Are you thinking big enough? EP #249 - Shorty

Well, guys, obviously I'm being a bit patchy this month on the podcast. There's a very good reason for that. We have been absolutely knee deep in planning with our VBA members for January and into February. Now. We have been focusing on really setting some pretty big goals for the year ahead. And, and what's been interesting is the mindset shift for many members pushing 25% or 50% higher for their annual goal than they perhaps thought was possible beforehand. So we've got businesses that were doing 400 now looking to do 600, business that were doing 600 now looking to set themselves a target of 800 or even a million. And that's very exciting to see how in the space of one coaching call, we're managing to shift the mindsets of our members to play a bigger game and breaking down that annual goal into a monthly goal and then a weekly goal, and then taking yourself off the roles and the tasks that are sucking your time in your business so that you can be more strategic and play a more strategic game. So that's what we're going to cover on today's show. So let's go.

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.

So this is episode 248 of the how to Scale a Video Business Podcast. And we're making a lot of changes at this point in time in our program, in our marketing. And so we just decided to take a bit of time out from the weekly grind of producing two episodes a week to allow ourselves a chance to refocus. And that's something that can be very, very powerful in your business, is taking time out to get very clear on the direction you're going. I just joined a mastermind in the US the guy called Sam Ovens and his really top level quantum mastermind. So I'm getting pushed in some really uncomfortable spots, but also to stretch me. And I always believe that you should have a mentor, you should have a mastermin group that you're part of. I obviously run my own, but I now have a higher level mastermind which is going to stretch my mindset, stretch my goals, but it also gives me massive access to some very, very smart business owners. And so the VBA guys are getting direct access to that through my lens of video production. But how's your year going? Are you getting stuck in? We're in week six of the year. Have you got a solid strategic plan in place now? Have you got a strategic number that you want to hit? And you know what that looks in a weekly and a monthly basis for sales? Because really, as a business owner, your number one priority has to be business development is bringing in the work and then having a systemized process that you hand off to your team to execute on the productions. And where I often see a big disparity is when video companies are too hands on the production process and they'll generally say to themselves, oh, but I like being on set, I like doing the shooting, I like doing the editing, and that is fine. But if you want to scale your video production business, you have to become head of business development and you have to systemize your business and you have to put key team in place. So once the deal is done, you hand over production to your production team. And that is the way you can continually focus on growth and on sales and on furthering relationships with existing clients so that you can get more out of those relationships. Where I think a lot of people lose traction is in one job happens, the client's really happy and they're like, well, the client knows where we are, so if they want to come work with us again, they'll just give us a call. And that can certainly be true, but oftentimes it's easy for clients to feel neglected. You know, you don't want to just be getting in touch with clients when you want to work with them. You should be having a kind of a formulaic or a systemized check in process. That means you're constantly in touch with them, coming to them with ideas, checking in on how the last project went. And that is going to give you the ability to have recurring business revenue ongoing. One of my clients has like 30 or 40 customers and he's had such a relationship with them now that they're always coming back for more. So we've been spending a lot of time this year with our clients and members really getting that strategic plan clear. What do you want to achieve? When do you want to achieve it by? And getting clear on that number and pushing that number bigger than perhaps people think possible. We had one client, one business, who was aiming for $500,000 this year. And on the call today, we asked the question, who thinks that's the right kind of number for this person? And everyone said, no, it's not. And they ended up on a figure of 750 to 800. And that was a big step up. But you could see this member, the cogs, worrying and the penny dropped that this is possible. So the question I want you to ask yourself is, what is your target for this year ahead? And are you asking yourself the question, how do I achieve that number? Rather than, oh, I don't think that's possible. And that's where being part of a mastermind group can be massively beneficial, because the group will hold you to a higher standard and a higher level of execution and than perhaps you will on your own.

It's, it's been well proven that, you know, if you have a coach, you'll perform better. If you're in a mastermind group of other business peers, you will play a bigger game. And so that's what we've been working on in the group. The other thing we've been doing is we've been getting ready to launch a brand new training platform and we wanted to get off Facebook for our discussion groups because of the distraction levels that happen on there. And I find myself getting sucked into, frankly, bullshit. When you go on Facebook and you, you go on to do one thing and you end up down a rabbit hole and it's not productive and it's not helping any business to reach their goals. And so we've, we've built a brand new platform on something called school, and that's going to be going live this week. And we've been going through all of our training content and, and rerecording stuff and streamlining stuff and taking trainings that might have been an hour or an hour and a half and rerecording them to 15 or 20 minutes. So we're really constantly focused on, you know, refining the message, refining the training to accelerate the results. Because that's why we call it the Video Business Accelerator. We want to accelerate people's results in growing a business. And so there's exciting plans for the year ahead. We've got a few different things going on that I think are going to be really interesting. Adding more value to the program. I'm going to be live, adding some live events and really upgrading the VBA as well, because we're seeing incredible results with our members. We've been running this program for three years now in this form, and we've got tangible results where businesses start doing 10 or 15amonth, end up with 40 or 50. Businesses that start at 350 a year end up at a million two years later. So we know this process works. So if this is something that, you know is interesting, for you. If you feel like you're not reaching the numbers you want to reach, there's a very good chance you've been banging your head against the ceiling and you can't go any further on your own, then it might be the right time to have a chat and for us to have a sort of pow wow and see where your business is at and see if the VBA is the right fit for you. Because we are seeing just phenomenal results with our members and I'd love to have some more success stories. I'd love if you're sitting listening to this and you've been thinking about it for a while to jump in and have a call. Because I guarantee if you are a good fit and your business is at the right stage, we can put a rocket under it with a proven process. And that is very exciting because when you do that, anything's possible.

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.