Live Q&A - Scaling Your Video Business In 2024

You ain't gotta ask me, we can hit the road got room in the backseat. Boys from the back street come so far Just singing over rap beats. See you on the way up Only looking down mama Seeing where we came from. You ain't gotta wait up. Never gonna slow back down. There's no stopping now, they can't take us down. There's no reason to fight this feeling. Cause I love this life. Everything's alright and there's no reason to stop belie living. Love this life and the future's bright. And there's no reason to fight this feeling, yeah. Love this life, yeah. Love this life, yeah Love this life, yeah Love this life. I won't wait around for the curtain fall. Life is not a race, it's on one big show go. I can see it now that the truth is told. Feels like letting go. I love this life, yeah. Feels all right. And there's no reason to stop believing. Love is life and the future's bright. And there's no reason to fight this feeling, yeah. Love this life, yeah. Love this life, yeah. Love this life, yeah. Love this life. Life. Is life, yeah. Love this life. Cuz I love this life. It feels all right and there's no reason to fight the love is life. Everything's all right and feel just bright. Love this life, yeah. Love this life, Yeah. I'm feeling like a brand new me. 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. Listen to my own be. Cherry on the top sweet. Everything around me is looking up. If life is what you make it, I' ma celebrate it. I'm feeling like a brand new me for the very first time I love where I meant to be. I just took a little visit and old me didn't know what I was listen Seeing so clear. Got that 2020 vision it was in me all along. All I had to do was listen to that heartbeat Found the side of my chest, the little voice. Sam.

What is going on? Everyone, welcome back for another live. We're here live on YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Clubhouse. Who knows, right? What's going on, guys?

How are we?

Evan, how are you? I'm good, man. How are you? Ethan, how are you doing?

Good, Good. Oh, we got. We got same mug.

Oh, I did that because last time. Yeah, from the team trip in Park City. I did that because last time you were. You were drinking out of that. I was like, dude, I got to get the same mug.

Up in here.

I got my.

Evan, I'm gonna ship you one as well and we can say did you.

Guys go to Target together?

Yeah, we did. Absolutely. What is going on? Everyone in this Q A, we're gonna do kind of just a live Q A again. So if you guys have any questions about how to scale your video business questions around that. What are things that are coming up for you as far as like pricing, how to get more leads, how to get more clients, how to get client results. That's something I want to start talking about as well. How to use the content within your system to get your clients results. Those are all huge topics we're going to be talking about. Drop a comment down below though, let us know where you're calling in from and we'd love to see where you guys are calling in from and just get to know you a little bit more. But Evan, I know you made a post recently about like not just creating content, but instead creating content that actually gets clients results and understanding the strategy behind it. Do you mind going a little bit deeper into that?

Yeah, so. So I guess if I remember the post that you're talking about, most of that was just coupled around like having something that, that brings a result. So normally like the first thing that I think people think about is you know, trying to make somebody more money. Yep. Right. And trying to do that through solely organic today it's a little bit hard.

Right.

Unless you know the secret sauce behind like making viral content and all of that. Right. But not a lot of people know how to do that. Right. So having a strategy that actually does get some sort of return does get eyeballs on that particular client's product or service.

Yeah.

Usually is going to be coupled with probably some sort of ad strategy. But I think a lot of people over complicate even going into what exactly that looks like. And it's really just like we all, you know, now know, like I now know this. It's reverse engineering the problem. Right. So what's the solution that we want? And then taking the steps to work backwards. A lot of people, they try and start at square one and figure out the stepping stones to get there and that's actually much harder to do. So just understanding what we're trying to do and then reverse engineering that and figuring out the best way to make it happen.

Yeah.

But you know, strategy also too doesn't necessarily have to be coupled with like how the content itself makes money.

Right.

You can save people time which allows them to make more money and a lot of people don't think about it from that frame as well.

What kind of videos would save people.

Time, like onboarding stuff for like a systemized process with inside of their business, you know, other other kind of explainer videos, like if there is a lot of, you know, questions that somebody's commonly answering in whatever process it might be. Like, let's say we're talking about internal stuff, we're talking about onboarding, we're talking about new systems and trainings. Right. So instead of having to take somebody or take time out of somebody's day for them to hold a meeting with the company. Right. To explain all that, you could do that through a video.

Right.

And that video lives forever in wherever that you have it, you know, posted and hosted and, and it does the job all the time until it's time to change out that video.

Yep.

Right.

Yeah, that definitely makes sense. It's having, having content that does the work for you because it can work 24 hours a day, seven days a week, as opposed to having somebody manually do that process. And I think a lot of people don't think about that. It's like, how can I create content for my clients that automates a process, saves them time, which in turn either makes them money or saves them money at the same time. You know, like internal training videos, FAQ videos, you know, brand films, stuff like that, where it automates that trust building aspects for your clients and you're able to, you're able to charge them more for that. But yeah, that totally makes sense. I'm going to pull up some comments and some questions from our school community and we'll kind of go through some of those. I asked people what kind of their biggest challenge was in their, in growing their creative business right now. And one of the clients, Dan, said finding clients is my biggest challenge. I do great work and I create a strong ROI with the clients that we have done work for and we deliver great value. But we need to find new clients. My, my network is filled with other creatives and I need to have people who want the type of work that I'm selling. So I don't know what to do and how do I go from here. So I guess Evan, where would you kind of start there? Or Ethan, maybe he has a great network, but his network of people is creatives and he has good, you know, he says he has good value with his clients and he has a strong roi. But I guess where would you kind of go from there? Either one of you, if you want to take that.

Ethan you got anything?

Yeah, no, I was going to say first, if you got great ROI and results for your clients, get case studies.

Yep.

With them first and foremost. Yep.

100%. And just make sure that getting, getting like documenting those results so you can then showcase those. What would be the next step from there, Evan, on your end?

I guess it would be kind of depending on what your circumstances were, but advertising, running paid ads to let people know about those results that you have gotten. For people, that's going to get, you know, the eyeballs on your message. And if somebody wants those same results for themselves, they'll reach out.

Yep.

Yeah.

100. It's really not that complicated. It's just showing people that you can get them a result and then showing that to other people who are just like them. And then if other people want results like that, then they contact you. You know what I mean? Like, it's not, I think a lot of people over complicated, but it really is fairly simple. Knox, Los Angeles says finding higher paying clients, you struggle with that. Knox, if you can drop a, like a little bit more clarity in the chat when you say higher paying clients, what are you charging right now? And then what are you looking to be charging? And then we can help you with that. We'll circle back over to that one. Let me find another question here.

That could be a couple things too. Like, yeah, qualifying leads. Could be a sales. Could be sales thing. It could be even just asking for, you know, asking for a higher price.

Yep.

Which is also coupled with sales as well.

Yeah. And I did a case study with one of our clients, Nick Sales, yesterday, and it was super interesting because like he, when he first came to us, he was like, I want to serve like coaches. I want to serve health and wellness brands and I want to serve like construction companies in Utah. And those are kind of like his three niches that he wanted to go into. And I was like, look man, you can do that, but like it's going to be harder to be successful than if you just go all in on one of them. And so I helped him pick coaches, obviously. I was like, hey, go all in on coaches. I know this isn't what you want to hear, but it's what you need to hear. Go all in on the coach aspect. Document some results. He got some case studies with some clients and then he started running ads using our inbound system. And I think he spent like $3,000 total. And he's generated $147,000 in contracts total in literally just the past two months. So, like, by honing in on that one niche, he was able to actually grow because he. He wasn't focused on everyone and anyone that wanted content. He was very laser focused on that one niche. Evan, what's kind of been your experience with that, focusing on one specific type of person?

So that was honestly, like, one of my biggest things to, like, overcome mentally. Right. I. I think in my journey of, like, really trying to find my niche, I really figured out more people that I didn't want to work with. Then I actually found that I did want to work with. But the people that I did find that I loved working with were consultants. No matter really what the industry was. Just if they. If they had something. If they had knowledge about something and were able to help, it's kind of like coaches. But I think there's a difference between coaches and consultants. Coaches help you figure it out. Consultants just tell you what to do.

Right.

But consultants was really my favorite one just because it was also very, like, personal brand feeling. And I think that's what makes for really good content, is when somebody gets to know the person, not the business.

Right, Right. So, yeah, because people don't buy from businesses. They buy from people that they like.

Yep.

Yeah.

100. And you said something interesting there. You said it's just like narrowing down on one specific type of person. Right. So, like, being very, very specific about who that avatar is. Because then you can speak to the pain points and the problems that they have, as opposed. As opposed to just speaking to everybody and then to kind of segue that, like, what would you say to somebody who's maybe like, on the fence about creating content for themselves and for their own business? And it. Dude, it's 2024. Like, what would you say to somebody who's like, I don't know if I want to post that content. Maybe it's not the right time.

Well, if. If you're trying to sell content to somebody, you got to make it for yourself. Right. Because otherwise, why would they. Why would they buy from you?

But you.

You inadvertently become your own case study.

Yep.

If you do it over and over again, you put in the res. It's again, it's like the gym analogy. Like, going to the gym for some people sucks, and it isn't fun. Right. It eventually does become fun. Right. And even. And even making content like, it can suck. Like, I made content this morning. I made new ads, and I made new content this morning, and I actually made it yesterday. But then when I looked back at it or listened back to it, I had an audio issue, so I had to read it. But I actually had fun doing it this morning. And, you know, I don't find myself saying that that much. Right. Like, sometimes it's kind of like, oh, like, I gotta do it again. But it's the thing that puts my face on the Internet and on the screens and gets me those impressions. For people to then say, like, oh, that's the guy that does this and I need help with that. And then they talk to me because they feel like they know who I am because I do it over and over and over and over again. It's not kind of just you make a video here and there and post it and whatever, there's a strategy behind it. But people just either are. They're too scared to get in front of the camera. They get overwhelmed by some of the things that it takes to do. And obviously us as creatives and video guys, like, we're probably harder on ourselves, on our own content than. Than somebody that doesn't make content should be on themselves. For those people, I would just say just start posting.

Yeah.

Like, you literally pull the camera out and start doing it. Lives are the easiest thing to start doing because it forces you to. It forces you to not be perfect and just be kind of natural. But you have to start you right.

It's like the reason you make content is to get people to spend time with you. And when somebody's watching a piece of content from you, they are. They are inadvertently spending time with you. Like people on our lives right now, you guys are virtually spending time with us. Right? And by doing that, you start to trust the person more, you get to know them more, and you start to open up to whatever it is that they do and start to be more open to that. Right? Because, like, there's a million video production companies, there's a million videographers, and like, all of that is amazing, but they all kind of say the same thing. So then how do you differentiate yourself in that crowd? Well, it's by building a brand around what it is that you do. And if you're not willing to do that, then you're not going to be able to charge higher prices, because the only reason people can charge higher prices is because of the brand. And like, if you look at, like, Gucci or like, you know, Prada or any of these crazy brands that. I don't buy into that stuff. But, like, you look at that, the actual product is probably exactly the same as something that's like ten times less. But the only Reason you're paying more is because of the name that's on it, and the name is the brand. And so, like, if you're worried about creating content, then, like, I mean, you either need to make it or you need to just not be in business, in my opinion, like, if I'm being brutally honest, because, like, people want to know you, people need to trust you. They need to know the brand, and that's what's going to get them to pay those higher prices at the end of the day, you know, I completely agree. And then I got a comment from somebody the other day too, that I thought was funny, but it's like they're like. And maybe Evan, Ethan, you want to speak to this? But they were like, you know, I don't know if I want to scale my business right now. Right. Or I don't know if I want. I don't know if I want to grow. I don't know if I'm ready to grow. Evan, what would you say to somebody who's like, I don't know if I'm ready to grow?

Well, you're never ready to do anything.

Yep.

You're just not. It's only by trying and either succeeding or failing that you figure out where exactly you are and what you exactly want to do. It kind of goes back to my niche thing. Like, I, I didn't know if I wanted to work with insurance agents or not. I was listening to the universe at one point about a year or so ago where it was like almost everybody that was contacting me was in the insurance game. So I was like, maybe that's a route that I need to go. And I didn't hate it. Right. But you know, it just, you learn the ins and outs of different things and actually what you want to do, but it's only by trying to grow do you feel or do you get to the point where you know for sure if, like, that's exactly what you want? Because there's nothing wrong with making X amount of money if you're happy. It's like Gary Vee says, like, if you, you love what you do but don't make a lot of money, then that's great. But if you make a lot of money, you hate what you do. That sucks.

Yeah.

Right. So it's just about find. You don't know yet until you try.

Yeah, 100%.

Yeah.

And it's also like, you're, you're never going to have that perfect time. A lot of people are waiting for the perfect time to make A leap to do something. Right. But it comes down to like, you're never gonna be that. That's that time is never gonna come. You're gonna end up waiting forever to make a jump and make a change and do whatever you need to do.

To get the one. The one that I get all the time is when I have a better camera, I can charge more money. And it's like, no, I mean, when.

I get ripped, I'm gonna go to the gym, right? When I feel better, I mean, I'm gonna go to the hospital.

Yeah.

It's like, it makes no sense, right? So, like, if you're making excuses as to why you can't grow, there's always going to be more excuses. And if the excuse is time. I reposted this thing from Hormozi recently, but I really liked it. It was like, you're never like, you have the time. Look at your phone, look at your. Look at your app, look at how much screen time you have every day. That is time that you could be putting towards the business to grow the business, but you're choosing not to do that. And so you either sacrifice in the short term to get long term gain or you sacrifice in the long term to get short term gain. If it feels really good now, it's going to screw you over later. If it feels really bad now, it's probably going to help you in the long term. It's like working out. It sucks. I just did leg day today absolutely sucks.

It's like, I know her Mosey talks about too. Well, a lot of people probably say it is. You know, successful business owners make decisions quickly. They don't sit around and ponder for, you know.

Yes.

Or years. They, you know, and then, I mean, if it doesn't work, then you find another solution.

Yeah. And that doesn't mean you need to do something like say yes. You just need to make a decision like, hey, is this the right, you know, take in the data that you have, taken the information that you have and then decide, hey, is this something I'm going to do or not going to do? But the people who are always unsuccessful are the ones who are like, let me sit around forever and decide if I'm going to make a decision. And it's like you have all the information in front of you. You just need to make the decision on whether or not you want to do that. And the funny thing about that too is you are what you attract. So if you have a lot of clients telling you that they don't have the money and they want to think about it and, and you know, you know it's too expensive. Then look at what objections you're giving when you're gonna buy something. And that is usually the energy you're putting off. And as woo woo as that sounds, that is, that is what happens half the time. Like that is most of the time what happens putting out that energy.

You know.

And like I've talked to a lot of people who are like, you know, maybe they're like oh you know, maybe it's not the right time or it's too expensive. And then we ask them, we're like what. What's the biggest objections your clients give you? Oh it's too expensive or I don't have the time. It's like that's interesting right? Yeah. I think it does come down to that mindset side of like you are what you attract and you decide to attract that type of stuff then you're going to get those type of people, you know. 100 let's pull up some questions here. Can you explain what case studies look like to be useful? Evan, you want to take that one?

So for me for a case study I would want to really showcase one the transformation that my client went through prior to working with me and then what it looked like after working with me and then really getting into the nitty gritty of the results. Especially if it has anything to do with money and something that was generated. Like for example I just did a testimonial with a recent client. It wasn't a full on case study but she did drop nuggets in there. I did a, I did a free video for a non profit that is has a correlation to my church and they use that video at a gala for donations and they generated 50k in donations. Nice with that video. So I have a testimonial on that. I'm just on my editing beta to get done. But but also too I think case studies work really well when you as the person are in it with them and having a conversation. Testimony was more just kind of the client focused but putting yourself in there as a back and forth conversation to really pull out all of that kind of emotion from their end as well because that's going to kind of inadvertently sell the people that are watching it as well.

100 yeah. 100 absolutely. Let me see if I pull a couple other questions from school here. Let's see. How do I find clients? How do I find the right clients that are willing to pay top dollar for my services today? It's so hard with so much competition out there and everyone is willing to work for free to get a client. Evan or Ethan, you want to take that one?

I'd say firstly, probably the type of businesses that you're looking to work with, you know, it's, you know, things that I shy people away from. Real estate, non profits or iffy, sometimes restaurants, things like that. Really like product based businesses as well. Yeah, because you can charge a lot more for a service like lawyers, medical professionals, home service companies are huge and people that have high ticket clients.

Well, and how do you differentiate yourself between other clients and other or other video production companies that clients might be looking at? Like what would you do to differentiate?

I would say, you know, have a, having like the, you know, the strategy. Like we were like we were talking about at the beginning of the call, you know, having a strategy in place.

And you know, case studies, like having proof. Right. If I'm between two companies and one of them has a ton of case studies with people who look just like me and amazing results and then I'm between one that doesn't have any of that, I'm obviously going to go with the one who does have that because those are the people I feel like have a higher likelihood of getting me a result at the end of the day, you know.

Exactly.

And like Ethan said in terms of his strategy, like if you have a simple illustration of we have this video and this is what it's going to do for you, it's much easier for a client to be like, oh, I can understand how that's going to serve me. Other than just, yeah, we're gonna make a free video for you and like here you go.

Right.

They can't really wrap their head around that, but they can wrap their head around like, oh, it's a free thing for me.

Yep.

And that, and that's fine. But if you have a visual illustration of how that video or videos work in conjunction to help them achieve that outcome that they're looking for, usually more revenue, they're much more apt to pay for that because they understand what it's going to do. Right.

100.

Yeah. So on the outcome and the results, not just asking, hey, do you want a brand video? Or hey, do you want to build trust and you know, in, you know, revenue. I mean there's a thousand things it could be.

Someone said on the topic of like posting their own content, they said, I want to start but the problem is the quality when I post. And I think they're worried about like Having the perfect quality. When they start posting their own content for their brand, what advice would you give them? Evan? We're talking about image quality or just like video quality. I think like, hey, I'm worried about posting my own content, but I'm worried about what the quality is going to look like.

And don't, don't over complicate it. It's one of those things. It's kind of like you're, you're never ready and you're like the first time you go to the gym, you suck. Right? Just start right? There's so many, there's so many free things out there nowadays that can help you fast track making it higher quality. If we're talking about like caption apps or different things like that, that kind of give you that higher end look that you think that you're looking for, that make it relatively easy for somebody who might not be a creative to do that. Now if you are creative, it's going to be that much faster for you to figure out because you kind of already have an understanding of, of what you need to do. You're honestly just in your own head of getting started.

Yeah, 100 absolutely. What other questions do we have, guys? Put them in the chat, let us know. If you're on Instagram, say hey. If you were on Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, say hey there as well and drop some comments questions you guys have and we are happy to answer them and go over those. I'm gonna pull up a couple more from school and then we'll be wrapping up here in like five, six minutes. Let's see. Maybe we could talk about some useful videos that we could be providing to clients. So maybe like we'll talk about the different categories of videos and how they actually help drive either A drive traffic, A help or B help with social proof conversions, C help save time. Evan, what are some, what are some pieces of content that maybe create like more traffic for businesses that people could offer to their clients?

So again, goes back to like what your strategy is. I think content that's like value centric content that you put ad dollars behind to drive traffic to. Like if it's your Instagram or your Facebook page or something like that, to where they can actually see all of the other content that you're making. Because the problem with organic only is that you're, it's kind of like just throwing it in the wind and you're just seeing what's going to stick and sometimes it doesn't. But if you pay for a little bit of that impression, you can kind of guarantee that and then it's just a repetition thing from there. But value content, I think social proof content in terms of like, so, so like for example, for me, like I'll record my coaching group calls, right? And then I'll snip those up into, into, into content and then I'll post them. And it just shows the social proof that I'm actually working with students and that if there's any other students out there that need anything, they know where to find you.

Right.

Other things for driving traffic, usually it's going to be, for me, it's ad related. I mean the organic stuff, it does fine. You just have to have certain CTAs on the end to really have people understand what they should do.

Right.

But those are the ones that if they work organically, they're going to work great when you put ad dollars behind them. But I would say, I would say value content and, and, and behind the scenes and social proof content would be, would be my biggest ones.

And then the ones that have worked really well for us and our clients too are like CTA ones where it's like, hey, give a, give a little bit of value and then ask them to comment a word down below and then use something like our CRM to then automate that process of like sending them a comment back and sending them a link to some sort of lead page or something like that. Capture the lead organically. Right. That's another huge piece that we go through with our clients as well. Let's see, Santiago, in your space, what's your definition of a perfect client to work with essentially your students. So what kind of clients do we go after? Typically our clients go after service based companies like local med spas, home service, lawyer, anybody who sells something for a high ticket amount of money. It could be like home, home building companies. Anybody who sells something for a higher ticket amount of money is somebody that our clients would be going after, if that makes sense. Is quality better than quantity when it comes to posting your own content? I would say quality gets achieved by doing more quantity. Right. And feel like you just have to do a bunch. It's gonna suck in the beginning, like it's not gonna be good. And then over time it gets better and better and better and better. Right. So that just becomes a longer term game there.

Sweet.

Let me see if I have any other questions here. You guys have anything else you want to go over before we wrap up here?

No, I think we covered a lot of bases today.

Sweet.

Cool.

Awesome. Guys. If anyone has any questions, feel free to schedule a call with our team@master filmmaker.com. we'd love to speak with you and see if we can possibly help you scale your video business. But without, I don't have anything else. And without any other questions, we will let you guys roll. And we do these every Tuesday and Thursday. So if you have any questions, drop them down below and we are happy to answer them on the next live. And we'll see you guys on Tuesday. See you guys.

Peace.

You ain't gotta ask me we can hit the road got room in the back seat boys from the back street come so far just singing over rapies see you on the way up only looking down remember seeing where we came from you ain't gotta wait up never gonna slow back down they can't take us down there's no reason.