@0:00 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Hello everyone and welcome to the shades of entrepreneurship this is your host Mr.

Gabriel Flores today I'm here with two Portland Oregon all stars I'm really excited about this one I've been checking it I should mention it I was checking out their email I mean their website it's phenomenal Ray and Joyce saying how are we doing yes I'm really excited about this one again you guys are here locally here in the Pacific Northwest what you guys really do is some pretty remarkable work with some pretty awesome content but I'm not gonna talk about I'm gonna let you guys it but first Roy I'm gonna start with you go a rake I'm gonna start with you go ahead and introduce yourself who is Ray uh yeah I am a filmmaker right now but I my background was in finance

@1:00 - Ray Tsang

That's 15 years ago, and then Joyce, she'll talk about this in a bit too, but she was an engineer.

when we got married back in 2009, we decided we wanted to take whatever energy we had being in our 20s to put into something creative but also make an impact in the world.

And so we started a film production company just to start telling stories. And then we've been doing that for the last 15 years, we're very blessed with that.

@1:27 - Joyce Tsang

Yeah, and I was really saying I am the executive producer, and only today, right now. So I work with our creative team to create content and make films.

But yeah, like Ray mentioned, we both kind of took an untraditional path to film. I have a mechanical engineering degree and was in kind of R&D engineering for a few years post college until I realized I didn't want to do that forever.

and kind of quickly made a pivot out of that and into into the creative world and first via photo and then video.

@2:12 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Yes, and now what you guys created actually is is only today. So only today. Tell us a little bit about only say what is it what does it do and how did you guys kind of start it.

@2:24 - Ray Tsang

Man, that's a great question. I'll I'll I'll start with the name because Joyce and I have left past like professional careers to build our filmmaking career.

We wanted to be to meeting something and so the name only today really is just a quote from Mother Teresa where I'm going to butcher this but she had a quote saying.

Tomorrow's not here yet. Yesterday is gone. only have today and I took that like we need to make the impact make an impact and make our stamp in the world.

Starting. with like the first day we jump into filmmaking and everything we do is kind of in service to that.

And then hopefully make a living out of it. And so we've been very fortunate to have found clients who really align with our purpose driven kind of our purpose driven business of telling stories.

And telling stories that just need to be told and finding a way to get paid for that. And so we do work with a lot of media broadcasters on large like Fortune 500 companies that bring us on to do brand film, to do commercial work.

those are all like amazing projects. But we've been very fortunate that I think 90% of our work is still about storytelling.

We'll do, you know, the shoe commercial, the coffee commercial here and there, but a lot of it centers around lot of like human interest stories and people do

awesome stuff around the world though and we get to just kind of peek into their lives.

@4:05 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

So how do like let's let's kind of so one of the things that's really interesting folks if you I really encourage you guys to take an opportunity to check out the only today dot tv website and if you if you forget that by all means please visit the shades of e.com sign up for the newsletter and we'll have this information but it's really really fascinating what you do because you're able to take film and make a story out of it but in a very short short amount of time how do how does that like feasibly how does that even possible and how much recording is done for a you know 30 second film.

@4:41 - Joyce Tsang

Yeah that's interesting I think what is considered long or short is really changing quickly. Very true. Like I feel like five years ago even a two or three minute film would be considered a short film and in today's world especially in advertising and with social media content like that is a long form thing.

So we do I mean, you know, there are times when we do 15 second things, 30 second things, and it's hard, you know, I'm not gonna lie.

It's hard to try and squeeze in some form of storytelling and have it still feel authentic in that amount of time.

But, you know, we always start with listening. We always start with listening and really trying to understand what this is.

Both listening to our clients and what they're trying to do with this project, whatever that may be, as well as listening to whoever's on camera and what their story truly is and really trying to distill that down sometimes to just one or two lines.

And it's hard, and it's been a learning and a work in progress as attention spans seems to get shorter and shorter and shorter these days, really trying to narrow things down and focus on like what is the heart of that story.

@5:53 - Ray Tsang

I will add to that Gabriel. thing I was thinking about recently and just like thinking about this podcast too is

yes like some of these pieces 15 seconds that might be like the final piece 15 to 30 seconds but you had asked like how much filming happens and like some some of these projects still take two dates for a 30 second video and while we want to distill stories for the audience and like whatever the attention span is what we don't want to do is fast track the process of pointing together those stories because there's people behind the camera and in front of the camera and we're just going to show up intrude on someone's life and to just to film them we sit down with them kind of like this and we'll have a conversation just to make sure that the story would put out there is authentic that they're aligned with it that everyone's aligned with it and everyone walks away from a film production wanting to do it again and think for us that's a big win we don't want to we believe that process is just as important as the final product or video that comes out

@7:00 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

And that is, that's such a great point. think that's one, you know, a lot of folks seem to take into consideration.

It's not about the, the quantity of the things you produce, but it's about the quality that you produce it in.

And you know, one of the things Ray, you mentioned is, is, know, learning your guests, right, learning who you're working with.

That's exactly what we do. You know, as I mentioned before we got on the air. My nonprofit Latino founders just started a business accelerator program.

And yesterday, our first kind of cohort for this, or the first meeting for this new cohort. The first thing we did was really just with learning each other.

What is your name? What do you do? What's your background? What is your business? How did you start it?

Because to your point, these, essentially these advertisements are, it's kind of like your, your elevator pitch, right? have a very short amount of time to disseminate your information, what your goals are and how you, how you started it.

But you also need to do it in a very clear, concise of way and also humanize yourself in the process.

then you guys kind of take it at another step forward because you also need visuals with it, right? How does, how does.

is like, take me through your guys's mindset when you're putting something together and you're thinking about the end user experience or kind of engagement with your films.

How does your guys's thought process go and like, hey, we need to make sure we're engaging.

@8:14 - Joyce Tsang

kind of tactics things you guys think about when you're thinking about that? Oh, there's a lot of things I kind of go in that go at, you know, but again, with like the the short attention span these days is really trying to find a good hook.

That could be something visually just very captivating. It could be a sound bite. It could just be like dropping you into something.

It could be a controversial statement, really kind of thinking through from a like from an audience standpoint and then matching that with like what is true to this story?

Like what actually makes sense here? And I think there's a lot of that happens in what we call. production in all of the planning and all of the the discovery work and a lot of the the creative building beforehand before we show up on set before we push the record button it's like what are we trying to say and how do we best say it you know sometimes you know and for us that's you know that can be done through storyboarding that can be done through kind of creative exploration with whoever it is on the other side and sometimes sometimes we plan for something and we show up and you know another opportunity presents us out and we grab that and I think a lot of what we do is going into things being as prepared as we can so that when we show up we have that room for spontaneity and for pivoting because if anybody's ever been on a film set you know there's always something that doesn't go quite as planned and and we've learned to roll with it adapt to it and make the best of out of out of those situations and uh sometimes

And so better than the stuff that we come up with, sometimes represented with options that we didn't know about when we were when we were planning it.

@10:11 - Ray Tsang

Just to add to that, there are and not to discount like other people in film production. I mean, it's just like the equipment is very accessible and like, know, so much content is being made.

And when people reach out to us, we like to think it's not because like we're great like filmmakers, Joyce and I like kind of came up like learning learning to shoot and learning how to be like really quick in our feet and think on the fly and adapt like what Joyce was talking about.

But we feel like our value comes from that pre-production of thinking about if we only have 15 seconds to get someone to share a message, we maybe get less than one second to convince someone at the beginning of a

so on whether to keep watching or not. And a lot of our pre-production goes into like, is that quick hook?

What is how do we keep people engaged through that first quarter second and then three more seconds? And hopefully they'll watch the last 11 seconds.

And that just I think comes from both a lot of work before showing up on set just to really think through that.

And then as soon as we get on set and we're in someone's home or we're in a studio, things change, problems happen.

And then our experience comes in, it's like, okay, well, if this happens, we will immediately pivot and this is more we're gonna do because it's versus like taking a gamble that this may or may not work for our client.

So there's just like a lot of, I think value in kind of that planning process. And hopefully when you show up and it's never happened, but hopefully it's a smooth drama-free shoot.

But something always breaks or something always happens on that.

@11:56 - Joyce Tsang

Something always happens. I do want to add though, I think there's a. It's a really important piece in that process is building a rapport and trust with the folks that you're working with, with the client, with the talent, with your crew, so that everybody has an understanding of your intentions and the process and what we're all trying to say.

And so when things come up, there's a healthy discussion and there's a lot of trust in that process so nobody feels like it's, you know, it's that we're all doing this together.

And I think that helps lot when, you know, in executing a plan that, you know, is complicated. Filmmaking is one big, giant problem-solving exercise.

@12:51 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Yeah. You know, and I imagine the trust building is so imperative because, you know, right, show up on... a set and the actor or individual you're working with might actually have a different view of what the end product should be and trying to find that common ground is so probably sometimes difficult, but to Joyce your point it's about creating that trust and respect and really understanding like hey you guys in the film makers I'm going to come to you because I understand you know the expertise and you know how to find that hook because folks you know Joyce was mentioning the attention span continues to get shorter and shorter and a good example of this is youtube if you go to youtube previously you know a couple of years ago even an instagram and in facebook the reels that the time amount for reels has shortened so for example if you go to youtube and you post a reel it has to be under 60 seconds to be considered a short if it's over 60 seconds it's considered video and so I've been trying to be mindful because I have hundreds of reels from all these different discussions right and then to you guys's point I take I spend more time editing those reels and the actual kind

conversations, right, to making sure we find the right piece, find the right hook, have some visualizations at the end.

So I have an end screen, what's on YouTube and so on and so forth. And so there's a lot of things that go into this.

And now one of the things you, Joyce, you mentioned too, is the pre-planning stage. Kind of take us through that process.

you're thinking of idea and you're working with one of your clients, you guys kind of do like a storyboard and visuals, or is it more just of organic discussion, how does that plan kind of materialize?

@14:28 - Joyce Tsang

It's, like I said, it always starts with listening and going back to what are the goals, who's your audience, what are you trying to say, are you trying to get them to do something, are you trying to get them to buy, they trying to click, donate, or just learn more, what is that thing that we're going after ultimately.

And then doing a lot of research and listening to figure out what is the strongest story angle. That is, and that sometimes involves research online.

There's a lot of pre-interviewing. that we do just to understand what we're working with. And then we get into things of what are the themes that we're exploring, writing what we call a pre-pro script, that isn't exactly what we end up with at the end, but just so everybody has an idea of what we're trying to stay and then we can kind of come around that to then find what are the shots, what does that story board look like, and really trying to start like reverse engineer that and start with what the goals are, what are we trying to say, and then back it up from there.

think it's really, when I started, at least earlier on, many years ago, we get really excited about shots and visuals and like how cool that is if we can just do this or shoot here and that.

you know, right over the years, it's like really hard and takes a lot of discipline to not jump to those moments in the process and really just dial it back to kind of a one-liner of what are we trying to say.

And then letting the story, letting your collaborators give them room to provide their input and their suggestions. I mean, right now you're talking to two of us, but there's so many other people in the process that contribute to this.

And they all have their expertise, and they're so much better at what they do than you know, Ray and I like we're producers and we bring people together to do this.

But really working with the team to kind of solve that puzzle, solve that puzzle and figure out where we start, how does that build in the story and like how does it end?

And that rings true, whether it's a 30 second commercial or a five minute Super Bowl teas. It's all kind of the same thing of working with, working with really good people, finding really good collaborators and coming together to make something awesome.

@16:54 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Yeah, you know what's interesting about that is, so folks that are listening, you know, when you think about your business.

business. You're trying to create the ideal marketing profile, right, for your consumers. However, Joyce and Ray have to do it every time differently because, again, their clients have different consumers and they have different goals.

And understanding the goal is so important because then you actually plan your tactics around that goal. Okay, now you have your goal.

Okay, well, tactfully, how are you going to accomplish that? operationally, what do you need to tactfully accomplish that as well?

So those are things that kind of take into consideration. And sometimes you might realize, you know what, I actually cannot, this is a lofty goal that, tactfully and operationally, we cannot do so we need to scale it down a little bit as well.

And having those, you know, crucial conversations is so important because it's interesting because you guys are essentially doing it for each one of your clients over and over.

So that's a really kind of fascinating thing. Now, Ray, you mentioned earlier too, you know, sure you and Joyce have been doing this for some time, but you guys had to start somewhere.

So let's take a step back. Talk about kind of like your entry into the film world and why did you guys decide, you know, kind of get into becoming producers.

@18:08 - Ray Tsang

Man. Okay, so when we started back in 2009, when we decided we made the decision, we're just gonna try storytelling, jump into filmmaking, YouTube 15 years ago, wasn't the thing YouTube was today, not as many resources right now, you can learn anything on YouTube back then.

@18:24 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

YouTube University, I love it.

@18:26 - Ray Tsang

Yeah, and back then, even just trying to figure out how to use like the newest cameras are coming out, no content, very little, right?

on forums, not even like Reddit or anything. was just like messaging boards and forums trying to learn. so we found ourselves in a position where we had to self teach ourselves how to use a camera, how to edit, how to tell a story.

And we took a gamble on ourselves where we decided when we basically overnight quit our jobs and took our savings, which we're going to use to

put it at the down payment for a house and instead put that towards education, taking a lot of workshops, buying equipment, just licensing software, getting all the tools we needed so we could in our little apartment just start practicing and trying and so it was we just took a year to squeeze in at those 10,000 hours of like learning and failures and we grew up in LA so fortunately with LA it's year round like event and wedding and like filming season kind of unlike the Pacific Northwest in many ways and so there were lot of people that were willing to give us an opportunity to film their event, do some photography all of that year round and that allowed us to really like fail and fail very quickly and learn what our strengths were and learn how to build a business around.

@20:00 - Joyce Tsang

filmmaking. Yeah, I think that one of the things that I look back on now is that very, I don't know that it's just like, I mean, I guess it was part of the plan, but at the moment it was also like, well, we put our job, so like we got to do, we got to figure this out.

got to figure it out fast, we got to figure it out fast, is the iteration loop of learning. We made sure that was as short as humanly possible.

So there was a time where we were shooting every week editing every day, and so we learned very quickly what worked, what didn't work.

And that, you know, also it was the same on the business side, like we would meet a lot of people, talk to them, try and get jobs and kind of making that loop really short and learning, okay, like this thing probably shouldn't say that or like probably shouldn't do this.

And this worked really well, so we should do it again. And really. um, squeezing in those 10,000 hours like as fast as humanly possible.

Um, and we went from doing kind of just like free things and test things to $10,000 or $15,000 jobs in about a year.

which was, uh, I think, I mean, it's just part of that trajectory and that path and that journey of, um, starting with yes.

That's one of, that's one of our core values and something that Ray, um, has instilled in me over the years is start with yes and figure out how to do it and do it together and do it with good people.

Um, you'd be surprised how far and how fast you can go.

@21:43 - Ray Tsang

Um, can I share one more thing? think, um, so there's the filmmaking fit production part of it. Um, an amazingly fun thing to get into.

can get really creative. Um, and you can do so much with it, but, um, I also knew I didn't want to be a starving artist and so sure like storytelling was one half of it but I also knew that if we wanted to build a sustainable company if we wanted to build an organization or be a creative that people not will not only hire ones but keep bringing back over and over again we had to figure out what it meant to run a business whether it's and learning putting just as much energy into that and that meant some very simple things that I think a lot of people still are trying to figure out like being prompt with emails or just or always reading in detail and replying in detail and like just acknowledging people and listening to them and so just like I think a lot of soft soft skills obviously they're like business skills of learning how to read a balance sheet like am I making or losing money?

@23:00 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Yeah, and either it's fine as long as we knew when we were losing money and if that was intentional or not And little things like that helped us really get to a point where we could actually within a year be able to pay our bills And make a living and and very quickly make back a lot of that money we spent That we had put out there to learn to buy equipment You know, that's that's a great point right I think that one of the biggest challenges of entrepreneurship especially for those individuals that are just kind of getting into it It's truly understanding cash flow Because I think a lot of there's a lot of hidden fees and hidden costs that we don't take in consideration The amount of electricity the gas you're using to travel locations the marketing flyers Right all of these things once you start taking them a consideration and then you you put that into your operational budget You know like holy crap, you know, I'm actually in the red right and and you know one of the things Joyce you mentioned to is the different Interations that companies goes through as they scale their business, right?

There's there's all opportunities to pivot because you know understanding the market like you mentioned YouTube 15 years ago is not the same as it was today and so you know 15 years ago there probably wasn't in your strategic best interest to focus on YouTube but now it's like what you should right everybody like you mentioned is YouTube University.

Now with that said there's there's certainly some challenges that come with trying to scale the business so joints will start with you first.

What were some of the challenges you remember starting to scale this business?

@24:29 - Joyce Tsang

Learning the business side of it. mean I think the funny enough neither one of us went to film school and I won't speak for right but for me that part was not terribly complicated to learn like yeah there was there's a lot of skill in figuring out a delighting camera and lenses and all that stuff but that for me at least came relatively it felt straightforward to me like there's a lot of hours you put in but like yeah there's a it's there's a there's a way to do that.

The the business business side, the leadership slide that involves humans and humans are complicated and different and everybody has, you know, has a different experience.

so for me, I think some of the challenges that I face and we face early on is understanding and learning how to lead a team, you know, on set and the office.

How do you work with people who you might not want to work with if it's a client or a talent that you didn't get to choose or or a difficult situation, like how do you handle that?

And that isn't something I don't even think they I didn't go to film school, but I don't even think they teach that.

So I think for me, it's it's that side of things is how do you build relationships, how do you nurture relationships, how do you navigate challenging times yet or how do you build trust, like all of those things that nothing and that's.

really not the specific to filmmaking, just in general, of working with people and building a business that I think were some of the bigger challenges up front and they still exist every day.

@26:14 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Very true. Ray, same question. What are some of the challenges you remember kind of building this business?

@26:19 - Ray Tsang

Yeah, man, that's a good question. No one's ever asked that before, but I can tell you exactly the one thing that has made the most impact that I had to get over with.

So my background was in finance. was like a junior analyst, had a private equity firm, and then private equity, and you're working like with Wall Street, it's all about that return, whether that's 15% return a year or 50% or whatever, doubling your money or whatever's the law about the money side.

And it's just like figures on a spreadsheet. And so I had to figure out that if I want to build and scale a business, how do I take this spreadsheet exercise and actually

apply it to our business where it's not going to take us 20 years to figure out how to be able to build a team and whatnot, how do we scale quickly.

And a big part of that came from me asking myself and I forgot the first moment I had to ask myself this but was like how much uh am I willing to bet on myself or ourselves on this business like if we really believe we have a business model here then do we start taking leaps and sometimes taking leaps mean you prematurely hire folks on or you start investing into certain equipment or sometimes it might mean if there's a you know 70% chance this client might want to work with us is it worth just jumping the gun and spending a thousand dollars to just buy and to meet with them in person just to make sure we're all in alignment with no guarantee

of them being our client or a return I guess the way I see it and that has played out not all our bets have really have panned out the way we expected but I'm like the ones that have the chances we've taken on ourselves and the better ourselves have been a 10, 20-fold return and so that it that story about just like taking the bet and spending two grand to go see a client that was 10 years ago almost 10 years ago where just a random not random this form of intern of my previous company had reached out and he was working at Fitmeta or Facebook at the time and he was like hey I think we have this project we think you're the right fit can you meet with us like the day before Thanksgiving and I'm just like oh my gosh

@30:00 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

You know, you mentioned Meta, got some really large corporations that are your, your clients.

@30:05 - Ray Tsang

How did you build that brand and scale your business to where it's at today? You want to take that, Joyce?

@30:12 - Joyce Tsang

Yeah, I mean, I think everything goes back to building relationships. We always look at every project as long term relationship.

Like we, yeah, it has to be successful. Everybody has to be happy walking away from it, but we don't, you know, we're not here for a one time deal.

Like, what can we do to be actually a true, a truly good production partner for you as a client?

where can we add value? we, I think sometimes complicates things because we, not everybody in the production world operates the same way.

And, you know, we, We're trying, we find a balance with, you know, how many hours we work and things like, and what we spend on set.

a lot of times, you know, we try and bring in value that doesn't necessarily end up on a line item in an invoice and we, and the, and the, and the whole goal behind that is to build that trust and have people understand that, yeah, we do good work.

So do a lot of other people, but what else, what else are we adding to this relationship, how else are we helping you as our client move up in your organization or achieve virgals, and that I feel like has been, I mean, not necessarily something.

I don't think it's something that like you can just list on your website as part of like a hey this is what we do, but actually following through and that's why we have some of these very long term clients that have been with us and continue to call us, you know, well over a decade.

year after year for things, you know, as big as the Super Bowl and as small as maybe just an internal internal communications film that they need to do.

Either way, I mean, I think what we often do is just try and foster those relationships and be a great partner.

@32:21 - Ray Tsang

Yeah, just to tag along on that. So I think relationships, Joyce said, super important, like we have meta as a client really because I took the time to get to know and build relationship with an intern.

So even though we stopped working together, he kept me in mind when he like got promoted up at meta and was able to make certain decisions.

And so I mean, that was like a probably a three, four year span of time. And then also taking a chance with our clients, especially in film production, people always want to like do

what's new or see what's next, right? And try to stay in front of trends and then even getting into the sports world really happened because some producer at the NFL, saw some of our event work online.

And really call to be like, would you guys be interested in trying to film some football? We don't really have that much money.

It may not be worth your time. And then the answer is like, yes, of course. We don't know where it's gonna go, but we instead, let's just show good faith.

We show up and put out our best work with no expectations. And at the end of the day, what I feel is lost in a lot of conversations when it comes to pitching and like trying to get the right client is at the end of the day, like even these large Fortune 500 companies, the client is really still one person within this large organization that's trying to do their job.

They don't represent all of Apple. or all of the NFL or whatever it is. They're trying to do their job and their task was just delivering whatever it is, a story, a marketing video, whatever.

And we approach it as we're not working with Meta, we're working with so-and-so, we want to be friends and we want to see you succeed and we will do everything in service of that.

And I think I've gone like some lot of question marks when bringing this up. love, this is how we approach it as money and the profitability is not even our list or priorities.

I just believe if you do good work and you build relationships, your partners, our clients will find a way to make sure we're paid because they want to make sure we're around.

And that has played out over the last decade plus is focusing on people and then people move within from one organization to another and our goal, our hope is-

like they'll remember us when they when they're at when they're VP at another big company. And that's really how we and how we grown our clientele list.

@35:10 - Joyce Tsang

Yeah, that's a great point. Yeah, so I feel like even our brand is is less of, I mean, sure, the filmmaking has to be there.

Just to get your foot in the door. feel like the area of entry is lower and lower as we go like every, you know, can shoot with your phone and like all these things that didn't exist.

You know, we started on tape. But less to us is I feel like the product has to be good.

And that is just the starting point. I don't I don't associate that with OT as much as the brand of the brand that I think of that I hope other people think of if they know us and if they know only today is that we're great partners and there we do good work, but we're also good people to work with.

@35:55 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Yeah, you know, I really like what you guys said there because I think at the end of day, your guys, your goal is not to

find value for your consumers and your clients, because they already know what they consider valuable. goal is just to basically exploit that value and help them bring it to life.

you know, think you bought a great point with folks that if you work in the corporate setting, like I work in health care, I have a lot of connections with a lot of vendors, but they have no connection with my organization.

They're connections with me because it helps me support my role, either a CRM I'm talking to or some data mining software, whatever it is, right?

Their connection is with me. so that's a really good point, folks, when you're thinking about, you know, even if you're looking at a larger organization, identifying any employee in there and building that relationship and networking, you know, networking is so important, because you'll never know who you're actually talking to you.

Like, you know, we mentioned earlier, the elevator pitch at the beginning of this conversation, you might be sitting next to your venture capitalists or a VP at meta or somewhere that is interested.

And they might then take that story and like, you know, I kind of want to learn more about that.

But again, having that quick quick synopsis of what you're doing because you know Joyce mentioned it perfectly our attention's man it's continuing to climb more and more and so making sure that we have a message that is is relevant and it's also meaningful but also kind of relays it has to personalize you as well which is very difficult to do in a very short time frame but that's why you know Ray enjoys take hours and days to do a 30 second film because so much time and energy goes into making these things really come to life and making it about that individual and that person and their true life goals and their aspirations and things of that nature because man it's probably not very easy to do I imagine you know now you know one of the things you know talking about building the brand we talked about challenges I would love to love to be interested what are some some things that have come easy some things maybe you really truly enjoy like oh man I'm so glad I'm in the filmmaking Joyce will start with you what are some of those things that either super easy or super enjoyable

@38:00 - Joyce Tsang

Oh great question um I really love being behind the camera. You know I don't I don't do that much these days anymore um there are we made a lot of great connections over the years and there's a lot of very talented uh post out there who who can lens a beautiful film but that is where you know when we first started we did everything you know you you produced your direct you shoot you edit you wipe the counters like you literally take out the trash but you know we do everything when we start and now you know with the bigger team we've kind of grown and kind of focused on our on our respective areas but I started behind the camera and I really really love that and that um I don't know it felt natural it I don't want say it's easy there was a lot of learning and there still is there's always lot of learning and stuff going on but that is one of the things that I really enjoy and I haven't missed that a little bit I try and get behind the camera a little bit at least.

times a year on projects that I really enjoy or really care about and that's I think that's one of the things that I that overall in the grand scheme of things came a little bit easier for me.

@39:13 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Nice. Ray same question.

@39:15 - Ray Tsang

Man no one's asked this before but there's two things I love and yes I wanted to tell stories but I knew personally when we were younger I loved to travel and I wanted to build community like wanted to just meet people and literally as we kind of jumped into filmmaking that's exactly what happened we had clients willing to pay us to travel halfway around the world to do a story to to work with some amazing people and tell their story so I got both almost all at once with the travel aspect and like mean just for context Joyce and Joyce hit a million miles like maybe a few years ago just on

like one airline.

@40:01 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

I'm very close.

@40:03 - Ray Tsang

So we did a lot of traveling. And I like to joke. the reality is, I have two 300 friends around the world because we've been able to spend two, three, four days with them, them sharing their story kind of like we're doing with you now.

And you just build a relationship there. And then we're just connected through Facebook, Instagram, whatever that is. But anywhere we travel, we have someone that we need help.

And so that's while now a lot of our clients like really love working with us because when they know we can get a film team into almost any corner of the world if needed, just because we built enough of a community where we have people trusted that we trust that can show up for us.

@40:48 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

I really like that sense of building community and getting out and traveling. Let's say, likewise, my wife always makes fun of me.

Like every time we go somewhere, you meet somebody. was in Kansas City. That's all. I knew we were down in a band.

saw somebody there. We were in frickin London. I'm like, holy crap, I know that I used to work with that guy.

@41:06 - Joyce Tsang

She's like, you got to stop. You really got to see how I'm like, I'm sorry.

@41:09 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

It just, it just happens that way. But I mean, you know, it truly is the importance of networking. You know, it really is such a strength getting out there and truly being involved in other people's communities.

You learn so much about the world out there. You get, you get more creative with it. You were able to share those experiences.

I mean, that's how Starbucks started, right? Steve Jobs went to Europe and really wanted to create this kind of cafe style organization here in the States.

And originally it wasn't not good, right? He actually failed originally and then he had to go back and then he made it successful.

So, traveling is always a good opportunity to really gain exposure to different ethnicities, different cultures, and different different color schemes, different patterns.

Again, I was in Europe a couple of weeks ago and I got to tell you folks, I want to start dressing European.

Like, I want to wear the khakis and the button up shirt and stuff and like have the sweater over my shirt.

I thought it would look like I was I was really impressed, but you know, there's a lot of great advice You know entrepreneurs received throughout the years, I would love Ray.

We'll start with you What is what is some advice you would provide to an aspiring entrepreneur?

@42:12 - Ray Tsang

Oh Man I would say advice is pick up a book and readers so many amazing Books out there that Just like so much knowledge out there that's written that you're not gonna be able to To capture in one Three minute even 30 minute YouTube video So I would say as soon as I started kind of reading and this is like business books Coaching books It just kind of expanded almost Overnight or over how many hours of reading expanded my view of what's possible in the world because someone was able to take all

all their experiences of running a business or building a brand or their life experience and put it in front and put it in front of you.

So I would I would say start there. It's huge. It'll broaden your horizons. you said, it's kind of like the equivalent of traveling.

You just see the world differently once you see it through someone else's eyes. And then the second advice is don't don't prioritize my money when you're first starting out.

I know that's really hard. I know sometimes it comes from a you have to do a lot of hurdles to that.

But my background is in finance and I've seen people just talk about hundreds of thousands, millions, billions of dollars.

It's kind of thrown back and forth. It's just just things that government and society has created. And it's probably one of the few things where it's essentially just limitless in this world.

There's the government's printing money, right? So, but we I thought, at least in our society, to treat it like this very limited resource, and so you make decisions based on that.

And I've seen a lot of friends and colleagues who wouldn't take a risk on something because it would cost them $10, $100 to take that risk.

But we talked through it and I'd be like, if this pans out, your return on this, you're going to experience for the rest of your life.

And what is that $10 now to take someone out and pay for their cup of coffee and take a meeting and just fly somewhere and meet someone and you'll get to build community, travel, and show up for someone that instead of on a Zoom call.

so I would say building community has been just probably the biggest thing that's helped Joyce and I, because you find lot of people and they want you to succeed.

And they will also show up for you when you need help. that has allowed us to really build a business surrounded by people that just are pushing us to succeed.

Asking for nothing in return, except for friendship.

@45:09 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Yeah, very, very good point. Joy, same question. What advice would you give an aspiring entrepreneur?

@45:16 - Joyce Tsang

Two things come to mind. If you're starting out, or you know, a refresher, you got to be great at what you do and turn out a good product or a service, but don't don't neglect the communications, the customer service, human side of why somebody should pick you and your business for whatever their need is.

There's a lot, there's a lot of talented filmmakers out there. a lot of other businesses out there that can create beautiful content, we are not unique in that way.

@45:53 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

As much as I like to think we are, like, let's be realistic.

@45:56 - Joyce Tsang

There is a lot of options out there. And regardless of what line of business you're in, what industry you're

tree and those things of being a good partner, having a customer service, being really buttoned up with your communications, all of that is just as important and more important than what you're actually selling in, at least in my opinion, in our experience of why a potential customer or a client might choose you.

So don't forget to invest your time and your money and your resources in that side of it as much as you are investing in your product line or your equipment or whatever that is like, that is all important, but that's not the end all be all.

And the other thing that jumps to mind is to learn how to delegate and empower those around you. There's only so much one person can do and maybe that's different if you choose to be a solopreneer, like that's one thing, but if you want to grow, want to scale, you want to create an impact.

on just yourself and have a position and contribute to your community. feel like that, you know, the faster you learn to delegate and surround yourself with good people and then empower those people to grow and learn, I think that benefits everybody.

benefits your team, the people that you work with, your client, the end product is better, benefits your clients, and ultimately, I think that just brings on a lot more opportunity than if you're trying to do everything on your own.

So that often, I think, is a bit of learning for entrepreneurs who many of us started on our own, we do everything ourselves and you're trying to be responsible with your cash flow, your money, you're like, when do I hire, do I bring on somebody else?

And those are all hard questions and there's no one right answer. when you have the opportunity to empower somebody else on your team or even somebody who's not on your team, just do that good well and

And give somebody a hand, know, what's the proverbial, like something the elevator back down, you know, how can you lift up other people and just see where that goes.

I mean, it might not necessarily come back to you, but putting out that goodwill in the community can only do good things.

And, and within your own organization and your own team. Learn how to delegate, open your open up your time and your mind to what you do best and let let the folks around you do what they do best.

@48:34 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

I love it some great advice. again, folks build a community. think hopefully you folks that are listening to the podcast feel you're part of the shades of entrepreneurship community.

All right, because we have a lot of different entrepreneurs that come on the show and learn from other people's experiences, get out there and network with folks understand what they're doing what they're not doing.

mean, you know, to Joyce's point, you know, maintaining a loyal customer and you know quality is better than quantity.

because the cost of a customer acquisition is so high that you really want to think about your sales funnel and get those individuals down to being a loyal customer, Ray mentioned, know, connecting with the individual from Meta.

Now they've been their clients for several years, right? So building those lasting relationships is important, but also making sure, you know, as Joyce mentioned, following through with good quality products, making sure you're communicating back in a timely manner, you know, being very mindful of the differentations of definitions.

So for example, if you say, Hey, I'm going to be right back and you actually not back for a week, you know, somebody's somebody might perceive, I'll be right back in five minutes.

So make sure you're very honest about what you're doing under products over deliver kind of things. So like, Hey, I'll be back in a month and you're actually back in a week, right?

So think about that. Ray, Joyce, for those folks that listening, if they want to get in contact with you interesting learning more about your team, how can they, where can they find you, what's the email site, social channels, how can they get in touch with you?

@49:59 - Ray Tsang

Yeah, I would say that. Two best places to start is onlytoday.tv, our website or Instagram, which we are pretty active, which is only today TV.

That's our handle. And so start there, you can find us. And we, in spirit of like building community, we are also open to just like talking to other filmmakers, entrepreneurs, whatever that is.

And it's really the reason why we're start opening ourselves up to just being on podcast. And we appreciate like what you're doing Gabriel, just like also storytelling and connecting people and building community.

So we're in a very fortunate place in our career where we want to really pass the baton down and empower new entrepreneurs and business owners, because we've been the recipient and benefited from that, from our mentors.

@50:55 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Perfect. So folks, again, if you, it's only, onlytoday.tv. And if you forget, At that website, you can also subscribe to the Shades of Entrepreneurship newsletter by visiting the Shades of E.com.

We'll have this information on the newsletter the week before the episode airs, the episode airs, and the week after.

They'll also be a dedicated blog post to this conversation as well as a dedicated page with the transcription of this conversation and the audio version of this conversation.

Roy, Joyce, Array, Joyce, you guys have been phenomenal. I really do appreciate what you guys are doing. Honestly, it's really cool how you're able to take a thought and make it into a story that's impactful, that moves.

You sometimes will see a commercial advertisement. It's like, oh, that actually moved me emotionally. I'm invested now. And I think that's a really good thing for people to think about.

And getting out and networking and meeting with other people that have different experiences than you is only going to help you continue to grow personally and professionally.

So I always encourage you to get out there and meet with people and network and, as Ray said, build a community, you know, the.

@52:00 - Ray Tsang

That's way to build a community is actually being present in the community, so don't be just a zoom call be actually feed on the ground.

@52:35 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

So folks, again, thank you so much for tuning in. You can subscribe at the shades of E. Thank you and have a great night