A laughable simple way to bring in new business.

Episode Transcription

Den Lennie (2s):
Good day, folks! It’s Den here and now I’m doing something a bit different this week. I am hosting a solo episode today, and I it’s been a while since I’ve done a solo episode and it was actually a copywriter. He said to me, on a huge, they should do more of this. Then, you know, we got a lot of good things to share. And so I thought I would do that today. Actually do a solo episode where I want to talk about a couple of things that I hope it will really help you.

If you are looking to scale your video business to snow, maybe you’d been affected by the all the craziness is going on. And also can address some comparisons to behaviors that I observe and witness both from people who apply to come into my program and those who succeed and also to really kind of explore, you know, why is it that two people with, you know, equal capability as filmmakers one person can thrive in a crisis and the other person will fundamentally kind of fall apart and kind of not, not be able to succeed.

Den Lennie (1m 7s):
And so that it is an important topic to address today. And because, you know, I, I’ve seen both. I’m seeing people who are literally on social media complaining that they have not worked for six months. And yet I speak to other filmmakers who happened to be in my group, who are literally thriving. And its like, well, what is, what is a difference? You know what What is going on? Well, one individual thrives in the crisis and another one, one struggles and kinda falls apart. So it doesn’t want to cover off the debt. So yeah, look, I, could we get straight into it? So I haven’t really got a plan for today’s short. Yeah, I have them. I thought I’d start with exploring that whole notion of why, why is that one person achieves great success and sees growth in a crisis when another person struggles and, and I think of it all comes down to mindset and I’m, you know what I’ve done live events in the past.

Den Lennie (2m 4s):
The mindset section is always the area where we get just an enormous traction from people in the seminar. And that’s because I’m often times it, unless you’ve done some work on pastoral development, you know, it, it, it really comes down to making a choice. Do you accept that everything happens that that happens in your life and as a result of something that you did or didn’t do, or are you someone who looks to blame external forces?

We did a webinar way back in March about this. It’s like if you allow the external world to dictate to you the outcomes that you can or can’t achieve that you’ve already last on the other hand, if you chose to accept responsibility and you look in the mirror and you realize that whether you succeed fail is down to the person staring back at Ew in the mirror.

Den Lennie (3m 4s):
That is when I believe you can have a huge breakthrough. And if you are someone who currently sort of Luke’s to blame external forces, then I want you to kind of listen to this and consider how that might be affecting and impacting your results. Because this all came from reading a book called extreme ownership by Jocko, Willink, and how a levy Navy seals lead. And when, and there’s this incredible book about his job as a platoon commander and, and the Iraq war and how he’s moved that into business coaching and business leadership training through his company. And that was when I started to really accept that, you know, anything that’s happened in my life good or bad or otherwise it was done to me.

Den Lennie (3m 49s):
And so I’m, you know, getting your mind set right around that is that the first thing to, to identify closely combined with, you know, what does it you actually want from your business and life? I used to struggle with this, this idea that you had to kind of map things out and plan things. And that’s a creative. I was like, I don’t want to plan things. I want to be spontaneous and you know feel my way around. And then if I decide I don’t want to do something, they’ll do something. And if not, I won’t, but if you don’t get super clear on what it is you want from your life, and then it’s very hard to achieve that with anything, with any real clarity.

So when you combine your mindset and, and when I talk about mindset, I’m talking about the difference between being abundant and plentiful versus scarce and, you know, worried that there’s not enough going around.

Den Lennie (4m 42s):
And this is something that is, is, it is it’s been conditioned in us from our childhood, you know, and we were always told that money doesn’t grow on trees, or we’re always told that, you know, if you don’t appreciate things more, you know, you, you won’t get any more. And, and then there’s this kind of a fan of, certainly from my experience, a lack mentality, one of, you know, there’s only so much money around them.

And even the cartoons they talk about, you know, it’s always the bad guy. That’s got the money. You know, the, the, the, the fat bloated businessmen is always the guy with the money. And so I think culturally in our society, the idea of having wealth and success and money is kind of frowned upon, you know, it’s a, it’s not something that people feel all that comfortable with.

Den Lennie (5m 26s):
And I think that’s something that, that, that, that, that happens too. A lot of us and, you know, my, my parents, weren’t very wealthy. We, we never went without growing up, but, you know, there was never a lot of money around it. You know, my dad has a certain amount of the job money, he, and, and his job as a printer. And I remember we used to go out and dad just to get paid.

And he is in there kind of a little Brown envelope where we were kids. And like at the end of the week, it was, there was only, kind of a small change left in the pay packet. There was nothing left. And so, you know, we sort of grew up in that environment where the money did run it every week. And it was only when I started doing personal development in business development and really kind of, you know, looking at my mindset and studying these topics that I started to understand that money is that there’s money to always flowing business and money is always flowing.

Den Lennie (6m 12s):
It was always available, but sometimes we let our mindset think otherwise, in fact, that we think we start to think that there’s, there’s, there’s a kind of a, a shortage. There’s a, there’s only so much to go around. And when the actual facts there has never been more money in the world, there’s no have been more opportunity for the way in which we can communicate with prospects and clients has never been easier. You know, I can put an advert on Facebook, Today selling a digital product and be making money within an hour. You know, that is absolutely possible.

It’s all at our fingertips. And so what we have to, first of all do is get our brains into a position of maybe accepting that we don’t yet know everything we need to know and audit to get to where we need to get to, you know, and in my own story and my own journey, I was a freelance camera, man.

Den Lennie (7m 4s):
You know, it had been stabbed for a few years at different companies and the TV stations, but we went freelance and, you know, it was building up that kind of that business via freelancer. And I had an accident and had to go out and do a few other jobs for a few years and then set up a business.

But when I first set it up my business, I was still very much thinking in those freelance terms. So as a freelancer, I’d have to be 23 different clients, and I’d be pretty much say yes to everything that, that, that freelancer car cycle it is. We say yes to everything, because we think if we don’t see yes to everything that you might not call us again, and this is a very real, genuine, you know, strategy, but it does kind of somewhat burn you out.

Den Lennie (7m 46s):
You know, what you are. You’re always kind of, you know, if you’re just, you’re just walking like a dog and it, it, I started running my business like that. And the, the trouble with that is, is that you kind of don’t want to let go of anything. So you get to a certain point where you got, you’re so busy. You are you doing so much that you are doing your own books, you are doing it on an invoicing.

You’re doing the shoot book, and you’re doing the production management. You probably, during the shooting, you probably did in the editing. Maybe you are hiring a sound recorder or an assistant. What you’re doing, all of the driving, you pack it in the gear, you get into the car, your doing the job, are you coming back? And then you got an offload, the cards and it just exhausted. And so it literally is kind of Feast and Famine one, one minute you kind of walk around like a dog and next minute there’s nothing and the calendar.

Den Lennie (8m 30s):
And so it, you know, its understandable that when you starting to build the business, you have that kind of a dichotomy. If you like, or that kind of, that, that rub wear your, you know, you kind of, you kind of running your business like a freelancer, but you are too scared to hire anyone because you’re probably not charging enough and you’re probably still charging or the way you do as a freelancer, which is like, is this much for a day? And this much for, for an edit, maybe a bit more on top, but that is not the way you scale a business. That is the tradesman’s approach to being a business owner.

And, and there’s nothing wrong with being a freelance business. If you want to be a tradesman, he just goes out and works in errands, you know, a good, good living, but it does everything yourself that his, okay, but please understand you are only going to CAPP you’re on an outing potential because you are only paid for the days that you are on set or behind the night of the machine and that will burn you out.

Den Lennie (9m 22s):
And that is what I did for Beto for three years, pay back in 2009, I just did everything myself. And, you know, we were doing about 250,000 pounds a year and revenue. And so it was pretty healthy, but I couldn’t get past it. I couldn’t get past it three years in a row because I was doing everything myself. And yes, I was hiring crew on bigger jobs, but I didn’t have any support team in the office.

You know, it was all we had to be in a virtual system and, and my wife was helped me for a little while in the business, but we just couldn’t get past that. And I had a mentor and Nick who was with us for a year and he was like a thousand pounds a day, but he came in and help us see where our holes were.

Den Lennie (10m 3s):
And he helps us kind of, you know, recognise that we couldn’t chase every opportunity. And nor could we the scale, our business, if we did everything ourselves. So we have to look at our price and we had to look at the way in which we were pitching ourselves to the market and we have to accept if we want it to scale. And this was the real battle for me. I would have to not do as much shooting and editing. And that would mean not keeping all of the money. However, if I was charging 900 a day for editing, let’s see. And, and I could find someone for three 50 while I was keeping six 50, I think by the whole made it right back there. It was probably around on the boats.

Den Lennie (10m 44s):
I don’t know. I’ve never been in between six to 900 pounds in the, I can’t remember exactly, but the point was, if I wasn’t physically doing the work, then I could do something else I can bring in more work and, and have people at editing for me. And that probably the first thing that there are a Video business accelerator to clients learn them is that you cannot scale your business if you’re doing everything yourself.

And so you have to look at your pricing virtually every single person that I speak to when they come into the program is undercharging. So the very first thing we do is we looked at the pricing. We do, we find ways to help them kind of increase their overall gross pricing. And that is because most of us come from the freelance background.

Den Lennie (11m 25s):
Well, we don’t, we, we kind of, we allow our, our mindset to get in the way of charging enough. We think, Oh, well we, we might not charge me and me. And then we may not pay for that. So there are for someone else may not pay for that. When in actual fact, if you look at your pricing, for me, value based model is like, what is the value you’re bringing?

And there’s an approach to do that. The way that you can actually charge more than just the time for money and businesses, you know, don’t just charge a time for money. You know they, I was taught, I was looking at a documentary recently. It, it was about Rolex watches. And someone asked the question, how much has Rolex actually cost to make an on this, this, I went down a bit of a rabbit hole.

Den Lennie (12m 6s):
So somewhere between 600 in a thousand dollars is what it costs to actually produce a Rolex with the components and the, the raw materials. And yet they solve for 30 or $40,000. But then someone said, wait, but consider what they spend on branding and marketing and positioning millions and millions and millions of dollars on that. And so a business isn’t just the actual product, but Rolex sponsors, you know, global yacht races and is, is there’s this big brand. And you get a sponsor at Wimbledon. You know, this is all millions of dollars of, of branding and social proof. It’s a prestigious brand. They’ve got huge teams of people that are in their stores are, you know, grand.

Den Lennie (12m 49s):
And they were luxurious. So all of us to be paid for it by somewhere. So when someone buys the Rolex, watch their buying into a lifestyle brand and position, he sends some of ’em, you know, it’s like, it’s like, it’s, it’s like a, a, a wealth of display of wealth is like, look, I can’t afford a Rolex. And I happen to think Rolex is a pretty gross, but there you go to, that was just me. I think that as far nicer watches out there, but, but the fact that that attracts a certain section at the market and, and it’s a status symbol, and that’s the face of a sudden, it’s a status symbol now. And then we take it back to your video.

Den Lennie (13m 28s):
Business, you know, are you producing a video, the shooting? And the editing part is like the manufacturing of a Rolex, but you’ve got to market yourself. And to be honest, most Video businesses that I’ve come into contact with. I don’t do any marketing. I mean, they tell me that some private is like, Oh, I just word of mouth. And, but, but at the same time, those, that kind of concern that, what am I probably isn’t the most reliable means of building a business.

Then we tend to have great conversations and you can do some great work together because you have to, if you, if you want it to scale your business and a big effort, and you have to start thinking about your business as a shopfront, as continuity across your social media channels, As systems, you need to be thinking in terms of how can I communicate the value to this client?

Den Lennie (14m 17s):
How can I become a partner to this client where they are no longer have to, Satch a video of suppliers, but actually have a, have a great partnership, a great kind of white listed, or a white labeled, a video production team. And within that, we come up with nine different accelerators that help that process.

The first one is, is you getting very, very clear on what your personal goals are and what your company goals are. What is your purpose? You know, why do you exist as a business? Is it just to be Billy, Bob the videographer who shoots and edits and makes, you know, a 50 grand a year, or do you want to run a company, but generates four to $500,000 a year?

Den Lennie (15m 0s):
Our parents are euros. You know, what is your, what is your commercial mission? What do you want to achieve? Have you ever sat down and actually documented, you know, the ideal, how she’d like to it or in the car you would like to drive? How much time off that you’d like to have in a week? Where would you like to go out on a holiday? Or where would you, like, how would you like to spend more time with the family? If you’re in the bikes, you know, what kind of bike to you or what is she, what do you, what is your dream? What are the, the stuff that if money wasn’t an object, you would have RIGHT all of that down and looked at the number and say, well, okay, I can have all of that. And, and this, this came out in the four hour workweek by Tim Ferriss. And he’s like, you don’t have to be a millionaire to live like a millionaire.

Den Lennie (15m 42s):
You know, you can rent a lot of these things. And I bought a new car. Recently. I bought a range Rover velar. There was a, a $150,000 was the, was the cost of the car ticket price. That it wasn’t a special at 19 nine, but I, I took up Elise on it and it cost me a thousand bucks a month. So I get to enjoy this beautiful vehicle for a thousand bucks a month. And I don’t really notice the payment going out.

So it’s like I get all of the benefits and, and I didn’t actually own it. I’m just kind of Lisa. And I know many of you listening lease cars, but this is a great way of, of enjoying the benefit without having to kind of leave your cash at home. So getting clear about what you want and how you wanna live.

Den Lennie (16m 22s):
You know, we live in a beautiful sunshine course in Australia. That was the plan. That was always a plan. And we’re building a beach house, just know, and we’d be moving into that middle of next year. All of this has been planned. We started planning this 10 years ago. So you know that you’ve got to start planning. You’ll get very clear on what you want, a very clear on what you want and then start planning, how are you going to achieve it?

So once you got a plan in place, it’s like, okay, we reverse engineer that plan. And, and it’s going to come down to needing a certain amount of cash each month. And that helps you then target, who are you going to work with more clearly, which has the second accelerator, which is defining your niche or your vertical, or the areas you, you want to work with them in this sector.

Den Lennie (17m 13s):
You must only target what market at a time and come up against an enormous resistance with this. But the fact is, you know, it’s just like you can argue with me, are, you can be brought to the fact, is those people in my mastermind who, who follow this path? Who, who, who stopped resisting the needs to sell video to Everyone and market it to one clear target demographic at a time. Now I have clients that have two or three different demographics, but there are very clearly laid out in their websites.

So in someone from a health care lands in their site, it’s a healthcare specific page. It’s not healthcare and support and the music videos, because you want someone who is interested in buying your services to feel like a year. You understand, and be you are a specialist in that field because once you’ve got an eye, a clearly identify a target customer, you can really get to know them.

Den Lennie (18m 3s):
And we have a, we have a 13 step client avatar process. It’s that in questions that identify everything you need to know about your client avatar, you’re a client. Avatar is like, you know, who is, who is your ideal target client? Then you need to communicate and educate with that market. You need to build your authority by educating them and how Video works and how it works, the way you operate it.

And I’m not saying you need to become an evangelist. A video, everyone knows video is important, but you know what I’m saying here is you have to become very clear with your target market, filling in the holes for them, if there’s anything that they don’t understand or help them understand.

Den Lennie (18m 44s):
And that’s that partnership process. And, and within the education, we were talking about websites where talking about, you know, social media, we are talking about marketing approaches. We’re talking about systems. You know, when someone comes on to your website, it’s not just a form that says, you know, get in touch here, let’s have a chat. I mean, the number of times I see this phrase, let’s have a chat. It’s like people are looking for a professional supplier to make a video. They don’t want to just have a chat.

They want to know how much and can you do it? And so having a, get a quote button on your website is critically important. You want to show that you are serious about making a sale and helping them achieve their outcome. People respect that.

Den Lennie (19m 24s):
Then you got to look at how do you generate leads? How do you generate inquiries? How do you generate interest? And there are a number of people that are on different stage of the journey. And there’s, there’s a, a kind of a table called the five levels of client awareness, Eugene Schwartz and Eugene Schwartz as an ad man and in the sixties. And they identified that the different people who are at different stage of the buying cycle, your biggest raving fans, when they call you up for a job, it just gives you a call to shop your messages and say, we got this job. Could you do it? When you hear it? He has the budget. But that other end of the Scale that are those that don’t even know they have a problem yet.

Den Lennie (20m 5s):
And so if you are trying to sell your solution to people who don’t even know that you got a problem, then that’s going to be, that’s going to be tricky. So understanding where your clients are on the journey and where you are pitching your marketing is a very important all to often. If someone was doing marketing and they are not aware of this process or excuse me, then they’re going to be a homie.

Try not to sell, you know, a, a, a sports car, two someone who doesn’t even have a driving license. So you got to be a very clear on where you are. Our target market is and where the right people are on their journey, who are ready to make that next move and book you, you don’t want to be wasting time selling to people who don’t even know that they’ve got a problem.

Den Lennie (20m 48s):
So following up, having automated systems, having marketing systems, being able to measure how effective your marketing is, let me ask you this. Do you, do you know how, how effective your marketing is? Do you know, are you able to kind of turn on the top and bring leads in to your business? And then, and you guys are too busy to turn the tap off because if you can’t, you don’t have a marketing system.

A marketing system is a predictable process for getting inquiries, but once you got those, those inquiries, what happens next? You need to convert them into customers because just because someone visits your website, it makes them quiet. It doesn’t mean they are ready to buy it. And we did a big sales training in a, in a program last week, we actually helped our members create a sales process, a script.

Den Lennie (21m 31s):
If you like with exact words to say and bullet points, to follow any questions, to ask, to fully understand the client’s challenge and problem so that they can help them. And if they, if they did, they can help them. Then they could present at the client with a price and, and a solution.

But also you’ve got a track, those inquiries, you know, using a CRM, a customer relationship management program. So you can see where people are on the journey. Some people aren’t ready to buy just now they might be ready to buy in six months. Well, you know, if you’d just leave it in to your email inbox, then you’re screwed. You’re going to forget.

Den Lennie (22m 11s):
So having a sales script and a sales process and using a CRM very, very important. And then once you win the job, then you know, you, you can’t do all of this and run the projects as well. So you got to think about, you know, communicating to the team, you got to think of systems and processes. You going to learn to be a leader. Are you going to be learned to delegate instructions in a clear way? And if there is a problem, be able to address that problem in a way that it doesn’t make you feel uncomfortable.

And I, and I know from my own experience, that that was something that used to really freak me out. You know, having to kind of communicate because I wasn’t clear in my own head what it was I wanted. And, and so from there, I had to learn how to lead, how to become a better leader.

Den Lennie (22m 54s):
And that involves study and, and courses and events and, and learning that you know, how to manage people in a way that if you have great systems, managing people is a piece of cake. So we have systems that we roll out in our business that helps us to, you know, communicate effectively to a team, be it in house or remotes, or indeed contractor’s and making sure that the contracts in place and agreement so that you are, so those contractors don’t steal your work.

You know, it’s not a big, a big fear for many, many people. And then we look at well, once you’ve got the up and running, once that’s cooking, once you’ve got a clearly identified target market, you’ve got a good funnel bringing inquiries into the business and you’re converting them into cells.

Den Lennie (23m 38s):
And then you are your scaling, your operation by taking on more work. So you’ve got the other editor’s working for you possibly could be a production manager. And yeah, w we have people that are in our community or who are a freelance production managers who are available pair our to help you with the project. And then you can start looking at more of a kind of management rule, which is you are measuring the business.

And, you know, Pat who was on the podcast a few weeks ago and said, you know, I used to love just shooting, but now I love building the business. And he’s in a, in the space of a year has really transformed from that freelance or mindset to actually running a business that, that he is in control of. He is loving the creativity of building his team, and it helps him, you know, spend time with his young family and Good auntie’s beach house and, and like have people working and making money for him when he’s not actually having to be on the tools.

Den Lennie (24m 29s):
So you got to start thinking about, you know, wearing your kind of hats of the manager, which is like, okay, I’m tracking my marketing spend, I’m tracking my operations. I’m tracking my finances and keeping a track of my operational expenses. You know, being able to read my finances in a way that is, you know, on the dashboard. So you can start to measure the health of your business. You can start to predict problems as well in advance. You want to make sure you are, and you can see when your lead flow is dropping back.

And, you know, if a client doesn’t spend for a while that your not going to be a big dip on your finances, that’s something else that when we look at it, and then we looked at nurturing your relationships with your team, with your clients, with your market, you know, going out to clients and having a system’s for making sure that they’re feeling loved that you’re not just responding when they need something, but you are actually actively, you know, nurturing that relationship.

Den Lennie (25m 25s):
We’ve got some great strategies around that way, or, you know, we have, again, system’s for sending us gifts or cards or at the end of a project. And then finally, it’s, it’s asked, and, and we, we have this sum has something called the ask frame, which, which we, which we do apply at various stages of the customer cycle, which is, you know, like, how can you are asking yourself, how can we do more as a team for our clients?

How, how else can we serve our clients and bring them more, more value I’m are you asking for reviews? Are you systematically asking for referrals? Referral quality leads are the easiest Business you will ever get.

Den Lennie (26m 6s):
But I think that, you know, as, as filmmakers, we can be a little shy. We, it can be a little bit reluctant or a little bit, you know, nervous or anxious about that. So, you know, that that’s our nine growth accelerators, and then it’s a wheel And and there’s, there’s there’s work to be done on every wheel, but once you’ve done a cycle, it becomes easier. Cause then once you’ve got all these things in place that you get your measuring in place, and you, you, you can, you can know that your clients and you can start to predict Business, you can start to go into different verticals and different business opportunities, but in the knowledge that you have the team you have for the systems, you have the support.

Den Lennie (26m 47s):
And that is how we create structure within a video production business. And for the clients that are implementing this, you know, they really are seeing incredible results. And, you know, I would never have thought that, you know, 10 years ago this would be where I would be, but I can see now that the structure of the discipline really makes an enormous difference to, to everyone’s Business and they get to spend more time with their family and they make more money and they are stressing less, you know, and one of the, the advantages of are group is that we have, we have coaching calls every week.

So we have two coaching calls a week. So it was like 90 minutes on each call. And the guys who are always saying, you know, it just it’s that that’s a check-in it’s that it’s that kind of reset every week.

Den Lennie (27m 31s):
I remember when I was running my business, it was terribly lonely. You know, you kind of, you, you were really, really busy or you were a dead quiet, and then as soon you have a dead quiet that those demons start to kind of rare up in your head and you start to think you’re not good enough. And then you’re like, well, should I do this? I should have to do that.

And then there’s people trying to sell you see, or do you think, well, if I could do an SEO, well, I’ll get more clients. And they see these companies just, you know, selling SEO. And then there’s the filmmakers with websites that just look like crap. And they were just pumped full of word’s thinking that if they’re just kind of mentioned the video 50 times, it was somehow get work and do some of that degree of some of it that works. But you end up being this kind of, you know, fresh responded to anybody who for four years you up.

Den Lennie (28m 15s):
And that is also not a way to run a business. And one of our clients, Simon to their CEO for a number of years, and then we can actually calculate the, the amount of the time he’d spent, put it in quotes together and umm, and sending them out and, and how much money they actually made a vessel as the work they’ve done. And there is an enormous difference. So umm, you know, it’s you got to be careful.

You’ve got, you got to make sure that you got some structure and ’em, as I say, we, we’ve got a, an, an opportunity here were, if you’re interested in and learning a bit more about this, then you can always book a call with us and we’d have a chat and, and give you some ideas and you can either take those ideas and you can run with them on your own, or we can have a chat about how we can support you and help you with that on your journey.

Den Lennie (28m 58s):
But guys, just about 29 minutes here. So I’m going to wrap things up and thanks so much for listening. I really do appreciate you all. And if you haven’t yet given us a review or a, yeah, you can have a Google rating then, please that I’ll make sure that they are beneath this podcast episode, that you can just go to iTunes and leave a sort of view that would really be helpful. And I will see you next week.

Den Lennie (29m 26s):
You’ve been listening to the how to scale a video business podcast with me, your hosts Den Lennie. If you are a video business owner, you to hit a ceiling and we benefit from a mentorship support and coaching and checkout how you can work with me over at denlennie.com. Don’t forget to subscribe and rate the show over on iTunes. And we really appreciate you taking a few minutes to leave a review and don’t forget to share if you feel you’ve gotten value from this episode and you think it will be useful for other filmmakers, you know, and please do me a massive favor and share it on social media and in groups that you might be in. See you next week.