The secret to success is always be moving forward. EP #184 - Den Lennie

Howdy, guys. Dan here with episode 184 of the how to Scale a Video Business Podcast.

I wanted to talk today about.

Being clear on where you're at on your journey.

And what I call the secret to success is actually just to be moving forward all the time.

You know, I think it's very easy to set yourself unrealistic goals and only unrealistic time frames when in actual fact, to maintain momentum, you just need to keep moving forward one step at a time.

You know, you can't really rush the process. I've been observing quite a few ads on Facebook just now where people promising, you know, six and seven figure success if you just do this course. And the fact is it's not possible to just kind of transform your business overnight and to be sustainable. All the successful companies that I work with that get to high six figures, in some cases seven figures do it over a period of time, years. It doesn't just happen. Now that's not to say that I've not had people work with me who go from 10 grand a month to 20 or 30 or 40 grand a month in a year. That is actually very doable. But I think there's this obsession with advertising. Seven figure profits. Very, very few businesses get seven figure profits. Some get seven figures revenue. But in actual fact, once you know what you really want from your life, you may not need 7 figures. You might be happy with 150k a year in net profit. You know, Gary Vee talks about this. He said the majority of entrepreneurs, you know, are earning somewhere between 3 and 500 a year, like at the high end the range, really high end. And, and you can do a lot with that. So I want to talk in this episode about reinforcing how important it is to have perspective about where you are at on your journey, because it is your journey, it's no one else's. I want to ask you to think about.

To stop thinking about what other people are doing and stop comparing what other people are doing and putting out there publicly and comparing what you do or are not doing because no one really knows what's going on under the hood. And I see this all the time, you know, where people sort of claim to be doing better than they are. And I get that, you know, a lot of that is about like wanting to appear bigger, wanting to seem like you're not a one man band. And I get that, I understand that and like it's not your fault. You know, I know that people are. You kind of taught that you want to look bigger than you are. But in actual fact, it can get in the way of progress because you're perhaps focusing on the wrong things.

You know, business is like an iceberg. The only bit you see on top is the bit you see from other people. The kind of, the showing off, the stuff that's going on. You know, I've, I've worked with people in the past who, who haven't sort of decided to kind of stick it out and, and I see what they're posting on social and I know what's going on in the business and they're very, very different things. What I've noticed about the businesses that do well is they're not really kind of, they don't have time for social. They're using social productively to engage their audience with what they're doing. But it's all based on what they're actually doing.

So the actions that you choose to engage with every single day on a daily basis, a rhythmic daily basis, are either moving you closer to your destination or a thousand miles away from your destination.

So let me try and kind of paint a picture. Imagine you've got a garden hose. You know, when a garden hose gets kinked up and gets tied into knots and loops, that, that could be the visualization of your current business where it's like there's lots of knots in it. You could start to unkink hoses in the middle of the, of the loop or at one end of the loop and it might not have a significant effect. If you plug that into the water main and it started to unravel, you might be undoing the wrong kinks in the business. However, if you do the right kink, if you undo the right kink that's holding up the most pressure, in many cases, it will start to unravel the rest of the hose just with the pressure and you have like a domino effect that releases the pressure in the hose. So it's a bit like that in your business. If you don't know where to look, if you don't know which part is causing you the headache, then you might find yourself in a situation where, you know, it's just, you're focusing on the wrong things. Oftentimes I'll, I'll hear and see people, you know, tweaking an About Us video or working on their show real when they don't have a website, or working on, you know, the back end systems when they don't have any customers. And that's where we work really in both the vba Mastermind for the businesses that are currently already kind of established. But we also have the foundation program. I want to talk a bit about that today in the sense that the foundation is there to help you iron out all of those kinks and get you into some sort of shape. Because a lot of times I'll hear people saying, oh, well, I'm just not ready for this because I've got to try and figure all these things out. My question to you is, well, how are you going to figure these things out? Are you happy to just spend the next three years trying to figure stuff out on your own? Or do you want a process that is mapped out, that has proven to be successful for other video businesses that you can follow at your own pace? And the foundation course is just that, it is a follow at your own pace foundation training program.

So back to looking at your day. You know, if you're looking at the tasks that you could impact and actually put some effort into any given day.

Are you being strategic in deciding how you do them? Are you clear on your purpose and your outcome so that you're actually moving the needle towards where you need to be? Because you can do something that's like a thousand times less effective or a thousand times more effective. So do you know what your goals are? You know what your aspirations are? It doesn't have to be about adding big sums of money. It could just be mapping out what your ideal life looks like and what that's going to cost. And in order to prepare and make sure you're focusing your time and energy on the right areas, on the right things, which are moving you measurably closer to your goal. And so this comes down to understanding your numbers. You know, if you don't know how many sales it's going to take to achieve the profit margin you need in order to take your family to Disneyland, then you're literally just, you know, weighing into the wind.

The second thing is, you know, you're not selling business to business or business to consumer. You're selling people to people.

You know, when I hear people ask me the question, but will CEOs or managing directors and marketing managers be on Facebook or will they be on LinkedIn? The good chance is they will be, of course, because people are engaged in LinkedIn and Facebook and these other platforms because they're human beings. Now, back in the 1930s, there's a guy called Robert Collier who was well known for writing letters that are known as direct mail, direct response. He would write letters that would be mailed out to sell items. Now, a famous letter written by Robert Collier was about selling a raincoat. And this sold 20,000 raincoats. One letter that was mailed out. And the fact is, human psychology hasn't really changed in 100 years. The method of communications have changed, the platforms have changed. And the fact is, back in the 1930s, 30s, Robert Collier could only mail out letters. That's the only method he had. Now we can effectively mail out a virtual letter to our target market on Facebook instantly for pennies on the click. This is phenomenal. And yet there's a lot of resistance to marketing and advertising. And the reason that I think is because, you know, you know, showing you and you don't know who you want to talk to and what your message is. So, you know, here, here's some, some, some processes I've outlined to, to help you understand.

You know, that that process, there's 10 steps here. The first thing you got to do is identify who you want to target. And I don't just mean like, you know, oh, you know, men 25 to 40 who like marketing. I mean, specifics. Are they male, are they female? Who is your target market and what level are they in the company they operate in? What industries do they work in? All too often, filmmakers spend a lot of time being very general in this area, and it just puts you in the same category as plumbers. Like, you will shoot anything for anyone at any price, anytime. You know, if you want to be a service provider and that, that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. But if you want to be a business owner, you've got to get clear on who you're targeting.

What's interesting here is there are people who need a video that aren't searching because they haven't got around to yet.

And they may have other methods of wanting to find out about it. So social media has changed the way in which people search for information.

You can market to people while they're browsing in their feed. They might see something in their feed that resonates. There's a chance they'll click on it to get some more information.

And we talk about the mere exposure effect, which is the number of times a brand needs to see your product or service before they feel comfortable reaching out. It's actually between 10 and 20 times.

So, you know, the prospect needs to feel comfortable with you. And social media allows you to do that. And Facebook advertising and LinkedIn connections are a way to do that. Now, when you come to, once you've identified who your client Is step two is you have to create what we call a bear offer. And a bear offer is an irresistible offer. It what's something that's going to be so irresistible to that person that will solve their problem or draw them closer to a conclusion that you can offer them a solution that will have them engaged?

One of the ways to do that, step three is to write an ebook. And you can write an ebook to give to your target market. Once you've written your ebook, you come up with a strong headline that will attract that person and talk to that person at a level that will completely resonate with them. Now, David Ogilvie, a famous advertising executive and founder of Ogilvy in Mather, used to have his copywriters write 100 headlines per advertisement in order to get the variations that required to test which one we perform the best. And so I think we often spend too much time trying to think a way out of a problem by thinking, well, this one sounds good, that will work. And if it doesn't work, we kind of fall over and go, that didn't work. So put some effort in. Write 20 headlines for an ebook, write 20 headlines for an offer, and then test them. And I promise you, if you do that, you will find the one that converts the highest. And like a lot of this stuff is really hard. It's really not easy. Now, in the vba, both the foundation and the mastermind, we've got an entire process for how to write headlines. We've got example headlines, we've got a process that shows you how to take some formulas and create 20 headlines and how to write an ebook. So we make it very easy and a lot of people resist it. And, and it's, it's foolish because it's a very powerful tool for, for getting people to engage. In fact, if you go to my website now at the bottom of the homepage, you can opt in for my ebook and see exactly how we do it. And then you can actually push that out on Facebook for a couple of dollars a day, a couple of pounds a day. And step four, be an authority and be preeminent in your niche and your pricing. Nobody actually wants the cheapest service, and nobody wants to be the cheapest service. So if you're willing to put in the effort and become an authority, become preeminent in your space, then you will become the preeminent voice in your industry and you'll be able to charge a premium as a result. Now, is this going to happen quickly? No. But if you put the work in, it will really benefit you later on.

Step five. You want to optimize and systemize. Once you've identified your one thing, your one offer, and you've tested your headlines and you've become preeminent in your space, you optimize. And that's where the testing comes in. You test one headline against another headline, against another headline, against another headline until you get the one that works best. You test images, calls to action, copy. You test in small amounts till you find the right recipe. Then you execute with the bigger spend once you've got it figured out. In the book Great by choice, Jim Collins talks about firing bullets, then cannonballs. If you were in a warship in the middle of the ocean, you wouldn't shell your heavy artillery trying to hit the target. You'd send bullets first till you heard a clink and then you would aim the guns and fire the cannonballs.

Step 6. Use what you've got. Play to your strengths. Gary Vee talks about playing to your strengths. Don't try and be something that you're not. Focus on being who you are. If you're an excellent colorist, focus on coloring. If you're an excellent producer, focus on producing. If you're an excellent editor, focus on editing.

Within the vba, you can collaborate with other filmmakers that that can provide services for you. We've got Andres in our group who has a post production company in Guatemala. A number of our members use his offshore editing services. He charges them a set amount. They charge that onto their clients. Takes editing and post production off their plate. It's a phenomenal.

You don't need to do everything yourself. And if you want to scale a business, you can't do everything yourself. You have to come off the tools and you have to delegate. So using the right people who you can trust is really important.

Step 7. Focus on fully optimizing the one business. Focus on your core offer. If you focus on one thing and focus on fully optimizing it, that is the number one most effective use of your time. So if you work in the healthcare space, focus 80% of your time on dedicating yourself to getting into every possible health space, healthcare space opportunity you can. Too often businesses chase too many rabbits. They want to be a bit of everything to everyone and it's the wrong approach and it might feel uncomfortable. But I can assure you, if you really start to focus on one core area, it will have a phenomenal effect on your business and you'll be hugely successful.

Step 8. Just Just do one thing at a time. I'm Going to emphasize this. Just do one thing really, really well. Specialize in a style, specialize in a genre. Do one thing and dominate. They say, man who chases two rabbits catches neither and gets worn out in the process. So it's super important that you focus on delivering maximum value to your target market. Step 9 is sales. You have to learn to become an awesome salesperson. And the way you become an awesome salesperson is you listen and you ask questions and you don't give solutions. You know, cash will solve almost all problems in business. So I want you to learn to sell. Don't shy away from it. Selling, when done right, is a massive service to your clients. You need to get people on the phone, ask them about the challenges they have, and only at the end, when you've exhausted every single question and they're clear what the challenge is, can you say, well, would you like some help with that? Because I think we can help you. Would you like us to talk you through how that might look? And they'll. That's then giving you permission to say, well, let's talk about your services.

So if someone says, oh, I want to make videos, you ask, well, why do you want to make videos? Well, I want them for social media. And you reply with, well, when you say you want them for social media, what do you mean? Well, I see. Gary Vaynerchuk says I should be creating content. And then you can ask, well, okay, what kind of content do you think would be valuable to your audience? To which they might reply, oh, I don't know, I mean, and so on and so forth. You ask lots of questions to get to the root of the problem, and then they tell you their problems. And then if you are appropriately qualified and your service can actually solve their problem because you have a moral obligation to not sell them at something you can't deliver, you say, well, actually, I think we can help you. Let's. Let's talk about how that might look. That's how you build a partnership with your audience. And then step 10, maximize. Before you multiply, make sure you've exhausted every single opportunity in your business before starting to chase another business revenue goal.

Be very vigilant against shiny object syndromes. You know, just because you have an idea to do something doesn't mean you should go run away and do it. And a really useful exercise in terms of planning your futures to think about where you'd like to be ten years from now. If you could look ahead and imagine you're 10 years away from now and you're looking back on what you've achieved. You know, what would that look like? What do you think that would look like? And then what you can do is actually create an org chart, like an organizational chart that lays out how you think your business might look 10 years from now. Now it might be a bit uncomfortable to do this. It might feel like a weird thing to do, especially if you're just a one man band. But do you want to be a one man band ten years from now? Do you want to have the same pressures? Do you want to be running around on location 10 years from now? Or would you like to have a small team or a team of contractors or be outsourcing your work so that you ultimately get into a position where the business kind of runs day to day without you?

And you get to choose how you spend your time. So you get to choose the projects, you film, the projects, you edit, if you do any editing. And you can also do fun things like go and play golf if you want to go for a bike ride or go and spend some time with your partner. If the business is solely relying on you, then it's not a business. And this is something that we all suffer from. It's just multiple jobs that you have for yourself that you're not paid for. And so, you know, remember, this is a marathon. Be patient. You know, I think as Tony Robbins said, we often over, we overestimate what we can achieve in 12 months, but underestimate what we can achieve in five years. So, you know, you're not going to just figure this out in six to 12 months. I mean, I've been running my business F stop Academy since 2009. That's. Was that 11 years? 12 years this year.

And you know, it took a while, I'd say it took six or seven years to see real scalable growth. And that's not to say we hadn't been profitable along the way. But there are a multitude of challenges in the process of building a business. And.

I've often reached out for help. In fact, just today I've been looking at my ad campaigns and recently Apple changed a whole load of stuff with iOS 14, which changed the way that Pixels work. And so I've had to go in and rebuild and remap all of my pages. And it's complicated. It's really complicated. But I work with a mentor called Ben Simkin. I'm a part of his mastermind. And so I'm always investing in my education. And I've sat down today and it's been frustrating at times I've had to watch a load of training and implement a new process and come across challenges, challenges and problems and solve them and slowly getting there. But, you know, learning can be uncomfortable. There can be discomfort in the process of growth, but that is where you make the breakthroughs. And what I'm pleased to say is that the folks that are in the vba, both the mastermind and the foundation, they have support, they have somewhere they can turn to. And so I guess what I want to say to you is if you're sitting listening to this and you're thinking, oh, I'm just going to try and figure this out myself, that is okay. But it's also a little delusional. No one excels in business or life by just figuring everything out for themselves. And if you want to accelerate that process, then the most logical, tangible way to do that is to get the advice from someone who's already done it and be in an environment where you can actively learn from other people. One of the things that comes up again and again every week in our weekly wins is the group is so powerful that being in an environment with other video business owners from around the world, everyone's experiencing the same challenges. And so you have a choice, either you can keep trying to figure out yourself or for way less than a camera, you can actually come and get some help to accelerate that process. And what I can say to you is that, you know, we just launched a new website. Come and have a dig around. We've spent a lot of money and effort and getting that all that website written. So I feel that our, we're articulating what we do much better. We've got a whole lot more case studies to upload there. So I invite you to come and have a look@danlenny.com and have a little look around and see the kind of success stories and to see how people are progressing because they're just like you. And at some point they were sat on the end of this microphone listening, going, oh, yeah, I could do with that. But you know, I'm not sure I can afford it and I'm not sure if it's really for me. And all that is is fear. And fear is false evidence appearing real. And sometimes you have to just leap off the cliff and the net will appear. And what I can tell you is, you know, we're having some incredible success with our members and members are staying a long time because they're getting so much value. So have a look around the website, download the ebook and if you fancy having a chat about how we're able to help you, it's all explained on the website. I'll talk to you soon. Guys, 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@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 episode.