How James Closed A $15K Retainer Master Filmmaker Case Study

What's going on, guys? I'm here with James Drake from Front Range Momentum, who just closed a 15k retainer. What's going on, James? How are you?

How's it going, Eric? Doing well, doing well, man.

I love it. For anybody who doesn't know you, do you mind just giving us a little bit of kind of backstory of, you know, your kind of experience in the industry, where you came from, and how that. How that's kind of panned out so far, being in the program?

Absolutely. I've been in the media space for 25 years, done everything you can probably imagine, and had a lot of experiences with B2B, national commercials, documentary narrative, all kinds of stuff. So pretty broad spectrum. But none of that experience was intent on the marketing side as much as it was just on the creation and, you know, starting out in video creation, for sure.

And so with, like, coming into the program, I guess what was kind of your biggest issue coming in?

And.

And then I know we've made pivots along the way, but I guess, like, what's been kind of the main kind of issue you had coming into the program, and what was kind of. What were you looking to get solved?

Absolutely. So probably the biggest thing was this constant nagging of things are changing fast, and I don't feel like I'm changing with them. You know, I go back in my brain to circa 2000 something, 2002 or whatever. We're working on tapes and cutting stuff on, you know, ancient computers, and that's kind of the same model that I used for 25 years or something. And I saw the world changing around me. You know, it was frustrating to see somebody put a ton of money into a video and get 300 views on YouTube with it. And so this nagging part of my brain's like, you're not providing enough value to scale or to continue doing this for another 20 years. So that's really what made me reach out when I saw some of the master filmmaker ads.

Yeah. So just more so like, not having the distribution around the content, giving. Giving a client a video, not them not really knowing what to do about it or how to use it. And then you kind of being in that gray area of like, well, should we help them? Should we not with the distribution. Was that kind of the main thing?

Yeah, that was the main thing. And then I would say the second thing that's pretty close to equal to that is just, you know, I got good at writing the middle. The highs and the lows, like Feast or Famine, Huge Months and then desert know. Right. Like that's just the nature of the creative space. And so my family kept getting bigger and the demands for things kept getting stronger. So I was like, I gotta change the model here. And I knew the, the guys, a master filmmaker could help me figure something better out with all their retainer packages and things like that.

Yeah. Cause you would sell, was it. You were primarily selling like one off packages and stuff like that. And that was kind of the main, main model that you had. My understanding.

Yeah. Like lots of handshake deals and the dollar amount on these projects was huge. Which ironically is also a problem because I started pricing out of everything in the market where there's this big push to more authentic content and more volume. And that model does not fit well with single ticket high dollar value things because people are expecting more and more these days. So the pressure was on.

Yeah, I mean and that's what we've seen a lot in the industry too. It's like a lot of companies are moving away from these large one off, one shot, hope it works video campaigns to more like let's do some not lower quality but lower production value type content and do more of it. So they kind of scale horizontally across like lots of content versus like vertically with one big piece of content. Hoping it works out. And like the large projects are great for P and L. Like it's. You see these big shootups, but it's like if you can buffer that with retainers and have like a good base of 50 to 100k a month of retainers, then when you have those big spikes, it just adds fuel to the fire, you know what I mean? And I think there's nothing wrong with doing the large stuff. It's just like we gotta find a way to have some stability in the base, you know?

Yeah, a hundred percent. I feel like I'm closer to having a scalable business now than I ever have been. And that's thanks to you guys. Like well, you did the work.

I don't want to take credit like you, you put in the work, you, you apply the systems. Like the, the system only works if you do the work. And clearly you're doing that. So I want to give credit to you on that. Right. So it's like, but I think it is huge to have like some sort of recurring recur element to the business towards like you have someone paying you, you know, 5k a month, 10k a month for some basic content that you don't have to do a lot of lift for. But it covers your overhead, it covers expenses, it, it provides stability and some peace of mind at the end of.

The day, you know, for sure. Well, and the other benefit there too is that I've always had a lot of subcontractors. I mean, I got guys I work with for 15 plus years. They're amazing, they're super talented. I could never afford to bring somebody like that on staff though. And you want to because you want them to be successful and you want to support their families. But with one off projects, it's impossible. With the retainer model, it's a whole different ball game. All of a sudden it makes sense to have somebody on your staff because you can predict and know where things are going and how to break your money up and what the actual value they can bring to the table is. And it makes more sense when you have more videos to break it up across days. And yep, it all kind of works together.

Yeah. And with, I'm sure you, you probably watched the $100 million money models from Alex Hormozi, but it's like a lot of stuff that we've talked about as well. It's like, I think it's interesting because like with 100 million, 100 million dollar money models, right. With Alex Hermosi, it's like at the time of this recording that happened maybe a week ago, it's like if you look at the model, it's like you could have a big one off project that you sell someone on, then you sell them on the continuity of a retainer on the back end. Right. And there's a lot of ways to mix and match that. But it's like without continuity, your business is always in this. Up, down, up down, up down. Because it's only reliant on front end acquisition.

Right.

So it's like your, your ability to get new clients is the only way you're going to make money this month. And if it's a, you know, a tough month or something happens, it's like, it's tough if you don't have a recurring element to kind of forgive some of those, those problems, you know, or those, those kind of up and down months on the back end.

Yeah, 100%. Yeah. I mean, you're exactly right. Like there's an evening out and a scaling aspect to this. Yeah. That I think is huge. And on top of that, you know, I think you're more sticky to a client. You know, the one off project is great. I mean, we've done projects that have gone so well, like 500x return on the production budget and then you don't hear from them for nine months and then when you do hear from them, they're like, can we do it for less? Yeah. So the whole model on that side is really tricky. So I agree with you a hundred percent. Like you don't necessarily have to give up on those big ticket projects, but you're also not waiting for them, which I love.

Yeah, yeah, you gotta have, you gotta kind of diversify your flow. A little bit of deals. It's not one or the other. I think it's always, it's everything. It's how many different kinds of, you know, how many retainers can I have, how many one offs can I have? How can I diversify amidst the two and kind of diversify the budget? Because it's like the one, the big one off things, the production is going to be heavier lift, but for retainers it's going to be a lot lower lift, less work, more recurring elements. So it's like it's, it's not one or the other. I think it's a mix. I think that's always important to kind of distinguish between the two, you know, for sure.

Well, and I mean there's clients out there that will not do retainers. It's just they won't like. One thing I learned in this program was I was trying to target a different market initially and I could not sell the retainer model for the life of me. And part of that was the category that was in and the type of customers and things like that. There's just too much overlap with what I wanted to offer and what they already had. And so it was a realization that, okay, I want to go to the market that makes the most sense, that has the most opportunity. And so with chatting with you guys, it was really helpful to realize, okay, there's a lot of opportunities right here. I'm in Colorado and I just need to focus on them and bam, like things are starting to move. It's super exciting.

I love it. I love it. And kind of a weird question, but I guess like where do you feel like you might have been if you hadn't taken the leap to kind of jump into the program? Because obviously it's a, it's, it's an investment in yourself, it's an investment in your business. It could be scary. A lot of people sit on that fence of like, should I invest in myself? Should I invest in my business? Like, where do you feel like you might have been if you hadn't taken that Action to kind of do the uncomfortable thing.

Yeah. I mean, back to your Alex Harmozi content. He is huge on investing in assets, one of which is your skills and your abilities. And had I not invested in this program, I'd probably still be in the same boat of kind of sweating each month thinking, are they going to commit to this big dollar ticket or are they not? Are they going to do something next month? Are they going to do something the month after that? Like, there was a lot of pressure there. And with my family, like, you feel it. Right. It's a big deal. So the mind shift that happened to this program is invaluable. Just going to all the different meetings throughout the weeks, hearing what other people are doing, hearing other people's challenges, other people's successes, all those things really help you frame a better mindset. And I can say that I've always been fairly okay at business, but I feel like this program poured gasoline on the fire to help me really expand my mind, figure out what's working. And instead of being a reactive person, that's like, oh, yeah, I'm available to shoot that now. I'm proactive, looking for leads, developing a brand and going into the market with solutions. So to me, like 100% amazing. Huge.

I love it, man, I love it. And obviously you did the work, you put in the time.

Right.

And that's the biggest thing there. And last question, I guess if anybody's maybe on the fence about just booking a call to see if this is a fit for them kind of being on the other side, what would, what advice would you give them kind of knowing what you know now?

Yeah, I mean, I don't think every single person is going to fit this program.

I agree.

Because it is a lot on you. You have to be self motivated. You have to be ready to engage, be open minded and really take in what they're talking about. If you come in knowing all the answers, like, you probably won't get that much out of it. Yeah. But if you come at it with humility and you want to learn. Excuse me. And you want to see what other people are doing.

Yeah.

Like you can get so much out of it. So for me, it's like if you're on the fence, check yourself and see are you ready to jump into this? Are you ready to make changes? Because if you are, it might be an amazing thing for you.

Yeah. Because I mean, I agree. I mean, I invest a ton in my own education because I don't know all the answers either. And it's like, I think a lot of people have to kind of check the ego at the door because that's what's going to hold you back if you think you know everything. And for me, like, I don't know everything. I invest all the time into people who know a lot more than I do at certain topics, and I'm like, how can I learn from them? And it's. I think it's just coming in with the mindset of like, how can I make this work and how can I learn from this? Instead of like, will it work? You know, and switching that frame of like, it's never going to be. I said this on my last call. It's like, it's never going to be one silver bullet. It's a million things we'd have to do, right? It's a lot of things that collectively grow the business. It's not this one silver bullet. If you do this one thing, it explodes everything. It's like it's multiple things along the process. You know what I mean?

100% well. And I think the other thing to keep in mind is nobody grows alone. Yeah, you're trying to do it alone. I mean, at the very least, get people around you that can help you build. And this community has been fantastic. I can't recommend them highly enough. On the other side of that too, there's this whole AI shift. People don't even understand the ramifications of what it's going to change. We are at the infancy of it, just like we were at the Internet and there was companies that were like, Ah, IBM's like, Nah, we don't, we don't need this extra Internet stuff. I mean, maybe not IBM, but like, companies were like, we don't need the Internet right now. And then there's the Amazon. So they're like, this is gonna be. They're seeing 3,000% growth on the Internet in 1997. So Jeff Bezos is like, let's kick this thing into a million. And then look at Amazon today, right? So we're kind of at that infancy of AI. And my point in saying all this is you need people to have visibility into all the different outlets and things that are going on to keep you accountable and help you transition and change. Because the ones that you know is a tool, right? The ones that take advantage of AI as a tool are going to be the ones that are going to be doing big things in the next 10 years. So why wouldn't you want to be around people that are thinking about it and dialoguing about it all the time. Yeah.

I always say it's like, you're not going to win the super bowl as one person. You need an entire team of very talented people around you.

Right.

It's the same with growing a business. You're not going to get to the revenue goals alone. There's just literally no way. So it's like, you have to put people around who can help you.

Right.

And who can help support you, which. Which is. Is so accurate. But, James, I'm going to let you get back to closing deals. I appreciate your time, and I'm excited to do another one of these when we. When we scale up even further. And we'll go from there.

Yeah.