The Identity Shift Required to Survive The Video Downturn. EP #342 - Den Lennie

So there are some real challenges facing the broader videography community just now. And we can't ignore the fact that the industry is changing, technology is changing, AI is changing, but more than anything is the financial cycles of the world. The larger community is impacting the demand for video. But what we've got to remember is this is not as bad as it was during COVID where we couldn't create content. I think what's really happening is there is a shift required of identity of probably 95% of videographers out there. And that's what we're going to talk about today. The fact that it's just not enough to be a good videographer anymore. You have to think like a business owner and you have to think about your particular market's problems and whether or not video is in fact the right solution for them. We'll talk a bit more of that in just one second.

Welcome to the Video Business Accelerator Podcast. Each week we uncover the secrets to creating a wildly successful and scalable video production business. With your host, Dan Lenny, discover how the accelerator program is transforming the lives of our members at www.videobusinessaccelerator.com. enjoy this episode.

So there's a really important distinction that I have to make at the beginning of this episode, and that is there have always been and there will always be challenges to running a successful business. Now, in this specific case, we're talking about video production businesses.

There's never been more demand for video. There's never been more acceptance and understanding of video. So rule number one, you do not need to go out and advocate for the power of video to your clients. And if you're listening to this and you have any bullshit on your website that goes, video is the most popular, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. And 80% people are consuming video on phones. To give the audience credit, they know this already.

Where I see the biggest challenge just now is a lot of videographers have this identity as the technician, as the person who shows up with all the gum, the gimbals and lenses and 10k and 12k and all over rubbish K. There is, I mean, it's just, it's overkill.

And you know, they're kind of. The identity shift needs to happen from that technician mindset, the freelancer, the solopreneur mindset to, to one of a business owner. And as a business owner, you solve problems for your clients, you help take away pain, and the medium that you happen to work within is video.

Now, I'm experiencing a lot of people now Telling me, oh, it's quiet out there. And depending on which groups and communities you hang out in, other freelancers will be saying things like, yeah, I haven't worked since January, it's really busy, it's really quiet and they'll know what's happening. The industry's changed. And while some of that is true, what the market is doing is it's killing off the dead wood. If you have not done any marketing in your life and you sort of stand proudly behind the, well, I've never had to market my business. The work just comes in. Good for you. How's that working for you? Now? I don't know why it is that videographers specifically have such an aversion to marketing. Let me break down what marketing actually is. It's putting the right offer in front of the right people with the right message at the right time. Now the big challenge that faces most videographers is they'll do anything for anyone because they can. And I often see websites with, you know, everything from weddings, music videos, short projects, corporate, you know, dentists, you know, agriculture, healthcare. And it's just a mass of like videos. And they expect, and this might be you, you expect the client to figure out, oh, they've got lots of experience so they'll probably be able to help you with my project. Here's the kicker. They don't. They just go, that's too much like hard work. Let's go and find someone who's going to make it easy for me. Because the majority of corporate companies, if they've never worked with videographers before or if they have their biggest deep rooted fear is, is the creative not listening, forcing their creative ideas on the client and then they're not getting what they want or it becoming harder work as a result in their work, therefore it costs them more. So we have to, you know, really get into the headspace of the client we're dealing with. And if you're dealing with lots of different industries, that is going to be extremely difficult to do. So as you know, I'm a huge advocate for niching and I'll tell you why that's so important. If you're talking to one audience with one offer and one message, then you can repeat that message over and over and over again so that when the time is right, the client will reach out to you because you're an expert in your field, you're a specialist and they want to work with a specialist, not a generalist. So back to this, this notion that it's quiet out there.

I think there's way more suppliers in the marketplace. Technology has become so accessible that you can pretty much spend two or three grand and get a camera that's good enough. Now, there's a huge distinction between those who have experience and knowledge, even how to shoot a basic sequence, and those that don't. But the market itself can't tell the difference.

And what you need to be thinking about is to simplify your message so it speaks to one person.

Now, I know what's going on in your head. Oh, but then what if I work with healthcare companies and logistics company comes along and sees my website and will be like, oh, my goodness, they don't do logistics, they just do healthcare. It doesn't happen like that. The single focus on a niche, and we do this in our program, it's actually, it's done through an audit process of go through your last 12 months of clients, look at who made the most profit and see if there are any commonalities in your sort of, you know, little black book of previous clients and see what comes out. That is likely to be a good starting point for your niche. The next thing you gotta do is do some due diligence on it. Is this niche one that has an ongoing need for video? Is this niche in a position to be able to afford ongoing video and do they have an ongoing need to update video? Therefore, you end up in a situation where you have regular work and a lot of people are just literally obsessed with the idea of getting retainers. Retainers are very good for the videographer. They're not great for the client in most cases. So we frame that slightly differently, that if you are in a market that has a constant need for video and you are an expert in that field, they will naturally come to you all the time anyway, therefore giving you the retainer income that you so crave.

Some harsh truths here. Most videographers are very selfish. They just think about what's in it for them. They think about whether or not the project's going to be fun, whether or not it's going to be something that's going to look good on the show. Reo. And that is the wrong approach, and I'm being bold, blunt here, because it's. Someone has to speak the truth. There are so many offers out there promising you miracles in 30 days, miracles in 90 days. It's not possible to build a business in 90 days. And to be sustainable, we build businesses that have really solid foundations and it will take you six to 12 months, but then you'll have a business that will serve you for decades. And so we are very honest and very open about the reality of how long that takes and what's involved. And so the reason I'm being blunt is, and look, you might not resonate, you might be like, fuck off, Dan, I don't want to listen to this. And that's fine, that's completely your prerogative. But I've been doing this for 30 years. I've been running a business for 14 of them. Trust me when I tell you I know what it takes to build a business. And I'm not just talking about my business, I'm talking about businesses. I've worked in bigger businesses, sales businesses, equipment rental businesses, as well as broadcasters. So the important thing here is to get really brutally honest with yourself and start looking at how you identify is the fact that you've got a red camera in your closet. The thing that defines you. Because it doesn't matter what gear you've got, if a client isn't calling you, you've got to be broke pretty soon and you'll be selling that red camera for a fraction on what it cost you. So the secret, or the not so secret process to scaling your video business operations is marketing. Everything is marketing and marketing is everything. And if you're not willing to get behind that, then I just recommend you sell your gear and go and get a job. Because it's not going to get easier out there. Only the strongest are going to survive. And those that survive are the ones that have a good lead generation and marketing strategy and solve a problem with for a particular sector of the market.

Now I'm going to talk about Grant, one of my clients and one of the video mentors. He is a specialist in logistics and transport. And recently a big trucking company, a big well known trucking company sent him out to do a lot of customer case studies. And guess what? All of the customer case studies that he was sent to were logistics companies. And guess what happened? More than one of them said, hey, seeing as you're here, we could do with some videos as well. And seeing as you're the guy who makes the videos for this big trucking company, can you do it for us too? So easy. It's so easy. If you can overcome the hurdle of the niching issue, everything else becomes easier. And I think the new pandemic we're up against is videographers and filmmakers not getting out of their own way and letting their ego dictate and their identity dictate how they show up in the market, many are more.

Focused on how they look to other freelancers in communities than they are to their clients. And other freelancers are going to allow you to sit in your story and it's going to deflect away from the work you need to be doing. And oftentimes people say to me, oh, I just, you know, the marketing dropped off because I ran out of time because there's all these other things to do. And my next question is always watch anything you do on Netflix recently. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm not saying that watching Netflix is a bad thing. I watch a ton of Netflix. But the very first thing I do every single day is, is marketing. And I, and I, and I market every single day. This is marketing. Being getting off my arse and recording a podcast is marketing. Sharing this very important message because it needs to be said is marketing. So whatever your channel is, you have to be connecting and marketing and talking to your audience because they forget about you. So you need to be putting yourself in front of them all the fucking time. Otherwise they will forget about you and go and work with someone else. And then you'd be like, oh my God, this client, they loved us. We worked with them last time, they were amazing and now they're working with someone else, why? And then you start to go on this self doubt journey. So it's really important that if you want to survive this leaner period and it's economic, there's interest rates at an all time high, there are elections going on around the world, there are lots of reasons why people aren't spending. But There are also 7 billion people on the planet. And wherever you live, you know, if Caleb can be doing half a million dollars a year in a small country town in Victoria, there's no excuse for anyone else. I was on a call this morning in our free community and I was talking to a client who's in the UK and he lives in a town of 88,000 people. And he's like, yeah, it's really quiet just now. I'm like, well, Caleb's in a small country town of 99,000 people and we're in Australia, which has 28 million people. You're in the UK, which has 68 million people. So you're already at an advantage where you have twice as many people available to you to buy your service. And I made clients on members from the US and I said, you guys have a 10x advantage because there are 10 times more people, are 333 million people in the US. So what this points to is an issue with mindset and allowing the lack to slip in rather than the abundance, which is there are people out there right now who would pay you for your service. They just don't know you exist. And your job is to put your big boy and big girl pants on and go out there and knock on doors virtually through LinkedIn and connect with people and say, hey, looks like we do work in a similar area. We help, you know, people in healthcare, people in logistics, people in hr, you know, solve the problems that that market has with video. And you can't just make up the, you know, the marketing equation. You have to find out, you have to do your research. You know, when you're on a filming project, if you've done really good pre production and recce, the shoot goes fucking really well. But if you don't, it's a dog's dinner and the edit's a nightmare. This is the same thing. So you have to kind of put your business pants on and say, hey, I'm going to go out and find out by asking the market what are the challenges they face. One of the areas we've been discussing recently in Elite is HR or you know, what they call culture and community staff retention. A lot of HR departments are now focusing on acquiring new talent.

Attracting them into their business, retaining the existing talent, but also communicating with their talent. So there's like Day in the Life videos, there's, you know, company overview videos. It's not all about marketing, marketing and communications. And I would suggest that my best guess is for every 10 videographers who go, I want to connect with a marketing manager on LinkedIn and, you know, maybe make some really cool homepage videos for them. There's probably 10 people reaching out to every marketing manager and maybe only one reaching out to an HR person. Because HR is not deemed to be as attractive as sexy. It's not, it's not, it's not the hero stuff yet. I know plenty of people who are making a lot of money making really cool personality videos for companies in hr. Because recruitment and retention is, is the bigger problem. And so what you have to do as a video business owner with a producer hat on is say, what are the current challenges in this industry? If you're chasing five industries, then only 20% of your time is going towards each industry. Whereas if you're chasing one industry, 100% of your time goes into that industry. And therefore you become laser focused on understanding every single nuance of that industry. And then you become the person that everybody goes to because you're the expert. And I mean, I must have said this hundreds of times over the last few years, but. But now is the time to decide, do you want to continue as a videographer? And if you do, you got to get into this, or if you don't sell your gear, go get a job, because it is not going to get easier. And a lot of people nowadays are facing the harsh reality of big clients they had before no longer spending, or they're using someone else, or they're bringing it in the house. So, you know, this is an important episode, and it's a blunt episode. And if you know me, I always speak the truth. What you'll get from me is the truth with heart, but it's the truth. And I was talking to Alain this morning, who's one of my clients and also a video mentor, and she said, you know, Dan, there's very few places where people will actually tell you the truth. Friends and family will always want to protect your feelings and tell you what you want to hear. But to be in an environment where you can get the truth, that's what we do at the vba. It's not always pretty and it's not always easy to hear, but it is what you need to hear. And you've got to ask yourself the question, who in your life actually tells you the truth? It's the human condition to want to protect each other's emotions. So.

I just wanted to share that today because it's such an important thing, and I'm just seeing a lot of people struggling. And I have the answer. It's just not something you necessarily want to hear. Now, before we go, we have got some really exciting developments in what we're doing here at the vba. We have just released and launched a new website called thevideomentors.com the video mentors.com and I have partnered with four or five of my best clients who all at some stage have said to me privately, you know, Dan, my real goal here is not just to build my business, but I really want to help others the way I was helped on my way up. And, you know, it happened to me. Two of my mentors, Jim Gobrath and Ian cowie from the BBC, when I was 16 years old, took me under the wing. I'm still in touch with them today, and I owe my career to them. And every single person on the mentor panel, Alana, Andy, Grant, Caleb, and Matt, have all said to me privately over the last year, you know, one day I just want to be able to, to, to put back and support those who are on their way up. And so we've brought it into a more formalized environment, which is all of these businesses have been through the VBA training, have implemented everything and seen their businesses grow, sometimes 2 and 3, 4, 5x over that period. And they all have team, which means they've got a bit of capacity. And we have been recording for the last couple of months podcasts with four of the six mentors at a time. This week we're recording episode 9 and 10 or 10 and 11, and we've now got a podcast producer coming on board, going to be editing them and putting them together. So we're going to be launching them very, very soon, probably within the next month or so. And then we're also talking about putting together a live event, so a networking event, a Get to Meet the Mentors event down in Melbourne sometime in mid August. And so that's going to be an amazing opportunity not only to learn more about what we do here at the Video Mentors, but also to meet the mentors. And if you are thinking about getting some help to grow your business, we offer six mentors for the price of one. And those are six mentors working across different businesses. I'm the only one not actively running a video business anymore. Everyone else is actively running a business day in, day out. So we think we're coming to the market with an incredible offer and we're going to be doing a launch of that very, very soon. But you can go to the video mentors.com now, check out all our information there. And yeah, please make sure you join our free community. If you go to the videomentors.com there is a button at the top saying free resources. If you click on that, you can join our free community. We do a weekly coaching call and add a lot of other different resources. So guys, you know, please take this advice, a sage advice. The time to start making changes in your business is now. They say the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago and the next best time is today.

You've been listening to the Video Business Accelerator podcast with your host, Dan Lenny. If you are a video business owner who is tired of going it alone and would benefit from mentorship support and weekly accountability, then mouse over to www.videobusinessaccelerator.com to learn more about how the accelerator program can help you today. 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.