Live Q&A - Scaling Your Video Business in 2025

Sun is shining over me. I got a good thing coming. Just wait and see. It's a good girl. What is going on, guys? We're back for another live. I'm muted there. What is going on? Ethan, what's going on, dude? How are you?

How we doing, guys? Good.

Week before Christmas. Everybody's getting ready. Let me get everybody in here. If you're joining live, drop a comment down below. Let us know if you're live, let us know where you're coming from and we're gonna answer any sort of questions you have around scaling your video business. We're gonna help you with anything you need going into 2025. And in today's live, we're going to be talking more so around like how to actually get more clients in 2025, what kind of retainers to offer, what, what kinds of packages to offer, what to price yourself at. And we're going to be working through all of that today. So if you're on the live with us, let us know and we are happy to help. Let me pull up some questions here. One sec. What is going on, everyone? Let's see. Ethan, what are some things you're running into this week or what are some things that people are running into? I think I want to kind of talk about focus and the idea of like not changing things every time something gets hard in the video business because I think a lot of people, they fall victim to that mindset where they're like, let me, let me change things the minute that something gets hard, the minute that something gets difficult. But what do you, what do you see on your end from people who do that?

Yeah, no, I see. No, exactly that. And I was actually watching Alex Mosey put out like a two and a half hour video like yesterday or today about, you know, just kind of long term growth and set long term goals for yourself and more so focusing like on the, on like short term goals. Because that's stuff you have a lot more control over at the end of the day.

Like focusing more on the short term stuff, you're saying.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so like he drew, you know, like a line graph and show, you know, like this might be two years, but over the course of two years you might get up a little bit, then plateau, then grow, then plateau. So there's going to be, you know, I guess, you know, kind of a learning curve and some plateaus along the way, but over the course of a couple years it looks like a flat line.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think like for, for me at Least I've. Like, most of my leverage has come from at least in my own experience, like, just doing the same thing and getting really good at it. And I think a lot of times newer business owners or newer video business owners, people who are just starting get into this place where they're like, well, you know, I want to. You know, something got hard. It must be the niche or it must be the types of clients I'm working with. And sometimes it's that, right? But a lot of times it's not. Like, if you're. If you're. If you look around and you say, like, there's other video business owners and video agencies that are successful in this type of industry that are making it work. Like, if they can do it, it's proof that you can do it as well. And, like, the answer is not changing the niche all the time. Because I think that's, like, the easiest thing. People blame the niche. They blame outside circumstances, they blame outside issues, right? Instead of just taking ownership and saying, like, hey, maybe I'm just not good enough yet. And I think that's a hard thing for a lot of people to accept, where it's like, maybe you're just not good enough and it hurts your ego. But, like, usually that's the answer. And I've done that for myself tons of times. It's like, maybe I'm just not good enough at this thing yet, right?

It's like, it's not the fun answer. It's the answer nobody wants to hear. Exactly.

It is exactly. What's up, Mint Media? Nathan, what's going on, dude? Yeah, glad you're here, man. Ask any questions you have. We're happy to help. And. And this is just an open Q and A. We're happy to riff on anything today. So if you guys are here, if you're live, let us know if you're live. We see people on YouTube here, Facebook, LinkedIn. Let us know if you have any questions, and we're happy to answer those. But, yeah, I mean, I know that, like, even with. Even with ads, right? It's like, ads are not perfect. And, you know, people sometimes launch ads the wrong way, and they're like, ads don't work well. It's like, well, all ads are doing is they're just letting more people know about your offer and your business. And, like, people can then choose if they want to click on the ad, enter their information as a lead, become a call, and then close and then buy with you, right? And it's like, if your ads aren't working. It's not that ads don't work, it's that you're not good enough at ads. Which means either A, it's the actual ad, B, it's the actual offer, C, it's your sales process, or D, it is client fulfillment. Like maybe you can onboard people, but they hate you and they churn out and they stop buying. It's like that is all a process. It's not that ads don't work, it's just that you're not good enough yet. You know what I mean?

Yeah. When you and I talk about this sometimes too is like people may not always buy on the first time they see an ad. Very rare. It takes, you know, six, seven, eight touch points. And that's why the nurture process is so important too. So like ads get them into your ecosystem, but if you have one conversation with them, you shouldn't just leave them alone after that.

Yeah, exactly. Well, it's usually seven touch points. Right. So it's like you have, you have an ad, somebody sees the ad, they're going to see the AD 3, 4, 5, 6 times, then they're going to click on it, then they're going to become a lead. Right? And then after they become a lead, then they're going to decide like, hey, do I want to answer any sort of text messages or phone calls? And then they're going to decide do I want to book a call? Right. They're going to have that like you have to overcome the hump of like, you know, are they going to book a call or not? And then when they book the call, then they have to talk with you and then they're going to decide like after talking with you if they like you and want to buy from you, and then they're going to go through like a consideration period there and then finally they're going to buy from you or they're not going to buy from you. And like that is all like there's multiple touch points throughout each process. And a lot of times I think like people don't a reach out enough, they don't run enough ads, they don't spend enough on ads, they don't follow up enough on the prospects that they have coming into the ecosystem and they just aren't doing enough volume to the point where like it's even making a difference in the first place. And they like talk to somebody once they don't want to buy from them and then they give up. You know what I mean?

Exactly. Yep. And things like having email, having Social media, you know, all these things. Just keeping it really. Just keeping yourself top of mind.

Yeah.

Is a huge part of it.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think like a lot of times we're just not doing enough volume and people get stuck and scared about reaching out to people and doing sales. When at the end of the day, like if you truly believe in what you're selling and it's like you shouldn't be scared of like selling it. Right. It's only when you don't believe in what you're selling that you feel like sales is slimy because you don't actually feel like you're helping people. Like if you truly believe in what you're selling, it's not sales. It's not slimy.

No.

Let's see. Mint media. I was curious what you think about scheduling software. Anecdotal evidence that hurts. That it hurts Engagement did this for a new client. Suddenly the reviews dropped to zero for like five to six videos. However, for posting manually is a prohibitive. Not sure what to do. Do you still use Metricool? We still use Metricool. I haven't seen a difference. Honestly. I've heard from a couple people where it is. It does hurt their views if you're using like a third party software. But for us it hasn't made a difference for us, if that makes sense. Nathan. But a workaround for that is you could just have a va. You could hire a VA and the VA could just schedule everything out. Or you can schedule it in Meta Business Suite, which shouldn't hurt. Any sort of like evidence or engagement or anything like that. On the actual.

It's all native.

Yeah, exactly. If you use Meta Business Suite it shouldn't affect it, but it really depends on the account is what we found. It hasn't made a huge difference for us, but for some accounts it has. Hopefully that answers your question there. Let's see what else. Who else is on the live. Guys, what other questions do you have about scaling your video business in 2025? I will answer that. I just made a YouTube video, dude, about the difference between like going after bigger businesses versus going after smaller businesses and because I've had a lot of conversations with like I had a conversation with a video business owner last week. Great guy, he's based in New York and the problem is they're doing. They do, they used to do at peak. He said like 2.1 or 2.1 ish million a year. I won't say who it is or any sort of like evidence that gives away who it Is but like doing 2.1 million a year was like their top line, but they were only profiting like 10 to 20% on that. Right. Because most of the projects they were doing were those large like $100,000 jobs or $200,000 jobs, which is like one commercial for a business. Right. And the problem is, is a lot of video or a lot of like business owners are moving away from just doing the one commercial into more doing social media content, consistent content, UGC content and more volume of content. So it's kind of this like, it's this thing where they're doing more volume than like quality almost. Where like it's still quality volume but it's also like just more volume because they have more shots on goal. And I think you and I talked about this as well, but like it is super, like there's a huge shift in the industry where people are going more towards volume of content. And that's why content retainers, like it's in 2025 is going to be a huge year for content retainers because like most of these businesses just want content consistently so they can have more shots on goal. You know what I mean?

Yep. Yeah. Things like ads and social content, they're going to be a bit more, you know, disposable, quote unquote. Where it's volume and consistency are the two things.

Yeah. And so if you guys are not offering that like a, if you're just doing one off projects, like these huge one off commercials. I love the emojis. If you're just doing these huge one off projects, then like you're going to have these big spikes where like you have one month, that's huge. And then you have nothing for three or four months. One month, that's huge. And then nothing for three to four months. And like that's what this person was going through. And so I suggested to him, I said, hey, you should do more content retainers where you're working with clients every single month to create content on a monthly basis to the point where like they're going to keep needing you. It gives you 70 to 80% gross profit margins on those packages and then they need you every single month to create content for them, you know?

Yep, exactly.

And it fills in those gaps in your revenue throughout your entire revenue, which is huge. Yeah.

You can't just have one big campaign like every 90 days. Yep.

100. And that's like clients are not willing. And if you think about it from the business's perspective too, like if you're a Business. Like would you rather invest 20k in like 5 to 6 different pieces of content that you can have multi use cases for? Or would you rather Invest, you know, 100K in one commercial and if that thing flops, then you're out 100K and you're just screwed? Right.

It's like, of course I'm going to.

Choose the 20k option. So like as video business owners, as videographers, as people who are video agencies, like we have to think about that from the client's perspective to where like they don't want to just like blow all of their money on one piece of content because if it doesn't work, they're screwed or they just have to take a loss. You know what I mean?

Yep. No, exactly. Yeah. You have more, more at bats.

Yeah. And I think those large commercial projects are still great, they're still fun, right. They still make money. But you know, having a baseline of like 50 to 100k a month in content retainers is a really good strategy. And then having those big, you know, one off projects throughout the, throughout the year being like things that kind of add to the revenue as icing on the cake.

Those are good for like the evergreen content, like brand videos, client testimonials, things that are going to live on for a couple of years.

Yeah, absolutely. What do you guys, people on the live. Where are you calling in from A and then B, what are some things you're going through in your video business? What are some things you need help with? It can be around like getting more leads, getting more calls, getting more clients. It can be any of those things. So drop a comment down below, let us know and then we'll answer those things for you guys. Let's see, what else do we have? I'm gonna flip over here to LinkedIn, see how do you go about pricing revisions into a contract or a proposal? Good question. So we typically just tell our clients to allow two revisions that are included in the project and then any revision after that. We just set a price. So it's like $200 a revision or $500 a revision or whatever it may be. Right. So like you build that into the contract. So then it's easy for you to be able to see like, hey, you have two revisions and then after those revisions you are done. So let me know if that makes sense. But that's how we typically handle that.

Yep. Well, and if they're outsourcing D Charger, I, I usually suggest charging a percentage on top of that. Like if you're paying your editor, you know, 30 bucks a reel, you know, charge a, you know, 10 or 20% fee on top of that as well.

Yeah, 100. Absolutely. Let's see, what other questions do we have? Guys, pull this up. Let me see. LinkedIn currently transitioning from shooting weddings to shooting more business content. Curious if you have any thoughts on how to transition and how to make that a smooth transition? Yeah, absolutely. So, like, if you're only shooting weddings and you're. You're trying to transition into shooting more for, like, content for businesses, it's just two different ballparks. Right? So like, with weddings, you're shooting on the weekends, you're shooting, you know, you're shooting maybe twice a week because, like, no one's having a wedding in the middle of the week. You're traveling a lot. If you miss the shot, you're screwed. Right. Like, that's why a lot of people transition from weddings to shooting for businesses. With the types of retainers our clients are typically offering, they're typically going out one time a month to shoot the content, and then after they shoot that content, like, they're not going out for another month to shoot more content. So, like, they shoot once per client per month, and then they're getting all the content for the month and they're done after that. Right. So, like, it's really important or it's just, it's. It's an important distinction between just doing weddings and doing content where, like, you're doing once a month, you're getting paid anywhere between like 5 and 15k a month for these content retainers. Whereas with weddings, you're maybe getting 5k one time and then you have to, like, scramble to get ever get all the shots that you need, you know what I mean?

Yep. And we even have people doing it, you know, every two months, like once a quarter too. So, like, it doesn't have to be every single month either.

Yeah, yep, absolutely. 100. Well, cool. Guys, we got a couple more minutes here. Any questions you have, drop them down below, let us know. We're happy to answer these for you guys. If you're just tuning in, this is we're going live teaching you how to scale your video business in 2025. If you have questions about getting more leads, getting more calls, getting more sales, drop a comment down below, let us know. And we are happy to answer anything you have. Let me go back over to LinkedIn real quick. I'm. I'm mobile here, man. So I'm just trying to switch between all my tabs hold on. Yes, the hotel life. Let's see, let's see, let's see, let's see. What other questions do we have? Guys, drop a comment down below, let us know. How do you use manychat to automate your lead gen for your clients? That's a good question. So typically what we're doing with our clients is we'll help them set up manychat, which if you haven't heard of that, it's a software where like someone's like, hey, comment down below. And to learn more, you can set your clients up with ManyChat. And then when you're posting short form content or your admin is posting short form content for them, you can just attach a word to that and then that can help them actually turn that into a piece of content that's going to generate leads for them when someone comments down below. And you hook that up to like some sort of lead form on the back end to get the name a phone number and then help that client actually start generating leads for that piece of content. And then if you want more, we should have a YouTube video on that on the channel. If you just search it, you should be able to find that on there as well. Let's see. I think that's it, guys. If there's any other questions, any other things you want us to go over, let us know real quick. Otherwise we're going to be dipping. We got to run to another meeting and, and we will see you guys in the next one here. Let's see. I'll give it 1/10 here to see if anyone else has any other questions. And if you guys want to learn more about what we do and how we actually help video business owners scale. If you go below this video, there should be a link to book a call with our team, see if we can actually help and get you to where you want to go in 2025. And we should be able to help if you just click that link but down below and schedule a time with us. But with that being said, guys, if you have any other questions, let us know. Otherwise, we'll see you guys next week, everybody. Have a good weekend, Stay safe and we'll see you next week. See you guys. Let's go.