How to manage overwhelm. EP #203 - Shorty

G' day guys. It's Dan here. Do you ever struggle with Overwhelm, with feeling like there's just so many things to do and you don't quite know where to start? You know, do you update your website, update your show? Reo. Do you, you know, make those sales calls? We'll leave them until later, eh, because it's not really the fun stuff. So today I want to share with you in the shorty that we've just been addressing this on our weekly coaching call. This is episode 203 of the how to Scale a Video Business Podcast. And I'm hoping in the next 10 minutes or so I can give you some really useful strategies to help tackle Overwhelm and get you focusing on the right things to get results for your business.

So, you know, it's very common to be overwhelmed when you're building your business because there is just so many different things to focus on. It can be a little bit chaotic. And oftentimes if you're not clear on what your top priorities are, because all priorities feel like top priorities. Right. And of course you're dealing with real life as well. You know, maybe you've got.

A son or daughter that's off to college and that's, you know, they're emptying the nest and that's leaving a certain emotional impact on you and your family. It could be any number of things going on, especially with all the craziness in the world just now. You know, there's. There's people that are in lockdown and not in lockdown, people going about their business. Normally it can be quite a debilitating time, but what I wanted to focus on today was how to overcome. Excuse me. Those initial challenges around overwhelm. Excuse me a second. Let's grab a quick drink.

I always do these live, so get them out. And no editing. So. Yeah. What are some of the things that can.

Create chaos? Well, you know, as creators, we are often very focused on what does our website look like now, for the best part of 10 years, I had a fairly ordinary looking website. We've just in the last year spent quite a lot of money on new copy and new websites. And actually on the show on Thursday, I'm actually interviewing Jamie Marie from Savvy Copy, who her company did all of the copywriting rewrite for us. So you can tune into that and get the insights on how she transformed what we were saying to make it, you know, just sound an awful lot better.

But, you know, that was something we did after 12 years in business. So what's more important on your website is the messaging, making sure you're talking to the right audience. And a mistake I see a lot of filmmakers make is that they try and target too many different businesses and they resist niching down or niching down when you know there's, there's so much evidence of niching in your business. So you niche your marketing message so you can tailor and target your conversations to a specific sector of the market. Instead of trying to communicate with everyone and spread your message too thin and too wide, you want to be, you know, accurately pinpointing prospects in your market and not just kind of, you know, causing everything. So one of the things I suggest you do for helping overwhelm is, is write everything down. It can be as simple as just using post. Its okay, get everything out of your head. What? When we carry a lot of information around in our head, we can very easily become overwhelmed because we just jump from one thing to the next. And then you've got your emails, you've got your social media to look at and before you know it you're just like not really getting any progress. So my suggestions are, and one of the chaps on the call today suggested using Trello which is like eat digital whiteboard with post it notes on it. Now there's a lot of different types of these kind of programs around, but Chris recommended Trello and what you want to do is prioritize the different aspects of your business and the different aspects of what you need to be focusing on. And that can be very challenging. One of the huge advantages, and we've just had an amazing coaching call with lots of great feedback about this very topic which is.

That, you know, having a space to come in and share the frustrations that you might have enables you to feel comfortable and safe for others to say, well actually, you know, we, we feel that too. So here's some suggestions and we had some great discussions on the call today about this. In fact, I just got some feedback from, from a new member, John and he said to me, he said it was a great session, very informative, open and honest and, and so thanks for that John. I really appreciate that. And that's what we, that's what we do in the vbe. It is, it is a business group. The focus is absolutely on building your business and making more cash. But we do it in a very supportive environment where there is open discussion about the challenges that we all face in life and how we're trying to build a business in amongst that. So using Trello's one suggestion or even just post it notes and then prioritize, prioritize the most important aspects first. And the easiest way to prioritize the most important aspects first is to always be focusing on revenue generation. If you spend an hour every day focusing on revenue generation and you reach out to enough people every single day and you do that with intent, and you will grow your business now by intent. And Stars mentioned this on the call today. He said, you know, the universe doesn't operate in a vacuum. The more you go out to the universe and the more that you share that you are open to supporting local businesses, you're open to supporting people to help them overcome their challenges with video, helping them communicate their message, letting people know that you're available and are willing to help in whatever capacity you can, that will generate opportunities. So by putting yourself out there and actually making calls. And that, I realize, can be very, very daunting for creatives. But, you know, one of the things we do in the VBA is we make it easy. It's all about making it easy because I built the VBA based on my own experience of running a business. And so I, you know, anything I ask people to do in the vba, I've done myself. And I know what it feels like to go, I'm going to call somebody up. But when you come at it with the right intent, and by intent, I mean just saying something as simple as, hey, I wanted to check, how are you? You know, what's been happening, a lot of craziness just now. You know, some people are in lockdown here in Australia, half the population is in lockdown.

You know, how can I support you? Is there anything I can do to help? And then you can branch out and expand and be more, you know, start thinking laterally. It's like, how can we help our client base? And if you do that, you're going to find yourself having really meaningful conversations. Now, even if it doesn't turn to be work straight away, people remember when you've made that, made that effort to go out and to.

You know, to, to make, to make, to make connections, to be human, to, you know, to, to, to help people get through a tough time. And you might think, well, my video business, but this is it. It's about, it's about selling people to people. So you want to be generating opportunities that help people out and so, you know, getting clear on everything that's on your plate. And then the other thing I'll just leave you with is, is start chunking days into different themes. Really great tip I learned from someone a few years ago is, you know, Monday, make Monday your business development day. Make Tuesday your accounts day. Make Wednesday your sales day. Make Thursday your production day. Make Friday your, you know, I don't know, review day.

This is always dependent on where you're at in business, so it's very difficult to give generic advice. But. But what I' is if you focus on chunking your weeks into themes and then finally what there's a suggestion from Stars is like have an hour in your calendar and say, right, for the next hour, I'm just going to work on revenue generation. I want to call as many people up as I can for this hour. I'm going to do this every day for an hour and then that's it done. And that will really help. As I say, guys, there's so much more to this.

That we get into in great detail inside the vba. So if you are sitting on the fence thinking about whether or not it's for you, then I'll leave you with this to give you a bit more insight. Ask yourself this has owning your own video business been everything you dreamed it would be when you first got started? It might be hard to admit, but think about whether you're genuinely achieving everything you set out to when you made that decision to grab the camera and go it alone. Are you really working less? Are you really earning more? And are you really in control? Chances are you're bloody good at what you do, but you're having to work like a dog, 70 plus hours a week. Whether it's filming, editing, marketing, or any of the other jobs that come with being the big boss of your own video company. When you're managing projects, constantly searching out for new clients and worrying about cash flow, it's easy to lose sight of the bigger picture or make real progress. Let's face it, that stress is the last thing you need when you're trying to run a profitable company that supports you and the people you care about. Truth is, a business that provides financial, professional and personal freedom really is achievable. But maybe you've got that nagging feeling that you're overworked, lacking stability, and struggling to get to where you really want to be. Right now, it could be that you just don't know how to make a positive change on your own. So I created the Video Business Accelerator Coaching programs to really supercharge your video business. With these unique coaching programs, you'll learn all the tools you need to get complete confidence in the success of your video business, you can take the first step on your journey to a successful business that doesn't control your life. Let me show you how. Head over to Denlany.com and click on Accelerator.