How to Take a Break While Still Running Your Video Business.

Episode Transcription

As a videographer have you ever wondered or gotten freaked out at the prospect of taking a couple of weeks off to go on holiday and worrying about what will happen to your business during that? One of my clients recently just decided to take a month off from his business and go and do some shooting in Europe.

And we had a big discussion about how you can prepare yourself for that and what that would look like for your business. So I’m going to give you a bit of an insight today and show you a clip from our VBA Elite Mastermind and how we actually work as a group to support one of our members who’s about to make a big decision in his business and take some time out and how he’s going to prepare for that.

Check it out. We’re just talking about taking time out the business and leaving the business and that. The anxiety that can be around that happening and how you manage that. Given that you’re not gonna be here for a couple of weeks, is there anything you want us to support you on or help you just work through given that you’re going to be in a different time zone?

How are you handling like the prospect of going away? And we all do it and we leave our business alone for sure. Jay is going to be on deck doing like the bookings, et cetera. And then I’ve got a friend on the coast here who shoots a photo and video. So he’s going to be taking on as much of my work as possible. And then there’s another photographer who will do the photo only jobs. What’s really interesting about this.

And we’re actually talking about this in the call last night with the guys is that we,

we. We get so used to running our businesses ourselves that we actually think that nobody else can do it. We get into our heads that no one can service the clients the way we do, et cetera. And then, and you flip that on the other side with the worry of if I get somebody else to do this, they might like them better.

They might do a side deal and cut me a deal. There’s all of these like things go on in your head, right? Whether you admit to it or not, that’s what’s really going on. But what you might find, Ryan, is that. A business that’s transitioning into a proper business away from being reliant on the business owner, which is the goal of this whole thing, right?

Is to step back and not be the person that the calls come to and the person that does the work. And it’s I’m peeling an onion, right? It’s a layer by layer thing. This is a kind of forced opportunity, which I think has been put in your way that I want you to go and enjoy yourself, go and have the best time.

You’re getting to go to Europe on somebody else’s ticket, do a little bit of work and have a bit of downtime. I would say that it’s probably if you listen to books. Get some cool books to listen to. And just use the time to absorb some different perspectives, but also just breathe the air, eat the food, drink the wine enjoy the experience because.

It will all be here when you come back and she’s very capable and you can say to her if she’s got any challenges at all, she can always ring me and just if there’s a decision needs to be made that you just, you’re worried about, you’re not awake or there’s something, some kind of emergency, just call me or any one of us here.

It’s actually a great opportunity to battle test. How robust your business actually is. And I think you’d probably be surprised in the short, shortish time we’ve been working together, you’ve gone from working at home solo from your kitchen table to moving into your second office, having almost a full time editor and in a position to, if you compare this to what it would have been like a year ago, if you’d taken this month off.

It would have just, it would have been just shut down in time or you might not have gone. Oh yeah, definitely. If I’d taken a month off last year I would have just had to stop everything and then try and rebuild that momentum when I got back, but luckily I’ve got good people around me who I can rely on to.

Do the edits to the shooting do the bits and pieces. So I think you’re right. It will be a bit of an eye opener when I get back. I think I’ll either get back and go, Oh, that worked out pretty well. I’ll book my next holiday or time to put my head down. Caleb, you’ve done this a couple of times, right?

You’ve done it. You pretty much had month off last year for military work and you’ve had a good. two or three week breaks of each baby that was born. Plus you like to enjoy your other commitments to the church and to hunting all these. What what advice could you share with Ryan? Who’s probably doing this for the first time, like leaving the baby at home and going away for three weeks.

Aren’t you running away for three weeks? A month. A month. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s worked varying degrees of well over the multiple times I’ve done it. But the one thing that meant that it was possible for me in the first place was knowing that the production workflow was all systemized. So there was nothing that was left in my head that people didn’t know how to do.

The only challenge that I find with going away now is the sales side of things because I’m not as actively. Out there and yeah, looking for them, those sales that can take a dip. But even so I just make sure it sounds like you’ve got everything in place that I would be.

Having in place, you just, you need people that are going to do the work and someone who’s going to take the bookings. So long as all of that is really systemized and there’s a good way of doing it. Good process. Then yeah, I found that’s been the. Being the winning ticket for me.

Whenever I take time off stuff always happens because I’m pretty consistent in doing stuff all the time. And when you take a week off, there isn’t actually a lag in the week that you take off for the month that you take off it’s the month after and the month after that, if you don’t maintain some sort of.

consistent outbound communication, then that’s when things slow down. So what my advice, Ryan, and Tom’s got a team, obviously Thomas, obviously. So it’s a bit different, but some ways, yes. Some ways no is just allocate some time during your trip to just do a few bits. If you can knock out Three, three, three posts a week on LinkedIn do that just the real danger is you don’t, you stop doing any kind of marketing.

And what we have to do is suspend any skepticism. That it won’t work for you and actually deploy the effort into just fucking doing it anyway. Because that’s like, when I said the other day on the weekly goals, it’s like I came at the gym at six o’clock on six, seven o’clock on Monday morning, having left the done 90 kilogram sumo squat and last week I did 130 kilogram deadlift.

And I’m like fucking I only got there because I’m consistent, like there’s no other fucking reason for it is that I go five times a week to stretching three weights every single week since the beginning of January. I’m averaging 15 to 20 sessions a month, not really changing my diet too much.

I’m just being consistent. And this is the beauty of it, right? You don’t have to be amazing at this marketing thing. You just have to be consistent. And where I see. I’m in a very fortunate position where I get to see everyone’s numbers and everyone’s position, everyone’s journey. And those people that I see growing consistently are doing things consistently.

And it’s actually all there is to it. And it’s just that we as creatives complicate the fuck out of shit. By going, Oh, but I don’t think this, and I don’t think that, and I don’t think they’ll like this. And we let our egos get in the way of what is factually correct, which is if you post stuff three times a week, consistently for a long enough time, and you reach out to 10 or 20 people a day for a long enough time, it will turn into gold.

It’s just hard work and it’s boring. And you know what? You just got to suck it up because that’s where the opportunities come from. You are actually going overseas to shoot an event. So like you’re out of office should probably say, Hey guys I’m actually out shooting a project in Italy for the next four weeks.

In my absence, I’ll be checking emails periodically in my absence, please go straight to Jade. She will be able to help you. There’s two things that happen there, right? One is massive positioning. It’s like he’s going to Italy. You could even say I’m off. I’m actually shooting in Lake Como cause that’s everyone knows that’s where George Clooney lives.

So their first thought is going to be I said, are you going to see George Clooney? So there’s an association with the fact that you’re going to Lake Como and you’re not telling them exactly what you’re shooting. I’m shooting a project in Lake Como and I’m out for the next month.

Massive curiosity. All of your clients are going to be like, what the fuck are you doing in Lake Como? And then you don’t you’re just not available, but you’re then training your market that Jay is the person to connect with. And then you’ll come back and they won’t want to talk to you because they’ll be used to talking to Jane.

She’s awesome. And so you’re actually going to create an environment where your clients are going to disconnect from your teat, and be on solids without you. And that is. Awesome. But add to that, shooting a project in Lake Como has massive sex appeal. It’s like what you’re doing in Lake Como.

It’s oh, look I can’t say too much about it at the moment. But I’ll feel you when I get back. Like just create the curiosity, keep them guessing and be like, Luke, I’m, I’ve got a project I’m shooting in Lake Como and Milan. I my, my email will be periodic in the meantime, urgent inquiries, please, but such and such I’ll get your inquiry when I get back.

It just puts a really strong message that a, what are most media doing filming in Italy. And and you’re obviously going to take your drone and stuff and shoot some nice shots and be like shoot some architecture, shoot some properties. And they’re going to be like, fuck you. There’s just, there’s going to be a lot of questions and curiosity will be spiked.

And you can use that curiosity to huge effect by not actually telling people what you’re doing. And you just position yourself as an international business. Yeah. That sounds good. That’s what I was going to put on my email signature or my email out of office. Yeah. All right. All right. Very cool.

Should be good. But yeah, scary though. Yeah.

But you know what? You’re only ever a phone call away and you can still do your marketing. You still post stuff and schedule it. You can still do outreach. You can still do all of those things. And in many ways, when you are not actually working out there, you’re going to be like. You’ll be happy to spend an hour working on your business, sitting in Italian cafe because the environment is so different.

Like the perspective you have, the kind of the big picture thinking you have when you’re actually doing that and your business is still operating is phenomenal. Yeah. I’ll be still posting regularly. And I think Jay will be doing posts as well. And I’m going to be doing uploads into Dropbox, like of everything that I shoot in that day kind of thing, which then can be turned into reels and stuff back here to be then posted, Hey, this is what we did.

And this is what we saw in Italy today. This is whatever it may be. And like that, that in itself is you doing front end marketing. So if you find these. interesting and useful. There’s a couple of things you can do next. One is you can join our free community to scale your video business community or go and watch our free training.

Both are linked below and let’s work together to build your video business. You’ve been listening to the Video Business Accelerator podcast with your host Den Lennie. If you’re a video business owner who is tired of going it alone and would benefit from mentorship, support, and weekly accountability, Then mouse over to www.videobusinessaccelerator.com to learn more about how the Accelerator program can help you today. Don’t forget to subscribe and rate the show over on iTunes, and we’d really appreciate you taking a few minutes to leave a review.