Live Q&A

In front of me. I got a good thing coming. Just wait and see.

It's a good girl.

Sam, what is going on, guys? We're back for another live here. Evan, is that a new setup, dude?

No, I'm just standing up today.

Let's go. Me too. I always got to stand up for these lives. Make sure I'm alert and aware. Ethan, what you got over there? You got an energy drink ready to roll?

Afternoon.

Caffeine.

Let's go, baby. Welcome to the Live, guys. We're back. If I'm looking over here, I'm looking at Instagram. We're on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram. We're going to answer any questions you have around scaling your video business. So with that being said, drop those questions down below. Let us know what kind of questions you have, what you're running into, how we can help. But we'll get it kicked off with a couple of topics. Evan, you got any topics or things you want to go over? Things that have been top of mind and then we can get us started there.

I mean, we had. I had a kind of common theme in yesterday's call, which was kind of around the topic of like being a perfectionist.

Yep. Right.

We were talking about like. Like I was trying to just like lay the pathway for the future when we were talking about like ads specifically. Right. And it was like, that stuff is going to be like an ever going cycle.

Yep.

Right. And it was like, there's nothing that will ever be perfect. Eventually you'll find an ad that will work, but that even in and of itself will have to be changed and tweaked and iterated on. So it was, it was a very common theme in my call yesterday, which William from the. From the program also was like, like, yeah. When I realized not to try and make it perfect, where he kind of was like, yeah, you know, throwing into that, that fuel that, like, don't try and make it perfect.

Don't struggle with that. They're like, it has to be. It has to be perfect. Creatives go do that. Better than perfect.

Yeah.

It's like you gotta. You gotta just let it. You got to get it out there. You got to start testing. And we always tell people when we're testing ads, it's like, start with something that is like film the ad on your phone, film it with your camera, and don't edit it a ton. Right. Test to see if the messaging is actually going to work before you start going crazy and putting these crazy edits on it and doing all these Crazy things. You want to test the angle first, and then once the angle is working, then what you can do is you can then test. You can test like, fancier edits of that version, different variation recordings.

Yeah.

Other variables. Yeah, exactly. And like, testing just different things throughout the process, but not getting too married to, like, it has to be perfect before I get it out. And that's where a lot of people get stuck, I think, when they're trying to grow complicated. For sure.

Yeah.

And something that's been top of mind, too. When I. I look at people's businesses, I'm like, even with clients we work with, it's like, I am very much a theory of constraints type of person. That's how I believe you scale businesses. Right. And when you look at it, it's like the theory of constraints. You want to look at what is the main thing that if I solve this one thing in my business, everything else will be easier. Right. We have a client that's getting really, really good qualified leads, but they're struggling to close a little bit. And, you know, they're like, oh, maybe I need to launch into a new niche or maybe I need to change my ads. It's like, well, let's hold on a second. Let's take a look at what's actually happening here. And it's like, okay, the leads are good. Are they qualified? Yes. Do they have money? Yes. Are they the right avatar? Yes. It's like, okay, well, then that's a sales problem. Right. Nathan and I were talking about this earlier, and it's like, it's a sales problem, not an ads problem. So we need to get better at sales. You need to hop on more of the coaching calls, more of the mock calls that we offer. Right. More of the actual training that we go through on. Objection. Handling. And it's like, that is if you solve that one problem, everything else in the business becomes easier as opposed to just like, focusing on changing the ads or something that doesn't work. And I know a lot of people probably watching this are in that same boat where they're maybe focusing on the wrong things in the business. And you know, the worst thing for me when I was growing and, you know, when I was scaling is like, I would spend a bunch of time on something and then nothing, and it wouldn't actually make a difference in the business. So I'd spend all this time and effort, like, making my website prettier or working on my logo or, you know, working on my brand film or, you know, editing all the projects. Because I'm such a perfection perfectionist that I don't want to let it go.

Right.

And it's like those things don't actually grow your business. You just get burnt out and stuck and you don't really know why. You know what I mean?

Yep.

I think a lot of people go through that. And if you guys are watching this too, drop a comment down below, let us know, like, what your, what your, like, actual bottleneck is and what you think your bottleneck is, and then we can kind of talk you through what that next thing, what you should actually be focusing on. If you give us some context for your situation, that's what we're here for today. So if you have a bottleneck, if you're not growing, give us some context on the situation and then we're happy to give you guys some, some feedback on, on what you should actually be doing there. But I guess, Ethan, Evan, what are some other bottlenecks people experience? What are some things people struggle with.

Like sales? If you like niche hopping? Just, you know, if one, you know, if they're running into sales issues, you know, or, you know, what they believe is a leads issue. Yeah, the leads issue. It's probably a sales issue.

Yeah, you don't need more.

You don't need more leads. You need better leads or better sales.

Right, right, exactly. Yeah. And if you're talking to the right type of person who has more money.

Right.

Then it's often not a, oftentimes not a lead problem. It's a offer problem or a sales problem, and it's figuring out which one of those is it and how do we fix that so you can actually close more deals. Right. I think you said something interesting there too, where you said niche hopping. Like, why do you think people change their niche when they are, like, running into the same struggles over and over and over again? Like, what do you think causes that?

I think, you know, if they get into kind of a rut where maybe they're not closing deals as often as they'd like, you know, every 5, 10, 15, 20 leads that they talk to, oh, you know, home service must not, must not be, you know, a good niche to go after where like you were just saying if the leads are qualified, then it's a sales issue, it's not a niche issue, because as long as they're qualified, it doesn't really matter what the niche is.

Yeah, exactly. And I think sometimes people think the grass is greener somewhere else when it's not usually. Like, you just have to like, because what's going to happen is, is you're going to. You're going to. You're to going. You. You try to scale in one niche, you can't do it, so then you go to another one, but then you scale up to the point you were at in the other niche, and now you're just at the same problem again in a different niche.

Right.

So it doesn't really make a difference. It's more about, like, you have to do the hard work, you have to do the boring work, which is like, figuring out what is the actual bottleneck and how do I get better at it. And, like, I think a lot of us don't want to confront the problem because we're like, ooh, that's a lot of work. It's like, yeah, scaling a business is not easy. Like.

Blaming something else. My sales process and the grass where you water it.

Yeah, exactly. And I'm a firm believer of that as well. It's like the grass is greener where you water. But yeah, you have to have, like, if the leads are qualified, you're getting calls, you're getting people booked. Then, like, it is a. It's a. How do I get better at portraying the value of what it is that I'm actually doing as opposed to, like, just getting on the phone and hopping on and giving them a price.

Right.

Someone said a bottleneck for me is how to turn followers or viewers into leads. That's from Motive Motivate Impulse Media. So if that's the issue, then. And Evan, maybe you want to hop in on this as well. But, like, it might be that the content that you're posting doesn't actually resonate with those people at all.

Could be one. Yeah. Right.

So, number one, I'd look at what is the actual content you're posting? Are you post. And this is a big thing. A lot of. A lot of video business owners do they post content for other filmmakers, not for the. Not for their target audience. So it's, number one, who are you trying to attract? And maybe you can put that in the chat. Who, like, who is your ideal client? Is it medical companies? Is it home service companies? Is it any type of business? Is it like, what is it? And then are you posting content that would actually attract those people and make them want to learn more? Because that's the first thing. Because if you're not getting the followers to turn into leads, then there's a fundamental misalignment of whatever's in your link and bio and the content that you're actually posting. You know what I mean? So that's the first thing I would look at. Anything else you'd look at Evan, if that was the case.

So there's like a weird. And this is really. I've. I figured out this out through like it's just kind of where you align yourself with. And I think me, like you and I can probably fall on two different ends of the spectrum of talking about your cta. Right. Like some or I know for a long period of time a lot of your organic content was very much CTA focused.

Yeah.

Right. Whereas I've shifted towards more of the Hormozi ideology where he's just goodwill, goodwill, goodwill. And then the next natural thing will happen now that the, the downtrikel to that is like you said, your Lincoln bio has to be the next natural thing.

Yeah.

Right. If, if it's, if you just run to your YouTube or you just run to somewhere that doesn't there also have some solidified CTA on it, then that's probably a broken cog in the system. Yeah. So you can look at those and just figure out which way you want to go. But you know, that's, I think, I.

Think a healthy mix is always good. Right. So you have like, you have the value content. So like your profile, if you're trying to attract people with organic content, has to have a percentage of value driven content where there's no cta. And then you have some of those CTA sprinkled in there. Right. It's like you do every two or three posts you do a cta. Right. But even though my philosophy has changed because it's like, even though you have a cta, if you're offering them something of value like a free lead magnet or free training, you're still building reciprocity because you're not really asking for the sale at that point. So you're still giving them something. Right. But you're getting their lead contact info by setting up a manychat, having them comment a word on your, on your reels and then turning that into a lead. Right. But if you're struggling to turn those followers or viewers into leads, it's either you're not, you don't have the right messaging in the content, so it's not actually like hitting the right people. So like for instance, you're speaking to dentists when you want to speak to home service companies or B, the second option is like you're not actually providing them any sort of value on the call. Right. Or in the content. Right. For them to get on a call with you. And so maybe it's just the content's not that good. Maybe look at like, or it could be too vague things.

It could be, it could be too vague in general.

Yeah, it could be too vague. Exactly.

So that's, that's another thing you can, it's usually just a content audit that you need to do at that point.

And then what I would do too is just start running like take, take some of the top performing pieces of content you have, test them as ads. Right, run them as ads. Because then you're paying to get the reach to that person as opposed to waiting for the algorithm to boost it is always my, my philosophy there. I don't like waiting for people to, to see the content. I'd rather put some ad money behind it and actually start generating some results there. That's what we teach a lot of our clients. So I see a bunch of people on here. I see Stephen, I see Austin, I see Zach. If you guys are just joining us, we're talking about the theory of constraints and what bottlenecks video business owners actually have. And so if you're joining us, let us know. What sort of bottlenecks are you running into? What do you feel like is keeping you stuck? And then we'll help you kind of identify what that main one or two things are that you need to be focusing on to actually get more clients and grow the business. And I know Chris Odds on here, medical professionals and law firms. Absolutely. I know you're working on your free to case study as well, which is great. But what are some other kind of like main bottlenecks people run into? You guys see what are some things that you're seeing? Because it's usually like once we fix lead flow, then it's a sales problem. Right. Once you fix the sales problem, then it's a fulfillment problem. It's like, okay, now we have too many clients and then we run out of time and then we have to hire people to buy back that time. And then we, we just slowly keep growing the front end to get more leads and more clients. As long as we're doing a good job on the client side. Right. And we're turning those into happy customers.

I'd say just in general, like running a business, you know, understanding that things are a process and not just an event, like, yeah, that's good. You don't put out one ad set and leads start flowing in like it may just totally bomb and we gotta put it, you know, gotta put More ads out or just cause you, just cause you have a sales process doesn't mean you're gonna close every single deal that comes, right?

Yeah. And I think the other thing too is like, like you said, it takes time and it always takes a little bit longer, and it's always a little bit harder than you think it's going to be.

Yeah.

And I have an example of like, Max Engage, one of like one of our successful clients. Right before they had that $73,000 day where they closed $73,000 in one day, Max came to me and I hope he doesn't mind me sharing this. And he was like, hey, man, I think. I think I want to turn off my ads. I think I just want to shut this thing down. I don't know if I want to do this anymore. And it was because he was, you know, he was hitting roadblock and obstacle and he was solving problems and it wasn't fun. Right. Business is sometimes just not very fun when you have to solve a bunch of unfun problems. And I said, look, man, let's stick it out. Let's look at these leads that we're getting. Let's take these sales calls. And literally the next day, he turned that into $73,000 in deals. They've gone on to. Now they're generating $40,000 a month. They've generated over $300,000 in video deals. After working with us, they're still working with us in our program. And, and they've grown that business to a point where they, they absolutely love the business because now they have money to hire people to do all the stuff they don't want to do in the business. Right. But it all came from that decision of like, I'm not going to give up, I'm not going to. To stop. And it does always take a little bit more time, a little bit more effort than you think it will, you know, And I think that's a lot of people maybe give up a little bit too soon or switch the industry or think the grass is greener or change their business or whatever. And it's like, like whenever it's hard, you have to remind yourself, it's like, this is why most people don't do it, and this is why most people are not successful. You know what I mean? It sounds kind of rah rah or whatever, but it's true.

No, I, I totally agree with you. It's. It's the ebb and flow of, of life, of business, of, of whatever, and you can call it the downfall of society and social media and the instant gratification of everything.

I think that's part of it is.

Is likely why a lot of people, because nobody sees the, you know, nobody saw the, what, 10, 15 years of. Again, I'll use her mosi as an example of the grind. And like, it seemed like he came out of nowhere at the end of 2019, 2020, when he like really blew up. And people just don't know, you know, what it really takes to do the things that they want to do. And it's a, it's a reminder every day that you just have to, you know, sit, sit with yourself on.

I think social media is a big part of it because we are used to getting things. So everything is so easy in life right now, right?

Yeah.

And it's like the things that are not. Are growing a business, getting in shape, like those things are things you can't instant gratification to.

Right.

And I think sometimes when, when we're not, you know, getting the results we want, instead of solving the hard problem, we decide to just switch. And that's. There's nothing wrong with that. I've seen a lot of people I know do that. I have good friends that are constantly switching businesses all the time. Right. I'm not going to say who they are, but it's like the thing that's going to make you successful is sticking with the one thing and going all in and figuring it out. Because it's kind of like business is kind of like this, like, maze, right? And it's like you're going through the maze, you're trying to figure it out, and then you hit a roadblock. And it's like you maybe try at the roadblock for a little bit of time and then you're like, what people do is they'll be like, you know what? I'm going to go all the way back and enter a different maze. But because you don't understand how to get past that roadblock, you hit the same roadblock in that maze as well. And you just keep doing that over and over and over again and you keep switching. So it's like you'll, you'll get a business, you'll go up to here, right? You'll be like, ah, you know what? I'm going to switch businesses. I'm going to go somewhere else. And then you get another business and it goes up to here again. You never get past that wall right there because you haven't learned the skills and done the hard things to actually, like get there, you know what I mean? So it's like you have to figure that out and get past that bottleneck and then you know how to scale. It's like, you know, if you're trying to grow, grow a business and you can't get yourself out of sales and you can't hire a sales team, you haven't figured that part out yet, right? Then switching businesses is not the answer. It's getting help figuring out how to grow the sales team. Because if you go start another business, you're going to get that problem again. It's like you still got to sell. All the selling's on you. And you're going to hit that ceiling and then you're going to switch again and you're going to hit that ceiling, you're going to switch again. And then if it's like same thing with leads. If you don't know how to get leads, it's like, it's not the niche. It's usually you just don't know the skill. Right? And these skills, little bricks in the road to get, get you to where you want to be at the end of the day.

I heard a good quote the other day. You guys might have heard this before. It's like the. I forget exactly how it was worded, but it was like the keys to the success that you're looking for lie within the work you're avoiding.

Yep, exactly.

That's, you know, there's a bunch of iterations of that, but like, like we're talking about, it's just, you have to, you know, once you hit a roadblock, you can't just take a left turn and go somewhere else. Like, you gotta push through.

Well, and, and a version of that too is like the business you love and the money you want and the life you want is all on the other side of the hard problems that you're avoiding and you don't want to solve. It's not fun, right? Hiring a sales team is not always fun. Hiring and training people is not always fun. But once you figure that out, you move to the next thing and you start to buy the time back. You get leverage on your time and to kind of move into that topic, it's like leverage really is the way that you make more money. Because like I have. We have how many people on our sales team right now, Ethan? Four.

Five.

Five?

Yeah.

So we have five people selling full time. Right. And so like, even if I wanted to, if I was the best salesperson in the world, I couldn't outsell my Five salespeople, because there's five of them. I'm one person, right? So, like, you get leveraged through. I forget the. It's like the four different categories. I know Naval Ravikan talks about it a lot, but it's like, it's code, media, people, and capital. And it's like, you can get leverage by having money. You get leveraged by having people. You get leveraged by having media recording a video once plenty of people see it. You get leveraged by having code. And for this instance, like, we're in the business of having people as leverage. And so, like, you buy another 24 hours or another, you know, people don't work 24 hours a day, but, like, you buy like, another 20, like, I don't know, 10 hours a day by hiring that next person. And I think a lot of people just don't scale because they get to this point where they're so overwhelmed and busy all the time, and they're like, they're in a pain. As Dan Martell talks about it, it's like they're in the. They're in the pain line. They're hitting that pain line, right? And they won't go further because they're like, I hate my life. I'm so busy all the time. I'm always editing, I'm always shooting. I'm not charging enough. I feel like I just can't get to where I want to go. And so they're like, you know what? Maybe running a business isn't for me. And then. And then they give up. Right? But that's not the problem. The problem is, is you didn't a charge what you're worth, hire the right people, buy the time back. Because, like, you can make a lot of money and not do a lot of work. Like that's allowed. And I think maybe some people don't think that. I don't know what you guys have thoughts on about that, but it's like, you can make a lot of money and buy your time back and have other people do the things you don't want to do. Like, there's nothing wrong with that. And, like, there's other people who. Who can do things just as good as you can as well. And I think a lot of people get stuck in that. Like, well, no one can do it as good as I can. It's like, even if that was true, it's not really serving you, because then you just don't let anyone else do anything for you. You know what I mean? There's probably people who are better editors than you or better shooters?

Oh, I. I know there is.

There are. For me, my work is. Okay. I'll be. I'll be honest about that. My work is not the best, but that's okay, right? I want to run a business. I want to. I want to recruit and find the best people and to tie it back, too. It's like, it's always the super bowl analogy. It's like, you're not going to win a Super bowl with one person.

Right.

You know, win a Super bowl with a winning team. Your only job is the business owner and is to recruit and find the best talent. Excuse me. For your business. And that's it. And, like, that is your only job. That's your only value, really, as a business owner. It's like, how do I recruit and find the best talent? And how do I keep that talent, motivate that talent? And you want to think about yourself as like a, you know, an NFL coach. It's just like, how do I find these people and keep them and grow them and scale them and grow them as people and get, you know, the most out of them for the business and for themselves? And how do I just keep leveling up and being a really, really amazing leader? And that's where you have to shift that focus from, like, I'm a freelancer to I'm a leader who's going to attract and get other people and grow them up within my business.

Right.

So, yep, that's my rant. But any thoughts on that, guys? Well, I rest.

No, dude, I think. I think you hit the nail on the head. I mean, it's all about the. It's all about the. The boring work or the. Not even in the boring work? Because I think, like, we were talking about before. Like, I think a point comes before the boring work for most people of the roadblock.

Yeah, right.

Like, identifying the roadblock. And, like, once you flex that muscle of, like, going through the roadblocks, the. The blockade becomes less and less every time. Like, first it's a concrete barrier or a wall, and then it's a concrete barrier, and then it's the little plastic thing, you know, that the police put out or whatever. It just becomes less and less over time. And that allows you to flex that muscle. It makes it a little bit easier to make that next choice decision whether it's go left or right. You make it faster, whatever it is, the confidence.

Because you're like, I've solved problems before.

Yeah.

And that's really all we are. We're in the business of solving problems. I saw someone I follow who got their account, like Instagram account restricted or whatever, and they're like, you know, for a second they were down on themselves, but then they're like, you know what, I'm gonna figure this out. And you know, we are in the business of solving problems as entrepreneurs.

That's it.

That's all we do. We're just, we are problem solvers. And like, that's what we signed up for. So a couple more minutes here, guys. What questions do you have around scaling your video business? We've worked with over 500 video business owners. This team right here, us three. So if you have questions around how to scale, how to get clients, Ethan's gonna be your guy for offer sales pricing. He's consulted all of our top clients on getting more clients closing huge deals. So what kind of questions do we have around scaling? And we're happy to answer those for you. If you're on Instagram, drop us a comment down below. If you are on YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, go ahead and drop us a comment down there as well. And we will answer anything you guys have could be around pricing, could be around switching from one offs to retainers. It could be how to get more leads, how to set up an inbound system, how to hire a sales team, whatever it may be. We can help you with that. So we'll kind of continue on some topics while we get some questions. And then we got to wrap it up here in about four or five minutes here. I gotta get to another call. And these guys got to help our clients, so. But yeah, I think it is, I think it's just like people, we have to build a team. You have to get in that mode of like learning how to do that and learning how to, how to hire people and getting yourself out of like, I have to the mindset of like, I have to do everything myself because, like, you really don't have to do anything in the business. You just have to find the people who can.

Right, right, right.

Like, you could literally start and scale a video business without having any idea how to actually shoot content. You just have to find somebody who can and hire them on your team. That's it. Yeah, you know, which is huge. I'm trying to think of some other stories as well with like when we talked about Tori last week, but Tori was one of our case studies. Closed about 45k in like, what, a week? Two weeks with us?

Yeah, two weeks to the hour after.

What did you switch from her packages Exactly. Ethan, when you worked with her pricing.

And I'm trying to think what else.

What did you do with the pricing specifically?

Bumped it up. Almost everybody I talked to about their prices up. Really?

Okay, okay.

Throw an extra 3k in there.

Ethan, how much did you double them? Did you like 1 1/2 x them? Did you, what did you do specifically?

No, I didn't quite know. We didn't, we definitely like didn't double it. I want to say it was like, I don't know, 20% or so. Because especially if we're going back to past clients, I don't want to like just sticker shock them and like, hey, my prices are doubled now.

Well, I think she said this is a brand new client that she was in conversations with but didn't really know how to navigate it. But yeah, I mean, I think that's a good point. It's like a lot of times we.

We.

We don't really charge what we're worth and like we're undercharging and a huge lever you can pull is by just simply charging more for the exact same thing. Doesn't require any work, which is.

And she does like a kind of a couple steps beyond like done for you posting, like she'll even do. She has people that like will respond and engage to comments.

Okay, yep. As well.

So that's where we can also charge a little bit more.

Yeah, exactly. Things we're solving more problems. Film, Film academy here says which is better, freelance or full time crew? Maybe clarify the question a little bit more. It just depends on what you want. Right? So like if you're a freelancer, you're trading your time for money. If you are a business owner with a, you know, employees that work with you, then you're building something that is, has more leverage on your time. Like we talked about. It's like If I have 10 people working for me, they can do a hell of a lot more work than one person can. Right. And so it's just what do you want? Do you want to scale yourself out of the business? Do you want to grow the business? Do you want to get yourself out of that? Or are you just someone who just wants to do the thing and you're cool with just clocking in, going on set for 12 hours and clocking out? For me, I didn't want that. I wanted to make more money and have leverage on my time and grow a business and you know, I wanted to hire people and give them opportunities as well, so.

Or if you're talking about Hiring people I would hire, I would just do freelance. Until your freelance costs, you know, exceed what you pay a full time crew.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

It just depends on, on, on your goals. Um, let's see what other questions. Guys, we, we got grow the business. Someone says they want to grow the business. How, how can I get from startup. From the startup. Also get retainers at the same time. Maybe clarify that a little bit there, but I think you mean like how do you start up. That's a little bit of a longer answer. But we have to figure out what's the niche, right? Who are we going after? Build an offer and then we have to start approaching people and selling that offer and having conversations. That's really what business is. At the end of the day. It's how do I solve this person's problem? And that's it. Like it's how do I talk to people, how do I solve their problem and then how do I charge money to solve that problem? And you just happen to solve that problem through, through content. Let's see, I got one more question. Like to know what your pricing starts at for helping people grow theirs? Yeah, for sure. So everything we do is custom. If you want to learn a little bit more below this on YouTube, you can book a call with our team. They'll kind of figure out whether or not we can actually help because we aren't for everybody. We're really for people who've already had a couple of clients and they're looking to scale. But there's also some free resources in there. If you want to go ahead and book a call and schedule a demo with our team, we can see if we can help. Let's see. I think that's pretty much it guys. That's all I got. I gotta run. Good live today. Let me know if you guys have any questions. We'll be back here on Thursday and then I'll be dropping some YouTube videos for you guys as far as training in the next couple days. So with that being said, if you want to learn more, click the link below, schedule a demo and we will see you guys in the next one. See you guys.