Creatives Grab Coffee - What we Learned in 2022 | Creatives Grab Coffee | Episode 34

Episode Date: January 11, 2023

What a crazy year of ups and downs. Coming out of a pandemic, we reflect back on some of the things we learned in 2022 and look forward to 2023.Welcome to Creatives Grab Coffee, a podcast on the business of video production, hosted by Dario Nouri and Kyrill Lazarov from Lapse Productions.Our goal is to make the video production industry smaller by creating a sense of community. Whether you are a creative, an entrepreneur or a professional, there is knowledge for you to learn. Join us as we have industry professionals from around the world share their insights on the industry and business. Welcome to Creatives Grab Coffee. Welcome to Video Production.

So welcome everybody to episode 34. It's the end of the year. 2022 was a wild ride. Was it not, Kiril? I love that intro. It's so like, welcome guys. It's been such a wild ride. Like, oh my god, so many stories. Dude, can you believe like the last time we recorded an episode was back in March? That we did one solo one? We started sprinkling them we started sprinkling them over like the course of like several months exactly well it it's because we got really busy with work this year right essentially we started doing the podcast when it was a little bit quieter uh or at least after we did this one major project in January, we recorded probably, what, 15, 20 episodes?

And then... What's 33 minus 14? 19. 19 episodes. Yeah, so this is now technically the 20th episode, and it is the last episode of the year that we're recording right before the holiday break. So happy holidays, everyone. Happy holidays to you, Kirill.

So today we're going to be talking about two different things. Firstly, how 2022 went for us as a business and what we're planning to do in the new year. Up until now, we've basically just been interviewing a lot of different production companies, but we haven't really talked so much about us on the podcast yet until the first episode that we really did, remember? Or at least the first few. We're planning on changing that going forward, so we'll do more

solo episodes in 2023. Just so we can get a little bit better at this as well. We're so good when we have other guests on but when we're on it's like we're rusty it's been a it's been a couple of months we're rusty you know but we'll get into we have like 52 episodes planned for 23 one a week if someone flops out on one of the given weeks we're going to do a solo one then or if we just want to plan to do solo ones we'll plan to do

solo ones either way because i think it's necessary i think it's good to have an equal balance of solo and guest episodes this way we can also talk about more specific topics because up until now with our podcast we've been interviewing companies hearing their stories which is great but i think what we need to also start doing is picking out different topics that are being shared on the podcast and kind of diving more into depth and kind of having a little bit of a discussion, maybe even a debate here and there, right? And there were a lot of different topics that we ended up covering with guests this year. What was like one of your favorite things that we kind of learned from the show? man i didn't prep for that are you just throwing

that curveball on me i don't know we we talked about so many things i thought we were going to focus more so on us now you want to go into what we learned we are this is this is the icebreaker this is the icebreaker test that me right off the bat i don't know let's see uh one that we've been putting a lot to use is improving your system processes. So we've kind of just been fine-tuning the machine that is LAPS Productions. I think halfway through the year, we just kind of looked at everything and for, say, client intake, for pre-production, for production, for post, sales, whatnot? We just kind of started looking into everything and fine-tuning it and just creating a set of procedures to implement for each thing. And obviously, it's developing as we go along.

That, I would say, was the most important takeaway out of all the guests that we've had. Yeah, essentially, it was more so getting from the sale to finishing the video and delivering it to the client. What did that look like? And we essentially had to put it all in specific detail how we would do each step of the process. And the next step was actually communicating that to our clients because I feel a lot of companies, or at least when you're starting out, not everyone walks a client through the entire process of how a video is typically created. One of the things that kind of helped us get started with that also was creating a lot of those blog series videos last year just to kind of get us to also define it ourselves, see what's a good way to explain it. And then from that, we were able to figure out how to properly communicate it to our clients. A little bit. A little bit.

That just really focused on very basic things. I think what really helped us was creating the checklist for ourselves yeah and for our clients especially so kind of explaining hey you know we're we're this is this is how we do things you know and this is a checklist and we want to make sure that you guys are all on board for for each step of the video process right so we're now moving into like you know even when you're closing off at the end of your sales funnel you could say like hey this is when you're in your summary meeting, you could say, Hey, this is like our, our process for how we create our videos. You know, we just did the intro call.

We did like the, the, the briefing calls, whatever you will have in your process. And now we're on the summary, uh, summary section. Like this is what we're doing. This is what we're going to be doing with you guys. And then once we move into that section, it's going to be like this. It's stuff like that that makes a big difference. Because until you define it, it's kind of up in the air, right? You're kind of going by it. You're kind of guessing. You're going through the motion and then you're at the mercy of how your client works as well. Having a very clear system and approach for how you work and how you

deliver the best quality work is actually much better for the client because that helps set expectations for them. If you don't have a clear process, how is a client supposed to explain when they're going to get a certain deliverable? So say they need a video within three weeks. What is our process typically like? How can we accommodate that particular delivery than just saying, yeah, we'll get you a video by that time but when do you do the pre-production when do you shoot it when do you deliver the first draft the second draft and then the final draft or even what those things entail but but okay so that's one of them what would it do what was your biggest takeaway the one biggest takeaway was that when you get into the process of creating a video, it really can highlight things that are missing within a business.

And that can help you really find good leads versus bad leads. That was from a guest episode? That was from one of our guest episodes, actually. Which one? And I believe this one was with, where was this? I think this was a discussion with Judah from Black and White Media, where it was specifically that video can be the gateway to real problems in a business. Oh, that. Okay.

Yeah. And what I liked about that is, and I noticed this even with some leads that would come in and they would be asking us to create video projects for them. And then you and I started asking very specific questions like, what is the purpose of the video? What are the key messages? What do you want people to do when they see this video? Who is your target market? If these simple questions aren't being answered by the lead, then there's nothing you could really do for them at this point because they don't know what they want at this point. Yeah. And you can actually use that to showcase your uh not really superiority but your your your uh expertise in that situation we did

that recently with a project where they came in and they wanted to do stuff ahead of time they're still waiting on stuff from their creative agency and i think after the second call i'm like guys i don't think i don't think you guys are ready for video i think it's way too early i don't think i should be brought on just yet and just because of that like they were super interested in like locking us in for the project that i thought that was pretty interesting but it's also uh it also is is important to know like if your if your lead doesn't know that information, you might have to stop wasting your time with them or just let them know. It's like, hey, listen, I don't think you're ready yet. Come back when you are or if you really want to do it, go with someone else.

Exactly. And this is why you have to be very specific about your process where you need to know, say, for your your business five particular questions need to be answered before you can even get into creating the video. Having that clear process helps make your life a lot easier and just makes it easier for your client ultimately at the end. Because if it's easier for you, it's easier for them. Essentially they're coming to you because they need an expert. They shouldn't be managing it themselves. You should be the one managing the project at that point yeah there's a lot to unpack there because i mean you could turn that into like oh it's part of a red flag uh criteria that you should have you know like if they don't know these things then that's a red flag for you um or you could turn that into an opportunity as

well to showcase your expertise or i don't know yeah well when you said it as a set of like things that you should be on the lookout for, maybe to ask them to help them come to an answer. Like for that lead, for example, they didn't really have like the objectives, the metrics they were going to check. There were probably three other things on that list, but that could be like a series of things

that you now look out for whenever you're doing a project. It's like, okay, what are your objectives? How are you going to track this? What's the purpose behind it? And if you were essentially a project. It's like, okay, what are your objectives? How are you going to track this? What's the purpose behind it? And if you were essentially a yes company and said, okay, no problem, we'll still help you make a video, you're doing a disservice to them if you do that, which a lot of companies are eager to do

when they're starting out because obviously you're trying to find work as much as possible. But if a client comes to you not knowing what they want and you just say yes to whatever request they do, the end product won't do your client justice and it will leave a bad experience in the end for everyone. And that's not what you want. You know, the easiest way to understand that is to just think of yourself like a doctor. Yeah.

When you're a doctor and you have a patient come to you, patient says, my back hurts. You don't say, okay, sure, here's some Vicodin. Have at it, boss. Or if they ask you for Vicodin. Vicodin for my back pain. He doesn't say, sure, here you go. He says, no, let me check you out. And if the guy says, no, you're wrong, it's like, well, there's the door. You know, that's why they have that saying that doctors make the worst patients. And I've also, I wonder if it's the same. It's like, would a video creator be the worst type of client technically?

Probably not. Probably not. But aside from that, one of the biggest things that we also did this year was relaunch the podcast. Because when we first started CGC, we started it in 2020 to just kind of get us out of that rut of not working for six months because of the pandemic. And then we learned a lot by doing that. And then in 2021, we basically just completely changed the business from the ground up. It really felt like we turned into a business in 2021. Yeah. At least the foundation. The foundation was set in 2021.

It felt like, okay, now we're a business. That's why I always think of 2021 as like year one for us. Even though we've been operating since like 2015, it feels like 2021 was like, okay, now it's a business. We don't tell clients that. We kind of keep that on the down low.

Yeah. Well, hey, when you're starting something new, you're not starting from square one. You're starting from square one with the experience. So you're never really starting from square one when you're revamping or relaunching something. A few other things that we did in 2022, the biggest goal I think we had was figuring out if we could get consistent work to come in. Because that is the biggest challenge for every creator out there is knowing when your next job is coming. I don't think we figured it out. I never said we figured it out 100%.

I said that was a goal of ours. We were going to figure out how to. I don't think we figured it out. I think we just got lucky. But it was because of stuff we did in 2021 that we kind of kept doing in 2022, which was focusing on SEO and advertising, right? That's essentially what we did.

And we had a pretty consistent stream of... What do we call them? Inbound leads coming in. Inbound leads, yeah. We haven't done any outbound to date i just i don't know how to i don't know how to do it i don't even know i don't know how effective it is like i think that to me is like i don't know well when you're doing outbound you're getting into the sales category where you're essentially calling hundreds of businesses

trying to figure out if they're looking for a or anything at this point, right? To your previous point, doctors don't exactly knock on the doors of houses saying, hey, do you have a broken arm? Do you need a brain surgery or anything like that? No, they're at the hospital waiting for the people with problems to come to them. And that is essentially what we've set ourselves up as, as a business. We solve problems with video. So if a business is needing a specific problem, they recognize that. And in a way that qualifies them as leads already when they're coming to us, because they already recognize that they have a business challenge. When you're doing outbound, you have to call a business, ask them 10 questions to figure out what could potentially be that problem.

Then you have to really convince them that that's the problem. It's just a numbers game at that point. Who was it that does outbound V strategies? I know By The Booth has their sales guy, James. But I don't know. I guess those guys make it work, but it has to be a numbers game at that point, right? You need to have someone that's just dedicated to that 24-7. Otherwise, you won't be able to focus on running the business and doing sales at the same time, right?

I'm of the belief that it all depends on your business model and what works for you. Some businesses can thrive really well on outbound leads because of the types of videos or content that they produce, the kind of resources or team members that they have, whereas other businesses, it doesn't work for them necessarily, right? When it's sometimes smaller teams, it might be a little bit more difficult. And again, what works for one company does not work for any other company. And that is one of the big things we learned doing this podcast is that you can pick any guests on our show. If you try to replicate exactly everything that they did, you will not get the same result because you as a business owner are different. Well, you're not supposed to.

I know, but that's what's interesting because a lot of people think, oh, if I do exactly what that company did, it'll work better. It'll work just the same for me. Not necessarily the case. The only times that'll ever work in life is if you want to become a lawyer, a doctor, an engineer, then you replicate what thousands or millions have done before you. Go to school, study hard. I wonder though, if it's a little different though, because at the same time, You know, I wonder though, if it's a little different though, because at the same time, you're still competing with all those other lawyers, especially if you're being a lawyer, I would say. You're basically operating almost as a business. You're still going to be competing with everyone.

You're basically studying for years to end up at the exact same place as everyone else is starting from, square one. As long as you're smart, you'll figure it out in that situation. Or in any situation, let's be honest. Okay, so what else did we do this year? We did the SEO and advertising. We had the inbound stuff coming in. Oh, we started paying ourselves consistently. That was new.

Every month we sent ourselves a salary. Yeah, that was nice. Yeah, for eight years, LAPS was the baby that just kept sucking money out of us and never paying us anything. But once you start treating it like a business, it actually is done properly. You call those people like a squatter that just won't leave and won't pay. LAPS was the squatter we never knew we had. But that was nice. Mentally, it was reassuring. And also, it kind of felt like, okay, you're like a line item in a way, so it has to be done no matter what.

That was nice. Damn Kirill and Dario, some major expenses for this business. Yeah, and now we're incorporating at the end of this month. So we have to keep it consistently because now we've got to issue T4s and everything and all that jazz, which will be interesting. We also upgraded a ton of our gear. That was new this year. Spent a good amount of change on that. Well, I feel like everyone is always upgrading their gear. We did a lot this year. The one different thing that we did was we were upgrading things that were actually necessary. Sometimes I feel a lot of businesses, or at least even freelancers, they upgrade their gear in things that they want or think that they

need, but don't actually need. And we were kind of doing it as we went or trying to anticipate needs. It's like, hey, we're doing more and more projects like these. We need to have X, Y, and Z pieces of equipment to help us execute it. Let's get that. Getting a new cart, getting new lighting equipment, not necessarily upgrading cameras every year like a lot of businesses typically tend to do. Get what you need, get started.

Same with lenses, things like like that you know what a lot of businesses do like a lot of guests that come on they don't really own a lot of their stuff they'll just use freelancers right which we're kind of shifting towards doing now where um we started using bigger crews on our projects we started hiring more freelancers for key positions which i think is important to note because normally we would do a lot of the cinematography and if you had to step in as a gaff or grip, you kind of did that too. It's like in cam op versus now,

like we're focusing more so on the producing, directing and trying to test out more cinematographers just so we know who's good for what type of project and whatnot. So that was a big change. So crew management has been a new thing. That's been a big shift compared to the past. And instituting an etiquette. And that has been a big thing that we learned this year

is that you have to institute an etiquette on set that everyone can kind of follow. Because you're working with different freelancers, everyone works a little bit differently, but you have to figure out what system you are operating on set or even just working as a team in general. And you kind of figure that out when you're hiring people, but it's important to also remind people at times

because some people, they work a certain way. You don't know what's normal for them on other projects they've worked on. They don't know what's normal for projects that you work on. So you have to communicate that. Yeah. Even something as simple. And we'll give some examples like, you know, we're in the corporate world. So like just even having a policy of like, listen, you come on our side, just wear all

black, like no graphics on your t-shirt, something like that does go to go a long way because again you're in an office environment there's people there that are you know they wear a suit or dress every day like they're not used to seeing people in casual clothes that often there so you want to give off like a pretty good impression uh yeah actually it's funny because we wear all black on set we all wear all black. I've actually heard a lot of people say, like, oh, everyone's wearing all black. Is that like your uniform? So yeah, it's the universal uniform of our industry at this point, right? Yeah, it's just so like if there's a reflection, no one's popping up. We're bright yellow.

were bright yellow yeah but uh that is a major one um dress dress code and uh the other thing would be uh you know phone policy like listen put it away put it away i feel like a teacher sometimes but it's like you tell them i had like look if you're on set like unless it's a bts picture yeah put it away, please. Because people will look and they'll go, why is that guy even here? We're saying this because we did have one incident where this did happen and it kind of opened our eyes to this side of production. Because again, we're used to Carol and me and maybe a PA coming out, helping us out. Now we have bigger teams and everything so you know sometimes you bring on people that are used to dealing or working in like film or tv type of environment so like for example like they'll just you know for like a gaffer or a grip they might

set up the shot and then kind of go on their phone after it's set up but the thing is we're dealing in like corporate video production where you kind of need everyone to still be involved after they set up it's not it's not like you're making a movie where you do have to step outside just because you otherwise you would be interfering with the chain of command because it's pretty hierarchical on those type of sets and environments but what we do it's different right like you still need to be involved like again we're dealing with types of shoots where sometimes it's very uh fast paced and running guns so like look if you said if you're a gaffer for example you set up the shot like stay there keep looking because you know uh if kyril or i

are producer slash director we're focusing on a couple of variables at the same time dp's focusing on something else audio is focusing on something else pa's focusing on something else that or they might not even know so like like you kind of still have to be involved in like, say, Hey, you know what? Uh, hold on guys. I need to fix that light quickly. Something like that. But anyways, that's just something. Cause sometimes you notice if you're, if you're paying attention, you also notice things that you wouldn't, if you set it up and then leave. Right. Uh, even like if sometimes you're setting up for a shot it looks it looks great when you set it up but if you walked away then something changed where you didn't notice it

you know then the whole thing kind of shifts at that point whereas if you're there keeping an eye out it's like oh something changed let me make this little adjustment or or whatever it might be it's it's all mixed i feel like we're it's almost like we're trying to explain this to like a future crew member but i guess for the listeners out there it's more so keep an eye on your crews. Let them know the on-site etiquette. So again, have a dress code policy. That'll help you guys out. Less thinking.

Once you have that, it's like, hey, listen, everyone, just wear all black or whatever. Whatever you want to decide. Even if it's casual, it's just basic. Nothing too bright. And then I guess make sure you let them know hey listen like no phones and please be involved the whole time because again i'm running doing 50 different things i need you to kind of focus on this obviously when you get into bigger projects you probably won't run into this because your your crew will become hierarchical like again if

you're dealing with project with like 50 people then like it's kind of like organizationally structured in a way where everyone has a specific role right but for projects like what we do most of us do where it's five to ten crew members max everyone kind of needs to be involved the whole time yeah well everyone is it's meant to be a cohesive unit and you're trying to make the shoot move efficiently right that's the whole point and this i feel like this is these are rules that can apply whether you're a small project or even a big project it it all depends but everything is also unique to your situation see what process etiquette and rules you want to you want to institute that will help move your projects forward what works for one company may not necessarily work for another one,

as we mentioned before. But these are just some things that we've noticed, at least for us on our shoots. But, you know, that leads into Cruise again. You know, we are kind of, we've planted the seeds in our mind for bringing on, like, full-time employees or even part-time at the moment. And, man, like like when we actually sat

down and did the numbers, it's actually crazy how expensive that can get. Like, I don't know how other people are doing it. Like that scares the hell out of me. Cause it's like, okay, for example, if you want to bring on, like, we've been talking about editors for a while, right? So, okay. I actually spoke to one of our editors. I was actually curious to see how much something like that will cost. And like a junior is going to cost you anywhere from $50 to $65, and then a senior close to $80 to $85. $90 if they're really good and you want to keep them happy, right? Because the cost of living in Canada, let's face it, is pretty expensive.

But editors, they have the luxury of living anywhere at this point. That's true. That's true. Oh, that's true. Yeah. I didn't think about that. luxury of living anywhere at this point that's true that's true oh that's true yeah yeah because one editor that uh we've uh reached out to lives uh where is it like like by saint catherine's even i i believe i was thinking you could do even like us-based or like someone in europe or whatnot

well i remember by the booth was telling us that they have animators all over the world doing projects for them and one interesting thing is like sometimes they would be finishing up a project uh in their hours and then they would go to sleep and then the other editors would be like picking up and continuing to work on the other side of the world in their normal that's a good way to that's that's a really good way to do it but for us like you know we're we're thinking about bringing people on and just the cost is it's pretty high man like it's it's actually wild when you know kieran i actually laugh because some you know sometimes we check out other people's websites and they'll have like 20 people on it and we know that that's not actually like how big their team is and it makes us laugh because it's like okay

if you actually had that many people you'd'd have $2 million just in costs. I know, right? Once you start breaking it down to numbers. Just salary costs. It's like, yeah, you got like a million just in salary costs. Buddy, you're not that big. It's just funny to see sometimes when we see something like that, especially now that we are looking at hiring someone. But I think right now what we're thinking of is maybe like having someone that's starting out as like a PA and hiring them as a part-time role and then having like mentoring them to grow into like a bigger role.

That's kind of our goal right now. But I would love to have like an editor on board. But again, it depends on the projects, the amount of projects we're getting. Like luckily it's been consistent. we're getting like luckily it's been consistent but if we just uh keep if it's if it remains consistent remains consistent and it increases by like a couple more projects a month then i think it'll be easy it'd be essentially essentially the goal is to get our first hire in 2023 it's not a super ambitious goal but for any company that is fairly small and is looking to try to scale the going from i've heard like one one thing that i remember was mentioned on one of

the podcast episodes is that going from one person to two people is in is very difficult going from two to three hard but easier but it gets a little bit easier as the team grows when you think about it right and so once we get that first hire then we can move on to the next, then to the next. And who knows? Sometimes the point of bringing on talent and other people onto your team is to bring in their skill sets, their experience, and their drive. Because you can't do everything yourself. And that's one of the things that you and I figured out this year is that we're we've been so used to doing everything just you and me for so many years that now even if we bring in someone to just even help move a bag it's like he's the messiah

oh another thing we did this year is we got ourselves a storage locker yeah that was that that's what we'll say oh my god you know what's funny is that we were basically storing gear half at mine half at his and then once we got the storage locker and put everything in there we looked at the final image of of all the gear and i was thinking to myself how on earth were we storing all this in our places like i was trying to think i'm like how did we do granted we did buy a lot of things this year to kind of make it a little bit more unbearable i like that this storage locker has been amazing because like after a shoot we just go and we unpack it there and it's just so nice like there's something about that it's just like away from home

so you don't have to think about it. It's just like away from home. So you don't have to think about it when you get home. All you have to do is just bring the camera bag inside and that's it. But that was much neater. We should have done that like a couple of years ago, man. Yeah. Well, also with the pandemic, we didn't really have money to burn just on storing gear everywhere, right? But anyway, amongst a lot of other things, that's most of what some of the major things

that happened for the LAPS team in 2022. And now I feel like this year we learned a lot and it's got us thinking about what we're going to be doing more so in 2023. And one of the things we already mentioned was getting our first hire, continuing to improve our SEO and our inbound leads generation. We've got to keep

improving that, keep working on it. It's never something where it's like you're done, you're ready to go. Yeah. Our goal with that is basically we're just going to keep doing what we did with it. I mean, SEO is pretty easy. It's just very time consuming, which sucks, but it's very easy to do um so our plan for that is just keep pumping out like good blog posts uh we did a lot of the technical stuff i guess just put more money into advertising maybe improve our google adwords maybe improve like our google adwords uh and then i guess i want i want us to do a lot more content marketing. I mean, we have the podcast, which we're in the middle of just separating entirely from our laps branding.

It's kind of becoming its own thing. For that, we're planning an episode a week, which is pretty ambitious, but I think it's doable. And we already have, like it's December 21st right now. and we already have like it's december 21st right now and we currently have one guest a week from the first week of january all the way to the third week of february and we're planning all of canada this coming year like we're going to get all the provinces connected uh and then none of it let's go i wonder if they have someone if they're probably sure there are i'm sure even i didn't even think about that because i was going based on population sizes there's and they didn't

even pop up there's probably like three cats up there yeah but those three cats are doing all the business you know they shoot for the other two people that live there exactly right uh so yeah we have we're planning uh do all the canada at least just so we get that out so just so we can you know canada first you know i gotta represent as they say uh and then we're gonna move on to the colonies and then maybe uh europe and whoever else can speak uh english and other countries because i'll be cool hey guys listen we're at the end of the the episode right Again, we're promising to keep these things short. That's why we're also speaking a lot faster

and we're cutting off each other just because otherwise we'll ramble on and on. Actually, I think this was pretty good. This was pretty good. So, guys, listen. We'll try to pump this out before the new year, but kind of unlikely, kind of unlikely. I'm not going to lie.

We might uh in which case uh happy new years and happy post uh christmas or whatever you celebrate happy holidays uh if it's after the new year well we all wish you a uh great start to 2023 um if you're listening to this and you haven't come on the show as a guest please please do so. If you have any questions you want us to ask future guests, let us know directly or comment it down below or wherever. We're pretty easy to get a hold of. Or if you have any questions. You put the CGC logo and the spotlight into the sky and we kind of just appear with our cameras. We appear with our cameras.

With the microphone. Somebody called. I wonder what CGC man would look like. It would not be pretty. There's a reason he's behind the camera. Okay, listen. Anything else you want to add before we tail end this? I think that's a good start.

Let's just keep aiming to do good work. Cool. All right. Thank you, guys. We'll see you in the new year or we'll be in the new year with you. All right. Take care.