Imagine if you DOUBLED your profit in 2021. EP #159 - Shorty

G', day, guys. Dan Lanney here for this week's shorty on the how to Scale a Video Business podcast.

Here we are, 23rd of February here in Australia. Episode number 159.

So I have a question for you today. Today's kind of a kind of cool exercise to do. We actually just did this on our first of our coaching calls today, and it was so powerful. I wanted to share it with you on the podcast today.

And I think you'll like it.

So I want to ask you a question. What would your life look like if you doubled your profit this year?

Not necessarily just your revenue, but your profit. So I want you to think about what you took home last year from your business.

And I want you to imagine that 12 months from now.

You'Re looking back on this year and you doubled your profit.

Now, forget about whether or not you think that's possible at the minute. I just want you to sit in the space, imagine I've waved a magic wand. And I want you to think about, what would life look like? So how would your life look different? How would your days look different? Would anything around you be different? You know, what was the first thing you'd invest in if you doubled your profit in your business? Would you be upgrading your computer? Would you be hiring someone to be full time in your team? Would you be, you know, expanding your business in another direction? What would that look like? Because unless you have a very clear idea of what you want life to look like, it's very difficult to put the right steps in place to achieve that. So we're very driven as humans by visuals, and our subconscious is largely motivated by a visual. So one of the things we do in the accelerator, both in the course and in the mastermind, is that one of the first things we do in one of the modules is a vision of what the future looks like. Where do you want your ideal life to look like? What does that look like to you? What does success mean to you? And then we work out where you're at currently, and then what is the gap between where you are currently and the future version of your life that has not yet become a reality? Because there are many, many places in which to put your effort and attention, but not all of them are actually going to deliver you the results that are important. It's very easy to get distracted and be putting effort into places that isn't necessarily going to benefit you. So back to my original question. What would life look like? How would life look different for you if you doubled your profit Month on month. So if you're making 3,000amonth and you were to be making 6,000amonth, what would that mean for you? And that is really what I want you to think about today, because it is absolutely possible to double your profits in 12 months. Absolutely possible. If you focus your attention in the right place, in the right areas and you do the right things. So we were discussing this morning on the coaching call, what are the things that prevent us from doubling our business? And it's almost certainly mindset. It's a mindset of not believing you can. And therefore you end up sabotaging, self sabotaging your ability to double your business. Most of the areas where I see the opportunity is, is in, in marketing and sales. And that is something that usually makes filmmakers freeze. It's like marketing and sales. But look at it this way. You know, as a business owner, your number one moral responsibility.

To your business is to deliver the maximum return for the shareholders. And if you own the business outright yourself, that is you, you are a shareholder in your own business. And if you are just kind of, you know, doing everything yourself and you're trying to just kind of brute force your way through your business, then you are not maximizing the return for the shareholder. You have a job that is very poorly paid. And I am not sitting here in an ivory tower, because when I was running my company in the uk, that's what I was doing. I was doing everything myself. I was trying to maximize, keeping all the profit myself. I was shooting, I was editing, I was producing. But I got really burned out and I realized that I couldn't scale the business alone. And so I started hiring contractors. And for me, the biggest thing was letting go of the shooting because I was a dp. I love to shoot. I loved, love to light. It's what I'd always done. But I realized that I could not scale my business if I kept shooting everything. I love to edit, I'm a very good editor. But I realized I couldn't scale my business if I kept editing. Because if I was producing everything and shooting everything and editing everything, then nothing else was being done. And what you need to do in your business to maintain revenue is to be continually filling the front end of what we call your funnel, which is the front end of your business, with inquiries. And you know, a lot of filmmakers I speak to talk about word of mouth is there, is their main source of business. And referrals are indeed an incredible source of business, but they're not predictable. Unless you have a predictable system. And so if you are, you know, just relying on word of mouth and then what happens is you get busy on a project, so you start to produce it, you shoot it, you edit it, and you don't follow up with anyone for a few weeks, people start to forget about you.

Now the issue with that is that that is what spirals the roller coaster, feast and famine. Because if you're not consistent upfront with your lead generation and your amount of opportunities coming into your business, then you're not going to be able to deliver consistent lead flow and consistent opportunities to your business. And so there is definitely a point at which, you know, you don't have quite enough work coming in to justify hiring someone. But then if you don't keep doing the marketing, you won't have enough work coming in. And there's this kind of spiral as a vicious circle. And so the most common first hire is to outsource the editing. Because the editing is something you can do remotely. It's something you can do, you know, sharing files in Premiere, doing proxy workflows, sending drives to people. It's all possible.

One of my clients, Andres, runs a company, Real Life Studios, and they have a post production company in Guatemala and they are able to provide post production services offshore at a lower rate than domestically, but with the added advantage of skills. They have incredible skills in their company and they have a team of 12 people, everything from motion graphics to sound design to regular editing to more advanced editing. And a lot of the members inside the VBA are now having conversations with Andres about offshoring their editing so they can create more capacity without having to hire a team. And that is, I think probably the thing that most video production professionals want to do. They want to increase the business, but they're scared to hire a team because they don't know how and they don't have any systems and they don't know what they should be doing and how they should be doing it. And that is why, you know, we have weekly calls with our accelerator coaching members is that we're constantly working on their businesses with them. But you know, that that is, that is, that is definitely a program for people who are quite a bit more established. But we do have, and we just launched in November, the Video Business Accelerator course. And that's slowly starting to fill up with, with clients who are doing maybe 2 to 5,000amonth. And we've got some incredible businesses in there who are learning the foundations of how to get to $10,000 a month. That is the goal of that program is to get you to $10,000 a month and you know there's a bit of work to do. It's not easy, but the people that are in there are following a process and are making progress. And running a business is not easy. But once you get to 10,000amonth, it's an awful lot easier to get to 20,000amonth from 10. The hardest part of the journey is getting from 2 to 10. And if you would like with that, then please reach out because we can have a conversation and we can see if we can help you with that. But I want you to leave this episode with this notion of what would life look like for you if you could double your business this year. I want to leave you with that thought and I will catch up with 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 to hit the 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 favour and share it on social media and engagement groups that you might be in. So thanks for listening, see you in the next episode.