Getting out of your own way! EP #004

All right, guys, back for another smasher of an episode. Welcome to the mentors officially. Grant Jamison. Great to have you here.

Good to be here.

That now brings our roster up to six, which means we can bring you even more perspectives on this on this podcast now. This week, I have been having a number of conversations with people who are very early in their business journey. And the thing that I hear a lot are stories of, oh, I'm going to build my business when. Oh, I can't build my business because I've got X, Y and Z going on. And as I dig into these conversations, what's becoming clear is when I think about you guys and everyone in the VBA who's succeeding in building a business, and I think about those that are not, I'm looking and going, well, what's the difference? Why is one person succeeding and another person not? And I think it's down to some of that mental gymnastics you have to go through, which is a phrase that our dear friend Matt Small and came up with about. He was making a lot of calls. He was calling 30 past clients, and halfway through the day, he started finding himself going, oh, don't need to call this person. Maybe I'll email them. But he pushed through one load of business. So I want to really kind of get your perspectives on why is it you think your businesses succeed and how do you get out of your own way? And I think the best to start this off has got to be you, Alana, because you. You battle with an awful lot of different things going on at any one time.

Yeah, I think the biggest thing for me with this has been getting used to being uncomfortable and being okay with that, because you need to do a lot of things that make you uncomfortable, like reaching out to people and doing sales calls and stuff like that. So it's really getting used to being uncomfortable is one thing, but then I think it's actually doing the work as well. And I think a lot of people. I hear a lot of people saying, I just don't have the time. I don't have the time to do all this. And it's like, well, what are you spending your time doing? Are you watching Netflix? Are you vegging on the couch? You know, like, how badly do you want this business to succeed? And are you willing to cut some of the things that aren't serving you and actually focus on the things that are gonna really help you grow? So I think that's the biggest thing. It's like, there's a lot more hours in the day than you can realize. I think a parent really understands that when they look back and they're like, wow, you can fit a lot into a day. So, yeah, I think it's just really figuring out, like, what's more important. And then the other thing I think is that a lot of people unwittingly self sabotage themselves just through doubting themselves and a fear of putting themselves out there. You know, you've got to put yourself out there on LinkedIn. You've got to show up, you've got to talk about stuff, you've got to establish yourself as an authority. And that can feel really uncomfortable. I think for me, it was a point where I was like, what's more important? What some random that I don't know thinks of me or my business being really successful and growing for my kids? And I was like, well, that's it, I don't care. I'm just gonna show up, put myself out there and put myself first. So, yeah, that's kind of my take on it is just, yeah, looking at what, what you're doing, what's serving you, what isn't, and then stopping caring what other people think and just putting yourself out there and going for it.

That's huge. Andy, what about you, mate?

Yeah, I love that, Alana. I mean, I can't help but like, the big thing that shines in my mind.

If this topic is like, it's like, what, what is. What are people's whys like? It's almost like the difference between success and not being successful is I've just got a stronger why. It's like I didn't get into business, look at the amount of work I've got to do and then make a decision like, hmm, maybe I would do it. Like, it wasn't the process, it was my why is strong enough that I need to succeed. And come hella high water, I'll. I'll do it like I'm moving in. And that's just what it is. Like, there's no, I don't think anybody who gets into business sits down for six months making a calculated decision on it. It like to some degree there is a level of impulse that is required to cross the threshold. And that's what keeps a lot of people in the same position and, you know, become kind of quote unquote unsuccessful is because of a lack of action. It's a lack of, it's a high volume of inaction. So it's like in order to overcome inaction, there is a certain level of impulse that is Required for better or for worse. But you know, if we're trying to define the striking difference between a company that's unsuccessful versus a company that is successful, I would say that it's because the company that is successful has a clearer why. When you start building a team and when you start leading into different kind of campaigns for your company and for your business, when you step into a position of leadership as well, you have to then start selling that why to your team as well and to your staff and to your, even to your own family, to your partner, to your kids and everybody else to remind people of what we're doing here. But more importantly, it's to remind yourself.

Because I was sharing this with a friend the other, well, a friend at the gym the other week and I was saying the importance of knowing your why. And everybody has a different why. There's, there's no right or wrong. Like, one of my reasons why I want to build expansion media to a certain point is because I know it's going to unlock the next phase of what I want to do in business.

So I will do whatever it takes to get there, any obstacle that comes my way. But if we, if we lose sight of why we're doing what we're doing, there are many opponents, we face distractions. There's the shiny object syndrome. There's just your old habits of just poor performance and what Alana was alluding to, just thinking you don't have enough time and then just a lack of efficiency in your life. If you don't have a strong why, you won't, you won't push yourself to come up with a solution. If you have a strong why of why you want this business to succeed, why you want to make a certain amount of money, you will find a way. An old, old coach of mine said if there was a gun to your head and that by the end of the month you had to hit your targets, I guarantee you all your targets because the why is very strong. So it comes down to probably more. For me, my perspective on these things is two things. I get clear on the why, but then the other thing is you've got to ask yourself, maybe you're not actually meant for business. Maybe this, you know, you're just buying into a narrative that actually isn't yours. And your experience is experiencing this extreme kind of discomfort or disconnection from that because it's actually not your narrative. You're buying into something. So there might be a bit of self discovery that needs to kind of happen there so that that's also an up because, you know, we all have different journeys in life. Just because we're on this entrepreneurial journey, it doesn't mean it's the only journey. But yeah, they thought.

What do you think, Grant?

Yeah. Wow, what he said. You know, it's funny because something I tell a lot of freelancers who message me, actually it's usually something I tell them face to face is, are you better off freelancing and trying to build a business or should you just go and get a job as an in house videographer somewhere? Like it's, it's totally fine, whichever one you want to do. But it's something you really need to ask yourself because building a business is, is very different than being the doer of the job of just going out and making great looking videos. And if you just want to do that, you might be better off going and getting a full time job somewhere because it takes a lot of effort, as Alana was saying, a lot of hard work to get to building a business. And you kind of need to change your definition of hard work in a way. It goes from, you know, editing for 12 hours a day and three weeks of shooting. That is your hard work. But now it becomes things like putting yourself out there on LinkedIn. It becomes making those uncomfortable calls to clients you haven't heard from in a while. It's all those other things around building a business that become the hard work. Like, I probably work less hours in a day now than when I was freelancing. But I would say it's, it's probably harder. The work, it's just, it's just different. Right. So that's kind of where I, I feel it comes into it.

Yeah, that's my little thrill, I think.

Also, you know, you have to, as I'm just listening to you speak as a business leader, as an entrepreneur, you have to think of many, many things in a given day. Accounts, finance, cash flow, tax bills, super.

Pipeline, chasing invoices, Janitor, Janitor. Yeah. But then you also have to be able to focus very clearly on one thing. So you've got all of this stuff going in your head, all of it which could get into your mind and really fuck you up. Like it just because the pressure, if you, if you really thought about the pressure you're under, it would knock you over. So you have to be sort of optimistic enough about the future that you don't believe you can fail, but realistic enough to protect the downside and always make sure you've got everything, belt and braces And I, and I do think that one of the skills I've observed everyone developing, myself included, is an ability to have a very big overview, but then put everything to one side and just focus on one thing, take the action. And I think that idea of 1% progress a day yielding 100% of activity progress in 100 days.

Hmm.

What are your thoughts on that, Sam? Well, whoever wants to go.

That's where your, the weekly goals come in. Right. Because it's all about what one thing can I do this week that's going to drive our business forward is. And all you need to do is just keep doing that, that one thing each week. And then after 52 weeks, you'll look back and you'll be blown away by how far you've come and how much you've achieved.

It's also setting the goal of where do you want to be? Like, I sometimes say this to people, it's like, you need to think about where you want to be in five years. Do you want to still be running on this hamster wheel or do you want to build something bigger? If you want to build something bigger, great. But what are the steps that you need to take to get there and then work your way backwards and make sure you're actually taking the right steps to build towards that.

Right.

Otherwise you're just doing random things and they're not actually helping you. You need to have that bigger picture plan so you're moving in the right direction. Direction.

And. And that plan can change as well.

True. Yeah.

Yeah. One of the, the things that I've observed that different levels of, of business, if you like, and that's probably, you know, different levels of income as well, like revenue generating for your business, you kind of unlock new levels. And what you, what I've noticed and observed in my kind of journey is that per level that I unlocked, give it, you know, quote unquote, per level that I unlock, it requires a different slash, more enhanced version of myself. And what I realized at that point, and what I've continued to, to try and stay aware of, is in this chapter that I'm moving into, am I showing up as the person I need to be for this new chapter, or am I bringing old Andy to this chapter? Because old Andy got me to that previous chapter. But this new chapter is going to need a new version of Andy. And usually the new stuff that we need to learn is uncomfortable. There's a lot of discomfort, there's a lot of resistance. We have a natural tendency to avoid change. So there is a certain level of awareness that is needed and kind of humility that we, that's required to, to progress in your journey because you have to, we have to accept, and I've, I continually accept this, that there are things that I don't know moving into this next chapter and I need help. Hence why we have a coaching group. It's like I need help. Hence why you surround yourself with people who are doing things, moving towards a certain direction because you, you know, you need, you need to have a certain level of discipline across yourself as well to then, then implement everything that needs to happen. So it's like, it's a, it's a, I've said this before, it's like that whole becoming the person first to do the thing in order to then have what you want versus focusing on just having it on or focusing on just the doing. We got to focus on becoming the person we need to be in order to do the thing to then have the outcome we want. So a lot of the work is internal. 90% of the work is internal. And the strategy is easy. The strategy shit is easy, you know, but it's hard when we are limiting ourselves mentally.

So Andy, can I ask you a question then? What would you say were the characteristics of old Andy versus the characteristics of the new Andy?

The one right now? Like one of the things that I'm, I'm, I'm reaping the reward rewards of which I once was very hes hesitant to, was growing a team. So now there's four of us within expansion media and it's probably similar to you now. I'm doing a lot less, but the stuff that I'm doing is much deeper, deeper work. So I think the old mentality I had was nobody can do it as good as I can do. So it's like the new mentality that I have is how, how good of a system or a process can I create for somebody to then get them to do it as good, if not better than I can do it. And I've, I've created a different reward system for myself within that. So it's kind of like, it's like a fear of letting go. Now I'm very quick to just be like, okay, who can we pull in? Let's go. It's a, it's a collaborative process as opposed to told me this is my show. I, the way that I talk to my team now is like, I'm making this company yours. I, I want you guys to, to have this vision to build your vision within this kind of empire that we're building where previously I only, I only saw myself in it. So I, I realized in order for me to get to these next levels, I had to open up, I had to let go. And there was, there was a, there was a fear of trusting people, there was a fear of performance dropping and letting clients down. They're all things I've had to deal with. And then I realized, ah, letting clients down isn't that bad. I actually, these guys are actually a lot better than I thought. Oh, this system's actually really quite effective. Oh, this is actually a lot better than I did it. You know what I mean? You get all these new unlocks in, in the journey. So it's. Yeah, it's. But again, it comes down to being aware and letting yourself learn that. Whereas we will sometimes cap ourselves when we are sort of limiting the input sources. Like honestly, Dan, last year before I was heading to Europe, I was doing literally everything myself and we went for that mastermind and then it just massive unlock and it's just been snowball, just literally rolling down the hill from that. But that was the unlock that I kind of needed to be like, dude, you need to let go.

It's been a huge shift. Andy, it's funny you mentioned that about going out to a team and collaborating, because I remember when Alana did a shoot for us and we don't use many freelancers, I'll be honest. But we sent Alana and this was when Alana was freelancing. So a couple of years ago and the footage came back, I was like, this looks amazing.

Better than what we do. And I was like, to jock, I was like, hey, make sure you ask Alana how she's done that because that's how we're going to film this CEO every single time now. And that's how we do it. So it's really, I think it is really important to move away from only I can do this to hey, actually there's a lot of people that can. Can do this. So where else can I bring value to this and how can I use other people so we all win together.

It's such a common thing. And Andy, you and I think so similarly. I think it's because we're both ENFJs. But what you're saying about becoming different versions of yourself, that resonates so much with me. And it's like I feel like we all think about the business and where we want the business to grow, but we've also got to think about ourselves and where we want ourselves to grow, right? And I was interviewing this Canadian astronaut, I can't remember his name, a few months ago, and he was saying that he was gearing up for this mission, and he was trying. And whenever he's gearing up for any mission, he thinks of what, like, additional skills can I learn that might help me out? And for this particular one, he decided to start learning Russian. And it turned out that they had this big issue up in space, and it was only him and the Russian guy that could fix it. And the only reason they were able to achieve what they wanted to achieve was because he could speak enough Russian to communicate to him to get it done. And he was like, it was just that because I had that mindset of what do I need to do to improve myself? And other things can I do to achieve the mission that I'm doing. That he learned that and it saved the mission, ultimately. So it's like really is thinking about, how can I improve myself? What's the next version of me going to be? What skills do they need? What does that person think? Like, what habits does that person adopt? You know, it's really important.

I think this is just one of these amazing. Every time we get together, I just love the conversations we have. But I want to just pull it back a little bit to. I did some research recently, and the numbers told me that 80% of videographers that we come into contact with, and that's hundreds. Are making less than $2,000 a month. And I think what I'm. What I'm seeing, hearing, and feeling from conversations I'm having, both in our free community and other communities, is.

They'Ll very quickly go, well, it's all right for you, Alana, because you're a Lana. It's all right for you, Grant, because you're a Grant. It's all right for you, Andy, because you're. Because they'll come up with a real kind of quick judgment on their perception of your skill set and ability without necessarily having the first clue of what you're juggling in the background. But perception is everything. And we did it on a coaching call recently where we were talking about our profile pictures, and we had this really honest conversation about perception. I think it was you, Grant. It was reading the Influence that there's a quote from Influence. Something about.

Here's one I prepared earlier.

Freaking love this book. Anyway, sorry, Dan. Yes. What was the.

What was the quote when you shared on that? Something about. And we judge everything.

Hang on. I've got notes from Influence. I like to write notes as I read. So who was it? Essentially all it was was like the number one factor for someone buying from you is if they like you. And it's, it's psychological. So if they, if you're, if you're presented well, you know, across your brand, but also like physically in photos and dress well, people are more likely to buy from you. It's so stupid, but it's just psychology, you know?

Yeah. So with that in mind, if we're going to really, I mean, our mission here at the Video Mentors is to impact the lives of a million videographers in some way, shape or form. And a lot of that will do through these podcasts. How do we, and this is a tricky one because you may never have been in that position where you feel this. But how do we help? Let's call them. Amanda, who's a filmmaker who feels she's struggling to get any work, is a complete introvert, perhaps feels like the work isn't good enough. And there's just lots of reasons why they don't believe they could ever be like you, Alana, or be like you, Andy, or you, Grant. What can we share in this environment and the time we've got available to help them? Just get enough confidence to take the next step. Alana.

Look, my motto that I always say to myself is don't give up, stay positive, take massive action. One thing and then I guess the other is just identifying who do you want to be and become it. Because when I started in the bba, I saw you elite guys and I was like, I want that and I'm going to be there in a year. And I was. And it's just seeing what you want, setting that goal and sticking to it and going for it and just not making excuses.

What about you, Grant? Because people may not know that four or five years ago you were Grant Jameson Videography and you were doing everything yourself and your biggest client was Tupperware. And now you're running this incredible company with two full time staff and serving a highly profitable niche that really appreciates and values, you know, the work that you do.

Yeah, it's, it's gonna take you longer than you think or would like and it's gonna be much harder than you think or would like. But you can get there as long as you stay consistent.

And just keep, keep pushing. Essentially you just have to keep, keep pushing through the, and then, and then.

You know, I think there's an example where you did, you know, you were, you were paying someone to do your LinkedIn outreach for you and help you in the business and production management. And you spent an entire year chasing down a particular niche in the business that you decided it wasn't actually going to be a good, a good niche in the end. But what happened then? Like, you know, because I think a lot of people, a lot of people see the LinkedIn stuff, for example, as a real, oh God, I don't want to link reach to 20 people a day. And they just talk themselves out of the, even the basic steps. But what are your thoughts on that and how you overcame that and accepting that you went a whole 12 months down a pathway and realized you were going down the wrong tree?

It's just like that quote from, Is it Keith J. Cunningham where he says fire bullets, then cannonballs. Essentially you, it's like with the two gunships or warships, and then you fire the bullets to make sure you hit your target and then once you know you've got your target, you fire your one cannonball. Well, I did not do that the first time and I went all in on one niche without any data or research behind it. Just kind of a bit of a hunch. Tried it for 12 months, it didn't work. But it did open up like through that pushing and making new connections and meeting people. It did still create networks and I met people who knew other people and that led me down a path into logistics and transport and that kind of thing, where eventually I did it sort of the proper way around it and tested it a little bit more and then fired the cannonball, so to speak, and really went harder on LinkedIn and used that assistant to outreach for me. I've now got someone making content for me, helping me write content focused on logistics and transport. And that's where we are today. So definitely have made mistakes along the way, but you really need to just learn from those mistakes and then implement what you've learned in a new way.

I mean, you've, you've, you're someone who's been just used to knock on doors to, to get, to get deals over the line. If you were thinking about Amanda, our fictitious videographer who's trying to break into the industry and just doesn't know where to go and is confused and unsure and perhaps scared and certainly fearful of rejection, how do we support that person in this environment? Because we're all quite strong characters. But you don't, you don't have to be. I mean, you can be you. What are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, I think it's validating that it is hard. Like, if Amanda's in a position now where she feels like she's making that two grand a month or whatever that number is, and. And everything is against her. It's validating that. Yeah, like your pain is completely justified and valid. Like, that is kind of what the journey is. The. The one thing that I've always hung onto and I still hang on to today is there's a. There's a kind of like a quote or a scripture from the Bible that talks about you will never be in a situation that you can't handle. And I think the battle is won in the mind. So it's like if. If Amanda is in a position now where, you know, she's at that point and she feels like it's the end, it's like it's not the end. And you have to believe that. You have to believe that it's not the end, that there is something else there and that you will find a solution to this problem. You will find a way to. To make $5k, to then make 10. But the battle is. Is won and lost up here. It all really does start up there. Because even if I surround myself with the best people, whilst they may have a very strong impact on me, if I have talked myself and thought and believed that I'm not going to make it, hella high water, you won't make it. So it is a relentless belief system that Amanda has to incorporate and really creep onto. And it's. It's.

You're.

You're kind of rewarded if you commit to that in the early stages, because it's almost like a. You know, if you're. You said it yourself, Dan. I was door knocking. The amount of times I was door knocking. And I literally felt like just lower than garbage in a gutter because I was like, I'm just harassing people.

People are saying no to the product. But this. I was taking it so personally. Like, this is my life. This is my rent, this is my food, this is my petrol. Like, you don't realize what you're saying no to. And I was. It was a very sensitive time in my life. I felt the most vulnerable. I felt the loneliest. But at the same time, like what Alana said, fix your eyes on who you want to become and just chase after that. And that's what I held on to, because even though I was copying all that and all my friends around me were successful and making money and, you know, they were doing cool things and I was like, I couldn't I had to to check my bank account to pay a bottle of Coke. You know, I was that kind of in the dumps. But I always believed that I would make it. And when I say make it, I always believed that I There was a better version of Andy awaiting. So it's like I'd say to Amanda Chase after the better version of Amanda. She is there. Don't give up on yourself. Like don't settle. Don't settle for where you are now. There is a better version of you. Go after that relentlessly and take comfort.

In the fact that we've all been there. But then cast your eyes upwards and focus on where you're going.

If you're tired of going it alone with your video business and could use mentorship support and coaching, check out how you can work with us directly atthevideo mentors.com or join our free community on the Free Resources tab. Our mission is to positively impact videographers lives, helping you earn more and work less to support us. Please follow, rate and review this podcast and share this episode with someone who could find it helpful.