Practice stretching yourself to get more predictable results. EP #129 - Shorty

G' day guys. It's Dan Lenny here on November 3rd for the how to Scale a video business podcast, Shorty.

So I started doing yoga, which I had no idea making such small slight movements would work so many muscles and also like make you feel so exhausted. It's like, it's way worse going to the gym, but it's also fantastic. And I want to share with you a few things I've picked up along the way from doing it in the last few weeks.

So I, I was at my local farmers market in Noosa here and I met a guy called Richard who has a company called Bonafide Broth and they make freeze dried chicken, chicken broth, bone broth and I've been doing intermittent fasting for a little while now where I kind of don't eat for 16 hours and I eat for eight. And he said, oh, you know, look, the body wants to move and, and I spend a lot of time nowadays, you know, not in location anymore at my desk sometimes 10 hours a day and I find myself getting really stiff and I guess if you're editing you must feel the same. There can be just days when you spend time in front of the edit machine and as a result you get really stiff muscles and neck muscles. And I found that when we moved up here to the Sunshine Coast, I just, I don't go to work anymore. Like I work from home. So when I was in Sydney I used to kind of get on the bike or walk to work and I was in Weworks, there was lots of steps, I was always running around so I became very conscious of just not moving. And I think if you've been some of the guys in Melbourne, Victoria recently and you know, been in lockdown for 11 weeks, one of the challenges was just kind of keeping motivated and keeping yourself sanity and, and as we go into this week, you know, I'm conscious that the UK has gone back into a four week national lockdown. And it's, it's tough, you know, it's not easy and I think one of the things that's important to do is to look after your mental health and your well being. And so I found that I wasn't unfortunate. I wasn't suffering from any kind of, you know, challenges around, you know, feeling down or anything. We're pretty fortunate. We've been largely untouched by coronavirus in Queensland for two or three months now.

But I was conscious of being at my desk a lot and focusing over a screen a lot. And so Richard at the market said look, you should use, try Yoga. And, and I've always sort of loved the idea of you. I've done a couple of classes in the past, but honestly I always felt very self conscious. You know, I'm not the smallest guys and I'm not very flexible. And I guess you feel a bit self conscious, you know, going to a yoga class and thinking everyone's gonna be looking at you. But. So I joined this men's yoga held at the Noosa Yoga center. And they're classes of like eight people. And it's run by Diane and Jeff, who are a couple who've been running it for many, many years. And they actually have a small business, they actually have a lift company, but they also do yoga on the side and they run it above their garage. And it's just incredible. But I was at a session earlier today and just, it was really hard work and I recognized that I'm working way harder in a one hour yoga session than I ever did at the GY because you're holding pauses and you're holding positions for extended periods. And some of the benefits are that I feel like I've had a workout when I've been. But more so mentally I just feel like I'm open and I'm calm and I'm relaxed and just stretching. And so my friend Richard, who's the bona fide broth guy, he said, you know, yoga two or three times a week, it will just do wonders for you. And it got me thinking about David Goggins, you know, and David Goggins, if you've not read his book, Can't Hurt Me, phenomenal book. And I was actually looking at his wife's Instagram. So his wife's got an Instagram account, she's often posting stuff about Goggins. And she was, she put a post out saying, you know, he basically, his daily ritual is just like religious. You know, he stretches for three hours a day, he exercises for two or three hours a day. He is just a discipline machine. And I realized that as creators, one of our biggest challenges is the discipline to do those kind of seemingly mundane tasks over and over again. And so I found that.

As I've matured as a business owner, there's a correlation between the discipline of consistency and output and outcomes. And when I work with clients who are not as disciplined or haven't yet developed the certainty and the consistency around discipline, I see patterns of kind of roller coaster creeping back in. And I think when you're freelance, the roller coaster thing is very real. And I talk to a lot of business owners when we're, when we're interviewing people to come into the program. And you know, the video business accelerator isn't just something you can pay a fee and come into. You know, we have quite a stringent.

Application process and we vet people and you know, we don't take probably half the number of people who apply. But what I see is I get to see into other people's businesses and I get to sense and predict where the problems are and where I see the businesses that have the biggest problems are the ones that are not consistent and kind of find excuses, reasons whatever to not do something consistently because of a story that's running in their head or before because of a habit that's just formed over many years and it's hard to break. And I get it, you know, but if you want to scale your business and by scale it might just mean have a consistent income that you can predict. You know, if I could ask you now, can you predict how much money you're going to make in December, January and February? Could you tell me or would it be a bit like. It depends. There's so much going on and I think especially for the Brits listening who are going into a second lockdown, it's going to be very easy to feel like fearful and worried that the government's not going to pay as much money this time. I think there's a 40% of.

Of self employed. There's going to be only going to be a sort of 40% benefit. But, but I want you to think about this is, is not to rely on government handouts. And look, we've had lots of support in Australia, so I'm not saying they're not important.

But.

Start, you know, people are used to the lockdown now. People are used to working this way. In fact, Gary Vee put a great post out the other day saying, you know, the way in which people work has changed forever and people are going to be moving more and more out of town and coming to the office two or three days. But I digress. So what I want you to think about is how can you support those clients you already have relationships with as you go into second lockdown or if you're somewhere else in the world where it's loosened off. This is a great piece of advice. Regardless of where you are constantly being in touch with your clients and prospects and ringing them up and literally saying, hey, how's it going? How are you being affected by everything that's happening just now? Is there anything we can do to Support you. That's literally all you have to do. But I know that for many creatives, the idea of getting on the phone is terrifying. And you know that's on our website if you're interested in learning a bit more about this. We actually have a free resource which is a follow up script. You can go to the website@denleny.com, click on resources, you can download it for free. And it's a resource that.

It's a follow up script. In fact, I'll just check out now because it might be, it might be a couple of bucks. But the point is, is sometimes you just need a framework. And if you do need a framework, this script is one of those frameworks. It's called the how to Reconnect with Laps Clients and Engage Them Again. And yeah, it's a free script. It's a free script, so you can download that for free. And it's video and it's a strategy to call up your existing clients and just check him. But there's actually some word for word scripts you can use. So why don't you go and download that now from danlaney.com and, and give it a try and if you do get a good result or any result, just let me know on LinkedIn, send me a message on LinkedIn, tell me you've, you've downloaded that, you've given it a go. Because I know that Caleb, one of my clients who's on the show just a few months ago, he's, he's an incredible position just now. He's just been in lockdown for 11 weeks in Victoria and they have 13 projects on the go. They've never been busier. In fact, they're at the point where they're kind of busting at the seams with capacity issues and we're supporting them through that within the accelerator. But if a company in lockdown can get 13 jobs, I want that to be an inspiration to you. I want that to be something that you can ask yourself the question, how are they doing things differently? And if you want to go back and listen to Caleb's episode, it's definitely a great episode. Caleb has a great work ethic, a great attitude and I'll just see if I can find it. Which episode it was that he was on? I think it was roundabout, yeah.

Episode 95. And Caleb and Bailey are smashing it just now. And a couple of other clients in Melbourne who have been in lockdown are having some of the busiest times they've ever had because the market is changing. The market for the way video is created is changing. And so, you know, you have to start working differently. And in doing so, you will create some additional, you know, opportunities for yourself. That's it for this week, guys. I will talk to you again on Thursday.

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's 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. See you next week.