#117 – Making a multimedia machine (Tony Milio & Ben Grynol)

From a kid obsessed with movies to a full-time video producer, Tony Milio has stuck with his passion for multimedia storytelling. Levels Head of Growth, Ben Grynol, sat down with Tony, now our Multimedia Producer, to talk about his previous experience in the world of film and video production, his journey to Levels and how he’s scaling our multimedia content efforts today.

04:14 – Try something new

Before joining Levels, Tony had a lot of experience working with video, but had never produced or edited a podcast.

Yeah, I really didn’t. All of my experience was being a director of photography, being an editor. And then also a lot of social media work as well for my previous employer. So when you reached out about the podcast thing, I was like, I don’t know the first thing about a podcast. If you asked me how to record or edit one right now and I’ve had to be scrappy about it, I’d drop it into editing software for cutting video and I’d cut it that way. And I remember in the interview, when you asked me that question about, would you be interested in doing podcasts? And I told you, I was like, I honestly don’t know. I was just like, I have to be transparent. I would not know where to start at all. And I was like, yeah, not the best way to start an interview, but I was like, I have to be completely honest about this because I really don’t know where to start. And you were like, oh my God, you do this all the time. You’ve been telling stories for almost a decade through video. It’s no different, it’s the same thing.

07:54 – Find your passion

When he spent a day on set of a movie at age 13, Tony knew he wanted to be involved in filmmaking.

It wasn’t until I was 13 that I finally had an opportunity through a family friend to be on the set of Spider-Man 2. The original Spider-Man 2, the one with Tobey Maguire. So I had the opportunity to be on a set the whole day and I got to be background, so background artist or extra as everyone calls it. But also I had the opportunity to talk to so many people that day and I was just this little kid, just asking questions that entire day, from day to night. I did get to meet Tobey, I did get to meet Sam Raimi, the director that day. I got their autograph. I got their picture with them. That day just created that whole spark, for sure. If it wasn’t for that day, I feel like I wouldn’t have started anything. And that kind of just turned into me just developing a passion first for acting. So I was doing everything I could to be in every school play I could. I was in so many auditions from the time I was 13, all the way up until I started college for my undergrad degree, skipping some days of class to do an audition or to do a video shoot for an Indie film, was definitely the norm.

12:04 – Make your way to full time

Tony had spent all of his career doing freelance gigs until he got the chance to work for Jamis Bikes.

I just started working as much as I could in every corporate gig I could to make the money. And then finally I got the opportunity to work for a bicycle brand, Jamis Bikes. And my mentor had told me about that opportunity. When I first got that gig, I actually didn’t think it was even a thing to be full-time in video. It sounded so odd. I was like, what do you mean they’re looking for someone that’s full time? They need someone in-house to shoot video. And I was like, that’s weird. I was like, I thought this was a freelance thing. It’s always been freelance for me up until this point. So I got that job and I was responsible for all their video productions, all their photo shoots, as well as all of their paid and organic social media. And I did that for nine years up until Tom Griffin from Levels, he gave me the opportunity to be on that first shoot for Levels, October 2020, I remember. And I guess the rest is history because now I’m here full-time, which is pretty amazing.

16:35 – Travel the world

One of the biggest perks of his first full-time video job was the opportunities to travel and see new places.

Yeah. That was definitely one of the most amazing parts. I got to see, I don’t know, over 30 states here in the US. I’m not sure how many countries, but I got to travel to the Himalayas, the Andes and Chile, Argentina. Mostly documenting a lot of mountain bike and road races. So it definitely wasn’t out of the norm for me to be on the back of a speeding motorcycle or the back of a car and the hatchback, with just harness on me and that was about it. So that was kind of common for me during all those years. But I don’t think when I was younger, that I was ever going to be able to see that many places in the US or that many countries.

18:29 – Get organized

His first few days at Levels were eye-opening. There was a level of detail and structure that he hadn’t experienced before.

It was definitely very interesting because during that year that I was working with Levels on a freelance basis, I never actually saw the behind the scenes. In my head, I also thought there was a headquarters. I also wasn’t familiar with Notion or Loom or any of these platforms and I didn’t have access to it. At the time as a freelancer, I was really just sending you guys edits. You’d send me notes via email. And then that was it. But I didn’t really ever see the internal workings of Levels till my first day. And I saw all of these platforms and I was like, oh my God, this is amazing. I mean, it was amazing to me because everything was so structured and organized. On my first day, I had my whole month planned out of onboarding through a checklist. And I’m very organized with almost everything in my life, down to every single drawer here in my office. So seeing this checklist on day one was amazing, because I was like, wow, this is so specific.

19:39 – Engage in deep work

The async environment of Levels has given Tony the chance to do deep work without meeting and email distractions.

And then it was also obviously an async environment. I never worked in an async environment. At Jamis, those nine years I was there, that was all in AM. We had an office in New Jersey, so we would come to work every day, nine to five, five days a week. To come from that to an async environment was totally different, but it also gave me this opportunity for deep work, right? Could just focus on edits. You don’t have some of the common things that could happen in a synchronous work environment. You don’t have emails to really bother you because we’re off email. It’s all Threads. But it just gave me the chance to really focus on deep work, focus on edits.

24:15 – Ramp up production

Since he came onboard, Levels has ramped up its video and prodast production. It’s the first time Tony hasn’t had to do the whole process himself.

Yeah, I think it definitely transitioned a lot, I feel like. And we just ramped up so much on production since I’ve been here because I started in October and I would say from October to January, I was editing all the podcasts, all the video content and around January, I think we made the transition that we wanted to scale the amount of videos and podcasts that we could release. So we ramped up production. So how did we do that? We started hiring freelance podcast editors. We started hiring freelance video editors, definitely something out of the norm for me, because I spent my entire career from pre-production, all the way to post production, handling the entire project from beginning to end on my own. Shooting, editing, everything. So this was my first chance at actually being a true producer. I’ve always been a producer, but I was the machine.

32:22 – Feel like a team

Even though everyone is async at Levels, there is still a feeling of cohesion and teamwork.

I don’t think there’s one thing that I could say that this is the one thing that I love about Levels. It’s just a whole host of things really, because you have the async environment giving everyone the opportunity to do deep work. But at the same time, we still all feel like we’re in a sync environment in the sense that we still get to see each other in these cafes every week. And then you have assemblage every quarter. So when I tell people that I’m in an asynchronous environment, an async company, they might think, oh, you probably feel lonely, but it’s no different. You still feel like you’re part of a team every day.

33:25 – Fit a lot into a week

Something Tony loves about working at Levels is how much everyone accomplishes in short time frames.

The other main point I want to mention is the fact of how fast we move everything forward. Faster than I’ve ever seen in any company where every week feels like a month in the sense of the amount of accomplishments we create by the end of the week. Where we meet every Friday and we go through these Friday forums and you see everything that everyone’s done on the team. And you’re like, wow, that should have taken a month to do something like that. Whatever it is, it could be a feature in the app. It could be something related to the blog and SEO. It could be related to press. You get all of these accomplishments wrapped up at the end of every week. And that’s one of the most fascinating things for me because you just look at it and you’re like, how did we do this in a week?

Tony Milio (00:06):

Around January, I think we made the transition that we wanted to scale the amount of videos and podcasts. So we ramped up production. We started hiring freelance podcast editors, hiring freelance video editors, definitely something out of the norm for me, because I spent my entire career from pre-production, all the way to post-production, handling the entire project from beginning to end on my own, shooting, editing everything. So this was my first chance of actually being a true producer. I’ve always been a producer, but I was the machine.

Ben Grynol (00:51):

I’m Ben Grynol, part of the early startup team here at levels. We’re building tech that helps people to understand their metabolic health. And this is your front row seat to everything we do. This is a whole new level.

Ben Grynol (01:17):

Growing up, the things that we’re exposed to, sometimes they shape our lives. They shape our path moving forward. Well, for Tony Milio, Tony is our multimedia producer, very much in charge of all the podcasts and video assets that we put out. Well, at an early age, the age of 13, he was exposed to theater. He was exposed to movies. He was exposed to the big screen. He had the opportunity to be in a number of movies. A number of TV shows, all these different parts. Well, that led him down a path of becoming a multimedia producer. He was exposed to cinematography, to editing and eventually, post school that led him to a gig in New York, where he lived in a production studio. He had the opportunity to learn, to be exposed to all these different things. That carried him eventually to Jamis Bicycles, where in 2012, he was a multimedia producer, full time in-house. After almost a decade, a year of which he was working freelance with Levels, eventually, in October of 2021, he landed a gig with us. Well, it was a great conversation. Here’s where we kicked things off.

Ben Grynol (02:29):

Why don’t we start off with this idea of your path to Levels because you had somewhat of a… I mean a similar yet non-traditional path. So similar in the sense of, a lot of people at the company have come here serendipitously through some exposure to the company and you started working as a freelancer with the team for a year. And then I think it was around September of 2021, that I popped you an email and I was like, hey man, do you want to chat about doing the podcast? We need an audio producer, are you into it? But you’re doing video, that’s the important thing is, you were doing video. We started considering because we launched the podcast in April and around June, well, that was always the goal. If we can start to get some traction, we’ll need someone to come in and take this thing on, full time, so we can actually scale it and put more diligence behind it.

Ben Grynol (03:37):

So it was June and we kept punting that and punting that, and you were still doing video work in the background. But the immediate need was podcast stuff. And so when we talked in the fall, there was this outreach of like, hey man, would you be interested in doing the podcast? And I remember the first thing that you said, that I’m still perplexed by, well, I don’t really know how to edit audio. And I just stared at you. I’m like, man, that’s all you do all day with visuals associated with it. What are you talking? But what was sort of the thought when you’re like, I don’t know how to edit podcasts.

Tony Milio (04:14):

Yeah, I really didn’t. All of my experience was being a director of photography, being an editor. And then also a lot of social media work as well for my previous employer. So when you reached out about the podcast thing, I was like, I don’t know the first thing about a… If you asked me how to record or edit one right now and I’ve had to be scrappy about it, I’d drop it into editing software for cutting video and I’d cut it that way. And I remember in the interview, when you asked me that question about, would you be interested in doing podcasts? And I told you, I was like, I honestly don’t know. I was just like, I have to be transparent. I would not know where to start at all. And I was like, yeah, not the best way to start an interview, but I was like, I have to be completely honest about this because I really don’t know where to start. And you were like, oh my God, you do this all the time. You’ve been telling stories for almost a decade through video. It’s no different, it’s the same thing.

Ben Grynol (05:18):

Yeah. And so we had that conversation and that was the intent of, come on board, let’s focus on the podcast. Let’s ramp it up. We’ll start to dig into some video things. But that’s a secondary priority. Even though it’s a high priority, it was secondary because the initial problem we were trying to solve was like, let’s get some infrastructure behind the podcast. Let’s start to scale it. Let’s put more attention and take the time off of my plate because all of that work was there and I was like, man, I got to get this off the plate. And eventually we’ll get to video, but like any good role, it’s like, you come in and things are moving quickly.

Ben Grynol (05:56):

It seems like once you ramped up after, well, it’s four weeks of onboarding. And then another week of getting more reps in with recording and how we do things and the way we do things, because initially it was like, don’t touch the podcast for the first month. Everyone who comes onboard, there’s four weeks of just onboarding and then it’s another month. But once we did that, it was like, okay, let’s double down on video, podcast. And we just went hard at it. I mean, it’s been fast and furious since then, since basically December, January.

Tony Milio (06:29):

Yeah. I mean, when I started, we were at episode 35 and now we’re over a hundred in a matter of six or seven months. So we ramped up a ton and that’s just on the podcast front. Obviously with video, it’s a whole another thing, but yeah, we ramped up super fast.

Ben Grynol (06:49):

Let’s rewind a bit. So your past experience, what got you into cinematography, multimedia production to begin with? You spent a number of years at Jamis, the bike company, and prior to that… Remember you talked about being into acting and just film since you were a kid, what is it that got you? What was that itch, if you rewind way back that you first remember really being interested in this whole category of the world?

Tony Milio (07:19):

Well, I’d have to really rewind.

Ben Grynol (07:23):

Take it’s way back. Take a back like a beta max tape.

Tony Milio (07:28):

Yeah. I mean, as a kid, I definitely was always passionate about movies and film and I just wanted to be a part of it, but I feel my parents had no idea how to get me. They’re not in the industry. Nobody in my family was in the industry. They were probably like, I don’t know what to do with this kid. He wants to be in movies one day. That’s what he wants to do or he wants to work on a movie. I don’t know what he wants to do. It was until I was 13 that I finally had an opportunity through a family friend to be on the set of Spider-Man 2. The original Spider-Man 2, the one with Tobey Maguire. So I had the opportunity to be on a set the whole day and I got to be background, so background artist or extra as everyone calls it.

Tony Milio (08:18):

But also I had the opportunity to talk to so many people that day and I was just this little kid, just asking questions that entire day, from day to nigh. I did get to meet Tobey, I did get to meet Sam Raimi, the director that day, I got their autograph. I got their picture with them. That day just created that whole spark, for sure. If it wasn’t for that day, I feel like I wouldn’t have started anything. And that kind of just turned into me just developing a passion first for acting. So I was doing everything I could to be in every school play I could. I was in so many auditions from the time I was 13, all the way up until I started college for my undergrad degree, skipping some days of class to do an audition or to do a video shoot for an Indie film, was definitely the norm.

Tony Milio (09:14):

And my parents didn’t mind it because they were just kind of happy for me. So I really appreciated all their support during all those years. From being on all those sets, whether it was a student film or an Indie film or even as an extra, if I had to go back to see those specific movies, I know exactly which part you could see myself in, or sometimes I’ll look for myself and I’m like, I didn’t make the cut. But just from being on all those sets, no matter how big or small it was, definitely just turned into this passion of just, I want to be behind the camera. So once I went to college, I did everything I can to be part of the college’s multimedia center. I actually begged, I remember the director, even though I had no experience beforehand with shooting and editing other than just being an actor.

Tony Milio (10:09):

So I did everything that I could and I said, I don’t care. I don’t have to get paid. I was like, I’ll volunteer. I’ll just be an intern. And she became my mentor, that director, still to this day, I still talk to her and I’ve had a whole number of mentors ever since that have kind of helped push me along the way. So I got to work there as an intern and then I left for a film school for my bachelor’s, did that for two years. And then while I was in film school, that’s when I got the opportunity to work in a production company, Slash Rental House. So I was basically surrounded by high end production equipment all day. And that’s when I was basically just reading manuals every day, camera manuals. That was my thing. And my boss there, that’s what he told me to do.

Tony Milio (11:03):

I ended up living there for an entire summer. So I was working and living there. He said, I’m going to let you live rent free here for the summer, if you could just put every dollar you make this summer towards your student loans. I was very fortunate for that opportunity because he didn’t give that to anyone else. But he felt that I had a talent that student loans would actually hold me down from pursuing a career in film, because he said, the last thing you want is student loans and a career like this, because it’s going to get rough and you can’t have that. So I paid off my student loans shortly after that summer. That whole summer I was just on corporate gigs, shooting and editing every week. And that’s where I got my start professionally, was that summer and it was 2011. And I just started working as much as I could in every corporate gig I could to make the money.

Tony Milio (12:12):

And then finally I got the opportunity to work for a bicycle brand, Jamis Bikes. And my mentor had told me about that opportunity. When I first got that gig, I actually didn’t think it was even a thing to be full-time in video. It sounded so odd. I was like, what do you mean? They’re looking for someone that’s full time. They need someone in-house to shoot video. And I was like, that’s weird. I was like, I thought this was a freelance thing. It’s always been freelance for me up until this point. So I got that job and I was responsible for all their video productions, all their photo shoots, as well as all of their paid in organic social media. And I did that for nine years up until Tom Griffin from Levels, he gave me the opportunity to be on that first shoot for Levels, October 2020, I remember. And I guess the rest is history because now I’m here full-time, which is pretty amazing.

Ben Grynol (13:16):

Full-time. What was it like when you’re born and raised in Jersey, Bergen County? What was it like as a kid? So you’re 13 years old and you’ve got this lens on the world of film, this sort of Hollywood lens, but I’d imagine that there’s a differing view between Jersey and New York and that’s the big city and that’s where things happen. What did it look like? When you think back, what did it feel like to be that kid? And same thing goes when you started shooting, right? You lived in this production house, this production studio in air quotes, the big city. Did you feel like a sort of an outsider looking at this thing that you aspired to do or to be part of?

Tony Milio (14:09):

Yeah. So I actually grew up in Rocklin county, which is actually in the suburbs of New York and it’s about a half hour from the city. So I wasn’t too far from New York City, but I was still ecstatic about all of it because I didn’t grow up in a city and all of this was definitely very different for me, but I was super excited about every shoot. It didn’t matter. I’ve acted in some of the worst movies too. So I didn’t mind it. I was just like, I’m in this movie, it’s going to be on demand, on direct TV one thing and it did. And that’s it. That would be the highest point for a speaking role. But I was like, I don’t care. This is just awesome. I just get to do what I love doing.

Ben Grynol (14:54):

Yeah. When you’re outside, you’re outside of the market, the place where things are happening, then it’s easy to have a lens of, well, that’s where it happens and what do I have to do to get there? It feels like this journey always trying to aspire to get to that place. What you’re saying about Jamis, and that was an interesting time because something similar happened with the world of design in the early to mid 2000s, where designers were starting to join companies as a functional role. In the early 2000s, it was like, oh, no, no. We outsource that, a graphic designer. We outsourced this idea of design, it wasn’t this function where it’s like, oh, design has so many facets to it. And the same thing goes with content production where even to this day, the same renaissances, it started to happen a few years ago.

Ben Grynol (15:51):

Even in 2015, 2016, it was absurd to think that anyone would have a full-time cinematographer in-house, never mind an entire production team of photographers, cinematographers, editors build the suite out of people that just work on creating multimedia content assets. That was a thing like, nope, you outsource and you freelance. So in 2012, when you’re working with Jamis, the analog is hiring a designer full-time in 2002 where it was just like, what? That’s weird, not weird, but what do you know that we don’t. What’s up your sleeve? And the work that you got to do was insanely cool because you traveled around the world.

Tony Milio (16:35):

Yeah. That was definitely one of the most amazing parts. I got to see, I don’t know, over 30 states here in the US. I’m not sure how many countries, but I got to travel to the Himalayas, the Andes and Chile, Argentina, mostly documenting a lot of mountain bike and road races. So it definitely wasn’t out of the norm for me to be on the back of a speeding motorcycle or the back of a car and the hatchback, which just harness on me and that was about it. So that was kind of common for me during all those years. But I don’t think when I was younger, that I was ever going to be able to see that many places in the US or that many countries.

Ben Grynol (17:32):

Yeah. It’s such a cool life experience to look back on and see how it’s shaped even the way that you shoot now, the way that you edit now, the way that you tell stories now, because it really is the foundation for building everything forward.

Tony Milio (17:44):

For sure.

Ben Grynol (17:45):

So October 2nd 2021, I believe that’s the date, the date that you joined, Monday October 2nd. And you had worked with the team for a year, then you came on board. What did that feel like when you actually joined? The doors had opened and you’re like, this is what it looks like under the hood. And you’re looking at the machine, this thing that… I think there’s probably a certain view of a company, any company from the outside. Well, what is it actually like on the inside? What did it feel like when you came on board? What were some of the things that you were thinking and feeling, and I don’t know, just going through your head as you’re ramping up.

Tony Milio (18:29):

Yeah. I mean, it was definitely very interesting because during that year that I was working with Levels on a freelance basis, I never actually saw the behind the scenes. In my head, I also thought there was a headquarters. I also wasn’t familiar with notion or loom or any of these platforms and I didn’t have access to it. At the time as a freelancer, I was really just sending you guys edits. You’d send me notes via email. And then that was it. But I didn’t really ever see the internal workings of Levels till my first day. And I saw all of these platforms and I was like, oh my God, this is amazing. I mean, it was amazing to me because everything was so structured and organized. On my first day, I had my whole month planned out of onboarding through a checklist. And I’m very organized with almost everything in my life, down to every single drawer here in my office.

Tony Milio (19:29):

So seeing this checklist on day one was amazing, because I was like, wow, this is so specific. And I was like, I love it. I was like, I can’t wait to take this on. And then it was also obviously an async environment. I never worked in an async environment. At Jamis, those nine years I was there, that was all an AM. We had an office in New Jersey, so we would come to work every day, nine to five, five days a week. To come from that to an async environment was totally different, but it also gave me this opportunity for deep work, right? Could just focus on edits. You don’t have some of the common things that could happen in a synchronous work environment. You don’t have emails to really bother you because we’re off email as all threads, but it just gave me the chance to really focus on deep work, focus on edits.

Tony Milio (20:26):

And that was just very unique. I just wasn’t used to it, but I adapted extremely quickly. And I think because of my entire experience, beforehand, working with clients as a freelancer and just being in deep work with edits, even though I was working full time for Jamis those nine years, I was also freelancing on the side for other clients as well, because they gave me that opportunity to do that. So it was very normal for me to work nine to five, come home and then edit from five to 10. And that was my deep work time. I went from that to like, okay, I get deep work now, all day, every day to focus on editing and now obviously producing which we could touch on that later too. But overall an amazing unique experience.

Ben Grynol (21:17):

It’s like you’ve been standing in line to Willy Wonka’s productivity factory and the gates get opened. And all of a sudden you see all these things and you’re like, what is going on here? All these platforms and you have to learn them and use them and change the approach to this weird factory, but one that is conscious. There’s a lot of effort put into trying to constantly improve it. I think that’s sort of the outlook, right? Is the constant improvement in the way we work, the way we communicate and always being willing to make these changes because it’s not perfect. You have to be a lot more calculated and thoughtful in the way that you work asynchronously and as a remote team.

Ben Grynol (22:02):

And then as we grow as a team, things evolve, things change, right? So yeah, it’s very interesting to hear that perspective because the whole outlook on getting to do deep work, especially when it comes to multimedia production, there’s no such thing as a, I’m going to dive into this edit for 17 minutes. When you are in an edit, I mean, you get into a deep, deep, deep flow state, especially if it was a longer video where you’re doing, putting together a narrative and a storyline and you’re calling hours of footage.

Ben Grynol (22:37):

You get into a flow state, but five hours could go by and you could be like, what happened? That gets harder to do in these environments, especially in person where you’re sitting down and you’re 17 minutes in and there’s Billy tapping you on the shoulder, hey, did you see the slack message and email I just sent you? And you’re like, no, I’m planning on getting into a flow state and editing here. So it’s cool to hear that, that’s the outlook of like, whoa, I was able to get into a state of deep work once you ramped up and adopted some of these working practices.

Tony Milio (23:12):

Yeah. I mean, it was definitely meant for me. It’s just meant for the way that I work and that’s being deep focused. I don’t really want distractions and stuff. So being able to have that opportunity here at Levels is awesome, because I can set when I want to go to coms, go to threads and jump on there. And I set certain times of my day and I block those time specifically for threads where the rest of my time is spent either editing or providing feedback to our editors. So yeah, it’s definitely amazing.

Ben Grynol (23:49):

So you’ve been here for almost seven months, six and a half, almost seven months, now. What’s it been like since you started, since you ramped up? We’ll call it January 1st. I guess it would’ve been December, October, November is your ramp up. But December, January is when you start to get into that flow state, let’s call it that. What’s it been like as you’ve been ramping up? Has your thinking evolved?

Tony Milio (24:15):

Yeah, I think it definitely transitioned a lot, I feel like. And we just ramped up so much on production since I’ve been here because I started in October and I would say from October to January, I was editing all the podcasts, all the video content and around January, I think we made the transition that we wanted to scale the amount of videos and podcasts that we could release. So we ramped up production. So how did we do that? We started hiring freelance podcast editors. We started hiring freelance video editors, definitely something out of the norm for me, because I spent my entire career from pre-production, all the way to post production, handling the entire project from beginning to end on my own, shooting, editing everything. So this was my first chance as actually being a true producer. I’ve always been a producer, but I was the machine.

Tony Milio (25:22):

So now it’s similar to that. Mike Didonato, episode where he says, the whole point here is to build the machine that builds a machine. Don’t be the machine. And these past few months, since January, is definitely a great example of that, because that’s what we did. We’ve grown from just me and you handling the podcast to now we’re a team of nine, maybe 10, all of them being freelancers. And I think two or three are Athena EA’s that handle a lot of the coms between guests that are on our show and a lot of the scheduling obviously. And then now Irwin, who’s one of our EAs handling all the derivative assets for TikTok and Instagram reels, which is amazing. It’s just all of these little touches of multimedia are all things that I was used to handling on my own. But you can’t do that as one person, with the amount of content that we’ve produced.

Ben Grynol (26:27):

Yeah, because when we had chatted about it, the goal was, hey, we’re going to build out the infrastructure. It was around the time when we updated or created, I guess, digital strategy moving forward and saying what needs to be true for us to start to really think about scale and distribution and a lot of these things. So when we chatted, it was, hey, that’s always the important thing too, is do you want to be part of building the infrastructure or do you want to be in the infrastructure because you can’t, especially in a creative role, we’ll say shooter editor, shooter editor, producer all have some aspect of creativity, but producing is very different than shooting is very different than editing from a creative standpoint. Some people only want to do those parts of the stack. And so we had that conversation where it’s like, do you want to be part of building the infrastructure?

Ben Grynol (27:20):

And you’re like, I’m in and you’re a little uncertain about it, but let’s try it. Let’s test it. And so then it was the agreement where it was like, trust the process, let’s make it happen. And we just kept doing it and doubling down and doubling down. And then now we’re at a point where one of the coolest things in all the tests that have been done is taking someone like Irwin, who being an EA that had no lens on production, full stop, saying, check out this YouTube video about how to cut in premier, read these things, go, go learn it. And now it’s like, Irwin is a full-time video editor. It’s incredible. But that’s building the inference. So you’re the puppeteer, you’re pulling all the puppet strings and you’re truly being a producer at scale.

Ben Grynol (28:08):

I mean, it’s almost a facade that the amount of content that goes out, I don’t understand. There’s technically one person. I mean, yes. We’ve got a massive team of so many people that are parts of the process. But if we’re just talking about multimedia assets as a whole, like podcast video, wait, one person is basically DRI, directly responsible individual for that. I don’t get it because there’s a lot of it going out and you’re like, well, that is the inference. So it’s been such a cool process to watch and it’s just very, very fun to see how you’ve been growing it.

Tony Milio (28:48):

Yeah. It’s been amazing. This is definitely the first time I’ve been a true producer. I’ve always called myself a producer. Yeah, I was producing it from start to finish, to the point that people would just not believe it. It always happened. I would talk to clients and stuff. It’s like, okay, how big of a crew was that video production though, that we just watched that you sent? I was like, no, it’s just going to be me. It’s just me. And they were like, no, no, no. Really, how many people are there on that day? It’s just me. I’m sure if all the productions I’ve ever been on, if I scaled it with the full size crew, I don’t know what those videos would look like with the full size crew of 10 to 20. But almost all of them were just me and a PA, production assistant or maybe me, a PA and a makeup artist or sometimes a gaffer just to handle the lighting. It’s like, hey, you focus on the lighting and I’ll just focus on camera work. But yeah, usually under five people at the most.

Ben Grynol (29:54):

The funny thing about the way that we’ve scaled video content, if we dive deep into the nerdy aspect of it, the production is very, very scrappy, right? So it’s non-traditional as far as, when you think of cool, somebody who’s a producer and a cinematographer, it’s like, okay, we’re going to go do shoots, but we don’t do that because we’re a remote team. So we don’t have the resources that being the people around where we could be like, hey Matt Flanigan, can you come and walk out that door. I’m going to take some B-roll of your arm with the Levels patch on it. We just don’t have those opportunities to do that as freely or these… Well, we’ll just do that video as a sit down talking head, because there’s a chair. And Casey’s walking by, can you give us a soundbite?

Ben Grynol (30:45):

And I know I’m being a little bit colloquial in the approach, but that’s the typical thing you can do when you’re with in-person teams is, things have a higher production value because all the shooting is done for the most part as custom visuals. There’s not a lot of cutting stock B-roll and all these things. So what we’re doing is all, well, we’re going to do remote production where it’s people having conversations. I think the pandemic and people being in remote settings has also opened up that as far as being pretty standardized now. It would’ve been a weird production technique that people would’ve questioned probably three or four years ago, but you can get away with it now. That’s how video is being scaled. But you haven’t been doing for the most part, any real shooting.

Tony Milio (31:34):

Yeah. It’s all been very much async. Every production we’ve done, every video you’ve seen up until this point. On the Levels YouTube channel has pretty much been async, just like this, on Zencastr, not on zoom.

Ben Grynol (31:49):

Yeah. Not practicing the craft the way that you’re trained to do it, but using a different lens and different approach to make it come together, which is cool. You’ve been around everything and everyone now, and you’re immersed in the culture, if you think about your favorite part of Levels and what you’re looking forward to in the future, as we scale and grow, knowing that startups are just ambiguous and unknown and things are always evolving. What are you thinking about when it comes to that?

Tony Milio (32:22):

Yeah, that’s a good question. I don’t think there’s one thing that I could say that this is the one thing that I love about Levels. It’s just a whole host of things really, because you have the async environment giving everyone the opportunity to do deep work. But at the same time, we still all feel like we’re in a sync environment in the sense that we still get to see each other in these cafes every week. And then you have assemblage every quarter. So when I tell people that I’m in an asynchronous environment, an async company, they might think, oh, you probably feel lonely, but it’s no different.

Tony Milio (33:21):

You still feel like you’re part of a team every day. I think the other main point I want to mention is the fact of how fast we move everything forward, faster than I’ve ever seen in any company where every week feels like a month in the sense of the amount of accomplishments, we create by the end of the week, where we meet every Friday and we go through these Friday forums and you see everything that everyone’s done on the team. And you’re like, wow, that should have taken a month to do something like that. Whatever it is, it could be a feature in the app. It could be something related to the blog and SEO. It could be related to press. You get all of these accomplishments wrapped up at the end of every week. And that’s one of the most fascinating things for me because you just look at it and you’re like, how did we do this in a week?

Ben Grynol (34:36):

I should do a live intro right now.

Tony Milio (34:39):

Oh my God. I don’t get to experience this.

Ben Grynol (34:39):

I don’t think I could do it. It would be the funniest thing.

Tony Milio (34:44):

Yeah. If I’m on here, I’d probably just make you laugh.

Ben Grynol (34:46):

No, if you go on mute, I could probably do it.

Tony Milio (34:50):

All right. I’m going to go on mute. I can’t believe I get to experience this right now.

Ben Grynol (34:55):

Okay. I just need to pretend that you’re not here and then I could probably do this. So here we go. Here we go. Growing up the things that we’re exposed to, sometimes they shape our lives.