Podcast

G', day, guys. You're listening to the Den Lenny show, the podcast for established video business owners who want to scale smarter, not harder. We talk strategy, systems and the scale method that turns busy founders into strategic CEOs. Jay Moyes was this close to giving up on his video business. He was ready to trade his camera for a wrench and go back to plumbing. But instead, he built a six figure video business and now travels the world doing what he loves. So how did he go from nearly giving up to filming in dream locations worldwide? And what one decision changed everything. If you've ever felt stuck in your creative career or wonder if success is really possible, Jay's story might be exactly what you need to hear today. Well, folks, this week on the podcast, we're talking to Jay Moyes, who is someone I have been working with for a couple of years now. And I just thought it'd be really cool to hear Jay's story today because he's had quite the journey from, you know, literally wanting to go back, potentially going back to becoming a plumber, to setting up a video business and having, you know, a really good six figure year. So, Jay, thanks for coming by the podcast today, albeit virtually. How's life right now, man?

Thank you, Dan. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Yeah, life's good. Life's good. You have your. I'm having a lot more good days and I am having bad days. So, you know, I think that's pretty common, that it's not always going to be high, high, high, but I've definitely had some pretty good highs lately, which is great.

So, yeah, so we are here. What? It's February 2025. You did over six figures last year. Tell me about that journey. Where have you come from? You're in a really good place. You posted something in the community recently where you said you'd set yourself some goals about this time last year and you created some imagery and you ticked a lot of them off. Do you want to maybe start there?

Well, a part of the training that we do here with the vba, the first thing we do is mindset. So there's nothing about anything else. It's just start with mindset, which is a great place to start because if you don't believe something's possible, then you're probably not going to make it happen. So the first year I was doing, you know, everything for everybody, anything, any, anything someone would pay me for, I'd be happy to do so. And then a year after that, just doing a lot more reading, listening to the guys in the group, the weekly calls and just started sort of piecing stuff together. You know, like everything what everyone says or whatever's in music and books and all that, I can see it's all related. Everyone's sort of just got their own interpretation of it. So you start sort of listening to that sort of thing. So then you start to believe things a bit more possible, especially with the mindset training. And then I saw a post on LinkedIn that was similar to like a vision board exercise that you. The 10 maxes do, but it was just using AI with the way that that's come. And yeah, just put in, you know, what do you want your ideal life to look like. And instead of just doing the one image, I decided to do a fair few things, six of them in total actually. Um, and yeah, just started. I left it as it was February mid about this time last year, created those six images and just left them. Didn't sort of look at them every day or nothing. And then by the end of the year came back to it and realized that, yeah, five or six of them I had done. And the similarities between them were, yeah, shocking.

So what were some of those things that you. That you created? What, what were some of the goals that you wanted to achieve? Because we just for the call, we're saying, you know, business success isn't just about money. So what were some of the things that you set out to achieve last year?

One thing I've always wanted to do and where I'm sort of going to with my business is sort of more outdoor adventure work. And one of those things was getting underwater with a camera. Licensed scuba diver, but I've always just taken GoPros and as good as they are and how convenient they are, they still don't create that quality image that I wanted. So I decided to buy housing and fly to the Philippines. And apart from just going diving, do a couple other things there I always wanted to be. So this group's allowed me to do that, to have that freedom to, you know, pack up and go do something. It was only a short trip, but I made it happen. So that was pretty cool. Got underneath under. Yeah, literally just jumped in the water with the camera, $5,000 camera with a $3,000 lens on it and just hoped it would. Hoped it would work. And yeah, it did. And then another one was I. I was in a communal office space just at a private desk. Well, shared desk in a private office space and.

Always wanted my own space, especially to do stuff like this and just have the doors shut and when it comes to editing and color grading, turn the lights off and all the rest of it. So that was another thing that I wanted. And halfway through the year, the office space that I was in called me up and said, one of the spots is opening. Do you want to take it? So, yep, that's another one ticked off. But once again, I didn't actually look back at this stuff. It just sort of. Things just started to happen. So. Yeah, yeah.

And there was a couple of other things in that. It was like. There was like some four 4x4 trips that you wanted to do. There was like road trips. Tell me about them.

Yeah. So once again, sort of on that adventure outdoor sort of side of things, I wanted to do some filming up in the Flinders Ranges down here in South Australia. And I had worked with a client before that we'd done some four wheel drive content for. They end up calling up to book me for another three days. And the image I had was through A.I. the image I had was a four wheel drive, driving around a bend, sort of dusty road. And yeah, when it came down to it, that's the exact stuff we were filming when we went out again that day. Another one was I wanted to go to India and do a bit of a good deed project. And a lady who had been to India before, we had just caught up randomly for coffee here and there and sort of told her what I was thinking of doing and try to give back a little bit. And she said, well, I can make that happen. So we booked a trip and went over there, did it very cheaply and stayed with a few of her friends and worked the whole time I was there on stuff I'm doing back here in Australia and made that happen. And then what was the other one? Just, yeah, adventure as well, getting.

Filming something in the adventure tourism space. And I have a friend who's a photographer and she called me up one day and said, I'm doing an Airbnb shoot over at Kangaroo island and they want some video stuff as well. Would you be interested? So, yeah, of course.

Amazing. So really just, you know, you set very clear intentions for specific things you wanted to achieve in a 12 month period. You wrote them down essentially with the help of AI and then 12 months later, all but one had come to reality.

Correct? Yeah.

So when we go back, like the beginning when we first met, I think maybe a couple years ago now, maybe even longer, tell us where you are at that stage of your journey.

Where I was at, it was pretty. Like I said, before doing a lot of stuff, anything for anyone, that anything would pay me. And I remember having the chat with you, Dan, and I had like, you know, a wedding shot on my website. I can. Construction shot, a food shot, just everything. It was just as. As you start, but. And just thinking that I could solve problems for everybody. But you straight away just gave me the advice is like, you know, your rates are too cheap for starters, and remove the wedding stuff, remove the food stuff, remove the event stuff if you're not doing it. So I was in a place where I could think that, you know, just by doing something and posting it online, someone would see how good a quality it was and I would get work from it. That's just, you know, post one video on Instagram, everybody else would sit in that space and say, I need to get that guy in. And money would just come. That's kind of the mentality I had. Yeah, yeah. And then obviously there's a lot more to it than that and how you do, you know, create a business and put a niche down into. I do this and I don't do that.

I remember at the very beginning you were. You were pretty skeptical, like you were really unsure as to whether or not you should invest in coaching. And I think I even had a chat with your dad or he even kind of like got in touch via. Via email to sort of suss me out. And I think it's important to. To talk about this. You know, there are a lot of shark coaches out there. Right. You know, it's because this space has become flooded with people who've been doing it for five minutes then offering coaching programs. So I think it is. There is a lot of confusion, a lot of apprehension from videographers out there. Talk me through what was going through your head at that time and what your concerns were.

Definitely the biggest thing as even with my own clients, the biggest thing was money. I didn't expect it to be as expensive. Expensive. Where I was in business, it was about twice my monthly revenue at this, at the time, and just couldn't, I think, well, I know on the first five minutes of the phone call I asked you how much does it cost? And obviously you're not going to tell me that because there's a lot of. A bit of a process you need to go through to explain the value of these things and exactly what I do with clients now, you know, it's not just about what it cost. It's. Yeah. So where I was at, I was talking to another couple of people and you've just nailed it with what you said. They've been in this business for five minutes. A couple of the people were younger than I am, you know, and not even in Australia. And it was just that trust factor where we had to, I had to find out who I was, you know, gonna put my trust in because I was definitely keen to do it. Yeah, it was better than the alternative. And yeah, it just came down to like I've mentioned to you before about the. Darren Mostin, the colorist in the UK had been watching some videos of his A7S3 color grading and was trying to learn off of him because he's very good at what he does. Yeah, I watched that video three or four times and it was only once he'd said, you know, and thanks to Den Lenny for giving me this footage that it all clicked. I was like, right, this is the guy, you know.

Yeah, well, funny, funny story. Darren actually cut and graded the original A7S launch film for Sony that I produced. I actually hired Darren to do all the editing and, and, and post and you know, we go back a very, very long way. So, so fast forward you decide to jump into the program. Right, well, so once you made the decision to, to, to step inside the vba, how is that journey for you? What did you do? What was, what do we remember?

I remember it clearly because I had a job that I was going to quote for. It was to a friend of mine up in Queensland and what I would originally have done it for would have been say $3,000. And just from the first little bit of mindset and value that I'm bringing to companies and clients basically doubled my rate on that and they thought it was probably a little bit more expensive than what they were prepared to spend. But I stuck to my guns and before I would have, you know, not even even put that price forward, but stuck to my guns and yeah, knew that I could get the results that they wanted. And that was the first shift for me. And then obviously meeting people in the group as well was a massive, massive bonus because a lot of work had come straight out of the vba. When I, before I joined I was thinking about getting a part time job at night stacking shelves at Coles or Willies or going back to plumbing and then just working when I could. But since joining the VBA that time I just advertised freelance editing and I managed to get some guys out of the elite group, that's the one above, to pay me for their services. It was better money than what I was going to get at Woolies. It was very closely aligned with what I was trying to do and it all just made sense. So, yeah, it was a massive shift.

So how quickly do you think it took you to make your investment back?

Within a month.

Wow. Really?

Yeah, basically just. Basically just off that job that I spoke about with my friend up in Queensland and then.

Just changing my pricing around. Yeah.

Yeah, Amazing. And if you were to work out what your ROI would be from that initial investment, from the day you started to know, any idea what that might be?

I. I wouldn't say even money, like I said before, isn't the thing, the time, like, it's the vba, the video business accelerator. The time I've got back to try to work it all out myself through trial and error is years.

Yeah. Wow.

If it's 100 grand, 200 grand, whatever, years of time is the biggest difference.

Yeah. And what would you be saying to yourself that. That kind of skeptical, quite concerned younger man who was like, oh, wow, this is like, you weren't earning a lot of time, but this is twice what I'm earning in a month. What would you say to someone now who's perhaps thinking, you know, oh, this, this seems like a big investment for me.

What would you say to them that that would help them push through and, you know, jump in, got to work.

Out where you want to be in life and how quickly you want to get there, because you can do it all yourself. Like I just said, it might take you five years, it might take you five months. Depends how clear you are. But I knew where I wanted to go and I knew I couldn't do it by myself. So whether it was through you or through anyone else, I think.

Knowing that it's a little bit of a money to invest, I. Yeah, guarantees are not the greatest thing to say, but I can guarantee you if you put the work in, you'll get your money back. Maybe not in a month. Depends on where you are in your journey. But, yeah, the amount of value in this course is out of control.

Yeah. Talk to me about the community and, and the people inside the vba and, and the, the level of support that you get from. From those other members.

Yeah. So when I first started, it was basically sort of just you den showing up to the calls every week. And since the last, say, six months or so, we've brought in Caleb and Matt. And I remember when I was at tafe, I had one teacher that I really liked and when we had to put our assignments in, she was the only teacher I went to for feedback and, and at the end of the assignments I actually got some feedback back from that teacher saying I know me and you get along but you need to get feedback from multiple people because my perspective can be tainted or not be the exact thing. So not saying that that's in the case of you Dan, but having those three mentors now, basically two people who work in the business in this day and age and someone who's been in the business for years. Yeah, it's a to massive plus.

Yeah, good to hear that. I mean Caleb and Matt have been clients I've worked with for four or five years who have implemented everything we teach and share and transform that into multi six figure businesses. So it's hugely valuable to have their input. But what about the actual community and the members themselves? You know, I often hear people tell me about, you know, the program is amazing, the coaching is great, but the community. Can you articulate to someone who's perhaps working on their own, trying to figure things out, maybe going into Reddit, maybe going to Facebook groups to get advice. Where is the VBA different when it comes to the community?

You've got people who have invested money into coaching, right. So they're very serious about their, what they're doing. You if you're on a Facebook group or a Reddit group or whatever, you've got maybe amateurs, maybe someone who's professional but maybe not too serious about where they're going. Having people that are like minded, are willing to spend the money and the time to get themselves where they want to be is probably the best part of the community. And there's people that are on the same page as you. There's some people that are six months behind and there's people that are 10 years ahead. So within that frame you can find out something that you need to know today that someone's done six months ago or you can see how people speak from people who may be five or 10 years ahead of you. Maybe it's not something you're going to implement right now, but having that stuff in your brain, knowing that that's where in five or ten years I need to be thinking is massively valuable. Yeah, yeah.

And then, you know, there's, there's obviously the, the straightforward business side of you know, how to do X or how do I. But something I see a lot coming up in the VBA is more vulnerable posts. More posts about people who are struggling a little bit. Maybe they're going through a lean month or a tough client or they've got a. Someone posted recently about having a bully client, someone who is really bullying them on price and pressuring them. Tell me about how, how you value that, you know, how does that support you as a young man building a video business?

Well, in those cases it's, you know, you could go home and speak to your spouse or partner about, you know, what's going on in your life in a video business and how this client is affecting you mentally or whatever. But if they're not in that space, it's very hard for them to relay or give guidance. So for those guys and girls that are in the group that can come into someone who's maybe gone through that before or maybe is going through it now and something similar to have that support as well as maybe a spouse or a partner or whatever is just. Yeah, it's incredible.

Yeah. And, you know, you've obviously gotten really busy recently, so I've probably not made as many calls as you'd like. But, you know, do you still use the resources, you know, how do you still take advantage of the community and the resources available to you?

Definitely, yeah. Like you said, probably a bit busy now and don't always line up. Obviously I'm going to take work over the calls because the calls are recorded so we can always come back to them.

But just, just always little nuggets of information that just continue to add value. Whether it's through the training that you guys are continually, continually updating or if it's just through, like I said with before, with Caleb and Matt being on there, these guys are working in the business today. They've got as many problems as we do. Probably a lot of them are more figured out, but they still have problems. And sometimes they're going through their own problems in there and they're getting feedback from us that is helping them. And just having that stuff spoken out is always going to be more beneficial.

Yeah. Do you think? Because it would be easy to have them on a pedestal as being more successful businesses. Them coming in and being as vulnerable and as open as they are about difficult months, challenging situations. How does that make you feel?

Yeah, it feels like you're not alone. And like, like you just said that, you know, you think they're on the pedestal and they've got everything figured out, but they don't. And that's not throwing shade on them at all. They admit it and that's the best thing about it. They're not sitting there saying, you know, I just sit back, people call me, I go out and do videos and everything runs smoothly, like, it's just not it. So it's good to see that.

Yeah. So when you think back to, you know, before you joined the VBA and you were talking to other coaches and you were looking at other opportunities, what was it that that kind of got you over the edge? What is it that made you choose to work with the VBA specifically?

It was just the authority that was the biggest thing for me. Like, you said that one of the guys I was speaking to was younger than me. He wasn't in Australia, for starters, so the calls would have been all over the shop. And just that authority, and knowing that someone has actually done this for 20, 30 years, you're going to get a lot more value out of someone who's been doing it for 20, 30 days or whatever it is. You know, they're probably still working out along the way and. Yeah, everybody's still working out along the way, but if you've got someone who's got that amount of experience, it's hard to pass up. Yeah.

And how do you. How do you feel about being in the vba? How does it make you feel?

It's good.

It's.

It's funny, when I speak to people, even the other video businesses, stuff like that, like, I say, I've got a video, you know, video mentor or a mentor in my business.

People kind of. I don't know, they may be a little bit shocked, you know, I said, oh, right. Well, you know, why would you do something like that kind of thing? But it's like, why I couldn't go without it. Whether it's speaking to you, Dan, or speaking to anyone else in the group, or just having that, you know, that feed that community to bounce stuff off. And even just celebrating wins, like, that's something that I never would have done. I don't really try to show anything that's good that's happening. But if you got to celebrate more of what you want more of.

Yeah. Why do you think that people respond with such surprise when you tell them you've got a mentor? What do you think it is about filmmakers where that wouldn't make sense when you think that every professional athlete has a coach, the greatest tennis players in the world have a coach, and their coaches aren't necessarily still playing tennis, but they're great at coaching someone playing tennis. Why do you think there's such reticence from videographers to invest in themselves? You know, I often hear people saying, I want to buy a new R6 and a whole set of New lenses or I want a new. The new Blackmagic 12K camera. And it's a real, like, there's a kind of almost a sense that if they've got better gear, they're going to be producing better work, which then will end up making them be able to charge more. But of course, that's not what happens in reality. What's your take on that as a filmmaker who, who has invested in coaching as opposed to people who maybe look at you a bit weird when you go, yeah, I've got a mentor.

Yeah, I fully get the argument for buying more gear because we're all.

We'Ve all done that. And I, like I said at the start, I used to think I'd shoot pretty videos and, you know, get pretty clients. I thought that's the formula. But for people being their reactions, I'm not too sure really why. Maybe it's just a mindset shift that, you know, they need to go through to realize that it's much easier to go with a group who's doing it and, you know, living it day to day than it is to just go by yourself. Not too sure.

Yeah. So anything else you want to share about, about your journey and where you've got to and how you feel about that?

Well, first, I'd just say thanks to you and the VBA community. It's been awesome. It's. Yeah, it's changed my life for sure. And I know I even speak to friends now about just, you know, general conversations, but they can tell how much I've changed in the last couple of years since being in this group. And.

Yeah, I look forward to changing even more in the coming years.

That's awesome, man. Well, it's been an absolute joy to watch your journey expand, to see you having commercial success, to see you achieve life goals and, you know, I'm excited to see where you take it next. And, and like we were saying earlier, you know, success is not just measured in terms of what, how much you make, but how much time you have. And, you know, you're often away in foreign countries doing, doing cool things. So I hope that you, that you continue to do that.

No, I appreciate it for sure. It's been, yeah, it's been such a good journey and I'm looking forward to what's ahead. And I think honestly, from where I came from for being in the plumbing industry to now doing this, like some days driving to work, driving to the office just to do a day's editing, like, I honestly feel like the happiest person on the road, listening to music, cruising window down. It's like I've said it to myself a few times, like there's no one as happy as I am right now going to work. So.

That's amazing, man.

Yeah, incredible. Well, mate, thanks for sharing your story. I think it's inspirational. Hopefully it will help someone listening to this or watching this, you know, just. Just seek some support and yeah, it's really cool. Let's just do this again another year and see where you're at then.

Sounds good. Thanks, Dan. I appreciate your time.

This is the Dan Lenny Show. If you've built a solid production business but feel stuck in the grind, it's time to think bigger. Over the past 14 years, I've helped 178 companies generate more than 52 million in documented growth using the scale method and our elite mastermind. If you want to create predictable pipelines, attract higher value clients, and finally buy back your time, head to denlenny. Com. That's where the next level begins.