Everything you do is a choice. EP #152 - Den Lennie

G', day, guys. Dan here with this week's episode of the how to Scale a Video Business Podcast and a couple of really cool things to share with you that involve you. And one is last week we breached 150 episodes of the show, which in itself was quite a momentous occasion. We also just broke 30,000 downloads in one year here. So thank you for listening, because if you weren't listening, we wouldn't have those downloads. So I'm so grateful that you listened to the show and you find some value in it. So thank you.

It kind of, you know, it's quite. It's quite amazing how that creeps up on you and how we first started this podcast. You know, I can't even remember what we did in the very first year, but the second year of the podcast is our second. The first full year of the podcast. I think we did a total of five and a half thousand downloads in one year. And I've heard the story many times from YouTubers who, you know, end up with millions of subscribers, is that for the first three or four years, they just would, like, had nothing. Except the hardest thing to do was to get to 100 subscribers. Sorry, 100,000 subscribers, and then 10,000 subscribers and then 100,000 subscribers. And once you get past that on YouTube, it seems to kind of bloom. I don't know how it works in podcasts, but I mean, certainly to go from five and a half thousand downloads in 2019 to, you know, a full 12 months starting beginning of 2020, to till now, over 30,000 downloads is phenomenal. So thank you for listening. You know, this kind of project is an ongoing project, you know, which leads on to really my theme for today's call, which is choice. It was something that I brought up to my members of the Video Business Accelerator last week and was talking about, you know, everything you do in life is a choice. You know, you choose to get up early and start your day and build your business, or you choose to hit the snooze button and stay in bed a little longer. Both. Both our decisions, both are choices. And, you know, when you commit to actually doing what's required to get what you want from your life, that involves a lot of decisions, a lot of discipline, and a lot of choice. Because at any time of day or night, you know, there's a micro decision to be made about taking action or not taking action, allowing an external force to influence your decision or pushing through, regardless. And, you know, I'm a great fan of the book you Can't Hurt Me by David Goggins. And if you want a book on motivation, on never giving up, it is probably the most motivational book you will ever read.

But the thing with choice is that if you are prepared and genuinely willing to accept that everything that has happened in your life, good and bad, is 100% down to a choice that you made, then you are on the cusp of finding a new level of freedom. And that commitment and that decision, that choice that you make to take the action, to take the hard road, will serve you beyond all means. You know, when I started this podcast, we started a podcast in 2012 and I can't even remember how many downloads we had. It wasn't, it was popular. People liked it. I think we did 12 or 15 episodes, but it was really hard. Like we had three different presenters, myself, Mick Jones and Bruce Logan, and coordinating our time to do stuff was very difficult. So it kind of burned out. And, you know, those episodes are still amazing. In fact, I might resurrect them and replay them because there's some pretty good stuff on there. And it was just one of those things our calendars couldn't quite coordinate. We couldn't quite get it together. So it went away. And then a few years later, someone said, oh, I wish you'd start your podcast again. So I did. I started, you know, way back in, I think, 2018, maybe 2019. 2019. We started with, you know, the first, it was called the Creative Business Accelerator Podcast or How to Scale a Creative Business. Can't remember now, but we kind of, we started, you know, and that was the choice was to start. And by starting we were able to begin a process. Now we put out maybe 60, 70 episodes last year, the first year, and got five and a half thousand downloads. So, you know, that was a lot of work. We were doing video at that time. We were doing video interviews. I was paying a company a couple thousand dollars a month to, to edit them all, present them or get them ready for publishing, publication. But what I discovered quite quickly was that you, the listener, the filmmaker, isn't necessarily going to sit and watch an interview with me on screen with someone else. And I think that, you know, what makes this podcast so popular is that we keep the episode short and sweet. We don't fluff around, you know, so if you're driving to a project or you're doing something in the background, you can listen to a 10 minute episode on a Tuesday or a 20, 25 minute episode on a Thursday and it's done. And the idea is that we give lots of ideas, lots of tips, lots of hints, lots of perspectives to help you just apply them in your own business. And so, you know, making that change from doing these half hour video interviews once a week. And we first started the podcast, it was once a fortnight. So we just, we just took action to get started. And I said, well, I'll commit to one a fortnight. And then we went to one a week, but we still only did five and a half thousand downloads in that first year. And I would just spend somewhere in the region of, I don't know, $20,000 on post production to get it already. And, you know, it was easy to sort of give up and go, I spent all this money and I got five and a half thousand downloads. What's that all about? But like anything in life, anything that's worthwhile takes time.

You know, nothing, nothing of any value happens quickly. And so we committed to, I committed to canceling the video. And we still do occasional video podcasts and occasionally we'll put some promo out. But fundamentally, I had this gut feel that my audience wanted to listen, consume information, take something away, implement, and move on. And so I decided to double up and go two episodes a week at the beginning of last year, a short episode on a Tuesday, longer episode on a Thursday. And that became my commitment. So we doubled our output and as a result, didn't just double our listenership, you know, what's that, 5,000 downloads six times. We increased our listenership by 600% in one year because we made a choice to change something and we actually simplified the production process, but we doubled our output. And so that had a massive impact on the show. And we've never taken a sponsor.

And interestingly, we get quite a lot of people getting in touch with us now saying, hey, would you have as a guest on your show? And I kind of say no to most of them because I would rather not fill your ears with crap with some random expert who's just there to pursue their own agenda. I'd rather do a solo episode and share something with you where I think is going to be of benefit to you in your business. Something that I've tried and tested in my business or one of my clients is testing with great success in their business. And ultimately, yes, I mean, this podcast is a marketing tool to attract those people who are ready to take their business up a gear to have a chat about the video business accelerator. And what I find is my best clients, when I have a chat with them before they come into the accelerator, have generally listened to the podcast for some time and therefore have got a good idea of who I am. The kind of things we talk about, we talk a lot about what happens in the accelerator. So it's a great funnel, lead magnet, if you will, into our business. You know, we make our revenue and profit from selling online education and ongoing coaching. So that is our product. But we do an awful lot upfront to. To help kind of attract people to our sphere. And this podcast is one of them. We have an email campaign marketing campaign. We are on Facebook and we spend money on Facebook every single day we have done for a year. That brings a certain number of leads in. And what we find is those that have listened to the podcast tend to make the best clients. So, you know, this all ties into the choice we made to simplify our marketing and have one funnel. You know, it's a video funnel where you come in and you watch a video which explains some of the things we can help you with. And then if it resonates, you can either take that information away and run it yourself or you can have a chat with us to see if there's a good fit. And then we can perhaps, you know, do some work together and make it happen faster. And for many of our clients that we've been working with for some time now, they literally doubled their business in 12 months last year. So we have a proven process that works for the right businesses. But, you know, we put enormous amount of effort into producing this podcast. You know, I have someone full time who looks after it every week, who takes the edit and puts it together, and someone's a great copywriter, writes show notes, and that all gets put together. We are in the process of building a brand new website just now that's all been rewritten, redesigned, and that'll be coming online in probably end of February. Probably. I'm sort of holding that up just now because I'm going to do a few more little design changes. But end of February, beginning of March, we'll have a new website and a brand new look to everything. But all of these things are choices. And I want to come back to that idea of choice because, you know, I now live in Queensland in Australia. We live in a beautiful town called Noosa. And that was a choice. Moving to Australia was a choice I made 25 years ago, really. That's when I got the idea. But it was 10 years ago when I really got serious about it. And then it took us that long to, you know, get paperwork together, convince my wife that you know, she should leave her family behind in the UK and come and live in Australia. So we came out in 2012 and we made the decision to kind of check it out. We ran some workshops and we kind of met some people and took Sam around the place and got a feel for it, and we moved here in 2015. And everything to do with that was a choice. It was, it was, it was not easy to pull that off. It was very expensive. There were enormous amounts of hoops and paperwork to jump through. But it was a choice. And in the same way that, you know, you might think, well, that's all very well for you, damn good for you, well done. It's like, I want to use it to illustrate a point, and that is you can have whatever you want if you make the decision and you're willing to do what's required to achieve that outcome. Because it's one thing to say, I'd like a new car, I'd like to make X a month. I'd like to be able to have more free time. I'd like to be able to take my family on holiday. I'd like to pay off the house. It's one thing to say it, it's another thing entirely to make the decision, to make that reality, because that requires a commitment, that requires sitting down and realiz that you may not have all of the answers and that you might be doing a certain amount of work to get to where you are now, but you're on the tools, you're doing everything. And you might be having a very, very profitable and high, you know, high value business, but you're working in it 60 hours a week. And that is not a business. That is a job.

That, you know, if you stop working, then you don't have a business. And I was on a call with Pat, one of my clients this morning, who's been on the podcast here, and we were just reviewing his year and what his plans were for this year ahead. And we were talking about, you know, how to increase the business by maybe 20, 25% this year and build that, that long, slow ramp to success. Now, he had a great year last year and a great year the year before. What we're doing is we're tempering the growth by saying, let's just kind of grow 20, 25% and see how that feels. Make sure you've got capacity to do the other things. And you know, what I've observed, this comes from a book called Great by Choice by Jim Collins, is that all the most successful businesses over a 20 or 30 year period. They grow incrementally, they follow the 20 mile march principle. And the 20 mile march is based on.

A story of, at the turn of the century, last century, that Scott and Amundsen were two different Arctic explorers who were going to go to the South Pole. And Scott was, the Englishman was trying lots of new technology, you know, diesel powered sleds, lots of technology.

Sort of, you know, ran things quite lean, had this kind of certain confidence that they'd get there by a certain time and, and ran everything quite tight. So they didn't have a lot of extra supplies in place, they didn't really have a lot of contingency. Whereas Amundsen, he went and spent three months living with the Eskimos and they had dog sleds and older technology and they prepared by living in the conditions. And then when, when, when they were actually marching, he had this policy where the goal was to march 20 miles every day. And even on a good day, if they got to 20 miles and the weather was good and there was still three hours of light, they'd stop, set up camp, rest and get ready for the next day. So their policy was slow and steady wins the race. They also had multiple spare supply stations dotted around the place. So if they veered off course or they got stuck, there was always going to be plenty of fuel, plenty of food within, you know, a short distance. Scott, on the other hand, ran everything very lean, had a certain arrogance that they kind of knew what they were doing. And on good days they would push further and go 25 or 30 miles. But on the bad days, when the weather was bad, Amundsen would still push forward and try and get, you know, even five miles in or six miles in and then set up camp. And then on the days when they just couldn't march well, they were resting. And when the weather was good again, they pushed forward, whereas Scott would push forward and then exhaust his team. And the sleds broke, the petrol sleds broke. And then on the bad days they were kind of snowed in and the morale got low. Anyway, to cut a long story short, because the whole story is in the book Great by choice, it's a fascinating, fascinating story. The, you know, Scott got to the Pole but didn't make it back because they ran out of supplies and they didn't have any contingency, whereas Amundsen made it to the Pole and back again. And so they both made a decision in how they would attack things. And what I love is that Amundsen didn't go and use the latest tech. He didn't go and use the newest thing. He stuck with what was tried and tested. He stuck with what works. And that is what works. In our video business accelerator, we have a tried and tested, proven process for business growth that is.

100 years old. You know, I'm reading a book just now from 1923 called scientific advertising, and this book is phenomenal. And you're reading it going, that could be today. You know, the language is different, the technology is different, but human behavior, human psychology has not changed. Whether you're dealing with someone who's reading a newspaper advert in 1923 or someone seeing an advert on their phone in 2021, it doesn't matter. Nearly 100 years difference. Psychology is the same. Human psychology is the same. So, you know, you don'. Need the latest piece of tech to make a great film. You know that. But you do need some, some principles in your business to. To make it successful. And those principles start with decision making. And those decisions need to be based on, you know, forward planning, strategic planning, being very clear on who you serve, being very clear on who that market is understanding intimately what their needs are. Too many video businesses chase every bit of business that comes their way. It's literally like a client goes, hey, can you do this? And they're like, yep. Can you do that? Yep. Can you do that? Yep. Can you do this? Yep. Rather than saying, you know what? We are specialists in this type of video, and while we could do this other type of video, it's not our area of expertise, so we probably would say no to that. But we could recommend a partner who could, who could absolutely serve you there. Because what we want to do is focus on this and that that approach is what yields certainty and a sense of.

You know, there's a phrase that I'm trying to think what it is. It's escaped my mind, but it's. It's that sense that, you know, you are an expert in your field, preeminence. It's called this, the strategy of preeminence.

And this is a method of being known as the number one author in your space and focusing your attention on your expertise. So you can literally demonstrate that you are the number one authority in your space for all sorts of reasons. And that way people look to you and say, well, if you're the number one authority in the space, then I wouldn't expect you to be cheap, but I would expect you to be reliable. And so that that strategy of preeminence means that you go into the marketplace and you say, I am the number one service provider for healthcare in the Boston area, which is what Pat essentially does. And he dominates that market because he does a lot of healthcare, a lot of public health, and has watertight relationships because he's an expert in that field. And that is the kind of thing that I encourage you, listening to this, to think about, where is your expertise, where are you strong in your field, and where can you apply a strategy of preeminence in your business? And. And are you willing to choose to be that person? Because there is a level of discomfort in stepping out of, you know, the. The ring to say, this is my area of expertise. But I can guarantee you, if you do this, if you, if you take this on, if you, if you apply, will change your life. Absolutely change your life. You know, I was talking to one of my other clients this morning, just in the group, and he's like, we're just putting together on a $100,000 quote for a video. And it's like he said, it's blowing my mind. Blowing my mind. This is someone who's making 10 grand a month, a year ago. You know, they're going to make their entire former annual revenue, potentially in one project in January, in the middle of a worldwide pandemic. There are opportunities out there, folks, and you just have to be willing to make the choice to not let anything get in the way, not allow anything that's happening in the world to derail your mission, to derail your purpose, because that is the choice I want you to make. I want you to choose that 2021 is your best year ever. And we are almost out of time in January. So if you've not yet figured out what your plan is for 2021, I want you to spend today doing that. It's absolute matter of urgency, a matter of priority. You have to know what your plan is. How much money do you want to make this year? How are you willing? How are you going to do that? What turnover and profit do you want? Who do you want to work with? Set a strategic plan in place, and if you would like some help with that, then I'm here to have a chat to understand if that's something we can help you with. And if we have a chat, the worst that can happen is you go away with some ideas. Anyway, folks, I will talk to you in the next episode. Have an awesome day. 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 that's hit the ceiling and we benefit from mentorship, support and coaching, then check out how you can work with me over@denlenny.com don't forget to subscribe and rate the 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 you might be in. So thanks for listening. See you in the next episode.