From Free Promo Videos to Tech Launch Videos (ft. LV Productions)

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Dario00:00Hi everyone, welcome to another episode of Creatives Grab Coffee. We're one of the few shows out there that talks about the business of video production. And for all of these episodes, we're always inviting the owners of other video production companies to come on and just talk shop. Before we get into today's episode, please remember to I don't know if you could like on the podcasting platforms, but if you can on YouTube, that'd be great. Subscribe. If you can rate the podcast on the other podcasting sites, that'd be amazing as well. but yeah, that's it. Let's get into today's episode. So we have Vlad from LV Productions, based out of California. Vlad, welcome to the show.

Vlad00:37Everyone.

Dario00:38So I I like to start these episodes off with just like a little history lesson of the guests. So just tell us about who you are and how you got into the video production scene and a little bit about your company.

Vlad00:50So I got into this whole industry about nine years ago. I moved to San Francisco from Belarus and one of the few things that moved with me back then was a camera, a photo camera. So I used to be a photographer. And I was taking photos, but it was kinda hard to make money with it because there's so many good photographers already in San Francisco and I figured okay, I'm just gonna start making videos instead of taking photos. So I got into videography. I bought the Sony A7 camera, which just came out back then, I believe. And I started taking videos, posting them on my Instagram. and at the same time, I was working a full-time job at a restaurant as a server. And I was just doing the videography thing for fun. And then one day My friend came up to me and he said, Hey man, the videos you make and post in IG are pretty cool. You should start doing like promo videos for businesses. And I thought, okay, this is a actually a good idea. And what I started doing, I I watched this guy on YouTube. I think his name was Daniel Schiffer or something like that. And

Dario02:05Okay.

Vlad02:06he was making videos for restaurants, for different businesses, like prom cool promo videos. And I wanted to do the same thing. So I just started walking into different businesses in San Francisco. I would walk into restaurants, I would walk into car dealerships, and I would ask them, Hey, can I make a free video for you? Just so I can post it in my portfolio and you can post it wherever you want for your marketing purposes. And I started doing that. I was doing that for a while, and nobody would reach out to me for more videos. Nobody would need more videos afterwards. And so I kept working at the restaurant and then one day a dude DM'd me on Instagram and his name was Dom Holland. He was the CEO of a tech company of he was a founder of a tech company in San Francisco and he said hey man I saw the videos you posted on Instagram. I want to hire you as a f as a videographer full time for my company. And this is when I Said, fuck yeah, finally this paid off and I quit the restaurant job and I joined that startup to become a full-time videographer.

Dario03:17Nice. that's

Vlad03:18That's

Dario03:19quite the quite the journey already. I mean, but I I I like how you had that like salesman instinct. 'Cause like to walk into like different places, even if you're doing it for free, like it's it's tough, you know. Like I I would have a lot of trouble

Vlad03:31Yeah.

Dario03:32doing that.

Vlad03:33I I I didn't know any other way to do this. This is the first thing that came up to my mind. I actually tried cold emailing a bunch of places too. I think that l landed me a few portfolio examples. But yeah, the whole the whole point is that I was first making these videos for free until someone noticed them and gave me a job.

Dario03:56Yeah, the other thing too is that I I don't I I haven't met a lot of photographers that switch to video. That's also

Vlad04:02Mm-hmm.

Dario04:02very rare. Like I've I've met some videographers that went into photography, but the other way is like very, very, very rare.

Vlad04:09Yeah. I I guess there's a lot of things that are cross related between photography and videography, like framing, lighting, camera and lens knowledge. But I think videography is much harder because there there are so many things, so many more things that you need to control. You need to control the focus, you need to control the movement, etc. and then editing whole Another kind of industry thing.

Dario04:42The whole other skill set, right?

Vlad04:44Yeah.

Dario04:46so tell me w what happened after you joined the company, 'cause now you're doing your own thing, so

Vlad04:51So when I joined the company, I I was wearing many hats at the same time. When I joined the company, they told me, okay, the first thing you need to do is you need to make her launch video. and I started trying to figure out how to make a launch video because I only did promo videos before with no actors, with no locations. So pretty much I was their producer, director, videographer. And editor at the same time. And I was also figuring out the marketing side where this video is going to be published. And for example, are they gonna go on YouTube ads? Are they gonna go on Instagram ads, etc.? So I was writing scripts for videos, I was hiring actors, booking locations, filming everything myself, editing everything myself, and then also doing part of the distribution of these videos online. And that happens a lot in startups. They hire you for one role, but you actually need to replace five people. and and wear that these five titles. So I was working there for two years and the videos I was making were performing really well, especially on Twitter. They all some of them were going viral. And I started getting a lot of DMs from other tech companies on Twitter or marketing CMOs on Twitter asking me to make a video for their startup as well. And I kind of saw that as an opportunity to start my own business. And I quit that startup and I opened my own LLC and I started just making videos for other companies. And then that lasted for like a month. And after a month I realized that okay now it's kinda hard to get more clients because I already did video for everyone who DM'd me on Twitter. What do I do next? And so that was back when ChatGPT didn't even exist. It was it was called GPT three back then. It was like a research demo. And I cold emailed the founder of the co founder of OpenAI. His name is Ilya and he gave me bet beta access to GPT three. And I built a tool with GPT-3 that would automate cold email marketing for me. And

Dario07:20Interesting.

Vlad07:21this is how I got some of my biggest clients probably through cold email marketing. I was just blasting this personally. How long ago?

Dario07:27How long how long ago was this? Yeah.

Vlad07:31that was 2022, I believe. Four years ago.

Dario07:34okay. All right.

Vlad07:37And nobody knew about GPT back then. Nobody knew about AI, LLMs, etc. And so I I had CEOs of very big companies respond to my emails and they were thinking that I personally did research in their company and I personally wrote this email to them, but it was actually AI that did that. It's just nobody knew that AI can do these things back in the day.

Dario08:01Right, right. Interesting. So it was

Vlad08:03So yeah, I got I got a I got a lot of clients this way and yeah I this that's kinda how I launched my business.

Dario08:13Nice. And then like what point are you at now? Like what's your team size like?

Vlad08:19Team size. well I I only have freelancers on my team. I have three motion graphics artists, three editors, and then for the videographers, I have well, yeah, I have like three DPs that I usually work with, and then everybody else I hire based on the demand. For example, if it's a TV commercial that we're producing, obviously it will need like a twenty person crew and another director and Maybe another producer, etc.

Dario08:52Well, I mean going from yourself to like where you are now and everything, like what were some of like the the the the the the hills you had to climb in a way, right? 'Cause

Vlad09:05Mm-hmm.

Dario09:06even it like I'm I imagine like when you started that AI email marketing campaign, like sure you're getting a lot of people coming through the door, but trying to scale your business is a little tricky at times, right?

Vlad09:18So when I left the startup, I already had a team that I was working with. And so I kind of took that team with me. And that that was a really good team. And it was cutting it for a while for me. But right now I'm reaching this point where I'm I need to grow the team and I need to hire more editors because my main editor The one I'm working with ever since I was at the startup. he's he's loaded with work from me and he doesn't have enough time to work on all the projects. So I'm trying to figure out at the moment how do I scale it so that the quality of the videos we output does not go down, but the the speed at which we output these videos becomes faster. Because some of the start the the thing with startups. And startups are the majority of it's like 90% of my customer base. They usually need videos within two weeks. Maybe sometimes even one week. So they come to you and they say, Hey, we need a launch video. And you have to figure out what this launch video is gonna look like, what is the script, then you need to film it, and then you need to edit it, and all this needs to happen within like one to two weeks sometimes. So It's challenging time wise, but yeah, I'm I'm I'm still trying to figure out what's the best pipeline for this.

Dario10:49Mm. Yeah, I guess you're gonna probably need to hire someone in house at some point then.

Vlad10:54Maybe. But yeah, I I I think so. I I just I'm having issues with vetting the right editors. I don't know, maybe you have some experience you can share about this.

Dario11:05I I wish Kyrill was on this this podcast episode 'cause he's been he's in charge of like hiring like the the editors on our team.

Vlad11:14Mm-hmm.

Dario11:15but like we're we're in a similar spot ourselves where like the split we have is I'll handle a lot of a lot of like the sales and biz development and producing stuff and Kyrill's been handling a lot of the creative and editing side. We've been doing more in house editing this year. Just to lower our costs and whatnot. But we are getting to the point where like he needs help. So we've been using other people. Especially for especially for the new wedding company we started. We've had to bring on like two editors to help with the the workload on that front. And I think what he was telling me is that he's just he need it takes it takes a while. It's not like you just give him a document. It's not like with Claude, you just give it a document with the instructions and you just get another handoff document and it understands everything. You kinda have to like work with them on the first couple and like work out the kinks and everything. so it's it's slow from what I've been what I've been seeing. But once you have

Vlad12:09Yeah.

Dario12:10someone

Vlad12:12And I don't know how it works with with wedding video production, but with my type of videos, it's kinda documentary style, case case study style videos, interviews,

Dario12:25Mm-hmm.

Vlad12:26there's levels to this edit, right? So the first cut or the first part of this process can be done by a very junior editor because usually they just need to watch through the footage. They need to Cut out all the fluff, they only need to keep the parts that make sense for the marketing team. only the right phrases. Then they need to go through all the b-roll, they need to prep the b-roll. So they're gonna cut the b-roll clips, they're gonna stabilize them, and they're gonna group them by folders. Not not by folders, but kind of that they need to group them. for example, this is the outside b-roll, this is the indoors b-roll, this is the b-roll of people, this is the b-roll with computers, etc. And so when this is done, what the senior editor needs to do is he just needs to come in and he needs to take this Lego blocks that the previous junior editor already put in the right bins and he needs to take these Lego blocks and he just needs to build a story out of this. A story that makes sense from the marketing stamp. So this is I think this is the pipeline that ideally I'm trying to build right now. yeah, because I feel like this way the editing is gonna be much faster and it's easier to scale because it's harder to find senior videographers for every project, but it's easier to find many junior videographers who'll just do the prep and then you need to like one or two senior video senior editors to do the storytelling.

Dario14:02Yeah, yeah. We we have almost identical process for our stuff. Even with the wedding side too. With the corporate it's it's been like that. That's where we applied the same thing to the weddings. but yeah, like for our stuff, I've I think like we usually like if Kyrill doesn't have the capacity, we'll just hand for corporate, we'll just hand off the whole thing to like one of the editors we trust. The only issue I'm I'm finding on the producing side is just the cost for those guys is higher. So it really eats in into the margins, but it's kind of like again, if we're too busy, like it's just one of those things we have to do. but yeah it's it's tricky to find someone that's like really good, senior, but also not eating too much into your margins.

Vlad14:44What are you paying the editors?

Dario14:47It depends on the project. We usually get like a custom quote. but like again, I g I can't I don't know. It it depends on the project. Like usually I'll reach out to them and say, Hey, it's this type of video, he's a reference, and then I'll get a number from them.

Vlad15:04I I usually don't do the pro per project quote. I usually just tell them, Okay, log your hours and give me your hourly rate and bill me at the end of the project based on the hourly.

Dario15:16okay, but then how do you how do you like I'm guessing you kinda know what it's gonna cost though, right? Total?

Vlad15:24Yeah, but sometimes I miss and I just eat the cost. Yeah,

Dario15:27Okay. I was gonna say what if you miss?

Vlad15:31sometimes I miss and I just have to eat the cost. But most of the time I I estimate it correctly.

Dario15:37Okay, that's good. 'Cause yeah, like I remember like when we're first meeting with people, like new people, they're always like giving us the hourly and I was like, I I don't know, like it d but you know, it could be like could take you a hundred hours or it could take you ten hours. I need to know like an all in price roughly, right? But we're good to our people

Vlad15:50Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Dario15:54too. Like if it goes over, like I give like a little bit extra, right, to make up for it.

Vlad15:57Mm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. But here's the thing. There's different clients who have different requirements. For example, I have some clients that I gave the quote that for example, okay, this this project will take twenty editing hours total, and it took fifteen hours total instead of twenty, and they paid four twenty. There's

Dario16:19Mm-hmm.

Vlad16:19another client who has exactly the same project, and I give them the same quote, but it takes forty hours instead of twenty. Just because this client is so picky and wants so many changes that it it just takes longer. But what I'm gonna do, I'm just gonna build this client more for the next project.

Dario16:42I see you do it like that. Do you

Vlad16:43Yeah, you've

Dario16:44'cause we we we offer like two rounds of revisions

Vlad16:47Yeah.

Dario16:47and then we let them know if it goes past that, like it's gonna be additional. We don't always do it, but I feel like if you're doubling your editing time, like wouldn't it make sense to charge them extra for it or like factor the I it makes sense to factor it into the next one, but

Vlad17:01I I usually I usually do this as well, but sometimes I I kinda let it go if I know that this is a worthy client and if there's potential for them to become a recurrent client.

Dario17:18Yeah, I do that too. Yeah. Kyrill and I sometimes butt heads on that. I'm like, No, no, it might come back, you never know. If it comes back it kinda makes up for it anyways, so

Vlad17:27Yeah.

Dario17:30I was checking out your website and I I really like how you did it. the so d do you use like AI to make your website as well or

Vlad17:38Yeah, so before I built my first website myself back when I just got into videography and it was built on Wix. And I I spent a lot of time figuring out how to figuring out how to build websites on Wix. I figured it out. I built it and then eventually I realized okay, this website is not good enough. I need another one. And so I hired a Webflow developer and he built me a website on Webflow. And I spent I think like five K on that website back then. Back then I was lot of money for me because I was not making that much money. So I spent around 5k on my website. I yeah, I I spent a lot of time designing it as well. It looked quite similar to the one I have right now, but it was just not as nice. And it was pretty slow also. And then eventually I hired an SEO Guy who helps me with marketing to make sure my website shows up on Google. And he said, Yeah, dude, you need to rebuild your website because your website is slow as hell. And I went to my developer and I said, Okay, you need to make it faster. And he said, I can't make it faster. This is as fast as it can be. So I fired him. I figured out how to use cursor, which is the AI coding software, and I just rebuild the whole thing myself in a week. And it's Probably the fastest website you'll find from a video production company right now because

Dario19:07Nice.

Vlad19:08I spent a few days just optimizing it and make sure it's real fast.

Dario19:12Nice. It it's so so it's not like WordPress it's it's called cursor, that thing you

Vlad19:18It's it's it's not a it's not a platform for building websites. It's literally code. It's like a a bunch of

Dario19:22Okay. okay.

Vlad19:25code written by AI and I just told the AI how to build it.

Dario19:30Yeah, yeah so I did our first website too and was it was not good, but I'm not like a web designer, right? Even though I tr I

Vlad19:37Yeah.

Dario19:37like I tried to learn how to make it on on WordPress, but I still don't know a hundred percent. but

Vlad19:44Mm-hmm.

Dario19:45yeah, I read I recently redid all three websites, including the podcast one using Claude, and it's it's like a game changer. Like I was like,

Vlad19:54Yeah.

Dario19:55my god, where was this tool when I was first starting out? Like it's it's incredible.

Vlad20:00Claude is good, but Claude is not as flexible as using the actual coding software. Because the coding software

Dario20:08Mm, okay.

Vlad20:09it can create different files on your computer and it can connect different APIs. And yeah, you you have it it's the same as having like a engineering team working for you. But instead of it being people, it's just AI.

Dario20:26Interesting. Okay. I I I think after the show I'm gonna like ask you some more questions about that. But

Vlad20:32Yeah.

Dario20:34what was I gonna say? Yeah, the the other thing I was thinking about recently, 'cause now that I finished all like, you know, fixing the web I revamped the whole website and and I was like, what can I do next? And I was like, I know in a couple weeks I'm gonna look at it and say, it can be improved and everything 'cause right now I'm still in like the honeymoon phase of it. I'm like, finally it looks like what I imagined like ten years ago.

Vlad20:54Mm-hmm.

Dario20:54I was actually thinking like, hey, what I should do now is find other websites of video guys or whatever, or other industries too that I like, and then create like a reference document and say like what can we do that looks as nice as these websites with ours?

Vlad21:09Mm-hmm.

Dario21:10But we'll do that for later.

Vlad21:13You yeah, you can do that with Claude Design tool. I so I think I actually what I did when I rebuilt my website from zero is I sent a link to my website and I I actually put in Claude Design and I said, Okay, this is my website, make something similar to this, but no, you know what I did? I exported it from Webflow. I exported all the raw code so it could see the actual website with code.

Dario21:40I see.

Vlad21:40And I gave it to Claude and then Claude redesigned it for me and then I just downloaded that. so the Claude designed just the main page. But if you go through my website, you'll see there's like I don't know twenty pages, maybe fifty pages, I don't even know. And so I had to kind of build all of these pages programmatically based on what Claude gave me, based on that template.

Dario22:03Interesting, okay. what look so you use the I mean you you're probably one of the first people to use AI to really run your business. You did it with the email marketing. what else do you use it for? Obviously the website, but what else?

Vlad22:20I use it for proposal automation. So whenever I see I I I use it for lead intake. For example, if you leave a if you fill out a form on my website, it first goes through the spam filter. So if we I detects that this is spam, it's just not gonna give me this lead because I I get a lot of spam I get a lot of people reaching out

Dario22:42Yeah, me too.

Vlad22:43and saying, Hey, we are providing voiceover services or

Dario22:47Yeah, yeah.

Vlad22:48hey, do you want to Do you want to go to our c online casino, stuff like this? And

Dario22:52Yeah.

Vlad22:52so I have I have AI spam filter for this, and then I have another automation that drafts the response email in my Gmail. So that whenever I receive a lead, I receive a notification on my phone through Telegram app. And then I also I'm also getting a drafted email inside my Gmail that I can just open right away, tweak it and send. And then I do use the I for proposal automation. So I I created in a Claude tool that has all my pricing, has other proposal examples, and so I tell it, for example, okay, this is gonna be a project in Seattle, it's gonna take one filming day, and they need three deliverable videos, and it will require, for example, a four-person crew. And it Calculates everything, it calculates the travel to see it all and back, it calculates the editing hours, and then it builds a complete proposal that I can just email to the client. They

Dario24:00Yeah.

Vlad24:01can open in their browser and sign read through it and sign it if they want to proceed with the project. So that

Dario24:09okay. Okay.

Vlad24:10that tool was also built with AI. I also use AI for so I built this thing called Video Galaxy with a with a colleague. and what it what it is is it's pretty much a video library from LinkedIn launch videos. So whenever whenever we find a video that we like on LinkedIn, for example, a startup video from from tech company, we add this to this thing called Video Galaxy, it analyzes it with AI and it adds specific tags to it. For example, it can be 2D animation, case study video, TV commercial, et cetera. It analyzes the video, it classifies it by tags. And then whenever we're looking for references for a different project, for example, if we have a new client from the construction industry, we just go to this platform, we type in construction as a tag, and it will show us all of the construction videos from startups from the tech industry.

Dario25:14as as so just to confirm, it's not your videos, it's like everyone's videos, so you can use that as references.

Vlad25:20Exactly. Yeah. So so that so that it's easier to find references in case we have a project.

Dario25:28Right, right, right. Interesting. Yeah, 'cause I I I use frame I I've I created like a brochure on frame and I just go and I pick out the the right link each time. But yeah, sometimes they ask for stuff that we don't have. So I I'm in like this weird in between space with

Vlad25:43Mm-hmm.

Dario25:44those conversations where it's like I might not have exactly what you're looking for, but here's a similar one. But then I know

Vlad25:50Yeah.

Dario25:50sometimes they can't make the connection to see like, okay. For example, it's a law firm testimonial video they need. I have like accounting firm testimonial video, but they can't make the connection

Vlad25:59Y yeah.

Dario26:01that it's the same thing, just different industry.

Vlad26:03Yeah, I I'm very transparent with them that these are not the videos if if I do show it to the client, I'm gonna tell them, Hey, this is not our video. This is the video that this company posted on LinkedIn. We did not produce it, but this is just a reference because sometimes, yeah, they reach out and they say, Okay, we need a video for I don't know, a chemical lab. And we've never done videos for chemical labs and they wanna see what it might look like. Like what what are what are their options? f I I used to produce TV commercials and for TV commercials there's a tool called let me see think iSpot.tv. So they collect all of the TV commercials that get aired

Dario26:56okay.

Vlad26:57around the US and I I believe North America in general. So whenever you w you're producing a TV commercial you can go there and you can find references. But there is nothing similar for tech companies and startups.

Dario27:10What was it called? iSpot TV?

Vlad27:13iSpot.tv, yes.

Dario27:15T V. okay. That's actually a pretty useful tool. Yeah, I I like that use of proposals because I I actually have to catch up on a few proposals after this call. and like I did create like an updated template and everything, but I'm still going in and fixing this stuff, but I think I'm just gonna like feed it like the inputs and just say, like, hey, just do it for me. Like 'cause it has the template. I just need to give it like the inputs at this point. I don't know why I was still

Vlad27:41Yeah.

Dario27:41doing it manually, but Well it's really useful. How do you feel about like do you have your pricing live on the website at all or is it just in the the link

Vlad27:51I mean,

Dario27:51you send them?

Vlad27:52I have some references on my website. For example, if someone goes to like a case study video production page, it will tell them okay, it costs anywhere between five thousand and fifteen thousand, let's say. But the actual cost is estimated based on the client requirements because some clients need one filming day and they have a one month turnaround. Some clients have three filming days for one testimonial video and they have one week turnaround. So obviously the second option is gonna be on the higher end. But I have kind of I I can't have the instructions at the Claude tool that knows all these details when to bill higher for editing, when to bill higher for the actual filming, etc. And it it just builds me the right proposal. And if not, I'll adjust it the way I need to.

Dario28:48Yeah, I I actually I I'm I created like a calculator tool as well for the the pricing. I I did make it public because I was I figured it out on the the wedding website first and I was seeing that a lot of people liked it. Cause I was finding that on a lot of those calls with them, I was having to customize a package for them and I was like, why don't I just let them do it. Come to me when they already know their number, right? And I was like, let's

Vlad29:14Mm-hmm.

Dario29:14and I got really great reception, so I was like Let's try it out for corporate as well. And clients have been loving it. but it was it also helped me like figure out some of like my costs on my end. Cause like for example, for editing, I was like, I think we were like kind of guesstimating each time like what we can charge or like what we

Vlad29:32Mm-hmm.

Dario29:32should charge for the project. whereas like I was like, we don't really have like a set in stone like this type of project that, you know, for what it would be, like should be this price, right? So I had Claude go over like all the invoices from the last two years and like look at all the editing line items and then come or come up with a number based on that. And I was like, Okay, that that works. That's pretty much good. Now at least we know going forward into a project, like roughly it would start at this and then go up. So that was that was really helpful.

Vlad30:02Yeah.

Dario30:04what else d do you still do those email marketing campaigns or

Vlad30:09I don't I tried doing them a few well I think I think I tried doing them a year ago and I tried doing them half a year ago again and I saw no return on investment from these so I just dropped it. It's there's too much I I kinda understand why it's not working anymore because there's too much AI spam going around. And now it's just not worth it in my opinion to do cold emailing.

Dario30:36So what are you relying more so on now? Is it like SEO referrals?

Vlad30:41I would say eighty percent SEO and twenty percent referrals.

Dario30:46Yeah, it's the same I would say it's about the same split with us as well.

Vlad30:50Mm-hmm.

Dario30:51Yeah. I was I was even debating like maybe trying out cold calling this year, but I'm like I feel like no one really answers their phone nowadays either. Or like I know on on my iPhone I have the the filter on where it's like if it's an unknown number or like one someone that I don't have as a contact that immediately goes to like an

Vlad31:09Mm-hmm.

Dario31:10AI machine that asks it like who they are and then I'll let them know if I wanna chat with them or not.

Vlad31:14Yeah. I tried cold calling, it didn't work out for me.

Dario31:19Hmm. Yeah, it's it's a little tricky. what else what else have you got planned for this year?

Vlad31:30like project wise. I have very busy September. I'm filming a lot of stuff in September. every week I'm filming in San Francisco some vlogs, some launch videos, some case study videos. So yeah, just the whole September is booked for the rest of the year. There's no plans yet, but most likely I'm gonna book it with projects as well because I've been ev ever since I rebuilt my website, I started getting a lot more leads from it, especially from the SEO side of the website.

Dario32:10Yeah, I think it's working 'cause that's how I found you. I think you were either page one or page two, one on or on on the top of the Google Map pack, right? So it's

Vlad32:20Yeah.

Dario32:21definitely working.

Vlad32:22I think SEO is great. it just took so many years to get to the first page. because I started doing it the moment I built my w first website eight years ago. And it's all optimization and trying new things and seeing if they work. And with SEO the problem is that you can try a new thing, you can build a completely new website, but you're not gonna know if it worked for like Three more months after you did it.

Dario32:51Yeah. Sometimes even longer too. Like they might release an update and then

Vlad32:57That's what happened to me a year ago. So exactly a year I'm I was doing good a year ago. I was getting like three thousand views from the different pages on my website. And then one day Google releases an update and it drops down to like five hundred. It drops six times. And I stop getting leads completely. And all

Dario33:16Yeah. Yeah. We had a similar thing happen at the end of I think at the end of twenty twenty three. Like they did something. Like around December time. And then I like, Whoa, what's going because we were like at the top of page two for video production Toronto and like trailing the bottom of page one.

Vlad33:33Mm-hmm.

Dario33:33Life was good, we're getting leads and everything. And then I don't know what I it took like months. It took us like six months to work out of that hole. Now we're going back up. I think we're still fluctuating a bit, but I did do a lot of changes to the website and And now at least it's finally like optimized the way it should have been from the beginning. But again, I'm I'm not a coder, so I d I didn't know to do all this stuff and everything. You know,

Vlad33:55Mm-hmm.

Dario33:55it's it's hard when you don't know.

Vlad33:58Yeah.

Dario34:00do you do Google AdWords?

Vlad34:03I tried that and Google Ads didn't work for me.

Dario34:07Okay. Why why would you say it did didn't work for you?

Vlad34:10So I s I think I spent like one or two thousand dollars on it and all the leads I got were fake leads. So someone would just I I guess the competition sends the fake leads to your Google ads, so you waste your budget and stop

Dario34:28okay.

Vlad34:28doing yeah, I I I it was real weird. I was getting just some weird gibberish text inside the lead form that comes from Google Ads.

Dario34:40Interesting. Okay. D were you, like did you optimize it properly or?

Vlad34:47I did. I I had the I actually hired someone to do this for me. It's just the c

Dario34:51Okay. Yeah, 'cause I sorry, go ahead.

Vlad34:54the the quality of these leads I got for two thousand dollars, they were completely worthless.

Dario35:01'Cause we like I I've been in charge of the the Google ads and at the time, like again, I was just I got a lot of things I'm doing, so I didn't l learn the whole platform the way you probably should have. we were getting leads and and everything, but I recently went through it with Claude a couple of months back and we reworked the whole campaign and it was telling me it was really interesting to like feed it the information from from the campaign and have it like tell me how like no, you th you weren't optimizing for this, so You spent money like it was telling me like stats on like, you spent this much money on these keywords that aren't related and they went nowhere. Cause I even fed

Vlad35:36Mm-hmm.

Dario35:37it all like the contacts that came in. So that was really interesting to see that. I was like, oof. I lost a lot of money on my own doing that. But web at the end of the day, the website was getting clicks. So I think it was at least helping on the SEO side where it's like getting some engagement, but

Vlad35:50W what was your cost per click? Because that is one of the the biggest deciding factor in in whether Google Ads will work for you or no is the region where your business is operating.

Dario36:03Mm-hmm.

Vlad36:04In in San Francisco it's around fifty dollars per click for video production companies.

Dario36:10okay. Yeah, I I wish I knew off the top of my head. It did tell me that information. It's in one of the chats. I'd have to go look for it. Or I can just I'll

Vlad36:18Okay.

Dario36:18just prompt it to tell me what it was. But yeah, like we're like right now, like the way it's set up, I have to it's interesting, like it's it 'cause before I was like, okay, I guess just getting clicks on the website will be good because then it'll boost the home page because if it's getting attention then I'll help the SEO signals go up and whatever. but right now it's basically been setting it up so that we can again I might be butchering this because I'm not an AdWords guy. Like I I'm I'm doing AdWords with the an assistant that's helping me. But basically it's we're trying to optimize a campaign for like conversion actions. I'm I forget what the exact term for that thing would be because it's basically we're trying to trigger the conversion action of someone going to the contact form and submitting it, right? So when it

Vlad37:12Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah.

Dario37:13goes to the thank you page, that's when that thing gets triggered. So it's trying to optimize for those types of leads. I again,

Vlad37:19Right.

Dario37:20guys, I'm butchering this. I'm not I just started this started with this whole Claude AdWords thing a couple weeks ago. so it's trying to figure that out. I've been having some issues with it though where it's like we still haven't gotten the conversion actions to trigger. But it should've by now 'cause it's been about two months. So I don't know if there's some issue with the code. I have to review it again. We went through a couple of times, but

Vlad37:43Mm-hmm.

Dario37:45I yeah, like it's I I don't know. I don't know. I don't know where I was going

Vlad37:50Okay.

Dario37:50with that. But yeah, it's it's better than when I was doing it on my own, essentially.

Vlad37:55Okay. Yeah, right now I I I don't want to try Google Ads because this is SEO is doing good and I would rather keep spending money on that. Mm because it works better for my case.

Dario38:09Yeah. I I think even if we do, you know, knock on wood we do end up on the home page at some point. Like I would still keep it going, but I would probably like drop the budget by a lot. Like right now we're doing about twenty bucks a day. but then it's also mirrored on Bing. So it's like forty total. I think if we ever get to the

Vlad38:31What

Dario38:32first page I would probably drop it down to like ten bucks a day total, maybe.

Vlad38:37What would you say is the percentage of the videos that you make that are wedding videos versus corporate?

Dario38:45I would say well we do way more corporate. Like the wedding thing was really just a side business we started. Like that the wedding company's like would say maybe like a quarter of what we less than a quarter of what we do with with Lapsee. Like Lapse is still like the the bread and butter. Really the the wedding company was just a way for us to stop freelancing for other people and just do our own thing and just have like a nice little thing on the side. Cause you know, God forbid something bad happens with Lapse at least we could we could survive pretty well on the other one, right? That was the whole point of it. so yeah corporate is still like the main main thing we do. We produce a lot of corporate content. Cause like for weddings

Vlad39:25Okay.

Dario39:26for example we have like twenty eight couples this year.

Vlad39:28Yeah.

Dario39:29We had we had twelve, no, eleven last year when we started. We're at twenty eight. I think we're gonna cap it at thirty next year and not go past that.

Vlad39:38Okay. Because on based on my knowledge, I think it would be easier to scale wedding video side with Google Ads because there is a lot more people searching for wedding videos. There's a lot

Dario39:49Mm-hmm.

Vlad39:50more consumers for this niche versus corporate videos. And corporate

Dario39:54Yeah. I have I have a campaign running for for Silver Leaf as well, yeah.

Vlad39:58Okay. But yeah, it it's it's interesting. Obvio obviously if it works for you, then just keep putting more money in it because if it's working then why not?

Dario40:10Yeah, it's again I try I I started it around the same time as I I fixed up the the Lapse one and yeah, like every week what I'll do is I'll just download all the the numbers from it, feed it to Claude, say, Hey, how's it looking this week? Anything you think we should do? And it'll tell me, like one of them triggered with this keyword or whatever, just do a negative keyword for that 'cause it doesn't make sense for your stuff and whatnot. but yeah. I th I think for us the AdWords is working. The SEO is working because on on the corporate side we're ranking pretty high on Google Maps. We're like one

Vlad40:47Mm-hmm.

Dario40:47of the top ones for there, but not in the regular search. Regular search, I we're like page three or four. now after but hopefully in a couple weeks it'll go back up. But yeah, I'm trying to figure out another way we can we can find another source of like getting leads because like it's good that we have Google, like SEO and and we have AdWords, but like, you know, a any moment that could drop, right? Like all it takes is

Vlad41:15Mm-hmm.

Dario41:15one update and I don't know, it just or it just doesn't like your website for some reason. There's a hiccup in their algorithm and then you get targeted, like and then what do you do, right? That's the that's the one thing I don't like relying on.

Vlad41:28Yeah. everybody tells me that networking is really good. I personally it personally doesn't work for me because

Dario41:35Mm-hmm.

Vlad41:36I I don't know, I I I for me networking is weird, but have you tried it?

Dario41:42I'm I'm a shy guy, so I d I send Kyrill out to those things. I'm like you,

Vlad41:45So you're you're like me.

Dario41:47like I I hate being in those rooms where there's too many people and then I can't hear what people say. Like I'm like, I don't know, there's too much noise. Kyrill's good for that stuff, so I I like to send him out for that.

Vlad41:58Yeah.

Dario41:59But I gotta start doing that. I like it's a shame that now like no one wants to like answer a cold email or a cold call, but that

Vlad42:06Mm-hmm.

Dario42:07would have been my like choice of like target, like just cold call or email.

Vlad42:11Yeah. let's talk about editing. What which editing software do you use?

Dario42:18We use premiere.

Vlad42:20Okay. How do you like it?

Dario42:22Again, I don't I don't really edit. I'll do like some little things on the side. I think with the but Kyrill Kyrill loves it. I like he's been using that since since we started. So I don't think we're gonna switch. I've told him maybe we

Vlad42:33Okay. Got it.

Dario42:35could check out Resolve because some of the other guys we know like keep telling me like, yeah, it's these features and everything. I like, Kyrill, maybe we check it out, but I know him. Like once he's using something he won't migrate away from it.

Vlad42:48Yeah. I you I actually started with Final Cut when I just got into videography. I used to edit in Final Cut, but then I got a Windows PC and Final Cut is not supported on Windows. So I so I downloaded Premiere and it's a working Premiere. And

Dario43:04Mm-hmm.

Vlad43:05I swear this is the most boggy s editing software that I've ever

Dario43:10Is it?

Vlad43:11used. It was crashing all the time. Someday I would be editing project for like five hours. And then would crash and lose all the progress and I would have to start from the beginning. Yeah, and the n I I also feel

Dario43:21God. It's gotten better from what I heard. Like you'll told it's gotten a lot better. Because I remember like I was editing a bit to help out like pre pandemic. And I remember it would crash randomly. You're like, What what the hell? Like

Vlad43:36Yeah. But this is when I also tried DaVinci. This is when it was about seven years ago, I think DaVinci just came out with Resolve. before it was only color grading software and then they added it added the editing features and I started using it and I realized okay, this app actually has a really good UI. You can easily understand where is the feature that you need, the timeline looks nice. And yeah, I I just found it to have better UI than Premiere. And lately they've been adding a lot of really cool features to it, like AI dubbing, AI transcription. so it has all of the AI features that Premiere has. The only downside is that it's not that good with animation as after effects. So whenever

Dario44:29I see.

Vlad44:30we are my me and my editor, we both work in resolve. But whenever we need to do animations, he has to do them in after effects and then

Dario44:41Mm.

Vlad44:42render them and drop them back to resolve.

Dario44:44You guys do a lot of animations, huh?

Vlad44:46Yeah, I have three animators on my team.

Dario44:50Yeah, we we don't do too much, like but w yeah, and I I feel like it's hard for me to pitch because the guys we do use, like they charge us a lot or like I just feel like it it ends up be i it's it i we only do animation projects when it they have like a lot of budget to work with. Whereas I

Vlad45:09Mm-hmm.

Dario45:10know some other people are able to do it at much lower costs, but did did you did you have that issue at the beginning too, or how did you how did you go about it?

Vlad45:20So I I did a course on animation. I learned how to you how to do 3D animation. And while I was doing that course, I met a guy who also does animation. He does 2D and 3D animation. And I started pitching animated videos to every startup with cold emailing back back in the day. I would pitch them launch animated videos. And Yeah, they they were just paying for it. They they loved the quality, and me and this guy were working on these videos together. The cost was not high because I was doing kind of the creative direction part and he was doing the actual animating part of it. But we were charging 6k back in the day, and then we raised the prices at some point we were charging 10k per video per animated video. but then not now there's way too many people that do this kind of this style of animation and they're all in India and Russia and they charge way less for the same product for the same service. So we start we stopped offering that. It's not that profitable anymore.

Dario46:43Like the client going like a lead going direct to those guys or using a company that has guys in India or Russia or Philippines?

Vlad46:50Yeah yeah, they go directly to these animators now because but

Dario46:55okay.

Vlad46:55back back when we started doing these animations these were pretty unique. it was hard to find something of this level, but now you can find an animator like this very easy.

Dario47:07really? Okay. Okay. I must be looking in the well, I haven't looked to be honest with you, so I don't know. But yeah, like I I spoke I I know some people were using people in like again, like India or or Philippines was the main one where they would use like animators there. And but they told me they had a lot of communication i issues with the people there, so they kinda stopped doing that. So I'm

Vlad47:32Okay.

Dario47:33surprised that you had leads or clients that went direct to the source 'cause

Vlad47:37Mm. I don't know, maybe they found the ones that have good English. Yeah.

Dario47:43They found the good ones. we touched on like goals for for the year a little bit. You kind of told me like what work you got coming up, but what are like your your business goals you got planned for the remaining how many months do we have left? Another four months left?

Vlad47:58Yeah, four months. So my goal, business goal right now, are to probably hire f find the right editors and create a good pipeline for post production that can output videos within two weeks with no stress on the team. I think that's the biggest goal right now.

Dario48:25Okay. Very very simple. Simple but complicated goal.

Vlad48:29Yeah. What about you?

Dario48:31Yeah, that well, yeah, the the reason I'm asking is 'cause like I'm I'm getting near the end of my goals for the year, so I'm like, I feel like there's something missing. I need to ask around and see what other people got cooking. but for us like this year, I really wanted to revamp the website. and I did, which I'm very happy with. And I know in a month or so I'm gonna look at it again and I'm gonna go like, Okay, I hate it. Let's fix it up again. but it was that one we I'm still trying to fix the AdWords campaign stuff. I I feel like some code is messing with how it's reading on Google AdWords, so I wanna fix that up. I do wanna create videos for social. We're we're cause I again I'm trying to think like we got SEO, I'm ready work, I'm tackling that one already. The AdWords being tackled, like the networking, I'm gonna figure out a the thing, I'll go with Kyrill. I gotta warm up to like I'm like you, I don't like it, but sometimes you gotta do what you don't like, right? So yeah, I guess figure

Vlad49:30Yeah.

Dario49:31out like go to more networking events. and I I do want to create more social content because that'll be part of like the whole sales approach too. And I feel like I could use those videos for the blog posts we have. And then also just to have them on social. So I was thinking like it could be like versions of the blogs that we have. and again I think it's good just As the owners of the company to get your faces out there, people will feel more connected to you in a way, right? So yeah,

Vlad50:00Yeah.

Dario50:01it's mostly that. I I would say am I missing anything? I think maybe fixing our our pre-production process a bit would be better too. Like I feel like we we kind of grew up in like run-and-gun environments, so we're very like Like you could throw us in any situation with like minimal info and we'll figure it out, type of thing, right? But I think we really need to sit down and like figure out like a nice structure for that. Everything else I think is pretty much good. I think Kyrill needs some help on the editing side, so I do gotta figure it out. But I think that's his domain. I'll let him figure that out. He knows who to contact for that. But yeah, other than that, we went through a lot of stuff. I guess another thing, I actually this is something that I did this week. I went through, I had Claude go through all of our accounting docs.

Vlad50:52Mm-hmm.

Dario50:53So and I and I even organized it in a way for our accountant to be able to use it. So I actually told

Vlad50:58Mm-hmm.

Dario50:58him, okay, send me I here's what I did. Like, how do you want it? It's like, can you add this and that? I was like, no problem, let's go do it. And then it figured out some things we need to fix. So I want to get that sorted too before the end of the year. It was interesting to

Vlad51:10Nice. This this this is smart. Which accounting software do you use?

Dario51:14Okay. We the only thing I did for accounting is I was get like sending our account in the statements, but also like creating like an ac like I would go on Excel and just do some basic stuff for myself, like just organizing stuff, very basic bookkeeping, nothing special, right? he our accountant would do like proper bookkeeping and all that stuff. I think he uses QuickBooks. but what I did was again, I just created the document that he would give us at the end of the year when he was filing our corporate taxes. I've just recreated it for this year with all the information. So I fed it all the freelancer invoices, all the client invoices, all the receipts, all the bank statements, and it was able to create it. Like I when I sent it to him yesterday, he called me. He's like, who did you get to do this? And I was like, it was Claude. And then like we're chatting a bit. And then he's like, so you can chat with Claude and then I'm like, just so you know he's an AI. He's like, I thought it was an actual person. but

Vlad52:09Yeah.

Dario52:12Yeah, it was even I had it I went all the way back to when we incorporated in twenty twenty three 'cause it it was finding some things it's like, I don't know where this is coming from. And I was like, okay, let me go back one year, might be there. Let me go back another year, went all the way back to the beginning. And it found some things that I was like, I called my accountant and I was like, Hey, I'm creating a document for you. We should probably review this before the next the next filing and whatnot. But that was that was really interesting to see because then what I did after that was I was like, Okay, now it knows all the knowledge, right? All the numbers. So I was like, okay, what are my like profit margins, right? Per project. So I asked it that and it gave me a whole document for that. It was pretty cool to like dive in deep with that stuff because like trying to figure out a profit margin was something on my to do list, but like before Claude I was like, I'll get to it eventually. It's I'm not that good with numbers, especially like calculations, this, that, that, and the other thing. So I was like, I don't have like four days to sit down and figure this out on a year by year basis. We've been operating for ten years, right? I can't go back ten

Vlad53:12Yeah.

Dario53:12years and figure that all this out. But now I can. I can just tell it. And he

Vlad53:16Mm-hmm.

Dario53:16was even I was even telling him like, What do you think I should know about? And he was telling me, like, you know, you're very you guys are good have got good numbers, especially for like this the salary changes you got planned for next year. Like, yeah, it'll be that was the other thing I did too. I was like, Okay, we're doing dividend payments right now. I was like, next year I want to switch to salary because I want to be able to add disability insurance. but they need two years of salary. So I was like, okay, let's do it. And I also want to get a mortgage eventually. So I was like, okay, I want to switch to salary, how much money, like what I don't know how that would work. So it gave me like a whole step by step for that. How much salary it could support, like the benefits, other things to consider. It was it's crazy, man. Like the amount of stuff you can do with it, it's blowing my mind. It's stuff that like. I would have never been able to do on my own 'cause I just I can't, you know?

Vlad54:08I have a question. So how does it work in Canada with business incorporation? For example, in California, there's LLC, which is pass-through, which is

Dario54:20Mm-hmm.

Vlad54:20all the money that your business makes as profit is technically your personal salary. And then there's

Dario54:28okay.

Vlad54:28corporation, where you pay yourself a specific salary, for example, 40k per year, and everything else that your business makes in profits, everything above this forty K is the business's property. So it has like a discounted tax on it. So how does it work with in

Dario54:45Ye y it

Vlad54:47Canada?

Dario54:47like the sec I'm pretty sure it's like the second one. So like the well

Vlad54:50Okay.

Dario54:51we're incorporated, so I'm guessing it's probably very similar. I I notice you guys there do a lot of LLCs. Like I've seen quite a few video companies that are LLCs, which is br

Vlad54:59Yeah.

Dario55:00I've never seen an LLC here in Canada.

Vlad55:03It's easy to set up. It's much easier to set it up and it's much

Dario55:05I see. Okay.

Vlad55:06easier to file the taxes for an LLC compared to S Corp. Because with with corporation, you need more precise bookkeeping. And for example, with an LLC, you have a personal credit card, you can go buy something, you can go buy a camera with personal credit card, and it will still be considered business expense. With a corporation, It is more complicated because you need to if you buy something with a personal credit card when you have a corporation, you then need to kind of depreciate it or move it onto your business name. It's it's weird. And this is why I'm still filing this LLC, but there's after you're making above the certain threshold with an LLC, it's more beneficial to transfer transition into a corporation.

Dario55:56Interesting, okay. I mean now you can also just give it maybe try out what I did and it'll give you like a good option. Do you have an accountant or do you do everything yourself?

Vlad56:06I have an accountant, but all he does is he files these taxes for me at the end of the year.

Dario56:11Mm.

Vlad56:11He but I need to do the bookkeeping myself. So I have

Dario56:15Right.

Vlad56:15quick QuickBooks software and before I would do it at the end of every month. So at the end of the month I would go through all my expenses and transfers and I would sort them out, but I I think I haven't done that in like half a year now. Because I don't have time for that. So I might just try the same thing. I might just try Claude for this.

Dario56:36Try it out, 'cause it was and again, I I suggest like doing the previous years as well. you'd be amazed what it can find. Like, for example, like it it was able to find an invoice we hadn't been paid for from twenty twenty three. November

Vlad56:54Wow.

Dario56:54twenty twenty three. It said, Hey, you haven't been you haven't been paid for this and I was like Are you sure? Like I would so that's why I was like, okay, check this one, check that one. No, no, it haven't been paid. So actually I had to reach out to the client yesterday and

Vlad57:07Mm-hmm.

Dario57:07say, Hey, hope you've been well. But I was just going through this stuff. Can you check on your end to make sure it went through? 'Cause I I'm I was checking and I can't find it. and it's a big amount. It was like six and a half K. So I mean, I I was telling Kyrill, I'm like, I think Claude just paid for itself. He's like, Why? I was like, You're

Vlad57:24Yeah.

Dario57:25not gonna believe this. We we forgot to collect.

Vlad57:28Yeah.

Dario57:29But even like you can feed it all the the QuickBooks stuff. Cause I had the accountant or accountant Howard, he he sent us everything. And what I really liked about it too is that it created a document just for him so he can also answer some of the questions it had, and then once he gives me the answers to those, or you can even like record I told him, was like, hey, if it's easier, we can just record the call and I'll just copy the transcript from the call and then just feed it to it, and then if it has more questions after that, they'll let me know. But yeah, dude, like I was like It was crazy just 'cause it created it like perfect. Our accountant was like, Who did this for you? I was like, I swear it was thing. And now that it's it's there in its context and already knows the structure, all I have to do now is every month just give it the updated statements like the freelancer stuff, and then it'll just do it on its end. Like a another cool thing I found out, I don't know if most people know this, but for certain services, like Google AdWords, for example, or G Suite, or even Claude,

Vlad58:31Mm-hmm.

Dario58:32if you don't put your business number, it ac in Canada at least, I don't know how it is in the States, it'll charge you HST, which is the tax, right? But if you put the business number, I won't charge you the tax. So I didn't know that. It it looked at it, it's like, yeah, by the you're being charged tax on these services. You shouldn't be charged tax. Just put your business number in.

Vlad58:50Mm-hmm.

Dario58:51I was like, what? I had no idea about this.

Vlad58:54Interesting. We we don't have that in California. We still need to pay tax on transactions. did did you did you

Dario58:58okay. But yeah, it was it's pretty it's been pretty awesome.

Vlad59:02did you ever have to deal with clients that don't want to pay you?

Dario59:10Lately or like in the past?

Vlad59:12In in general.

Dario59:14Not lately. Not in the

Vlad59:16Okay.

Dario59:16like not in the near past either. Like it happened

Vlad59:19Okay.

Dario59:22It happened w one it happened twice when we were first starting out. But Papa always gets his money. I got that money. Yeah, no, no, no.

Vlad59:32Mm-hmm. Okay.

Dario59:33They were gonna pay. Like that I wasn't gonna let get away with that. Like

Vlad59:36Okay.

Dario59:37one of them d and again, this is like first project starting out. They're like, they weren't happy With the edit, but I'm like, this is the footage you gave us. They're like, we don't no, they said, we don't need it anymore, so we're not gonna use it. So we're not gonna pay. And I was like, That's that's not how this works. Like you still gotta pay.

Vlad59:57Yeah.

Dario59:59And then the other time the other time something happened where there was like it was through an intermi intermediary for this client. But the intermediary, I won't say the name, but they're very big. And then something ha something strange happened where they said because it was too long of a delay, like it was a six month delay in getting the money. They're like, we can't pay it anymore. You have to get it direct from the client. So I went to the client and I said, Hey, that video's up on YouTube. You got till tomorrow to reply. Otherwise, I'm gonna copyright strike you guys. And we got it.

Vlad1:00:34Okay. Nice.

Dario1:00:36But we haven't had we haven't had anything, but l because also like our contract is pretty strong.

Vlad1:00:41Yeah.

Dario1:00:42And it's a lot stronger now that I had Claude go through it. There were like quite a few things that were problematic with it before. 'cause like for example, we also offer photography, right? But it wasn't optimized for photography. So I had to change that and then whatever. So we haven't really had issues. What what about yourself?

Vlad1:01:01I recently had a a case, so it was a returning client, but that that client is a bit of a mess because they had a marketing manager and that was that was my main point of contact and he was requesting

Dario1:01:21Mm-hmm.

Vlad1:01:21videos from me and I was I made a few projects for them, they paid me for it. Then this marketing manager he requests another video from me. And then within a week they fire him. And they

Dario1:01:36okay.

Vlad1:01:36they hire a new marketing manager and they say, okay, now this new marketing manager is your is the lead for this project. So I work with a new marketing manager now. So we work out the dates, we work out the pricing, we come film the project, we edit it. She takes a long time to reply with during the post production process, but we finish the project. in two months because she took so long with the edits. And then we send it to her and I tell her, Okay, I sent the invoice, she said, Okay, cool. A week later she's also fired. And then yeah.

Dario1:02:15Okay. Bad luck in that job. It's like the Harry Potter role. That guy always gets replaced every year.

Vlad1:02:23Yeah, and and now I'm I'm DMing their their accountants, not

Dario1:02:30Yeah.

Vlad1:02:31DMing but emailing their accountants

Dario1:02:33Yeah.

Vlad1:02:33and and their founders and they're just ignoring me. I guess their logic is that if the person that hired me is gone, they don't have to pay me or something. Yeah.

Dario1:02:43What how long's it been? Is it been like weeks or?

Vlad1:02:48it's been a few weeks since I sent the invoice, maybe like three weeks.

Dario1:02:53okay. Okay, yeah you better stay on top of that one.

Vlad1:02:57I know, yeah. I I I've already sent them a few emails and a few messages in Slack, so I I don't know what to do. I might might need to send something more for

Dario1:03:07Yeah, that's weird. I mean they're probably swamped, is my guess. Yeah, yeah.

Vlad1:03:13They are, for sure. But I mean, I sent the invoice and it it's been three weeks and nothing.

Dario1:03:19Yeah, that's strange. Again, my my thinking is always like they're probably too busy.

Vlad1:03:24Mm-hmm.

Dario1:03:25'cause that's usually what ends up being the case. Especially if you've done a lot of work with them. That's that's pretty strange.

Vlad1:03:31Yeah. But they haven't ev they haven't even posted these videos we made for them. I I sent them the videos they have. That is true. That is true. Because the work has been

Dario1:03:36Well, they they post it or not, they still gotta pay up, you know, so they always gotta pay.

Vlad1:03:42done. I I paid my editors, I paid my videographers.

Dario1:03:46Do you how do you invoice people? Do you do like fifty fifty or do you do like a three way three split? Like

Vlad1:03:52I I usually do fifty fifty, but for this client

Dario1:03:54Okay.

Vlad1:03:55I said you can pay later because they were returning clients.

Dario1:04:00Hmm. I I tell

Vlad1:04:01Which was a mistake.

Dario1:04:02them like it just needs to be in the system 'cause I know some of them got like sixty days. There's one company that's got

Vlad1:04:07Yeah.

Dario1:04:08ninety days, which is brutal. But I tell

Vlad1:04:10Yeah.

Dario1:04:10it's like you just let me know it's in the system at least, right?

Vlad1:04:13The the the the the problem with this client is they called me and they said we need to film it in two days. And I know they just would not be able to process it so quickly. So I told them, Okay, that Right. Yeah, yeah.

Dario1:04:23But at least put it in put it in the system. Do you know what I mean? I know it might be like net thirty, but at least like submit it so we know it's it's gonna come in on time. Yeah. I mean, hopefully it wor No, I hey listen, like I'm

Vlad1:04:30Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Anyways, rookie rookie mistake. Rookie mistake.

Dario1:04:37like when it's a returning client, like you're always gonna be more flexible. They're probably

Vlad1:04:41Yeah.

Dario1:04:42busy. I mean, if they keep replacing one person, probably replacing other people too, right? Like I've I've had that happen not with our clients, but like with the old insurance brokerage we were using where like the guy just wasn't getting back to us and then I find out someone else joins a combo at a later date. They're like, yeah, thing left the company, so

Vlad1:05:02Mm-hmm.

Dario1:05:03I can take over the account. I'm like, okay, that would have been nice if there was like a handoff at some point to know.

Vlad1:05:08Yeah.

Dario1:05:09So that that's probably what's happening. But yeah, like I I learned from that missing invoice that I mentioned earlier. Like that you have I in Canada you got two years from to date the invoice was sent to be able to get the money. After that, like you can't do anything about it. So you still got time. You got you got two

Vlad1:05:29Okay. Yeah.

Dario1:05:30I don't know if it's the same thing in the States. I'm assuming it is, but you got two years probably.

Vlad1:05:35I have no idea. I looked into this and it pretty much says yeah if they don't pay you you have to take them to court if

Dario1:05:41Yeah, yeah.

Vlad1:05:41it's less than ten K, but then court is also kinda messy because it takes time, it takes money, you need to pay for lawyers. I don't know if it's worth it.

Dario1:05:49Yeah, I mean they'll probably resolve it bef they'll resolve it before then.

Vlad1:05:53Yeah.

Dario1:05:54I used to get stressed about that stuff and now I just I I just forget about it. Like I some actually I got a few invoices like invoices I gotta send out today 'cause I've been a little delayed on it. I don't even like I was even thinking about it. I'm like, man, I don't wanna go through each one individually. I'm just gonna feed the contracts to to Claude and say, Hey, what's missing that I need to send today? 'Cause I gotta like I was gone like for like a couple weeks, right? For my vacation, so I have to like Check the Google Calendar and see what shoot happened, who was on it, all that stuff.

Vlad1:06:23Okay.

Dario1:06:25But yeah. I think we're at the yeah, we're just past the one hour mark, so we could probably cut it short unless

Vlad1:06:32Yeah.

Dario1:06:32you have do you have anything else you wanna go over while we're on the call or?

Vlad1:06:36Mm no, I think I think we talked about everything.

Dario1:06:38Cool. well, before we end the episode though, tradition is to talk about how you named you came up with a name for your company. So how did you come up with LV Productions? Louis Vuitton Productions? Is that how it came up?

Vlad1:06:49This is bor this this is very no, this is very boring. This is just the first letter of my last name and the first letter of my first name. Yeah.

Dario1:06:59Okay. Sometimes that's the easiest way, you know?

Vlad1:07:02Yeah.

Dario1:07:04I mean, for ours, like we just came up with it Lapse because it was just a cool short film idea at the time. I I

Vlad1:07:11Okay.

Dario1:07:11thought it was cool at the time. Now I think back on it, and then I was like, we should just add productions to the end. It sounds cool. We didn't really know what it stood for at the time. Like we came up with the meaning for the company later on.

Vlad1:07:24Mm-hmm.

Dario1:07:24Right? So now it stands for lasting, amazing. Pictures, sounds and experiences. But we can't

Vlad1:07:29I kinda wanna change my company name, but I think it's gonna take a toll on the SEO side. Yeah.

Dario1:07:35On the SEO, right? Yeah. Yeah, like I would just leave it at this point. It's not that important, but it's always fun to hear people's naming story.

Vlad1:07:47Yeah.

Dario1:07:47But anyways, I think I think that's a good place we can end it. So to our listeners to find Vlad, go to lv-prod.com. And your socials are Pulling it up here. at lvproductionsllc.

Vlad1:08:12On Instagram. Yeah.

Dario1:08:13Yeah. Yeah. Do you have TikTok as well or just Insta?

Vlad1:08:16I think it no, it's just Instagram.

Dario1:08:19Yeah, the you should get on TikTok too. I feel like that's like setting the the seeds for the next generation 'cause they're all growing up on on TikTok. I feel

Vlad1:08:28Yeah.

Dario1:08:30like Instagram is more millennials, like people our age are on it.

Vlad1:08:33I was I was using TikTok for three years and then I deleted it because I was wasting too much time scrolling on TikTok.

Dario1:08:39Yeah. Yeah. I I completely agree with you. Sometimes I'll go on there for a couple minutes and it's like, it's been thirty minutes already.

Vlad1:08:46Yeah.

Dario1:08:47But no I'm glad it's been great to have you on. So guys, if you have a shoot out in California, are you local to a specific place there or like you move around?

Vlad1:08:57San Francisco and LA. So I'm I'm in between these two cities.

Dario1:09:00Cool. So guys, if you have a project out there, make sure you reach out to Vlad. Mention the mention that you heard him on on the pod. Just so we got a little bonus CGC point. but yeah, no, that's it. Thank you so much for coming on, man.

Vlad1:09:18Thank you, Dario. It was a pleasure.