BFC #001 - What you Need to Know about Scaling your Business with Charley Valher

You're listening to the Business for Creators podcast where each week we uncover the secrets to balancing creativity and business all in the one place with your host, me, Dan Lenny.

G', day folks. Welcome to this episode of the Business for Filmmakers podcast. I am your host, Den Lenny, and this week I'm excited to have a very dear friend on the line, actually. Charlie Valor. Charlie is the co founder of Outsourcing angel, host of Confessions of a Business Owner podcast and runs the association community. Charlie, it's just wonderful to have you on the podcast today. How are you going today in Melbourne, mate?

I'm really well. I'm cold, I'm rugged up for anyone watching the video is I've brought on the vest life. I'm really enjoying the puffer vest, but I'm doing really well, Dan, and I'm super, super happy to be here with you.

Do you know, when I very first came to Australia 25 years ago, I was shocked that Melbourne gets cold because over in the UK we just think Australia's beaches and sunshine the whole time. But it gets bloody cold in Melbourne.

Melbourne is a special place. And all I can say it's lucky it has an amazing community, amazing food scene and great sport because otherwise I'm not really sure why you'd want to be here.

So Charlie, we. We met probably actually not that long ago, I think probably. When did you run your course run a business to works without you?

So it was about August last year, so about a year ago.

Right. So almost a year. And this was a program that I was introduced to by Ben Simkin and it literally changed my life in so many ways. Not least of all that I got got to become friends with you, which is really awesome. But it started as a business relationship and that program really changed my life. So I want to talk about a bit about that process today and how that happened for you because it certainly had a massive impact on me and I think for anyone watching or listening this to this podcast, it could have equal impact. But I want to just start, because we primarily look at the filmmaking community, is that you do actually have a connection to a video business, don't you? Or did have tell us a bit about that background?

Yeah, definitely. So I have been involved and still am a little bit to these days with a company called Monkey Video Production, which if you go to monkeyvideoproduction.com it's still there. Now this is a business that's more focused on, I suppose, the editing and animation side of film because we leverage some other things that I have available to me, like Outsourcing Angels in the Philippines. So that's something I've done for a while now. Now this is actually a business I ended up in, kind of by chance, if you will. It kind of just happened, which may sound a little bit odd. I met this girl called Lynn Padetti many years ago, and we started a company called Outsourcing Angels together, which I still run and I'm a part of today. But as a part of that, Lynn was doing a video production business as well. And she was like, I think you should get involved with this. And I suppose I won't say naively because I had a great relationship with Lynn, but I was like, yeah, why not? Sounds great. And even to this day, that business is still going and going strong. We also do video editing at the marketing agency I'm involved in. And then Outsourcing Angels itself does a lot of video editing and particularly like podcast editing and vlog editing today, which seems to be something that's much more dominant than it used to be a few years ago.

That's awesome. And one thing that strikes me is that that's quite a lot of businesses to be involved with and yet you are actually not directly involved day to day in amongst the nuts and bolts of those businesses. How did that come to be? How do you. And it's kind of the nirvana, isn't it? We want to be running a business that doesn't consume us. But I know for a lot of people watching or listening to this, that can often be the case where it can consume you.

Absolutely. And I'll preface this by saying, do you, you know, the. I'll just kind of preface it and put it into an analogy that I think that helps is like, I don't know about you, but like, when I was in high school, I had a girlfriend, and then once that ended, the next girlfriend I had I wanted to make sure was exactly the opposite to the one I just had. So if I had a brunette, I was like, right, not having a brunette. It's like, I'm looking for a blonde now. So whatever the thing was that was annoying me in the previous one, if you will, is what we look for in the next. I know that's an analogy. And all girls are lovely and all the rest.

No, but absolutely. I was just laughing because I kind of. I think we can all, you know, relate to that. You know, it's not me, it's the blonde. I'll try brunette next time. And it's just. It's just funny because none of us are that different really. But in terms of business, I know that for a lot of filmmakers listening or watching to this, they feel a real sense of overwhelm in that in order to make money, they've got to be doing everything. So a classic would be, well, I'll bill for the shoot and I'll bill for the edit and I'll just do it all because then I can make more money. And I think you can do that for a while. But there's a tipping point, isn't there, where it just, you just can't scale beyond yourself. So what lessons have you learned along the way about scaling your business to the point where you're no longer actually required in the business, but yet still take home income from the business?

Yeah, so that's, that's my legacy of work. Like, that's my life's work, in all honesty. And what my course is built on, so much like I was talking about in that analogy before, is that I had a business, I had a marketing agency called PPC Empire. And I promise you, I was as in and workaholic as it could come. I was working 60 to 70 hours a week as a standard or weekends didn't exist for me. I had an incredibly poor social life and really a dysfunctional relationship with my partner because I was just never there. Eventually I hit a tipping point though, where I just worked so many weeks and worked so hard that I became incredibly burnt out, had health challenges, like, you name it, I had it. And much like I described in the analogy earlier, it was like, well, I hit a point where I realized I'm like, there are people in the world that make far more money than me, that work nowhere near as hard as me. There's clearly a gap in what I know how to do. And there's people out there that have these skills. Now I come across this book called the Cash Flow Quadrant. And I don't know if you've ever read it by Robert Kiyosaki, but it basically described the idea that if you have a business and you need to show up every day or even every week, that you don't have a business, you're actually self employed, you're an employee of your own business, and I'll be real with you, that really hurt me. That was I identified as a business owner, I saw myself as a business owner, but then I got kind of smacked with the left hook, if you will, by this book.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I'm like, well, hang on a minute. Like.

This is kind of Something I really need to pay attention to because it could be easy to get caught in this trap. I see a lot of people doing this, and this could be the rest of my life. And again, like, I was very fortunate through a mentor that we both know called Ben Simkin. He kind of said, he put it like this. He's like, pursue things that don't require you. That's was the mindset and the very wise sentence to this day that I still reflect on.

That is a writer downer.

That is definitely a writer downer. That's an absolute gold nugget from Ben. And Ben really was incredibly helpful with saying that if you're going about things and making decisions that require you doing things, so if you book a shoot and you know it's going to require you going doing the shoot, well, then don't be surprised that the business requires you. But if you're doing things that allow other people to facilitate the work, like that's where leverage and scale ultimately comes from. So I set upon this quest and I was like, well, at that point I made the decision that I was not going to do the marketing agency anymore because it had killed me and I had a lot of bitter feelings towards it. I wanted to get rid of that girlfriend and move on to the next.

But I went into outsourcing angel with a completely different stack of mind. So I went in and I used one rule when I went in there, I was like, I will only do things that do not require me. Long term, I'm happy to set things up. I'm happy to build systems, I'm happy to hire people, I'm happy to set up the marketing. But if anything in this business leads me long term, I don't care what it's going to pay me. We're not doing it. And that was the mindset I ran with for like a good year. And what was interesting is over that year, you learn how to problem solve from a completely different point of view. So what I kind of think of with a lot of people is that it's not that you can't do what I did, it's just that your decision making is making you do things that will require you. So when a problem comes up, let's say you book a shoot, your mind is just automatically going, well, I'm at that shoot. You never even questioned you not being at that shoot or what would need to happen if you were not at that shoot. So when we started operating in this way and really putting all the attention into it and prioritizing time over money. And that's a really important thing I'd noticed. I'd developed this skill set to the point where the business actually didn't need me at all. And to test that point, although it's not a great story, I unfortunately contracted glandular fever in, I think it was maybe 2015 or 2016, going back now, and I had to take a substantial amount of time off. Like, I couldn't actually go to work because I was a mess. So when that went down, I was like, oh, holy, I don't need to be here. So that was kind of like the crux of the story of going that when you build a business in this way, and it's very different than what most kind of perceive, it is very, very possible to build something that works without you, and it can be done today.

Amazing points there, because I. I know from my own journey that when we're running small video production, boutique video production businesses, and we kind of. We have the connection with the client, we do the deal, and then we seem to assume that because we've done the deal, the client will expect us there. So I think a lot of times it's about positioning that in such a way that you're not an integral part of that. And it just. Something else cropped up in my mind. I know you were speaking in Bali recently at an event, and I think I saw a photograph you took going, wow, you know, all these entrepreneurs who are living the laptop lifestyle, who claim to be, you know, traveling the world, living the laptop lifestyle, actually are broke and they have to get on the laptop to sell some stuff to pay for their accommodation that night. And I thought that was interesting because clearly they haven't come at this from a systems perspective, a way of facilitating business making money while they sleep. And I know that there's an awful lot of attraction to that notion of, you know, a passive income. I don't believe passive income actually exists in its truest form. I think what does exist is the ability to build a business which is systemized. So you put a lot of the work in up front to create the systems and the checkpoints that then allow you to be able to go and spend time in Bali for a month if you wanted to, and not actually have to be involved in the business. Tell us the story of how that came about for you, because I know that you. I think I was a post that you posted when you were in Bali about that.

I have a good giggle. But in all honesty, I was devastated at the time and I'll tell you why.

Okay. So you can imagine in this world is like, what the path I have chosen is very uncommon. It's not often I meet people that have prioritized having a business that can work without them as a main focus point. So I'm a little bit of a unique sword, if you will. Like, I meet a lot of business owners, but not many kind of, you know, this is their skill set. So when I went to Bali, right, I'm quite familiar with something called the digital nomad. These are these laptop style business owners that travel the world and spend all the world and work from a laptop. Now, I had built up, and I will say this, I had built up a fantasy that I was gonna. This was gonna be like my homecoming. This was like going to be me connecting with all the people that prioritize the same things. And I was gonna meet all these geniuses that saw the world in my view of prioritizing time over money and how they had their systems set up and businesses set up to run things. So I go into this co working space and I walk around and I meet a few people and I'm kind of assessing things. And what became very, very clear to me is it was a bunch of workaholics with a view.

So it was a really devastating moment. And honestly, a little bit of a heartbreaking moment because it became clear to me that a lot of these people are living on like $10 a day or $20 a day and like the lifestyles and things they're going for. I'm like, this is terrible. This is gross. So sadly, in a lot of cases, and I don't think it's uncommon, but what I see is this really common thing is there is a lot of workaholics out there. They're in every facet and the grass is definitely not greener. It's a really, really interesting thing, particularly in a space that glorifies the, I suppose, freedom that comes with being a digital nomad. I was yet to find that freedom, and maybe I was just looking in the wrong places, but definitely not seeing what I anticipated there.

You know, it is really interesting how when you look around the Internet, at the entrepreneur scene, that there is a sense of the harder you hustle, the harder you work before 5 and after 7pm like, the more successful or the more effort you're putting in there for the more successful you're going to become. And I think where I see a disconnect is that running a business is hard work and you will have to put in a lot of work at certain stages of the business growth. But just working hard doesn't in itself define entrepreneurship, if that makes sense. And I think I saw another post that you'd actually referenced on Facebook about someone had actually commented on how the fact that if you're not hustling at four in the morning and midnight and getting three hours sleep a night, you're not somehow doing it properly. And of course your philosophy completely is the opposite of that.

Yeah, so I'm pretty much anti the hustle after experiencing it myself. So I tried it like I did try the hustle thing and like working the astronomical hours, thinking it was the solution and time and time again and there's so much research you can look at this, but I'll give you a few points here is like, if you're working obnoxious hours, like super amount of hours and you're going sleep deprived, you, there is zero chance you are operating a business from a sound point of mind. Studies have shown that if you're, you know, getting like four hours a night's sleep, you're actually pretty much operating your business at the same capacity as a drunk person. So when I look at that is like being drunk and running a business doesn't sound like a good idea. Now the, the second part I look at it is like when you, your life is that unbalanced, when all you do is just work right, you actually start to turn into a bit of a bitter person. Like if you don't have four friends, social life, do fun things or things for just the sake of it, it actually does damage your soul. I know some people may not understand that or maybe they think they can get away for, for a point, but there's so many great things in life to experience. Now the other thing is my best ideas have never happened at my desk ever. And I look at it and go that it's when I have time away and recalibrate or spend time with other people or do other activities that that's often where my best ideas and strategies and things come from. So really I need to make sure that I am doing that stuff. Otherwise my business is kind of screwed. Where in the retrospect is like, I watch a lot of people work the crazy amount hours, which means they're operating from a place of being drunk, listening to poor advice, wearing it as a badge of honor by, you know, not seeking out great mentors or great people to be around. And then after a certain amount of years, they're sitting there shocked why they haven't got the result. They're sitting there like I've done all this hard work, like it should count for something and it just doesn't.

You know, it's interesting going back to the course that I first invested in with you.

That had such a dramatic impact on my life because at the time I was going down a route of developing the video creators, I saw this opportunity of creating high volume content for business coaching for business clients. And, and I had signed two clients very, very easily and those gigs were worth about $75,000. And I was like, hey, this is easy. But the thing that I very quickly realized was I wasn't getting to play my drums, which is something that wanted to do for ages. And I was spending a lot more time in client management world, which I hated. And during our time working together on that program, I actually realized that I wrote a tree. So we used a piece of software called Coggle. It's kind of like a mind mapping software for anyone who's not familiar with it. And one of the challenges was to write down all the things you're doing currently and all the things that would need to happen to remove you from the business. And I actually put a third branch out, which was what do I want to do? And one of the things that came up for me was playing the drums. I just bought this incredible drum kit. I'd managed to find somewhere to put them, but I wasn't finding time to play them. And so Charlie said to me, put it in your diary. And now I'm still working on becoming consistent with that. But you know, last Wednesday I think I spent four hours in the studio playing drums. What happened during that was a, it was great exercise and I had a great time, but I had this clarity of this great idea come to me during the session about how I should run a part of my business. And so can completely concur that, you know, for me the, the, the, the true wealth or the true value of being a business owner now is not just money. Money is a, it's an important part of the mechanics of the transactional nature of how we live life. But to me, true freedom and value comes from having time to go play my drums on a Wednesday. I know for you it's cycling. Can you, can you, can you add any more to that notion?

Yeah, definitely. And like the first thing is I'm thrilled to hear that then being. Because, I mean, you just exactly put into point what I mentioned about, you know, the time away and the drums and all the rest and for me, it's the bike and like it's what life is for. It really, really is. And I really think what's interesting is a lot of business owners say that they want to be working, but the truth of the matter is if you dig deep enough, there's a hobby or a time with a family member or kids or something that is of a priority and it's just super, super important. Now I'll layer into this a little bit. Now the first thing is if you own a business, you are one of the people that has the opportunity to go for the trifecta. And what I mean by that is time, money and freedom. And I honestly can't see why you would settle for anything less. I mean, if you're going to take all the risk of starting a business, all the pressure, all the stress, all the knowledge, all the learnings, then I want the reward. Otherwise, I sincerely believe that a job probably will provide a better environment because at least they might shut the office doors or you might get weekends off. Not in all cases, but that's a very, very harsh truth for a lot of people. So when we look at this and like this is the course I built and as I said, it's my life's work, is because for me, what happened on the back of achieving what I wanted out of life is I suddenly got to a place where I realized I needed to help other people have the same because I felt almost.

I felt selfish. I felt like I built something and it was my obligation to share it with other people so that they could have the life that they want and actually appreciate things and have all the things that I get to enjoy on a daily basis. So over that year when I did this for myself and developed all those learnings is like I'm a type of guy that said, well, what can I do to pass this on to someone else? And this is where the course came through. So I developed out a series of activities that someone would need to do which you've gone through den and put it into modules that would allow someone to go through the thinking and questions and thought process to develop out their current business model and look at how it could work for them. Now this is something I kind of recognize as a starting point for everyone. And this is honestly like a low hanging fruit is just go through your time, like go through your time and then go through where your money comes from. So look at what you're spending your time on and then look at what activities are actually paying you and then really question what Things require you or could be done by someone else. And once you start asking yourself that, you'll start to see these opportunities elsewhere. Now, for me, I realized that, well, if I scale outsourcing angel, it doesn't matter if we have one VA on service or a thousand. There's no difference in my time. That's a fantastic thing to be working on. But if I was going to take on marketing projects, there was very much a limit on what could be done because it was going to be able to require me. Now, I know you have a very film based. So I want to make this, I want to use some general things here which I think will be super helpful. So as I said, like I'm in this space and like I, I do things here, even down to the podcast editing the company does and whatnot. But when I looked at the video space, I could see that what was happening in a lot of ways was that the cost of good quality production gear was just going through the floor. And I could see that the ability to use this gear was also like getting easier and easier. Like I'm a bit of a tech guy and a muso and all that. So I've played with this stuff for many, many years. But it's like I'm beyond amazed in what an iPhone can do these days. I'm like, holy shit. So I know when I was 14, my first job was actually developing photos in Kmart. So it's like for me, this technology has just gone nuts. But when I look at it right now, I was like, you know, what I think is going to happen is like, I think the, where the industry is going is that it's going to become easier and easier to film things and the demand's going to become on the editing, the storyboarding, all these things that exist across it. And I decided to kind of position the what we were doing in those areas. So that was my thought process. In from there I was like, well, I don't necessarily want to be tied to the filming of things because it's very location dependent, very time constraining and there's a lot of people in this space. I'm not against this as a business model, but I just want to take people through my thoughts on it. So on the back of that I said, well, if everyone's shooting more iPhone videos and everyone's shooting more videos with like, you know, some of these Canon SLRs that are even reasonably cheap these days, or everyone's filming podcasts, who's doing the editing? Who's. Because I can tell you right now, like, entrepreneurs are notoriously bad at that type of stuff, and a lot of business owners aren't going to pick up the editing skills. So I was like, okay, well, how are we going to do with this? And then that's when I decided that that's the side that we wanted to be playing on. So then the next side of things was like, okay, now that I've established that, I'm going to build a system and some rules. So I decided how we wanted to serve these and what it would look like, and then I found the people that could execute that at a profit for the company. Now I'm telling this fable also in a series of steps, so that anyone who's in the film industry and was starting to think about, you know, replace certain pieces could see it. But effectively, that was the system of getting into the staying in the video industry, developing something useful and a great model, but assessing in a way we could deliver it, which didn't involve me. And that was the foundation of it.

I love it. And of course, that leads me nicely on to the idea of systemization. And I know that.

Dave Jennings, who runs Melbourne Video Production and System Hub, was someone who you connected with a few years ago and was probably quite instrumental in helping you to look at systemization. And I think.

What'S challenging for creatives, full stop, is the discipline to sit down and create a system, because it is some work. But when I look at how you run your business now, and you've shown me your calendar and your diary, and it's like there's nothing in it. All week, you literally are hanging out doing podcasts, you're touching base with the team, you're cycling, and you're having fun. And, like, that's what I think we all crave. But what I want to make sure people really understand on this podcast is that it's not that you haven't had to do work to get here, but what is the process? What's the importance of systemizing? How is that had a really practical impact on your ability to have a clear diary?

Oh, so this is a really good point. So the first thing I want to say, don't confuse simple with easy. Okay? I assure you that, you know, some of the things I've. I've done and the way I've set things up do require hard work, but it's the right work. So working hard, doing something that's going to need me again is the wrong work. Always the wrong work, in my opinion, because all you're going to have to do is do that again. What I look for when I decide what work I'm going to do is this fantastic idea of compounded effort. So I like to do things that are going to continue to provide a return to me well after I've done them, and ideally forever if I can so much like compound interest or, you know, many of the things we look at from there. That's what I look to achieve now when it comes to systems is that if you build a system, so if you spend the time and you build a system for how to deliver work for a client and then you can get someone else to run that profitably, you've now created an environment where work can happen without the need of you at a great standard, where you can achieve a result. So I'll loop back into the Dave Jennings comment though, and Dave, like, I'm such a huge fan of him and so, so grateful for the time he's given me over the years. When I was in the marketing world is I met Dave and he was running Melbourne SEO at the time and I would been lucky enough to get some time with him and some mentorship from him. And one of the things, and this is my first experience is like, my agency was like, I was just winging it. I had no clue.

But thank you for your honesty because you know what, most of us have at some point been winging our business.

Absolutely. It's part of the fun.

I've had days and I'm like, just stay cool. They don't know. You don't know what you're doing.

It's great advice. Sorry, I just had to chip in there.

Yeah, it's hilarious. But anyway, I met Dave and like, Dave was a fantastic mentor and like, what he did is he took me behind the scenes of his agency. He showed me how his agency worked and I looked at that compared to how mine work. And it was pretty much like my agency, if I had to use images, was a bowl of spaghetti and his was a neatly stacked pile of bricks. And I was like.

This is magical. This is unreal. Like, what is all this stuff? What is this? And he went on to describe what systems were and how they worked and how they could be leveraged. And that became like such an eye opener on, like, that was how he achieved scale. So essentially what Dave did was provide me with my first idea of what systems were and how to use them. And then upon going to do that is how I scaled the marketing agency. So just in understanding the basics of systems Was I was able to go from a team of four to like a team of 15. So that's how we scaled. And I'll give you a really good example because this is from there is like what was killing me in the marketing business is like I would go and do AdWords for someone. So I'd be doing AdWords and then I'd say to one of my guys, hey, Martin, who I worked with at the time, can you go and finish off some things in this account? And then he'd go into the account and he'd take ages and I'd contact him. I'd go, what are you doing, man? Like, there was like two minutes of work in here. And then I came to realize that he was doing a lot of the work I'd done again in his own way. So we were double handling work. So if you just imagine this is like, imagine, you know, editing film work twice. If you. It's like, yeah, terrible idea. And then what was worse is we were getting frustrated and shitty each other because of our differences. So. So it was creating this tension and all the rest. And like one day me and Martin sat down and we said, right, we're going to decide a way to manage an AdWords account. Like a start to finish, where you start in the account, what you do, and then that is it, and that is how we will both go through this process. So we sat down and we mapped out together, like how an AdWords account should be managed, what needs to be looked at once a week, what needs to be looked at once a month, how often, you know, things are changed in the account. And that became the way. And all of a sudden our productivity shot through the roof and I was like, oh, we can take more accounts. So all of a sudden the business was more profitable. But then this was the icing on the cake when it came to hiring that next person. All we did was screen record ourselves going through the process or going through the system. And like, here's your training. This is, this is how we roll. So hiring people, scaling them up to be as good as us and well trained was like, took a day.

And we're like, oh my God. Instead of doing all this other stuff, this is all we had to do. So we got to be able to scale the team really quickly. Like, the culture was really good. We're producing a high quality, consistent work. And I was like, wow, systems are just the way. This is just like how you do things.

Amazing. And there's a great phrase that I think I got from Jocker Willink in his book.

Extreme Ownership. And it was.

Structure and discipline will set you free. And as someone who has lacked structure and discipline for many, many years, you know, because I'm creative, you know, I'm off chasing the shiniest new gear. I'm spending all day on, you know, B and H photo, looking at gear. I was that person. And so I've worked hard to become more structured, more disciplined, and it's an ongoing thing. But I've got to tell you, I'm starting to fall in love with systems. In fact, I had a conversation with you just last night saying, hey, do you think I should use this one or this plug? I've started using Asana to manage projects. It's amazing how when you start to break down the steps and you can explain them in a logical order. I love nothing more than recording that video once and then going, hey, that's done now. I don't need to touch that ever again. And when someone comes in who's new, you go watch this video and boom, they understand it. It's just mind blowing.

Yeah. So, I mean, I could go through countless examples, but this is the fascinating thing I see with people. It's addictive. So once someone gets a taste of what it is, like, everyone hates it. Like, let's pretend I'm not going to lie. The first time I had to sit down and do this with Martin, I was like sitting there going, we could be making money. Why are we spending a day on this? Why? This is stupid. Like, you know, and I even hesitated to like, you know, like, we don't need to write this down or document it out or record ourselves. Like, we, we got this.

And then after we did it a few times and I saw, and I saw like what it was doing, I was like, oh my God, this is all I want to do. We should just. So you get into this addictive phase and then before you know it, you'll have systems for most of the things in your business or the most important things, I should say. And the world just changes on the back of that.

And do you believe that for, for a lot of the folks that perhaps watching this podcast, listening to it are one man band businesses? You know, they are freelancers who've started taking on a few more projects. They've started perhaps outsourcing sound recording or editing or other aspects, graphics. Do you think there's still value in a one man band business starting to create systems? Because. Because it does seem like a lot of work when you're working on Your own. There's that tipping point. Isn't that where you kind of feel like you're overwhelmed and. And where you're going to find the time? But what advice do you have for anyone who's in that position?

Oh, you know, it's really interesting. It's a great question, by the way, Dan. I love this question. So the first thing I'll say is build your business not from. Not from where you are, but from where you want to be. So if you want to have people down the road, you should be setting up systems from now, because it's a skill. Start getting good at them. The second thing, particularly with creatives, and there's a few I'll go into from here, I'm a creative. Like, I used to play in bands. I'm. I would say I'm a little bit artistic, maybe not very good, but we'll see. But even now I'm like, I'm loving creating podcasts and doing all those things. What I've found is that creatives or anyone in general who has systems and follows their own systems is quicker with the systems than they are without.

So I'll go through something here. Let's pretend you've just done a shoot and you're coming into a place where you're doing the editing. If you're going through your editing and just doing it randomly, like, might do a little bit V and E, might watch some end, might try filter. Like if you're just doing things randomly, like, it can blow out you all of a sudden a day can go in editing and you can not even realize it. But if you had a structured way, you do your editing and say, well, right, first off, I'm going to trim. I don't know, I'm not very good. I haven't much experience in editing. But, you know, first off is this. I'm going to clear any waste. Second off is I'm gonna set the screen size. Third off is I'm gonna just filter out this thing from here. Fourth, I'm gonna order the captions so we can have, you know, the subtitles. But if you find you follow the process, what's really, really great is in following your own process or your own system, one, you don't miss anything. Two is it's actually very freeing because you just follow your own thing. So it actually requires so much less brain power to go through your own system. And it's super, super, as I said, just really powerful from teaching you to be a quality business owner. So if you are building systems From a point of view in your own business, to run them yourselves, you're actually leveling yourself up in this process. So there's just so many wins. I really look at that and see why, even if you're a one man band, you should be doing this.

Jets. It's gold. You know, just. I was working with an editor for a while and.

It'S. Something just cropped into my head. I'm like, God, it's. So if I'd put a system in place, that wouldn't have happened. But this guy, great editor, but did a lot of broadcast TV work and therefore was setting up projects and creating steps for assets and graphics that weren't required. Despite me saying, this is only for Facebook or YouTube, it doesn't need all this other shit. But he was doing it because he was so used to doing it and his system was to do it anyway. But one of the things he would do would be he'd split the audio tracks into music and voice and left and right and effects, which I'm sure.

Facebook does massively well.

Yeah, but he did all these things that created an extra process that on a couple of occasions meant he missed some basic editing nuances. Just simple things like not fading up the audio gently at the beginning and fading it down at the end. He was so busy cutting music up to try and make it fit better as a beat. And yet most the time I would just be like, you know, the last thing I'll put on is a bit of music bed just to kind of help drive it along. I actually don't really care what the music is because it's down so low. It's just there to help along. But he was spending half an hour taking a track, splicing up to get the different nuances of the track to work really well with different parts of the video. Now his intention was to create a great video and he was going into levels of detail which would absolutely, in some circumstances enhance the project. But for me, I had a certain number of hours scheduled for editing that the client was paying for and he was now blowing time on stuff that wasn't required. So in the spirit of Jocko Willink and extreme ownership, 100% my fault, because I made an assumption that he would do it my way. And of course, without a documented process, what happens is what happened in your business, which is two people come at the same project from two different perspectives. Neither are right, neither are wrong, but there's a clash. And I found that a very challenging scenario because I had to keep Explaining and discussing with someone who, who had an ego. And I don't mean that negatively, but you know, they felt like I was criticizing the way they operated and that was me trying to be kind of cool and like, hey, you know, I'm bringing in talent so I want to allow them to do it that way. But when it started to cost me money, I had to step in. And I realized now that a system that was documented with videos would have removed that. So that's one example of the frustration. And what happens psychologically is you go, oh, I knew this was going to be a hassle, so I'm better off just doing it myself. And it's working through that pain point where you could do it quicker yourself this time, but what you want to be doing is not doing it again. And so I actually have a project just landed on my lap yesterday. Somebody popped in who we've done a little bit of work for, said, oh, could you shoot this event and edit it? And I'm like, well you know what, I've got assets here which can be utilized to generate revenue for the business. So I said, yeah, here's a quote, no problem. My job now is to make sure the shoot happens without me and the edit happens without me. And so actually what I'm going to do is create some processes and systems so that I can get somebody else in to shoot that project and get somebody else to cut it. So I completely see where there is pain involved in this process. And as you say, simple isn't necessarily easy.

Yeah, well, I mean there's many great things there and I think you identified one of the most important is that.

Systems can really level out training gaps and it's over training and under training. So when you're working with really skilled people in your example here, it's keeping them in the rails of what actually delivers a profit for the business. Now I don't doubt the work this guy was doing was valuable and high skill and all the rest, but you are footing the bill for the overwork and overwork is, you know, really challenging. In my case I was footing the bill for Martin redoing my adwords work. So working with people is systems is just a no brainer on that one. From there, one of the things I kind of look at is I love your attitude towards, you know, going into this next thing with not being involved. And that's the mindset it takes like that really, really is what I look at things or how I would approach things. And, and then it's the thinking Back from there and what you need to have in place. The other thing I just wanted to mention quickly is like one of the things in this space that I think is most important if you are gonna do it. The best thing I noticed to create a higher quality end result with anything to do with video and audio is providing something that's called definition of done. So it's all good to have a system or you might have a step by step, but if you can provide an example of what the finished product should look like so someone can check their own work against it, like that is something that will just raise the standards across the board.

Fabulous. Yeah, I love that. And yeah, it's certainly a bit of work, but I'm certainly excited about the prospects of. It's a challenge for me. I took this job, I actually vowed at the beginning of the year and I think I said to you, I'm not doing any more production work. But there's a line there which I want to be clear to everyone. I don't want to do any more production work. That doesn't mean my business isn't capable and leveraging my incredible history and experience and the real people ask us to do stuff. The key caveat here is I don't personally want to be involved beyond maybe sending a quote which could be systemized. And I use zero. So I've actually got department code set up, so it takes me five minutes to send a quote. But the, the ideal in terms of systemization would be that there is a procedure for sending a quote that my virtual assistant could do, for example. So I'm using it as a challenge and I'm, you know, being really upfront with everyone listening to this. This is a really tough call for me because I'm a control freak and I'm used to just going, oh, I'll just do it. I'll go to the shoot because I'll keep an eye on things and make sure things go well. But the challenge for me is to articulate what needs to happen on that shoot so that I don't have to touch it. And that's why I'm taking this job on. And look, it's. It's a five grand job. And if, if done right, I'll make, I'll make two and a half, three grand on it because I'm smart and I'm using my assets, I'm using my technology, I'm using my camera equipment. The key is to get people in to do the, the mechanics of it. And that's going to Be. That's gonna be a challenge. So I'll. I'll let you know how that goes.

I look forward to hearing the result of that. But I love it because their business owner skills. And honestly, I'll be real with you, that's where the gap is, especially in the film industry. A lot of people are technically amazing. Like I see and I'm sure you do too. So many talented people. Like the way they shoot, the way they edit. Like it's awesome. But. But where the skills are lacking are the business owner skills. It's the hiring and finding the right people. It's taking on and pricing and saying no to the right projects or saying yes to the right projects. It's having guidelines for delivery or having the marketing set up so you can bring in more work.

Yeah, absolutely. 100%. Charlie, this has been amazing. I don't want to take too much of your time up. I suspect we might be able to. We haven't even touched on outsourcing Edge on the value of virtual assistant. Maybe we just would just touch on that just momentarily to tease up because I'd love to get you on again, but obviously you're involved in outsourcing angel, which is a company that provides what's a social enterprise that provides businesses with support. Just share a little bit with me about the power of virtual assistants because I think when small video production owners are looking to scale, many of them don't want to build a team. Many of them are quite happy doing a few hundred thousand dollars a year, maybe outsourcing, some editing, outsourcing, some shooting. But that missing link for me, and I'm going through this just now is all the low level tasks that we find ourselves doing. All accounts or receipts or uploading or checking emails. And I was amazed when I first met you that you don't actually check your own email. You're like the lord of the land. But there's a very good reason for that. And I'd love you to just share a little bit about your journey working with a virtual assistant and how. How that became a reality and now I guess a necessity for you.

Yeah, I love that. The story that I don't do my email. Like I don't do email. I think email is gross and I just think such a time constraint. So I'll take you back through this is. And okay, so when I had the marketing agency, I met Lynn Padetti, who's now my business partner, and she was already into this outsourcing stuff. I wasn't and she kind of Worded me up and said, look, you know, you can definitely use VAs in your business. And I was much like most people in, like, I don't know, offshore overseas. Can they speak English? Like what? Like, do they have the Internet? Like, they know what the Internet is. But anyway, Lynn said is like, you know, just look at what you're actually spending your time on. And she gave me this fantastic link to something called Rescue time. So it's RescueTime.com and what this software does, it'll actually track what you do on your computer. So I installed this software and I ran it and I thought, it's just going to tell me I'm spending like three hours a day on Facebook. This is. It's only going to bring statistics to what I already know is a kryptonite. But what was fascinating is it wasn't social media that was taking up my time, it was email. I was spending like three hours a day minimum in email. And I did this equation and was like, if I didn't do email and I spent that three hours a day working on my business, I. What type of difference would it make a year from now if I spent three hours a day, you know, taking better care of the clients, finding new clients, building systems, doing all these other things, like, how would this be different? And I was like, substantially so. What I did is I developed a system to have a VA look after my inbox. So Lynn had got me the wonderful juvie. So juvie shout out to you. I'll make you listen to this episode just so you can hear me give you a shout out.

And now everyone wants juvie.

Well, juvie is the prototype. Juvie has been my experiment and smashing success and dear friend of mine as well.

And. And I've got to say, juvie is wonderful. So shout out to juvie.

Absolutely. Go juvie. But what was interesting is I worked with juvie and we developed this system and I said, right, this is what we're going to do. Look at my inbox. Everyone that emails me is going to get a tag and they're going to fall into one of three categories. They're either one of my friends or family. So it's like one of my mates or my wife. And it's like if they email me, you can just email them back as you and say, hey, it's juvie. You should know Charlie doesn't check his email. I'll take care of whatever you need. Awesome. Category one.

Yeah.

And it's like, if it's anything urgent, tell them to Call me. Cool. Category two is like, I was getting a lot of emails that I didn't actually need to deal with. They were like questions for the team or resources or asking for stuff. So we used to, at the agency would get a question like, oh, can we have a copy of the report? Can we change this in the account Now? I didn't need to do that. I just found there was a lot of tasks that needed me to filter. Was like, all right, I've got to take this email and I've got to get Martin to change this in the account and then I've got to send an email back to the client telling them that's been changed in the account. I was getting a bit of that. So there was this middle tier of, like, things need to be done, but I don't need to know about it. So juvie would just get the email, get Martin to fix it in the account, and then write back and tell the client it was done, or she would go get the report or the information. Now, there's one thing here is we had a frequently asked questions. So if one of the questions was asked in email, she had a templated response to send back. And then there was category one. So that was category two is like, this is, you can reply as me and deal with anything that can be dealt with yourself. You don't need to tell me it's been done. Like, just take care of it. And then there's category one. These were things that were coming into the inbox where Juvia was like, I don't know how to reply to these. I was like, cool. So what we're going to do is every day we'll have a call and you can read the email to me and I'll dictate to you what I want to say back and you can type it up. So that's how we got my email down from like three hours a day to honestly, like 15 minutes where I would just have a call, she would read it. Now, the one thing I'll say from here is, what was fascinating is juvie actually has far better grammar and spelling skills than I do.

Go figure.

So my email quality has actually improved, but we got zero blowback from this and, like, a substantial thing. And when this happened, I was like, holy, my world changed. Like, we all have moments in life where it's like, you know, there's moments that, like, you. You see, like, nothing looks the same. So it's kind of like, you know, in this was one of those experiences for me, but it Might be the time you met your wife or your partner or it might be the time you started these life changing moments. So after this I was hooked. I was like, I see this is the way we grow. Like this is how we do it now. At the time I was working in the agency and it wasn't common for people to have virtual assistants or use over offshore staff. Now I was trying to compete against these agencies in Melbourne and in Australia and all that that had big teams and offices and like it was very challenging. And I was like, I saw the light. I was like, this is how I win. There's no way they can match me on base cost. So if I can build this right and leverage the Philippines to fulfill work, I'll be able to undercut these guys and be far more profitable than I'll be able to execute far more quickly. I'll be able to scale more quickly. Like this is how we did it and that's effectively part of the journey. So that was the birthing of Outsourcing angel was me as the first client. So I was the result of the first experience at Outsourcing Angels or I'm sure there's others. But like that was what got me hooked. And then teaming up with Lymphadetti and I'm like, we've got to take this to the world. This is like so powerful. We wanted to do this and like, so me and Lynn teamed up and then that was the birth of the company. And effectively what we do now is help other people do that. So we really help people. We're going, okay. As you mentioned, like all business owners, including myself and everyone else, there is so much shit you should not be doing, but yet you do or think you have to do or that your team is doing. And it's like if you're just able to leverage the arbitrage rates of hiring someone who costs $10 an hour to $10 an hour work, and you're freeing up your key people to work on that hundred dollar an hour work or the high value stuff, you can just create so much more of an efficiency in your business.

It's amazing. And I want to add here because I know you're a very.

Understated kind of a guy that while there's a massively commercial aspect to running a business, including an outsourced business, you guys go way farther than that. Because Outsourcing angel is actually a social enterprise, isn't it? You know, you dedicate a substantial amount of resources and cash to improving the lives of the communities that you work in and if you're okay to talk about this, because I know that you're a bit shy about this kind of thing, but I think it's incredible how you've created this vehicle that helps businesses succeed, but it also helps the community that. That supplies the services.

Yeah, absolutely. I'm more than happy to talk about this. So my honest belief is that once you get past the kind of looking after you part of your life, like everyone's got that bit where you need to get your finances sorted, your wife sorted all that stuff, or your partner and all the rest, buy the house, all that crap, but something will happen in you where you realize money isn't it. Now, for me, a large part of my life now is actually helping other people. Whether it's other business owners have success in business or whether it's the Philippines in the country that has been so, so good to me. So when we started Outsourcing Angels, we knew that we had a responsibility to not just take from a country, but give back to a country. So we could see that we were changing lives in the Philippines as we grew. So when a VA gets a job and works for a western company, like someone in Australia, you change someone's life. Like, as an equivalence is like you're now enabling them to have income for their family and not be a part of the poverty line over there. And like just eating and education and a good home and like it's a life changing experience and it's something very, very beautiful to see. And I'll admit is there's been times when I've like watched VA's transform. And I'll use a really good example here is like, I actually cried when the day my VA got a car. So she was in her 30s and never had a car. She's got three kids and her husband never had a car. They've always scooted around and it was like through working with me and her husband, working at outsourcing Angels as well, she was able to drive. Like they didn't have to have their kids on school scooters. And I was like.

We have to do more. And Lynn is honestly the big driver here. I won't pretend this is on me. She is the driving force behind the social side of it. Lynn found someone in the Philippines to team up with that could deliver social projects direct to the Philippines. So one of our concerns was like, if you want to start helping a country, like if you. And I'm not going to name any organizations, but if you donate a dollar to A lot of organizations, you'd be lucky if 30 cents actually gets to the cause. Yeah. Where we were like, we want none of that. So Lynn found someone in the Philippines where we could actually like every dollar we spend with them, we could spend on what we want so we could take on the projects we wanted to take on. Like if we want to put kids through school, we can. If we want to do community stuff, we can. And that 100% of the money we donate would go into the cause. So that's how it kind of started. From there is like we realized we had a big obligation and we realized that as business owners we want to make the world a better place. Like my aim, I'm going to leave this place better than it was when I got here. And if everyone would just participate in that methodology, like the world would transform. But there's unfortunately a lot of selfish, greedy actions going on that I won't get into on this call. But I choose as myself is like that's what we're going after there. So with outsourcing angels, a number of years ago we did actually try to launch as a social enterprise and it didn't go well. It wasn't well received. Clients didn't value it or see the perspective we had from there. So we actually said, well, look, we're not actually even going to mention this stuff. We're just going to be a full capitalist company and then what we do with the profits is our business. So we've been doing a bunch of social work over there and the things we really love to do is what I call paying up, not paying down. So to give you an example, if we pay someone who's just hungry and we give them food, the problem is, is that we need to give them food again. We have to keep supporting that for them to go on. But if we pay for people to get educated or create jobs, then we're creating the ability for people to look after themselves and have impacts on families and communities. And there's a huge compound effect. So education and jobs are really a big focus for us. But what we've looked at doing is just putting more and more into that as the company grows. So as we do better, we're able to kind of give more. Now this year we retried to launch the social enterprise campaign and put it out there. Like we're very fortunate where we're at a stage in business now. And I don't want to say it's not that we don't have to try in our marketing we definitely do. But we kind of made a decision that this is who we are and we're going to put it out to the world whether they like it or not. So what we did is we launched some of the social stuff we've been doing. And this time it was so different. It was so well received. People were getting on board. I was like, the world has changed. People want to make the world a better place and they want to use companies and be a part of companies that are socially responsible. Like, I mean, I won't go into the other ones from here, but it's like there's some VAs out there that work for other companies and the conditions are horrible, the pay is horrible. They don't look after them at all. And it's like when a VA comes to work at Outsourcing angel, the first off is their paid well. Second off is they're part of a community. And then third off is like, that we're able to do things to make their environment and what they're a part of and they're a part of the mission as well. So it's sense of purpose and all these things that come with it. So it's really, really special. Oh, flickering.

I should know better. I hadn't actually plugged the camera and the battery ran out. Go figure. 20, 25 years in, in filmmaking. Sorry about that, folks.

Keeps it honest.

Didn't want it. Didn't want it to interrupt your floor. Charlie, I. I think there's probably plenty of scope to talk to you more about Outsourcing angel or even get Lynn on the podcast, because I know I've met Lynn and she's. She's a firecracker. She's incredible.

She is I. One of the best people I've met in this world. And I did your friend. Now, at the time we're actually recording this, Lynn is actually in the Philippines right now running the Outsourcing angel conference. So she's over there with the VAs and doing charity work and social work herself at the moment. And it's just such an amazing things like some of the videos and photo photos I've been sent is just crazy at the moment. So super proud of her.

And, and it's. It's like that old adage, you know, when you're on an airplane, you put your own oxygen mask on first before fitting others. Business owners have to be robust before they can start changing the world. I think it was Richard Branson who said, you know, you've got to be in a strong financial position. Before you can start helping others. Otherwise, you. Your intention to help others falls short because you run out of money. And that's terribly irresponsible.

Yeah. And I actually to this point is there's a lot of broke people out there trying to do good in the world. And I really do believe that they should channel that energy, get themselves right and then make a bigger impact. Because I would. If you've got something behind you or an ability to do that, you can make real change. Like you can see your difference. And that's what we need.

100%. Charlie, this has been fascinating almost an hour now. I would just wanted to say thank you so much. You've shared so many incredible knowledge bombs. I'm sure anyone listening has gotten immense value from that. And thank you because it's a pleasure always talking to you and to get a chance to share this with the audience is just fabulous.

It's been amazing, Dan. Thank you for having me.

So, folks, that's it for this episode of the Business of Filmmakers podcast. You have been with myself, Dan Lenny, your host, and the wonderful Charlie Valor, whose details will all be posted beneath this video or audio. You can get a hold of him@charlievaller.com that's C H A R L E Y V A l h e r.com and that will link to all his other websites. But thanks, Charles. It's been amazing.

Thanks for having me. Dan.

You've been listening to the Business for Creatives podcast with your host, me, Dan Lenny. If you're a creative business owner who is struggling to get your business performing at the level you want, then head on over to businessforcreativespodcast.com to take a free business evaluation survey and discover where you can plug the holes in your business. You can also access a range of free training to help you build your business faster. Also, don't forget to rate the show over on itunes so we can get the message out there to more creators who need to hear it. Thanks for listening.