Episode 112
Expanding to Multiple Cities & Potential Career Change (ft. Tone Films)
Plenty of videographers dream about scaling past themselves. Andrei Tone actually did it. He started Tone Films in 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, out of a love for shooting and a hunch that clients were struggling to find reliable videographers. A few years later, that one-person operation had grown into a multi-city company with a vetted network of shooters and a repeatable way of working.
In Episode 112, Andrei sits down with Dario and Kyrill to walk through how he got there: learning the craft, expanding into new cities, building and vetting a dependable team, and leaning hard on SEO to get found. It is also an unusually personal conversation. Andrei has a finance background and is openly weighing a potential career change, so the second half turns to work-life balance, daily routines, and the bigger question of what he actually wants his life to look like.
Key Takeaways
- Born from the pandemic. Andrei started Tone Films in 2020, turning a vlogging habit and a gap in reliable videography services into a business.
- Expansion means systems, not just hustle. Growing into multiple cities forced Tone Films to standardize how work gets produced and delivered.
- A reliable team is everything. Vetting videographers carefully is the only way to hold quality steady across markets you cannot personally cover.
- SEO put them on the map. Being findable online was one of the biggest levers for winning work without a large ad budget.
- Outsource what is not the core. Andrei handed off editing to free himself to focus on growing the business.
- Communication drives client relationships. Clear, consistent communication is what turns a one-off shoot into a repeat client.
- Reflection is part of the job. Andrei is openly weighing a potential career change, drawing on his finance background, and asking what he wants his life to look like.
- Balance is a continuous challenge. Daily routines and time management are the tools he uses to keep work from swallowing everything else.
Timestamps
From Vlogging to a Videography Business
Tone Films started the way a lot of good businesses do, from a genuine obsession. Andrei was vlogging and shooting for the love of it when he noticed a gap: clients kept struggling to find videographers who were actually reliable. In 2020, in the teeth of the pandemic, he turned that observation into a company. Learning the trade and learning the business happened at the same time, which is the reality for most people who go from picking up a camera to running a video production company.
That origin matters because it shaped how he thinks about the work: less as an artist waiting for inspiration and more as an operator solving a customer problem. It is the same founder energy the show has heard from guests who talk about adaptability, sales, and SEO in growing a video business.
Expanding to Multiple Cities
The headline of the episode is expansion. Rather than staying a single-market solo shooter, Andrei pushed Tone Films into multiple cities, serving clients in markets he could not physically be in every day. That move changes the whole nature of the business: it stops being about one person’s calendar and starts being about a system that can deliver the same result in a place you are not standing.
Expansion like that only works if the production process is repeatable. Whether you are covering one city or a dozen, a clear corporate video production process is what lets you promise a consistent outcome, and it is the difference between scaling and just being busier in more places. The show has dug into the trade-offs of doing this deliberately in its episode on how to scale smart, not fast.
Building and Vetting a Reliable Team
You cannot be in five cities at once, so the whole model rests on other people. Andrei is candid that building a reliable team, and vetting videographers carefully before trusting them with a client, is the hardest and most important part of the operation. One weak shooter in one market can undo the reputation you built everywhere else.
This is where the difference between hiring a shop and hiring a lone freelancer becomes real for clients, a distinction Lapse breaks down in its guide to a video production company versus a videographer. For Andrei, investing in the bench is the growth strategy, which echoes the show’s conversation on growing and investing in your team.
Why SEO Was the Growth Engine
Ask Andrei what actually grew the business and he points to SEO. Being findable when a potential client searches for a videographer in their city turned out to be one of the highest-leverage, lowest-cost channels available, far more sustainable than chasing every lead by hand. For a multi-city model, showing up in local search is close to the entire game.
It is a lever any studio can pull. Understanding how to optimize video and rank in search turns your own content into a lead source that compounds, and the show has explored the same territory in its episode on adaptability, sales, and SEO.
“SEO was the single biggest thing that put us on the map.”
Andrei Tone, Tone FilmsSystematizing Editing and Delivery
As the volume grew, Andrei made a classic operator’s move: he outsourced editing. Handing off the edit freed him from the timeline so he could focus on sales, systems, and growth, the work only he could do. Building a dependable editing and delivery pipeline is what let Tone Films take on more without Andrei personally touching every frame.
That is the same instinct behind treating the whole production process as a system rather than a series of heroic efforts. The founders who scale are usually the ones who figure out early which tasks to keep and which to hand off.
Pre-Production and Creative Projects
For all the talk of systems, Andrei still cares about the craft. The conversation gets into creative projects and the pre-production work that makes them land: planning, concepting, and setting a shoot up to succeed before anyone rolls camera. Good pre-production is what separates a polished result from an expensive scramble, and it is where a lot of the value of a project is actually created.
It reinforces a point this show returns to often: the quality of the final video is mostly decided before the shoot day. Knowing what a corporate video is meant to accomplish, and planning the right type of video for the goal, is pre-production doing its job.
Communication and Client Relations
Andrei is clear that communication, not just camera work, is what keeps clients coming back. Setting expectations, staying responsive, and being easy to work with turn a single project into a relationship. In a business built on referrals and repeat work, how you make a client feel is as important as the footage you deliver.
That is the same lesson at the heart of the show’s episode on deepening client relationships. The technical bar is table stakes, the relationship is the moat.
The Live Production Challenge
The conversation also touches on live production, which Andrei flags as its own beast. Live has no second take, so it demands redundancy, tight coordination, and nerves, closer to running an event shoot than a controlled studio piece. It is a useful reminder that not all video work carries the same operational risk, and pricing and planning should reflect that.
A Potential Career Change
The most unexpected thread is personal. Andrei has a finance background and is openly reflecting on a potential career change, weighing whether to lean further into the numbers side of his life. It is refreshingly honest for a founder to say out loud that the business he built might not be the thing he does forever, and to think about it clearly rather than pretend the question does not exist.
It reframes the whole episode. Expansion, SEO, and team building are not just growth tactics, they are also choices about what kind of life the business creates. That is a lens the show applied to its own journey in the looking back and moving forward episode.
“You can love the work and still ask what you actually want your life to look like.”
Andrei Tone, Tone FilmsWork, Life, and Time Management
The back half of the episode gets into happiness, balance, daily routines, and time management, the unglamorous machinery of not burning out. Andrei is honest that balancing work and personal life is a continuous challenge, not a problem he has solved, and that structure in his day is what keeps the business from swallowing everything else.
It is a fitting place to land. A video company is only as sustainable as the person running it, and thinking clearly about routines, priorities, and the occasional smart, unhurried growth decision is what makes a long career possible.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Andrei Tone of Tone Films?
Andrei Tone is the founder and creative director of Tone Films, a videography company he started in 2020 and grew into a multi-city operation with a vetted network of local crews. He also has a finance background, which informs the career reflections he shares in the episode.
How did Tone Films expand to multiple cities?
By building a vetted network of videographers in each market and standardizing the production and delivery process, so quality stays consistent even where Andrei cannot be on set himself.
Why is SEO important for a videography business?
Being findable online is one of the highest-leverage, lowest-cost ways to win work. Andrei credits SEO as one of the biggest drivers of Tone Films’ early visibility and growth.
Should a video business outsource editing?
Andrei found that outsourcing editing freed him to focus on sales, systems, and growth. Handing off non-core tasks is a common and healthy step as a solo videographer becomes a business owner.
How do you balance running a video business with a personal life?
Through routines, time management, and honest reflection about what you want. Andrei is candid that balance is an ongoing challenge rather than a solved problem.
The Hosts
Dario Nouri and Kyrill Lazarov are the co-founders of Lapse Productions, a Toronto video production company, and the hosts of Creatives Grab Coffee, a weekly show about the business of video production.
About
Creatives Grab Coffee is a podcast about the business behind video production: sales, strategy, pricing, team building, and everything that happens off camera. New episodes every week on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.
Lapse Productions is a Toronto-based video production company serving tech, finance, healthcare, and manufacturing clients with corporate, promotional, testimonial, event, and recruitment video. Not sure who to hire? Start with our guide on how to choose a video production company.
Tone Films is a director-led videography company founded by Andrei Tone, known for a multi-city model that pairs a small in-house core team with vetted local crews to produce brand, corporate, and event films. Learn more at tonefilms.com.
