the real reason you don't have "Time" to scale (2025)

What's going on, guys? In today's video, we're going to be talking about the difference between broke videographers and successful videographers and why not having enough time is completely bs. Now this might trigger some people, so be be warned, but if you don't know me, my name is Eric Darren. And to date I've worked one to one with over 472 video business owners, helping them scale their businesses, helping them buy their time back, helping them grow their business and not build a business that they absolutely hate. And I do that through building systems, building process, and helping them get out of the day to day so they can actually grow a business and have time for their family, go on vacations, all that fun stuff. And in today's video, it's something I'm particularly passionate about because I found myself in the rat race for a very long time of shooting, editing, doing all the things myself, and really being frustrated because I didn't have enough time and I was wondering why I wasn't growing. So if you're someone who's really busy all the time, but you're also not making as much money as you want and you don't have the freedom that you want, this video is gonna be for you. So let's talk about some of the symptoms and why this comes up. Right. So broke videographers and video business owners are typically doing all the shoots themselves, right? So they're doing everything themselves, they're editing everything themselves. They are typically doing all of that because no one can do it as good as them, right? If this sounds familiar, let me know it was me. So I understand. They're also not focusing on lead gen and sales, right? Because typically, because we love these two things so much, right. The problem is, is we don't focus on lead gen and sales because we are so in the weeds here of doing everything ourselves that we have no time left after this. And that's one of the cardinal sins here. They're also not focusing on lead gen, like I said, lead gen and sales. And they're not selling, they're selling the cinematic content, not the outcome of that content. Remember, we're not selling cinematic content here. We're selling the outcome of that content. We're selling what the content does. We're not selling the content itself. Delta doesn't sell you the plane ride, they sell you the destination. Remember that? And oftentimes these types of people are complaining because they don't have the time to grow their business. And if you think about it, that makes Absolutely no sense. How could you not have the time to grow your business? That is the only thing you should be spending your time on. That's it. And if you don't have the time to scale your business, it means there's something fundamentally wrong with the way that you're doing things. And that is what's leading you to not be able to scale your video business. And so it typically falls into a couple main buckets. And usually the bucket it falls into is that you're doing all the work yourself and you're stuck right up here as the bottleneck of the business. Right? And the reason they call it a bottleneck is because it's at the top and it starts with you. So this is what the broke videographer and video business owners who are constantly stuck in that rat race of like, I need to get more clients. I have clients. So then I pause things again and then I need to get more clients. And then around and around we go. Right now, let's talk about the successful video business owners. So the people who are successful are the ones who focus on lead generation and sales, and that is the main thing that they focus on because these are what we call revenue generating activities. What does that mean? That means that these things make money. That's it. That's a fancy way of saying that these things make money. If you focus more time on things that make money, you will in turn make more money. Crazy, right? So we need to be focusing on lead gen and sales. So how do I get more leads? How do I get more people who are interested? Right. If we keep it super simple. And then how do I get more people to buy? How do I have better conversations with people so I can turn them into a client that I can actually help? That is literally all you should be focusing on until you reach a point where you have so many clients and you have some sort of issue with client fulfillment. That's the only thing you should be focusing on until that point. Right? And a lot of you guys, you're busy, but it's because you're doing all the work yourself instead of being able to hire somebody who can do the work for you. Now, the other thing that successful video business owners do, like I said, is they focus on revenue generating activities, things that make the business money. Because when you can make the business money, you can then pay for more help. You want to think about this as like you're trying to build a sports team. I love this analogy, and one of my mentors taught me this. You're Trying to build a sports team, right? And so you're trying to get all the money so you can go hire the people to join your team, right? And if you don't have the money to do that, then you can't hire people. So, like, if you're focusing on all your time of editing and shooting, that's not actually making. Making the business any more money. You need to focus on how can I go get more money, and then I can take that money and deploy that by hiring other people so I can buy my time back and then move up to the next rung in the ladder, right? And like I said, what they do is they hire others to buy back their time, so they spend time buying back their time. And what that looks like is instead of doing something that could be a $20 an hour task, you hire somebody to do that. You hire an editor, right? And, like, even going into your personal life, like, I don't mow my own lawn anymore. I don't go grocery shopping anymore. I don't do any of those things because I could make more money working on sales and marketing in my business than mowing my lawn. Now, if that was something that I enjoyed, that's fine. You could do that. But personally, like, I would spend a Saturday every single day in the summer, like, for a couple of hours mowing and edging and doing all these crazy things. And, like, that didn't actually help me make more money and I didn't enjoy it. Right? So, like, and a good example of this is, like, one of our clients, we helped him get out of the rat race of doing all the work himself, so then he could focus on putting a system in place to get more clients. This is one of our clients, Braden. And you could see here. Let me see if I can zoom out a little bit here. Um, there we go. You can see here. He targets law firm owners. And what we did is we helped him set up that system because we bought his time back by getting other things off his plate. And he just had an owner of a law firm doing $10 million a year, who wants to scale to $20 million a year book on his calendar, right? And this is him talking to one of his. One of his team members. They said, beautiful. And it's a law firm. And they didn't do any sort of Google Ads, no SEO partners. They didn't do any sort of, like, cold outreach. This was straight booked in from the system that we helped set up with him. Right? And so this is an example of, like, when you can focus on this. You can focus on bigger opportunities and bigger things within your video business and then hire the people that you need to buy your time back. And one of the first things that we do with our clients is we focus on a time audit. So you could see here, this is an example of a time audit. And we basically give this to our full, our full private clients where we map out every single thing that they're doing every single day. So, so like for example, we have them list the task over here on the side here, right here. And then from there, what we then do is we say, okay, was this revenue generating? Yes or no? And then what is the cost to hire this out? $1 $2 signs, $3 signs. Right. Kind of like if you went to a fancy restaurant, you would have a certain amount of dollar signs. And then do you enjoy doing this? Yes or no? And then how much time? We have a tracker built into this custom Monday board. How much time did you actually spend doing this stuff? Right. This, this is just an example. So like that's not accurate, but like we want to look at this. Like, is editing client projects right here a revenue generating activity? No. How much would it cost me to hire that out? $2 signs. Do you enjoy doing it? Yes, I love doing it. But is it actually revenue generating? No. We should definitely hire this out. Right? And then we look at this. It's like task management for team. Right? Is this revenue generating? No. Is it? How much does it cost to hire it out? $1 sign. And you don't like it offboard this immediately. Right. And so we really just want to be focusing on things that are not revenue generating and then cutting those things out, cutting this out, and then only spending our time on the things that are actually going to make us money at the end of the day and then that's going to translate into growing the business. Because if you're spending, excuse me, if you're spending all this time working and you're not actually making more money year over year, then it fundamentally means that you're spending your time on the wrong things. And I know that's really hard for people to accept, but it means that you're literally not working on the right thing. It's kind of like spending all of your time driving, like every single day, spending all your time driving. But you have the wrong destination in. Right. You could spend a ton of time driving, you could work really hard, you could stay up all night, you could drive all day. But if the wrong destination is in that, in that Jeeps, you're not gonna get there, right? And so you really need to be focusing on what is revenue generating, what is not. And then that's how you can actually start buying your time back and only work on things that you absolutely love and. And make the business money. And then we hire out all the stuff you don't like. It's your business. At the end of the day, you could choose to do that. It's exciting, right? It's like, I think a lot of people think they have to stay in this miserable place, but you have to make money first, right? And so, like, that's what we help our clients with is, like, you can make the money, and then you can actually buy your time back, so then you don't have to do all the stuff you don't like doing. I don't like mowing my lawn. I'm gonna hire someone to do it. I don't want to go grocery shopping. I hire people to do it. Right. Like, it sounds snobby, but, like, you know, why would you want to live a life where you're not doing things that you actually want to do and give you a ton of fulfillment every single day, right? And so that's the thing to think about. So hopefully this makes sense. Guys, if you have any questions about this or you want to learn more about becoming a private client potentially, and us helping you do this in your video business, there should be a link down below to schedule time with either me or my team or, you know, some. One of my stunt doubles, someone who can help you out. And if you want, there should be a link below. You can schedule that. If not, keep enjoying the free videos on YouTube and. And leave a comment down below. Let me know if you guys are enjoying this. I'm really putting a lot of effort into YouTube this year, so let me know if you enjoy these videos, and I will keep making more of them. Until then, keep being awesome. We'll see you guys in the next one.