Den’s Clint Eastwood Story (And Episode 200!)

Episode Transcription

Den Lennie (0s):
Well, Hey guys! Welcome to this slightly different episode of the How to Scale of Video Business podcast today. This is episode 200 and I was racking my brains as to how to mark the occasion. And oftentimes when show’s get to this kinda of size, you, you do a retrospective how you look over previous gas, but to be honest, with 200 episodes, is that a lot to get through. So I thought what I do is tell you my story. I probably touched on bits of this as we’ve gone through the show. And if you’d be listening to us for a while, then thank you. And 200 episodes, it’s a bit a milestone, and we have done it in about 18 months.

Den Lennie (42s):
I’ll talk about it about that later on. But I thought that what they should do is they actually tell my story from the beginning as a means for you to really understand who I am and how they got to where I am today. Because I think as a, as a slightly, a bit introverted a filmmaker, you know, I, you never really wanna talk about yourself. You wanna talk about it, you know, the, the results you get for the people in their health that you do. And by that, I thought it was my wife that said to me, look, you, you could share your story because its inspiring. That’s what I’m gonna do today. So I’ve come down to the beach where I live a, which I guess as the first inspiring thing to note, I mean I live literally 400 meters.

Den Lennie (1m 27s):
Is it that way? This the beach with my wife and I work on every morning, sunrise and every evening and for 35 and we take the dogs. So yeah. So I guess we’ll start there because that is where I am now. So the 20, 21 we’re in trouble in 2021. I, and you know, it it’s taken a while to get here, but it all started with the a trip, I guess it did to Australia 24 years ago. And when I backpacked around here, but let’s, let’s go back a bit further. So I grew up in the little town called the Edinburgh in Scotland. And from the age of about 16, I, I kind of wanted to do something different.

Den Lennie (2m 8s):
I didn’t really wanna follow the path that everyone else was following. And the, you know, since, since a young stir, my dad have DSLR, cameras were not a DSS, SLR cameras. And I used to enjoy, you know, picking them up and looking through the lens and looking at the world through the lens. And, and I was really that interested in photography park. I was interested in a moving image part. So what I got to the school and you know, it was bullied at school. So I didn’t really feel like a fitted in. So I got stuck into the theater and at that level we don’t and a VHS video camera, one with a separate Ricardo that was lots in the ER cup. And they managed to kind of a friend, the guy in the cupboard and start shooting things at school, you know?

Den Lennie (2m 48s):
And so when we work experience came around at about age 16, I didn’t want to do the jobs that were advertised. So I ringing around radio stations and I thought I’d always been fascinated by sound and audio and recording and video. So I rang around the look radio station to see something with giving a week’s work. It has been so they got lots of noise. So I guess from an early age, I started the door knocking and cold calling, but it was a Friday afternoon. Then I remember her calling the BBC and Scotland and they we’re based in Edinburgh are they had a branch and then, and Brad and I just asked to speak to someone about work experience and their receptionist just put me straight through to the boss.

Den Lennie (3m 30s):
And he was kind of impressed with my tenacity and said, well, look, you know, get your teacher to write a letter and we’ll figure it out. And that was the beginning of my, I guess my career because I spent a week or two, I would say a weaker think it was in the radio studio is so that was fascinating. Great. But I remember being introduced to the M T a news crew and he had a big three tubes, icky Gammy camera, a separate pneumatic Riccardo. And I met Ian and a gym who became lifelong friends. And I picked up the camera, put the zoom rocker on, and that is what I was hooked up. So I then spent the rest of the weak with the news Cru and in that very first week of work experience and up doing an interview with them, Clint Eastwood.

Den Lennie (4m 12s):
So obviously I completely and utterly hooped, you know? And so after that I went off and did I want it to try to be better? I see. And then the catamaran and said, look, you, do you go and get an education? So I went to college, applied to the PBC, got rejected. We went to university. What it is a Polytechnic was like a technical college, like a team of here in Australia. And then the film course is quite new. You and I was feeling a little bit frustrated. So my girlfriend at a time is going to go to Australia for a year. And I was like, well, if she goes, that’ll be it. So maybe I should go to, so I decided to save all my money up, work, three jobs. I did follow a spot at the Edinburgh fringe for like three weeks. I worked in the hag and dies ice cream.

Den Lennie (4m 52s):
I watch in hotels and I scraped together enough money for the flight. I think it was 800 pounds return. I remember that. And it had about 400 pounds in cash and we flew off to you, Australia in that would have been all of it September of 1992. None of them in Australia, in Melbourne and I’m, you know, pretty quickly write out of money. So the phone, our way up to the gold coast, where we got a job in the hotel that night yeah. Precisely to spend 11 months in Australia, fell in love with Queensland lift in Cairns for, for months, as they say here, Keens. And, you know, just, just fell in love with Australia, passed through the sunshine. Cause very close to what I live. No, and just discovered this incredible lifestyle existed.

Den Lennie (5m 36s):
And I’d grew up in Scotland, which is beautiful, but the weather’s not great. And I’d spent 25, 5 years in Scotland. And so I kind of, it was ready to you. So anyway, I came back, finished my degree and then instead of, and finishing and doing honors, which you well driving a 10th as what a dissertation I, I bailed. And I, I got an opportunity to get a job that actually this came up on it because when I worked for Haagen Daz, when they launched a store, they have a TV crew come up. So I have a friend that the TV crew kept in touch. And when they got back from Australia, they got in touch and he said, oh, look, you know, they’re looking for a sound recorders at writer’s and GMTB Scotland’s, you should go for him.

Den Lennie (6m 19s):
So I finished my third year of uni. I applied for this job and gossip it. So I left university in, inside working in broadcast TV in what for JMTV M for two and half years, as it looks on recorders and the editor, we have a cut in two machine front panel in the back of a machine in the back of a fan. And probably the biggest story that I’ve covered in Scotland was a dumb blamed massacre. We, with the second TV Cru on the scene, we spent pretty harrowing week there. So, you know, I got to experience some pretty cut in, you know, from the frontline news stories. But then I was, I was getting frustrated. I wanted to be a camera man. And the camera man, and Martin was it wasn’t going anywhere.

Den Lennie (7m 1s):
So I applied for job with BBC it east Anglia. We got it actually rather cheekily I flew and then a alive in the boarders of Scotland of the day of my aunties for the BBC for drove to Glascow flew to Luten and car. That car drove to Noridge, which was a three and half hour drive. It turned up in my head of work here at my Gore-Tex jacket. And didn’t interviewed in front of our panel and they’re like, oh, you know, we don’t let you address for them to you. And like, well, I was doing a live broadcasts this morning for JMTV. So I’ve kind of just went, what do you want me to say? So anyway, I got that job. I ended up working in east Anglia and Lutin for a year as a vet east BVC east.

Den Lennie (7m 48s):
And it finally got to the wait for the BPC. And it was like the pinnacle of, I can’t have a dream, but in fact, is I a M I didn’t love it. And it’s a very bureaucratic organization learn a lot in that year. I had a, a hunger for more. So I applied for a job that was advertised and the back have broadcast magazine in London tonight were looking for, or what they call it, the news photographers, which were our base, the camera men. So I went for that job and got that, got a 10,000 pound pay rise. Suddenly I was working for days a week in London. It was amazing. I did it in entertainment. I did a, a, you know, travel news, current affairs, Matt, a really good friend of mine, Paul Mongey.

Den Lennie (8m 28s):
And who, what are you still friends today? In fact, poles, it, one of my clients in my mastermind group, in the VPA and Paul’s who had an amazing career as well. And, and that was the beginning of my, kind of a real broadcast TV career. And our last shot, lots of celebrity’s lots of a royalty film. The queen, a queen mother, a lots of celebrities in the various forms over the three and a half years, I was in London and absolutely love to have that have that slipped ball. But then I decided to go freelance. We spent like 18 months deciding to go freelance. And then we got the opportunity to grow freelance and couple of really good brakes. Fantastic. It will make it in mine, got me involved with trans world of sports.

Den Lennie (9m 11s):
So I’ve got the gig with them and then the lovely marinating Gael. And it brought me into which you were here when she was the main presenter for that. So I got to shoot which you were here for three years and that was just, you know, it was a dream job back in the state is getting 12 million viewers in Louisville, not from the UK. I wish you were here. That was a very, very successful travel program. And so we, you know, we, we had an amazing time doing that a anyway. So I went freelance and then, but in my leg actually on it on a shoot, when a friend of mine called pat dye, we were filming in Chamonix, too guys who were going to Paris, send off for the summer of my block. And yeah. You know, how the accident and got airlifted off the mountain M six months off of work.

Den Lennie (9m 55s):
So it’s a pretty, pretty, pretty tough, but I went to Thailand, hung out of it. You know, I have insurance, which was a really cool, so he got back to back up to the freelance mode, start at shooting a lot with Nick Marie, who is now a massively successful director or in LA. And then in fact, next back I’m on the podcast. At some point, he is, he’s won Emmy’s for doing drag race. And he’s, he’s, he’s working in the top end of the TV now in the house. And if, and I shot a quite a few programs so that you bring in to do things like, and most haunted live. So then I did it, I would say a broadcast. I did a, you know, sports documentary, a shot stuff for RDS things like a holiday show that really kind of stuff.

Den Lennie (10m 36s):
And I love that stuff, but it is a good experience. Anyway, two years after my accident, I was filming in South Africa leg just didn’t feel quite right. So I got home. I was actually shooting the pilot for a place in the sun, Homer, a way a again with pat uhh, and benefit from Pinella. And she was a producer and we were filming in Cape. So it didn’t feel quite, he got back home. We didn’t see an ankle, especially. So basically your ankles, Scrooge, you got arthritis. What are you do for living? Is that in the camera? And he says, that’s it? No it anymore. So I had the really kind of a dark period. There were, I was told I couldn’t be a cameraman anymore. And that was a pretty, pretty crazy because that’s, that’s all I knew.

Den Lennie (11m 19s):
So I have to bail on that any way over a few month’s, you know, back it up a lot of debts. I mean, so thirty-five 40,000 pounds. And with that, I just put a 200,000 lb a house since it opens something of my income was gone, thought a bit, going back into photography. None of that felt quite right. So I, I got a job with pro cab telephone. So Jon and Cal, then they hired me and I got a job in the way that I just ran in the warehouse. Cause I, I needed something. So we went back in the warehouse where you start really started to revise how they work, systemizing the kit’s and stuff. But after a short period of time, it became clear that I had skills as a camera man, and I could interface with production managers. So I went into the office and started business development. And then that two or three year periods added about a million pounds worth of their bottom line, ended up with a share of that company.

Den Lennie (12m 6s):
And until one tire trip to Las Vegas, like eight or ninth trip to Las Vegas for NEB mark forth from make carp and the other CVP a said, look, I love the way to come and work from me. So why don’t you come and jump ship? So I did, I had started a relationship with Sony by that point as well. So I jumped ship CVP. In that time, we see a, that’s a pretty good growth for those guys, helped set up CVP TV and started training people in how to do things using video. And that became beginning, I guess, of f-stop academy because I saw that the world is changing and I connect it with Phillip Blum at that point, who ever had a small block at that stage, then I saw it.

Den Lennie (12m 52s):
He was going somewhere. So we teamed up and we set up our stock academy and started making the tutorial videos. And the first tutorial video we made, it was a five day mark two. We shot it in the afternoon in a Cambridge and made like $200,000. It was insane. So that few months later he did the 17 and Sara sorts out in Florida. And then it just didn’t really work out. Food was on a different trajectory. He was very much building is blog. I want it to build the training organizations. So we parted ways I took on. So that academy, I have my own remortgaged, the house. And we built up from that. That was in 2009, over the last, you know, 12 years it’s been my main occupation.

Den Lennie (13m 32s):
So I guess 20 12, 20 13 got involved in a lot of them filming again, because cameras are getting smaller. That a lot of what the GM’s talking, the hanged man filmed with Duran Duran, but there are two DVDs in 2012, We at the drop of a Williams act, take the Crowne tour. And some worked in Madrid with Christiana Ronaldo, which was quite a funny, cause they didn’t know he was, and I was there filming with him and it was only one of my nephew said, what are you doing with Ronaldo? I’m like, how do you know? And he’s like, well, you’ve shown up on his Facebook page. And I saw a 10 million fans and I was like, wow, these quite big deal this guy. But that’s the way isn’t often when you’re filming you, you’re not necessarily tied up and who the person as you’re just doing your job. So I had a really great period they’re but I still missed the Australia.

Den Lennie (14m 17s):
And I was getting toward my 45th bus. And I was like, if we don’t do this now and I’m never going to do it. So I convinced my wife to take a trip to Australia and we actually went for six weeks and we run some workshops. So we traveled all over the Australian. You know, I put it on wet business class, did it all properly and she fell in love with it as well. So that’s how we began the journey of migrating to Australia. So 2015 we moved and it took us nearly three years to get a visa. And we moved to Australia in July, 2015, which is just a little over six years ago. And start again, you know, it started right from scratch.

Den Lennie (14m 58s):
And that was challenging because I had to kinda put my money where a mouth wasn’t and rebuilt the business for the first two years, we run a production company here at the very first job did was the M F T five launch from it in previously we done FX seven and the <inaudible> S and other foams for Sony. I have very, very long and standing relationship with sone and we’ve done multiple launch film’s for them, but the Fs five was a, a a hundred thousand dollars project. So it was good kick-off and I got make Jones is involved in that. And we shot that in Sydney and a typically fill the other day, we were filming on bond. Diabetes was gray, which was a bit of a nightmare, but, you know, make cool that in the bank.

Den Lennie (15m 39s):
And we ended up with a great product. And then Soni asked me to go on and spend the next 18 months periodically traveling around Asia, speaking at YouTube events. So I’d fly in and out of it. Yeah. Our Singapore or what else? So when I went to Jakarta, I went to Sol the, the one in Sydney in Taipei. So have an incredibly exciting to me. We actually shot up a series called be real during that time, which was a document that the journey’s, we, we were trying all sorts of soft social media marketing. And then, you know, we live in the Sydney for three years, for years almost. And then we moved up the coast here at the Queensland and that’s sort of the last couple of years, we spent two years in new.

Den Lennie (16m 22s):
So I just last year filmed with Sony again to launch this camera, the a seven S mark. And you know, it just, just continually surprised by the fact that they keep coming back. But I think it’s a very simple reason. They say, I give them what they want. A, I don’t let my creative ego get in the way I give them what the one and the have a very complex set of requirements. So only when you make them content for them. In fact, they got in touch with me just, just last week again, to ask if I would help judge a competition. So, you know, I think the, the lesson here is and give client’s what they want. And, and you can have a very long and successful career with just a couple of clients.

Den Lennie (17m 3s):
And, but to bring that up to speed today, you know, we move to this beach house for three months ago and a business has never been better. We’ve got a phenomenal group of business owners and the video business accelerator. And then I stopped doing production probably couple of years ago. And mostly because I feel like I’ve done it all. I’ve been very blessed. I’ve shot, feature films, music, sport, documentary, lifestyle entertainment. I’ve traveled to 50 countries around the world and I get to enjoy the snow. And so my time is now spent helping other business owners create balance and fulfillment and financial success of their life.

Den Lennie (17m 44s):
And that’s a hugely rewarding. I have incredible clients who I call friends and who they are all having phenomenal results, but I think more than anything. And I’ll probably leave with this is it to me, its all about fulfillment. You know, reaching a point in your life where you are a fulfilled, you love the work you do. You don’t have to kill yourself for it and you work smarter and not harder. I think that is really what my biggest lessons been. And I cannot tell you how awesome is to have achieve the level of success in life that we’re living in the place we want to live. Even with my wife, 16 years, we have a lot of great successes behind us and we live in this incredible country, which I’m blessed to call home now.

Den Lennie (18m 33s):
And really the, it all starts with an idea. You, you can do anything you want to do. You can achieve anything you want to achieve. If we create a, create a plan, write it down, get, get clear on what success means to you. And if you need some help with that, that’s what we here to do with the video business accelerator. It just one last thing. If you’re not where you want to be. We did this in six years from living in Essex to living by the beach, owning a house. And this is our at our doorstep every day that I’m not seeing that that’s write for everyone. But if your not achieving the result she won and you keep doing the same thing over and over again.

Den Lennie (19m 20s):
Maybe ask yourself what needs to change or what do you need to change in yourself to achieve that success? Because it was very hard to achieve in your own. And I’ve had mentors. I have spent hundreds, thousands of dollars on a business education, but it it’s been an investment of every single cent. I have spent my own education. I’ve seen multiple returns. So if you’re not getting the results you want, or you’re not clear on the results you want, then jump on a call. Let’s spend some ideas around and see if we can offer you some insight. And if we feel like this, a good fit, then we can help you. If we can talk about how we can work together. But if not what we can just have a chat and hopefully it sent you off for some ideas.

Den Lennie (20m 1s):
So a yeah, have a think about that. And see you in the next episode.