How Jon & Jonathan Added $180K In Video Retainers - Master Filmmaker Review

What's going on guys? I'm here with one of my clients, Wild Gravity, John and Jonathan, who added 180k in video retainers to their business. What's going on guys?

How are you doing? Well, I love it.

For anybody doesn't know you guys, do you mind just giving us a little bit of backstory on kind of Wild Gravity, you guys, how you got started, what you do, and then maybe like why you kind of were interested in adding this kind of lane to your business, if that makes sense.

Yeah, John, you want to, you want to take that and then I can kind of talk about how our interest in adding this, this new line of business.

Yeah, sure thing. While Gravity is a creative production agency, we specialize in doing agency creative services plus production, plus post production and visual effects. Generally we do this work for large brands. Our anchor clients, our Amazon and Microsoft. And we do work for other huge brands like Coke and Lego and Hasbro and Dungeons and Dragons, the NFL, the NBA and a lot of others. And Jonathan's going to go into this, but we decided to start expanding our business to beyond the enterprise and to start reaching out to small to medium sized businesses with a social media offering.

Yeah, yeah. And thank you for that, John. Our biggest intention with that was really to kind of raise the floor of our business. When we're working with enterprise level clients, they can tend to follow the same patterns, meaning when the money is flowing with one, it's usually flowing with another and they can also kind of pull back around the same times and that could be really painful for business. We want to try and minimize the ebbs and increase the flows. Right. And one way of managing that is by starting a separate line of business working with small, medium sized local businesses that can kind of help bridge that gap and raise that floor so that when the big clients say, oh, we're not going to spend money this quarter.

It'S not so painful.

And that's been a really big change for our business and we're looking forward to expanding that.

Yeah, absolutely. And I guess what, what are some of the things that you guys have, have seen? Obviously we're still going through the process, we're still growing this arm, we're still working on developing it. I know you've had a lot of really good conversations that have led to 180 and then there's some more deals kind of coming down the pipeline, I guess. What, what has been kind of the difference or maybe change for you guys? And what have you seen kind of adding this, this arm to the business.

I mean, I, I'll, I, I'll jump in first and I'll let John follow up. I think at first it was, it was daunting. It was a lot to try and spend so much energy on this new line of business, like, because it operates so differently than what we're used to. So it was a lot to learn. There's a lot of upfront, just kind of energy spent learning. Okay, how do we court these new businesses? How do we approach them? But then the learning process has been really great. I feel like our ability to sell to these customers has, you know, increased tenfold. Very comfortable, you know, having these conversations, you know, just familiar. Much more familiar and more comfortable with the sales process, which I think is overall a valuable thing. Um, and then, yeah, just, just discovering over time, you know, what we should be billing for folks, what, how we should be approaching them, what's sticking and what's resonating and what, what do the ones that actually close have in common? And then starting to see those patterns a little bit earlier on. So I can kind of tell if I'm taking a call with someone, ah, this isn't going to be a fit or this person is perfect for what we have to offer.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I guess as far as, like, when you guys initially found us, how did you find us? And kind of master filmmaker initially, how did you guys come across us?

I found you guys, I think it was probably originally from a Facebook ad, and then I was checking out your social media content and I was impressed with it. And then we talked and you and I hit it off and that's how we got going for sure.

I love working with you guys. It's awesome. And I love, I love seeing the brand expand. I love seeing this continue to grow. And obviously it's going to continue to grow over the next couple of years, I guess. Was there, has there been anything that we've worked on specifically that you feel like has been particularly helpful for you guys or, like, anything new that we've kind of implemented on your end?

Sure. I mean, first of all, we really were unfamiliar with the whole meta ads advertising platform. It's extremely confusing, it's technical, and you have been absolutely instrumental in helping us get that set up and then walking us through all of the ins and outs for it. Also, the support has been amazing with our continued calls and you personally being involved in our business and showing us how to run ads and run the platform has been amazing. Also, the sales training itself has been great as well. Overall, we couldn't be more pleased with the master filmmaker platform process and support.

Yeah, I think it's, I think you've developed a really nice repeatable process like John said, especially the sales process. Those learnings have been so valuable because you can apply that to all walks of life really outside of sales, just conversations with, with folks. I'm finding myself having the ability to kind of get things my way more often just by, just by, you know, practicing what we've learned through those sales teachings. So that's been, that's been really fun and interesting.

And I'm curious because I know we implemented a new CRM for this, a new, a new pipeline stage, new deal stages, all that stuff for this arm of the business. Had you guys had any sort of CRM or anything built out previously?

No, we had no CRM previously built out. It was. Our business has been 100% driven by relationships that we've built by our reputation. It's been completely organic outside of this. And you know, I think John and I have had conversations like, man, if we had just started this eight years ago.

Yeah.

Where could we be right now?

Well, because you guys and I obviously will keep, keep numbers to ourselves, but you guys do a decent amount of business with these large enterprise companies and it's like, it's crazy that you guys and I love to see it, but it's crazy you guys got to that point without having like a CRM or any of that kind of stuff to kind of aid in that process. And obviously it's, it's done really well and now we're adding that consistency and we talk to a lot of people, I think, who are in that enterprise level and I think they're seeing the shift in a lot of the content strategy that a lot of these small to medium sized businesses want. And they see, okay, it is profitable to have people paying me 5, 10, 15k a month on retainer to then, you know, have that base where you can cover overhead and expenses and things like that to the point where like you have that stability. But was that kind of what you guys were looking for when you first joined? Is that kind of what the goal is?

Yeah, that's exactly right. With the enterprise sized clients, it could be really feast or famine. And what's nice about doing this retainer business is we can grow it and are in the process of growing it so that it covers our monthly expenses and then everything we do with the enterprise sized clients is just gravy.

It's pure profit.

Yeah.

And also you're working obviously John, on your book, your book, launch your personal brand. How has like some of the stuff we've went over kind of transferred to that side of, of your brand? Like would you say some of those things are applicable or what would you say on that side?

Yeah, I mean that was extremely helpful as well. I mean it was. On top of the regular business, I am launching a new book called Hacking Advertising. It's in the background.

I already ordered it on Amazon too.

So I'm.

Yeah, absolutely.

And so being able to easily and quickly set up ads for that, it was a capability that I didn't have before and that's been instrumental in not just growing the, the pre sales for the book, but also being able to grow my email list and then have a platform on go high level to be able to consistently email and message my new followers.

Absolutely. And I'll wrap it up here because I know you guys get to get back to work here. But I guess if anybody's maybe on the fence about booking a call, speaking with a team, I guess what advice would you give them? Especially if maybe they're in the, they're doing more of the enterprise stuff and they want to move into like adding another arm, but maybe they're a little bit nervous I guess. Like what advice would you give those types of people?

I mean I would say I talk to a lot of different companies and a lot of different lead gen firms and sales firms and you know, funnel makers and all that thing and so it's really, really confusing and it's really hard to know who to throw in with. But I would say that you and master Filmmaker are legit. You're the real deal. The human contact and the done with you methodology just really works and I couldn't recommend you guys more highly.

Yeah, I would agree with all that. I would also say that you know, if you're on the fence and you do pull the trigger, you know, be prepared to experience your internal resistance to change. I know that I did, I know that we, I'm like, I don't know if this is, this feels off, this feels off brand. This feels so different than what we've been doing. But then you finally get going and the sales start coming and you, you know, you're taking the calls and you're feeling really good about what's happening. And now it's like, like I said, I wish we had started sooner.

Yeah, absolutely guys. Well, I appreciate your time. I'm excited to see the growth from here and appreciate you guys.

Appreciate you.