How To Create Consistent Leads For Your Business ft. Ivan Gonzalez

On this episode of Business Builder Way, we dive into the journey of Ivan Gonzalez, a successful entrepreneur in the TV, film, and commercial industry. Ivan shares his insights on various topics, starting with the importance of considering employees' needs and prioritizing their well-being. From feeling trapped in a previous job to now enjoying being more involved in production, Ivan shares how he found his passion and took control of his own destiny. We also learn about Ivan's networking experiences and the value he places on building connections. From humorous interactions on LinkedIn to attending local small business networking groups, Ivan shares how consistent involvement has led to an increase in leads for his company. Ivan emphasizes the importance of recognizing the contributions of all team members, from editors to freelancers, and the impact it has on their motivation and self-worth. We delve into Ivan's financial journey, from converting a pavilion into office space with contractor Vernon Martin to navigating the challenges of funding the project. Ivan stresses the importance of understanding the potential return on investment and having a partner to process financial decisions. He shares how seeking advice from coaches rather than accountants has helped him gain a holistic understanding of profit, self-worth, and setting goals based on the value he provides. Throughout the episode, Ivan reflects on his networking experiences and emphasizes the slow but proven method of generating leads. He talks about the hashtag he uses on social media, "It's good to be the king," to represent being in control of his own life and encourages listeners to find their own kingdom and view themselves as kings. From Ivan's extensive industry experience and career progression, including starting as a production assistant and eventually becoming a full-time producer, we gain valuable insights into his mindset and the journey that led him to start his own business. Ivan emphasizes the importance of enjoying the journey, even amidst challenges, and shares his personal experiences of overcoming debt and eventually finding financial stability. In addition, we explore the concept of building a sellable business, inspired by the book "Built to Sell." Ivan shares insights from the book's CEO-founder and highlights the need to create a business that doesn't solely depend on one person. He discusses his own reflections and plans for the future, including the importance of having a dedicated space for reflection and gratitude. Join us on this insightful episode as we unravel Ivan Gonzalez's entrepreneurial journey, learn valuable lessons about networking, financial decision-making, and finding success on your own terms. Don't miss out on Ivan's inspiring story and his valuable advice for fellow business builders.

Wayne Herring
00:00:3000:01:01

So Yvonne, can you tell the business builders what is this business that you're building? Let me try that again. So, Yvonne, can you please tell the business builders what is this business that you're building? And I want to right up front, talk a bit about what you do because some people may listen to this and they want to contact you for your services rather than waiting till the end. I like to just put that right up front.

Ivan Gonzalez
00:01:0100:01:49

Perfect. Yeah. Thanks, Wayne. I am Ivan Gonzalez. Or Yvonne. Depends on who you are. You can call me either way. And I run a video production company here in California. We have clients worldwide, literally. And we do productions for all sizes of businesses, anywhere from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies. We do all kinds of advertising, content, marketing content, corporate videos, testimonial videos are great animated explainer videos as well. Anything for social media to put on a website or to market on TV or on YouTube or whatever. We help with all of that.

Wayne Herring
00:01:5100:01:55
What's a video that you and your company created recently for a business?

Ivan Gonzalez
00:02:0200:02:38

Okay, sorry. So we have such a big body of work, we're literally exporting videos every day. So we have clients that have needs. We have some clients that every week we need to do five or six videos for them. We have other clients that maybe it's once a month, and then we have clients that use us for one video and then they come back six months later for another one. The key thing is there's a lot of return customers. So I think that means we're doing a good job.

Wayne Herring
00:02:3900:02:47

No doubt. What is a business type and a video type that you would do so many, like five to six, as you.

Ivan Gonzalez
00:02:4700:03:27

Said, a lot of times we have these bigger businesses that need corporate videos, like training videos, or they do webinars and then they want a replay of the webinar. There's a lot of needs for things that maybe they record even on zoom, and for compliance reasons, because whether it's healthcare or technology or financial, they need to have compliance. And so certain things need to be edited before they put them on their website. We do a lot of those things with some pretty big corporations. Those are usually like the five or six per week kind of clients.

Wayne Herring
00:03:2900:03:53

Got you. And I feel like I remember that you've even done well. Not even. You probably frequently do drone work and showing like a big production facility, meaning like a little factory or RV. Do I remember something about RV sales and things? So those are kind of videos we do as well.

Ivan Gonzalez
00:03:5300:05:10

Oh yeah, for sure. So that actually the RV one. We did a video for a series of videos for a company that's in California. They are one of the largest rental places for RVs in the region. And they contacted us, they wanted a new kind of a brand anthem is what we call it. Basically a promotional video about what they do. And so we had three different sets of people. We had a retired couple, we had a family with kids and then we have a newlywed couple, like younger, two young people that just got married. And we had them go out into great experiences. So they went to the beach, they went to the mountain, they went to the desert and we just kind of did all those in three days and filmed different locations with all the different people to kind of make three different sets of videos. Like if you're newlywed, you're looking for an experience and getaway rent our small RV. If you're a family, maybe you want the big bus, RV, that kind of stuff. And yeah, it came out really well. And of course we use drones and all that stuff.

Wayne Herring
00:05:1100:05:51

Nice. So within that almost here, sometimes people get ideas in their head and they think, wouldn't it be cool if we had a video that explained this aspect of our service or how this works? Or I have a friend who's a pastor, Josh, who has done a little bit of photo and video work for business Builder Camp. And one of the videos that they created at his church was a video of the experience of somebody coming to church for the first time. And they park and then they go through the front door and what would they see when they walk in so that it would already be familiar before they ever even got there? Right. So you can create all kinds of things like that, even with actors and actresses, it sounds like.

Ivan Gonzalez
00:05:5100:06:53

Yeah, exactly. I think that's a great idea that your ambassador friend had because a lot of times people want to see that. Like, what am I going to feel when I walk into this place? And so that's a great way to have the point of view of your potential customer, to walk into your place or do something. For example, we have a kids business. It's an indoor playground that they have a bunch of locations in the West Coast and we've done a couple of videos for them where it's kind of like we started off with that point of view, sort of shots. And then we go into all the stuff, different things that the kids can do when they play and everything. And then the parents get to watch and they get to eat pizza and all that fun stuff and it's just as long as you make it a fun video, then the parents see that and go, this could be fun for my kid. And then if the kids see that and go, I want to go there, then that's it. They made their money.

Wayne Herring
00:06:5400:06:58

You're telling a lot of stories of the videos that you're doing.

Ivan Gonzalez
00:06:5800:07:13

Exactly. You know what they say? I like to tell people a picture tells a thousand words or more than 1000 words. Well, guess what? Video or film is 24 pictures in a second. So how many words is that?

Wayne Herring
00:07:1400:07:41

Right. Yeah, I hadn't thought of it that way. That makes sense. So in business builder camp in our community, just thinking right now we've got a high end dog trainer that works with oftentimes dogs that may be like strong dogs and they're like working dogs and people are having some challenges with aggression and it's both training the dog and the human. Right?

Ivan Gonzalez
00:07:4200:07:42

Yeah.

Wayne Herring
00:07:4200:08:24

And then this particular guy, Tony, also now has started Stoke School for Dog Training and he is training trainers because he's developed a methodology over the years of how he works with these dogs and then he has trainers on staff that work with the dog. So now he's going to share that with other people. And I'm feeling like if as an example, tony came to you and to your team and started just starting like that, started saying what I was saying, you would creatively start to think of, well, we could tell your story to new people like this or like that. Am I close to some of what.

Ivan Gonzalez
00:08:2400:09:39

You do with yeah, for sure. I mean, it's always a collaboration. One of the main reasons why I got involved in this business was because I wanted to have that feedback from the client. In the old days before I started my business, I was a producer for these million dollar commercials and as a producer I was over here in the corner. The client was way over here. They had a need or a vision and by the time the project got to me, twelve other people already got their hands into it. So my hands were tied. There was only so much I could do. And even if I thought that maybe we were better off going in a different direction, there wasn't much I could do about that because I was never really interacting with the client. Now I am interacting with the client. And so funny, sometimes I get to talk to the same level of clients that I used to have before, but now it's one on one and we get to actually have a collaboration. Whereas if I think that maybe there's a chance we should go this direction, at least I can have that conversation with the client. And if they agree, we can go that way.

Wayne Herring
00:09:3900:10:12

Sure. Got you. So some of that will lead into how you started your company. But before we go there, if anybody hears what you've said so far, or some of the rest of it, and they think Yvonne might be the guy to brainstorm with and see if he can bring my ideas about video to life, how do they contact you and how does that process start? And I would think some people are probably worried that if they talk to you, they're not clear enough, and so they should wait a while to get clear on their idea. At what point should they enter your process?

Ivan Gonzalez
00:10:1300:10:55

If you are a business owner or a marketing director or sales director who is looking to stand out from the crowd, even if you're not quite sure what to do, I welcome conversations. As long as there's time in the schedule to do it, we can have a conversation and figure out what it is that you need. If we agree that maybe video is not the best thing for you to do right now, it's okay. I'll be the first to tell you, or if you think so, I will accept it and it's not a big deal. But if we decide that it should be video and it should be with us, we can help you determine what kind of video is the best way.

Wayne Herring
00:10:5500:10:59

To go about it and how should people reach out to you?

Ivan Gonzalez
00:10:5900:11:09
Play
Oh yes, so you can feel free to email me, Ivan at IG Onecommunications.com. Are you going to put a thing or something?
Wayne Herring
00:11:0900:11:13
Play
Yeah, we'll have a link in notes and things to get a hold of.
Ivan Gonzalez
00:11:1300:11:30
Play
Cool. That way I don't have to spell it out. So it's Ivan at IG Onecommunications.com and you can go to our website, IG Onecommunications.com, and check out some of our work. And if you like what you see, I'd love to have a conversation.
Wayne Herring
00:11:3100:11:51
Play
Great. And of course, the other question that people have is so you just said you did million dollar commercials. How much does it cost? And I know of course there's like a wide range, but for people that don't ever do videos with a company like yours, from at the extreme ends, like what to what are we talking about?
Ivan Gonzalez
00:11:5200:12:48
Play
Well, there's a super wide range. It's like if you're a real estate person and I were to ask you how much does it cost to buy a house, then you probably want to know what neighborhood, how big is the house, how many bedrooms? Does it have a pool, does it have a big backyard? All kinds of different variations, right? And just like you could buy a house in I'm local here, right. So you can buy a house in Victorville for $400,000. You can buy the same exact house in Irvine for 1.5 million. Right. So for a video, it really depends on the client's needs. And we are very conscious of the budget. We usually can start at around 5000 and go all the way up to $200,000. Like literally, we do all aspects of that spectrum.
Wayne Herring
00:12:4900:13:00
Play
So three days of shooting with actors and actresses, going to the beach, young couple, old couple, RV, that kind of thing, that's when you start thinking, few hundred thousand dollars.
Ivan Gonzalez
00:13:0000:14:23
Play
Yeah. And in fact, when it comes to that, I'm not going to try to pat myself on the back too much, but we actually are very good at helping our clients with their budgets. So we actually like that exact series of videos. If they had gone with another production company, it would have gone probably 50 to 60,000. And with us, I believe it was around 35. So they definitely got the bang for their buck. And we always try, whether it's you're in the high end or in the low end, we'll do what we can to make sure that one of the things we take pride in is we don't bring in unnecessary people to the equation. So if you have a project and we need a couple of people to work on it, we're going to charge it for those couple of people. If you have a project and we need 30 people to work on it, we'll charge you for that. In bigger production companies, they have full time staff of 30, 40 people working in the building. So anybody who has a project, basically, in a way, has to pay for all those people. We don't have what we like to call ourselves, a boutique production company. So we have a smaller staff. Right now, we have eight people on staff. Even though we have eight people on staff, I'm not going to charge you to keep the lights on for eight people.
Wayne Herring
00:14:2400:16:04
Play
And so that gets in your story a little bit too. So you have eight full time people on staff and then bring in people as you need them, right? And you're nodding your head for those who are listening on audio. I like that give and take. I'm sitting in this building at the farm business builder camp, home central or home base or whatever. And this used to be a pavilion. It was a concrete slab with posts and a steel roof, and it was part of our farm and we closed it in and added a shower, bathroom, all that kind of thing, heating and air conditioning system. And I remember working with Vernon Martin, who was a client of mine at the time, a contractor, to go through this project. And it wasn't that I didn't want to spend the money, so to speak. It wasn't just looking for a yes or no dollar figure. What I was trying to figure out was, okay, well, if we want to create this, how much is it going to cost? And then I'm thinking, where will the money come from and or how long might it take to obtain the money compared to other things we could spend money on? And I think so often with something like what you do. It's not that people want to know the price, because it's just an absolute. This is a yes, and that's a no, but rather, they just kind of need to work it. It's almost like design, build. If we bring this in, then we can do that. And they're figuring, what's the ROI? And so to have a partner like you to just process through those decisions is really valuable.
Ivan Gonzalez
00:16:0400:16:39
Play
Yeah, and I love helping our clients as much as possible. Like I said, sometimes it's not a video thing. They just want some tips. I have a small business client down the street, and their website went down, so I connected them with a website designer and I gave them some tips on what to do with the redo. I'm like, since you're redoing your website, you should probably think about making it look like 2023, because that website hadn't been worked on for like, seven years or something like that.
Wayne Herring
00:16:4400:17:12
Play
So you were a producer and you're doing videos. Can you take us back to what was the call? What caused you to leave employment and start a business? So I'll end up sometimes I'll ask a bunch of questions at once and I'll try to slow it down. When did you start your business and what was the call that took you from employment to going off and starting to build this thing?
Ivan Gonzalez
00:17:1200:21:15
Play
Sure. So, a little bit about my background. I've been in the TV, television, film, and commercial world for 23 years now. My last job, I was a producer of commercials, national commercials, million dollar type of budgets. In fact, the amount of money we were putting behind each commercial was a million dollars a week just to air them. So I was working up in Santa Monica, and I lived in Orange County. So those of you not in California, I'll explain by this, it took an hour and a half in the morning on a good day to get to work and 2 hours on a good evening to get home. So that was every day, Monday through Friday. I worked there for about two years. Before that, I worked at another company. But I've always been good at moving up in the world. So I worked my way up from being a production assistant on film, television, whatever, till gravitated towards commercials because it was a quicker turnaround and I liked freelancing. And then I got hired as full time producer at an agency. Then from there, I got a better job as a full time producer at another place. And then but then the commute was that while I was working in all those things, I encountered that notion of, like, I'm just kind of stuck here in the corner while we could be doing all this. I don't really have a say in it, so I enjoy what I do. But I didn't like not having the power to be able to make different decisions than what I was being told to do and being able to interact with a client, I couldn't do that. Really. So kind of funny, actually. One day it came that I was working at that company, and then just out of the blue, I got laid off. And so when I got laid off, I even offered to stay for an extra week because we were literally finishing a commercial. And I said, we're delivering a commercial. We're delivering a show this week. Do you want me to stay so that the show can I can see it through? And then I'll leave. I don't mind. And the HR guy said, I really appreciate you saying that, but I can't do that because of liability or whatever, right. So I was gone. I got home and just to give a little bit of background on that day, that week, there was a game between the Kings and the Penguins, my two favorite hockey teams. And the Penguins are never in town, only once a year, and the Kings are my second favorite team. And so them playing each other, I was really looking forward to that. I had the tickets already, but because we were finishing a show, I didn't know if I was going to make it to the game. And so I came home at two in the afternoon. My wife opens the door. She goes, what are you doing home so early? I'm like, Well, I have good news, bad news and good news. She's like, okay. I'm like, okay, good news is I can go see the Kings and Penguins game on Wednesday. She's like, why? What's the bad news? I'm like, well, bad news is I just got laid off. And she's like, okay, well, then what's the good news? Right? It's all bad news. What's the good news? I'm like, good news is, you know my goals, you know what I'm all about, and I think it's time to go all in and start my own business. So I think this is a great opportunity. I'm just going to go for it. And she said, well, every time you set your mind to something, you do it, you accomplish it. So I am behind you 100%. And that was that. So then I started the business.
Wayne Herring
00:21:1600:21:18
Play
When was that? What was the date?
Ivan Gonzalez
00:21:1900:21:24
Play
It was March of 2014.
Wayne Herring
00:21:2400:21:25
Play
Got it.
Ivan Gonzalez
00:21:2500:21:29
Play
So this March, I just turned nine years old in the business.
Wayne Herring
00:21:3200:21:38
Play
So as you were driving home, I don't know, about two in the afternoon, how long the drive was, it was.
Ivan Gonzalez
00:21:3800:21:40
Play
A lot quicker than in the rush hour.
Wayne Herring
00:21:4300:21:56
Play
What were the thoughts going through your head about this leaving and new business? Because now it sounds quite positive. Right? Good, bad, good. How long did it take to I'm going to do this?
Ivan Gonzalez
00:21:5600:22:49
Play
Yeah. On the way home, at first, I literally felt the relief. I just felt like all of a sudden I was a bird that just got out of the cage, I was a free bird. I was thinking Leonard Skinner without even paying. But yeah, it's like all this weight got off of me. I had a mortgage to pay and a little boy and a little baby at home, so that's a little stressful. But I wasn't thinking so much about that because I figured, I'm going to figure out a way to pay for all that. It's going to happen no matter what. But I was just kind of envisioning my future, like, okay, now that the rains are off, what am I going to do? And I was just kind of thinking about that. The way home.
Wayne Herring
00:22:5000:23:17
Play
I have a friend and a guy who's been around business builder camp. His name is Dan. Wowack. And he was on the History Channel show alone, and he was by himself in Patagonia for 40 some days. And he says while he was there, he envisioned his business and what he was going to do. 40 some days all by yourself out in the wilderness is a little bit longer, but you managed to think through a lot of that on your ride home.
Ivan Gonzalez
00:23:1700:23:20
Play
Yeah, I just needed an hour.
Wayne Herring
00:23:2000:23:23
Play
You don't need to go live by yourself out in the woods, right?
Ivan Gonzalez
00:23:2300:23:28
Play
No, I'd probably go crazy if that happened to me.
Wayne Herring
00:23:2800:23:41
Play
I think it's borderline from what I've heard from him. So then you go to the hockey game on Wednesday. What were some of the first steps to start IG one?
Ivan Gonzalez
00:23:4100:24:15
Play
Well, I contacted all my network, let them know that I was out and if anybody needed any help with any production support, I was available. And I wasn't getting too many things, but some came because before I was full time, I had been freelance, so a lot of people knew me and I was able to get a couple of good, decent sized projects right away. That one of those projects paid for three months of the bills.
Wayne Herring
00:24:1500:24:16
Play
Got you.
Ivan Gonzalez
00:24:1600:25:28
Play
So it was nice. The funny part is that I literally started the job in the baby room. The company IG One, which was called GB Pictures back then, was founded in the baby room because we had just had a baby and it was like, during the day, that was going to be my workspace. And now, nine years later, obviously it's been a roller coaster. I'm not going to lie. It's not like it was just one smooth. It's not like Wolf of Wall Street where all of a sudden he thinks, I'm going to buy and sell stocks for people and charge 50 cent commission or whatever it is, 50% commission. And next thing you know, they're like all billionaires and having fun. No, it's not like that. In fact, I went through some debt and it was hard to pay the mortgage sometimes. But nine years later now things are good. I've got a nice 2500 square foot office, eight people working full time and meeting with great clients traveling the world. It's all been fun.
Wayne Herring
00:25:3100:25:44
Play
Can you tell us some of the things along the way? From the car ride to today with 2500 square foot eight people, what are some points in the journey? High and low.
Ivan Gonzalez
00:25:4400:29:58
Play
Sure. So right away there were some high points as I got some big projects that were like, oh, okay, cool. The great thing is, because I come from the big leagues, I guess you could say, the projects that I got, I was able to manage them correctly and I was able to figure out, okay, how do we do this $125,000 budget photo shoot? Okay, let's make it happen. But then I was starting to get finally some small clients. My very first client that I got to work with hand in hand was a medical group down the street who just happened to have heard about me somehow. And we did a little $5,000 video series of their doctors because they had a great idea, let's make these videos. Because when people are looking for their primary physicians or primary providers, whatever you call it, you're looking on a website and you see people's accolades, oh, this guy went to USC or blah, blah. But you don't really get to see their personality until you meet them. And so their idea was, let's make little videos of them so that at least people can go to the website and see their personality and then decide who their primary physician is going to be. And I thought that was a great idea. And so we did those and there's been little slowly but surely. And I got some bigger clients that needed a lot of social media videos. I went to Miami and did film some testimonials for a big company and I asked them, so what are you going to do with these testimonials? Honestly, we don't know what we're going to do. Okay, well, how about I put them together and I give you a series of videos that you can use on social media. They're like, oh yeah, we might want to do that. So a couple of weeks later they called me back and they said, yeah, do you still have the footage? Of course. Well, this is what we want to do. We want to put a series of videos. We think we have enough for 30 videos so we can do these 30 videos for social media. I'm like, okay, let's do it. And then just kind of kept marketing, of course, networking as much as I could. And those are some of the highs at the beginning. The lows were there was a point when I figured out that I had $75,000 in debt because I kept having to pay things with the credit cards and whatever. And so we sold the house and paid off the debt and then the debt was still there and so negotiated with some of the credit cards. Luckily never had to negotiate with my American Express because that's been the lifeline for me. And the moment you negotiate with a credit card, they won't give you any more after that. So the American Express has been great, and then the Wells Fargo card as well and just kind of worked. It was kind of hard. We had to move into a smaller place, and then we moved to an apartment, finally could afford to rent an apartment in a nicer neighborhood. And then we were living there for four or five years, and now we're living in a house again. It's nice. And then the whole time when we were in kind of not so sure, I could feel something was going to break soon, and I would keep telling my wife, like, don't worry, I can feel it. It's going to break open pretty soon. I just know it. There's so much out there. It's just that nobody is like, the floodgates haven't been open yet, but I feel like at any moment they're going to open. And I was able to stay with it for up to year number five. It's so funny. They say the fifth year in the business, if you've made it this far, you'll be fine. It was around the fifth year when all of a sudden we could pay our bills every month without having to ask my parents for money or anything like that.
Wayne Herring
00:29:5900:30:04
Play
And around year five, you hired some full time employees at that point?
Ivan Gonzalez
00:30:0400:31:14
Play
No, I was working with Pure Freelancers, and around year five, I could afford to have a little what do they call it? Like WeWork regis shared office space. So it was like $300 a month rent for the office, so I was able to afford that. So that became my central of operations. But the editors were all working from home, and so we're working and doing projects, most of them small. Every once in a while we'd get a big one. So it became kind of a thing where we get two six figure projects a year, and then the rest is all small projects from five to 25,000. And then it just kind of kept at it. And now we're yeah, now I actually can afford to have the full time staff and an office where the rent is not $300 a month. Just last year I spent $100,000 in equipment that we needed.
Wayne Herring
00:31:1800:31:52
Play
So you're talking about the $75,000 debt, and then you paid off debt by selling your house. But there was still debt. And what has your journey been, Yvonne, in terms of learning to read a profit and loss and or other ways of managing money? Because it's not always in the PNL either. Right. Sometimes those things can actually hide things be confusing. There's this very workable, back of the envelope napkin math that you get. How has that been for you to learn that?
Ivan Gonzalez
00:31:5300:34:06
Play
Well, it's been a process, for sure. And it's funny because. We're talking about profits, but we're talking about numbers. You would think that I would be talking to an accountant about those, but honestly, I've talked to coaches about them because everybody, even myself, could be like, I'm good, I don't need a coach, whatever. Right? But a few years ago, I met a coach and he gave me a really good discount because we were neighbors in our office building and he opened up some of the eyes that I'm sure that you do as well for everybody. Right? So it's things that you look at besides the profit and loss, like your time that you spend working on the business or for the business or whatever you want to call it, the time that you're away. So you kind of figure out what your hourly rate should be, so that how much are you paying yourself or how much are you billing for, whether it's not like you're a lawyer, you're going to bill by the hour, but you have to keep that in mind as to how much you're worth. Whereas maybe when I started, I was probably from all the networking events and meeting with people and everything, I was probably making minimum wage once it comes down to it. Now I'm not. So it's great, but it's great to see that growth as well. And then also it helps you set goals. Okay. In the last year, we had this many clients, so the average client was paying us this much. This year, let's see if we can get the average client to pay 10% more, 20% more, something like that, without taking advantage. I mean, that's two completely different things. Yes, they can pay more because you're doing probably better work for them, but it's also about how much you're worth. And as long as you're seeing your self worth, then it's okay. You can see why it's necessary to charge a little bit more.
Wayne Herring
00:34:0700:34:16
Play
Yeah. And on the people side of things, on the people equation, they have eight plus you. So nine total.
Ivan Gonzalez
00:34:1600:34:26
Play
Nine? Yes, it's eight plus me. Yes, full time. And then we have a lot of freelancers that we bring in all the time.
Wayne Herring
00:34:2700:34:31
Play
What does the company chart look like?
Ivan Gonzalez
00:34:3300:35:49
Play
So we've got myself, we have a chief of staff, account manager, and we have another account manager, and then they are both awesome. And we're actually this year, our goal is to get our infrastructure right and our processes right, because we've been seeing a lot of growth up to this year. And this year there's still a lot of clients are coming to us. Literally every week there's a new client. I want to make sure that we can meet the demand without sacrificing quality. We don't want to be known as the McDonald's of video production. We want to make sure that we can still provide the good quality and meet the demand of all these clients coming in. So between the three of us, we're working on making our infrastructure better and our processes better. And I'm not really focusing much on business development. Business development has been great the last couple of years, but now I'm not taking my foot off the accelerator, but I'm not putting it into the next gear yet because I want to make sure we're good and then we'll go out and seek new business.
Wayne Herring
00:35:5000:36:17
Play
So the chief of staff, account manager and the other account manager, when I was going through that scenario of a client comes to you and they have a vision for a video or maybe go back to your doctor's office where they have five doctors or they're going to do videos featuring them. Your account managers are now doing some of that conversation with your clients about what kind of video do you want to create or do you do most of that now? Still?
Ivan Gonzalez
00:36:1700:37:08
Play
I'm still doing most of the conversation because I'm the brains, I guess, the creative drive for the operation. I do bring in partners to help write the script or creative directors. So sometimes we go in together, depending on the project. We will have a first conversation. My chief of staff myself will have a first conversation with the client, and then once we figure out what they need, then we know what kind of people to bring into the operation, and then we make it all happen. And it's never a one man band kind of a thing. We like to balance. We like to get feedback from the client, but we also have people like a writer or a creative director that we like to balance ideas back and forth.
Wayne Herring
00:37:0800:37:20
Play
Sure. So you and the two account managers and then the other remaining people on team which would be fixed, are they more doing the video editing and the actual filming and things like that?
Ivan Gonzalez
00:37:2000:37:43
Play
Exactly. Yeah. We have our head of post production who also edits, and then he kind of heads to all the editors. And yeah, we have a nice rotation of editors. They work from home and here they'll come in at different times of the week. So that way we always have room for everybody.
Wayne Herring
00:37:4400:38:11
Play
Got you. And you described yourself earlier as being a boutique video production firm. And then you talked about just now about getting things right and making sure it's stable before you do a whole bunch of growth. Do you see yourself down the road? Do you want to stay a boutique firm? Do you think.
Ivan Gonzalez
00:38:1400:39:20
Play
I'm kind of torn. That's where it gets a little bit muddy. I'm very happy doing what we're doing with this size, but I am not going to turn down the opportunity to grow and become a bigger I don't know, like a Mad Men type of a company. Right. I'm not opposed to that. As long as we're still creating what we're still getting the same feedback from our clients, which is always, I loved it. You guys are awesome. You guys are great to work with. One of the things that we're known for is our attitude, our harmony on set and during the whole process that clients just love working with us because of our easy going attitude, we know we have a job to get done. There's no need to pretend you're important. Just get the job done and have fun doing it. And if we don't lose that, I'm okay with being as big as we need to be.
Wayne Herring
00:39:2300:41:07
Play
There's a book called Built to Sell. And in the book, the CEO founder initially is doing all kinds of marketing work. He has an ad agency, marketing agency, and eventually he gets this idea that he wants to have a company that he could sell. And he goes to a family friend who has built and sold businesses who said, I'm sorry, but you really don't have anything, because once you're gone, everything points back to you. And so in the story and in the book, he really specializes and niches down and ends up building a business that can be sold. But one of the things he does every year is go to a kind of a retreat place. It's in California and goes to this family friend's beach house, and while he's there, cooks a good steak and has a glass of wine and reviews the past year and then thinks about what is ahead. Do you have any annual ritual now like that? Do you have a time of reflection, Yvonne, where you then think about things are good? I hear gratitude in your voice. I hear like, you've worked hard, you've had confidence, you've gone through ups and downs, you've got a very supportive spouse, and you're not all about growth for growth's sake, and you don't feel like a boutique. Successful firm is awesome, right? But do you have any place to go to sort of annually to think about that? Like, who do I want to be or what do I want the business to be?
Ivan Gonzalez
00:41:0800:42:43
Play
I like to take trips with the family once a year, so we take advantage in the summer to go for a week. Kind of a short attention span kind of a person. So anything longer than a week and I get bored. But I go with the family, and I like to do that to just really enjoy ourselves. We don't spend a ton of money, but it's just about having a good time with the family, be able to do experiences, whether it's go to Disney World or go to last year we went to San Francisco. We pick a random place and we'll go and we'll have a great time, and we just enjoy it. And I like to try to disconnect from the job, from the office, as much as possible. And the last few years have been great because I've been able to have that support at the office where I don't have to think about work 100% of the time. And if I decide it's time to go on this vacation, we can actually have a vacation and not have me on the phone all day long while we're looking at a forest or whatever. Right. So, yeah, I don't want to ruin my family time, so I try to do the best I can to try to disconnect, and as long as we prepare, it's okay. And then during that time, I get to reflect on the year. So I kind of do both at the same time.
Wayne Herring
00:42:4300:42:43
Play
Sure.
Ivan Gonzalez
00:42:4400:42:53
Play
But it's a very good moment of reflection. Okay. And I usually come back with some good ideas to implement in the upcoming year.
Wayne Herring
00:42:5400:43:10
Play
And do you ever think longer term? Are you like, okay, in three years or ten years or 25? Do you go there, or is it more staying in the present, or a little bit of both? How do you do that?
Ivan Gonzalez
00:43:1000:43:23
Play
A little bit of both, because I've always been of a mentality where you can always do better. I was honestly born and raised by a motivational speaker.
Wayne Herring
00:43:2400:43:24
Play
Wow.
Ivan Gonzalez
00:43:2400:44:42
Play
My dad is a motivational trainer. He deals mostly. His clients are all in Spanish, so I was born in Mexico. But I've always had that mentality that you can always do better. And so it's great to have those goals. I really think that if you don't set goals, you're never going to get anywhere. So you need to set goals. They don't have to be financial goals, but you have to set goals of some sort. And if you set a timeline and you try to accomplish it, it's great to work towards those goals. But as the Cliche says, you got to stop and smell the roses as well. If you don't do that, you're not going to enjoy the journey, and then you're going to get there, and you're going to forget why you got there or why you set that goal. And so you always have to enjoy like, I'm always enjoying the journey because I am thankful for what I have. And I know that, yes, I worked hard to get here, but at the same time, I want to make sure that it's enjoyable. The whole process is fun. Otherwise you feel like you wasted half your life if you just got there. Right. You want to remember everything you did to get there. And the whole process has been a really great journey.
Wayne Herring
00:44:4500:45:00
Play
I see pictures of you on LinkedIn, and I feel like you really celebrate your team. I think you genuinely love having people share with us something awesome and good about your team. Or people.
Ivan Gonzalez
00:45:0000:46:04
Play
Sure. I'm picky when it comes to selecting people to work with. And so throughout the years, I've picked out really great people, and I just love how they share the same attitude as me. We have one on ones every year. We have a catch up meeting one on one, and we talk about the year, how we did the year before, what we can do to make the next year better. And I just love how I'm just always impressed by everybody's positive attitude and they're always willing to jump in and do the work, whatever needs to be done. I mean, last week we were two weeks ago, we were just in Charlotte and we were at an event and one of my team members, he came with me and he was editing in his hotel room until the wee hours of the night. Because the next day we were showing a video that we had filmed that same day.
Wayne Herring
00:46:0400:46:05
Play
I see.
Ivan Gonzalez
00:46:0500:46:45
Play
And so just willing to make it happen. And then the best part is we get to show the video and the clients were just super happy. And I'm sharing that with the team because I need them to know that their work made the clients happy, met their needs, whatever it is. And so he was there and he was really excited to see that. And it's good to have that positive reinforcement, but it's also good to have the people who are willing to do what it takes to get that. And it's how Martin Scorsese said it, anybody can be a great director if you surround yourself with the right people. And I'm surrounded by the best people.
Wayne Herring
00:46:4800:47:23
Play
As you've gone through these years, sometimes what starts to happen, even you have great people on your team, the conversation of compensation, benefits, balancing, all that out starts to come up and you may have to change or think ahead. How have you learned about that? I asked you about financials earlier, but how have you learned about total compensation package benefits? How have things changed in your company?
Ivan Gonzalez
00:47:2400:48:19
Play
So I have a financial advisor who has helped me for the last few years. Once the company was growing enough and getting enough revenue, I'm like, okay, I can't just handle this on my own. I need somebody to help guide me. And so I got a financial advisor who's been great and kind of showing me different things, how we can compensate, things that I didn't even know about. And yeah, we like to do a little bit of profit sharing so they get a little bit of money now, plus a little bit extra money into their 401K, all that stuff. And benefits. I wanted to make sure that I could get good enough benefits. I mean, we're a small business, so we can't have the best benefits, but we can have pretty decent benefits. And so just trying to go out of our way to make sure that our employees are in good hands.
Wayne Herring
00:48:1900:48:31
Play
So you have a 401K already for yeah. That's impressive at this stage of the journey. And some profit sharing so they feel like they're participating.
Ivan Gonzalez
00:48:3200:48:43
Play
Yeah, exactly. I know that the government asks for certain things and we decided it's good to do a little bit more than what the government asks, got you.
Wayne Herring
00:48:4300:48:55
Play
And do you find yourself talking very openly with people about that? Or even like, hey, we're a small business, we're going to do what we can with health insurance and things. It sounds like you're open about that.
Ivan Gonzalez
00:48:5600:49:35
Play
Yeah, I don't think it's what we have is decent. It's not. If you were working with Toyota or a super huge conglomerate, you're going to get an amazing benefits package. We can't afford that. But for the size of the business that we are, I do go out of my way, sacrifice some of the profit to make sure that we have something that you can survive with. Health care is very expensive these days, but at least having a decent plan helps, and I try to make sure of that.
Wayne Herring
00:49:3700:50:08
Play
What do you think the benefits are of people being on your team? So your small business and maybe certain things about financial compensation aren't there. But I have a friend who's a recruiter who said also the emotional and the intellectual compensation for certain people, if it's a match, can be as important. You have to have enough money because we can't be living kind of hand to mouth. We don't want to do that. But on the other hand, there are benefits to working for a company like yours, right?
Ivan Gonzalez
00:50:0800:51:31
Play
Yeah. When you work in a creative space, it's nice to get those positive reinforcement. Like when you hear good things from clients, you want to make sure that all the people who were involved in that project get to hear about it. One thing is, back in the old days when I was producing these million dollar commercials, I found out after the fact that some of the commercials I produced or I worked on won some industry awards. And I didn't even know that until after, like years later. Yeah, why didn't anybody tell me? It would have been nice to know. So I try to make a point. Whenever we win an award, which we have won quite a few, whenever we win an award, I will look back and see who worked on that project and I make sure that everybody knows, hey, congratulations. We just won a Tele Gold Award for this video. We just want an addie for this or whatever it is. I want to make sure that everybody who was involved, from the editors to the freelancers, whoever was filming, or even the Pas, know that they were involved in something that was recognized and it was all things to their work. And so I will never stop doing that because I know what it's like to not be told. So I definitely want to tell people.
Wayne Herring
00:51:3200:53:29
Play
I think that's great. That's really helpful, the fact that you look at your employees and think about some of the things that you wish you would have gotten, and now you're able to give that to people. Much like you started the company because you felt like you were in this corner, and now you know that you love to be more involved with the actual production. Those are pretty solid bases of this company that you're building. There's two more thoughts that I'd like to pull out here. One is I met you through LinkedIn, and I'd have to look back at the date, but I remember this funny interaction where you're trying to figure out whether I was a real person. And it was it one more of these, like, spammy coachy, let me get you more leads sort of things, or did I legit actually want to meet you? So that was funny, and it stands out. And I've had a chance to come to your local California, like, small business chamber networking group a couple of times, which has been really fun. And I found LinkedIn, you're a great example. There are other people, of course, but I've just had a chance to meet people that I love their story, and now we can have a conversation like this on a podcast, but that also being part of that local small business networking group. I saw you in action and how you showed up consistently, and now you're telling me leads are coming in. And you said you kept saying to your wife, I feel like the floodgates are going to open. So everybody wants to do business development. I have a younger guy right now who has a local web design and SEO firm, and he's trying to develop business. What experience would you share? What was that journey like? How did you go from where you were to now having leads come in all the time?
Ivan Gonzalez
00:53:2900:55:24
Play
Well, when I started the business, I started looking for networking. A friend of mine said, why don't you check out meetup.com and look for networking groups? I'm like, okay, so I found some networking groups, and from there I joined a networking organization. I think that one was called Team and was in a little chapter. Then, funny enough, that chapter kind of disbanded from Team and became its own little thing, which was great. But I got to meet a lot of people, a lot of great people who I still talk to nowadays. This was nine years ago, and then I left that group because it wasn't really working for me in a business sense. After a couple of years, I say try everything for two years, if you can. So I've been doing a lot of networking for the last nine years. Join chambers of commerce and things like that. Right now, we are members of three chambers of commerce in the area, and one of them, we put a lot of time into it because it's been great throughout the years. The other one, I still need to put some time into it, just haven't had it. And the other one is really actually, they're great ambassadors to what we do. They've connected us with some really high profile people in the government and we've been able to do certain things with the different parts of the government, like the spa and things like that. I would say just keep on. The networking part is kind of a slow process, but it's a proven method. I didn't believe it at first. Once the leads start to come in, you believe it and then you start to figure out because it is a time, you need a lot of time to make it happen.
Wayne Herring
00:55:2400:55:25
Play
Sure.
Ivan Gonzalez
00:55:2500:55:46
Play
But then you can think I could be spending this time cold calling or I could be spending this time meeting with people. In my world I prefer to meet with people because my business is more of a relationship business. Other people might have more of like what's the word? Transactional business.
Wayne Herring
00:55:4600:55:46
Play
Right.
Ivan Gonzalez
00:55:4700:56:19
Play
Maybe in that sense cold calls work better, but because relationship it takes a long time to really get those leads to happen. And so the more you get to know people, the more you earn their trust and then they refer you to people outside. Because that's another thing when you're networking you should not network to the group. You want to network through the group as much as possible, otherwise your leads are going to run dry as soon as everybody knows you in that little group. But you have to constantly keep asking for referrals.
Wayne Herring
00:56:2000:56:23
Play
What does that mean? Network through versus two.
Ivan Gonzalez
00:56:2300:56:42
Play
So let's say we have a group of ten people, we all do business with each other and now it's done that's networking to the group. But if instead you network through the group, that would be those ten people could become ten sources of referrals for you from their extended network.
Wayne Herring
00:56:4200:56:42
Play
Got it?
Ivan Gonzalez
00:56:4200:56:49
Play
Now you're not limited to those ten people, you've got the world that can come to you.
Wayne Herring
00:56:4900:57:07
Play
So if I were in your consistent networking group and you wanted to network through me, how would you prepare me to go out and talk to people or introduce you? How do you help me be the one to go out and figure out, oh yeah, this is somebody I need to get back for a conversation with Yvonne.
Ivan Gonzalez
00:57:0700:57:34
Play
So I would probably open your ears. In my case, I would say if you ever hear somebody talking about how maybe they're looking to do a commercial or a video or they're looking to maybe they just did a video and it didn't quite work the way they thought. Something like that. Did you hear my dinghy on my computer?
Wayne Herring
00:57:3400:57:35
Play
I did, yes.
Ivan Gonzalez
00:57:3500:58:37
Play
Sorry, I'll try to say it again. So in my world, I would suggest to you, if you're talking to other business owners or marketing directors or sales directors, and maybe they're very excited they have a new product or service and they want the world to know about it. But maybe they're frustrated because they can't figure out how to really put it out there and explain what it does without just getting lost within the crowd. So if they want to stand out from the crowd, you can always say, hey, you know, I've got a friend who has a video production company. Have you ever wondered about that? Maybe I could introduce you to no pressure and then see what happens. And I get people like that, that introduces like that over email and most of the time it turns into great. Either another referral down the road or just business right away. It's great. Sure.
Wayne Herring
00:58:3700:59:32
Play
Yeah. Even if you have a conversation with that person that comes to you and if it's not the right moment, but now it's one more person that knows who might benefit by having a conversation with you. And they've experienced it. Right. It's not just words on a page that are promises. Like they've really felt what it's like to give and take with Yvonne and have him create and serve. So that makes a lot of sense to me. The last question I have is so we advocate or suggest people to try journaling and try writing down their thoughts or writing down visions of the future or just take the time to get everything spinning around up here in their head down on paper. What suggestion would you give to business builders for something, a prompt if you will, to write about in their journal as they're on the journey.
Ivan Gonzalez
00:59:3201:01:22
Play
Sure. So one of the things that I like to use a hashtag on Instagram and on social media is it's good to be the king. And that is for myself. As soon as I left my old job and I started my business, I was the king of my own kingdom. And right away I thought about that. So every time I try to post with hashtag, it's good to be the king. And I don't have to be a millionaire or a billionaire, I just need to be king of my own kingdom. And sometimes it's not so much about money, but it's everything else in your life too. So I would ask people, or I would challenge people or something, I would challenge people to write, if you can look at yourself as a kingdom, what exactly is your kingdom? Because everyone can be a king, you just have to see it for yourself. It's like the Lion King, right? Like simba everything the I sees is your kingdom. Well, that's great. Maybe not everything you see is your kingdom, but you do have a kingdom. What is your kingdom? And now you'll feel a lot better about yourself and maybe where you're going. And then just unless you're a doctor, a heart surgeon or something, just think when things get stressful, you're not trying to save lives, you're not trying to cure cancer unless you are. It's always good to not stress out about your work so that you can enjoy the ride and with work and with whatever the personal side too, that.
Wayne Herring
01:01:2201:01:54
Play
Is a great prompt. Yvonne said, Hashtag, it's good to be the king. What does that mean to me? How do I express that? And I think that you are a good king, benevolent king. A king that is thinking of your team and your clients and people like me that you've met along the journey. And I'm sure glad that you answered that LinkedIn message that I sent with you. And I appreciate you sitting and spending this time with the community.
Ivan Gonzalez
01:01:5501:01:58
Play
I'm just glad you didn't try to sell me crypto.
Wayne Herring
01:01:5801:02:03
Play
That's what your question was, right? That was the hot thing at that time.
Ivan Gonzalez
01:02:0301:02:08
Play
At that time, it was crypto. Now it would have been leads, right?
Wayne Herring
01:02:0901:02:14
Play
Yeah, no, crypto. Great. Well, thanks a bunch. So good to catch up with you.
Ivan Gonzalez
01:02:1401:02:37
Play
For sure. Thank you so much. Wayne and I really value what you do. I think you're amazing with the coaching, and I think everybody who gets to talk to you could see that, which is why we wish we could have you in California. You'd visit the chamber more often, but everybody just still talks about you. You're amazing.
Wayne Herring
01:02:3701:02:57
Play
Thanks. I appreciate the opportunity. I've been blessed and fortunate like you to have so many good people in our community, the business builders and mentors, but thanks. We'll all keep after it and keep working to serve others. So it's good to be the king.
Ivan Gonzalez
01:02:5701:03:01
Play
It's good to be the king. Thank you so much. All right. Bye.

[00:03:53] Promotional video showcases RV rental experiences.

[00:08:24] Collaboration with clients leads to better work.

[00:14:24] Staffing includes both full-time and temporary workers. The building was renovated with added facilities. Careful consideration was given to costs and funding options. Having a partner for decision-making is important.

[00:17:12] TV producer with million dollar budgets starts business.

[00:25:44] High points included managing big projects and getting small clients, like a medical group, for video series. More big clients came in for social media videos. Low point involved $75,000 debt, selling house, and downsizing. Persistence paid off in fifth year of business.

[00:31:53] Importance of coaches in analyzing business profits.

[00:39:23] Book: Built to Sell, CEO niches down. Annual reflection ritual for Yvonne's successful firm.

[00:41:08] Family vacations for a week, enjoying experiences.

[00:51:32] Employees appreciate being given what you lacked. Funny LinkedIn meeting and local networking group. Leads pouring in after consistent effort. Journey from struggling to successful business development.

[00:53:29] Networking: a slow but proven business strategy.

[00:59:32] "Being the king of your own kingdom"

1. How important is it for business owners to consider the perspective of their employees and think about what they would want as employees themselves?
2. Can you relate to the feeling of being trapped in a job or situation and wanting to break free to start your own business?
3. Have you ever had a humorous interaction or experience with someone on a professional networking platform like LinkedIn?
4. How has consistent involvement in local small business networking groups helped you generate leads and grow your business?
5. Can you share your journey from struggling to generate leads to now having leads come in consistently?
6. What are your thoughts on positive reinforcement and the importance of recognizing and acknowledging the work of all team members, including freelancers and assistants?
7. Have you ever experienced the impact of not being informed or acknowledged for an award you won? How did it make you feel and how do you ensure others are recognized for their achievements now?
8. How did you go about finding and converting the pavilion into your current office space?
9. What factors do you consider beyond profit and loss when making financial decisions for your business?
10. Can you share your experience with networking and how it has been a slow but proven method for generating leads?