5 Ways to Fail in Your Video Business. EP #296 - Den Lennie

Nobody wants to fail at running their video business, but there's a high probability you will if you're not hyper aware of the pitfalls. Most video businesses fail to even make $100,000 a year and if they are, they're doing all the work themselves, are burned out, they're unhappy, and they're actually failing at both running their business and running their life. The good news is I'm going to share five ways to that you could fail in your video business and how to avoid them so that you can actually avoid failing in your own video business. We start our video business because, well, we love making videos and to be fair, you can earn a really decent living as a videographer. But making videos involves a very different set of skills to running a successful video production company that is both profitable and doesn't consume you. The first main difference between being a creative and running a creative business is that creativity is all about fresh ideas, a new way of doing things, coming up with an original way of doing something you know, we don't want to be seen to be copying anyone else. Running a business, on the other hand, is actually a set of monotonous tasks repeated consistently. Business and money like structure which can be at odds with the creative process. If you don't want your business to fail, you have to figure out a way for logic and creativity to play nicely together. And that's what I'm going to share with you today. Hi, I'm Dan and I help videographers and video production companies scale the business side of their operations. Now if you're new here, I have been in video production for 26 years, have traveled the world to over 60 countries, have filmed in almost every genre of television production, and filmed with some of the world's biggest celebrities. Nowadays, I help video business owners scale their business so they can have more freedom, more more fun and make more money and spend more time with people they love. Now make sure you grab my 21 steps to six figure profits cheat sheet which is below or on the screen. Now this is a quick start guide to help you understand what steps need to happen to build a solid six figure profits business. Print it out, pin it up, use it as a reference guide. It will help you on your journey. If you find this content helpful, please do like and subscribe and ding the bell and tell people about this channel. Let's now get on with the five ways your video business can fail if you're not careful at number five Seems obvious, but most videographers are undercharging for their services. I think it stems from being a freelancer, where you have a rate for shooting, a rate for editing, and maybe you throw some expenses on top of. But when you start to turn your freelance business into a proper business, you need to factor in your overheads. The easiest way to save your business from failing is to increase your prices today. Let's look at an example. So if you're charging, say $500 a day for shooting and $500 a day for editing, and you did 40 projects last year, let's call that $1,000 per project times 40 is $40,000. With this strategy, if you now charge $1,000 a day for editing and $1,000 a day for shooting, you're now making $2,000 per project. Same number of days, increase in price, you now have $80,000 in revenue. There are plenty of companies charging this and more. So the market can handle this pricing. The question is, are you targeting the right market? For the most part. If you're a videographer who's anxious about put, it's actually not your fault. It's normal, because no one's shown you how to do it the right way. But fear can stop a lot of videographers from truly earning what they deserve. I have a mastermind called the Video Business Accelerator, and recently we did an exercise where we compared prices on the same project. And as a result of that conversation, one of our members decided to put their prices for editing up by $250 a day, which equated to $37,500 of additional profit just by his prices. If you'd like some help with your pricing, then I've got a book here called the Filmmaker's Guides to Budgets and Quotes that help increase margin on projects by 20 to 30% instantly. If you'd like a free copy of this, go to the link on screen or below. Join my free community how to scale a Video Business where you can get access to this book, which shows you not only how to put your prices up, but what quotes and mechanisms work the best. Number four Websites. Oh man, websites. So many websites are terrible. If you do a search for video production in your town, what you'll find is about 90% of the websites all look the same. It's got a showreel. It's got a headline that says something like passionate Storytellers Partner with us. It's got awards for short films. It's got pictures of the founders and how passionate they are about storytelling. And they talk about their love of filmmaking and. But what they don't do is help someone build trust and they don't answer the common question, which is how can you help someone solve their problem with video, there's a lot of vagueness, a lot of ambiguity, and most people are getting this wrong. Having a website full of awards and shows is a surefire way for your business to fail. Let me explain a better way. Have a clear headline that articulates the problem you solve for your clients. Helping busy marketing managers with effective relatable video. That is a powerful headline that will attract a busy marketing manager to want to click and learn more. Be super clear on who you're talking to. Build a customer avatar. Know who you're talking to. Most websites try and speak to everyone and in turn end up talking to no one. Have social proof. Have client logos. Have testimonials. Have evidence that you can do what what you say you can do. It's far stronger for other people to tell the story of how good you are than you telling it yourself. We're in the business of problem solving. What problem do you solve and what do you want the client to do next so you can help them solve their problem? Offer a strategy call or a get a quote button. Have them go to an automated calendar so they can choose a time that suits them and then follow on with a short survey that asks leading questions that helps you to understand a whether or not this client is a good fit and you can qualify them so you don't end up with time wasters, and b the client will feel like you already care before you've even spoken because you're helping them articulate their problem better. Most importantly, if you do this, it filters out the time wasters and means you only have qualified people booking a call. By making people jump through a few hoops, you filter out the weeds. The third way your business can fail is by spending too much money. Gear. Now, I realize this is not a popular thing to say. I love gear, you love gear. But you have to know when to invest and when to hold back. The number one reason people get into trouble is they think that by buying gear they're going to save tax. But all you're doing is burning through your cash flow to save a very small amount of tax. It's very important to have a good accountant to advise you on this stuff. But trust me, spending money to save money is not a winning combo. The second area that people get into trouble is by thinking that they've got to buy the latest and greatest gear to impress the client. Clients rarely care Unless you're doing something which is ultra specific and the broadcaster wants a specific camera, then yes. But for the most part, for corporate video, you do not need the most shiny, expensive camera. I did a project for a client in the UK a few years ago and I shot it on the FS7 with prime lenses, blah blah, blah, blah, blah, delivered the project, they were really happy, they got me back to do it again. And this time I was flying from Australia, so I didn't want to bring all my gear, so instead I brought my A7s kit, shot a follow up project for that at the same price. Client didn't bat an eyelid, they didn't care that I shot it on my A7s. At that point I sold all my FS7 kit and did everything else on my A7s. I made more money, there's less gear to carry and the client didn't care. Now, I do understand that having a fast computer and the right equipment is important. So if you are going to make an investment in equipment, work out what that is for the year and build it into your annual budget. Another great strategy is if you buy it in one go, can you get finance and finance it over 12 or 24 or 36 months? So you have a small monthly payment but access to all the gear straight away so you can make the money back. You make money, but also make sure you're charging appropriately for your equipment. Most people fail to charge the right amount of money for the equipment they have, partly because they're in denial about how much gear they've got. But here's a strategy we use. When I used to run a rental company in London, we get the piece of equipment and all the accessories. We take the full amount and divide it by a number. So if you have $30,000 worth of equipment, if you divide it by 100 days hire, you get $300 per day is the hire rate on that equipment. If you use that equation, you'll start to build in a really solid amount of money to every hire, which is going to build the capital up so you can buy more gear in the future. The number two way that your business might fail is by relying too heavily on word of mouth. Your business simply won't grow on referrals and word of mouth alone. Now don't get me wrong, referrals are the best source of traffic. Because someone has worked with you, they recommend you. The barrier to someone else working with you becomes much, much lower and you end up with great relationships. But they're not predictable. And they're not consistent. So you need to make friends with marketing. My friends, most videographers have never done any marketing, don't want to do any marketing, and are very reluctant if they have to do some marketing. But let me just explain what marketing is and hopefully that will help you feel a little less icky towards it. Marketing is simply putting the right offer, right people, right time. There are two parts to marketing. There's the strategy and then the tactics. The strategy might be to have a funnel on your website that enables people to leave their details, book a call with you, and go into some sort of email sequence to nurture them while you get back to them. A great tactic for getting traffic to your website would be to use LinkedIn. Now, the way we would approach LinkedIn would be to go and connect with people in your target market on Sales Navigator, connect with them, introduce yourself, and then create good content in your feed to build a relationship at such times that they might say, hey, I need someone. That guy on LinkedIn's been pretty cool. Let me get in touch with him. If you want to learn how to use LinkedIn as a strategy, I've got a free LinkedIn training in my free community how to scale a video business. Just click on the link below or up here and you can go and join that today for free. Number one reason video businesses fail is they don't manage their cash flow properly. Profit on paper is not the same thing as cash in the bank. You can't buy anything with profit. You need cash for that. The first rule of business cash flow is you have a business bank account dedicated to all incoming business income and all outgoing business expenses. Be very careful not to mix your personal income with your business income. It gets very messy and very hard to track. Business money is not your money and it's not your money because the government wants his taxes. So set up a second account for your taxes. Now, your accountant can advise you on exactly how much, but I would say 20 to 30% is a very safe amount, which is going to create a buffer for you. So come tax time, there are no surprises. The fact that taxes exist mean that your business is profitable. If you've got a tax bill, it means you're making money. Tax is a good thing and no one should ever have a surprise tax bill. A good accountant will be able to calculate what Your tax is six or 12 months out from when it's actually due. If you're tracking your profit and loss each month, you know your financial position. Cash is king. So protect it and invest it wisely. So there you have it. There's five ways to help you avoid your video business failing.

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.videobusinessaccelerator.com 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.