Start getting realistic about growth and stop being impatient - 'Shorty' EP#60

G', day, guys. Here we are, Tuesday again, the 4th of February. This is the sixth week of the year already. Where the hell did January go? Anyway, I just want to drop in here on Tuesday with these little shorties. One of my contacts just called it a shorty. I quite like that. That's. Thanks for that, Colin.

So today I wanted to really share.

Something along the lines of, you know, patience.

I feel that as creatives, it's not something that happens naturally for us, is being really patient.

And yet.

The lack of patience means we can often be really unrealistic when we set things in motion, especially from a marketing perspective. So, you know, I want to talk about LinkedIn, for example. We've had some really great success on LinkedIn recently and it's like it's. There's no secret recipe other than, you know, we know our market and if you know your market and you talk to your market about things that you know that they.

Care about or are anxious about or have challenges around, you're going to connect. And what I've got to tell you about LinkedIn is that it's, you know, there is definitely an art and a science to it, but it's not complicated. And the thing that I see people fall down with more than anything else is a lack of a commitment to consistently posting. Like the way it works is an algorithm. The more you post, the more engagement you have, the more the algorithm thinks here you're somebody of influence. And so they'll show your content to more and more people. And for some reason a lot of filmmakers and creatives just don't put the effort in to being consistent. And it is.

The single easiest way to grow your network is to have an amazing profile. Use Sales Navigator to connect with people in a cool way that's not cheesy or salesy and then actually deliver amazing content. It's just that simple. Just give them great content and don't want for anything. If you come to it from a place of your heart where you actually want to help people and share with people your perspective, that's all there is to it. Oftentimes I hear people say, oh, I'm going to put together like, you know, three weeks worth of content and then build up and it's not the way to do it, guys. You've got to just start posting today. Just start doing. The wonderful thing about Instagram, sorry, LinkedIn, probably Instagram as well, is that if your content sucks, it will be sucked into the ether and no one will see it if it doesn't Suck, then it will hang around. We're on a coaching call this morning and someone on the call said, I had a bit of content that I put out like a month ago and people are still commenting on it now. That is phenomenal. So my first tip for you today is get out of your own way and just do something like. And the second tip is you have to know your target market. Probably the most controversial topic that I discuss is the idea of niching down or niching down. And people get so hung up on this. I'm talking about niching down from the point of view, from a marketing perspective. Now you can niche or niche in a particular sector or in a specific industry, but I have a couple of clients and they work across two or three different sectors. And so their marketing message goes out to all of those three sectors. But if you try and market to everyone, you, you'll end up talking to no one. So it's really important that you start to think about the sectors that you want to work within and start there. So today on our weekly coaching call, it was a planning day. And so what we're doing is looking at the month ahead and saying what are the most significant things that you can focus on outside of production that will have an impact on taking your business higher towards the goal? Now, to put some context, you're probably somewhere between 5 and 7,000 tasks away from achieving your 10 year goal. And that might be a financial goal, it might be a revenue goal, it might be to live somewhere. You know, five years ago I was living in the UK and now I live in Australia. I'll talk about that a bit later. But.

You'Re sort of 5,000 tasks away from achieving that goal. So the only way to tactically approach that is to break that down into smaller chunks. So a year at a time and then 90 days at a time, and then a month at a time and then a week at a time and then a day at a time. And that process will help you chunk down the overwhelming list of things to do. And you'll always be focusing on the most pressing priority, which, to be honest, should virtually always be marketing and sales. Because for businesses under $500,000 a year in revenue, marketing and sales should be the business owner's number one priority. When you get bigger, you can start to automate some of that, subcontract some of that and put systems in place. But marketing and sales should be number one priority. And marketing starts with knowing who, who you're talking to, what it is you offer, and finding the best platform or route to get your message in front of those people. And for us in the video business accelerator, by a country mile, LinkedIn is dominating that at the moment. But let me give you a caveat. It doesn't happen quickly. So back to the topic of patience. You simply can't do a handful of posts on LinkedIn and hope that people are going to start calling you up and asking you to book for work. It's just not going to happen. So you've got to think of this from a long term perspective. And that's probably the biggest challenge facing every small business, not just filmmakers or video production companies, is that things take time. Things. Remember, if you've got to achieve, let's call it a million dollars in revenue as a benchmark. Now, revenue and profit are different things, but that's for a different conversation. But let's say you wanted to generate a million dollars in revenue and walk away with $200,000. What needs to happen to generate a million dollars worth of sales? How many people do you need to speak to to generate a million dollars in sales? And you break these down into smaller tasks and you build systems around the way in which you're going to achieve that. And the only way to do that is by actually doing it yourself first. And the number. The first place to start is identifying who you're talking to when you understand who you're talking to. I'm talking about a single representation, one person who represents your market. Once you spent time talking to them, you can get to understand everything about that person. What they want, what they desire, what they don't want, what their problems are. And you can find a way to match their needs by creating content. Because when you push that content out to the market, people will start to resonate. They'll think, hey, this person understands me. Oh, they must have the solution. And you will begin to build a level of expertise around your, you know, your, your area of expertise. You become an authority by writing content. You are authoring the authority. And what LinkedIn is so good for, and the content on LinkedIn is so good for is, is authority building. It's land grabbing authority. And the more consistently you post, the more the platform will recognize you. So I've recently got my author badge because I just post consistently. I post three to four times per week on LinkedIn and it really is that simple. Now, there's obviously a bit more to it in terms of how I write my profile. None of it is by accident. Everything is deliberate. I have systems and processes around attracting the right kind of people into my feed. I have very clear systems and processes around the kind of content we produce. We track all of that content. But I have been trending repeatedly for the hashtag video production, so I kind of know what I'm doing now. I figured out how to hack the system, but the great thing is there's no kind of black hat things going on. It really is in large about knowing your market, understanding the market, and creating content that they want to hear and see. And it's had some incredible results which I want to share at some point in more detail. I've had a few people reaching out and asking if I'd do something on LinkedIn, so I'm thinking of putting some sort of course together. But what I wanted to see was.

4Th and 5th of March in Melbourne, I'll be hosting my quarterly Mastermind event and we usually have a couple of spare seats for the first day. Day one, where if someone's been interested in learning more about the Mastermind program, we actually invite you along. We have a little chat and we think there's a good fit. We'll invite you along to the first day and you can sit in for the day and be part of the group and meet the other guys in the group. So if you're interested in exploring that, reach out to me on LinkedIn, mention the podcast and we can set up a chat. But other than that, guys, that is my quick shorty for today and I'll talk to you soon. 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 group that you might be in. See you next week.