New Ways to Generate Leads (ft. Altitude Media)

Auto-generated and lightly edited for readability. It may contain small errors. For chapter deep-links into the video, use the Timestamps section above.

Dario Nouri00:02what's going on you've been so quiet been so quiet since you joined you're not talkative type

Kyrill Lazarov00:02he ready then

Liam Dawe00:07what's happening i'm waiting for the to get into it here to get get you appen

Dario Nouri00:17i did mention those before we get into it though i did mention the questions thing it's not that you'll be asking us the questions today on the show it's more so like if you want to chime in at any point like it's good to have just some questions on your like i'm sure you have some questions you want to ask us right i hope one or two at least

Kyrill Lazarov00:34yeah it could it could be even at like the end even sometimes you know like sometimes like we try to keep it very informal the discussion as it goes and then sometimes there might be something like oh i wanted to ask you about this one thing that i saw or read about or whatever it might be

Dario Nouri00:39yeah

Dario Nouri00:52you just can't ask us like what our favorite color is or something like that

Liam Dawe00:57okay can you give me i have some in my head could you give me thirty seconds to just um make quick notes here

Dario Nouri01:07give you like fifteen seconds something like that may

Kyrill Lazarov01:09oh you're making over making it hard for him are you

Dario Nouri01:14yah

Liam Dawe01:16yeah it's mainly just like

Dario Nouri01:16he's very serious haven't seen him crack a smile yet there you go

Liam Dawe01:20it's mainly just it's mainly just topics i want to uh kind of have a discussion around with you guys

Kyrill Lazarov01:20there we go

Dario Nouri01:26yeah

Kyrill Lazarov01:27yeah that sounds good topics or topics are good too

Dario Nouri01:34you have an accent but like are you from uhoupinland or you from somewhere else

Kyrill Lazarov01:34has it gotten

Liam Dawe01:40i'm born and bred buddy

Dario Nouri01:42really okay interesting i don't know why like i was

Liam Dawe01:43yeah but mine isn't too too bad

Kyrill Lazarov01:48it doesn't get like not no i wouldn't say worse but it gets more intense more more intense or distinct distinct is the word i would like to use

Liam Dawe01:51uh uh

Dario Nouri01:51worse

Liam Dawe01:58it can it can we can we can turn it on and off at any point but

Dario Nouri02:03interesting

Kyrill Lazarov02:04the way he said it to

Liam Dawe02:15okay

Dario Nouri02:15do you by chance have any any other headphones

Liam Dawe02:20yep i got beats

Kyrill Lazarov02:24yeah that that would probably be better yeah just because the string like we had one guest before we had it and the string it would be better to have to not have that if possible

Dario Nouri02:25those would be to be better

Liam Dawe02:28try that

Liam Dawe02:36yeah i would

Dario Nouri02:36it's just i would say it's just a little distracting if anything because it's like on full on white

Kyrill Lazarov02:40that's what i mean

Liam Dawe02:40i would prefer to wear my air pods but i'm ware that they're going to die like halfway through that's kind of my worry about those here in popes

Dario Nouri02:50did you charge them

Dario Nouri02:54if they're charged they should last like an hour now

Kyrill Lazarov02:57yeah oh that should be fine

Dario Nouri03:05dr

Liam Dawe03:07is this any better

Kyrill Lazarov03:08yeah yeah that's actually that's actually better

Dario Nouri03:09yeah i like it more

Liam Dawe03:17cool

Kyrill Lazarov03:18awesome day just at the center you mike a little bit as well if you can

Kyrill Lazarov03:28yeah that's good

Dario Nouri03:34you still need a little bit of time for your questions with

Liam Dawe03:39oh no no i just wrote down some topics operations project management sops coaching pitching and treatments

Dario Nouri03:46cool okay so before we start they'll go to bottom left under settings oh wait it doesn't matter i guess

Kyrill Lazarov03:56yeah because he's well i mean this is just the backup recording right it's good to make sure we have it

Dario Nouri03:59yeah it doesn't matter well but i can't get audio into it anyway so it doesn't matter

Kyrill Lazarov04:04true true okay

Dario Nouri04:07all right well carl said apparently i stuck at the openers so once we started this time

Kyrill Lazarov04:11my god you say this every time now like oh my god what a funny guy

Dario Nouri04:17it's either i hear about it on here or i hear about it in the edit so you go ahead go ahead show everyone show everyone these amazing openers you you can do go ahead

Kyrill Lazarov04:21yeah

Kyrill Lazarov04:26likes to try to put me on the spot occasionally but anyways welcome everybody to episode forty of creative scott grab coffee this is like the first time we've hit probably the next four point o what is this guy doing right now thar

Dario Nouri04:34m hm

Dario Nouri04:40what are you going to say creates group group coffee

Kyrill Lazarov04:43creatives group coffee exactly today where we welcome lem from saint john's and Altitude Media and lem just before we kind of dive into it like give us like a little quick description of what Altitude Media is

Liam Dawe04:59yeah for sure so we're based out here on the island of new land in the middle the atlantic on the east coast of canada and a really old city called saint john's oldest city in north america actually and so in twenty seventeen i was getting my engineering degree and funny enough picked up a camera fell in love with it saw opportunity here on the market to um you know provided content creation services this is also when like peter mc kinnon was just gtting going so being able to um you know learn and enhance my skills in videography m i did a lot more of that instead of studying engineering but basically continue to to grow the business while i got my degree and then when i did finish my skill engineering degree i continued working on the business full time since then for the past two years so what we do is video production here locally in any and all forms where there'd be short for law for more like document style we did a web series last year that we produced so content in all forms

Dario Nouri06:08so you're the second person we have we brought on the show from newfoundland we had braden king um previously and did he not also study engineering so you guys both both studied engineering and you guys are both doing video production out there

Kyrill Lazarov06:22is that the trend in newfoundland go to engineering go into video production right after

Dario Nouri06:24uh

Liam Dawe06:28yeah so braden is like pretty much from my best friend we've we've done a lot of traveling and yes we did do engineering school and funny enough i got two roommates also did engineering and both work and marketing now as well so yes i guess it is the trend here in new foundland to get an engineering degree

Dario Nouri06:39yeah something about engineering schools there that don't like motivate their students to continue with it

Kyrill Lazarov06:47it's a bad advertising for engineering in newfoundland

Dario Nouri06:49uh uh

Liam Dawe06:50there could be something there there definitely could be something there that we're tapping into

Kyrill Lazarov06:54yeah

Dario Nouri06:57so two years into it you're just fresh out right basically

Liam Dawe07:01yeah so i graduated in twenty twenty one so now i've been full time in the business for the past two years yeah

Dario Nouri07:06m

Dario Nouri07:11so i would say we're kind of in a similar situation like we've mentioned before like even though we kind of started the business back in like twenty fourteen ish like i feel like we weren't really treating it like a business i would i were also kind of two years into it i'm just wondering um like what are some of the challenges you faced so far running it

Liam Dawe07:36yes so i would say since i got out i mean when i was a student you know it wasn't that big of a focus for me it was like any time a job came up it was like you know great excitement sure let's take it on but now you know i'm not a student and i need to make a full time income from this so it's like you know you really got to keep this business afloat and manage your cash flow in such so in saying that it's it's you know keeping the work steady and going i mean i looked at my revenue over the last two years and throughout the year you see it go like this right i don't know if it's like this for you guy it seems to be pretty common across video production businesses so this year i'm really trying to um figure out ways where i can kind of alleviate that and get more steady cash for more steady projects coming in so i mean it seems that the number one thing that video business to struggle with is lead generation um you know has that been a challenge for you guys or you know how do you guys think about that

Dario Nouri08:06yeah same thing

Dario Nouri08:34we get you know what what's interesting is a i would say about late into i would say q four of last year late last year well into this year we're we're getting a pretty consistent amount of of leads coming in through our our website i would yeah like on a daily basis there's there's quite a few that come in but we've we've started to focus on filtering the out even more lately so i

Kyrill Lazarov08:53almost on a daily basis

Dario Nouri09:04expect that the amount of actual leads and i'm not talking about like those dumb sco or those i lead entries that i can't stand

Kyrill Lazarov09:14they're constantly coming in now especially like it's it's wild

Dario Nouri09:18it's increased so much in the last week is driving me bananas i wish i could black list every one of those companies but i want to give them attention uh yeah kind of we're trying to filter them out a bit more because girl and i actually did the numbers on the projects were doing and how much were supposed to make off of it and we realized how you know what like the entry points we had for a lot of leads coming in was a lower than what we should have been setting the expectation that for example we had our projects starting out at

Kyrill Lazarov09:42yeah

Dario Nouri09:47five k right that was like the first century point five to seven and a half and we just did the numbers on on what the total cost is for a production process and i was we were like you know what it has to be like starting at at least ten so we've kind of increased it so i suspect that the amount of leads coming in are gonna be a lot less but the ones that come in at it will be bigger fish for us but in terms of what we're doing for

Kyrill Lazarov09:51yep

Kyrill Lazarov10:02did

Kyrill Lazarov10:11well there're more quality because they're more quality like i know exactly what you mean like where the lead generation process should be evolving obviously in the beginning you want to try to get as many leads as possible in the beginning you know just to know that it's kind of working and then as you start getting more and more and more you realize there's only a certain amount of time you could spend with each and every lead so then to your point that we have to filter the out in a certain way it's better to filter down to get more quality leads so

Dario Nouri10:14yeah

Kyrill Lazarov10:40like we would rather get maybe ten solid leads that could actually have potential then go through a hundred leads where only maybe five to ten of them would actually be decent to even explore right so it's all about figuring out what works for you as a business

Dario Nouri10:52yeah yeah

Dario Nouri10:57but that's that's that's one of the

Liam Dawe10:57so what does your guys this qualifying process look like

Dario Nouri11:01uh well i mean we have we i guess it starts off from our contact form right over there we kind of decide who's coming in through the door and then from there it's literally just a question of money right based on what the what they need so like qualifying qualifying factors i guess for us is like to talk to us you need ten right off the bed it's like you need you need at least tends to talk to us and then from there we're kind of going based on what they need and then if they need more it's like you know you need you more on you don't have the funding while you can't get that right another factor would be i guess i don't know how it's going to be with these ten k plus leads curl because to start off with that but well to start off with that budget it's going to be a different type of animal compared to like we only have five k and we want the world right do you know what i mean like to get to start off from that it's already like a special type of lead where it's like okay we kind of know what we need you might

Kyrill Lazarov11:42we're still learning well still learning

Kyrill Lazarov11:49yep

Kyrill Lazarov11:52yeah

Kyrill Lazarov11:56yeah

Dario Nouri12:01get one that where it's like yeah we have like a twenty budget but they want sixty thousand dollars with the work right so i don't know how it's going to work out with these new leads that will come in but from the previous ones we've had where they did have these types of budgets it was pretty easy briey

Liam Dawe12:07yeah

Kyrill Lazarov12:17yeah well i think it's because there's a sense of like where they've already kind of prepared and done their homework on why they need to spend that money and kind of understanding the strategy behind why they need video at the first place like money is typically like a good indicator of like how serious a company can be and if they've done any prep work you know if a client hasn't thought to themselves how they should probably use or utilized video they're going to be more hesitant to spend some money right where it's like i don't know what i need video for maybe i was only willing to spend like two three thousand dollars can't go more than that because then i might lose lose it for nothing whereas what we're hoping for is the as the bigger budgets come in it's like all right we need to hit this this this goal this this goal in this goal in order to do that we need fifteen thousand to achieve it all right now let's find someone who can solve our problem with this budget so it's kind of like trying to get that part of the whole process

Dario Nouri13:11or that might be what that might be what they that also might be what they just set aside for it they might not know because like but normally like that would be like the first yeah the first step is like do they have the money step to i guess is like what do what do they want and what do they what do they think they want what do they actually need and are they willing to kind of like listen right to the experts yeah

Kyrill Lazarov13:17yeah or something like that it's at least an idea

Kyrill Lazarov13:36what what problem are they trying to solve essentially like how is it over in saint john's i was just going to say like what have you experienced at this point like doing lead generation in saint john's

Dario Nouri13:41and then i guess from there

Liam Dawe13:50well the thing here locally i mean it must be probably similar in your market is you have your your free lens videographer which is just your stand alone guy which was me like two and a half years ago just going around with a gamble and and you know with so many seven and then you've got this a really high end agency right and so we're trying to bridge to get right in between and you know obviously here a lot of tire kickers a lot of people that think they're going to get a video for four under box and so and um we just recently so i want to ask my next question would be you know have you guys done anything marketing paid marketing on social because i just recently got into that and i recently had not seen any results before but we just ran a campaign and have been able to book a ton of calls saw a lot of success from that so is that something you guys have done before what's that

Dario Nouri14:44what are you using what are you what are you using what are yo using as the as the platforms like are using instagram facebook or linked in what are you using

Liam Dawe14:54yes so it's a facebook and instagram uh campaign so i think we're doing about fifteen dollars per spend per day and what it is it's a lead form that they fill out right on facebook or instagram and basically i get their email and then i have someone who manages the leads and then books in on a call with me through Calendly so um and what that video was um it was myself on a camera like like i am right here and quick forty five second video

Dario Nouri15:00okay

Dario Nouri15:16m

Liam Dawe15:24and what i spoke to is the fact that i felt that video marketing here locally still hasn't caught on like it has in bigger cities like vancouver otranto and let's see that as an opportunity and then i spoke to that and then you spoke about what clients we've worked with here locally with our pretty um you know well know brands and then my offer was this a video marketing boot cam basicallly let's let's start your business at the start of this year um by doing some video production in video marketing and from that we're able to book now eleven calls in two weeks and that's actually why i asked about qualifying leads because sometimes i'm getting on calls and it's just like okay you weren't a fit so what i did to adjust that was i think what you guys said you're doing your within the contact form you have a budget option right you guys said you're starting out of ten for me i also went in and did okay four to six is the starting point there

Dario Nouri15:55interesting

Dario Nouri16:17hm

Kyrill Lazarov16:23yeah you have to adjust

Dario Nouri16:23wouldn't it be better to do linked in for you because like the type of lead that you want to get i'm guessing at least like types tht you get on facebook might be like smaller businesses which whchyou're dealing with smaller budgets but if you're doing link then you'll get like maybe you'll get bigger companies that are looking at it right

Kyrill Lazarov16:39but you have to look at the market that he's in he's in saint john's there's not as many major corporations or businesses that are based out of a lot of the companies he's probably dealing with are at least this is what i'm guessing are probably on the smaller medium and kind of sizes and maybe his market is is more so on facebook and instagram like what works for us in toronto may not necessarily work for him right it's a completely different market that that he's working in am i right

Dario Nouri16:55ah

Dario Nouri17:00oh yeah yeah

Liam Dawe17:08i definitely think you're you're correct in saying that but dare i think what we planned to do is that once we see ad burn out um within meta because now we've proven that this has worked on on facebook i mean we've booked a lot of calls and now doing a couple of pitches this week it's been a great success which honestly i was completely surprised i didn't think it was going to work but we've seen a great success with it and now i think you're right we should once we see ad burnet on meta will move into linked in and but the thing about linked in is you're right

Kyrill Lazarov17:19m

Liam Dawe17:38it's more qualified people that are on that platform but it's much more expensive

Dario Nouri17:40more expensive

Kyrill Lazarov17:44sorry with derry what did you say

Dario Nouri17:46it's crazy expensive on linked in like i was looking at doing running some adds on it ourselves and i was like let's just try organic at this rate

Kyrill Lazarov17:48yeah yeah

Kyrill Lazarov17:54yeah unless you put enough money behind your ads depending on the platform that you're in you're just going to be throwing money away for nothing like you're not going to get anywhere with just like five bucks a day or something on certain platforms are in order to see any kind of result you need like forty or fifty because then you're just going to be spending money for nothing

Dario Nouri18:13are you using google lads

Liam Dawe18:17yeah so i do search ads now i really should go and hire someone who actually knows um through way around that platform myself i've just set up a pretty basic campaign clicks are good but i don't think it's optimized to where it could be you know how about you guys

Dario Nouri18:25yeah

Dario Nouri18:34same boat we're in the same we're in the same boat like i ran the i ran whatever i did but actually this week i was thinking maybe we should hire someone that knows their stuff on on that platform because i don't think i did like the best job at it but you know what like it is getting a lot of clicks

Kyrill Lazarov18:51it's trial an air it's trial an air like i find that it's trial in air whether you hire someone or you don't you know it's good to kind of get a general sense of the platform beforehand and understand what's good and what isn't and then as are mentioned sometimes now and as you mentioned as well know where your limits are and that at what point it would be a good idea to start bringing in an expert that can help you know obviously like the very basic you could probably handle but maybe some more advanced search techniques or whatever it might be it would be good to bring in more experts

Dario Nouri19:26you could also do the course i was thinking of doing the certificate course where edwards because in the long in the long term i could say a lot of money and and whatever but yeah i don't know it's funny because that the the the key words for our industry are very specific there's not that many compared to other ones as it's a very small list

Kyrill Lazarov19:30it's a good idea

Liam Dawe19:48yeah you're so right about that and when it comes to hiring an expert for this get someone from a referral or red reviews i had a guy reach out to me and i decided okay you know what sure i'll hire this guy to do my google search adds next thing i know i have banner ads showing up on websites in in turkey in india or something this is what this guy did for mean i was paying for him and i was just like yes exactly exactly

Dario Nouri20:08oh my god

Kyrill Lazarov20:09oh my god

Dario Nouri20:11that's the default that's the default setting if you don't select something third parties yeah that's what he did he left that on

Kyrill Lazarov20:17um see this see that's the importance of knowing at least a basic understanding of some of these platforms because you might accidently hire someone who actually doesn't know his his his work and then you're kind of screwed like in your situation there like i remember once we were we were trying to see about hiring someone much earlier on and i remember doro he called me the next day is like yea so i looked into what they were telling telling us that we should do and it's a come

Liam Dawe20:18and i couldn't even believe that i was

Kyrill Lazarov20:47let cam that they're they're doing this and i complete i completely cracked up about that but

Dario Nouri20:53no it wasn't that it it was like the thing the stuff they wanted to do was the most basic of basics and i was like this is not this is not like i can do this so then i started doing it

Kyrill Lazarov21:00oh that it wasn't even worth it

Kyrill Lazarov21:06that's how dario became eneficionato when it came to google edwards for

Dario Nouri21:11no for so but edwards i still don't know what the hell i'm doing with it but it's working like our heads are on the like they run on the first second page and everything not putting too much money into it though i think we just put like five hundred bucks a month something like that i think we run ten ten dollars to day maybe maybe ten fifteen but you know

Kyrill Lazarov21:19we're getting there we're getting there

Liam Dawe21:32and yeah and so you are like you're pretty well versed in so is that correct like how can i up my co game i mean i know i need more back links but like you know if you had three things i should go and do right now to increase my pay drinking like what do you think what do you got for me

Dario Nouri21:40average average

Dario Nouri21:50number one i'm not number one i'm not an expert number two i just say just to the basic check list on what's that website i used something dot io it was back i think it was back link dot io if i'm not mistaken let me just trip back link but i think with co it's it's not back link that i don't go to that site i don't know what that is but

Kyrill Lazarov21:52oh

Kyrill Lazarov22:05we have to dario will double check it

Kyrill Lazarov22:17yes dario might get a virus you like that's them cracking into your computer at that point

Dario Nouri22:19yeah even i want a page load slow you're like oh god it the idea yeah listen i'm not an expert when it comes to c o i've learned the basics i think but i think when it comes to you just got to do like the the basic technical stuff and then

Kyrill Lazarov22:41the biggest is consistency like i remember once we started being more consistent once we started being more consistent that's when more results

Dario Nouri22:44consistency is the other one yeah we got to explain you got to explain what you got to explain what that is with this consistency i was getting to that before you rudely interrupted me so just have like the basic technicals h that you know i'm not going to go into each one of those you should research that yourself and then number two is like yeah create high quality pages through your blog get so banklings that way uh number three don't to shady ship because you'll get caught of

Kyrill Lazarov22:52well i'll leave it to you because remember you're the expert yeah

Dario Nouri23:17really like there's this one website that if you search for the production through on the they just somehow appeared on the first page and it was a total scan website like they were video production company with no work no work right it was just a ton of key where it's on their page and it it took it took google like over a year before they hit them and then now there like page for something that slowly disappearing but yeah

Kyrill Lazarov23:33yeah it was all key words on on every page

Kyrill Lazarov23:42yeah

Kyrill Lazarov23:47thank god

Dario Nouri23:48i don't know for so it's just be consistent ly posting make sure your the technical side is correct like you know you using for example for technicals like you're using the correct headers headings like you know h one for title titles and then you do you know h two for subsequent ones like you got to like index your website like the way a library organizes its book collection right so you i don't know hat are you doing so far for for all that stuff

Liam Dawe24:14cool

Liam Dawe24:18um really just on the website trying to have key words it's like you guys said about that video production company that you said was a cam it's like i went on this one website was a web design toronto company and i just saw thought the entire page was like we provide web design services in toronto like everything was every single paragraph and every single piece of text was purpose for o so i went into my own website and tried to put a little bit that sauce in

Dario Nouri24:45hm

Liam Dawe24:48there um you know we provide video production services to businesses and saint john like just trying to clean up the website in the copy on there what you just said about one and two and headings and such i definitely need to go in and have a look at that because i don't think i'm doing that properly with within word press um and then

Dario Nouri25:07you you also can't overdo it though because i now what mean with the headings i mean in terms of like you know populating your site with the right key words and everything because at the end of the day use your experience s what matters because i've seen some websieswhthey just throw in like a ton of words and you look at and you're like your you made this website for google but if i was a user i would just tap out so like great you're ranking high but like how many leads are you actually getting because your website is a disaster right

Liam Dawe25:38i totally agree and on that website that i mentioned where it was just nothing but key words it was just the writing was just completely garbage because it was so focused on key words and so that's a really great point you make there

Dario Nouri25:50yeah and i think a lot of people are going to start abusing all these a i tools and i think that's great because it's going to screw up their rankings because googles already made it clear that they hate that stuff some good opportunity there or people shooting themselves in the foot

Kyrill Lazarov26:06unless they switch over to bing unless they switch over to bang and then really use all those ai tools

Dario Nouri26:14no they limited it on on being like you can only use it like a couple of times a day and everything so it's not and all these tools are so broken anyways like in the sense that one out of ten times they'll give you something decent and then you look at it you're like i could have i could have done this myself in half the time you know that you spent trying to figure it out

Kyrill Lazarov26:20that's good

Kyrill Lazarov26:34yeah like throw in like rerephrase this for me and you have to put that function like ten different times before it gets you something even half usable and then even then you still have to re work into what actually works better i mean who knows where it can actually help in certain situations but i think it's still very nice out like it's not going to be the solution to everyone's problems it can only be as like an eight or in certain i don't know if eight is a word

Dario Nouri26:48yeah

Kyrill Lazarov27:04really but it's a will just simply be a help tool an aid it will be an aid

Dario Nouri27:04it er that's not a word man and and you know what bucks me is that on linked in on my feet it's like everyone's talking about it and it's like the most like annoying post i've ever seen in my life like one after the other like it makes me like cringe every time i see it my linked in it's my listen linked in is turning into facebook it's awful i can't stand it

Kyrill Lazarov27:19right now yeah uh uh

Kyrill Lazarov27:27because everyone's trying to capitalize

Kyrill Lazarov27:33you know what yes it's funny because i have noticed that it's almost like as if everyone who grew up on facebook then moved to linkedon that's what happened they got into their careers

Dario Nouri27:42yeah and it's got this like it's got this caltivibe because it's like everyone has like this smile almost like the post read like they're smiling you know like like i'm a hostage but it plays everything s fine type of vibe to it

Kyrill Lazarov27:56hm

Liam Dawe27:57i think you're right yeah i mean they say that instagram you know people are putting on a filter and showing the best their best life and then on on linked in i find it's like a corporate filter you know it's very like it's like you're saying

Dario Nouri28:08yeah yeah that's that's exactly it

Kyrill Lazarov28:09it's it's the it's the i lost my job but everything is fine approach it's it's it's unfortunate right because like in those situations if that happens it's like i mean what are you supposed to do be negative like you got to try to be positive and get yourself out there so it's like you understand why things are the way they are there

Dario Nouri28:14uh uh

Dario Nouri28:28that's for that stuff that's that's that's stuff but it's like most of the stuff is like like god like i always look at these posts and i go how does this guy have this much time in his life because you'll see it's like you'll see like a post or like to see more and you click see more just out of curiosity and it's like a like it's like a blog post you're like how did you have this much time and like what are you doing i'm like this is why work from home doesn't work for everyone you should be at work like how do you have this much time to write like fifteen hundred word essay

Kyrill Lazarov28:38were there only on linked on

Kyrill Lazarov28:46yeah it's

Kyrill Lazarov28:54like it's like it's like for it's like ten reasons why business is the way business is or something and then literally list them out not just listen out definition for each one and then literally like you said like it's like a novel or a book it's like you should have actually written a book at this point not a licked in post

Dario Nouri29:03oh my god man

Dario Nouri29:14i think i think the thing is this fake positive reinforcement people get because it's like it's like oh my post guy like twelve lights it's like buddy like i'm on linked and i'm just liking random stuff as i go down

Kyrill Lazarov29:22okay we're now we're now getting into the social media craze because this is also the same thing could be said about instagram facebook and other content creation you know it's just that's just what the business blanket over it or like the corporate side of things right is your community very active on linked in in in saint john's did you find or was it just pretty much like mostly facebook and instagram like we were talking about

Dario Nouri29:31but it's yeah it's true though

Dario Nouri29:36yeah

Liam Dawe29:48i definitely think that you know businesses are active and individuals within those companies are pretty active on linked in absolutely um and probably i don't thin they're etting on facebook and posting too much about um you know their work life balance and how working from home as impacted them and such but yeah i would definitely say that linked in people here locally are certainly active on that platform and there's definitely some people in this city who have really built a brand on linked in our posting creating content in there

Kyrill Lazarov30:21oh so then why don't you start incorporating maybe like some of those promotional aspects on linked it i mean aside obviously from how expensive it could be is that something that you thought about doing that's what i mean organically

Dario Nouri30:30well what about just organic you could do organic too now

Liam Dawe30:34i think that's absolutely something i need to focus on as well as you know just blocking out time every two hours every thursday morning which clearly i have started to do and now you know writing content dedicating two hours every week protected time to creating content because i think we also have a hack where we have a lot of video content and that on linked in usually performs pretty well linked in actually wants you to post more video stuff because a lot of it like

Dario Nouri31:02yeah

Liam Dawe31:04that is on a fifteen hundred page fifteen hundred word looking blog posts i think video content they're going to push that organically pretty far on liked in so i totally agree got to make it happen

Dario Nouri31:17the great thing about our businesses is that we have the tools to create the the most effective type of content the tricky part is actually creating that content

Kyrill Lazarov31:17yeah

Kyrill Lazarov31:27yeah because a lot of the time we're thinking about what kind of content to create for clients and their businesses and like we've like we've said this before on the on the show is that you got to treat your own business as your own clients you know try to look at it objectively from an outside perspective it's like what is what is missing from this business like what is missing from Altitude Media okay clearly Altitude Media have this this and this but they're missing out on blog posts and you've remedied that for example now now you've blocked out two hours every week where you're just creating blog content that you're posting there oh maybe now i need to put like an hour a week where i just start thinking of like linked in video ideas that i'm going to create for Altitude Media you know like you got you got to start thinking more about how to work on the business essentially

Liam Dawe32:15absolutely and it's kind of it's funny to mention that because you know i'm a video marketing company and my revenue is going like this well wy don't i just do video marketing right and like that's kind of something that's how i ended up landing on in doing this is exactly having that kind of outside perspective on your business and realizing if if i'm saying we do video marketing well we should practise what we preach and that's kind of what the approach i took on this whole thing

Kyrill Lazarov32:23m h

Dario Nouri32:39can you go into a bit about the video marketing because it's not often we meet another company that does focus on that it's very rare actually so tell us a bit about that

Kyrill Lazarov32:39yeah

Kyrill Lazarov32:47at least like from a video background you know like going from video production to video marketing is not always very common

Dario Nouri32:53yeah and is it like is it like a side thing that you're offering or is it like it's the bulk of your business is video marketing

Kyrill Lazarov32:58the main

Liam Dawe33:01well first i would want to ask you know i'll give my answer first you know what do you guys to find as the difference between video production video marketing for me video production is someone's coming to me maybe it's an agency or it's the business or marketing team an they're saying we want to execute on this two minute video and then you make it happen and then you deliver on their vision video marketing i would say is more so working with the client through a discovery process to figure out what sort of video should we create that are going to that are going to accomplish marketing objectives it like what would you how would you guys interpret that

Dario Nouri33:35well we do but the second one is still video production isn't it that's what we do

Liam Dawe33:43it is video production but it's there's more strategy involved that's kind of how i would interpret it right where as video production i'm thinking that is just someone's coming to me and they're giving me the treatment on the video they're giving me the direction that's kind of how i would think of video marketing we're coming up with the solution for the client on how they can accomplish the marketing objectives what would what would you be answered me

Dario Nouri34:03okay so okay because video marketing to me is i'm creating the video for you and i'm helping you market the video that's what that's what that's what that is yeah yeah

Kyrill Lazarov34:14i actually put it out there

Liam Dawe34:14okay the full the full funnel that's how you would think that

Kyrill Lazarov34:17the full distribution process is essentially because a lot of the time i think what you're kind of like trying to separated as it's almost as if you're kind of being the marketing department for that company in a way with the video content but at the end of the day there still needs to be distribution and execution upon it right and that is how we see video marketing on our end because a lot of the time even marketing departments they they know they need to do video but they don't know always what they need to necessarily do so i guess you've kind of like basically in our eyes separated video production into two kind of two types of clients essential that you're servin servicing clients that know what they want and clients that don't know what they want but that's still video production

Dario Nouri34:59or in his in his case though it's more so like if we were dealing with clients like that when we have had our marketing agencies it's more so like the first thing you described and then if we have direct a client directed the business it's more so the second type you describe because that's what we deal with a lot

Kyrill Lazarov35:12yeah

Kyrill Lazarov35:18yeah yeah

Liam Dawe35:20so you guys are executing on the roll out of the content that you guys are creating

Dario Nouri35:24no no so we h we don't do the the actual distribution side of things that's that's that's video marketing right but we like most of our business i would say like ninety nine per cent at this rate at this point it's a directer client and almost always they're coming to us with you know they need they need it an initiative and then we help them craft the right video based on their initiatives right so we are and they're at you know farm to table ideation all the way to completion but what they do with that video at the end of the day is always up to them right

Liam Dawe36:02cool and so i would like to learn about you know what is your guys discovery process when it comes to that audiation and work with the client to figure out what what the requirements are what does that look like for you guys

Dario Nouri36:14so i mean we have like a whole process in terms of it starts actually from the discovery call we ask a ton of questions related to what the purpose of the video is going to be what the intention is behind it the key message is how they're going to all the way to like how they're going to distribute it and then as we go through like our sales funnel we're pitching them on the right type of video that they want or what they want at the end of the day and then going into our reproduction process we have like a good idea of what the video is going to be so from there is just a matter of getting into the fine details right so then at that point we go through our entire reproduction process to figure out the whole road map for everything so i guess it's a two step process it's a first during the sales process we're figuring out exactly what the client needs because we got to pitch on the project right and then going into it is when we really like flesh it out so when we get into reproduction we're flashing it out

Kyrill Lazarov37:14yeah

Dario Nouri37:14it's two steps for us

Liam Dawe37:16and and let's kind of unpack that sales process is that just discovery and pitch or is there more in between that or doesn't vary on the project

Dario Nouri37:23there there might be so like during a discovery call like thirty or forty minutes for us and that's where like we've developed like a series of questions where we just go through each one and that gives us enough detail then i'll do a follow up with them and then ask them for more information or if they haven't provided that during the call last time to send it to me a email and then carol and i started to unpack everything and then if we have further questions we just do email communications for that and then we just do our final call with them where we were

Kyrill Lazarov37:50yep

Dario Nouri37:53just pitch for the what we do our r f p essentially right

Kyrill Lazarov37:56yeah it's kind of like doing the work of the r f p essentially beforehand because you mentioned like you're essentially looking for companies also that i know exactly what they want what they're aiming to do that's essentially what an r f is right like these are our goals this is the content we need to make how can you execute it right that's what they're asking for so this is when you're when you're dealing with new leads you're trying to figure out what those things are ininitially and you kind of create your own r f p

Dario Nouri38:02yeah yeah

Dario Nouri38:12yeah

Kyrill Lazarov38:26a way based on what you've talked about with them

Dario Nouri38:29yeah you nailed it on the head it's it's exactly that it's basically getting all the information that would need to be on an r f p and then we basically just answer that r f p so once you go into the project with that you already know what the project is going to be especially if they have agreed with what you want to do and then obviously for the reproduction process like it's a bit more of going into the net gritty on whatever you just pitched and then for that you should have your own process as well right i think for everyone it's going a kind of b

Kyrill Lazarov38:36yeah yeah yeah

Kyrill Lazarov38:42yeah

Dario Nouri38:59similar like for us we just actually just sat down last week and like went through it very in a very detailed manner and that's actually how we realized that we were under charging for reproduction especially considering the amount of time that we need to spend on it because we did a breakdown were like while we got to spend at least fifteen hours on reproduction so that's when we're like you know what like we're not charging enough for that so even even with something like like

Kyrill Lazarov39:22yeah

Kyrill Lazarov39:26yep

Dario Nouri39:29reproduction processes contains like three client meetings as part of it karl and i were doing way more than that sometimes just go over an hour and we've even defined that like you know there's three meetings there an hour each anything after that needs to be done for email communications because you can not do that when you're doing a project here there but when you have a lot of projects you just don't have the time and like you know if you do like five meetings back and a lot of them can just be done through your email like it does

Kyrill Lazarov39:53yeah but

Dario Nouri39:59the lay things where you should be focusing on other things to right

Kyrill Lazarov40:02yeah like i mean if it's if like if the bulk of your projects are very similar you should have a pretty good streamline process about how you should go about it we're not talking about the situations where it's going to be like say five hundred project are a one hundred project where there's a lot of different elements that need to be checked off before you can get into certain parts of the process and even sometimes reproduction can go well into the production process as well for example you have a few shoot days prior and then like you have to schedule the next few shoot days like two three weeks later you're still kind of doing a little bit of reproduction in between based on like the other shoots that you've done those are very unique situations that that we're not kind of like touching upon we're talking about like what is your most basic starting point to execute a video project try to figure that out and have that in mind when you're pitching and selling to these new leads because then if you don't have that in mind you don't know how much work is going to go into it and then as mentioned you might accidentally under charge and that actually even helps you figure out at the end of the day what your new baseline is if you figure out like hey if it takes this much time to do this video project than i need to be charging a little bit more you know to make it worth my time as well

Dario Nouri41:20yeah but you'll figure that stuff out as you're going through it because you should be able to like you know those distribution graphs where it's like like it's like a mountain you should be able to tell look bulk of my clients fit into this category right so from there then you can just standardize things but i forgot what the question was what was the question

Kyrill Lazarov41:23it's trial and error

Liam Dawe41:44i was asking about your sales process and discovery process and ideation and you guys you guys answered it pretty well

Dario Nouri41:52oh because i don't i don't know where where that one i don't know where i ended up with that one and i was like i don't know why i'm in this stage

Kyrill Lazarov41:52yeah it was a long it wasn't a yes it wasn't a yes or no question dario don't worry you answered it

Kyrill Lazarov42:04creativity you know just ends up anywhere

Dario Nouri42:06yeah

Dario Nouri42:10okay so

Kyrill Lazarov42:11so what so what are like some other like like what is like your kind of like sales process aside from like that form like you feel like you feel like it might be too long or too short or something that you might need to fix based on it

Liam Dawe42:23um so right now it's very similar to what you guys are doing first we do a just a fifteen minute discovery to bet them and even before that we'll look at that calendly form and see if they're goin be a fit

Dario Nouri42:35how do you bet them how do you your hat's your betting process

Liam Dawe42:39well on that question are is budget and also their business and so we kind of do a deep dive into that and look into their and

Dario Nouri42:48but you have fifteen you have fifteen minutes right so when you're doing that fifteen minute call what are you doing to that them

Liam Dawe42:53yeah so i'm just answering i'm just reading through a script and learning about their business um learning about you know what their objectives are what are they selling what what would the outcome of the project need to be for them to be super satisfied and really i'm just looking for red flags you know i mean people saying i don't know you know we have the budget for this and ou know you know the typical stuff right and then i'll hop off the call and you know if i know at the end of the call is definelynabe that i'll say hey let's book in another another time to chat on this and then do further discovery or come to them with a pitch like yesterday i did a pitch on a second call and that went pretty well but that's because on that first call went so well and i thought they were really warm and ready and so i went ahead with that and so like you said i think it's pretty similar for a lot of video production companies to do that type of discovery process

Kyrill Lazarov43:50so you essentially have a it's more so like a like a pure vetting call you don't go into any deep dive details until until you've done this essential call right

Dario Nouri43:50hm

Liam Dawe43:59no i would say i would say it's it's not just a vending call um i am trying to learn what would they like to to accomplish with the project for sure and as i'm doing that like i said i'm just looking for red flags that they might might have

Kyrill Lazarov44:03okay

Dario Nouri44:15i kind of do like the my intra call is kind of mixed in with the follow up one as well as i tried to like just nail everything out of nail everything at once like i don't want to have to have too many calls like elongate the process because i used to do that and it was like okay quick call let's just but i figured actually one thing that helped me was that i just tell them you get him on a phone call and you get them on like a video call

Kyrill Lazarov44:15it's

Kyrill Lazarov44:26yep

Liam Dawe44:41it's a video cost they booked through calendar it's a zoom they had the zoom like there

Dario Nouri44:44okay i noticed i noticed the ones i don't want to do the video call is also a good good way to bet them out because it's like what do you want to like what yeah what you have to hide you know

Liam Dawe44:51yeah yeah but again they're not even going to get past booking on Calendly right same thing when they see the same thing with the four to six in the form they're gonna hit that and go okay never mind right

Kyrill Lazarov44:51could could be a red flag yeaht'slke what do you have to hide

Dario Nouri44:59you have the calender interesting yeah that's good

Kyrill Lazarov45:01ah that's that's

Dario Nouri45:07you know i have people lie to me all the time on that do you have the same

Liam Dawe45:12well i have everyone that comes through it's it's the bottom tier right the four to six not this six to ten or ten ten ten to fifteen fifteen plus right no one's hitting those they're just hitting the base minimum right so that's something to consider

Kyrill Lazarov45:23yeah they want to pay

Dario Nouri45:24no but i still have i still have them it's like oh we actually have less than that's like but why did you get in touch like

Liam Dawe45:30yeah and then you just need to yeah

Kyrill Lazarov45:31they want to they want to sweettakus that's what it is

Dario Nouri45:34that's why like my first question is like well i always go like okay let me just quickly go through your detail so you said you need that the wait you selected this option is for the budget i just want to come from that's correct right on friday i had my first i just told them like oh yeah now we can't we can't do and it was amazing just telling them no right off the bat they wanted it so much more so

Liam Dawe45:46yeah and

Liam Dawe45:54well tell me about that like telling a client on a call to be like hey um we're not a fit like how do you approach that

Dario Nouri46:02well i looked at the at the number and i was like oh yeah now we can't we can't do that at all and then they're like oh but you know but i was like sorry you know like i was like no no i don't refer to them like i don't have time like that's time out of your day right and if it's like if you didn't read the thing that's not on me read the yeah

Liam Dawe46:12do you refer them

Kyrill Lazarov46:16who

Kyrill Lazarov46:22that's that's also someone you don't want to refer to people in your network that you respect and and appreciate working with and collaborating with

Dario Nouri46:28do you want me to send you do you want me to send you a lead that has like no budget

Kyrill Lazarov46:32that has no potential

Liam Dawe46:34the no budget is tough but i know some local videographers that are on the come up that i do send business to but not like super crap leads that's a good point

Dario Nouri46:34no potential

Kyrill Lazarov46:41it depends

Dario Nouri46:42see videographers is video videographers is different because like a lot of the times like they're not handling audiation to completion right like they're more like hired guns in a way so it's like like i know a ton of you know with a ton of some like videographers we could send these leads to but it's like we're also dealing with a certain budget level words like they would need to do kind of what we're doing just on a much smaller scale like the types of lead that we're getting in now like the ones that the one that was dealing with

Kyrill Lazarov47:00they're not going to want to do it

Dario Nouri47:11two years ago would have gladly taken them on right but it's like you still need to know how to run the whole reproduction process and a lot of those guys that's like they don't really i mean they might do some some of that work for smaller clients but it's like it's not really their forte in a way um but yeah it was amazing just telling that that lady know it's like she wanted me to like stay on the call and like she she just like oh but you know like maybe you can tell it was funny

Kyrill Lazarov47:29it's not their bulk

Dario Nouri47:41but you know maybe we could tell you could tell me a bit about yourself i'm lie there's no point like you're not a good fit right like i was like you need you need at least this to talk to me i was like if you want talk to your manager if you could or your superior if you can get more budget then we can skedeanother call but and then she she still wanted to pry and ask questions about like you know what how we do it and i was like look how i do it is for is for my type of clients like a person with your budget range does is completely different like the weight balinsiaga makes their clothing is different from the way gap makes it

Kyrill Lazarov47:55and what

Dario Nouri48:11clothing right you could you could learn the process but if you don't have that kind of money you still can't buy belinsiaga and like gap is not going to be of the same quality

Kyrill Lazarov48:19yeah and like just one thing to note and to stress is that this isn't like this isn't done with an intention to be rude or anything like that and it's just a matter of like it's it's just how business is run right like everyone has only so much time that they could spend within their business on certain things it's not a matter of being rude it's just a matter of like saving people their time because this is actually something that is a service to these leads as well is that we're not wasting not only we're not goin t waste our time but we're also not going to waste their time so that gives them more time exactly exact

Dario Nouri48:46that's what i told her that's what i told her i was like listen i think you need i don't want o waste your time and my time as well but i think you need to spend this this time right now start finding a company that can match your budget right

Kyrill Lazarov48:58exactly it's it's it's being it's it's you don't want to do a disservice to anyone that you work with or could potentially work with right and it's a matter of like putting putting your name out there in a positive light and in different ways too

Liam Dawe49:13speaking of blensiaga um do you guys have insurance media coverage insurance is something i just learned recently that i definitely need to get i had insurance for drone doing areals and recently learned i need media insurance to you guys

Kyrill Lazarov49:29you need liability insurance essentially yeah that was yeah that's the only thing

Dario Nouri49:31how does that relate to ballensiaga though was where's the connection

Liam Dawe49:38so billinsiaga just recently has been in a fire storm on line over a recent campaign that they did right and it was i think now there's a bunch of law suits going on and the law suits are towards the agency that actually created that campaign right so that's kind of how that ties in exactly right so that's that will be in the courts right

Dario Nouri49:43the pedal stuff right yeah

Dario Nouri49:54even though even though they signed off on it right because they have to sign off on you

Kyrill Lazarov49:59i see i think okay well firstly one i always think at the end of the day is the company that puts it out there if they're the ones that chose to put it out there it's it's up on them i can see why though that they would probably be trying to blame the agencies because they're saying i was like oh you know we trusted them as experts in this and this and this that might be one thing but i think what saves us as video production companies is that we're just we're just the tool you know maybe it was the marketing or the add agency specifically developed the strategy that might be more

Dario Nouri50:33then them suing us is like someone sewing the graphic designer for like the like yeah like it makes yeah but hold on let's go into the insurance part because we have what do we have we have liability in insurance

Kyrill Lazarov50:37yeah or suing or suing the camera company it's like you made it with these cameras

Kyrill Lazarov50:48yeah we we have a liability for like the liability insures that we have basically covers like you know in case there's any accidents on said or anything like that that is usually required by any any video production company you don't have insurance go and get yourself some if anyone is listening

Dario Nouri50:56yeah

Dario Nouri51:03hey carol do we need to get one specifically for each shoot each time we shoot or it's no it's just for the in general for the year right

Kyrill Lazarov51:09no no no no no no no not not necessarily i think i think those are the situations where you have to get it if you don't have um if you don't have any typically you don't have any insurance

Dario Nouri51:21oh i see but we have it so we don't need to i see okay

Kyrill Lazarov51:25exactly like some some like if you were if you wanted to book a professional studio to rent they have to see that you have a certain kind of they have to see that you have insurance set like maybe you could probably generate like like might not be a bad idea to look into this but just to see if we need to generate some kind of report with our insurance kcompany for those specific shoots just it's just literally one document that would just kind of get printed out but

Dario Nouri51:39oh i see

Dario Nouri51:54because you've been handling the studio stuff for us so like if we have to shoot out of studio we got to get a special form from our insurance guy i thought it was just i thought it was just like why do we have to get it for a student like we already have it now

Kyrill Lazarov51:55but if you

Kyrill Lazarov52:03yeah it's it's a specific one

Kyrill Lazarov52:09i think it's because you're dealing with something a lot a lot more major in a studio setting because with with insurance you're basically kind of like covering their asses as well i think that's why we have to do it with studios is that you're covering their asses so that they know that we have it but it's it's so that everyone is covered on all fronts where s like if we're going to like a client company the film things certain there like we need to have our own no matter what right so that's a

Dario Nouri52:26oh i

Dario Nouri52:38yeah yeah

Kyrill Lazarov52:39there's that i mean it's always good to double check things in end

Dario Nouri52:42yeah i think i might call up our guy and just ask him

Kyrill Lazarov52:45i don't know if he i don't think he may know on this i think we have to check on more of the production side of things like i'm like what is your experience on that front like if you've if you've had to deal with that

Liam Dawe52:56well so yeah i got the liability insurance and the drone insurance but just recently now the insurance company s after me to get this kind of like media protection around the content that we create i don't fully understand it might might be like some kind of sam i got a meeting right it's like because i'm creating content and insurance around around that not just you know liability onset

Kyrill Lazarov53:08that's interesting up scale up sell

Dario Nouri53:20i'll tell you why because you tell them you do video marketing that's why

Liam Dawe53:24you could be right

Kyrill Lazarov53:24maybe that might be i that might be because again you're not distributing the content right you're not you're not walking you're not doing the whole process there

Liam Dawe53:32yeah well we're moving more into that this year like yesterday's pitch i did actually would be executing on the media buying um so maybe that is maybe that is appropriate

Kyrill Lazarov53:41ah

Dario Nouri53:42also you are starting to shift into like actual marketing of the videos okay okay

Liam Dawe53:46absolutely so so now i'm looking to basically create content and marketing assets for the entire customer funnel right right from an awareness add to a landing page and also the media buying in between and just as a way to kind of increase our service offering and really revenue and you value we can provide here in the market

Dario Nouri54:17interesting yeah we've we've had this conversation you know prior to actually pre pandemic believers or not we were debating getting into the video marketing side of things but we just decided the we don't have that expertise so it doesn't make sense for us and we might as well might as well become you know better at one one side of the things and he also would have been a completely different animal for us to tackle

Kyrill Lazarov54:35well it

Kyrill Lazarov54:43yeah i think it's the key is like to know where you want to kind of excell in and where you want to focus your attention because the second you start introducing new services into your business model there is a whole new set of things that you have to consider and they could affect every other part of the entire process like for example uh uh if you wanted to do video marketing or like say on the video production side the color grading process is completely differ

Liam Dawe54:43it is it's a beast yeah

Kyrill Lazarov55:13process that has to be incorporated into your plants so then when you're going through preproduction you have to have now another section that specifically where you have to go to a coloring house how you will essentially get the footage to them how you will get different drafts things to present to clients and things like that right if you didn't have color grating in your whole production process so every service that you incorporate into your business can affect every other aspect of the business specifically in your whole process and then you have to consider like how will that affect essentially that very first interaction with a client in that sales call it's like okay instead of presenting a ninth step process now you have to present a tenth step process so

Dario Nouri55:53i'll give i'll give a better example because what you're because for like color is like that's if you if you have to go to colors you're dealing with with a bigger budget so it's factor i think but but marketing something like that is qullinto what we're doing with the photography so like with us we started offering photography services right now it's not us actually doing the photos or us knowing photographers it's we partnered up with a photography agency so

Kyrill Lazarov56:01that's what i mean like i'm just using an example of a process alter

Kyrill Lazarov56:09yeah

Dario Nouri56:23basically what we do is we just use we we can we use them for that right so we get it at at at a good rate they get the business and then they handle that we we we're only involved in a little bit of the communications with back and forth you know let let them know okay let's book a photogohis a photogohe great okay i'll get involved with the contact they go shoot it they send us the link to the photos and then we we forward that to the client that's that's that's the extent of our

Kyrill Lazarov56:38in co ordination

Kyrill Lazarov56:52yeah and and vice versa we also help them on the video protection side if they need it for for their business right so it's a matter of like finding key partnerships that can help you serve better serve your clients and introducing services that are actually going to help your clients because sometimes some companies they push services on to clients that they don't really need and sometimes it's better to offer services that uh well essentially keep you in mind as the problem solver

Dario Nouri56:53involvement with that right

Dario Nouri57:00yeah

Kyrill Lazarov57:22your clients right when clients come to you they basically want you to solve their problems and challenges right so for example if we do for this one client of ours we do a lot of video production and occasionally they have events where they might need a photographer so rather than them going to going through the tenuous process of trying to vent and find people that they don't know see how they work together if it's a good fit or not they could just come to us and say like hey do you know do you have any photographers that would be available on this day that trustworthy and reliable and if they can execute it with a delivery date of this this and this and then say yep we have exactly the person you need let us know these details and then we'll just co ordinate it for them and we just simply connect they go shoot it provide us with the images and then we provide it to the clients that way it's like a one stop shop almost in a way so it

Dario Nouri58:13it could be i could be a good idea for you to maybe i don't know how far you are into the into the marketing process but it could be a good idea for you to also see who in the local business side of things can can help you out with that because then you can just focus strictly on the production side or you want to do both that's that's up to you entirely but just because we've noticed like when we try to divert our attention too much one thing always suffers it's hard enough to run a video production company as a whole right

Kyrill Lazarov58:39yep

Liam Dawe58:41yeah i totally agree especially when it comes to the media buying side and you know running facebook guys and such i'm pretty well versed in that but i need to find someone who really knows their stuff i really can deliver so i totally agree and potentially you know finding those strategic partnerships with another agency or maybe you know hopefully i can find an individual you know to help manage the cost there but i agree on that what there any other strategic partnerships that you guys have or you know that you're looking into and what does that kind of look like is that just the conversation to say okay guys you know handshake deal or is it more intricate than that

Dario Nouri59:20you know where we only have that one going on right now and luckily enough they also do offer more marketing services so for example i just we had a lead come in and they want to do like a website a website re design but part of that was new video content for their website right so i pitched them on on our videos and i told them also we have a partner that can help them with the website re design so i connected them with them right in terms of like agreements on paper it's still very early on so we don't we don't have anything on paper but we have had conversations where we've discussed like how it could potentially move into something bigger going forward so we both both parties are aware of where it can like you know it's meant to grow right

Kyrill Lazarov59:51yep

Kyrill Lazarov59:59yep

Kyrill Lazarov01:00:12yeah i think it's important to see and trial a trial and error essentially because sometimes when people try to do partnerships or or things like that right out of the gate that each party might have a different idea of what it could be and sometimes it could turn into something else that you wouldn't expect and what you might say like a this is how we want to basically handle client referrals or things like that it might not work within like three to six months after that

Dario Nouri01:00:14m m

Kyrill Lazarov01:00:42right so it's good to kind of test it out feel it out see how everyone works together and then if if you get to the point where there's like a consistency like back and forth back and forth back and forth like every every day or every other day oh now that that's when it's time to talk about it that's what it's time

Dario Nouri01:00:56that's when it's time to like yeah if it grows yea like at the end of the day it's yeah at the end of it's all about it does come down to money so like if the money started getting to the point where it's like okay we really need to talk about this then we'll obviously do it but like you know we're on the same page on that in terms of other partnerships i think for now no i mean i actually care one good thing would be maybe with an animation company something like that that would be a great idea

Kyrill Lazarov01:01:09yeah

Kyrill Lazarov01:01:25potentially potentially it

Dario Nouri01:01:26yeah just just to have that service because animation is one of those things or it's like we don't do too much of it but it does come up here and there and then when it does come up it's like i don't know like that's the only thing i would maybe add to a repertoir ould be honest you like a strong animation partner m because we do use freelancers but it's always a free lancer at the end of the day the quality is always going to vary compared to who you use um and availability availability too

Kyrill Lazarov01:01:46yeah

Kyrill Lazarov01:01:52it's also availability as the is the challenge with free lancers yeah good animators that deliver and are reliable and trustworthy are very difficult to find i find more difficult to find than like say editors or sentpetographers because it's a lot of it's not like front facing as well as much like you're basically they're working from home like like like senametographers or other crew members you see them on set able to understand how they were a little bit better in person whereas it's a little bit harder to find and take the chance on like say editors or animators because it's such a

Dario Nouri01:02:29but also because also because you're not in animated right you're cynemetyou're a cynemetographer you can tell like it's like a dog recognizes another dog type of situation right like but in animate it's like i hope this guy is not like you know just selling me on this like i hope he knows what he's selling me on you know

Kyrill Lazarov01:02:32well that's the thing that's true

Kyrill Lazarov01:02:36yeah yeah yeah that's a good point it's a good point

Kyrill Lazarov01:02:52yeah is there is there a certain partnership that you have like the top of your priority list that you might want to explore more of or you still kind o trying to figure that out

Liam Dawe01:03:02yeah i definitely think i'd like to i mean we've worked with marketing agencies here in town who don't have in house video but i think you know developing a strategic partnership within a big agency here in town you know to be there go to for video production could be pretty pretty strong for us

Dario Nouri01:03:21you know we noticed the with that you'd have to go with a big one but then the big ones always have a lot of option so they kind of can shop around easily because we've noticed if you deal with a like a small to medium sized marketing agency their clients like at least for the type of video production work we do because even with with our partner over there if they're sending us video work that they know that it has to be video work of a certain budget because a lot of the times when you're dealing with small to medium size

Kyrill Lazarov01:03:29yeah

Dario Nouri01:03:51liens and your marketing agency like the video budget is smaller right like we could dry out there like two months maybe of their marketing budget with just one video right but that's just because of the type of video production company we are actually most of us are kind of like that right like i mean for us now we're starting point is ten before that it was like five now at seven and a half like most people fall into the five to ten range right but a lot of these small businesses like if you tell them like like i on't know if they're dealing you're dealing with a restaurant you tell them yeah we can we can your mark

Kyrill Lazarov01:04:14yep

Dario Nouri01:04:21agents it's like well we'll shoot one day is worth one we'll come in for a day we'll shoot one video you'll get one video asset ahead of it and it will cost ten thousand they'll go like what the hell we can't do that that's a lot on a monthly basis it won't work right so i think the only challenge with that is going to be like trying to find a partnership where it's like i can't do like the same quality of work that i do for one type of project

Kyrill Lazarov01:04:36yeah

Dario Nouri01:04:49in terms of like basically they'll need a lot of work they'll need more so like a videographer i've noticed compared to like an actual company as a company like overhead is high like we bring on a lot of people like the cost of a video is just too high for them i find at least

Kyrill Lazarov01:04:58depends on the service

Kyrill Lazarov01:05:06think of it like this is because they're they're going to these other companies with a certain kind of idea in mind of like overall content that they need they need many services right they're not going in there specifically with video as the main service that they need they need to create their website they need to create promotional photos they need to create banner ads like like a whole wide range of things so in their mind they're basically say they have like fifty like say ten k that they need to distribute amongst all these platforms some come

Dario Nouri01:05:16yeah

Kyrill Lazarov01:05:35i can do it obviously some parts are more so focused on and then other parts there might be a little bit if there's budget left so think of it like if they've spent the eight thousand to get their whole media brand image set up right from the gecko they only have two k left over and then they're like oh let's do a video how much is it going to cost ten k they don't they won't have that

Dario Nouri01:05:57it only works if you have it only works for them if they have like an in house guy because then it's it's a reality salary so they can just send them out whatever

Kyrill Lazarov01:06:05but again they're also having the challenge of like how much time is that person is going to be spending on this one particular client right it it all goes back down to even if they're in house their hours are still bailable in terms of like if they have to spend the time on this

Dario Nouri01:06:19no no i know but no but but let's say your market engagency and you have an in house viteographer if you send them out for one two hours on tuesday it's fine t because that guy is probably going to edit it as well versus if we send out someone if you send out a sinametographer it's at least i like you got a book him for the whole day even if it's two hours like that guy is not going to take it on so it's like boom right away your fifteen hundred in the whole that's not including the project management feels just like co ordinate

Kyrill Lazarov01:06:28yeah yeah yeah yeah

Kyrill Lazarov01:06:42but that's

Dario Nouri01:06:49stuff and that's just sending the guy out it's like just capture whatever if you want to produce the boom another fifteen hundred ight away you're three k and the whole just footage capture even if it's like two hours

Kyrill Lazarov01:06:58yeah i mean yeah i guess it's like basically it's the different kind of experience you know like a lot of people lump in sinamotography and videographer together as the same role but maybe those are two separate completely separate roles and distinctions that people have to define in in our industry but it always keeps changing

Dario Nouri01:07:08yeah

Kyrill Lazarov01:07:21sorry lean was that was that did that answer the question like dar go like i noticed that this episode like you've asked the question than darian just kind of went off

Dario Nouri01:07:29well he's he's not joining the conversation were like waiting for lem to join in and he's not joining in

Liam Dawe01:07:30now it's great it's good value there

Kyrill Lazarov01:07:35no no no he's as as as he just mentioned like it's he's just kind of taking in what we're talking about hopefully it's something useful there right

Liam Dawe01:07:44i mean absolutely i totally agree you now you need to have a good communication and a good standard set with that agency um you know say hey listen like don't come to us with a two thousand dollar budget right you need to to kind of establish those terms and set those expectations

Kyrill Lazarov01:08:03yeah

Dario Nouri01:08:03yeah but but then again if you re dealing with the ones that would deal with those budgets and now you are competing with other people in your in your pool right but you never know could could work out but i don't like i don't like relying on agencies because i feel like i mean they have no loyalty they have no loyalty to you right i mean why should they right so it's like you could be their go to guy for like six months and then someone under under you know under charges and deliver the same quality boom you're gone right

Kyrill Lazarov01:08:11yeah

Kyrill Lazarov01:08:15yeah

Liam Dawe01:08:18no you don't want to rely no

Liam Dawe01:08:35absolutely i totally agree um i want to ask you guys have you guys done any mentorship or coaching programs to kind of level up your guys ability because i recently started partaking in those over the past couple of months they're pretty expensive but i found that was a way to really accelerate my learning and ability to kind of or organized myself in my operations in my business and also

Dario Nouri01:09:02where did you find where do you find those

Kyrill Lazarov01:09:05like a mentor do you mean like finding a mentor for yourself essentially

Liam Dawe01:09:05so

Dario Nouri01:09:08no i think he's talking about paid consulting that's good

Liam Dawe01:09:11you know it's paid coaching so it's like paid community and paid mentor ship and so i'm in two of those are both based on the united states and so basically i meet with a mentor every week and i also have access to all their learnings and that has been kind of like monumental for me over the past just these couple of months i mean i used to get this i used to like email proposals right like and now i've since um you know level

Kyrill Lazarov01:09:13oh

Liam Dawe01:09:40up my ability with the whole discovery process i wasn't even familiar with that prior to this coaching so you know what have you guys done if you haven't kind of dived into any programs what have you guys done kind of level up your ability i mean you guys are very competent in your business acumen and in your video production business

Dario Nouri01:09:59he thinks we're competent

Kyrill Lazarov01:09:59you know it's you know it's funny you know it's funny is that when we i think i think one of the big one of the biggest things is actually this show was a big changing factor for us because wohen we started it we started during the pandemic because you know there was no work coming in so we needed something to kind of give us a little bit of like a shall we say like a purpose on a weekly basis you know like let's let's do an episode and interview people and it was kind of like a good way to give everyone a chance to kind of like you know connect and talk and then we actually like through doing these episodes we kind of started learning a lot more about not only what other people were doing but also learning about what we weren't doing it's like oh dario like i think we need to start thinking about this this and this or like we haven't thought of this we haven't thought of this and then that was kind of like the probably the biggest thing that we've done is essentially just doing this show and just connecting with more and more creatives

Liam Dawe01:10:52and within here i see you guys are going back and forth like hey you know we should we should look into that we should try that i think that's super cool and you know you guys have been super consistent we have this is episode thirty is it forty wow and how have you guys have been able to maintain that i mean this is a lot of work to book all these guests in and then produce it and put it up there you know what has been your process keeping it going

Kyrill Lazarov01:11:03forty yeah forty no yet

Dario Nouri01:11:03forty

Dario Nouri01:11:15but we the thing that's helped a lot is that we started hiring editors for this so that's that's saved up a lot of time so basically right now the break up is i'll be the one that does the outreach books and the books and the guests and then carol deals with the editor and then carol pumps it out on the on the social channels that's been the breakdown kind of just split it up like that and it's just it's just worked

Kyrill Lazarov01:11:28at least most of it yeah

Kyrill Lazarov01:11:38yeah

Kyrill Lazarov01:11:43it's easier to kind of just separate like like giving up the role so that it's like okay one has done that now i can get this and then like handle the creative and put together the actual product this way it just becomes a lot more of a well oiled machine like i mean before we did it's not like we did forty episodes in a row so just to keep that in mind we basically had

Dario Nouri01:12:04it started it started like at the end of like we did it how it worked before yeah like twenty twenty we did a run of like fifteen episodes or so and then twenty twenty one were like we got a lot to focus on we don't have time for that and then took a year break which we should have should have kept it going because we learned a lot from this so we restarted in twenty twenty two and then just slowly we did a ton of them in march and then we just released them little by little

Kyrill Lazarov01:12:08in twenty twenty

Kyrill Lazarov01:12:18we took a year break essentially oh yeah

Kyrill Lazarov01:12:32periodically but one

Dario Nouri01:12:34now we're just doing more more weekly once because we realize that you know we were growing a lot on a week by week basis so every week were learning something new

Kyrill Lazarov01:12:44and it's good to have it's good to have your own kind of piece of content that you could actually focus on you know like there's a lot of things that you can learn doing doing something like this you know that can work in other aspects of your business you know like sometimes you might for example find a bug in one of your post production softwares that you wouldn't have noticed otherwise if you were just handing projects to editors because i discovered one last week and i was and it was like frustrating me

Liam Dawe01:12:44totally

Kyrill Lazarov01:13:14all week until i figured out what it was and then now it's like okay perfect now we have a fix and now we can apply it to everything else that we do so this was actually some this was actually an issue with the way adobe premier exports its color and i was noticing slowly over the last few weeks it's like there's something going on with the export and i couldn't put my finger on it exactly and sometimes it happens with different updates and

Dario Nouri01:13:21what was the problem

Kyrill Lazarov01:13:45and then it just kind of hit me last week and i was looking at like the previewbar of adobe premerit's like what the what the color and the look was and then i looked at the export and i'm like there's something different here and then i basically put them side by side and i'm like why is it exporting with colors completely washed out and uncontrasted versus what is on the previewbar and i'm like this is probably where we've had issues in the past with certain projects where we were thinking to ourselves oh the color was a little bit dull in that pro

Dario Nouri01:14:06it's weird

Kyrill Lazarov01:14:14i wonder what was going on and i think this was essentially the problem and essentially this was a problem that dates back to like twenty sixteen twenty seventeen even and a lot of people deal with this issue because whatever is being exported with premier premier set up for essentially a color space that is meant for proadcast and that color space is completely different to what it is on the players and the and the media players on on mac books on p c's but ultimately you tube like i had i read that some people were saying essentially that it was like oh it's just that media player that you're using you got to use v l c and then the problem is fine which is okay that could be fine but most people who are using mac are going to be using the standard media player so you wanted to be optimized for that that's one but ultimately that same issue was appearing on you tube and that's what was frustrating me all last week i delayed an entire episode released because i needed to figure out what this was

Dario Nouri01:15:03time yeah

Dario Nouri01:15:14i was wondering why that episode didn't release

Kyrill Lazarov01:15:14is it yeah that's that's why it's being released this week because

Dario Nouri01:15:19so what's well how do you fix it what's the fix

Kyrill Lazarov01:15:21it was a lot yeah you tube right

Liam Dawe01:15:21i'm so familiar with this issue like i've had this as well i think everyone has it just only a few people like ourselves have noticed it and so and the funny thing is is that you get this lot that you need to apply to the premier you get it from adoby's website well we got it

Kyrill Lazarov01:15:31yeah

Kyrill Lazarov01:15:36yeah but they delated it they delated it so here's the that's the crazy thing and and that's what frustrated me because a lot of the resources that i was finding were saying oh you just have to download this let from adobe and then i just kept giving me error messages to like maybe the link was just broken and they just put it on a different part of the website but i finally found another youtuber his name i believe is sir matt johnson he do's a lot of wedding yeah yeah exactly like

Dario Nouri01:16:03oh yeah the guy with the beard right the wedding guy

Kyrill Lazarov01:16:06he does a lot of really good wedding tutorial content and he basically had a fix for this and what he did cheekishly in his video saying doby has this lot and i could link it to the thing but i'm going to just put it on my website just in case for whatever reason they might delate it down the road and that was like three years and that was like three years ago so like like the god the god he said it i downloaded it and uh yeah it worked it worked already released short this morning and it looks completely different compared

Dario Nouri01:16:23and they did

Liam Dawe01:16:25that's smart

Dario Nouri01:16:28nice it worked

Kyrill Lazarov01:16:36what the premier was exporting prior and oh my god i was just that was one thing i was going to actually talk to you dario after this call was this was was this

Dario Nouri01:16:45it was about that i was wondering why you delayed it okay that makes a lot of sense listen but going into the mentor stuff what's the name of that program you're using i mean we're not i don't want to do it but i'm just curious

Kyrill Lazarov01:16:48yeah

Liam Dawe01:16:55this

Liam Dawe01:16:59so there's one that's called you gurus and you know that one is mainly it used to be something for people doing freelance web design and help build that into build their free lance who eve design into more of an agency and so it's not very tuned to videographers but the mendership is still extremely valuable and the other one i'm in is eight figure agency m these guys jordan roshsanzacfith out o the united states and so i get on a call with zach once a week

Dario Nouri01:17:01okay

Liam Dawe01:17:29and you know we're just laying out okay how do we get the agency to the next level and really build this business and so it's really great accountability um you know i guess you guys could probably speak to accountability ease you got a partnership here for me i don't have a business partner in this so it's really great to have that accountability every week and also he's introducing me to so many different you know strategies and the biggest one so far has been related to operations and actually doing sops and really die

Kyrill Lazarov01:17:43true

Dario Nouri01:17:58what's that

Liam Dawe01:17:59ling in my process so an s o p is a standard operating procedure and so for every single project now we have a standard operating procedure right okay and you have it actually documented and mapped out okay step one what were going to do after our discovery call and when the client is saying okay let's let's move ahead with the project what they're going to what we're going to do is we're gonna invoice some our deposit okay step to we've received the invoice step three now we're going to do a welcoming importing email and mapping out this entire process of you project right from start to finish right and with

Dario Nouri01:18:32yeah we did that we did that that's interesting we we've been doing that lately as well like we've mapping it all out

Liam Dawe01:18:39yeah it's so beneficial and now that i do it i can't believe that i didn't do this for the past like four years right it was just always

Dario Nouri01:18:46what do you do with the deposit like one one thing i was trying to figure out i think i'm gonna start implementing it is i'm going to start doing right when they sign we need to get the fifteen per cent deposit and then before the production date i'm thinking of doing thirty five per cent is due and then after the production date i issued the other fifty percent or maybe at first draft what what's your breakdown for that

Liam Dawe01:19:14so i mean it varies on the size of the project and you know typically if it's like a five a project we're doing fifty fifty to start fifty upon completion now on a bigger project say above fifteen thousand i would first speak with the client and kind of propose a payment term so for something above fifteen thousand wuldsaydbe twenty five percent and then you know at a certain portion you know if it's a two month project we want to keep cash flow coming into the business so i would say be fifteen and then invoiced to fifty percent and then put completion up to a hundred percent but i mean i think just speaking with your client and finding something that works but like i said on the lower lower end like five to tank i think it's like fifty fifty is pretty reasonable that's kind of how i how i approach that

Dario Nouri01:19:58because we're right now moving in the in the ten plus range so i have one to implement this new form at i did have someone give me resistance on the fifty fifty and now i think and i notice like you know even though you say like fifty per cent do on contract signing it still takes them a little bit to process it through right so my new thing is going to be you give me fifteen percent once i receive it then we start the reproduction process right and i'm really going into a break i really i'm breaking down the reproduction process for them because it's like a ten step or for us right don't how many steps you got for you it's about actually if two of them could be removed depending on if they need actors or why not so it's about eight to ten steps so that's one thing by the way i wanted to mention something one thing you were doing with the fifty fifth you do fifty percent when the project is finished i'd recommend you stopped doing when the project is finished just move it to when you deliver the rough draft for them and i'll tell you why sometimes it might what am i oh i got to call okay sorry hold on guys

Kyrill Lazarov01:20:37yeah

Dario Nouri01:20:59i have a call right now hold on let me chist

Kyrill Lazarov01:21:03you gotta gotta you gotta schedule it for like two hours after

Dario Nouri01:21:07hold on hold on hold on oh my god holy shit i got a call give me a second i just got to let her know

Kyrill Lazarov01:21:17ah i think so what dario was kind of like mentioning though was that are you good

Dario Nouri01:21:19well let me let me just let me just finish let me just so yeah move it to the rough yet because sometimes before you get to the final like you know off boarding this is the final version it might take up quite a bit of time because you got to wait for them to give you their revision notes and everything you know our standard is like forty eight to seventy two hours but some guys let you know some clients need like a week or more so it delays your our

Kyrill Lazarov01:21:38yep

Dario Nouri01:21:49your cash full process i guess in a way right because if you're expecting it it's like okay i'm supposed to be done this project by that point if they take a lot longer then it's like boom i'm now getting it like two months later than i expected it right

Kyrill Lazarov01:22:02you need to pay the editor you need to pay you're overhead whatever it might be and this way i just kind of like standardizes the process a little bit for you in terms of how you get it and at that point like that shouldn't be an issue because you go you're already creating the project with the client and you are both serious about it so at least sending it through his key because a lot of the time they have thirty day pay periods as well so if you wait till the off boarding which as dario said could delay from like two to three weeks after who knows you know like the main person the main point of contact doesn't see it in time it's a week end then it's a long week and by the time they send it to their superiors than they take like another week by the time all that feedback gets to you it could be another two weeks so that way if you send the invoice with the first draft you at least start the thirty day clock so that you actually get paid pretty much around the time that you actually finished the project tactically speaking so it's more so to take that into account

Dario Nouri01:22:47yeah

Dario Nouri01:23:02yeah okay i have i have a call to get to so we have two options we can either end off the episode here or i jump out of the room and you guys continue so what d you guys want to do

Liam Dawe01:23:03yeah absolutely i think that's a good tip

Kyrill Lazarov01:23:13i was actually going to say this is probably a good point to kind of to end off the call since we have already hit about an hour in twenty minutes we usually try to keep it around an hour but like you know sometimes these discussions you know they get really good so we don't want to we don't want to stop them and honestly thank you so much for joining us on the show

Dario Nouri01:23:19yeah

Dario Nouri01:23:25yeah

Dario Nouri01:23:30and and i like how he was asking a lot of questions like this is this is good i like this

Liam Dawe01:23:31hey

Liam Dawe01:23:34you told me you told me to bring some questions and then i wrote down four bullet points and then i asked a ton of questions so yeah now it was cool you know to get your feedback on a lot of different stuff and have this discussion day of super cool you want to you now appreciate you guys having me on here

Dario Nouri01:23:40yeah

Dario Nouri01:23:49yeah thank you thank you