What would your life look like if you doubled your profit this year? Would everything be different? Yes, it’s absolutely possible, if you focus your attention on the right areas.
Episode Transcription
Den Lennie (3s):
G’day guys! Den Lennie here for this week’s Shorty on the How to Scale a Video Business Podcast. Here we are, 23rd of February here in Australia, episode number 159. So I have a question for you today. That is kind of a kind of cool exercise to do. We actually just did this on our coaching calls today. It was so powerful. I wanted to share it with you on the podcast today. And I think you’ll gonna like it.
Den Lennie (47s):
So I want to ask you a question. What would your life look like if you doubled your profit this year? Not necessarily just your revenue, but your profit. So I want you to think about what you to call to last year from your business. And I want you to imagine that 12 months from now, we’re looking back on this year and you doubled your profit. Now forget about whether or not you think that is possible at the minute that I just want you to sit in the space. Imagine, I waved the magic wand. And I want you to think about what would life look like?
Den Lennie (1m 27s):
So how would your life look differently? How would your days look different with anything around you, be different? You know, what was it? So it was the first thing you to invest in. If you doubled your profit in your business, would you be upgrading your computer would be hiring someone to be full-time in your team? Would you be expanding your business and all the directions? What would that look like? Because unless you have a very clear idea of what you want life to look like that it’s very difficult to pick the right steps in place to achieve that. So we were very driven as humans by visuals and our subconscious is largely motivated by our visual.
Den Lennie (2m 17s):
So one of the things we do in the accelerator, both on the course and on the mastermind is that one of the first things we do in one of the modules is, is a vision of what the future looks like. Where do you want your ideal life to look like? What does that look like to you? What does success mean to you? And then we work out where you’re at currently. And then what is the gap between where you are currently and the future version of your life that does not yet become a reality, because there are many, many places in which to put your effort and attention, but not all of them are actually going to deliver you.
Den Lennie (2m 58s):
The results are important. It’s very easy to get distracted and be putting effort into it, places that isn’t necessarily going to benefit you. So back to my original question, what would life look like? How would life look different for you if you doubled your profit month on month? So if you are making 3000 a month and you were to be making 6,000 a month, what would that mean for you? And that is really what I want you to think about it today, because it is absolutely possible to double your profits in 12 months, absolutely possible. If you do the focus, your attention in the right place, in the right areas, and you do the right things.
Den Lennie (3m 42s):
So we were discussing this morning on the coaching call, what are the things that prevent us from doubling our business? And it’s almost certainly mindset. It’s a mindset of not believe in that you can, and therefor you end up sabotaging self-sabotaging your ability to do double your business. Most of the areas where I see the opportunity is, is in, in marketing and sales. And that is something that usually makes filmmakers, frees is like marketing and sales. But look at it this way, you know, as a business owner, your number one moral responsibility, too, your business is to deliver the maximum return for the shareholders.
Den Lennie (4m 36s):
And if you own the business outright yourself, that is you. You’re a shareholder in your own business. And if you are just kind of, you know, doing everything yourself and, and you’re trying to just kind of brute force your way through your business, then you are not maximizing the return for the shareholder. You have a job that is very poorly paid, and I am not sitting here in an ivory tower. ’cause when I was running my company in the UK, that’s what it was doing. I was doing everything myself. I was trying to maximize keeping all the profit myself of a shooting. I was editing and it was producing, but I got really burned out. And I realized that I couldn’t scale the business along.
Den Lennie (5m 17s):
And so I started hiring contractors. And for me, the biggest thing was letting go of the shooting. Cause I was a DP. I love to shoot. I love to light. It’s what I had always done, but I realized that I could not scale my business. If I kept shooting everything and I love to edit, I’m a very good editor, but I realized I couldn’t scale my business if I kept editing, because if I was producing everything and shooting everything and editing everything, then nothing else was being done. And what you need to do in your business to maintain revenue is to be continually filling the front end of what we call your funnel, which is the front end of your with inquiries.
Den Lennie (5m 59s):
And you know, a lot of filmmakers I speak to talk about word of mouth is there is their main source of Business and, and, and referrals R and D or an incredible source of business, but they are not predictable unless you have a predictable system. And so if you are, you know, just relying on word of mouth and then what happens is as you get busy on a project, so you start to produce it, you shoot at you and that’s it. And you don’t fall up with anyone for a few weeks. People start to forget about, you know, the issue, but that is that, that is what’s spirals, the rollercoaster feast and famine because if you’re not consistent up front with your lead generation and you, and your opportunity is coming into your business, then you’re not going to be able to deliver a consistent lead flow and consistent opportunities to your business.
Den Lennie (6m 51s):
And so that there is definitely a, a point at which is, you know, you don’t have quite enough work coming in to justify hiring some of them. But then if you don’t keep doing the marketing, you want to have enough work coming in. And, and, and this, this, this is a kind of spiral as a vicious circle. And so that is the most common first hire is to outsource the editing because the editing is something you can do remotely. It’s something that you can do. You know, sharing files and premiere doing proxy work flows, sending drives people. It’s all possible. One of my clients undress, and it runs a company released videos, and they have a post production company in Guatemala, and they are able to provide post production services off shore at a lower rate than domestically.
Den Lennie (7m 44s):
But with the added advantage of the skills, they have incredible skills and their company, and they have a team of 12 people, everything from motion graphics to sound design, to regular editing, some more advanced editing, and a lot of, a lot of the members in inside the VBA you are now having conversations with Andrea is about offshoring. They are editing so that they can create more capacity without having to hire a team. And that is, I think probably the thing that most video production professionals want to do, they want to, they want to increase the business, but they’re scared too, to hire a team because they don’t know how, and they don’t have any systems and they don’t know what they should be doing and how they should be doing it.
Den Lennie (8m 27s):
And that is why, you know, we have weekly calls with our accelerator coaching members is that we were constantly working on their business’s with them. But you know, that, that is it. That is definitely a, a program for people who are quite a bit more established, but we do have, and we just launched in November the Video business accelerator course. And that’s slowly starting to fill up with, with clients who are doing it to be two to 5,000 a month. And we’ve got some incredible businesses in their who are learning the foundations of how to get to $10,000 a month. That is the goal of that program is to get you to $10,000 a month. And, you know, there was a bit of work to do.
Den Lennie (9m 7s):
It is not easy, but people that are in there are following a process and are making progress and then running your business is not easy, but, but once you get to 10,000 a month, it’s an awful lot easier to get to 20,000 a month from 10. The hardest part of the journey is getting from two to 10. And I’m, if you would like some help with that, then please reach out because we can have a conversation and then we can see if we can help you with that. But I want you to leave this episode with this notion of what would life look like for you. If you could double your business this year, I want to leave you with that thought. And now we’ll catch up with you on Thursday. You’ve been listening to the how to scale a video business podcast with me, your host, Den Lennie.
Den Lennie (9m 51s):
If you are a Video business owner, that’s hit a ceiling would benefit from mentorship, support and coaching and check out how you can work with me over at denlennie.com. Don’t forget to subscribe and rate the shore over on iTunes. I mean, we really appreciate your taking a few minutes to leave a review, and don’t forget to share if you feel you’ve gotten value from this episode that you think that would 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. So thanks for listening. See you in the next episode.
