With apps like Procreate and Cavalry disrupting the Adobe ecosystem, should motion designers look to add these tools to their workflow? In this episode, the team talks to School of Motion founder and all-around extraordinary human being Joey Korenman. Listen to them talk about updates Adobe is working on for After Effects and Photoshop, popular new tools like Procreate and Cavalry, and the benefits of online education versus a traditional school. Both Joey and Nick Campbell also share insights to entrepreneur-ism and the challenges they face as leaders of growing companies.
In this episode, the team talks to School of Motion founder and all-around extraordinary human being Joey Korenman. Listen to them talk about updates Adobe is working on for After Effects and Photoshop, popular new tools like Procreate and Cavalry, and the benefits of online education versus a traditional school.
Both Joey and Nick Campbell also share insights to entrepreneur-ism and the challenges they face as leaders of growing companies.
Nick Campbell: 00:00 Hello friends. It's Nick here from Greyscalegorilla and welcome to another Greyscalegorilla podcast. Today is an extra special episode. We had Joey Korenman from School of Motion here on the podcast and we ended up talking about a ton of different stuff including his recent trip to Adobe max. Talk about some of the new stuff that Adobe announced. We also talk about the state of online education and how to really get the best bang for your buck in today's online education world. We also talk about growing your team. We've both experienced some growth in our team and uh, kinda go a little bit behind the curtain on how to grow a bigger team for business. So, um, some really interesting discussion. Always great to talk to Joey. And without further ado, let's jump into today's podcast with Joey Korenman from School of Motion.
00:54 [Music Plays]
Nick Campbell: 01:06 Hello friends. I'm gonna call you render friends from now on. Hello render friends. Welcome to the Greyscalegorilla podcast. Today is extra special. We have Nick and Chad and Michael here from Greyscalegorilla. How you guys doing?
Michael Maher: 01:17 Doing good.
Chad Ashley: 01:19 Doing good.
Nick Campbell: 01:20 Oh, and we're all here. We got the whole team together to welcome our extra special guest today. Please welcome Joey Korenman and he's from School of Motion. By the way, if you don't know this, this friendly face, Joey, how have you been man.
Joey Korenman: 01:32 I've been awesome. And thank you so much for nailing the pronunciation of Korenman. I know we practiced before we started recording, but you, that was a 10 out of 10 Nick. Thank you.
Nick Campbell: 01:41 Did I do it right? Is there now see there's that E in there we talked a little bit about, but I'm gonna say, the corn man himself. Joey. How that, that's, that's how I'm going to remember it.
Joey Korenman: 01:50 I love it. Yes. And I do actually really enjoy corn. So it's appropriate.
Nick Campbell: 01:55 Who doesn't, come on, we're in America. Let's go.
Joey Korenman: 01:58 Yeah, I mean, and I know that you love soup, so you know, see, you're named really well.
Nick Campbell: 02:02 Well, so, so last name Campbell and my great grandma once told me it's pronounced camp bell and I still don't believe her camp bell. Can you believe it?
Joey Korenman: 02:11 Are you calling her a liar?
Nick Campbell: 02:12 I mean, I don't know where it is. Where's the hiss? Where's the history on that one? But, uh, you could, you could say it either way. Joey, thank you for joining us today. Uh, now you just got back from, um, uh, Adobe max and we gotta we gotta get the inside scoop because, uh, we were over here not paying as much attention as we should have and you don't, maybe you could fill us in a little bit. Well, how was it?
Joey Korenman: 02:34 So I'll give you some of the highlights. Uh, so first of all, I've never been to a conference like this one. Um, I mean, obviously it's like a big sort of celebration of Adobe, you know, in a way it's a big commercial for Adobe. Um, but they actually do a really amazing job of getting ridiculous speakers to come, you know, um, you know, I was walking around and all of a sudden there's Aaron Draplin and, uh, I got to go listen to G munk talk. And then for some reason, I, yeah, exactly. And so, so there were so many great speakers and, and the rooms that they give these talks in are enormous because there's like 16,000 attendees. And so, you know, if you watch the YouTube live stream, uh, which you can actually go to to Adobe's YouTube channel and watch these things, they record them. The big main kind of keynotes that they do where they unveil new features and they have celebrities come up and give talks. The, it's a, it's one room with 15,000 people in it. It's the craziest thing I've ever seen. And this year the keynotes were incredible. And, um, my seven year old daughter actually, uh, probably watched it because Billie Eilish was one of the, uh, speakers. Um, and I don't know, do three even know who Billie Eilish is. Like Chad, you might like you, you've got a daughter,
Chad Ashley: 03:49 bro, yeah.
Joey Korenman: 03:50 See, I've kind of gotten into the music now because that's all we play in my house.
Chad Ashley: 03:54 Yeah. My daughter went to that one to her concert. I don't really get into her as, she's a bit sleepy for me. Okay. But, um, I appreciate it.
Joey Korenman: 04:02 Yeah, yeah. So, and then also Dave Grohl, uh, was sort of the last, um, person
Chad Ashley: 04:07 yeah, that's more my jam.
Nick Campbell: 04:08 Yeah.
Joey Korenman: 04:09 I mean, he's a national treasure. Uh, I love him.
Nick Campbell: 04:12 He really is.
Joey Korenman: 04:12 Um, it was a lot of fun. And then, you know, there's this party called the max bash, which I thought, okay, you know, I've been to conferences where there's parties before this was insane. They rented out the staple center in Los Angeles and there's this area around it called LA live, which is this giant outdoor sort of section. And Adobe just kind of bought all of that for the night. And this band called vampire weekend played a concert in the arena that only people at Adobe max could go see. I mean, it was absolutely ridiculous. The scale of it.
Chad Ashley: 04:44 They have some cash over there.
Joey Korenman: 04:47 They've got a couple of, maybe, maybe they have just a few bucks. Yeah. Their stock price is doing okay. Yeah. Yeah. So it was a lot of fun and it was a, it was a big honor to be asked to go and speak there. And, um, you know, and I always love meeting the after effects team. You know, Tim and Andrew and Michelle. Um, I didn't see Victoria there. Victoria is the the product manager. But um, but it's a really awesome team of humans that make after effects and it's always fun to get to go meet up with them too.
Nick Campbell: 05:13 Yeah, that was a, so last year it was my first year at max and had a similar experience where I got to meet, you know, some of the celebrities walking around, which was great. But actually meeting the Adobe team, I think it was more fun for me. It was like, Oh you just, you just sit and make after effects. You literally make after effects. That's great. It was a quite amazing and yeah the, the show they put on and the room that, that thing is, I, I was like how far away from my, from the stage, cause those screens are so big and I finally stood up on my tippy toes and I could barely see the silhouette of the speaker up front. I'm like, I'm halfway in this room and I could barely see them.
Joey Korenman: 05:48 It's a football field between you and the stage. It's insane.
Nick Campbell: 05:51 It was crazy. So any, any features, any, any big news from, from Adobe side that, that we should, uh, we should download and get used in right away?
Joey Korenman: 05:59 Well, I think the biggest thing that they announced was probably Photoshop for the iPad, which actually looks pretty amazing to be honest. Um, you know, they, they've managed to basically bake the entire app into an iPad app and they've also, and it's not like they just ported it over, they made an iPad version so that you have gestures for undo and things like that. Um, I dunno if you guys have ever played around with ProCreate the drawing app on a, on iPad, but it's so fun to use because they were really smart about using gestures, you know, like you can undo by tapping with three fingers and you can tap with two fingers to, you know, sort of move around and, and so, uh, the Adobe's done this with Photoshop. And then the other really neat thing that really kind of, I was geeking out on was they have this technology that they call sensei, which I think is some sort of machine learning algorithm, you know, Skynet kind of thing.
Joey Korenman: 06:55 And this is what it's kind of like this general technology that they use in a million places. So like the content aware fill for video that they announced. Uh, I think that was actually the last max, um, that uses that technology. It's also in photo shop, like when you use there, uh, there's this button now in Photoshop that man, it would've been so handy when I was doing client work that says select subject and it uses like machine learning to figure out what the subject of the photo is and it will generate a mask and it's pretty damn good at it. And so they've, they showed all these new sort of tech demos where let's say you have a shot of food and there's like 10 things on a plate, you can sort of like roughly select one of them and it will figure out what you were trying to select and generate like an almost perfect mask around it.
Joey Korenman: 07:43 So they're really like pushing the envelope with machine learning. There was, um, there was another tech demo they did that I missed. Uh, my team was telling me about where they have this new technology that will end up in an app somewhere where you can take a video of a person walking around without tracking markers or anything and it can sort of figure out how they're moving and then apply that to a rig. So it's sort of like, you know, uh, markerless motion capture. Um, I mean, so yeah, there's all kinds of crazy stuff that, that Adobe is doing. And eventually a lot of it'll end up in the apps. But, um, and I, and I will say that they also released after effects 17.0 during max. Uh, which goes a lot faster, which I think is probably the best feature they could have added. They actually really focused on speed as opposed to a whole bunch of new features.
Nick Campbell: 08:30 You guys put on an excellent video about that. Kind of going over some of the, um, uh, some of the new features and some of the speed enhancements and, uh, where, where can people find that video, uh, for those, uh, if you haven't seen it, go check it out. Where, where'd you guys post that one?
Joey Korenman: 08:46 Thank you for that next. Yeah. So if you go to schoolofmotion.com, uh, and you go to tutorials, you'll find it in there. There's a big sort of thumbnail that says After Effects 17.0, it's also on our YouTube channel. Um, so it's pretty easy to find. And Kyle Hammerich who we've been working with for a long time, he's a teaching assistant for us. He's done a lot of content for us. He's really, really awesome teacher. Um, he uh, he was also speaking at Adobe max and he, he put that one together for us. Um, and for any sort of expression geeks, there's like a really cool new feature for expressions where you can create dropdown menus on layers now and, and have that drive different things and stuff. So there are some cool new features. But really the main thing that I thought was cool is they just made it faster.
Nick Campbell: 09:27 Man. I've been waiting for that.
Chad Ashley: 09:28 That's a huge thing cause that's the, that's the big complaint. Right?
Joey Korenman: 09:32 Yeah. Well and it's funny Chad, cause I know you're a fusion guy and we're, we uh, we recently announced this visual effects for motion design class and one of the bonus lessons that we put together for that was sort of, cause the whole class takes place in after effects. And so we put a bonus lesson together sort of talking about nodes versus layers and after effects versus a node-based compositor. And when I was doing client work, I used a nuke. So I got pretty comfortable with that. But I didn't want to use nuke for this because it's really expensive. And I wanted students to be able to like try something out if they are, if they're into this. So I used fusion and I'd never used it before, but it was really easy to learn coming from nuke. And I was absolutely floored by the speed of that app. It is, it's, I mean, I love after facts. It's my bread and butter, but fusion, it's like the speed of thought almost sometimes in like, I mean even the tracker and stuff like that, it's so great. So I might have to start diving into that a little bit more too.
Chad Ashley: 10:30 Dude, let me know. I'll, I'll set you up nice.
Joey Korenman: 10:35 And there's a free version of it, which was, that's crazy. That's why I chose it because our students can then go play with it if they want to. But there's literally a free version of it.
Chad Ashley: 10:44 Yeah, that's crazy. When it was purchased by, uh, by black magic, I was sort of like really nervous that they were gonna destroy and kill the standalone version because I'd use the standalone version for so long. And they were basically roping it into resolve proper as like a panel in resolve. And we were all like, Oh my God, no, they're, they're going to kill it or they're just gonna let it be this thing inside of resolve. And uh, I think they, they listened to the, to the public, which is great and they actually invested more time and money into the standalone version, which is what I love using. And I was super stoked to to see that they're, that they're keeping that thing alive. Cause I think it's probably the best comper out there in my opinion because it's, it's sort of like a, a bridge. It's sort of an in between nuke and after effects where you can be creative with it, but you can also get really deep into it, uh, from like, you know, uh, a comping perspective. I don't tell people that they should do motion design in there because that's just like, yeah, not the right place for that. But for comping, it's great.
Joey Korenman: 11:49 Yeah. That's what I found too. And I, again, I was just like completely by the speed. And I love how it's integrated into resolve. You know, like the way premiere and after effects work together is really, really handy. Uh, but there is still this kind of gap between them, whereas in, you know, nuke studio, that's the Foundry's version of what da Vinci has put together. Um, you know, you've got a timeline and then you basically like, you know, double click on a clip and all of a sudden you're now in a node tree. Um, it's kinda like flames work and, and now with resolve and fusion, it's, it's not quite that seamless yet, but you can kind of tell it that's the direction it's going.
Chad Ashley: 12:28 Yeah. And I tell people to like play with it, you know, cause you might find that you like that workflow and, and honestly, the color tools that you get in a DaVinci right there in front of you are super powerful. And there's also some really cool, uh, de noising in, in, um, uh, DaVinci that they've had forever because you know, you're, you're constantly degraining footage and regrading it. So they have some really good Denoisers in there.
Joey Korenman: 12:56 Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's sort of best in class for color grading, like on, you know, at, at this scale, you know, unless you want to go up to something like, I don't know Baselight or something super expensive, right. Who's already got time for that?
Nick Campbell: 13:10 It's reminded me a little of a, our last podcast that went out, um, where we talked about some of the other, uh, pieces of software that, uh, motion designers and, uh, visual effects artists are kind of using. And we talked about this, this, uh, thing that's been happening slowly but even quicker lately, which is no longer is just like one piece of software installed on your computer. And, uh, you open it and you use it. Now there's people are jumping in between all of this amazing new software and, uh, Joey, I've always looked up to what you guys have been doing over at School of Motion and having great teachers and an incredible, um, you know, group audience that you have. What have you, what have you been seeing on your side of maybe new software or you know, what's, what are, what are people using these days to get their job done? And maybe is there something new that we haven't even seen yet that's going to pop up here?
Joey Korenman: 14:04 Well, I'm still very much focused on the 2D side of things. It's actually, it's interesting because a, I was talking to, uh, to Paul and Matthias said I'm at max. Maxon had a, had a presence there. And um, and Matthias was asking me like, Hey, do you, do you use cinema 4d at all? And you know, when I was doing client work, I was literally 50, 50 cinema 40. And after effects I was like really kind of trying to be both. Um, but then when School of Motion started to grow, our first class was a two D class. So now that's sort of all I have been with to focus on. Right. And so, and so EJ thank God he's, he's focused on the 3d side, so he'd be better to ask about about that. But on the 2D side, the truth is there's not really that many new apps, I'll say that procreate, um, for the iPad that has actually become kind of the tool of choice for illustrators. Um, we have an illustration for motion designers class that came out this year. Uh, Sarah Beth Morgan who is brilliant, teaches that one and she actually, you know, she has a big Cintiq and that's generally what she uses to work on.
Joey Korenman: 15:10 Um, but we wanted to have her teach, uh, that you know how to use an iPad because that's accessible since peaks are still pretty expensive and you have to have the room form and now you've got procreate, which I, you know, it's like a, I don't know, 10 or $20 app. It's really inexpensive and it's incredible. The drawing tools in my opinion are better than Photoshops and it's really intuitive and it can spit out a Photoshop layered file. And so, um, that app has really kind of taken over the illustration world, which is really cool to see. Um, but then in terms of two D animation, it's still 90% after effects. There is a new app being developed, um, by, I'm trying, I don't want to get the company wrong. I'm pretty sure it's mainframe. Uh, in the UK they're building an app called cavalry.
Nick Campbell: 15:58 Oh, I've seen it all. I've seen little snippets.
Chad Ashley: 16:00 I'm on the beta, but I've never opened it.
Joey Korenman: 16:04 Yeah. So, so I, I'm on the beta two and I've opened it a couple of times and you know, it's a beta app, so it's not, it's not ready to use on client work and there's a lot of things that you'd need that, that are kind of missing. Um, but the, they're building it in a way where if you use cinema 40, especially if you use the MoGraph tools, it's pretty intuitive and they're doing it, they're building it. It's a completely different system than the way after effects works. Um, and I can see it maybe in a couple of years when it gets developed, more being an incredibly useful tool for certain types of animation. Um, and also too, I just, I love that there is somebody trying to create some kind of competition for after effects. I mean, I don't see after effects going anywhere, but there has not been competition. And I think it makes it, um, it does slow the pace of development when, when there isn't.
Nick Campbell: 16:54 Any, anytime there's competition, even if even if you stay where you are, it's just going to help everybody. It's kind of this, this new, um, blender energy that's happening. You know, people are asking like, do I need to switch to blender is it's really, um, uh, not, not that, not that there's going to be like the ultimate winner at the end of all this by having tighter competition like that, they're all just going to get better faster. And so that's, that's the exciting part for the customer is like a blender might add something or, or, um, Calvary might have this concept and that'll push after effects to be even better for the next version. So that's, that's what's exciting about that to me. For sure. Yeah.
Chad Ashley: 17:34 The idea behind cavalry is really fascinating. The idea that something like 2D animation that largely has never sort of appreciated a procedural workflow is now going to be able to sort of work like that, which is really great. I feel like the complexity of 2D is getting insane. Like I don't know how some of these artists are handling some of these animations that I'm seeing. Like I don't even know how I would approach that if it wasn't in three D. so the idea of a program that is sort of built on a foundation of proceduralism to a certain extent, and it's also intuitive from what I've seen. I haven't played with it yet, but that idea is great. It's only going to make everybody's work better and you're just gonna see a lot more crazy stuff.
Joey Korenman: 18:20 Yeah, there's this, there's this thing that I see in the 2D world. I'm trying to think how to put this into words. So in 3D when you're working in, in cinema 4D like you're way more likely to, if you have this vision in your head of what you want to see, you have to build that actual thing to see it, right? Like you. Like if I have this vision of, I dunno, some sort of Essure looking composition, I have to literally build all the pieces in three D. and so it's, it's a lot more literal of a process, whereas in 2d, it doesn't matter how the thing's built at all, as long as the pixels in the final render look the way you want them to. And so, uh, it's in two D there's always been, I feel like this universe of hacks that you have to learn how to do to get the result. You know, we, um, we had, we worked with ordinary folk, this amazing studio in Vancouver to do a manifesto video for us this year. And there's shots in there that I looked at and I'm like, how the hell did you do that? And after effects and they have breakdowns on their site and it's like expressions in these crazy hacks where you have this pre-comp but on the next frame you switch, switch out a different pre comp so that it just looks the right way. And in three D it's much harder to do that. And I think cavalry, the goal is it'll let you work a little bit more like you do in 3d where it's like I want a field of things that are all randomly moving and then they combine at the end and you actually make that as opposed to faking it. You know, like turning off this layer on one frame and turning on a new layer and kind of, you know, doing this slight of hand thing.
Chad Ashley: 19:52 I just have to say that manifesto video was insanely good.
Joey Korenman: 19:58 Yeah, it was. I, I, I wish I could take more credit for it. I picked the right person to head it up, which is, which is Jorge. I mean he is one of mine. He's the best. Yeah. I could not be happier with that thing.
Chad Ashley: 20:11 When I watched it, I was like, Jesus, how, how, what.
Nick Campbell: 20:15 you guys have been, uh, on a roll man on fire this year with, with, uh, that piece and all these new courses coming out the scene. Are you launching two or three new courses? What's, um, what's, what's in the, what's in the near future for you guys? Sure.
Joey Korenman: 20:29 So this year we released, uh, illustration for motion, which is taught by Sarah Beth Morgan. And um, that class was really the first. So this year we grew like crazy, uh, like real, like literally like crazy. Like we started the year with, um, with six full time staff and we're ending the year with 16, uh, which, which was just crazy and terrifying and awesome. Um, and so, and part of that was we made this big investment to upgrade our production values. So we bought these like production kits with 4K cameras and lighting kits and shotgun mics and Atomos recorders. And, and we, we invested in a bunch of those. And so now we send those out to our instructors when they're making a class. Sarah Beth's class was the first one where we did this. And it was really challenging to make that cause we had to figure out how the hell to make a class that uses a camera. And you know, Sarah Beth is an illustrator so that she doesn't have a ton of experience using the camera. So how do we teach instructors to do all that? She was kind of the, the beta for that and she did such a good job and I'm so proud of that class. And so then we took that experience and we built, um, the next two classes, which are both coming out. Uh, we announced both of them, but there'll be on sale in a few weeks. A VFX promotion, which the instructor, and by the way, this was like a bucket list thing to get this guy Mark Christianson. He wrote.
Nick Campbell: 21:54 Wow.
Joey Korenman: 21:54 He wrote the book. Yeah. He wrote after effects, uh, compositing techniques. Um, which, and it's so funny because I remember I told him when he, when he agreed to do the class, I said, you know, I remember being in like, I dunno, like right out of college or something. And I was in a bookstore, uh, back when people still went to bookstores and I saw that book and I opened it up and flipped to a random page. And there was this technique on how to match, uh, something that you've keyed onto a background plate using levels and using, you know, channels and stuff. And I'd never seen it before. And I read that. And then like five years later I had to do that exact thing and I knew how to do it because of him and it like saved my bacon. And now he's, he's created this crazy class that that class is, is nuts. We actually, um, all of our classes are project based. So we had to come up with like real world scenarios. Like why would you have to key out talent with blonde hair that's also inside of a car and there's reflections. And so we would sort of write a fake promo for a fake TV show. We flew to Boston and we worked with a production company and shot, it was a pretty big scale shoot, um, and captured like 11 different projects. Uh, you guys might remember this. There's a, there's a really famous TV commercial from the 80s for Maxwell tapes where the students sitting in a chair and his Butler comes up and shows him the tape, puts it.
Nick Campbell: 23:15 Yeah.
Joey Korenman: 23:16 And then, yeah. And then he turns on the music and it's like opera or something and the wind starts blowing and it's like a jet engine. So we recreated that. We literally like built a set, recreated that, um, and had Nydia Diaz do a smart direction and design for it so that it, I mean, we went nuts with that one. Um, and Mark is an incredible teacher and then the other class is called expression session. Um, and you guys probably know that after effects, artists are sort of oddly obsessed with learning how to write expressions. Um, and so we got Noel Hoenig who is brilliant. He's, uh, he lives in New York and he freelances for companies like golden Wolf and CYOP.
Joey Korenman: 23:54 And he also taught our beginner after effects class. Uh, he paired up with Zach Lovett who is pretty well known in the world of script development and expressions. He, uh, he developed explode shape layers and flow, which are two very popular scripts for after effects. So the two of them paired up and taught and created this insane expressions class. Uh, and it was, that was really difficult too because Noel's in New York and Zach's in Los Angeles, so we had to ship them each a camera and an iMac pro and, and they had to figure out how to like co-teach, um, across the country. And that class is amazing too. Uh, we, we had artwork from, uh, Jimmy Simpson and Carly cyclone and, and some amazing artists. Uh, there's a lot of fake UI kind of projects in there and, um, creating templates and turning those into, you know, things editors can use.
Joey Korenman: 24:45 And so we've been so busy this year, um, that I kind of can't wait for the holidays to come around. So a sec.
Nick Campbell: 24:54 A little break.
Joey Korenman: 24:55 Yeah, exactly. It's been great though. I mean, and, and my favorite part about the whole thing is just seeing how our team has grown. And you know, Amy, who I know you've met before, you know, she was, she was the first person that I ever hired and she's been with us the whole time and now she's our executive producer and she's managing a team and, and you know, and helping make these things happen. Uh, EJ, uh, is working on, um, a new class that he's going to teach. Plus we just signed on another instructor, uh, to, to be named, uh, eventually. Um, and, and he's going to be making a pretty amazing 3d class too. So there's a lot going on. And, uh, sometimes I, I describe it as just trying to hang onto the bowl at this point. Like, I feel like, you know, if I was hit by a bus, this would keep going. Like, you know, like I, I'm not the linchpin anymore.
Nick Campbell: 25:42 Well this, this may be a little inside baseball for some of the listeners, but I, I'm really interested in how, what, what the hiring, um, uh, the roles that were filled to go from six to 16. You know, I feel like we're, you know, we're, we've hired three people in the last, uh, three, four months now we're on this really, um, with, with plus kind of as the successes as what, uh, what, what happened with plus and everything we have planned for it. We just know that we're building this team really quickly and so I would, I would kind of want to know what was that process like? And you have any, any tips for someone that is currently at six or seven and might grow in, in the, in the same way?
Joey Korenman: 26:25 Yeah, totally. We'll see the one of the smartest things I ever did and it w it wasn't smart cause I'm smart. It was smart cause someone told me to do this and I did it. Uh, I just listened, um, was to really kind of separate the operations of the company from the sort of visionary aspect. I'm not a good operations person. That's not, that's not my strong suit at all. Um, and so when, uh, when Alaena VanderMost came on and she's our COO, um, she basically took over like, how are, you know, I, if I say I want, you know, us to do this, she can figure out how we do that and what we need and you know, as long as we have enough money to do that, she, you know, has free reign almost. And so she recognized all these gaps that we had. So like at the beginning of the year, we, uh, scaled up our support team, but we actually sort of started thinking about it differently. Like we have, um, we have customer support obviously, and I know you guys do too, but we also kind of took the model of, you know, at a lot of startups, they don't call their support team a support team. They call it customer success, which is kind of like silly sounding. We call it, like we, we basically call ours a student experience. So, okay, that department, which right now is two people full time. Um, and a handful of, uh, sort of contractors, um, they handle all the support tickets and all that stuff, but that's only half their job. The other half is how do we make these classes more engaging and more fun? And how do we connect alumni with studios? And it's basically all about making the experience better. So it's actually just investing in things like, you know, okay, this class just had a really hard lesson and the energy level dropped. How can we bring it back up? Let's have a contest and it's, you know, take a picture of your workstation and whoever has the cleanest one gets a free tee shirt. Like just stuff like that where, you know, it just adds to the experience, but you need people to do that. So that was one thing we did, um, up until the very end of last year, our marketing team was one person. Um, Michael, how you doing buddy?
Michael Maher: 28:33 I, uh. Hm. So Caleb's doing well then?
Joey Korenman: 28:41 Caleb is killer. He's an amazing dude. Um, but yes, but we brought on a Ryan Plummer towards the end of last year. Uh, and then this year, um, we brought on two more people, uh, for our marketing team. Uh, CJ and Phil. Um, we also, uh, this year EJ came on as our 3d creative director. So he's in charge of the three D curriculum. Um, that's, uh, that's his to mess up if he now he's like, he's absolutely talking to him, gets me so excited cause he's got such an incredible grasp of like the thing in his head. He's got this vision of what he's going to build.
Nick Campbell: 29:19 He's awesome. He's a great hire man. I had got to spend some time with him out, uh, on some of these max on trips that, uh, had been happening. The road tour or whatever they call it. It's always good to catch up with each. I'm going to see him in Denver actually here.
Joey Korenman: 29:32 Yeah, I know. I was actually thinking of coming out to that, but I have, I have too much travel. I'm actually going to see tool this week or next week. Um, so I've, I've, I basically had been told I can't fly anymore. Uh, but in addition to that, I mean, we, um, we brought on a second producer this year, Reagan who, um, she actually was my producer, uh, at toil, the studio that I was running up in Boston and she lives in Hawaii. So we have, we literally span, you know, as far from East to West is as you can possibly go. We brought on a junior producer, Kaylee, uh, we brought on Zach who is our technical product manager. So he's basically managing all of the engineers and all the technology on our site. Um, we're in the middle of a huge site redesign that we were hoping to launch in December. I have a feeling it's going to push to January, but he's managing that whole thing. Um, and we're, and then we just brought on somebody that, uh, I can't really talk about it quite yet. Um, but we'll have some pretty cool news towards the end of the year, um, about who we're bringing on. Uh, so it's really like, like overall it's been student experience, beefing up marketing, which was long overdue. Uh, and then.
Michael Maher: 30:45 [Cough Cough]
Joey Korenman: 30:45 We're making classes and you alright there? Wait, wait, wait. Frog in your throat.
Nick Campbell: 30:51 I lost a lost connection there for a sec.
Joey Korenman: 30:53 Yeah, I dunno. I dunno what that was. But anyway, it's, you know, it's sort of like we've, I it felt like we hit this inflection point where you're a small company and you're able to get away with kind of having everybody just being a Swiss army knife and, and then it was weird. It's like, it just, there was just a point where all of a sudden everything started to break and we were like, Oh. Well we need this person to fix that and then something else breaks. Oh, we need this person to fix that. And actually a big part of it, um, which I'm sure you know, you and Chad can definitely, uh, appreciate is, um, I was doing eight things and Alaina was doing eight things and both of us, like ha had no ability to turn our brains off ever. Uh, or to like, you know, take time off and not be like constantly thinking about stuff. And so a lot of it is also offloading things to people who are better at it than us, um, and have the bandwidth to, you know, to really focus on it. And so it's also opened up Alaina and my bandwidth and, um, and let us be able to like poke our head up and kind of look around and say like, Oh, okay, so where should this giant boat go now, you know, and, and listening to our alumni, um, you know, I, I go to conferences a lot and I'd meet alumni everywhere and they're telling us like, this is what we want, this is what we want. And up until pretty recently, we had no ability to do anything about it cause we just didn't have bandwidth. Um, so yeah, I don't think, I don't think we'll double again next year and head count. But um, I, I bet we get up to maybe 20 or something, but this was the year. This was like the, the crazy year.
Nick Campbell: 32:32 No, thanks for sharing that. Cause we're, we're, I think in a similar place to where we, we all had so many hats on. We all kind of knew roughly how everything else worked. And at a certain scale you have to have things a little bit more isolated and a little bit more focus, like hire people that just do that one thing and make sure that that is happening. And that that's been our transition over the last year as well. And I'm experiences experiencing the same thing too when it works. Right. The, you know, we could kind of lift our heads and have a breath to look in and plan better and see what's coming down rather than all of us like just, you know, heads down in the factory making all this stuff. So it's been, um, it's been a really fun transition last year and I appreciate you, uh, kind of sharing that actually had a question about the first thing you said cause there was, there's something interesting to maybe pick apart that I think might also help. Um, you know, freelancers and in any of us listening that are kind of starting our own business is separate. The separating the vision from operations. And it reminded me of of something that I remember when I was working, um, as a designer and working in animation that a lot of times the, uh, we were directed to make a board that we didn't, where we didn't have to worry about how it was going to be made and essentially instead of making a board to, to, to try to win over a client and worrying about how this was going to be animated and worrying about the technology and worrying about the plugins used, trying to like ignore all that part and then just literally make the best board possible for that client. And then if it wins, we can go find the technology or find the freelancers to get it done. Is that kind of roughly what like separate vision from operations is in a bit more business way of like, let's, you know, pick where the future is, what the vision is without worrying about the tech. And then once we know that that's the future turn around and hand it off to operations, is that, did I understand that correctly?
Joey Korenman: 34:40 That's a good connection to make. I never thought of it that way, but I think that's exactly what it is to be honest. Uh, so I, um, you know, when you start a business and this and this definitely a hundred percent applies to anyone who has been a generalist or a freelancer and then you graduate or you get promoted to creative director, let's say it's a totally different way of thinking. Uh, and it's, it is kind of like separating the how and the why a little bit. Um, and, and yeah, that's kind of exactly what it is. I mean, I'm trying to think of a concrete example from, from our perspective. I mean, um, I mean, just like as an example, um, you know, we have, I think now we have like 34 or 35 teaching assistants for our classes and they're, um, you know, their, their part time basically contractors. And, uh, you know, that we have to figure out like how many we need. And we have to hire them and, uh, we have to pay them and figure out how much they get paid based on how many students are in their session and this and that. And then they go on, uh, you know, sometimes they, they go on vacation and we need to like substitute one for the other and it's this big logistical operational problem. And because money is involved cause we're paying people, it was really hard for me to kind of let go of that for awhile. Um, and so there was this weird crossing of wires where I would maybe have Alaina deal with, um, you know, assigning students to teaching assistants. But then when it came time to pay them, I would then, uh, you know, I would be sending numbers to our bookkeeper to actually make the payments. And so it was sort of like, instead of just letting her own that process, I was kind of hanging onto a piece of it and micromanaging a little bit. Um, and then in the end it just got to be too much. And I finally gave it to her and she said, okay, now that I own this, I'm going to make this automated and smarter. And that's what she's brilliant at. That's kind of her like genius is her ability to like make air tables and use, you know, Zapier and like create these. It's almost automated now. Um, and once I let go of that and I was like, okay, here's what I want. I want our TA's to get paid on time every single time. Uh, and she figured out how to make that happen and it happens. I'm not really capable of figuring out how to make that happen and making it happen. She is. And because I was in the way initially, I like hadn't fully let go. Um, we had problems and we had like, you know, screwed up payments and stuff like that. So, um, so really like that was a good lesson for me to realize, like if I let go and I just, you know, trust that this person truly is like way better at this than me, everything works better. Um, and so that, that's been a muscle that I've had to develop over the last probably three years is just, um, I mean that's, that's been the hardest thing for me. Like as a whole building School of Motion is just learning to let go of things. And um, it's the same thing. I think almost every entrepreneur minded person, you know, finds out, you feel like Superman. Like, Oh, you know, yeah, look, I made my own website and I figured out how WordPress works and I figured out how to use ScreenFlow and Vimeo and how to market this thing and look at, I did it all myself. And, and so it's hard to let those pieces go. And, and the second you do, uh, your company goes from six to 10 in one year.
Nick Campbell: 38:01 That's the secret.
Joey Korenman: 38:04 That is this, it really is. Honestly, someone was asking me at max, um, I ran into a couple of buddies who were also kind of in this online education space and they asked me what the, what's the secret? Cause they've seen how big we've grown this year. And I said, um, build a good team. Like, and it's so cliche, like I'm sure, you know, you hear that all the time. It's easier said than done and it's, it's, it's hard to find good people. But I think the hardest thing is as a, as the person who kicked off this party saying, okay, I'm not gonna be the bartender anymore. I'm let somebody else do that. You know, I'm not going to be the DJ anymore. Someone else is going to do that and being okay with it.
Nick Campbell: 38:40 Yeah. I personally have no clue what you're talking about with all the micromanaging and letting go,
Joey Korenman: 38:45 yeah, Chad, chad, we'll talk later.
Chad Ashley: 38:49 Let's circle back on that.
Nick Campbell: 38:52 That's been a huge, um, a huge part of, of, uh, my growth and the team's growth too is, is kind of figuring that out because you're right, you, you, you have that year or two where you did do it yourself. And I think this, I think this works in, in for freelancers and, and other, you know, business owners, even if you're, uh, you know, working in as a freelancer or starting your own company, we all go through that part of it, which is, you know, I did this all on my own and I, and now that there's other people around, how do I, how do I, uh, give up some of the, give the trust to the right people and also, um, how do you remove your ego from it as well? And I'll tell ya, I'll tell you a part of the secret and you've done this to Joey, is hiring really great people, uh, because that once you have the, once you could look at someone and they do it better than you and you can remove your ego from it, hopefully you could start to walk away and say, okay, they, it's in good hands.
Joey Korenman: 39:49 Yeah. And, and you know, business coaching has been like invaluable for me there. Um, and, and this, I mean, I, I really recommend like anyone who feels like it would be helpful and you can find a good setup, like get, get a coach. I know. Um, you know, uh, our, our mutual friend Hayley runs, um, motion hatch and she's got motion design masterminds, which is sort of like a, you know, it's like a different flavor of coaching. Um, it's just having somebody who's like two steps ahead of you or outside of your bubble that can like be objective and look at what you're doing and saying like, yeah, I can see you spinning your wheels a lot right here. Why don't you just not do that? You know, um, like my favorite piece of advice. How about you? Uh, stop. Just not do that anymore. Yeah. How about you just go, Oh, I never thought about that. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Um, yeah. And, and so, you know, when you're in the middle of it, in the middle of the hurricane, it's really hard to stop sometimes. So having, having outside counsel, uh, I'd say is also been really helpful.
Nick Campbell: 40:50 Well, I, I appreciate that. And, um, yeah, it's, it's, that's also been a lot of the fun for me of like learning how to build the team and how to, how to get to where we we want. There's so much we're doing this year and the, the success of Greyscalegorilla Plus and like everything we have planned there is like, like it ignited a new, um, like I feel like it's ignited a new fire in the team and, and our purpose and everything we're, we're building right now is, is for this, this, this plus group and it's been, um, it's been really fun. So I appreciate that, that kind of insight. Cause uh, I I have a feeling we'll, we'll see if we get to 16, but, uh, I have a feeling this might be the year as well.
Joey Korenman: 41:33 I wanted to congratulate you on that too, real quick man. Cause I know like when you guys announced it and you did it, I mean I can't imagine how scary that must've been. You know, cause that's a big, that's a big shift from the way you guys have been operating. And from what I've heard is, you know, everyone I've encountered who's used it, raves about it. Um, and I, I expect that you will eventually get to 16, um, because I think it's gonna it's gonna allow Greyscalegorilla to operate in a different way and really like have, you know, I think a little more of a runway to like launch things and really like help your customers and help your audience. Um, in a way that was probably a little bit harder to do before. Um, because now you've got this ongoing relationship.
Nick Campbell: 42:17 Yeah. And that, that's what's been fun too internally now that we, now that we have an ongoing relationship with our customers, we're allowed internally to have ideas that we don't have to necessarily package up in new $100 box.
Joey Korenman: 42:33 Right.
Nick Campbell: 42:33 You can have an idea that is a simple scene file or a smaller material pack like, you know, 10 materials and say, you know, let's, let's just build this and, and include it in plus because we think that that will help. Or if there's a new trend in a certain direction, we don't have to, um, you know, again, package it up into a a hundred or 200, $100 box. It's just included. It's right there in your membership. And that's been really fun. And we're seeing our customers, um, really respond to that too. Even the quick tips, Chad just put out a bunch of, uh, like five, 10, 15 minute quick tips of stuff that really wouldn't have fit well on YouTube. It's really not this stuff people would search for on YouTube, but it's like a little bit more advanced and a little bit more like technical, but exactly the stuff you need to learn when you run into that problem and they're just sitting there. So that's, that's just been really fun to do that. I, I appreciate that. It's been a a long time in the making now. It's, uh, it's finally going. And so maybe that's how, um, we can kinda ask a couple more questions for you cause we're in a similar space when it comes to online education. We've talked a lot about this, I think on one of your podcasts, we dive. We kind of dove into online education and kind of what that means to, to, um, to our industry and just kinda seeing where, where you're sitting right now with online education and there's a lot of options out there and there's always, you know, the expensive art school that, uh, I'm, I'm definitely not a fan of. I'm pretty sure you're not either. And so we, you know, what, what would you say right now to someone that is looking to get into this industry and, you know, they've been playing around with after effects or cinema and they're like, all right, this is it. I want this to be my career. What would be, you know, the first, a few steps for them, uh, based on kind of where, where the internet is these days?
Joey Korenman: 44:30 Yeah, I would definitely stress that unless you have the cash to pay for a four year art school. And this is a pretty us centric view because I know in other countries it's not as expensive. It can still be very expensive though. Um, yeah. In the U S uh, you know, I, I think I just talked about this, um, well we talked about it with Chris Do on, um, on one of his live streams.
Nick Campbell: 44:54 That's right.
Joey Korenman: 44:55 You know, it's, it's $70,000 a year to go to these big art schools and you know, and then you're taking out loans almost certainly for that. And so with interest in everything, it's, it's well over $300,000 of tuition and room and board and all that stuff. And unless you can just pay for that, like if you're, if you're really in a good, if you're in a very fortunate situation and that's not going to put you deep in debt, then cool. Go do that. I mean, that's a good way to learn it, but it's a terrible way to start your life in your early twenties with basically a mortgage that you have to pay off that you cannot discharge in bankruptcy. I don't think a lot of, I know that 18 year olds don't know this when they're signing up for student loans. Uh, but student loans are the only kind of debt that you cannot get rid of ever. There are people in their sixties that are starting to collect social security and the government will garnish your social security if you haven't paid off your student loans. No other kind of debt works that way. Um, I feel very strongly about this. I, I, but so I'll try to not rant about it too for too long. So don't do that. That's a don't do that. Um, what I would say is this overall the full, like the, the mentality that I think, um, I wish, like I'm really trying to do this with my kids and, and anyone I talked to you that asked me this, I would say you have to understand that at some point you have to invest something to get good at this. You can invest money to get good at this and that might speed up the process. You can also invest time to get good at this, right? So if you are willing to sleep four hours a night for a year and just gourge on YouTube, right? Like go, like watch every Greyscalegorilla tutorial, every School of Motion, tutorial, every Mt. MoGraph tutorial. Um, Ben Marriott's is like this, this new tutorial artists who's doing amazing stuff. Just gourge on that. Um, and just practice, practice, practice. Then you can basically learn all of this for free if you have to be very disciplined and you have to be willing to sacrifice a lot of time to do that. Uh, but it's totally an option and there are plenty of people that that's how they get into the industry. Then you have another level where you can, you can invest some money to have a curriculum structured for you and really all that the money is doing well. I think there's kind of two points to paying for class. One is it's saving you so much time, cause someone else curated things for you. But also, I'm also a big believer in having skin in the game. Um, you know, I really find that, you know, I'm a big Seth Godin guy. Um, and he sells, he has these classes that his company runs and he makes them expensive, not because they have to be expensive to make a profit, but because if they're not expensive people don't finish them. Um, and, and we've seen that too. And you know, if you look at like the finish rates of say the average skillshare class versus the average School of Motion class, I guarantee ours are an order of magnitude higher because you have 1000 bucks in the game, you're going to want to do it. Um, so you're either investing time or you're investing money and you can sort of, those are your two leavers that you can sort of adjust, right? And if you have less money, invest more time. If you have less time, invest a little more money. Um, and I would say just like, just ask somebody who knows what you should learn. People like when I was at max, people would come up to me after my talks and they would say, how do I get started? And I would say, uh, you know, open after effects, ignore absolutely everything in that app except for shape layers and key frames in the graph editor. Don't touch anything else. You're not allowed to touch the motion tracker or the effects panel or any of that you touch.
Nick Campbell: 48:46 No lens flares until, until you key frame.
Joey Korenman: 48:50 I know you want to, I know you want it, but just and then just go on YouTube and, and search for like our, our ball bounce tutorial and just do that right? If you can animate a ball bouncing after effects your head of 90% of, of the curve. Um, so I, I think that really it's just sort of the first step is just adopt that mindset. I'm going to invest something, I'm going to sacrifice something to get good at this. Uh, I think one of the issues that, and this is all hindsight because I went to college and I had an amazing time, but in hindsight I had the mentality I think most college students do, which is well I'm here, I showed up and that's good enough because I'm here, I will learn and I will be sort of moved along the conveyor belt of life towards a job and success. And as we all know, that's not how it works. Right. Um, because they're not truly invested in it. Um, and so if every, if there's any, you know, high school students listening or anyone that is thinking of, you know, going into this, I would say just first adopt that mindset. Like I'm going to invest something, I'm going to sacrifice comfort for one year to get my foot in the door. Once your foot's in the door then the path forward becomes pretty clear to be honest.
Nick Campbell: 50:02 Yeah. Meeting. Yeah. Cause then you're talking about the other side of it is like meeting the right people, understanding you know, what's in your hometown and, and cause at the, I always, I always say that too. It's like at the end of it, you need to meet a person that will invite you into this world and give you your first break or, or your, and that's, that's always how it goes. So that, that's, that's great advice. Like getting started getting out there. We, you know, uh, like you said, tons of free stuff as well just to get going. And if you find yourself not being able to pay attention to the free stuff for a week or two or a month straight, you might, you might be, uh, you might be learning a lesson of this might be, might not be the thing you want to spend the next four years of your life on, you know.
Joey Korenman: 50:51 Well, yeah. And the problem with free is, it's kinda what I was saying before, you know, to learn how to use the speed graph in after effects. Right? We have a class called animation bootcamp, and there's a lesson in there about speed graph. And the exercise that we do is we give the students a paper airplane that's made up of 3d layers. So it's actually like a little paper airplane and we give them this very curvy Loopy motion path. And we say, animate this, this airplane so that it obeys physics, right? Is it when it's going down, it's accelerating. When it gets to the top of a hoop, it almost stops, but then it keeps going and it does a loop. It accelerates until the bottom and then it slows down as it's going up. And to do that with the speed graph, the first time, it is so painful, it's like getting your, you know, it's like getting your teeth drill or something. It's very hard to do. Uh, and if you're watching a free YouTube tutorial and you start doing it and it's hard, you may just quit, right? But if you've got money invested in this and others and you're seeing other people, you know, post their thing and it's looking pretty good. Or if your teaching assistant is waiting for this thing and you know that they're waiting for you to turn it in, you may actually just suck it up and do it. And so it's really about knowing yourself and being able to hack your motivational, you know, the motivational center of your brain, however that works for you.
Nick Campbell: 52:10 Yeah, I agree. I've definitely found parts of my life where I am self directed and self motivated and just making the thing is enough. And then there's definitely other parts where I'm like, okay, I need help. Right? It's like if you, if you, there are people that can go to the gym and are self motivated to go do all this stuff and sweat and you know, uh, stress their muscles and leave feeling fulfilled about what they just did. And then there's some other people that need someone to yell at them or go to a class and follow, you know, have a group of people around you all doing the same thing. And it's, and it's really, it does, you're right. Joey comes down to understanding yourself and how you learn. And once you find that, then you could set yourself up for so much success because you can, you can understand that you might need a little help or you might need a class to, or, uh, like you said, a TA yelling at you to, to, to turn your homework in. Finding out how how you learn is a, is a huge part of it. That's, uh, that's huge.
Joey Korenman: 53:09 Yeah. And it's really about like, if you're spending money to learn, it's really you're buying, you're buying more resources to be able to learn and you're, you're also buying a little bit more of a piano hanging over your head. Like, I spent money on this and if I squander this opportunity, then I'm doing something dumb. I can tell you having taught at a physical art school, the best students that were there, um, when I was there, you guys might know him. His name's Jake Ferguson. Um, he was a demo artist for octane. Uh, I think he's kind of perma-lancing at imaginary forces right now. Incredible 3d artists. And he was at Ringling when I was there. He was a sophomore and it was clear from like a week of meeting him that he was going to be a killer. And the reason I could tell was because he would stay up all night working on three these stuff and he would come in the next day showing me, Hey, I learned how to use, you know, the particles and cinema 4d, like figure it out himself. Someone like him is going to use any resources around him. And if you give him the resources of a Ringling, he, it's just rocket fuel. Right. But there were plenty of students there that didn't take advantage of any of the resources. And it wouldn't matter if they're on YouTube or if they're at school of motion or MoGraph mentor or Greyscalegorilla Plus or Ringling. If you don't actually sacrifice something and work, nothing happens. Right. Um, and so, you know, like the point I'm trying to make is that just spending more money does not equate to a better result. It's still completely dependent on the person. And so you may think I'm the kind of person that I need someone sitting there yelling at me to, to, to learn. And I've been that person sitting there yelling at a classroom and it doesn't work if you're not invested in it.
Nick Campbell: 55:01 Uh, yeah. Well, well said. Um, well I, I want to respect your time Joey. Uh, I guess we can, uh, probably start to head to wrap it up, but I did, uh, want to make sure that, uh, you know, anyone listening, if they wanted to get a hold of School of Motion and kind of learn exactly what is coming out, you guys have so much new stuff coming out, you know, what's the best place to go? The tutorial page.
Joey Korenman: 55:25 Yes. So if you go to schoolofmotion.com, uh, you know, we always sort of tried to update our front page with whatever's new and exciting. Um, if you're, I mean, if you just go and look through our tutorials and our podcast, I mean you can sort of browse and check out anything you want to. Uh, we have a courses page that specific to all of our paid courses and if you want to sort of be able to keep up easily, um, we do have a mailing list, uh, you can sign up for it's free. And we put out a weekly newsletter called motion Mondays, uh, where it's mostly just news about the industry, cool pieces of work, new plugins, um, you know, conferences, things like that. Uh, we also, we, we have a lot of partnerships now, so we, we sometimes get sort of exclusive discount codes and stuff. Um, and then when we launch a new class or when it's a new session and we're about to open registration, we let you know. Um, so yeah, I would just say you go to schoolofmotion.com And um, you know, there'll be something will pop up and tell you what's going to go up.
Nick Campbell: 56:24 Well man, I appreciate your time and I got to say every time I meet a new, a part of your team, they are always so nice, so helpful, so friendly, so personable. I've just really enjoyed watching, watching your team grow as well. It's been really fun to meet them and uh, congrats on all the success this year, man. It's been amazing to watch.
Joey Korenman: 56:42 Oh, thank you so much. It's been awesome hanging out with, uh, with the three of you and, and again, congrats on Greyscalegorilla Plus. I mean, it's really, really impressive what you've done and, and I know that, you know, in 12 months you're going to look back and you're going to be like, can you believe how small it was? And you're, you know, you're going to have your first, uh, you know, 16 person retreats and it's going to be awesome.
Nick Campbell: 57:00 All right, I'm going to put it in the calendar right now. One year from this podcast. We're going to do a survey here. Figure out what, how big the team as well. Awesome. Well, thanks again, Joey. I appreciate a man and a everyone listening. I really appreciate you stopping by and uh, thanks for joining another great skill growth podcast. We'll do the group a goodbye. You all ready?
Nick Campbell: 57:22 Thanks for coming everybody.
Joey Korenman: 57:24 Goodbye.