00;00;00;04 - 00;00;26;13
Torrey
Couple of years after college as we were expanding the agency, and there wasn't just the founding partners as part of the team. I think that's where the big growth happened, which was when we started implementing processes. And that's a big thing that I think even today helps us stand out in the marketplace because a lot of video production companies are kind of black boxes of secrets.

00;00;29;10 - 00;00;42;03
Paul
Welcome to Video NBA, the podcast, where we dove deep into the dynamic world of video production and explore the art and business behind the lens.

00;00;45;24 - 00;01;07;02
Paul
Today on the podcast, we're speaking with Tory Tai, a.k.a president of Spark House in Orange County, California. Spark House is one of the leading production companies in L.A. and with Tory at the helm, the company enjoys a lot of referrals and repeat customers, which he says makes up the majority of its revenue. So how does Spark House ensure repeat business?

00;01;07;19 - 00;01;22;01
Paul
Well, that's one of the questions we've got for him on today's podcast. And so without further ado, I bring you Tory tie in anchor for time. All right. I'm here with Tory, Italian, aka Tory. Thanks for joining us today.

00;01;22;28 - 00;01;23;24
Torrey
No, thanks for having me.

00;01;24;25 - 00;01;43;25
Paul
Tory, you've been around the video production business for some time. You had your first start up in high school all the way through to today. You're I mean, you're running a great agency CEO of Spark House. What are you. Tell us a little bit about yourself. And again, I would have I would have introduced you properly here prior to this interview.

00;01;43;25 - 00;01;48;18
Paul
But why don't you sort of give us your origin story and sort of tell us how you got started in the business?

00;01;49;28 - 00;02;14;28
Torrey
Yeah. So like you mentioned, I did start a version of Spark House. We had we've changed our names a few times and rebranded through the years. But I started a version of Spark House, a video production company back in high school. Basically, I was I was taking a video production class in high school, really enjoyed it. And obviously we're doing kind of my own little fun videos as a like a high school kid.

00;02;15;02 - 00;02;33;17
Torrey
This is even before YouTube really was popular, but just make making fun videos, whether it's with my water polo team or just with some friends. And my mom actually was and still is a residential real estate agent and she knew I was really into video and basically one day came home and said, you know, hey, check out this video.

00;02;33;18 - 00;02;55;04
Torrey
I hired a company to film this house of mine that that she was trying to sell. And again, this was all kind of new. People weren't doing that to to promote houses yet. And as a high school kid, she said, you know, I paid someone $150 to do this. And I said, you know, that's not even a good video and I'll do it for half the price.

00;02;55;04 - 00;03;39;09
Torrey
And that's where it started. That's where I figured out I could make money making videos. And so that's how I got my foot in the door, started making videos for real estate companies, expanded that into almost a full service marketing agency. We did websites and we did printing and design work and things like that. And as that grew, basically the real estate market then crashed in 2008 and I decided to head to film school and focus more on the creative aspect and graduated from USC Film School, came back to Orange County and then started doing what we're doing today, which is more branded content, commercial work, helping companies use video basically to grow their business,

00;03;39;09 - 00;03;41;12
Torrey
promote their product, promote their business, things like that.

00;03;42;14 - 00;03;50;20
Paul
Describe for us like an average day for you as owner of Spark House. Give us an idea of, you know, the day to day activities.

00;03;51;09 - 00;04;13;03
Torrey
Yeah. So I mean in the office as being a creative company, we start late. So we, we work late and we sleep in. So at the office here, we start normally around 10 a.m. in the office here we have producers and post-production people, the editing side. So a lot of what we're doing on the, on the bulk of our days is, is prepping future productions.

00;04;13;03 - 00;04;35;26
Torrey
So that might be doing things like casting actors, finding locations to film at, writing scripts, things like that, booking schedules and doing things around the preproduction side. And then we also have the post-production team, the editing team. So they're going to be in here editing, editing videos, animating graphics, finalizing things that we've already filmed, things like that, and delivering them to the client.

00;04;36;19 - 00;05;00;04
Torrey
So that's happening every day, Monday through Friday, and then about two, maybe three days a week. We also have on location or production days. And so I guess we have a mix of how those go. We have multiple sprinter vans where we actually go out on location and film at a business, whether it's like inside their manufacturing facility or talking to their team members.

00;05;00;23 - 00;05;27;22
Torrey
Or we also film on location that like rented area. So we'll rent a lot of houses or get permits to go film at the beach or a park. Or we might be promoting more of a product instead of just a company. We'll do the filming there. And then we also the last thing we have is a studio actually here in our in our office here in Costa mesa, where we will build a set that we've built fake conference rooms, bedrooms, things like that, where we'll film in the studio.

00;05;27;22 - 00;05;42;20
Torrey
It just depends on the creative of how we approach that. So again, on the day to day, we might be prepping or finishing a project here. And then I would say the busier days we're actually doing that, that actual film production. But in the end we're a full service video production company.

00;05;44;02 - 00;06;04;03
Paul
How long Tory did it take to get to sort of the high performance company that you've got right now? You mentioned that first it was a couple of realtor videos, but now you've jumped ahead some time. Can you give us a sense of sort of the the speed bumps that have happened along the way? How long did it take you to sort of get to where you are now?

00;06;05;18 - 00;06;27;22
Torrey
Yeah, we came up in, I think, in a different way than a lot of other companies. We didn't ever take funding to to grow the business. It was a lot of and like I said, I was a filmmaker. I am a filmmaker. So I actually would go out, do the filming, do the directing, we would get paid and we would put that money back into the business to grow that, you know, kind of slowly.

00;06;28;09 - 00;06;53;16
Torrey
So it definitely wasn't like an overnight thing. We would film something. We would buy a better camera, we'd film something, we'd buy better lights, we'd film something else, we buy something else and kind of grow that probably around a couple of years after college as we were expanding the agency and there wasn't just the founding partners as part of the team, I think that's where the big growth happened, which was when we started implementing processes.

00;06;53;16 - 00;07;26;08
Torrey
And that's a big thing that I think even today helps us stand out in the marketplace because a lot of video production companies are kind of black boxes of secrets where they don't really communicate super well, schedules and timelines and deliverables with their clients. Or at least that's the experience that I've been told by, by the clients that say, you know, we're a breath of fresh air when they work with us, but we have a very specific process that we've built so that we can plug and play, whether it's adding an outside director or a cinematographer that has never worked with us.

00;07;26;09 - 00;07;39;17
Torrey
They know exactly where their job starts and where the responsibilities end. And once we implemented that system, that allowed us to then scale basically as quickly as we wanted to or as we had the clients coming in.

00;07;39;26 - 00;07;43;02
Paul
Like through a project management system or something like that.

00;07;43;25 - 00;08;14;25
Torrey
Yeah. So we've changed the actual technology of how we implement that process. We've used everything from project management side. We have like a sauna and Trello and we've used on Monday. Right now we're currently using a system called Right and we've been using that probably for the last four or five years, but the process was more literally just writing it down on paper and having and we have about and we might skip a step, we might add a step, but it gives us the kind of bones, the blueprint to every project.

00;08;15;04 - 00;08;38;25
Torrey
And again, at the beginning when we were, I would say, kind of winging it in my head, I really fought this, the idea of making a set process for our pre-production, our production process, because I always thought like every video is different because we create things like animations, we do interview based videos, we do videos with actors, with videos, with voice overs.

00;08;39;11 - 00;09;13;23
Torrey
So each one is different. But again, once I really sat down and we, we outlined a full process where, hey, 90% of the videos are going to go through most of these steps. That's where, again, it allowed us to kind of scale and have just a set of checks and balances and milestones along the way. And the big thing is being able to bring someone in, drop them into that process and have them be able to understand where they fit within, where their role is versus before when it was all up in my head, it was really hard to add people because it was a lot of training, a lot of onboarding to get people

00;09;13;23 - 00;09;19;07
Torrey
up to speed. But again, like everything is documented now and we can add people and remove people from that pretty quickly.

00;09;20;19 - 00;09;39;17
Paul
Amazing. So it sounds as though that are you still deeply involved in the creative side of the business or are you more on making sure and overseeing everything's happening? And if so, how do you balance that creativity versus the ongoing demands of the business?

00;09;40;09 - 00;10;11;00
Torrey
Yeah, so I'm definitely involved on the creative side. I would say I'm more involved on the strategic side. A lot of what our clients come to us for is they've never created a video before, so they really don't know what they would like and what they dislike yet. And so pointing them in the right direction of saying, you know, this type of video is going to help this type of product be promoted via Facebook versus a different type of video might be better if we're going to promote it on Connected TV or cable TV or even Tik-Tok.

00;10;11;00 - 00;10;31;12
Torrey
Now, like we have a lot of different strategies. So I'm pretty involved on I guess like the, the content side of deciding what type of video and the format that we're going to be delivering. But then I do bring in basically outside deciding on the nuances of the lighting, maybe the music choice, selecting actors and things like that.

00;10;31;12 - 00;10;53;29
Torrey
I've never been one to I hate to say I don't care. I just it's not super important to me because I know that if we switch out an actor, as long as the content is there, it's going to be a useful tool to our clients. So at the end of the day, my goal is always to create a video or a piece of content that's going to help our clients accomplish whatever their goals are.

00;10;54;06 - 00;11;15;10
Torrey
So that could be to oftentimes sell more product, you know, drive more traffic to a website. But sometimes it's other things, whether it's an educational video, to make sure that their customers fully understand how to use a product which at the end of the day raises customer satisfaction or trains an employee on how to build a product or distribute something.

00;11;15;14 - 00;11;22;16
Torrey
And again, just it accomplishes their goals. There's a lot of different things you can do with video and that that's where I live in on the day to day. Normally.

00;11;23;02 - 00;11;44;09
Paul
The strategic side, that's great. Well, I think that a lot of folks considering going into the business or newcomers in the business or even those that have been in it a few years. They're probably currently by choice or not by choice still in the out there, grabbing shots in the field and then running back and doing the editing and that sort of thing.

00;11;44;09 - 00;11;49;16
Paul
But you've you've found a way to sort of separate yourself and really focus on your strengths. That's what it sounds like.

00;11;50;11 - 00;12;13;06
Torrey
Yeah. And surrounding myself with the right team members that, that I can trust to execute those things. I would say I'm on set personally, probably again, 80, 90% of the time I'm not just completely hands off, but you'll oftentimes just see me basically sitting in the corner on a computer working with potential clients, taking on biz dev type things.

00;12;13;12 - 00;12;45;00
Torrey
But we have really cool technologies now that allow me to view what's being filmed on my phone. I can see it in real time. I can see what's been recorded. So if there are any things that again, I'm not super big on giving creative input, but again, strategic input if the product is not being displayed in the format that I know the client wants or as small as, you know, some distracting element in the video, then I would hop in and collaborate with with the people actually directing or filming the video.

00;12;45;00 - 00;12;48;03
Torrey
But yeah, I'm not the one out there anymore clicking the record button.

00;12;49;15 - 00;13;03;06
Paul
Yeah. So what sort of distinguishes your firm in the market in Orange County or throughout the general Los Angeles area? What is it that you're doing that is proving to be successful? Yeah.

00;13;03;23 - 00;13;30;07
Torrey
So I think going back to what I was saying at the beginning like that, our process I think is key, but it is a little bit hard to advertise the process as being the most important thing. But if you talk to our customers, you read some of the reviews that we have with our past customers. Our process makes sure that not only are we efficiently getting through a project, we're hitting the deadlines that are required, but we do have clear collaboration points with the client.

00;13;30;07 - 00;13;51;19
Torrey
So they are comfortable going all the way through knowing that they're going to get the video that they want. Again, other video production companies, oftentimes the clients just don't know what's going on until they get the video at the end. And when you deliver a video at that point, it's too late to adjust something in the script, changing actor, things like that.

00;13;51;19 - 00;14;14;22
Torrey
So we again, we have those check points to make sure the client's reviewing and understanding it. The other thing that I think we really take to heart, just being a small business ourself, growing the business with small budgets and smaller clients, no matter the size of the project we really take and what we call like an entrepreneurial approach to the production and the budgeting of a project.

00;14;14;22 - 00;14;33;06
Torrey
So if we don't have to go spend extra money, whether it be to source specific locations, to rent certain types of equipment, we're not going to do that just to make the budget bigger. And at the end of the day, that's passing savings down to to to the client side. And they and they see that and they know that.

00;14;33;06 - 00;14;52;04
Torrey
So different clients want different things. So some of our bigger clients with larger budgets, they may want to be completely hands off. So we're going to pay, we're going to rent every location. We're going to source every big thing that they want versus some of these smaller clients that we work with. It's more important to have something come in under budget or, you know, within a certain limit.

00;14;52;04 - 00;15;07;19
Torrey
So we'll offer up, hey, here's a free location that we're able we have access to. If you guys want to utilize this, we're not going to charge you for that or that's where our studio comes into play. A lot of times we'll film things in our studio instead of sourcing a location again, passing those savings on to the client.

00;15;08;01 - 00;15;40;20
Torrey
And then the only other kind of thing that I've noticed that separates us is, is we've invested heavily over the last couple of years of owning all of our own equipment. So like I said, we have multiple sprinter vans, we have multiple six k red cameras. We have all of the lighting equipment and audio equipment to do. I would say like the majority of our commercial productions can be done without sourcing any outside equipment that allows us to be flexible on schedule, film something really quickly and again not have to incur costs every time we turn on the camera.

00;15;40;26 - 00;15;57;04
Torrey
A lot of production companies just don't have that kind of base where they can invest that kind of money into these cameras that that cost as much as a car. Now, so those other companies are renting a camera every single time they go out and film. And that is fairly common, but it's just something that we decided to invest in do early.

00;15;58;26 - 00;16;22;03
Paul
And in order to maintain that kind of overhead you got there, you've mentioned studio, you've mentioned some staff members, you've mentioned a couple of six K red cameras, which I know aren't cheap, etc.. How is it that you're finding clients that are able to afford your services, say, compared to someone else without all of that gear?

00;16;23;10 - 00;16;42;10
Torrey
Yeah, it helps that we've been around for a long time. We have a big Rolodex of past clients. We try as hard as we can to make sure that once they've produce a video with us, they're happy with the end result. They want to come back and hire us again. So we do have a lot of repeat clients.

00;16;42;10 - 00;16;58;00
Torrey
And when I say repeat clients, we have some clients that come back to us every quarter when they're launching a new product. And we've had some clients that have come back to us five years after they did their first video just because they haven't needed a video since then. But again, we keep top of mind when it comes to just basically anything video.

00;16;58;13 - 00;17;19;10
Torrey
So a big like return customer base, we do have a really big referral base as well. I'm personally on the board for the Ad Federation of Orange County, so there's over 150 advertising agencies right here in Orange County that that specialize in different things, whether it's a company like ours that does video. There's companies out there that do social media websites, things like that.

00;17;19;21 - 00;17;46;13
Torrey
We oftentimes service those agencies on their behalf for their clients. So again, if you hire an agency and you need a website, you probably also need a video or things like that. And we we we get brought in, whether that's on a white label basis to work for that agency or just a straight referral. And then the the big thing again, is just if you search our name, you search video production company in Orange County.

00;17;46;22 - 00;18;05;13
Torrey
We have hundreds of five star reviews from our clients, our past clients. So we kind of have that proof of success and happiness. And then we're happy to to offer referrals. You know, if people wanted to check out our past clients, but we just have kind of that good, big reputation here, at least in Orange County.

00;18;06;25 - 00;18;33;10
Paul
Great referrals, great testimonials, completely underrated way to grow the business and maintain the business. So well said for sure. How do you stay profitable while growing top does talk a little bit about the challenges of that because bringing in work may or may not be easy. Staying profitable is sometimes challenging on these projects. Can you address that a little bit?

00;18;34;22 - 00;19;05;16
Torrey
Yeah. I mean, I would say profit on a on a project to project basis that definitely does fall on basically myself on properly pricing out a project. You know, so if someone comes in and they describe what they want and the budgets, they say their budgets $20,000, but they describe a project that should cost $30,000. It's about, in a nice way figuring out how do we whether we get them to increase their budget, we get them to lower their expectations.

00;19;05;24 - 00;19;29;15
Torrey
I never want to say, hey, we can do that $30,000 project for 20 and actually deliver a $20,000 project. They're not going to be happy with that. So there is that this dev side of it, making sure we're setting proper expectations so that we can be profitable. But then when it once it enters our doors and we start working on it, it does lay on the project manager and the producer for that project.

00;19;29;15 - 00;19;56;26
Torrey
So we we have three major checkpoints throughout the project where we actually review the full budget. So what we we have a budget template that we created. So when we kick off a project, we input everything. What we're estimating things should cost at each phase. And again, we basically can see that if we follow this plan, it'll be profitable at the end or it will be close or whatever it might be.

00;19;56;26 - 00;20;16;02
Torrey
And those are the things we watch out for. We then review that same budget at what we call the production section of our process, which is like the day of filming. So right before we go into filming, we're going to review that that budget. Oftentimes you'll see that there is either a deficit in that budget or there's a surplus.

00;20;16;10 - 00;20;44;16
Torrey
And based off of that, we might make some small adjustments literally the day before the production on how big the crew is, how much we're spending on even small things like craft services and props and wardrobe and things like that. And then the third time is actually after production. Before we go into the editing phase, we're going to review that budget one more time to basically tell the editing team how much time they can allocate to to edit it so that we are still, again profitable.

00;20;44;26 - 00;21;04;07
Torrey
At the end of the day, we are always going to push to make sure that we are delivering the product that the client wants, that at a high quality versus saying, hey, we have to to make a certain really hard line profit. And obviously when you look at the books, it doesn't look amazing. Every month because of that.

00;21;04;07 - 00;21;39;24
Torrey
But it's something, again, that we think we've seen through the years at the end of the day, that that is going to help make our customers happy, keep us in business, get our referrals up and things like that. I think the major factor though on overall profitability within the company is just on lead flow and incoming projects. Since we are not the type of agency that's on a retainer where we have a guaranteed contract with with a company for six months, a year, whatever it might be, we're really just sitting here kind of waiting for projects to come through the door.

00;21;39;24 - 00;22;07;10
Torrey
So when November is coming up, like November, December, when every company seems to be on on vacation, taking breaks, they're out of the office. We definitely see a dip and we have to prepare for that. And we'll have busier months that that counteract that. But we've kind of learned to see those kind of trends that we're going to be seeing as those different milestones kind of or not milestones, but different holidays, different back to school events or things like that might affect our business flow.

00;22;07;10 - 00;22;31;17
Paul
What advice would you give to newcomers? Yes, that is our audience for the podcast. Those considering video production newcomers or even those just sort of in the early years or maybe old, old guys like me that are interested in hearing the insights from others. What advice do you have for those wanting to get into video production?

00;22;31;17 - 00;22;56;08
Torrey
So again, I think there's a lot of different ways to to go at it and a lot of people have done it in different ways. One of the things that I have seen a lot of value and I think a lot of people can easily take advantage of this, is to understand and to become, at least partially talented at doing every step of the services you're offering.

00;22;56;15 - 00;23;17;24
Torrey
So if you're talking like just purely production, like understanding how cameras work, understanding how lighting works, how audio works, so that you not only can potentially step in and help when needed, but also you know how to talk the talk. And you can kind of plan with a little bit a level of expertize or a level of knowledge.

00;23;18;07 - 00;23;38;24
Torrey
Just to give you an example, if you hire director of photography, ADP, and you request them to set up a scene and they say it's going to take 2 hours to set up that scene, if you have no experience in like cameras and lighting and things like that, you really don't have much to be able to push back on that.

00;23;38;24 - 00;23;59;00
Torrey
But again, like I said, since I was a DP, I was doing the lighting. I have experience in that even as things change on the technology side, I can still come in and be like, Hey, what if we adjust it in this format? Or maybe we approach it a little bit differently so that we can can be a little bit more efficient in this setup.

00;23;59;00 - 00;24;32;20
Torrey
And efficiency is the name of the game when it comes to production and making sure going back to what you were saying with profitability, making sure that we're actually going to be making money on that the production day. So getting your hands dirty and understanding it I think can go a long way. And that also goes to, I guess when you were saying like profitability and even cash flow, if you do have a downturn on a quarter or a month and you don't have a lot of lead flow coming in on the business side, you if you understand how to produce some of these videos, not to say is the best business advice to always

00;24;32;20 - 00;24;51;26
Torrey
be in the weeds, but you're able to step in if you need to, to increase that profitability by saying, hey, maybe we don't need to to outsource this writing or we don't need to bring in so much outside crew because we're going to hunker down and actually produce some of these with the people in-house. And again, you can increase your profitability for a couple of months.

00;24;51;26 - 00;24;55;01
Torrey
I won't be super efficient, but it allows you to do that as needed.

00;24;55;01 - 00;25;08;08
Paul
Amazing, amazing, great insight and some great advice to our work and listeners working. Our listeners find you online. Why don't you give us your virtual pen about how folks can track you down?

00;25;09;10 - 00;25;30;16
Torrey
Yeah. So our website for Spark House is going to be the best spot. We have a ton of content on there, both about our our process, our company and the thousands of videos that we produce. So that's going to be the E Spark House dot com. Also on there if you guys visit our website, sign up for our featured Friday email list.

00;25;30;25 - 00;25;49;20
Torrey
Every Friday we send out our favorite and most recent video that we produced for one of our clients. So again, it's just kind of a fun way to see what we're doing because I can't put everything on our website, there's too much stuff, but every Friday we email out, whether it's a commercial or a training video or a testimonial video, something that that we produced over the last month.

00;25;50;01 - 00;26;13;03
Torrey
And then myself personally, I have my own website to dot icons, so tio r e y t dot com. I just did the t because as you said at the beginning, TikTok is a little bit of tricky to spell and say, so I just left it there. But you can check out there. I got a bunch of articles that I've written both on video and business on Entrepreneur magazine and Forbes and things like that that you can reference out.

00;26;13;21 - 00;26;21;06
Paul
It's a quarantine. All right. Thanks very much. Again, thanks for being on the podcast today and keep crushing it out there.

00;26;21;28 - 00;26;24;14
Torrey
Hey, I appreciate it.

Season 2

Video MBA - Torrey Tayenaka. SparkHouse.