BFC #008 - Easy Ways to do Business as a Creative with Simon Banks

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 and welcome to this special edition of the Business for Creatives podcast. I'm very excited to have another live podcast here with Simon Matz. G', day, Simon.

G'. Day.

Now before we get into a bit about Simon, I just want to share a bit of a biog about him. He is an Aussie Brit which makes him a bit confused. Spent most of his life in England. 30 years in the TV and video industry. Wanted to be a cameraman since doing two weeks work experience at Sisters Production Company in Sydney. Age 16. Became a news cameraman at 21 for a regional TV station in Wagga Wagga that is actually a place for anyone who's not in Australia. Worked for seven Network Australia as a current affairs cameraman. Moved to the UK in 1990 and has worked freelance and founded five, five media companies. Hired and fired lots of people in the last 15 years. Done a lot of work in business to business video. He understands what a freelancer is all about, being a one man business and running larger creative companies and he knows what it's like to run your own business. He wrote a book which for those of you watching the video is here. It's called how to Get Video right. Really out of frustration with clients not getting their video right. Lots of insights in here on the video business sector and where it currently is. And finally here the corporate video is dead. Well on that bombshell, Simon, welcome to the office.

Thank you.

Apologies for anyone listening to this. Hearing buzzing and plumbing. We are in an office, we can't seem to do anything about that. So hey, it's live and dirty. So quite an intro Simon. I think before we get going really I'm just gonna make sure I've got a timer on this because we don't want to run.

We're probably. We could talk all night.

Yeah, exactly. So corporate video is dead. Let's start there.

Well, I've been doing corporate but I would say was the corporate video for about 15 years. And just to show my age, my first corporate video was delivered on a VHS tape tape, if you remember those. I just find I still do a lot of what I call it business to business films rather than corporate video work because it just sounds a bit more interesting but I still get inquiries of people wanting to do a 5 to 10 minute one off video for their business and I just think that's not what? It just shouldn't do that anymore.

So you're referring to kind of the hero corporate video.

The hero, the one that sits on the front page. And it starts off, we were established in 1972, an employee for 500 people, blah, blah, blah, no one cares about that. I say to my clients is, you don't want just one video, you need video content. There's this concept called content marketing. Every marketer I talk to says video is so important, it's really going to be up there on top of the list for any business needs to embrace video. So I think the concept of the corporate video is dead and it just should be video content which supports the business marketing and business goals. And I don't, I think a lot of businesses haven't really understood that, which is why I wrote my book and then said I did write out of frustration because I was so fed up of clients spending good. You know, my average video is between 10 and 15,000 pounds. So it's a bit of an investment and they're not doing anything with it. I just thought they're wasting their money. So I decided, right, I'm going to write a book about this to try and help businesses understand the power and value of video and as the title says, how to Get Video Right.

So how would you describe what you're doing now in terms of how your business has changed? I mean there's one thing to express to clients that they should be doing this. But as we know, anyone who's worked in clients in the client space, what they should do and what they think they want to do can sometimes be a rub. There can be a conflict. So what are you doing now and who are you helping?

So generally we're. So my target audience would be marketing managers, communication managers and CEOs or MDs of companies.

And I feel a lot of people get what I call, they get very excited about what I call the middle, which is making the video. I mean that's my background. I'm also a cameraman, DOP for 20 odd years. You know, I'm a creative, I enjoy making videos as well, but I just think in isolation it doesn't work for business. It needs to be how does it fit in with their marketing strategy or their goals as a business in case, you know, increase sales, do they want to do more brand awareness? So how I, what I'm finding some traction now is actually not to jump straight in when clients say I want a video, how much? But going into more detail about, well, what is the purpose of the video, who is the audience? How are you going to market and distribute it? What outcomes do you want from it? What is your return of investment? And I think as creators we've been extremely poor at explaining or showing what a return of investment is on video. And that is the big problem because companies then go, well, we can't really measure this, which is a lie because you can, because you've got this wonderful thing called the interweb. Therefore they think, oh I don't want to spend a lot of money on it. So they tend to go down the cheaper route rather than actually investing in it. And for me there's two of the biggest pieces shouldn't be the actual video production, it should be what I call the pre production work and how I'm helping clients. Now I'm doing what I call a strategy session which I actually spend about half a day with them and actually try and work out what they actually want to achieve from this. And I write a report and that's a paid for piece of work up front. And then if they want to go into video production then we can help them with that. And these days it could be whatever. If you want to shoot on an iPhone or if they want to have some internal skills in house, fine. If want to go an external agency, brilliant. In fact you should be doing all three. And then the other piece of the puzzle, which is just as important as all the others is how do you get eyeballs on your video and do they have a marketing and distribution strategy and I don't. And people I work with tend to think, oh I'll just put on YouTube or put it on my website or I'll share on my social media channels. That's not enough these days.

And don't you find people talk about social media channels like one big sweeping statement? Of course in my experience and I'd be interested to hear your thoughts. But an audience on Facebook is different to an audience on LinkedIn is different to an audience on YouTube. What have you discovered about the different platforms?

Well this is where we really important to the pre work is like who is your audience and where, where do they, where do they sit or where, you know, where do they watch this, your content or how they consume the content? Because I'm now talking to clients about, you know, if you're doing yes, it's great to have a 90 second video for, for the front page of your website but that should be needs to be a 62nd or 32nd version for Instagram and there needs to be a Different, literally it's a different edit and it's now different format as well. And so we need to talk to clients about how they can maximize the use of just one piece of content which needs to be what I call multi purpose across different platforms. So there's no more what I call the magic bullet video. Where a client wants a five minute video and it's going to appeal to their stakeholders, their staff, to prospects. It just doesn't happen. That can't happen anymore. You need to be who's your audience and you create content for that audience, which to me means quite often multiple pieces of video content.

Do you think as a creative in whatever space you work in, you have to really genuinely embrace flexibility in some of your own ideas? Because some of these new fads, for one of a better word, around 9 by 16 video or square video, there can be a lot of discussion, a lot of heated debate in camera specific forums or media creative specific forums about oh, you know, why are we doing this? It's a nightmare. But of course the reality is that's what the client wants. You've got to give it to them. So I think if you just embrace it.

Well, I find where I am, I have to educate the client. I mean to be honest with you, clients don't give a shit about what you film on. Well, my clients don't because I'm dealing direct with the companies. I'm not dealing through other production companies because I am a production company. So when people come, when I have directors saying oh we want to shoot on a red or an Alexa, I'm going, why? Because it's going to end up on someone's mobile. Because this is where most people consume video call most social media content or any contents, you know it's going to end up on a square, little square on your iPhone. I mean I don't, clients think seriously don't really care on the quality of it. They just want to care on getting, make sure they get the content right and the message right. Yes, they wanted to make it look good, but I have no. Well the content reproduce always looks good. So that's not an issue for us. It's generally about for me is getting their message right. And that's the battle I have with the client is getting the message right and to make sure that we're delivering across different platforms. So it might have to be different sort of video for that or slightly different message. So for example Instagram, you know, you need to probably have so Instagram or most video Facebook, you know, you've got three seconds because that's what's counted as a view. You got three seconds to eight seconds to attract someone's attention. So you don't put a logo stinger right at the front of the video, you put that down in the video. So you have to hit them hard with some sort of engaging content or statement to draw the audience in and then try and you need to have a call to action within the video, not right at the end because that say that most people, only 20% of people actually watch all the way to the end of the video. So these are kind of insights that I give to our clients to say that no one's going to watch your video for three minutes. Seriously. And no matter how good it is, no one's going to watch it for that long. So that's why there's an argument for me and I guess there's a debate in the whole marketing world. And if it's a sales type video we have a short form. And short form, I mean somewhere between 30 seconds and 90 seconds versus something which is, believe it or not now called long form which is five minutes above. And I say there's a, it depends again go back to what is your business goal and if it's a sales video or you want to get more sales then you have something at the top of the sales funnel. We call that a 30 to 60 second video. And as they get more interested, you have more video content. Yes, people will watch a 10 minute video but not further into the sales funnel when they actually get to know who you are like you. And the longer form videos is about how they trust you. So this is how I work with my clients is getting to understand a one off video is not going to be wow bang, I'm gonna get lots of sales, lots of views on it.

So I just want to dial back a bit to Wagga Wagga because for anyone who's not in Australia, Wagga Wagga seems like a bit of a made up place. But that's where your career really kicked off, didn't it?

Yes. It all started when my sister worked as a production manager for a company in Crowsnest which is sort of north Sydney. I went there two weeks, 16 year old and I thought wow, this is really cool. I we are talking God, 1980, you know, I just saw these cameramen wearing jeans and a T shirt. And on that first week I met Elton John because he was touring there. This production company actually did a lot of music videos and they obviously when big bands were Touring Australia. They used to do the concert videos as well. And then Kiss came in, you know, to talk about. Because they were touring sort of the same time. I thought, wow, this is amazing. So I thought, I want to be a cameraman. I then did a degree in communications and media in Canberra University. And then I had to get a job. I'll be honest with you, I had no strategy, I had no plan. In those days, the only way to get a job was you basically wrote to every TV station. Because in those days there was only television stations, didn't have really corporate video companies unless they're making big drama or films. And, you know, and I got. Didn't hear any. Got a lot of rejections. And one day there was an ad applied. It was in the local Canberra Times, because that's where I grew up, in Canberra for training cameraman in Wagga Wagga, which I've never heard of myself, which is. Which is about an hour and a half, I think, west of Canberra. And that's where I started my career.

Just to put some context, it's kind.

Of in the middle of nowhere central New South Wales. It's. It was at the time, it's a small country town, it was about 50,000 people and it had one television station. That was it. But it was a good rounder because in here in Australia, when you. You tend to shoot and edit, you do both at the same time. So I always believe if you can shoot and edit, you become a better cameraman because you edit your own crap. Yeah. And then from there, from Wagga, I couldn't wait to get out of the place, to be honest with you, because I'm not really a country boy. And I went back to Canberra to work on the networks, the seven Network, where I did pretty much current affairs. And then I was made redundant in 1990 as made redundant because the network went into receivership and I came. Went sort of back to London because I was born in the UK and went straight into freelance. I happened to land the day that Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. There was actually plenty of work because all the freelancers went up to the war zone and I picked up a lot of camera work, mainly during years.

I think, also because I worked with a lot of Australian cameramen when I was in London. The. The training you get in Australia or at that time, the shoot, edit, really gave you guys a massive advantage because you come to London and you were very hard workers, could shoot and edit and would never complain about doing three.

Or four jobs in a day. No, I actually Remember when I arrived doing bringing up production managers for.

TV stations and production companies then I remember one saying, oh, you shoot at it. Well that means you can't be very good at either.

And I was like, you wait. And I just thought you're wrong. And so I actually went into. I got a freelance contract with LWT News which is sort of quite complicated to understand how UK broadcasting work but it's a three day contract just doing news, one man band and. And we were hated by the other group which was Thames Television because they had a four man crew so they. So they had a producer, cameraman, sound person and driver and here we were, we were doing one man banding, just one man band and a journey.

That was at a time when the unions were fiercely resisting this health and safety and we couldn't do this one man band.

Well, I couldn't get into the union then. I think it was called Actu at the time because it was. I didn't have enough paid experience when I started so they'd want to know me. So I just thought stuff here I'll just, you know, I got a short term contract one man banding and they loved it because they loved the flexibility and we employed a lot of Aussies and.

The situation changed a bit so basically we didn't become just a three day TV station, became a seven day TV station. They formed a new network called London News Network which I think Den, you were involved. Yeah, and I was senior cameraman at the beginning and. And obviously I employed a quite a lot of few Australians because they're multi skilled because we went one man band so. And then I had to teach some of the English cameramen how to edit as well. Yeah, and there's a resistance, there's a resistance toward it but technology was moving and that was back. We're talking about sort of the early 90s here.

Well, camcorders were coming into play, weren't they? Instead of being a cameraman and a recordist where the tape recorder was separate, suddenly it was this one camera that could do everything.

Yeah, I can remember what we're shooting. I guess it was BDSP would have been. Yeah, BDSP at the time. Yeah, I've got the still heavy buggers and I got a stuff back because of it. Yeah, but you know it was, it was great experience and then you know, as a senior cameraman I basically did all the feature stuff so I didn't actually end up chasing ambulances and fire engines which was quite nice but. And then from that I went I didn't really like being part of a large organization because I was not management but I couldn't do the things that I wanted to do within the management. So I resigned and went to freelance as a cameraman and then basically built up from there doing documentary work.

So becoming a DFA and that's quite a traditional route. It's you know, for, for those of us for a certain age we started because I have a very similar story. I was 16, went to work. The BBC is work experience and, and that was 30, 28 years ago, something like 30 years ago. But the, that you, you get jobs in broadcast and then you go freelance and, and freelance is great because it teaches you some business skills. But what was the turning point where you went I'm no longer going to be a freelancer, I'm actually going to run a company.

I think it started. I have to thank probably Steve Jobs and Apple for basically coming on with Final Cut Pro. Final Cut Pro on a Mac because in those days, well as we know the camera, well maybe you don't know camera equipment those days. I bought my first camera equipment in 1995 and it cost me £78,000 for the camera, a couple lenses and some lights. I mean in those days you could buy two bedroom flat with that. Yeah, and to buy an edit suite in those days was £100,000. And so the advantages I guess in some of us oldies would call the glory days because the barriers of entry were really high. You had to have tens of thousands of pounds to set up a video production company. Obviously that's changed dramatically.

I just wanted to stop you there. I'm sorry for anyone listening to this. There is a pipe that seems to be filling a water tank right behind this wall that has never been there before. So I apologize if you can hear lots of noise. We are in a busy office. I'm sorry but Simon, please carry on.

So then when Apple came along with Final Cut Pro1 which is non linear editing, which had been around for a while but it was still pretty expensive with an Avid and a decent Mac, I just suddenly decided oh, I could shoot and edit and I could do little films for businesses and that started. And this was probably 2001, I guess maybe 2001 and that's where my journey started of running a business. You know, I decided I could do that for small businesses and it just, it grew from there from being a one man band to then having getting an office and then employing an assistant and then growing it from there from 1 to 2 to 3 to 4 to 5.

And what. Was there a point that you can remember where you suddenly went, oh, I'm not a freelancer anymore. I actually run a business. And what was that point? And then what did you discover? Did you ever reflect at the time about.

What was shifting in your mindset around the difference between being a freelancer and a business owner?

I took, I didn't. And that was my problem. I had a freelance mentality. And by that I mean I had an employee mindset where I was just going, you're just looking for one job after the other. See, I actually sort of was running a business by default, really, because I didn't really pay much attention to the numbers or how do I grow this thing? It was just literally, how do I get some work? How do I pay off my camera equipment loan? How do I pay for an office? How do I pay for stuff? And it's only when things go quiet or you lose a client and it comes to bite you in the bum, you sort of think, shit, actually, I'm struggling a bit here, so what's going on? So my pivotal moment was, I was on holiday probably about eight or nine years ago. I was reading a book called the E. Myth Revisited by a gentleman called Michael E. Burger Gerber. Yeah, yeah. And there's a bit there where he's talking about if you want to grow a business. Because I wanted to grow a business. I had this fantasy that, oh, I could grow a business and I could become a business owner and I could make, you know, millions of pounds of dollars. Yeah. And then retire. You know, I had this vision of, yeah, I. I can grow a business. I mean, come on, how hard can it be? And I was struggling because when you were freelance, because I was a freelancer, really, you know, I. How do I grow that? I can't grow this thing and just read the book. And there's a bit there which said, you need to work on your business, not in your business. And that was like, boom, light bulb moment. It was because it was suddenly, ah, I'm a technician. And I am a technician because I was a cameraman for 20 years and an editor. And I really am good with the technical side of filming and the creative side of it. And that's what the mismatch. Because I was good at that side but not good at the business side. So I had to make a decision. Do I want to stay the technician and just do the creative stuff, go on shoots, travel the world, all that sort of stuff, or. And interesting enough when you get older, you sort of have kids, you sort of think, actually, I don't know if I could do this forever. I do want to retire at some stage I decided or do I want to run a business And I decided that potentially trying to do the technical side and run the business side, to be in it and on it, you can't really do that. So you have to make a decision, am I going to be the business owner and change my mindset so I work on the business rather than in it? And that's made a decision actually I'm going to step out of doing the technical side of it, as in shooting, directing, editing, and generally work on the business in terms of a bit more vision, how to get clients, clients. So I moved from that side of it. And when you're a small business owner, you have to be a salesperson. I know creatives hate that word, selling, but every business, no matter what business you're in, is driven by sales. And therefore you have to put your business hat on and think, right, I'm going to grow this business, but I have to work on sales and how do I get new clients in and have more of a strategy and vision. Sorry to mic there. To, to. To grow the business, otherwise your business doesn't grow.

Which is a different set of skills and tools to being a filmmaker or a photographer or designer creator.

I knew shit. I knew nothing. So I became a sponge. I signed up to do all sorts of courses, I went to all sorts of workshops. And at the time I was looking for tactics, I was looking for how to five steps to create your sales funny sales funnel and make 100 grand. And within three, three weeks or something ridiculous like that, you go, yeah, you know. And that doesn't really work, you know, you know how to do marketing, how to run social media, social media channels, you know, and then. And so it's more involved in the new shiny things, you know, I like that sort of stuff. So it's like, oh yeah, maybe if I just have a YouTube channel, maybe that would sort things out. Or, you know, maybe if I sign up for this course, follow this person, I'll get all this information that I can transform my business.

Depending on your mindset. Doesn't work for me. It didn't work. And what I've really discovered over the last, I guess five years, I've been doing a lot of work, basically personal development work about my mindset. Because ultimately running a business.

Relatively simple, but doesn't mean it's easy.

But if you look at, because I was Looking at other people and saying, well, how come they've got a multi million dollar business, how come they've got a big team? You know, how are they doing this? And the reality is it's not so much, it's not that hard, but it's just having some insights and some strategy to doing it and basically have an idea that you can, that you can go to market to.

In my view, your mindset has to be clear on the objective you're trying to. How is your product or service unique or different enough that's going to help someone achieve their result. And then it's a question of putting systems and processes in place and selling and keeping an eye on your cash flow.

I think the biggest issue I'm seeing, and I include my business and previous businesses in this is as creatives, there's two things we don't like to sell. And to be honest with you, we're not different enough in the marketplace.

Okay, so my back, I'm a video guy and there's an explosion over the last five years of people doing, calling themselves video production companies. I mean, you can buy a DSLR camera and an Imac or Final Cut Pro for under $10,000 and set yourself up as video production company. So videos become a commodity and therefore I find I lose a lot of business on price. And that's because I haven't demonstrated the value enough, I haven't made myself different enough. And that's my advice to anybody. And I think if I knew this 10 years ago, I'd say, right, how do I differentiate myself in the marketplace? How can I stand out from the crowd? Or what's something I can do which adds value to the client? And for so long I'm just doing what everyone else does. You just do a bit of marketing, do a bit of emailing, hope that some work comes in, you deliver a product and basically you send the video to them and that's it and you move on. And realistically, I think a lot of video production companies or web design companies are suffering from the same thing here, that we're not differentiating ourselves enough for the client to go, oh, I want to work with these guys. I'm willing to pay a bit more for it because we're not doing a very good job at actually demonstrating that.

And do you think that's a feature? Do you think it's a fear? Do you think it's a kind of pack mentality? It's like, oh, we can do it, we can do everything. So let's offer Everything they do, I mean, it's.

I think it's become swings and roundabouts. There's a time when you should really niche and be very specific of what you do. And. And now I find that you got this, what I call super agencies, which we're still, you know, fighting against because they do everything and I still get clients. Go on. Are we going to bring this to our agency? And I always say they're not video people. They don't do it very good. And so it's really about how you don't have that pack mentality, because most people do. So it's what I call having the employee mindset. And just sort of, oh, I'll just do this. And, you know, we do. What we do is really good. And we. Okay. You know, we're competitively priced, so therefore the work will come. It doesn't work that way anymore. Used to. But now you've really got to shine. You've really got to show why you're good at what you do and demonstrate that in some capacity or somehow you're different to other companies. Because we all have so much choice these days.

Yeah.

And there's a lot of skilled and talented people out there. Doesn't mean that. And I've also seen a lot of skilled and talented people who do really well in business who are not that skilled and talented. And I've seen a lot of people who are really good at what they do, but because they can't communicate or market themselves, they struggle. Because as a creative, and I understand this totally because I'm a creative person, you know, you just want to be liked. You want people to love you and just love your work, and they come to you time and time again because you deliver such a good. A good service or a good product, and that's great. You have to have more than that these days.

Well, because the video particularly has been commoditized, as has photography, there is. There is less point of difference. I mean, your phone can shoot a pretty reasonable picture and the artificial intelligence can adjust it with two lenses and make it look pretty good. And a lot of times I'll use, you know, photographs that I've taken on my phone, in my newsletters, or on my website or my blog, because it's about having access to something quickly. So what is your advice? How do you go about differentiating yourself in this new marketplace?

This is where I'm moving towards what I call video strategy or video pre planning. For us, it's about our video marketing. Because these are just a tool. And they're good tools, as you're right. You can shoot really good 4K video, great photographs on them. And so we've got to move away from being the technician and the creator from that side of it. You've got to work out. That's great. But how are you going to use these.

How they're going to support your marketing or business goals and how are you going to distribute and market them so that people can see these wonderful videos or watch or look at these photographs? And that's the missing link, I think, for a lot of creatives because we just deliver a nice video or pictures or a nice website. And you need to do so much more now. You need to offer from a creative point of view. You know, how. How can people market with this material? How can they get more sales from this material?

You know, I often hear creatives saying they hate marketing. Literally, they hate marketing. They despise that. They have no interest in it. What's your response to that?

Get over it. Yeah, it's hard. I understand. I am. You know, the social media, it's time consuming and to do it well takes some time, money and effort. But I do believe that you just can't also just can't go and sell. You can't just go and pick up the phone and say, hi, I'm a video company. You got any work on? For me that just. It might work, but it's very rarely going to work. So therefore, you need to create what we call content marketing. So you need to be get out there. And for me, it's about how do you demonstrate your why? If anybody's seen Simon Sinek's video about the why, I would recommend just YouTube Simon Sinek, the why. Because that's what people are going to buy from. They don't buy what you do or how you do it. It's about all the why you do it. I think the more you can demonstrate the why, and it could be about your background and how you do things differently, why clients love you, whatever it may be. You need to have content that demonstrates that. So that should be a video. It could be photographs, it could be a podcast. And that's what we all need to do. And that's what I call marketing. It's about finding that content you can market to. So it's not about going to the market and saying, hi, I'm a video production company, I can make a video for you for, you know, $999. It's not about that. It's not about how you sell that. It's about how you educate your client about how they should be using video, how they should be using photographs, you know, how they should be using their website, whatever it may be. Because we're all becoming commoditized. And if you want to fight about that, unless you want to be the cheapest person, but no one wins the race at the bottom, you will not be in business very long if you're the cheapest person in the business, unless you can do volume. But most creative businesses are small. You can't do volume. So what you want to do is create a community or audience who love you. Because not only what you do, but why you do it. Therefore you can start charging a more premium price. And for us creatives, it's always about regular work. How do we get clients who come back to us time and time again?

I'm always curious why.

More video production companies don't actually have video explaining their process on their website.

You know, we know why, because we're all busy. I'm guilty. I have a production company, a million pound production company and there's 10 of us working the business. You know what we should, I know we should be doing so much more video in terms of educating our clients and behind the scenes and all that sort of stuff. But it's hard because we're busy. Yeah, we are a busy company as well.

And I think we should. And I believe, you know, show reels. I hate showreels, personally. People do showreels. That's what they think they do. They think, I'll put a showreel. And this is what I'm talking about, video companies mainly, or freelancers who do a showreel put on their website. And I, as a client, and I am a client, a lot of freelancers employ a lot of freelancers. I don't give a shit because it doesn't show me anything. It's a 2 minute, 3 minute piece to music with nice images. It doesn't really, to me explain anything about what you've done or how you've done this or why you've done this. And I believe that you should do, if you can do, if you're a small business, go with your personality, go with who you are, not try and be the big player and all things to all people because people buy from people. Big believer on that. It's all about, it's all about relationships. And that's taken me a long time to learn that one. It's not about the sale, can't be about the sale. When you're small, creative, it's got to be people buy from you because of who you are and you've got to demonstrate that. And you've got to do that through content, whether it's video, photographs, podcast, blogs. You just got to learn how to do content, find a way. I don't know how you're going to do it, but you've got to find a way to that on a regular basis.

But the other thing I would say is, you know, you're not born knowing how to ride a bike.

So.

So my advice as someone who's been doing a lot of content marketing the last few years, is that you just gotta start and start with your phone and literally do I used to do Snapchat stories or you could do Instagram lives or Facebook lives. Just get the phone up and start talking to the camera. Because the more you do it, the easier it will become.

I agree and I have a confession. I'm of effects and the. So of course making video. I want video to be reflective of the quality of work that we do. So therefore you want it to be.

How's that working out for you?

Well, it doesn't because you don't do it because it takes too long to do.

Exactly.

And I think that's again, when I'm saying you got to get over it. I've got to go over myself and get, you know, that's, you know, my plan. I have done some vlogs and stuff like that. I need to get in front of this thing more often.

But it's not about just recording on this. It's about having a strategy on how you actually distribute this as well. Yes, you can do this and talk to your camera. Great. But unless you have some sort of idea of how you get people to watch it, that's a different mindset and strategy as well. So I think. But Den, right, you got to start. And I've done that. You just start. No one's going to watch the beginning. You know, if you do some Instagram stories, which I think is one of the trendy places to be for creatives at the moment, you know what? I started doing some of that. You get what 10 people might watch.

Them, you know, but that's still 10 people.

I mean. Yeah.

Who wouldn't see it if you hadn't done it?

I think the issue with marketing and social media is you cannot get a return of investment or see an increase of sales or inquiries straight away. It's a long term game. You've got to Give it six, nine months, I think do it. And it's hard when you're doing a lot of content and you think no one's watching or listening or reading this stuff. It's hard. And I think you just got to oh, doesn't work somewhere and do it.

Yeah.

And I think you'd be persistent with it.

Absolutely key. You have to be persistent, you have to keep going. It's one of those slow burns. People get to know you to get to like you, to get to trust you. So when you do open up a sales conversation, they know who you are and they can see you know. And it's the Google sniff test, I call it. If someone Googles you, which is the first thing anyone does, is we Google the supplier we're looking at and you see what comes up. If there's lots of social media content, it builds a sense of trust.

Well, it does because I've do.

My previous company, I did a lot of more vlogs than on camera. And you know when your sales been in people thought they sort of know you, they think you're a bit of a star because they go, oh yeah, I know, I've seen you, I've seen you, I've seen you, I've seen your videos and it's, it's great on how to build trust is what to do. So you need people, they need to know you, so they need to see some of your material and the more they watch the ideally get to like you and then once they get to like you, they will then trust you. And when they trust you, they're more likely to buy from you. So it's a cycle. I do believe that you need to find the right platform for you. So I'm doing business to business films. So I'll be honest with you, I don't think Facebook is where my audience, they're on Facebook but they're not looking to buy or see me on Facebook talking about video per se. So I'm more controversial. But what I'm trying to do is not get sucked into, have to be on every platform. So I'm looking. So LinkedIn for me is where I want to is what I'm going to look at more closely. LinkedIn.

YouTube is an obvious one but it's a harder one to crack. And then I really like Instagram because I think I see a lot of video people and stuff like that, but my audience is not video people. My audience are marketing people and business owners. So I just need to, I need to look at where they Are.

So what I'm planning to do is do some video content, but I'm also going to supplement that because when you do a video, you should get it transcribed and you make it into a blog or an article, which you can then put on your website. But for me, because not having a huge amount of traffic to my website, I think LinkedIn's better because I get more traction on LinkedIn. So it's looking at where your audience is. How are you going to reach them? And then just looking at. Rather than go, right, I need to be on LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook. Just pick one. Just starts.

You know, there's definitely a strategy in that I have. I have a slightly different viewpoint, and that is you can't know which is the right platform unless you test all of them. So my strategy is we're running a. I mean, by the time this goes out, we'll have been doing it probably nearly three months, is to do literally 100 days of content posting across all channels and then to track the results and base our decisions on the numbers, rather than what I feel or think.

Is that, yeah, that, hey, listen to this guy. Is good. It's good strategy. Yeah. I've got a gut feeling. I say LinkedIn, but you know what?

I've been constantly proven wrong by gut feelings on things like social media. And if we look back to Michael Garber's book, the business owner working on their business stands back and looks at charts and data.

Yeah.

And bases decisions on data. And I think this is a really important point because what I feel and think is a very creative trait.

The analyst goes, it doesn't matter what you feel or think, what are the numbers telling us?

And it's no lie. Numbers is really important. It just not only goes to your numbers. In a business, I'm still surprised how many business owners do not know exactly how much. What the cash flow is, how much cash got in the bank, how much they owed and how much. You know what I mean? Their accounts receivable and payables, you know, that's one part of it. It's also knowing, is your marketing working now? We've moved on. You know, in the old days, we used to put an ad in a newspaper. You wouldn't, Wouldn't necessarily know how it was working on, but online, you've got. All the analytics can prove that. And I just think, you know, it's not about also just being online either. It's about how can you be offline. So what else are you doing in terms of. Of Sending someone. So I actually wrote a book. So people are surprised. But you're a video guy, so why have you. I wrote a book and I said, yeah, it's a book. And they go, oh, it's a book. You know, as in that gives you physical book massive authority.

Because very few video guys have written a book.

Yeah. So it's about hard. It is hard. So time consuming. But from this book, there's a mountain. There is a mountain of content in there that people, you know, I will use for future for articles and blogs and it's quite satisfying. I had a conversation with a client who I sent my book to and had a conference call with him and he was quoting my book back at me. Oh yeah, I read this book. Yeah, you're really right on it. I was thinking the same thing. I know, I was saying, right. So he's like, yeah. And he's going to do what I call a strategy piece with me to start with. Which I think that's why I suggested he started. And to me it's been really upfront with clients saying, no, I'm not willing to sell your video because I need to understand more your business goals. And I have actually told clients previously that you're not ready for video. You haven't got the basics right first. So until you get that right, because.

It'S about the long game. So tell me, you know, how do you balance business and creativity? Because I certainly have my own thoughts on running a business can be very creative. But I'd love to know.

I'll be honest with you, I've had to give them up the creativity side and concentrate on the business side. Because when you run a team of 10 people, you've got to know your numbers and you've got to help them be creative. So my creativity at the moment, I bring people in. So it's either my in house team or I outsource that creativity. And to be honest with the people out there are probably better than I am at the moment because I'm the still because I've set up five businesses in the past. I'm pretty good at understanding how to do that and understand where I should put my attention.

Is that rewarding? Do you find that rewarding business?

No, no, I don't actually. It's hard one because I miss the creative side. So how I do my creativity is when I. It's personal stuff. And what I will do is I will do more creativity when I do our own content marketing. And that's where, that's where my Creativity comes from. It's not so much serving the clients with that in terms of the technical side of making a video, it's more about how can we communicate our why to our clients. So where my joy actually comes from, it's not actually making the video. It's actually helping clients understand how they should be using video and having their like they're seeing their light bulb moments and go oh yeah, we should whole content series and oh yeah, maybe we should do this. That's, that's where I get my, my joys. Helping and serving my clients to use video much more effectively.

And what about building a business?

Building a business is hard actually. It's no shit. Yeah, it's. And sometimes, you know, I just got to work out what I thought that I wanted to do originally wants to do. So I run a million pound business, I thought I could double it and then five years time grow it to 20 million and sell it.

That was my goal. That's changed a bit now because I think that's hard and I need a much bigger team and a lot more clients to do that. And I've actually decided actually where my purpose is actually to help serve clients on a more one to one basis because once the bigger the business you get and then if it's your own business and you run the business you tend to, you have to step away from the data, you have to stay away from the day to day. If you don't, you just go mad. You've got to, you've got to let people to run your business for you. And that's the ultimate working on the business, not in it. So I, for me it's like, well, how can you know for me my, you know my, where my value is for my clients is my knowledge and I want to serve those clients more on a consultancy, one to one business and that other people make the video content for me and that's how I'll grow my business because that's. I believe there's a big need for that at the moment and it's exciting times for creatives because everyone wants, needs to have content, needs to have video, need to have photographs, need websites, need podcasts, whatever it may be. So there's a big need for us. I'm very excited about the future. It's not easy, it's competitive. But man, the age we live in, it's a very exciting.

So tell me, what's the best advice you've ever received? If there's one thing you could focus on.

For me it was, I Guess coming back to the book, the Emif was really, I had to make a decision do I want to stay the technician or do I want to actually grow a business or you know, build a business.

And I decided that I wanted to build a business but for me at that time meant that I had to sort of hand off the, the technical side of actually or the physical side of making videos. And then I need to concentrate more the strategy on getting the people on board, doing the sales, doing them, doing the marketing.

And can you share some of your personal habits or you know, processes you use that you feel really strongly contribute to your success?

I do.

It's.

I work a lot of mindset. All right. And because when you're working in a large production company and we have 30 odd projects ongoing and let's face it, business would be much easier if we didn't have to deal with clients, but it'd be much poorer as well. And it's about really, people get really wound up, creators particularly really wound up when client criticizes something or comes out with some feedback. And I just got to go. So I'm telling my team all the time, it's not personal, it's not personal. They just don't know. We haven't, you know, where's our responsibility? So for me it's about where's. And I was telling my team and myself where's our responsibility when we're working with clients. Have we communicated that enough with them? And so don't go off the deep end when a client comes back, wants more changes because have we actually, you know, you have to say, put yourself in their shoes.

So the, that's where so to do that. So I do meditation every day. I have a 15 minute meditation program and it's about just so I can just go, just sort of quieten myself a bit before I go into the office. Every day.

Things sort of wind up a bit.

I love the analogy of you wouldn't race a Formula One car around the track 24 hours a day without letting the engine cool down. And I think that's a great analogy for meditation is that we are told to eat well, we're told to exercise and there's an increasing movement towards quieting the brain and breathing. But it's so, so important.

I think for me particularly it's switching. You got to switch off too. It's not about, you know, it's not about working really hard because people say I'm business, I've got to do 16 hours a day, seven days a week, week well, good luck with that.

It's a myth.

It's a myth.

It's this hustle myth.

Yeah.

That's been perpetrated by certain people that you have to be working 100 hours a week. I mean, I've done it and I know you have, but it's really a really bad way to grow a business.

No, I survived for me now, you know, I just get a stage where I'm going to create a business which works for me and the lifestyle and the goals that I want from a personal level rather than have to do the hustle now. Yeah, I provide good customer service and I do check emails in the evening and I will work in the evening, but I have a lifestyle. There's certain during the week where I'm doing exercise. So I go for a swim every Friday morning religiously. So I'm in the pool at 7:30, I do an hour and that's not movable for me. Things like with clients all over the world, yes, I do Crawford Schools late in the evening, but that's fine. I'm more than happy to do that. But then there'll be times when I'm not going to rush into the office to be there at 8 o' clock in the morning and stay there until 7pm because I think I have a life, I have a family, I have kids. It's important. It's really important. I was going to say it's important to get that life work balance correct, but there isn't. So there's a myth about having a work life balance because if you run your own business, it's all integrated into one, but it's making it better. It is having those boundaries and place to say, right, I'm not going to work 16 hours a day, seven days a week to grow this business because ultimately you're just going to burn out. So yes, you need to work. There'll be times when you've got to deliver a project. You need to work hard. Fine. But make sure, you know, you need to have some time off as well. And the most important thing is to have some time off where you can sit and do the vision piece. And that's doing 90 minutes. So I, I'm going to aim to do 90 minutes a day is where emails off, computer off. And I'm just working on the vision for the business and making plans because I just find. So I don't check my emails first thing in the morning because that is a disaster. Critically important, that is a disaster because you just get one email from a Client or someone, something or whatever who's not happy about something. Or I have or staff member emailing me saying they're ill today, you know, and it just throws you off your game. Throws you off the game. So it's very important for me, routine meditation, some quiet time, not checking email or news or social media.

You know, actually interesting. Something that I think is fascinating and I don't know what you think about this.

I come from a news background. I filmed television news for years. I now refuse to watch or read or consume any television or news whatsoever.

Yeah, I only do it. I'll do it in the evening, but it's not for long because it's too depressing. Especially where in the UK there's only one news that dominates at the moment and that's gonna have a huge impact on business. So. And that's out of my control at the moment.

So I've not been watching news now for exactly three years and not watching news and not reading news has had no impact on my life whatsoever other than positive. Because I still continue to grow my business and live my life without knowing what's being created by the news media to keep me fearful of going out my front door.

Yeah. No, I mean, I worked in newsrooms for a long time and of course, bad news sells. I think, referring back to business, it's about positivity. And I do believe that you need to be in a positive state of mind if you really don't grow a business. You can't be negative. You've got to be positive because people pick up from that, especially clients. So if you're miserable and in the uk, we're very good at moaning, you know, which is why people, I guess, buy from me because I have a sort of a, you know, half Australian, in a way, so I sort of have a bit more positive smile on my face.

Yeah.

And I just won't let things get me down because life's too short. And you know what? You know, I have to tell. I have told a client this because they were really annoying me. I said, it's only a fucking video. No one dies at the end of the day, you know, because they were getting really stressed about it. I'm like. And it's not brain surgery. Yeah. What we do, we're creatives. It's like, you know. Yeah. I like to get it, obviously, we like to get things right. And our clients, you know, love what we do, but it's not worth getting stressed about. Life's too short. And actually. And sometimes you just Gotta go. I'm not gonna work this client again because. So I don't know why they're stressed about this. It's just not worth it. I want to attract clients who, you know. Yes, we've got to work hard, we've got deadlines to hit, all that sort of stuff. Absolutely. But you know, it's finding clients who, who sort of get what we do. And this just comes back to, this is where we need to be better at educating our clients about why we do it and the process of what we're doing as well and explaining the process to our clients. Because why would they know they're not creative people, why would they understand why we do things or how we charge things or how we deliver things?

So what would be the one book. I think I know the answer to this. You would recommend someone watching and listening to this show should go and consume a media?

Well, yeah, I've mentioned it, of course.

How to Get Video Right by Simon Banks.

Yeah, well that's, that's fine. Yeah, that's fine. Yeah. No, you know, I recommend when I, when I, you know, I help a lot of freelancers particularly who say, oh, you know, you've bought companies before, how come become like you? And I go, you read the email revisited first because that was my light bulb moment and I said you need, if you can get your head around not being the technician and more on to work on the business and the business owner. Because I think as freelancers particularly very poor at distinguishing themselves between freelance and a business owner because they have that, what I call the employee mindset. So it's a bit of woo woo stuff as well. You need to think about, it's about positive things thinking, it's about changing the way, the way you do business and how you communicate with people.

And moving towards. I'm a business owner, I want to grow this business. But you need to think about what growth means as well because that will be different to many different people.

So clarity around the outcomes you're seeking.

Which is the visioning, you're talking about the vision. What do you want, you know, what kind of business think about, what kind of business do you want? And it's not necessarily I want to make, I want to run a million dollar, million pound business per se.

Because that's just, that's mean, it doesn't actually mean anything.

Doesn't mean anything. I'm talking about, you know, what kind of business do you want to create? As in where do you want to work, who do you want to serve, what Kind of people you want to work with, what kind of team do you want to build? What are your income goals? And it's not just about turnover, it's about profit. How much do you want to pay yourself? You know, and if you say I want to, I want to earn quarter of a million pounds or dollars, you know, so what kind of lifestyle will that help you with? Know, do you want financial freedom? Because I find the bigger the business you grow, the more stressful it is, to be honest with you. So I'm more into more holistic smaller.

Businesses and there is a point at which running a certain size business of us regarded as a smaller business can yield a far higher profit for less work they do.

Yeah.

I find once you start to scale, you need more people and your costs and your headaches increase.

I earn more, I earn less money now than I did probably, probably 10 years ago as a one man band. And that's very common that when you move from freelance, as soon as you start having office and staff overheads, you tend to, you have to run your business as a business, therefore you can't just sort of keep taking money out of what you want.

The difference is if you weren't in the office for three weeks, the business is still running. And that's the nirvana, isn't it?

And that's the biggest thing for me is that I can, I'm away two and a half weeks from my office. Yeah. I'll check in with some emails just, just to see what's going on. But the business will run it, it's still running, we're still selling, we're still delivering videos and that's been in the vinyl for me for a number of years now when, when I have a team that do that. In fact, I find the business runs better when I'm not there.

Epic.

Yeah.

What do you think the world is missing in from a creative perspective. And this can be related to business, it can be related to, to, you know, not to business. But what does the world need more of?

I was going to say it needs less salespeople but in terms of. It's about for me, it's about for creatives and ideally we're in it to build a business because if you don't build a business, you don't get paid and if you don't get paid, it means that you can't, you can't, you can't live where you want to live or you can't support your family. So I think people, the reason we're in business because we are in this sort of economic.

Community world that we're in business needs to make money. Because if you don't make money, you're not going to last in business very long. So what I think people need to, if you're creative and yes, it's great being a creative, you need to think about, well, how can I make this work for me From a financial point of view, you, so you do need to get your business head on a bit or you need to find someone who can help you do that part of the business. Because you don't know. Because as creative I didn't know, I learned the hard way, I just learned self taught how to run my business from that. So what we need, what you need to do is basically work on your mindset, to work more on your vision and to work really on how you're going to serve clients. You know, and it's not just about how am I going to sell them this website or you know, what purpose do I, do I have and what's your purpose in your life. And as creatives we do have purpose and quite often, you know, it's a great purpose. So why don't we work on how can we not just how do I get that next gig, how can I go and get a client want to make a video for me it's about how can I actually be more service, add value to our clients. And I think from a creative point of view, it's getting your business hat on. And you do have to think sales and marketing and to do sales and marketing.

I don't know about you, but most people, I don't like cold calling. I don't like ringing clients up and going, hi, do you want a video? It doesn't work these days anyway. So it's about how do we educate the clients, clients. And so my purpose is how do I educate clients into using video in a way which will build their business or serve their purpose. And I feel if I can do that, business will come to me.

Awesome. So if you had one piece of advice that you could draw on from your career and share with the audience, what would it be?

I think you know what it being a creative.

In this day and age is exciting as well as scary. And I think the biggest piece of advice is.

Get over yourself, get over your fear. And you need to work out how you can stand out from the crowd because it is a crowded marketplace and a lot of the creative services are becoming commoditized and unless you have a great business idea and how you can do something for volume, for cheap or an app or whatever, then great. But for those of us who just love being creative and helping serve clients, you need to work out, how do I differentiate myself in the marketplace? And that means how are we different from every other person who's got a camera or a video camera or stills camera? And that's quite often the hardest part for a lot of businesses and creatives to work out. Why am I different? What value am I adding which will make me different from everybody else? And that's the piece of work I think you need to work on, is how I'm going to do that. And once you've discovered that, basically you need to tell the world about it and you need to get in front of camera, you need to write those blogs, those articles, those podcasts, do those videos, do the webinars. I just think. And that's the hardest part. It's quite a lot of work to do, which is sort of what I call, you think it's unpaid, but it's not, you know. And I just think that helps you position you in your marketplace as being different or as the expert or however you want to position yourself.

Amazing. So, Simon, how can people find out more about you?

Well, I've got the book. There's a website called how to get video right or getvideoright.com Next year I'm definitely going to put more content on there. My production company is tallboy t a double l b o y.co.uk and there's a lot of content on that about videos and the work that we do as well. Awesome.

Thank you so much. It's fascinating to hear your journey and your insights and I'm sure the audience will benefit a huge amount from your perspective. Thanks so much for dropping in.

Well, thanks for having me.

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.