The Five Must-Follow Marketing Tips for Videographers! EP #350

Grad Jamison, video mentor extraordinaire. The reason that I wanted you to be involved in this was because you are a rare breed of accomplished filmmaker, business owner, have built a team, started life as a videographer, but actually, you love marketing. And we were just saying before this recording, like, marketing is the number one skill that if you can master as any business, but specifically a filmmaker, it can change everything in your business.

Thanks, Dan. Good to be here. Yeah. So I started Lyft at the start of 2020, which was the perfect time to start a business. Covid absolutely shut that down within months, but we still managed to survive, which was. Was awesome. We've slowly built our way up. We've made a few mistakes along the way. I think I spoke to you this about this before, but, you know, we niched in the wrong space. Um, I messed up a big 200k contract, which still eats. Eats at me now. Um, but now, four years on, you know, we're getting one to two leads a week. We've got over, I like to say, over 43 clients. Look, that's a little. Put a little bit of mail on that just because, you know, you know, one client might spend 5K with us a year for three years. And I've.

I've counted that.

But, you know, 43 plus clients, and we've got a team of three now. So it's been a bit of a journey, but it's. It's super exciting to be here. And I think if I can nail it down to one thing, it's. It's just getting comfortable with marketing. And that's something I'm really passionate about. I started off hating marketing, hating the idea of putting myself out there, and now it's just kind of part of life. It's just a habit that we've gotten into. So. And I think you've always said marketing is everything, isn't that right?

Yeah. I learned this from another mentor, and he said, marketing is everything and everything is marketing. And then I think another mentor said, if you are making less than $1 million a year revenue, you are a marketing business, nothing else. And I think what they meant was, all of your effort needs to be on filling your pipeline, getting in front of new opportunities. And we often talk about it at the vba. It's like your number one job is just to create some visibility for what it is you offer to the market, because value is only created when you solve a problem. And the biggest problem that I think face most videographers, most filmmaking companies, is they just don't do any marketing. They just rely on word of mouth, hope the phone will ring. And as we've experienced in the last few months, for a lot of freelancers, that's really changing. Why do you think.

Filmmakers, on the whole, are so adverse to marketing?

Oh, that's a tough question. I think it's because we're so used to being behind the camera and we don't really like getting out in front of the camera. Possibly is one. One reason. And the other reason is it's hard to know what to post about. It's hard to know what to market. Like, we're not marketers necessarily. We haven't been trained in that. We've been trained in filmmaking. We go into film school. We love cameras and the techy kind of stuff. So marketing is like this whole other world.

Yeah, I think you're right about the being behind the camera. I think a lot of videographers, filmmakers, whatever you want to call yourself, are actually introverts. But we don't want to be in front of the camera. We want to be behind the camera, composing, framing, telling the story. And I think the idea of marketing is that you've got to somehow put yourself out there, and you do to some degree. And we were just saying before this call, you know, we can say with lots of experience, hey, he's got to get the confidence to get up and do it anyway. But as you said, that's. That's harder than it seems at times if you, if you lack a bit of confidence. I think the fear of rejection is so great in us creatives because. Because the skill that makes us so good at what we do is an understanding of subtlety, is an understanding of nuance, is an understanding of human behavior. But that vulnerability can leave us susceptible to feeling a little bit naked, a little bit fearful to. If I put myself out there and someone says no, will that knock my confidence? Is that something that you have experienced or seen others?

Absolutely. I still get a little anxious sometimes posting now I've been doing for like four years. So I think it's important, though, to not get disheartened. You need to stay consistent and, you know, give yourself baby steps. Like, it might be just to start off with, like, don't give yourself this huge task where you're going to create a series of videos or something like that for LinkedIn. Just start off small. Just do a little. Today we're on set with this customer. We're helping them create a new brand video. I'm super excited to get this out like it's. It's baby steps. Right. It's not trying to, you know, conquer the world in one LinkedIn post. It's just slowly working your way up and you'll gain more confidence the more you post. And that's sort of what I've seen along the journey is I started off, probably got like two or three likes a post, and then people forget about it anyway. So, yeah, it's also that little bit of like, no one's thinking about you as much as you're thinking about you. So that's kind of freeing in a way. Right. Because it means you can just post something and if it doesn't stick, well, no one really saw it anyway.

Yeah, it just. It just reminded me of something, which is a lot of times in the Cross, the people we work with.

I think there's a propensity for filmmakers, videographers, creators, producers to think everything, everything I do has to be of an absolute 100% standard. Because I think there's a misconception in the mind of the filmmaker that says, hey, what I put has to be perfect, otherwise the person watching it might judge me and think my work is bad and therefore not harm me. Is that something that. Where have you seen that show up and how you perhaps overcome that? Is that something you ever experienced in your own work?

I think it's easy to get obsessed with, like, the details. I see a lot of videographers fine tuning their showreel over and over again and not. Not sharing it, not posting it. Just like, I'm still working on it. It's almost there. So my kind of motto is done is better than perfect. And I think with social media, it's so fast and it's moving so quickly that you're just holding yourself back. If you're holding onto some content and spending weeks developing it, much better to get it out and move on to the next thing. For me, it's all about consistently posting decent quality content rather than sporadically posting incredible content. Yeah.

So a little. And often beats.

Yeah.

One or once a month, I think.

So it's like A plus consistency with B plus. B plus quality.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's interesting because, I mean, we've known each other quite a few years now, and I've seen your journey evolve enormously and. And you're now a bit of a LinkedIn guru. A lot of people within the VBA have you on a bit of a pedestal, which normally makes you feel really uncomfortable, but they just see you producing this consistent work. And I Think you've just hinted at it that, like I was saying to someone on a call this morning that, you know, you will spend an hour on a Sunday putting together your LinkedIn post of the week because you want to get it done and dusted out. The way.

I hear a lot of videographers who say they want to grow, they say they want success, they say they want to have more leads coming in and more customers. But Saturday and Sunday, they're not working on that because it's a weekend. And what do you think is the block? What changed for you when you were grad Jamison videographer with a handful of clients, what was the turning point for you? But you went, I wanted to just put some extra effort in here because I have this desire for this outcome and this goal and I realized the time I'm allocating to it, it's not enough.

Yeah, I think it was just kind of this realization that if, you know, if it's quiet now, then three months ago I had a marketing problem. You know what I mean? So it's like, what can I do? So that in three months time where we're not quiet, we've got work, we've got a pipeline. And the answer to that was creating content. So then the question becomes, well, what kind of content do I create? And that's actually really hard because you, before you can get to that, you need to work out what your target market is, right? You need to work out who you serve and who your clients are, and that informs the kind of content you create. So in the bba, we talk about the Ask framework, which is going back to your customers and asking them a series of questions. So that's the best way to start because you literally, if you record that call with a client and ask those questions, they give you a goldmine of information of content that's going to be relevant and resonate with more people like them. So you pin, you take out those key little moments from the Ask framework, you turn that into, into different types of content. For me, that's LinkedIn posts, and then it sort of snowballs from there.

What have been Your most popular LinkedIn posts? And have there been any that have really surprised you?

Yeah.

Yes.

Sometimes you just. Sometimes I'll spend hours on a post and it will go nowhere. Other times I'll just have like this stupid thought and I'll just post it and it'll go nuts. Like one that went really well for me was I was traveling to Perth and I was like, hey, here's a hack to get more done in your day is you fly to Perth and then you get four hours of your time back. It was just a stupid thought I had and people love that. Now all, of course you can't always be doing sarcastic kind of content like that. But that's the kind of content that's one that's worked for me really well. The other kind of content that I see that works really well is. And you can't do this too much, but it's a bit of a founder story. It's sort of a transformation kind of thing. So if you look back and find some old photos of yourself and then you might find a photo of yourself today, and then you might write sort of a story of the evolution of you and your business. Now, don't always post this kind of content, but it's really effective at showing people who you are and what you stand for and where you've come from and the challenges you face. So that's a really good sort of foundation for a post. But that's all about us, so we don't want to do that too much. The other kind of content that works really well is. And this is so stupidly simple and again, this is just to mix in. But just being on set, taking a selfie with your client and tagging them in it, I know it's not super deep necessarily and you can still create other deep content, but it's just so effective at tapping into their network, showing that you're having a good time, that you're easy to work with and the kind of work that you do. So that's my favorite, like easy. I'm not sure what to post. I'll just share like a behind the scenes selfie. Super easy to start with.

I wonder if you, you might do this already, but I'm just thinking here, got my clapper board and I know that clients love the clapper board and I wonder if you got clients doing the clap. Yeah. On set and you posted that. I would bet they would share that with just so many of the friends.

We only have a clapper board because our clients like to clap it. That is the only reason.

Yeah.

Behind the scenes it is really good.

You know, most, most clients spend their life in corporate, behind the table and the desk and you know, in a booth. Making, making videos is a lot of fun.

Yeah, it's a lot of fun. And I think that's a really important point is showing that you're having a good time and that you're easy to work with and the client's having fun. It smiles. I, I think that's an underrated marketing tactic. Yeah.

You, you posted something just last week on LinkedIn and actually we turned it into a, to a Facebook ad to test it because we both, we both love marketing and we love testing stuff. And the post starts. I officially started my business live video production 1,693 days ago. And then you went into a great story about. Was January 2020 the ideal time to start a business? No. Did I underestimate the work involved? Yes. But today I have an amazing team, a healthy business and a home working in the transport and logistics space. It was a long road to get there with a fair share of fuck ups, including. And you go into the fuck ups. Yeah, but what I loved about that was it's, you know, I think when you're, when you're marketing, you can't take yourself too seriously, can you? You've got to kind of have a bit of tongue in cheek.

Yeah, absolutely. And that's a, that's a good example of like your founder journey kind of story. People love to see a bit of a transformation. People love to know, like some of the failures, not all the failures, but just some of them. Yeah. And they love to see where you are now. So I think that kind of content is really effective. And then, you know, you can do a similar thing for your customers. If you've had a really great result with a customer, talk about it. Talk about the results you've gotten. Show that transformation in the content that you share.

That does. I can't, I can't have you on this, this podcast and not talk about the Holden video that you made.

You love making comedy stuff. And I think this is what's really. I hope someone watching this or listening to this takes us away, that you can have a lot of fun with marketing and actually create some great content which in turn kind of sells what you do to your audience by you actually using the very skills that you're trying to sell, the filmmaking skills to your audience by making a film. It's a, it's a crazy concept. Sell video by making a video about you. But can you hear a bit about that, that particular story? Because. Because it leads into a couple of things. One being it was really a lot of fun. But second thing, you've used it again and again and again and it keeps kind of having a great life of its own.

Yeah. I genuinely believe that humor is like the most effective form of marketing that videographers can use. So with the Holden Nova video. I had this 1996 Holden Nova, so a fairly old sedan with a few issues. And I made a parody video like it was a slick new car commercial. And we filmed it and we got like a professional voiceover, essentially tried to make it a carbon copy of a professional car ad, but just with my crappy old Holden Nova, and it went down really well. People loved it. I think it's just. It's just fun piece of content. It breaks through the noise, and particularly on LinkedIn, it can get a bit stuffy. You probably notice that it's a lot of, like, congratulations on your last promotion and that kind of thing. So when you can share, you know, when you can share something that's just a bit funny at. It cuts through the noise. It's a bit different. I think that is a. It's such a great way to stand out. Yeah.

Okay, cool. Well, look, I think, you know, and you made this great suggestion, which is you wanted to come on this podcast as long as you could share some. Some observations or some tips that you've picked up along the way with our viewers and listeners. Why don't we get into that? Why don't we start, you know, creating some actionable steps that someone who's perhaps a little further down in the journey from you, like, maybe not quite as established or even if they are, like, what are some of the things that you've learned that. That you could share with with the audience?

Yeah, absolutely. I've got some good tips to get started. And I found. I was looking for a freelance videographer the other day, and I found this really frustrating is I. I kept stumbling across people calling themselves like corporate filmmaker and cinematographer, but doing corporate. And so a lot of language, a lot of different language that I think for people that aren't in the industry wouldn't understand. So that kind of got me thinking. Well, I think what a lot of videographers aren't doing is getting their positioning. Right, getting the language that they use to describe themselves. Right. So how do you identify? First of all, do you identify as a videographer or as a filmmaker? Because what's going to make sense to your target market if you're trying to attract businesses, then calling yourself a filmmaker is probably not going to attract businesses, but it might work for agencies. Is that if that's what you're after. So what's going to make sense to your target market when you call yourself. So at Lyft, we help marketing and communications teams with video content focusing on the transport space. That means customers that we essentially just call ourselves a corporate videographer. Jock's our lead videographer. I refer to myself even as a videographer, even though I'm not the one going out and shooting, because that's the language that they use. So you really need to be using the language that your customers use. That's sort of. My first general tip is working out the language that your customer use and then, you know, correcting that. The second lesson that I just wanted to share was don't get disheartened. I think it's really easy when you're posting content and you get really excited and you share it for like two weeks and you get nothing, and then you kind of crumble, John. I mean, like, you kind of go, this isn't working. But the thing is, with video is, it's. It's quite a considered purchase. It's not like a $10 novelty pair of socks that I impulse purchased on TikTok the other day. It's something.

It's all like my treadmill walking pad that's under my desk that looks terrible on camera. That's like an impulse purchase. Video production isn't like that. It's a considered purchase. Your potential customers, they're not going to see one post and purchase. They may not even see. They may not even, like, engage with your content. Time and time again, we've had people come through it through our Get a Quote funnel that have never engaged with my content, but have seen us on LinkedIn. So it's important to remember that you might be posting content and you're not seeing engagement, but it doesn't mean that people aren't watching. And it also doesn't mean that you should stop. It's about consistently posting relevant content. So when your audience is ready to buy, you've already built trust and credibility because you've just been consistently hammering out relevant content three days a week for six months. And I think at a minimum, you need to be posting your content three days a week, and you need to do it for six months. And then you can look back and go, well, what did well and what did not as well? And how can I make more of the content that did well? So that's my kind of second. Second lesson, I guess, is just don't get disheartened in two weeks. If your content is bombing, you need to keep pushing and testing and trialing.

And the reality is that building a business takes a lot longer than you think.

Oh, my God.

Not as long as you think. If you look back over the last Five years. How far lifts come in the last five years? It's, it's incredible. But when you're starting out, it seems like so far away.

Seems so far away. So it really is just consistently posting content. And you'll find that even the content that bombs, you'll get lurkers that might mention it to you in a call. We've had a couple of customers go, I saw this post. You did? And I really liked it. That's why I wanted to get in touch. And I looked back and I was like, you didn't engage? And it got like three likes. And I thought it was a dead post. So you don't actually always know just based on the LinkedIn metrics necessarily, but.

By posting frequently, you're always being seen. And I think it's that being seen makes it look like you're always busy, because you are always busy. But you can actually kind of fake it a little bit as well. You know, you can post old content and the key is to, if you're consistent, whenever someone who could be a client is on LinkedIn, they're seeing that you're out on a shoot somewhere and they don't, they don't think any more than that. It's like, oh, that's that guy again, 100%.

And I, I repost content all the time. I like, regularly. I call it like my evergreen content because I can just use it again and again. So you might just like, change the image that you use with it, or you might change the hook, but once you've kind of posted for six months, you'll see that you've got, like, absolute winners. And you can just repost those every three, four months and maybe just tweak them a little bit. And then you don't have to be always creating fresh content, which is exhausting. Right?

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Awesome. Great tips. Give me more. Cool.

I've got more. I've got some more. We have touched on this already, but, and maybe this is controversial, but I'm all about the A plus consistency and B plus quality. And I, I don't mean that in a. In a bad way. Like, obviously the quality still has to be good, but it's more about the fact that you just have to be consistent and keep posting. Like, and we've just touched on this, but I don't think I can undersell how important it is to just be consistent and keep posting content. That's the, that's the lesson. It's such a short one. That's a really short one. But it's just.

But also I've noticed that, you know, you're not, you're not. You don't take yourself so seriously that you're ensuring that every single picture of you is super flattering. Like, sometimes there's a picture of you squinting at the camera, looking side on and like, some people might be like, I don't want people to. You know, we have an impression of how we think we look versus how we actually look.

Yeah.

But I think the fact that you're just willing to post whatever shows that you're just. You're focused on the consistency and getting job done for your clients. And the thing that I, when I show people your profile, which I do frequently as an example of how to do it well, it's just such a different mix of content as well. And so there's lots of variety, but you can see there's. There's certain themes that appear again and again and again. And the thing that always stands out for me, with you being working in transport logistics, there's a lot of trucks and a lot of high vis, which actually is a visual language of the industry you're working in. And so when potential clients see you, they go, well, he's already suited and booted in the high vis. He's probably done the training, he knows all the compliance, he knows all the safety issues and he's there with trucks. So why would we go anywhere other than the guy who does trucks? And I know that some of your big clients, and they're big, big clients fly you all over Australia when they could absolutely get a crew locally, but they want you because of your expertise, 100%.

And I had a call yesterday with someone and he said, as soon as I saw all your high vis, I got excited.

Yeah.

I was like, oh, amazing. That's. That's exactly what we want. If I was like, great, we basically live in hi vis. And he was like, oh, I doubt that. And I was like, no, it's like, literally, we live in Hybez, basically. So I think that's a really good point. It's about, I guess, creating. Creating that content and even the imagery, it's all about your customer and what's going to resonate with them.

Yeah. Something is really sticking out for me that, you know, that I know I very much stand behind, but it's great to teach it and then see it implemented and then hear you teach it back to this audience, which is you've just got to put all your effort into what is the client's result, what is the result they want? If you focus all of your energy on that.

You will win forever. They'll keep hiring you because you're not making about you. You're not making it about the gear, the frame rate, the lenses, the aperture, lights or the whatever, whatever rubbish. You know, the trend of the day. The clients just couldn't care less.

I think that's been a really big lesson for me as well is it's not about 4k, 8k, 10 bit red lighting, whatever. It's just about how can we get the clients the results they want by using video. That's as simple as that, right?

Yeah.

So, so for example, a big one for us is recruitment. So, you know, it's not, obviously we try to make pretty pitches, but it's not just about making pretty pictures, it's how can we help them find more quality applicants by using video in their next recruitment campaign.

Yeah, nice, nice.

I've got one more, I've got one more tip. I just want to share some content ideas just to get people's brains ticking. I've got some do's and I got some do not do's just to help videographers starting out with marketing. They don't know where to start. Just some easy, easy stuff. And the thing I'll say is if you're stuck and you're listing, you can go to my profile and you can steal my formula, you can probably don't steal my story, but you can steal the way I write. Whatever, I don't care, just do it. Just get yourself started.

Yeah.

So the first content idea is the behind the scenes. We talked about this already, but I just cannot hammer in how easy it is and effective to just post some behind the scenes photos or video and tag your customer in there. Like that's easy. It's pretty easy, right? That's, that's easy. You can do the second one, the founder journey. That does take a bit longer. We spoke about that. It's really good, I find, at inspiring people and it generates a bit of discussion from your customers and then people that have worked with you will comment and go, wow, you know, it's always been a pleasure working with you, that kind of thing. So that's pretty good real time sharing of what's been working for your customers. So the kinds of content they're working on and what that's doing and that often doesn't get a huge amount of likes or anything. But for the people that that's relevant to, they will read it and they will respond to it. And I think that's really powerful. So we did a post, it was all about, it was like best practices for creating video in the transport logistics space. And I had a look at the people who engaged with that, that piece of content and they were some pretty high up people in some pretty high transport companies and they never engage with any of my other content. So it just goes to show that posting relevant content is just super critical.

Then you can go into things like what kind of challenges your clients are having and what sort of trends you're seeing in their space. And how they're using video to solve those challenges is always a helpful one. What I would say is have less of the five tips on doing this and five tips on the best gear and the five. Your clients don't care really about that sort of stuff. Remember, it's. It's not about the video. Like it's not about the actual video, it's about what they can do with the video. So less AI drivel I think. I think we've all seen enough. I see a lot of people just make a mid journey photo and then copy some ChatGPT. It's okay to use ChatGPT to get your idea fleshed out, but you can't just copy and paste it because it's so obvious. When a post is like in today's digital world, you know we're evolving to do, it's not. Mate, you've lost me. Just talk like a human talk like you would normally. Some of my best posts are ones where I'm a bit flippant, a little bit sarcastic and it's just literally like I'm talking to you in real life.

And let your personality come through. Don't feel you have to be like, apply this business personality because it's LinkedIn.

That's exactly right. It's like, yeah, let your personality come through. I think you've nailed that then. And then my final tip, and it might be a little controversial, but I would probably share less of your finished projects. Share occasionally, but I find that the people on LinkedIn don't really care that much about looking at some other company's video unless you can really highlight how it helps them. I personally have just found very little success sharing our finished work on LinkedIn. Not really sure why that is. I can only assume people just don't care about other businesses. I don't know.

I think, I think it's like that earlier. You know, we care much more about us than anyone else does and I Think we care much more about the finished project that we've like sweated over that. Unless you are the client, no one else really cares.

Yeah, exactly. And then the final one is like, customer testimonials are good, but you'll find they don't always get a ton of engagement. But I think that's okay because it's still reinforcing the trust and credibility thing. So, um, it's like, don't get disheartened again if it doesn't perform that well. I found that customer testimonials don't usually perform that well. Sometimes a video one does, but generally they don't. But it's still worth sharing because even if people don't really like it, it just shows that. It shows that social proof element. Right?

Yeah. And one thing you didn't mention was something I know a lot of people get quite.

Fearful of, and that is the idea of building lists of job titles like marketing managers or HR managers inside the sales navigator, and, and reaching out to them and beginning a conversation, which is an important part of, and probably the most uncomfortable part of this process for a creative person. Yeah, you talk a bit about that, what that is, how important it is. And, and you know, I know you did it for, on your own for a while and now you outsource it, but, but you still put a big emphasis on that because you're always filling your viewer list with, with new people. Can you share a little bit about that side of it?

Can't believe I missed that little, that little nugget in there too. So outreach is incredibly important. I think you have to be doing some sort of outreach, particularly if you're just starting out and you don't have a huge amount of customers. So for every hundred messages we send, I think we've worked out that we get three calls from that. So it's just about generating opportunities. And it's a, it's a numbers game. It's. You can't be sitting there analyzing someone's job title, trying to work out if they're the right fit for you. It's more of a message. See if they connect, send a second message and go from there. So we actually generated a 50k a year customer the last 3 years from doing outreach. And they were in our first batch of messages that we sent.

And they've become, yeah, one of our strongest customers and that was through outreach. So today we're generating one to two leads a week and I would say the majority of those are through LinkedIn. And I reckon most of those are from doing the outreach. But it's not like you send the message and they go, yes, I need a video right now, Take my money. It's more like they don't respond. And then three months after seeing your consistent content that you're posting three days a week, then they go, hey, we've got a video coming up, can we chat about that? We want to do some stuff. And that's when you, you know, that's when you start to see the results.

I think there's a statistic and I don't know how accurate it is, but I, I believe that if you post something on LinkedIn, the algorithm will show it to 8% of your contact list, as in people who either follow you or you connected with. And so if your contact lists full of like other filmmakers, then you're kind of diluting who the message is going to get in front of. And one thing I did a long, long time ago was I basically, and it took me like, I think about six hours, I went and manually deleted anyone in my connection list who was not in the video business. Because you want to show your content to the right people. And then I believe, and no one really quite understands or knows, but apparently if someone comments and likes on it in the first hour, it then gets shown to like 23% of the audience. And then if it gets lots of engagement, it gets shown to more.

Yeah, so I think there's some truth.

To that thing to remember as well, but something that, that I think I hear a lot of feedback from people who are, who are thinking about doing this and they get, get quite concerned about the rejection part of it is.

There are times when you'll send a message to Someone. Even though LinkedIn is a peer to peer business networking platform, there is going to be time and we've seen a bit more of it recently. But people are like, no, stop bothering me. I don't want whatever the hell you're selling. And it's easy for someone who is lacking a bit of confidence and is a bit of an introvert to, to go through the trouble of doing all of this. And then they get, they physically get rejected by someone who's just having a bad day.

How do you deal with that? And, and you know, how do you, how do you process that rejection part?

Yeah, it sucks. Some people can be quite nasty. I think maybe they think you're a robot on the other end instead of a real person because, you know, we're not, it's not like I'm cold pitching to them in the first message. I'm not like messaging them like, buy my video now, when can we catch up for a coffee? Or something like that. It's purely like a, hey, you know, we work with Mark Comms people creating quality video content. Is it all right if we connect? So, you know, it is surprising sometimes the messages I get that are rejecting that when it's. It's more like I see the opportunity for us to actually help you with something that we're good at. It's. This is a. It's a valid connection request. Right? But the way I kind of deal with. I just kind of laugh it off, shrug it off. I say, hey, no worries. Thanks anyway for connecting. I don't think there's any other way around it. I think you just kind of have to build a bit of a thick skin. It's still. Sometimes I still get a bit like, oh, sorry, mate, like, whatever. Yeah, the thing that helps those. Having a va do it for me has really helped because it kind of takes away the.

That you don't really deal with the initial. You get a list at the end of the week with his responses and I think you've got that distance to then go, hey, no worries. But you know what, there's one of our colleagues, Sammy, in the vba.

We did a similar thing for him for a long time and he had someone literally shout him down one day going, oh, yeah, I wonder where the crap you're selling it. And then he said, it's hilarious. Like, nine months later, this person came back somewhat sheepishly saying, we actually do need some live streaming. So I think you've just got to develop and I think it's a good point to bring here. You know, I think as filmmakers we're generally quite, quite sensitive to a lot of things and I think that's what helps us become great storytellers.

But I think you have to learn to develop a thick skin, don't you? You have to just learn the context of what's going on. Someone's responding to you the negative way. You probably just caught them at a bad time. Any, Any tips for how you've built some resilience in. In. In. In accepting that occasionally you're going to get rejected?

Oh, that's a tough question. Because to be honest, it's more just having done it for so long now that I kind of just shrug my shoulders, move on to the next person and I, I guess, you know, one thing you can do is just think about all the positive.

Relationships that you have and the positive messages that you get, we always focus on the one negative from someone who doesn't even really matter. It's not like they're a customer. We've never spoken to them in our life. Doesn't actually matter if they get a bit upset at a.

Well, they're probably still going to buy from you.

You know, they're probably not going to buy from us. It's not worthwhile if they're upset. Like, let them. I think it's. Is it Mel Robbins, who has a great quote about, you know, if. If someone's unhappy with you, let them. If someone's, you know, ignoring you, let them.

If you.

If you don't get invited, she says, to a party or whatever, let them. And I think that's really. I don't know, I found that really inspiring. It was just like, you can't control that. So just cool. They're angry. Let them move on to the next person.

Sam, My wife came up with this. I don't know where she got it from, but she's like, if you are upset with me or you have an opinion of me that is not aligned with something I would think is complimentary, cool, that's got nothing to do with me. What you think of me has nothing to do with me. And I think that's really powerful because I think we often feel more than we perhaps need to. And I think what happens is the more you do anything. I was having this conversation the other day with someone.

And I remember distinctly, it was about 2019, when I was looking at doing my first sales call for, like, this moving into this digital world of training and education, and I had to do my first sales call. And I was like, oh, my God, I've got to follow this process. And then there was this tracking sheet, and it had, like, hundreds of lines, and it said, data not valid or valuable to you. Executed 30 sales calls. And I was like, oh, my God, 30 sales calls. Like, that is terrifying. And I know you and I have many conversations over the years about sales, and you were never that keen on it. And. And I would. I was like, oh, God. You know, and then just the other day, I did my 300th sales call.

Wow, that's huge.

And I was like, wow, 300. And now I'm like, I don't. I don't even need any notes. I can just. I can go through the process almost verbatim. And it's just practice. It's just repetition and doing it and getting rejected and being like, okay, that's okay. It wasn't the right mix, it wasn't the right fit. So I think there's a lot to be said for building resilience by just doing it anyway, I think so.

I like to ask this question because I'm curious, because someone asked me it recently and I said it's a brilliant question.

Going back to your childhood, is there a time when you can reflect on an action or a situation that you can now see was the beginning of your entrepreneurial journey? And what was that? And what created that environment? And why do you think you ended up becoming an entrepreneur?

It's funny that you ask me why did I end up becoming an entrepreneur. When I was about 9 or 10, my stepmom asked me what I wanted to do, and I said, businessman. And I, I must have seen like a movie or something to do with a generic businessman. And I was like, yeah, I want to do that. Didn't really understand what that was. And then, you know, as I went through high school picking up a camera, similar journey to, I think a lot of videographers, you fall in love with creating images and that kind of thing. But I always had this idea of, you know, running a business and being an entrepreneur and sort of running the show and I guess having my destiny in my own hands and all those kinds of things. And then, you know, I joined an agency for about six years, so full time got made redundant, and then I was like, you know, well, fuck it, let's just have a go on my own.

Yeah. And how has that journey been?

A roller coaster of emotions, I would say. You know.

Obviously, you know, I started in 2018. Maybe a little fresh face, naive maybe about what was. What was to come, but it's just been like really slow process of, like, learning a new little thing or adding a little thing to our. Oh, what's the word? Like our portfolio. I just, just piece by piece, growing and growing and growing in such small little increments that you don't even realize how far you've come until you look back. Yeah, I think that's probably the best way to sum it up. It's, it's. You don't know how far you've come until you look back and go, oh, wow. Yeah, I used to, used to, used to only be doing like 50k, 60k in a year, you know? Know. Yeah, that's pretty incredible.

Well, you, your, your main client when we first met was Tupperware, and they don't exist as a business anymore. And you were, that was like your number one client. And I remember they went quiet for a while. You were like, oh, they've gone really quiet.

Yeah.

That's why I love. You know, we get together twice a year in the vba and we. We spend three days in the room. And the day that I love the most, I mean, I love all the days, but the day I love the most is day one, when we go, okay, so we want to just, like, start sharing where they were this time six months ago and where they are now and what's changed. And I think even though we've done it multiple times, we're always constantly surprised by just how much you've achieved because you're not really noticing the incremental changes that happen every single day. You look back and go, oh, actually, we were doing X this time last year. Now we're doing Y. Or six months ago, we had this. And then. I mean, remember when we. Before you even had any of your team. Yeah. It's like, oh, my God, I've gotta, like, build a system for editors. Oh, it's so hard. Like, wow, I hate it.

Really.

I'll just keep doing it myself. And then the pain got too bad. And then you found someone amazing in Jock. And then. And then you kind of. You kind of. You kind of graduate. I always think business is like, you start off as a child, then you become a. An older child, and then you. You hit 10, you're like, I'm. I'm. I'm kind of. I'm 10 now.

Yeah.

I'm not a kid anymore. And then you become a teenager.

Yeah.

And it's weird. The other day, I was saying to Sam, I said, you know, it's funny. Each decade is like.

Like, you know, 10, 20, 30, 40. We celebrate the milestones. But you're a teenager at 13.

Yeah.

And you've only actually got seven years as a teenager, and then you're 20. But I think. I think of business, like, you're. You go from being a child to an older child to an adolescent.

Yeah.

And the adolescence business phase, I think, lasts a long time till you become up kind of an adult business.

Yeah.

You go through different phases and seasons.

I like that. I think we're probably still an adolescent. They still got.

Adolescence.

But you're well on the way, you know, And I'm so thrilled that you found the time to be able to, you know, to invest in being part of the video mentors. And, you know, our goal is to. To do more conversations, like the. Share more tips. And I guess all we want you to do from a listener and viewer point of view is if you find this valuable, please share it with someone that you know.

And and you can also join our free community on school. If you go to the videomentors.com you can click on the big orange button that says Join our free community. We spelled it with a K to be all marketing and make it stand out so people go hey, you spelled it wrong. But that's pattern interrupt, right? And that's really part of what marketing is all about. And Grant, any, any final thought? Any questions I've not asked you? No, you think I should have?

I think we've covered it like just it's been really good to do a deep dive into marketing. Maybe we can do a part two at some stage. But yeah, you know, if anyone's listening has any questions about how they can start marketing, I genuinely enjoy talking about it. I find it a really interesting field. To be honest, if I didn't run a video business I'd probably be working in marketing because I just find it really fascinating. So please just reach out if you have any questions on some tips on getting started, some feedback. Always happy to help.

Yeah, definitely connect with grant on LinkedIn for sure.

Thanks Dan.

If you're tired of going it alone with your video business and could use mentorship support and coaching, check out how you can work with us directly@thevideomentors.com or join our free community on the free Resources tab. Our mission is to positively impact videographers lives, helping you earn more and work less to support us.

Please follow rate and review this podcast.

And share this episode with someone who could find it helpful.