Never do this (In your Video Business). EP #326 - Den Lennie

Don't ever go into business with someone thinking that it's going to make your company more successful. It's something that I hear a lot. And I can tell you, having done it twice, it's a terrible idea. A much better idea is to partner with other production companies. So let me give you an example. When I worked in London, I used to partner regularly with another production company. We'd simply say, hey, I've got this project. Can you do all the posts for me? What's that going to cost? I then factor that into my quote and add some margin, and everyone was happy, and vice versa. We had an agreement that said, hey, when there's opportunities to hire me, you come to me and I'll come to you. So when he had projects, he'd bring me in, ask me what my DP rate was, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. He'd add his margin on, everybody was happy.

So what I want to do is.

Walk you through an example just like this. This was a question on one of my coaching calls inside the vba.

And what we do is we walk.

Through the process of how do you then negotiate that with that company? There's some really valuable, valuable tips in here to help you negotiate better with other production companies and avoid the pain of going into any official business partnerships. Now, if you like this content, please do like and subscribe. And let's get on with the video.

If you're bringing the job, if you're, if you're, if you're negotiating the job with the client, you have to put your producer hat on, which is, the client's coming to you. You do up the court for director, producer, shooter, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You get to the production company and say, hey, what is your rate to me for directing, producing this project, for example? So let's call it a number. You put that into the quotation, you send that to the client, you're doing the transaction with the client, and then you're subcontracting those roles to the production company. So you've kind of always got to forget their production company and look at the roles they're going to be fulfilling for you.

And then what you can do is say, hey, guys, I've got this project, I've got $3,000. Are you guys up for producing and directing it? And then you kind of like work that out in your quote. And then what happens is you can foster relationship. These people saying, look, guys, I'm going to be bringing some clients to the table and I'd Love to be able to just kind of exclusively give you the work as producers, directors. But in return I'd really appreciate if you get work that use me to your cinematographer. And James and I used to work like that. So James would get a project and he'd say to me, what are you going to charge me for doing? I'd give him a price, he'd put it in his court and off we go to the races.

So I think that's one way you could do it. And you just got to kind of build that relationship, see how they feel. I'd often say to James.

What does the budget look like on this? He's like, look, it's a bit tight. I don't like to ask, but if you could come in around here and I'd be like, no problem. But then other times he's like, no, the budget's great. Charge me this plus a bit extra because, you know, you did me a turn the last time and you foster this really good partnership agreement where you're not in business together. You just have this kind of respectful agreement of if the budget's there, the budget gets shared. If it's not there, everyone clips their ticket a little bit and what you'll end up with is, you know, resources. Like, they'll get work, you'll get work. And you're always feeding each other. James and I had two high functioning businesses doing good revenue, working with some major clients. I did Duran Duran with James, I did Robbie Williams, I did Ronaldo with James. He did all the stuff with me on Sony on the FS7 launch films. We just gave each other quotes and factored it in. And then, you know, off to the races we went. And we were never in business together. And it worked perfectly. He had his business, I had my business. But we would always be flexible to each other. And it was just that there was a trust there.

If I had a hundred grand budget.

I'm like, James, we got 100 grand, charge me whatever you want. And he was like 1250 a day starling with his red or whatever. And then other jobs it'd be like, it's a bit tight, can we do it for this? And it's like always, yes, there's always the quoting template is your reference point. It's like your frame. Ideally you want to get the highest rates possible. But it's like I'm saying, business and negotiation is always messy. The client's got X, they don't want to spend any more. You present them with Y, they're like that's way more than I thought. But, like, at least they're seeing the value. And then there's a little bit of like, well, look, okay, let's go through this together and see where we can compromise, reduce scope and bring the budget in closer to where you want. And then it becomes a partnership of, let's work on this together. You're not just going, okay, well, we'll knock 20 grand off. It's like, okay, let's go through. And that's, that's why I like line itemization. Let's go through the quote together and work out where we can streamline this. Okay, let's not have hair and makeup, but so, you know, that might make the shoot longer because the client's going to do their own makeup and it might not look great and blah, blah, blah. We could reduce scope here or we could instead have a full grade. We could use some luts and you then helping people walk through the process. But I think the big lesson here is, like, we've got a lot of amazing tools. Some of them are really advanced. And don't get locked into them thinking that's the only way to do things. At the end of the day, it comes down to a negotiation. Hey, how much have you got? Am I willing to do it for this? Can we make this work? If you haven't got as much money as I'd like, is there some other leverage point? Could you do us a testimonial? Could you refer us to three people? Would you be willing to say this? If we do it for this price, it's on the condition that you don't tell anyone that we've done it for this price. But I'm going to leverage your reduction in fees with a testimonial and my permission to use that to promote my business. So you never want to just give money off. You want to try and negotiate some kind of, you know, value response.

So I hope you found that helpful. Now, if you'd like to get involved and maybe come and be part of this free community, you can do so by clicking the link below. It's completely free to join. Or if you want to join, you can watch our free training.

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