The hidden power of saying no to great opportunities. EP #175 - Shorty

G', day, guys. Dan here. Episode 175 this week's Shorty on Tuesday, April 20th. I want to chat a bit today about opportunities and how there are always many opportunities to pursue in your video business. And I think a common.

Mistake that can be made by all of us, myself included, is just saying yes to everything. Which is a hangover from the days of being freelance where, you know, there was a culture of if you just. If you said no to a client, they wouldn't call you again. And of course that is valid as a freelance.

But saying yes to everything as a business owner can be actually detrimental to the business. Steve Jobs famously said, you know, it's more important to say no to great ideas than it is to say yes to everything. And this comes down to the whole notion of staying in your lane and being very focused on who you serve, how you serve them. And we had a discussion this morning on our call with the VBA masterminders about this very thing. And, and, you know, the thing is, oftentimes, you know, running a business is really hard and it's very easy to make mistakes. In fact, it's. It's akin to walking on thin ice every day. You know, if you take the wrong step, you can put a hole through the ice and be up to your neck in water. And so there's. There's a kind of analogy or a phrase that goes something along the lines of this, you know, as a business owner, entrepreneur, someone who's willing to risk the unknown to build something that will return a yield later on, has to have an inbuilt optimism that believes you can't fail. You know, I have it. It's like, it's, of course I can't fail, but equal in measure, like a seesaw. On the other side of that is I'm only ever one bad decision away from disaster. And so it creates this kind of realism that says, I've got to protect the downside. What if this happens? What if that happens? What if this and that happens and then this happens? What. What is this? What is the consequences of that? So I like to always be very cautious about opportunities. You can't possibly serve everyone in every market, so I recommend you don't even try. And what I have observed is problems occur in business when we say yes to an opportunity based on it being lucrative or thinking, oh, we can just. We can slide this in, and then something goes wrong that was unexpected. And that is that kind of thing that can trip us up that thin ice. We can stand On. And so it's really important to.

Ensure that you've got real clarity around who you are, what you do and who you do it for. Because if you keep doing work for everyone, you will trip up at some point.

Or you'll burn out because you're just chasing too many opportunities. And the more you focus on staying in your lane and being clear about who you work with, what problem you solve for them, and the fact that you are an expert in this field, I guarantee not only will you enjoy it more, but you'll end up with great clients who really respect you because you stay in that lane. And so I want you to think about that today. You know, are you chasing too many opportunities? Do you have projects that are on your radar just now that are problematic, that are not the most fun, that are a bit of a. You kind of dread, you know, you think, oh, God, I've got to deal with this client today. And if you have, then I want you to ask a deeper question, which is, what was the motivation for taking that work? Were they totally aligned to your purpose of helping a specific target market achieve a specific result with your unique offer? Because that is what is critical. And it's probably one of the hardest things to do in business. And every ounce of your ego and body will be like, no, no, we can do all of these different things. So let's do true, true business success, I believe, is, is in staying very focused on one thing. And to reference Steve Jobs again, you know, as we get to today's the day that Apple are announcing their, their April event. Well, it's probably tomorrow by the time it gets here in Australia. But, you know, the Apple's philosophy was always like to stick to their lanes, to stick to one thing, to stay focused on their core, core philosophies and, you know, without getting into twos and froze of, you know, Apple and professional service and all that kind of thing. You know, the fact is they are known for one thing. You know, it's very simple, great products that are easy to use, that interface with us in a way that no other product seems to be able to do. And so, you know, getting very clear on who you are and what you do and being comfortable saying no. And I think that is probably the biggest, biggest challenge that we face, because inside of all of us are the little people who are freelancers going, but if I say no to this client, they may not book me again. And when I say little people, I mean as in the quiet person inside the little voice in your head. That goes, if I say no to this, I might miss out on something. It's something I have to continually.

Deal with and struggle with. It becomes easier because I now have a very clear focus on what I do and what I don't do. And I say no to a lot of opportunities. And the thing is that the key to saying no is to say no quickly and politely and say, look, that's not what we do, but I can recommend someone else. And I had a couple of clients recently who've taken this on and really embraced it. And so they don't do work under 5k. And if work comes in under that, they say, well, we actually don't work on those kind of projects, but I can hand you over to someone I really rely on. And they're handing it down to their freelancers who are really happy to get the work, but then feel a stronger bond to that production company. And as a result of that, you know, these guys are not doing these smaller projects. But what's happening is the clients are coming back and saying, well, oh, right, I didn't realize that. Well, okay, I'll bear you in mind when we have a bigger project and they're coming back to them a couple of months later saying, well, we've got a 20 grand project that we wouldn't hand over to one of these freelancers. Can you do that for us? So it's all about positioning and authority positioning and premier positioning. You want to be the premier choice for your market. You don't need to do the most work. You just need to be known for doing the best work and the most appropriate work for that market. And I have a number of clients who are in this position where they just get offered the higher quality work because they're very clear in every part of their marketing. They live, breathe and.

Exude expertise in that particular area. And this can be something that can be very challenging and it doesn't happen quickly. For some of these clients of mine, we've been working on this for a year, but we're in business for a long time. And I was just thinking the other day, I was 50 this year. Which, you know, to someone who's 20, seems old. But I think about Prince Philip, who, the Duke of Edinburgh. He just died, he was 99, which means I'm only halfway through. And so there's plenty of time. So make sure you work with the right people, make sure you enjoy the work that you do and get, you know, invest some time in thinking about who you want to work with and Invest some time in yourself and some money in yourself. You know, I've mentioned this before, but, you know, we so readily buy equipment.

But do you invest in yourself? You know, meditate, spend some time, you know, taking some time out? And what I found is that the more you take time to think about what you really want, the less you have to do to generate the income to fulfill the, you know, the practical side of life. And, you know, if you want some help with that, that's what we do at the vba. And I'm excited to say that we've got a new website coming online in the next week or two. We're just finalizing a few things, doing a few tests, but I'm really excited to share that with you because for the first time ever, we're really going to show our breadth and depth of knowledge and experience. And we've worked with an amazing copywriter who's articulated what we do beautifully. In fact, hopefully I can twist Jamie to her arm to come on the podcast and share the power of great words. And yeah, guys, have an awesome day. I've got a really cool podcast on Thursday with Ryan Coral from the studio Sherpas. Ryan and I finally got on a call together and he's going to share his story and also share the fact that, you know, we are. Could you arguably say competing brands, but we have a really abundant attitude towards helping filmmakers succeed worldwide and we love working together to help more people. So look out for that on Thursday. I will catch you then. 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 don't do me a massive favor and share it on social media and in groups that you might be in. So thanks for listening. See you in the next episode.