Getting Retainers As A Videographer - Live Q&A

Sam, There ain't nothing like this right here Got me see things crystal clear so high I can find them all it's gonna feel There's a fire underneath my feet Got me rolling like a river deep Let it flow cause I know that my soul lift me up Got your thing coming and it's all I need Everything I want it's in front of me Stuck it up and I'm down Sun is shining over me I got a good thing with Wait and see It's a good, good. Sa. When you see it going to make you believe if you know what I mean. Got a good day coming and it's all I need Everything I want is in front of me sun is shining over me I got a good thing coming Just wait and see it's a good. There ain't nothing like this right here Sleep so high I can feel. Let it flow Cuz I know that my soul lift me up Got something coming and it's all I need Everything I want in front of me Sucking up and I'm down Sun is shining over me I got a good thing coming Wait and see It's a good, good. Good if you know what I mean. Got a good day coming and it's all I need Everything I want in front of me.

What's going on, guys? Happy Tuesday. Welcome to another live. We are live on, I think it's YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. We're doing Instagram more here, so appreciate you guys hopping on with us. I got Ethan, my COO over here. He manages all of our clients and helps them get amazing results and what's going on, Ethan? How are you, man?

Good, good. Been a busy start to the week.

But yeah, dude, it's been crazy. You've been packed. Our clients have been packed. Everybody's been packed. It's been a. It's been a crazy start to the week. I had my birthday yesterday and we did a little birthday sale and got a bunch of clients who decided to jump in with us, which is awesome. And we're on Instagram over here as well. So if you see me looking over here, I'm going to be looking at questions. But if you guys have any questions, comments, questions about how to scale your video business, drop them down below. That's what we do here on Tuesdays and Thursdays. So we are happy to help you with that. But if you have any wins as well, drop them in the chat. I'm going to go over some client wins here. I'm gonna pull this up. We Got a couple wins. I'm doing a case study here with hubby later, right after this, and I'll get that uploaded for you guys to check out. But he had a client that he worked with back in 2023 that paid him 18k that he actually just reactivated using our reactivation strategy, working with Ethan over here, and they just locked him in for 12 months for 72k, which is awesome to see. Let's see what else we got over here. We got Ryan over here who went through his network. He has three calls set up using our ghost proposal method to get those people reactivated back on the calendar. And. And he's going to be able to help get those people across the line and get them into a deal for his video business as well, which is awesome. And we got Luke over here, who's been getting over 200, 000 views on LinkedIn, dude, which is crazy. I don't even get 200, 000 views on LinkedIn, which is wild, which I love to see. He's booking calls with people who are interested in video services, and he just wanted to post this for everybody, letting them know that organic content can generate leads as well. And we got Randall over here, who's actually been nominated for the Gwinnett County Chamber Best small, small business in video, which is freaking awesome. I know we got some people on Instagram here, so if you guys have any questions, let us know in the chat. Got a couple people coming in here, and then we will start answering those in just a minute. Ethan, dude, what. What are you seeing today with the clients? What have you been seeing over the past couple weeks? What's been going on lately?

What have we been doing a lot of. A lot of profit margins lately? You know, just run through, you know, the cost of, you know, whatever, you know, packages we're coming up with, making sure margins are healthy and, yeah, still, you know, profiting off of the work and not just breaking even.

What is. What is a good profit margin that a video business should run off of? What's the typical kind of profit margin they should be shooting for on the packages?

I mean, I'd say 70 to 70 to 80, but, you know, maximize, you know, if you can get 100 or, you know, 90 to 100, but as more people start to come into the picture with editors and, you know, crew and whoever else that you need, it's, you know, profit margins might get a little bit smaller, but, you know, gotta account for that in the price.

So 70 to 80% for the actual packages. So if you're selling something for $15,000, you should be profiting 10,500 on that. Is that right? Like 1212,5 right around there. Cool. So 60 to 70% is what you should be shooting for. Let's see, we got some questions in here. And pull up Instagram. And so why is it important to be at 70 to 80%? Like why is that important typically in the packages?

So you got enough, you know, enough wiggle room, you know, so you're just profiting off the packages in general because you don't want to just be breaking even thing because then you don't have any money to, you know, market your business or you know, if you need to bring on somebody else, like a, you know, full time employee, you got to have, you know, kind of a, you gotta have money in the bank to pay people too as the business grows and expands.

Yep, 100%. I was talking to one of our clients last week and he, he was in a situation where he, I think he was doing about 2 to $300,000 a year in his video business, but he was paying. You talk to him as well. We won't say who it is, but he was paying an editor full time. I think it was like 100, like 70 to 100k a year. And so half of his margin was going to this editor, which obviously was a huge issue because he wasn't making as much margin as he should have been in those packages because he was paying all of it to the editor. And it was really putting him in a tough spot. And so what we did is we obviously worked with him to kind of shift that around and make sure he was actually targeting or he had the right people for the actual amount of revenue that he had. And so a good rule of thumb is if you are a business owner, like this doesn't count for contractors. Which is why you want to start by hiring contractors first. But then after you hire those contractors, you should be doing about 200 to $300,000 a year per full time employee that you have in your business. And if you're not doing that, then you have an issue there and you don't have enough revenue per head basically for someone that works in your company. And so what you don't want to do is have a bunch of full time people and then not have enough money to cover the overhead because each person should be making you directly or indirectly, 200 to $400,000 per year in your video business. And so if you're not quite there, I would err, on the side of like hiring contractors. And you wouldn't be hiring anybody outside of a contractor until you're past 3,400k a year in, in your video business because otherwise you're just, you're flushing a lot of money down the drain that you could be holding on to for profit.

Yeah.

Would you R.L. tomso10 says on Instagram. Would you rather you recommend having one or two things you can do at high efficiency before scaling, or would you say work on all opportunities and actively improve as you go? If you can give me a little bit more clarity on that. I'm not sure what you mean as far as opportunities. I don't know if you mean like people outside of a certain niche. I would focus on one niche and one offer until you're past a million dollars a year in your video business. And a lot of people want to have a bunch of different offers and a bunch of different things and get crazy with a bunch of different offers. But one offer can scale to over a million dollars a year, probably even more. And so if you're saying, hey, we help this type of customer avatar, do this type of thing, get this type of result using our video services, our video packages, that's one offer. And so you can service as long as you're not servicing astronauts or someone crazy. Right. You've never heard of before, you can scale that past a million a year, but you have to be targeting the right niche. You have to be targeting someone that you focus solely on. Because if you focus on like home service companies, health and wellness companies, another type of company over here, then like once you get like 10 to 15 of each one of those clients, your operational side is going to become a nightmare because you have all these different types of clients that have different needs and different pain points and it just becomes a whole mess from there. I would Recommend Focusing on one offer, one avatar until you get past $1 million a year. And then once you get there, you can afford to add more offers that same avatar. But even then we really don't want to be adding people and more offers, more avatars to your services because it just makes things unnecessarily complex. You know what I mean?

Yeah. You want to scale vertically, not horizontally.

Exactly. Yeah. Here's another one. I've been shooting for two years with no knowledge. I'm a fuss style director out of Nashville. Mainly shoot all visuals but music videos. Still need help on creating video packs. I'm not sure what you mean by video packs, but what I would say is like mainly shooting music videos. Okay, so you're saying you shoot all visuals, mainly music videos. I would focus on, I'm not sure what you mean by video packs. I would focus on going after a business client. Because when you can go after a business and you can make them more money. Okay, I see video packages. Got it. So if you can go after a business and make them more money, then you can charge, you know, 2, 3, 4, 5, $6,000 a month on retainer to make that business more money with your content. And so focus on a type of business. Med spas, health clinics, home service companies, service based businesses of any kind, lawyers, private practices, any of those are usually fair game because they charge a high ticket amount of money for their services and you're able to help them make more money with the content that you're creating. And so you want to make sure that you're focusing on finding one avatar. So if it's like lawyers, like we have a client, Daniel, who works solely with lawyers creating video content packages with them. And so focus on one avatar. And then what types of videos are you going to create for them that's going to help them make more money in their, in their business? Right. So are we creating brand films, testimonial content, social content reels, whatever it may be? We focus on a strategy to help them make more money with the content that we're creating. So then we can obviously keep them on retainer and they can continue to pay us over and over and over again. No, absolutely. For sure. I see we got some good people on. We got a decent amount of people on YouTube and LinkedIn and Facebook. Drop a comment down below. If you guys are here, hit us with questions. We love answering your, your specific questions. So we're not just rambling on, on random topics over here that you guys don't care about. So drop questions whether you're on Instagram, you're on LinkedIn, you're on Facebook, you're in YouTube. Drop some questions down below. So I'm going to pull some questions from our, our school group here and take a look at other questions that people have here. Hold on one sec while we wait for that. Dun dun dun. How do you manage video clients and what systems do you use? It's a really good question. So what we recommend for our clients is that you use something like Slack and you put each one of your clients in a private Slack channel where there's a, it's like a locked icon basically on Slack. You put them in a private Slack channel. And then what happens there is you can basically put them in there. You do no more emailing, no more phone calls. You only do Slack and Zoom to communicate with them. And so when they have revisions on the, on the, the content you're creating, you deliver it through Slack. They give you notes in Slack, they give you feedback in Slack, and then after they give you feedback in Slack, then you can just hit them back in there. So then your whole team is in that Slack channel. So then every time you just get a new client, you just add a Slack channel. Add a Slack channel. Add a Slack channel. Add a Slack channel. Right? So it makes it super, super simple. And then we'd Recommend Something like Monday.com for project management. We give our clients a project management template in Monday. And so you basically have a project management where it's like, hey, here's the client journey when you sign up with us. Here's what month one looks like, here's what month two looks like, here's what month three looks like. And then you have all those, those months mapped out for the client. It easier for them. So then you can show them like, hey, here's what's going to happen when you, when you sign up with us. And then here are the different things we're going to be doing along the way. And so those are really, Monday, Slack and Zoom are the main things that we use. The problem is, is when you scale to multiple clients, like, you have a lot of clients, if you don't have your system streamlined, you're going to be, you're going to be hating your life because you have client over here, they're texting you, a client emailing you. Like, Ethan can tell you, I hate, excuse me, I hate emails. It's like the worst thing in the world. And so we don't want to use email because it really is. It's just, it's a mess because then you have people hitting you from all different directions and then you let them slip through the cracks and then you're not able to service those people and then maybe miss a reply and a client's angry. So those are the main things that we focus on. We use Slack Money dot com. Ethan, anything else on your end on that?

No, no, I was gonna say email gets messy because unless you reply in the thread and somebody sends you a new email, you have no context as to what they're referring to. And then you have to go spend five or 10 minutes hunting that down.

Yep. Yeah, 100. Absolutely. Can you spell Slack? Slack, yeah, Slack is exactly how you spelled it there in that comment. So it'd just be slack. S, L, A, C, K. Let's see, what's the optimal pricing? What should I charge for pricing here? Should I be shooting for more clients or less clients? That's a good question. So this is a question. We get a lot as far as like, you don't want to have a ton of clients. We want to shoot for like five to 10 clients is a good sweet spot until you can hire an account manager or somebody to start taking those clients and managing those clients. But one person should be managing about five to 10 clients. And if you do the math on that, if you have 5 to 10 clients, let's say you have 10 clients paying you 5k a month. So 10 times 5k, that's 50k a month. And so I would rather have personally 5 to 10 clients paying me 5k a month. Like 10 clients paying me 5k a Month to make 50k a month than 50 clients paying me $1,000 to make 50k. Because the more clients shaking his head over here, the more clients you take on, right? The more people you take on, the more logistically and operationally complex it's going to become. And so you want to focus on having higher ticket clients, people who pay you more money because A, they're easier to work with, right? There's less, less revisions, less things they have to do. And then B, you just physically take on less people so there's less room for error and room for you to be like. Or room for, you know, people to, to have communication issues or have issues with you. And so we always focus on having more clients paying us on a recurring basis. And that's not just like more clients paying us one time, it's more clients paying us on a recurring basis to where we have, you know, 5k this month, 5k next month, 5k the month after that. And then we have that consistency because that allows us to scale. Because if you get 5 clients paying you 5k this month, then you have those same 5 clients pay you next month, but then you get 5 more clients, then you're adding on to that revenue and you're able to grow and stack that revenue on top of each other. Right? So hopefully that makes sense. Let's see, good questions, guys. What else do we have? Let's hear from YouTube over here. I know we got some people on here. Drop a comment down below if you guys are here and let us know if you're enjoying these lives. We do these Tuesdays And Thursdays for you guys to answer any questions that you may have. I'm gonna pull up some over here. Let's see what we have in school, how to charge what you're worth. Ethan, you want to talk about this one?

Yeah. I think it's.

It's not about how much you think you're worth. It's how much value you physically provide to the company. And what does that mean at the end of the day, right?

It's, you know, and take a look at, you know, the business. I mean, there's a lot of factors that go into.

There's a lot of factors, right?

Margins, how big your crew is, do you have an editor, what are their customers worth to them, what is the average lifetime value of a customer.

Right.

All these different things that go into.

It, which is why we spend like a week with our clients figuring out what that retainer price point is going to be and what's going to make sense for their actual business. So, I mean, the biggest thing here is, like, we really want to focus on. Want to focus on first building our packages in a way with scale. We want to focus on building our packages in a way that we have scale in mind, right? And so, like, we want to make sure that we're focusing on how much is it going to cost us to fulfill in this package. And this is something a lot of people don't do. And they end up with five to 10 clients and they're not profitable. Right? You have to be very careful. And so if you're going to charge 10, let's just use even numbers, right? If you're going to charge 10k for a project, your cost to fulfilling that project cannot be more than $3,000 because that's 30%. So if your cost is higher than that, you need to either A, up your prices or B, lower your expenses. And so if it's 3K, right, that's your max. You can hire a DP, an editor, you can hire a producer, you can hire someone for sound. But it all has to fit within that $3,000 a month or $3,000 flat. Otherwise you're going to be in a situation where you're not making as much money as you should be. And we want to do 70% margins to give you more wiggle room for later on when you have other expenses in the business. And so that's the first thing. And then the other thing is it's easier to just up your prices and then build a gap in the sales call and help the client understand the value of what it is that you're going to help them do. And so it's all about figuring out where that client is to where they want to be, and then helping them bridge that gap with your content. So if you're like, hey, we're at $200,000 a month right now, and we want to get to $500,000 a month. Okay, gotcha. What do you feel like you need to do to get to $500,000 a month? Well, you know, I think I need this and this and this. Okay. And then at the end, when you're diagnosing and pitching, saying, hey, we're going to create this video that's going to help you do this thing, which is going to help solve this problem for your business, to help move you closer to that $500,000 a month you said you wanted to get to. And then you're just building that gap. And as long as you fit within that, like it makes sense for them, then that's how you charge what you're worth. Right. So kind of a long winded answer, but hopefully that makes sense. Over here. Let's see. I got some good questions here. What is a good way to generate seed capital if there are no startup resources? So I'm not sure what you mean by this. If you're asking like, how do you get clients if you don't have any money to spend on, like, ads or anything like that? What I would do is first look, do you have any past clients in the niche that you're trying to solve or you're trying to serve? So if you're going after lawyers, have you ever worked with a lawyer before? Yes or no? The answer is no. Then what we want to do is what we call a free to case study. This is what we do with some of our clients if they don't have previous clients. And so we want to do a free to case study where we go to a lawyer and say, hey, you know, we want to do part of our package for you for free in exchange for a case study. Right. And so then what you do is you offer a small part of your package. Maybe it's like a couple of social reels, maybe it's a testimonial video, something you can knock out in a couple hours, but provides a lot of value to the client. And then we do that, we create that for them, and then we get a case study from them, and then we use that case study to then go market to other lawyers like them. And like lawyers don't care about how pretty the content is that you shot for the last lawyer. They care about the results that you got. So we want to try to create and create some sort of result from the content we created for that lawyer and then get a testimonial documenting that or a case study document. And then what often happens, and this happened with one of our clients, Esteban, he did three free reels or three free videos for different medical practices in the the Denver area. And he upsold all of them after that free package, like a trial, he upsold them, it was $93,000 that he ended up making from all three of them once they all closed. And so don't underestimate doing some sort of free to case study to where you create something small, you get a case study, and then after that case study, you then upsell them to a higher package or you at least get that case study because that case study is going to be worth its weight in gold because you've worked with other people, right? And so like, how much easier would it be if you created content like if you were going after lawyers and you had 60 case studies with different lawyers of how you've created brand films for them or some sort of video for them and it helped them make X amount more money, right? Probably pretty easy. And that's just not what a lot of people think about, is they don't think about getting case studies with their clients. They're just thinking about creating amazing videos. So you want to focus on getting case studies highlighting a result. Like one of our clients, Juan, I don't know if he's on here. I saw him hop on the, hop on the live here earlier, but he works with real estate agents. He's gotten real estate agents. He does these FPV fly through videos for real estate agents. And he's gotten multiple real estate agents, 11 to 20 million views on these pieces of content. And he hadn't thought to get case studies. So we helped him get those case studies and actually document the results that he was getting. So now the next time a realtor wants to come to him and say, like, hey, we want to do X, Y and Z, he can show them results and proof that he, he is who he says he is. Right? And so that's super, super important. Let's see. Elaborate on the contractor model. Are we referring to fiverr contracts or something you guys have implemented? So it's usually something that we implement for our students, for our clients through our network. And so what we do there is we, we Basically find we, we don't like using Fiverr as much. They just, you usually don't get good quality people. Like if you need to do like small thumbnail designs and stuff like that, Fiverr is fine, but I prefer just finding contractors like depending on who it is. Like if you're looking for a videographer, we help our clients build a vendor list of videographers in the areas that they service and then they build out those day rates and figure out what those day rates are and making, they make sure obviously they fit into the margins for the projects that they have. And then they're, they'll basically build out a, like a vendor list of people that we help them build and then we, we have a like onboarding systems and stuff like that to help them onboard into the business so then they can hire work out to those contractors. Happy belated. Thanks man. I appreciate it. This is my second live. Yes, it's very valuable. Well, I appreciate it. Ken's Ken, over here. If you have any questions, just let us know and drop them down below. Got some questions on Instagram here. Let me flip over. I'm just gonna be looking back at and forth. Dude, I'm just looking crazy over here. What questions can I ask my client to figure out what value my services are actually bringing them? I manage to make make content for their socials. So if you make content for their socials, let's ask them like, like first of all do an analysis of the types of content that have actually gotten traction for them on their social media and then add up all those views. So like number one, add up all the views and figure out, hey, we've gotten them, you know, 10 million views across all the content that we've posted for them. That's number one. That's like a, that's like a top level result. And then what I would do is I'd go to the client and ask them and say, hey, I know we've created this content for you. We've gotten you close to 10 million views on the content we've created. You know, what sort of results have you seen? Have you seen an increase in leads, an increase of calls and increase of clients that mention that they are coming from social media. Like what sort of results are you seeing? And you just ask them that either over a phone call, over a text, and then if they say, hey, you know, we saw an amazing result from X, Y and Z, then just hop on something like this, like Riverside fm, hop on with them and then do a case study and we have case study questions that we give our clients, but you'd hop on and do an interview with them. Hey, I'm here with Ethan. We helped him get 10 million views and double the amount of leads that he's been able to get from social media using our viral content strategy, or whatever your strategy is called. And then you get that case study. It's typically five to 10 minutes. You get that case study, and then you're able to use that to then document, hey, this is a result that we got for someone else. And then you can use that on your website in your funnels, like we teach our clients and within all of your systems, because it's easier to show clients the results that you got than to just tell them. You know what I mean? Like, Ethan, would you believe me if I, you know, just said I help a bunch of video business owners, or would you believe me more if I had 70? Like, I think we have close to 70 to 80 video case studies I've recorded with clients that we've had. Right. You'd probably record me more or you'd probably trust me more now that I have results and proof. Right. And so, like, if you're a video business owner, why do you not have results and proof? It's very easy. You just go back and ask your clients. Just do a little bit digging.

Yep, yep. Honestly, something else you can do is, you know, if you have a link in the bio to, like, a, you know, could be a calendar, a Contact Us page on the client's website. You can make a trackable link and track the traffic through that link and then see, you know, okay, we started working back in May and look at, you know, the. The graph and, you know, the data.

Over time, depending on the type of business. If it's a business that relies on appointments being booked, then we create a separate calendar for the Instagram bio, for the LinkedIn bio. And we label it, like, Instagram call. LinkedIn call wherever you're posting the content or giving them the content, and then you can track the results and how, like, how many calls are actually coming from Instagram? How many calls are actually coming from LinkedIn? Yeah, it's a huge. That's huge, dude. So do you just do it on, like. Do you do it on all different platforms like YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram?

Yeah, no, yeah, just put it. Yeah, wherever, you know, wherever you're posting your content. And then. Yeah, have a separate calendar. And then you can also track things, you know, like website traffic and all that as well, from. I Mean, you can't track it directly like reel by reel, but you can track it platform by platform.

Yeah. I mean, and that's the thing is like, we just want to have some sort of metric and a lot of people are like, well, you know, I can't quantify the results I get from my clients. You just have to try. Right? Because if you don't have any quantifiable metric that you're helping your clients with, you're always going to be stuck charging this much, like a lot less than you really could. The minute you can start saying, hey, our content helped this client do XYZ thing, insert tangible result, you can start charging more money. Because like, if I said, you know, who would you trust more? Somebody who actually had results or somebody that just says that they can create pretty looking videos.

Right.

I know that hits home for a lot of people. It hit home for me because I DP at heart. I love dping. I love the art. But like the art at the end of the day is not what's going to get you paid. Getting clients results and having good client results is what's going to get you paid, you know, so. Yep. Yeah. 100. Sweet. I saw Juan on here. What's up dude? Fire emojis. I love it. We're gonna, we're doing some, some spicy stuff with Juan and his social media here. So we're gonna have some real nice organic content content coming in with him, which is going to be awesome. So I'm very excited for that. Let's see. So hopefully that answered your question on what you can ask to figure out the value of your services. What does it mean to send a proposal? What does it mean? What does it mean? I sent a proposal and got ghosted even when they seemed down. Probably too expensive. I understand that's part of the sales process. Yeah, huge, huge question here. So if you have a client who says, and sorry guys, I'm looking at Instagram over here. So if you have a client who says that you're too expensive, number one, what you don't want to do is send a proposal. Huge. No, no, don't ever do that. Very bad idea. Like you want to have a discovery call and then you can then set another call and then on that next call we go through the sales process and we walk them through our packages on the phone on zoom, just like this. Hey Ethan, we have a 12 month for 60k. We have a 3 month for 35k. We have a, or a 6 month for 35k and a 3 month for 15k just making up numbers. Right. And then you walk them through those packages. Which one are you leaning towards? Right. What you want to do is walk through that on the zoom call because when they have objections, when they have questions, when they have concerns, you want to be able to walk them through that process. You don't want to have that in an email because then they have all the power and they can just ghost you and F off and leave and they like. And you will never know what happened. Right. And so if it's an expensive thing, that's a separate story. So if someone says, hey, you're too expensive, then what we want to do there is we want to, we want to dig deeper. Hey, what do you mean by too expensive? Just so I can understand. Well, I'm concerned about X, Y and Z. Okay, gotcha. Like what specifically? And you want to dive deeper, but you can't do that if you're over email. So you're just severely disadvantaged when you do this over email as opposed to when you're actually on the phone walking them through the process. So I think that's Nick, Nick over here. Hopefully that makes sense. Let me know if you have any questions on that. But that's, that's the reason why we do not want to just send them a proposal. Because it doesn't. It never ever, ever, ever, ever, ever works better than just walking through a zoom, like walking through the packages on the zoom call. You know, Ethan, anything you want to elaborate on there?

No, I think you covered everything yet. Yeah, you know, having, having a call, having, you know, diagnosing the pain points.

Yep.

But yeah, that's my, my number one rule is don't ever send, never send anything over email.

Please don't. Yeah, that's. It just doesn't work. What is the best way to approach a lawyer? To ask for. Asked to shoot a free reel. So I would just find a couple of people in your area. So like do. If you don't have the money to run ads or to set up an inbound system or anything like that, I would just Google lawyers in your area. Typically injury law firms are going to be better for this type of content. Google those people in your area and then just reach out and say, hey, be honest is what I say is like, hey, we're looking to create a case study with a couple lawyers in the area. And because of that we want to offer you XYZ video. So do you know anybody who might be interested in that? So I always ask, do they know Anybody, I don't ask them directly. So I say, hey, we're doing this thing because insert reason. Because we're doing a case study because of that we're offering insert offer here. Do you know anybody who might be a fit for that? That's all you do, right? You just reach out and you offer that super helpful email. Less empowering on the phone. Makes sense. Yeah, absolutely, man. Glad that was helpful. So do that. And I promise you, even if you are not good at sales, which go go to our YouTube channel, we have a whole live that Ethan and I did on breaking down our entire sales process. Or if you guys just go to. If you just DM us the word cheat sheet on Instagram. So it's DM us the word cheat sheet. We have a full free sales process walkthrough that we use that we've used to close millions of dollars in video deals. So just DM us the word cheat sheet and we'll send that to you on, on Instagram and we have a full breakdown of that. And that's like the entire process A to Z. And then typically for that we just want to go through it on the call. Even if you suck at sales, you're still going to close more deals than if you sent the thing over email. It just never ever, ever works. So please do not do that. Let's see what else. Any other notes on that, Ethan?

Because it could be something as simple as, oh well, I can't pay 4,000 up front. Can I pay you 2 to get started and 2 upon delivery. It could be something as simple as.

Right. And a lot of times these prospects will be like, you know what, I don't want to offend them by, by saying that. So I'm just gonna, you know, I'm just not gonna do it right now because I don't have the money. I don't have the money. Right. A lot of times logistical money excuses can just be worked through very simply.

And it's not just figuring out the math. That's all it is. But like getting somebody to trust you, that's much different. Because the money, money is the easiest part.

Yep, 100%. And like with our clients, we help them with the reactivation. Like there's probably a lot of money that you already have in clients that you've worked with. And so if clients are paying you one time, they're not paying you on a recurring basis, build out some retainer based packages. That's what we do with our, with our clients. Either get help from us or just figure out a way to build out a retainer based package for what you do. Build that retainer based package and then re approach everybody else that you've worked with before and talk and say, hey, we rolled something new out, we'd love to chat with you about it. You know, would love to chat, set up a meeting, walk through the sales process that we give our clients, walk through that and then close a percentage of those clients on new deals. Yep.

Because I know something that, something Alex and Layla Hermosi talk about a lot is in a metric I know or I don't think a lot of people think about is lifetime value in comparison to, you know, like just acquisition cost of a customer.

Yeah. And this is something else I wanted to hit on too, is like when, like if you're mainly relying on referrals, referrals are great, but referrals are lay down sales. So like you can't grow, like, yes, you can grow your business on referrals. I'm not saying you can't, but you can't grow your business as quickly if all you do is rely on referrals. And so what happens is, is when video business owners go from referrals to having an inbound system, what happens is, is like they start to realize, oh, I actually have to have a sales process now. I have to have a nurturing sequence. I have to have a system for nurturing these people, right? Like, I have to, I have to have a way of turning these people, these leads, people who are interested into actual clients. And if all you've done is rely on referrals, you're used to people just like showing up with their credit card, just saying, hey, I'm ready to buy and not actually having to walk them through a sales process. And so when you, when you can actually learn a sales process and then have an inbound system where you have leads coming in through marketing through either paid ads, LinkedIn, YouTube, Google, Facebook, Meta, any of those platforms. And if you can have a system for like a call system, like a call process for turning those people from leads into sales, you can scale infinitely because all you have to do is turn up the ads, right? Like that's why I'm such a huge proponent of that. And you have to actually learn a sales process to grow your business. Like, you can't just get by on referrals because referrals will only get you so far and they're great. I love lay down sales. Like, trust me, I love it. But like, most people are not as Easy as referrals. So, like, that's the difference and that's what I see sometimes when people switch over to an inbound system is that they're like, oh, shoot, like, I actually have to learn a sales process. I actually have to nurture these leads. I have to set up like an email newsletter, which is something we help our clients set up. I have to set up follow up systems because people might not buy right away, right? So, like, huge, huge, huge, huge points there as far as like, not just relying on referrals and making sure you have a system. Because, like, if you ever want to sell your business, if you ever want to not be involved in your business, you have to have a system for a way of acquiring clients every single month, every single week, every single, every single day. Right. And a good litmus test for this is like, if you do not have, I'd say five calls a week. Like, if you're not booking five calls a week with new leads who want to work with you, you have to focus on acquisition because that is the main bottleneck of your business. And so if you look at your business as like a pipeline, doing better work doesn't usually get you more clients because you probably already do really good work. You need to focus on getting more clients. If you're not taking five to 10 calls a week, you need to focus on getting more leads and getting more clients. And the way you do that is with an inbound system, obviously. Let's answer some questions here. First time here, I'm new to videography, but not new to editing. Just taking some notes. Absolutely. Trying to figure out my rates and packages as a newcomer to the business. Yeah. So what I would do is I just, I would look at like, what niche do you want to serve? Who do you want to serve? And then do some work for them at a discount or for free. Get a case study, Build two to three case studies and then now you can start charging like what you actually want to charge. Because, like, if you don't have any results, nobody's going to trust you and nobody's going to buy from you. Like, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna pay someone that I've never, like, they've never done anything for someone who looks like me or looks like my business. I'm not gonna pay them anything because I don't trust them. Right. Let's see if we have any, anything else here. Thank you. Yep. Absolutely. Yeah. If you guys have any questions, comments, concerns, drop them on Instagram here. We're Answering those for the next two, three minutes. And then I gotta run. And Ethan has a client call as well, and we gotta. We gotta dip out of here. Let's see. Anything else that comes up for you, Ethan? I know we kind of just ramble on some of these and answer some questions, but I always have a good time.

That's good. Yeah, no, been. Yeah. Run through a lot of the margins lately. And then, you know, just the standard, you know, sales objections that come up. You know, money, trust, time urgency. But yeah, no profit margins. Because, I mean, it's different to every business too. Is, you know, do you. Is it just you and you contract out, you know, Right. You have to rent gear, you know, do you pay an editor? And so it's just, you know, like we have the, you know, hey, we need to be about 70%, but what makes up the 30% that comes out of.

Right.

The 100.

Well, and I think a lot of. A lot of video business owners are operating as if they are one person. Whereas if you want to make this a business where you can make money independent of your time, you have to be able to build in margin so you have other people that you can hire for the business. Right. Super, super important. You have to, you have to begin with the end in mind there. Because if your price, like a lot of people are like, well, you know, 5K is enough. Right. It's not enough if you need to hire more people, an editor, a videographer. Right. You need to have that margin baked in so you can actually hire those people, make that money, and then be able to make some profit on top of that without you having to do all the work.

Right.

Because that's ultimately the goal. Yeah. 100. So, yeah, 70 to 80 profit margins on the packages. And then overall, as a business, you want to be shooting for 50 to 60% margins is very, very respectable. That's what you should be shooting for. Here, let's see, what else do we have? I got a couple questions over in school. Let me pop these up. What do you do if a client tries to cancel on you before your second sales call? That's a good question. So let's say that you have a really good discovery with a client or with a potential client with a prospect. And then you then schedule that next meeting. Right? And then in between those meetings, they say, hey, you know, I don't think I'm ready for this. Why don't we just cancel the meeting and then we can go from there. Here's what I do. I just say hey, no worries, Ethan. Not a big deal. Why don't we plan on that call since we already have it on the calendar. And at the very least, I can give you some free resources to move forward if this doesn't seem like the right time for you. And so what you want to do there is still get them on the call, because if you just say, okay, bye, right, you could have missed out on a sale, missed out on a client that you could actually help. And so you say, let's hop on a call, and then you get on that call, and then if they really, if it really isn't a good fit, then you can give them some free resources. But 50% of the time you're able to still get them over the line and then move them forward and move that sale forward. And so if you have a client who tries to back out before that next meeting, just say, hey, no worries. Why don't we plan on the call anyways? I have some resources I could send you for free if it doesn't seem like now is the right time, not a big deal. And then we can, you know, go our separate ways. But 50% of the time, they just have those nerves. But that's why you do not want to send proposals over emails. Because, like, people see the price, you're not there to explain the price, they get in their head about it, they get scared, and then they say, oh, I, I can't do this right now. This is too much, like, this is way more than what we thought. Because you're not there to alleviate any concerns that they may have. Right? So you want to make sure that you are doing that on the call and then obviously alleviating any sort of objections or concerns that they have on that call. Let's see, what else, what else, what else? We'll go one, two more questions and then we gotta go here, guys. So if you have anything, any last minute questions, drop them in chat, either on YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, or on Instagram over here, and we will answer them, which I school here. Ooh, how do I know if I'm working in my business versus working on my business? That's a really good one. That is such a good one. So if you're like, this is, this is a huge problem a lot of people suffer from and I've suffered from myself. But if you're working in your business, you're doing all the editing, all the shooting, all the interfacing with clients. If you're working on your business, you are doing, getting more leads, you're focusing on marketing, you're focusing on sales. How can I get more leads, calls, and clients? That's what you're doing. If you're working on your business, you're doing anything outside of that, you are working in your business. And so if you're at a place where you're maybe frustrated because you've been working really hard, but your business is not growing, then you are working in your business, not working on your business. I'm going to repeat that again. If you are working really hard and your business has not grown, you are working in your business, not on your business. And so if you're always busy but you're not making more money year over year, you are physically focusing on the wrong things. That's it. And that's really hard for people to, like, digest. But if you are not working on the right things, you are not, like, your business will not grow. And so ultimately, what we see with a lot of video business owners is like, you guys just need to get more leads and get more calls and get more flow, right, Ethan? That's something you probably see a lot with the clients, right?

Yeah.

No, yeah, like you just said. Yeah.

You know, people, they're taking 12 calls a month. It's like, dude, you need to be taking 12 calls a day with people who are interested in working with you.

Yep.

Like, you need to be taking five to ten calls a week. And if you're not doing that, then, like, there is a leads and sales problem. There is not a. There's not a quality of work problem. And so, like, you could be focusing on your portfolio, how good your content looks like, how great your client experience is. But, like, all that stuff doesn't matter if you're not getting more leads, calls, and clients. Like, you're not focusing on the top of fun funnel because all that stuff is bottom of funnel. Yep, yep. Huge, Huge. Huge. Awesome, guys. Well, hopefully this was valuable. Drop a comment down below if it was. If you want to learn more about kind of what we do at Master Filmmaker, you can go to either the link in our bio or link below schedule, call with our team, learn more about what it is that we do, and then if you guys have any questions, let us know. But hopefully you guys got some value out of this and. And we'll see you guys here on Thursday and we'll talk to you then. Boom.

Pe.

Sa. There ain't nothing like this right here. Got me. See things crystal clear so high I can find the fear It's a fire beneath my feet got me rolling like a river deep Let it flow Cuz I know that my soul Going to lift me up Got your day coming and it's all I need Everything I want in front of me Sucking up in the D Sun is shining over me I got a good thing coming so wait and see It's a good good. It.