How We Built A $250K/Month Production Business Despite A Major Pivot During Covid
Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?
Hi, my name is Joshua Dixon, I'm a director, producer, and founder of Mbrella Films.
We are a production house that produces and directs corporate videos, commercials, and feature films all over the world, we are shooting in multiple countries each day, this allows clients to be able to show anywhere affordably. And now we are expanding our business with a brand new post-production house
Check out our showreel:
We started the business around 5 years ago with just 5-6 people, and now I can proudly say that we are over 40 people strong and looking forward to hiring a couple more.
I can’t say the exact number in terms of revenue, but since the inception of the company, we have been doubling our revenue every year.
The full version of the StarterStory Podcast is available here:
What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?
Back 16-17 years ago, when I was in the US. I was in a rock band, playing music full-time, like every teenager that dreams of being in a rock band.
Then I started to shoot a music video for the band and that is what segued me into the film business.
There was a short period I worked in an ad agency and I acquired many skills. Seeing how they interacted with clients, it kind of helped me understand their approach to it.
I had an opportunity to work in movie production in Vietnam because of the RED Camera (special filmmaking camera) that I got and I had a very great time working in that production.
There was a moment when I knew I had to go on with this business when I was on the BTS (Bangkok Transit System) trains in Thailand, and I saw many digital ads. I thought to myself “There’re so many ads here.”
The last time I ever felt like this was when I’m at Time Square. Many countries might have it now but I think Bangkok is really at the forefront of that. That’s when I came up with an idea for the production house.
At the time I moved here to Thailand, there was only me. I got divorced and still had some bills to clear out.
After taking care of them I moved to Thailand and still got an opportunity to be a DP (Director of Photography) in the movies shot in the US, so I had to bounce back and forth for around a year and a half.
Take us through the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing your first product.
We have a strong network of clients, referrals, and reviews that brings in customers to us regularly. Our first client was actually a short film, one of the “passion projects”, and now we are producing full ads for Disney, I would say we have had a great journey!
We promise the following to our customers from the get-go:
1) Clear and concise communication
2) Quick responses and transparent budgeting
Once a request hits our contact form and our inbox, the contact will hear from one of our team members to schedule a one-on-one call. It can be an online video meeting or a WhatsApp call.
Our producer gets on this call to understand the potential customer’s needs and ask any other relevant questions regarding the video requirements such as their brand’s positioning, and other details.
Then we step in to give the right recommendation to our client. After a day or two of understanding the requirements, our team follows up with the customer with the expected cost and the resources required.
At this point, our team is 100% available and attends to our client’s needs, questions, and any other details they need and we follow through with this system until our job is complete.
If you're gonna operate an organization right with a team, your team needs to know what they're doing daily, weekly, and monthly. Everything needs to be able to function without you.
Some of the commercial work we did in the early days for Pomelo:
Describe the process of launching the business.
Before we launched Mbrella Films, I started Wind Up Films where I’d partnered up with a couple of guys. At first, I thought that I had to do something, something’s got to change or I’m going to be a freelancer for the rest of my life.
So, our shareholders brought in some money, which wasn’t a huge amount of money but that money bought me time to figure out how to run the company properly in Asia. I was able to breathe just long enough to properly set up our management team and the actual legal side of the business. If it wasn’t for that money I would be running around from one job to another job with a lot of uncertainty and won’t have time to settle things out. So, that was probably the biggest thing when we launched Mbrella Films.
Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?
We have a very wide net online, people recommend us on Facebook groups a lot. It's 5-6 years of solid building connections, reviews, and figuring out where the gaps in the market.
We do a good job of making sure our customers know everything from the beginning, there are no surprises for the customers. We give them costs upfront and respond fast. I will say that we do choose our customers, we won’t work with just anyone, it has to be the right fit. Unfortunately, in our market a lot of people are just window shopping, we don’t pursue those types of jobs.
That's one of the challenges here is the communication (Thai language) and the response time. With that, we kind of eliminate that, and that's one of the reasons why clients love us is because of course the communication is very clear.
It's a huge market here, there's a massive amount of people here that consume media. I think that there's not a matter of attracting people. When we went to the American film market, we were trying to attract people here to shoot their movies in this region. But, as far as we are trying to attract people, they're already coming here. We just gotta be the people that stick out.
What we did during Covid is we shifted everything. I had 25 staff at the time and we brought everyone together and said, we gotta think, how are we gonna pivot? I'm proud of all the staff we had that stuck through that and helped us pivot. What we did is we established remote production and it worked well. It was a very scary time. It was very difficult but we had to pivot as a team and find that gap in the market.
Here’s a promotion we did for remote production during covid times:
Here’s a behind the scenes of another remote production commercial for an ice cream brand:
We always follow up with each production with a measurement call, we make sure to listen intently to what our customers like and also what they thought we need improvement on. Fortunately, we have had a very positive response to our productions, the ultimate compliment is when we have a new referral, I can’t speak highly enough about our customers who send us their colleagues and connections.
How are you doing today and what does the future look like?
Everything that I mentioned about remote production is continuing. I'm not turning it off because Covid ended. I think that a lot of businesses have shifted and there are a lot more people working from home now.
There are a lot of businesses that understand that they can save money by doing remote production because they've done it so much now that they're not scared of it.
We are launching a post-production house and just shot our first feature film. The post-production house is set up to do a post-production service for commercials, corporates, and feature films. We have the presentation room for the client, a minibar, and a lounge area to double-head the work.
In the future, I want to have another division that does just films with our IP. And the other is the line production for other movies that are coming to shoot in Thailand.
Our goals for this coming year are to increase our team to 80 full-time and increase revenue by 30% with the addition of our post-production house.
Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?
When leading a team, it's very easy to get caught up on things that don’t affect the macro. I prefer to let the team figure out their way to get from point A to point B, instead of holding their hands the whole time to get them to do it just how I would myself. In the end, it’s not always important how they achieved the work, as long as it's not wasting your resources or time. So, that kind of thing is learning when you should correct people and when you shouldn't and that's something I'm still working on a lot.
Of course, it's very difficult for me because I'm a very OCD type and very much a control freak. So I'm having to learn personally to step back, reassess, calm down for a second, be slow to anger, walk away, and then come back another time. To see, is it gonna make a difference or is it gonna make a difference to me?
What platform/tools do you use for your business?
We use all kinds of different applications. Like Google Workspace, we use it for everything. HubSpot for tracking all kinds of our CRM and we use Frame.io for video reviews. Also, the typical thing everyone uses like Google Drive, it’s the tool we use to transfer footage back and forth.
There's an application that we use called Lark, it's a communications platform for our internal staff. To keep track of everything from the typical chat to a sick leave form to notify HR.
What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?
I think Gary V's youtube channel is probably the most influential for me in how to cooperate with my staff, how to approach them, and how to form a culture at the company.
Another one is Alex Hermozi, he is very good at operations and understands how to make your business profitable and get rid of things that don't make sense and it's a very common sense approach.
The last one is Grant Cardone, but he's more in the future for me. It's more of a long-term strategy for investing in real estate. I'm kind of collecting that, and right now, I'm trying to focus on growing the company. Once I'm in another place, then I'll probably start getting into real estate investment, that sort of thing.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?
If you're gonna create a startup or a company of some sort, you’ll need to have someone that can do the operations and then you’ll need to have someone that can probably do sales. Those are the two things that I think you need in a company whenever you're starting.
You need to have protocols in place. If you're gonna operate an organization right with a team, your team needs to know what they're doing daily, weekly, and monthly. Everything needs to be able to function without you. If that's not able to happen, your business is gonna stop whenever you get sick or whenever you have to go on a business trip.
Listen to your team, even if they are working for you or they have less experience than you. However, a lot of them have great ideas. If you can't listen to them and get their ideas, you're not gonna be able to collaborate with them and you shouldn't call them a team member.
Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?
I'm now at the point where I need to get a full-time executive assistant and accounting staff. So I'm looking for these two positions right now in Thailand. Both positions are full-time jobs and can’t be done remotely.
We're always looking for producers too and we prefer to get people that have little experience to know the experience and understand how to communicate well.
Where can we go to learn more?
I have a regular podcast on everything related to production and running a production company.
Following are the links to our companies and other resources where you can reach out to me:
If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!
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