here we go. Welcome back to another episode of the LCR Media Podcast with your host, Nailor Taliefero. How's it going everybody? Back at it again here. We are live in the studio with Keith Calfis. How's it going Keith? What's up bro? What's up? We're live in Keith's studio by the way, not, I fooled you guys there, not my studio. I'm using his Roadcaster Pro here and it's, this is just fun times. I've been wanting to come here for a long time ever since I saw you put all this together. And you know, I just, I don't frequent Michigan often enough. And unfortunately when I do, it's always in the winter when it's cold. So we, we joked off air like I gotta come here in the summer because I'm, I hear it's beautiful. So I can't wait to do that, but in the meantime, man, this studio is epic. I know we talked a lot off air, you know, the amount of work that you put into, to putting this together and it really pays off. It looks good. It sounds good. All the content that I've seen coming out of it is good. So how's life? Life's good. Bro, I'm fired up man, more motivated and ambitious than ever. I can tell. I can tell man, we've had a lot of off air conversations and I can see all the epic content coming out. And you've, you've been really like a, a pioneer in our community since, you know, like not only one of the OGs, but just a pioneer of like really focusing on quality content, you know, consistent content, all different forms of content, virtual assistance, building a team, doing all these, you know, marketing, doing all these things that a lot of people probably didn't even know as possible, you know, like, you know, that some people like in our industry, in our community, they, they want to, they maybe want to give back or they want to create content that aren't really sure how or whatever or even for their business, maybe, you know, promote their business as well. And you've always been like the spokesperson of that, like you're always showing and telling, you know, all the different ways to create content and to interact with your customers, interact with other peers in the industry and, you know, all the different avenues with that. You've been doing this probably way before we discovered you in the community, right? Like how long have you been the guy that knows all about sound and, you know, content and all that? Like, what's the, what's the history there? I don't think we've ever even really talked about this. Bro. So way back in, I think it was 99, 2000, I was really getting into music. I must've been 18. I was playing the piano and singing since I was a kid. But I wanted to create music. My friend was rapping and I was singing the hooks and, you know, I heard, I would go to guitar center and look at the expensive gear that I couldn't afford at the time. And I was told that you have to go to a studio. So I'm looking around for studios and one day I go to this, this guy's studio and he I think he charged like $65 an hour. This was like back then his, he must have put like 80 grand to the studio and today it'd probably be a quarter million or something. It had like a util rubber floating floors to stop the sonic vibrations from going through. There's like, anyways, I left this studio and it was just in a basement, but it had like a drumroom and it had like the four layers of plexigat glass to cancel out the phase cancellation from the sound going through and a guitar booth. All this stuff. It was like a rock studio and I was there and I was singing on the microphone and discussing studio time and all this stuff. And I come back and I'm telling my friends like, bro, I went to a real studio. And I was like, wait a second, this is in somebody's basement. It's a, wait, but I was asking the guys like, how did you come up with the money to do all this? He's like, well, I put it all on credit cards and then I would go to someone else's studio and it's just like in a bedroom and a smokey apartment where there's weed smoke and I can't even breathe and there's beer all over the place and you can't even get on the mic because. And then another, I went to all these studios and I grew up around in Detroit where there's hip hop and beats and all this stuff and I was obsessed and I got so pissed off, bro. I said, you know what, I'm sick and tired of trying to rely on someone else sitting in someone as my wife was a singer too. And we like go to the studio and this is like after, but I'll make it quick and she, my wife can sing, bro, but she won't ever do it. But she sang too and we were like singers and we go to the studio and they're just hanging out smoking weed and talking and like, she didn't even get to get on the mic and we drove all the way there for that. And that type of shit is what pissed me off. I said, you know what, bro? I went, I literally spent my lawn care checks, I'm buying, you know, a computer and microphone and sound board mixer, everything that you need. I got a beat machine email at the Emu MP7 hip hop multi track sequencer command station and I made my first hundred beats and I started learning how to produce tracks and do vocals and engineering. I became obsessed with learning EQ compression, normalization, understanding different compression ratios and how sound sound works, even order out of order harmonics analog to digital everything and I became obsessed. I'd stay up all night, bro. I'd make coffee and drink coffee till 10 o'clock in the morning. Am I boring you right now? Oh, not at all. So my friends, now they will come over because I had my own studio and I would just go to get foam and foam out a closet and make a sound booth. And then I started producing tracks and I produced six albums by the time I was 22. And so then I started producing music videos and back then it was just like a DVD cam. So I would direct and produce music videos and edit them and do everything and then we were doing shows. I was the guy at the show who had like live hip hop shows. I was a guy who had my own microphone that everybody wanted to use. Keith Michaels microphone because I have my own expensive microphone that sounded better than the other microphone I'd buy a case and people come up to me, these other rappers and they'd be like, bro, can I use that mic for my set? I'm like, no, dude, this thing was like, yeah, this is like, because I was a germaphobe, too. Yeah. So. But anyways, and then I started producing my second album. Anyways. That's epic, man. So when I got into starting my own lawn and landscape business, I just took all the stuff I learned from promotions and music and stage stuff. And I put it into the YouTube channel and it was just a natural transition of all the marketing and understanding. But the most amazing thing of everything I'm seeing right now is there are content creators who know zip, zero, zilch about all this stuff that I'm talking about and they're crushing it because they have a message that they want to share with the world and they got an iPhone or they got a GoPro and they don't know anything about the difference between MOV and MP4 and the different, I could literally spit home so much techno babble stuff to you right now. Right. About. All the things. I want to do it just because my ego, like I'm telling you, bro, I know a lot of stuff about production. Oh, I know. I can. I can already tell them. I've heard you talk so much about it. That's why I wanted to bring this up because there's history there and then you've learned all this stuff along the way. I know you know all this stuff, man. Like no babble. That is the, that is the term. Yeah. I can tell you see on a piano, I think it's 44,000 oscillations per second and the next C above middle C is 88,000 it's even order harmonics. So like I'm obsessed with that. I'm always listening to frequencies and sounds and I'm obsessed with the way lighting works. Like a Lembrandt Rembrandt lighting overhead key lighting, three point lighting, what makes a set. Look, I hire like I have friends that are in doing production like I had like a wedding video business or have produced like a TV show. My uncle, not that it matters, but he was like the head stage and set designer for the Lawrence Welk Show for like 30 years. It's like in some like is this in my blood? Is this in my DNA? I paid a friend of mine. I think we spent 14 straight hours in my studio just analyzing the way that the light reflects off of the different objects in this way. I have a four camera, five camera setup. I forgot about 70,000 to the studio with everything, including every last SD chip and my goals. I want a studio that's you know, half a million dollar Barna Minium studio with multi levels with like live event space and everything. I want LED panel light walls. That would do that. It's going to be amazing, bro. You want a creator clubhouse? It's going to be a great clubhouse. It's going to be so insane. So put this producer friend of mine, like we have the screen, the monitor and the cameras pointing for my podcast studio setup. It's a multi camera. We got leather couches and lights pointing at us. And so the wall is lit independently, like with a different color. So the subject pops off the background and basically he looks at the monitor that's showing what the cameras can see that's plugged into the cameras via HDMI and he's like, what's that? And like, what do you mean? He goes down underneath like the chair in the frame, like underneath where you sit. Real small. I'm like, what? He goes, there's a little tiny cord, like a cord coming off like the road caster pro mixer that where it plugs in, I go cares. He's like, well, you can see it. I'm like barely. It's underneath the chair. He's like, well, that's muddying up the frame. He's making the frame look unprofessional who wants to see an electrical cord. So and then we move the electrical cord high and then we take a little piece of like electrical taper. We move it so you can't see it in the camera angle. Then we switch the camera angle to the side angle and then you can still see it. So we had to reroute it completely. It's like 10 minutes. Let's just say just that. Then the next thing he's like, what's that? That little hot point. So it's a reflection behind us. We have my studio. It's like a booth. It's like a sonic chamber. It's a voice over booth, but it has a polished nickel handle like a, it's a door handle. Yeah. But it reflects light. I don't care. Well, if it reflects light, that's white or silver or lights bouncing off like a reflection or a refractory type of, I feel like I was hoping I'm not boring. Okay. That was awesome. He, he, he had me go and like take a little piece of like a electrical tape and stick it on little tiny things to reduce the refractory the way the light was reflecting. Yeah. So it didn't create a hot point in the lens. And then he goes, wake, what's that? So I have like a, like a big screen TV behind me that will just like play like scenic nature. So it looks cool in the podcast. He goes, well, he, he goes, there's a light reflecting off of the big screen TV. I go, who cares? He goes, well, I can see it in the frame. I'm like, what? So one of the light bulbs in my studio was at the perfect angle or it was reflecting off the camera. So when you look, you know, when you look at a big screen TV, you can see like a light from the ceiling. Yeah. So we literally took cardboard. I have these from the dollar show, like the black construction board. And we cut it out and we taped it all off the ceiling to make like a, um, a little light panel and we cut it into the perfect pattern so that it doesn't, it shines light, but does not reflect it off 15 feet away off the TV. So the camera lens won't see it. And we kept adjusting it. This is like 20 minutes until you couldn't see the light on that. And then we're like adjusting the pillows and the furniture and the, and then there's plants in the background behind me. And I did a whole podcast on Apollo, Jameson's podcast, talking about branding and I got so deep into it that it was obsessed with it. But I guess people liked it. Yeah. Yeah. So, like a brand transformation type thing. Yeah. So there, I have plants in my, I have plants all over the fricking place. So it has like a natural feel because we're in the green industry. And he's like, I don't, the plant, it's blending in with the background on the wall. It's like, we need to shine a light on the plant. I'm like, well, there is light shining on the plant goes, no, we need the light. The plant needs to have its own light. Look what the hell are you talking about? So there we are. He's sitting there pointing while I'm climbing up and down a ladder in my studio for 14 hours over two days, 14 hours of this guy. I climb up, I run the electrical line and I see, look, if you look at that plant, see that blue light up there? Yeah. And it's blue. It's not white light. It's, and we, we're going through and I was digging through finding gels. So that plant has its own light. So in the frame, that light, that plant shows up in the, in the camera scene. Yeah. And now the plant looks like it's illuminated. So it looks cool, like, and then, I mean, that's just that. Yeah. So this is just a microcosm of the stuff that we went through refining and refining. And I retained about, I think I retained 80 to 90% of everything that he taught me. I feel like I did 100%, but I don't actually put into practice because I, I don't care that much, but his level of obsessiveness, I'm like, oh, how the F, do you get anything done? The reason we were preparing for this is because Joshua Latimer was coming over to film. So we had multiple cameras set up. He was running the switcher while my videographer was getting behind the scenes b-roll. Yeah. And then so we hang, we hung key lights from the ceiling, one for Josh, one for me, and we cut out these custom cardboard cutouts to create barn door flaps off the lights. So the light only specifically hits our faces at a specific Rembrandt angle and doesn't bounce off and spill onto the back wall because the back wall is independently illuminated itself. So we're controlling and tuning the lighting, right? And then so we looked perfect in the frame. Hey, guys, I just wanted to interrupt for a minute and tell you the actual details for the content master class that I'm going to be doing. In January, I don't know if those of you that remember previous episode, I kind of just went off the cuff and just mentioned that I was going to be doing or thinking about doing that and didn't really have a whole lot of details but said to reach out to me if you're interested. So with all that being said, the conclusion is I'm opening up some spots for the master class that I'm going to be teaching for my inner circle coaching group while we're at synced live in Atlanta this January 14th, 15th, 16th. So if you're interested, you can click the link in the episode description for all the details. So the content master class is going to also include that that ticket is going to include the entrance, the registration for synced live as well. So you'll be able to hang out with us at Pod Row, learn how to podcast if you're starting out or want to start out, get on some podcast, share your story if you would like. You can even start your podcast there at Pod Row. Just bring an SD card and pop it in one of our boards. You can pop it on my board, absolutely, and you can record some episodes as well and actually start your podcast off right there at Pod Row, which is pretty much what I did when I started my podcast four years ago. Before there was a Pod Row, I was just at a networking event and I utilized Paul Jamison's podcast board. I popped in my own SD card and I banged out a couple of episodes while I was there. And so I want to, you know, that's a great way to start. So I want to offer that to you as well. But the content masterclass is going to be going over all of the ways to create great content for your audience and for to attract brands if that's your interest. So whether you're trying to attract customers for your business, other businesses for, you know, a following so that you can have a following to then offer to attract brands to, you know, have brand deals and sponsorships for events that maybe you want to host or are hosting. And it's all about having the right content plan and the type of content to create that kind of environment, whoever you're trying to attract. And then how, how, what do you do with that audience and different tips and framework that I'll be sharing for that. So whether you're just starting out creating content or you want to get better and take it to the next level, the content master classes for you, again, this is for my inner circle that we're doing this, but I was able to find a bigger space that I can get at sync live so we can add some more spots. So it's limited seating. I don't remember the number is what, what the actual total that we can fit in there. But the bottom line is if you're interested, just check out the link and sign up as soon as possible before the spots are all gone. And I hope to see you guys there. Toro is a proud partner of the LCR media podcast and they're offering some great details on equipment. Now through February 28th, set your commercial operation up for success in 2025 with new machines and major savings, get up to $1,000 off, select spray masters and aerators and treat turf exponentially faster, visit your local Toro dealer or click the link in the episode description for more details. Josh is just coming over to do a podcast, a one hour podcast and wait, it was one to two and a half days. So maybe it was like with us socializing and getting food, I'm talking, bro, could you imagine spending two and a half whole days setting up a studio and running things and making it precisely perfect? And I said, why would you do the she goes? This is what professional like Hollywood and studio set designers do. They have an entire team of people that obsess over microscopic little details. Like, I have these, if you look around, I see I have these like leather furniture and matching wood grain like corner tables with little plants and stuff. When we actually set it up, we're moving the coasters and the plants and rotating them. So they're precisely like symmetrically spaced in between. So they're not blocking. If you see the microphone, we don't want anything masking anything else. So therefore, when you look at it in a three dimensional space through what the camera sees, everything is so precise that it looks like, like, and here's the thing, you ever like, like, get a, you see a brand new car right off the lot. Yeah. Like, it's different than a car that's brand new that's even three months old, but even just got detailed to car wash. There's something about a brand new car. You know, it's brand new because something about it illuminates to where your subconscious mind, like just something about it, like brand new shoes, like a thing. It has this. Right. And that larger than life, it's a surreal type of. It's perfect. Perfect. Yeah. Yeah. It's perfect. It hasn't been touched. It's perfection. It's just right there. Like perfect specimen. Yeah. Your eyes will catch like, or my wife is an OCD clean freak, bro. Like when she cleans the house, you came over our house is relatively pretty clean. But when she finishes, they seem fine to me. Yes. She cleans, cleans, bro. The house is so clean and surgically clean that it has a different, a totally different feel to it to the point where it's like, whoa, I do, you just know, take your shoes off a couple or something. It's this, it's this feeling because there isn't a single thing at a place or spec of dirt. Yeah. Yeah. Just like that. So it almost looks like a sort of like hyper reality, right? So when, when you take things to this type of level, um, it's so, but here's the funniest a caveat with the entire thing. So when you're filming people, uh, cameras, unless you have like a really good expensive new camera, they, my cameras are like that camera's eight grand, seven grand, four grand. I've already got expensive cameras, bro, but the cameras will hunt for focus. They have like, uh, eye detection, face detection, stuff like that. Well, just to be safe, sometimes you want to turn auto focus off, just if you've got it locked in your field, your depth of field. And so we've got Joshua Latimer perfectly locked off it with a 70 to 200 millimeter lens. We turn the auto focus off. We got five cameras running. I'm sorry, four cameras and the fourth camera is on a parallaxing slider going left to right and it was tracking on a robot, you know, so as soon as Josh got excited, he, he, he's sitting on the couch, he got excited when he was talking and he sat up and perked up and lean forward and lean forward, like out of focus, out of focus, bro, like, like six inches. That's all he moved. But from the camera's perspective, he went blurry and stayed blurry for 70% of the interview. And that was the main camera. And so, like, I don't want to throw anybody under the bus, but I said to my producer, I was like, we spent 14 hours making the set perfect. And then he went out of focus and you didn't notice that. You didn't notice that. And like, that's what I was thinking, but I couldn't, I couldn't bottle up ice. I had to bring it up to him with like some amount of emotion. Yeah. Like, like, where the fuck is the priority here? Right. What's going on? And he said, um, it looked fine on the screen and he didn't notice it, but I was like, what? How is that? How did you not notice it? So I went way over the edge and over polarized into like panicky freaking out thinking like the whole interviews room. And I'm not even that type of guy. I'm usually more laid back, but like, and, you know, as you spent so much time, you invested so much time probably contributed to that feeling that you had after the fact. Yes. So afterwards, the interview was all done and chopped up and edited. We released it all over the place and he leaned back a little, but he was still slightly blurry. You look, you could tell when someone's perfectly focused because their eyeball, the retina and the cornea and the pupil, like, this is one thing. If you record videos with your smartphone, like in your truck all the time and it's not super good lighting, you're going to have really good auto focus. Your eyes look just a little like gooey almost. It looks like low low, I'm sorry, the sharpness is off and people will be like, are you high? Do you? Are you high or something? Or what's like, you don't look like as sharp as a tack as you consciously are. You look like something is off because it's actually the quality of your camera is off. So if your eyeballs are perfectly tack sharp and you have like a really good high quality Sony camera, like an a seven four or something with like a 16 to 35, like, I don't know, have four lens and it's like got got a eye detection. But anyways, his face was slightly blurry, but in the in the in the long run, nobody noticed. Nobody mentioned it. The interview was fire. It was amazing. And nobody even freaking noticed that he was just like so after like three months and then six months goes by the nine months and I go back and I keep looking at the interview as my emotions decreased and I got out of Mr. super hyper technically perfect guy and I just looked at it as a normal viewer. I was like, wait a second, it's not even bad at all. But I mean, he went a little bit blurry, but like nobody even noticed or cared because they don't they don't have X when the standard is so high and it drops down a little bit. People aren't going to notice. So it's like there are people who like criticize technical things or movies or even landscape jobs or whatever and they're so good at what they do and they're so perfect and there's such perfectionists that they can suck all of the joy out of being a creator because they're being so perfect about everything. They can drive their employees insane that nobody feels like good enough. They can drive their spouse insane that that's not like me, but when it comes to like stuff like this, I I realize that I'm in the zone right now. It's awesome. I was so obsessed with building a studio like this and when I finally started making a lot more money, I was investing like I got to the point I was so like if I wanted something for my studio, I'm buying that shit, bro. Don't bump bump bump bump bump bump bump bump bump bump bump bump just stuff from Adorama.com, a B&H photo in Amazon. If I need like like wireless HDMI 4K Holiland Mars set up so there's no wires all over the place, wireless transmission and now 4K multiple cameras all wireless to a switching board without wires all over the floor. It's like 3 grand swipe just because they all showed up and actually the things don't even work that good. They cut out and like so I had to hook the wires back up and they're now like 3 grand and paperweights sitting around. You learn some hard lessons. Sure. You got to buy the 6,000 dollar ones. But what I was going to say is I wanted to build a studio so bad and I dreamed of it. Every single camera, every single lens, every single microphone, every single thing. I know a lot about it, I've done a ton of research, it's sat in my shopping cart for literally months before buying it. I never bought any of it on impulse. I know about every single thing of probably the 10,000 things in this studio was something that I hoped and wished and dreamed about and I researched and I watched tons of videos and obsessed about and compared to other pieces of equipment till 3 o'clock in the morning. Should I get this microphone to this microphone or this mixing board or this quad shielded kiwi cable that has the thing that takes the polarization and doesn't mix with other wires so sound doesn't leak through and total harmonic distortion of this. Like when I got it all set up in the studio was finally coming together and I was making these epic badass amazing podcasts. I get on the phone with a friend of mine who's in an industry just like ours and he's like bro, if you're talking to brand new newbie startup guys. I would never show them that studio because they can't like relate to you. You need to be like out in the field getting your hands dirty and talking to gritty grimy stuff and it's like they're not going to relate to you anymore and then I was like. Starting to think like wait if you just make videos with a GoPro like do we don't even take the 4, 7 or 8,000 out of the camera out in the field because the way the footage looks so good. People can't relate to it in the videos get the worst views of all when I go on the field with the GoPro and we make just gritty ass landscaping videos. 20,000 50,000 views right well when we take the $7,000 camera we make a highly produced video that we spend multiple days and we have a $4,000 budget to make. One amazing epic video that looks like a freaking cinema movie. You don't even break a thousand views and nobody likes it. It's trash and it's garbage and I'm sitting here banging my head against the wall because everything that I've fought and worked for and been obsessed with and thinking trying to reach the pinnacle of ineptness. I said in that it's not in that this is the reciprocal and that was anyways trying to reach the I'm obsessed with words so trying to reach the pinnacle I was going to say pinnacle yeah. Was it I feel like it was all for for nothing but it was just this passionate journey so I had at some point I had to accept the fact that he's obsession like my wife doesn't even come to the studio anymore she knows I'm obsessed with technology and in like. She's like in all the cameras and stuff and like that she comes in my studio it's my digital man cave and I love it when she comes here I want to make podcasts with her stuff like that we're gonna we're gonna do more podcasts soon but anyways. I have to accept that that's Keith's passion and it doesn't necessarily translate to anybody who is in the audience trying to start a landscaping business or trying to get their landscaping business to the next level and. So I was on the phone with a Kevin lawn care juggernaut yeah he said something interesting it's like you ever there's this like saying people that some of the people in the most successful people in the world at certain things they if you have to actually sit them down and ask them. They actually secretly want to do this whole other thing right that doesn't have much to do with what they actually do right and so it's like this dream. And but that dream doesn't work doesn't make success it doesn't make the money it doesn't turn offer to the views of the change of the lies and all that stuff. And it's strange to me so it's like I say how do I like a alchemist take intern base metal into gold and take my passion for other things and transmute and stuff that actually helps people. And does a good job and that you know makes a lasting impression and then I can do the other stuff or be obsessed with it and it's just my thing. And so that's what I think that the full circle is when you realize you're doing all this just for service and I think that those are important. Chapters in the journey that when you hit mastery level at something. One is you can get upset like the stages of grief and realize oh that was all just like a lie why was I so technically obsessed like a great point to conclude this is there was a time period is around 2015 16. Well 2014 15. I remember in the winters when I was like after working landscaping for 80 90 hours a week and then the winter came in between plowing snow I would find myself. Wanting to get out of the house and like just what is it like to go into a store because every time I would go. I like you go to work before any stores are open you get off work after the stores are closed right and this goes on for years yeah I had I don't even didn't even know what it was like to be inside of like a grocery store or a Walmart clothing store. I was like I would just walk through like Walmart or the dollar store right in the middle of the day in the winter it was like whoa like this is what it's like to walk through a store do people actually do this and so like I would I would spend half a day. And just I would go walk around Walmart and look at the electronics and all the cameras and all the stuff and I would go to the dollar store and then I would like. And we have more here and I'm just looking at all this this crap. And and then I started to ask myself this went on for a couple winters this is fascinating I said. Why am I walking through stores like they get the at home store with all like the cool plants and all the art stuff and stuff you can furniture they have everything there. And I want to build my studio but I am like why do I keep walking through stores looking. At all this crap and going to best buying looking at computers and laptops and. And I and I was like. It's because I'm searching for an epiphany. Well I hope you enjoyed the first part of this conversation with Keith at his epic studio while I was up in the Detroit Michigan area for the the element Mark Bradley mastermind that I was invited to that was a great time I learned a lot for sure been sharing my insights with my inner circle coaching group and. Obviously applying some of those things to my business as well but I just wanted to break this episode or this conversation up into two parts because per the usual whenever Keith and I get together. We we we go deep into a lot of different topics mindset things like that business marketing content creation just kind of so many things. So so that we can all kind of process it I try to break it up into two different parts when when we end up. Talking about so many things over a long you know over an hour long conversation so this way we can kind of. Process what we just heard you know on this episode and then on Thursday's episode you can finish that this the part to the conclusion of our conversation where we talk about even more things so. Just you know selfishly enough it helps me you know spread some content out you know when things are getting tight because everyone's schedules trying to get interviews and conversations in there and and. Truck talks and so on but but also just for me to want to. Honestly you know I know for me it's hard to listen to a whole hour episode and process everything sometimes have to go back and re listen to parts of. Of these longer episodes and things like that so I just try to be mindful of that as well and break it up so that you can cut into more bite size digestible. Processed pieces for you all so anyway with all that being said thank you for listening and hopefully I will catch you guys on. Thursday's episode. Thank you to our company for sponsoring the LCR media podcast and until Thursday I'll see you then. This has been an LCR media and Mr. Producer production.
