Is Perfectionism Holding You Back From Scaling Your Business - Shorty EP #108

G', day, guys. It's Tuesday 21st July, week 30 of 2020. This is Dan Lenny with the how to Scale a Video Business podcast Shorty. Now, before I get into this week's episode, we are working on a very exciting project just now, actually that will be revealed to the world, I believe, on the 29th of July.

So I am taking a couple of weeks off the podcast to focus on that. And then after the 28th of July, I'm hoping that.

Well, I'll be able to tell you all about it. So, yeah, I decided to take a little break from the podcast for a couple of weeks just to focus on this project and also look after my accelerator clients, which is my core, you know, focus these days, is helping video business owners and particularly freelancers who want to build a business to, you know, move away from that kind of feast and famine, that smash and grab of like freelance mentality. I call it the curse of the freelancer and move more into a, a business owner position which is, you know, where you've got a few systems and processes and some, some clarity around who you want to do business with. But before we get to today's topic, yeah, I'm working on something just now which unfortunately I'm not able to talk to you about in detail, but it's involved me getting back behind the camera. I've been listening to the show for a while. You know, I stopped filming really properly a few years ago and someone has asked me today, well, why did you do that? Well, the main reason is because back in 2001 I fractured my ankle and that put a pay to my broadcast career. And in 2003 I was on a shoot in South Africa filming for. It was a pilot actually, for A Place in the Sun, Homer Away. It's a big UK TV show and my ankle didn't feel right. So I went to a specialist when I got back to the UK and he said, what do you do for a living? I said, I'm a cameraman. And he said, not anymore you're not. So that kind of put my career, what smashed my career to bits really. But I started working for Pro Cam television for a while and then for, for, for Mick Corp, that came became CVP and learned an awful lot about business and kit rental and kit sales during that time and really learned a lot of my knowledge around how to run a business from, from those guys who ran that companies, those companies, and I'm very grateful to them for that. But then in 2009, the DSLR thing kicked off and that kind of with the lighter cameras allowed me to shoot some other stuff. And what was interesting about the hiatus that I'd had from broadcast was that I got involved in filming at a much higher level and in the space of a few years was working with Cristiano Ronaldo twice in Madrid. I was working with Robbie Williams, I was working with Duran Duram. And those sort of key significant job really kick started a lot of opportunity for us in terms of, you know, speaking and, and creating content for, for manufacturers. Which leads me to what I'm doing just now. It's some, some content for manufacturer. It's a new camera that's coming out and yeah, it's exciting to be involved in something again. So I'll be teasing you here. I believe the 29th is the announcement date, so I'll be able to share hopefully more in a podcast episode around that time. But putting that it has been. I've been up doing sunrise shots and some beautiful kind of nature shots recently and it's been really exciting, kind of just getting behind a camera and my wife and I went up a mountain on Saturday to shoot a sunrise. And you know, it's, it's really not much can go wrong in your life when you start the day with the sunrise. And I just reminded me about how privileged we are in, in this industry to do what we do and to be paid for it. And you know, it's been a while since I've got behind the camera, but I dusted off my eyes and you know, you don't forget. So yeah, that's been quite exciting. But as I say, I'll share more with you when I'm allowed to. But today I wanted to just touch on the fact that, you know, when you are building your business, which you never really stopped doing, it's important that you actually stop and measure and implement. You know, there's one thing to learn how to do something and to watch a video or watch a training and go, oh, you know, I know how to do that. I've watched the training. It's another thing entirely to actually implement it and get to the point where you can do it well and you know, are measuring the success.

Excuse me, just need a quick drink there.

So what I mean by that, I mean you have to be measuring what you're doing. On our strategy call today with the accelerator, we had, excuse me, a general Q and A call and what we were doing was really identifying where the bottlenecks.

In your business and sometimes we can get stuck on really small things. We can get stuck by getting in our own way, by feeling that perhaps we have to, you know, get through a load of coaching or training before we can implement. And so I guess my theme of today, Shorty, is to remind you that whatever your plans are strategically to build your business, it's important that you. You implement what you're learning as you go. And don't wait till everything's perfect till you launch something. I think this is something that is particularly prevalent with us creators. I. We can often get stuck with a perfectionism and not want to put something out until it's right. And I guess in the last week I've been doing some test filming and I've been added editing a kind of little animatic, which is kind of a, you know, a kind of storyboard to the music that I'm using. And I've been looking at just replacing those shots as I bring them in. It's quite, quite a luxury to have that really.

But I found myself getting caught up and kind of like something's not quite right and doesn't feel quite right. So. So I go and leave it for a night and I come back to. And the same is true in business. You've got to implement strategies even if you're not quite sure if they're going to work or not. We're chatting on the call this morning, and one of my clients has been really investing a lot of money in marketing. And what I admire about this guy is he's not afraid to invest three or four thousand dollars a month in paid advertising.

But his particular campaign wasn't working very well just now, and he was trying something and it wasn't quite working. But what we identified was there was an added benefit. He was actually adding people to his database who perhaps weren't ready to buy right now, but would potentially be ready to buy at some point in the future. Then we started to explore other opportunities he might have to kind of promote other people's courses or benefits, you know, from. From an affiliate relationship. And so we were just looking at what are the hidden benefits in doing this. And I was reminded that, you know, when you do any kind of paid advertising, you know, the business education, business lessons aren't free. So what you're doing when you run paid ads, and Kim talked about this last week on the podcast, is you are getting your message in front of a test audience very rapidly and very quickly. You will get feedback on how well that ad is performing, how well the message or the offer is resonating with your target market. And so it's very important that you test. You know, in marketing, we say marketers don't think they test. And I think that one of the challenges that many of us, including myself, have had in the past is we're trying to, we try to overthink. We try to figure everything out before we go out and do it because, you know, in some cases on a shoot, that's what we're doing. We have to prepare for all the eventualities and the hope that, you know, we don't, we don't get stuck. Got caught out the shoot I'm working on this week. We were originally going to shoot something down in Victoria, but Victoria and Australia has gone back down in lockdown. And so we had to completely rework the idea, completely rework the, the idea and the, and the strategy and the topic so that we could.

You know, so I'm just distracted there because Chris Schwager's ringing me and the phone was buzzing on the desk. So Chris, if you're listening to this, I'll call you.

But yeah, you know, we had to completely rethink the concept, the idea and rework the entire thing from scratch. And that's, you know, that was, that was challenging. But to tie it back to marketing in your business, it's the same in business. Things don't go according to plan when you are running a business. And so put stuff out there, test stuff, but track and measure it. And I think if you do that, you'll, you'll start to see lots of little results come into your business. And so one of the things I'm very big on is as I track every week, you know, what my ad spend is, how many leads have come in, how many clicks we've had, and then you can start to track it over a period of time. So, you know, think about that. You know, is there something you're doing in your own business just now that you're not implementing or you're trying to make perfect before you launch it? Well, you know, if you want a little bit of guidance from me, launch it, test it and then modify and then that way you will, you'll start to see quicker results and, and, and better outcomes. So, guys, I will see you in a couple of weeks or you'll hear from me in a couple of weeks time. Taking a couple of weeks break, few weeks break from the podcast while I work on some other projects. And we'll be back hopefully on the 29th of of July with, with an episode to talk about the project I've been working on. So guys, great to be with you again. And if you're looking for something to listen to in the next couple of weeks, I think we have 108 episodes in our back catalog, so there should be plenty of things for you to go back and listen to. Anyway, guys, I will talk to you soon. 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 who's hit the ceiling and we benefit from mentorship, support and coaching, then check out how you can work with me over@denlenney.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 you for for other filmmakers you know, then please do me a massive favor and share it on social media and in groups that you might be in. So thanks for listening. See you in the next episode.