The “Booked Solid” growth playbook

Most commercial production companies aren’t short on ideas or talent. You’ve got the creative horsepower. What’s usually missing is a system that keeps everyone aligned and lets you repeat what works without relying on a few people sprinting at full speed every day.

Growth shouldn’t feel like luck or a last-minute scramble. It should feel intentional and steady. And that’s where Copper comes in.

Hi, I’m James Keblas, and I’ve spent my career helping commercial film production companies grow with more intention and less chaos.

I built this playbook, along with the 10-part video series you’re about to watch, to help production companies shift from reacting to what comes in, to building a pipeline they can actually count on. 

This isn’t about turning your creatives into salespeople. It’s about giving your team structure, context, and clarity so you can make better decisions together.

Most companies think they don’t have enough leads. Usually, that’s not the real issue.
The real issue is that their team isn’t aligned on:

• Who they’re trying to reach

• What “fit” actually means

• How to start a conversation that turns into opportunity

Once your team shares that clarity, the rest gets easier.

If your producers only show up after a job is awarded, you’re missing one of your strongest growth levers.

This is where Copper comes in.

Copper integrates with the tools your team already uses like Timmy, Asana, Mailchimp, and the rest of your creative stack. Your delivery pipeline becomes a real-time, living dashboard showing every status, dependency, and next step.

No more Slack-chasing. No more digging for the latest version. No more five-tab detective work.

With Copper, you get:

• One source of truth for context, timelines, assets, and communication

• Pipeline automations that handle the admin work for you

• Website forms that pre-sort inbound leads so producers know what’s coming

• Seamless Google Workspace integration

• Hundreds of connections tying sales, delivery, and operations together

Most CRMs shove everything into one long, linear pipeline. It’s oversimplified and unrealistic.

Copper lets you build pipelines that match how your company actually runs. For many production teams, that means five distinct, but connected, pipelines:

• Marketing: Attract the right leads

• Engagement: Spark curiosity and qualify real opportunities

• Development: Shape strategy before the brief

• Sales: Take the lead and close the deal

• Delivery: Turn finished work into future growth

Because it’s not just about tracking stages. It is about understanding and improving the entire journey.

In most production companies, “growth” quietly falls on the shoulders of two or three people. Everyone else stays heads down on delivery. It works… until it doesn’t. Because companies don’t scale when a handful of people are sprinting and everyone else is running a completely different race.

When your whole team shares the same system, the same visibility, and the same expectations, growth stops being a separate initiative and becomes part of how you operate every day.

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

• Sales is smarter: They walk into every conversation with full context: past projects, budgets, timelines, preferences, red flags.
  
  

• Strategy is sharper: Your team isn’t guessing; they’re building off real client behavior, real needs, and real production realities.
  
  

• Production feels connected: No more “What’s going on with this lead?” or “Why wasn’t I looped in earlier?” Everyone sees the same truth.
  
  

• Leadership gets clarity: Trends, performance, bottlenecks, and opportunities aren’t anecdotes; they’re visible, trackable, and actionable.

That’s when things start to click. That’s when momentum builds. That’s when your company moves from reactive to intentional. And not because you hired more people, but because you aligned the people you already have.

Two flywheels, one platform

There’s a formula most companies don’t even realize they’re missing. They focus on one part of growth and assume the rest will sort itself out. But real scale comes from running two flywheels at the same time.

Lead Generation Flywheel

Marketing → Strategy → Sales

Marketing attracts attention. Strategy turns that attention into clarity and alignment. Sales converts clarity into revenue.

When this flywheel spins smoothly, demand becomes predictable. Your team isn’t hunting for work. Work comes looking for you.

Client Growth Flywheel

Delivery → Account Management → Development

Delivery does more than deliver.It proves your value. Account management deepens the relationship and reveals new needs. Development translates those needs into future opportunities.

This flywheel turns existing clients into long-term revenue engines.

A CRM isn’t going to walk into a pitch and magically win it for you. Your work, your team, and your point of view do that. But a CRM can shape the conditions that make winning more frequent, more predictable, and a whole lot less chaotic.

Because here’s the real competitive advantage most production companies overlook: consistency, clarity, and alignment.

Copper is the system that helps you build all three.

When your team knows exactly where every lead stands, who owns the next step, what the client actually cares about, and how past work informs the current opportunity, you stop wasting energy on the chase and start directing it toward the work that matters.

Copper becomes your operating system. It is the thing everyone relies on to know what’s happening, what’s changing, and what’s coming next.

When that happens, growth stops being a scramble and starts being a rhythm.

In the next 10 videos, I’ll show you how the best production companies build systems that support creative freedom, operational clarity, and long-term growth.

Let’s build something stronger, together.

If you’re ready to bring this kind of clarity and momentum into your own production company, you don’t have to wait for anything else to fall into place. You can start building a stronger, more aligned system today. 

Try Copper for 14 days free! 

It’s the same platform I recommend to production teams who want to work smarter, move faster, and turn their process into a real competitive advantage. 

Give it a try and see how much easier growth feels when your CRM finally fits the way you actually work.