How to avoid the Feast and Famine Rollercoaster. EP #149 - Shorty

Howdy, guys. Dan Lanney here, host of the how to Scale a Video Business podcast with this week's Shorty Episode number 149.

Can't believe we're racking up these numbers like we are. But there you go. That's what happens with consistency.

So today I want to talk about how you can avoid the feast and famine, and it's all about choice.

I'm talking about choice. You know, you getting to choose how you show up and how you attack your day, your month, your year, because you can't make this the best year ever if you choose.

So this, this notion of choice.

You know, we typically default to habits, habits that. That are ingrained in us from childhood. Habits that are ingrained in us because we do things the same way every time. And. And as creatives, typically showing up in a certain way, especially when things get difficult. So if there's a difficult opportunity or a challenge, how do we show up? Do we typically kind of go and do the shiny, fun stuff, or do we attack the difficult stuff? And I'm going to argue that in most cases, people tend to fall back on the easy path. And the easy path is rarely the path where you're going to make the most growth, rarely the path where you're going to see the most, you know, expansion of your mind.

And rarely where you're going to get anything but a pattern emerging of default behavior. So, you know, if you're starting this year and you're wondering how you're going to do it differently, you do it differently by planning, you do it differently by setting an intention and executing consistently. And that is probably the hardest thing that you will face in your business. Growing a video business is. Is the consistency that is required to achieve the goals that you want. Typically, what happens is, as creatives, we come up with a shiny idea, we want to execute it, do things differently, and that is great in production. But when it comes to business, you need consistency. So on this topic of choice.

You get to choose what you do when you get up in the morning. You get to choose whether or not you go and exercise or eat well.

Take the easy path or take the more challenging path. And if you are someone who is used to the roller coaster or the feast and famine, and in some cases, you might even get off from it. You might even, like, feel it's a drug. Like, you know, I can already bust my gut and push through for the next month or two, and then I'll rest. But if you would like to have a more consistent life, a more consistent business, then you have to start building consistency into absolutely everything that you do. You can't simply pick and choose when you want to be consistent. And that can be a very challenging obstacle in business and in life as a creative because you have to develop discipline. And that's the discipline to do things that you don't necessarily want to do, when you don't necessarily want to do them, but you do them anyway. And you know, everybody has challenges at home. Everyone has challenges in business, everyone challenges in life. Everyone has their own demons to deal with, their own challenges to deal with. But the key is to understand and recognize when those demons are showing up and pushing through regardless. And so you get to choose how to show up. You can have a tough day and decide to open a beer or a bottle of wine, or you can have a tough day, eat some healthy food, drink some water and get an early N and realize that that feeling is only going to be temporary. It's going to pass.

And I really believe that success in business and in life is down to micro decisions. Micro decisions that we make to go left or to go right. Do we go and eat the bag of chips or do we eat the salad?

And I found this in my own life, is that I've always tended to kind of comfort eat. If I'm feeling like a challenge, I'll go eat a nice piece of banana bread or something.

But the tough thing to do is to actually allow that feeling to subside. And one of the ways in which I've been able to do that, and I'm still working on this, 100% working on it, is intermittent fasting. So I've been intermittent fasting for about three or four months now, where I don't eat between.

8Pm and 12 midday. So it's 16 hours of fasting. And there's all sorts of research which explains the benefits of your body going into ketosis. I'm not here to convince you one way or the other to even do it, but I'm just saying that that's worked for me. But that started when I didn't drink for six months. So I have always struggled with discipline around food. And so I didn't drink for six months. And then that gave me some stronger sense of self discipline and, and that's really help now with intermittent fasting. I'm, I'm, I'm tracking my calories with my fitness pal lost 1.2 kilos in the last fortnight. So I'm really chuffed about that because I'm tracking the data. But it's always a choice. You know, it's a choice to, to, to have what you want in life. If you want a business that is successful and consistent, then you have to choose consistency. And.

You can't have erratic business methods going on in your life if you want a consistent business with predictable income and cash flow. And I think the biggest obstacle that faces business owners in the creative space is our creative egos. We think that we've got to do everything ourselves. And then there can be a panic that sets in that says, well, I've got to do all this stuff to keep the wheels turning.

What I'm saying to you is it's always a choice. You have a choice as to how you show up. You have a choice about how you spend your time. You have a choice about what you spend your time on. And you know, what we are focusing on in the VBA just now is securing a solid strategic plan for 2021 and, and filling out the data that allows you to track and set a benchmark for where you're at today so that you can evolve that and track it month on month so you can grow tomorrow and beyond. And so, you know, be, be asking yourself this question. You know, are you making the right choices? Are you choosing to develop a business in life that has predictability, or are you leaving some of it to chance? Are you genuinely investing in the right areas of your life or are you someone who thinks, well, I'll just pick a bit from here and a pit from and I'll watch a few YouTube videos, then I'll, then I'll kind of just like, I'll mix, mix it all together and come up with my own solution. And because that is not a winning combo, you've got to be very, very aware and very, very diligent to self sabotage, very diligent to.

Habits that don't serve you, very diligent to not falling into patterns of behavior that don't serve you and make sure you are looking after yourself. You know, one of the areas that's helped me enormously is meditation. You know, I'll often wake up on a Monday morning and I was saying to my wife, Sam, just yesterday, you know, I always wake up on a Monday morning feeling a little bit anxious, a bit restless, a bit concerned. And I think it's because I've generally had the best part of a weekend off. And that's only just recently, actually. I've started taking Sundays off after 11 years in business. And so I'm exploring, you know, More photography. I'm doing some, some other things really kind of feed my sou. But I wake up on Monday morning feeling guilty that I haven't worked on a Sunday and I'm suddenly behind. So what I do is I meditate for 45 minutes on a Monday morning. Then I have a coffee and I hang out with Sam and the dogs. Then I go to yoga and I don't start working until I've meditated for 45 minutes and done an hour of yoga. And that tends to set me on the right track for the week. But I'm still susceptible to being influenced by exterior forces. And so I'm first step is to be aware when you're being influenced by a force one way or the other. Acknowledge it. Ask yourself, is there a lesson in here? Be grateful and say thank you. That's really helpful. I've learned something from this. And then move on. And if you've got a strategic plan, if you've got a very disciplined way of operating, then you will find yourself in a much stronger position to move forward with clarity. And then the best advice I can do say to you is if you're having a day that does feel a bit off, then move your body, go and walk or run or do whatever it is you do and change your physiological state because that will change the way your brain feels. And as I say, it's always a choice. That's with me, guys. I will see you on Thursday. 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, it's hit 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 favorite and share it on social media and in groups that you might be in. So thanks for listening. See you in the next episode.