Creatives Grab Coffee - #100 Looking Back & Moving Forward (ft. LAPSE Productions)

Episode Date: August 13, 2025

WE DID IT! 100 episodes of Creatives Grab Coffee! 🎊 Join Dario Nouri and Kyrill Lazerov as they reflect on their 5-year podcast journey, from sweating it out in a hot condo during the pandemic to becoming a well-oiled machine. In this milestone episode, they dive deep into the biggest topics that shaped the video production industry over the past year.Timestamps: 00:00 - Intro & Episode 100 Celebration 02:18 - The 5-Year Podcast Journey 03:48 - How We Got More Consistent 05:09 - The Time Investment Reality 06:13 - Posting Schedule Changes 06:55 - Starting a Second Business 08:45 - Partnership Agreements: The Big Topic 10:30 - Business Valuation Reality 14:53 - Partnership Agreement Details 18:13 - Life Insurance for Partners 20:10 - The Difficult Conversations 22:10 - AI in Video Production 24:14 - Dario's Hot Takes on AI 26:04 - Will AI Replace Us? 28:20 - Niching: Case-by-Case Basis 31:03 - The Documentary Midlife Crisis 34:29 - Passion Projects Reality Check 36:30 - B Corp Certification Discussion 37:22 - Business Evaluation Trends 42:23 - Awards as Team Building 44:10 - LinkedIn Strategy Deep Dive 46:56 - Our 2025 Goals 49:01 - Riverside & AI Efficiency 53:14 - Silver Leaf Weddings Story 59:07 - Why Weddings Make Sense 1:02:07 - Multiple Business Management 1:04:31 - Project Satriali's Edit Shop 1:07:15 - Organizing & Backing Up Everything 1:17:42 - Finding New Freelancers Challenge 1:19:45 - Cutting Costs & Storage Solutions 1:25:12 - Advice for Starting a Podcast 1:27:20 - Thanks & See You Next TimeSPONSORS:Canada Film Equipment: www.CanadaFilmEquipment.comAudio Process: www.Audioprocess.ca🎵 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2vHd8BdbkMQITFZmDJ0bo9🍏 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/creatives-grab-coffee/id1530864140🎞️ Produced by LAPSE PRODUCTIONS – https://www.lapseproductions.comTo learn more about the show, visit: https://www.creativesgrabcoffee.com/#CreativesGrabCoffee #videographyhacks #videography #videographer #videoproduction #businesspodcast #videoproductionpodcast #lapseproductions #videomarketing #videoproductioncompany #videoproductionservices

Welcome to Creatives Grab Coffee, the podcast on the business of video production. Creatives Grab Coffee is hosted by Daria Nuri and Carol Lazaroff from Labs Productions. Our goal is to share knowledge and experiences from video production professionals around the world. Whether you're a freelancer looking to start your own business or a seasoned business owner aiming to scale your company, this is the show for you. Join us as we develop a community of like-minded creatives looking to learn and help each other grow. Welcome to the business of video production. Welcome to Creatives Grab Coffee.

Before we get started with the show, let's go over today's sponsors. Do you have a shoot in Toronto? Do you need crew or a strong production partner to help you with your project? LAPS Productions is one of the top production companies in Toronto and your go-to video partner. With our strong creative skills and extensive network, we can help you achieve your goal. LAPS Productions is able to offer you production services, white label services, or finder fees for project handoffs. Reach out to us on our website at LAPS Productions.com to learn more. My name is Maran. Welcome to Canada Film Equipment.

We are a boutique rental house based in Toronto. We are here to help you guys out with all production sizes. Feel free to contact us to get a quote if you're a production house and you're looking for lighting, camera packages or lighting and group band packages You can see our contact information in the link below. You're more than happy to help you guys out Make sure you follow and subscribe to creatives scrapcoffee.com. Thank you Thank you Hey, what's up everybody? I'm Matt. Welcome to Audio Process. We are a boutique audio doing location sound, sound design, post sound, ADR, fully.

We service equipment. We do all your audio needs here in Toronto. We got you covered. Come on down. Audioprocess.c. Don't forget to like, follow, subscribe, and all of the other internet things to creativesgrabcoffee.com. They'll be waiting for you. I'll be waiting for you.

And we're all gonna have a real good time. And now, let's begin the show. All right. Well, here we are at episode 100 of creatives grab coffee welcome we did it dude i was going to ask who's going to do the intro for this episode we should we should have done it at the same time well i was assuming you were going to i'm like let's just both go at it at this point man so do you believe it no no i can't it feels like it's gone by pretty quick i still can't believe the pandemic was like five years ago yeah it feels

It feels like it was almost yesterday that we were starting this podcast, essentially, just to kind of keep us a little sane, as we've mentioned a few times on this podcast. In a hot office room, two overweight guys sweating their balls off because there's no AC at Kirl's condo. Very sit-entry. Well, I mean, it was also three lights that were blasting in that tiny room. Yeah, but they're LEDs. They technically don't give off heat. technically but i don't know it was it was still one of those things but uh yeah no what a crazy time that was but yeah it's it's been quite a ride to to this point like we're right now in

the middle of 2025 so took us five years but that doesn't mean that it took us from doing it on a weekly basis you know we basically took first uh year yeah months off at a time well well what happened initially was we did we did about 15 episodes in 2020 took a break, realized very quickly what we have been doing wrong with our business. And we're like, okay, it's time to essentially change things up, figure out how to do things right. So we basically took like a year and a half off. And then I think it was in, I guess, early to mid-2020 when we started it up again and to be a little bit more serious. I think it was, I think it was March. Yeah, March 22, we took it up again. And then,

excuse me, we did, uh, I think a consistent like 20 to 25. episodes every year since then yeah so like 20 in 22 then I think we did only like 10 or 15 in 23 20 24 we did about no it's been like I think it's been consistent like 20 to 25 episodes yeah this year this year is where we did a bit more this year we got a little bit more consistent I think we're right now at what 30 maybe even already at 25 no no no I think it's the same amount this year my goal for this year was to challenge myself to do an episode a week and

we were on track for that but it's very time consuming I don't think people realize how much time we need to put into this thing like just trying to find people is very time consuming because you know I got number one find the people

that I would want to talk to reach out to them try to get like a pre-interview meeting going after pre-interviewed try to get them booked in not everyone books in the recording date and then there's follow-ups and there's duds that happen as well pretty late into the process too you guys would all be surprised like there's duds that happen like after we've had like sometimes like two pre-interviews and everything but we were on track to actually do weekly

and then we just got too busy at work so I'm leaving it to once every other week currently, and right now we have enough episodes stocked up to last us till like September. So I think going forward, it'll just be every other week we'll do an episode release. It just makes it a lot easier for me to like post these and and whatnot. But we'll be posting a lot of the reels like at least three times a week. So you guys can always like catch up on everything there. Yeah, it's a good kind of balance with everything and then gives people like time to you know like see the one episode you know because sometimes by the time you might see the first or one episode the next one's already coming out so at this point just trying to

get like the best like value for every for our time with it and especially now with what we've started over the last year or I guess six months like starting a second business our time is going to be even more divvied up at this point so it's going to be a lot harder to focus on this along with like basically the two main businesses that are going to be bringing in money because as people know this is this podcast we're not doing it for this one brings them money necessarily doesn't doesn't uh indirectly indirectly it's indirectly yeah it's not the one that directly brings it in but because it's indirect it doesn't need to be done like every single week you know we can go at our own pace set our own schedule in terms of what works but essentially like the

main thing is like just getting to talk to different people in different markets has been very interesting you know and seeing a lot of the different topics and trends that people like to talk about every year is always interesting and this year we've had a few topics that like kind of started becoming more and more consistent right like Darry what was like one of the topics that you felt was maybe not surprising but you know it was like oh it's interesting that everyone's talking about this I'm not going to say niching because I'm tired of talking about that topic. I'm going to say something that maybe that hasn't been coming up on the show

just because it's a private matter, but partnerships is the topic that I've tried to bring in sometimes on the show because I keep hearing about it off record, but, you know, some people aren't comfortable talking about it. I was surprised to see how many people were in partnerships that then went south. so with them like during the pre-interviews like I would like try to pick their brain and see like how that went wrong and everything and whatnot and the theme I kept I kept hearing about was that they didn't have like some type of agreement in place and some of them were surprising it was

like people that have been together for like long long time many many years so after hearing about all that, I told Kirill and I was like, I think we should probably get some type of partnership agreement in place. I was telling this guy this for a while. And he's like, yeah, yeah, we'll get to that eventually. But then all of a sudden it took talking to other people's failures to be like, oh yeah, maybe Carol's right. Maybe we should start actually doing this. Surprising. Like so many, so many stories. And that'll lead into the difficult conversations. That's the problem. Like a lot of partners that get into business together don't necessarily always have the difficult conversations first.

And that's where those frictions tend to happen, right? I guess. I mean, we went through it. Also, just a note for people listening that are in the same spot we were in. If you're incorporated, it's not a partnership agreement. It's called a unanimous shareholder agreement, USA. USA. If you're not incorporated, then it's partnership agreement.

And it's actually very easy to create. You can do it. I mean, we did it on ChatGPT. I forget what I fed it, but I think ours is pretty rock solid, actually. Yeah. It's pretty well-rounded. We went through like multiple different versions of it, like different scenarios. And it wasn't hard to do.

because I think Carol and I also learned also like I guess that's another topic is we also learned how much these businesses go for again this is off record conversations that unfortunately to our listeners you aren't privy to but it was surprising how low these companies like our companies go for and I guess that's all to do with I mean Carol you can get into the the reasons why well the thing is we're dealing with a creative industry We're not dealing with physical products as well. And in terms of like the kind of assets that you might have in a business like this, it's not all that much. And well, no, assets can be a lot. The thing I want to get. Can be. Can be.

But no, no, the assets can be a lot. It's, it's the recurring revenue I wanted you to dive in. Yeah, yeah, that's the main, that's the main thing that it's really difficult to quantify. Because everyone, like in a lot of businesses, the way that, things get quantified is by contracts that are like for like years, two years, three year kind of agreements those are easy to quantify because then you can actually forecast and see what money's coming in. But in our industry it's not an industry where you know where your money is coming from and even like production

companies we were talking to on the show they would even like share with us like oh yeah you know like we've been around for 15 years but I don't know exactly how much money we're going to make two three months out and 20 25 years like they don't know six months out they don't know could happen because they don't know six they don't know two they don't know even two months out that's the crazy thing it's like it's because we're per project business that's the biggest issue um very few of us have like longer term contracts but even then it's not it's not like year long contract or like very few of us have like those year long ones right yeah but everything's per project and even hearing much more experienced companies still have

that issue i'm like man like this is like a big big issue with with the industry as a whole yeah but what are you going to do that's the business we're in right that's the business we're in and i think the very first uh the first example of that was um was like we had like a client that we had worked with from like many years back like i think since we started like 2014 early 2015 and it wasn't it wasn't a major client you know it was just like an independent guy who created his own video content and things like that and then we were basically doing almost on a monthly basis content for him up until the pandemic hit and you know we considered him like the grandfather

client of laps you know like you know he was the guy who was working with us from early on yeah and then all of a sudden in 2020 it was just kind of like like I think he basically figured out how to do his own content which is which is understandable and as soon as the pandemic hit everyone got bootstrapped down and kind of figured out how they can do things themselves which is perfectly fine but the thing that killed us was that it was just like complete like cut off of contact almost to the point where you know what though like what you know what though like did you do you keep up with your dentist no fair enough okay that's i i get that no no i know but it's just like we weren't expecting it right because of what how we how we saw that relationship but then basically from that it made us realize

okay anything can happen with a client at this point doesn't matter if we've been working with them for two, three years on a consistent basis, they can just disappear all of a sudden because their goals have changed, their marketing goals have changed, their budgets have changed. That's the biggest thing, you know, like, or if, especially if people move on, because sometimes you build a relationship with a marketing director at a company, you work with them consistently, and then they leave, move on somewhere else, that company with the new person that comes in, they bring in their own vendors. You know, this is an industry where you can't really forecast everything. There's no consistency. And again, I guess we are kind of like, we are kind of like dentists. Like a dentist is not expecting you to have come in with a broken tooth twice a year, right? It can't project that kind of income. Same thing with us. So I guess it's just one of those things I got to deal with. But again, that affects the value of the business, right? So it's recurring revenue is a big factor. Assets is another one. But again, like, and not really. That actually helps out a lot. I guess it was just the recurring revenue, the

client list all that stuff really affects the value of the business but yeah so I guess this how do we start this so yeah it was a value of the business right so a lot of our businesses aren't worth a lot so figuring out like the split and everything was just some technicals how did we get into this we're talking about partnerships the agreement yeah yeah yeah we did like the Trump weave we got to weave it back to the to the main topic so the partner partnership agreements are, you know. Essentially, we learned a lot by doing it.

We were able to go over different scenarios and situations, you know, like what happens if something happens to one of the founders, what happens to the company, what happens to the business. The main thing was just the payout amount, right? Like, we were just trying to figure out, okay, so if this is a value and your share is 50%, how do we go about paying that without handicapping the business? That was like the biggest obstacle, like the biggest thing we were trying to figure out, right? Yeah, which is, when you think about it, it's like pretty much like the main thing.

Everything else is pretty straightforward. And, you know, like the one funny thing, though, for us is that it took us how many years to actually get one of these together? Like, don't do what we did, you know? It took us, what, 11 years to actually put 11 years to paper an agreement. If anyone, if anyone is curious or needs help with it, just reach out. I can send you like a one with some stuff redacted on it, like names. But, oh, another tip for you guys. If you guys got a partnership, I forget the guest that told me this.

He's going to be coming on, I think, after this episode, release from Montreal. I forget the name. Oh, my God. I'm so sorry. But anyways, the next Montrealer that will be coming on, he gave me this tip. You can, you can, you can. you can um again this is just a tip before i forget uh if you got two partners doing this agreement uh set up life insurance for you guys because if that if something ever happens

you know knock on wood um then you can use the payout amount to do the uh estate payout whatever so that's actually a pretty good tip that's actually what took us the longest time to like nail down in the in the agreement was like okay so when we get the life insurance insurance payout money like how is that distributed that actually took us the most amount of time to figure out yeah it was just kind of because you're basically going through all these like different scenarios of what could could happen but it's like and you know just going over those things like darry and i are very like straightforward with each other when it comes to how we communicate so we don't have these issues but this is probably where a lot of these challenges

probably happen to a lot of other people who go into partnerships right where they start having these more difficult conversations about these extreme examples of what could happen. And then you start to see kind of like where they're, what they value or what they think their goals are and it won't align with yours. So that's probably where a lot of those frictions can potentially happen. So yeah, when you get into a partnership with anyone, this is why they recommend creating these agreements because it forces people to have conversations about things that they never would have thought of, right? because where you are in your early 20s, early to mid-20s,

versus where you are in your 30s, everything changes. Your values change over time. Like what you wanted to do in your early 20s is not going to necessarily be the same as when you're in your 30s, right? So, and that's why you also have to review these contracts every couple, every two to three years just to make sure. We have it every two years unless something major happens.

Like we buy, I don't know, piece of property or whatever. Yeah. We should tell them that, that, so we're figuring, that life insurance stuff out. Carol said the funniest thing ever. We're going through the... Okay, so we got a pretty decent policy and we're going

through the different scenarios and he said the funniest thing. He's like... He's like, but wait. So the incentive with this life insurance policy is for one of us to go.

And I was like, yes, Carol. I mean, but the way it was worded, it was just like, you just said, I'm like, you really just say, like, the incentive is for one of us to go. I'm like, now you know why some people kill other people to get the life insurance policy. I know, so we had to, we had to fix that up a little bit where it's like, okay. No, it was fine. You were just like, you're like, but wait, the incentive is for what? Like, he said it's so, like, serious.

Like, he was really like, he discovered it for the first time. Well, basically, yeah, because it was just like a funny realization. It's like, this is a lot of benefit for this. But the incentive is for one of us to go. I'm like, yeah. It's called an insurance policy. It's crazy. But anyway, like the whole point of it is that if the point of the whole thing is essentially

this, if you're going into any kind of partnership for any kind of business, not just, you know, a creative business, get an agreement so you can have those difficult conversations with people first because as you will hear on other episodes you know people who have gone into partnerships it didn't last for whatever reason obviously because there are reasons that couldn't be shared on the podcast because that's the thing you know it's such a personal kind of thing to to talk about right we heard a bunch of different reasons like off the record I mean I'm not mentioning names but we heard some some normal reasons some like and then some out there reasons which is surprising I didn't expect that but

anyways I can't show those with you to finish off the life insurance thing I would say if you're gonna do it get like a long-term policy like if you're expecting your business to like if you're expecting to be in business till you're like we're in 30s we're probably and we live in Canada so we'll probably have to work till we're in our 60s so we got the 30-year term because we locked in a lower rate and then also a lot of people don't think about this but I thought about it inflation is going to kill the amount you'll get at the end of it so if you go with like whatever amount you go with if you factor in like 2% conservative inflation amount it'll it'll turn into half by the end of the 30 year

term so just something to keep in mind I think a lot of people don't think about that they think about the amount that's how as it's value today but like if you think about it like if you think about it like if you think about for example 250 in 30 years that's like 120 if you think about 500 it's 250 at the end of the 30 years so just something to keep in mind and that's how we learned how insurance companies actually make their money yeah like they I mean number one like we got it for the bit like the business is the holder so they're also I guess they're also assuming that a lot of corporations don't stay in business that long so they're factoring the fact that okay these guys are getting 30 year but that business probably going to stay in business another 10 years or something right

so i think that's the other thing they they take into consideration but little do they know that we could run this with just one or two of us so we'll probably be working for a while yeah but anyway so that's that's one of the biggest topics which was partnerships and one of the other big topics that we've heard a lot of people kind of be somewhat concerned about is the topic of AI and I feel like we've talked about it quite a bit on a lot of our episodes but it is a recurring thing that you know concerns people in our industry in terms of like what jobs is it going to replace what jobs is it going to diminish but how is it also going to be helpful right and one thing I always talk about with people is that I see AI as a very efficient tool that

that you could use to help you in a lot of different aspects of the business. And if you look at it as a tool, then you can leverage it to help you push your business forward. Because you have to learn to adapt with it. It's here to stay. It's not going to, it's not going to disappear anytime soon, right? You know, it's like the digital, it's like the DSLR revolution. As soon as that camera, that small form factor camera came out, everyone had to get with the times and adapt because the industry is changing and it's constantly changing. I don't know what I think it could either put everyone out of a job or it might just

never get past the point it's at now I really don't know I think it's pretty dangerous to be honest to you I think it's gonna put a lot of people out of work it'll make art costs a lot lower like I'm like within the next couple of years I can see us never ever bringing on a makeup artist ever again audio op I think those two positions are definitely on the way out. Even with the amount of gear or D.P. Hot takes. You could probably like, man, just imagine you could probably light something up so like menially and then just have it adjust everything in post. Like, oh, I forgot I didn't have a hair light that day, add a hair light. You don't know where it can go or it could never

get to that point. They're starting to come up now with the video. AI stuff like Google V-O-3 and I don't know like in a couple years where that can be who knows like there's a video of a Tesla robot filming yeah I saw that yeah I don't know in 10 years we might be out of a job but if we go out of a job like everyone else is like I don't know man it's here's the thing you keep you keep talking about the things that are going to be coming in is basically the different tools that can be used. They're still always going to need to be some kind of creative vision and creative direction for all these projects.

You know, it's like getting, it's like getting different video tools that have made things efficient for us like back in the day, right? Like, remember we used to use glide cams and steady cams for everything? Yeah, but... And then the gimbals came in. That changed everything. Yeah, but I don't know, man.

It's, uh, it could go either way. It could go to the point where we just keep using it as a tool. You know, use it as a tool plus lower. our costs or like do they really need to reach out to us type of thing it could get to that point i saw a video where they um they they they were using this um it's this new software where you can just use like a p ov camera like a gopro on your head just capturing like what you're seeing and then as you move around the environment so the video i was saying it was like in a in a workplace kitchen so it's a chef with a gopro

And as he's moving and stuff working around the kitchen, it was creating like a map, like a map of the whole space. And you could, they were creating videos from that. So I don't know where it can go. It could get to the point where like our jobs are obsolete. But then again, a lot of other jobs will be obsolete too at that point. I don't know. You don't know where it could go.

Should we have not gotten the 30 year plan then? I guess not. But it could go either way. It could get to the point where it just. never gets to be that smart. That's also a possibility. Like there, I saw some getting the limitations. Some article was talking about like the newer versions of chat GP3. Like, it's not actually becoming smarter. It's just using patterns more so. So I don't know. It's, uh, it, I think it's going to be a way bigger deal than like, you know, transition from film to digital or

from TV to web and social. I think it's going to be a way bigger deal. I think it's going to be a way bigger thing and i i don't know if anyone will be properly prepared for it i wonder what it's going to be the state of like content at that point when it does get to that you know where it's just like all the content you see is just constantly AI made it's like what are people even going to be watching at that point right it's almost like i don't know right it's the same thing now like what we watch now everything you watch is either like reposted content or i i generated at this point yeah essentially it's all up in the air you know we'll see what happens got to keep a close eye on it but try to essentially the point is and the and the one tip that we could suggest is you know try to

adapt with it in whatever way you can start leveraging it even starting small you know getting used to the idea and like i think most people at least the people we've talked to like i think everyone we've talked to is using it in some capacity i mean you'd be really behind not using it Right now. If you if you still haven't like booted up chat GPT and like used it a little bit, like I don't know what you're doing. Like you must be doing really well to not give a shit basically. Yeah. I think again, it's like if it could even help save you a few hours a week, it's very much worth it to incorporate in your in your workflow. Because honestly time, your time is so valuable now. Right. And especially if you want to try to fit more work in, you know, to keep expanding. Like, you. You got to figure out, you got to leverage whatever tools you have at your disposal to save you time. And that's the main thing. But anyways, we go into these into more depth with some of our guests in past. And I'm assuming also some future episodes, it'll definitely come up again.

But I think those are like two of the really main ones. Leach was the other one. Like so many people kept talking about niching this year. But the thing with niching is that the thing that we've learned is that it's powerful. it's powerful the niche down but you know what's also powerful is being flexible as well you know not limiting yourself to one type of content all the time no i think it's i think it's just a case-by-case thing like for some people that's what i'm saying like for some it works but also being flexible is also a good thing it's like you have to figure out what works for you for some

people niching down really makes sense for others it really doesn't so that that's the one big thing we've learned with this show is that what works for one company doesn't work for another no matter what topic we're talking about right like everyone's situation is so drastically different because there's a lot of intangibles that you can't really quantify you know like you know it's location where you are your experience your network like all these things are factors that you can't you can't replicate in another company right and like even with companies that we've seen in Toronto like not just in video but also in photo where similar markets similar types of content that they do or similar types of clients, they still have very

different kind of things that work for them. You know, it's not easy to replicate it exactly the same. So, you know, like, that's what the whole point of the show is, essentially. Here are all these different case studies and examples of different companies and how they're operating. What works for them may work for you, may not. You have to test it out. And that's the main thing. Keep testing things out and try things out until you figure out what works. Yeah. I think that's it, really, for many topics that I noticed so far this year. Yeah, a lot of people, a lot of niche. I don't even know if it's niches or niches. I don't know what the pronunciation is. Everyone says it differently, right? When I heard niche, I was like,

dude there was a i posted a reel with uh i think it was a the the foxhole media one yeah i don't someone like corrected dave in the comments oh it's not pronounced uh niche it's pronounced i'm like what the fuck he got he got upset i think i deleted the comment i was like what the hell is wrong with these people i would have left that up just just for comedy oh my god man like Dave you got a hater out there someone was purposely like waiting a comment under you're real um it's like that's not how you pronounce it yeah i mean one other thing that some people have talked about is like you know if you have time explore like different kind of passion projects that you can that you want to do you know it it really varies though that is the midlife crisis

of the video producer from what i've noticed it's after 20 years they start to say like oh yeah i'm uh i'm starting to make original content and it's always a documentary hands down always a document like but that's the there's a reason though there because it's like those are fun types of projects to do you're telling real stories with real people rather than just creating something that is meant to sell something right i think that's just the idea of like trying something i think it's because it's easier than uh getting actors that's probably the actual reason i wouldn't i wouldn't say so man like i honestly like to find a good documentary story to actually to tell

could be a lot more difficult than actually putting together a narrative and hiring talent. If that's true, how come like these streaming websites are loaded up with documentaries? I said good ones. I didn't say terrible

as I said to do a good documentary. Jesus. Anyone can create... Everyone that's been in this business for over 20 years always says, I'm trying to focus more on like documentaries and pop, pop, pop, pop.

So yeah. watching 10 years he's going to do it he's like hero i crack the code we got to do a documentary it's like great it's too mainstream now every time i think of documentary i just think of netflix i mean okay which is like i don't know it's too uh it's too common but yeah passion projects you haven't had too many people mentioned it this year it was a mention a lot last year we had a few we had a few talked about it had like two or three people mentioned that they want to start it. I haven't seen I don't actually like do it though or finish it. It's always on the back burner because again, once you have a lot of client work,

that stuff always takes precedence. So unless you set aside time for it, it's not going to happen. And it's too big. Everyone's always trying to make it way too big. Like if you really want to do it, I'm of the opinion. I'm of the opinion like just create something small. Like put it on social. Like if you're going to do like a 90 minute documentary, you'll never get that thing done. yeah that takes that takes way too long you got to start with some short ones you know dip your toes in like that's one thing that i'm looking into a little bit for us in the future but that's the only way to that's the only way to do it you got to start off small like you said like the problem is sometimes people try to go too big right away and because of that you never get anything done

because of how long it takes like you can't do like a three-minute documentary as like a test run for the idea you probably can't do the 90 minute one exactly that's my that's that's me that might be something hot take oh I agree no that that's a good that's a good tip honestly because like like you said if you're not able to carve out enough time to put together a short version or even

like a proof of concept version what makes you think you can actually because that's what they do at like film festivals like you gotta have like the short film and then like if it gets enough hype and attention then you tell you already have the feature ready and you get the funding right away

and you go make it that's usually like I think that's how it works now. Again, this is a little speculative from us in terms of people who haven't gotten into the industry. But anyway, that's, I think that covers pretty much some of the main topics that we've talked about on the podcast. We've obviously talked about a lot of other different ones. One that did pop up this year, like I guess this will be maybe like the last one was that some companies have explored becoming B-Corp certified. That did come up a few times this year. I came up like that came up like once and that came up originally last I came up once that was originally something that came up last year when we started doing some more West Coast companies because that really is just a West Coast thing if you go anywhere in the middle or east or any other country that is not a thing I doubt and for those that don't know it's basically some certification that you're green you pay people a lot blah blah blah that that

that, all that stuff. It's fluff at the end of the day. Again, I think it's a West Coast thing. I think it makes sense if you are dealing with clients that are B-Corp because I think those guys get more points. If they work with other companies that are B-Corp for anywhere outside of that region, it just seems like not worth it because it's not an easy thing to do. And they take money for it.

You also have to open up your your, your, your, your, books essentially you have that's fine that's fine the thing is like you got to pay for it and it's not cheap so if you're in a market where there's if you're in a market where there's not a lot of b corps it doesn't make any sense to me and the fact that we're in a global recession also doesn't make sense for me to like like i don't know why you would want to pay for that if you're not if it's like just a little bonus thing if you're not in the west coast don't do it doesn't make sense yeah depends on the clients they again everything you do all always depends on the types of clients that you're serving and seeing what they value but yeah anyways I think what we could

probably know move on to is a little a little bit is well what are some of our goals well hold on the valuation is one that keeps coming up so as people that was trying to strengthen their business to be able to sell it that I don't know if that's been coming up on the show but it was definitely coming up in the pre interviews and I think after during the pre I think I think the post episode discussions we were having with the guests like trying to create a business that you can sell in the future is a topic that was coming up and I think it's pretty interesting I think it's something not a lot of us think about I don't think a lot of people realize that it's not going to go for like a crazy amount but it's still something to focus on with your

business so like how can you create a business that you could potentially sell that or that it has value something and you know it starts off with something as simple as like having like a process a system in place like stuff that was coming up was like making sure like you have like as an example like the most up-to-date information for your clients even past clients because that is part like of a list that is going to generate money right that type of information is is very important. Not a lot of people, not a lot of us focus on that type of stuff. Like that's something we started focusing on is like really tracking all of our information, making sure we have like a system in place. Everything's organized. Everything's backed up. Like that stuff is very important.

Yeah. You always have to figure out ways to make your business efficient on the back end. But the thing is like what you're some of the things you were talking about, your processes and your portfolios and all that kind of stuff. This is all stuff that is still difficult to quantify over time, right? And then it's, it'll become like a subjective kind of value that you would put on it. And that makes it difficult to sell, which kind of goes back to the what we were talking about with when you're putting the partnership or the shareholder agreement together. You know, it's like, unless you're able to like get certain things that you can quantify, it will be a lot harder to kind of place of value. And then it's just going to become a matter of what is the market value of the business at

the time what you and your partners put a value on you know what you i mean if you're really if you really want to figure out like the number it's easy just bring in like two to three evaluators and they'll give you like a number and then you just kind of like average it out based on like what the first second and third person says you could easily figure out the number then i just got pay for it that's the only thing um but yeah like just preparing your business to sell i think is a good mindset to have, I don't think they're worth as much as someone might think they're worth, but it's still good to at least have that system in place. That I think is really important. If not to sell, it's at the very least to make your business run smoothly and efficiently. That's

the main thing, right? I think if you want to be a business owner, you do need to look at it that way and think of it like that. Otherwise, like, you're just the freelancer at that point. Like, that's the truth. Yeah, and that was like one of the biggest issues that we had before, before starting the show actually, right? And that's kind of how we operated before. And that's what we're continually trying to avoid, you know, going forward. But anyways, minor topic before we're done with the topics, the awards discussion was pretty interesting. I think that came up twice. came up a couple times but it's people who do it find it the funny thing is people who do the awards i think find it very valuable people who don't don't find it very well i i never thought

it but i just thought it was a money grab and you just pay to get it type of situation but that's that peter shells from el dente entertainment really turned uh uh really uh converted uh converted uh converted my thinking on it i thought it was uh interesting how he he he looked looked at it more like a team building exercise and also something to make the client excited. I think that's actually pretty pretty good way to think about it. Because what he did, I think it was him who did this, where not only does, not only do you guys get the award and the trophy, but you also get an extra trophy for the client that you can give it to them, and that creates another level of a client experience for them.

So that way you build on that relationship even more. It's like, look at this. Like we did such great work together that we actually won an award. And it's not that. And then you get something that you're actually touching, right? You know, because obviously in our industry, we're dealing with creating products and services for clients that are not physical. And you can't physically touch the videos that we create, right? So having an award is kind of like, what's sorry?

You could touch the hard drive. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I do that all the time. but yeah but the final product you know it's not physical right so like having an actual trophy or an award that that you can give your client it's it's something that really elevates the experience you know and so that that was something i thought was that made me interested in it a lot is that side of it as well right not just obviously you know you winning an award being like ooh i win an award you know like that's one thing but also elevating the client experience is a big bonus which i don't think

people anyone thinks about initially right no no i thought that was really interesting after talking to peter i was like oh okay there's some you know good reason uh you know get an award or apply for an award so that was that was just a matter of which videos which categories and then we can just actually on that note another one would be uh focusing on lincoln um oh yeah uh lift Grant from Lyft video production that episode he really could like change my mind on LinkedIn like when he told me about how he uses it and all that stuff I was like man let me try this out like maybe there's some truth to this and I think he's right I think for for us it's good to utilize LinkedIn just to be top of mind for people it's the

thing for new business I don't know I think new business I haven't cracked that code yet but I think it's so tricky with us with that you essentially Essentially what he basically highlighted for us is that social media, like Instagram, LinkedIn, and all those places are great for staying active and showing current and new clients that are coming through is that you're also not a dead company. That was the main thing that they were talking about. Because when you look at a lot of companies in our industry, they would have like an Instagram page or a LinkedIn page and rarely would ever post on it to the point where you don't, you can't even tell if they're active, right? You know, when you think about it. I think just LinkedIn, like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, but I think it's just, I think it's good if you're targeting small businesses that are active on those, like e-commerce businesses, that

makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. Or your wedding company. That's the only time it makes sense. If you do corporate, I think just LinkedIn, just to be top of mind for your clients, that's the only reason. Because that's where they're active, you know.

They're active on LinkedIn. Like, all corporate and B2B types of clients are only active on LinkedIn mainly. So they want to see other partners and vendors being active as well. If they're active, you're active, then you get top of mind. And then sometimes people will message you out of the blue. It's like, hey, you know, like I got this video that's coming up and I saw what you did recently for X, Y, and Z. This is what I'm looking to do because, yeah, like, you never know. Everyone changes and evolves over time.

And people that you worked with back in the day, they might have worked with others, you know. So just sometimes a simple, quick reminder is good. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, LinkedIn definitely, like, be active on it. But LinkedIn is a weird place, man. Because if you start liking people's posts, like, you just start getting those people over and over again. Like, I like to support our guests and everything.

So I tend to like a lot of their content. And I notice, I'm like, oh, my God, it's just the same people over and over again. I can't see, like, new people posting anymore. It's like a weird, weird algorithm they have. Yeah. And people like to engage with content that's specifically centered on you and, like, what you're doing, not just what your business is doing. So I feel like there's like that element that goes into it as well. It's like, remember to share not just from your company, but also you personally, because people in your network will engage a little bit more with you.

that sense. That's one thing I noticed with some I wonder if that's an algorithm thing because I wonder that's an algorithm because it's like it's not a person. I'm pretty sure it's an algorithm thing because I've posted content directly and then posted it through the business page and like the business page almost never generates like anywhere close to the same engagement. Even if you share it, even if you share it. That's the thing I noticed. Like I posted like two or three behind the scene photos of like a shoot that that I did for us recently. And that thing got quite a bit of engagement that I, more than I was expecting. And then I posted the actual video from what that video, from what that was from,

posted it on the business page, and then shared it and commented about it on my personal. But it didn't get as much engagement as well. So, yeah, it could really be, like you said, something with the business pages don't get as much push. Then I don't know. Because they want you to, I think because they're pushing you to pay. That's the only thing that makes sense. for me. Yeah, yeah. So you got to do it all, you got to do it all personal and then give him the money. Give LinkedIn more money. Yeah, but anyway, I think that pretty much rounds out all the

topics that we, a lot of the main topics that we went over over the past year, year and a half. And now in terms of like the future, Dario, what are some of the goals that we have for not just the podcast, but also for the business? Like what's, what's like a main goal that you podcast is a well-oiled machine at this point. I'm sticking to just... I wanted to do 50 episodes this year. I really wanted to challenge myself. And I could have, to be honestly, I could have.

It was just taking up way too much time. And also, I noticed, like, I need time to, like, process the information. Just information I learned from people and apply it. I found that, like, doing too many episodes over a short period of time, I was starting to get bored of doing them. And then also I was starting to not be able to bring new stuff to the table or be interested enough to ask different things that I was hearing similar stuff over a short period of time. That's what I noticed with that is that a lot of the topics started to kind of blend in with some of the episodes.

Because I think our perspectives didn't weren't as fresh compared to like in the previous years, like almost like the way we did it was like posting like once every two, three weeks, maybe even four weeks sometimes, on what the month was like for us and then but then again we did kind of record a lot of episodes and no how we how we were doing it before previous years was recording a lot at the beginning of the year and then just getting too busy with stuff so they would get posted a lot later tried to spread it out I was I mean we were doing at least like an episode this year but I think I'm going to spread out a bit more for next year and cap it I think at whatever every two weeks would be like i think going forward these episodes these episodes will

start like second week of january because that's when everyone's back and then they'll end yeah second week of december so however many up and then biweekly however many that is probably around 20 to 25 episodes yeah yeah like but doing it consistently i noticed the stats were going up like a little bit on RSS I noticed we were getting consistent like amount of listeners and um on on on on YouTube I think it was averaging out to be however many but um uh it's uh I mean I'm glad I pushed for it because now we can see how it would be like because the previous years it was kind of like on the back burner like if we get to it we get to it type of thing yeah um well also my previous years we didn't have it

efficient with Riverside right like before we used to have to Riverside helps a lot people don't we wouldn't have been able to we haven't been able we wouldn't have been able to do what we did this year if it wasn't for Riverside because before we used to basically have us recording everything on our end the guests recording on there and and then that became such a convoluted process to make sure we get everything together then we have to edit the video together then we have to create the content for it and then Riverside just became so efficient with its AI thank God for AI this is one of those

areas where AI became a leveraged tool for us that saved us hours on a weekly basis that allowed us to do more. But I can pump out one of these and like actually the cool thing is after the episode's done recorded within like five or ten minutes, I can immediately send the client or the client. The client. The guest. Fuck what you call. The guest.

Like an auto cut up like version of the episodes. Like all I have to do is just trim the beginning and ending and add an intro or outro. But sometimes they're curious. They're like, oh, can I listen to it before you post it? I'm like, wait two more minutes and I'll send you a link. Yeah, it's, it's a minute. And they check it out and yeah, and it's so fast. And like, all the reels you guys are seeing, they're from Riverside.

Like, I actually lately, I don't even like, you don't have to do too much cutting with it. I just select, like, make it between one to three minutes long, like, and then I just kind of like, I used to actually, at beginning of the year, I was going through it and like manually check. and listening to it and like extending, removing, that, da, da, da, that. Now I just, like, I got a little lazy, so I just kind of read the title that it generates and then kind of listen to it once and just export it. If they're interested, they can go listen to the full episode. And if you listen to it once and it's generally there, like, again, with stuff, depending on the work that you're doing, and you've got to figure out what's efficient for you.

And for us, like, we're trying to save as much time as possible while still providing something decent because like it's the content you know like yeah we're we're using the riverside packaging and it keeps getting better and better so we're trying to test it out and see kind of what works what doesn't work and you know it's better to do more at 80 percent quality than way less at like 95 I think this is actually I think this is actually better than the quality we were outputting before because now we didn't have time it was so it was so well it was so time consuming we had other shit to do like running laps and then had to do this on the side and then you know like it was becoming a chore because of the time but now because it's so fast like

it's not as like much of a chore like I can pump out like I think every Monday I just sit for like an hour hour and a half and I'm able to like pump out the episode the reels and then like just organize everything on my end upload the episode I mean publish the webpage all that shit and everything it's so much faster now like hour and a half it's good you guys get a fresh episode compared to before you used to take us like four hours to edit an episode like manually so time consuming yeah and that's if you don't get distracted you know because there i remember back in the day like when we were actually editing the video like i'd be working on it and then a client would send an email asking about something so i'm like okay i got me pause this for a second go to that

all right let me go back to that nope dario's calling what is he won okay let's see so time It can get time consuming in that sense. But anyway, so the whole point of it is the goal of the podcast continue what we're doing, except maybe change up how often we post 20 to 25 episodes over the next year. So we're looking at basically getting to episode 200 after about four to five years, depending on how we go with the posting. But who knows, our goals might change at the end of next year as well. So that's that's creatives grab coffee.

That's creatives grab coffee. on the the lapse side of things because of the show we've learned that we want to start obviously focusing on more marketing and focusing more on LinkedIn because it's definitely something that's going to be more interesting to do definitely going to be something that could be leveraged for us in the future to stay top of mind with clients because one of the biggest challenges is also trying to maintain current relationships you know you're not working with all of your clients every single week on a weekly basis right it that's that's not the nature of our business, right?

So there are some clients that you work with once a year, twice a year, depending on what events or marketing plans or strategies they're trying to execute. So, you know, in other parts of the year, try to figure out ways to engage them in other ways, right? And that's, and focusing on LinkedIn is one thing that we want to do. Daria, what is another goal of ours for this coming year? This coming year, I want to fix. up a lot of the pages on the website and create new pages too. Actually, I'm calling a project Setriali's Edit Shop. I got that idea. I got that idea from one of our financial clients. They

always have like, they call them project and then the, I can't say it because of legal reasons, but the project and then the name of the thing is always based on like their environmental theme. So I was like, okay, let me create one for us, so Setrialli's Meat Shop is from. the Sopranos, which I love. Project Polly, Project Toney. So I called it Project Cetrialli's Edit Shop. So basically I'm going through all the current pages

that we have up on the website and just editing them, making sure they're optimized properly. And then I'm also creating specific pages for like AdWords and all that. So again, big SEO focus. That's for the website. And then ideally, I would like to do

a beautification of the of the site but I think whoever that's so badly we're gonna need help with that we need to hire someone to do it and I'm gonna test them out first with the with the podcast website and then I'm gonna monitor it and see if it doesn't fuck up anything and if it doesn't then I'll get them to do the lapse one as well maybe we could do that with the with the wedding one that might actually wedding is square space so for those that don't know. We started our own wedding company last year. Again, we like to do stuff in reverse because that is the lapse approach. So, you know, instead of being videographer first and then starting a company, we decided to start the company first and then also do videography. And then

as a tradition, we decided to the same thing with the wedding company, which was like everyone always wants to get out of the weddings. I think it's just great side income. So I'm kind of cool with it and then last year one of the guys I was freelancing for big company in Toronto they is a wedding videography company they were going to close it down so I was actually offering him to take it over and I'm like wait I might need help because it's a big company so I asked Carol I'm like are you interested in taking over that company Carol was like yeah let's do it so I was like okay approach the guy he's not interested still wanted to close it I'm like no problem and then our photography partner

So actually no like no no no like what happened was At first I was like well the people that are working there that are not going to be out of a job I was like why don't why don't we do something with them and then I was like ah it's going to be too many people It's going to be a fucking disaster it got it got too complicated like we there and I were going over all the scenarios of like is there something here for us to kind of like take over and then I just suggest that you know what dude I think we need to just start our own thing from scratch just do our own thing It's just going to be easier. You and I know each other. We know how this business works. Like, Dari and I together have been like shooting weddings on the side for like 11 years.

I wanted to do this the year before, but you weren't interested. I don't know what changed your mind last year. Well, no, last year is when we decided to do it. I know, but I was 2023. I wanted to start a new business in 2023, but you weren't interested in starting a wedding company. and then that guy was closing and then I think goals change and then also like potential opportunities

kind of you know also like when there's shifts in the market that's kind of like when you can kind of girl bought a truck that's what happened he bought a truck no the truck came later the truck came like six months after we opened the business so that wasn't a fact that wasn't a flannel shirt

and a truck and he suddenly needed to needed the extra money but the thing I learned was my biggest shift was essentially figuring out how to free up weekends a little bit more because obviously like if you were to fill up a week if you were to fill up your weekends in a year like say 20 30 weddings there's 20 30 days of your weekends basically gone at that point right whereas if you did the equivalent like your own company with your own clients maybe like one or two or maybe half of those days will get freed up

in terms of the equivalent amount of work that you would do if it was your own client, right? Because yeah, maybe obviously there's going to be more work on the front end and on the back end, but on the actual physical shooting days, that does shift a little bit. So that's kind of like what we're trying to figure out for the future as well, right?

I wish I could send this video back to Kirolin, 2023, when he's like, oh yeah, I want to stop doing weddings soon. And then two years later. it's a shifting of the time machine I'm gonna like export this clip and like send it back to you let it back to me right

well yeah we'll think about it we're trying to maximize we're trying to maximize our time right the irony though is that like the irony is that because it's a new business at least for the next couple years

takes a lot a lot of work in the beginning yeah well actually I thought it was but it's actually pretty straightforward now I like how it's just making at least me less reliable on the other companies because again that company that's what i wanted as well that's what i wanted as well it's like i lost like 30 weddings because that

company closed down that was a lot of work a lot of money that wasn't like trump change like 30 weddings all of a sudden gone like fuck like yeah that's brutal man the thing is is that when you're freelancing for other production companies um you're pretty much at the mercy of if they're going to give you work or not, right? With any relationship. You can kind of like, you can kind of like estimate and go like, well, I get this much from this guy every year. But you don't expect them to close. That was like left field. I'm like, oh my God, man. Like, what the fuck am I going to do now? Like, that's a lot of money. Yeah. So we're basically going back and just relying on ourselves. That's the idea. And then having it as its own separate machine, basically,

separate business. It's not. I really don't, I really don't know why a lot of people in our industry are against the weddings. I think they're, I think for what they are, like, it's great side income. Like, that's, like, I think people get too emotional about the wedding thing. Like, oh, fuck it. Like, I don't do that. I'm too fucking bougie in high class with that shit. Like, bro, it's just money at the end of the day. It's just a side income. Like, it's a side business. That's how I view it. Like, we're good at it. I'm passionate about it. But at the same time, like, I'm just viewing the company's as just a side business

that we're doing in a business. It's a side business. I don't know why people get so emotional about it. It's just a business. People don't know how to learn with it. People also don't know how to learn with it because sometimes focusing on different kinds of industries, different tactics and strategies there

can help you figure out what might work and not work in other businesses, right? Like focusing on actually putting content together for weddings and, you know, having another creative element that you can work on rather than just selling products all the time, you know, can really change your perspective. I'm not saying you have to mix in your businesses together because I know some companies do that where they, where they have a company that does both corporate and weddings. I don't think that's the right way to go. No, no, keep it separate. That's, that's, that's Bush League stuff.

Keep it separate. Yeah. Yeah. But keep it separate. And then it's its own thing, right? you know like people can have multiple businesses you know you're not meant to you don't have to just do the one thing strictly do corporate i strictly do commercials like brad chill man it's just it's just business at the end of the day yeah like but like in putting together some content for

for some of our recent weddings you know like i'm figuring out little things that can help in in terms of like for example how to produce some of the content for the corporate side of things and what might work there. So, like, don't be afraid of it, right? You know, if you feel like you're comfortable with it and you like what you're doing, then then go for it. For me, it was a great way to check out and see how we do, how we run our processes and just archiving and all that stuff. Because, like, I tried to approach it from like a different perspective. And, um, and, uh, I actually tried to look at it like a fresh, like I, I tried to do everything fresh for it. Yeah. And then, And in doing that, I kind of realized some things we could improve with lapse.

And especially when it comes to weddings, I'm very nervous about, you know, missing stuff with the couple or losing stuff or anything like that. So our backup and archiving process, I gave it a whole new overhaul. And we just applied that whole, that whole system to lapse. And the first big purchase as a result of starting this business was this big, uh, uh, uh, hard drive tower that that I got for us because I'm like we need something that's more central that we can if we need to we can make a like a master kind of like archive and then we have our online archives then we have all our backup drives then we have the backups at darios and stuff like that but it's at least like there's one main one that's like where everything can be on it for like two

years that's that's what I was hoping for that way like especially when you get into this industry like especially now with technology how it's evolving you know like the files are getting bigger and bigger and bigger so you need more well there's also the fact that we started laps 11 years ago and when you start something that long ago excuse me there's going to be bad habits that you carry on uh into into like future developments so with silver the company is called silver leaf weddings and with silver leaf i i really did go like okay how would i do this like if if i don't know anything about how i normally do my stuff with laps so organizing stuff in google drive like all that stuff i i looked at it from a fresh perspective and that really helped like look at laps in a

different way and i'm looking at it i'm like i want to change this i want to change that and uh making sure of like our archiving is rock solid because being organized or yeah being organized and like yeah getting your shit together and everything and also because there's now three things that we have running so laps CGC silver leaf it to be really good with time management and like make sure everything's like running well so it doesn't interfere with the other that's also another reason why like CGC is only going to be every other week and like yeah I was trying to actually with the reels. I was trying to post them every day. And then I was like, fuck it. Just three a week. That's all you guys are getting. It's not doable. And like, especially when you're running multiple

businesses, there, as Daria mentioned, you need to have like certain amount of focus for each one on a week basis. And look, it's not like you're going to be able to give yourself 40 hours a week for every business that you have coming through. No, man. People don't realize like, like, like CGC. I did so much work for this like at night. Like my girlfriend's looking at me. like give me like another 30 minutes which turns oh we've had those that's how it is with the late night editing I know what that's like so much of that like she's a trooper for putting up with that and silver leaf too like that was a lot of working in the evenings just trying to get everything off the ground like networking with planners and other photographers and everything that took a lot

of work but now it's at the point where like at least on my end I don't have to put in a lot of work on that everything's kind of like set there's just some stuff here and there podcast same thing like now that it's like I'm spreading it out like and when I have a stockpile of episode like good till like end of August like I can chill and just do a little bit just an hour and a half basically like once a week and I kind of have everything set for the week like it's fine now I can just focus a lot on laps and even with laps like a lot of the stuff it's like we're working on some projects and like girls handling that I don't have to worry about it and then like for the other stuff I just give myself like pretty generous goals

Like editing the website, I gave myself the full year to do that because there's like 60 pages. I can't just do like three pages. Is it really that many pages we have on the website? Bro, there's like fucking like 40 something odd out like 50 page like blog posts. No, 40 blog posts. Oh, right. I forgot about the blog. Yeah, sorry, I forgot about the blog post. And then there's like 20 pages that are a mix between like, you know, foundational pages and like subpages.

And I got to like rework all of them. And that's going to take a while. So, like, if you give yourself, like, a generous, like, timeline as well, like, you can get it done. But that's, like, one thing. And then posting on LinkedIn is so, so time consuming, too. You've got to set time aside for it. But, like, again, like, it's not, at the end of the day, it's not that much work, really.

I just, like, I find that the thing is you just got to be quick with stuff when it comes in. If you let it pile up, then it becomes, like, a mess. That's the main thing. Like, one of the main, like, I'm going to be leaving for vacation in a couple, in about a week or so and there were like a bunch of projects that I know that are going to be due close to close to like when I come back

so I like over the last month I've just been focusing on getting a lot of things off of our plate that is coming up for after that and now I got to the point where I think there's literally only one thing and that's like with still a lot of time coming after the fact and that's what you got to do with your business you got to figure out like what deadlines

are coming up you have to figure out how you can be efficient, you know, like to get those things off your plate. And as Dario said, you know, like if you let things pile up, it can get really overwhelming. And trust me, especially since the last last six months, for those of you who don't know, I had got a workplace injury last year. And I wasn't workplace injury. Sorry, not a word by saying workplace. Yeah. Workplace injury. I got an injury playing, playing soccer. You got injury kicking a balloon. That's what happened. Yeah. Anyways, point is, I had surgery back in. November, so I couldn't shoot for months. And as a result, I started focusing only on the post-production

side of things and editing. And what I learned very quickly was how to make things a lot more efficient. I got a lot faster with editing to the point where it's like, okay, now this system has gotten a lot better with this sense. So like, that's, I guess, one thing that you also have to learn running your business is how you can pivot and adapt and then leverage that for the future. but to the point workplace injury you're killing me yeah I know sorry

I didn't you come up with that I don't know why I said it was not a workplace it was not a workplace injury oh my god man if an insurance company ever like listen to this like he's talking out of his astro

not workplace dario kicked me he dropped the sandbag on his knee and tore his ACL yeah right but anyway the whole point is like now

you got to figure out how to like be efficient business be organized and then you know like for us continue creating the content that we're doing slowly grow the businesses you know like and see kind of where it goes so yeah yeah but yeah they're all well well oiled machines at this point like all three to the point where i'm like only get better i'm just like what can i do now i feel like i'm getting bored a little bit i'm trying to think of a new business idea to start because he's already things are all these think well podcast is running fine like it's easy to do doesn't take up a lot of time

Silver leaf is pretty much fine right now and now wait till we start getting a lot more clients that's that's when things will get things will keep us well worry I don't know I'm I'm already drumming up some new ideas maybe a new podcast idea would be cool and different topic I'm tired of talking about the video industry what you want to talk about I don't know. Something else. Movies? I don't know.

Anything other than video. No, movies is still like video related. Nothing video related. He wants to do something just like, he wants to see, this is one of Dario's passion projects. He wants to have, his passion idea of a passion project has nothing to do with what else he does. Yeah. I like challenging myself. He's going to be an espresso connoisseur.

That's what's going to happen, right? Yeah, but I can't do a podcast out of that. And I already figured out espresso's. Oh, yeah. And you can't do that because it's too related to creatives grab coffee now, right? So you've got to do stuff together. And we really need to find a sponsor for this show. I have someone in mind.

I got to try out their beans first. And then if they're good, then I'll approach them. I think beggars can't be choosers when it comes to sponsorship. Well, we don't need it, to be honest with you. So I can't be a cheezer. But, yeah, we have someone in mind. I think it'll be someone is definitely going to be

Toronto based because we've got to represent the Toronto Bean Roasters but someone in mind let's see if it goes through I think you guys will like it try to get you guys like a nice 10% subscription

discount or something yeah but I gotta say it's crazy that we're now here though at 100 episodes of this podcast is definitely wasn't something that I didn't finish the goals for us to get to

there's still more for us to go through you want to go Because I don't know what you said. What did you say again? What did you say your goal was for the business? Well, one of the goals that I was talking about was like focusing more on the marketing and on LinkedIn. Kind of like what some of our other guests have talked about. Like that's probably one of the main things.

Like that's a big thing that we need to focus on. I said the website, potential redesign. There was also staying in touch with past clients. we talked about that already as a goal did you did you say that as part of your marketing yeah yeah yeah I mentioned it as part of the marketing like yeah those are like the main things really like everything else is like mostly small stuff like like oh I guess one thing is it's good we obviously want to keep trying to dip our toes into different industries if possible and just try out different kinds of projects like we did one recently for a tennis client which was a lot

a fun to do. And then I guess that, but aside from that, I think we pretty much covered everything, right? Yeah, we did some stuff. I'm actually looking through my notes because I have like a list on under my Google keep of stuff. We actually did a lot of it already. Yeah. Yeah, it's just really marketing stuff at the end of the thing. The marketing is the main thing that we need to focus on over the next year. Like I think I think what we did with the first, the first half of this year was essentially just focusing on refining our systems, getting the second business up off the ground. That's where a lot more of our focus kind of went to it. Yeah, we fixed up the finance.

Like we looked at, I predicted, I already knew we were on a recession. I just thought the government was finally going to go public with it. So I was like, let's start fixing leakage. Yeah. Anywhere we could. It's my balls. That's a casino reference for the uninitiated. Yeah, so we did fix up our finances, like quite a bit, like a lot.

Like we went through everything that we were spending money on. It's like, is this needed? Is this needed? Okay, put a cap on equipment for the year. This, that the other thing. That's one thing a lot of businesses need to make sure that they're able to do is make sure there's a good cash flow in your business because there's nothing worse than like being strapped for cash when you absolutely need it.

You know, like don't overextend yourself if you can. Otherwise, you might need to start a second business, right? Yeah. An 8.99% APR got them good. Yeah, yeah. We did the partnership, which is the goal. We did the life insurance, insurance, which is another goal. We did quite, honestly, when you think about it, the first thing was.

We cleaned up our Google Drive, which was like, I was looking at. I'm like, this thing is disgusting. We got to clean this out. Yesterday, I finally finished it. I'm like, we went from like 12, 12 main folders to, like. Yeah, six. Carol was like, what did you do? You've deleted this, deleted that.

I'm like, you haven't opened that document in three years. You were never going to reopen it. I'm like, it's gone. Yeah, yeah. No, that's come about basically also, like, as we mentioned, like from what we learned doing the second business. Like how efficient do we need to make the business to the business organization here? This is it? Okay, great.

Let's see how we can apply it to the main one and then just kind of take it. If you guys haven't opened a document in over a year, just delete it. You're never going to use it again. I'm telling you. You know what that reminds me of? It reminds me of this one, this one meme I saw where, like, someone said that after vacation when they come back, they delete their entire inbox and they say, like, why did you do that?

It's like, if it's really important, they will get back to me again. When I heard that, I'm like, oh, that's, that was work in, like, the corporate world because I know, like, any time we come back from vacation, my wife, her inbox is flooded with so many emails and I'm like, yeah, like, I think that would be a great thing to implement. So one thing we learned from that, too, is that if they're on vacation and you email them and they haven't gone back to you, just follow up because they probably deleted that whole unread email list.

Yeah, yes. The, oh, archiving too. I don't think a lot of people do this. if you use Google Drive or Dropbox back it up back up all the documents I do once a week backups now because like imagine

like a lot of it is on Google Drive for us and I was like fuck if we lose this like there goes all of our proposals all the accounting sheets and everything I back up the whole folder minus like the client thing that has all like the video footage and stuff that one I don't back up

because that's already backed up separately but massive files every other document thing is backed up like the same way you back up your website you should be backing up your Google Drive folder because what if it goes down, right? Yep. Also uploaded that on

Dropbox as well just to have like a separate copy somewhere else but backing up was archiving was something we were really needing to do on like not just footage but like the whole business as a whole. Digitizing receipts, stuff like that. We'd started doing that this year. trying to find new freelancers is

a bit of a pain in the ass I don't know what we're going to do for that found a couple but there's do you still need more I thought it was going to be a lot easier than it ended up being sorry I thought it was going to be a lot easier but it ended up being a lot harder than I I don't know why you thought it would

I don't know why you thought it would be easier well I figured like it's an ongoing videographers I was like yeah but for the videographers I figured I'm like I got 150, 150 people applied. 10 of them, at least, right? 10. I'm not asking for a lot.

I'm asking for 10. We got two. He's asking for, what was it, 10%-ish? Yeah. Yeah, like something. Like, the people that applied, like, most, like, we nerded down to 30, and it's all big-time DPs. And I'm like, bruh, you've seen my website.

I don't do movies. I don't do the commercials. There's one of those classic things where it's like you're too overqualified. qualified for this position. Yeah, it's like, oh, now I understand why, like, McDonald's one higher someone with a PhD. It's like, why would I bring you in? Like, I'm looking for someone that fresh out of high school, you know, like what I need? If you want to swat a fly, if you want a swat a fly swat or you don't need a bazooka, you know, it's one of those things. You don't need to level your house to get this. But that's a bad sign. When I saw all those

things, I'm like, oof, oof, that's not a good sign. If the D.P. is out of work and they're applying to I'm not saying we're like low grade but it's like like you do Nike stuff you're applying to like what we do like Fortune 500 stuff like what like this makes sense wait are you saying that we're the Fortune 500 no like I mean we do like corporate stuff like corporate corporate you know like I'm talking Fortune 5 million maybe like AGMs AGMs webinars like you do Nike commercials like why are you applying for this and it's like man if they're out of of work and they're getting desperate, think about how many people work under a DP. That means those guys are also out of work, which was a bad sign from what I saw. Yeah, there's a whole

department that some people don't realize that that goes under the, that goes under them, yeah. Yeah, I was like, ooh, that's not a good sign. Not good. But anyways, the point is figure out how you can keep yourself going. Having longevity in this business is like people don't realize like how important it is and you got to make time to focus on that. It's less over. Cut the fat, yeah, 100%. You know, get rid of those studios if you don't need them, you know. Studios.

Even something as simple as like downgrading your storage locker. Like we save 100 bucks a month because of that. We went from like 300 to 100 each because that's what it was getting to. Oh, they raised. Oh, yeah. Yeah, they were going to raise it on us. So we went for, yeah, because like if you have like a 10 by 10 foot. lockers see if you can put that cut that down in half like one of the genius things we did was like

we did we had a 10 by 10 and then we got a 5 by 5 each that's closer to us it's like perfect this is maximizing everything well cutting our cost by 40% that's essentially what we were able to yeah we went from yeah you're right oh wow I thought it was just a hundred dollar difference no no because it was getting to like 3 30 I think uh with the cost and they wanted to raise it a bit more and I think My locker costs about $95, $90, $90. Mine is $39 or something, yeah. Yeah, so look, $180, so that's like about $150 being saved right there. Oh, man, like, I was so happy when we did that switch.

I was like, because number one, like, we lived in different parts of the city, so it was like. Well, before I made sense because we were close. Right in the middle. Yeah, it was right in the middle for us. And yeah, I moved and then it just became like way too much of a distance for me to travel to. And also, like, it was getting sketchy, you know? Like, that's the thing I don't like about storage locker. Lockers, there's

always, like, sketchy people in storage lockers. Even in my current one, like, you go out certain times and you're like, oh yeah, when I went to yours. Who comes here? Like, no, bro, any storage locker. I've been through like four storage locker. So, knock on, mine has been great so far. Go at different times, man.

Like, you'll see characters there. You're like, I'm sharing it with them. Like, it's so sketchy. Like, a long term, I would love to just long term i would love to just not have a storage locker because like i just don't like who shows up at times uh but yeah like definitely do what we did switch yeah like that's like a creative way like even if we were like a one-man operation that's actually a pretty clever way to save costs like have two five-by-fives if you have like a 10 by 10 especially like in our

situation like our 10 by 10 the reason we we went to two five-by-fives is because we were really just using five by ten of the space like well well what we did there was a couple things one we were actually using about half the actual space that we had there the middle was just like a place where we could walk in so you could see everything right like we're just storing garbage i think we went through like item inventory too we're like spring we did spring cleaning basically we're like yeah yeah because i remember one time i went there and it was like after having to go there against my will i was looking at it and i was like we don't need half of this shit like half of this stuff is like garbage or like we don't use it anymore we haven't touched in

years yeah yeah and so yeah we sold a lot of stuff let's get rid of it man yeah and it's been great yeah that and then you know we made some money from the stuff we sold as well that was nice because just gathering dust yeah so figure anyway whatever you do in your business, figure out how to trim the fat, be nimble, stay organized, plan for the future.

That is our podcast. It's a good podcast. Yeah, 100 episodes, though, this is great. Like I mentioned before, I didn't expect that we would be creating this

to get to this point. But, I mean, we're technically already over 100. You have low hopes here. You've got to be optimistic. Look, when we started this back,

in 2020, I just wanted us to get some work to come through the front door. I was not thinking, yeah, this is going to be the thing that we'll get it to 100 episodes and then we'll see where it goes. If anyone's thinking of starting their own, because I talk to people at times

and they're like, oh yeah, I'm thinking of starting my own. Like, do it for the fun of it, but it is very time-consuming. Like, yeah. It is going to, like, if you want to, like, I'm not saying like, like, there were a couple of times that we're going to drop this one. Just, uh, because we're just getting busy. I'm like, man, we're not really putting in the effort for it.

But like, it's fun. It is very time-consuming. Don't do it. Don't do it to make money. Then I think that's what a lot of people make the mistake of doing. They do these. We made money indirectly. Like, surprisingly, like, yeah, don't do it for the money because you won't.

Like, we happen to make money out of the. because of the connections we made that's it yeah but like we weren't I never expect to make like every time we get a project out of this I'm like oh I didn't expect it but it's nice that we have it just bonus stuff yeah like it's kind of paid for itself in a way considering the amount of time we put into the show yeah but it's been really fun and I got to say the lessons that we've learned were worth way more than how much it cost to make the show because it helped us grow from small company to a pretty decent size company and we're like a player on the field officially which is rare it's hard to break into that

so it really helped i think the only reason we're really continuing it is just because might learn something that might make us more money that's really it there's there's that yeah it's all it's all learning game and you know it's fun and it's a good way to connect with other people in the industry and just like see what works for other people because it's like yeah like there are ideas that are brought up and experiences that are just so interesting to hear and you know it's good to do something where you can be curious about i think that's the thing if you want to do a podcast find something that you're genuinely curious about because if you're not curious about it then that podcast is destined to die because then you're not going to dive in further and further

like figure out who you want to learn from figure out what you want to learn about and I mean I think that's a bit of everything even like even starting as a business well this this thing technically is a business when you if you look at it that way yeah but it won't be easy to sell because you know again it's the attention well the difference is that it's all following right when you have a everyone wants to they want to sell it I can't I'm cool with just closing it in the future to be honest to me all three businesses just close it It's meant for you and me, man. Like, it's meant for us to do, to create good work together, you know, collaborate and, you know, have fun essentially, right?

And provide mainly. Provide mainly for the future, for future families, you know, because right now we're, right now our two families are two and two. We knows where it will get to, right? And hopefully like these two to three businesses technically will help provide for us for many, many years to come. That's the goal. cool all right let's send it off there yeah thanks everyone for listening thanks for staying with us for 100 episodes and here are still those of you that did stay those of you that didn't too bad it's sayanara see you in the next podcast thanks take care thanks for listening to this

episode of creatives grab coffee please make sure to follow and engage with us on instagram TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, and your favorite podcast app. Creatives Grab Coffee is created by LAPS Productions, a video production company based in Toronto, Canada. Creators Grab Coffee is also sponsored by... My name is Maran. Welcome to Canada Film Equipment. We are a boutique rental house based in Toronto. We are here to help you guys out with all production sizes. Feel free to contact us to get a quote if you are a production house and we're looking for lighting, camera packages,

or lighting and group band packages. You can see our contact information in the link below. You're more than happy to help you guys out. Make sure you follow and subscribe to creatives scrapcoffee.com. Thank you. Hey, what's up everybody? I'm Matt. Welcome to Audio Process.

We are a boutique audio company doing location sound, Sound design, post-sound, ADR, fully, we service equipment, we do all your audio needs here in Toronto. We got you covered. Come on down, audio process.com. Don't forget to like, follow, subscribe, and all of the other internet things to creativesgrabcoffee.com. They'll be waiting for you. I'll be waiting for you. And we're all going to have a real good time. Thanks for listening and we'll see you on the next one.