We Gotta Eat Together

This week I counted everyone Corex has paid since 2013. More than 240 creatives, close to $1M into creative work, and a number that almost stopped in year three.

This week I went through twelve years of e-Transfer receipts.

Three inboxes. Payroll records. Crew contracts. Every name I could find of someone Corex had paid to work with us, going back to August 2013, when I paid someone for the first time and Corex was barely a company.

2013. Corex was barely a company, and the crew was whoever believed in the idea.

The count came back at more than 240 creatives. Filmmakers, editors, designers, colourists, sound people, producers, crew. Close to $1M into creative work.

I've said for years that numbers are the greatest storytellers. I just hadn't run this one.

The number almost stopped early

In year three I nearly shut Corex down.

Three wrong-fit projects landed at the same time. I overdelivered on every one of them, undercharged on every one of them, and watched the money run thin.

I've talked before about the trap most creatives live in: you walk away giving, but not receiving. I was doing it at the company level. And when the business doesn't receive, nobody downstream gets paid either. Every dollar I failed to charge was a dollar I couldn't pass on to the people doing the work with me.

That was the part that changed how I saw pricing. Raising my rates was never really about me. It was about whether the next editor, the next shooter, the next young creative on their first real gig would get paid properly, or at all.

Closing would have been the reasonable call. What kept the doors open was a rule I'd later say out loud on a podcast in 2018.

The rule

If I get paid, they get paid. We gotta eat together.

It isn't charity, and it isn't a slogan. It's how the company is built.

I was running some version of it before Corex had a name. HighClass in 2008, 106 & York in 2010: each one teach one, bring people in, put them on, make sure the work pays. Corex just gave it a structure. When money comes into the company, it moves. It moves to the people on set, in the edit suite, behind the board.

HighClass, 2009. Each one teach one, years before Corex had a name.

The 240 aren't a cost line I manage. They're the point.

What 240 actually looks like

It looks like 2021, when we paid 73 freelancers in a single year.

At the monitor in 2021, the most creatives we've ever paid in a single year.

It looks like one project where Corex became the employer of record and put 51 young Black professionals on payroll. Real paycheques, real roles. I wrote about that work in We Kept the LCBO Out of Their Own Impact Film.

The crew on the LCBO project, 2021.

It looks like freelancers paid by e-Transfer, employees on payroll, crew on contract and the core team that holds it all together.

Most of those names will never show up on a client list or a credit roll anyone reads. But they're the most honest record of what this company has done.

Count your people

If you're building something, run the count.

Not followers. Not revenue. Not projects shipped. Count the people who got paid because your thing exists. Then ask whether that number is growing, and whether the way you price, the way you say yes, and the way you say no is protecting it.

Mine almost stopped at a handful. It's now more than 240, and I'm not finished.

Still on set. Still counting.

So here's my question for you: who was the first person who took a chance on you, and who are you taking a chance on now?