Business is Hard in Good Times So it's ok to Feel Challenged - Shorty EP#84

G', day, guys. Tuesday, the 28th of April.

Week 18 of 2020. This week's Shorty.

I'm just gone off the call with the guys in the accelerator and first of all, I'm feeling a lot better this week. Thank you for reaching out if you sent me any messages. I got a few messages, which was really nice. And.

Yeah, just took some time out to rest, had some blood tests, everything's fine. Blood pressure's back down to normal. Well, normalish for entrepreneurial business owner who's always working. But, yeah, feeling a lot better, really. The, the serious note here is I just took some time out.

A lot of the guys this morning. We were sharing, we have the themed called every week. And the fourth week of the month is always, you know, what's working now. And we just had a bit of a deep dive into, you know, like, the pressure that this whole situation has put on us as business owners and how we got to make sure we look after each other and ourselves and that if you're feeling, you know, overwhelmed, which is something that I think is quite natural during something like this pandemic, then that's okay. And there might be days when you're just going to lose your shit and feel really pissed, and that's okay. But what I'm here to say is you will get over it and it's probably an indication that you may need to just go easier. And one of the things we've been discussing in the group is just taking a little less, putting a little less pressure on yourself and during this time.

Because, you know, there's a lot going on. Fortunately, and actually on Thursday show, we're going to have Jamie MacKenzie from Pure Productions in New Zealand. New Zealand is just kind of unlocked from stage four to stage three. Australia here is looking like it's going to be easing some restrictions. So, you know, I think. I think we're through the worst of it. That's not to say that things are going to return to normal quickly, but certainly I think we're seeing some light at the end of the tunnel, which is. I know I've said that a lot recently.

But, yeah, make sure you're looking after yourself. You know, I had a cold for a good four or five weeks and it just wouldn't shift. And I think it was just stress and it was reflected in my blood pressure and that kind of gave me a bit of a jolt. But as I said, some blood tests and everything's fine. And I'm now just making sure I get some more balance into my life. So really that, that's the key is to just make sure you're looking after yourself. Because I know this is really tough for a lot of people, but there's also a lot of opportunities. And that's, that's really the theme of today's, you know, shorty was to just make sure you understand that things, if you're sitting waiting for things to get back to normal, that's a really dangerous perspective to have. They're not going to get back to normal as we knew it. You have to be looking very differently at your business. You know, you might have been doing $10,000 jobs pre Covid, you might be looking at $850 jobs now. And that is no exaggeration. A couple of our guys are just pivoting very rapidly towards just helping local businesses with Facebook ads, creating $750 little videos with some stock footage. And what this is doing is it's going out to the community and helping those people who need to communicate a message. So if you are a video producer who truly loves to help people, then this is, this is a relatively short term fix and a relatively short term endeavor. But if you go out and actually really come from a place of service and wanting to help people, you know, you might only make 500 bucks on a video, but you can probably do them quite quickly and think of it as a marketing investment. Think of doing a lower price project for someone as a marketing investment because when this recovers, they will remember the people that helped them out. And another thing that's definitely going on just now is a lot of businesses are going under and a lot of video businesses are going under. And we talk about this in some more detail on Thursday. This Thursday's coming as episode with Jamie because, you know, any kind of financial crisis really kind of calls some of the cowboys, if you like.

It's very easy to make money as a videographer by going out and buying a dslr, a couple of lenses, doing a quick course and then going out for, you know, not much money. Anyone can be busy doing that. And in a buoyant economy, in an economy where there's lots of work, there's always going to be opportunities to make a bit of money.

The issue with that and the challenge with people who go out and undercharge is that they're just destroying their own business. Because when you live at home with mum and dad and you buy a DSLR and a laptop and you build a website and you go out and make a thousand bucks a day, that's great money if you're in your 20s, but you're not factoring in growth. You're not factoring in what happens if you kind of need to buy new technology. What happens if you need to buy, you know, invest in coaching or business development.

And you can't scale. And so what happens is it erodes the market because the market gets used to paying a certain price, going, well, why should we pay you 5 or $10,000 for video when Billy Bob over here can do it for a thousand bucks, fifteen hundred. And I've seen it happen time and time again. In fact, there's people I know in the photography world who have undercut. You know, I was having a conversation with someone last week and they were up at the kind of four or $5,000 mark for a complete package of branding photography, which is very fair and they work in the speaker space. But there was someone who I know who was coming in and just undercutting massively. But the trouble with the person that was undercutting is that they're now struggling to pay the rent because you can only the strategy of undercutting is a race to the bottom. And when you undercut your profits, you're not making any money. You have no oxygen in your business to fuel it. So, you know, and I, you know, it's unfortunate that people are going to lose their businesses, but it's, but it's not altogether unpredictable. If you go in too cheap, if you don't invest in marketing, if you don't invest in training yourself and educating yourself, then you don't really deserve to succeed in business because business is hard. I was on a strategy call yesterday with the mentors in Ben Simkins Mastermind. Ben was on the podcast a few weeks ago and we were just doing, doing some, some, some, some brainstorming around some ideas. And, you know, one of the things that we talked about was the fact that the business is so hard. It's so hard, and no one tells you it's going to be hard. Your bias naturally feels like, hey, you know, I mean, my first year of business, I was like, hey, we'll be a millionaire in three years. You know, we'll just sell this much stuff. And I don't think like that at all now. I, my values are very, very different, but I'm also much more measured. I've been running a business since 2009, 11 years and kind of in a good place now, but it's taken 11 years. And, and literally it's taken 11 years. I mean, okay, we're halfway through that. We moved countries and that really did sort of slide us back a little bit, quite significantly, actually. But every time I've done something like that, every time I've had adversity in my life, I've learned something very valuable. And, you know, without pain and discomfort, there can be no growth. And we grow because we experience challenges. If you break a bone, it's very painful, it's very uncomfortable, and the physio is really uncomfortable afterwards. But. But when it grows back stronger, there's a callus over the joint which makes that, that join stronger. And so, you know, you've got to get used to the discomfort and actually get, get used to being under pressure because that is what running a business is all about. And yes, there are some big benefits, yes, there are some advantages, lots of them, in fact. I mean, I run a business because I don't want to be employed. It's as simple as that. I don't want to have to ask another human being if I can take time off in two months time. That's literally my driving force. I also love setting my own agenda. In fact, one of the things I did last week was when I was feeling just a bit beaten up, just a bit under the pump, is I decided to just completely rework my workstation and get rid of all the cables that were dangling everywhere. And I actually bought an EGPU and a really fast graphics card and plugged it into my 2018 MacBook Pro. And it's definitely got an improvement. I know there's some. There's some discussion around GPUs and the fact that you're using a cable so you lose some of that speed. But my ultimate goal is I want to get a Mac Mini and stick that on the table and have all the cables tidied away and just have my workstation as I've got the monitor up on an arm. I've got my Rodecaster now sliding on the monitor. I've got a camera set up with a little Porter Prompt thing, and it's all lit really nicely and it's just given me this kind of clarity. And so it's funny how the rewards I get from being in business are now things like, well, I can just go out and buy an EGPU and a housing and decide to rework my workstation, buy a Mac Mini. I guess that's one of the perks, is that I'm able to do that. But more than that, it's just like, I love what I do. And if you don't love what you do. It's going to be very hard to run a business doing that. Anyway, I'm digressing slightly. I guess I'm just being a bit philosophical because I'm feeling really good this week. I'm feeling like I've come through this coldy infection thing that I had and just really appreciative of. Of my health, I guess. And I'm going to take it a bit easier and then I'm going to have a bit of time off this week. Take a few hours off with Sam and get out and enjoy some fresh air. So, guys, really, I just wanted to kind of round this up by saying, you know, if you're feeling a bit down, that's okay, like it won't last forever. Give yourself a break. If you feel like going out and, you know, letting off some steam, let off some steam. We are getting through this. It is changing. We are seeing progress around the world. And I think we should just enjoy this opportunity to reflect on how we're doing things and reflect on what's important and just really, you know, enjoy the ride. Because we're not here for a long time. And I think it's important that we, you know, take time, take stock, and appreciate what we have.

You've been listening to the how to Scale a Video Business podcast with me, your host, Dan Lenny. If you're a video business owner who's hit a ceiling and we benefit from mentorship, support and coaching, then check out how you can work with me over@denleny.com don't forget to subscribe and rate the show over on itunes. And we'd really appreciate you taking a few minutes to leave a review. And don't forget to share if you feel you've gotten value from this episode and you think it would be useful for other filmmakers, you know, then please do me a massive favor and share it on social media and in groups that. That you might be in. See you next week.