Latest / Studio B Sessions / Filmmaker to Millionaire: He Turned $75 Shoots Into a Real Estate Media Empire
Transcript
- 0:04Vipul Bindra: John, thank you for coming.
- 0:05Vipul Bindra: It's always a pleasure talking to you and I know you're a busy man, so thank you for taking time out of your day to come here.
- 0:12John Ruz: Of course, my friend.
- 0:13John Ruz: Thank you so much for having me.
- 0:14Vipul Bindra: So it's funny enough.
- 0:15Vipul Bindra: This podcast is so new, barely out.
- 0:17Vipul Bindra: Like I was telling you I've had so many people request for you to be here because I've had like everyone come on and then when they're about to leave, they're like, well, you gotta have john on here.
- 0:30Vipul Bindra: So it's like, yes, yes, but we're saving him.
- 0:31Vipul Bindra: So you know, it's the second last episode of the season and um, like, first of all, why, how do you think you have this cult following in the?
- 0:35Vipul Bindra: In the orlando filmmaker database, I guess?
- 0:38Vipul Bindra: Um, I don't know, what do you think I feel like?
- 0:42John Ruz: um, I'm very transparent and I I like business.
- 0:46John Ruz: Um, and I feel like this industry lacks about that, lacks about talking about you know, being transparent, being in business, how to make your business profitable.
- 0:57John Ruz: It's very important that no one talks about exactly and what's crazy is we met at the first.
- 1:03Vipul Bindra: So, david, you're right, a friend had started filmmaker meetup and we met literally the first filmmaker meetup ever.
- 1:11Vipul Bindra: Uh, and I had no idea what that was going to spawn into.
- 1:14Vipul Bindra: And years later now here we are.
- 1:17Vipul Bindra: Um, I want to know.
- 1:18Vipul Bindra: Obviously, let's go back then.
- 1:19Vipul Bindra: Right, where was your business then?
- 1:21Vipul Bindra: What type of revenue were you doing?
- 1:23Vipul Bindra: Did you have any employees or contractors?
- 1:25Vipul Bindra: Tell me more.
- 1:26Vipul Bindra: If you remember, I think it was like 2023, two years ago, I think.
- 1:30Vipul Bindra: Two years ago.
- 1:31Vipul Bindra: Yeah, two and a half years ago, roughly.
- 1:34John Ruz: It's kind of the same as of right now.
- 1:36John Ruz: Team-wise we have scaled.
- 1:38John Ruz: Right now we have expanded to Texas new market for JRP.
- 1:42John Ruz: So, going back a little bit, I co-own two businesses with Brian, my business partner.
- 1:48John Ruz: So one is JRP and the other one is Big Wave Productions.
- 1:51John Ruz: Jrp focuses more on architectural photography, videography, 3d tours, matterport tours, all that.
- 1:59Vipul Bindra: So everything to do with real estate essentially right.
- 2:02John Ruz: Yes, and Big Wave is mostly commercials advertising conferences and all that.
- 2:10Vipul Bindra: So back when I met you so about two, two and a half years ago did you have both of them or you were only doing so.
- 2:15Vipul Bindra: You still had both.
- 2:16John Ruz: We still had both.
- 2:18Vipul Bindra: Okay, and at that time, what type of revenue were you pulling in?
- 2:23John Ruz: We were making around.
- 2:25John Ruz: Let's say we have been from the start.
- 2:28John Ruz: We have been pulling six figures throughout.
- 2:31John Ruz: When I started, by myself, of course, I was hitting close to five figures, but when Brian came in as a 50% partner, we scaled the business and started pulling in six-figure figures.
- 2:46Vipul Bindra: Which is really good.
- 2:47Vipul Bindra: Yeah.
- 2:47Vipul Bindra: Now I want to know, two years later, how much have you scaled?
- 2:49Vipul Bindra: Are you pulling like higher six figures?
- 2:51Vipul Bindra: Have you reached seven figures?
- 2:52Vipul Bindra: Where are you at right now?
- 2:54John Ruz: We haven't hit six figures.
- 2:55John Ruz: We're very close.
- 2:56John Ruz: This year might be the year that we hit six.
- 2:58John Ruz: You mean seven figures?
- 2:59John Ruz: Right, Seven figures.
- 3:00John Ruz: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- 3:00John Ruz: Sorry, Because I was like you're already six figures.
- 3:02Vipul Bindra: I know that.
- 3:03Vipul Bindra: So are you at high six figures right now.
- 3:06Vipul Bindra: High six figures, high six figures.
- 3:07John Ruz: That's pretty good I mean.
- 3:08Vipul Bindra: That's incredible, especially with the real estate.
- 3:10Vipul Bindra: I don't know if people know I'm hoping because you know our audience is filmmakers but real estate is one of the lowest money-making markets, like you know, where you make the lowest money for the most amount of work and you have.
- 3:23Vipul Bindra: You and your business partner have figured out a way to scale that business and make it profitable, which is an incredible feat.
- 3:30Vipul Bindra: You know, in a market, like I said, that's saturated, that's low paying, plus you're doing high quality work and somehow making that work.
- 3:37Vipul Bindra: How did you manage that?
- 3:39Vipul Bindra: I want to know the beginning of it, I guess.
- 3:41Vipul Bindra: How did you figure this formula out?
- 3:42John Ruz: Yeah, so when I started it was just myself charging $75 a shoot.
- 3:47John Ruz: Crazy, right yeah $75 for shooting, delivering everything that's crazy, that's crazy yeah.
- 3:54John Ruz: And now we are charging up to, you know, a real estate shoot, architectural shoot.
- 4:00Vipul Bindra: It can be up to $5,000, $7,000, $14,000 shoot, which is crazy to think about and remember.
- 4:05Vipul Bindra: For commercial, okay, but like for real estate to be able to pull that numbers is very you know, you're in the high end of that market, correct, but Orlando has properties that can match that right, yeah, so Properties and agents and businesses that need that type of quality.
- 4:27John Ruz: You know we have in Connor the low tier end of real estate agents that might not have the budget to hire us, you know.
- 4:29John Ruz: But there's the other side of it, that they see the value in the investment right.
- 4:35John Ruz: So they tend to go towards us because we do like to target those people and tailor our business and our vision to what they want.
- 4:45Vipul Bindra: Yeah, and to be real in real estate, any successful agent knows that's how you're selling a property.
- 4:51Vipul Bindra: Most people aren't just showing up, they're going through pictures, they're going through the Matterport tours.
- 4:55Vipul Bindra: That's somebody who bought a home two, two and a half months ago.
- 4:58Vipul Bindra: Basically, that is what you do you browse and then you pick your favorites and then you go see them in real life, right and with your agent, but you're not gonna go right if the photos don't make the great impression right and if the tour you know, then you do the 3d tour.
- 5:15Vipul Bindra: You can't imagine living there.
- 5:16Vipul Bindra: And the best one is video and one of the reasons I gravitated towards this house.
- 5:21Vipul Bindra: This was one of the few that had a video, and as soon as there was a video, I was like oh, now I can you know, because to me that's the biggest, most, uh, powerful one of them um, and then that made me want to.
- 5:32Vipul Bindra: Oh, I definitely have to go see it right you appreciated that.
- 5:35Vipul Bindra: Yeah, exactly yeah, because they you know, it makes you be able to see the space even better.
- 5:39Vipul Bindra: Right, it makes you be able to to picture you know everything in it.
- 5:42Vipul Bindra: Um, so what's your?
- 5:44Vipul Bindra: Uh, you would say a share of um ratio of like video to matterport to photos of what you're doing it's kind of crazy we have, when it, let's say, 2023, we were hitting mostly photos.
- 5:58John Ruz: Now it's video with reels, you know, tiktok being in place, reels being in place.
- 6:03John Ruz: Our content it's 70 video, 30 photos right now, which is, for me, it's crazy.
- 6:10Vipul Bindra: Yeah, to think about that, yeah because they, you, because, like you said, yeah, it was mostly photos, but agents have woken up, they're realizing that, uh, you know videos where the, where the play is, because now you can add emotion, you can add music, you can, you can, you can create the environment that that makes people want to live there right.
- 6:27Vipul Bindra: Because that's who they're targeting right, Right and not only that, you know video.
- 6:33John Ruz: One key thing that we have in our business and the mentality of being in the business of real estate is that the assets that we provide not only helps sell the health faster but helps the brand of the agent right themselves, their personal brand, their business.
- 6:48John Ruz: They want to represent like they want to show up on camera and and the video right on the final edit.
- 6:55John Ruz: We target those people that appreciate the assets and the investment.
- 6:59John Ruz: You know, the other tier end don't see that value.
- 7:03John Ruz: Is that that why we?
- 7:04John Ruz: We just grew, grew, grew out of it?
- 7:06Vipul Bindra: yeah, exactly.
- 7:07Vipul Bindra: And then and that's smart because, like you said, at the end of the day, um, you know those, you know, uh, they can pay more because they're selling more and uh, you know, these other agents just need to learn that.
- 7:19Vipul Bindra: And until they're there, uh, you know, right, you, you just have to cater the market.
- 7:24Vipul Bindra: That's good for business, because 75 dollars for shoot, I can't imagine yeah it's very hard.
- 7:28Vipul Bindra: So so tell me this, because it must have taken some kind of uh, you know something in you to want to do that.
- 7:35Vipul Bindra: So why, what?
- 7:36Vipul Bindra: Why what was so passionate that you were like I don't care if it's 75, I just want to do it.
- 7:41Vipul Bindra: Um, what year was this, by the way, when you were doing this?
- 7:43John Ruz: 2018, 2019.
- 7:46Vipul Bindra: Okay so you're charging $75 a box for a shoot right Right, like most real estate.
- 7:51Vipul Bindra: By the way, this isn't unique.
- 7:52Vipul Bindra: I've met people who are like very, very low budget.
- 7:55Vipul Bindra: It's like it makes no sense, but that's what they're doing, right, the market is what it is.
- 7:59John Ruz: What it is, yeah.
- 7:59Vipul Bindra: So.
- 8:00Vipul Bindra: So what made you because there's some kind of push in you what made you want to be still okay with that rate?
- 8:05John Ruz: So you know one agent and one agent, clint, of ours.
- 8:11John Ruz: She was fantastic, she was working as a real estate agent and knew someone in the marketing team of one of the biggest builders in the US Nation One International and she's like you guys might be interested in working with this builder, you know, and she went into the office, referred us.
- 8:31John Ruz: We totally shot, shot for free for that client.
- 8:35John Ruz: Uh, because we knew the potential.
- 8:37John Ruz: I knew the potential brian wasn't part of of the equation.
- 8:39John Ruz: Now, um, and he's a really great piece of an important piece of my development in the business.
- 8:47John Ruz: Um, and she's like, hey, let's do photos for them for free, you know.
- 8:53John Ruz: And I'm like, okay, yeah, sure, and I shot it, edited everything for free.
- 8:57John Ruz: And then the marketing director saw it and he's like, okay, well, perfect, let's, let's keep you rolling.
- 9:01John Ruz: And I was shooting, you know.
- 9:02John Ruz: And he's like, okay, well, perfect, let's keep you rolling.
- 9:03John Ruz: And I was shooting, you know, two to three properties a week.
- 9:06John Ruz: Now I'm shooting 10 a day.
- 9:08Vipul Bindra: Wow, 15 a day.
- 9:10Vipul Bindra: So it did help you doing it for free, because you all of a sudden went from two to three to 10, 15 a day.
- 9:15Vipul Bindra: Right, then you can scale up.
- 9:16Vipul Bindra: So, even though the price is low, right, you can make it up on the back end because you're doing way more, right?
- 9:21John Ruz: yeah, okay, and then one key thing is that brian came in, and brian is a veteran on the industry not, so how did you meet?
- 9:29John Ruz: Him, so I worked for him crazy part I.
- 9:31John Ruz: I was um I when I graduated full sail.
- 9:35John Ruz: I graduated from full sail okay film and I I promised myself that I will find something, um as fast possible.
- 9:44John Ruz: So I started emailing people studios every single day for a year, boom, boom boom back and forth.
- 9:52John Ruz: No one.
- 9:53John Ruz: I you know.
- 9:54John Ruz: I got some gigs here and there and my email was hey, I'm an intern, just graduated from full sale.
- 9:59John Ruz: I'm looking for opportunities.
- 10:01John Ruz: Do you have something?
- 10:01John Ruz: Please let me know.
- 10:02John Ruz: Here's a link to my portfolio.
- 10:04Vipul Bindra: And the sad part is I'll tell you this I get a ton of those because full sale, a lot of those emails, and then most they go unread.
- 10:12Vipul Bindra: Or I try to be nice and I respond hey, send me some links, maybe your rates, I'll try and put you on a list.
- 10:18Vipul Bindra: If somebody calls out I can call you, but out I can call you, but the truth is and this is just for people who are doing that I'm telling you it's not worth it.
- 10:28Vipul Bindra: Maybe you'll get lucky.
- 10:28Vipul Bindra: You're better off going in person, because here's the thing I don't mind bringing people for free, right?
- 10:33Vipul Bindra: I just need to know who you are right, and an email is just the most terrible way to know who you are right and that's why those get ignored.
- 10:40Vipul Bindra: Right, because I'm just like I don't know your feel, you know your, your tone.
- 10:45Vipul Bindra: How are you going to go with my client?
- 10:47Vipul Bindra: Because last thing I want to do is I bring you in a shoot.
- 10:49Vipul Bindra: Let's say I'm charging the client 15 grand for that commercial right and you come in for free, but you say something silly, or even if the silliest thing you'd say not you, but I'm just saying when somebody's new, they could go.
- 11:00Vipul Bindra: I don't know how to set this light up the client goes, goes.
- 11:02Vipul Bindra: Oh, I'm paying this much for amateurs even though it's okay for you not to know, right, but if the client hears the perception changes, it hurts the business.
- 11:08Vipul Bindra: So I need to be able to vet the people Cause then I know, okay, hey, you're not going to say something silly.
- 11:13Vipul Bindra: And if you do need to cost cause, it's okay, whole perception.
- 11:21Vipul Bindra: And these conversations need to be had in person, not over email.
- 11:25Vipul Bindra: So I highly recommend if you're going to reach out by email, then just ask for coffee, right?
- 11:29Vipul Bindra: Just say hey, let's meet.
- 11:31Vipul Bindra: I would love to just pick your brain for a little bit and most people will say yes, versus you know, hire me.
- 11:36Vipul Bindra: Because then it's like here's my portfolio.
- 11:38Vipul Bindra: It doesn't matter what your portfolio is, right, I don't know the person.
- 11:45Vipul Bindra: So I think that's far more important.
- 11:46John Ruz: Anyway, tangent, but I want to tell people how to get out of that rut.
- 11:48Vipul Bindra: Key point yeah just meet for coffee.
- 11:49Vipul Bindra: Get them to know you as a person because, trust me you, anyone will teach you.
- 11:54Vipul Bindra: I so many people on those podcasts will happily bring anyone new and teach them right what they won't do is just bring a stranger on set so just don't be a stranger, go meet people anyway.
- 12:04Vipul Bindra: So, yes, so you had, you had that experience, which I I hope I wasn't one of the ones but I apologize if I was?
- 12:11Vipul Bindra: Uh, because that happens, that happens daily it's so crazy how often that happens.
- 12:15Vipul Bindra: But yes, so you tried.
- 12:16John Ruz: Obviously couldn't find something I tried, you couldn't find something.
- 12:19John Ruz: And then brian replied back hey, which is awesome.
- 12:22John Ruz: So, yeah, you never know, yeah, right he's like, hey, yeah, perfect, let's, let's meet up at this spot um dress.
- 12:29John Ruz: Dress accordingly to the occasion and you know what?
- 12:33John Ruz: My first get?
- 12:34John Ruz: What was for rolex 24 daytona, you know for the interior designer yeah, it was great.
- 12:39John Ruz: Wow, I'm like, oh my god, this, this is what I love to do.
- 12:42John Ruz: You know, this is great.
- 12:43John Ruz: This is an amazing opportunity.
- 12:44John Ruz: So fast forward.
- 12:46John Ruz: Um covet hit 2020.
- 12:48John Ruz: Yeah, best brian's business.
- 12:51John Ruz: Um was mostly into, you know, commercials and advertising and conferences, which dried up.
- 12:58Vipul Bindra: Yeah, pretty much yeah so my business.
- 13:01John Ruz: At the time I was working for that builder, pulling my hair out because I didn't have a team.
- 13:07John Ruz: I was working for myself.
- 13:08Vipul Bindra: You know I'm like 10, 15 shoes.
- 13:10Vipul Bindra: It's crazy yeah.
- 13:11John Ruz: I was working, I was pulling 12 hours days shooting, plus then all night editing then QCing and delivering, which is just crazy.
- 13:20John Ruz: I wasn't getting burned out.
- 13:22John Ruz: The client was getting super annoyed of not hitting delivery times.
- 13:26John Ruz: You know, and real estate it's, it's a fast turnaround, it's 24 hours turnaround, so you have to shoot and deliver in 24 hours.
- 13:34Vipul Bindra: You know it's, that's what they expect, because they want to put the listing out.
- 13:37John Ruz: Yeah, right, so um, he came in.
- 13:39John Ruz: Well, I'm like, hey, brian, I'm sorry, but I need so much help right now.
- 13:44John Ruz: He's like, oh my God, yes, perfect, this works great.
- 13:47John Ruz: I don't I, you know I'm not doing anything, let's do that.
- 13:50John Ruz: And you know, he, he came in as a producer and helped me you know, randomly run, randomly client and, and you know that been some ideas.
- 13:58John Ruz: And he's like hey, helping me edit, helping me just manage things, helping me book stuff on the calendar.
- 14:03John Ruz: And I'm like, okay, cool, well, this is working.
- 14:06John Ruz: I'm having a team player right here, so this is great.
- 14:10Vipul Bindra: But that's incredible to think about.
- 14:11Vipul Bindra: Hold on a minute.
- 14:12Vipul Bindra: You started right.
- 14:14Vipul Bindra: You reached out to somebody who responded out of sea of emails and he hired you.
- 14:20Vipul Bindra: He brought you on right.
- 14:22Vipul Bindra: He's more experienced and now, because of covid, tide have turned.
- 14:26Vipul Bindra: Now he's coming in to partner with you because he his work dried up.
- 14:29Vipul Bindra: So you never know people that hire you could end up working with you, right, uh.
- 14:33Vipul Bindra: So now he's like oh, I, my work dried up, let's partner together.
- 14:37Vipul Bindra: But because he's so experienced, he can come in and kind of find efficiencies I'm missing in the process right, he, he is a veteran on producing.
- 14:45John Ruz: You know scaling the business, the business developing, so he was a key, essential part to you know, jrp, not only scaling, but you know making profit, making numbers, because if you're pulling 75 bucks a shoot, yeah with edit editors in place and paying myself you're like pulling one dollar profits exactly, which is like nothing in orlando.
- 15:08Vipul Bindra: Good luck, uh.
- 15:09Vipul Bindra: So.
- 15:09Vipul Bindra: So essentially, he came in, he.
- 15:12Vipul Bindra: So you were the talent at that time, right?
- 15:15Vipul Bindra: He's now the the business brains, right?
- 15:17Vipul Bindra: So what do you guys do to scale it or or to to make it better?
- 15:21John Ruz: right.
- 15:21John Ruz: So this client really helped us visualize the future of this business.
- 15:27John Ruz: So, it's like, okay, well, we have to target home builders, interior designers, architects that have bulk of business, have 15, 20 shoots at that time and we're like, okay, well, we can pull in a shooter contractor right here.
- 15:41John Ruz: All of our shooters are contractors.
- 15:43John Ruz: None of them are employees.
- 15:45John Ruz: The only two employees on our two entities are Brian and I, and that's it.
- 15:49John Ruz: We, only we only.
- 15:51Vipul Bindra: So I do the same thing the contractor formula even though I have people you know who get a lot of work from us.
- 15:56Vipul Bindra: But it worked for me, which is so funny.
- 15:59Vipul Bindra: When I started the company, I wanted to replicate.
- 16:01Vipul Bindra: They had full-time employees, so I'm so glad I didn't.
- 16:04Vipul Bindra: This is the better format, but what made?
- 16:10John Ruz: you go with this format where you bring in contractors versus employees.
- 16:11John Ruz: We were running out of money so fast with employees.
- 16:15John Ruz: We tried with one of our first contractors.
- 16:19John Ruz: We put it on a W-2 basis.
- 16:21John Ruz: We said no, no we can't.
- 16:27Vipul Bindra: It's so much Because you have to then the overhead and all that, right, right, and you have to have the current, yeah, recurring revenue, right, yeah, exactly we're like maybe the contractor rates will work and we we're targeting contractors that not only specify in real estate, but they only they.
- 16:42John Ruz: They mostly do weddings on the weekends, so they have the weekdays pretty much open and that's where we come in look at that.
- 16:48Vipul Bindra: We don't shoot for the weekends.
- 16:49Vipul Bindra: That's pretty smart.
- 16:50Vipul Bindra: So you basically went out and you said hey, here's wedding videographers who are free during the weekdays.
- 16:55Vipul Bindra: Come do real estate for us be contractors.
- 16:58Vipul Bindra: That's smart.
- 16:59Vipul Bindra: So what were you, or what are you paying them?
- 17:02Vipul Bindra: On average, a shoot.
- 17:04John Ruz: So it can vary depending on the season.
- 17:08John Ruz: We have slow season and high season.
- 17:10John Ruz: Our shooters can make from $2,500 a month to up to $10,000 a month.
- 17:16Vipul Bindra: That's pretty good for a contractor Right.
- 17:18Vipul Bindra: And then how were you able to up your rate?
- 17:20Vipul Bindra: Did you go back to that same builder and say I want to go from 75 to I don't know, 150, 200, whatever?
- 17:24Vipul Bindra: You upped your rate, did you go back to that same builder and say I want to go from 75 to, I don't know, 150, 200, whatever you up to your rate to?
- 17:27Vipul Bindra: Um, how did you manage that conversation?
- 17:30Vipul Bindra: Or did you just have to find a whole new client to up the rate?
- 17:33John Ruz: not really.
- 17:33John Ruz: You know um with brian.
- 17:35John Ruz: He's like okay, john, you have to see the business through what we're working for this is a builder that's pulling billions of dollars and probably doing a six you know budget a year for marketing.
- 17:48John Ruz: So you have to think about how much we're going to charge them, how much we're going to pay our contractor, our editors, our backend team, qc team, and then we have to figure out a number that we can pull to the client, right.
- 18:00John Ruz: So we find out that packaging our pricing with photo, video matter, port work, great for profits and for the client, right?
- 18:09John Ruz: So we we came in with the for the client with several pricing tiers and uh packages, and what ended up happening?
- 18:17John Ruz: They're like okay, well, let's take for every single home to stick with this package, and for bigger shoots, for moto homes, for you know, more involved shoots, let's go custom, right?
- 18:28John Ruz: Yeah so, and that's what happened so.
- 18:30Vipul Bindra: So you were able to build packages that and your real estate is a very good market where you can do that.
- 18:36Vipul Bindra: So give us an example of your current packages so people, and with some example pricing, so people can understand what clients are paying and what the deliverables are like you know photos, video, whatever, so what?
- 18:47Vipul Bindra: What did packages look like?
- 18:48John Ruz: Some examples so we have three packages and we have something that's called price anchoring, right?
- 18:54John Ruz: So we have our high tier list that can cost up to 2,500 bucks and includes photos, video, matterport tours, landing pages, marketing kits and 2D floor plans.
- 19:07John Ruz: Then we have our middle tier.
- 19:09John Ruz: That can cost you $250,.
- 19:12John Ruz: That includes photo video, a cinematic tour and a floor plan, but you take out the Matterport tour.
- 19:19John Ruz: And then we have our lowest tier that can cost you $950, and it only includes photo video and drone.
- 19:26Vipul Bindra: That's it.
- 19:26Vipul Bindra: That's about it.
- 19:27Vipul Bindra: No, matterport, no, or floor plan, but that's smart.
- 19:30Vipul Bindra: So you were able to tier up, but it makes it easy for the client to go.
- 19:34Vipul Bindra: This times this many properties, very easy for them to also get the services that they want and they don't have to worry about any of the overhead.
- 19:43Vipul Bindra: So that makes absolute sense.
- 19:44Vipul Bindra: Now, how did you take a market that's used to cheap photographers and have them accept this rate or these tiers?
- 19:52Vipul Bindra: Did you have to do anything on the business side, in your sales side, or what did you do?
- 19:57Vipul Bindra: Or you just had to find those clients.
- 20:00John Ruz: The most important thing is to treat a client as a partner, right?
- 20:04John Ruz: You are their marketing extension, not you're a single vendor, right?
- 20:10John Ruz: So whenever we can make that connection with that client, they just open up.
- 20:14John Ruz: They're like hey guys, you know we have X amount of budget, let's plan ahead, right, what we can do with this, right?
- 20:22John Ruz: So that way we find the right qualified clients, right qualified people and, you know, they become friends at the end of the day.
- 20:31John Ruz: We are friends with every single client that we have.
- 20:35John Ruz: We have a close connection with that person because we want that not only for the business but as a relationship.
- 20:44John Ruz: You know we want to treat them as partners, not just another vendor.
- 20:48Vipul Bindra: No, absolutely.
- 20:48Vipul Bindra: So you're partnering with them, you're offering them a very easy offer that they can accept.
- 20:54Vipul Bindra: Plus, they have scalability, so they have a higher tier property they can scale up to hire or even a custom price point.
- 21:01Vipul Bindra: Then how does the pipeline matter, Like, do they reach out to you or do you have a project manager?
- 21:08Vipul Bindra: How does that like?
- 21:09Vipul Bindra: Walk me through an example, timeline right, you reach out to this person.
- 21:12Vipul Bindra: This person calls this person this you know?
- 21:14John Ruz: you know what I mean, right?
- 21:15John Ruz: So yeah, we have a pretty simple system.
- 21:17John Ruz: Some, some people overly complicates these stuff and the project managers are Brian and I.
- 21:26Vipul Bindra: Yeah, that complicates this stuff and the project managers are brian and I.
- 21:27John Ruz: yeah, that's there you go because you are the relationship builders.
- 21:29John Ruz: So we want direct contact with the client.
- 21:30John Ruz: They want to speak directly to the owners, to the both of us, because we are their friends, their partners.
- 21:36John Ruz: They understand us and we understand them right.
- 21:38John Ruz: So we, if we try to put someone in place to replace us, especially building this relationship for three, four years, something might crack right so we don't want that with our clients.
- 21:50John Ruz: We want direct content with them.
- 21:52John Ruz: So whenever they have a project, they email their call or like hey guys, we have this project coming up, can you quote me for it?
- 21:59John Ruz: You know, and send a quote for that, perfect.
- 22:01Vipul Bindra: So they reach out to you and they say, let's say you've obviously signed them up so they have two new properties coming up, whatever.
- 22:11Vipul Bindra: So they let you know.
- 22:11Vipul Bindra: Is it by email or how do they typically contact you?
- 22:12John Ruz: email, I'm guessing, or phone, so we have a platform um that's partnered with us.
- 22:17John Ruz: It's called tonimo.
- 22:18John Ruz: It's mostly a crm for real estate photographers um there's other ones in there this hd photo hub.
- 22:24John Ruz: There's um, you know, ario, spiro, whatever.
- 22:29Vipul Bindra: So we we were on hd photo hub with transition to tonimo for their built-in crm system that they have they can either book themselves online oh, perfect, so they have like an account right so they can just go in and schedule it.
- 22:43Vipul Bindra: Perfect, so it's pretty fully automated.
- 22:45John Ruz: So we don't sometimes if they have a special project, bulk project, like hey, we have 15 houses coming up, of course we want to target that online or over email Right, of course.
- 22:57John Ruz: So when they have one-off shoots here and there, it's better for them to book themselves, see the real-time availability from all of our shooters and book it.
- 23:06Vipul Bindra: Okay, that's awesome.
- 23:08Vipul Bindra: So they can just go in, they can enter it, they can even specify a specific shooter if they want to, if they like someone better, obviously, and they schedule it.
- 23:17Vipul Bindra: Then what happens?
- 23:18Vipul Bindra: Does the shooter get in, because they have probably on the app platform too, right, so the shooter gets a thing.
- 23:30John Ruz: Like you got to have, probably on the on the platform too, right, so the shooter gets the thing.
- 23:32John Ruz: Like you gotta go shoot that.
- 23:33John Ruz: So we have, um, all of our contractors have a jrp email, right, gmail account, yeah, attached to it.
- 23:35John Ruz: So, um, my assistant, gene virtual assistant, and myself and brian manage pretty much the entire dashboard of the bulk of the google calendar, right, so our contractors can mark themselves off if they want to work or not, right, or if they have another shoots coming in in the schedule, right.
- 23:49John Ruz: That schedule ties in into our online booking platform where clients and which is great, the client has a, you know, not dedicated photographer or videographer, but preferred vendor or photographer or videographer, so they can choose, or the system automatically chooses for them that partner and they let them choose a time and date for the shoot.
- 24:12John Ruz: So when that shoot comes in, it pops into the Google schedule, it sends an email confirmation to the client, of course, to the shooter.
- 24:20John Ruz: It sends a text message to the shooter and to the client and it automatically notifies our editors that there's a job posting to the shooter and to the client and it automatically notifies our editors that there's a job posting in progress that needs to be edited, so that's perfect.
- 24:30Vipul Bindra: So essentially you've automated to the point.
- 24:33Vipul Bindra: The client, once you onboard them, has a platform access to your crm software.
- 24:37Vipul Bindra: They can go in, right.
- 24:39Vipul Bindra: They can select everything.
- 24:40Vipul Bindra: The system automatically alerts everyone, both the contracted shooter and the client, right, they meet up, uh, and then goes plus.
- 24:48Vipul Bindra: At the same time the editors know, hey, this project is coming up in the pipeline, right.
- 24:52Vipul Bindra: So that's perfect.
- 24:53Vipul Bindra: So the shooter shows up, they do their thing.
- 24:55Vipul Bindra: How long is typical real estate shoot?
- 24:57Vipul Bindra: A couple hours at most.
- 24:59John Ruz: So it varies.
- 24:59John Ruz: If you're doing photos only, it might take 30 minutes.
- 25:01John Ruz: If we're doing the whole, it might take 30 minutes.
- 25:02John Ruz: If we're doing the whole package, it might take three hours.
- 25:04John Ruz: Yes, three hours, okay perfect.
- 25:06Vipul Bindra: So let's assume they did photos and video, the typical stuff, and then they applied it back to the same platform.
- 25:13Vipul Bindra: Is there a different platform to send the footage back to it?
- 25:15John Ruz: So the platform is attached to Dropbox, which is fantastic.
- 25:18John Ruz: We pay for the business thing and we get, oh my God, unlimited storage, pretty much.
- 25:24John Ruz: So.
- 25:26John Ruz: All of our shooters have a dropbox account attached to the jrp email and they get an email where I don't recommend dropbox for like big files.
- 25:34Vipul Bindra: I think it's good for real estate.
- 25:36Vipul Bindra: I've had a terrible experience with dropbox yeah, but again, that's because we I'm sending files at 100 gigabytes.
- 25:41John Ruz: 200 gigabytes, it doesn't work for that.
- 25:43John Ruz: For us it's like 20 megabytes.
- 25:45John Ruz: Yeah, exactly, and that's perfect for that.
- 25:47Vipul Bindra: So, yeah, so it integrates, so they just upload it it uploads it.
- 25:52John Ruz: Well, each shooter has their own dedicated folder that it's linked with our editors, our project managers that's Gene, and our QC people, that's Michelle and Eduardo, right, so all of them are all tied together into one folder and everything is pretty much.
- 26:09John Ruz: You know, notifications all the way.
- 26:11John Ruz: So we have Slack built in, right, intuit Gmail baked in, so we have, so they get a Slack notification hey footage was uploaded, right, or photos were uploaded, so the editor is just on it, they started.
- 26:23Vipul Bindra: And then what's the delivery?
- 26:24Vipul Bindra: Does that CRM are uploaded, so the editor is just on it, they start it and then what's?
- 26:27Vipul Bindra: The delivery.
- 26:28Vipul Bindra: Does that crm platform?
- 26:28John Ruz: handle delivery, so they just upload it back back in back to the client so it doesn't go to mls.
- 26:31Vipul Bindra: The client has to put it on mls, correct?
- 26:33Vipul Bindra: Okay, so your team just gives the client the, the deliverables, right, and then you're the agent most likely the client, right.
- 26:40Vipul Bindra: So the agent will then do the whole mls thing.
- 26:42Vipul Bindra: Okay, correct, that's perfect.
- 26:44Vipul Bindra: Yeah, I love it.
- 26:45Vipul Bindra: Yeah, I want to talk more into now your employees, or your contractors.
- 26:48Vipul Bindra: Yeah, so, there are they any anyone in america besides you and brian?
- 26:52Vipul Bindra: Are they all internet well, shooters are.
- 26:53Vipul Bindra: But I'm saying your editors and your virtual assistant and your qc people, are they all us-based or are they foreign-based?
- 27:01Vipul Bindra: Foreign-based?
- 27:02Vipul Bindra: Look at that all of them, and exactly why you're here.
- 27:05John Ruz: I want to I want to talk because I I have.
- 27:06Vipul Bindra: By the way, if for somebody doesn't know, um, all my people are us based, except for my animation team, which is based out of india.
- 27:14Vipul Bindra: So it's okay, I'm all for.
- 27:15Vipul Bindra: You know, taking advantage of skilled people, right, um, you know, in in a different country and getting them work.
- 27:22Vipul Bindra: So I want to know is how you came up with that concept?
- 27:25Vipul Bindra: What is your?
- 27:26Vipul Bindra: Idea brian's idea and then how you went about recruiting them.
- 27:29Vipul Bindra: Did you use a specific platform?
- 27:31John Ruz: yeah.
- 27:31John Ruz: So the funny story is whenever, when I was editing the photos, right, I got a message on instagram from a vietnamese editor right, hey, john, I can.
- 27:44John Ruz: Oh, you know, I can edit your photos for 80 cents.
- 27:47John Ruz: I'm like wait a minute.
- 27:48John Ruz: Okay, well, I can.
- 27:49John Ruz: That means I can send my photos to edit for this price and I can have them ready in no time, in 12 hours eight hours and for real estate.
- 27:58Vipul Bindra: It's not like you have a lot of photos, you're like 20 photos right and something like that.
- 28:01Vipul Bindra: Right so the cost wouldn't be that high.
- 28:03John Ruz: Yeah, right, so you're, you're pulling 25 bucks, you know, off of a shoot, 30 bucks for the editor.
- 28:09John Ruz: Yeah, you know, um, and I'm like, does that mean I need, like I can alleviate myself from editing?
- 28:14John Ruz: And that changed the game, right?
- 28:16John Ruz: So I've gone through several editors, because you have to test right, and there's either Facebook groups that have a ton of online editors that can work for you.
- 28:29John Ruz: It's become so popular now that you might get 30, 40, I get 40 DMs a day, 30 DMs a day from editors.
- 28:38John Ruz: Hey, can I work for you?
- 28:39John Ruz: Hey, can I work for you?
- 28:40Vipul Bindra: So you, can then go vet who's?
- 28:41Vipul Bindra: Because that's one of the hardest things I've found is and I have US-based editors.
- 28:45Vipul Bindra: Even then, hardest thing for me is finding and you met my leader and, but you know, and then she has to handle all the other editors.
- 28:52Vipul Bindra: It's a pain, because finding somebody who can get your vision, who can do it right and do it fast, is very difficult.
- 28:59John Ruz: You'd be amazed how many editors are not the right fit.
- 29:05Vipul Bindra: So you have to go through a few right to get to to the ones that work, and then you want to keep them.
- 29:07Vipul Bindra: You don't want them to go no so so you go, so you get now obviously a lot of dms and a lot of people so you're just going through their profiles, kind of vetting them right maybe giving them a project or two to test out right.
- 29:18John Ruz: So each project that we give to a new editor, it's a test job and it's three photos.
- 29:23John Ruz: So I've developed a system where I know if on those three photos it's it's shown that you can prove to my to yourself that.
- 29:32Vipul Bindra: So they have like what bad color or bad dynamic range just three photos.
- 29:35John Ruz: I already know if it's a good or not good wonder if we can leak the photos.
- 29:41Vipul Bindra: No, that's very smart, so that's good.
- 29:42Vipul Bindra: So you found three photos that you know very hard to edit.
- 29:44Vipul Bindra: Right, you send that to them.
- 29:46Vipul Bindra: You know, if they edit them good, they're good and then they, they pass the grp test.
- 29:50Vipul Bindra: That's, that's so good.
- 29:52John Ruz: And then um, you know, we have stocked with one editor for three years now which her, her team is amazing and crazy part.
- 30:01John Ruz: They, they expanded because of us, because of our bulk of business, and we saw, we love that success for them right.
- 30:09John Ruz: We know how important this stuff is for them, so we might get some photos and videos from their office, Like hey, John, thank you so much for being a client.
- 30:18John Ruz: Look what you guys made for us so great.
- 30:21John Ruz: You can see them.
- 30:22Vipul Bindra: So you're supporting them and they're expanding because you're expanding right, so that's amazing.
- 30:28Vipul Bindra: So you partner with this and they already have their in-house editors right, they might have 30 editors in there, yeah so that's incredible, and they know the, the level of quality you're expecting, so they do it.
- 30:37Vipul Bindra: And then how does your qc teamwork are they based out of?
- 30:40John Ruz: uh, you know, same country right, you said v Vietnam was your first Yep, you like Vietnamese people.
- 30:46Vipul Bindra: I love Vietnamese food.
- 30:47Vipul Bindra: By the way, a lot of people, and I didn't know this until I discovered Vietnamese food.
- 30:51Vipul Bindra: Apparently there's a huge Vietnamese population in Orlando.
- 30:55Vipul Bindra: We have literally a little Saigon in downtown Orlando.
- 30:59John Ruz: Really, I didn't know that.
- 31:00Vipul Bindra: Oh my God, and we have incredible Vietnamese food here in Orlando and a huge Vietnamese population and I had no idea for the first few years.
- 31:09Vipul Bindra: I lived here until I discovered it, so you got to go to little Saigon in downtown, but I love Vietnamese food so it's pretty cool.
- 31:14Vipul Bindra: So how did you find your QC people?
- 31:18Vipul Bindra: Same thing, and what are they checking for?
- 31:20Vipul Bindra: What is the QC?
- 31:22Vipul Bindra: Quality control?
- 31:31John Ruz: What are they essentially checking?
- 31:32John Ruz: To what is the the you?
- 31:33Vipul Bindra: know qc quality control.
- 31:33Vipul Bindra: What are they?
- 31:33John Ruz: essentially checking um to make sure that you know before they they released I guess the content.
- 31:36John Ruz: Yeah, so our qc team, we found them through upwork, right?
- 31:38John Ruz: Okay, so we have either um, upwork or fiverr that you know, um that provide those virtual assistants.
- 31:41Vipul Bindra: We post a job in there and you just get get into and do you still go through upwork, or have you now moved them off upwork, since you work right with them so much?
- 31:49John Ruz: one of our key thing is to move them out of out of upwork right because of the fees, yeah, they take 15 off, 15, 15 of their cot and some fees from us so it's like both of you save basically by going, especially if it's a regular thing.
- 32:03Vipul Bindra: I get it's a one-off thing, uh, but if it's like a regular thing move them up, bring them into your system.
- 32:08Vipul Bindra: That's great.
- 32:09Vipul Bindra: So what are they checking for?
- 32:10Vipul Bindra: What's the qc that they're doing?
- 32:12John Ruz: so michelle is one of our qc teams and she is mainly looking for inconsistency in color.
- 32:19John Ruz: Are the verticals or straighten?
- 32:22John Ruz: Um, if there's reflections on the floors, if there's trash outside, if there are cracks on your driveway, stuff like that, yeah, some, some key things that make our quality better than the other.
- 32:33John Ruz: It's like that.
- 32:34Vipul Bindra: It just make sure that the little details are taken care of exactly how do you find a qc person, because they have to be very detail oriented.
- 32:41Vipul Bindra: But how do you test that?
- 32:42Vipul Bindra: It was easy for the, for the editor, because, like you said, you have three photos.
- 32:46Vipul Bindra: Do you have a method to test the qc people?
- 32:49John Ruz: so same thing.
- 32:50Vipul Bindra: Three photos so your photos already hidden trash and reflection.
- 32:54John Ruz: Look at that that's so smart three photos and as soon as we edit it yeah we just wanted to see if she saw the details in there.
- 33:02John Ruz: Right, the little small details.
- 33:04John Ruz: Of course we gave her instructions because, no, a lot of them don't follow instructions.
- 33:09Vipul Bindra: Yeah, so that's all you want, you, right?
- 33:11Vipul Bindra: You're you're happy to obviously train them like hey, here's what you should be looking out for, and we do that yeah and and, and she did obviously the person you ended up going with right, and so what's the process then?
- 33:21Vipul Bindra: They catch this and then send it back to the editor, I'm guessing with notes like hey, this is wrong.
- 33:25John Ruz: So if it's a bigger mistake, like inconsistency in coloring between photo and photo, we send them back to the editor.
- 33:31John Ruz: If it's something that they can pull off on Photoshop real quick, they can do them.
- 33:35Vipul Bindra: They can do them so, but you know we have our partner, our editing partner in Vietnam.
- 33:40John Ruz: She's amazing.
- 33:41John Ruz: She knows our quality, she knows what we're looking for.
- 33:44John Ruz: You know, there's some months that from the bulk of business that we give her some inconsistencies here and there, but that's fine.
- 33:52Vipul Bindra: Yeah, exactly, we're human plus, like you said, she has a team so right, you never know.
- 33:56Vipul Bindra: There may be inconsistencies, which is why quality control is so important.
- 34:00Vipul Bindra: Right, by the way, for my company, none of my videos ever go out.
- 34:03Vipul Bindra: I don't care if I was not involved, because there's a lot of projects now where I'm not involved.
- 34:07Vipul Bindra: I will not release a video to a client until I've seen it, so unfortunately I don't have a team.
- 34:13Vipul Bindra: I'm not as big as you I am the qc, but for me it's like my name is on the company which I want to talk to you about the name of the company yeah, silly again.
- 34:20Vipul Bindra: I wish I picked a different name, but now it's like it's Bindra.
- 34:22John Ruz: Productions.
- 34:23John Ruz: I am the Bindra.
- 34:24John Ruz: Nothing leaves my you yeah.
- 34:27Vipul Bindra: Because I'm like my name can't be on it until.
- 34:30John Ruz: I'm saying yes.
- 34:31Vipul Bindra: Yeah, so how did you pick JRP?
- 34:33Vipul Bindra: Because you know that's your name right.
- 34:35Vipul Bindra: John Ruse Productions.
- 34:36John Ruz: Yeah, Again in my opinion, we should name companies after a name after name, but, oh my god, I did it, you did it, I did it so was it just like me, like laziness, or what?
- 34:45John Ruz: Yeah, that's it I'm like okay, well, let's call it myself.
- 34:48John Ruz: Uh, don't lose.
- 34:49John Ruz: Production is easy.
- 34:50John Ruz: Right too late to change now, right once you once you scale and you're like I don't know if you've thought about it.
- 34:55Vipul Bindra: I've thought about many times.
- 34:56Vipul Bindra: I'm like, oh, I should have picked a different name because you know I wanted to be bigger than me.
- 35:00Vipul Bindra: But it's like harder, because now I'm like over established, it's hard to change it right.
- 35:04John Ruz: Have you thought of that too?
- 35:05John Ruz: A lot, yeah, a lot.
- 35:06John Ruz: And sometimes I'm thinking, what boards should I change the jrp to like something right?
- 35:14John Ruz: Yeah, I can change that like I can change something to to that, right, but it's so hard, exactly so yeah, I don't know what you make out of it.
- 35:21Vipul Bindra: Maybe you know, uh, hire, uh, what do you call a focus group?
- 35:23Vipul Bindra: To come with some, but you don't know what you'd make out of it.
- 35:24Vipul Bindra: Maybe you know, hire, what do you?
- 35:24John Ruz: call it a focus group to come up with something, but you don't need to.
- 35:26Vipul Bindra: That's what.
- 35:26Vipul Bindra: I'm saying Same thing happened with me.
- 35:28Vipul Bindra: Even though I want to, it's just like at this point.
- 35:30Vipul Bindra: We're established.
- 35:31Vipul Bindra: People don't care.
- 35:31Vipul Bindra: People call me Bindra.
- 35:33Vipul Bindra: They just call me by my last name, because that's the name of the company and different where it wasn't my name.
- 35:46Vipul Bindra: But too late, right.
- 35:47Vipul Bindra: So, uh, you know, so you, you, you're one of the other people that's going through that.
- 35:49Vipul Bindra: So, but hey, uh, you found success.
- 35:50Vipul Bindra: I love the.
- 35:50Vipul Bindra: The process.
- 35:51Vipul Bindra: It's fully automated.
- 35:52Vipul Bindra: Um, with you know, contracted us shooters, you're giving them work, right.
- 35:57Vipul Bindra: Um, uh, then you have contracted, uh, these, um the remote foreign workers that they're getting work.
- 36:03Vipul Bindra: Everyone's happy, right.
- 36:04John Ruz: And at the end of the day, um, you're able to give your clients a better product at the end, which is what matters at the end to them, right?
- 36:11John Ruz: And the biggest part is that we talk to them.
- 36:15John Ruz: To the client it's like, hey, what do you guys need?
- 36:17John Ruz: And we are very transparent with our clients.
- 36:20John Ruz: Hey, we are implementing new QC procedures for your project to guarantee that you guys are getting the best quality in the next project.
- 36:27John Ruz: So just want to be transparent with them.
- 36:30John Ruz: Because, again, you are an extension of their business, you're an extension of their marketing team, right?
- 36:35John Ruz: They want to help them.
- 36:36Vipul Bindra: Exactly so this is my next thing I want to ask you is basically how does this?
- 36:40Vipul Bindra: Now, obviously, the process works, you figured it out, you got the right people and you're doing the management side, but how do you?
- 36:48Vipul Bindra: The biggest thing, I think, is customer service to a business.
- 36:51Vipul Bindra: It's so crazy, but people don't realize how important customer service is because, you don't know right the client, obviously, the process is good you make sure the photos are good, but you don't know what the agent feels, feels.
- 37:03Vipul Bindra: It's very important to know where they are at feedback and all that.
- 37:07Vipul Bindra: So how do you create that feedback, luke?
- 37:09Vipul Bindra: Do you do like a manual call in, check in or do you do like a survey?
- 37:12Vipul Bindra: How do you know the agents are happy with what they're getting and their needs are matter whatever?
- 37:18Vipul Bindra: Tell me that, because to me that's more important than the whole process that we've talked about so far, even though obviously the product is the thing they're buying, right, but it's the experience right.
- 37:29Vipul Bindra: So how do you manage that?
- 37:30John Ruz: Crazy part is that we did not implement that until last year.
- 37:35Vipul Bindra: Oh, wow.
- 37:35John Ruz: Right, we just sent you photos and peace out.
- 37:38Vipul Bindra: Right, exactly.
- 37:40John Ruz: With our builder clients, bigger high-end VIP clients we do have a relationship.
- 37:45John Ruz: So we ask them stuff For our real estate agents.
- 37:48John Ruz: We didn't have a system right.
- 37:51John Ruz: It's easy to send an email, but if you're doing 20, 30 shoots a day, it gets hard, yeah, and you don't want to be spamming them either?
- 38:00Vipul Bindra: Then they're like I don't want these many emails.
- 38:02Vipul Bindra: So what's the?
- 38:04John Ruz: process that you implemented.
- 38:05John Ruz: So our platform offers a follow-up email now automatically.
- 38:08John Ruz: So we just hit the what's this platform?
- 38:11Vipul Bindra: again, it's called tonimo okay, I don't know this.
- 38:14Vipul Bindra: But hey, people in the real estate.
- 38:16Vipul Bindra: Okay, go ahead, tonimo.
- 38:17Vipul Bindra: So it has like a feedback loop in built into it.
- 38:20John Ruz: Okay, so it has a trigger built in when you complete the actual project and send the completed project.
- 38:26John Ruz: It waits two days to send a follow up.
- 38:28John Ruz: Like hey, just wanted to check in.
- 38:31John Ruz: Were the photos up to par for your work quality?
- 38:34John Ruz: If there's any changes, please let me know.
- 38:35John Ruz: You know we don't want them to attack them right away.
- 38:38John Ruz: Asking questions.
- 38:39John Ruz: So, two days is the perfect, you know threshold that we find.
- 38:43Vipul Bindra: Exactly.
- 38:43Vipul Bindra: That's awesome.
- 38:44Vipul Bindra: And then what I want to know is what's the take rate?
- 38:46Vipul Bindra: Because you know, not everyone responds.
- 38:48Vipul Bindra: And usually when they respond is when there's a problem, not when they're happy.
- 38:51Vipul Bindra: So what did you find?
- 38:52Vipul Bindra: Do you have a percentage Like how many?
- 38:54Vipul Bindra: What's the response rate to those?
- 38:55Vipul Bindra: Emails A lot Actually, really.
- 38:59John Ruz: It's high, so much this looks fantastic.
- 39:01John Ruz: That's really good because it's not the common thing typically people don't respond no, so that's pretty good.
- 39:06John Ruz: So you have a high.
- 39:06Vipul Bindra: But again, your, your clients are agents, so it's right, different, uh.
- 39:10Vipul Bindra: But so they're responding.
- 39:11Vipul Bindra: And then you do get positive.
- 39:13Vipul Bindra: What's your ratio?
- 39:14Vipul Bindra: Positive to negative?
- 39:15John Ruz: um, if you have numbers again, you know, we, I don't want to, I just don't want to brag, but we do such a great, my team does a great job and it's okay to brag.
- 39:25Vipul Bindra: Look, you came here from public demand.
- 39:28Vipul Bindra: You must be doing something good.
- 39:30Vipul Bindra: So no, it's okay to brag.
- 39:33Vipul Bindra: So you're saying it's mostly positive.
- 39:36John Ruz: Mostly positive and when you do get negative what is it generally?
- 39:40Vipul Bindra: Is it QC or what are they finding negative?
- 39:43John Ruz: When we encounter negative feedback, we love that.
- 39:48John Ruz: We really target the.
- 39:50John Ruz: You know we help them.
- 39:51John Ruz: We jump in right away.
- 39:52John Ruz: We stopped everything and just help that client figure out what happened right.
- 39:56John Ruz: We have messed up of course.
- 39:58John Ruz: We have missed shoots, we have missed delivery, we have missed deadlines, of course, and you know, not because of technology, because of us as well.
- 40:07John Ruz: So we have to, you know, take on that right.
- 40:10John Ruz: So we have to make sure the client knows that we are taking care of them.
- 40:14John Ruz: We're like, hey, we F up.
- 40:16John Ruz: Sorry, we're going to fix it right away.
- 40:19Vipul Bindra: Exactly so.
- 40:19Vipul Bindra: You're just basically do you reach for a phone?
- 40:22Vipul Bindra: Do you reach for text Phone?
- 40:23Vipul Bindra: Just basically, are you, do you reach?
- 40:24John Ruz: for a phone.
- 40:24John Ruz: Do you reach?
- 40:25Vipul Bindra: for text phone phone.
- 40:25Vipul Bindra: You're calling them right immediately.
- 40:26Vipul Bindra: You're like, hey, I apologize, let me fix the issue.
- 40:28John Ruz: And generally it's just that date timeline mix up or it just didn't get done in time, or whatever yeah, that's a typical thing I, I'm shy, I I don't like, I'm an introvert I don't like speaking to people right, and brian has taught me to call them because I'm like, oh no, I messed up.
- 40:46John Ruz: Let me send you a text message real quick.
- 40:48Vipul Bindra: No, no, no.
- 40:49John Ruz: Call them.
- 40:49John Ruz: They want to hear you say I'm so sorry, I'm going to fix it right now, right away, you know no, I completely agree with you.
- 40:57Vipul Bindra: I'm an introvert too, and that was the struggle.
- 40:59Vipul Bindra: I didn't like, you know, talking to people, right.
- 41:04Vipul Bindra: I grew up a generation with text.
- 41:05Vipul Bindra: But the crazy thing is the number one thing, yeah, you have to implement in your business is call.
- 41:11Vipul Bindra: Like it's so funny, I've changed Again.
- 41:13Vipul Bindra: I don't call for like hi, hello to my friends, but I'm like client.
- 41:16Vipul Bindra: No, I'm calling immediately Because to me that conversation, that one-to-one, is so important.
- 41:23Vipul Bindra: An email cannot get the tone right.
- 41:26Vipul Bindra: It's just, it's not possible, it is not and it's not fixable.
- 41:29Vipul Bindra: But, like you said, it's very important to stop.
- 41:33Vipul Bindra: I'm like if something goes wrong, especially if it's rare for me, I'm like no, no, no, we stop.
- 41:38Vipul Bindra: We literally call and we're like what's wrong?
- 41:41Vipul Bindra: Like how did we fix it?
- 41:42Vipul Bindra: It's funny the I've talked about this like two incidents I can think of in last year that went wrong with me had nothing to do with us, even though they're blaming.
- 41:49Vipul Bindra: So one, literally, and this is I'm saying I do a lot of productions.
- 41:52Vipul Bindra: Two, was I offered this client a free?
- 41:56Vipul Bindra: You know we did a course for this client and she wanted uh, you know she had to choose between english and spanish.
- 42:02Vipul Bindra: She only had money to do one version.
- 42:04Vipul Bindra: So, me being kind, and obviously her market was more English speaking, even though her native is Spanish, we went with English version.
- 42:11Vipul Bindra: But I was like, shouldn't do that.
- 42:13Vipul Bindra: I was like, oh, I'll be nice and I'll give you a free dubbed version of Spanish until you can afford to get the Spanish version made.
- 42:21Vipul Bindra: No, it didn't go through the translation.
- 42:24Vipul Bindra: She said okay, but you know you don't know the language and, funny enough, again, I had Emmanuel with me in the meeting, so somebody who speaks Spanish.
- 42:30Vipul Bindra: But point is she said I got it, you know.
- 42:33Vipul Bindra: I was like remember, this is free and this is just dubbing, it's not an edited nothing.
- 42:38Vipul Bindra: We're just putting Spanish audio, your voice on it, right until you know you're ready.
- 42:48Vipul Bindra: So we delivered the english video amazing, love it.
- 42:49Vipul Bindra: And then the complaint I got was the spanish version is not edited.
- 42:50Vipul Bindra: It doesn't match my lips, obviously it's dubbing if we're not gonna match the lip, but but the client doesn't get.
- 42:56Vipul Bindra: And then so I was like I'm trying to do customer service, you know.
- 42:58Vipul Bindra: Immediately I'm like let me call you.
- 42:59Vipul Bindra: I'm trying to explain to you and even after I had the conversation, I was like I don't think she gets it Because I'm like ma'am, it's dubbing, your lips are not going to match, you know, because it's a different language, even though you're saying the same thing when you translate.
- 43:12John Ruz: It's different, yeah.
- 43:13Vipul Bindra: So anyway, so that was my one, and then the other one was a client.
- 43:17Vipul Bindra: We recorded a speech.
- 43:18Vipul Bindra: It went amazing.
- 43:25Vipul Bindra: Remember the live speech I'm saying with an audience, not where we can stop, not a studio speech.
- 43:27Vipul Bindra: His pocket got inside out and he was unhappy with my crew for that.
- 43:29Vipul Bindra: I'm like we were in the back of the room.
- 43:30Vipul Bindra: You're speaking to 300 people.
- 43:33John Ruz: We're not going to stop you in the middle of it or that's not even our job anyway.
- 43:36Vipul Bindra: But I'm saying but then you still had to apologize.
- 43:38Vipul Bindra: I was like, look, apologize.
- 43:40Vipul Bindra: Next time when we film your speech I will personally check your pocket and your wardrobe to make sure.
- 43:48Vipul Bindra: I mean, ideally I want a wardrobe person there if that's important, right, exactly.
- 43:50Vipul Bindra: But obviously clients don't get it.
- 43:51Vipul Bindra: So no, no, we don't need a wardrobe.
- 43:52Vipul Bindra: I said, okay, don't worry about it, I will check it.
- 43:55Vipul Bindra: So you know you have to do that, even though it sounds silly.
- 43:57Vipul Bindra: At the end of the day I'm like come on, I don't get complaints here, I don't want to ruin my reputation over a pocket being inside out.
- 44:05Vipul Bindra: And, funny enough, it went through three of their team members and nobody noticed it because it's a small thing, but the first moment a client mentioned it to them, the video is off.
- 44:15Vipul Bindra: It's like we can't share it anymore and I'm like I get it, but at the same time I don't.
- 44:20Vipul Bindra: It's a live speech, things are not.
- 44:22Vipul Bindra: anyway, you get my point, I know.
- 44:23Vipul Bindra: So I've had two complaints, like I said, in the last two years that I can think of, and then both of them had nothing to do with me.
- 44:29Vipul Bindra: Even then, I still had to call and apologize because at the end day, that's what you can do and that's what you need to do, because customer service is important.
- 44:39John Ruz: It's the most important, it's the backbone.
- 44:40Vipul Bindra: Yeah, you know, even though you're like I don't know how I can control a pocket.
- 44:44Vipul Bindra: But I'm gonna apologize and I'm gonna say next time we'll look out for it you know, because that's all you can do.
- 44:50Vipul Bindra: Right, but it is the difference between being successful and not being successful.
- 44:54Vipul Bindra: Right, right, 100 yeah, customer service is one of our main things that we strive for on both businesses, on jrp and big wave, you know and, like you said, the biggest thing is don't email, don't text, hang up, call, talk to the client you know, because you know there's nothing better than that you know because you can immediately figure out what they're thinking, what they're going through.
- 45:19Vipul Bindra: You can hear the emotions in the voice.
- 45:21John Ruz: You can't get that through text or email.
- 45:23Vipul Bindra: So that's incredible, but it sounds like you built an incredible real estate business.
- 45:27Vipul Bindra: Thank you, it's mostly automated.
- 45:29Vipul Bindra: Obviously, nobody can replace you having to go find the leads and you know having to do, you know customer service yourself or whatever.
- 45:37Vipul Bindra: There's obviously things you and your business partner are doing.
- 45:41Vipul Bindra: Now are you doing all the sales too, or do you have a sales team?
- 45:44Vipul Bindra: So Brian and I do the sales?
- 45:46Vipul Bindra: Okay, so you're basically bringing in the business, You're making sure everyone's happy, You've automated the middle process, the grunt work, essentially, but those people are happy too, because they're getting paid more than they would either in their country or as a freelancer in America right.
- 46:02Vipul Bindra: Because it's like we talked about real estate industry doesn't pay well and you're trying to offer people higher pay, so that's why they want to work with you, and then the clients get a better product.
- 46:11Vipul Bindra: You know, everyone wins.
- 46:13Vipul Bindra: Kind of seems like at the end.
- 46:14John Ruz: We have heard feedback from our contractors that we are one of the highest pay per project contractor rates for real estate that they have worked for, so that tells us something right, yeah, that's incredible.
- 46:27Vipul Bindra: Now here's what I want to know what's, what type of profit percentage are you aiming for?
- 46:31Vipul Bindra: What are you getting?
- 46:32Vipul Bindra: Let's be realistic to 2024, like, are you aiming for like 80, 60, 40 roughly.
- 46:37Vipul Bindra: What are you at the end, after all, expenses paid, not counting taxes?
- 46:41Vipul Bindra: Uh, obviously, but what is your, your, your, your profit that you're trying to pull?
- 46:47John Ruz: it's pretty high.
- 46:48Vipul Bindra: Um, we don't have that much of overhead, right, so no but I mean, you still have people costs right contractor costs yeah, so after you take out your remote, because things like that's your cost, right right cost is contractors and important employees, so you're able to put what 80, 90 percent, or is it lower?
- 47:04Vipul Bindra: no, it's low, it's 70, which is pretty high yeah like I said, I'm at 20 so big, big, big up uh, so 70 is really good right and you're doing seems like financially really well and thank you, something that went probably really good for you.
- 47:19Vipul Bindra: Your real estate market went crazy in Orlando and it literally went skyrocket.
- 47:26Vipul Bindra: So I'm guessing when that was happening.
- 47:30Vipul Bindra: You had plenty of work.
- 47:33Vipul Bindra: I'm guessing Plenty.
- 47:33Vipul Bindra: Yeah, it was more like catching up to the amount of work.
- 47:37John Ruz: Yeah we, we are.
- 47:37John Ruz: You know, since 2020 we have capped um not lower 2000 shoots a year for jrp.
- 47:46Vipul Bindra: That's crazy now here's what I want to know real estate took a downturn, yeah this year especially because you know again what goes up must come down.
- 47:55Vipul Bindra: Yeah so how are you managing that?
- 47:58Vipul Bindra: Did you?
- 47:58Vipul Bindra: Did you have to cut hours or like, because, let's be real, the real estate market is down right now yeah so obviously it's not as down.
- 48:05Vipul Bindra: It's still high compared to where we started, right, but it's not where it was like peaking, like where people were willing to pay 30, 40, 50k above listing price, right.
- 48:14Vipul Bindra: Um, now you know, people can even ask for a discount, like, hey, I just I bought a home, um at the end of last year and, um, like I said, I was able to ask for closing costs, which is you couldn't have thought of that ever.
- 48:25Vipul Bindra: I was like, look, I'll pay your, you know, a decent price.
- 48:28Vipul Bindra: I think I paid good price for the home, but I was like I need more right, but you couldn't have done that in the past, right?
- 48:35Vipul Bindra: Not in orlando, right?
- 48:36Vipul Bindra: Yeah?
- 48:36Vipul Bindra: Yeah, they wouldn't have done that in the past.
- 48:37John Ruz: Right, not in Orlando.
- 48:38John Ruz: Right, yeah, not in Orlando.
- 48:38Vipul Bindra: Yeah, they wouldn't have even entertained your offer and here I'm trying to negotiate with them.
- 48:42Vipul Bindra: Even my real estate agent was like even for this market, are you sure, Are you sure?
- 48:45Vipul Bindra: No, I was like yeah, yeah, no, I want it, let's do it.
- 48:47Vipul Bindra: I was like, no, let's send it.
- 48:52Vipul Bindra: Because I, anyway, I know enough people like you in real estate.
- 48:55Vipul Bindra: I'm like I know where the market's at, anyway, which is crazy for Orlando, but how did that affect your business?
- 49:00Vipul Bindra: How did it hurt your business?
- 49:02John Ruz: And yeah, kind of like that you know we have been pretty smart on diversifying and we don't throw all of our eggs in one basket.
- 49:12John Ruz: We don't just service real estate agents.
- 49:15John Ruz: We service builders and builders keep building.
- 49:17John Ruz: Yeah right, they have so much inventory right now and you know, in covid they got so much marketing budget and they, they are spending it throughout the years now and you know, for us, we we have been busy because of builders, because of interior designers and, um, you know, custom home builders, architects and all that.
- 49:36John Ruz: That's's so smart, real estate.
- 49:38Vipul Bindra: Yeah, you got to diversify.
- 49:40Vipul Bindra: You're absolutely right.
- 49:41Vipul Bindra: Here's the opposite of the advantage of it.
- 49:43Vipul Bindra: Now that you say that, again, I'm not an expert like you are, but here's what I noticed Because, like you said, home down.
- 49:50Vipul Bindra: But when I was buying, my agent was like all these new homes, you know, and showing me all these communities.
- 49:55Vipul Bindra: Because here's what happened when the demand went like this, all these builders started building new communities and now that, when they're ready, the market is down, right, but that's an advantage for you because now they have inventory they need to sell, they need to make photos, videos, obviously, to sell this inventory.
- 50:11Vipul Bindra: So we have actually high demand and I guess I would have loved to buy one of these new homes, but they all come with HOAs and what are they called?
- 50:19John Ruz: CDDs and I was like, nah, I don't want to pay that.
- 50:23Vipul Bindra: So you know I got intrigued.
- 50:25Vipul Bindra: There were some really nice homes down in Claremont.
- 50:27Vipul Bindra: I was amazed how many people, by the way, live in Claremont.
- 50:29Vipul Bindra: Half the people on my podcast so far have been from Claremont.
- 50:32Vipul Bindra: But really beautiful homes and I was like, oh, they look really nice.
- 50:36Vipul Bindra: But then you know, you go.
- 50:37Vipul Bindra: How far is it from the airport?
- 50:39John Ruz: And I'm flying so much.
- 50:40Vipul Bindra: And then, on top of that, I was like I don't want to pay this HOA.
- 50:44Vipul Bindra: I don't want to pay this CDD Plus.
- 50:45Vipul Bindra: Then where am I going to park the van?
- 50:47Vipul Bindra: You know like.
- 50:48Vipul Bindra: But they're beautiful homes, they're incredible and their inventory is guess.
- 50:59Vipul Bindra: So you basically moved or you already were diversified.
- 51:03John Ruz: So it wasn't like it doesn't hit us hard, yeah, that hard.
- 51:05Vipul Bindra: So how much would you say?
- 51:06Vipul Bindra: Your business is down right now from the peak, is it like-?
- 51:10Vipul Bindra: So, personally, we were up, so you're up still.
- 51:13John Ruz: So you didn't suffer at all?
- 51:15John Ruz: No, we.
- 51:15John Ruz: This week alone we have 20 shoots this week and it's january.
- 51:20John Ruz: It's the second week of january, you know it's like, oh my god crazy business, yeah, exactly and you know it's january.
- 51:28John Ruz: Florida market it's crazy, especially with home builders.
- 51:32John Ruz: They it doesn't stop.
- 51:33John Ruz: We don't have breaks until the.
- 51:36John Ruz: We are shooting up to the 31st of December, nonstop.
- 51:40Vipul Bindra: Look at that.
- 51:40Vipul Bindra: So you're basically killing it in terms of demand, and I'm guessing most of it is because of repeat business, right?
- 51:48Vipul Bindra: You're trying to keep the agents, the builders, the interior designers on board, so it's much easier I'm guessing, cheaper, right?
- 51:55Vipul Bindra: Have you calculated your customer acquisition costs or no?
- 51:58John Ruz: Not really Okay, that's because.
- 52:00Vipul Bindra: I guess it's mostly boots on the ground, handshaking Right.
- 52:03Vipul Bindra: Are you doing any kind of ads?
- 52:04Vipul Bindra: Oh, I know you are Cause I've seen some now that you say that I I sent corrected to my own question.
- 52:10Vipul Bindra: But yeah, so when did you Instagram ads or any kind of advertising?
- 52:15Vipul Bindra: Have you always been doing it, or is this new or so we we started advertising on Google a couple months ago and we had hits on our website.
- 52:25John Ruz: We were pulling numbers and but no, no conversions.
- 52:28John Ruz: It's crazy, no conversion at all.
- 52:30John Ruz: You know we get non-qualified leads.
- 52:34John Ruz: It's it's crazy.
- 52:36John Ruz: And you know Google has been so weird that at at 3 am ona random saturday, it just peaks 30 000 views on the website and then monday, three views and it's like, oh my god, I'm paying three thousand dollars a month for exposure here, right?
- 52:52Vipul Bindra: yeah, I've had bad luck with google ads too.
- 52:54Vipul Bindra: They've been like I've not had any um luck getting anything, like you said, qualified leads out of that right but then you tried what instagram is.
- 53:02Vipul Bindra: Are you doing anything besides instagram or right now, no instagram?
- 53:05John Ruz: so instagram is where you are at.
- 53:07Vipul Bindra: Yeah, how did?
- 53:07John Ruz: that go it.
- 53:09John Ruz: It's been incredible.
- 53:10John Ruz: We have pulled in an incredible amount of numbers that already have paid off for the entire worth of our ad spend through the year right so and we're pulling between 50 and 100 a post each.
- 53:27John Ruz: Each reel that we have, that we know it's going to be targeted to a specific audience, let's say builders or real estate agents, or architectural photography or something like that right.
- 53:36Vipul Bindra: Plus, it can be hyper-local right, because you're trying to target what, which I know we'll talk about your expansion into other markets, but you're currently marketing what?
- 53:45Vipul Bindra: Florida or Central Florida?
- 53:46Vipul Bindra: What's your main market Central?
- 53:47John Ruz: Florida.
- 53:47Vipul Bindra: Central Florida.
- 53:48Vipul Bindra: So it makes it easy because you can hyper-local builders in Central Florida put $100, you'd say roughly in a post, something like that, that's it.
- 53:56Vipul Bindra: And then what type of numbers are you pulling in roughly?
- 53:58John Ruz: We are getting.
- 53:59John Ruz: You know, we just had 60 leads from one video $100 for 60 leads yeah, that is incredible, incredible, incredible numbers.
- 54:10John Ruz: Yeah, and we have got-, do you have?
- 54:12Vipul Bindra: any conversion rates yet or not yet, not yet.
- 54:15Vipul Bindra: I'm still, it's so yeah that we haven't.
- 54:17John Ruz: Still, we we got some bookings over there.
- 54:20John Ruz: We got some pretty amazing qualified clients.
- 54:24John Ruz: Look at that very good qualified clients that booked that.
- 54:27John Ruz: You weren't thinking, oh my god, this client.
- 54:30John Ruz: I, I thought this client might just book one shoot.
- 54:32John Ruz: No, she ended up booking five shoots through the entire month.
- 54:36Vipul Bindra: what's your lowest thing?
- 54:37Vipul Bindra: I'm guessing it's like some kind of photography package, right?
- 54:39Vipul Bindra: What's roughly average there, the lowest of the totem pole?
- 54:43John Ruz: now I'm saying Lowest, it's photos only and it starts at $175.
- 54:47Vipul Bindra: Okay.
- 54:47Vipul Bindra: So, just so you know, I'm just saying $100 at your highest spend $175 times five.
- 54:55Vipul Bindra: I'm saying if they were at the lowest level, $175 times five, which is that one client you're already like you know what, at least what 10x-ing your, if not more your, roi.
- 55:07Vipul Bindra: So it's like totally worth it.
- 55:09John Ruz: It's crazy.
- 55:10John Ruz: And the crazy part is she went and booked for our anchored package, which has a retail price of, you know, $1,200.
- 55:18Vipul Bindra: So look at that.
- 55:19John Ruz: So it was obviously way for our anchored package which has a retail price of, you know, 1200 bucks.
- 55:22John Ruz: So look at that.
- 55:23Vipul Bindra: So it was obviously way more than the bare minimum, but I would say, even at the bare minimum it would have been worth it, right?
- 55:24Vipul Bindra: But obviously you know most people aren't going to pick, you know.
- 55:28John Ruz: And you know, I met the client.
- 55:30John Ruz: I drove to Ocala to make her and she's like oh, you are the guy from the video.
- 55:34John Ruz: I didn't know you were shooting my house, thank you, and that connection, yeah, I think, just made a lifetime client.
- 55:41John Ruz: You know exactly.
- 55:42Vipul Bindra: It's like oh, yeah, plus, now you're the guy they saw and you are the guy who's showing up, right, just like uh.
- 55:47Vipul Bindra: I don't want to compare us to uh attorneys, but you know the a lot of the injury ones, they purposefully, you know, put their face on there because, right, you know it matches right uh who they're gonna meet, um, until they pass you off.
- 55:59Vipul Bindra: Right, they're like, hey, new client, sign the paper.
- 56:02Vipul Bindra: All right, see you, here's your actual attorney yeah uh, yeah, it's a strange process, uh, but that's incredible that it's working for you.
- 56:10John Ruz: Yeah, and uh, that's more expansion, more leads, right, you said more revenue, yeah and one tip yeah, real quick, before we change um, if you are pulling ads through meta or instagram, do it through desktop, not not do it through the, through the app on the phone.
- 56:27John Ruz: It will save you 30, right it's crazy.
- 56:31Vipul Bindra: Yeah, 30 just by starting the pro.
- 56:33John Ruz: Uh, no, just just by throwing the ad on the desktop instead of the app.
- 56:37Vipul Bindra: It's crazy.
- 56:39John Ruz: I never thought of that until I saw it.
- 56:41John Ruz: I'm like, oh, because there's probably higher demand for mobile right, yeah, that's a good tip.
- 56:47John Ruz: Thank you, john.
- 56:47John Ruz: Look at that, we're already learning.
- 56:49Vipul Bindra: I may play with them.
- 56:50Vipul Bindra: I've even had Ben on the podcast and he has such great things to say that I may actually test.
- 57:02Vipul Bindra: Uh, test my waters with.
- 57:02Vipul Bindra: Like I said, I tried a bunch of this stuff, but it was six years ago and then, like seven business skyrocketed.
- 57:04Vipul Bindra: I stopped that behind.
- 57:05Vipul Bindra: I was like I don't need to worry about it.
- 57:06Vipul Bindra: But now I'm like, hey, I'm ready to expand, I'm trying to make it bigger than me.
- 57:09Vipul Bindra: It'd be so cool to experiment, uh.
- 57:12Vipul Bindra: But but here's the good, the interesting aspect of it I'm the behind the scenes guy.
- 57:16Vipul Bindra: You have to put your face on it.
- 57:18Vipul Bindra: You have to go in front of the camera and make these ads.
- 57:21Vipul Bindra: What made you pick it to be you versus your partner?
- 57:26Vipul Bindra: And then, how is it being?
- 57:28John Ruz: in front of camera.
- 57:28John Ruz: I haven't talked to Brian about why he doesn't like to be on camera.
- 57:35John Ruz: I feel like I don't know, it's something that I don't know right, and he's not camera shy, but I think he doesn't like to.
- 57:44John Ruz: You know, just do that kind of stuff.
- 57:48John Ruz: You know, I feel like I have developed this personality of you know being on camera.
- 57:54John Ruz: I love being on camera and, you know, talk to people.
- 57:58John Ruz: I've developed talking to people and just being out of my shell a little bit more through the years to really just speak with that person in front of the camera.
- 58:07John Ruz: That's, that's viewing the video.
- 58:08John Ruz: I just want to connect with you.
- 58:10John Ruz: Yeah, right, so, um, I don't know, I don't know, I have that's a good question some people do that where they create a persona.
- 58:15Vipul Bindra: Have you done that?
- 58:16John Ruz: yeah, he's my.
- 58:17John Ruz: This is who I'm talking to their name is shane.
- 58:20Vipul Bindra: You know they have five, five properties.
- 58:21Vipul Bindra: They need to right get photo.
- 58:22Vipul Bindra: Have you done that or no?
- 58:24John Ruz: not really.
- 58:24Vipul Bindra: No, you're just just saying like I'm talking to whoever my client, whoever, yeah, yeah, okay uh, but you're doing that one-on-one conversation right?
- 58:31John Ruz: and um, I feel like if, if I'm the one speaking, um, you know, if doing the face of the company, another that brian does and brian does way more than me on that in that aspect um, but on social media per se, right?
- 58:47John Ruz: Um, if I'm showing myself on on social media and then meet that client about what happened, I feel like I'm making a greater connection rather than showing, um, we can hire someone else, we can hire a spokesperson for jrp or big wave to do that right, yeah but in our mentality it's like okay, what, what type of client do you want to attract right?
- 59:08John Ruz: and for us, having that direct connection with the client and having them as a friend and your partner, it's way more important rather than just scaling and building a bigger brand and all that Right.
- 59:21Vipul Bindra: Then what made you going to go to Texas?
- 59:23John Ruz: Well, we have one of our clients, um, that served HQs in Texas right In San Antonio, and for years we have been, you know, thinking of expanding to to Texas right.
- 59:38John Ruz: The Texas market real estate market's fantastic.
- 59:40John Ruz: It's huge.
- 59:41John Ruz: It's very similar to.
- 59:42John Ruz: Florida and that client is growing rapidly very rapidly.
- 59:47John Ruz: So the we have two clients, we have our main builder client and our staging a partner, um down in San Antonio, and they, they were like hey guys, we're not doing this kind of service that we're doing providing photos with staging on our HQ, on our city.
- 1:00:07John Ruz: Why don't you guys?
- 1:00:09John Ruz: In two weeks they gave us two freaking weeks to move everything.
- 1:00:15Vipul Bindra: Wow, so you had to find new contractors.
- 1:00:16Vipul Bindra: Everything Right, and plus, what they want is virtually stage photos, right?
- 1:00:21Vipul Bindra: No, no.
- 1:00:21Vipul Bindra: Actual stage photos.
- 1:00:22Vipul Bindra: Oh, actual stage photos, because that's the thing.
- 1:00:24Vipul Bindra: Right?
- 1:00:24Vipul Bindra: Virtual staging Right.
- 1:00:25Vipul Bindra: I don't like it, but that's the thing.
- 1:00:27John Ruz: You up for that.
- 1:00:28John Ruz: You know virtual staging can be a great asset to you.
- 1:00:35John Ruz: Know someone that's needs to sell something fast.
- 1:00:38Vipul Bindra: Staging matters so much, because then they can see that when they actually come in too, instead of virtual.
- 1:00:43Vipul Bindra: There, it's right, it's just in the photos, right?
- 1:00:46John Ruz: so, um, you know that that staging client really, um you know, we we have been working for, for them for six years.
- 1:00:54John Ruz: We have been building a relationship so deeply that they don't look elsewhere, and that's what we want right, that's so incredible.
- 1:01:02John Ruz: In Texas.
- 1:01:03John Ruz: We're like well, we have plans in the future to expand into Texas, right, and this is such a great opportunity to do it.
- 1:01:11John Ruz: So I think it was June or July last year that we made that leap, and now we have three contractors, and we have one in San Antonio, one in Austin, two in Austin and then one in Dallas.
- 1:01:26Vipul Bindra: Look at that.
- 1:01:26Vipul Bindra: So you're doing incredible.
- 1:01:27Vipul Bindra: You're expanding.
- 1:01:28Vipul Bindra: Do you need to?
- 1:01:30Vipul Bindra: Since this is such an automated process, do you need to travel or no?
- 1:01:35Vipul Bindra: You can, just no, so you don't even need to actually go to texas to make this happen, right?
- 1:01:39John Ruz: look at you.
- 1:01:39John Ruz: Yeah, so we travel to texas to set up yeah, initially, yeah, initially to train our contractors, meet them, have dinner and lunch and just see where they're looking right, exactly.
- 1:01:50Vipul Bindra: How do you find them?
- 1:01:51Vipul Bindra: Did you go to the groups?
- 1:01:52Vipul Bindra: Or indeed, indeed, oh, look, look at you.
- 1:01:56Vipul Bindra: Oh, my goodness, you've basically used everything You're like.
- 1:02:00Vipul Bindra: I have Upwork, I have.
- 1:02:01John Ruz: Indeed, I have everything that's incredible.
- 1:02:03John Ruz: The tools are there for you.
- 1:02:04John Ruz: Yeah, I mean use them.
- 1:02:06Vipul Bindra: So seems like you're doing really good.
- 1:02:08Vipul Bindra: Thank you Then why the expansion into or, when that happened, to the commercial and the other side of it?
- 1:02:15Vipul Bindra: Because you have that other company right you mentioned.
- 1:02:20Vipul Bindra: When did that came about and why that addition to real?
- 1:02:21John Ruz: estate.
- 1:02:22John Ruz: So Meet Big Wave or Big Wave Production.
- 1:02:25John Ruz: Meet Big Wave is our IG.
- 1:02:26John Ruz: Big Wave Productions came to be because Brian had Brian Adams Photographics and then I had John Bruce Productions.
- 1:02:36John Ruz: So by the time that we working together, I was working for him, for his clients, he's working.
- 1:02:42John Ruz: He was working for me for um, my clients and we're like you know what, let's just do one entity and we both love the ocean, we both love um the waves and you know the water and all that.
- 1:02:54John Ruz: So we we were like let's do big wave.
- 1:02:57Vipul Bindra: Right.
- 1:02:58John Ruz: And a big wave came to be.
- 1:02:59John Ruz: And what year was this same time, or it was 2019.
- 1:03:03Vipul Bindra: Okay, sorry.
- 1:03:04John Ruz: Uh 2021.
- 1:03:05John Ruz: 2021.
- 1:03:07Vipul Bindra: That's when you yeah, so you're doing real estate, obviously, but now you, you combine these two entities to become one, right?
- 1:03:19John Ruz: And uh, uh, what type of work are you targeting in the corporate and commercial world?
- 1:03:21John Ruz: So we're doing mostly corporate shoots um interview style.
- 1:03:24Vipul Bindra: Uh we're doing interview b-roll, the typical interview b-roll.
- 1:03:26John Ruz: We're doing mostly um seminars, um, you know, conferences.
- 1:03:31John Ruz: We have a manufacturer facility, um device, um provider in sarasota that builds wheelchairs and, you know, lifts and elevators for people with disabilities.
- 1:03:45John Ruz: So we we do around five shoots a year for them.
- 1:03:50Vipul Bindra: Amazing, we have one upcoming in Connecticut in more than one of our largest one, that we have built with them Awesome, so that's incredible.
- 1:04:03Vipul Bindra: And then let's first find out how do you find these clients for that?
- 1:04:08Vipul Bindra: Because obviously your real estate much easier automated these clients actually before that.
- 1:04:13Vipul Bindra: What's your average rate that you're trying to target for these type of projects?
- 1:04:17Vipul Bindra: Because it's going to be much higher right Per project that you're going to charge for this.
- 1:04:20Vipul Bindra: So what range are you trying to hit?
- 1:04:23John Ruz: Oh, we are doing, you know, 10,000 plus.
- 1:04:26John Ruz: Yeah, exactly.
- 1:04:27Vipul Bindra: So much higher, so much harder to find than a simple Instagram ad, right?
- 1:04:31Vipul Bindra: So how are you finding these clients?
- 1:04:33John Ruz: They are past clients from Brian B-A-P-G.
- 1:04:35John Ruz: Right, they have been Brian.
- 1:04:38John Ruz: As I said, brian has been such a great partner that he pulled in his past clients and it's like, okay, let's rail them into Big Wave and introduce them to the company, to the new company.
- 1:04:50John Ruz: It's like it's not Brian.
- 1:04:51John Ruz: So he already had clients that he brought in Okay.
- 1:04:56Vipul Bindra: So do you find any new clients, or is there any process of finding new clients?
- 1:05:00John Ruz: We have found new clients through agencies.
- 1:05:02John Ruz: We work a lot with agencies and mainly Google.
- 1:05:05John Ruz: Either Google or referrals.
- 1:05:07John Ruz: A lot comes from referrals from both businesses.
- 1:05:10John Ruz: From the JRP and the Meet Big Wave.
- 1:05:12John Ruz: Big Wave Productions come from referrals, okay.
- 1:05:16Vipul Bindra: That's awesome.
- 1:05:16Vipul Bindra: So, essentially, you're you leaned into, you know your exit.
- 1:05:20Vipul Bindra: Past clients, clients you have now, and I'm sure one of these real estate agents probably, or the bid builders go.
- 1:05:25Vipul Bindra: We need a commercial, we need something, and then you can be like.
- 1:05:28Vipul Bindra: We have that service where we can.
- 1:05:29Vipul Bindra: So you said about 10 K above is what you're targeting.
- 1:05:34Vipul Bindra: Talk about this new upcoming production.
- 1:05:35Vipul Bindra: What's the rough budget for it and what's the deliverables look like?
- 1:05:40John Ruz: So we are delivering 90 videos.
- 1:05:42John Ruz: Wow, that's a lot.
- 1:05:44Vipul Bindra: It's two weeks.
- 1:05:45Vipul Bindra: Two weeks of production, so 14 days of shoot.
- 1:05:48John Ruz: We're doing 10 days of complete shooting, so 10 days of shooting a whole load of deliverables, a whole lot.
- 1:05:56Vipul Bindra: What's the price range?
- 1:05:57Vipul Bindra: Roughly the whole production cost.
- 1:06:03John Ruz: We build 160,000,.
- 1:06:07Vipul Bindra: I believe that's actually pretty good for that amount of deliverables.
- 1:06:10Vipul Bindra: What type of videos are there?
- 1:06:11Vipul Bindra: That's a lot of videos.
- 1:06:12John Ruz: Lifestyle videos Lifestyle videos.
- 1:06:16Vipul Bindra: So what industry are they in?
- 1:06:17Vipul Bindra: Some kind of product or something Correct?
- 1:06:19Vipul Bindra: Okay, a product, a lot of product shoots it's in their hq or wherever you're filming.
- 1:06:24Vipul Bindra: Are you getting a studio we are doing on location, on location, and then what role in these productions do you and him play?
- 1:06:32Vipul Bindra: So are you like, like, is he the dp?
- 1:06:34Vipul Bindra: Are you directing?
- 1:06:36Vipul Bindra: Like, how are you dividing your tasks?
- 1:06:38John Ruz: It's great because with this client we have built such a good relationship that we of course we have to pull the team right, the crew to pull this off, because it's a big shoot, but Brian and I are I'm the DP, brian is the director, producer and lifestyle photographer right, okay?
- 1:06:57Vipul Bindra: awesome.
- 1:06:57Vipul Bindra: We might have other crew members.
- 1:06:58John Ruz: I'm the DP, Brian is the director, producer and lifestyle photographer.
- 1:07:00John Ruz: Okay, Awesome, we might have other crew members that assist with wardrobe talent producing, managing, railing people, you know.
- 1:07:07Vipul Bindra: So what's the crew size?
- 1:07:08Vipul Bindra: Going to be roughly.
- 1:07:09John Ruz: We're thinking of being five, five.
- 1:07:13Vipul Bindra: Okay, just so people hear this.
- 1:07:14John Ruz: Let's summarize this what?
- 1:07:16Vipul Bindra: you just said so, five person crew yeah, 10 day this.
- 1:07:19Vipul Bindra: Let's summarize this, what you just said so, five-person crew yeah, 10-day shoot, not including the client though, yeah, of course.
- 1:07:23Vipul Bindra: So five-person crew, 10-day shoot, right, $160,000 with 90 deliverables.
- 1:07:32Vipul Bindra: Right, and how long?
- 1:07:34John Ruz: are these deliverables 30 seconds long, 30-second deliverable.
- 1:07:37Vipul Bindra: Yeah, okay, let that sink in.
- 1:07:39Vipul Bindra: I'm going to repeat myself, because to me, this is what people need to hear Right, right Again.
- 1:07:44Vipul Bindra: Five person crew, 10 days of production, $160,000, 90 30 second deliverables.
- 1:07:55Vipul Bindra: Right, dude, that's it.
- 1:07:57Vipul Bindra: Go sell that now I mean, that's what it's about, right?
- 1:08:02Vipul Bindra: And then, um, now, uh, what type of profit margin?
- 1:08:06Vipul Bindra: Because you know it's typically not as high when you're doing um such big productions.
- 1:08:10Vipul Bindra: However, right seems like you have a small crew, so you should be able to pull pretty good profit what profit margin are you aiming for again?
- 1:08:18John Ruz: it's not been done yet, so so right.
- 1:08:20John Ruz: Um, I'm not sure.
- 1:08:22John Ruz: Brian is the total producer for this one, so I'm not sure, 100 sure what the project but roughly in these type of projects.
- 1:08:29Vipul Bindra: What do you aim?
- 1:08:29John Ruz: for he, he aims high he aims to high profit, so that's why we keep our cost low, yeah so 50 to 70, you would say, or probably which is incredible to pull that kind of profit.
- 1:08:40Vipul Bindra: And I think it comes down to his relationship, right?
- 1:08:42Vipul Bindra: It's why the client's trusting you 100%.
- 1:08:45Vipul Bindra: So it's going to be with models and stuff, right, there's no actual company interviews in there right, nope, just models yeah just models You're going to do, do it with them.
- 1:08:53Vipul Bindra: That's incredible.
- 1:08:54Vipul Bindra: Thank you, uh, and and this is obviously, I'm guessing years of building relationship, right, four years with this client.
- 1:09:01Vipul Bindra: So that's that's incredible.
- 1:09:02Vipul Bindra: Yeah, um, what would you tell people?
- 1:09:04Vipul Bindra: Because a lot of people want, obviously, now that the people hear this, because, people have asked me.
- 1:09:09Vipul Bindra: It's like oh, how do you get them like relationship?
- 1:09:11Vipul Bindra: I want to say something more than that, so I would love to hear uh, people hear this.
- 1:09:15Vipul Bindra: Obviously that's like a dream gig for somebody.
- 1:09:18John Ruz: Yeah.
- 1:09:18Vipul Bindra: Because you know, at the end of the day, even with editing, you're what Two, three weeks into the whole thing, right?
- 1:09:22Vipul Bindra: That's basically it, that's it, and you can make $160,000.
- 1:09:25Vipul Bindra: Let's assume after all costs you pull in $100,000.
- 1:09:28Vipul Bindra: And I'm going low, sounds like, because you guys are pulling way more profit than a typical production.
- 1:09:33Vipul Bindra: Because you know most agencies would come in and charge a 40% production fee, so their profit would be 40% and you can most likely pull 60, 70% here.
- 1:09:42Vipul Bindra: So you can make $100,000, $120,000 in 10 days.
- 1:09:47Vipul Bindra: Maybe, let's add, because you know you do spend time pre-production, post-production.
- 1:09:51Vipul Bindra: So three weeks you can make that's a huge profit.
- 1:09:55Vipul Bindra: Most people that are listening to this are trying to make that in a year.
- 1:09:58Vipul Bindra: What would you suggest to them Realistically, you know, because let's be real it doesn't happen in a day.
- 1:10:04Vipul Bindra: It's years of building a relationship with client and trust.
- 1:10:08Vipul Bindra: How would you say they start or try to get gigs like this?
- 1:10:15John Ruz: I will say it's not luck, it's grind.
- 1:10:18John Ruz: You have to grind as as much as possible to you know, find this true client, because you, you know, one, yes, can change everything right so I feel like searching for that type of client.
- 1:10:32John Ruz: If you search for it, you will never find it if it comes to you, naturally right.
- 1:10:37John Ruz: So you just have to grind and grind and, just you know, level up and change that mentality, because people think that we cannot make a living doing this stuff and we can't oh yeah, we can make killer we can make a killer living two people sitting right here and all the other people have been here.
- 1:10:53Vipul Bindra: Everyone's making a killer yeah doing this.
- 1:10:55Vipul Bindra: So it's definitely doable.
- 1:10:56Vipul Bindra: I think you just have to think from a business mindset, right, and you have to uh figure out efficiencies and sops correct and uh get it, you know, right, because then you're not fighting to make money, you're actually just out there doing what you love to do, right and I feel like when you change that perspective and you show that the clients that you are not a freelancer or someone that you know potentially doesn't want to build something bigger, or shows that you know stuff like that, you know I feel like that client.
- 1:11:28John Ruz: When clients sees that, I feel like your mentality changes and eventually you get way more, bigger business and better business.
- 1:11:38Vipul Bindra: You know exactly, and uh, like I said, it's also relationship building and trust building, because that's ultimately what leads them to trust you.
- 1:11:45Vipul Bindra: Right, you know, being able to tell their brand image and how they want it to be done.
- 1:11:49Vipul Bindra: Now, um, did you?
- 1:11:50Vipul Bindra: Uh?
- 1:11:51Vipul Bindra: How do you price a gig like this?
- 1:11:52Vipul Bindra: I mean, uh, did you do it?
- 1:11:54Vipul Bindra: Oh, just deliverables divided by per deliverable times, the number of you know like simple math, or did you have other things?
- 1:12:01Vipul Bindra: you're going, oh, how much can I profit?
- 1:12:02Vipul Bindra: Like, how did you guys build this price?
- 1:12:05Vipul Bindra: I'm saying Right.
- 1:12:08John Ruz: Brian's method is profit vision.
- 1:12:11John Ruz: It's like how much profit can I pull from this shoot?
- 1:12:14John Ruz: You know we don't cut corners.
- 1:12:16John Ruz: We try to just work with the same team, have the same rate.
- 1:12:21John Ruz: We know what we're expecting to.
- 1:12:23John Ruz: You know um, have expenses from and just.
- 1:12:26John Ruz: You know just calculate from that yeah, right.
- 1:12:29Vipul Bindra: So and then uh, did you.
- 1:12:31Vipul Bindra: So you said same team, are you flying your people in or you are hiring local people there?
- 1:12:35John Ruz: we are hiring local if we need to.
- 1:12:37John Ruz: Uh, brian is the the actual brains of the operation, so he's doing the producer right part of it.
- 1:12:43Vipul Bindra: So he's going to handle all that, that's pretty cool so you just come in, you're like I'm the dp uh, do you get 50 of the profit?
- 1:12:50John Ruz: that's incredible.
- 1:12:51John Ruz: Where do I find partnership like that?
- 1:12:52John Ruz: No, actually, um, you know, no, no, I'm not saying you do a lot of work.
- 1:12:57John Ruz: Yeah, he has inputs that I will give him to him, but I don't want to discount what you do I'm just saying you put it yourself there.
- 1:13:04Vipul Bindra: I was like uh, you're dp, you get half the profit.
- 1:13:08Vipul Bindra: Let me meet brian I was like huh john who no, no, uh, but that's's incredible that you two have built a business You're partnering.
- 1:13:19Vipul Bindra: Then that's a second business.
- 1:13:20Vipul Bindra: That's not even like you know one, like you have two businesses Right and you're killing it in both.
- 1:13:26Vipul Bindra: Thank you and again, I think people can see that it's from that business mindset.
- 1:13:31Vipul Bindra: It's not once have you said this is the camera I'm going to use.
- 1:13:34Vipul Bindra: This is the camera I'm going to use.
- 1:13:36John Ruz: This is the settings I'm going to use.
- 1:13:37Vipul Bindra: I'm the DP, I'm going to have five people under me, but that's what the mindset people get when they get the DP.
- 1:13:42Vipul Bindra: You won't believe how many times I listen to it.
- 1:13:43Vipul Bindra: I'm the DP and I'm like who cares?
- 1:13:46John Ruz: Yeah, exactly right, and I was that person five years ago.
- 1:13:50Vipul Bindra: So what brought about the change?
- 1:13:51Vipul Bindra: How can people change the mindset?
- 1:13:53John Ruz: I think just thinking bigger.
- 1:13:55John Ruz: You can think bigger and you can think more of like a business instead of a individual person.
- 1:14:01John Ruz: I don't, I don't mind if you're an individual person.
- 1:14:03John Ruz: You know some people absolutely love one man crew, just a freelancer, and I, I absolutely love that.
- 1:14:10John Ruz: I applaud to that.
- 1:14:11John Ruz: Some days I'm like I just wish I just have my little camera and that's it.
- 1:14:16John Ruz: Right, that's my creative.
- 1:14:17John Ruz: I never wish that.
- 1:14:19Vipul Bindra: I'm always wishing for bigger Cause.
- 1:14:20Vipul Bindra: You know, that's what I'm finding.
- 1:14:21Vipul Bindra: I'm always like trying to, you know, bring in more, and I have clients all the way.
- 1:14:26Vipul Bindra: Cause to be real, I don't want to say that, like I have clients where it's just me doing some interview and B-roll.
- 1:14:31Vipul Bindra: Here's the footage to you know $400,000, $500,000 shoot.
- 1:14:36Vipul Bindra: We have 50 people on set right and everything in between.
- 1:14:38Vipul Bindra: So it varies.
- 1:14:39Vipul Bindra: It's a huge difference, but I'm always trying to reach the higher number I'm like I want to bring more people.
- 1:14:50Vipul Bindra: I want to have better you know content better sets better everything, but obviously not everyone's budget can scale.
- 1:14:53Vipul Bindra: Yeah, exactly.
- 1:14:53Vipul Bindra: So you have to obviously find or like.
- 1:15:02Vipul Bindra: They're like oh no, we just need a couple interviews, right, just need one man crew.
- 1:15:03Vipul Bindra: And it's like okay, well, the day is available, let's do it.
- 1:15:04Vipul Bindra: You know what I mean.
- 1:15:04John Ruz: But but I'm always trying to, you know, be like I don't want, you know, I want bigger sets, bigger crews, because I think you make something better when you collaborate yeah, um, I know.
- 1:15:08Vipul Bindra: Uh, it's not why I brought you here.
- 1:15:10Vipul Bindra: I want to talk more business, but I want to know what camera are you planning to use for this shoot.
- 1:15:14Vipul Bindra: Do you have anything in mind?
- 1:15:15Vipul Bindra: How do you go about like as a dp because it sounds also fashion oriented, where camera matters, look matters.
- 1:15:22Vipul Bindra: How are you gonna pick your camera or what are you leaning towards?
- 1:15:25Vipul Bindra: I want to know more gear, just so people can hear what type of gear is used these type of shoots to be honest, it's gonna be the canon r5 canon r5 look at that wow, that's it.
- 1:15:37John Ruz: We have a red komodo, yeah, but you're not planning to use it nope, no.
- 1:15:41Vipul Bindra: Why is the canon r5 the better product?
- 1:15:43John Ruz: workflow.
- 1:15:44John Ruz: Okay, and you're doing photos too.
- 1:15:45Vipul Bindra: I'm guessing it's both photos and videos, so it's going back and forth brian is doing the photos, I'm doing the video.
- 1:15:51John Ruz: Um, but workflow wise, it works for me, right, and it works for the client and it works for the looks that the client are wanting.
- 1:15:58John Ruz: They, they are in high tech.
- 1:16:00John Ruz: They don't want the shiny stuff on set, they don't.
- 1:16:03John Ruz: They don't want that, they don't like that and they don't care about that they just want to have the assets available for them to pull in and just distribute.
- 1:16:11John Ruz: That's it awesome.
- 1:16:13Vipul Bindra: So you're gonna use canon r5?
- 1:16:15Vipul Bindra: Are you gonna shoot in log or no?
- 1:16:16Vipul Bindra: Yeah, for sure, okay, I was about to just walk away from the set if you had said no, but I mean, hey look, it works, it works that's why we're having this conversation?
- 1:16:27Vipul Bindra: Because look at the end of the day, I want people to know um.
- 1:16:32Vipul Bindra: You know, obviously work is good.
- 1:16:34Vipul Bindra: I've looked at it.
- 1:16:35Vipul Bindra: But I want people to know that's not why you have work.
- 1:16:36Vipul Bindra: You work because of business sense and looked at it.
- 1:16:38Vipul Bindra: But I want people to know that's not why you have work.
- 1:16:38Vipul Bindra: You work because of your business sense.
- 1:16:38Vipul Bindra: And that's just the truth.
- 1:16:40Vipul Bindra: You want to be on the comments and just say I can make something better?
- 1:16:46John Ruz: Yes, I already say sure, 100%, absolutely.
- 1:16:49Vipul Bindra: You know it doesn't matter, the client doesn't care.
- 1:16:52Vipul Bindra: That's the truth.
- 1:16:53Vipul Bindra: The client cares about the people, the relationships, the trust, and that's just what's more important than your skill.
- 1:17:01Vipul Bindra: I'm not saying don't be good at your craft.
- 1:17:03Vipul Bindra: It's very important, but that's not what sells big projects.
- 1:17:06John Ruz: It's just the truth.
- 1:17:08Vipul Bindra: And that's what the point of this is for people to hear the real truth, not something fake.
- 1:17:13Vipul Bindra: Let me come in.
- 1:17:14Vipul Bindra: I hate those courses that have shown up all over.
- 1:17:17Vipul Bindra: I will help you scale your business.
- 1:17:19Vipul Bindra: I'm like look we'll help you scale it for free with no, no incentive, yeah unless you have a real estate photo I don't know what else is used to sell right anyway.
- 1:17:30Vipul Bindra: Um, so I love that.
- 1:17:31Vipul Bindra: Thanks, like I said, for sharing this.
- 1:17:33Vipul Bindra: Uh, so you're gonna use canon r5, you're going to shoot and log thank goodness, I mean hey, uh, and then, um, and, like I said, you're going to give them deliverables, clients going to be happy.
- 1:17:47Vipul Bindra: How do you send, because that's a lot of deliverables?
- 1:17:49Vipul Bindra: How do you get a sign off on it?
- 1:17:51Vipul Bindra: Do you use frameio or dropbox or what?
- 1:17:54Vipul Bindra: What?
- 1:17:54Vipul Bindra: Yeah, what's your process?
- 1:17:55John Ruz: dropbox and frameio um, and we started implementing frameio with this client and they absolutely love it, yeah because it's for this, many deliverables that I can't imagine with.
- 1:18:03John Ruz: Dropbox.
- 1:18:04John Ruz: Again, like I said, Dropbox is good, but when you start to scale up, it just starts to break on you really fast and I'm going to knock on wood, but I'm pretty sure that we are not going to have too many revisions, because we already know what the client wants yeah, because you have an existing relationship.
- 1:18:21John Ruz: So they already know the look, they already know the result and we know they're like okay, well, you know, this is the tentative deliverables, and we're like I'm pretty sure that we know what you guys need.
- 1:18:33Vipul Bindra: You know exactly at this point and and here's the the money question.
- 1:18:38Vipul Bindra: So let's say you've talked to them, you've presented.
- 1:18:41Vipul Bindra: Do you present like a proposal or do you just say the number on the phone?
- 1:18:44Vipul Bindra: How do you present the initial number?
- 1:18:46Vipul Bindra: Let's proposal proposal.
- 1:18:47Vipul Bindra: So you to do the proposal?
- 1:18:49Vipul Bindra: Uh, they can visually see it.
- 1:18:51Vipul Bindra: Are you on the phone with them or you just send it?
- 1:18:53John Ruz: because you've already had the, the conversation, yeah it, yeah, it's pure conversation through email.
- 1:18:58John Ruz: They're like hey, we have this shoot.
- 1:19:00John Ruz: They call it the massive shoot.
- 1:19:02John Ruz: So, it's going to be the massive shoot on March.
- 1:19:05John Ruz: It's going to entail this, this, this.
- 1:19:07John Ruz: It's going to be throughout nine days, 10 days of shooting.
- 1:19:10John Ruz: Do we need 90 approximate deliverables?
- 1:19:12John Ruz: Can you put something together and in your proposal, do you fully break down or is this a big number?
- 1:19:22John Ruz: No, you fully break down.
- 1:19:23John Ruz: So how do you break it down?
- 1:19:24John Ruz: By, like, what's your process?
- 1:19:24John Ruz: It's going to be creative fee, photography fee, video fee, video editing fee.
- 1:19:26John Ruz: You know distributions and so all that.
- 1:19:28Vipul Bindra: Okay, perfect and then, once they obviously accept it, how do you split the payment?
- 1:19:32Vipul Bindra: Or do you not split it, like what's the payment schedule when you get your payment?
- 1:19:36Vipul Bindra: 50%?
- 1:19:37John Ruz: upfront 50% at delivery.
- 1:19:39John Ruz: Okay, that's it.
- 1:19:40Vipul Bindra: That's simple.
- 1:19:40Vipul Bindra: And then do you give them obviously 80 grand, so you're going to give them wire transfer, I'm guessing.
- 1:19:46John Ruz: Yeah, for sure.
- 1:19:46John Ruz: And then before delivery that's a huge amount.
- 1:19:49Vipul Bindra: Right, they have to do it before you give them deliverables have built so a good relationship.
- 1:19:55John Ruz: But I I recommend before db deliver for most clients, but if you have a relationship.
- 1:20:00Vipul Bindra: You don't care, you're just going to deliver them and then they'll pay you whenever they pay, you do they?
- 1:20:04Vipul Bindra: Pay normally on time.
- 1:20:05Vipul Bindra: Oh, for sure this guy yeah exactly what I'm saying bigger amounts, the checks come faster.
- 1:20:11Vipul Bindra: Uh, I'm guessing wire transfer, though not a check for correct yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, pretty standard, so pretty standard yep, all right, so that's incredible.
- 1:20:20Vipul Bindra: Now I want to know is the second biggest project you did?
- 1:20:22Vipul Bindra: So people can know you know what the scale level is uh what's the second biggest project you've done for them ever?
- 1:20:28Vipul Bindra: uh?
- 1:20:29Vipul Bindra: Price-wise or roughly it's been 45 40 grand, so exactly see, you can scale up because way more, way more because because you know, like they know, the the shoot is massive, right, the deliverables are high, so it doesn't mean um, you know, if you get a 10, 20, 30k client, that can't one day become 100 150 200k client because you know you scale with them right.
- 1:20:54Vipul Bindra: Uh, so what was the rough deliverables in that 40k?
- 1:20:58John Ruz: um, we were delivering 10 videos, 15 videos, I think.
- 1:21:03John Ruz: So pretty, pretty standard, same thing, same calculation, roughly.
- 1:21:07John Ruz: And this was local, not traveling, so you didn't have to travel.
- 1:21:09John Ruz: No, there's no travel cost.
- 1:21:10Vipul Bindra: So that's pretty good, so people can have some idea.
- 1:21:13Vipul Bindra: Uh, and then for your typical uh, you know the typical corporate stuff, which is when most videos end up being, which is like talking head, you know, b-roll right, whatever needs to be edited into brand video, testimony, whatever do you have like a pricing structure that you aim for there.
- 1:21:30John Ruz: Like this is the range we want to be at, because that's typical standard right, long production um from uh, brian and I have talked I um our day rate start at 1750, I believe, and it goes up from that um it.
- 1:21:45John Ruz: It depends, but, brian, I see it depending on you, know who is this company right?
- 1:21:52Vipul Bindra: like.
- 1:21:52Vipul Bindra: So you're doing value-based pricing right, depending on the company, if coca-cola calls the rates higher.
- 1:21:57Vipul Bindra: Yeah if you know, joe schmo calls it's lower uh, what do you aim for with edited?
- 1:22:02Vipul Bindra: Because you know that's obviously your day rate.
- 1:22:03Vipul Bindra: That's how you're calculating day rate, probably editing fee.
- 1:22:06Vipul Bindra: So what's your average?
- 1:22:08Vipul Bindra: You would say total for a small to mid-sized company that you're aiming for after editing.
- 1:22:14John Ruz: You know um nick, who is our editor that's based in texas he does.
- 1:22:20Vipul Bindra: So you do have an american, us based correct editor for this type of work.
- 1:22:24John Ruz: Yeah, okay for uh, me, uh for big wave, okay, um, he, his day rate is 1200, around 1200.
- 1:22:33John Ruz: So if we're pulling, you know, a 40 grand shoot we might giving him.
- 1:22:39John Ruz: You know he he might ask 2000.
- 1:22:42Vipul Bindra: You know, make sense, yeah so so for a tip, do you do like.
- 1:22:46Vipul Bindra: So what's your minimum?
- 1:22:46Vipul Bindra: Sounds like you add his 1200 your 1750 the most bare minimum shoot a client can get is 4k right, right.
- 1:22:54Vipul Bindra: Can they get anything lower than that?
- 1:22:56Vipul Bindra: anything, no right we don't budge it doesn't make sense anyway, because your rates yeah, yeah so that's going to be you shooting right and then him editing and the company, obviously, I'm guessing, will pull profit from both right correct companies to make money too.
- 1:23:08Vipul Bindra: That's incredible, I mean.
- 1:23:09Vipul Bindra: And look, that knows people.
- 1:23:11Vipul Bindra: The scale 4k, 160.
- 1:23:13Vipul Bindra: Have you done anything bigger than 160 or is this your biggest project, biggest project?
- 1:23:17Vipul Bindra: So that's the scale Now between the two companies.
- 1:23:20Vipul Bindra: What's your percentage Like?
- 1:23:21Vipul Bindra: Is JRP like 60, 70% of your business and this one like?
- 1:23:26Vipul Bindra: What's the divide between the two?
- 1:23:28John Ruz: It's 60, 40.
- 1:23:30John Ruz: 60, 40.
- 1:23:31John Ruz: Jrp 40.
- 1:23:32Vipul Bindra: So JRP still is the primary moneymaker, but this is getting there almost seems like.
- 1:23:38John Ruz: Big wave pulls in bigger profits than JRP still is a primary moneymaker, but this is getting there.
- 1:23:40John Ruz: Almost seems like Big wave pulls in bigger profits than JRP though.
- 1:23:42John Ruz: Oh, that's incredible.
- 1:23:43Vipul Bindra: So because you know real estate, I don't know why I'm shocked.
- 1:23:47Vipul Bindra: That makes sense.
- 1:23:49Vipul Bindra: Yeah, real estate, yeah.
- 1:23:51John Ruz: Pulls in bigger profits than JRP.
- 1:23:53Vipul Bindra: So what's your game plan?
- 1:23:54Vipul Bindra: Are you trying to grow both, but do you have a certain focus?
- 1:23:59Vipul Bindra: And what are you two thinking about the future?
- 1:24:02John Ruz: I feel like JRP is going to scale through the nation.
- 1:24:07John Ruz: We'll be in different markets in the next five years.
- 1:24:11John Ruz: We really want to track with this staging client that has been partnered with us.
- 1:24:17John Ruz: So I feel like if they expand we will spend with them um test the water, see what works what, what doesn't.
- 1:24:25John Ruz: With jrp we're tending to expand a lot into different markets.
- 1:24:29John Ruz: You know, girl, the the team um bigger and with big wave, I think, just staying the same really.
- 1:24:37John Ruz: We want bigger clients.
- 1:24:39John Ruz: You know this type of shoots that we're doing for this type of client in Connecticut.
- 1:24:44John Ruz: You know, on March I feel like that type of client.
- 1:24:47John Ruz: That's what we really strive for.
- 1:24:50Vipul Bindra: Exactly, and so that's incredible.
- 1:24:52Vipul Bindra: So your expansion plan with GRP is very simple and I think it would work, because you've tested the market You've obviously done it here so now all you have to do is just go to these other markets and just expand and, just as we know, with the real estate market, it's down.
- 1:25:09Vipul Bindra: That means it's going to go back up, so it won't be that long until it's going back up.
- 1:25:14Vipul Bindra: And then you'll be able to expand even faster.
- 1:25:16Vipul Bindra: How do you plan on managing it, Because it seems like once it becomes large enough, do you plan on like do you think you'll lose?
- 1:25:25Vipul Bindra: Because here's my thing, Right.
- 1:25:27Vipul Bindra: Like me, for two years I've been trying to find someone to you know, because you know I'm a filmmaker first, but I had to learn business because that's how you make money Right.
- 1:25:35Vipul Bindra: I had to learn business because that's how you make money right and that's what your clients care about.
- 1:25:39Vipul Bindra: But I try to be bringing both together right.
- 1:25:43Vipul Bindra: The point is I've been trying for years to find somebody to go do the sales so I can focus on the creative and then the production, being the producer, director, dp.
- 1:25:53Vipul Bindra: But I haven't been able to Because, like I said, nobody's passionate and driven enough where I'm like I can let them do your thing, because you know the people who are good, they're already doing it Right, and people who are not good at it, I don't think they need to be here Right.
- 1:26:08Vipul Bindra: So the point is, I haven't been able to find a suitable I'm saying replacement and obviously, and I'm happy to do it up until then because it's not like I'm burned out or anything.
- 1:26:18Vipul Bindra: I just want to do more of the production and save time.
- 1:26:22Vipul Bindra: So, on your side now, once this happens I don't know if you guys have even thought about this yet how are you going to manage it?
- 1:26:28Vipul Bindra: Because you're going to have to probably bring regional manager or something but, then how do you keep that?
- 1:26:32Vipul Bindra: What makes you you is the relationships, the quality control, the customer service, and then you have to let go, and then that's when cracks happen.
- 1:26:40John Ruz: You know that's when scaling is really hard, really hard, so have you two thought about that.
- 1:26:44Vipul Bindra: How are you going to solve the problem in the next five years, which sounds like a long time.
- 1:26:49Vipul Bindra: It's not in business terms.
- 1:26:52John Ruz: So have you thought about that?
- 1:26:54John Ruz: That thought has, you know, passed through my head, but, you know, just doing what I'm doing right now seems to be working.
- 1:27:04John Ruz: Um, and you know, just keep our guys happy, it's the most important thing, you know, it's the building.
- 1:27:12John Ruz: Really, I'm stride, I strive for building relationships.
- 1:27:15John Ruz: So, um, that thought of hiring, you know, head managers might come for sure.
- 1:27:22John Ruz: Um, that's, that's an a great idea and it potentially is going to happen.
- 1:27:27Vipul Bindra: yeah, if you spend, yeah, let's say two, I don't know, let's guess, right, the bigger markets.
- 1:27:31Vipul Bindra: You go to texas, you go to california, go to new york, right, right, uh, I don't know how you manage that all by yourself, right, it will be impossible exactly yeah but then have you thought, and then again, it's okay if you haven't, because like I said it's far away right now right you're only going to your second market but I'm just saying, when you go, five markets, six markets, right, I don't know how you can be there and you can't, then you know, how do you, how do you manage the same thing you know, without you being able to do all of it?
- 1:28:01John Ruz: I feel like not that all of our clients are, not that I have preference from client to client, but I feel like VIP clients deserve a little bit extra right.
- 1:28:14John Ruz: So if we have a VIP client, let's say, on another market, I have to show up right.
- 1:28:20John Ruz: So if we do some mistake or something like that, I do have to show up right.
- 1:28:23John Ruz: So if if we do some mistake or something that I, I do have to show up that, what that?
- 1:28:25John Ruz: What happened in in in austin couple weeks after we launch?
- 1:28:30John Ruz: Um, you know, one of our contractors messed up.
- 1:28:33John Ruz: I had to show up for the client and I flew in back in, did the shoot for the client, flew back out.
- 1:28:40John Ruz: So I feel like that type of customer service still need to be there throughout no, absolutely and then that's exactly what I expected you would have done, right?
- 1:28:50Vipul Bindra: you're like oh, I'm on a plane, even though it may not be profitable at that point.
- 1:28:54John Ruz: Yeah, because you have to get a hotel.
- 1:28:55John Ruz: Yeah, for sure to fly.
- 1:28:56Vipul Bindra: But then that's what you have to do, right, right, and then you slowly fix it, I guess right okay um and um.
- 1:29:04Vipul Bindra: Now talk about um somebody and I know I have more topics, man, we got to talk about virtual assistants, okay, but but before we get there, I do want to talk, like I want to give people real advice.
- 1:29:15Vipul Bindra: So you figured out and I felt like your partner brian was sounds like after talking to you was a key reason that you guys are able to you, you know, like, do it faster, better together, and pandemic was just the reason that that happened.
- 1:29:28Vipul Bindra: Right, but talk to somebody like who's listening, maybe new, you know, maybe they know.
- 1:29:34Vipul Bindra: Let's say that let's not talk about craft, let's say they know how to make a good video, cause that's like the number one thing.
- 1:29:39Vipul Bindra: How do they, especially on the production side of it, like how do they get higher paying clients?
- 1:29:45Vipul Bindra: How do they find success?
- 1:29:46Vipul Bindra: How do they grow?
- 1:29:48Vipul Bindra: Because you know when you're and I'm sure you've been there when you're you know not making that much money, you're just worried about life.
- 1:29:55Vipul Bindra: How do I pay my bills, how do I pay my mortgage, how do I pay my rent or my food or whatever?
- 1:30:01Vipul Bindra: You can't worry about scaling and you know automation and all that, but but that is what leads them to there.
- 1:30:07Vipul Bindra: So how does somebody from here go here, or what would you do?
- 1:30:10Vipul Bindra: Maybe they can try and copy it like now, tomorrow, like you lose everything, you have to start from scratch.
- 1:30:16Vipul Bindra: Here's a brand new company, you know rpg productions.
- 1:30:19Vipul Bindra: I don't know.
- 1:30:20Vipul Bindra: So how?
- 1:30:20Vipul Bindra: So how do you?
- 1:30:20Vipul Bindra: How do you?
- 1:30:21Vipul Bindra: You know how?
- 1:30:22Vipul Bindra: What would you do?
- 1:30:24John Ruz: Um, I feel like you have to find work for free.
- 1:30:29John Ruz: I feel like you first you have to build up a portfolio, uh, build some sort of um credibility in the industry, and then we kind of use a method that maybe some people don't use it, which is the DM method, instagram DM method where we I actually record myself right and offer something for them right, something I can be a 50% off or an incentive here and there to that client, and that's how their name on it Like oh man, I love that.
- 1:31:05Vipul Bindra: Okay, personalized, yeah, that's my favorite way.
- 1:31:07Vipul Bindra: Uh, when I tell people how to promote, it's like, right, make it custom, make it for them.
- 1:31:12Vipul Bindra: Yeah, so you record a video, you send it to them, incredible through instagram, dm through instagram, and it works.
- 1:31:17Vipul Bindra: And it works because it's just for them.
- 1:31:19John Ruz: Yeah, when you do the shoot, then you can build up up to, let's say, five clients.
- 1:31:24John Ruz: Right, those five clients are now.
- 1:31:27John Ruz: You know you, you build your portfolio, you have a product to sell, right, something to sell yeah then you can go to other companies.
- 1:31:36John Ruz: Hey, this is what I've done for this five clients let's do that let's do something for you yeah, and I feel like that.
- 1:31:45John Ruz: It's a snowball effect boom, boom, boom.
- 1:31:48John Ruz: Yeah, and you have that.
- 1:31:48Vipul Bindra: That's a proven strategy, right.
- 1:31:50Vipul Bindra: So if you're doing this to instagram and you can do this in person as well, right, boots on the ground.
- 1:31:55Vipul Bindra: But essentially the idea is you offer them something.
- 1:31:59Vipul Bindra: Maybe in the beginning, you offer a free shoot, right, and then you slowly maybe offer 50 or whatever.
- 1:32:02Vipul Bindra: At the end of the day, you offer a free shoot, right, and then you slowly maybe offer 50% or whatever.
- 1:32:04Vipul Bindra: At the end of the day, you build a portfolio.
- 1:32:06Vipul Bindra: When you have the portfolio, you find their competitors or similar industries and you go to them and you're like look, this is what I did for them.
- 1:32:14Vipul Bindra: This is the rate.
- 1:32:14Vipul Bindra: Do you want to do it?
- 1:32:16Vipul Bindra: It's a very simple offer, because at that point you're no longer like, hey, look at my skill or what I can do right.
- 1:32:24Vipul Bindra: So, hey, I'm look at my skill or what I can do, right, right, so you have to kill it, obviously on the first few right now.
- 1:32:27Vipul Bindra: Don't keep always doing work for free.
- 1:32:27John Ruz: This is just so you can build a portfolio, right?
- 1:32:30Vipul Bindra: yeah, that's, that's fair, because then somebody else is getting a good video.
- 1:32:32Vipul Bindra: You're learning, you're getting that high-end content.
- 1:32:35John Ruz: Yeah, very smart um and you know good strategy.
- 1:32:38John Ruz: That's a strategy in my advice.
- 1:32:40John Ruz: Really, it's just to grind every single day, like I, I did.
- 1:32:44John Ruz: I I when, when I didn't thought of the instagram method that we offer right now, I was doing it.
- 1:32:51John Ruz: I was pulling it off off silo, I was going into the, you know, sending message to the agent.
- 1:32:58John Ruz: I was pulling, I was searching their names, pulling into google or facebook, searching for further emails, tapping their emails and look, hey, xyc.
- 1:33:08John Ruz: I see that you don't have a video on xyc property.
- 1:33:11John Ruz: Um, do you want to do that?
- 1:33:13John Ruz: Do you want to do something for free?
- 1:33:15John Ruz: Do you want to?
- 1:33:15John Ruz: I can do this for you right.
- 1:33:17Vipul Bindra: Look at that, add value for them, right?
- 1:33:19John Ruz: that was more interested in it than just right you have to research them before offering something, Exactly Because if you don't know them, you don't know what they need.
- 1:33:28John Ruz: Then they will never buy it.
- 1:33:30Vipul Bindra: And at the end of the day, look, here's the truth.
- 1:33:34Vipul Bindra: If you keep doing it over and over again, you may fail.
- 1:33:37Vipul Bindra: You may not find success.
- 1:33:39Vipul Bindra: But most businesses fail within first year of business and then the next is five years.
- 1:33:45Vipul Bindra: If you just make it past five years, success is right there right.
- 1:33:49Vipul Bindra: The reason most businesses don't is because most people are not.
- 1:33:52Vipul Bindra: It's not because they're not good, it's because they just stop trying right just don't give up, right, you know what I mean.
- 1:33:57Vipul Bindra: Keep at it, keep at it.
- 1:33:58Vipul Bindra: You'll find success, hopefully sooner than five years.
- 1:34:00Vipul Bindra: Right, exactly, exactly, hopefully, not that, but I'm saying that is, you know, the idea is, anyone can find success.
- 1:34:07Vipul Bindra: As long as you know, you're trying to be better Now, don't keep doing the same thing for five years.
- 1:34:13John Ruz: Nothing's going to change.
- 1:34:14Vipul Bindra: But the idea is to you know, just keep doing at it, keep getting better at it and offer people value, you know, and then people want it.
- 1:34:21Vipul Bindra: Why wouldn't they want to help you or hire you or whatever?
- 1:34:23Vipul Bindra: Because, at the end of the day, here's the truth.
- 1:34:26Vipul Bindra: In the market that you're in talk about real estate, they need videos, they need photos, they need Matterport.
- 1:34:31Vipul Bindra: There is no like, if and buts about it.
- 1:34:34Vipul Bindra: The question is are you going to be the person providing?
- 1:34:36Vipul Bindra: it for them, and then are you going to be able to scale it?
- 1:34:41Vipul Bindra: Because, again, sure, sure, you can go find 100 clients at 50 bucks, but what's the point?
- 1:34:44Vipul Bindra: If you can't just survive or be sane doing it.
- 1:34:47Vipul Bindra: You know, because I knew someone, I was like dude, what shoot is this?
- 1:34:51Vipul Bindra: Oh yeah, this is my 10th shoot how much are you charging?
- 1:34:53Vipul Bindra: 50 bucks.
- 1:34:54Vipul Bindra: I'm like, come on, you're telling me you made 500 bucks and I just walked in this meeting and charged this client because I hired someone.
- 1:35:01Vipul Bindra: You know they wanted to learn right I was like I'm happy to bring you.
- 1:35:04Vipul Bindra: And, um, they came for the shoot.
- 1:35:06Vipul Bindra: Great guy, awesome guy.
- 1:35:07Vipul Bindra: And then, as soon as, like most people you know we do a big shoot and we hang out he's like no, I have another real estate shoot oh my god he's like how many?
- 1:35:14Vipul Bindra: he's like oh, I did your half day shoot, plus I have 10 real estate shoots and I was like how much are you getting paid?
- 1:35:19Vipul Bindra: 50 bucks.
- 1:35:20Vipul Bindra: I'm like you're telling me I paid you.
- 1:35:22Vipul Bindra: I, uh, you know.
- 1:35:23Vipul Bindra: And then also on my side, I'm like I paid him.
- 1:35:25Vipul Bindra: I was like are you telling me I paid you for?
- 1:35:27Vipul Bindra: Five of your shoots I know, I'm not, I obviously paid him for the video, but what I'm saying is oh my god so for him that even that 250 that fell low to me was really high, right.
- 1:35:38Vipul Bindra: But then you have to look at the other mindset.
- 1:35:40Vipul Bindra: The grind is so crazy and then I'm like I'm here charging this client 10, 20 grand to make this one video.
- 1:35:47Vipul Bindra: It just feels, you know, so, so weird.
- 1:35:50Vipul Bindra: I'm like holy crap, and he's gonna work all day to make 500 from real estate on a normal day crazy.
- 1:35:57John Ruz: Yeah, that's not sustainable I'm saying anywhere, especially in orlando, good luck living off of that, jesus plus yeah I mean, you have to eat some point, so anyway.
- 1:36:06Vipul Bindra: So what I'm saying is yeah, you don't want to be, you want to figure out a way to scale it in a way where it makes sense, uh, but it also, you know, doesn't burn you out, right, and you can have a life, because at the end you know, otherwise I don't know why you're doing it right, exactly there's better ways to make money if you just want to work.
- 1:36:22John Ruz: 12 14 hours.
- 1:36:24Vipul Bindra: You might as well go find a different job.
- 1:36:27Vipul Bindra: But that's incredible.
- 1:36:28Vipul Bindra: So what about the other side of it?
- 1:36:31Vipul Bindra: So let's say they don't want to do real estate, they want to do commercial and corporate video.
- 1:36:34Vipul Bindra: Would you do the same thing?
- 1:36:36Vipul Bindra: Uh, would your suggestion be just find similar industries make a video and then any other tips or tricks that you have that you can think about.
- 1:36:43Vipul Bindra: I love that one where it's like oh, do it on desktop, it's cheaper.
- 1:36:47Vipul Bindra: Yeah, I think people can definitely take advantage of that, but what would?
- 1:36:51Vipul Bindra: What else?
- 1:36:52Vipul Bindra: Do you have any other tips or tricks?
- 1:36:53Vipul Bindra: You'd say.
- 1:36:55John Ruz: Just that, that mentality of you know you can make it, you can just thrive doing what you love.
- 1:37:02John Ruz: You know it's nothing, it takes work, but it truly does.
- 1:37:08John Ruz: It's a feeling that just of I don't know how to put it together, but it's something that I cannot explain right.
- 1:37:19John Ruz: I'm so happy to do this for a living and I wish someone looking at this right now that it's struggling and looking just just- go through.
- 1:37:28Vipul Bindra: Or even if they're, you know they're 80k and they're like how do I get to 800k?
- 1:37:32Vipul Bindra: You know, whatever like that.
- 1:37:34John Ruz: It's that mindset talk to your clients.
- 1:37:37John Ruz: Yeah, like they will help you get there too, like, you can upsell products, you can upsell services, you can upsell everything to your client right, talk to them, you know, and in the corp and commercial world.
- 1:37:50Vipul Bindra: I've said this over and over again your data is hugely valuable because here's what you can do.
- 1:37:55Vipul Bindra: If they hire you and they say make me a testimonial video, you go get b-roll, you get interviews.
- 1:38:02Vipul Bindra: Sure, you sell them for whatever 3k, let's say right.
- 1:38:05Vipul Bindra: But now you own all that extra footage.
- 1:38:07Vipul Bindra: Why can't you put together that B-roll and make them a quick I don't know teaser, social or something video?
- 1:38:12Vipul Bindra: And now you can go back hey, do you want this?
- 1:38:14Vipul Bindra: It's going to be X or whatever price.
- 1:38:17Vipul Bindra: You can keep using that content and as you work with them more, you have bigger and bigger library.
- 1:38:21Vipul Bindra: Use the content to make more money, yep 100%.
- 1:38:25John Ruz: Yeah, do you want to chat about virtual assistants now?
- 1:38:32Vipul Bindra: So this is the main thing I learned from you in the beginning, and I'm doing something similar, so I did get an assistant, but mine's US-based.
- 1:38:38Vipul Bindra: However, I feel like I'm spending too much money.
- 1:38:41Vipul Bindra: I hope she's not listening to this, but you know what I mean.
- 1:38:44Vipul Bindra: I feel like I'm spending too much money.
- 1:38:44Vipul Bindra: I hope she's not listening to this, but you know what I mean.
- 1:38:45Vipul Bindra: I feel like you're doing it the smarter way Getting somebody from Vietnam, I'm guessing again.
- 1:38:48Vipul Bindra: Is that your favorite country, or what?
- 1:38:52Vipul Bindra: So you know like they are great hardworking people, that's awesome Because you know at the end of the day here's the thing Like we've talked about, you only have so many hours in the day.
- 1:39:03Vipul Bindra: You need to do high-level tasks and a lot of the stuff we do is just silly email stuff.
- 1:39:08Vipul Bindra: As you saw, literally walking, I'm like I need to respond to these emails.
- 1:39:11Vipul Bindra: I'm like I don't have time for that.
- 1:39:13Vipul Bindra: Point is, if somebody can come in, take that time off, fix your calendar, get some meetings done, meetings scheduled, basic responses to email.
- 1:39:23Vipul Bindra: It can be a game changer.
- 1:39:24Vipul Bindra: And you found the formula, which is virtual assistants, which I think is perfect because it's not that expensive and a lot of businesses can afford it.
- 1:39:33Vipul Bindra: So tell more about how did you think of that, how did you go about finding a good assistant, and you know again how it's been able to help you.
- 1:39:41John Ruz: Yeah, so we hired our first virtual assistant, uh, back in 2023, and it really changed the game on replying to text messages, replying to emails, you know stuff, just daunting tasks here and there.
- 1:39:59John Ruz: And Jean may may make such a great job on, you know, providing customer service to our clients and all that.
- 1:40:08John Ruz: So, um, she went in and changed the game for us.
- 1:40:12John Ruz: You know where did you find her?
- 1:40:14John Ruz: Um, brian found her and he brought her into both businesses pretty much, but I'm pretty sure he found her through Upwork.
- 1:40:25Vipul Bindra: Upwork perfect Best platform.
- 1:40:28Vipul Bindra: A lot of people have mentioned to go find you know, report employees or whatever.
- 1:40:32Vipul Bindra: So once you found her and then, how did you integrate her into the business, because I know you were mentioning that before like you know, was able to do a lot of things.
- 1:40:41Vipul Bindra: What are the things that a virtual assistant can do, so daunting tasks?
- 1:40:43John Ruz: everyday, know was able to do a lot of things.
- 1:40:45John Ruz: What are the things that a virtual assistant can do?
- 1:40:46John Ruz: So daunting tasks, everyday tasks, replying to simple emails, texts, you know, um, managing social media accounts pretty much just the she can do.
- 1:40:54John Ruz: She can manage my business pretty much.
- 1:40:56John Ruz: You know she knows the backend of everything.
- 1:40:58John Ruz: She can book shoots for a client.
- 1:41:00John Ruz: If a client wants to shoot a, if the client wants to book a shoot, right right there.
- 1:41:06John Ruz: Right, if we, if we, get a text message or an email, she can reply back.
- 1:41:09John Ruz: Right, that's incredible.
- 1:41:11Vipul Bindra: So anything that you do think of this and that's a lot right you do on social media, text or email, they can accomplish right which is like 80 of our manual labor tasks right that we have to do outside of, obviously, shoot.
- 1:41:23Vipul Bindra: So that's incredible and and they're not that expensive, right.
- 1:41:26Vipul Bindra: So what?
- 1:41:27Vipul Bindra: What could somebody realistically let's say they want to, they like the idea because I, I like the idea.
- 1:41:33Vipul Bindra: I think this is the one of the best things I ever heard from you.
- 1:41:35Vipul Bindra: I was like, oh, this sounds like a game changer, so I want to get a virtual assistant.
- 1:41:40Vipul Bindra: Uh, what could I roughly get one for?
- 1:41:43Vipul Bindra: To do the type of tasks you know that could help.
- 1:41:45John Ruz: You'll be surprised um.
- 1:41:47John Ruz: You can find someone for three dollars an hour.
- 1:41:50Vipul Bindra: We pay gene five dollars an hour and roughly how many hours do you think you use?
- 1:41:55John Ruz: she works full-time, full-time so that's what eight hours roughly you say in a day, because obviously some days I'm sure very varies.
- 1:42:01Vipul Bindra: So that's what, uh, five tens, I don't know I'm doing math over here uh, I don't know, a couple thousand a month you'd say yeah, yeah, I mean, that's not bad considering that's a full-time employee doing anything and everything with email thing and, like you said, you could find somebody cheaper.
- 1:42:20Vipul Bindra: That's obviously sounds like a good assistant.
- 1:42:21Vipul Bindra: You could find them for what?
- 1:42:22John Ruz: two, three dollars an hour probably right and it will do a great job, like, for example, our qc michelle right um, we have a set uh 250 a week for her.
- 1:42:32John Ruz: Uh, eduardo, it's 50 bucks a week right, look at that.
- 1:42:36Vipul Bindra: So finding somebody for 50 bucks a week and they are extremely happy, right?
- 1:42:43John Ruz: yeah, because that's like a lot of money when you translate into to the, to the current currency over there in vietnam?
- 1:42:49Vipul Bindra: uh, do they?
- 1:42:50Vipul Bindra: Uh, does the time difference play into it or they're just used to working american hours?
- 1:42:56John Ruz: they.
- 1:42:56John Ruz: They are not trained, but when we hire them, we ask them if they can work US time-based.
- 1:43:04John Ruz: And they're like yeah, I'm all that time so I can work.
- 1:43:07John Ruz: That's perfect, yeah.
- 1:43:08Vipul Bindra: Because I don't think it's that vast.
- 1:43:09Vipul Bindra: It's not like yeah, so that's incredible.
- 1:43:13Vipul Bindra: And then they're willing to work.
- 1:43:15Vipul Bindra: They love the pay because you know, in their country that's a lot of pay.
- 1:43:18Vipul Bindra: Correct Versus for us to think about somebody for 50 to 250 a week.
- 1:43:26Vipul Bindra: Correct is just yeah, that's not right.
- 1:43:27Vipul Bindra: Like I said, I I feel ashamed when I'm bringing a pa for 250.
- 1:43:28John Ruz: I'm like can you?
- 1:43:29Vipul Bindra: please be a pa for 250 and I'm like uh I'm I'm begging them.
- 1:43:32Vipul Bindra: I was like what, uh, in here you're like you don't know, work the whole week for me.
- 1:43:37Vipul Bindra: But that could be a game changer, like I said, because, like I said, most time I'm just tired of emails how do?
- 1:43:43Vipul Bindra: You do text messages, do you have to have some kind of platform, because I like iMessage.
- 1:43:47Vipul Bindra: That's been my key.
- 1:43:48Vipul Bindra: I did try to do so here's my experience For a few years I'd used an app, so you know the business phone was an app you could access from computer everywhere.
- 1:43:56Vipul Bindra: But then I found that people love the iMessage.
- 1:44:10Vipul Bindra: You know question mark, you know all the response things that you can do on iMessage, so I moved it back.
- 1:44:12Vipul Bindra: So it's on my phone direct.
- 1:44:12Vipul Bindra: That is my number.
- 1:44:13Vipul Bindra: I even I don't even have my personal number anymore.
- 1:44:13Vipul Bindra: It's just how it is.
- 1:44:14John Ruz: So yeah, I just did.
- 1:44:15Vipul Bindra: I was like well, if everyone just calls me here and all I talk about is video, all my friends are video people.
- 1:44:19John Ruz: It's like what is business?
- 1:44:21Vipul Bindra: versus personal right.
- 1:44:22Vipul Bindra: I was like two, three people who use my personal number.
- 1:44:24Vipul Bindra: Here's my business number Just call it on that.
- 1:44:26Vipul Bindra: So that's what ended up with me.
- 1:44:27Vipul Bindra: I started the proper way with the virtual phone thing.
- 1:44:31Vipul Bindra: It became my now real phone Plus.
- 1:44:33Vipul Bindra: Now I can do all the iMessage thing.
- 1:44:34Vipul Bindra: That's what I was lacking, why I was like I need to do this.
- 1:44:37Vipul Bindra: But the disadvantage would that be?
- 1:44:45Vipul Bindra: I can't just give my now text messages to someone remotely right.
- 1:44:46Vipul Bindra: So you probably am using, I guess, in an app-based system.
- 1:44:48John Ruz: So we tried, uh, google voice, google voice.
- 1:44:49John Ruz: Yeah, that's exactly what I was using google voice for a couple uh years actually and it worked great.
- 1:44:56John Ruz: But the um calling feature was so bad, right it we.
- 1:45:01John Ruz: We had lags or we will cut off or um.
- 1:45:05John Ruz: You know, if we're sending a text message repeatedly to to people, they will block us.
- 1:45:11John Ruz: Because you know, if we're sending appointment reminders 30 a day- it's the exact same thing.
- 1:45:16John Ruz: It's the exact same template.
- 1:45:18John Ruz: They will block you from scamming right um, we switched back to open phone and our platform isn't attached.
- 1:45:27John Ruz: It has like a burner phone.
- 1:45:29John Ruz: So it's an attached to open phone.
- 1:45:31John Ruz: So it's great.
- 1:45:32John Ruz: Tonamo is great on sending for text reminders through a burner phone that was yeah, they stop or block, it's not you anyway.
- 1:45:39Vipul Bindra: Yeah right.
- 1:45:40Vipul Bindra: So that's actually very smart, because you don't want to take your business number and have your clients block you.
- 1:45:44Vipul Bindra: Oh my God.
- 1:45:46John Ruz: It was painful yeah.
- 1:45:47Vipul Bindra: So that is so.
- 1:45:49Vipul Bindra: But the negative of that is and again, maybe you don't have that issue Because, like I said, I have clients who have to, you know, do the iMessage, the group chats all that.
- 1:45:57Vipul Bindra: You definitely can't do that with that right.
- 1:45:59Vipul Bindra: You can't, so this only works.
- 1:46:01Vipul Bindra: So maybe it's good to have two numbers you know, so it's a, it's good to to have a number.
- 1:46:06Vipul Bindra: Obviously that is through a virtual system, correct, and which one did you say you use?
- 1:46:10John Ruz: now Open phone, open phone.
- 1:46:11Vipul Bindra: Okay, I've heard of that, is it a good system.
- 1:46:13John Ruz: It is how expensive, is it?
- 1:46:18Vipul Bindra: It's not that expensive.
- 1:46:19Vipul Bindra: Yeah, you can't even get a regular phone for that.
- 1:46:21John Ruz: And Gene is in, brian and myself are in, and that's it.
- 1:46:26John Ruz: We both three are top 10.
- 1:46:27John Ruz: And what I absolutely love about Open Phone is that if a client sends a message, you can actually have a conversation with your vitro system and internal team off of that message.
- 1:46:39John Ruz: Like how can I reply to this, or should we reply this?
- 1:46:43Vipul Bindra: this, this Should we say it yeah, whatever, so you can have A-B testing between the team.
- 1:46:48Vipul Bindra: It's like, hey, is this better or this better?
- 1:46:50Vipul Bindra: That's pretty cool, yeah.
- 1:46:51John Ruz: Or you can just add Gene, Like.
- 1:46:53John Ruz: Just reply to the text.
- 1:46:56Vipul Bindra: Okay, so she can respond or whatever, and it's pretty amazing.
- 1:47:00John Ruz: It's very good and we have two lines.
- 1:47:02John Ruz: We have the Florida and Texas line in there.
- 1:47:04Vipul Bindra: And then for emails, I'm guessing it's just appointments, basic delivery questions, correct, anything that we're not thinking of.
- 1:47:11Vipul Bindra: Because I want people to expand, because you know most people go, I don't need an assistant.
- 1:47:15Vipul Bindra: I want people to know what all so anything else?
- 1:47:31John Ruz: you can think of out of the ordinary, of what we're talking here, that people can use an assistant for they can do um, that we're not talking about following up on dm message with your bistros virtual assistant.
- 1:47:35John Ruz: So whenever I send a, a video message, I have a google sheet that I created with eduardo um and we both are in there and I just literally mark whomever I'm dming and he knows.
- 1:47:44John Ruz: Okay, this person needs to be follow up and he actually managed the conversation and quote-unquote sales.
- 1:47:51Vipul Bindra: Look at that so you can automate your responses I just say one, and that's it 50 bucks a week worth it, totally worth it, yeah oh, my goodness.
- 1:47:59Vipul Bindra: And then, um, uh, because yeah, even one shoot, it's, yeah, paid for and that's a cheap photo shoot.
- 1:48:02Vipul Bindra: It's not even like and that's a cheap photo shoot, it's not even like an expensive shoot, and Eduardo does the photo selection too overnight.
- 1:48:09John Ruz: So we kill two birds with one stone.
- 1:48:13Vipul Bindra: So for $50 a week.
- 1:48:14Vipul Bindra: He works what?
- 1:48:15Vipul Bindra: Eight hours a day, five days a week.
- 1:48:16Vipul Bindra: Is that the schedule?
- 1:48:17Vipul Bindra: Is it more he?
- 1:48:18John Ruz: works four hours a day.
- 1:48:19Vipul Bindra: Four hours, that means so long.
- 1:48:20Vipul Bindra: Yeah, two hours for instagram, two hours for photo selection.
- 1:48:27Vipul Bindra: So four hours five times a week.
- 1:48:28Vipul Bindra: I'm guessing five days, correct, okay?
- 1:48:29John Ruz: that's again.
- 1:48:29John Ruz: That's still pretty good, I mean uh and uh.
- 1:48:33Vipul Bindra: The question now I have is are these their real names?
- 1:48:36Vipul Bindra: Are they actually called gene and eduardo, or these are made up names?
- 1:48:42Vipul Bindra: I don't know so that's what they told you.
- 1:48:43John Ruz: Yeah, wow, yeah, and you've never been like, because you know if you've been to ever.
- 1:48:54John Ruz: Do you eat Vietnamese food or no?
- 1:48:55John Ruz: I do, yeah, Okay, I'm just making sure.
- 1:48:56Vipul Bindra: It'd be funny.
- 1:48:56Vipul Bindra: You're like I have all these Vietnamese people in Manhattan.
- 1:48:58John Ruz: I mean, which is fine.
- 1:48:59John Ruz: I mean you don't have to yeah, but uh, so anyway.
- 1:49:01Vipul Bindra: But I'm saying, when you go to these restaurants, the names are, you know, I can't say right, so I'm just like uh uh, tran and yeah or yeah, stuff like that yeah, exactly so.
- 1:49:11Vipul Bindra: So they probably have, I'm guessing real names, so they came with their name you wouldn't make them you wouldn't give them the names.
- 1:49:17Vipul Bindra: They already have the american yeah, okay um, and then so when you pay them another thing so for american contractors, you contractors you know we do W-2 or W-9 for the contractors, right.
- 1:49:27Vipul Bindra: And then you have to send them the 1099 or whatever.
- 1:49:31Vipul Bindra: Right, again, not tax advice, this is just given.
- 1:49:35Vipul Bindra: So how do you handle that?
- 1:49:38Vipul Bindra: Like because it's an international Contractor?
- 1:49:40John Ruz: Yeah, do you have to still do 1099 or no?
- 1:49:42John Ruz: Because they shouldn?
- 1:49:50John Ruz: You have to still do 1099 or no?
- 1:49:51John Ruz: Because they don't do.
- 1:49:51John Ruz: They shouldn't have to pay taxes in america, right?
- 1:49:53John Ruz: Yeah, it's a special document.
- 1:49:53John Ruz: Uh, we use gusto as our payroll partner and gusto takes everything away from us.
- 1:49:55John Ruz: It's like we send an invitation link.
- 1:49:56John Ruz: They just fill out the information and that's it okay that's, and then it pays them.
- 1:50:00Vipul Bindra: And then right, so what if they have a legal name?
- 1:50:02John Ruz: they probably put it with that platform, you don't even have to worry about it, right?
- 1:50:06Vipul Bindra: and what does this type of platform cost for somebody who wants to use it?
- 1:50:10John Ruz: um, actually I'm not sure.
- 1:50:11John Ruz: Okay, and that's.
- 1:50:13John Ruz: I don't see those numbers.
- 1:50:13John Ruz: Let me just look it up.
- 1:50:14John Ruz: Right gusto?
- 1:50:15John Ruz: You said gusto g-u-s-t-o.
- 1:50:17Vipul Bindra: I'm guessing correct, and is that just for your international people, or is it for your local contractors?
- 1:50:21Vipul Bindra: So you're using that for all your payroll but mostly contractors.
- 1:50:26Vipul Bindra: You don't have to pay out what the taxes and stuff, right, because that's them, because they're contractors correct.
- 1:50:32John Ruz: That's pretty cool, so they're able to even use, you know, do international all of our contractors send us their invoices and we just enter that into the platform.
- 1:50:41Vipul Bindra: Yeah, yeah and then, uh, you don't even have to worry about taxing.
- 1:50:45Vipul Bindra: I'm guessing the platform just takes care of it.
- 1:50:47Vipul Bindra: That is incredible, because that's what my question was.
- 1:50:49Vipul Bindra: I don't have, obviously.
- 1:50:50Vipul Bindra: Uh, I wouldn't know, like, how would you even handle vietnam?
- 1:50:53Vipul Bindra: You know taxes or anything?
- 1:50:55Vipul Bindra: Right or, and again, it doesn't have to be that country.
- 1:50:57John Ruz: That's just who you're using like you said I have people in india, so you can have people you know all over, yeah, so it's just finding the right people for you, yeah and um, you know, at the end of the day, especially the tasks that don't really need somebody to be local, I think that's incredible like I said, I got a virtual assistant, but she's from us based and I'm like I'm thinking about adding a couple more virtual ones because I feel like the costs are, you know, when you're doing in american dollars it's a it's a little, I but, but my initial idea was.
- 1:51:28Vipul Bindra: Here's, like I said, where I screwed up um again tiffany's great, no offense but you know I was like, oh, you could then take calls and I didn't want to have to somebody, you know, with a, with an accent or whatever, right, yeah, even though the owner has a slight accent.
- 1:51:40Vipul Bindra: But you know, we'll just keep it that.
- 1:51:42Vipul Bindra: But then I realized quickly, because of my fiasco with the, I was like, oh, they can't even call and answer the phone anyway.
- 1:51:48Vipul Bindra: So the whole thing didn't really go to plan.
- 1:51:51Vipul Bindra: So I was like, oh, that's good, okay, you just handle emails and stuff.
- 1:51:54Vipul Bindra: But then I'm like, uh, an international assistant works so much better for that.
- 1:51:58Vipul Bindra: Yeah.
- 1:52:05John Ruz: Uh, and they can automate so much and save so much time, and now all that time I could go do other things?
- 1:52:07John Ruz: Yeah, exactly, or?
- 1:52:08Vipul Bindra: be on more shoots or whatever.
- 1:52:08Vipul Bindra: Plus, then I don't have to miss it, because so many times what happens with my calendar is I'll manually like uh, like later today, literally after this, I'm supposed to meet a buddy to discuss some, you know, future growth stuff and I'm like, uh, I almost forgot to add in the calendar.
- 1:52:23Vipul Bindra: And then, then you know, jill was like oh, after the podcast, what do you have to do?
- 1:52:27Vipul Bindra: And I was like nothing.
- 1:52:28Vipul Bindra: And then I was like no.
- 1:52:30Vipul Bindra: I got to have a meeting.
- 1:52:31Vipul Bindra: So you know, like that Sometimes you miss things Right, because you know it's me scheduling, because it wasn't through an automated system.
- 1:52:37Vipul Bindra: This is me texting or calling, correct and going.
- 1:52:39Vipul Bindra: Oh, I need to add it, and usually yeah, usually I'll go in the calendar and add it, but sometimes you know you forget.
- 1:52:45Vipul Bindra: You're human, right, and but that could throw up everything.
- 1:52:48Vipul Bindra: I hate double bookings because I never want to cancel with someone, right, because I double booked or whatever, because that makes you look unprofessional, right.
- 1:52:58Vipul Bindra: So, that happens to us all the time before we had that platform, and that's so good that you do have the platform now because, like you said, that's like the yeah, easiest way to look unprofessional without being unprofessional because you didn't do it on purpose.
- 1:53:07Vipul Bindra: Yeah, yeah, it just happens, oh no so, um, so that's incredible that you figured this whole formula out and I feel like so many people could take advantage of that.
- 1:53:17Vipul Bindra: Um, and and think of this way.
- 1:53:19Vipul Bindra: You don't have to be this successful right to do it right, even if you're making 80 100 grand a year.
- 1:53:24Vipul Bindra: Think of this way.
- 1:53:25Vipul Bindra: If you can just take away somebody like eduardo half a day, right, five days a week, 50 bucks a week, I know you can afford it.
- 1:53:35Vipul Bindra: Yeah, you spend more than that on coffee, I know, and and again, I don't want to go into that stupid argument because you know some people also take yeah, take it too far, like don't drink coffee, but I know filmmakers drink coffee and they will happily pay 10 bucks at Starbucks for it.
- 1:53:48Vipul Bindra: So I'm just saying and this could save so much more time for us to have more meetings, more outreach, more whatever it's a hack and you double triple your revenue because now you have double triple the time for me.
- 1:54:01Vipul Bindra: Like I triple the time, yeah, for me, right, like I here's what I'm bad at and I'm already seeing the use of it I take, um, I go on sets.
- 1:54:07Vipul Bindra: I'll usually even, despite my being crazy busy being director I will still take some photos or something right or people will send me if it's, if I'm doing a remote producer thing and I have some photos, and I'll always ask, hey, send me some photos.
- 1:54:20Vipul Bindra: But then I never get to posting it because I'm so busy.
- 1:54:23Vipul Bindra: And then, you know, I move from project to project to project to project and it's like, um, then you look at your social media like I didn't post anything and then it'd be so cool to just be able to go to someone like there you go there, just make posts.
- 1:54:36Vipul Bindra: You know it doesn't, because it's not like I'm trying to make revenue from it.
- 1:54:39Vipul Bindra: I just want to be able to share what we're up to, and it'd be so cool to have somebody, like you said virtual, and it's a lot easier.
- 1:54:46Vipul Bindra: I don't feel at all weird about sharing my business instagram with someone and meta has now the photo scheduler for instagram.
- 1:54:54John Ruz: Yeah, so they can even do that.
- 1:54:55John Ruz: It's free, does?
- 1:54:57Vipul Bindra: it schedule video or no?
- 1:54:58John Ruz: yeah, videos, video, everything.
- 1:55:00John Ruz: That's what I'm saying.
- 1:55:00Vipul Bindra: That'd be so cool they can and that's the platform.
- 1:55:02Vipul Bindra: So I like uh which I know facebook is old but still it's good for you know ceos and stuff that I deal with, but facebook, instagram can do that way, done through meta right, and then I think it's just linkedin right.
- 1:55:15Vipul Bindra: So it shouldn't be that hard and I know they have a managing tool, correct.
- 1:55:18Vipul Bindra: So if somebody was doing that they could just go in one day.
- 1:55:21John Ruz: That's their task schedule for the whole week, Gene might have already the entire year booked out with social media posts.
- 1:55:29Vipul Bindra: Dude this is a hack.
- 1:55:30Vipul Bindra: This is genuinely a hack.
- 1:55:32Vipul Bindra: People, if you learn anything today it's just hire virtual assistants, because I'm telling you like I said, we've talked about this before and even just listening to you a little bit, I was like my wheels were turning and I was like this is incredible yeah if somebody could just do these basic things for me.
- 1:55:49Vipul Bindra: Like I said, ideally I'd like somebody to take the phone over to right and I don't know how to do that without having multiple numbers right, but once I figured that out, that's, like I said, my big task it would like change everything.
- 1:56:00Vipul Bindra: Yeah, because because so much time I'm spending on all this stuff that it's like hurting my business, right?
- 1:56:08Vipul Bindra: Not that I'm hurting for revenue, but I could definitely be doing better or spending more time with family or whatever.
- 1:56:13John Ruz: Yeah, the worst thing that we can do is leave a client hanging.
- 1:56:16John Ruz: Yeah Right, it's like okay, she texted us at 9am and we haven't responded.
- 1:56:21Vipul Bindra: At 3pm it's am and we haven't responded at 3 pm.
- 1:56:26Vipul Bindra: It's like, um, I have to tell this story, this worst thing I've done, and I'll say it publicly.
- 1:56:29Vipul Bindra: So here's what happened and this is a recent one, so I I partnered with the chambers right so as being, uh, you know, of indian origin.
- 1:56:34Vipul Bindra: Indian american chamber of commerce locally here is one of my partners, okay so we do their annual gala and, uh, I did this air last.
- 1:56:42Vipul Bindra: What september?
- 1:56:43Vipul Bindra: I would say um.
- 1:56:44Vipul Bindra: So I did their annual gala, like always, you know.
- 1:56:47Vipul Bindra: And um, you know, I just do it to be to be partners because you know we are technically sponsoring majority of the cost.
- 1:56:54Vipul Bindra: They pay us some but you know, at the end I'm saying I'm not doing that to make money, right, so we just want the businesses there to see our content, yeah and, and you know, help the chamber.
- 1:57:05Vipul Bindra: So anyway, so I make the videos and, like they do, one of their board members introduced me to somebody for marketing or whatever at.
- 1:57:12Vipul Bindra: Orlando Health.
- 1:57:13Vipul Bindra: So which is a very good contact locally Right.
- 1:57:16Vipul Bindra: So they're like hey, this person said hi and I was like, oh yeah, we'd love to talk, you know, because my whole thing is, once I show up up on set, they're not going anywhere.
- 1:57:24Vipul Bindra: but you have to first type show on set, right, because you know they don't know what I can do until I show up on set.
- 1:57:29Vipul Bindra: That's just correct yeah because you're just another video person in their mind.
- 1:57:33Vipul Bindra: Uh, until you, like you said, we build that relationship, so anyway, so he introduced me, vorn lead, because that's one of their surgeons you know, like uh point is, it's a very good lead, plus I'm having direct, so I shake hands.
- 1:57:44Vipul Bindra: He even forwards me their number and he never says so I know it's legit because he's like, hey, this is, this is someone important, right, you know, catch up.
- 1:57:50Vipul Bindra: So as a business owner, I'm saying at least I should just connect, say hi, follow up, and guess what happens, because I'm so busy I just go from that shoot to fly to another shoot, to something, something, something and something.
- 1:58:03Vipul Bindra: And it gets stopped, point is yeah, and it's like, and then he reaches out a few weeks later.
- 1:58:07Vipul Bindra: He's like, hey, have you reached out?
- 1:58:08Vipul Bindra: And I was like, oh, oops, sorry.
- 1:58:10Vipul Bindra: And now I'm like then my brain goes, ah, this may be too late.
- 1:58:14Vipul Bindra: And now, four months, six months later, I go, crap, I should have reached out.
- 1:58:19Vipul Bindra: And now it's too late.
- 1:58:20Vipul Bindra: That would be awkward.
- 1:58:21Vipul Bindra: It's like what are you again right?
- 1:58:22Vipul Bindra: So I never reached out.
- 1:58:23Vipul Bindra: So I'm saying that was a good lead, right, that was wasted because you know I'm busy and you know anyway, and and that could have been so easy because it was in my text, right, because somebody could have followed up and all we had to say was nice meeting you.
- 1:58:39Vipul Bindra: You know, let's chat, or something like it wasn't point is a huge lead lost because of my being busy.
- 1:58:47Vipul Bindra: Who thought you'd be losing?
- 1:58:49Vipul Bindra: business, because you have business anyway, it's crazy, but and these are the type of leads that matter, because at the end day, like you, I'm trying to find or like I have a few and I'm trying to find more of these clients that just bring repeat business right we keep doing bigger and better productions for them.
- 1:59:05Vipul Bindra: They're happy, they make money.
- 1:59:06Vipul Bindra: We make money.
- 1:59:07Vipul Bindra: At the end of the day, we're not chasing clients all day, every day.
- 1:59:10Vipul Bindra: Right, that's what we want.
- 1:59:10Vipul Bindra: Like you have the one you're talking about in Connecticut, yeah, and it could have been one of them, who knows, we'll never find out and it Mexicala, but I don't know if you can reintroduce to reintroduce, I don't know, and one year later that would be weird.
- 1:59:28Vipul Bindra: But at the end of the day, I take it as full responsibility as an owner because, again, it's my company.
- 1:59:32Vipul Bindra: But I can't keep doing that.
- 1:59:33Vipul Bindra: If I kept doing that, I'm going to, for sure you know, go out of business.
- 1:59:37John Ruz: Right.
- 1:59:37Vipul Bindra: Meeting new people, building the relationships is very important, is very important, and I think, as we talked about virtual assistants, is, I think, the perfect, perfect example of what you can do to get there.
- 1:59:52Vipul Bindra: Anyway, like I said, you have so many amazing hacks that you figured out.
- 1:59:56Vipul Bindra: You're so young.
- 1:59:57Vipul Bindra: How old are you?
- 1:59:57Vipul Bindra: 28.
- 1:59:58Vipul Bindra: Dude, at 28,.
- 2:00:00Vipul Bindra: You have figured out formula for success in two different avenues of video.
- 2:00:04Vipul Bindra: You have figured out automation.
- 2:00:04Vipul Bindra: You have figured out formula for success in two different avenues of video.
- 2:00:05Vipul Bindra: You have figured out automation.
- 2:00:07Vipul Bindra: You have figured out you know revenue and how to expand, how to scale.
- 2:00:13Vipul Bindra: What do you attribute to?
- 2:00:14Vipul Bindra: You're definitely, you know, like I said, not normal.
- 2:00:17Vipul Bindra: So what makes you different, you would say, than you know other people around you?
- 2:00:23John Ruz: The people I surround myself to.
- 2:00:25John Ruz: It's just that, just finding true valuable assets, the people that you it's not what you know, it's who you know, right.
- 2:00:34John Ruz: So I feel like the people that surround you and the information.
- 2:00:38John Ruz: I'm a good listener.
- 2:00:39John Ruz: When it's time for me to listen, I listen and just analyze everything and you know that's what makes me me pretty much yeah.
- 2:00:51Vipul Bindra: And, like I say, you're killing it so before we go.
- 2:00:54Vipul Bindra: Before we wrap up, like I said, I could talk to you for so long.
- 2:00:57Vipul Bindra: And, like I said, your request to people want to listen to this.
- 2:01:00Vipul Bindra: I'm hoping you know this gets a.
- 2:01:02Vipul Bindra: Not that I care, but I mean I do want more people to get value.
- 2:01:05Vipul Bindra: A lot of people listen and get value out of this.
- 2:01:08Vipul Bindra: I want to know, before we go, any other hacks immediately that you can think of, or just ideas to share with people that they could implement, you know, just to help them either be efficient or find more business or something else.
- 2:01:26John Ruz: Can you think of something on top of your head?
- 2:01:28John Ruz: Um, don't over complicate stuff pretty much, uh, because you can think automations, virtual assistants yeah you know platforms to schedule crm people and blah blah.
- 2:01:34John Ruz: All these stuff might seem like a huge headache, but when you implement all these stuff, I can be surfing while my business is working.
- 2:01:44Vipul Bindra: Yes, right, that is so smart and I want people to know yes this does sound daunting.
- 2:01:49Vipul Bindra: Uh, I was talking to a buddy of mine been on the podcast but he was like I have nothing like this he didn't even have a contract, wow, um, doesn't end making over six figures, and you know.
- 2:02:00Vipul Bindra: and then the crazy thing is that's okay, you know, at the end of the day, look, you figured out what a lot of people haven't you know.
- 2:02:04Vipul Bindra: And then the crazy thing is that's okay, you know, at the end of the day, look, you figured out what a lot of people haven't.
- 2:02:07Vipul Bindra: You know, build good products.
- 2:02:08Vipul Bindra: You got your craft right.
- 2:02:09Vipul Bindra: You figured out the business side of it.
- 2:02:11Vipul Bindra: All this can happen.
- 2:02:12Vipul Bindra: All you have to do and I know this is a thing with entrepreneurs, especially new business owners don't want to spend money Like, so they want to take everything, but spend money go hire the professionals money, like.
- 2:02:23Vipul Bindra: So they want to take everything but spend money.
- 2:02:24Vipul Bindra: Go hire the professionals because, like you said, you can hire somebody to come and automate for you.
- 2:02:27Vipul Bindra: You cannot hire somebody to automate sales for you, correct?
- 2:02:30Vipul Bindra: I mean, I'm talking relationship relationship you have to do relationship, you have to understand how to vet people and hire them at the top level, and if you can't do that, you cannot scale.
- 2:02:41Vipul Bindra: But guess what?
- 2:02:41Vipul Bindra: You can hire people to do taxes, accounting, payroll, like we've talked about.
- 2:02:45Vipul Bindra: We gave you gave names of the software to use.
- 2:02:48Vipul Bindra: You know, use quickbooks, I mean like there's so many different ways to simplify these things correct.
- 2:02:54Vipul Bindra: And if you don't want to do it yourself, hire somebody to do in vietnam yeah, to do it and they will happily do it and you go out and do the other stuff, but remember, there's no like tell me if I'm wrong.
- 2:03:05Vipul Bindra: There's no way to replace the other aspect of it you have to go out and do the relationship building.
- 2:03:10Vipul Bindra: There's no way to automate that right.
- 2:03:12Vipul Bindra: Am I missing it?
- 2:03:13Vipul Bindra: Nope no, okay, no so, yeah, that's the key thing that you need to be good at.
- 2:03:17John Ruz: The rest can be figured out I wish we can just clone ourselves and just, oh, that'd be, that'd be great.
- 2:03:22Vipul Bindra: But then I'm like wouldn't my clone want to listen to me?
- 2:03:24Vipul Bindra: Because I wouldn't want to.
- 2:03:27Vipul Bindra: Right, have you ever thought about that?
- 2:03:29Vipul Bindra: Yeah, because what makes you a leader is you know you go, do things right.
- 2:03:32John Ruz: There's no way your clone will be a follower because your clone will be a leader and you cannot have too many leaders.
- 2:03:38Vipul Bindra: That's true, because I'm like I don't need me, I need um.
- 2:03:43Vipul Bindra: You know what you have virtual.
- 2:03:46Vipul Bindra: I need a gene and I need an eduardo yeah because I feel like they can help me so much more, and at the end of the day, I can then focus on relationship building.
- 2:03:55Vipul Bindra: Better videos, better craft better you know sales, so that's incredible.
- 2:03:59Vipul Bindra: Thank you, john.
- 2:04:00Vipul Bindra: Thank you, uh.
- 2:04:01Vipul Bindra: This has been incredible.
- 2:04:02Vipul Bindra: I learned so much I hope people listening did too amazing and uh, like I said, you're welcome back anytime.
- 2:04:08Vipul Bindra: Thank, you before we go tell people where they can follow you, your instagram or whatever, I don't know yeah, so instagram for jrp is meet jrp, big wave is meet big wave.
- 2:04:21John Ruz: That's it.
- 2:04:22Vipul Bindra: And then youtube for, uh, both companies, it's the exact same thing do you post a lot on youtube?
- 2:04:28Vipul Bindra: What are you posting type of content on?
- 2:04:29John Ruz: youtube I'm posting for jrp big wave is still a work in progress.
- 2:04:34John Ruz: Uh, for youtube I'm posting you know, walk through like very high and walk through videos of multi-million dollar homes so the good ones, you know, the high end, right, and I'm posting a little bit of bts.
- 2:04:43Vipul Bindra: I really want to follow david's advice, oh yeah, through videos of multi-million dollar homes.
- 2:04:44Vipul Bindra: So the good ones, you know, the high-end ones is the ones you share, and I'm posting a little bit of BTS.
- 2:04:46John Ruz: I really want to follow David's advice.
- 2:04:48Vipul Bindra: Oh yeah, that's a smart, smart thing.
- 2:04:50Vipul Bindra: Yeah, become like a micro-influencer, essentially because, then you're already the leader in the space, but people need to know that right.
- 2:04:56John Ruz: Right.
- 2:04:57Vipul Bindra: And they can, once you do all the vlogging and BTS stuff that's pretty cool.
- 2:05:00Vipul Bindra: I'm going to go find it and then see your progress.
- 2:05:04Vipul Bindra: Like I said, I don't know if I can do that.
- 2:05:05Vipul Bindra: This is the best I can do.
- 2:05:06Vipul Bindra: Share free, valuable information, though it's a very smart move.
- 2:05:12Vipul Bindra: At the end of the day, you help other people, plus you gain an audience.
- 2:05:16John Ruz: I love helping people.
- 2:05:19Vipul Bindra: I could talk to you for hours.
- 2:05:20Vipul Bindra: I love all these little things.
- 2:05:21Vipul Bindra: Like I I said, there's the filmmaker in me yeah, who would love to talk about cameras and stuff, but the other side of me just loves the the business like, especially the automation, because I love when you build, uh like standard operating procedures, sops, where then you know, then things just happen.
- 2:05:36Vipul Bindra: Right, you like?
- 2:05:37Vipul Bindra: you go to a team member whoever you're like, okay, this is what I want you to do, right, and then it, then it gets done.
- 2:05:41Vipul Bindra: That's it.
- 2:05:42Vipul Bindra: It's like, wow, right, like this is like holy moly.
- 2:05:46John Ruz: You record it once.
- 2:05:48Vipul Bindra: Yeah, and then it's forever.
- 2:05:49John Ruz: Exactly, you don't have to repeat that again, and again, and again.
- 2:05:51Vipul Bindra: Exactly, and then and do the same thing, which is what we're doing for clients.
- 2:05:55John Ruz: Right.
- 2:06:04Vipul Bindra: Make them courses or the same thing.
- 2:06:05Vipul Bindra: Just do it for yourself and it'll be a game changer.
- 2:06:07Vipul Bindra: Game changer, like I said, this has been incredible.
- 2:06:08Vipul Bindra: We love to have you back in season two, uh, but I'm excited.
- 2:06:09Vipul Bindra: But and good luck to your company I can't wait to see your expansions and hopefully this year we'll try and find a way to collaborate, like I said, looking forward to it.
- 2:06:17Vipul Bindra: You see my van it's ready to go, let's roll it impressive.
- 2:06:20Vipul Bindra: Yeah, oh, thank you, but, like you know, let's, let's go.
- 2:06:22Vipul Bindra: Uh, you know, uh, like I said, let's just kill it this year, let's go and uh like I said, we'll follow up uh later in the next season.
- 2:06:29John Ruz: Thank you, thank you.