The Harsh Truth About Building A Video Agency

I think there's a harsh truth about why filmmakers stay broke and why people stay in this cycle of not being able to scale their video agency. And after working with 580 video business owners up to this point, the recurring theme, I have a couple, couple things I wrote down here, but the recurring theme I see is that people don't know their numbers and they don't actually treat their business like a business as opposed to some hobby that they came up with and they thought was fun fun, if that makes sense. So you know what I, what I see across tons of video business owners when they come into us is a, they don't know their numbers, they don't know how to get leads. They're not implementing a system, whether that's to get more leads and more calls and more sales or to get a proper client journey put in place. Having people go from one activation point to the next as a client, everything is custom and they, they're kind of spinning their wheels not knowing why they're not scaling. And I was stuck in that loop as well because when I first started I just was a DP. Like I was a freelance DP for 5 years. I loved it. But then when I wanted to grow a business, I had some people referring me and sending me work and I was like, oh, this is great. Like I have a business and I didn't really have a business. I had more of like a glorified hobby because I didn't have a predictable way to get clients or leads or calls. I also didn't have a predictable way of getting those clients results, results when they came in. So I was basically just like, I would get word of mouth referrals. One month I'd get a couple of referrals and this is what I see a lot. And then the next month I'd get maybe no referrals or nothing. And then it would just be up and down, up and down, up and down. And I wouldn't know why. And it was because a, I didn't know my numbers. So I wasn't even tracking like how many leads were coming in. I wasn't tracking how many calls were coming in. I wasn't tracking, you know, how many of those calls turned into a client. Like as far as closing percentage on my calls, I, I wasn't tracking how many of my clients got a client result. I wasn't getting case studies with my clients. I didn't have a predictable way of getting case studies. I wasn't obviously highlighting case studies because I didn't have Any case studies. And it was just kind of this doom loop of going over and over and over again. And it put me in this place where I was just really frustrated and I didn't know why I wasn't growing. And so maybe you feel like you're in a similar position. A lot of the people we work with were in similar positions to that when they first started. Because most people are focusing on the gear, they're focusing on the beautiful work. They're not focusing on treating this like an actual business, which it needs to be treated like a business for you to be successful. And so what I would encourage you to do is if you're not doing any of that right now, at least start tracking. Take a look at, okay, you know, this month is February. Let's look back at January or this, Sorry, this month is March. Let's look back at February. In February, how many leads did we get? How many calls did we take? How many, how many of those calls did we turn into clients? And look at all of those things and say, okay, I got 10 leads this month. Five of them turned into clients. And then of those five, three of those people move forward. Great. And then now we want to look at, okay, of the three people that move forward, what was our average deal value on that? Okay, each client was 5k. Now was that a one off or was that a retainer based project? That's what we want to look at as well. Because if you're doing one offs, then you have this little blip. You get a client blip and then they're gone. Whereas if you have a retainer, you get 5k a month. 5k a month. 5k A month. 5k a month. Five k a month. And you build that consistency and the client pays you more over time, it increases your client lifetime value. And so if you can get five people paying you 5k a month, boom, there you go. You're at 15k a month. But everything you want is on the other side of doing the work you don't want to do and tracking the numbers you don't want to track because it's not sexy, because it's not fun. And I was there as well. But that is literally what's keeping you back. Because business is just, it's just a game of numbers. It's okay, how many leads did I pour in at the top? How many of those turned into calls? How many of those turned into clients? That's it. That's all businesses. Like, it's nothing fancy. And if you can know Those numbers. Then you can pull on levers like ads to get more leads. You can pull on levers like hiring a salesperson to take those calls. And then on the other side, when the client comes in to your world and becomes a client and pays you. Now we need to map out the client journey. So where are they right now and what are the, you know, if they sign a three month retainer with you, what do the next three months, three months look like exactly? Down to a table. Like you have to have that mapped out. If you don't have that mapped out, then you're just kind of guessing and clients can feel that and they know you're not prepared. So we want to look at, okay, in month one, we're going to be doing scripting and recording the first bits of content. Month two, we're going to be recording a second shoot day, more content posting for them, whatever it may be. And then month three, we're going to be doing X, Y and Z. And they should hit the first activation point in the first month. Like they should get some sort of result. And then when they get, when they get that result, we're going to choreograph it. We're going to go in for case study and we're going to document the result that we got them. We're going to then take the case study, put it on our website and we're going to rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat. But I think a lot of people treat this like a freelancing gig, not like a business. And you have to know the numbers, you have to understand what it is that we're tracking. And we have to understand exactly what those numbers look like in the business so that we can manipulate them. Right. If I know I get 10 calls and five of them turn into or 10 leads. Five of them turn into client or leads leads, sorry, five of them turn into calls and then of those five, three people move forward and I made, you know, $20,000. Okay, great. What if I got 20 leads? Then I would double my income. I'd go from 20,000 to 40,000. Right. So you just have to know the numbers. You have to track. You have to put systems in place to understand that. I just wanted to make a quick video going over that because I feel like a lot of people don't actually track their numbers or understand what to track in their numbers. So we want to look at that and just a short rant. So hopefully that's helpful because guys have any other questions or want to learn more about what we do at Master Filmmaker. There should be a link below. We can help you with possibly scaling your video business like we have for 580 others. And if not, keep enjoying the free YouTube videos and we'll see you in the next. Thanks one.