Navigating the January Blues in Videography. EP #331 - Den Lennie

Well, g', day, guys. It's Dan here. Welcome back to the how to Scale a Video Business Podcast. I'm in my new studio, which is as yet not sound treated. So forgive me, it is sounding a bit echoey, but also I'm sounding pretty husky. I just had Covid and feeling the effects of coming out of the back end of that. But today I wanted to really just kick things off this year and really address the elephant in the room for a lot of videographers this time of year, which is mid January. Those January blues and the fact that a lot of people are feeling the same, it's a really rough month for videographers on the whole. And we just came off a two hour coaching call with our VBA elites and, you know, it was a theme that a number of people were feeling a little bit, you know, beaten down at the minute. It's like you have all this enthusiasm, optimism for the year ahead, but the bank account is looking a bit empty. A lot of bills are coming in and perhaps deposits that were due to be paid in December haven't been paid or been paid late. And, you know, a lot of businesses are still cranking up and so it can feel like quite a lonely time. And that's what I wanted to address today is how do we navigate January as a videographer?

Welcome to the Video Business Accelerator Podcast. Each week we uncover the secrets to creating a wildly successful and scalable video production business. With your host, Dan Lenny, discover how the accelerator program is transforming the lives of our members at www.videobusinessaccelerator.com. enjoy this episode.

So, you know, this is something that comes around every year and, you know, even though it comes around every year, it can still feel like a pretty dark time.

And I really wanted to just address this head on. Running a business is really hard and it's harder on your own. But as we were just discussing in this week's coaching call, there's, there's a sense of unity in being a community who are sharing the journey. And one of my clients said, you know, then sometimes the, the mood of the group is very up and upbeat and very much achieving things, and other times we're feeling a bit down. And he said, you know, you're really good at reading the room and taking the conversation on a trajectory to address that. And we have a fairly new member to the group who was commenting on, you know, he felt he was able to open up and, and share that he'd had a few rough couple of weeks. And so that really What I wanted to say is it's okay to feel bad or to feel like less than enthusiastic about your business, especially in January. You know, towards the end of last year, it was a hectic time for a lot of companies. A lot of businesses are looking to get stuff out before Christmas. And it can feel very challenging when you are on the go working a lot of hours and then you have a break at Christmas and then you come into January and you're sort of reflecting on, well, what just happened. That was crazy. And now, now it's looking at the calendar and it's looking kind of empty. And it's a time in the year when we get a lot of inquiries because people have time to think about how they're going to run the business differently this year. But one thing I want to really address is that how to scale a video business isn't just about making your business bigger, but rather making your business fit you better.

One of our clients was just feeling a little bit overwhelmed by the sheer workload and, excuse me, making a lot of money, but no time and no life. And he wanted to basically burn his business down. He was just so fed up with, with doing that. What we're able to do on the call was to kind of collectively.

Trying to help this person see what they couldn't see. And that's really why being part of a coaching community is so important. Excuse me a second. Take a quick drink.

Is that, you know, we're there to, to make sure you don't make any rash decisions that throw the baby out with the bathwater. You know, a lot of work that we do as videographers, isn't that exciting. It isn't that joyful. Isn't that exciting? It's not stuff that you want to put on your show reel. We're going to remember is as a professional video production company, your job is primarily to communicate an idea, to tell a story through video, to help a client or a support a supplier of some kind of project widget or gizmo to help communicate an idea or a story to their audience. And a lot of times it isn't that exciting.

So when you're faced with like doing a lot of work, um, it's easy to feel beaten down. It's easy to feel like, you know, why am I doing this? I got into this to, to create great content and, and I just seem to do this shit work and it's like taking all my time and, and I'm. I've got no money because I'm just Constantly, like, paying out for stuff. So it's definitely a time of the year when you reflect. And so what we always do is we come back to the idea of, like, you know, what is it you want to achieve in your business this year? And start with you. What do you want to achieve in your life this year? You know, what is your vision for your year ahead? I'm a huge fan of vision boards. I do one every year. And when I put images on this vision board of how I want my life to look, the vision board helps me to articulate that through the medium that I know best, which is visuals. But then I have it up on the wall and I look at it every single day. And then once you've got that vision of what you want your life to be like, it's actually quite straightforward to then work backwards and plan out how you're going to get there. And it always comes down to how much is that vision going to cost in time and, and in resources. And I maintain that the reason that we start a business is because we love what we're doing. We want to make some more money. But when you start to think about scaling your business, it's about, how can you buy more of your time back so you have more time to enjoy the fruits of your labor. And for some people, that is like scaling back and doing less. But actually that's not that sustainable long term. So what is the other option? Well, the other option is you create a strategic plan. You create a big picture for the year ahead. You say, okay, well, I want to make $500,000 this year, and I want to take home, you know, $20,000 a month. So that's $240,000 in profit on $500,000 in revenue. How can I do that? What kind of clients do I need? Can I, Can I. You know, there's. There's a number of different ways you can do that. One client does a lot of real estate.

Do. Excuse me, one client has a lot of real estate. They could increase their prices, they could increase the number of real estate jobs they do, but it's very labor intensive. The other client does a lot of corporate. So you could increase the prices of your services, which is something I think you should do anyway.

Every year. But it's like, how can you do this? And, and the fact is there, there are a number of different ways in which you can do that. So the way in which we support and we encourage is to come up with a strategic plan. What is the financials that you're looking to achieve and how are you going to get there? What are the steps you have to take every week, every month, every day to make that a reality? And so that big picture plan breaks down. You know what you need to look at? One of our clients is going to do 800,000 this year. It's 200,000 a quarter, 66.7 K a month. And so when you break that down to a monthly statistic, you got to reach out to a certain number of prospects, clients and, and, and customers and ensure they're spending a certain amount of money with you every month. That's where your focus and energy goes. And so the key to a really successful video production business is actually consistency is consistency and being clear on what your plan is. And so I just wanted to start this year by saying that this process is relatively simple but very difficult to execute on your own. Because as filmmakers, we spend a lot of time in our heads and a lot of time.

Beating ourselves up that we're not further down the road then we want to be. And so I'll leave you with this thing.

I really predict that whatever task you're setting yourself this week, it's going to take you four times longer to achieve it than you think. And if you start to implement a four times longer than you think it's going to take strategy, you'll find yourself achieving more and giving yourself less of a hard time. The reason that so many of us fail to achieve what we want to achieve in a week is that we have unrealistic expectations, but we're trying to achieve. And then we think, what's the point even having a go at this when we're never going to get there so there's no point and you get distracted and go and do something else. So if you really want to grow your business this year, what you have to do is get very clear on what you want your life to look like, create a big picture plan and then execute on it every week. And of course, if you'd like some help with that, we can absolutely help you with that. But until next week, guys, hopefully my voice will be better by then. It's a short one this week. Have a great week.

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