Creating Strong Business Foundations.

Episode Transcription

Den Lennie (2s):
G’day guys! It’s Den Lennie here, host of the How to Scale a Video Business podcast to tell him and he’s done a little bit is a little about high. Here we are with another episode of the How to a Scale a Video Business Podcast kind of this teeth I’m trying to do to much at once. So this is an episode number 188 and a week ago, I said I was going to do some of them themed episodes around the aight growth. Accelerate is that eight core areas that we’ve discovered working with our clients and the video business accelerator and watching them double and triple revenues and profits in as little as nine months.

Den Lennie (45s):
And I’ve been studying my members and looking at what they’re doing differently and how they’re implementing the training that we share so that we can help them to continue to do that, to grow sustainably consistently without burning out. And so last week we talked about managing and Improving Belief Systems being at the absolute core of that foundation. And this week, I wanted to talk about our growth accelerator too, which is Creating Strong Business Foundations. You know, it’s not really your fault because no one teaches you how to run a business, right? It’s something that we learned along the way.

Den Lennie (1m 26s):
And most of us begin as freelancers and it sort of fallen to running a business. But often times we are running a business with that freelance foundation at our core part of our belief system is that that’s how we run a business. And so what we’ve discovered walking in with many, many, many, many, many dozens of filmmakers very closely is that if you want to grow and succeed as a business owner, then you have to develop a business owner mindset and shed the freelance business owner mindset. As a freelancer, we take anything from anyone at any time. And typically we are given a rate for the job and that’s what we do.

Den Lennie (2m 9s):
So the way you shift into being a business owner is you get to set the rates for the job and you get to decide how much you’re going to earn on a project. It’s not simply a case of just dishing a day rate is much more involved than that. So the, the, the first place to start when migrating from the more of a freelancer model to, to a business, when the model is, is to get very specific and very clear about your purpose, because if you don’t, you’ll be pounding a treadmill forever and mediocre mode M so I want you is if you take nothing away from this episode, other than that, make it, that get very specific about your purpose, you know, ask yourself, like, what are your personal goals?

Den Lennie (3m 2s):
What is your purpose? Why do you exist as a person? Why we exist? Is it the business? What does the reason that you do what you do? ’cause it goes beyond just, Hey, it like filming. And if you do just like filming, then, then please just, just to remain as a freelancer. That’s totally cool. It’s just the decision and that if you don’t know where you are now and what you want, how can you possibly know what you need to do to trigger growth and your business? So getting a very clear about what you want, it’s important and it’s something that you may never have done before. So, you know, do you have a clear idea of what you want to achieve in your business? Have you, how have you written that down?

Den Lennie (3m 42s):
Do you know what that looks like? You know, do you wanna leave a legacy for you kids or do you want to leave an impact on the world? You know, do you wanna leave, leave the world the better place then you found that, you know, I’m not sure it is a lot to get your head around, but these are some of the questions you need to ask yourself because, you know, an idea is just an idea until it gets executed. So getting super clear about what drives you, you know, for many years, I was very selfish. I used to just love going out and filming and making beautiful images and helping people tell stories. That was my, I guess, my freelance purpose.

Den Lennie (4m 22s):
Whereas nowadays, you know, my purpose is to help other video producers succeed. And I get such a huge kick out of doing that, but yes, I run a business. He has to be charged for our services, but we also do an awful lot of free content and all of, a lot of value contents. And if you know your listening to this new to take something away and implemented, and all I want you to know is like, how did it go? What kind of results did you get? I’d love to hear from you. And because, you know, implementing what you learn is the difference between success and failure. You, you can consume bucketloads of content. You can read tons of books, but if you don’t act in any of it, then you kinda buggered, you know, that, you know what, you’re not going to get anywhere.

Den Lennie (5m 6s):
And so getting super clear on what you want from life is really cool. And the way we do that in the VBA is we have it. We have a visioning exercise where we actually create a vision board for what you want your ideal life to look like. And when you use images to do that, you can start to break down what that looks like in terms of costs. And once you know, what that looks like in terms of costs, then you can see, well, you know, ha how do we actually achieve that in terms of business revenue and business profits. We’ll talk a bit more about that in next week’s episode. So, I mean like, you know, what is your version of success? Looks like not everyone wants to drive a Porsche or live in the eight bedroom mansion.

Den Lennie (5m 49s):
I’m most people, most filmmakers wanting to be comfortable and Luke after the family and not have any money worries, but success, do you make mean, you know, only are at epic or an Alexa or whatever it is. You have to design success through your lens. You have to define what it looks like to you because it, what is different to you is different. To me, my ID of success is living by the beach in Australia, where I live in a tunnel summer. And that wasn’t, that was an idea hard 23 years ago, executed on that over a number of years in various forms, but in the last 10 made it a reality.

Den Lennie (6m 30s):
And then for six, we’ve been doing it. I got very clear about what I wanted, unfocused, everything I did on making that reality and late the vision board exercises, you know, if did you go and do that anyway, pin it up on your desk, have it in your peripheral vision all day, every day. And then any decision that you have to make towards your business becomes rooted and anchored in that vision. And you will start as you. And I mean, this may seem like a lot of touch. No, but you might find yourself in a position where you can see nor to work. I mean, I have clients know who, who sent to work. I mean, it it’s become something to do is they, they, they, they, they knew exactly who they want to work with.

Den Lennie (7m 11s):
Exactly how they want to serve them exactly the times at which they want people to work with them. And if they don’t fit into those terms there simply see the sole, we can’t help you. And, but I have, I had people that we can pass you on too, and actually the Nevada. So it, until you become clear on your purpose, you are kind of shooting blind are worse. You risk wasting time and effort in a disorganized spiral of procrastination. And, and, and you’ll be kind of contemplating what to do when to do at which the best route to take. Oh, I’m not sure if we should do this. I’m not sure if we should do that.

Den Lennie (7m 52s):
And you know, you, you will be exhausted because you’ll be riding the never ending roller-coaster of the feast and famine of freelancer life. But if you get this right, and you have a clear motivation every day and always be focused on your desired outcomes where it’s reducing your hours, doubling your revenues are building your own Vashon of a video empire. Having clear clarity around what you need to do is key. And there was foundations AR purpose and mission. So purpose is, you know, why you X, why don’t you, why don’t you go out every day? Or what is it that drives you to make films, to help clients achieve outcomes, right? The dome try and put it into a sentence.

Den Lennie (8m 33s):
You know, we help talk at market achieve desired outcome with our unique offer. You want to be able to share that, you know, on, on our website, we have a variation of that. And it’s, it says spending out of here world-class achieve more and finally feeling control with the only coaching program on the planet, tailored the video business owners. So what class achieve more and finally feeling control is the outcome. That is the outcome we promise you, you know, do you want to work class? Do you want to achieve more? Do you want to feel in control of your business? You know what, the only coaching program on the planet that’s are all free.

Den Lennie (9m 14s):
It’s a coaching program, Taylor, out to our target market, video business owners. Then we talk about, you know, going from chaos to clarity and your production business, where the tried and tested blueprint firm, the world’s ballsiest filmmaker and the P to the stars and are bullet points are stopped walking long hours. When they make little progress, reduce your stress levels in the and predictable income and lamb proven processes that will grow your business faster. That is our purpose. Our purpose is to help video business owners achieve more white glass and finally feel later in control of the business. And we do that through our coaching program, which is the video business accelerator mastermind and the video business accelerator foundation.

Den Lennie (9m 55s):
That is what we do when that we also offer some one-to-one coaching for those businesses that need that one too one. But, but, but this, but the mission is the same, the purposes of setting and their mission to, to just to differentiate between the two, the financial goal, it’s that it’s the revenue goal is the number of people. We want to work with this number, but we wanna reach. And the time frame for doing that ’cause without that financial goal is not a business and business, the way that you measure success in the business is through a financial metric, but also a number of clients metric. We’ve got a goal for the number of clients we want to work with. We have got a goal and we’ve got to cap that and the mastermind. So it is, there’s an intimate field in that group, but those are just some of the basic foundations.

Den Lennie (10m 40s):
Then from there, you want to start thinking about it, you know, while what else is important. I know. How do you want to be perceived in the marketplace? Which part of the market do you want to work with? Because it’s, it’s not, it’s not possible to serve the entire market, you know, from, from a marketing perspective, do you say things like, you know, oh, I want to serve anyone who’s in it. Who’s in corporations who is in medium sized businesses that that’s not specific enough. S whereas have you say it, I want to work with healthcare and medical device companies in the us, but predominantly focusing on the Boston in area of the U S that’s very specific, and it helps you to tell it to get your opportunities.

Den Lennie (11m 31s):
And it helps you work the more narrow field. And, and, you know, you, you, you simply can’t as a filmmaker, be available to film the whole world. I mean, see this, a lot of our clients are business that don’t actually list were the best. Most people want to know where you’re based. And if then if the love what you do, they will fly to whatever they need. The fly. You bet trickier. Just no, of course. But the point being is you gotta get very, very clear what you do. How do you do at four or, and where do you do it? And this is a big mistake. I see a lot of businesses make is that they don’t have an address on their website.

Den Lennie (12m 12s):
So no one knows where they are. And that all of that does is create M skepticism. Its like, well, why haven’t we got the name or e-mail address or, or of physical address in the website? So, so that’s number one, but, but really getting very clear on what you want and from your business is absolutely key because once you know what success means to you, you know, I’ve got clients who, who, who want to work four days a week ’cause they want to spend time with their kids and they’ve built a business. That’s allowed them to step back from editing, for example, focus on business development. And now there are tripling and quadrupling in that business as a result. So one of the byproducts of stepping back from being involved in every aspect of your business and actually getting clear on what you want and who you want to do it with and how you want it to look or is it, you end up finding yourself in your own lane in a much better way.

Den Lennie (13m 7s):
So as a freelancer, we tend to do everything we do at our marketing. We do it all in producing. We did on in directing with your, on shooting, with your on editing, grading the words and it can be overwhelming. And what I see time and time again, when people do this, as they hit income ceilings, because they can’t get passed it cause they are doing everything themselves. Whereas when, when you get clear on your purpose of what you want to achieve, we can start to walk out. Well, how can you remove yourself from some of the kinds of the tactical elements of what you’re doing? How can you remove yourself from being the engineer from being the technician? You don’t need to cut everything that you shoot. How’s it gonna chat with pat or the other day on one of my clients?

Den Lennie (13m 48s):
He said, do you know? Right in the beginning I felt I had to be involved in every ad it. And he said, no, he barely touched them because I’ve trained my team. We built systems and we’ve got great talent to help us. And there are, are so many freelancers are scratching around for work. It it’s phenomenal. So you never going to be shot of great talented people. And if you want to build your business and you want to be a business owner, they can then spend some time getting very clear on what is that you want from your businesses, how you want your business to look at how you want to help people in impact people. And, and I guarantee that wall that will give you the stepping stones to, to moving in, to kind of creating a strategic plan to execute are on.

Den Lennie (14m 32s):
And so next week I want to talk in the podcast about creating that strategic plan and, and helping you to get clear on how you take these, these purpose and mission statements and turn them into a plan. So you can actually start to see a stone, a map if you like a GPS to achieve your goals. All right, guys, I’ll talk to you next week. You’ve been listening to the How to Scale a Video Business podcast with me, your host Den Lennie. If you’re a video business owner, it’s hit the ceiling we’ve benefit from mentorship, support and coaching and checkout. How you can work with me over at denlennie.com.

Den Lennie (15m 13s):
Don’t forget to subscribe and rate the short over on iTunes. We really appreciate you taking a few minutes to leave review and don’t forget to share if you feel you’ve gotten value from this episode and you think it would be useful for other filmmakers, you know, and please do me a massive favor and share on social media and ingroups that you might not be in. So thanks for listening. See you on the next episode.