The Realities of Growing a Video Business and Overcoming Burnout. EP #327 - Den Lennie

Well, g', day guys. It's Dan Lenny here and this is episode 324 of the how to Scale a Video Business Podcast. And we've had a little bit of a hiatus. We had about a six week break. There's been a few things going on here with family and business changes and moving house that has been just, you know, we got to a point where we're at capacity and something had to give. And after 323 episodes, you know, there's, there's definitely a real sense of podcast burnout. But today I'm going to share with you what we've been doing, where we've been, what's been working, what's not been working, share some of the results our clients are getting behind the scenes. And also just be honest with you about the reality of growing a business no matter what that business is. But in this context of a video business, it's hard and there are always obstacles. And I want to present to you the real pragmatic reality of business, not just the Instagram gloss that often is portrayed with great promise of riches if you just do A and B in 30 days.

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.videobusinessacceler. enjoy this episode.

So let's just get into it. I got a bit burnt out is the truth. We were, we've been really giving YouTube a go this year, making a lot of video content, a lot of video podcasts. I've engaged, you know, YouTube experts, consultants, like $5,000 a time to really figure out how to do this right. And the truth is, I just don't enjoy it. I don't Enjoy producing a YouTube video each week. Honestly, the thing I enjoy the most is working with my clients. And we'll come back to them a little bit later. But, you know, there's this pressure that you've gotta be doing all these different things. And I think Alex Hermozi is the current kind of, you know, guru du jour, where he's just, everyone's raving about how amazing he is and he is, he's got some incredible concepts and ideas. They're not new concepts. They're trying tried and tested methods. But he's very much at the moment pushing his book and there's some really good stuff out there. But that's not the issue. The issue is there's not the issue is not finding the information. The issue is choosing which parts of the information to take and which channels to use. And we have been, you know, trialing a lot of different things this year. And actually having had a break from all of this, I realized the thing that I enjoy the most is audio podcasts. I love talking to you about what's going on in my world, what's going on my clients world, and sharing things with you. Because I know as a former cameraman and film producer, a video producer, that you spend a lot of time driving, a lot of time getting to a location, getting to a job. And I think that, you know, being able to listen in the car to stuff that can just seed ideas and give you concepts to try is a really valuable thing. And we've been running this podcast 323 episodes and this is episode 324.

It's been a labor of love for a number of years now. We're well over 100,000 downloads now. And while it's not the biggest podcast in the world, I know from talking to videographers who listen that it's valuable to those of you who do. And I think what's super important in business is to be really aware that you can't sell to everyone. You can't be everything to everyone. Everyone. You have to choose your niche, you have to choose your section of that niche and be comfortable just operating in that slice, just taking that one slice of the niche and being valuable to that audience. So yeah, so what I wanted to do today was just kind of give you a bit of a feed, a bit of a feedback loop on what we've been doing. So we put our house in the market here. About two months ago, we found a dream home that just came out of nowhere. I mean, I say nowhere. We were always looking. And that new home is subject to the sale of this home. And it's been, you know, open homes every week for the last eight weeks and we're not quite at an offer yet that's, that's suitable. So there's been a lot of a kind of holding pattern. And a few of my clients have moved house recently and I'm sure you've been through it yourself, but you know, when you move house or you think of moving house, everything becomes kind of ground to a halt. Here in Australia they do open homes, so twice a week we open the home. So we have to kind of make sure the house is tidy. My office has never been so tidy. Part of the reason I've not been doing the videos is because I pulled out a lot of the gear to make the room not feel like a studio so much.

And yeah, you know, so that's really was the beginning of why we took a bit of a break. But also I just, I just got fatigued. I got fatigued. You know, 323 episodes is a lot. And you know, some people like the solo episodes, some people like the interviews. You know, running, running interviews, finding people to talk to, booking all that is a big job. It takes a team. And you know, we're always doing so many different things. You've got to deploy the resources in, in a way that works. And one of my biggest philosophies, one of my biggest kind of mantras is it's not just about becoming the biggest business in town. It's about the holistic approach to business. It's about how do you want your life to be. I was watching Dari the CEO this morning and behind the scenes and you know, there was a, he was visiting a tech company who were trying to hack sleep. And I said to my wife, I said like, surely, surely you just kind of like turn the tech off and that will hack your sleep. You know, the part of the reason people struggle with sleep is they're on their devices till late at night and then the first thing you do when you wake up is get on the devices. So I did this thing recently where I started putting my phone in my office and I now don't even take my phone to the gym. I literally leave my phone in the office from last thing at night when I'm finishing work and I don't look at it till I've been to the gym, come back, had breakfast, walked the dogs, had a coffee. And that habit has started to mean that I'm less anxious being near my tech the whole time. So. So we took a break and then Sam's parents came over from the uk. First time they visited Australia in eight years. So we took two weeks off and so October was pretty much written off because they arrived early October. I was still running my weekly coaching calls for Elite, but Caleb was jumping in and taking the up level calls. Caleb Maxwell from Hebron Films. And so we've been introducing him to more of the calls and the members really love that because they get to sort of, you know, different perspective. And the thing is when you're building a business, you don't want it to be all about you in your video business. You don't want to be the person the client's expecting to show up on the shoot. And a lot of what we do in Elite particularly is removing the founder from that client expectation so that you can build a team, build systems and deliver the same level of service without you having to be there, which means you can be free to do other things. So Sam's parents came over. We went up to Far North Queensland for a few days. We went to Cairns, we went to Port Douglas. We went to the rainforest up at the Cape Tribulation. It was incredible. The Daintree rainforest, oldest rainforest on the planet. And took them on a trip of a lifetime. Flew over the Barrier Reef in a helicopter. Just did some really wonderful things. And then we came back and I had a few days at home. I did a kind of little bit of work and then we drove down to Sydney from where we live. And that's like a 12, 1300 kilometer drive. So we dropped off in a few places and hung out and showed them around Australia. But on the way back, we just had this wonderful opportunity to, to spend some time in the car together, Sam and I, and just have a few days off. And you know what was really nice was that we've built a business that, that allows us to do that. You know, we don't, we don't have to labor every day to pay the bills. And that's really what we're trying to do in the VBA Elite and up level is to get you to a point where your business helps you run the life you want. Not let's make a million dollars for the sake of making a million dollars. Now I have clients who are making over a million dollars a year. In fact, we've got a client who's just last week told us that he's at 960 for the year and it's blowing him away. He's going to hit over a million dollars this year. And we have, we have a couple of clients like that who are consistently doing over a million dollars. A couple of clients we've worked in the past that did over a million dollars. Now, if that's what you want to do, that's awesome. But it takes a team. And it's, it's, it's, it's a big, it's a big commitment in terms of time, in terms of energy. But many, many of our clients are doing half a million to 750 a year. And that's very, it's a very comfortable number to be earning and, you know, enjoying your life. Because that's, I think what's so important is that it's not just about the money, it's about how does that business vehicle support you to live the life you want. So we were able to take, you know, two weeks off in the middle of October.

We didn't add any new clients to our business in October and still had a really, really healthy month because our structure is one of, you know, recurring revenue. It's, it's, it's, it's a subscript. And so, you know, looking at that, how can you apply and deploy things like that in your business? And a number of clients recently have been looking at more kind of retainer type clients. And it's something that we teach at the right stage of the VBE up level. And Elite is building in that subscription revenue, building in the retainer clients. And I see a lot of stuff banded around on retainer clients and big promises, but a lot of those are doing really low level videos. It's like making a ton of videos for a dentist or a lawyer and churning them out and then paying you a bit of money each month. And I don't think that's the most enjoyable or rewarding work. And I think that as videographers, the thing that we're always looking to do is to balance the quality of work you're doing and the money that you can generate from that without feeling like you're doing something that's dull as dishwater or boring as batshit. And so, you know, a lot of our clients are now at a point where they're, they're building up a really good relationship in a particular niche or sector. And then, and then it becomes a natural conversation to say, hey, look, you know, if you want us to do this more regularly, there's a way in which we could make this easier for you. So it's like one invoice a month and not like five invoices a month. And the big thing that's important here is not to ever call it a retainer, is to call it a partnership. Because when you're partnering with someone, you're making their life easier. And one of the things that comes up again and again in conversations in our communities is the videographer's looking to get a retainer to make their life easier. But you got to flip that conversation, you want to flip that conversation into how can you make the client's life easier? How can the client see this as a no brainer, as an irresistible offer rather than you coming to the table going, how can I get a monthly retainer? Because we all know the benefits of that. Okay, regular income is always super beneficial. But where people often go wrong is they come in too hard on the, hey, I want to get a retainer from you, the client. Rather than nurturing the client through conversation into a position where you go, hey, I've just had this idea. I wonder what it would look like if we were to just like, be able for you to have one point of contact and you could. We could do editing for you, we could do shooting, we could do repurposing, we could store all your footage, we could do like research for you on stock footage. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's a different kind of conversation. And so whenever you're thinking about clients, always try and put yourself in their shoes. And this seems so obvious, but I hear again and again and again where videographers go, oh, basically, I need this, so I want to try and pitch it to a client. And the other thing is, it's just not pitching to a client too quickly. You know, these kind of things, you've got to nurture the relationship. You've got to build the trust. So, yeah, that's just a little side on, on. On the idea of, you know, recurring revenue. But back to, yeah, we trip. So we did this trip, came back, kind of takes you a week to recover. And then we just started running some new ads for Elite. And, and we've got an event coming up in December, which I'm really excited about. But the thing that I really wanted to just focus on today was like this idea of burnout. You know, it's okay to take a break. It's okay to just stop something.

I, you know, there are 326 episodes of a podcast, so, like, you can go back and listen to stuff. There's. There's no shortage of free content that we produce. And we produce that free content with the view to bring you, if you're a stranger, if you're new here, to some idea of whether or not you like my style, whether or not you think there's some value in what you're listening to. We want to give away good value for free so that, you know, if you're interested in learning more, you'll go to the videobusinessaccelerator.com, which is just videobusinessaccelerator dot com and check out what we've got there. We just relaunched a new website for that. It's separate to the Den Lenny brand, and it just focuses on our two programs and also our free community. We have a free community, which, truthfully has been sort of neglected in the last few months called scale your video business. And that's a place where we're going to be starting to stimulate some more discussion so that if you're very early in your journey or you don't know much about me, you can join this community. There's a bunch of free resources in there. You can try some of the content out. In fact, just recently, one of our clients, he became a client. He jumped on a call with me. He wasn't quite ready to jump into up level. He joined the free community and he read a book that we have in there called the filmmaker's guide to budgets and Quotes. And he implemented one thing from that book and secured a $35,000 client. He then immediately joined the VBA and has now turned that client into a 60, $70,000. So there's good information there, but the information is only part of the journey because if you don't apply the information, if you don't deploy the information, if you don't do the work, you're just not going to get the results. And there are no easy fixes. There are no sort of magic buttons in business that you can use to just accelerate your business super rapidly. Building anything real takes time, and there's a set of processes you have to go through, and it's probably going to take you a couple of years to get your business into the shape that you really want it to, to be in. So I'm very much a pragmatist, I'm a realist, and I'm never going to bullshit you that you can do it like in 30 days. There are a lot of things you can implement in 30 days and get fast results. And the way you think and the way you approach clients are things that we discuss week in, week out on the up level calls. And certainly the journey of being in something like up level will, will accelerate that process dramatically. But if you're interested in learning more, go to videobusinessaccelerator.com click on Uplevel. We've got a new video that really walks you through what that's all about. Go and check it out if you want to join the free community, it's all linked there. Just go to videobusinessaccelerator.com and I'm going to start doing more podcasts, more audio podcasts, and we may come back to video at some point in the future, but we're going to keep it fluid. And, you know, if you've been listening for a while, thanks for allowing us to have a break. It's good to be back. I am really enjoying just talking to you and sharing whatever's going on in the VBA with our clients and they're having some incredible successes. But it's a slow process. It's a slow, steady process. But I'll leave you with this. I believe that the best way to market is like a farmer, where you have to clear the field, create the space.

Nurture the soil, plant a seed, water it and watch it grow. Now if you imagine planting an orchard of apples, if three months in you're looking at the soil going, why haven't got any apples yet? That's the wrong app. That's the wrong approach. However, if you get to the two year mark where there are mature apple trees that will give you fruit for life every single year without fail. So in any business, the hard work is done at the beginning to build a foundation that will then deliver you results and fruit or the fruits of your labor for years to come. And if that's something you're interested in, it's something you understand, then we'd love to help you. And that can just be listening to this podcast. It can be joining our free community or if you want some help to do it faster, then we can do that in our paid communities. But guys, it's great to be back. Thanks for listening and I'll talk to you soon.

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 review.