Do you have a well-defined business purpose? Plan your year ahead, strategize and align them on your goals.
Episode Transcription
Den Lennie (1s):
Hi guys. Welcome back to the Podcast. It’s 2021 this week’s shorty. I’m finally back after just about two and a half weeks of break, which was just divine. I hope that you had some time out as well to reach to relax, to recharge, reflect. I always find time to get you a chance to be creative. I did a bunch of a landscape photography, drank a bit of wine and really enjoyed the space to think. So I hope you had a good time to, but we were back into it for a day.
Den Lennie (47s):
And you know, the great thing about the break cause you get to really recharge. I think it’s so important, especially in our industry where we just, you know, it can be, it can be so flat out so much of the time. So he just came off of our first coaching call of the year and we start strong with a very big annual planning session. And I want to just share some of the insights from that session with you, because if you’ve not undertaken any strategic planning before I strongly recommend you use this time in January to do that, get really clear on, on the sort of key metrics that you’ve got to measure your business by this year.
Den Lennie (1m 27s):
But I want to just start by saying it was really fascinating on the call because I actually sent to the guys that said, you know, if someone who wasn’t in this group came in to this meeting and listened to the results that you guys got in December, they probably wouldn’t believe you. And that’s because, you know, your environment is so important to your success. And if you allow yourself to be surrounded by people who are conspiracists and who are, who think that everything that’s going on in the world is somebody else’s fault, then you know, you’re screwed. You know, we, we employ a very, very much a extreme ownership concept within the VBA.
Den Lennie (2m 16s):
And that is that your success or failure, there’s a a hundred percent done to you. And it starts with Planning, which is why we spend your 19 minutes on the first Monday of the year, the first Tuesday of the day, depending on where you are, I’m talking about Planning and the reason the planning is so important is it helps you create consistency and to stay focused on, on the high value outcomes. Because if you don’t then, you know, really you’re, you’re going to be buggered. And so when we start to break our planning into five main steps, which is your purpose and mission, you know, why do you exist at the business? And what is your commercial goal and any strategic obstacles are the objectives that you’re to achieve and what is your core focus is going to be?
Den Lennie (3m 4s):
And what is your plan for executing on those strategic objectives? And then creating a system for executing regularly, which is really one of the core, the major benefits of the video business accelerator to mastermind is this is a weekly coaching, umm, but also where we are implementing smart goals this year, which I’ll tell you about. So starting with the purpose and mission and its the DNA of your business through the years, like why do you exist as a business? You know, what, what practice do you serve in? Why do you stand out as a business as opposed to all the other hundreds and thousands of Video businesses? And so it’s not enough just to say that we make great films and tell stories and all that bullshit.
Den Lennie (3m 45s):
You know, you’ve got to have something unique that you offer the market you’ve got to solve for it. No problem. And then the emission is, is, is, is your commercialization of that? What do you want, do you want to achieve? And then your plan is how are you going to do it and that, so, you know, getting clear on who you want to serve in the market and, and, and how are you going to sell it? And it’s very important that we have an equation it’s that we help industry or a niche achieve desire to come up with unique offer and, and you work on that. And that statement helps you to stay on track and say no to the wrong jobs. And you know, this is the right jobs. And you know, do you have a well-defined business purpose that is clearly communicated in your marketing? They will buy based on certainty.
Den Lennie (4m 27s):
Let me get to your mission, which is, you know, what, what does it you want to achieve? And the next 12 months, you know, how much money do you want to make? What is your revenue goal? How many clients is that going to take? And at what price point, and then what prophet do you want to make? These are things that we track at a very high level and we’ve just a day introduced it. Ah, ah, ah, ah, a matrix of Business metrics. There will help our members to track all of this data in one place on a month-to-month basis. You, you know how much revenue you want to make, what prophet goals are, what their values are. And because it’s really important that you work at your number and, and identify what it is. You’re willing to trade an exchange because if you’re very much a freelancer than you are going to be spending, you know, mean nine, 10 o’clock in a Sunday night or in your garage and editing.
Den Lennie (5m 18s):
And that’s time away from family, it’s taking away from your health and your lifestyle. And this is happening in your energy and the bigger, the number that you want to add to the bigger the trade. And, and I, I spoke to people recently, he was like, Oh, I got this 20 or $20,000 project, but I’m doing everything myself. And it’s like, great, but you can’t do anything else on it. Unless you leverage external support coaching team, contractor’s, you know, a system for her to do this, then making more money isn’t going to necessarily solve your problems is going to give you more problems. Are you going to spend more time doing the work yourself and you will hit a ceiling and you will burn out if for some people that has to happen. You know? So you need to be very clear on what you want. And we have a visioning exercise for that.
Den Lennie (5m 59s):
Once you’re clear on what you want and then you can start to execute on it. And the first thing you need to do is understand the, where your revenue came from and the last 12 months than we have an audit process for that, again, this is a part of this new matrix we have introduced. Cause you want to understand which clients yield at the highest return for the least effort. And from there you can M you can start to focus on the most profitable client and stop working with the ones that aren’t the biggest mistake. Most video production companies make is the chase, every piece of business that like, yes, we can do that. Yeah, we can do that. Yeah, we can do that. Yeah. We can do that. And it’s, it’s a recipe for disaster. It’s a recipe to cripple your business and you’ll never get beyond a certain threshold.
Den Lennie (6m 41s):
So the way we do that is we actually get very clear on what the strategic obstacles and objectives are with a company. And we have a process for that, which goes through a process of, of, of, of, of documenting achievements lessons, land. And then we have a, we have an equation for how we calculate the strategic objective out of that. And then we create a strategic objective and we sat at that lane for achieving it and then hold people to a cone by making them all about making them. But there’s, there’s a process where they can document all of this in one place, then on a coaching call and you can jump on a call and say, Hey, look, you know, my having a problem with this area, what do you think of this? We’ve got this, this problem or this lesson, how can we turn that into strategic objective?
Den Lennie (7m 24s):
And that becomes the focus for the business for the next three to six months. And so then you’ve got to focus on, you know, where are you going to put your focus and how are you going to execute the plan? It’s easy to chase all Business that comes your way. And it’s actually not that there’s not a good recipe. You know, you can’t, you can’t serve everyone. If you try and appeal to everyone in your appeal to no one. So it’s really important that you get very clear and we’ve got quite a detailed process for assessing you and your energy, your, your, your processes and the way you measure outcomes. And we’ve got that all documented in this matrix as well. So we’ve got this ability to track month to month where the challenging areas are on your business and where you can execute at a higher level and developed skills.
Den Lennie (8m 12s):
And then we got the business analysis, which is your marketing, your prospect’s, your sales, your clients, your delivery, and your operations. And what typically happens is the majority of freelance filmmakers just focused on a tiny bit in marketing, close a few deals. And then there are the deep end of two deliveries like producing, directing, shooting tele. That was the film. And that’s why they get stuck at an income threshold because there is no systems. So we, again, we track this and we score out of 10 every month. How would the marketing is looking, you know, how the prospect funnel’s looking, how sales clients deliver and operations or looking. And then that means we can focus our energy and the energy of our clients on attacking the right parts of the business that need the attention first.
Den Lennie (8m 57s):
And prioritize. And then of course, when you start to prioritize or you need systems for execution, so you’ve got an annual plan that we create. And then we break that down into quarterly priorities and then weekly goals. And then the guy’s post in the group or on a weekly basis too, to hold themselves accountable to everyone else. And that way we get this kind of weekly rhythm and a weekly, weekly achievements. And the other thing that’s very powerful. He was using a default diary. So actually putting your tasks into blocks in your calendar. It was ultimately. You want to be the implementer. You want to be the past and control. And then finally we were implementing a new system called smart goals, where we’ve actually, you know, taking some of these core messages, core problems and a production company.
Den Lennie (9m 45s):
So if we take, for example, a classic problem, which is, Oh, I don’t have enough website inquiries while the desired outcome is actually to want more leads. So if we turn it into a smart goal, that becomes something that’s specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-specific. And so he turned it into a, a smart goal that becomes, we have a fully functional strategy session funnel that has automated delivering five qualified leads per week. And that is just one of 18 that we’ve created. But within that, you’ve got to identify who your ideal client, you’ve got to understand their wants and needs. And you’ve got an interview for existing clients to build a high, an avatar.
Den Lennie (10m 25s):
You’ve got to write compelling copy. Then you’ve got to build credibility authority and trust on your website, and you can do it through case studies and the written testimonials and branding, and a consistent social media message. Then you’ve got to create a, like a landing page and I’ll throw where you have got to identify what your client actually wants, and then help them get what they want. And then you got to have a sales script and a sales process, and a method for tracking all of this and technical integration of the automations. And then we onboard a client when they sign up and then follow up with a non converting client. So that’s just one of the team that we’ve created, which is a video company specific.
Den Lennie (11m 6s):
So it’s an exciting start to the year. And I’m, you know, I’m certainly looking forward to see what the members do this year. I mean, we were talking to them on the call when I find that to come in and just one year. And, you know, and we, we have got some space for some in tech this year. So if, if you are sitting and listening to this thinking, you know what, this would really benefit me. Then, then I have a chat. Can we show it to me? And let’s have a chat and see if I can give you some guidance, some support, because this, this is a very, very powerful process. And I’m, you know, I think for the guys who have been through already that they’re really seeing all the incredible results that we’re going to start really looking to, to wrap things up this year.
Den Lennie (11m 46s):
Okay, you guys got exciting podcast for you on Thursday is the top 10 of 2020. So look out for that and I will see them. You’ve been listening to the How to Scale a Video business podcast with me your host Den Lennie, if you are a Video business owner and it hit the ceiling, we have benefited from a mentorship support and coaching in check out, or you can work with me over at denlennie.com. Don’t forget to subscribe and rate the show over on iTunes. I 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 that you think it 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 may not be in.
Den Lennie (12m 29s):
So thanks for listening. See you in the next episode.
