We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Lada Egorova. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Lada below.

Lada , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What do you think it takes to be successful?

The first step is to define success for yourself. What it means to you and what you are trying to achieve in your career. Not everyone’s idea of success is the same and if you don’t clearly define what success looks like to you as early as possible you’re most certainly on your way to fail. The next step is having a plan. Since I’m 15 I’ve had the dream of becoming a successful filmmaker. But I didn’t really know how to achieve that until I created a clear plan that I could follow step by step and that would help me assess where I am on my path to success. Is it winning prizes at film festivals? Or finding an investor for your feature film? Or making 10 short films, or selling a script? Success becomes attainable once you have defined the steps you need to follow and what you want to achieve and how you will achieve them.

Once you have a goal, a plan to achieve it, what you need next is consistency. I think consistency is more important than hard work. It will bring you faster to achieving your goals than if you work hard for one week then do nothing for months.

Of course depending on what you want to achieve you might need money, find a team, resources and depending on your background, where you live and what you have access to, achieving these goals will take more or less time. But I strongly believe that if you follow your plan, adjust it to adapt yourself to what happens in your life, you are consistent and make time to work on your goals (make time not find time, everyone is busy, but those who succeed are the ones who make time to work on their goals no matter how busy they are with their other priorities) then you can become successful.
But you need to have a desire, dedication and consistency.
I used to always push back the days I would write, it made me write every once in a while, and I would always find excuses or other things on my to do list that would leave me too busy for writing. Now everyday I make time at least one hour to write. I schedule that time so I know it is part of my day and I have no excuses to be busy on something else. On really busy days I only write 30minutes, but I try to be consistent and show up everyday in front of my notebook to write.
I realized that I actually have time to write, to develop my projects on a faily basis rather than on the weekends. You should remember that you are the one in charge of your time and schedule, don’t let it become the opposite!

Lada , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am a screenwriter, director and producer. I have written and directed eight short films as well as produced several short films. I also work as a freelancer videographer and a photographer. I provide services for businesses, individuals, artists, content creators such as photoshoots, filming events, filming behind the scenes, podcasts, music videos. I also work on film sets in several positions such as 1st AD, script supervisor, production assistant, cinematographer, 1st assistant camera.

My goal as a filmmaker is to create compelling stories, have unique perspectives by having main characters who come from different backgrounds. I also help upcoming filmmakers to rewrite and produce their short films.
As a videographer and photographer my goal is to highlight the personality and talent of the artists I work for, provide coverage of events or capture memories for families and friends as well as help content creators or businesses to build their brand’s identity and promote their work and products through high-quality photo and video content.

I have always been passionate about helping others grow, create with other people, help others bring their vision to life, experiment artistically.

Have you ever had to pivot?

After my bachelor degree in film production, I was certain I would only work on film sets and develop movie projects. It was what interested me the most, I studied for it. I had no doubt about it. However, as I started looking for gigs, I began to have opportunities as a videographer and photographer more than as a production assistant at a film company. I decided to develop my skills in this area as well as content creation specifically when I moved to LA from France. Now to my surprise I have several opportunities in that area, I enjoy the variety of projects it enables me to work on and I learned a lot by doing projects others than film ones and I am able to apply that knowledge to the development of my own film project. My career plan was so firm since the beginning of college but I am glad I accepted to try something different and walk on a slightly different path. I learned other ways of telling stories and using visual arts!

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

Social media is a strong tool to grow your clientele specifically if you join groups on various platforms where you can find people or you can advertise yourself to a large community of people who can be looking for the services you provide. I would recommend reaching out directly through messages/DMs, introduce yourself and what you can provide as services to someone. Don’t write a general message or email but be specific on how you can help someone else grow their business or achieve fulfillment through the services you provide. When reaching out to people, don’t make it about yourself, make it about them, specifically if you provide services like social media content creation, marketing, video and photo services. You are here to provide a solution to an issue that person might be facing (having higher social media engagement, having a higher quality pictures and videos, grow their sales and audience etc)

Contact Info:

• Website: https://ladaegorova.wixsite.com/website/galerie
• Instagram: lada.egorova_
• Facebook: Lada Egorova
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/egorova-lada