0:00 Welcome to the habitus podcast I'm your host Daniel Martinez. Today I have special returning guests. Mr. Josh Lawler. If you have not seen the other episode, please go check it out. We've talked about some shoe rentals. But today is episode deal breakdown. We cover cool, interesting stories. And since he's in the film shoe rental business, we're going to ask you what is coolers the story is that he has about film rentals that could be bad or good. Let's find out. 0:25 Yeah, so I think Thanks for Thanks for having me on. Daniel, thanks for coming back. And so yeah, so when I think about the film shoot rentals that I've done, there a couple a couple of kind of, I think a couple of interesting stories, I think are worth worth sharing. So one is the time that we made over $11,000 in one day. So we were doing a shoot for a talent agency. And I say talent, this is like, professional executive search agency. So corporations that are looking for technology talent, might contact an executive search agency and say I have a need for, you know, a developer who knows, you know, Python, or, you know, experience with, you know, Java or something like that. And so, this this company, it was interesting, the owner, the owner of the company, actually lived on the opposite coast of me. So I'm on the I'm on the East Coast. And this guy and the company are based in Seattle. And but they were working with a production company that was based in Brooklyn, which is commutable distance from where I am. And so they actually flew, they flew to my, to my location. And so, again, for anyone thinking about doing film shoots, you don't, you don't have to be in a certain part of the country, you don't need to be in a big city, you don't need to be near La, it really depends on either the location of the company that's creating content, or the location, or you're nearby a production company. So in this case, the client kind of flew out to us and other cases, we've had instances where, you know, the client is local, and a production company will come. So we we were doing a we're doing a shoot a one one day shoot for for this company, and it was a full day they're trying to pack a lot in, which is typically the case, right? Because it's more, it's more cost effective. When you're when you're planning and if you've got a you know, whatever's 2:39 there, you got the cameras, there's cameras, there. 2:43 Yeah, 40 person 40 person crew. And so that was that was kind of on the bigger side for us. But you know, well, within kind of the the normal the normal range. And one of the things I recommend in film shoots is, you don't just want to have a, you don't just want to set a daily rate, you want to set tiered pricing. So in our case, you know, our tiered pricing starts at our base rate is 600 an hour. And again, we are in a higher cost part of the country. So you know, you can adjust based on sort of where you're where you're living, that's kind of more of a metro area pricing, I would say, but it floats, you know, if you're in a lower cost for the country a little bit lower, fine. So that would be our base rate for say, one to 10 person crew. So, but this shoot was over, over 40 people. And so we set tiered pricing, so our hourly rate just increases with each size with the size of the of the production. So these guys came, and for whatever reason, they were kind of running running behind a little bit. And so they needed to they asked if they could, you know, stay a little bit later and do do overtime. So this is something that it's not not super common, because usually the crews are, you know, kind of well oiled machines, but sometimes a crew will come and they'll, they'll find a part of the house where they'll realize that, oh, this wasn't part of our plan, but we want to do a shoot, you know, we want to get some extra shots and give you an example like we were once doing a shoot and for a children's line and then they saw the laundry room and said oh, you know what, this would be good actually, can we we're gonna you mind if I know this wasn't part of the plan, but can we shoot there so they took a little bit a little bit more time so that's what happened with this shoot. So they ended up needing a couple extra hours of time to do the shoots and so after everything was said and done, it was so it was a long day for for the crew not not for me because I was just kind of hanging out in my in my home office while they were while they were working. But after the after the shoot, I think so it must have gone about you know, 13 or 13 hours or so maybe 1314 hours. You know, we always have a cleaning fee and By the way, when you're renting your house for film shoots, you can charge time and a half for overtime. Just like if you were working, working at jobs. So if you're basically if your base rate is 600, you know, your overtime is going to be 900. But our base rate was our rate was even higher here because it was a bigger a bigger shoot. So you can imagine that the numbers go up. And so at the end of the day, this ended up being a shoot, we made a little over $11,000 for one day, shoot. And that's when I kind of knew that I was onto something with with film shoots. So that's, that's kind of the, like, the I was the eye opener for me. So that was kind of like, that was like one one story. I don't know how much time we have. But there's 5:42 no I got questions. Yeah, go ahead. So one thing I didn't answer this is you've been you've been doing this for a while now. Do you do direct booking now to kind of save on peerspace pricing? Because I'm the middleman always gets paid. But if you can, and I know Airbnb is the kind of do to try to like get their customers that pass through. That way they can book their business again, if they pass through again, if there 6:05 Yeah, isn't. So, ya know, it's interesting, I actually, I actually don't recommend that. And I actually have story that like where we learned the hard way, why. So I actually always recommend people going through a platform, like a listing a listing platform. And the reason I recommend that is because there are built in protections. And so and I'll give you an example of a time that we didn't do that. So early on in our film shoot rental journey, we got an inquiry from someone through one of the standard platforms, and it was a pretty small shoot. So that might say, this is we're talking like an eight person shoot would have been very non disruptive. And for whatever reason, when these guys submitted their film shoot permit to the application to the town. For the first this was the first and only time permit has ever been rejected. They were rejected. Oh, let me back up. Sorry. So these guys were a small shoot. And they were really they said, look our budgets really tight, can we, what if we don't go through a platform, because just like you said, we want to avoid paying the fee, you can avoid your, you know, portion of the fee. And we're kind of naive. And we said, and then they said, you know, our budgets really tight and should have been a red flag for whenever anyone's sort of talking about tight budget, that should be a red flag. But I said, Okay, you know what we figured it's such a small shoot, not a big deal. But we still had them go through the time permit application. And like I said, first time ever, the town rejected the permit. My theory, it wasn't because we've had much bigger shoots much more involved shoots. The reason my theory that they were rejected is because these guys were just jerks. You know, they're kind of people like the way they interacted with you. And you can just, I could just imagine them sort of, you know, hounding the town saying, Why isn't this approved yet? When is this gonna get done, and it was sort of that sort of attitude. So anyway, that was a surprise. And we were, you know, disappointed to not be able to do the shoot, but, but a few weeks later, we got a sort of rather threatening letter from the legal department of this marketing agency that was doing the shoot, basically saying, like, hey, because and we had done a direct agreement with them. And you know, they're a company and they have like, their, their lawyers. So we signed this agreement. And, again, we had never had a shoot rejected. So we didn't even think that was from the town permit perspective. So we didn't even think that was an option. And so they they sent this letter demanding money for the sunk costs for the shoot that they couldn't do. And we ended up sort of negotiating and talking them down, but we still ended up having to pay them, I think around 800 bucks or so just to kind of make the problem go away. So instead of making money from a shoot, we ended up having to pay money. And that was the last time that I ever went direct and avoided a listing platform. So I know a lot of people may want to save, you know, a few 100 bucks, but um, I recommend going to the there are all kinds of protections built in from damage to a third third party that you can escalate issues to. And yeah, so to answer your question, you know, where I stand on this one. 9:14 I'm just gonna gotta get on a bad story. Because I think everybody everybody's like, The Good, The Good, The Good, The Good, the good. And like, yeah, that's, that's what's really the bad here. And I think that's a perfect example. That's, I really want to ask it too, because as much as everybody teaches a bit about the everything that they're doing is good. There's always the caveat. And one thing I've known is that usually through the third party services, they have the insurances coverage and all that stuff. And if you don't have that, you don't have to get it done yourself. 9:46 Yep. Yeah, exactly. I highly recommend going through the going through the listing, sort of valid listing platform, recommend getting getting the permits from your town. And look, you know, the reason You know, like I said, people may not maybe be reluctant to get a permit or worry that the production company that you're working with isn't going to want to pay the permit, you know, kind of permit fees, but any professional crew is used to dealing with a local, local municipality they are. And again, it's a red flag if they kind of raise issues when when you bring up the permit question. So 10:23 there you go. I think I think it's very, I think, for everybody here, dumpster rentals.com Where can people find you online? Besides films, rooms? 10:32 People, people can email me Josh at film shoot rentals.com. But yeah, it websites the best best place to go to learn more and learn about my course. 10:40 They go check out the other episode, man, I think I think it's a good opportunity, good opportunity to create cash for you, you know, see the opportunity. I think this is one of the things we're like, I like doing interviews like this, because it's one of those things, you don't know what you don't know. And now that you know, you can do better and see better and then possibly monetize it. And hopefully, I'll hold off and take advantage of that. 11:01 The the other and I hope we have time, this is like a 32nd story that I think that does kind of that we haven't talked about. But the other thing to sort of the nonmonetary so you know, again, we say film shoots, people often think like, oh, feature films, again, if it's not obvious yet, like, typically, we don't do feature films, they're typically one day commercial shoots. But we once did a we're working with an Esports company got this kind of, you know, Esports Betting app, and they had relationships with professional athletes, like in all these cities across the country, and they were doing a tour of creating content with their celebrity who are professional athletes spokespeople. And because I'm near New York, this happened to be a, they were working with a star point guard from the New York Knicks. And so, it was kind of surreal to like, do this shoot where you know, we had the star point guard from the Knicks just kind of like hanging out in our in our living room for this for this interview and a shoot so you know, in addition to the money, sometimes you get the occasional celebrity, you know, just hanging out in your house. 12:10 Interesting. I think it's one of the like I said, I think the other episodes talked about how they had the music video. See, you don't know who you're gonna meet and network with when you're doing interest when you're doing unique stuff like this. Exactly. So interesting. I think it's dope for everybody here. Go check it out for insurances. I can say it again. I'm sure it's it's like that. We're hopefully we're going to hopefully get something going and make some money doing it as well. So for everybody here, go like share the episode. If you find it interesting. Leave us a like a review. We'll see you next time. Thanks for tuning in. Thank you, Josh, for coming on. And we'll see you next time. Thanks, guys. Bye bye.