How are you going to do next year differently. EP #292 - Den Lennie

G', day, guys. It's Dan here with episode 292 of the how to Scale a Video Business Podcast. Now, we are getting to the pointy end of the year, and if you've been marketing and enjoying, you know, a proactive approach to getting clients this year, you're probably starting to wind down. But for a lot of people, this is a very stressful time of the year. And that's what I want to talk about today.

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Now, it can be quite a stressful time of the year for a lot of filmmakers, but I'm here to tell you it's not too late to reverse that. So, you know, a lot of times in the freelance world, what happens is you're just busy doing the work, you're busy kind of doing the jobs, and then you're staring suddenly at the middle of December into January, and it's an abyss. There is not much that we can do to fix that right this second. Okay. But what you can do is ask yourself the question, how did you get here? And I'm going to take a stab in the dark and say that the reason you got here is because you've been doing this cycle of feast and famine like you're. You're doing a bit of marketing, and then you get really busy and you're doing the work, and then the marketing falls off the side of the cliff and you find yourself panicking again. So what I want you to think about as we come in towards this part of the year is how many times this happened previously. How? And do you really wanna continue going down this pathway? Because you've got a choice, okay? There's a choice to buy that new bit of gear or a choice to invest in yourself and do some learning. Now, whether that was with me or someone else or just spending some time reading books, implementing strategies, that is what matters more than anything. We can help you accelerate that process. And there are plenty of filmmakers who jumped in with us in November who are on that journey. Now, one of my clients just announced he's got $28,000 worth in January. So there is a reason why we call it the Video Business Accelerator. It does accelerate your ability to implement. But what I find happens is a lot of people get very scared. They're Fearful at the time of year when they're trying to conserve funds of investing in themselves. But what I want you to ask yourself is when are you going to change your algorithm? Because if you keep doing the same things over and over again, you're going to keep getting the same results. And you know the definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. But, but there's a great deal of fear, especially when it comes to backing yourself. So what I want to do today is just kind of share a few stories to help you understand that this journey of business growth, it's like planting a tree, right? The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is today. And we what you want to be thinking about is what is it you're actually doing this for? Because if you want to continue. It happened for me when I made the big shift from being a freelancer to business owner. A business owner is about building leverage into your business. So one of my clients, Stu, who's on a podcast just recently, he is going to take the entire month of January off. He's shutting down his business for January to take his family of five to Bali. He's doing that because he's built a business that has leverage. We had a mastermind last week in Melbourne, three day mastermind. It was incredible. Tim is now working a four day week. Caleb is working a four day week. Matt is working a four day week. Sammy wants to move to a four day week. He's got about four and a half at the minute. He wants to move to a four day week. They all have young kids, they all have a desire to balance their life with their business. And none of these guys fixed that problem late in December and cured it by January. They've been working on it for a year, two years, three years. Building a business takes time. Building a meaningful business takes longer. But if you're going to put the work in anyway, do you want to keep feeding the beast and just being a gun for hire? There that is. Your inputs and outputs are determined by someone else. So someone says, hey, I want to hire you. And you go, yeah, cool. It's this much a day or this much an hour. You're in a position there where you're not leveraged. You are basically a service based business where someone pays you, you go and do the work and when they don't need you, you sit at home panicking. So I want you to think about what can you do differently this year? What can you change in the way you're approaching your business.

You know, it's interesting that filmmakers often have a kind of an unrealistic expectation when things are going well, they're spending the money before it's come in. And when things are not going well, they're panicking. And oftentimes they'll get in touch in a kind of bit of a state going, help me, Obi Wan, I need your help now. And I can't help people in a panic situation. What I can do is help guide you in how to get clear on who you want to target, get clear on what you want to say to them, get clear on the problem you actually solve for your market, and get clear on how you can be the only choice that makes sense in their mind. And through that process, you will build a very successful business. Like the clients I have in both my up level and my elite program, everyone that I work with understands it's a journey. And it's a journey of stages. And stage one needs to be completed. Before you can go to stage two. You need to be clear that you got to believe that you can make more money. Okay, then you're going to be comfortable making that money, but then you're going to be prepared to do the hard work and understanding how you're going to get there. And I'm just not going to be the kind of person who's going to bullshit you and say this is easy, it's not. But there are a series of decisions you can make and the quality of the decisions you make affect the quality of the outputs you will receive. So I'm going to keep it really short and sweet this week guys, because we've got a lot to wrap up this year. I'm doing a lot of one to ones with my clients this year, this, this month to wrap up the quarter, to check in on the results, to get ready for their plan for next year. And I want you to think really carefully about how are you going to do next year differently.

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