Creatives Grab Coffee - #119 From Free Promo Videos to Tech Launch Videos (ft. LV Productions)

Episode Date: September 3, 2026

Vlad Lapich of LV Productions on going from free promo videos to tech launch videos, rebuilding his website with AI, automating proposals, why cold email died, SEO vs Google Ads, scaling post production, and what to do when a client stops paying.Chapters:0:00 Intro0:38 From Belarus to San Francisco: photographer turned videographer2:06 Free promo videos and the Instagram DM that changed everything4:46 Wearing five hats at a startup, then going solo7:21 GPT-3 cold emails and the first big clients8:13 The team: freelance editors, animators, and DPs8:52 The bottleneck: scaling post without losing quality12:12 Junior prep, senior storytelling: the editing pipeline14:44 Paying editors: hourly vs per project, and picky clients17:30 Rebuilding the website in a week with Cursor22:03 AI for lead intake, proposals, and Video Galaxy27:41 Pricing on the website and the proposal tool30:04 Cold email is dead: 80 percent SEO, 20 percent referrals32:22 SEO takes years, and one Google update can undo it34:00 Why Google Ads did not work in San Francisco38:37 Weddings vs corporate at Lapse41:28 Networking for introverts42:11 Premiere vs DaVinci Resolve44:44 Animation: from 10K videos to offshore competition47:43 Goals for the rest of the year50:53 Claude as bookkeeper: margins, salary, and a missed invoice54:08 LLC vs corporation59:02 Clients who do not pay1:03:46 Invoicing: 50/50 deposits and net terms1:06:38 The story behind the name LV ProductionsCreatives Grab Coffee is produced by Lapse Productions, a Toronto video production company.

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

So I like to start these episodes off with just like a little history lesson of the guest. So just tell us about who you are and how you got into the video production scene and a little bit about your company. So I got into this whole industry about nine years ago. I moved to San Francisco from Belarus. and one of the few things that moved with me back then was a camera, a photo camera. So I used to be a photographer. And I was taking photos, but it was kind of hard to make money with it because there's so many good photographers already in San Francisco.

And I figured, okay, I'm just going to start making videos instead of taking photos. So I got into videography. I bought the Sony A7 camera, which just came out back then, I believe. And I started taking videos, posting them on my Instagram. And at the same time, I was working a full-time job at a restaurant as a server. And I was just doing the videography thing for fun. And then one day, my friend came up to me and he said, hey, man, the videos you make and post an IG are pretty cool.

You should start doing like promo videos for businesses. And I thought, okay, this is actually. a good idea. And what I started doing, I watched this guy on YouTube. I think his name was Daniel Schiffer or something like that. And he was making videos for restaurants, for different businesses, cool promo videos. And I wanted to do the same thing. So I just started walking into different businesses in San Francisco. I would walk into restaurants. I would walk into car dealerships. And I would ask them, hey, can I make a free video for you? Just so I can post it in my portfolio and you can posted wherever you want for your marketing purposes. And I started doing that. I was doing that for a while

and nobody would reach out to me for more videos. Nobody would need more videos afterwards. And so I kept working at the restaurant and then one day a dude DM'd me on Instagram and his name was Dom Holland. He was the CEO of a tech company of a he was a he was was a founder of a tech company in San Francisco and he said, hey man, I saw the videos you posted Instagram. I want to hire you as a videographer full-time for my company. And this is when I said, fuck yeah, finally this paid off. And I quit the restaurant job and I joined that startup to become a full-time videographer. Nice. That's quite the journey already. I mean, but I like how you had that like salesman instinct because like to walk,

into like different places even if you're doing it for free like it's it's tough you know like I would have a lot of trouble doing that I I didn't know any other way to do this this is the first thing that came up to my mind actually I tried to um cold emailing a bunch of places too I think that landed me a few portfolio examples but yeah the whole the whole point is that I was first making these videos free until someone noticed them and gave me a job Yeah, the other thing too is that I don't, I haven't met a lot of photographers that switch to video. That's also very rare. Like, I've met some videographers that went into photography, but the other way is like very, very, very rare.

Yeah. I guess there's a lot of things that are cross-related between photography and videography, like framing, lighting, camera and lens knowledge. but I think videography is much harder because there are so many things, so many more things that you need to control. You need to control the focus. You need to control the movement, et cetera. And then editing, a whole another kind of industry thing. The whole other skill set, right?

Yeah. So tell me what happened after you joined the company because now you're doing your own thing. So when I joined the company, I, um, I was wearing many hats at the same time. When I joined the company, they told me, okay, the first thing you need to do is you need to make her launch video. And I started trying to figure out how to make a launch video because I only did promo videos before with no actors, with no locations. So pretty much I was there producer, director, videographer and editor at the same time. time and I was also figuring out the marketing side where this video is going to be

published and for example are they going to go on YouTube ads are they going to go on Instagram ads etc so I was writing scripts for videos I was hiring actors booking locations filming everything myself editing everything myself and then also doing part of the distribution of these videos online and that happens a lot in startups they hire you for one role but you actually need to replace five people and where that is five titles. So I was working there for two years and the videos I was making were performing really well, especially on Twitter.

Some of them were going viral and I started getting a lot of DMs from other tech companies on Twitter or marketing CMOs and Twitter asking me to make a video for their startup as well. And I kind of saw that. as an opportunity to start my own business and I quit that startup and I opened my own LLC and I started just making videos for other companies and then that lasted for like a month and after a month they realized that okay now it's kind of hard to get more clients because I already did video for everyone who damed me on Twitter what do I do next and so that was back when chat GPT didn't even exist.

It was called GPT3 back then. It was like a research demo. And I called email the founder of the co-founder of OpenAI. His name is Ilya. And he gave me beta access to GPT3. And I built a tool with GPT3 that would automate cold email marketing for me. And this is how I got some of my biggest clients probably through cold email marketing. I was just blasting this.

How long ago was this? How long ago? That was 2022, I believe. Okay. Four years ago. And nobody knew about GPT back then. Nobody knew about AI, LLMs, etc. And so I had CEOs of very big companies respond to my emails.

And they were thinking that I personally did research in their company and I personally wrote this email to them, but it was actually AI that did that. It's just nobody knew that AI can do these things. Right, right. Interesting. So, yeah, I got a lot of clients this way. And yeah, that's kind of how I launched my business. Nice.

And then, like, what point are you at now? Like, what's your team size like? Team size. Well, I only have freelancers on my team. I have three motion graphics artists, three editors. And then for the videographers, I have, well, yeah, I have like three DPs that I usually work with. And then everybody else I hire based on the demand.

For example, if it's a TV commercial that we are producing, obviously, it will need like a 20-person crew and another director. and maybe another producer. Well, I mean, going from yourself to like where you are now and everything, like what were someone like the the hills you had to climb in a way, right? Because even like I imagine like when you started that AI email marketing campaign, like, sure you're getting a lot of people coming through the door, but trying to scale your business a little tricky at times, right?

So when I left the startup, I already had a team that I was working with. And so I kind of took that team with me. And that was a really good team. And it was cutting it for a while for me. But right now I'm reaching this point where I need to grow the team. And I need to hire more editors because my main editor, the one I'm working with ever since I was at the startup, he's loaded with work from me. And he doesn't have enough time to work on all the projects.

So I'm trying to figure out at the moment, how do I scale it so that the quality of the videos we output does not go down, but the speed at which we output these videos becomes faster because some of the start the thing with startups and startups are the majority it's like 90% of my customer base they usually need videos within two weeks maybe sometimes even one week so they come to you and they say hey we need a launch video and you have to figure out what this launch video is going to look like what is the script then you need to film it and then you need to edit it and all this needs to happen within like one to two weeks sometimes So it's challenging time-wise, but yeah, I'm still trying to figure out what's the best pipeline for this.

I guess you're going to probably need to hire someone in-house at some point then. Maybe. But, yeah, I think so. I just, I'm having issues with vetting the right editors. I don't know. Maybe you have some experience you can share about this. I wish Carol was on this podcast episode because he's been, he's in charge of like hiring like the editors on our team.

But like we're in a similar spot ourselves where like the split we have is I'll handle a lot of a lot of like the sales and business development and producing stuff and Kirol's been handling a lot of the creative and editing. Aside we've been doing more in-house editing this year just to lower our costs and whatnot.

But we are getting to the point where like he needs help so we've been using other people. Especially for the new wedding company we started. We've had to bring on like two editors to help with the workload on that front. And I think what he was telling me is that he's just, it takes a while. It's not like you just give him a document.

It's not like with Claude. You just give it a document with the instructions and you just get another handoff document. I don't understand everything. You kind of have to like work with them on the first couple and like work out the kinks and everything. So it's slow from what I've been seeing. But once you have someone.

And I don't know how it works with wedding video production, but with my type of videos, it's kind of documentary style, case study style videos, interviews. There's levels to this edit, right? So the first cut or the first part of this process can be done by a very junior editor because usually they just need to watch through the footage. they need to cut out all the fluff, they only need to keep the parts that make sense for the marketing team, only the right phrases. Then they need to go through all the bureau. They need to prep the bureau.

So they're going to cut the bureau clips. They're going to stabilize them, and they're going to group them by folders. Not by folders, but they need to group them. For example, this is the outside bureau, This is the Indoorse Bureau. This is the Bureau of People. This is Bureau with Computers, et cetera.

And so when this is done, what the senior editor needs to do is he just needs to come in, and he needs to take this Lego blocks that the previous junior editor already put in the right bins, and he needs to take these Lego blocks. And he just needs to build a story out of this, a story that makes sense from the marketing standpoint. So I think this is the pipeline that ideally I'm trying to. to build right now. Yeah, because I feel like this way, the editing is going to be much faster and it's easier to scale because it's harder to find senior videographers for every project, but it's easier

to find many junior videographers colleges with the prep and then you need to like one or two senior editors to do the storytelling. Yeah, yeah. We have an almost identical process for our stuff, even with the wedding side too, with the corporate it's it's been like that that's where we applied the same thing to the weddings um but yeah like for our stuff i i think like we usually like if kirol doesn't have the capacity we'll just hand for corporate we'll just hand off the whole thing to like one of the editors we trust the only issue i'm i'm finding on the producing side is just the cost for those guys is higher so it really eats

into the margins but it's kind of like again if we're too busy like it's just one of those things we have to do. But yeah, it's tricky to find someone that's like really good, senior, but also not eating too much into your margins. What are you paying the editors? It depends on the project. We usually get like a custom quote. But like, again, I can't, I don't know.

It depends on the project. Like usually I'll reach out to them and say, hey, it's this type of video. He's a reference. And then I'll get a number from them. I usually don't do the project. per project quote. I usually just tell them, okay, log your hours and give me your hourly rate and bill me at the end of the project based on the hourly rate.

Okay, but then how do you, how do you like, I'm guessing you kind of know what it's going to cost though, right, total? Yeah, but sometimes I miss. Okay, I was going to say, what if you missed? Yeah, sometimes I miss and I just have to eat the cost. but most of the time I estimate it correct okay that's good because yeah like

I remember like when we're first meeting with people like new people they're always like giving us the hourly and I was like I don't know like but you know it could be like could take you 100 hours it could take you 10 hours I need to know like an all in price roughly but we're good to our people too like if it goes over like I give them like a little bit extra right to make up for it yeah but here's the thing there's different

who have different requirements. For example, I have some clients that I gave the quote that for example, okay, this project will take 20 editing hours total. And it took 15 hours total instead of 20 and they paid for 20. There's another client who has exactly the same project and I give them the same quote, but it takes 40 hours instead of 20. Just because this client is so picky and wants so many changes that it's, it just takes longer. But what I'm going to do, I'm just going to build this client more for the next project. Oh, you do it like that?

Because we offer like two rounds of revisions. Yeah. And then we let them know if it goes past that, like, it's going to be additional. We don't always do it. But I feel like if you're doubling your editing time, like, wouldn't it make sense to charge them extra for it? It makes sense to factor it into the next one. but I usually I usually do this as well but sometimes I um I kind of let it go. If I know that this is a worthy client and if there's potential for them to become a recurring client.

Yeah, I do that too. Yeah, Carol and I sometimes have but heads on that. I'm like, no, no, it might come back. You never know. If it comes back, it kind of makes up for it anyways. So yeah. Um, I, I was checking out your website and I really like how you did it. Do you use like AI to make your website as well? Yeah, so before, I built my first website myself back when I just got into videography and it was built on Wix. And I spent a lot of time figuring out how to build websites on Wix. I figured it out. I built it.

And then eventually I realized, okay, this website is not good enough. I need another one. And so I hired a Webflow developer. And he built my website on Webflow. And I spent, I think, like 5K on that website back then. And back then, it was a lot of money for me because I was not making that much money. So I spent around 5K on my website. I, yeah, I spent a lot of time designing it as well.

It looked quite similar to the one I have right now. but it was just not as nice. And it was pretty slow also. And then eventually I hired an SEO guy who helps me with marketing to make sure my website shows up on Google. And he said, yeah, dude, you need to rebuild your website because your website is slow as hell. And I went to my developer and I said, okay, you need to make it faster. And he said, I can't make it faster.

This is as fast as it can be. So I fired him. I figured out how to use cursor, which is the AI coding. software and I just rebuild the whole thing myself in a week and it's probably the fastest website you'll find from a video production company right now because I spent a few days just optimizing and make sure it's real fast nice it's a so um so it's not like WordPress it's it's called cursor that thing you it's it's it's not a it's not a platform for building websites it's literally code it's like a bunch of code written by

AI and I just told the AI how to build it. Yeah, yeah. So I did our first website too and it was it was not good, but I'm not like a web designer, right? Even though I like I tried to learn how to make it on on WordPress. I still don't know 100%. But yeah, I read I recently redid all three websites including the podcast one using Claude and it's it's like a game changer. Like I was like yeah.

Oh my god, where was this tool when I was first starting out? Like, it's it's incredible. Claude is good, but cloud is not as flexible as using the actual coding software. Because the coding software, it can create different files on your computer and connect different APIs. And yeah, you have, it's the same as having like a engineering team working for you. but instead of it being people is just AI. Interesting. Okay.

I think after the show, I'm going to like ask you some more questions about that. But what was that going to say? Yeah, the other thing I was thinking about recently, because now that I finished off like, you know, fixing the web, I revamped the whole website. And I was like, what can I do next? And I was like, I know in a couple weeks I'm going to look at it and say,

oh, it can be improved and everything. Because right now I'm still in like the honeymoon. face it, I'm like, oh, finally, it looks like what I imagined, like, 10 years ago. I was actually thinking, like, hey, what I should do now is find other websites of video guys or whatever, or other industries too that I like, and then create like a reference document, say, like, what can we do that looks as nice as these websites with ours? But we'll leave that for later. Yeah, you can do that with Claude Design Tool.

So I think actually what I did when I rebuilt my website from zero is I sent a link to my website and I actually put in Claude design and I said, okay, this is my website, make something similar to this. But no, you know what I did? I exported it from Webflow. I exported all the raw code so it could see the actual website with code. And I gave it to Claude and then Cloud redesigned it for me. And then I just downloaded that. So cloud design just the main page.

But if you go through my website, you'll see there's like, I don't know, 20 pages, maybe 50 pages. I don't even know. And so I had to kind of build all of these pages programmatically based on what Claude gave me, based on that template. Interesting. Okay. So you use the, I mean, you're probably one of the first people to use AI to really run your business. you did it with the email marketing. What else do you use it for?

Obviously, the website, but what else? I use it for proposal automation. So whenever I use it for lead intake. For example, if you fill out a form on my website, it first goes through the spam filter. So if AI detects the spam, it's just not going to give me this lead because I get a lot of spam. I get a lot of people reaching out and saying, hey, we are providing voiceover services or, hey, do you want to go to our online casino, stuff like this?

Yeah. And so I have AI spam filter for this. And then I have another automation that drafts the response email in my Gmail. So that whenever I receive a lead, I receive a notification on my phone for Telegram app. And then I also, I'm also getting a drafted email inside my Gmail that I can just open right away, tweak it and send. And then I do use AI for proposal automation. So I created in a cloud tool that has all my pricing, has other proposal examples. And so I tell it, for example, okay, this is going to be a project in Seattle.

is going to take one filming day and they need three deliverable videos and it will require, for example, for a person, crew. And it calculates everything. It calculates the travel to Seattle and back. It calculates the editing hours. And then it builds a complete proposal that I can just email to the client. They can open in their browser and sign it, read through it and sign. it if they want to proceed with a project.

Okay. So that tool was also built with AI. I also use AI for, so I built this thing called Video Galaxy with a colleague. And what it is, it's pretty much a video library from LinkedIn launch videos. So whenever we find a video that we like on LinkedIn, For example, a startup video from tech company, we add this to this thing called Video Galaxy. It analyzes it with AI. And it adds specific tags to it.

For example, it can be 2D animation, case study video, TV commercial, etc. It analyzes the video. It classifies it by tags. And then whenever we're looking for references for a different project, for example, if we have a new client from the construction industry, we just go to this platform. we type in construction as a tag and will show us all of the construction videos from startups from the tech industry. Always. So just to confirm, it's not your videos. It's like everyone's video so you can use it as references.

Exactly. Yeah. So so that so that's easier to find references in case we have a project. Right, right, right. Interesting. Yeah, because I use frame. I created like a brochure on French. and I just go and I pick out the right link each time. But yeah, sometimes they ask for stuff that we don't have. So I'm in like this weird in-between space with those conversations where it's like, I might not have exactly what you're looking for, but here's a similar one. But then I know sometimes they can't make the connection to see like, oh, okay. For example, it's a law firm testimonial video they need.

I have like accounting firm testimonial video, but they can't make the connection that it's the same thing, just different industry. Yeah, I'm very transparent with them that these are not the videos. If I do show it to the client, I'm going to tell them, hey, this is not our video. This is the video that this company posted on LinkedIn. We did not produce it. But this is just a reference because sometimes, yeah, they reach out and they say, okay, we need a video for, I don't know, a chemical lab. And we've never done videos for chemical labs.

And they want to see what it might look like. Like, what are there options? I used to produce TV commercials, and for TV commercials, there's a tool called, let me see. I think I spot TV. So they collect all of the TV commercials that get aired around the U.S. And I believe North America in general. So whenever you're producing a TV commercial, you can go there and you can find references. but there is nothing similar for tech companies and startups.

What was it called? Ispot TV? Ispot.tv. That's actually pretty useful too. Yeah, I like that user for proposals because I actually have to catch up on a few proposals after this call. And like I did create like an updated template and everything, but I'm still going in and fixing this stuff.

But I think I'm just going to like feed it like the inputs and just say like, hey, just do it for Like, because it has a template. I just need to give it like the inputs at this point. I don't know why I was still doing it manually, but it's really useful. How do you feel about like, do you have your pricing live on the website at all? Or is it just in the link you send them? I have some references on my website. For example, if someone goes to like a case study video production page,

it will tell them, okay, it costs anywhere between $5,000 and $15,000, let's say. But the actual cost is estimated based on. the client requirements because some clients need one filming day and they have a one month turnaround some clients have three filming days for one testimonial video and they have one week turnaround so obviously the second option is going to be on the higher end but i have kind of i have the instructions at the claw tool that knows all these details when to bill hire for editing, when to bill higher for the actual filming, et cetera. And it just builds me the right proposal.

And if not, I'll adjust it the way I need to. Yeah, I actually, I created like a calculator tool as well for the, the pricing. I did make it public because I was, I actually tried it out on the wedding website first. And I was saying that a lot of people liked it because I was finding that on a lot of those calls with them, I was having to customize a package for them. And I was like, why don't I just let them do it come to me when they already know their number, right? And I was like, oh, and I got really great reception. So I was like, let's try it out for corporate as well. And

clients have been loving it. But it also helped me like figure out some of like my cost of mine. Because like, for example, for editing, I was like, I think we were like kind of guesstimating each time, like what we can charge or like what we should charge for the project. whereas I was like we don't really have like a set in stone like this type of project that you know for what it would be like should be this price right so I had Claude go over like all the invoices from the last two years and like look at all the editing line items and then come up with a number based on that and I was like okay that that works that's pretty much good now at least we know going forward into a project like roughly it would start at this and then go up so that was that was really helpful yeah What else? Do you still do those email marketing campaigns? I don't. I tried doing them a few.

Well, I think I tried doing them a year ago. And I tried doing them half a year ago again. And I saw a no return investment from these. So I just dropped it. There's too much. I kind of understand why it's not working anymore because there's too much AI spam going around. And now it's just not worth it.

in my opinion to call emailing. So what do you relying more so on now? Is it like SEO, referrals? I would say 80% SEO and 20% referrals. Yeah, it's the same. I would say it's about the same split with us as well. Yeah, I was even debating, like, maybe trying out cold calling this year, but I'm like, I feel like no one really answers their phone nowadays either.

Like, I know on my iPhone, I have the filter on where it's like, it's an unknown number or like someone that I don't have as a contact that immediately goes to like an AI machine that asks like who they are and then I'll let them know if I want to chat with them or not yeah um I tried cold calling it didn't work out for me hmm yeah it's it's a little tricky um what else uh what else have you got planned for this year uh uh like project wise um I have very busy September. I'm filming a lot of stuff in September. Every week I'm filming in San Francisco, some vlogs, some launch videos, some case study videos. So yeah, just the whole

September is booked for the rest of the year. There's no plans yet, but most likely I'm going to look at with projects as well because I've been ever since I rebuilt my website. I getting a lot more leads from it, especially from the SEO side of the website. Yeah, I think it's working because that's how I found you. I think you were either page one or page two, one or on the top of the Google map pack, right? So it's definitely working. I think SEO is great. It just took so many years to get to the first page because I started doing it the moment

I built my first website eight years ago. and it's all optimization and trying new things and seeing if they work. And with SEO, the problem is that you can try a new thing. You can build a completely new website, but you're not going to know if it worked for like three more months after you did it. Yeah. Sometimes even longer too. Like they might release an update and then.

That's what happened to me a year ago. So exactly a year. I was doing good a year ago. I was getting like 3,000 views. from the different pages on my website. And then one day Google releases an update and it drops down to like 500. It drops six times. And I stopped getting leads completely.

Yeah. Yeah, we had a similar thing happen at the end of, I think at the end of 2023. Like, they did something like around December time. And then I was like, well, what's going? Because we were like at the top of page two for video production Toronto and like trailing the bottom of page one. life was good we're getting leads and everything and then i don't know what it took like months it took us like six months to work out of that hole um now we're going back up i think we're still fluctuating a bit but i did do a lot of changes to the website and and now at least it's finally like optimized the way

it should have been from the beginning but again i'm i'm not a coder so i didn't know to do all this stuff and everything you know it's it's hard when you don't know yeah um do you do uh google adwords I tried that and Google Ads didn't work for me. Okay. Why would you say it didn't work for you? So I think I spent like one or $2,000 on it and all the leads I got were fake leads. So someone would just, I guess the competition sends the fake leads to your Google ads. So you waste your budget and stop doing it.

Yeah, it was really weird. I was getting just some weird gibberish text inside the lead form that comes from Google Ads. Interesting. Okay. Were you like, did you optimize it properly or? I did. I actually hired someone to do this for me. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah. Sorry, go ahead. The quality of these leads I got for $2,000. They were completely worthless. Because we, like, I've been in charge of the Google ads. And at the time, like, again, I was just, I got a lot of things I'm doing. So I didn't learn the whole platform the way you probably should have. We were getting leads and everything.

But I recently went through it with Claude a couple months back. And we reworked the whole campaign. And it was telling me, it was really interesting to, like, feed it the information from the campaign and have it, like, tell me how like, no, you, you weren't optimizing. for this. So you spent money like it was telling me like stats on like oh, you spent this much money on these keywords that aren't related and they went nowhere because they even fed it all like the contacts that came in. So that was really interesting to see that. I was like, I lost a lot of money on my own doing that. But at the end of the day, the website was getting clicks. So I think it was at least helping on the SEO side or it's like getting some engagement. But what was your cost per click? Because that is one of the biggest deciding factor in whether Google ads. will work for you or now is the region where your business is operating. In San Francisco, it's around $50 per click for video production companies. Okay. Yeah.

I wish I knew off the top of my head. It did tell me that information. It's in one of the chats. I'd have to go look for it. Or I can just prompt it to tell me what it was. But yeah, like we're like right now, like the way it's set up, I have to. it was interesting because before I was like

okay I guess just getting clicks on the website will be good because then it'll boost the homepage because if it's getting attention then I'll help the SEO signals go up and whatever but right now it's basically been setting it up so that we can again I might be butchering

this because I'm not an adwords guy like I'm doing adwords with an assistant that's helping me but basically it's we're trying to optimize a campaign for like conversion actions. I forget what the exact term for that thing would be because it's basically we're trying to trigger

the conversion action of someone going to the contact form and submitting it, right? Yeah, yeah. So when it goes to the thank you page, that's when that thing gets triggered. So it's trying to optimize for those types of leads. Again, guys, I'm butchering this. I just started with this whole Claude Edwards thing

a couple of weeks ago. So I was trying to figure that out. I've been having some issues with it, though, where it's like we still haven't gotten the conversion actions to trigger. But it should have by now because it's been about two months. So I don't know if there's some issue with the code. I have to review it again. We went through a couple times. But, yeah, like it's, I don't know.

I don't know. I don't know where I was going with that. But, yeah, it's better than when I was doing it on my own, essentially. Okay. Yeah, right now, I don't want to try Google ads because this SEO is doing good, and I would rather keep spending money on that because it works better for my case. Yeah. I think even if we do, you know, knock on wood, we do end up on the homepage at some point. Like, I would still keep it going, but I would probably like drop the budget by a lot. Like right now we're doing about. 20 bucks a day. But then it's also mirrored on Bing. So it's like 40 total.

I think if we ever get to the first page, I would probably drop it down to like 10 bucks a day total, maybe. What would you say is the percentage of the videos that you make that are wedding videos versus corporate? I would say, well, we do way more corporate. Like the wedding thing was really just a side business we started. like that the wedding company is like I would say maybe like a quarter of what we

less than a quarter of what we do with with LAPS like LAPS is still like the bread and butter really the wedding company was just a way for us to stop freelancing for other people and just do our own thing and just have like a nice little thing on the side because you know God forbid something bad happens with LAPS at least we could we could survive pretty well on the other one right that was the whole point of it so yeah corporate is still like the main main thing we do we produce a lot of

corporate content. Because for weddings, for example, we have like 28 couples this year. Yeah. We had, we had 12, no, 11 last year when we started. We're at 28. I think we're going to cap it at 30 next year and not go past that. Okay. Because based on my knowledge, I think it would be easier to scale wedding video side

with Google ads because there is a lot more people searching for wedding videos. There's a lot more consumers for this niche versus corporate videos. Yeah. I have a campaign running for Silver Leaf as well, yeah. Okay. But yeah, it's interesting. Obviously, if it works for you, then just keep putting more money in it because if it's working, then why not? Yeah, it's, again, I started it around the same time as I fixed up the laps one. And yeah, like every week, what I'll do is I'll just download all the numbers from it, feed it to Claude, say, hey, how's a lot? looking this week anything you think we should do and it'll tell me oh like uh one of them triggered with this keyword or whatever just uh do a negative keyword for that because it doesn't make sense for your stuff and whatnot uh but uh yeah i think for us the adwards is working the SEO is working

because on on the corporate side we're ranking pretty high on google maps we're like one of the top ones for there but not in the regular search regular search i think we're like page three or four um now after, but hopefully a couple weeks, I'll go back up. But, yeah, I'm trying to figure out another way we can, we can find another source of, like, getting leads because, like, it's good that we have Google, like, SEO and we have AdWords, but, like, you know, any moment that could drop, right? Like, all it takes is one update and I don't know,

or it just doesn't like your website for some reason. There's a hiccup in their algorithm and then you get targeted. like and then what do you do right that's the that's the one thing i don't like relying on yeah um everybody tells me that networking is really good i personally it personally doesn't work for me because i i don't know i for me networking is weird but have you tried it i'm i'm a shy guy so i send you're like me you're like i i hate being in those rooms or there's too many people and then i can't hear what people say like i'm like i don't know there's too much noise. Kirol's good for that stuff, so I like to send him out for that.

Yeah. But I gotta start doing that. Like, it's a shame that now, like, no one wants to, like, answer a cold email or a cold call, but that would have been my, like, choice of, like, target, like, just cold call or email. Yeah. Um, let's talk about editing. Which editing software do you use? We use a Premiere. Okay. How do you like it? Again, I don't, I don't really edit. it. I'll do like some little things on the side. I think with the, but Carol, Carol loves it. I mean, like he's been using that since we started. So I don't think we're going to switch. I've told them maybe we could check out resolve because some of the other guys we know like keep telling me like, oh yeah, it's these features and everything. I was like, you know, maybe we check it out. But I know

him. Like once he's using something, he won't migrate away from it. Yeah. I actually started with Final Cut. When I just got into videography, I used to edit in Final Cut. But then I got a Windows PC. And Final Cut is not supported in Windows. So I downloaded Premiere and I started working Premiere. And I swear,

this is the most boggy editing software that I've ever used. It was crashing all the time. Someday I would be editing project for like five hours and then I would crash and lose all the progress. And I would have to start from the beginning.

God. Yeah, and it's gotten better from what I heard. Like, you told me it's gone a lot better because I remember like I was editing a bit to help out like pre-pandemic. And I remember it would crash randomly. You're like, what the hell? Like, yeah. But this is when I also tried Da Vinci. This is when it was about seven years ago.

I think DaVinci just came out with Resolve before it was only color grading software and then they added it. added the editing features. And I started using it and I realized, okay, this app actually has a really good UI. You can easily understand where is the feature that you need. The timeline looks nice. And yeah, I just found it to have better UI than Premiere. And lately they've been adding a lot of really cool features to it, like AI dubbing, AI transcription.

So it has all of the AI features. that Premiere has. The only downside is that it's not that good with animation as After Effects. So whenever we are like me and my editor, we both work in Resolve. But whenever we need to do animations, he has to do them in After Effects and then render them and drop them back to Resolve. You guys do a lot of animations, huh? Yeah.

I have three animators on my team. Yeah, we don't do. too much. But yeah, and I feel like it's hard for me to pitch because the guys we do use, like, they charge us a lot. Or like, I just feel like it ends up, we only do animation projects when they have like a lot of budget to work with, whereas I know some other people are able to do it at much lower costs.

But did you have that issue at the beginning too? Or how did you go about it? So I did a course on animation. I learned how to do 3D animation. And while I was doing that course, I met a guy who also does animation. He does 2D and 3D animation. And I started pitching animated videos to every startup

with called emailing back in the day. I would pitch them launch animated videos. and yeah, they were just paying for it. They loved the quality, and me and this guy were working on these videos together. The cost was not high because I was doing kind of the creative direction part and he was doing the actual animating part of it. But we were charging 6K back in the day

and then we raised the prices. at some point we were charging 10K per video per animated video but then not now there's way too many people that do this kind of this style of animation and they're all in India and

Russia and they charge way less for the same product for the same service so we stopped offering that it's not that profitable anymore like the client going like a lead going direct to the

guys are using a company that has guys in India or Russia or Philippines? Yeah, they go directly to these animators now because back when we started doing these animations these were pretty unique. It was hard to find something of this level but now you can find an animator like this very easy. Really? Okay, okay, I must be looking in the... well I haven't looked to be honestly so I don't know but yeah like I spoke I know some people were using people in like

again like India or Philippines was the main one where they would use like animators there and but they told me they had a lot of communication issues with the people there so they kind of stopped doing that

okay I'm surprised that you had leads or clients that went direct to the source because I don't know maybe they found the ones that have good English they found the good ones yeah We touched on like goals for for the year a little bit.

You kind of told me like what work you got coming up, but what are like your your business goals? You got planned for the remaining, how many months we have left? Another four months left. Yeah, four months. So my goal, business goal right now, are to probably hire, find the right editors

and create a good pipeline for post-production that can output videos within two weeks with no stress on the team. I think that's the biggest goal right now. Okay. Very, very simple, simple but complicated goal. Yeah. What about you? Well, the reason I'm asking is because, like, I'm getting near the end of my goals for the year.

So I'm like, I feel like there's something missing. I need to ask around and see what other people got cooking. but for us like this year I really wanted to revamp the website and I did which I'm very happy with and I know in a month or so I'm going to look at it again and I'm going to go like okay I hate it let's fix it up again but it was that one we I'm still trying to fix the AdWords campaign stuff I feel like some code is messing with how it's reading on Google Adverse so I want to fix that up I do want to create videos for social. Because again, I'm trying to think, like, we got SEO.

I'm ready to work. I'm tackling that one already. The ad words being tackled. Like, the networking, I'm going to figure out the thing. I'll go with Carol. I got to warm up. Like, I'm like you. I don't like it, but sometimes you got to do what you don't like, right?

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

so yeah yeah it's mostly that I would say am I missing anything? I think maybe fixing our pre-production process a bit would be better too. I feel like we kind of grew up

in like running gun environments so we're very like you could throw us in any situation with like minimal info and we'll figure it out type of thing, right? But I think we really need to sit down and like figure out like a nice structure for that.

Everything else I think is pretty much good. I think Kirol needs some help on the editing side, so I do got to figure. But I think that's his domain. I'll let him figure that out. He knows who to contact for that. But yeah, other than that, we went through a lot of stuff. I guess, oh, another thing, actually, this is something that I did this week. I went through, I had Claude go through all of our accounting docs. And I even organized it in a way for our accountant to be able to use it. So I actually told them, okay, send me, here's what I did. Like, how do you want? It's like, oh, can you add this and that? I was like, no problem. Let's go do it.

And then it figured out some things we need to fix. So I want to get that sorted too before the end of the year. It was interesting. This is smart. Which accounting software do you use? Okay. We, the only thing I did for accounting is I was getting our account in the statements,

but also like creating like an like I would go on Excel and just do some basic stuff for myself. Like just organizing stuff. Very basic bookkeeping. Nothing special, right? He, our accountant would do like proper bookkeeping and all that stuff. I think he uses QuickBooks. But what I did was, again, I just created the document that he would give us at the end of the year when he was filing our corporate taxes. I just recreated it for this year with all the information.

So I fed it all the freelancer invoices, all the client invoices, all the receipts, all the bank statements. And he was able to create it. Like when I sent it to him yesterday, he called me. He's like, who did you get to do this? And I was like, oh, it was clawed. And then, like, we're chatting a bit. And then he's like, say, you can chat with Cloud. And I'm like, just so you know, he's an AI.

He's like, oh, I thought it was an actual person. But yeah, it was even, I had it. I went all the way back to when we incorporated it in 2023 because it was finding some things. It's like, oh, I don't know where this is coming from. And I was like, okay, let me go back one year. It might be there. Let me go back another year.

Went all the way back to the beginning. And it found some things that I was like, I called my accountant. And I was like, hey, I'm creating a document for you. We should probably review this before the next, the next filing. and whatnot. But that was really interesting to see because then what I did after that was like, okay, now it knows all the knowledge, right? All the numbers. So I was like, okay, what are my like profit margins, right, per project? So I asked it that and it gave me a whole document for that. It was pretty cool to like dive in deep with that stuff because like trying to figure out a profit

margins was something on my to do list. But like before Claude, I was like, I'll get to it eventually. I'm not that good with numbers, especially like, CalC, this, that, that, and the other thing. So I was like, I don't have like four days to sit down and figure this out on a year by year basis. We've been operating for 10 years, right? I can't go back 10 years and figure all this out. But now I can't. I can just tell that.

And I was even telling him, like, what do you think I should know about? And it was telling me like, oh, you know, you're very, you guys have got good numbers, especially for like the salary changes he got planned for next year. Like, yeah, it'll be. Oh, that was the other thing I did too. I was like, okay, we're doing dividend payments right now. I was like, next year I want to switch to salary because I want to be able to add disability insurance. But they need two years of salary. So I was like, okay, let's do.

And I also want to get a mortgage eventually. So I was like, okay, I want to switch the salary. How much money? Like, what, I don't know how that would work. So it gave me like a whole step by step for that. How much salary it could support like the benefits, other things to consider. It was, it's crazy, man. Like the amount of stuff you can do with it.

it's blowing my mind. It's stuff that like I would have never been able to do on my own because I just I can't. You know? I have a question. So how does it work in Canada with business incorporation? For example, in California, there's LLC, which is pass through, which is all the money that your business makes as profit is technically your personal salary. And then there's corporation where you pay yourself a specific salary, for example, 40K per year. And everything else that your business makes in profit, everything above this 40K is the business's property. So it has like a discounted tax on it. So how does it work with in Canada? I'm pretty sure it's like the second one.

So like we're going to incorporate. So I'm guessing it's probably very similar. I notice you guys there do a lot of LLCs. Like, I've seen quite a few video companies that are LLCs, which is, I've never seen an LLC here in Canada. It's easy to set up. It's much easier to set it up and it's much easier to file the taxes for LLC compared to S-Corps. Because with corporation, you need more precise bookkeeping. And for example, with LLC, you have a personal credit card.

You can go buy something. You can go buy a camera with personal credit card. and it will still be considered business expense. With a corporation, it is more complicated because you need to, if you buy something with a personal credit card, when you have a corporation, you then need to kind of depreciate it or move it onto your business name.

It's weird. And this is why I'm still filing as LLC, but after you're making above the certain threshold with an LLC, it's more beneficial to transition into a corporation. Interesting. Okay. I mean, now you can also just give it,

maybe try out what I did and it'll give you like a good option. Do you have an accountant or do you do everything yourself? I have an accountant, but all he does is he files this taxes for me at the end of the year. But I need to do the bookkeeping myself. So I have quick book software. And before I would do it at the end of every month. So at the end of the month, I would go through all my expenses. transfers and now it's sort them out but I think I haven't done that in like half a year

now because I don't have time for that so I might just try the same thing I might just try it out because it was and again I suggest like doing the previous years as well you'd be amazed what it can find like for example like it it was able to find an invoice we hadn't been paid for from 2023 November 2020 I said, hey, you haven't been, you haven't been paid for this. And I was like, are you sure? Like, so that's why I was like, okay, check this one, check that one. No, no, no, it hasn't been paid.

So actually I had to reach out to the client yesterday and say, hey, I hope you've been well. But I was just going through this stuff. Can you check on your end to make sure I went through? Because I was checking it. I can't find it. And it's a big amount. It was like 6.5K. So, I mean, I was telling Kirill, I'm like, I think Claude just paid for itself.

he's like, you're not going to believe this. We forgot to collect. Yeah. But even like you can feed it all the quickbook stuff because I had the accountant or accountant Howard. He sent us everything. And what I really liked about it too is that it created a document just for him. So he can also answer some of the questions it had.

And then once he gives me the answers to those or you can even like record. I told them, I was like, hey, if it's easier, we can just record the call. And I'll just copy the transcript from the call and then just feed it to it. And then if it has more questions after that, they'll let me know. But yeah, dude, like, I was like, it was crazy just to, because it created it like perfect. Our accountant was like, who did this for you? I was like, I swear, it was thing. And now that it's, it's there and it's context and already knows the structure, all I have to do now is every month, just give it the updated statements, like the freelancer stuff.

And then it'll just do it on its end. Like, another cool thing I found out, I don't know. most people know this, but for certain services, like Google AdWords, for example, or G Suite, or even Claude, if you don't put your business number, in Canada, at least, I don't know how it is in the States. It'll charge you HST, which is the tax, right? But if you put the business number, I won't charge you the tax. So I didn't know that. It looked at it. It's like, oh, yeah, by the way, you're being charged tax on these services. You shouldn't be charged taxed. Just put your business number in. I was like, what? I had no idea about this. Interesting. We don't have that in California. We still need to pay tax on transactions. It's pretty awesome. Did you ever have to deal with clients that don't want to pay you? Lately or like in the past? In general.

Not lately. Not in the like not in the near past either. Like it happened one. It happened twice when we were first starting out. but Papa always gets his money. I got that money. Yeah, no, no, no, no, they were going to pay. Like, I wasn't going to let him get away with that. Okay. Like, one of them, uh, and again, this is like first project starting out.

They're like, oh, they weren't happy with the edit, but I'm like, this is the footage you gave us. They're like, oh, we don't, no, they said, oh, uh, we don't need it anymore, so we're not going to use it. So we're not going to pay. And I was like, that's, that's not how this works. Like, you still got to pay. And then the other time, the other time something happened where there was like, it was through an intermediary for this client. But the intermediary, I won't say the name, but they're very big.

And then something strange happened where they said because it was too long of a delay, like it was a six-month delay in getting the money. They're like, oh, we can't pay it anymore. You have to get it direct from the client. So I went to the client and I said, hey, that video is up on YouTube you got till tomorrow to reply otherwise I'm going to copyright strike you guys

and we got it but we haven't had anything but because also like our contract is pretty strong and it's a lot stronger now that I had Claude go through it there were like quite a few things that were problematic with it before

because like for example we also offer photography right but it wasn't optimized for photography so I had to change that and then what So we haven't really had issues. What about yourself? I recently had a case. So it was a returning client.

But that client is a bit of a mess because they had a marketing manager. And that was my main point of contact and he was requesting videos from me. And I made a few projects for them. They paid me for it. Then this marketing manager, she requests another video from me. And then within a week, they fire him. And they hire a new marketing manager, and they say, okay, now this new marketing manager is the lead for this project. So I work with a new marketing manager now.

So we work out the dates. We work out the pricing. We come film the project. We edit it. she takes a long time to reply during the post-production process but we finish the project in two months because she took so long with the edits

and then we send it to her and I tell her okay I sent the invoice she said okay cool a week later she's also fired okay bad luck in that job it's like the Harry Potter role that guy always gets replaced every year

Yeah, and now I'm DMing their accountants. Not DMing, but emailing their accountants and their founders. And they're just ignoring me. I guess their logic is that if the person that hired me is gone, they don't have to pay me or something. How long has it been? Has it been like weeks? It's been a few weeks since they sent the invoice, maybe like three weeks. Okay, okay, yeah, you better stay on top of that one.

I know, yeah. I already send them a few emails and a few messages in Slack, so I don't know what to do. I might need to send something more for them. Yeah, that's weird. I mean, they're probably swamped, is my guess. They are, for sure. Yeah. I mean, I sent the invoice and it's been three weeks and nothing.

Yeah, that's strange. Again, my thinking is always like they're probably too busy. Because that's usually what ends up being the case. Especially if you've done a lot of work with them, that's pretty strange. Yeah. But they haven't even posted these videos we made for them. They posted or not, they still got to pay up, you know? That is true.

That is true. Because the work has been done. I paid my editors. I paid my videographers. Do you, how do you invoice people? Do you do like 50-50 or do you do like, at three weight three split like i i usually do 50 50 but for this client i said you can pay later because they were returning client hmm i i tell them like it just needs to be in the system because

i know some of them got like 60 days there's one company has got 90 days which is brutal but i tell them it's like you just let me know it's in the system at least right the the problem with this client is they called me and they said we need to film it in two days and i know they just would not be able to process it so quickly. But at least put it in, put it in the system. Do you know what I mean? I know it might be like net 30,

but at least like submit it. So we know it's, it's going to come in on time. Yeah. I mean, hopefully a rookie mistake. No, hey, listen,

like I'm like when it's a returning client, like you're always going to be more flexible. They're probably busy. I mean, if they keep replacing one person, probably replacing other people too, right? Like I've had that happen.

Not with our clients, but like with, the old insurance brokerage we were using where like the guy just wasn't getting back to us and then I find out someone else joins a combo at a later day they're like oh yeah thing left the company so I can take over the account I'm like okay it would have been nice if there was like a handoff at some point

to know so that that's probably what's happening but yeah like I learned from that missing invoice that I mentioned earlier like that you have in Canada you got two years from the date the invoice was sent to be able to get the money. After that, you can't do anything about it. So you still got time. I don't know if it's the same thing in the States.

I'm assuming it is, but you got two years probably. I have no idea. I looked into this and it pretty much says, yeah, if they don't pay you, you have to take them to court if it's less than 10K. But then the court is also kind of messy because it takes time. It takes money. You need to pay for lawyers. Yeah, I mean, they'll probably resolve it before.

They'll resolve it before then. Yeah. I used to get stressed about that stuff and now I just, I just forget about it. Like, actually, I got a few invoices I got to send out today because I've been a little delayed on. I don't even, like, oh, man, I don't want to go through each one individually. I'm just going to feed the contracts to, to clot and say, hey, what's missing that I need to send today? Because I got to like, I was gone like for like a couple weeks, right, for my vacation. so I have to like check the Google calendar and see what should happen, who was on it, all that stuff.

Okay. But, yeah, I think we're at the, yeah, we're just past a one hour mark. So we could probably cut it short unless you have, do you have anything else you want to go over when we're on the call? No, I think we talked about everything. Cool. Well, before we end the episode, though, tradition is to talk about how you named, you came up for the name. for your company. So how did you come up with LVie productions? Louis Vuitton productions? Is that how you know? No, this is very boring. This is just the first letter of my last name and the first letter of my first name.

Okay. Yeah. Sometimes that's the easiest way, you know? Yeah. I mean, for ours, like, we just came up with it elapsed because it was just a cool short film idea at the time. I thought it was cool at the time. Now I think back on it. And then I was like, oh, we should just add productions to the end. It sounds cool. We didn't really know what it stood for at the time. Like, we came up with the meaning for the company later on. Right? So now it stands for lasting, amazing picture sounds and experiences. I kind of want to change my company name, but I think it's going to take it tall on the

SEO. Yeah. Yeah, like, I would just leave it at this point. It's not that important, but it's always fun to hear people's naming story. Yeah. But anyways, I think that's a good place we can end it. So to our listeners to find Vlad, go to LV-Dash prod.com. And your socials are pulling it up here.

Oh, at LVProductions LLC. On Instagram. Yeah. Yeah. Do you have TikTok as well or just Insta? I think no it's just Instagram yeah you should get on TikTok too

I feel like that's like setting the the seats for the next generation because they're all growing up on on TikTok I feel like Instagram is more millennials like people our age are on it I was I was using TikTok for three years and then I deleted it

because I was wasting too much time yeah I completely agree with you sometimes I'll go on there for a couple minutes and it's like oh it's been 30 minutes already Yeah. But, no, Vlad's been great to have you on. So, guys, if you have a shoot out in California, are you local to a specific place there or, like, you move around? San Francisco and L.A.

So I'm in between these two cities. Cool. So, guys, if you have a project out there, make sure you reach out to Vlad. Mention that you heard them on the pod. Just so we got a little bonus CGC point. But yeah, no, that's it. Thank you so much for coming on, man. Thank you, Dario.

It was a pleasure. 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.

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