Give every project a home

In the interview, Michael and Marno described the frustration of searching for an invoice, contract or message they knew someone had sent. Ten minutes here, ten minutes there. Multiply that across several people and several jobs, and it adds up.

I use different tools for different parts of my business, including HubSpot, Better Proposals, Xero and Vimeo. There are good reasons for that. The thing to watch is whether you and your team can find what you need without asking someone else where it lives.

Give each job a project page or card. Put the client contact, agreed scope, current stage, next action and responsible person there. Link to the proposal, working files, review page and invoice record. Use the same job name or number across those tools so you can follow it through the business.

Keep the current information accurate. Copying a shoot date into four places creates four things to remember when it changes. Where possible, link to the original record and make it clear which version the team should use.

Keep track of jobs before they’re confirmed

CoolerBox has a stage they call “Limbo”. It holds information about projects that have been discussed but haven’t been approved. I liked that. A client can disappear for three months and then come back ready to go. By then, everyone has forgotten the details.

After a sales conversation, record what the client wants, what you discussed, what’s still undecided and what needs to happen next. Add a follow-up date and give someone responsibility for it.

You should be able to open that record months later and understand the conversation. A few useful notes now can save another meeting and a search through old emails.

Make the next action someone’s responsibility

As a team grows, it becomes easier to assume someone else is taking care of something. Michael and Marno talked about this: one person thinks a task belongs to another person, who thinks exactly the same thing.

For each active job, write down the next action, who owns it and when it needs to happen. “Waiting for feedback” is a status. “Alex to follow up with the client on Thursday” tells you what happens next.

The owner doesn’t have to do every part of the work. They do need to make sure it moves forward. That’s particularly useful when a job passes from sales to production, production to an editor, or delivery to accounts.

In your weekly production meeting, look for jobs with no clear next action or no named owner. Those are the ones most likely to sit there until someone asks what’s happening.

Have a clear way to communicate shoot changes

A call sheet can be out of date almost as soon as you send it. The location changes, the client moves an interview or someone needs a different arrival time. That was one of the basic production problems the guests wanted to fix.

Choose where the current call sheet lives and make that clear to everyone. If you send PDFs, give each revision a date or version number and clearly identify the latest one. If you use a shared document, make sure the crew can access it.

Changing the document is only half the job. Tell the affected people what changed. For anything that could leave someone at the wrong place or arriving at the wrong time, get confirmation that they’ve seen it.

Give client feedback a proper process

Feedback gets messy when comments arrive by email, text, phone and a review link, sometimes on different versions of the edit. Someone then has to work out which instructions still apply.

At the first review, explain where you want feedback, who should consolidate it and when you need it. Ask the client to gather comments from their team before sending them through. Keep version numbers clear and mark older cuts so nobody mistakes one for the current edit.

Before the editor starts, check for conflicting comments and decisions that need clarification. Keep changes to the agreed scope visible so you can discuss the effect on cost or timing.

A review platform helps, but the client still needs to understand how you want the review to work. That conversation belongs at the beginning.

Keep invoicing visible after delivery

The invoicing example stuck with me because it’s so easy to see how it happens. You’re hands-on with the work, making sure the client is happy, while another production is already demanding your attention.

Keep delivery and payment visible as separate things. For each job, you should be able to see what has been invoiced, what’s still to be invoiced, what’s due and what’s been paid.

Before closing a project, check that any agreed extras have been accounted for and the final invoice has been issued. Give that check to a named person. Then include outstanding invoices in your regular accounts review, using your accounting system as the source for payment status.

You’ve already done the hard work of winning the job and making the video. Give collecting the money its place in the process.

Archive projects so you can use them again

My clients sometimes come back years later wanting to update a video or use existing footage to make something new. I also like keeping the work itself. I don’t want something I’ve made to disappear.

In the interview, I talked about keeping two sets of hard drives in different places. Even with care, things can slip through, such as new assets being added after the backup was made.

Make archiving part of closing the job. Check that the project, source footage, final masters and anything needed to reopen the edit are included. Record where they’re stored using the same job name or number you used during production.

Try retrieving an older project. Can someone other than you find it, locate the approved master and open the edit? You’ll learn more from doing that than from assuming the folder marked “Backup” contains everything you need.

Start with one gap this week

Michael and Marno started by trying to make their own working day easier. That’s a useful place to begin. Look at your last three jobs and ask where information went missing, someone had to chase an answer or a task was forgotten.

Choose one recurring problem and make a small change:

  • If enquiries disappear into email, create a record with notes and a follow-up date.
  • If work stalls between people, assign the next action and its owner.
  • If feedback is scattered, agree on one review process with the client.
  • If invoices get missed, add a financial check before the job closes.
  • If old work is hard to find, catalogue one finished project and test retrieving it.

Use it on the next job and see whether it helps. Ask the team what’s still awkward. Fix that before adding more.

At the end of the interview, I talked about acting like a professional. For me, that includes how we run the job: people know what’s happening, clients get clear communication and we follow through on what we’ve agreed to do. Those details are part of the service we sell.

You can hear the full conversation with Michael and Marno in the player above. You can also visit CoolerBox Brothers or have a look at CoolerBox Tracker. I have no commercial involvement with their app.