A mini-seminar on how to get out of a funk. EP #244 - Den Lennie

G', day, guys. It's Dan here with the pre Christmas episode of the how to Scale a Video Business Podcast. We are on episode 244, 23rd December 2021.

Now, I'm going to do something slightly different today because, you know, we are heading into that Christmas period. And no matter how your business has gone this year, it is the one opportunity in the year you have to just detach yourself from everything, spend some time.

Doing things that, you know, bring you joy. Because if you've had a great year, then you've got lots to celebrate. And if you've got a having a year that's maybe not so great, then it's a time to reflect. But either way, there's not much you can do between Christmas and New Year. So I strongly encourage you to chill if you can, you know, take. Take some time out. It's very easy to become overwhelmed for a whole host of reasons. And we talk a fair bit about mental health on this podcast. And, you know, I had a rough week last week. Just a bit of overwhelm for many, many different reasons. Lots of things hitting me at the same time. And, you know, I just had to kind of take myself out of the loop for a while. And then on Sunday, I just spent the whole day just chilling. And it's really important to two things. One is I watched an incredible micro documentary about four women who rode across the Atlantic. And she was recalling and recounting the story, and they were rowing three hours on, 90 minutes off, three hours on, 90 minutes off in a cycle, repeat cycle. And she said she got to day 39 and she just had enough. It's just like the repetition was just. Was just too much. And she just curled up in a ball in one end of the boat and just went, I just can't do it anymore. And then she started reflecting on the whole purpose of the journey was to push herself. And so she was in a bit of a funk. And the funk lasted three days. And she said when she was rowing, she'd just put her headphones on and just do the job. And on day four, it just changed. And she recognized that whatever you're feeling, whenever you're feeling it, and I'm someone who can definitely feels a bit of kind of Christmas.

Lethargy, maybe Christmas mood downer. It's not my favorite time of year. But.

The key to this message was that she decided that this will pass and any negative feelings you might have will pass.

And then her other kind of mantra was just get on with it, just get on with it, do your time, do the strokes. And then they made it and they actually won the race. But she said she'd brought those two things very much into her daily life, which was what? Whenever you feel like you're in a bit of a funk, because we're all human.

It will pass. Just be kind to yourself. It will pass. And just do it anyway. Just do. Just do the work you need to do. So I just thought I'd share that with you as a bit of an intro to the episode today. I mean, look, you know, I don't want to be a downer. I mean, you know, it's, it's, it's a great time of year for just having a few days off regardless. But I know that from my, you know, 45 years living in the UK and the last six in Australia, Christmas feels very different. And so I know if you're in the uk, it can be. Or in the Northern hemisphere, where it can be a bit cold and damp and wet and not necessarily the happiest time of year, you know, just. Just here to say, look after yourself. Give yourself some time, Give yourself some space.

For us, those of us living in the Southern hemisphere, it's. It's summer holiday time, so it's a very different vibe and I' grateful that I get to do that with the perspective that I have and. But I wanted to sort of kick off today and, and also talk about, you know, if you are going into Christmas with a bit of trepidation, you know, if you're thinking back to the year you've had, you know, ask yourself, has it been the year you thought it would be? Have you? And I know Covid had a massive part to play in people's numbers in some cases, because I also have many success stories of people who have literally bust their business goals. This year I had one client who just shared with me, they've just broken seven figures. That's over a million pounds in revenue. And when they started with me 18 months ago, they were doing about 350k. So, you know, even in a pandemic, there is room for video businesses to grow. I have another client who's literally 4x this business in the last year during a pandemic, living in a small rural town. So I share this with you, not to brag, although I'm very proud of the successes of my clients. But more to highlight that success is more of a mindset than anything else. I was actually watching a tremendous podcast with Jimmy Carr, UK comedian, and he Was talking about how, you know, when we're growing up, we get to start 21, 22, 25, and we think, well, we learn everything we need to learn now. We are this person and somehow our personalities are locked in place and we can be like, oh, yeah, I'm not really that kind of person. I didn't come from that background, therefore I can't achieve this level of success. And he said, that's something that's very alien in terms of concepts. He said, well, why can't you just reinvent yourself? And that's what he did. He decided to become a comedian at 25. And he said it was about purpose, it's about having a clear purpose. And he asked this question of himself. He said, who am I and how am I perceived? I wrote those two questions down and it was really interesting actually, because I was just like, oh, that's really got me thinking, who am I and how am I perceived?

And to add to that, when you look around, and I think it was a very famous quote that goes something like, this is, you know, comparison is a thief of all joy. I think it's Eleanor Roosevelt. Comparison is a thief of all joy. And so the other question that Jimmy brought up was, who do I like and why do I like them? And I thought those three questions were very revealing. So who am I, how am I perceived and who do I like and why do I like them? And I thought it was a fascinating insight into really digging into who you are, why you are who you are and who do you want to be? And because I believe you can choose to do that, and I think in a small way I can reflect on our journey to come to Australia. There was a lot of very well meaning people who were like, oh, I'm not sure I could do that. I'm not sure I could move to Australia. What about family? What about leaving everyone behind? And sure, that is a fact. There's a fact that when you move to Australia, places 10 and a half thousand miles away, you do leave people in another time zone. However.

How you communicate, how you connect with each other just changes, that's all. It just changes. And, and I think, you know, when you, you make a move like that, I mean, it's expensive, it's, it's complex, there's a lot of risk, there's a lot of paperwork and it's quite stressful. But then you come to a new country and no one really cares who you are. You don't get any special treatment because you've come from another country. But I've got to say people were very, very friendly towards us. Here in Australia it's known for its kind of mateship and giving people a fair go. But you are on your own and so you get established and set up. And then we've moved states and we've moved cities a few times and we're now established where we are on the Sunshine coast. Got this amazing community and it all just takes time. Much like a business, it just takes time to figure out where you feel comfortable. And for us, you know, Sam wanted to move to a city. Part of our visa requirement was that we were in Sydney. So we, we moved to Sydney, had an amazing time in Sydney. Lived in a brilliant city, beautiful, beautiful city. Then we moved about 12, 1300 kilometers north to a place called Noosa and beautiful kind of beachside holiday town. We were there for two years and we just moved about 40km south to Bach beach where we are now. And we bought a house here and we're 400 meters from the beach and it's, and it's, it's stunning, you know, and I was just sharing with my, one of my clients, Sammy this morning how he was asking me what I was doing for Christmas. I said I'll probably just go on the beach and hanging out. And he said, oh, it'd be great to live by the beach. I said, you know, this is my vision board. In 2013 I send it to him and this is where I live now. And so from 2013 to 2021, in 2020 we bought the house. So seven years to realize a life changing dream. And I think if you get really clear on your purpose, our purpose was all about helping people. But also I wanted to live a different lifestyle. I wanted to live in a warm climate, tropical climate, I wanted to be near the beach, I wanted to enjoy the outdoors. And all of that came true. So what I'm trying to get at is wherever you are, these things start with an idea, but the hard work is actually implementing the idea because you're going to come up against lots and lots of.

Barriers and hurdles, self doubt naysayers, and you have to just kind of zone it out. And it's exactly the same if you want to grow your business, if you want to scale your business and have everything you've ever wanted, it's not going to happen quickly. But I have evidence of two separate businesses who've done it in about 18 months and you know, one has tripled their income from about 350k to over a million. One has quadrupled from 10k a month to 40, 50k a month. It is possible. And you know what's interesting is it's not that hard, but it's a big mental game to overcome because you have to invest in yourself. And we're not talking about crazy amounts of money either, not relative to the gains, but the biggest cost is in you letting go of your own limiting beliefs and enabling yourself to be part of a community that will help you get there. And that is the vba. I mean, that is exactly what we do. We have a community of incredible businesses who are on a journey together. And it's not about getting to a specific destination. It's about being on a journey with other people who are going to share that journey with you and guide you and share what's worked for them and what's not worth for them so that you can accelerate the process of getting to your destination faster than if you were to try and do it alone. And that is really what we've set out to achieve. And I'm very proud. We're coming into the third year of the VBA in January, and it is an incredible environment. And we're just about. We're in the process of building our own app.

And there will be an element of that app that will be available to you as a subscriber of this podcast, if you would choose to download it. We'll have a resource and discussion forum there. We're going to come off Facebook altogether. I just feel Facebook's become a bit of a cesspit. It's like it's just so easy to be distracted away from what you first set out to do. And so Facebook groups, I feel, just get you hooked into their algorithm and you end up watching 20 minutes of crap before you actually remember why you were there in the first place. So we're taking that out of the equation. We're investing quite a significant amount and building an app and moving content across to a new platform. So it's all going to be single sign on for our members and we're going to be offering, you know, a kind of free discussion forum for subscribers of this podcast where you can, you know, post questions. We'll pick a few questions each month and we'll do a live and we'll kind of answer those questions just to give you a bit of a. A dip, A dip, a toe in the water, if you like, of what support looks like. There's going to be no cost, no charge for that. It's just going to be A kind of a bonus for being a podcast subscriber. And in all, true transparency, the reason we do that is that we give you a chance to kind of come a little bit closer into the circle to experience a little more of what's going on. We'll tease some. Some content that we use in our membership, so you can try that and have a look at it with a view that some of you might feel like, oh, this is actually feeling like a good f. Maybe I'll have a chat with Dan. Because we're planning some quite aggressive growth plans next year in terms of bringing more of the right kind of businesses into this environment because we are seeing incredible results using our system and we've been quite.

Low key about that. I mean, I talk about it a lot on this podcast, but we are going to be opening up some spots and there's probably about 10 spots available in the VBA in total. So it's not tons. It's not a kind of group. We're going to make huge. The foundation program has a bit more scope. If you're doing sort of 2 to 5k a month and you want to try and get up to 10k a month, then the foundation program is really where we're at with that. But the VBA itself, and there's about, I think probably about 10 available spots for next year. And the truth is people tend not to leave and. And there's a reason for that. And there's no contract tying them in. They stay because they get results. And those results come from discipline, they come from consistency, they come from a very supportive environment. And they come from the hive mentality, the mastermind mentality. The mastermind is a hive. It's a group of your peers who help you achieve your results quicker than if you were just to try and do it alone. So as I leave you to go and enjoy Christmas, just have a little think about that. Have a think about how your business has fared this year. Has it in fact reached the goals you planned it to? Has it done better than you imagined? And if it has, where else could you go if that's been the case or if it's not gone as well as you'd hoped? Why not? What is it about what you're doing alone that's not getting you the results? Because I've seen multiple businesses during the pandemic have their biggest years ever, and that's because they focus on the right things and they have the right kind of support. So if that's something that you feel is missing in your business, then please do have a dig around the website@denlany.com read the customer stories, read the reviews, and reach out if you have any questions. Because you know we're going to be launching a brand new marketing campaign come January. The app will be going live and there's a lot going on, but until then, we're going to take some time out. We're going to take some time out till the 10th of January. There'll be a couple of podcasts in between so we don't lose our momentum. And also I want to keep my commitment to you maintaining this weekly connection. There won't be any shorties over Christmas New Year, but there will be some episodes of the podcast and I want you to have a really.

Restful Christmas if you can. I know there's some challenges around the world with different restrictions, not least of all here in Australia, but this will. This will pass. This will pass and and just do it. Or as we said in the book, just effing do it. It's like it's just about showing up and taking the next step. Merry Christmas, folks.

Ask yourself this has owning your own video business been everything you dreamed it.

Would be when you first got started?

It might be hard to admit, but think about whether you're genuinely achieving everything you set out to when you made.

That decision to grab the camera and go it alone.

Are you really working less? Are you really earning more? And are you really in control? Chances are you're bloody good at what you do, but you're having to work like a dog, 70 plus hours a week. Whether it's filming, editing, marketing, or any of the other jobs that come with being the big boss of your own video company. When you're managing projects, constantly searching out for new clients and worrying about cash flow, it's easy to lose sight of the bigger picture or make real progress. Let's face it, that stress is the last thing you need when you're trying.

To run a profitable company that supports.

You and the people you care about. Truth is, a business that provides financial, professional and personal freedom really is achievable.

But maybe you've got that nagging feeling.

That you're overworked, lacking stability, and struggling to get to where you really want to be right now. It could be that you just don't know how to make a positive change on your own. So I created the Video Business Accelerator Coaching programs to really supercharge your video business. With these unique coaching programs, you'll learn all the tools you need to get complete confidence in the success of your video business, you can take the first step on your journey to a successful business that doesn't control your life. Let me show you how. Head over to Denlany.com and click on Accelerator.