The Power of Repetitive discipline - EP#055

G' day guys. It's, it's Dan here and a very happy new year to you. The very first show of 2020 coming to you in a slightly different format. If you have been watching these podcasts, which to be honest, I don't think many people have get based on the numbers and we're no longer going to be doing video podcast. We're going to stick to audio. Audio is where I began my career. It's what I love the most. And talking to listeners and customers who work with us, they were like, nah, we don't watch it. We listen to it in the car on the way to jobs. So I'm excited to say we're going to be doing more and more of this in the coming year. So that's the first thing. We are actually going to be upping our game to two episodes a week as well. So the plan is to do one main episode potentially with a guest, sometimes just myself, and then we're going to do these short microcasts, which is a name I came up with today. I'm not sure if that's a real thing or not, but because we've got to drop the video aspect, it just improves our workflow immensely and, and I can run a lot more audio based stuff and bring you more value and bring you more content, which is what I want to do. And so that's the second big thing we'll be doing. And the third thing is in early February we're going to be launching properly. So I'm going to do a few little micro episodes here in January and then in February we're going to launch our two episodes a week. When you commit to doing two episodes a week, I want to make sure that I'm ahead of the game and we're not going to start running out of content, which I don't think we will. But I want to just get myself ahead of the game. You know, been in the video production industry for quite a number of years. You know, planning is the key, isn't it? It's a bit that keeps you.

Front and center of staying out of the shit storms. So we're gonna be doing that and then the other thing I'm gonna be doing is, is bringing all the different brands we have together. Sounds very fancy, doesn't it? All the different products and services that we offer under one banner and just calling it denlany.com one of my clients, Ben, said, look, you know, we know you as Den Lenny. This other stuff's just confusing. So we've Been really listening to our listeners and our clients to get a real sense of what's working for them and what's working for you. Because we don't want to just do this for the sake of it. We want to make sure it's valuable to you. So that's going to be happening in early February as well. But today I wanted to just bring in a little bit of an insight. So on a Tuesday when I'm recording this, we actually have two coaching calls for our video business accelerator group. And today we were doing one of our training days and we were talking about the power of repetitive discipline. And I wanted to share a little bit of insight with you. So this, this was kind of. Kind of an idea that it's been around for quite a while. It's part of our growth accelerator methodology. And, you know, the thing that I think we struggle with most as, as creatives is, is the discipline to do the stuff which isn't all that much fun. I don't know if you've come across this, but when you're like, kind of doing creative stuff like editing or shooting or coming up with concepts or script writing, it's quite an enjoyable process. But then there's all the other business stuff, which can be a little bit, you know, it just, you know, spreadsheets used to drive me crazy or accounts, so I used to just kind of avoid them. And nowadays I'm lucky. I've got a bookkeeper and everything's automated to a large degree. And we've got lots of systems, so, you know, it's not quite as painful. And I've actually just eliminated that from my. From my activities. But the thing that's had the biggest impact on me personally in business has been the idea that the more structure and discipline I have in my life, the freer I become and. And the more success I enjoy. And a couple months back, one of my clients said to me, oh, yeah, we just had our best month ever. And. And I said, so would you put that down? And he said, well, I was. I was chatting to the team about it, and it wasn't an especially huge month.

We didn't do anything that felt like it was a massive stress, but we recognized that we just implemented a lot of systems and those systems are working well. And so actually we were becoming more effective and more efficient as a result of that. And it ties in with Jim Rohn, who says success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines practiced every day. And that is really the essence of repetitive discipline. It's taking the kind of chaos that most businesses experience, which is being reactive, too tactical. There's no structure. They're always kind of hunting from one thing to the next, oh, I just need more work, or I just need to do this, or I just need to finish this edit. When I've got that edit finished, then I can do this. And there's an awful lot of justification, a lot of, an awful lot of chaos. And what happens is that that leads to just unnecessary levels of anxiety and stress and that doesn't serve anyone. And Mark Bouris was saying, you know, and Mark Bouris, for anyone who's not from Australia, is an entrepreneur. He's worth $200 million net. He has a show called Mentored and he talks about how a board meeting of board of directors for a corporation, they get together every month and they meet at the same time every month and they have the same agenda every month. And while that might sound kind of tedious, actually what it does is it helps create this repetitive discipline of like, okay, how are we looking on sales? Are we on target? How are we looking with marketing? How are we looking with personnel? Are there any issues are arising that are impacting our desire to hit our targets? And as a small business owner, and just to Clarify, in the US, any business under $25 million a year in revenue is classed as a small business. So we're all small business owners, right? Small business owners, we tend to try and do everything ourselves rather than build a system around it. Now, I've got no issue with you doing everything yourself to figure out what needs to be done and then systemizing it. I actually have, on my, on my computer screen, I have a, have a, one of those Dynamo label things and it says do it once, record it and create a system. And the easiest way to create a system is just start to record Loom videos. Loom's an app you can download. It's kind of a web based app where you can start to record yourself doing things and start storing them. Because if you bring somebody else to help you in your business, you've got to explain to them what to do and if you can help them by showing them videos. Bingo. Awesome. So really the session we did today in the group was all about how, you know, creating a pathway to formal discipline and how to provide a framework and a playbook, if you like, a structure for doing that. And as I mentioned earlier, our growth accelerators are just that, the framework of nine separate aspects of growing and scaling a business that have to be moving consecutively well to create forward momentum. And so, you know, the whole idea is that you can actually train yourself to become more disciplined. You know, I wasn't born disciplined. I've had to work at it. And I think as, as a, as a creative, at my core, it's the thing that I find the biggest struggle, but I also own that struggle. And I know that I can train myself, I can rewire my brain to be more structure, to be more disciplined. And discipline just needs structure. And structure can be as simple as having a strategic plan. Now, if you go back to the beginning of which is our very first growth, Growth Accelerator, which is why, why are you doing what you're doing? And Simon Sinek's big on this. You know your why. Why are you doing what you're doing, number one? Number two, define who you want to do that with. Number three, what is your offer to the marketplace? Number four, how are you going to generate inquiries? What's your message to the market and how is the market going to perceive you? Part six is how you're going to convert those people, those that are interested, into paying customers. That's the sales element. And Then Growth Accelerator 6 is to delegate to systems and then team.

Because you can't, you simply can't scale a business on your own. It's not possible. You can get so far, I did it for a number of years in the UK and hit kind of reasonably decent incomes, but I was exhausted and I had no relationship at home. So it's like it was a killer. At Growth Accelerator 7 is once you get to a certain size, you start to measure and track and then you want to protect your best clients. So how do you nurture them? How do you, how do you, how do you help them to kind of achieve more? How can you give them more? And Then Growth Accelerator 9 is ask, how do you scale that business? How do you ask for more opportunity? And we went through this process today and we don't have time in the podcast to go through it all, so we created this Ask Framework, which is, you know, how can you do more for your existing clients? You know, do your clients know all about all of your services? Are those very clear in your marketing and communications? And then we talk about enhancing connection with client interviews and then how to go about asking for referrals in the right way? And then the things are going well. How do you seed that conversation to follow up for Reviews both on LinkedIn and Google? But the idea is that what we actually went through is we actually went through a framework for this, including, you know, emails and conversations you can have like literally pluck and play, you know, scripts you can duplicate and actually, you know, connect with people. And actually the people, things that people find the most challenging I think is, is actually, you know, what to say and how to approach the conversation. And so that's what we did in the call today. So it was a really powerful 90 minute call. We do these calls every week in the group. I just wanted to share that little insight with you because, you know, I want you to get some value from the stuff that we talk about. And repetitive discipline. It's not going to be a popular topic, but it's one that I know will have a huge impact on you. It could just be, you know, discipline and anything works. You know, for example, I've lost 2 kg since the 23rd of December. It's now the 14th of January. I weighed myself today 2 kg. And the repetitive discipline there is, I'm using, I'm riding three days a week, but I'm also using my fitness pal and I'm tracking all the food I put in my mouth and I've got a target of 2,000 calories a day. I'm going to ride on days that I ride. I can, I can consume more, but just tracking those. I've lost 2kg in less than a month and I feel healthy and I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything. I'm not doing without anything and, and you know, and a few months ago I stopped drinking for a while and actually I've got a podcast coming up, but I'm going to talk about the benefits of that and how that impacted my life and business. So we've got some really cool stuff coming up for you guys. See this, Just a short episode today just to drop into your feed and let you know that I haven't forgotten about you. We haven't gone anywhere. We're just in the process of using this beginning of the year to just change things up a little bit. You know, I'm a great believer in tracking data and then acting on that data, you know, making sure that if something's not working that we do something about it. So as always, thanks for listening. I hope that you got some value from this show and I'll see you next week. 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, it's hit a ceiling and we benefit from mentorship, support and coaching. Then check out how you can work with me over@denlenny.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. So thanks for listening. See you in the next episod.