Why I’m Giving Away $10K of Training for Free EP#368

G', day, guys. You're listening to the Den Lenny show, the podcast for established video business owners who want to scale smarter, not harder. We talk strategy systems and the scale method that turns busy founders into strategic CEOs.

G', day, guys. And welcome to this episode 368 of the how to Scale a Video Business Podcast. And today, it's all about a big announcement that after three decades in the video industry, I'm giving away all of my previous training around video production. Now, forgive the pugs in the back of shot. They are not in the back of shot. The back of sound. You probably hear them snorting away. It's witching hour here. So I thought I'd just record this podcast anyway. So over the last few weeks, I made a decision that I would release all of my back catalog on all of the shoot and lighting training that I've ever produced. I've had many requests over the years, and so I literally sat and I uploaded them all and relabeled them all to YouTube. So I now have what I'm calling the Videographer Foundation, Series.

1 through 5 on YouTube covering a whole raft of different things. Now, if you're an established videographer, then you may know all this stuff already, but I know myself. I always love learning from others. And these are some of the fundamentals that I think are missing in the modern videographer world. Things that I learned over, you know, three or four years working as a camera operator for broadcast television, learning from places like the BBC and learning from very experienced filmmakers and DPs. So let me walk you through what they are. So first of all, we've got series one, shoot to edit, scene coverage and sequence building for videographers. Now, this is something that I think is massively missing from modern education. Many younger videographers kind of want the answers. They'll throw a camera on a gimbal and just wave it around and, you know, try and cover a scene. But many of them don't understand why and what elements are required to block a scene correctly. And I hired a videographer last year to cover one of our events. And he had a really nice camera package. FX6 camera package, all the bells and whistles, prime lenses, this, that, the next thing variands. But he couldn't cover a scene. He didn't know why he was doing what he was doing. And so this series of, I think there's probably 20 plus videos here. Cover everything from framing, lens choice, composition, moving the camera. You know, things like one of the exercises is me standing in one position, looking to cover as many shots as possible in 10 minutes.

So it's really about framing, composition, how to shoot sequences. And for a lot of it, I had a GoPro attached to the cameras. You could see physically where I was standing, what I was doing, walking and talking you through every single shot. So that's the first one. And really it's about, you know, shooting B roll that your editor can cut together so you don't overshoot, but you tell better stories and you understand why you're doing them. The second Videographer foundation that I've released is Lighting for Real World Shoots. This was originally called Lighting Interview Lighting, but really it's about location lighting with a small compact lighting kit to create interesting and unusual lighting setups when you're working very, very quickly. And again, I think there's 15 or 16 videos in this one. And it covers everything over everything from, you know, just simple talking heads, lighting two people, lighting with two cameras. Lighting two people with two cameras and doing it quickly. So again, a lot of this was learned in my days as a location cameraman working in London. We did a lot of celebrity interviews. You know, lighting in a boring room, or if you're in a hotel room or a small space that's not very interesting, or lighting in a boring boardroom. Now granted, these trainings are in some cases 8, 10, 12, 15 years old in some cases, cases. But the principles remain. So if you're looking for a really good archive of base training, then, or maybe you know, a young filmmaker, or you have a young filmmaker on your crew who you're trying to train, then these will really do a great job of doing that. The Videographer Foundation Series 3 is what I'm calling easy cinematic light location lighting when solo shooting. Now, I used to call this advanced video lighting. And that was really. It's an odd to or a nod to when I was a freelance location cameraman. It had my lighting kit. It's what I could fit in the back of the car. And it's really me showing you how I created all the different looks and the tool set. Everything from, you know, recreating that white apple style cinema look to lighting interviews against windows or how to control light and shadow in a white room, how to turn off white wall black when lighting, high contrast interviews, adding texture and depth of props. So again, you know, but I'll be a few years old, but it's still a fundamentally strong training series to help you renomb polish up some of your skills. Look over my shoulder, see how I do things.

And then we move into a couple of camera trainings that have been requested many, many times. And I guess this whole series came off the back of I had a video up called Recording Clean Audio with a Canon 5D Mark III and I put that up about 12 years ago and it's had 148,000 views. And I just suddenly realized that all this other stuff was sitting on my hard drive. So we've got the Foundation Series 4, which is mastering the Canon 5D Mark III for video production. So if you know any Canon shooters who have that camera, again, it's going to be a really helpful series. And then finally we've got the Videographer Foundations Series 5, which is the Blackmagic Cinema Camera training. Now granted, this camera goes back a while, but again, myself and James Tonkin from Hangman Studios walk through everything from lens choice, powering, framing, mounting, exposing in the real world. And we're on location, we're in a studio, different lens tests. Again, a very comprehensive set of training there. So it's all on my YouTube channel. Just search Dan Lenny on YouTube or Den Lenny the Video Mentors and you'll find it. Or Video Business Accelerator. All of those things will find us and check them out. You know, as I say, we used to charge a lot of money for this training and we've given the entire back catalog away from for free on YouTube. Now the other thing I wanted to just share with you today is we've been very busy in the background, we're updating our entire VBA operating system, which is what we call our ecosystem for building and helping build video businesses to high six figures. And what we've decided to do, as we are streamlining what we're offering and how we're offering it, we've decided to do something that we've never really done before and that is offer a part scholarship. If you live in a regional area where we don't already have a member who's installing this operating system in their business.

So the way this works is if you qualify, we're going to give you a $2,000 US saving off the full price.

Of the VBA up level program. And that's a significant saving that will help you. If you're perhaps doing it tough right now, perhaps things aren't going quite as well as you might have hoped. And you know you're finding business a bit challenging. So what we're doing is we're just looking to support five filmmakers with our part scholarship offer. Now let me just explain a little bit about what the VBA is. A few people have been confused. So I'm Den Lenny, obviously. I've been doing this for 30 years. I've been running the F Stop Academy, which is the company, since 2009. And you know, we've had a few different iterations over the years, but I've decided that it's time for me to not be front and center. And so we brought Caleb and Matt in, who you will have heard on this podcast, as coaches into the vba. And so we've created a company called the Video Mentors. And the Video Mentors are really an umbrella for future development of coaching products and the ecosystem which sits underneath that, which is all under the Video Business Accelerator engine. Within the Video Business Accelerator we have three levels. We have up level, we have the Ascend level, which is a new level, and then we have the Elite Mastermind. And really it's designed to help you depending on where you are at on your journey. And so really what's important here is that there's something for everyone. And you know, the up level is for solo filmmakers who are ready to stop but relying on referrals and build predictable revenue and learn to run a business correctly. The VBA Ascend is for a growing business who's got some clients and they're preparing to scale with systems and strategy. And then VBA Elite is when you're an established business looking for a high touch point strategy, connection and peer to peer mastermind. So we've got our three elements. So as I say, I founded the Video Mentors which is the core coaching brand and the Video Business Accelerator is the engine inside it with three levels within that. And so what we're doing is we are really looking to help those people who are be struggling just now. I think we've got five scholarships on offer.

So if you've got a few decent clients, you're doing solid work, but you feel like you're stuck doing everything yourself. And deep down you know it's time to step up and play a bigger game. You know, you don't need more gear, you don't need to grind harder. What you need is structure systems and a scalable offer that removes you as the bottleneck. And so we call that our VBA operating system. And what that's going to do is it's going to plug you into an ecosystem which is supported with weekly live group coaching with a strategic 90 day sprint plan, a quarterly Peer Mastermind which is online, it's virtual. We did one yesterday, it was three and a half hours. Phenomenally successful full access to the video MBA training vault, which includes done for you proposal templates that have generated in excess of $1.3 million for Caleb's business. You also get two SOS support calls a year, one on one when you've got an emergency and a highly engaged global community of creative business owners. So if that's something that sounds like you know would work for you and you're keen to learn more, then I will make sure either connect with me somewhere on Instagram en Lenny or send me an email at den@the videomentors.com and I'll send you the link to the application page for the scholarship. Now, we're not going to run this scholarship beyond five members because where we're we're discounting quite significantly. But the reason for that is we believe if we can help you, if you're sitting there just now who just can't quite find the funds to join the full vba, we're going to offer this scholarship to help you get started. Because we believe if we help you get started and you have success, then you will want to stay with us and do more and ascend through our ecosystem. I'm going to ring off now because the dogs are ready for a walk and as you can hear their bark barking in the background. But in the meantime, any questions, drop me a line on Instagram and I look forward to talking to you again next week.

This is the Dan Lenny Show. If you've built a solid production business but feel stuck in the grind, it's time to think bigger. Over the past 14 years, I've helped 178 companies generate more than 52 million in documented growth using the scale method and our elite mastermind. If you want to create predictable pipelines, attract higher value clients and finally buy back your time, head to denleny.

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That's where the next level begins.