Sales Pipeline Strategy & Team Tension Over Operational Control

Uh, uh, yeah, she's the head of production.

Oh, you can fill in the rest there.

I will.

I just brought it up to the negotiating section. All right, JD, I like this little spreadsheet you sent over.

I've been—

yeah, who's In-N-Out Productions? Do we know anybody at In-N-Out Production, uh, Sean? They seem to be doing a bunch of shit. I don't know what they're doing, but so this should, let me see.

I got 2 pages. So I signed up for every email that I could, um, try to get as much information coming from the Film LA permit. And I think we've got names, we've got location managers, we've got emails, we got production office phone numbers and mobile phone. So. We should have a lot of useful information from this coming through. Uh, we can obviously take this information and do with it as like, we can harness or harvest all of the information and start to update some like CRM information if we get down that road. Um, but if there are other services out there that do a similar thing where we're getting film permit and information, it might be useful to subscribe to those just so we can get more information aggregated.

Yeah, I don't, I don't know of any others.

Well, I was thinking if we wanted to, uh, if we knew of like a New York, um, similar service or like a Georgia service, just so we can understand like who is going where. Like if we happen to see one of our customers pop up in a different region, that might be useful to have like, hey, you're spending X with us, but you're only spending 25% of your spend theoretically in Los Angeles? Like, just to help us understand the scope of the market. Um, I'll do some research.

Kind of the same thing we were talking about with HDR on that chat, Mike, where it's like we can understand what total potential location services spend is out in the market because we know It's Always Sunny season 18, block 2, permit 2, right? Like, how many days I It's Always Sunny Season 18 shot out on location. We don't have that today.

Right.

So, but we have trailers and trucks on it. So it gives us intel to be able to know like, hey, there's, you know, potentially up to $25,000 in location services spend that we're not capturing today. And here's how we go get that. Business intel stuff.

Mm-hmm.

Is prod, prod cos, are they renting from us tomorrow?

Uh, you know what, I'll hit up Yvonne. Uh, she did not hit me up for anything, so I don't know. I don't know why.

I don't know. It says they're shooting Thorn, which I think is— if it's what I think it is, it's a supplement company. Oh yeah, I get their CoQ10 pills. Um, what about Do we know anybody at Group Therapy?

Okay, wait, so just in the interest of time and kicking this off, um, this is cool. This is what we talked about, Richard, last Thursday of just like this kind of just kind of came up by happenstance of like kind of understanding who's out there shooting stuff, and this was in relation to the kind of sales opportunity tracker that Mike had built a few months back that we're, you know, bringing more attention to, to really use that as a beachhead for getting an organized kind of account management strategy identified. The kind of action items coming into this call, there was this JD was going to go see if he could build something like this. He kind of has. I think there's some additional action items that will come out of that. I was going to pull together kind of just some very basic pipeline construction and management 101 type tips to kind of talk through, and I have those. Mike was going to just go through and add some additional columns to their tracker. Stuff that he thought would be helpful, whether that was, you know, different stages, that type of thing. And then Sean was going to kind of pull together a getting from A to B with Pretty Bird, specifically identified as the target for that as an action item. Before we start that, I do want to just try to make heads or tails of this, like, a text message that Sean sent me yesterday, and then some emails I've seen now going back and forth as it relates to Ronald making the decision to move grip and lighting from, I guess, Cahuenga to Saticoy. Richard, can you fill me in on what exactly this is?

Because I, I think Sean originally probably heard that from Michael. And the only thing that Ronald did was just mentioning to Mondo, right, that, hey, you know what, does it help, like, as a few ideas? Because the only person that's really dealing with this G&L is actually me talking to Garrett and Daniel about what we discussed last time, right? Possibility of them managing your G&L sales and so forth, which we're waiting for an answer. That's it. So Ronald does not do things like that.

I want to make sure I understand what you're saying there. The only thing that is kind of in motion there, when you say the thing we talked about that last week, is that the— what's his name—

Mark?

Yeah. Begins to support the grip and lighting kind of CSR type tasks?

Yeah, that's it.

Because that's one of the things that Sean had expressed he needs like help with and kind of special thing, right? That's what you're working on? Yeah, that's it.

Okay. Yeah.

Okay. I don't know if that was you saying Ronald has decided to move, yeah, grip and lighting from somewhere to Sadakoi, and that that's not going to work from you and you can't live like this, or something like that. What is that?

What, what is what?

What was that?

I, well, I gotta say I apologize for framing it that way because when Mondo expressed that, he's like, yeah, Ronald said he's going to move all the grip and lighting up to Saticoy, I was like, why? And I guess that my— and perhaps this is, uh, you know, sort of what I put in the email yesterday, Richard, of, you know, I've had operational control of this business since 2007, if you go back to Coyote Times, you know what I mean? And I definitely want Ronald's support and help here, but it was one of those things where it's like I didn't want him making unilateral decisions about the business when he doesn't understand how the business is making money or what the client's expectations are, or, you know, those sorts of things.

Well, here's the thing, Sean, I'm gonna stop you right there now, okay? Let's be very transparent about why we are here, okay? Why Ronald is there, okay? It's doing that because you guys are not doing what you're supposed to be doing, and that's been proven time and time again. And I've said it in our meeting before, okay? You already have 4 other interventions before me and Ronald go back in there, okay? If you guys know exactly what to do, here's my question to you. Answer this: why didn't you just do it? Why are we there?

I have a question further to that.

I guess I sent that email last night to those two guys too, because those two guys are causing way more havoc than it's worth, okay? They're talking to people outside, they're, they're out there looking for jobs or whatever. You know what, do whatever the hell they're gonna do. I'm done with this, okay? So, Sean, let me tell you this one last time. If you know what the hell you're doing, why don't you just do it? Why are we there?

Well, guys, can we just— can we, can we all— I don't want this to get so heated. I just want a conversation.

No, but Mike, you know what, enough. I mean, come on, I hear from Sean, he's like, I know what I'm doing, I know what— then fucking do it. Do it.

Are you done?

I have a question.

No, I'm not quite done. Because I'm sick and tired of hearing you saying stupid things over and over again, okay, when you could just do it. And also, like I said to you before, look, before Ronald and I stepped back into this, you had Ronald, you had Katie, you had Dan, you even had James helping you guys. This is like the last move, okay? And, and here it is, nobody's doing anything unilateral without discussing with anybody. So I don't understand a lot of it. Like I said, A lot of Mundo, as far as what I heard, okay, is that his dissatisfaction is not exactly coming directly from Ronald. He's got all kinds of issues. That's why you saw the emails I sent last night. Enough. I want to hear from them. So they got 3 days to figure out what they want to say. Either say it or forever hold their peace. I'm sorry, James, go ahead.

I think my question is if I can try to distill just this as a discrete issue, because I hear what you're saying, Richard, and I, you know, there's not no merit there. But like, Sean, are you saying that like Mondo framed something incorrectly and that caused you to send me this text message effectively saying, I can't do this anymore? Like, in effect, like a game of broken telephone started this exchange?

Yes. Can I help with this?

That was my bad.

One second. So there's a game of broken telephone, and in parallel to that, I think what I'm hearing Richard say is that game of broken telephone or not, there's still, I think, maybe this like call it misunderstanding, or a— you don't know, just like effectively just a misunderstanding and a lack of trust, call it, in that you are still trying to, as I understand, protect from unilateral decisions being made. Yes. And yes or no.

Yes.

And then in parallel, Richard is saying there are no unilateral decisions that are going to get made that dramatically impact the business. And I think probably this is where the boundaries of that begin and end, I think, is still probably where it's causing that confusion. But as I'm hearing this and from what the little exchange I saw going forward, It does feel like that's a big root problem here. And so I think something that would probably be beneficial is— it's honestly like the same thing back, Sean, from December, November, whenever that was, where it was like, I feel like This game of broken telephone has like pulled us right back to the thing that we've all been grappling with for 3 or 4 months. And I think that we have all of this other stuff that we're desperately trying to get to, but it's these types of touchpoints, these types of things which continually pull us back into extraordinarily unproductive conversations. And I think what you're hearing there from Richard, I actually think it's valid. I think like I'm equally frustrated there, but like at the same time, I think that leaning harder into what we have— I've reviewed a lot of the stuff that like you and JD— I shouldn't say a lot of it, but I reviewed what you came up with and like, I think it makes sense. I think it's a fuck ton of work and I think there's a lot that we can talk about there, but like That has to be an all-consuming activity. And so these types of triggering things, and I hear you attaching it to this belief that you've owned this operation going back to 2007 and that it's— and as hard as it is, and I have no ability to utilize that, you must divorce from that. I and the business needs you to focus exclusively on this. If Mondo comes to you at the end of this sentence and kicks your office in and says, Ronald is moving your park— like, my parking spot somewhere. Like, you know, like, that's not a good example. He's moving communications up to Satacoy or something. You can be angry about it, but like, bring it— like, you got to find a better way to channel it. Because we don't know if it's true. Like, who the fuck knows? But just like take a beat, try and absorb, process, set it aside. We've got 2 touchpoints a week going right now. Like, there— it's not like we're going so far in between conversations where this stuff can get lost in the sauce. But like, if there's one thing I can impress upon you, both of you, once again, is that I don't care if the Kawango warehouse is on fire if it means that you two are focusing exclusively on like just 100%. If you move to Bali but you just spend 100% of your time on this, the business will be better off. I'm not even necessarily being metaphorical or figurative there. We have to figure out how to put blinders on earmuffs on so that this stuff that's happening— because exactly what it sounds like happened is going to keep happening. And I think that, like— and if I can, and I'm not trying to pound in, pound you in or emphasize this, but it's like, I feel like because of your personal relationships with these people, à la Chris Garcia, they know how to twist you. They know how to push your buttons. Kind of an incentive to right now, because the walls are kind of closing in on them, as they should. We have no margin of error. We made our fucking first debt payment last week, and we're kind of clearing rents right now, making payroll. We have a $70,000 margin of error right now, but it's growing. And the work that we do here, goddamn, if that does not have like tenfold compounding impact. I will start to get even angrier than Richard the more we get pulled into this stuff. And it's kind of fucking at this point, we are spending a ton of time. I will give you all of my time. I am extremely protective with JDs because it has so many touch points. So that is like, Richard and I can sit here all day. JD has actual shit to do. Like, so hear me on that. Let's, to Mike's point, hopefully heard, and we can move on and get into the stuff that will actually help us drive this forward.

Yeah.

Yes, Sean.

I just wanted to say, Richard, I apologize, and James, I apologize. I did act, I took hearsay and I acted emotionally on it because And I will say, it's not the tension that the Ronald transition has brought to the guys here, and that has rubbed off on me too. So I've reacted in a way that is not, uh, becoming or businesslike at times. And I will do my best to not allow that to happen anymore. Okay, so the warehouse is on fire, I will just keep trying to sell more equipment and trucks.

And as you can see last night, right, it triggered me to take further action last night. You saw the 2 emails went to Dan and Mondo, right?

Yeah.

You got 3 days to really tell me what the fuck is going on, what they're thinking. If not, forever fucking hold their peace. Okay, done. Would not—

I appreciate— I actually appreciated the email because it's like, yeah, hey, doors open for us to listen and take— like, I appreciated how it was written and the fact that it's like, hey, giving them the floor. I gave them both the floor last week, met with them personally.

I'll tell you what, the floor is only gonna work if they use it, okay? And I don't even expect them using it because their head is not screwed on straight, both of them, okay? But this is the last chance I'm giving them because we're not wasting more fucking time on these guys.

I agree. And in the interest of time, I think that we can probably like put a period on this. I'll tell you that like The approach that Richard takes in these situations has only proved the outcomes that we needed. It was on me to stop giving a shit about the process and actually to focus on what mattered for the business. So take that for what you will. Let's get into it. I think in order for this to really be, I think, the best structure, Maybe let's do this. Let's start out, Mike, with the columns or just kind of the additions that you made to the sales tracker. Did you get to that?

I mean, I did, but I only added two. Like, I added the next follow-up date column, and then those— like, let's talk about it. I think that's like our way of like, hey, when we look at this, like, shit, I gotta follow up with Annie or smuggler. Now we just have to go fill it in. So I asked it, I added like— go ahead.

I was going to say, let's pull it up, JD, if you can, or someone if you can.

I could pull it up.

I know about this because I can kind of weave the pipeline construction and management piece into this. We've got, you know, we've been seeing this thing kind of evolve, and I would say 7 out of the 9 crucial things are there. I think there's some like rounding out we can do, adding stages and kind of defining what the rule— I'm so sorry.

Oh, stages.

Stage of life. And then defining and being very disciplined on what those stages mean, what it takes to go from one to another. And so for stages, less is more. 4 to 5 I found pretty like effective. Um, and we can kind of talk about those. Another thing that I've also found very effective, and this has been— I've used this, as JD will tell you, in every pipeline I've ever built, is probability of close. And that is— that can be defined on whatever timeline that you kind of have it on. But it's— what that is, is like trying to just If you were to go through, and that's a, that's a, you only really kind of have to do that once because once you do that, your stage rules, your account kind of pipeline stage rules will naturally put it into probabilities. Yeah, that'll kind of get set up. But, um, very simply, Sean, would you say there's like 300 to 500 kind of accounts in that AICP list that we went through that one day?

I mean, I have them all here.

Perfect. Okay, so what— that great. However, what's the total number here?

I mean, we cut out some shit. It was probably like, yeah, 200-ish.

So what we've done there is we've disqualified some, don't even apply, which means that we now have 214. We have a capped, for now, 214 total addressable market as it relates to this type of structure. I know that there are, you know, kind of fractals that come off of that. But what that means is that prospecting is by and large, as it relates, like there's no more new leads coming unless someone starts a new kind of account. And so what, what is usually a very, very helpful exercise is to go through and assign just like an initial probability of like if you were to contact them today, How likely are you to actually get them to a decision quickly? Because that's going to help you identify low-hanging fruit that you might not be paying attention to, because right now it's just going to probably feel like noise. Something that I saw, Sean, in y'all's exchange on Friday was this concept of like, okay, there's 214, but not all 214 are created equal. There's these like top 50 that probably get— and this will get into kind of like what you, you are talking about— but the top 50 ones, they get special attention, they get personalized emails, they get certain follow-up cadences. And then 51 through maybe 150 get some other type. And then there's kind of everyone else. And by crunching it into those thirds, you make y'all's life easier by knowing how to think about all these things. So again, it's not just kind of like a wall of noise. And I think I'll stop there for a second. Those three kind of concepts are pretty heavy. And like I said, a lot of that is already here. So the good news is it's really kind of rounding that out. Rounding it out and it's finding the stages that you work. The ones that I always used: not contacted, initial outreach, engaged, which means they've replied, negotiating, and then either closed won, closed lost. And closed lost— and if you haven't heard this from me, you will— I care I care. I love winning, but it barely edges out understanding why I lost.

Mm-hmm.

And I think about the radical thing kind of here, stuff that we took out of that. Yeah. Like all the kind of stuff that came out of— so 4 to 5 stages, getting very simple, making this very easy. You will continue to hear me be very resistant to setting up a CRM create a data thing. Two, data population and migration on that is fucking a lot. And then you would need to then migrate it from there to RentalWorks, probably creating all this other stuff when like, I don't need the address of the company in my CRM, but in a normal CRM, you're like, you should have it. You know what I mean? Like, it just kind of creates this noise. And I think like this is not about the actual CRM as a concept thing. This is really more about like a lot of what I saw, Sean, and what you and JD were talking about is 60 to 70% there. Like you have a lot of that already here. So adding this kind of intermediary system layer, like if we're— there's nothing that would cause that CRM to be more effective at getting us to follow up than just living in this document. Like, there are email tools that I can absolutely recommend that are very helpful where you can pre-write follow-ups and send it out on a cadence if they have not emailed you back. JD and I built a 2 million lead, like, outreach dashboard that was doing, you know, crazy things like that, but it wasn't a CRM. It was an email system.

I mean, add context to this too. I'm going through this whole CRM setup shit for the production business right now just because we're launching these directors. So I will learn a lot in that process too.

So if we eventually get there, I will have a lot of like, I think that like anyone who, anyone, I think anyone who recommends we move to CRM, but hasn't been through SEO, needs to go through it. Because it's like, it's just one of those—

No, it's a lot. I mean, the data dump right now is ridiculous.

And then it begins from just managing it. Every company I've ever worked for, and like the last company we were running, had someone that that was their full-time job.

Yeah, well, we hired this company that is doing it kind of for us. I know, same guy that does all my design work too, but— Yeah. But it's a shit ton of work.

But my point here is like, we've got 214 qualified leads. Yeah, we have a cap, we have a capped market. And now we can apply that very basic kind of like, what are the 5 stages? When did we last talk to them? Are they engaged? Like all of those types of things. And if we're living in this document, we don't need a CRM nudging us because it's just sending you push notifications that you're going to ignore. I did. I constantly ignore those and I just focus on what I'm going to— I would focus on like the 10 to 15 that I was actually paying attention to anyway, because those were the ones that were likeliest to close. Your time, your bandwidth is still capped as well. So I think like, especially with all this other stuff that we want to get to. So you've added last contacted date. Great. Do we have— you, you already have kind of like projected yearly spend. That's huge. You might not have it for all of them. That's okay. You will learn that as you— when they move from initial contact to no contact, initial contact, engaged, and then negotiating, you're going to get that piece of it, like, kind of identified. But I think we have— I think the piece of it here that is probably not tailored and is difficult, regardless of what system you're on, to capture is the myriad ways that these companies can transact with y'all. Is that fair?

As far as like what they can actually rent, like what line of business they're going to be doing with us?

Andrea at Pretty Bird moves from company to company, right? And so is that fair? Is that right, Sean? Did I get that right?

Yes, she's a freelancer. She's been there for about 8 or 9 months out though.

Full-time?

Uh, just— and they've had the same production team do the same set of jobs over and over and over again, if that makes sense. Not full-time, but like—

yeah, it does, it does. Okay. Um, okay, so, but even still, something that I've picked up and seen is that random-ass PA gets assigned to that job that we were filling the truck up for that Saturday afternoon. Like, that guy, how— like, I think understanding how you guys think about that, because that is a whole— that is what takes this from being like 214, like, capped companies, right, where we want to get this like ultra valuable preferred relationship with, and then a layer down from that is you probably got 2 or 3 between executive producer, head of production, some other person, so 214 by 3. And then a layer beyond that is like art department, PAs, like all of these other things. And that's where you get into the, you know, just really kind of factorial, um, situation. So I think that's something that you guys should— I don't know how to handle that best. You guys will figure out how to do that best. And, and another thing that I think you guys could that we should decide is that piece of it, that one that is a much broader kind of market, for lack of a better word, like addressable market. Like, and again, Sean, I'm going to go back to that thing that you were kind of talking about there. Is that the stuff that is better addressed through almost network effects? It's not network effects, but kind of. Where it's like in raising the awareness and getting that in front of them organically and that type of stuff and just getting them in so that they're feeling the love from the team there and the efficiency and all that stuff that's kind of happening there. It's because this is the stuff that you should be focused on. This is the stuff that y'all should be focused on. That other stuff is the stuff that's running in the background. But this is where I want you in Bali or Hawaii, wherever, just pounding on this and flying in 3 to 5 times a week for lunch and then flying back out so you don't get distracted by the warehouse being on fire. Like, that is— this is what— this is where it stands. So let me regroup because our objective here was JD has You know, the permit bot. Um, Mike, you added a sales tracker. We're speaking through kind of like pipeline management construction, but I'll—

I'll add that in here because I think I like the stages. So not contacted, engaged, and what was the middle one?

I'll follow up kind of with like just like a very bare bones bullet point type thing, but you're gonna go not contacted, initial outreach. That's we've sent them an email or a text phone call, we have not heard back. Sometimes, and I don't like this stage, sometimes, like, you can have, like, replied, but we're not having a conversation. Whereas engaged is we had a productive call and we have a next step. Your pipeline is really supposed to do 3 things. And give me some rope here while I try to remember what it is, but it's like tracking It's tracking who it is, what they're worth, and what your next step is. And that's really it. Anything else outside of that is kind of nice to have noise, but really, we're trying to get things out of whatever status that they're in.

Right.

And sometimes that means a quick no is better than a long yes. And I'm going to use Hungryman as an example of this, where they kind of kept us in this limbo state and we had sent them this and that, but it kind of dragged on. Time kills all deals there and we don't want to be annoying. And you guys are going to know the best what each kind of touchpoint's cadence requires, but that's going to be something that you guys need to— I think that's something that can be improved by being— by thoughtful conversation around it between the two of you, because I'm not going to be able to help there, but that's what this is for. Um, so I'm going to follow up with just some basic kind of like that stuff. Again, a lot of that stuff is here. And then we can pause really quick, I guess, for any questions. But then if not, I think we should move to Sean talking through whatever kind of the strategy is we talked about on just we're going to focus on Pretty Bird and go from an A to B. This is how we move Suzanne, I think, from not contacted to a decision point.

Yeah, I don't have any. I don't have any questions. I think it's clear.

Just a quick question.

Go ahead.

Just a quick question. So, I mean, so based on this list, like on the bottom where you have this 200-some-odd contacts, so the action point here would be you guys will organize that into a different order or importance category, right?

Yeah, I mean, I think this was like my attempt at at a pipeline here, but I think I, I like James's approach better because it's— there's a little bit more data just by looking at it quickly, right? Like, these are all, you know, closed one, right? These are all— what's your engaged, right? We're currently engaged in negotiating. So these ones were— I don't know what you would call this because we're communicating, but we're not at like a—

I would say that negotiating can be a stage. Negotiating means you're trading paper and you're trying to, like, hone in on a deal. Current target priorities. Again, I probably engaged. That's engaged as long as you are, like, having a conversation. But what we want to be tracking in each of these stages is how long do they stay there and why, right? Like, um, whatever apostrophe was, whatever we said, Mike. 5 months, and then WSM was a week.

Oh no, maybe 2, maybe 2.

But you know what I mean? It's like, yeah, these are 2 data points now, so we have crazy bimodal distribution. But it's like, as more come through, we will just learn. And like, but it's, it's setting those types of metrics up and being able to track them, and we will be able to capture those data points. But Richard, I think to your question, it's We've got 214 rows or whatever, maybe 80% of them have no data attached to them. I think that's really where Sean and Mike, that's where I'm going to feel way better working on all of this other stuff if I know there's no low-hanging fruit in there. No, like, because I get agita, I think, when like thinking about like engaging in all this other stuff and there just being something in my orbit that like could have— we could have done sooner or whatever. Like, and, and just to speak to this because it's on the Avon commercial piece, I get worried about that commercial because what I don't want it to do is gate the other conversation that we can have. And my response, like the thing that's to put a period on that is that wanting to use that to soften or contextualize those important conversations, okay. Or rather not wanting to have that conversation 100 or 1,000 times or whatever, I get that, but making sure that we're still not— that we're still having it 10 or 20 times, because the point there being just like that, we're, we're still moving those forward. And I think Sean, what you said actually, probably— I don't know what it was that you did with RSA that you said was good, um, but whatever that was, whatever got you excited enough to say that that. So, yeah.

What I said, I mean, we basically had a meeting actually to follow up with them because they were supposed to be up.

Where is RSA on this thing?

They're there also. There's another one, and this will happen a few times on that list of 214, 200. Where the main production company also has a non-union component. So in this case, RSA is the director's bureau also.

Um, so I didn't realize they were the same.

Yeah, so you sometimes, if we get these deals, we'll be getting two companies at once, kind of like Anonymous and Serial.

Yeah, or Apostrophe and Caravan Club.

Yeah.

Okay, okay.

Um, so Good to know. I didn't— I mean, I guess I realized some of them have non-union.

Okay, but so as it relates specifically to RSA, we emailed agreement 213. That's what you're saying you need to follow up on?

Uh, yeah, well, she was gonna come by for a tour. She wanted to see the studio and see the warehouse, and, uh, they were gonna schedule something and they're like, oh, we're busy. And of course, so I'm gonna hit them up right now.

Okay, so, um, quick, quick question, and maybe you have a bot for this, JD, and it doesn't need to be a human or an admin, but how— like, instead of me sitting there for over 200 contacts and trying to find main contact and contact emails, like head of productions and their emails, do we have a a phys— a human admin or a bot that can get me all that information?

I can work on that.

Yeah, I'd be able to, because you could probably—

I tried to do it with AI to like scrape, basically I think I just pointed it to the AICP page, but I don't know, I'm not— I'm probably nowhere close to as good with it as you are. So I can, I can take it as a way to populate this with like HOPs.

And Mike, is the data at AICP?

Some of it is. I mean, then I did a combo of that with LinkedIn.

Um, LinkedIn's really tough to scrape. They're real— LinkedIn's very tough to scrape. Yeah, but does the AICP just have a directory of that stuff?

I mean, I, I don't know if they just have the HOPs, if I'm being honest.

Sean, is there a way that you can just jailbreak a document internally, like that data has to exist at AICP. Someone has that.

What do you—

what document? Like, what do you want me to jailbreak?

Like, just all the HOPs and their emails for all these production companies.

Most of them are listed on their websites. Some are not. Some don't even have an HOP. Like, the structure of each production company is kind of different. Sometimes it'll be called the, like, executive manager or managing partner. That's the person that's the decision maker. But I could see, I could ask.

Yeah, see, this is the info they'll have here, which is just a general email. It doesn't mean that that's the HOP.

So yeah, wait, go back to 1 Park 9. I mean, like, that's not a general email. That's the founder and president of that company.

So because you know that— oh, founder and president. Yeah, that's right. Michael Belmont had a production.

So like, I guess—

good point. I didn't read up there. I was just looking at it.

How did you figure it out?

It's just— I'm half eating lunch, fucking having my second coffee.

He's like, he's like, that's just a general— he was like, is it? That feels like a pretty qualified like lead there.

All right, who's Matthew Wilkson? I don't know, but I got his email. I mean, you know what I'm saying here. Like, how do we—

sure, but my point, I guess, here is that it feels like this information on the sample size of 2 we've pulled so far is there. John Wynn, and you got John's email, like the producer.

So yeah, is there an admin that could do this so that I'm not spending time scraping the—

Mike, unfortunately, it's no, it's you, buddy.

Just saying, man.

I mean, I could hire him. I can hire a, um, uh, Mike. The answer is $5 an hour.

I'm kidding. Like, that's the answer is that's something that we can start to run down. But it sounds like what the answer is for this thing in order to fill some of this out. Um, actually, Sean, what this means is There is a spreadsheet at the AICP, uh, there's a spreadsheet at the AICP that, that like feeds this website. Like this whole thing is an exportable database that we would be a lot better sorts if we can run it down.

Let me see what I can do.

Yeah, okay, so Action item here is Sean's going to see what data he can jailbreak from AICP by any means necessary. Um, I winked but you didn't see it.

I'm sending myself an email called AICP jailbreak.

Okay, let's do another thing. Let's keep our action items in this sheet because I think like even— yeah, let's just start a tab that's going to track what we do and say, like, in these, so that it's all in one place. I don't like having, like, all of this stuff kind of scattered around in emails and all this stuff. Like, we're just—

this is just—

we're establishing this as a single source of truth for the shit that we do here. Um, okay. Because there's also still lingering action items from last week. Like, Sean, we still have to connect on the AICP contract. I want to talk to you guys about, like, a couple things, but, like, the goal of this, and I think what we talked about last Thursday, Richard, for your benefit, was in order for us to get the most out of, like, using this, both the organization system and this time that we're allocating to it, it can't just be a They walk us through their— what actions they've taken, like, in contact with people. We need to be— if we're going to do this, the number one determinant of success in pipeline management is discipline, consistency. And so spending time getting it set up and being thoughtful about how we're doing it to make it tailored for how we do it is as valuable as the, like, work we're about to go do on it. So that's, that's that. One thing I do have on this, and I thought about it, I think if we're gonna have 2 meetings a week, I think one of them should be mostly pipeline focused, and then the other one should be geared for all these other items. Because I think what we're doing is we're trying to pack it all into once, and it's making it very difficult to actually kind of, like, drive meaningful progress. I think we're doing well right now on the pipeline management construction piece, but it's at the, you know, it's at the expense of some other things that we know need to move forward. So I would propose that for like the next, call it, 4 to 8 weeks, that one meeting is spent on this, and then you guys spend the rest of the week working and living in that pipeline, like This needs to be something that you guys are hitting every day so that, John, exactly what just happened. You scan this, you see you sent RSA an email 2/13. You knew that they were like you had talked to them last year and you're hitting that, you're catching that trigger early and you're self-catching it instead of us talking about it on this. And so that starts to transition the responsibility where it belongs and its highest impact to y'all. But still gives all of us the ability to kind of still help bear this burden in building this thing, um, from the ground up. So one meeting pipeline, one meeting like ancillary other sales support actions, and let's try that and see if that doesn't help us drive progress faster.

Sure, I like that. I like your water. Is that an Owala water bottle?

Kids, I hate these so much.

You fucking kidding me? They're great.

So I love them for adults, like my kids have them, and it's just like I resigned to like inevitably at least once a day an entire Owala will be emptied somewhere in my house.

All right, well, yeah, hopefully it's not yours, but it's fine. Um, okay. Any other action. So I'm going to update the—

so Sean's going to try to jailbreak that. In the meantime, um, I'm going to send some basic pipeline strategy type stuff immediately after this call. Um, Sean and I still need to connect on the AICP kind of contract piece, all the stuff that we went through while he was touring the, um, people around last Friday. Um, and JD got his permit bot thing kind of figured out. Um, I do think though that an action item for up in next week is going to be like whether we've got— whether we've jailbroken the data or not, I have to believe, but tell me if I'm wrong, that if you go through that 214, Sean, you might find names, or Mike, you might find names that jump out at you of just like, oh yeah, this, this, and this. And you're just able to move it up to— because right now everything on there is not contacted, right? And that doesn't mean in going through it you immediately contact them It's about trying to do this in batches.

Yeah, yeah. Uh, who we already— I mean, that's— me and Sean did that a few times where it's like, all right, who do you know? Let's just like go through. And then we moved them up, put in the, you know, filled out the contact information. Or if we didn't, we looked it up. And that's fine. And that's how we got to where we are up top. But we haven't done that in a while, so we'll do that a few more times. Um, yeah, and just keep plugging away at it.

Yeah, um, okay, what else do we want to kind of like— so in terms of getting specific on this, I do think establishing just some like, as dorky as it sounds, just some like basic structure and/or rules for these, these times. So if we're gonna make one meeting the pipeline meeting This is what that means. If we're going to make one, the sales action item, whatever, meaning this is what that means. And we need to be really defensive on that. All of us have a bunch of other shit to do. But like, Mike, maybe that's something you and I take a stab at before.

So create rules of engagement.

Yeah, basically. And yeah. JD, anything, anything you can think of or anything that jumps out?

I mean, the only, like, item from what Sean and I discussed was the, the video and the timing of that. Like, are we prioritizing that, deprioritizing it? Like what?

We want to shoot it next week while I'm there. And I owe you guys an email on the breakdown. And me and Sean have already been talking about scheduling it. So great.

Okay.

Okay.

I might be coming in next week as well to meet with an investment bank. Oh, and so I saw your email last night. I meant to reply and deny your time off request.

It wasn't a request. It was— it was an informal—

whatever helps you sleep at night. But it was an informal idea. And we will be contacting you. Sir, are you going to Portugal?

I probably will answer. That's my, that's my issue. My assistant was like, oh, I like that you put in there that you want to be offline. And I'm like, yeah, but we all know that's bullshit. But at least I'm like trying.

I'm—

no, I'm just—

he will tell you I'm pretty aggro about it.

You're off, you're off.

Right.

Yeah, that's fine.

No, for those, the first April, like 10th through 13th is my birthday and I'm going and doing like an adult hockey thing for 4 days. My birthday's April 11th.

Mine's the 13th.

Oh, well, we're very similar.

I'm also going to come do this hockey thing with me then. I'm also going to adult hockey camp.

There you go. Um, and then I have cousin's wedding and the kids are on vacation that like, that like week and a half chunk in the middle of April.

Yeah, um, my birthday's about April, just as a sidebar.

What'd you say?

My birthday is also in April.

A year later, right?

24th.

Yeah, 24th.

Yeah, our third due date. Our third due date is, um, April 19th, April 20th. So I might have a 4/20 baby. JD's, I think it— are you Cinco de Mayo?

Cinco de Mayo.

Yeah. What, another one on the way, or this is the one year of— no, what? No, it's his birthday. Your birthday? I'm like, you already have another kid on the way?

I'm like, yeah, Latin flair for life and zest for life.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right. So y'all are— you're going to send us kind of like a cost and scope overview of the commercial. Great. I have one thing as a bit of extra credit. In hearing y'all over the last few months and kind of like the importance on the social media piece of it, I would like to maybe in like 2 or 3 weeks schedule a meeting with this social media director type person who runs social media for a bunch of different production companies, like specifically one of my wife's. And I'm going to spend some time with her over the next couple of weeks. Just having her help dial in how to think about setting up a social media campaign that measures outcomes, I guess. Because when we think about it as like the 214— and Sean, I think what you said, and again y'all's conversation where it's like the PPC and all that stuff doesn't necessarily matter Or is that as, you know, driver of an outcome? So it's like helping us kind of build that framework out and building that out. She wouldn't be a full-time social media director. She might not even get paid, but like, she's a friend of my wife and is, you know, looking for other ways to bolster.

She did—

she ran social for the CDC during COVID so, and she runs for some, you know, no-bullshit production companies as well, so Can I be part—

I mean, I don't know, could I be part of those conversations?

No.

Okay, sweet. No, I mean, I'm currently talking to a similar company for, for the production company who are also doing our CRM, and it's all about kind of like tying it all together so that any, any kind of promoting and campaigns we're doing on social get tied into the CRM, so then there's follow-up.

Maybe Maybe that is something that we pick back up is just having a structured conversation about how to think about marketing for the aggregate group of companies. Yeah, because I think my lens on it is a little different now that we're not like dying at the end of next week. And I think that there's some stuff that we can kind of start to think about there. Maybe you and I find a breakout on that.

Okay, so what's the action item?

You and I— okay, one, you and I set time to kind of talk about not just like the Versa, because the social media thing would be just for Versatile. Yeah, there might be some for the Avon HDR piece where I don't even think HDR has any social. Avon used to, but we kind of probably should a little bit. Just because there's actual stuff like our trailer. The star of It's Always Sunny is posting about being in our trailer constantly.

I mean, that's— I feel like Coyote had some good things they did with their marketing, and that was one of them, was like, look at the celebrities that are in the trailers, right?

Like, yes, they've also fallen off on that, is what I'm saying. But also, I'm very curious what outcome that drove. And I think there's some like anecdotal things.

I mean, it's, you know, it can I would hope these days you can actually track a lot of that, like, outcome and what money was generated for that. But I think a lot of that shit is brand awareness, right? Like, that you can't really put a dollar sign on. But, um, I don't know, we could talk about that more, not on this call.

Yeah, and I think that that's also probably why you should be having in this conversation with— her name's Deca— but just like What I've told her is that whatever level of marketing infrastructure or thought she thinks exists as it relates to Avon or HDR, she's wrong. Like, it's lower, right? You guys are a different story, but like, you know, there's a lot of tweaking there. So we'll find some time on that, and then I will similarly— another action item there is I will pull you into the conversation with DECA. We talked last night, we're going to talk again later this week. So once that initial call gets set— okay, um, I guess an audit of sorts. Is this all the action items that are floating around from the last 7 days, uh, that are not complete?

I believe so, yeah. But somebody can check me on that.

More action items to come, I guess.

What's this? Is this that you need to email Sarah and Nico?

No, I just did.

All right, well, then that is—

Done and done. But let's move that, throw that in over on the last contact. Okay. Like next thing, John, I think that would be helpful either in the notes, like you're going— it doesn't matter. I don't need to know what you emailed them, but are you going to know what you emailed them?

Well, I mean, yeah, you could look at the email too, but yeah, just, I just emailed a follow-up.

So I think what you were saying though made a lot of sense and like it is true. It's why I don't like CRMs. 'Cause it's really fucking hard to like have it just be a quick glance type thing that then lets you go do the next thing. You have to like sort through all this stuff. I like these because of this. Unless we are running a much more complicated sales engine that has theoretically limitless lead gen potential and, you know, kind of complex project type based sales or consultative sales where we're building RFPs and that type of stuff.

Sean, real quick, is this the same Nico? Nico Wallen?

And then— oh yeah, I just spoke with him yesterday actually.

Uh, he's— what is it, two? It's two different Nicos or the same Nico from RSA?

And no, it's two different Nicos.

Different Nico.

Okay, I've gone from zero Nicos to now two Nicos. I thought it was just always like a throwaway character name and like an Italian Mafia movie. Um, okay, gentlemen, anything else? We're at time.

I'm good.

We go ahead.

Okay. Um, okay, cool.

All right, James, if you want to talk today, let me know on the, uh, SCP agreement.

Okay. What's your schedule like?

Uh, pretty good for the next 4 hours. I'm just gonna be working here. Uh, I gotta— I just gotta leave by 5 today, so anytime. I mean, I could— after my trainer's coming at 5:30, so at my house.

Okay. Um, okay, JD, when are you— when are you free next so we can knock out that other thing?

Uh, probably around 1.

Okay.

And of course right now it is 11:45. Yeah.

Um, you don't have an Apple Watch, you could put all the different time zones. It's very helpful when you're watching. Um, um, okay, what— oh, just let me know, James, if you're in town next weekend. I'm there Tuesday till Friday afternoon.

I think I'm gonna do the same.

Uh, anything we should schedule together?

What's up?

If there's anything we should schedule together.

Okay, um, Cool.

Will do.

All right, y'all.

All right, really quickly before we leave, when are we sitting back down next? It's Tuesday, yeah?

Yeah, so Thursday.

You want to do Tuesday, Friday? What's better?

I mean, I mean, I think Monday, Thursdays was good, but because we did Friday last week, it could just put like Friday, Monday is like, right?

I guess the point being, now that there's a pipeline meeting and a action item meeting.

Does it matter?

Does it matter? Um, Mondays seemingly suck for everybody just in general usually. Um, so Tuesday, Thursday, busy meeting days for JD. I know.

Um, Tuesday, Friday.

Good.

So we want to do Friday. Okay, Friday at 10.

I think, Mike, I think you and probably JD have the most congested calendars, um, so I'd like to just get this like booked, um, out for maybe the next month so that we're not having to just constantly rebook the day before.

So maybe 10 AM Pacific work work well for me every week, if that works for you, JD.

Friday's 10 AM Pacific? Yeah, uh, that works in general except this week I'm out of town, so I won't be able to do a Friday meeting, but going forward that will work.

Copy that.

Is there anything that we need from JD this Friday though? Maybe we can just have a more focused session on non-JD requiring items.

Sure.

Yeah, I don't think there's anything on my And except for what Sean and I are like working on, but that doesn't need to come to larger groups. So yeah, I don't think I need to be included anyway.

I will respond to your email too. That was great. I saw it yesterday, JD, just to get a chance to—

Yeah, no, no rush. If you want to get on a call too, we can get into it.

Okay.

Well, just, and I don't know, so I don't know whose plate this would be on, but thinking of a an admin or a bot for the pulling all the information. If I put that as an action item, all the like heads of production and emails, who would— who's that?

Yeah, well, can we just hire someone from overseas at a very low rate to do those kind of— there's— I know those companies exist where you can source out.

That's what we used to use, but no, no, just me.

Just—

I'll do it.

Okay, what was that one called? Spider Lion.

Spider lion.

Yeah, spider.

If you want it to be 3 times harder for everyone and more expensive, we can hire someone overseas.

Hello, Buzzfield.

What? God. Okay, I'm adding it to the action items. All right, gentlemen, it's been real.

I think spider lion— actually, we found one that I think subbed it to another one either.

Yeah.

So it was just like this, like, I mean, I've heard—

I've never used one, so you guys have the experience. I've heard of ones that they're like in South America, so it's even better from like a time zone perspective, and they're supposed to be great, but I don't— never used them, so I don't know.

Yeah, you know. All right, thanks.

Okay, thanks.

Hey guys.