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The Case for Keeping the Team In-House with StoryFarm
88 Plays3 years ago
John Sherman is the CEO of StoryFarm out of Baltimore, Maryland. John and his team have been (very) successful creating a host of different types of videos for clients like Dell, McDonalds, ExxonMobile - you name it. The unique thing about StoryFarm? In this age of decentralized, on-demand video work, they've decided to stick to the old ways of doing things and keep all of their employees salaried, and in-house.
In this episode, we talk with John about why this seemingly old-fashioned approach to business management actually yields some surprising advantages in market, and how it has helped them grow to over $2.5M in revenue. We discuss how they are better able to serve their clients, how their potential clients love knowing their work is going to be all in-house, and how sometimes it's more about journey than the destination when it comes to video production work.
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Transcript
Introduction to Max Kaiser and Pipeline Software
00:00:00
Speaker
Thanks for watching!
00:00:04
Speaker
Okay, we are back with Crossing the Access, the biz side of video production. I am your intrepid host, Max Kaiser, the CEO of Pipeline Video Production Management Software, the software that will get your shit together if you are a video production company with budgeting, scheduling, all kinds of tasty little nuggets to hold you together. Check it out at videopipeline.io if you want to rocket your company into humongous success.
Guest Introduction: John Sherman from Story Farm
00:00:33
Speaker
Someone who already though has been humongously successful in this industry and is my guest today is John Sherman of Story Farm out of Baltimore, Maryland. John's company works with, I mean, if you go on his website, storyfarm.com, the logo soup is like eight rows deep.
00:00:57
Speaker
of companies MasterCard, Exxon, McDonald's, Uber, UPS, Pepsi, and they also have won an insane amount of awards with Addy's coming out of there behind. Emmys, they have 16 Emmys. The next time you get one Emmy, just remember there's companies out there getting 16 of them. They've actually won a Peabody.
John Sherman's Career Transition to Story Farm
00:01:17
Speaker
They just have a tremendous body of work, which you can see on their website. They have
00:01:23
Speaker
beautiful videos. They have a recent video they did on sexting which is
00:01:30
Speaker
It actually is just incredibly fantastic. I'm making both my teenage kids watch it. They do so many different categories of types of films, from animated to a category that they may have invented called the milestone film, which if you're looking for a new category to work from, I would highly encourage you to go take a look at that because it's a pretty cool idea.
00:01:55
Speaker
But they've learned like the rest of us to skin the cat in a lot of different ways, but they've done it really successfully and they've done it together as a team. There's an incredible team at Story Farm that uniquely is in-house and has built on some very long, deep friendships. And I'm really excited to talk about the sort of evolution of the production company and what a
00:02:22
Speaker
what a production company can look like today that has just sort of held together. But before we do, let's meet John. John, thanks for being on the show today. Thanks so much for having me, Max. I'm excited to be here. Yeah, thank you. And tell us a little bit about, you came from the reporting side, you came from journalism, right?
Story Farm's Financial Success and Team Growth
00:02:40
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, we, you know, we're not film school guys, or at least the sort of founders and partners are not, you know, came from a fan down by the river doing the TV news and did that for 12 years and
00:02:55
Speaker
It was about 2008, 2009. We saw HD video for the first time in the newsroom on a computer monitor. And I'll never forget, it was like a bee on a flower. And I was like, oh my God, every website is gonna have video on it. Who's gonna make all this video? Why shouldn't it be us? We wanna be body and all this stuff for video storytelling. Why shouldn't it be us? And so in 2009, we started the company and here we are.
00:03:23
Speaker
all these years later than doing really, really well.
00:03:26
Speaker
Yeah, they have been doing really well. John was sharing with me some of his top line numbers. They're doing about $2.5 million this year. Congratulations on that. Thank you. And they also have been having a pretty good net with that, which is we talked about a couple of other podcasts about making a profit is really important. And we'll talk a little bit about
Benefits of a Cohesive In-House Team
00:03:50
Speaker
that later. But just to point out that they're doing financially just fine.
00:03:55
Speaker
And and they but they've done it together. And when you said you started in 2009, what was that original team that you started with? So it was it was originally just me and Bill Kershaw, who is our director of photography and, you know, my partner for for all this time. And it was he and I in a
00:04:13
Speaker
in a TV news van and, you know, we started the company and for a year and a first year and a half of the company, we would be in the news van at like a murder scene and we would have finished the news package and done whatever and we'd be working on Story Farm.
00:04:28
Speaker
Oh man, that's cool. And then you, I don't know why that sounds vaguely dirty, but. I mean, I don't, you know, the ethics of it may be a little bit dubious if I was the employer, I might want their time, but I mean, you know, the flip side of that is if you've ever hung out in a news van at a murder scene, once the work is all done, there's really not much to do. So you can sort of do what you want to do.
00:04:50
Speaker
Hey, I'm not judging. But so so and then you added so you had yourself in bow and then you added Dan as sort of sort of development, a little bit. Yeah, yeah, it was interesting. So, you know,
00:05:05
Speaker
We, our first hire was really a sales guy. And it was Dan, you know, we brought him in as a partner. And he had been doing a creative agency staffing for like a decade before. So he had all kinds of contacts at ad agencies, marketing companies that he had placed at high, low levels. And just had a really deep network. And he was sort of like, you know, what if I, what if I took my network and did something else with it? And it was, you know, obviously we're, you know, 10 years later, it's been super successful. We love them.
00:05:35
Speaker
Yeah, no, that's that's what's incredible. Okay, so folks, this is what this is sort of my thing is like is talking about a company that where these friendships have gone on for a long time. I've hung out with these guys, full disclosure, and some different meetups and stuff around the country. And it's been really fun to be with them and see how well they gel together. It reminds me of my team that I had at my old company Handcrank.
00:05:58
Speaker
But unlike what we did at Handcrank where we ultimately decided that it was just going to be the principles and we were just going to hire everybody else on demand, which is the way so many companies have been going. In fact, I think we just talked with Guy Bauer and he made that pivot. John and his team has kept with
00:06:22
Speaker
a more traditional model of keeping the company, keeping folks in-house. Tell us about your team. Tell us about how you work a little bit. Sure. So there's 14 people full-time at Story Farm right now. We actually were down one. It might be 13. We have a sequence still in the animation department. So when we're at Fullstaff, we have four animators full-time. We have two producers full-time and thinking about a third as well.
00:06:50
Speaker
We have two or three DPs and they edit as well. And so, you know, our production team is like five or six people. The animation team is three or four people and, you know, producers. And then I'm sort of like a executive producer on a lot of different projects. I do a lot of the writing. And then we have a super,
00:07:18
Speaker
incredible Chief Creative Officer, Andrew Fetchko, who is a film school guy and really, you know, just brings a tremendous amount of firepower to story fun.
00:07:30
Speaker
Yeah. And so tell us about how does it, I'll just get right to it. Like I think everyone's concerned with having a roster that big is that they're feeding the beast all the time. And how do you get around that? How do you make the most of this? Let's just talk about, I think we all kind of know that's the disadvantage, but let's talk about the advantages of having a cohesive internal team.
00:07:57
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's, um, so I think it starts with, with honestly, my roots in news and really always want, you know, like a newsroom. There's a lot of bad things about a newsroom, but a newsroom is like a very vibrant place. It's a, it's a, you know, it's a fun place to be, to hang out in, like, you know, you make a lot of really deep friendships. It's sort of like your
00:08:18
Speaker
on a sports team or going to war with a bunch of people because what you're doing is just so ridiculous. And so it really brings people together so I wanted to sort of like have this culture and we came to, you know, advertising and production through the side door we didn't really know what we were doing so
00:08:35
Speaker
I've just been trying the whole time trying to make this this this sort of culture. And so we hired people full time in a world where, you know, a lot of times people are mainly freelance and sort of grew out our teams that way. And fortunately, we've been able to be productive enough in the new business department to be able to support the team as we've grown it. That is the key to it, you know, because nobody wants to have like
00:08:58
Speaker
six people hanging out with nothing to do. You know, in your company, that's not good. So it is about feeding the beast. And there's a few times when there might be a little slack in line, but there's also other times when we're just firing on 16 cylinders and everybody is working extra days and late hours. So it all evens out.
00:09:22
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, like I said, I remember, I think I always look back like, and I think everyone that I knew on our hand crank team after we broke up always said those were the days, basically. As tough as it was to keep everyone together, it also was the most fun by far. And we definitely had that esprit de corps and that sense of being in the trenches together that you just simply don't get. I think
00:09:50
Speaker
I watched your Zoom video about the team trying to come up with a reel. And making reels, as we all know, is like the worst thing. I mean, we'd all rather have our eyes gouged out and our fingernails pulled than have to make a reel. And watching the team sort of agonize over it collectively via Zoom, it was awesome. Like, it was great. I mean, I know you guys just put it up there for fun. It's not really a reel.
00:10:16
Speaker
It was really good. If I were a client, first of all, I love it when a company shows a little bit under the skirt. I think that it just made me really feel like, wow, it's a very flat organization was my feeling. It's not super top down. Although you talked more than most in it, but I think.
00:10:41
Speaker
But, but I, I did feel like everybody's voice was so evenly heard and yet you also kind of had to agonize together which when it comes to making a real for anyone that's ever sat alone in a room in a dark editing room and tried to come up with a real.
00:10:57
Speaker
It seemed really like, oh man, that would have been nice to have everybody to just agonize together with. Yeah. I love that you did that. And I would encourage folks to go take a look at that if you want to see what we're talking about. Like, it's kind of a great example of exactly what we're talking about here. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know,
00:11:21
Speaker
I think there's something really sort of special and precious and magical about business. And when you give someone a job or when someone hires you to do a job, they've selected you, you've selected them out of everything out there in the universe. And it's really super special. Well, it strikes me that for Story Farm,
00:11:45
Speaker
The journey
Adapting to Remote Work and Future of Office Spaces
00:11:47
Speaker
is a lot of the goal. I mean, it seems like the daily life of being at Story Farm and having the team and having the office and working together is a lot of the, is a lot of where you're going on a daily basis. And that certainly was like, I remember meeting with, I remember meeting with you guys like five years ago, right? And Handcrank, we were always like super like, what's our numbers? What's our, where are we going? What's our plan?
00:12:11
Speaker
and all that. And like, yeah, we're all at dinner together with you guys. And I'm like, well, what's your plan? What are you guys doing? You're like, I don't know. Yeah. That's what I mean. You know, we're not film school guys. We're not business school guys. Like I've never, uh, you know, been like for the next three to five years, I project, we will be doing this. You know what I mean?
00:12:29
Speaker
And yet it's worked I mean it's like, I think that you've really you've, and I think it's also I hate to say it but in our crazy lunatic business. It's actually a very same way of living, because otherwise it's the vicissitudes are so great like one thing that john showed me before the call was that you know, like the rest of us.
00:12:49
Speaker
The last year, their top line number was quite a bit lower than this year, and the year before had been quite high. And so the vicissitudes are still there for Story Farm. But it's like before.
00:13:06
Speaker
We don't have any retainer business. We started zero every month. Retainers don't work. I don't know. Have you ever tried them? We've danced around with a couple of different strategies around it, but really, no, it's never really. Have you ever heard the Chris Rock song, there's no sex in the champagne room?
00:13:27
Speaker
Have you ever heard that? Oh, it's so freaking awesome. It's basically Chris Rock trying to sing to like to people like, you know, coming up, you know, guys that are like, yeah, I'm going to keep putting money in the strippers outfits. And eventually I'm going to get to that champagne room. And he just is like, that never happens. Yeah.
00:13:44
Speaker
And he's like, I've been there. It never happens. Retainers, I've just sang for our listeners. I've heard, I met with a guy a couple of weeks ago that was like, I got the whole retainer thing worked out. And I'm like, it won't work. They will hate you. You will hate them. And you basically, they can't do enough work to make the payments work out. You're not a lawyer. And so I just want to tell everyone,
00:14:08
Speaker
No sex in the champagne room, retainers don't work. And you're welcome to email me about that. If you want, we can do a whole show on why retainers will never work. But it seems like every production company I see at about five years decides they're going to have a package retainer deal. That's brilliant. If only I could get the money to even out, if only I could get it. Right.
00:14:26
Speaker
You can through a lot of work in different ways, but that's not the way. Anyway, sorry, I had to go on that tangent, but you're right. You don't have retainers. I guess what I'm saying is you just have a very healthy everyday is what it's going to be attitude. A lot of the folks that I've seen thrive in our industry have that attitude. Some of the attitude that you read in the business books, it's like, yeah, but you don't know where I live.
00:14:56
Speaker
Yeah, no. I was talking to a friend of mine who started his own business this year about this a couple of weeks ago. What kind of business? It's a PR shop. Just the idea of sort of comfort with discomfort. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, comfort. You might have just had the log line for this episode.
00:15:20
Speaker
I can't take credit for it. It actually comes from, from my kids' school. It's something they talk about, but you know, they talk about with the kids, like if you're a parent and you don't have comfort with discomfort, your kid will never learn. Like if you swoop in and solve every challenge for them, they'll never learn to do it themselves. You need to like sit with that comfort, in the discomfort of watching them fail and watching them learn to do it again. And it's the same thing in business.
00:15:43
Speaker
I'm struggling with the kids right now. So that's good. I'm going to take that home. Yeah, no, that's that's that's right. Comfort with discomfort. And and you folks seem to espouse that and you seem to find a lot of comfort. Again, one of the values is you find comfort in your community and you've built a community. And I think that increasingly the community for the film production company is like nascent to nothing. And as much as we like
00:16:11
Speaker
you know with our higher on demand and we know the folks well and we were chummy with them but there's just something about being like right in those trenches that is I mean a lot of what we're doing with our software with pipeline right now is like we decided in the middle of the summer to make a real pivot towards trying to become the hub for your production team because
00:16:35
Speaker
you're really an outlier these days and so many of the production companies are just in the digital space and so we wanted to be able to be like the place where you could come together with that sort of team as best as you possibly can and we're still yet to roll everything out to see if that's going to work or not but that was the idea but you folks are really holding it together in a much
00:17:00
Speaker
I feel like I need to fully disclose that since COVID, we haven't been in the office together, and you know this Max, but for the millions of listeners out there, that we haven't been in the office since March of 2020.
00:17:20
Speaker
Yeah, so what about that? What about that? Okay, so that must really make it where you wind up saying to yourself, well, I mean, geez, wow, wouldn't it be nice to rip off the payroll tax and a few other of these big numbers and just be paying these folks on demand, seeing as I'm not even really seeing them yet on these annoying group zoom calls and stuff like that. So how does that work?
00:17:42
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's a challenge we are still trying to figure out and work through. I feel like it's very much unsettled, not just with us, but within the greater world in general, like what work looks like, where it happens.
00:18:00
Speaker
for like for examples that we have some people like our animation team that have big hardware workstations that you know they can't just pop in and and you know like come to the office oh i'll now i'll go home i'll continue my work which you own right i mean you yeah those are the property of story farm but they've taken them home at this point correct yep yeah we've set them all up with really nice uh you know it does make it tough to just dance on in doesn't it
00:18:24
Speaker
Yeah, so that team's remote. And then the production team has to come in for shoots and stuff and to check gear, prep gear, all that kind of stuff. So they're using it two or three days a week, but it's not like it used to be like a... It's like a terminal. It's a terminal. It's a glorified storage locker with those tables. Did you ever install any beer taps in the terminal?
00:18:50
Speaker
I was wondering if that's a good idea or not. My guys did it, and I feel like productivity went through the floor. Oh, we had a full bar. I mean, let's be serious. We definitely have a whole situation. Our office is in the sanctuary of a church that was built in 1888. And so it's this crazy big room with stained glass, and everything is really old and cool.
00:19:13
Speaker
you know, we want an office with some sort of like agency style coolness to it has to have something special. There's a reason. There you go. Right. See, again, I love that you're that's, again, a very physical. I mean, I just I grew up watching 30 something. Remember that show and the joints were the dudes worked at a video production company and they have this exposed brick. And I'm like, that is what that's hilarious.
00:19:37
Speaker
That is what I want and that it's always been my dream and I still to this day, I've never had an office with it. Well, wait, no, I did. Down in Seattle, our office had exposed brick and I love going there. Yeah. Yeah. We got a lot of exposed brick in Baltimore. They live for sure. And I mean, and I mean, neon kind of went out of style, but I always wanted the neon on the exposed brick too. That's kind of 80s, but yeah.
00:20:01
Speaker
I'm an 80s guy. What can I say? I threw him through. I like it. I want to hear that. But again, you're talking about a physical space, not a coffee shop, not a Zoom thing, but a physical space and how it makes you feel. And I'm pretty sure, you know, I read the Wall Street Journal prereg and I'm kind of a business head. And I'm pretty sure the jury's back on this one. And everyone says working together is actually a shit ton more productive in person if you can pull it off.
00:20:33
Speaker
I'm not so sure. I don't know. I feel like in some ways, yes. Like definitely being around each other, especially when you're doing creative things.
00:20:46
Speaker
There's a mentorship and learning that happens when people are watching over each other's shoulder, editing, all that kind of stuff. So that's definitely a loss. But from, let's say, my perspective, which is like a lot of meetings and calls and stuff, you can stack up Zooms and get a whole lot more done in a day than you ever could press in the flesh to me.
00:21:11
Speaker
You know what i mean like you can you can have an hour meeting everybody's in and out you're moving the ball things are moving. As opposed to like you know let me drive from the baltimore to dc to meet with you in your office and come back and like you know i just lost six hours for a forty minute meeting.
00:21:26
Speaker
Well, that's the different part of it, though. That's that's like sales meetings. Right. Yeah. I'm thinking of like just the the work like, yeah, the work. And so but that so this is where my head's at with with this thing. And tell me what you think of this just sort of conceptually. Yeah, I believe that that where it's trending and my sort of like defining idea are off our leases up in March. And so we're trying to figure out what's next is that the office is not the place of the daily work.
00:21:56
Speaker
So it's not the place for people editing. It's not the place for people animating. It's a place for collaboration. It's a place for meetings. It's a place for community building, social things, for client meetings, anything like that. But it's just not the place of the daily work. OK, is it worth the rent then?
00:22:17
Speaker
That's the question. And that's where we get it. And that's where it gets real wild. It gets really wild about thinking that, you know, so like we're looking at new office space and looking, you know, we can build a castle, we can build a palace. But does anybody want to come and his office space pretty cheap in Baltimore?
Balancing Decentralized and Centralized Work Models
00:22:34
Speaker
It's not that cheap. I mean, the options we're looking at to move away from where we are now are more than what we're paying. And we'd have to build them out and stuff. They're like empty space. As cool as that would be to build out and hire an architect and build out and offer some scratch and do it, do it, do it. I have friends with tech companies who've done that and it's super cool. What if nobody wants to come?
00:23:02
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's the thing. And I, I mean, I, I, I also wonder, like, I don't know. I mean, uh, I'll, I'll want to talk to you in like a year and find out where you went with that because, you know, to me it is all about working together and sort of like struggling over the edit together and just grabbing someone. It was always, I just loved being able to grab people and be like, Hey, let's just go talk about this or let's look at this video together. And, and let's just kinda like,
00:23:31
Speaker
I don't know, there was something lost when, cause that's kind of how we operated in the last few years. And I just feel like there was still something lost and not, you know, there's definitely something lost. Like, like, you know, what you're like, uh, we had a very strong company culture and people were, you know, good friends with each other and lifelong friendships have been formed at Story Farm. And, you know, I'm not saying that's not happening anymore. I think it is, but it's, but it's,
00:24:00
Speaker
It's just different. It feels loose, less cohesive. I see people every month or two, not on Zoom. But don't you feel like we all also need to get out of the house? I mean, it's like, I don't know. I've started coming back into the office all day. And I run a software company. I can do it from anywhere. But I'm just like, I gotta do it. I don't know. See, I've been out of the house forever. It was a news reporter.
00:24:24
Speaker
You know, I had to work every holiday, like every snowstorm, I'd be out in the snow doing walking around like a moron. Like, you know, I sort of missed like being Mr. Home guy. Yeah. And so I have I'm like nesting in my home office. OK. All right. Tell me this. How does so one of the advantages that I felt like I lost when we went to a more decentralized was with the client in the pitch. And that was that how do you
00:24:52
Speaker
It always felt like a very strong hand to play to say, we got a little something different that we're doing here. And that is that we're all together and integrated and we've got a team that's going to be working on this for you. You truly are hiring a unit here. Do you feel like that's a major feather in your cap? I do. And I honestly think that's the biggest
00:25:17
Speaker
you know, an advantage we have over a lot of competitors and a part of our value proposition. Did you see a client respond to that in the pitch? Yeah, absolutely. That, you know, it's a cohesive team that is really, you know, works well together, likes each other, is used to doing this thing. And, you know, because a lot of clients come in, you know, how what percentage clients don't do video all the time, or it's a really big special thing for them, you know, like a lot of them. And so they need to feel that sort of specialness reflected in the in the
00:25:47
Speaker
vibe of the interaction. And I feel like we do that really well. The Southwest Airlines CEO's line is we're a customer service company that just happens to fly airplanes. And I kind of like that concept. We're a customer service company that just happens to make videos. I like that idea.
00:26:08
Speaker
I mean, how do they, what is the advantage? Give me the sort of pitch. What do you say? Like, what's the advantage? So, I mean, you know, like we have a dedicated team of producers that, you know, will be your primary point of contact throughout our project together. And, you know, that person will be dedicated to you in this project and you go to them at any time, they'll get right back to you. And, you know, because
00:26:33
Speaker
There are some other companies or people I've come to understand that are going in and out of their sets and really like a contractor juggling like six jobs where you're just sort of like running from one thing to the next without really the backbone administrative structure to really support the thing. And so I think that's what we really do have.
00:26:54
Speaker
So it allows you to have more predictive scheduling, more predictive management of the projects and everything because you know, you own everyone's schedule, so to speak. Yeah. Yeah. And I think from the client's perspective, it's like, you know, they really just have sort of a high touch customer treatment. Yep. Yep. Absolutely right. And it's an integrated experience all the way across. So when
00:27:23
Speaker
when basically you kind of, when you compare apples to apples, do the clients feel like in the end, I mean, do you get a lot of feedback? Like, hey, that was a really different experience. We're used to working with, you know, Bob who hires out 17 different people. We have heard that. Like, you know, we have,
00:27:50
Speaker
We have a lot of business that's been coming to us for many years and our friends with our staff and, you know, it's true that following each other on Instagram and texting each other and that's great. That's a great point. That is it. That actually is a killer point that we think business comes to us through our biz dev guy.
00:28:10
Speaker
But actually, it seeps in through the cracks. If you're running a good shop, it seeps in through the cracks of a lot of your folks and they make relationships, your producers make relationships, and all those relationships are pointing back to the mothership. They're not pointing to, oh, my cousin Lenny's got a production company too, he'll do it for half as much, and so forth. So you're really, that is,
00:28:35
Speaker
Yeah, that's a good one. I just thought that sort of frames it a little bit differently, but you're right. A lot of our clients are following 3, 4, 5, 6 Story Farm People's Instagrams and just engaged in the flow. And I can tell you firsthand that when you are running decentralized, those gigs do go other places because
Maintaining Team Spirit and Motivation
00:28:54
Speaker
Even though the producer works for you all the time, if someone comes to them and says, I've really only got 20 bucks. Well, I'll do it with this other team because they're willing to do it. We all know that sometimes those $20 ones that we make allowances for and make room for, they can become great things. You're not just missing out on little things, you can miss out on very, very big things too. It's just one of those things that is just a hidden positive aspect of this. I think everyone's just really quick,
00:29:23
Speaker
these days to jump to the decentralized model and I don't know. How do you do your data storage? Is your data storage decentralized now too? It's all at the office and we've got a server there and then we just use tons of external drives. External drives that people are working off of. Yeah. Yeah. That's not too big of a pain point.
00:29:46
Speaker
No, because that's one of the wonderful things that switched, right? Like back in the day, we were running Apple X and everyone had to be in the office on fiber optic to be able to really share data. And so the decentralization of the data through small drives and using the proxy files and everything on Dropbox or however you might do it, it did make that decentralization of the workforce like way, way more viable for a production company.
00:30:14
Speaker
Yeah. But it sounds like you're doing a little bit of both. Like you're doing some decentralized, but you also have your central servers, which we definitely had as well. But anyway, I don't know. It's all really interesting. And I think that it is your plan to, there's no plans to make any major changes with this, but keep on rolling with something that's good. Yeah.
00:30:37
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Um, you know, it's funny, we've had, uh, some, some of our absolute best employees, uh, have gone on to freelance, you know, and, and as we, you know, have capacity issues or, or, you know, need help, we, we use, uh, our, our all-star alumni, as I like to call them, uh, quite frequently. And we love those guys. And so, you know, always love giving them work and, and.
00:31:01
Speaker
you know, working on projects with them and spending time with them. So it is really like a community. How do you, okay, last question. I know we're kind of running along on time here, but we'll two, I got two more. One is how do you keep the love alive with you and Dan and Beau and keeping that like not only the friendship, but the sort of how do you keep on listening to one another without, you know, becoming sort of too set in your ways in any way?
00:31:30
Speaker
It's interesting because partnerships are tough. I mean, a lot of so many production companies fold because of bad partnerships.
00:31:38
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it just kind of works, you know, like, I love those dudes. They're my brothers. That goes a long way. That goes a long way. What you're saying right there. And a lot of respect for them, too. I know I've seen it. You know, I've seen it. And you also represent very, I would say you represent fairly different disciplines in a lot of ways. And you share certain commonalities. But yeah, I mean,
00:32:03
Speaker
We're all doing different things like Bose in production and Dan's in new biz. And I'm just sort of, I'm in both of those. And then- And your own strategy. Yeah, and trying to think what's next for the company and build the company. You backed away from, I'm gonna totally jump on a completely different topic. Just one quick second. Did you in fact back away from doing a distribution?
00:32:31
Speaker
We have, yeah, we, yeah, we hired someone. I remember we were all about this picture four years ago, you and I were like, yeah, let's do distribution.
00:32:40
Speaker
Yeah. We're like, you know, they have to get it from someone that with, you know, we just tell them, here's your video. Good luck. Like, that's not really great client service. Right. But there's too many people to sell that to them. They don't want it from us. Is my OK. We won't even go there. That's a different topic. We'll call you up later. We'll talk about that. The other question is the last question is how do you keep the love alive with everybody else when
Importance of Strong Leadership and In-House Team
00:33:04
Speaker
you do have to feed the beast sometimes?
00:33:05
Speaker
I would say that one of the advantages of the decentralized model was that for every job we were able to say, well, you take this or you don't take this. No big deal, right? If doing like this nonprofit video is not your gig and you only want to do the motorcycle videos, then that's cool. That's what we'll call you for. But when you're all in house, it's like, no, no, we're doing the nonprofit video. How does that work for you?
00:33:29
Speaker
How do we keep the staff happy with sort of like the very nature of the projects? Well, not every project is that fucking sexy, right? Totally, totally. How do you get through the non-sexy stuff together without everybody freaking out? You know, I think a part of it comes from the fact that we are not sort of like, you know, I don't know, pardon the term, but like sort of like film school purists or something like that. Like we're not... All is really...
00:33:59
Speaker
I love that. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, like we won a Peabody award when we were in news and I was 30 and like, I felt like, you know, we spiked the football and like, what else can we do? And so I'm not really, you know, we want, uh, we view it as like an entrepreneurial business where we're trying to grow a business. Um, and, and, you know, love telling stories with video. Absolutely loved it since I was a kid, but, but, um,
00:34:26
Speaker
When you're hiring people, you make sure they understand that. Yeah, I think so. I think so. If they don't understand it coming in, they will when they're here. That's not to say we don't want to do great stuff. I was going to say, you guys produce some incredibly sexy work. Do not get me wrong. Go folks, look at the stuff that they're doing. In fact, I was telling John before we got on the call that in the form of how long I've known you, five or seven years, something like that, the work has just gotten so much more
00:34:55
Speaker
beautiful high level. I'm sure the budgets are, I'm sure you guys are doing budgets over a hundred grand on regular basis for stuff. Yeah. Um, you know, dude, that's the dream. I mean, that is for many of us, you are walking and talking the dream, but they're still going to be the job that everyone's like, you know, here's a huge thing is like, um,
00:35:16
Speaker
to someone out there who is trying to sort of build pieces around them is like, you don't have to be the smartest one in the room. You don't have to be the master of every discipline, all of these things that are happening around you. You just have to put the right people who are in the right seats, in the right places. The elevation and the work you're talking about is really, I'm gonna give a whole lot of credit to Andrew, our CCO who has just come in and
Max Kaiser's Praise and Business Model Insights
00:35:45
Speaker
really knows what he's doing across a ton of different disciplines and has a great head for business. And it's just a fantastic part of Story Farm and has really helped us elevate everything. Yeah. Well, that's awesome, man. That is cool. And I think that once again, you just brought it all back home to the idea of
00:36:08
Speaker
how, you know, having that team, having Andrew right there in-house, having your folks there to grow with you. I mean, it's a remarkably fulfilling thing, I'm sure. Oh, it is. It is. I, you know, I think of Story Farm as like sort of a living, breathing thing. And, you know, it has to, like every other living, breathing thing, it has to be cared for and you can't neglect it, you know? Yeah, yeah.
00:36:35
Speaker
Well, that's awesome. And I really appreciate you joining us and sharing your tale with us. It's the same wonderful story that I've heard from you and your Ben Bow and Dan there for years. And I just kind of wanted to share it with my listeners because I love it so much. And I absolutely think it's I think it's increasingly unique in our industry, but I think people need to hear that they're
00:36:56
Speaker
there's always another way to do it and sometimes that way of doing it isn't the most the one that all the business books and the gurus tell you it's just the way that your gut and your heart tell you to go and grow and you guys have done it so hats off to you and I encourage our listeners to go look at the work
00:37:14
Speaker
because it's super worthy. It's really, really strong work. And to also just kind of think about different models that you might want to be taking on as you grow. So again, John, thanks very much. And I hope we have you back again sometime soon because there's so many other topics that you and I could bust down. Awesome. Really enjoyed it. I'd love to come back. All right. Talk soon.