Focus on your business or yourself - which comes first? EP #150 - Den Lennie

Howdy, guys. Dan Lanney, host of the how to Scale a Video Business podcast. With this episode number 150.

Actually quite hard to believe we got 250 episodes. But that's part of what I want to talk to you about today is just getting started in anything you're looking to try and achieve is absolutely critical alongside a strategic plan. You know, if you don't have a plan for what you're going to do, we talked about that last week in the shorty. Then, you know, you don't know where you're going. But if you don't set a deadline and actually start, you'll never get there. And it's incredible how quickly things can start to escalate and suddenly.

Like we're at 150 episodes and, you know, it's, it's, it's a lot of work. Don't get me wrong. I mean, we pump out two episodes a week, but we've just about broken, I think, just shy of 30,000 listeners. In fact, we will buy a tender because I will be exceeded 30,000 listens on this platform alone. We've been with Buzzsprout since about January of 2020. Prior to that we were with Omni, and then prior to that we were with SoundCloud. So we're probably hitting up closer to 40,000 downloads. And the funny thing is, when you start a project like this, like, you just have no idea how it's going to go. And, you know, I've, I've studied YouTube creators and the likes, and they'll just say sometimes it takes three or four years before they start making any money from like, ad revenue. And we don't, we don't, you know, make any money from ad revenue on this. We use it as a, as a lead generator to build trust and, and help share knowledge to feed into our video business accelerator programs. So that's where we kind of take the commercial side of the podcast. But, you know, we've put 150 episodes and, you know, it's also, it's a great platform because, you know, the audience is growing and building an audience for anything is, it takes time. And in the same way that when you are, you know, starting out on a video business, you have a small number of clients and as you grow in scale over years, you end up with a bigger group of clients until you reach a critical mass where once you see it, I think once you get to between 30 and 50 clients, you're kind of always going to be busy. You're always going to have Work because, you know, the. There'll be a residual kind of. People will always need something. I'd say the sweet spot is probably somewhere between 30 and 40 clients. And it can seem like a very, very distant goal if you've only got three or four clients at the minute. But in actual fact, just getting another two or three clients might be enough to get you through the next month and then the month after that, and then a month after that. And so, you know, always, if you, if you look at the bigger picture, if I started a podcast and went, I want to get to 40,000 downloads in two years, I'd be like, oh, my God, I have no idea how to do that. But you just got to put one step in front of the other. And I think it's the same in anything in business. It's have a plan, have a focus. And, you know, this podcast has evolved over the years. I mean, doing a lot more solo episodes recently partly for the fact that, you know, I just, I could fill the podcast with guests, but I don't want to just get guests on for the sake of like, you know, talking shit. To be honest, I might be quite frank with you. I want this to be a valuable insight to running a video production business. You know, I've had a number of people contact me as the show gets more popular. You get more and more cold people reaching out to you, saying, hey, I'd love to be in your podcast. I can share topics and this and the next thing and. And I'm kind of quite. I'm quite careful, really. You know, I don't. There has to be a genuine connection to video production or something that really will benefit a video production business. And I would rather not just kind of fill the podcast with guests from all walks of life for the sake of it, because I think there's a lot of those kind of shows around. I would rather. This show just gives you what you need, which is ins into how to build a video business. But I'd love to know your thoughts. I mean, would you like to see more guests on the show? Are the people that you'd like to hear on the show? If so, let me know. I mean, I'd be more than happy to. To try and connect with them. One of the benefits of having a show that's now got in excess of 40,000 downloads combined. It's got a voice now, it's got an audience, and it makes it easier to reach out to people. But, you know, who would you like to hear on the show kind of Topics would you like to hear about now? Last week we talked about the top 10 episodes of 2020 and it's an interesting mix actually of.

You know, ranging from shooting the, shooting the, the A7s stuff. So gear stuff always gets a kind of bit of a peak. But more than that, it's just, you know, online branding, you know, the theory of constraints, avoiding the freelancer trap and quite, quite a variety of marketing content there and, and sort of mental health and advertising. So, you know, I've got some insights as to what episodes are popular. But today I wanted to just, you know, reflect on the importance of playing to your strengths. You know, there are certain characteristics and character traits, if you will, that you will have. And I've been much more conscious of this recently. You know, I'm, I'm someone who likes to come up with an idea, come up with a strategy and have a very high level view of something and give direction. I think it's one of my strengths. I mean, I'm able to kind of, you know, get clarity for someone. But I, but I'm not, I'm not an implementer in the sense that I'm not someone who likes to kind of roll it out through a team. I'm very much a creator in that regard. And I was helping my wife actually today with, with one of our marketing campaigns and I've got a giant whiteboard in our hallway. It's like, it's got to be like 2 meters.

3, 2 or 3 meters wide by like a meter and a half tall. And I'm really good with like four colored pens just mapping. But I don't want to do the bits and pieces that kind of join it all together. And so we've been outsourcing some of her copywriting to a group called the Copywriting Crew who we've been using for her site. And actually some of my members have been using it and they've been getting really great results.

So it's like understanding to play to your strengths and don't try and do everything. I think that's something that is a kind of a hangover from being a freelancer or a freelancer who's starting a small video production business. I think even more established businesses still fall into this trap of finding themselves getting caught back up on the tools. And the trouble with that is that when you're doing work on the tools, you're stepping back from strategy and you're stepping back from monitoring your business. You know, you've got to be very careful if you win a Big job not to throw the baby out with the bathwater and just go hell for leather on that one job, because you'll end up dropping the ball. You have to be very mindful of the strategy and the execution. And that takes discipline. And I think that's the thing that, that we as creatives struggle the most with. And I often make this, this reference point of, as a creative, we want to be coming up with new ideas, you know, shiny ways of, of reworking a concept or coming up with a new way to film something. So it's very much in our DNA as creators. But business doesn't like that. Business likes consistency. Business likes the monotony of certainty. And so if you are someone who applies the same creative traits to business, your business will be a bit of a mess. And maybe this is something that resonates with you. Maybe you are someone who struggles with the consistency required in business. And that is one of the big selling points of what my members tell me inside the VBA is that they get consistency because they've got a framework to follow. So all I've got to do is follow the, follow, follow the numbers, you know, follow the, follow the steps. But then from there, it's the consistency of showing up every week and getting clear on what you're going to do. So by having an annual plan that we check in on once a month and once a quarter and actually having someone to ask the questions to, like, hey, should I be doing this or should I be doing that? Because one of the things certain about business is there's always a million things you could be doing, but how do you know it's the right thing to be doing? You know, if you've got an option to look at your marketing and go, wow, you know, I want to, I want to just redo all my branding, because that's typically what creatives do. They kind of go, I'll redo my website, I redo my branding, I'll redo my show. Real thinking that that's going to have the highest leverage and it rarely does. Now, that's not to say you shouldn't have consistency across your platforms. And we at the minute, going through a massive rebrand and in the middle of building a brand new website and it's been new copy that's been written and that will be coming online probably sometime in February. We're on the kind of last round of change. I think we're on version 10 of the design and that's just like tweaking little things and little pages.

But that's gonna be coming on online. It's gonna be about a five or six week build. But you know, we've built a substantial business without having a decent website. You know, it's not, it's not, it's not. The key driver to our success. The key driver to our success is actually really caring about our, and helping them get results. And that is why they stay for so long. Because, you know, we don't tie anybody in. They stay in the VBA because they're getting results. It's a simple transactional relationship on that level. But there's also a lot of care inside the membership and there's a lot of, a lot of community. We've seen a, quite, quite a lot of people coming on board with us recently and which is really exciting for us. We're seeing a lot of growth and a lot of, a lot of, a lot of filmmakers who are actually realizing that they just can't keep going on the way they are because it's, it's like it's not working. You know, word of mouth is not a strategy that you can rely on. You know, referrals is not a strategy you can rely on. Yes, it's nice to have and it's nice that when your business gets to a certain size, people will refer you, but you, you absolutely cannot rely on referrals and word of mouth to grow and scale your business because it's not predictable. And, and, and if you do think that's the case, then that's fine. There's nothing I can do to help you because you, you don't think you've got a problem. But if you want to scale a business and remove the feast and famine and actually have predictability, then you need systems. You need, you need systems, you need consistency, you need discipline, and you need to be willing to commit to building new habits around.

New behaviors that will serve your business beyond what it's doing at the minute. It's going to involve you coming off the tools. It's going to mean not going on all the shoots. It's going to mean certainly not touching an edit. And that's something that can take a while for people to wrap their head around because they feel like if they're not involved in the edit, then you know, the client's going to suddenly not want to work with them anymore. But actually the clients don't really care. The client doesn't know that you're not sitting in on the edit. And if you've got everything systemized correctly, then you will find yourself.

With more time to spend with your family, more time to spend on creative projects, more time to spend maybe just on your health. Like I've personally made a huge commitment. So part of our planning process, we've got, we've got a matrix that I just introduced last week actually to the members that we've been talking about for a while. But it's a series of spreadsheets which track everything to do with your business and yourself. Because if you're not finely tuned and optimized, then your business can be. So we work on you first and your business second. And I was, I was using a form of this matrix last year and you know, one of the things we look at is health, fitness diet, you know, mental health, you know, meditation. And I started to, basically I started to.

Really get into yoga last year and I've been going three times a week for about four months now. And it's been life changing apps. I do a younger yoga three times a week, two men's classes, one mixed class. And it's phenomenal. Like strength training and flexibility and the ability to like, I, I, they had me doing a headstand within 20 sessions which blew my mind. But that's really working for me. I'm on the bike two or three times a week and you know, I'm conscious of what I'm eating. So I'm making some very concerted effort. But it's, but it's hard. It's like takes discipline. You know, I'm actually using my fitness pal. I want to drop 10 kilograms. So I, the only way I know to do that is, is through data and that is tracking what I'm eating, tracking the effort I'm putting out on exercise. And there has to be a deficit otherwise I won't lose weight. And it's the same in your business, you know, if you're not using dashboards, if you're not using tracking in your business, if you're not tracking how many inquiries you're getting a week, how many of those are turning into jobs, what your sales cycle looks like, then, then there's a good chance you're just sitting here listening to this going well, I hope the phone rings, you know, it should be okay. And I know that because that's what I used to do. I mean I'm not, I'm not here to judge you listening to this, I'm saying that's what exactly what I used to do. It was like, oh, I don't need to do marketing because I didn't really understand. I don't need to do that. I don't spend money on that. I just want to make, make, make the job work. If I do the shooting and the editing and the color grading, I walk away with X. I just hope that that job comes through, you know, that we, we live in a world of. I hope that job comes in. And it got to a point where it was exhausting. It was exhausting being in that situation where you were always hoping that something would come in, and oftentimes it did. But the stress involved in being in that situation was not healthy. And, you know, nowadays I can predict three months ahead what my revenue is going to be. You know, give or take 10%, I have that much visibility. I work probably four to six hours a day, four to five days a week. My goal, my ultimate goal is to work four hours a day, four days a week. That is my, that's my ultimate goal, and I'm working towards that.

But you have to be very clear on what you want and then work out a strategic plan to execute it. And then the next missing link is, how do you track it? How do you know you're on track? And I recognized that when I wasn't using MyFitnessPal and wasn't tracking all of the food that I was eating and tracking calories and I wasn't tracking the exercise, then I wasn't getting the results. I've lost 1.2 kilos in the last fortnight by just going down 2,000 calories a day. And if I, if I exercise, I can eat more. And if I. If, like yesterday we went out for, for the afternoon to this place called the night quarter. We hung out and had like, you know, some nice food and a couple of beers, and Sam and I shared a cronut, which is. If you've not a cronut, like, it's. It's basically a croissant that's covered in sugar and deep fried like a donut. It's insane. It's so good. But we shared one of them. So, like, by the time it got to kind of, you know, dinner time, I was like, I. 200 calories left, and I could easily have gone, oh, I'll just, I'll have a cheat day. But the thing is, when you have cheat days, all you're doing is cheating yourself. So I just had some broths, some, some bone broths, and I weighed myself this morning and I was like, you know, I was down 1.2 kilos from two weeks ago, and I was like, thrilled so, you know, I'm sharing that vulnerability because, you know, we're all human. You know, we all struggle with, with aspects of, you know, discipline. I'm certainly not sitting here in an ivory tower. You know, I'm human just like anybody else with my, with my foibles and my quibbles and. But, but, but when you track data and you're accountable, you get results. And that is probably the hardest thing to tackle as a creative, is accepting that you have to be disciplined. And, but, but when, when you start any new project, it's hard. There's a lot of resistance, you know. You know, I think it's an analogy around the space shuttle when it was running that, you know, it used 70% of its fuel in the first two minutes to get it from Earth into orbit. And then once the big rocket boosters blew off, it used another 20% of its fuel for, to get into high orbit and there was like 10% of the fuel left, managed the entire rest of the mission.

And so, you know, you've got to kind of remember that change is always very, very hard at first. You know, you've got to overcome gravity, the over the pool of change, the resistance, messy in the middle. You know, when the space shut was ejecting rocket boosters and all that kind of things, a lot, a lot of risk there. And, but then they get to space and it's beautiful and it's calm and like the power of a hair dryer can move them through the entire mission. And that, that's not my analogy. That's actually from Robin Sharma, who wrote an amazing book called the Monkey Sold His Ferrari and many other ones, including the 5am Club. And I've studied a bit of Robin Sharma's work. I love a lot of his learnings, but like anything in life, you know, you draw inspiration from different people and different places. And I've been reading some fascinating books over the Christmas break, which I'll share with you as we, as we go on through the podcast. But, you know, making any new shift is always difficult. And at this time of year, it's a great opportunity. When things are a bit quieter and especially if you're in the UK just now, I've got to say I'm really, really impressed with all my UK clients who, who are just really embracing the lockdown and saying, okay, this is an opportunity for us to kind of rework our planning, get our marketing in place, redo, redo our website, get our offers running, running well. And, and they really are, you know, taking advantage of this, this, this downtime. Because what we've seen with clients in Australia who've been in lockdown, as soon as it ends, if they're set up correctly, they can take on a lot of work and make up the deficit and have ridiculously busy months. But you've just got to be careful because if your capacity isn't, if you're not geared up to be able to increase capacity and reduce capacity is required, you can be in quite a vulnerable position. You know, there's been plenty of times where people have won a big job and then it's screwed the business because they've missed the cash flow up. So you've got to have a mechanism for accountability, a mechanism for checking in. And that's what we do. Inside the vba, we have, inside the Mastermind, we have to have two programs now. We've got the course only version, which has a Facebook group, and we have the Mastermind which has weekly group coaching, and that is 90 minutes, two times a week on a video call. And, you know, everyone just books into the calendar and they're like, they're like regular clockwork every week because we cover so much. And, you know, oftentimes you'll pick up like one tip that somebody in Birmingham, Alabama over in the States has like just shared one tiny nugget of information. And someone in Worcestershire in the UK goes, oh my God, that's an amazing idea. I'm going to take that or use that, or someone in Ireland goes, I just took that exact same thing that, you know, this guy said last week and I implemented it straight away and I got this result. And so, and you've got clients all over the place. Miami and Seattle and New York and Southern, you know, Texas, Australia, Ireland, the uk. And it's a really amazing community who openly share like, you know, what is working now.

And will kind of support and help each other through tough times and are there to celebrate the successes as well. So, yeah, you know, it's a fantastic, fantastic group. But I mean, you hear me talk about it a lot and there's been a lot of people on the podcast who are members. And so, you know, you should go back and listen to something. Go and listen to Caleb or to Andrew or to, you know, to Stasi. In fact, Stasi's not been on the show yet. I must get Stasi on the show.

But Pat, you know, these, these are all episodes which have, you know, obviously been, been with members. But, but the big thing is, is just like the discipline to maintain routine and rhythm in your business, that is going to be the thing that will have the biggest impact on you and you scaling into the future. So as always, if you want some help with that, we have always, you know, I'm always open to having conversations. And actually what's been really interesting is our, our marketing system is really kind of working well now. We've got inquiries coming in every week. But, but I say to people when I have conversations, you know, like, we probably only accept less than half the people that apply because it is, it is about the right fit. We do want businesses who are ready to grow, who are willing to do the work, you know, because it is, it is challenging, it is, it's not easy. But the rewards are there for those who are willing to put in the work. Anyway, guys, that's it for me. I will talk to you again next week. 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 hits 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 you might be in. So thanks for listening. See you in the next episode.