Roy Abdo walks through an ad shoot in Paris that went sideways: delayed flight, fake Airbnb, last-minute hotel scramble. He learned to solve problems one at a time, build a backup team, and make fast decisions. He also explains why chasing every customer wastes time; focus on warm prospects instead.
Whatever it is, failure will only happen if you let it happen. We're in Paris. It's kangaroo time. We have Maya, we have Kika, and there's Roy, and there's Sas behind the camera. Listen, we're gonna produce something awesome. We're trying to figure out the little pieces because we had some setbacks, but we'll keep on going. All right, ready? All right, go! All right, perfect.
Anything to say, Director Abdul?
We're making shit happen. All right, we're in Paris and we're eating pain au chocolat. It's not croissant au chocolat, okay? Apparently there's difference according to Maya. Do you agree? Yeah. Well, they're all bread and chocolate. Do, uh, You're gonna think I'm crazy, but I want to do it with the GoPro from the beginning till here. See what I mean? Are you okay with that? GoPro on my head? Yeah, I got this.
How are you gonna take it? From there?
Okay, the idea is you go from her And she's walking in front of you, the terrain, you see it in there, and then she walks there.
Okay, okay, I got it. That's good, right?
What do you think, Stas? Which angle you like better?
I think Like here, around here. Yeah.
Like basically check the app, wave. Oh, okay. You know what I mean? Do the whole scene, wave, and then meet up there. Okay? 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, go!
So we're out here to film a marketing project for a client of ours.
I'm gonna give you the 3 tips that I learned that helped me make this project a success. So, a lot of things are happening. Where are we going? We're going to Paris. We're hoping to get there. The flight got delayed, we got pulled out of the airplane, things is a mess. I don't know if it's gonna make it. So I told the flight attendant, please tell the pilot I need to get off the plane right now, 'cause I need to be in Paris Monday night, 'cause Tuesday morning I have something very important needs to happen. So I need to get off this plane right now. She's like, "Are you sure you want to get off the plane, sir?" I'm like, "Yes, I definitely know that I need to get off the plane." So she went and talked to the pilot. The pilot makes an announcement. They bring us back to the airport. I'm running out to the airport help desk to get our flight situated while the model is trying to get the bags. I get into the help desk and the lady goes, "Well, I can't get you on the earlier flight, but I can get you on a flight that leaves at 10 PM and you'll make it to Paris Monday night." I'm like, "Perfect." Everybody else had to get off the plane because they had to basically refuel the plane. Meanwhile, I was being transferred to a plane to get on here. At the same time, to make things better, somehow our booking in Paris— it turns out we booked the whole room, we booked the whole apartment through Airbnb. It was a beautiful apartment, 3 bedrooms, all this kind of stuff. Airbnb calls me, is like, hey sir, this apartment is a fraud. So that means I don't have a flight to get here and I don't have a place to stay. At the same time, I got on the phone with another friend of mine, like, hey listen, I need you to find me a hotel as soon as possible for 3 people in Paris in this location. Whatever it takes, let's make it happen. He got someone to find me the location. In the same time, I'm trying to figure out my flight. They write us in, they put us on a flight going from, from DC to Germany, Germany to Paris. We get on the flight, and the same time my friend texts me, hey, I found you a hotel. It was great because right on, right in the middle of the place we were shooting the commercial to tell the story. And we got on the flight, we land in Paris, and we pretty much made it happen. There's one point on flight. I'm on the call with the airline, WhatsApping, texting my travel agent, and I'm texting the model who's sitting like 2 seats down because there was like 5 things going on almost. And there's also the videographer coming from different location to meet us in Paris, and the model already made it to Paris. So think about how much stress there was. But thinking, if you take those like 7 things all at the same time, you're gonna fail. But if you think about them one at a time and how they can connect with each other and knock them out one after the the other, you will able to manage a lot of multiple projects in the same time. Just put that focus lens on this one project, one problem, to get it solved. Give it what it needs, then move to the second project, then move this to the third project, and move to the fourth project. This is one of the key tips that I think about when I'm putting, you know, big pictures and then trying to think about bigger strategies, how to move everybody forward to achieve the right goal. So lesson from this is, whatever it is, failure will only happen if you let it happen. That's my big biggest takeaway. The second thing is, when you're thinking about management and managing people and managing time, trusting people is big. Finding trustful, reliable people is, is very essential. But also, what's more essential, have backups, because you are the only orchestrator and the planner of the production, of the plan, of whatever life plan you have. If you lose control, everything else will fall apart. So the highest focus is on you to make things happen for that production, for that project, for whatever it is. If you start thinking, oh, I No, the fuck, we cannot do the project. Yes, you're gonna fail. But if you say, oh, the flight's gonna cancel, let me check out what's the other flight. You gotta have this mentality, this mindset that whatever it takes— by whatever it takes, I mean instantaneously making decisions, moving on to the big picture. So you might be moving on those small decisions, but on the big picture, you're moving because you're making those small decisions that help the big picture move. Does that make sense?
Thank you for watching me.
Why you're not getting customers? Because you're thinking about customers, they're all equal, and not all your customers are equal. There's different temperatures in the buying habits of customers, and most of you, when you start your marketing campaign, you're looking for what? The hottest customer and the hottest moment. That doesn't happen. Because people, when they discover you, they don't buy from you the first time they see you. They have to engage with you on multiple occasions to build relationship with you to buy from you. So if you're thinking your marketing is not working, guess why? Because you did not find the right customer who's ready to buy right now. You might have found one who's gonna be buying in the next couple of months, but you gave up on it because you did not invest enough time building the relationship. What is the relationship? Is putting enough messages, putting enough images, putting enough videos about your product, how it's gonna help that customer to come to you, because Once they buy your product, their life gonna change.
