- No clickbait.
I said no to a $100,000 photography and filmmaking contract.
And I know you're on the other end going,
"Are you (beep) crazy?"
A little bit, but let me explain.
(upbeat music)
So, I think it's important to add context.
Now, before we jump into the video
and I explain the contract at hand and why we said no,
I think it's important to understand who I am
and what we do.
So, my name is Chris Hau,
I own an agency with my fiancee Lizzie Peirce.
We produce commercial and corporate jobs
for Mercedes Benz, Toyota, and Corona, just to name a few.
And about two years ago we were offered this contract.
Now, before I tell you about the contract,
I wanna tell you a little bit about our philosophy
on how we work with certain clients
and how we got to the point
where we work with Mercedes Benz, Toyota, and Corona,
which are all great companies.
So, here's a bit of our philosophy and the pillars
or the different items that need to be checked
before we work with a client.
Number one, is there a financial reward?
Obviously there has to be money involved
before we actually say yes to this project.
Number two, do we have this in our portfolio?
Have we worked on a project like this?
Would this be good for our portfolio?
Number three, selfishly, is there travel involved?
We wanna see the world, that's one of the pillars.
Number four, I can count, don't worry.
Number four, is the company doing good in the world?
If we contribute to this project and put our time into it,
is the company actually doing anything
to better the world around them?
Number five, would I be proud to put my name on this?
Is this just another job
or is this something I can stand behind and be like,
"Good job, Chris, that was a good decision"?
And number
six. (laughs)
Are the people that run this company
and the person that we're gonna be working with,
are they good people and do they respect us?
These are the different things that we look for
before we take on a project,
and we always do this
for every single project that we take on.
Now, I know you're probably already thinking to yourself,
"Hey, this company must not have checked
"any of these boxes."
It checked a few, and that's what made this opportunity
kinda complicated.
So, let me tell you a little bit about this job.
Now, obviously I cannot tell you the name of this company
or the people behind it,
but I'll tell you a little bit
about the scope of the work that they were looking for.
Number one, yes, there was a lot of money.
It was very tempting to be like,
"Wow, 100,000 plus dollars to work on a project."
But then you gotta think about it for a second.
Here's the scope of the project.
15 videos, and we had to produce them all
within under a month.
Now, yes, this is doable, but is it worth it?
Once you start thinking about all the expenses involved
and all the people that we need to hire,
the editors, the sound people,
the travel that was involved to go along with it,
is it actually worth the money
and should we put our name on it?
So, let's start breaking it down
in terms of our philosophies and this contract.
Number one, financially,
obviously the $100,000 is very tempting,
it check-marked the financial.
Number two, would this be good in our portfolio?
This is a bit of a gray area.
So no, we've actually worked on a project like this before,
but we've also never produced 15 videos in a month.
And that actually might be a good case study
for a future brand that we can handle
that big of a workload.
Additionally, we'd also be able
to grow our network very quickly
by working on a project like this.
So, there's a benefit to it, but also a negative
because we already had something like this in our portfolio.
Number three, the selfish side, is there travel involved?
Yes, there was travel involved.
But we'd only be going across the country for two days
and then having to come home,
so we'd actually have no time to go and check out that area
and shoot beauty shots or get to experience.
So the travel, again, a bit of a gray area.
Yes, there's travel,
but we didn't actually get to enjoy the travel.
Number four, are they doing good in the world?
No, I can't divulge this information
or I'd be at liability here,
but you've gotta trust me, from our perspective,
it didn't seem like they were doing any good in the world,
it was only for profit,
and we never really saw them doing anything
to benefit other human beings.
Would I be proud to put my name on this?
Again, it's a bit of a gray area.
Yes, it's kinda cool to work on a project like this
and it also feels good to provide these many opportunities
for all my colleagues and friends in the industry.
But at the same time, would I truly be proud
to put my name on this?
Probably not, it's just another corporate video.
And number six, are they good people?
And this is always a really hard one to kinda gauge,
but in this case, we had to trust our good.
Yes, on a surface level
this person seemed like a good person,
but there's always all these little red flags
that kinda come up.
Number one, they would never give us a heads up
if they were calling us.
They'd just kinda calls us up out of the blue
and some people would be like,
"Well, that's just business."
But it means he did not respect our time.
Number two, he said a few things over the phone
where he kinda joked about certain things
where I was just like, "I didn't like that
"and the way that you were talking about certain people."
Number four, did not respect the timelines
that we had set out.
When he said, "We have to get all of this one in a month,"
why did you not do more planning ahead of time?
Why is it being left to one month now
and we're the ones that have to pick up your mistakes?
The client also just didn't really know what they wanted.
They were like, "Oh, we think you guys are super creative.
"Why don't you pitch us some ideas?"
No, you need to give us some context of what you need.
And I'll never forget this
when we were all on the phone call
we told him our typical thing that we tell clients.
There's one round of revisions.
If there's some small edits here and there,
we don't mind doing them.
So about two edits altogether for the final video.
He was like, "No, we're more of a five to seven edit
"type of company."
I could not believe it.
That means that they actually
have no idea what they're doing
and do not respect our time,
and also wanted us to just do it for free
rather than get paid more money to do it.
So there's a lot of stress involved with this company.
So right up front, tons of red flags.
But then on the same side, a $100,000.
So, I'll never forget,
my business partner and fiancee Lizzie Peirce
said to me, she goes,
"I know we've put already a ton of time in this."
When you actually accumulate all the man hours,
it was about $500 to put together an estimate,
jumping on random phone calls
whenever this guy wanted to jump on a phone call,
and all of the other things involved.
So there was already some upfront cost
that we already lost in trying to get this contract.
But she said, "I don't have a good feeling on this."
And one of the biggest things
that I've learned in this industry
is that you have to trust your gut.
No joke, it was very difficult to say no to this contract
because that money meant more opportunity.
If we had this in our portfolio maybe we could go
and do more things like this on this scale.
Maybe they'd be a repeat client.
But do you really wanna work for somebody
that does not respect you and your time
and the work that you do?
No, because one of the biggest things
that I've learned in this industry
is that if you network with people who are slimy people,
let's call them slimy people.
I just imagine a very slimy human slimming around.
If you network what slimy people,
they only network with other slimy people
and then you're just gonna be in the land of slime
where you just don't really make money
and people take advantage of you.
So, trust your gut.
If you have all these red flags coming out,
even though it might seem tempting to have the money
and people will just be like, "That's business."
Is it really worth your time, that stress,
your energy, your creative ideas,
for somebody else that's just gonna be like,
"Whatever, that's just business"?
It's sometimes a bit more than that.
And the last thing out of all this,
I remember having conversations with Lizzie,
I was like, "I just don't like that guy, but whatever,
"that's just the way it is."
And she's like, "No, we don't like the person.
"This is work, we all wanna work with people that we like."
When you're working on creative projects,
you wanna be excited about the project
because you'll actually have better results.
And what happens if you keep going
through all those revisions
and by the end of all those revisions
you look at that final video and you're like, "This sucks."
Because that stuff happens.
Those companies can destroy creative ideas,
the energy and the excitement that you have.
And you don't wanna carry that energy
into those next projects,
and have an idea that that's the way
that the industry is, because it's not.
Because there's so many opportunities out there
for you guys to live out your creative potential
and get paid for it too.
So when opportunities like that come up,
although very tempting on the business side
and the money side,
sometimes you might have to say no.
One of my favorite quotes is from Miles Davis.
He says, "The notes that you don't play
"are just as important as the ones that you do."
If you think about it,
if you went on a piano and played all the notes
'cause you wanted to get those jobs,
you wanted to do as much as possible,
it would sound like (beep).
But what makes your life musical,
what makes it actually beautiful
and what gets you to the places that you wanna go,
is by saying yes and no to the right areas.
And at the beginning, I would recommend
that you say yes to everything.
But when you're at a point where you're okay financially
or you can get by,
I think it's better to trust your gut on situations.
Because you wouldn't wanna feel sour about this industry
and getting paid in this industry.
Because getting to be a creative
is one of the best things that you can possibly do.
I wake up every single day so stoked
to make videos for you guys, for our clients,
because we said yes and no to the right opportunities.
So, my little tidbit for you is don't be afraid to say no.
We kinda talked about this in our latest podcast,
Lizzie and I have a podcast.
And a few weeks ago we talked about
how to say no to certain projects
and opportunities and people and all those things,
so if you guys wanna hear a bit more in depth,
links are below for that.
Guys, I just wanted to share
a little bit of a heart-to-heart
and a real story, no clickbait.
If you guys saw value in this video
or relate to this story in some way,
please press like, it actually means the world to us.
Subscribe and hit the bell to be notified
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And we'll catch you guys in the next one.
I gotta go work because we said no to that contract
and I gotta go make some money.
I'm just joking.
Okay, love you, bye.
(gentle music)