3 Biggest Lessons From 2019

G', day, guys, and welcome to this very special Christmas edition of the podcast. Merry Christmas from Queensland here on the Sunshine coast, where it's currently 40 degrees. If you're somewhere cold, wrap up warm and I hope it's very festive. Now, today, Christmas fell on a Wednesday, so we don't stop our production. Today we're going to look with Charlie Valor back at the three biggest lessons from 2019 that we've experienced running the show and working with our cl. So settle in with a little glass of something. I hope you enjoy the show. Thank you for watching and listening this year. We've got some very exciting things happening next year, so tune in very early in the new year. Talk soon and Merry Christmas.

Welcome to the Video Business Accelerator Podcast. Each week we uncover the secrets to creating a wildly successful and scalable video production business. With your host, Dan Lenny, discover how the accelerator program is transforming the lives of our members at www.videobusinessaccelerator.com. enjoy this episode.

G', Day, Charlie, and Merry Christmas to you.

Merry Christmas, Dan. How is the day treating you so far?

Well, let's not bullshit the audience, right? It's actually not Christmas Day when we're recording, so we're actually the 12th of December. It was 40 degrees in Melbourne yesterday. It's 20 degrees today, so my little tropical skin's freaking out in the cold.

But.

But I'm sure at this point on Christmas Day, I will be very relaxed, probably having walked the dogs, getting ready for lunch. How about you with young Jack? You've got a baby. How exciting.

Well, it's Jack's first Christmas. I had a son not long ago, and now, I mean, I guess I can spoil it here because no one, by the time this episode comes out, it will have already happened. But we've actually spent some time on eBay. EBay, sorry. Getting him a little elf costume. So he's gonna rock up on family Christmas as a little baby elf.

That's what.

That's what we're rolling.

Hilarious.

It will have happened by now.

It's gonna be such a different Christmas for you.

Huge. Hugely. I mean, I've noticed a lot of life changes and business changes since the birth of a son. And I mean, the big change for me, and I think a lot of parents would know this, or people that look after people, is that suddenly time has just become so much more important and scarce.

Yeah. Well, I mean, I guess the biggest change for you this year, the biggest celebration, is the birth of your son, Jack. Congratulations.

Thank you.

But what I wanted to do today, Charlie, was, you know, become a bit of a regular on the show. I do. I do enjoy when we get together and the listeners tell me they love when you're on the show. So we thought we'd just get you back to help us, I guess, facilitate a. What's been the highlights of the year?

I'm so happy to be back and just to be reinforcing there. I love it when I get a message from someone who listens to these podcasts and says something nice like, it really makes my day dead. And I'm sure it does for you as well when you get a little reach out saying, hey, I enjoyed the podcast.

Well, I think that's probably one of the big lessons from this year was really committing to a weekly episode of the podcast. We've done over 50 episodes now. And I think what's great about a podcast is that it's a really fun thing to do because you get to speak to lots of really fascinating people. And I think as storytellers, first and foremost, as video producers, you get to do lots of research.

What's the joy of a podcast for you?

Well, if I had to look towards wins in 2019, podcasting has been it for me. In both having my own shows and then going on shows, it's had a huge impact on my business. So straight out, how I could weight this or justify the effort? Number one is roi, the time invested versus the result it produces for my business. Absolutely. It's there. I think it's become a major medium and a powerhouse that competes with anything else, like blogging or videos or anything else. I think podcasting has become its own thing for marketing a small business. But then the other side of it is what you nailed is that for me, I enjoy it. I actually love making content and talking with people like this. So it doesn't feel like work even today. Like, I mean, I suppose we could call this a work day on Christmas maybe. But I love the actual. I love the thing. I enjoy doing the thing. And I. When it comes to business, if you can find a few areas where you enjoy the work, it can make all the difference. And I think filmmakers can probably relate to this. If they love making films, perhaps it's editing or shooting or something to do with that. That if they can enjoy a certain component of it, it makes the business so much more enjoyable. So it's had that effect as well.

Absolutely. So I think podcasting has been a huge win for us this year. I've really enjoyed all of the guests We've had, we've got some incredible guests who've shared lots of stories. I think the biggest shift we had in the podcast this year was we moved away from long episodes of like 45 minutes to an hour. And I've purposely been looking at 20 to 30 minute episodes because what I wanted to do was to give you, the listener, the opportunity to consume an episode whilst driving to location. And I think that's something that we've always been really keen to do with this show, is really take feedback.

And actually give you more of what you want rather than us kind of force feeding you a 90 minute episode.

I'll second that. I think short content, like some podcasts, have too much fluff, too much waffle, and I feel like shorter, more direct content. People really appreciate it. They love it when we can get to the point. So I like that change.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think, I suppose what we. Before this podcast, Charlie and I were discussing what, what should we share on this Christmas episode? And Charlie suggested that, you know, would be good to kind of look at three lessons from the year that we've observed through our, I guess, a microcosm of helping video producers succeed in business and any lessons we can share rather than kind of, you know, overly Christmas ifying the episode. So maybe Charlie, you can pose some questions and I'll give you my best attempt at sharing our insights from our year.

One of the things I love to do, Dan, is when I'm talking to someone, I love to understand why they're the best person to answer a question. I think it's a really good thing to address before you ask anyone anything, not to go into it, but in business I got burnt a few times early because I took advice from people that hadn't done the thing. And it's funny that it's like, you know, you wouldn't, if you're going to an obese personal trainer taking health advice, you probably would realize they're probably not going to know or be able to give you the right information to produce a result. And in business I made some huge mistakes with that and I've got this like always up filter of like, okay, is this person, should I listen to this answer? Have they done the thing? Are they the thing? Like, why are they qualified? And I realized that you're someone who has not only done the video business thing, but you've also actually helped others with a video business. And you've got an aggregate of data, so you've got a very unique positioning to actually understand what is Working, what isn't working? What are the common traits? What are the uncommon traits? Like what are the successful video business owners do that the ones who are not getting the success do not? So I'm really fascinated. Right, so with that as the context for the listeners here, when you look back on 2019 and the year that was, has there been things that have stood out in the people that are getting results? What do the successful video businesses do?

That's a great question and absolutely. And the answer might surprise you and it might surprise the listeners. Oftentimes, I've discovered in business, it's the simplicity of an answer that can sometimes throw you. Sometimes we're looking for very complicated solutions to a problem. And all businesses want more clients, all businesses want more revenue, all businesses want to work a bit less as a blanket. The number one thing that I have seen have the biggest impact on the clients that we work with who have been having the best year of their careers or the most successful years in quite some time is consistency. And it's consistency in everything that they do. It's consistency in executing their strategic plan, it's consistency in not running too far too soon, and it's particularly consistency in their marketing. So it's not necessarily making very complex or overly elongated marketing or having to make these massive productions and videos and before they're ready to push out. It's posting regularly and consistently across, largely LinkedIn. That's where we've seen a huge amount of growth for our clients. But consistency in executing every single part of their business, consistency in building systems, consistency in managing the expectation of their contractors or people who are not directly involved in the business. But yeah, consistency is the one word that I would say has had the biggest impact on virtually everyone in our program and people that I speak to, even who are not in the program, who say, I've tried this thing you suggested and it's really great. But what's interesting is that people I speak to who are not doing as well are always looking for a magic bullet or a magic pill. The next hack, the next hack. And I think the Internet is full of technology and apps and hacks, and if you just do this one tactic, it will solve all your problems. Coming right back to, what do you want and who would you like to work with? And then let's build a plan around achieving a revenue goal that will facilitate the life that you want without you kind of working crazy hours.

That has been the number one lesson from this year, and it's something I already believed, but we've put a couple of dozen people through our program who are now seeing the results and the benefits of that consistency. Something like, you know, one of our clients, Matt, said in October, we had the best month ever last month. And we analyzed it and we said what's changed? And the team went, well, not much except we systemized and we're doing less. So we're doing less, but at a higher quality and with more focus. And the systems and processes mean no one's getting stressed, no one's working crazy hours and peaking and troughing. One of my favorite books, if you're looking for a book to read this Christmas period, it's called Great by Choice by Jim Collins. And he talks about the theory of the 20 mile march. And I won't explain it now, but the 20 mile march is based on Scott and Amundsen hitting the South Pole in the early part of the 19th, 20th century, 1916 I think it was. And both prepared very differently for that journey. One survived, one didn't. And the one that survived was Amundsen because of his regimented, only marching 20 miles a day no matter what. And I think in your business, and I'm sorry not to share the whole story because it's a very long story but and the details are important so I'd rather you go and read it.

It's worth reading but.

But the fact is slow and steady incremental growth over a long period of time is sustainable and lowers your risk to external forces playing a part in the destruction of your business. And those, those external forces can be yourself. So I think consistency has been the number one lesson.

I love that as a lesson and I think you kind of hinted on the longer view when playing a longer game. Like it irritates me to think that there's people out there who are winning because of like hacks and secrets and little like you know, Google algorithm games or whatever it is. Like there's been so many of them over the years and I think we can always have a bit of like FOMO in. Oh, we're not taking advant of that. But on reflection it's like I don't think those people are winning. Like I think you, you've nailed the idea of consistency is absolutely the way. And if I look towards the people in the program, we're getting success. They certainly behave like that. Like that is true. But I want to dig deeper here and you've, you've kind of looked into a few things. Specifically you just mentioned LinkedIn as something that's been a Huge win for a lot of members and yourself, I believe. Has LinkedIn been the marketing channel for video businesses to pay attention to in 2019? Is this the area they need to be spending more time?

100%.

We've done extensive testing on LinkedIn in the last three months and it is the gold mine of opportunity for video production companies. Having said that, we were discussing on a coaching call just recently and it was my members saying, we are noticing people who are using LinkedIn for sort of carpet bombing. They're like dropping content and running away and it's all like, here's our latest film, here's the latest project, here's some great feedback we got. And then they're gone. LinkedIn is an intelligent environment and it's a community and you have to invest time and consistency. There it is again in, in building up your reputation of value to the community.

And, and delivering content very regularly in order to build an audience. And, and my members and myself have seen ridiculous levels of engagement. One of my clients, Edwin, did a behind the scenes photograph in a factory for a big mining manufacturer. 5,000 views of that post in seven days, including the big manufacturer. It was Lebhair, I believe, sharing it with their network and him having a whole pile of people checking out his profile and reaching out and you could go, well, let's try and reverse engineer that, let's do behind the scenes photographs. It's more than that. It's a framework. We've created a framework for how to post content on LinkedIn that doesn't take up a lot of your time, that gives you the ability to build your relationship with the audience on LinkedIn and, and have the platform and the algorithm support you to extend your reach because you're posting more frequently and just having incredible, incredible success on LinkedIn. But LinkedIn is a long play. If you go into LinkedIn thinking, I'll do a few posts and try and win some clients, you're not going to win. We're not looking at tactics, we're looking at strategy. And I think that authenticity and vulnerability and the willingness to share your human side is a subtlety on LinkedIn that we've been noticing. And it's a very fine line between, you know, going too far and we've figured out the sweet spot and we've noticed that you know when to post these kind of bits of content. We've got infrastructure and kind of frameworks around days of the week. We've also been testing weekends and other kind of things. It's really fascinating. But what We've got, we're sharing this on a call recently is it's not just me testing this, it's all of our members testing this. So we on a group coaching call and we share what's working in which capacity. Yeah. And different things work for different markets. So that's been the second biggest discovery this year is the power of LinkedIn and using sales Navigator. And it's a combination of profile, connection and content and it's an amalgamation and there's nuances in each. And I think as filmmakers and storytellers, we understand the nuance of story. And so we're actually approaching social media on LinkedIn, like a film, we're telling stories. There's multiple threads of storytelling going on and it's, it's such a cool. And it's quite complex, the interlocking layers, but when you get it right, it's absolutely golden. What happens is instead of reaching out to people, you present your life through the business and people come to you and they're like, hey, I've been watching your content. I love what you're doing. How can we work together? And that's what you want. Gary Vee said recently in a post, you know, stop badgering people to work with you. People are smart. They know how to find you, they know how to contact you. You don't have to say, hey, click here to get in touch. It's like they can just click your link and call you. If they want to call you, they'll find you.

You actually made me laugh. That was authentic. I was trying to hold it in because obviously on podcasting I don't want to cross the channels or make it sound, but it's like, that is so true. Like the gimmicky days of the Internet are over. Like that stuff.

Just use a red button and you'll get more people clicking, trick them into clicking.

But it's fast. It feels like LinkedIn's got a bit of vibe about it, like Facebook used to be. It really does.

Do you know what's great about LinkedIn is it's self policing. Like there just isn't space for scammy spammy idiots. I had a guy actually friend request me and get in touch and start chatting. And then I realized that he was kind of like in the coaching space. And I looked at his profile and suddenly he was doing stuff for video production companies. I was like, hey, look, you know what, whatever, there's plenty of space. I'm not worried about, you know, competition. I think, I think we each have our offer and I'll polarize some people and whatever. There's plenty of space in the market. I have an abundant psychology. But this guy started connecting with all of my friends and I looked at his profile one day and I went, this is a bit weird. Like, how could he possibly be connected to some of these people? And I realized it was like, because he basically farmed my friend list, made connections. And what brought it to my attention was one of my clients said, oh yeah, I had a call with this guy. He was really aggressive. And at that point I was like, okay, hold on, this is not cool. So I disconnected from him and I let my clients know that I had nothing to do with them. But very quickly the community disconnected from that person. And so you cannot be a douchebag on LinkedIn. And I think it's the only social media platform where that that is the case. You have to be. You have to be a real person. And if, and if you're an idiot, the community itself will just banish you.

I do have to laugh that this person, like, obviously I got, like, I got added. This person added me as well. But this person wanted to do lead gen and this is what they were doing. And I was just looking at the irony of like, ah, I would never hire you because if you did this to my clients or who I was going after, like, it's just so, so often. Luckily the policing system works. It's a really fascinating one. I mean, I'll go into a question here. It's like, has worked in 2019. It feels to me like LinkedIn is an area you're probably going to go deeper in 2020. Is that the case?

Yes. LinkedIn with podcasting, that combination of seeking out. Let me caveat this. If you are clear on who you want to attract into your business and you understand you've done the research on their needs, their wants, their desires, their pains, and also their key decision drivers.

Then LinkedIn, you are going to win and you're going to win big because it's about building real relationships over time. Connecting, yes, there's some cold outreach, but it's done in a way with a script that we use which is cool and has more people connecting than not. And if they don't connect, that's okay.

But then creating authentic, genuine connections and content and allowing them to come to you, that is going to. We're going to put more fuel under that and create more content and more value.

And continue to encourage our members to play a long game because there are always going to be quick wins along the way. But playing the long game will give you far greater ROI from any marketing costs. And I say marketing costs just your time, because there is a time factor in creating great content for LinkedIn. But I would ask you this question. If you're not yet marketing LinkedIn, what could be a greater use of your time than genuinely connecting with great prospects, genuinely creating great content and having really meaningful conversations?

I think you just hit a point. I want to, I mean, I want to segue. I want to shift gears, so to speak, to my new cycling buddy. Shift gears. We'll throw that one in.

I like that.

Thank you. But you've just referenced something there that I think is the perfect tie into that. If you look towards your successful clients versus, let's say, people that aren't seeing the success.

What'S the difference in how they spend their time? What are they looking at doing differently? And I reckon I've got a few. But I'm not going to comment or sway this. I'm very curious on your answer.

So I would say pretty much across the board. The first part is they don't own. The people that are not successful think it's somebody else's fault. Deep down.

They'Ll blame.

Or they'll perceive a blame of, well, I didn't get this and therefore I failed. But second to that is a short term mindset. I've been exposed to people this year who are looking for what they can get out of a situation as quickly as possible. Then they cut and run and that is a lack mindset. It's like, what can I get from this community and this training and as quickly as possible and then go.

The people that I've seen succeed give first. And it can often be an interesting paradigm for some people to adopt because, you know, it's a paid community, we have a coaching group and there's a fee and some people are like, well, I'm paying and I've got to give. But they're missing the point. When you contribute to a community and give first, you learn a great deal more by sharing your perspectives. And what happens is the feedback comes back at you 10 times more. So you get a 10 times ROI if you give first. And that's something that I'm very fortunate that the culture we've created in our community is a give first culture. People will help each other. We have three businesses in Melbourne who all rank on page one for the SEO search term video Production Melbourne who sit in the same room as competitors, but they help each other out. They treat each other like friends. They help each other out.

It's something I'm very, very proud of.

And you should be. And I think there's a powerful lesson even within that point. They're not competition.

They're not competition. I hope it's okay, Dan, but I want to throw in a couple that I've observed from here. I'll admit I. I am probably not as qualified as you. So you can, you can say no, that's not right at any point.

But what I would say, Charlie, is that you've been sitting on the sidelines this year, involved in events. We bring you to events. We've had you on the podcast a number of times to bring a different perspective. So I'm really interested to hear your perspective because you don't have the bias I have from being a filmmaker myself.

I guess we'll see. We will see. Number one. All right, I've got it from here. They don't compete on price.

The ones who are, in my mind, winning and I speak to, it's like it's never about being the lowest price. They've really got a confidence around their pricing and being profitable. And then two is, I've really noticed a lot of them spend time on working out. They spend time and energy on working out how to get others to help them. It's all about, all right, we've left, for example, maybe they got a project and instead of thinking about how they're going to shoot it, they're thinking about, right, who. Who on my team is going to shoot it or who can I bring in to help me support? So I think those two have become really clear where it's like on the reverse, if someone's really focused on, all right, we're going to be the cheapest and I'm going to try and do everything myself is. It's been a bit harder.

Definitely. Great, great observations. I couldn't. Couldn't agree with you more. Absolutely.

Okay, so looking some really interesting commonalities here now, looking into 2020. Now, we've spoken a lot about, you know, where we are from here. Being you have such a good pulse on this industry.

What do you think is worth focusing on in 2020? What is worth paying attention to if you're a video business owner?

The opportunity that I think is worth paying attention to is.

Never resting on your laurels.

Almost virtually every industry is being.

Affected by artificial intelligence in some way. I always refer back to taxis versus Uber because it's such a great analogy, but taxi drivers never saw Uber coming. And if we as video production companies have one lesson from that, it's like, where are the threats to our industry? Because robots will take over eventually. Let's put this into more of a kind of realistic context. What are the tasks that we're currently doing which are labor intensive and are expensive? And for me that is editing. Editing seems to be the bottleneck for many businesses. And I'm not talking about complex edits, I'm talking about your talking heads, corporate presentations, events, that kind of thing. And the average editor in Australia is between 40 and $75 an hour.

And really for assembling a two or three camera event.

That'S not a $75 an hour task. So I, I don't think I, I, I'm, I'm absolutely certain at some point artificial intelligence will come to a place where you could use a 4K camera, shoot wide and assemble various timelines.

Well, that's not company trying to do this though, isn't there? There's like the Vimeo or whatever it is, the little device where it's like you just set it up in it.

That's right, yes. But I'm thinking more of a kind of a broader professional type thing. Now at some point that may or may not happen. We've seen it with, you know, transcription, AI transcription, but there's something missing from an AI transcription that is the human interaction. So I believe there will be technology that will cut for you, but it will never feel quite right in my view. So I think leveraging the support of lower cost per hour services overseas is a huge opportunity for 2020. And I want to be really clear about this. It's not about offshoring editing to get it a lot cheaper so you can make a lot more money. Although I have no issue with that because that's smart business.

We're not exploiting anyone. We're talking about giving well paid jobs to people in communities where the cost of living is far lower, but where the skill level is absolutely up there on par with Australian or British or American editors. And this will be unpopular with editors. But that's okay because you know what Uber was unpopular with taxi drivers. Uber is still the big player. So I think if you are smart, you will begin 2020 with an open mind to use utilizing offshore facilities to cut and do kind of post production aspects of your business because that is going to allow you to compete at a level that will make you untouchable.

I wish I could drop this mic, but it's on a stand for anyone Listening. So it hasn't really dropped. I think you've nailed that. And there's so many examples of that across so many areas of a business. So, like, obviously the one you just mentioned, like going offshore, is one. But even to that point, my Philippines team has now got 100 up, 100 down. Internet 2019 was the first year we had that capability, and it's been a game changer. So the technological advances and Internet advances, like as IT stacks and compounds on top of each other, is going to become more and more important for video businesses to pay attention to. So I think that's huge. I think that point should really drive home. But then I also think about, like, just the little things on the other side. I mean, I took photos at your last event. Now I don't know how to use a DSLR at all, but I had the latest smartphone and with my hack shooting, the software was good enough that it actually produced photos that I imagine it's probably not as good as a pro, but it wasn't as far off as it used to be. Like a few years ago, if I'd have done that, that would have been dramatically worse off. And it's not that it's caught up. They're the same, but it's catching like it's worth paying attention to.

This is, this is the point that's really beautifully made that, Charlie, is that the technology is now doing a lot of the work that a pro used to have to do to get something to look good. And so we mustn't be naive and caught off guard into thinking they'll never replace me because of blah, blah, blah. We're all replaceable, okay? We're all replaceable. So think smart. Think. How can I get ahead of the curve and start testing this? Because with any new technology or any new facility or any new kind of offshore, there's going to be a level or a degree of bedding in a degree of testing, a degree of. In its infancy. But what, what swung me was, you know, Lex, on your team cutting a promo for me with no instruction. And I made a few changes, but there, there were no more changes. They were changes on pace and particular shots that I would have with a $75 an hour editor.

That were creative inputs. It wasn't technical inputs of like, oh, you didn't know how to use the software. It was like, hey, I would love it to look this way.

That's right. So the world has become a bigger playground for business to transact across borders. And that I think is going to be a huge opportunity from a broader business sense for video production companies that I think we will be looking very, very seriously in the first part of 2020.

Oh, I want to go to one more topic here that ties in a little bit with this. Be mindful of time. Feel free to shut me down here, Dan, but gear and equipment in 2020, is there any items you stand out that are like a must have for video businesses? Or is this a time when it's like must not have of video businesses?

I think one of the things we're going to do with the podcast next year actually is start to talk a little bit more about gear, but with a very clear brief. I want to talk to the CEOs of companies. I want to have people on the show like Jeremy Atmos, who's already said he's going to come on the show and ask Jeremy, who's the CEO of Atomos, how does someone investing in a piece of your technology, how does that benefit the business? So I want to look at gear from a business perspective and ask manufacturers, why should someone buy this bit of equipment? How is it going to make them faster, more efficient? How is it going to enable them to create more product? And how can they charge more for it? So I want to start putting gear manufacturers on the spot and asking those. They're not difficult questions, but they are questions around, commerce around, okay, how does this piece of technology enhance someone's business? So I'm going to leave those questions to the manufacturers and for the audience to decide. Because I don't have a crystal ball. I would say less is more. I think the businesses that are in my group who are doing well don't have that much focus on gear. They don't care too much for it. It's just an interface between the client's desire and the client's outcome. So I think it'll be an interesting strand to take the podcast down to bring in that gear talk, but not from the point of view. Look, you know, I want to be unpopular here, but most of the gear sites are sponsored by the gear companies, okay? So there's not really a great deal of independence.

It's a sugar saga all over again. It's like the sugar studies conducted by the sugar industry. It's like they found the outcome they wanted.

Right? And I don't believe any, by the way, any of the sponsors are leaning on anybody in the marketplace to say anything specifically. I really don't. And I don't blame any of the companies for sponsoring some of these big Shows it's the actual individuals running these channels who I know are just gear junkies and who just want to keep everybody happy. And because there's not a great deal of journalism or etiquette in that sort of traditional journalism space. And it's just a kind of like, yes, no three bags. So we love your gear. We love you gear. We love your gear. And then a bit of, bit of lip service to, oh, well, you know, we tested this independently bullshit, you know, like, you know, you're sponsored by the company is making the gear and you, you, you just won't say anything too negative in case they stop spending the money. So that's okay, that's fine. I want to just kind of come at this from a slightly different perspective and ask kind of, you know, how does this benefit someone's business? And hopefully.

That'S an opportunity to get some. Some real kind of, you know, truths.

Absolutely. And I just want to give some context to that answer. If you're a YouTuber, you might have a re. It might be your full time geek and you're sponsored by a gear channel and they're giving you gear. If you left them a bad review, even if the product was bad, for them, to take that income away from you could be very detrimental to your own personal needs. And it's a huge paradox in the YouTube reviews. It's a huge paradox where we're getting reviews that are just in the manufacturer's favor to basically for people to put food on their table. And I think it's a very, very dangerous game. And again, you've got to be careful about the incentives on this stuff. And it is getting better. A lot of people have woken up to it, but that is a very real concern. But then I want to do some more rapid fire questions now. I want to throw some at you. Best book you've read in 2019.

Oh, best book I've read in 2019. Gosh, there are a few. I'm gonna have to pick up my phone here because I've got a fair number on the go at the minute.

David Goggins book came out this year. Was it early in the year, really?

Yeah. So David Goggins, in terms of motivation, can't hurt me. David Goggins, I would say.

Cadence, Pete.

Williams, I loved that as well. That's definitely up there for me.

And probably my favorite book of the year by a country mile. And if you read one business book in your life and nothing else, and you won't be surprised when I say this, the road Less Stupid by Keith J. Cunningham. Best business book, hands down, I have ever read.

It is my number one of all time as well, and I'm a picky reader, but I just think that book is so spot on. So I'm great to hear. There's another fan here. Okay, so we've nailed the best books. We've gone through so many of these. Is there any final words you would like to put in to encourage people or what's coming up for den in 2020 that the audience can look forward to?

We are going to relaunch this podcast early in 2020. We've decided to pivot slightly and we'll be changing the name of it and it's going to be called how to Scale a Video Business. We've decided that it feels more appropriate to call it how to Scale a Video Business because that's really what every topic is about to allow you, the listener and the viewer to take tips and implement them to your own business. So we're going to change that early in 2020.

I think my big goal is to continue to share what's working for our members to give you the incentive to try it for yourself. I'm excited to see what happens with LinkedIn. What I can promise you is we will be fully committed to continuing to test many, many different strategies.

But really my big lesson, I think, and my big goal is going to be to explore the relationship between. I took up road cycling earlier this year and have fallen in love with it in a very, very big way and just recently purchased a new bike, which is incredible. But on my very first ride, went from riding 30km to 65 in one go. And on that ride I realized the correlation between riding a road bike and your own definition of what you can achieve and stamina and business. And I'm, I guess I'm excited to explore that continued journey with my own personal fitness and stamina and endurance and business. And that's something that I'm particularly excited to kind of share with you as, as we go.

It's really interesting. So the connection between your personal health and wellbeing and how that plays a role in business, I think that's a powerful topic, Dan. A very powerful topic.

I think so, Charlie. I think so. And you know, we, we can get very caught up in building a business. And there's many business owners who die young because they spent all their life in the business putting effort in and not enough time on themselves. I want to shift that. I want to make it my mission next year to Help video production company owners grow in scale, but not at the cost of their health. Because I did that for many, many years. I haven't had a drink in six months for no other reason than I wanted to test it. I wanted to battle test what would happen if I stopped drinking alcohol.

And it's been incredible and probably another episode's worth of discovery, but it was just about how would that affect my discipline, my self discipline and my alertness and my awareness. And I have no reason to not drink alcohol and I have no history of any alcoholism or any issues like that. I just went, I want to stop drinking and see what happens. And so I'm doing this kind of experiment and I want to continue to share that journey, to see what, what else happens. Because I think when we make a decision to do or not do something, it has a, it has a kind of ripple effect and that's a kind of a whole layer of business development, if you like, that. I want to explore and share on this podcast.

So powerful. And I just think there's so many business owners out there that are so busy building a business, they forget to build a life.

And.

Something you said to me the other day, you know, Keith Cunningham shares this, it's like, it's not how much you make that counts, it's how much you keep that counts. And I see a lot of people going, oh, I've got an X dollar revenue business. And I'm like, I know, but like, how much are you keeping? There's a guy I know who's got a restaurant and he keeps saying he generates a million dollars a year, but he's got no profit. And it's like he's proud of it. And I'm like, why on earth would you put yourself through that stress? So I want to really focus next year on because this is business podcast, right? I want people to focus on how much are you keeping. And that means not spending money on the latest gear, or it means making decisions about gear that are commercial decisions that are going to generate you income and generate you cash. And so I'm going to be looking forward to exploring that and hopefully having in the podcast a few more times. I know this is an area where you, you're very passionate.

Definitely. I'm getting more excited as we talk about these topics. Don't get me wrong, I love the video stuff, but it's like, I've never ran a video business where it's like the, the broader business stuff I feel very related to, although I'm getting much closer to yourself and the members. And it's just such a powerful industry.

Yeah. Well, Charlie, we're up to 45 minutes, which I think is one of our longest episodes, but I think that's okay for Christmas Day. Any closing observations from yourself on this, this last 12 months of journeying through this, this podcast?

The biggest observation I have for this industry overall is that video is just getting bigger and bigger. It's gone from something just bigger businesses did to this, like trickle down to where solopreneurs and people that are just starting out doing video. So what I would close out with here is that if you have a video business, now's the time to get excited. There's a big, big wave to ride, and those who are prepared will reap the rewards of a very prosperous future.

Well, Charlie, I want to thank you. You are our very first guest and have been on the podcast many times this year. Thank you for bringing that external perspective to the show. I know that the viewers and listeners always comment on the episodes that you're in and thank you and I look Forward to exploring 2020 with you and seeing where we can help more video producers achieve greater success.

You've been listening to the Video Business Accelerator podcast with your host, Den Lenny. If you are a video business owner who is tired of going it alone and would benefit from mentorship, support and weekly accountability, then mouse over to www.to learn more about how the Accelerator program can help you today. Don't forget to subscribe and rate the show over on itunes, and we'd really appreciate you taking a few minutes to leave a review.