A laughable simple way to bring in new business. EP #128 - Den Lennie

G', day, folks. It's Dan here, and I'm doing something a bit different this week. I am hosting a solo episode today.

It's been a while since I've done a solo episode, and it was actually my copywriter who said to me, you should do more of these. Then, you know, you got a lot of things to share. And so I thought I would do that today, actually do a solo episode where I want to talk about a couple of things that I hope will really help you. If you are looking to scale your video business just now, maybe you've been affected by all the craziness that's going on and also kind of draw some comparisons to behaviors that I observe and witness, both from people who apply to come into my program and those who succeed, and also to really kind of explore, you know, why is it that two people with, you know, equal capability as filmmakers, one person can thrive in a crisis and the other person will fundamentally kind of fall apart and kind of not be able to succeed. And so this is an important topic to address today because, you know, I'm seeing both. I'm seeing people who are literally on social media complaining that they haven't worked for six months, and yet I speak to other filmmakers who happen to be in my group who are literally thriving. And it's like, what is the difference? You know, what is going on where one individual thrives in a crisis and another one struggles and kind of falls apart? So that's what I want to cover off today. So, yeah, look, I will get straight into it. So I haven't really got a plan for today's show other than I thought I'd start with exploring that whole notion of why. Why is it one person achieves great success.

And sees growth in a crisis when another person struggles? And I think it all comes down to mindset. And, you know, when I've done live events in the past, the mindset section is always the area where we get just enormous traction from people in the seminar. And that's because oftentimes, unless you've done some work on personal development, you know, it really comes down to making a choice. Do you accept that everything happens, that that happens in your life.

Is a result of something you did or didn't do? Or are you someone who looks to blame external forces? We did a webinar way back in March about this. It's like, if you allow the external world to dictate to you the outcomes you can or can't achieve, then you've already lost on the other Hand. If you chose to accept responsibility and you look in the mirror and you realize that whether you succeed or fail is down to the person staring back at you in the mirror, that is when I believe you can have a huge breakthrough. And if you're someone who currently sort of looks to blame external forces, then I want you to kind of listen to this and consider how that might, you know, be affecting and impacting your results. Because this all came from reading a book called Extreme Ownership by Jocko willink, how Navy SEALs lead and win. And is this incredible book about his job as a platoon commander.

In the Iraq war and how he's moved that into business coaching and business leadership training through his company. And that was when I started to really accept that, you know, anything that happened in my life, good or bad or otherwise, was down to me. And so, you know, getting your mindset right around that is the first thing to identify closely combined with, you know, what is it you actually want from your business? In life, I used to struggle with this. This idea that you had to kind of map things out and plan things. And as a creative. I don't want to plan things. I want to be spontaneous and, you know, feel, feel, feel my way around. And if I decide I want to do something, I' if not, I won't. But if you don't get super clear on what it is you want from your life, then it's very hard to achieve that with any. With any real clarity. So when you combine your mindset and when I talk about mindset, I'm talking about difference between being abundant and plentiful versus scarce, and, you know, worried that there's not enough going around. And this is something that is, is. Is. It's conditioned in us from, from. From childhood, you know, and we're always told that money doesn't grow on trees. We're always told that, you know, if you don't appreciate things more, you know, you. You won't get any more. And, and. And there's this kind of, certainly from my experience, a lack mentality, one of, you know, there's only so much money around. And even the cartoons they talk about, you know, it's always the bad guy that's got the money. You know, the fat, bloated businessman is always the guy with the money. And so I think culturally in our society, the idea of having wealth and success and money is kind of frowned upon. You know, it's not something that people feel all that comfortable with. And I think that's something that happens to a lot of us. You know, my parents weren't very wealthy. We never went without growing up. But, you know, there was never a lot of money around. You know, my dad had a certain amount of job money he earned and his job as a printer. And I remember he used to go and dad used to get his paid and he's in a kind of little brown envelope. We were kids and like at the end of the week, there was. There was only kind of small change left in the pay packet. There was nothing left. And so, you know, we sort of grew up in that environment where the money did run out every week. And it's only when I started doing personal development and business development and really kind of, you know, looking at mindset and studying these topics that I started to understand that.

Money is. There's money always flowing. Business and money is always flowing. It's always available. But sometimes we let our mindset think otherwise. In fact, that word think, we start to think that there's a kind of a shortage or there's only so much to go around, when in actual fact, there's never been more money in the world. There's never been more opportunity. The way in which we can communicate with prospects and clients has never been easier. I can put an advert on Facebook today selling a digital product product and be making money within an hour. You know, that is absolutely possible. It's all at our fingertips. And so what we have to first of all do is get our brains into a position of maybe accepting that we don't yet know everything we need to know in order to get to where we need to get to. You know, in my own story, my own journey, I was a freelance cameraman.

I had been staffed for a few years at different companies and TV stations. We went freelance and, you know, was building up that kind of that business via freelancer and had an accident, had to go and do a few other jobs for a few years, then set up a business. But when I first set up my business, I was still very much thinking in those freelance terms. So as a freelancer, I'd have be 20, 30 different clients, and I'd pretty much say yes to everything. You know, that. That freelancer curse I call it is we say yes to everything because we think if we don't say yes to everything, they might not call us again. And it's a very real, genuine strateg.

But it does kind of somewhat burn you out. You know, you are. You're always kind of, you know, you just. You're just working like a dog. And I started running my business like that. And the trouble with that is, is that you kind of don't want to let go of anything. So you get to a certain point where you're so busy, you're doing so much that you're doing your own books, you're doing your own invoicing, you're doing the shoot booking, you're doing the production management. You're probably doing the shooting, you're probably doing the editing. Maybe you're hiring a sound record or an assistant, but you're doing all the driving, you're packing the gear, you're getting into the car, you're doing the job, you're coming back, and then you've got to offload the cards and you're just exhausted. And it's. It literally is kind of, you know, feast and famine. 1. One minute you're kind of working like a dog, next minute there's nothing in the calendar. And so, you know, it's understandable that when you're starting to build a business, you have that kind of dichotomy, if you like, that kind of. That, that rub where you're, you know, you kind of. You're kind of running your business like a freelancer, but you're too scared to hire anyone because you're pro, not charging enough. And you're probably still charging the way you do as a freelancer, which is like, it's this much for a day and this much for. For an edit, maybe a bit more on top. But that is not the way you scale a business. That is the tradesman's approach to being a business owner. And there's nothing wrong with being a freelance business owner. If you want to be a tradesman who just goes out and works and earns, you know, good, good living, but does everything yourself, that is okay. But please understand, you're only going to cap your own earning potential because you're only for the days you're on set or behind an edit machine, and that will burn you out. And that is what I did for Best Heart three years. Way back in 2009, I just did everything myself. And, you know, we were doing about £250,000 a year in revenue, so it was pretty healthy. But I couldn't get past it. I couldn't get past it three years in a row because I was doing everything myself. And yes, I was hiring crew on bigger jobs, but I didn't have any support team in the office. You know, it was all we had with a virtual assistant. And my wife was helping me For a little while, the business, but we just couldn't get past that. And I hired a mentor, Nick, who worked with us for a year. And he was like a thousand pounds a day. But he came in and helped us see where our holes were. And he helped us kind of, you know, recognize that we couldn't chase every opportunity and nor could we scale our business if we did everything ourselves. So we had to look at our pricing, we had to look at the way in which we were pitching ourselves to the market. And we had to accept if we wanted to scale, and this was a real battle for me, I would have to not do as much shooting and editing and that would mean not keeping all of the money. However, if I was charging 900 a day for editing, let's say, and, and I could find someone for 350, well, I was keeping 650. I think my edit rate back then was probably around about maybe between 6, 900 pounds. I can't remember exactly. But the point was if I wasn't physically doing the work, then I could do something else. I could bring in more work and have people editing for me. And that's probably the first thing that our video business accelerator clients learn is that you cannot scale your business if you're doing everything yourself. And so you have to look at your pricing. Virtually every single person I speak to when they come into the program is undercharging. So the very first thing we do is we look at their pricing. We find ways to help them kind of increase their overall gross pricing. And that is because most of us come from the freelance background where we don't, we kind of, we allow our mindset to get in the way of charging enough. We think, oh, we might not charge, we might not pay that. So therefore somebody else might not pay that. When in actual fact, if you look at your pricing from a value based model is like, what is the value you're bringing? And there's an approach to do that that you can actually charge more than just the time for money. Businesses, you know, don't just charge time for money. You know, I was looking at a documentary recently and it was about Rolex watches and someone asked the question, how much does a Rolex actually cost to make? And on this, this, I went down a bit of a rabbit hole. Somewhere between 600 and $1,000 is what it costs to actually produce a Rolex with the components and the raw materials, and yet they sell for 30 or $40,000. But then someone said, but consider what they spend on branding and Marketing and positioning, millions and millions and millions of dollars on that. And so a business isn't just the actual product, but Rolex sponsors, you know, global yacht races and this big brand and they sponsor Wimbledon. You know, this is all millions of dollars of branding and social proof. It's a prestigious brand. They've got huge teams of people. Their stores are, you know, grand and luxurious. So all of that has to be paid for by somewhere. And so when someone buys a Rolex watch, they're buying into a lifestyle, a brand, a position, a sense of.

You know, it's like, it's like, it's, it's like a wealth display of wealth. It's like, look, I can afford a Rolex. I happen to think Rolexes are pretty gross, but there you go, that's just me. I think it's far nicer watches out there. But the fact is it attracts a certain section of the market and it's a status symbol. That's the phrase I was looking at. It's a status symbol. Now we take that back to your video business. You producing a video, the shooting and the editing part is like the manufacturing of a Rolex. But you've got to market yourself. And to be honest, most video businesses that I come into contact with don't do any marketing. I mean they tell me with some pride that it's like, oh, just word of mouth. But, but at the same time, those that are kind of concerned that word of mouth probably isn't the most reliable means of building a business, then we tend to have great conversations and we can do some great work together. Because you have to, if you want to scale your business, okay, big, if you have to start thinking about your business as a shop front, as continuity across your social media channels, as systems, you need to be thinking in terms of how can I communicate the value to this client, how can I become a partner to this client where they no longer have to search for video suppliers but actually have a, have a great partnership, a great kind of white listed or white labeled video production team.

And within that we come up with nine different accelerators that help that process. The first one is you getting very, very clear on what your personal goals are and what your company goals are. What is your purpose? Why do you exist as a business? Is it just to be Billy Bob the videographer who shoots and edits and makes 50 grand a year? Or do you want to run a company that generates four or five hundred thousand dollars a year or pounds or euros? You know, what is your, what is your commercial Mission? What do you want to achieve? Have you ever sat down and actually documented, you know, the ideal house you'd like to own, the car you'd like to drive, how much time off you'd like to have in a week? Where would you like to go on a holiday? Where would you. How would you like to spend more time with the family? If you're into bikes, you know, what kind of bike do you want? What is your. What is, what is your dream? What are the stuff that if money wasn't an object, you would have?

Write all of that down and look at the number and say, well, okay, I can have all of that. And this came up in the Four Hour Workweek, a book by Tim Ferriss. And he's like, you don't have to be a millionaire to live like a millionaire. You can rent a lot of these things. I bought a new car recently. I bought a Range Rover velar. It was $150,000 was the cost of the car ticket price. Now it was on special at 99, but I just took a lease on it and it cost me a thousand bucks a month. So I get to enjoy this beautiful vehicle for 1,000 bucks a month. And I don't really notice the payment going out. So it's like I get all of the benefit and I don't actually own it, I just kind of lease it. And I know many of you listening lease cars, but this is a great way of, of enjoying the benefit without having to kind of lay your cash down. So getting clear about what you want and how you want to live, you know, we live in a beautiful sunshine course in Australia. That was a plan. That was always a plan. And we're building a beach house just now and we'll be moving into that middle of next year. All of this has been planned. We started planning this 10 years ago.

So, you know, you've got to start planning. You get very clear on what you want, very clear on what you want, and then start planning. How are you going to achieve it? So once you've got a plan in place, it's like, okay, we reverse engineer that plan, and it's going to come down to needing a certain amount of cash each month. And that helps you then target who you're going to work with more clearly, which is the second accelerator, which is defining your niche or your vertical or the areas you want to work with. In this sector, you must only target one market at a time. And I come up against enormous resistance with this. But the fact is, you know, it's just like you can argue with me or you can be broke. The fact is those people in my mastermind who follow this path, who stop resisting the need to sell video to everyone and market to one clear target demographic at a time. Now, I have clients that have two or three different demographics, but they're very clearly laid out on their websites. So when someone from health care lands on their site, it's a health care specific page. It's not healthcare and sport and music videos. Because you want someone who is interested in buying your services to feel like a, you understand and B, you are a specialist in that field. So once you've got a clearly identified target customer, you can really get to know them. Now we have a 13 step client avatar process. It's 13 questions that identify everything you need to know about your client avatar. Our client avatars let you know who's your ideal target client. Then you need to communicate and educate with that market. You need to build your authority by educating them in how video works and how it works, the way you operate it. Now, I'm not saying you need to become an evangelist for video. Everyone knows video is important. But what I'm saying here is you have to become very clear with your target market filling in the holes for them. If there's anything that they don't understand, help them understand. And that's that partnership process. And within the education, you know, we're talking about websites, we're talking about, you know, social media, we're talking about marketing approaches, we're talking about systems. You know, when someone comes onto your website, it's not just a form that says, you know, get in touch, hey, let's have a chat. I mean, the number of times I see this phrase, let's have a chat. It's like people are looking for a professional supplier to make a video. They don't want to just have a chat. They want to know how much and can you do it. And so having a get a quote button on your website is critically important. You want to show that you're serious about making a sale and helping them achieve their outcome. People respect that. Then you've got to look at how do you generate leads, how do you generate inquiries, how do you generate interest?

There are a number of people on different stages of the journey. There's a, there's a kind of a table called the five levels of client awareness. Eugene Schwartz. And Eugene Schwartz was an ad man in the 60s and they identified that different people are at different stages of the buying cycle. Your biggest raving Fans, when they call you up for a job, they just give you a call, shop your message and say, we got this job. Can you do it? Here's the budget. But at the other end of the scale, there are those that don't even know they have a problem yet. And so if you're trying to sell your solution to people who don't even know they've got a problem, then that's going to be tricky. So understanding where your clients are on their journey and where you're pitching your marketing is very, very important. All too often if is doing marketing and they're not, they're not aware of this process, excuse me, they're going to be trying to, trying to sell, you know, a sports car to someone who doesn't even have a driving license. So you've got to be very clear on where your target market is and where the right people are on their journey who are ready to make that next move and book you. You don't want to be wasting time selling to people who don't even know they've got a problem.

So following up, having automated systems, having marketing systems, being able to measure how effective your marketing is. Let me ask you this, do you know how effective your marketing is? Do you know, are you able to kind of turn on a tap and bring leads into your business and then when you get too busy, turn the tap off? Because if you can, you don't have a marketing system. A marketing system is a predictable process for getting inquiries. But once you've got those inquiries, what happens next? You need to convert them into customers. Because just because someone visits your website and makes an inquiry doesn't mean they're ready to buy. We did a big sales training in our program last week. We actually helped our members create a sales process, a script if you like, with exact words to say and bullet points to follow and questions to ask to fully understand the client's challenge and problem so that they can help them. And if they, if indeed they can help them, then they could present the client with a price and, and a solution. But also you've got to track those inquiries, you know, using a CRM, a customer relationship management program, so you can see where people are on the journey. Some people aren't ready to buy just now. They might be ready to buy in six months. Well, you know, if you just leave it into your email inbox, then you're screwed. You're going to forget. So having a sales script and a sales process and using a CRM, very, very important. And then once you win the job, then, you know, you can't do all of this and run the project as well. So you've got to think about, you know, communicating to the team. You got to think of systems and processes. You're going to learn to be a leader. You've got to be learned to delegate instructions in a clear way. And if there's a problem, being able to address that problem in a way that doesn't make you feel uncomfortable. And I know from my own experience that that was something that used to really freak me out, you know, having to kind of communicate because I wasn't clear in my own head what it was I wanted. And so from there, I had to learn how to lead, how to become a better leader. And that involved study and courses and events and learning that, you know, how to manage people in a way that if you have great systems, managing people is a piece of cake. So we have systems that we roll out in our business that helps us to, you know, communicate effectively to a team, be it in house or remote or indeed contractors, and making sure there's contracts in place and agreements so that those contractors don't steal your work. You know, it's a big fear for many, many people. And then we look at, well, once you've got that up and running, once that's cooking, once you've got a clearly identified target market, you've got a good funnel bringing inquiries into the business, and you're converting them into sales. And then you' scaling your operation by taking on more work. So you've got other editors working for you, possibly be a production manager. And, you know, we have people in our. In our community who are freelance production managers who are available per hour to help you with your projects. And then you can start looking at more of a kind of management role, which is you're measuring the business. And, you know, Pat, who's on the podcast a few weeks ago, said, you know, I used to love just shooting, but now I love building the business. And he's in the space of a year, has really transformed from that freelancer mindset to actually running a business that he is in control of. He's loving the creativity of building his team, and it helps him, you know, spend time with his young family and go down to his beach house and, like, have people working and making money for him when he's not actually having to be on the tools. So you got to start thinking about, you know, wearing your kind of hats of the manager, which is like, okay, I'm tracking my marketing spend I'm tracking my operations, I'm tracking my finances, keeping a track of my operational expenses, you know, being able to read my finances in a way that is, you know, on dashboard. So you can start to measure the health of your business. You can start to predict problems well in advance. You want to make sure you're, you can see when your lead flow is dropping back and you know, if a client doesn't spend for a while, that you're not going to see the big dip in your finances. So that's something else that we look at. And then we look at nurturing your relationships with your team, with your clients, with your market. You know, going out to clients and having systems for making sure they're feeling loved, that you're not just responding when they need something, but you're actually actively, you know, nurturing that relationship. We've got some great strategies around that where, you know, we have, again, systems for sending out gifts or cards at the end of a project. And then finally it's ask. And we have something called the Ask framework, which we deploy at various stages of the customer cycle, which is, how can you. Asking yourself, how can we do more as a team for our clients? How else can we serve our clients and bring them.

More value? Are you asking for reviews? Are you systematically asking for referrals? Referral quality leads are the easiest business you will ever get. But I think that, you know, as, as filmmakers, we can be a little shy, we can be a little bit reluctant, a little bit, you know, nervous or anxious about that. So, you know, that's our nine growth accelerators, and it's a wheel and, and there's, there's, there's work to be done on every wheel. But once you've done a cycle, it becomes easier because then once you've got all these things in place, you've got your measuring in place, and you can, you can nurture clients and you can start to predict business. You can start to go into different verticals and different business opportunities. But in the knowledge that you have the team, you have the systems, you have the support, and that is how we create structure within a video production business. And for the clients that are implementing this, you know, they really are seeing incredible results. And, you know, I would never have thought, thought that, you know, 10 years ago this would be where I would be, but I can see now that the structure, the discipline really makes an enormous difference to everyone's business. And they get to spend more time with their family and they make more money and they're stressing less, you know, and one of the advantages of our group is that we have, we have coaching calls every week. So we have two coaching calls a week. So it's like 90 minutes on each call. And the guys are always saying, you know, it's just, it's that, that's that check in. It's that, it's that kind of reset every week. I remember when I was running my business, it was terribly lonely. You know, you kind of. You could. You were really, really busy or you were dead quiet. And when you're dead quiet, those demons start to kind of rear up in your head and you start to think you're not good enough. And then you're like, well, should I do this or should I do that? And then there's people trying to sell you SEO. And you think, well, if I could do SEO, I'll. I'll, I'll get more clients. And I see these companies just, you know, selling SEO, and they're, there's, there's, there's filmmakers with websites that just look like crap, and they're just pumped full of words, thinking that if they just kind of ment video 50 times, they'll somehow get work. And to some of that degree, some of that works, but you end up being this kind of, you know, first responder to anybody who phones you up. And that is also not a way to run a business. One of our clients, Simon, did SEO for a number of years, and then we actually calculated the amount of time he'd spent putting quotes together and sending them out and how much money they actually made versus the work they'd done. It was an enormous difference. So, you know, it's. You've got to be careful. You've got to make sure you've got some structure. And as I say, we've got an opportunity here where if you're interested in learning a bit more about this, then you can always book a call with us and we have a chat and give you some ideas. And you can either take those ideas and you can run with them on your own, or we can have a chat about how we can support you and help you with that on your journey. But, guys, I'm just about 29 minutes here, so I'm going to wrap things up.

Thanks so much for listening. I really do appreciate you all. And if you haven't yet given us a review or.

Kind of Google rating, then please, I'll make sure they're beneath this podcast episode, but even just go to itunes and leave us a review. That would really be helpful and I will see you next week. You've been listening to the how to Scale a Video Business podcast with me, your host. If you're a video business owner who's hit a ceiling and we benefit from mentorship, support and coaching, then check out how you can work with me over@denleny.com 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. And don't forget to share. If you feel you've gotten value from this episode and you think it would be useful for other filmmakers you know, then please do make a massive favor and share it on social media and in groups that you might be in. See you next week.