It's been a tough year - Be kind to yourself EP#111- Shorty

G', day, guys. It's Dan Lanney here with the how to Scale a Video Business podcast. Dropping in with a shorty. Now, I had actually told my clients that I was going to be easing off with these shorties because we were getting busy with other things. But my good friend and colleague Benjamin, he was a bit disappointed. He said, oh, so you're going to cut down the number of episodes you do? And I was like, yeah. And then I thought about it and, you know, my first and foremost desire for this podcast to share value. So we decided to come back and do the shorties regardless. Because.

You know.

What I decided to do is just is minimize some of the work our end, because what we typically do is record an episode and then we do a blog post and we post it. And I've just brought in some new team members. We're going to get them involved in that. And I guess speaking really honestly, I was like, do people really want to hear from me twice a week? But I got some feedback when we said we were going to not do the shorties. And so, yeah, decided to reverse my decision and, and bring you the. The episode twice a week. So we'll still do a short episode on a Tuesday, and then we'll do a slightly longer episode of 30 minutes or so on Thursday here in Australia. Depending on where you are in the world, it might be Wednesday, where we'll bring on a guest and help you, you know, develop skills and insights to help you scale your video business. And I wanted to. The reason I wanted to come in today was because we had a really interesting coaching call this morning inside the Video Business Accelerator. And it just really went to highlight how important having a community and having a peer group of people who can support you is. And whether that's through the accelerator, which, you know, granted, is not. It's not kind of currently has capacity for many people. We're a very small group and we're not currently open at the moment. But it's important that you get support during what has been a absolutely brutal year. And on the call this morning, we were actually talking about that and talking about the fact that, you know, 2020 has been an exceptionally challenging year, especially for video production companies. And yes, I know lots of different industries have been affected, but it's been a particularly tough year. So I think what I wanted to do with this shorty was actually just remind you that to bear that in mind and to kind of go easy on yourself. One of the conversations we were having this morning was like just having Shitty days, you know, like one of our members was having a really crappy day, and I had a really crappy day yesterday. And we just talked open about the fact that, you know, to support each other, that, you know, you're not alone. Like, it's. It's been a very challenging year where we're almost at the halfway point of the year, where in terms of. To give you context, it's almost six months. And since COVID really kicked in and kind of kicked us in the guts and. And wow. You know, we talk a lot about the positivity and a lot about the. The good things that have come out of it and how we're more connected and we're spending more time with our families. There's no doubt it's been a challenging year for businesses and, you know, so I want to just kind of. To bring that out into the open. You know, one of the most popular episodes we've ever done was when I had my wife on Sam talking about anxiety in business. And I think it's an important topic that we kind of openly talk about, you know, especially as men. It's important, you know, the majority of my listeners are male, and if there are females listening, then you'll understand this because you'll know many. You love brothers or partners or fathers. You know, we don't typically let our emotions out. So it's really important that you find a community, an environment where you can share, you know, how you. How you're coping, how you're feeling. And if you're having a rough day, then, you know, that's okay. Come and, you know, make sure you can talk to someone. We're fortunate in the group that we meet every week, twice a week. So there's calls every single. Every single week on Tuesday in Australia, 8am in the morning and 7pm at night. And that tackles West Coast, East Coast USA Monday night. And then the Brits and the Europeans come on in the evening, which is that morning, Tuesday time. But we find that having that continual check in, it ends up creating a family, a business family, and one that we don't just talk about business. We don't just talk about what's working and what's not. Talk about how are we managing, how are we coping in this environment. And I think when. When everyone's in the same boat, it just makes it a little bit easier. But. But, you know, we're also always focusing on what are the things that you do have control over, what are the actions that you can take, what are the areas of your business and life that you do have influence and control over. And so, you know, a lot of that time and effort we spend focusing on abundance rather than scarcity, you know, really pushing that, that gratitude in that and that ability to process and focus on what is going well and what is having great success and, and trying to avoid anything that's going to negatively impact you. Because we're like sponges, right? We're like emotional sponges if we absorb negativity and we absorb all of the kind of bad stuff that's going on. And this can be from, you know, well, meaning friends and family. You know, you've got to be really, it's really important that you filter who you spend time with and how you spend that time in a time when there's a lot of change and because that will definitely influence how you feel. And.

If you process everything from a kind of optimism perspective in terms of where are the opportunities, how can we use the situation.

To take advantage of this new opportunity? How can we, from a commercial point of view, offer greater value to our clients, how we help serve them in a way that perhaps we'd missed, that is the opportunity that lays in front of you during this time. And we are six months in now. You know, we're virtually six months into this, this, this, this, this very different way of operating. And so, you know, it's going to be like this for a while and, and it is very challenging. And I know in the US just now you've got an election coming up and, and, and, and any country I've ever lived in, which is a couple, you know, when elections coming up, everything tends to stop. Big business don't like to spend too much money. And it always seems to impact the corporate video world. It always seems to be that clients are a little more reluctant to spend. And so one of the things that we discussed this morning on the call was, okay, well, how can you be using this time differently? How can you be using this time to build other aspects of your business? You know, when you're a freelancer looking to build a business.

A lot of times you're responding to business in that freelancer mindset. Whereas, you know, to really run a business effectively, you need to start looking at things a bit more systematically. And so what, what kind of things could you be doing during this time? Well, one of them is, is creating a strategic plan, is getting very clear on, you know, what is the measurable outcome that you want. And in a simple form, that can just be, how much money do you want to make, to take home, to enjoy the lifestyle you want to live in terms of not just financially, but also how many days a week do you want to work? My goal personally is to get to a point where I can work four days a week and, and have the rest of the week off to do other things or structure my day in such a way that I can have several hours off during the day. But that's for me. I know my friend Charlie, who runs Valor Media, who's been on this podcast many times. Charlie loves to ride cycles, he cyc one to two hours every day and has built his team up around that. So you've got to think about specifically what is important to you and how do you want to fund that. Because as a freelancer, we typically tend to say yes to everything, do everything, do everything ourselves, and then get burnt out. So I want you to think about how can you use this time constructively to make your business better? And if you need some support with that, we've obviously got the books, we've got the podcast, and if you do want to have a chat about how that might work for you, then then book in a focus session with us. We have focus sessions every week where we can, we can learn more about your business. We can discover, you know, what's. What are the things that are holding you back. There's usually two or three things that hold most businesses back. We can explore them with you. And then if at the end of the call you'd like some help exploring how we might be able to help you further, we can talk about that. But there's absolutely no pressure. You know, we' always keen to kind of talk to people and understand how we can support you. So, guys.

I'm glad I'm back with Shorty's. I'm not going to do blog posts and things for the time being. I'm just going to post this up on the channel so you get it into your podcast feed. But yeah, I've got an exciting podcast coming for you on Thursday, all about outsourcing with Lynn Podetti from Outsourcing Angel. So I look forward to talking to you then.

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 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 favor and share it on social media and in groups that you might be in. We'll see you next week.