Overcoming gear addiction and finding lightness in creative work. EP #329 - Den Lennie

G', day, guys. It's Dan here with episode 329 of the how to Scale a Video Business Podcast. And today it sounds a little bit cavernous here. That is because I've just peeled all of the sound treatment off my studio walls because we are a moving house on 12 December, which is all happened very quickly. But today I want to talk about a discussion we had on the VBA Elite Mastermind call this morning about film industry gear, and especially with it being Black Friday week, all of the offers that are being presented in front of you and whether or not it makes sense to invest in the gear or invest in something else.

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 it's that time of year where your inboxes are being bombarded with offers to buy shit you don't need. We were talking about this in some depth this morning in the Elite Mastermind and really the idea of overcoming the gear addiction.

And resisting those impulse purchases that make you feel good for about five minutes. But you know, if you buy that piece of gear now.

And the invoice comes in from your credit card in January, which is typically a very quiet month in video production, the heaviness of that weight is going to really prey on you. And that's something that I experienced myself years ago. I remember buying an F5 kit, a full OConnor tripod system and zoom lenses from Zeiss. And it was like a probably 60, $70,000 gear. Because I believed at that time earlier in my career that if I rocked up on set with, you know, the best gear that I could somehow charge more. And the truth is, it never worked out like that. I remember doing one particular job about four or five years for a company in the uk. I flew back to do it, and the first time I shot it all on the FS7 and a load of gear that probably cost 10 grand. The second time I shot it, I shot it on a 7s and it didn't look any different. And the client didn't notice or pay any attention to what had been shot because they didn't care. What they cared about was the outcome. But, but more than that, what we discussed this morning on the call, which I wanted to share with you, is that.

If you can overcome that gear addiction, then you can Find the lightness in not having too much equipment, and that in turn actually fulfills and fuels your creative work. But what I wanted to do was talk about the fact that the conversation was actually about aperture lights. There was the 30% off offer and we were like, the quality of LED lighting has become so high now that, you know, Aputure seems to be the very vogue brand. And I've never used Aputure. I don't own them, so I can't comment. But everyone seems to want Aputure lights. But they're very expensive in comparison to Nanolite. For example, my whole studio is lit with Nanlite. It's a fraction of the price, just as good, just as much output in many ways. It's the type of modifier that you use that I think has a greater impact on the quality of the light. But that's nonetheless. So what we're really talking about here is are you going to stay in that impulsive gear purchase, gear acquisition syndrome this week, or are you going to choose to invest that money in yourself, in your business?

And can you resist the Black Friday gear purchases and prioritize savings? Or are you going to allow yourself to follow the same patterns? Because when it comes to building a business, it's about breaking patterns. But of course, so much of our identity is shackled to the gear. You know, I see plenty of people turning up to jobs with crazy amounts of equipment. And the benefit I've got of nearly 30 years in the industry and working with, you know, several hundred people closely over the last few years, probably thousands over the last 10, is that the businesses that succeed and build a great capital pool, like by capital, I mean money, who save profits from jobs, they can pay their tax bills no problem. They have excess capital. They're not buying all this gear. You know, they're investing in themselves. They're investing in learning how to sell better, learning how to build systems. Maybe they're putting money into some marketing so they can build a greater asset. Now, the key here is about the spending habits you have in your personal life and therefore, how do they transition into your business life? Because it's very easy to justify a purchase in your business and say, well, if I get this light, I'll be able to do X, Y and Z. But the key here is, you know, how else can you deploy that money? You know, I would. I would be saying to myself, you know, if I had a certain amount of capital sitting around, I wouldn't be buying equipment, I'd be putting it into ads. Because I can generate more return on investment. Or I work with a mentor. My mentor's US$30,000 a year and we got on a call once a fortnight in a group situation. But that, that information that I get, the ability to have a high level conversation makes that investment 10 times more valuable than what I'm spending. And so being in the right environment and being able to navigate business decisions and navigate discussions around the best way to deploy available funds is critical. To give you an example, today one of our clients had an issue with a shoot that he'd subcontracted out to a company over in Canada. And the person who is on that project didn't press record on the A cam, which was the camera that was looking down the barrel through the prompter. Now they're gonna have to reshoot. It's caused an awful lot of headaches and hassles. But what we were able to do this morning was discuss in a very private way. I'm not, I'm not gonna talk about names or any involve anyone specifically. But the fact is an example here of a very tough situation where you've got a client who's really piss off, who's having to fly someone across country to reshoot. And so we were discussing and navigating how you would approach that with the, the supplier. But also more importantly, how can we mitigate that risk in future? Things always go wrong in business. Things always go wrong. And, and having a space where you can share that and feel like you're being heard is really important. And I would say that's way more valuable than a new light. And so I think what I wanted to kind of really share today was a piece of guidance really. As someone who's had, who's a recovering gear acquisition addict.

I just offloaded a load of gear on ebay recently and made like 10 grand. And that 10 grand is now sitting in my bank account, not sitting, gathering dust on the shelf. And I can tell you that that that principle is, is what you want to be doing going forward. I, I invested to say US$30,000, 50,000 Australian dollars this year in a mentor. I've been doing that every year for the last 10 years. It, it is such a valuable investment and so anyway that I wanted to share that with you and also just let you know that I'm going to be putting out a very short, sharp offer this week for anyone who is considering really focusing on their business going into 2024. So I'm going to be running two offers. One offer is going to be A half price entry point to my up level program. Now we generally sell that as a lifetime membership. We're going to be doing a 12 month membership for 50% off for 24 hours. So if that's something you're interested in, please look out for your email or drop me and Drop a message denleny.com so it's going to be a time specific 12 months and at the end of 12 months there's an opportunity to go on if you want to and we can discuss that then. But I want to give people the opportunity who perhaps.

Are at a point where they need some help. And then the other thing I want to be doing is offering a sales training. It's going to be based on our main training and I'm calling it the Organic Sales Machine. And I want to teach you how to create and ensure your profile is, is, is optimized for LinkedIn. I'm going to show you how to find leads on LinkedIn using Sales Navigator and using an organic process with scripts, processes and, and frameworks for how to actually reach out to people cold, but to seem very friendly and not at all pushy. Then I'm going to teach you our sales process that all of my clients use to secure high value sales. Then we're going to look at how to quote for maximum profit, including my quoting template. I'm going to show you how to automate your quoting process and also give you a copy of my budgets and quotes book which I'll show you how to articulate when you are presenting quotes. And then I want to share my elite pricing strategy where I want to show you the rates and gear survey we did earlier this year and also the breakdown of a couple of case studies of how I've priced up, you know, $35,000 projects, one day shoots and then how I actually priced up the Sony FS5 launch film. So I'm going to give you real insights into that. And then I'm going to teach you how to manage your cash flow and budgets better, including a bonus section with a specialist media accountant talking about how to run your accounts. So those are going to be on offer this weekend during Black Friday. So make sure you look out for your emails. That's the only place I'm going to be pushing this out is via email and if you're interested just drop me a line denleny.com or join our free group and send me a DM. It's the only sale we're going to do all year. We do one day of sales every year. And as I say, it's going to be on Black Friday. So if you're interested, look out for your emails and I will catch you soon.

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