Why I Start Work at 2AM Every Day with Simeon Quarrie (Part 1)

Hey guys. Dan here with another episode of the Video Business Accelerator Podcast. Now this week I'm pretty excited. We've got a guy called Simeon Quarry on with us. Simeon is the owner of Vividia in London. He's a filmmaker and storyteller, but he's also a Canon ambassador, an international speaker, a G team member, and an advisor to Google and YouTube. He started life in weddings, but has successfully transitioned out of weddings into commercial work, corporate work. And he's always focused on staying ahead and now creates interactive virtual reality films for people like Sky, Barclays, Burberry, Ey and many more. Now this is a two part presentation. We've got the first part this week and the next part be next week. Simeon did this call at 3am in the morning and I was like, oh my goodness, they must have got the times wrong. But no, he gets up at 2am every day to get in a good six to eight hours of work before everyone shows up in the office. Fascinating, fascinating episode. Certainly not something I think I would do, but interesting insights as to how Simeon is adapting his business. And I think you'll find it's a really, really interesting episode. So I'm excited to present this to you. So enjoy the show.

Welcome to the Video Business Accelerator Podcast. Each week we uncover the secrets to creating a wildly successful and scalable video production business. With your host, Dan Lenny, discover how the accelerator program is transforming the lives of our members at www.videobusinessaccelerator.com. enjoy this episode.

Simeon, it's. It's awesome to finally get to speak to you. I feel like I've been sort of stalking you in a similar way in the last 10 years. You've been doing things, I've been doing things. We may have met at trade shows, I'm not sure. But first of all, I just wanted to say welcome to the podcast and thank you for getting up at 2am that's right.

It's no problem at all. I'm an early riser now. I've changed my behavior a lot over the last.

Oh, actually I've been doing this type of morning just for a couple of months, but this is not unusual for me. So I start my morning now. I'm up at half past one in the morning. I'm in the studio for 2:15 in the morning and work through till six. So this actually, despite the time zones difference, works amazingly for me.

Fantastic. So let's start there because I'm an advocate of getting up early and I'm, you know, I've been Less so recently. But I've changed my lifestyle quite significantly. But I was very much in the 5:00am Club, you know, getting up at 5:00am Because I saw the value of the work I was getting done, the productivity I was seeing between 5 and 7. Talk to me about getting up and.

Starting work at 2am So I think one of the things is as you grow, you've got more voices in your business, right? You may be working with other team members and sometimes I get frustrated because there's so many things I need to do, whether it be from a creativity point of view or whether it be because I need to work instead of working in the business, I need to be working on it. Looking at the systems, when you work during the normal part of the day, all I get is email after email, call after call, slack message after slack message, Skype call after Skype call. It's a very, very noisy environment whereby you can't necessarily always do your best work or you can't necessarily strategically be thinking in the right way. So all of a sudden by eight, nine o', clock, I've done a full day' that's really powerful. Four days work and then I double up and I get two days work done. There are experiments and technology and innovation and thought processes that I get to do because it's almost like my playtime and I've incorporated that into my, my normal, my normal day to day. So yeah, I balance it. You know, I'm probably doing this realistically four, four times a week. But even on the weekend, you know, my family, I could, I could leave, I could be in the studio for 2, 15 on the weekend and I could work through till 8 o', clock, be with my family for quarter past 8 in the morning when they wake up and rise and then I can go and I can have the normal day with them also. It means that when I look at things that we want to do, whether it be creatively from a business point of view, I don't have the same level of anxiety and fear because I feel like I can get this done. And where we are for Vivida right now is that we've been working with video for a number of years and photography. But one of the new areas that we're really focusing on at the moment is one, interactive filmmaking and storytelling by using virtual reality in the Oculus Rift, which involves a lot of 3D development, a lot of character design, environment design, motion capture. And then what we're also doing is we're now also turning those into animated movies because we were doing 2D animation, but now that's become like a 3D animation. So all of a sudden when you land that client, because you put that work in and you showed them something they like and you're up against a crazy deadline, all of a sudden you're like, yeah, we can get that done. It's just because I'm, you know, I'm increasing on the day. Also it's more cost effective, right. Because I'm essentially doing two people's work. So sometimes when you go through shifts and changes and you're trying to work out if things are working and if a certain business strategy makes sense, you can't always afford just to go and employ someone for X amount thousand pounds. So I'm doing that myself. The other thing is that you can't systemize a process unless you understand what it is in the first place. So I can't delegate it. I can't put it in a structured format so that it can be acted upon. Unless in my case, I either employ an expert who knows much more about the situation than I do, which is hard when you're really innovating. The other thing I have to do, roll up my sleeves and I have to do it myself, right. And understand, understand those dynamics and I can go, right. You know something, I've got the option then of getting someone else to do those things and then going and doing it all over again or starting to do a little bit more normal hours. But just to finish off. Yeah, I was just going to say one final point is, you know, look, we hear that the Tim Cooks of the world and a lot of those CEOs, they're a 345, right. 4:00am and I look at them and I go, well, they are running businesses that are successful. They are already hugely successful themselves. For me, they're in a totally different league. So I kind of think, why should I do less than them? Why should I do the same as them? In fact, I should be putting in more effort than them because my level of success is nowhere near their level of success. And as a result, that's a shift change in my behavior and thought process.

I'd love to talk a bit about how you manage your energy and what kind of lifestyle hacks you employ to get up at 2:00am and you mentioned before the call, you're up at 2:00am, you finish at 6:30pm and then you're back in bed by 9:00pm so what kind of things are you doing to manage your energy and nutrition and I mean, sleep obviously is important. Talk to me about some of those things. Because, you know, it's 2:00am and you, you, you're pretty, you're pretty kind of on the ball and like most people will get up at that time and be like, you know, sluggish. It strikes me that this is something you, you're kind of very focused on from a scientific perspective.

So one thing I do is when that alarm goes off now, there is no snooze. I'm up and all of a sudden my brain's just like, right, I'm up once. You'll see you do it a number of times. You.

Your body starts to. I've got like stamina for it now. It doesn't become such an issue. Sure, I take the little short naps. So sometimes if I really need to, sometimes I have to take a 15 minute nap two times a day or half an hour nap two times a day. But to lose half an hour or an hour during the course of the day when you've just gained another seven or eight hours for me is a, is, you know, it's a net win. The other thing that really.

Changed things a bit for me is attitude. So sometimes I used to get up, you know, when you get up for shoots, you know what it's like, right? It's that one morning, we're like, okay, it's a shoot. And you're like, oh great, I've got good project come in. But it's that grind of oh my gosh, gotta load the bags or get in the vehicle, we've got to drive to location. And it becomes that really important.

Day. But it's the anomaly, right? Because the reality is, is that often, unless you're a DOP and if you're running a production business, those short days, shoot days are, you know, they're the smaller percentage of the overall behavior. But I would get up and I'd be driving in the vehicle. And even if it was four in the morning, I'd be like, where are those people going?

And you might see people and you know, they might be doing jobs in kitchens, they may be doing cleaning jobs and working on the transportation system. And then some of them are hustling and you realize that they're doing two or three jobs, right? And then I thought, well, wait a minute, if they're doing two or three jobs in that hustle in order to succeed, what makes them do that? And then I thought about it. I thought, I've had a unfortunate situation to have a daughter that was terminally ill with cancer and the medication that she was chosen, it was a throw of a dice as to whether we would be able to have the medication for her. And if we didn't get the medication, I would have needed to have raised half a million pounds in order to give her a chance of survival. And I know that if I needed to have done that in that circumstance, I would have done it. I would have got up whatever time of day, I would have hustled. I would have made it happen. Fortunately, she did survive. But then I realized those people are doing those things because they have to out of survival instinct. I don't have to, but I should want to because I should want to do these actions on my own terms. So I just decided that I was going to do this with on my own terms. The other most important thing for me is I absolutely love what I do. There is no place I would rather be than inside my Zen space, my studio, creating, experimenting and doing what I do. So I shifted my work around to try and understand what it is that makes me tick and understand what I like doing. When I understand that, when I start to do those behaviors, I wake up every morning and I'm excited. I go to bed and I'm thinking, oh, my goodness, tomorrow, this is what I'm going to try and do. I'm going to see if I can do this, I see if I can achieve this. I'm going to get these things crossed off my list. If for some reason I can't sleep by 10 o', clock, I get up and I come back into the studio, because believe me, if I go back to work again, I'll be tired at 5 in the morning. And then I go to sleep and then get up again at 8, 8, 9 o'. Clock. So, yeah, love what. We're really fortunate as creatives in general. We love what we do. So that's where I count myself as very lucky. And I'm sure most people in your audience do as well.

I love that. And thank God your daughter got better. But it's interesting that when we're faced with health challenges, we suddenly have a massively different perspective. So I wanted to just kind of move on from that and talk about the team, because obviously you have a team.

And when I was doing some research on this episode and we were chatting, you talked about growing and shrinking a team and your business to survive and thrive. And I think it's a really important part for the audience to listen to and watch, because business in this space is cyclical. It's not impossible to have consistent work. I think it's absolutely possible if you put the right systems and process in place. But if you want to remain creative, there's often the opportunity to scale up when need be. And I think I've certainly done it and perhaps you've done it as well. Where we get the fancy office in the city, we think, hey, we'll have this prime address, we'll build this team and then we can do the big projects. What's your experience of that and what would you share with the audience? Wow.

Okay. I guess the first thing is I've built a business from being in weddings, then gone corporate and commercial and tried various different models and. And yeah, I've. I've had it all the way from me through to being multiple people to being me to multiple people, to being me to be possible people. So I've done it in a number of different ways. You grow your team for a number of reasons. I think one is, is it's because you're looking at how much you need to achieve and they're just isn't enough hours in the day. And if your business is primarily based in some ways based on how much on your productivity, based on the hours there are in a day, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that you all of a sudden you potentially cap your abilities because there are only a certain number of working hours in a day, even if you do some crazy hours. Right. So you end up trying to fill in those gaps. Also, you need to maybe be able to consistently deliver a certain speed regularly for clients. So you need certain level of infrastructure around you. You also get sick sometimes of having to hire entire talent very, very quickly at a very, very high rate when a client needs something like that. Okay, can I find.

No, I'm really sorry, there's no one available. What you mean you've got no one available? Is this not the business that you in? Is this not like me going into a restaurant and ordering a meal from you and you turning around and saying, I'm really sorry, I don't have anyone in the kitchen in order able to cook your meal for you. And for a lot of businesses, that is inconceivable, particularly when you start to work with more corporate clients. So I think there is a business model where it makes sense to have a skeleton crew in much the same way that.

You'D have the most important fundamental pieces of equipment to hand so that you can always be able to be in a position to do a job. You may always go and get that, you know, extra special increased lighting. You may decide to go and rent those additional lenses or those bits of equipment. But you always look to have a certain level of equipment and infrastructure to be able to deliver at a level that is consistent. But you have to also understand that you have to be prepared to also tack that number up and down. And I've done the same thing. I've. I've grown it with the, with the weddings because all of a sudden I was shooting and editing and then every time a telephone call came through, I'd be like, I'm really sorry, I can't really afford to talk to you right now because I'm in the middle of an edit and the deadline is due. And then all of a sudden you're not getting the business in that you need to. Right. Because then that potential client that wants to do business with you can't because you've just put them off or you're not accessible. So then I realize is no, I need to actually focus on being more front end. Right. I need to be front of house, welcoming people, talking to people, trying to encourage and nurture that business. So instead what I would do is on a production side, I would maybe start off the first 10 or 15%, let someone else do the main bit of the work, and then I would check over and bring it from the 80% to the 90% because going to 100% is not always the most economical. Doesn't always make good business sense. And so that was the process that I used in order to be able to kind of scale up.

I love the analogy with the restaurant because you can't be the chef cooking the food and at the same time be welcoming people, marketing people to get them in the restaurant, welcoming them and serving them. And. And yet so often that's what video producers do. They're one man band. They're so reluctant to. I think there's a fear of hiring anyone because of the cost and because there isn't. My theory is this. There's not a strong enough pipeline of inquiries, marketing inquiries and a sales pipeline to know what's coming, to be able to predict revenue and cash flow. Therefore, go, we can afford to pay someone. And that's something you must have gone through a few times, a few occasions.

Yeah. So I partly don't fully agree with you in that I think that you can have a restaurant or let's say you can provide food for customers and do all the jobs. All you need to be is you need to be the burger store on the corner of the road, right, or the hot dog stand, right? And then. But what you have to do is you need to be aware and you need to build your business around that so you can be front of house talking to someone whilst you're openly cooking. But what you need to understand is the moment you need to take the transaction, you actually need to stop, right? And you have to fulfill orders maybe one at a time. And there is a business model that, that works for. But just as you said, the really difficult thing is business can get.

If you are stuck in the process of constantly having to do every process within the business in terms of work, accountancy, sales, doing the business. The moment you get that big bit of business, and I'm sure all your audience have been here, you get that great juicy piece of business and all of a sudden you're filming and then you, in the edit, you are unavailable, you are gone, right? You're not looking for the next piece of business. And all of a sudden, a month later, when you come out, you go, oh, you've got this beautiful clip, you can put it on the show reel. Then you go, right, what's next? Oh, my goodness, there's nothing next because you've not been servicing the sales needs of the business. And then as a result, you go, okay, great. So you've got that pot of money. You're waiting for those 30 days for the money to come through. So you're a bit nervous. And then you're like, right, you're trying to hit the phone, you're trying to send out the emails, you're ringing up people going, is there any more work, etc. And then that process of getting new work might take three months, right? Money hits the account, great. And then over those next two months, that money that you just made disappears. You're back to zero again, you're terrified. And just in time, you get a new piece of business again. And the same again, you repeat. So all of a sudden you get these huge ebbs and flows and. And sometimes what terrifies you from getting someone, employing someone is those ebbs and flows can be terrifying. So when you get that juicy bit of business, you get, oh, you get a bit confident, right? Oh, yeah, this is fantastic. But then all of a sudden you come out of the edit and you upload it, you give it to the client and all of a sudden the money starts to dwindle down and you get terrified again because you're like, if I had a member of staff right now, this would not be working for me. Right. But the issue is that your pipeline is not great because you are not constantly working on the pipeline. So sometimes when you can break up elements of the process and you can decide that I'm going to dedicate, you know, 40, 50% of my time to maybe the marketing and the sales effort and to developing and nurturing a pipeline, all of a sudden, then you're in a position whereby you can actually sustain and you can actually maintain.

And do you think that some of the challenge there is in. I talk a lot with my clients about niche and sticking to a niche or sticking to a vertical or being in a particular part of the market so that you can leverage the network within that market. And one of the challenges I think a lot of filmmakers face is they don't want to be seen as just doing one thing. Now, in practice, even if you niche in the market, you never just do one thing, you always end up doing more. But when you niche, you're able to market to one person in one sector who's got a network. And when you do that, you can build consistency. What's your experience with the businesses you've run or the different sectors you've been in in terms of small clients, big clients, and where are you today and what lessons have you learned along the way about that? I Love the analogy. 50% of your time should be on sales and marketing. I agree with you.

So I have done it, ironically, when I was doing the wedding business is when I did it really. Right. Right. I did weddings. And at first I decided, I'm going to do weddings. Okay? And then I decided, and I was getting a few jobs here and there, but then I decided, you know something? Let me study as a creative. Let me study the marketplace. I studied the market and I came across this community, this Asian community. Right. So Indian community. And I looked at them and I thought, there's a recession that's just around just popping off, so that's going to cause issues. And a lot of the traditional English white weddings were going downhill, right? Because when they spend according to the income and the disposable income, when it's related to weddings. But the Asian marketplace, oh, no. They had saved in a trust fund from when their child was born. They'd put in £100amonth, whatever the figure was per month. So when their wedding hit of their daughter, it became hugely lavish in order to kind of show off for the community, they become the hosts of. For the community of 500 people and do this amazing wedding. So I thought, right, that community, the money seems to always be there, even if there's a recession. I then also realized that this community did multiple events so I could get one wedding and have multiple events. So my cost per acquisition in terms of client had just plummeted. I also realized that that community there, from a wedding point of view of filmmakers and photographers, they were slightly behind in thinking they'd taken a methodology from India, which meant that the bride hired one team and the groom hired another. Why? Because back in that culture, there was this sense of the arranged marriage, which essentially meant that the two families didn't know one another, so they're not going to let the other side order the wedding services. So they independently choose creatives. Even though that over the course of the 10 years, this had kind of changed, but the behavior was still the same. So I thought, you know something? How much budget do you have? They had 100% budget. Just for the bright side, that was totally correct for an entire wedding. Photography and filmmaking and the groom had the same. So instead I went, I will take them both and I'll give you a more consistent, holistic service. I thought, my production value can go up, right? So that's what I did. And that, what that meant, as you rightly said, is it meant that from a marketing point of view, I was talking directly only to my audience, right? So my communication, the language, the vocabulary, the dialect meant that it looked like I was. I was a solution that was designed specifically for them. The other thing that happened is when it came to advertising, you have to pay. You know, if I was going to advertise on Google with the term wedding video, the cost was, if I was to advertise with the term Asian wedding video, the cost was tiny because I was trying to target a very, very specific audience. Marketing for a very specific audience is much, much more cost effective. And I think sometimes when it comes to us as creatives, we start off in this position whereby we go, we just want to create video. And what we don't do is we don't do what. If we've been using the restaurant analogy during the course of this conversation, what we don't necessarily do is go, right, you know, something, location, location, location. What's the best location? If you were going to set up a restaurant, you'd be looking at location. What cuisine would make sense? What can I do as a cuisine? And actually what cuisine would make sense for the area? Okay, now let's look at the ingredients that we're able to get hold of here in this location, what's cost effective. And you make those really calculated decisions if you were going to set up any other business. But yet for us as, as creatives, sometimes we just start and as a result it's not as effective. That's when I did it right. But when I started to service corporate businesses, I was very much just a visual storyteller. It's a lot more wide. In some ways we've successful because, yes, our project shrunk a lot because our wedding fees were very high. They shrunk and then they grew and then it looked like, yeah, we are to a certain extent quite successful because we working with some of the very, very large companies and very large organizations, but we were nowhere near as effective as we could be because we was generalist. I also put that down to though, the fact that I didn't really understand one what I wanted to do. So it was a little bit like dating, whereby you're not. I did actually marry the first woman I fell in love with, but a lot don't, you know, they, they essentially, they try and understand what they like by trying different things and then you can zone in. So I don't think you have to panic about going in immediately and zoning in straight to a niche market if you're not really understanding where your strengths are or the target audience that really appeals to you. Because you've got to love it if you're going to go niche. You've got to love what you do.

And then essentially during the course, I then realized that I was actually just far too loose, far too wide, and I wasn't as effective as I needed to be. I've now really worked much more on changing from this more generalized into something that's far more specific. So now we're working with virtual reality and some of those storytelling. Our marketing is now really starting to shift again and starting to become much more focused. And as a result, we're already seeing better.

Rewards.

Awesome. Well, look, that's a great place to pause. This is so interesting. I feel like we're only halfway through. Let's pause here and take this to another episode because I want to dig into marketing next. Simeon, thank you so much.

You've been listening to the Video Business Accelerator podcast with your host, Den Lenny. If you are a video business owner who is tired of going it alone and would benefit from mentorship, support and weekly accountability, then mouse over to www.videobusinessaccelerator.com to learn more about how the accelerator program can help you today. Don't forget to subscribe and rate the show over on itunes, and we'd really appreciate you taking a few minutes to leave a review.

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