Growth Accelerator 1 - Defining Your Purpose with Den lennie

G', day, guys. It's Dan. It's Wednesday. It's podcast day, and I'm feeling a bit sorry for myself. I've got a bit of a cold, so forgive my voice sounding a bit dry. And yeah, it's been a long week, but I am excited about today's podcast episode. I have just written a new ebook, Video Business Breakthrough, and you can get that book for free on my website, filmmakersbusinessacademy.com. click the big orange button at the top of the page. You can have that book for free. And. And what I wanted to do was start breaking down the nine growth accelerators that we lay out in our Video Business Accelerator program, and our members go through and have huge results with. So I wanted to share some of those with you. So it's a dog just shaking itself below me there, but I wanted to do that, start revealing, kind of breaking down these nine accelerators for you so you can get some understanding of how they work in a business. And today I'm gonna focus on purpose. And this is something that I got introduced to a couple of years ago and I think you'll find really useful. So I hope you enjoy the episode.

Welcome to the Video Business Accelerator Podcast. Each week we uncover the secrets to creating a wildly successful and scalable video production business. With your host, Dan Lenny, discover how the accelerator program is transforming the lives of our members at www.videobusinessaccelerator.com. enjoy this episode.

So this week I want to talk about purpose. Now, purpose is a concept that I hadn't really given any consideration to until about 2016. It was September, and I was at an event where I heard Jocko Willink speak. Jocko Willink is the author of Extreme Ownership. And I got to spend a little bit of time with Jocko and, and I mean, his talk was all about extreme ownership and sharing some anecdotes and stories from how the book came about and his time in the Navy seals. But during that weekend, I got introduced to this concept of personal purpose. Now let me explain what that is. So I. If you're anything like me, you know, at 16, I wanted to be a cameraman. I spent all my time at school playing with cameras. I just got through some work experience when I was 16, and I, I was able to kind of focus a relationship with a great mentor, guy called Jim Gobrath, who to this day remains a friend, you know, 30 years on. And Jim and Snacks were the two guys on the crew who took me under the wing. And I was very Lucky. I knew what I wanted to do from a very young age. And so I thought my purpose in life was to be a cameraman. And certainly on the odd 50 odd countries I've filmed in and the 30 years of being in the business, you know, I've been very fortunate. I've gotten to do a lot of things which I thought was living my purpose, but. But in actual fact, that's not strictly true. I would have my accident back in 2001, you know, that kind of put an end to my filming career. And I went in different directions. And, you know, I think life always throws things at you that enable you an opportunity to do something differently. So anyway, Fast forward to 2016. Someone asked me, what's your personal purpose? And I was like.

I don't know. They were like, well, you should explore it. And this took me on a journey to really understand a deeper level, my why. So what I want to share with you in this episode is to encourage you to look at your why. Because success means different things to different people. Maybe because I was fortunate and got to fulfill my lifelong dream to become a cameraman. I traveled all over the world. I filmed with celebrities, film stars, musicians, have been on tour with bands.

I thought I got to do everything I ever wanted to do. And perhaps in some regards, I actually fulfilled my dreams very early in life. And that hit me around about 40 with a bit of a kind of hole. And I was like, oh, you know, kind of, I've done everything I wanted to do. I can't be a cameraman anymore. And I sort of lost interest in that to some degree. I felt like I'd achieved a lot of stuff there. So I started looking deeper inside. And, you know, when we start a business, oftentimes it's because we are a technician. You know, I was a cameraman. And so I went freelance back in about 2000. Then I started kind of, you know, renting a bit of gear out on the side, buying equipment, renting that production. And so it kind of evolves. And I think for a lot of us, we start off as freelancers and we get a few corporate jobs, and then we evolve.

So, you know, we kind of fall into being a production company, and then we get more jobs. Maybe we take somebody on or we start farming stuff out. Starts by, you know, renting sound recorders, maybe an editor. And the next thing you know, you're thinking you need a production manager. And that's how your business grows. It grows organically, it grows by word of mouth. And that is Still a very, very profound way to build any business long term. You know, relationships are the key to everything.

But as Michael Garber talks about in the E Myth, most small business owners are technicians who never really get out of running the business. And his famous phrase is, you know, you want to work on the business, not in the business. And many, many small business owners, many video production company owners, still very much work in the business. Now, I want to be clear here. I get this, right? We love what we do, so we're probably never going to not be behind a camera at some point or sit in an edit. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the bigger picture of being clear about your business. So we start a business because we think we want to make more money. We want to have a nicer life, maybe a bigger house, maybe an extra car, maybe a boat, maybe some other stuff. You know, practical, material things that define success in our society.

But you get to a point where you're working 60, 80, 100 hours a week, and yes, you're making money, but you're exhausted, you're burnt out, you're literally spinning 15 plates. You are stressed. You probably don't have systems in processes. It's all in your head. And the weight of that is phenomenal. You know, you literally are weighed under. And what happens is everyone gets used to having extra money around. So you buy a bigger house or you extend the house. I've been to this. We extended our house, we built a studio. You know, business was going great in the uk, but we kept hitting a ceiling. We kept hitting an income ceiling, and it was a healthy living. We were going on lovely holidays, family holidays, the Caribbean. We were traveling business class. We were having a great time, but it was costing a lot of money. And what I found was there was this perpetual cycle of having to take everything because we got used to a certain lifestyle. And after about three years of doing that, I was realizing we're hitting the same income ceilings we were measuring. And every year we were hitting an income ceiling within about 20 or 30,000 pounds a year of revenue. And so I realized that something had to change. And I started studying business. I started going to seminars. I spent over £100,000 going to seminars and buying courses and joining mastermind groups and learning from other people. And I realized yesterday that I have been studying marketing for 15 years and I still am learning today. And, you know, really, when I want to start to reflect on it all, I was like, well, what is my purpose? What is Success because I had a very successful business in the uk, But I was the linchpin. I was the bottleneck. If I didn't do the work or didn't coordinate something, the whole thing would fall over. And I think that's true for virtually every video production company. We find that hard to let go. And so if you find it hard to let go, just accept that you're always going to be basically a glorified freelancer, you know, who has a few extra projects on the go. So, anyway, back to the idea of purpose. I started digging into what is my purpose. And through a process and some time, I really discovered that I love to learn, I love to study, and I love to share, and I love helping people. I passionately love helping people succeed. You know, the guys inside my video business accelerator would attest to this. I care way more than I should about my clients, and I don't want to sound disingenuous. It's like I take on, like, I'm very empathetic. I feel when someone has a problem with a guy in the group this week who lost a longtime member of staff, he resigned. It was all very amicable, but this kid is ready to move on. And this client was like, really, really kind of, you know, it was. It was a shock. But I, like, I said to him, I said, this is a great opportunity for you to bring somebody fresh. And so, you know, we. I'm very attached. I think as filmmakers, we are empathetic by nature and we are storytellers and we care. So I realized that was my purpose, was to help people succeed. And so I made the decision to shut down my production operations and focus purely on the coaching business because I wasn't able to do both. Well, and there's a great Chinese proverb, you know, man who tries to catch two rabbits catches neither. And even though the video production business was very aligned with the coaching business, they were very different business. I became very focused on what do I want, what is my purpose? My true purpose is to help people succeed. And we do that through this podcast. We do it through the ebooks, we do it through the accelerator program. I speak at live events. I'm a mentor in a couple of other business groups. And so I'm living my purpose. And so it's actually got nothing to do with money, and it's got everything to do with how it makes me feel. So I feel a great value when I help others succeed. Now, from a commercial perspective, we have a value exchange in our accelerator program where people pay A monthly fee to get access to the community and to the coaching. And in many cases, people double and triple their businesses. So it's not just a kind of feel good factor, it's a business group. But by exchanging value, the money comes and that funds and fuels the lifestyle that I desire. So when you start thinking about your purpose, you've got to define what does success mean to you? You know, is success mean to you a house with a pool, with two cars and a boat? Great. The key here is not to judge anyone for what they define successes. Success to you might be buying a Rolex watch, it might be just taking your kids to Disneyland. It might be having the luxury of working three and a half days a week or working a set number of hours. And really what you've got to do is start digging into what does success mean to you. Because, you know, we can all make money, we can all work hard, and we can get so far on brute force and energy. And certainly when we're younger, you feel invincible. But what we were looking to do is build sustainable, consistent businesses. And I believe that's absolutely true and valid today in the video world, it's not that there's no work, there's more work than ever, but I think how we approach that work has to be different and the market has changed and all we need to do is adapt to the market. So what does success mean to you? Get really clear on this. And if you haven't written this down, and this is something that I found a real struggle for many years, these mentors of mine would say, you got to write down your goals, write down your goals, write them. Paint a picture. And I always stopped. I was always like, it feels uncomfortable. And generally speaking, when we are finding something uncomfortable, it's because we are getting ready for some change and sometimes confronting our biggest goals and writing them down is quite a challenge because we have to be very honest with ourselves and we have to take extreme ownership of our position, our situation, and assess how we spend our time. I speak to a lot of filmmakers and, you know, their emails on all the time. There's every notification on. They're responding to emails like it's instant messaging.

It's a bad habit. And so much of consistency in business is about building good habits and changing habits is hard. I love the analogy that Eben Pagan uses about the space shuttle. You know, the space shuttle had these huge fuel booster tanks and a huge fuel tank on the, on the front. And, you know, he likens change to launching the space shuttle where the amount of energy that's required to get the space shuttle off the ground in the first 90 seconds is phenomenal. I think it uses something like 70% of its fuel in the first 90 seconds to get the resistance from the Earth's atmosphere and the pull of gravity and push that massive metal up through the atmosphere. When it gets to the upper atmosphere, it boosts again, spends another 20% of its energy to push it into high orbit and into into space. By the time it gets to space, it only requires 10% of the energy and the fuel left to actually deliver the mission. So changes like that changes very, very hard at the beginning. It takes a lot of effort and a lot of energy and a lot of willpower and willpower depletes. It's not. You don't have as much willpower at ten o' clock at night as you do at six o' clock in the morning. So change is very, very hard in the beginning, messy in the middle, but beautiful at the end. So think about what it is you want. Do you want the cars, the house, etc. Or do you want consistency and security and a comfortable life with no stress? You know, bigger businesses will deliver bigger results, but they'll also create bigger problems. And there's no way you can build a bigger business without having staff. Now, we have a philosophy that you can actually build a team that don't need to be in your office, that can be remote. And that, I find, is a really great way for filmmakers to manage a team more effectively. So get clear on what your number is, work out what it is you want your life to look like and work out how much that's going to cost work backwards. And while if that's going to cost X, what do you need to earn to achieve that? And how can you do that consistently? So you can step away from this feast and famine of work comes in, you get busy, you know what goes quiet, you go quiet. And one of the things that we wouldn't touch on in this episode, but we will in future episodes, is this idea of you do marketing when you're quiet and then you get busy and you stop marketing. And then you get this perpetual cycle of waves of up and down and up and down. And consistency is key. When you're busy, you should continue your marketing, but we'll talk about that in future episodes. So are you clear on your goal? Have you ever thought about your goal? I encourage you to spend some time really reflecting on that. Take a walk, get away from the office, go and sit by the beach, go to the forest, go and sit by a lake. Be in nature. This is really important. When you're trying to figure out your purpose, you need clarity. Do it on your own. Don't sit with your partner and discuss it. Initially, you need to go away with a notebook and write it down. Write all the things down that matter to you. And some of those things might be material, they might be practical. I think, you know, our society, fame and fortune is something that we grew up thinking that, hey, if I was just a millionaire, you know, everything would be great. Yes, cash is important because cash is the oxygen of your business. I don't want to kind of diminish the importance of cash flow and generating sales and making profit and tracking what you're doing. But you have to be clear on your why. Otherwise you just end up kind of behaving like a freelancer, which is, I just need to take every bit of work that comes in. And you worry that if you niche down too far, or you worry if you don't. If you say no, that work will stop. And the opposite is true. And I want to go into more detail about this in future episodes.

But this is what I call Growth Accelerator 1. What is your why now? I've established there's nine growth accelerators to build a consistent and thriving video business. And we're going to be covering those nine accelerators in future episodes. But today it's about your purpose. What is your why? You know, why are you doing what you're doing? You need to dig into that and figure that out. And that could be an uncomfortable process because when you start to write down what it is you want, it becomes tangible, it becomes real. And what you'll find is when you have tangible, real, written down goals, you start to use your time more effectively instead of just, you know, bouncing around from one thing to the next being reactive. You know, hey, I get all my business from word of mouth. So when the phone rings, it's great. Or things go quiet and I'm like, oh, shit, things are quiet. And then a few days later, that's all right, the phone rang, we're good, we're back in business.

That's an indication that you're good at what you do. Okay? But it's not an indication of a sustainable, consistent business. So what I want you to do is think about your purpose, think about your why. Start working out what it is that you really want. You know, how do you want your life to look five years from now? I can share with you that and I'VE mentioned this before, but Tony Robbins sums this up beautifully. He says, you know, most people overestimate what they can achieve in a year, but vastly underestimate what they can achieve in five. And, you know, Sam and I, my wife, we are four years in July, living in Australia. And when I think back to four years ago, I mean, our life couldn't be any different. We've just moved to a beautiful home. We have a pool, we have three and a half bedrooms, there's two of us. We're on a thousand square meters. We have palm trees in the gardens. We are 10 minutes from the beach, 10 minutes from the river. We've got kayaks, my drum kit set up in the garage. We have lots and lots of space. We have two fantastic little dogs. And our life is perfect in so many ways. We're happily married, we've got great friends, and I feel like my life is pretty perfect. And it's about balance. And I'm very clear on what I want my purpose to be. And I can tell you that when I made the decision to shut the video production business down and focus on coaching video production business owners, my life started to change because I got very, very clear on my purpose, which, as I said before, is helping people succeed and specifically helping video business owners succeed. And we strengthened that further by saying by helping video business owners succeed, by building consistent and thriving video businesses. And that's what we do and it's very satisfying. And we are all about playing the long game. So I want to leave you with the fact that, you know, be, be patient. One of the traits I think we suffer from as creatives is an absolute lack of patience. We're quite unrealistic about how long it's going to take something to happen and we get very beaten when something goes wrong. And so, you know, surround yourself with a great community of filmmakers who are doing the same as you.

And that will become a lot, a lot easier. It's a lonely job running a video production business, particularly as a video production business owner. Even if you have team, you don't necessarily want to discuss the financials with the team. You don't necessarily want them to know how much money you're making in the company. And people can get funny around money. They see a lot of revenue coming in, they think, well, I should get more of that. But no one sees the ten years of you blood, sweat and tears, risking everything to start a business. When I started this business, I. We remortgaged the house and we started the business 10 years ago and we remortgaged the house to start the business. So you invest and the rewards come in time, but the consistency is critical and you have to be clear on your purpose.

You've been listening to the Video Business Accelerator podcast with your host, Dan Lenny. If you are a video business owner who is tired of going it alone and would benefit from mentorship, support and weekly accountability, then mouse over to www.videobusinessaccelerator.com to learn more about how the Accelerator program can help you today. 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.