Live Q&A - How To Scale Your Video Business

In front of me sun is shining over me? I got a good thing coming? Just wait and see It's a good girl. 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's gonna lift? Coming and it's all I need? Everything I want in front of me? Sun is shining over me? I got a good thing coming so wait and see It's a good, good.

What is going on, guys? We are back for another live this Thursday. I got the crew with me. We're all the E Men. Over here, we got Evan and Ethan and Eric here. What's going on, guys? We're live on Instagram over here on the left. We're live on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, and all the platforms on the right. So if you guys are joining us, drop a comment down below, let us know where you're tuning in from. We would love to get. Get to know you guys if you haven't been to one of these lives before. Basically, we just go over any sort of issues you guys are running into. We've coached over 500 video business owners to date, so we are sharing those lessons with you and any questions you have around that and how we're happy to help in any way we can. So if you have comments, drop them down below. If you're on YouTube, I see a bunch of people here tuning in. So if you're watching on Facebook or YouTube, drop a comment down below, let us know where you're calling in from. We got someone from the Netherlands over here. Charlotte, North Carolina. Where else, guys? Where else? That's awesome. Netherlands is crazy. I didn't know I had any followers from Netherlands. It's pretty wild, but what's going on, guys? Evan, what are you up to? Ethan, what are you up to?

I just got done working out, so. Nice.

Me too. What did you. What'd you do today? You doing boxing workouts?

Of course. Every two. Every Tuesday, Thursday, boxing. And it was tough, but, dude, I.

Used to do boxing. I loved boxing. It was a lot of fun. It is a good time. It's a good workout. Ethan, remember we used to do. You did it with me sometimes.

Right?

Knuckle up. Yep, yep, yep.

Oh, yeah. That's what I was trying to think of what it was called. Yeah, yeah. Knuckle up was fun.

Yeah.

Over in Alpharetta. Absolutely. We got people from Miami Tuning in. What is going on, guys? Drop any questions. What are you struggling with in your video business right now? I want to know. Drop a comment down below. But, Ethan, what have you been up to? Just client calls. Helping clients get out of. Get out of their way and close some deals.

Yep. Went on a walk, got out, got a little sunshine. Get out of the office for a minute.

Heck, yeah, dude. I just did a case study with Gabriel, one of our clients, the other day. Yesterday, actually. Dude, ten days into the program closes a 10.5K deal. Freaking awesome. And he was nervous as heck to join the program, too. I remember Hakeem was talking with him. We're gonna say.

I know. I was saying. That's what he was saying in the. In the chat that you guys had.

Yeah.

Yeah, dude, I love seeing stuff like that. When people come in, they apply themselves. There's literally like, no. There's no cap to whatever they can do. Like, they can absolutely crush it. And.

And was it a fresh lead, like. Or somebody, like, he already knew, like, he reactivated?

Yeah. So it was a reactivation, I believe.

I think.

I don't. I don't. I don't think that I. I don't think it was covered in the thing. I just. That's why.

Yeah, I think it was. I think it was a reactivation. I believe it was a landscaping company that he did. He's doing it's 3, 500amonth for three months is what he's charging them. And for anybody who's like, well, I don't know if a, you know, a local business would pay that. They absolutely will if you show them the value. Value of what it is that you provide. So. I love it, dude. Evan, what have you been working on lately while we wait for some questions and comments?

I have been working on fresh content. I just loaded some fresh ads today. Nice. Obviously, working with all of our clients as well. A few of my own new clients as well. Just kind of a full boat of things and trying to grow and scale a little bit more myself.

Absolutely. Dude. Ethan, what have you been up to? What kind of client. What are. What are clients running into right now? Or what do you see from somebody who maybe just joins the program? What's some of the things that they're.

Struggling with when they first join sales.

Is a big one.

And then, you know, stuff that we talk about a lot. Sending proposals, you know, sending stuff over text or email.

Yep.

And then just coming up with packages, too.

Yeah. What would you say, either Evan or Ethan, what would you say to somebody who's like, I don't think my clients will pay retainers. Like, I don't think that that works. That's only for, you know, that's only for big, big agencies. I can't charge retainers. Like, what would you say to someone who thinks that, Evan?

I mean, it's kind of like you said at the beginning. It's like, they will pay it. They just need to understand why it's worth it for them. Right? And. And getting the right help and understanding how to show that and how to make it worth their while is kind of really the only key that you need for your tool belt to be able to open up that conversation. Because just as much as you might be scared to pitch something like that, the client and prospect is if they've never seen it before, if they don't understand it, they're just as scared to say, like, maybe it will work. Yep, it's the same. It's the same thing. But if you have two people, it's kind of like the spider man meme, where you're just, like, standing there and you're pointing at each other. Right. Like, it's kind of like that in real life. But it can be done. You just have to. You have to. You have to get in the water is the way that I look at it. I've been using swimming analogies a lot lately. I don't know why.

Dude, you're ready to jump in the pool. You wish it was summer, I guess.

Yeah. I don't know. I guess.

Yeah. Guys, what. What questions do you have? Drop them down below. We're happy to answer them. I'm going to go over a couple questions I got last week. Let me pull some up here. If you have questions around scaling your video business, how to get clients, how to get leads, how to operate sales calls effectively. Drop those down below. Oh, here's a good one. How do I handle objections like, we don't have the budget. Evan, maybe you want to take this one. But how do you handle. When someone says, hey, we don't have the budget for this, like, why are they saying that? And then how do you handle it?

Sure. So I ask them. I honestly ask them to clarify what that means, because then you can figure out, like, if it's an honest thing in terms of, like, they just simply don't make the kind of revenue that they need to in order to be able to do that. But really, it's just kind of peeling back the layers of the onion. Right. Like, you have to get them to clarify what they mean by anything that they give you out of the gate, no matter what the objection is. You have to ask for clarification on why they're saying that. Yep. Because that nine times out of ten, will lead to the next thing. To the next thing, to the next thing. That will be the ultimate objection that.

They actually do have. Yep. 100%. Yeah, absolutely. And so for me, it's usually because we're not building a big enough gap from where they are to where they want to be. And so, like, if somebody doesn't feel like it's something that can actually help them get to the next level, then it's going to be really difficult for them to invest or have the budget for it because they don't see it as something that's valuable to them.

Right.

And so what a lot of people are doing is they're just offering content, as opposed to what you should be doing is talking about the results and the strategy behind the content. And if you don't know what that is, then you need to invest in help and getting the skills to actually use your content to actually get them a result at the end of the day. And so it's super, super key. I think a lot of people sleep on that. And. And that's why they're not necessarily able to demand higher budgets or higher prices.

Right?

Totally.

Yeah.

Ethan, what do you see? Like, why are people typically saying, hey, we don't have the budget? Like, what are they. Why are they saying that?

Well, like Evan said, I think first thing would be, you know, does that mean we just, like, we literally just don't have the money laying around, like it doesn't exist? Or, you know, do you think it would be better used for something else in your business? But all before that as well, like, you were talking about making sure, you know, they feel good about the strategy and something that it can actually help, because if they don't feel like it can help, we don't need to talk about price.

Right. If they're not sold on it being the solution to their problems and actually getting them to the level that they want to get to, then they're not going to invest in it. I want to switch gears for a second. Someone asked, how important is it to be able to build a personal brand and create your own content as a video business owner? Evan, maybe you want to take this one.

Oh, no, I love that question. Because personal branding is not something that, you know, I, as a student, what, three or four years ago now, when I came through master filmmaker. Like I wasn't focused on that. Like I didn't even have a professional brand at the time. Like I thought, oh, I gotta have this business brand and be this like, you know, forward facing Goliath or whatever. It's only really honestly been the last. What's it, It's October since like end of June. Like I've really started like working on my personal brand and like putting me and my name in my content, in my ads and little things like that. Because like, you know, we preach too. It's like people, people buy from people at the end of the day, right? They're not gonna buy from your company unless your company is like Coca Cola. Like, right. Like that's different. That brand is hundreds of years in existence. But, and I, and I use this too when a lot of people come in and we're like looking at their funnel build outs and they come in and they have their logo like really big at the top. I'm like, make that thing really small. Nobody here has brand like you don't. Nobody cares about it. So. But working on you as a person and funneling that back to your professional brand and service is kind of what I see is actually working a lot better right now. But what do you mean by that? I would say that it should be a four of a forefront of what everybody should start doing, you know, with their content, with their ads, with the way that they are generating conversations. Come from your, from your name, not necessarily your company.

Because I think it helps. Yeah, well, and the other thing too is like we're almost in this, this place where people don't trust you if you just run ads, right? So you need to have the ads are really your top of funnel metric or your top of funnel device or tool to get people into your ecosystem. And then from there you should be having content that you make about yourself, about your clients, about the, the videos you produce, about the results that you're producing. And that should be what is then turning somebody from just somebody who is aware of you to now somebody who wants to start talking with you about how you can solve their problem. What type of content. If somebody was like, hey, I don't even know where to start on what type of organic content to post. Like what would you recommend for them to post?

So I mean you can do different things. Like you can make content around specific kinds of content.

Why?

You know, certain kind of content are advantageous for certain placements and how they're used, you know, and obviously too short form versus long form. There's a big, you know, there's a big difference in what you can do in 90 seconds versus 90 minutes, for example. Right. I, I like. And if we're talking about just content, maybe not specific kinds of content, but like, if we're talking about somebody who, like, I don't know what kind of content to make or, you know, whatever, I don't think I'm good at it. I would say start with long form because you can repurpose and turn it into short form as well. Honestly, everybody should start a podcast of some sort, in my opinion. I've been podcasting for nine months with me and my wife. We're doing it just to have fun. We're not doing it for any marketing purposes. But I, I look back and I say to myself, like, if I would have started doing this for my business nine months ago, I, I mean, I would have troves of content. I, I post pretty much something almost every day. But like to do it in a, in a maximum capacity or like at scale, like, podcasting is like the way to go. And, and it, and it really, it really helps you out too because in the planning stage, like you're doing research and you're like figuring things out. Even if, like you're new and you're learning stuff, like, it's a great tool to be able to do that. It is really hard to do a one person podcast. I will say that I've tried to try to kind of do it before. It's kind of tough. But if you can get a Get.

A friend hop on Riverside FM. Yeah, you can even record it on there. It's 29 bucks a month. And like talk about things that you're an expert in, right? And so I think a lot of people are just like scared to even take the first step of like, oh, shoot, dude, I don't want to create content. It's so scary. But honestly, like, that is the, that's the first step. And it's just talk about things that you know, right? So talk about, like, hey, I created a video project for so and so for this client. Just talk about that, right? If people don't know about it and you don't document it, then like, nobody knows about it, right? So I think a lot of people are kind of scared of getting over that first hurdle. But a lot of times it's like, how do I just create some content or document what I'm already doing or just talk about what I did yesterday, right? So like, shoot some B roll of you on set and then just do a voiceover of talking about what you did and why you did it. So like maybe you made a brand film for a client because of a specific reason. Right. Maybe you did a testimonial video for a specific reason. Talk about why that is and just talk about your expertise and what you are good at. And then you can use that as a starting place for that content. You can chop up the long form, like Evan said, and put it into short form.

Content 100%. Yeah.

Have some questions on Instagram here.

Hi guys.

I'm a new EP and in order to get clients, I'm struggling to create an offer that sells branded docu documentaries focused on socially conscious storytelling. What should I do to start IG content question mark? I'm not sure if I fully understand that question, but I think the first thing. And Ethan, I would go to nonprofits. What's that?

I would go to nonprofits.

Either nonprofits. Or figure out, like you said, you create an offer that sells branded documentaries focused on socially content. Socially conscious storytelling. That's a, that's a word. Word salad. But who do you serve with that? Like, who is the actual audience?

Right.

Like, like who is buying socially conscious storytelling documentaries? Right.

And for what reason?

And for what reason? Why are they buying it? Right. So I think you're unclear still on your offer and who you're actually targeting. Right. And number one, get clear on, you know, am I targeting nonprofits? Am I talking, am I targeting local businesses? Am I targeting medical companies? Who am I target?

Right.

And then we're going to make content. I would start with making some organic content around that actual problem and start documenting what it is that you actually do. And then number two, I would be reaching out to people who are in that specific niche and asking them if you can do some sort of free work in exchange for a case study. Right. And then once you get that case study, you can then take that case study and then use that across other platforms to then get more clients. Am I missing anything there, guys?

No, I don't think so.

I think you covered make money outcome.

Yeah, it has to be a make money outcome. Like why am I buying content from you if it's not to make more money for my business? It's going to be tough to charge a higher ticket amount of money.

Right.

There's three outcomes. It's health, wealth, and relationships. And so for businesses, it's a make money outcome. So you have to show them how you're going to make the money.

Right. 100%.

Yeah.

Which you could still do with nonprofits. It would just be in the form of donations.

Funding donations. How can I, how can I, how can I create a piece of content that helps you raise more money?

Right, right.

And, and that's the key there. So we have to really focus on like, how are you doing that? And then showing them how you're doing that as opposed to just like I help them create this type of content which is kind of this like, kind of vague thing, if that makes sense, you know.

Yeah, nobody, nobody cares about pretty Instagram pages.

Nope.

Or anything like that anymore. They used to, but they don't anymore.

Yeah, they don't. Absolutely. Let's see, what other questions do we have? Guys? Let me see, what else have you been working on lately, Evan? Like, that's coming up for you?

For me, I am, I'm trying to get rent back up. My. One of my retainer clients had to take a break because they were like onboarding like three new, three new employees. Like they're growing a lot and we had a huge backlog of content already that they didn't even get up and out. So I'm focusing on getting them back in and working with them a little bit and adding a little bit more to what we were already doing. Because I was just providing them content. Like there was no, I mean there's, there's, there's strategy behind, you know, what we do with like the call to actions and stuff. But there was no back end strategy. So we're going to implement some things, some, some, some workflows and some automations that will deliver lead magnets and little things like that I'm gonna get implemented for them. But you know, just, just really I'm focusing on a new kind of podcast offer as well for local businesses here in my area, kind of partnering with the podcast studio that I use for my podcast and, and, and, and use and using that more as the kind of the niche mechanism that, that I kind of want to focus on right now just because I have found myself. I don't know, I'll send it to you guys. I was on a podcast last week, episode premiered yesterday. I'll send it to you guys when we get done. But I really figured out in doing that podcast last week I was like, you really like podcasting? Like I told myself that like I have been doing it for nine months with my wife, but it was kind of like me doing it on my own just with somebody else who was a, you know, who's another videographer and Creative. And I was like, you really like doing this? So it's kind of something that I really want to be able to share with the rest of the world. In. In the. In the process that I've kind of cultivated a little bit. I don't think I've made it up. I definitely think I subconsciously am copying somebody. Yeah.

Easier medium, right? So, like, when you have a podcast, you can record a long form piece of content, and then you can essentially just, like, chop that up into pieces from there, you know, which is huge.

It's a lot more fun for me than the intentional, like, making short form to make it. It's also a lot less pressure for other people. And, you know, like, kind of like we said, like, if you don't know where to start, I think podcasting is a great vehicle for anybody also to be able to sell as well.

So, I mean, at the end of the day, you just need to be making content. So, like, if you're selling content to your clients, you need to be making content. Otherwise, it's. I mean, how. How do you expect somebody to trust you if you don't, of course, take your own medicine. Right. It's like, I see so many people who are scared start posting, or they have private accounts, or they, you know, they have things where, like, you can't see them. It's like, guys, like, more visibility, more awareness, more people seeing you is ultimately what's going to lead to more money for your business, right?

Yeah.

More people, more eyeballs, more conversations, more calls equals more clients, period. And, like, another hack, too. Sorry, guys, this camera's going haywire over here. Another hack is like, if you have people following you on Instagram, Facebook, DM your followers. If you don't DM your followers, what are you doing?

Yeah, right.

Those are leads right there. So, like, number one, make sure your Instagram, your Facebook, all of your social platforms are focused around a specific avatar, number one. And then, number two, make sure that anytime someone follows you, you DM them. Hey, thanks for the follow. Are you here for just the content, or are you looking to scale your business with content? Something like that. Right?

Yeah, easy.

And then as you start having more conversations, like, people are just afraid to, like, get out there and reach out, and you got to just get out there, start having those conversations and start turning those conversations into calls, and then those calls then turn into clients.

Right.

That's an easy place to start. So if you're struggling and you don't have leads or you're not getting as many Leads you DM the people who are following you. Very simple, right? Yep. Yep. Question for you, Ethan. Someone said, how do you. How do. How do I handle difficult clients or set clear boundaries? How do I set boundaries without losing clients? Maybe talk about the onboarding process.

I was going to say it all starts from the. It all starts in the beginning with, you know, just like a. Well, and like you said, I. A lot of people don't have an onboarding meeting. Like, they'll just set up the first shoot day and what is it?

Let's back up. What is an onboarding meeting? What is that? What is that?

So, you know, it depends how you have things set up, but, you know, like, if you have, like, you know, if you communicate by slack with your clients, if you have like a trello or asana, a Monday board, some type of project management, you know, setting expectations, mapping out the next, you know, month, 3, 612 months, however long the agreement is, and then, yes, expectations. You know, as far as, you know, it could be anything from revisions to reschedules, to how you communicate with them and just putting everything out up front versus basically just being proactive.

Yeah.

In proactive versus reactive.

Yeah.

And like, so when you close a client, you take their money, the first thing you should do is set up an onboarding call. And so, like, you set up that onboarding call and then you hop on the onboarding call and you say, hey, here's what the next X amount of months are going to look like. Here's what I expect from you, here's what you can expect from me. Here is the line of what we do and do not do. And then, sorry, guys, this camera is. And then from there it's essentially like, here's what we do, here's what we don't do. And you set those clear expectations upfront. Right? So, like, that way there's no confusion as to what it is that you do versus don't do. And I think a lot of times where people struggle and where myself, I've struggled in the past is you want to be everything to everybody. Where you have to set those clear, clear boundaries, where you're like, hey, this is what we do. This is what we do not do. And then if that problem comes up again and they ask for that fourth revision, you say, hey, just a reminder, based on what we talked about last time, this is what we do, and this is what we do not do. And, you know, if you wanted another revision, it's going to be X amount of money to do that. And Then as long as you record that first call, you get agreement on that onboarding call, you, everyone's in agreement. Then what do you. What are they going to say at the end of the day? They're going to say, oh, well, I didn't hold up what we agreed on, Right? So then they have no leg to stand on. And you respectfully set that boundary because.

A lot of those things are already mapped out as contingencies in, in an.

Agreement, typically, it's like, hey, here's what we expect. Here's what you need to do. If you do not do these things, here's what's going to happen, right? And so then that way, when they jump on board with you, everyone's on the same page. And I think a lot of times unhappy clients come from simply not setting clear expectations. If you could just set clear expectations and then meet those expectations, your clients would be over the moon, very happy. You don't even have to exceed expectations. Literally just have to set them and meet them and that's it. Right? So I think a lot of people struggle with that. They're like, yeah, yeah, I'll do that extra revision, or, yeah, yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll edit that extra clip for you, or I'll do this. And it's like the minute you kind of bend over backwards for them, they're going to take advantage of you because they know you will keep doing that and like people, you teach people how to treat you. So if you continue to do that, they know they can get away with it and they're going to keep pushing you on it. So hopefully that answers your question. This is awesome. Ethan says something about profile not being looked at again that much. Does that mean I should focus on creating more video content in my niche rather than actually posting my work? Ooh, this is a good one. Evan or Ethan, you want to take that?

I don't remember the last time I like. Well, no, I honestly, I don't. Off the top of my head, I'd have to go back and scroll my accounts, but I don't remember the last time I posted. Like, my work, it's been. It's been at least two or three months since I've posted something that I've done. Most of my content is nurture content for people that discover me. Or. Or it's discovery content, like reels, things like that.

Let's dive into that. What is nurture content and what is discovery content?

So nurture content is going to be. It still can be reels. Right. So reels usually because of the, the way that the algorithm works. Right. Like they show it to people who are not following you. So it's a really good way for you to get discovered. You can still make nurture reels. It's just the subject matter might be a little bit different in, in certain places, but nurture content is more long form. And then also like your stories placement, for example, because if people see that like on Instagram or I don't even know what it looks, I think it looks blue on Facebook and it's rainbow or whatever, like the Instagram color flow. But if people see a ring around your profile, they know that you're active there, so they go check out your stories. Right. Stories was something that I didn't really invest any time into up until about three months ago or so, just because I don't, I didn't use it in my natural way of like my entertainment of the platform. So I just didn't really care about it for myself. Yeah. But when I kind of got turned on to, hey, if you're, you know, running profile visits ads to your profile for a reason, like people are gonna see that your ring is lit up and then they're going to see what you're doing. So if you want people to see that you're active and actually doing things and not just making things for the sake of making it right just to have content, then they're going to really know more about you. They're going to get closer to you personally, and that is nurture content in and of itself. And then you use your stories function to push the long form stuff. So I, whenever I make a long form video, I take the thumbnail, I put it on my stories, I put a link and let people go out to my YouTube and watch that as well. So that's kind of. I forgot to turn that off. It's okay. So that's just the difference between nurture and discovery content. At the end of the day.

That makes sense.

Yeah.

So to, to answer that question, no, do not post your work. We want to post the results of your work plus discovery and nurture content. And so at the end of the day, if all you're doing is posting your work, that's cool. But remember, we're not selling our work. Just like Delta's not selling the plane ride. You're selling the destination where they're getting to as a result of that work. Right. And if you guys want to learn more about that, comment the word workshop. Don't comment. It here, but DM it to us. DM Workshop. And we'll send over like a free training going over how that actually works and how we can help you guys out a little bit further. But we're almost at the end of our time here. Does anyone else have any questions? Anything else we can answer? Go once here. Let's see. And if you guys want to learn more about what we actually do, if you're on Instagram, you can send me the word 15k. If you want to learn more about what we do. And if you are here on YouTube, you can schedule a call at the link below. Below. If you guys have any other questions, let us know. It was great hanging out with you. We're here every Thursday. And if you guys want to learn more about what we do, you can go to that link below and we will see you there. Outside of that, everybody, have a great rest of your Thursday and we'll talk to you in a bit.

Brand new me.

Brand new Brand new.

Brand new I blew away the clouds I was standing under Traded all my.

Rainy days For a little summer I.

Fly so high right now that I might not come back down into my own big carry on the top Sweet. Everything around me is looking up it's like it's what you make it. I'mma celebrated.