When NEVER to make an important decision.

Episode Transcription

 

Den Lennie (3s):
Good day, guys. Den Lennie here with this week’s episode of the, How to Scale A Video Business podcast. Had a bit of a technical issue, just completely recorded this issue and then re-recorded it, because of an issue with a broadcaster, which I haven’t quite figured out. So thank goodness we have a good old-fashioned, quick time. So for take2, we’re talking today about rewriting the stories that might be holding you back from achieving what you really set out to achieve in your business when you first started it.

Den Lennie (47s):
So we’re up to episode 238 today as we push through to the final stages of this year. So let me take you back to where this all started. We writing the stories that are holding you back. Our mind is really the problem area when it comes to building a business, growing a business, and sustaining a business. The thing that you have to be aware of is that there are different stages of growth in a business.

Den Lennie (1m 26s):
And so what I want to do is just take you through those five stages to help you understand where you might be on that journey. So we begin with startup and startup is when you are really just out fishing for work. As much work as you can get from anyone who pays you, I’ll let people spend a good number of years in that stage, but the next stage is the growth stage. And that’s when you start to have a little bit of extra profit, a little bit of extra cash flow, and that’s when you can start to invest in some marketing, start to invest in attracting new members into your world and new businesses to work with, members of your community.

Den Lennie (2m 18s):
Cause what you redo is the businesses is creating a community where you have great relationships with people who enjoy what you do trust you and enable you to not only provide a service for them but also grow your business. Now, a lot of businesses spend a lot of time in the startup and growth phase. It’s like a cycle of business comes in. Money, comes in, do a bit of marketing. What I see a lot of businesses do is give up too quickly on marketing. They try something for a very short period of time. And then when it doesn’t work, as well as the top, they give up and say, well, that didn’t work for me.

Den Lennie (2m 59s):
And that’s something you got to be very, very mindful of. There is actually an expression in marketing, which says, marketers, don’t think they test and everything is marketing and marketing is everything. And when you start to wrap your head around that, it makes life an awful lot easier to grasp. So don’t be surprised if you spend an enormous amount of time in that startup and growth phase. And so, when a lot of businesses sit and a lot of businesses get stuck, the point at which we go from growth to scale is where it can be some of the hardest periods in your business because you’re going to have to start investing money in things that are going to just appear as a cost for a few months before everything starts to bed in.

Den Lennie (3m 50s):
And that usually means hiring a team. So at the scale phase, you’re saying, I can’t do everything myself. I need some help and that’s going to cost you some more money, which means you’re gonna have to look at your pricing and the way in which you currently structure your pricing. I speak to a lot of filmmakers. And a lot of times when they’re making that transition from freelancer to the business owner, they get stuck in charging per hour or per day for the physical practical kind of production elements of shooting and editing. And that is a real problem because what you want to be doing is looking to price based on value, not simply on rocking up and saying, it’s this much for our camera.

Den Lennie (4m 31s):
And there’s a bunch of our cameraman, this much for a director, those elements that are important when putting your quotes together. But if you want to scale, you’ve got to start thinking more broadly and building and profit to cover all of your overheads and also you the overhead and allow you to scale. If you’re going to scale, it might be taking on a new editor. If you’re bringing them in-house, you’ve got to think about a computer and a desk and a place to put them. So those are very, very common stages of growth from startup to growth to scale. Once you have more than two or three people in your team, then culture becomes stage four. And that’s where you start to develop that kind of sense of here’s, how things are done around here.

Den Lennie (5m 16s):
And that culture means that as the business owner, you can be away from the business and the team still runs without you. It still develops and delivers without you needing to be there to steal the ship. And that is the beginning of the freedom phase. And the freedom phase is what I call creative. And that is the ability to choose if you come to the office or not. And if you do what you do when you’re there, it means that you’re no longer involved in the day-to-day operations of your business. And that all of this takes systems. It takes systems, it takes discipline, but more than anything, it takes a mindset. And what I often see is plenty of businesses have a goal.

Den Lennie (6m 1s):
Like I want to get to this much revenue, or I want to get to, oftentimes people say to me, I just wanna have a nice office with a creative team around me. I’m finding that’s less and less important, especially with what’s happened in the last couple of years. So you want to be thinking about, what is your own personal goal? And what’s your goal for the business. And then where most people fall down is they just don’t have a strategic plan. They don’t have a plan of how they’re going to get there. They have the desire and they have a goal, but what happens is there’s no plan. And sometimes what happens is people self-sabotage. And I put this down to awareness and awareness is the real umbrella of psychology and awareness that what needs to be done and what am I currently doing and is what I’m currently doing, actually going to get the job done.

Den Lennie (6m 53s):
So we’ve got to think about how our brain processes information, and this comes down to really kind of basic physiology. And that is that the reason people don’t plan is suddenly it’s because of fear or irrational fear that if they start to plan, then they won’t be creative. When in actual fact planning enables creativity. There’s a phrase you need to slow down to speed up. It seems illogical. It seems counter-intuitive, but it’s true. If you take your time, you can go faster. So I want to talk a bit about the brain and how that works and how we handle situations of stress because whenever we’re facing any kind of opportunity in our business, there’s a decision to go one way or the other.

Den Lennie (7m 44s):
Usually, it involves some kind of sacrifice, some kind of investment, and so that can feel stressful. And we start to fear. What if it doesn’t go right? What if I lose this money? What if I hire this past? And there’s not enough? What if I buy this new camera and system and there’s not enough work? What if I invest in myself and then I can’t afford to pay the rent. This all comes down to the way the brain processes information. So, the brain sort of has three core areas, the reptilian brain, which is your instinct, something’s known as the croc brain is the fight or flight.

Den Lennie (8m 26s):
Okay? So it’s like a hierarchy. So what happens is that the brain comes across the situation. And so if you’re in danger, you must respond quickly. So as an act of self-preservation, the reptilian structure immediately throws chemicals throughout the body to create energy so we can fight or flight. So if you’re watching a shocking news story or you receive an upsetting message, the limbic system is stimulated and so we kind of respond in terms of, am I in danger or am I being threatened? And then the second process, the second filter is the emotional system, which is the limbic brain, which applies a sense of reference point to it.

Den Lennie (9m 13s):
It’s kind of how you’re going to feel. And then the neocortex is the rational thinking brain. So any situation that happens to us, gets processed through the reptilian brain, the limbic brain, the neocortex. And, so you have to very quickly decide, is this situation a threat or an opportunity. And the interesting thing about the brain is that it can’t distinguish between what’s real and what’s imagined. And so if you are facing a situation, your business where you’re kind of just doing too many hours and you’re shooting, you’re editing, you’re coloring, and you’re doing all the production and you’re just dropping the ball. And, you know you need to be thinking about employing someone or delegating that task, but you’re scared because you think, well, it’s going to take me a lot of time to build a system.

Den Lennie (9m 60s):
So I’ll just do it myself would be quicker if I do it myself, or you just think, well, I’ll just push through to the sales because nobody else can do it because I tried that once before and it didn’t work. And so, therefore, we tell ourselves a story that that wouldn’t work again. So the brain is basically processing stressful situations all day long, real, and imagined. And so what you have to do is understand what to do in those situations. And the simplest thing, if you take nothing else away from this episode, is that the easiest way to manage stressful situations. First of all, awareness that a stressful situation that’s happening. Second, is to breathe, take three big deep breaths and regulate and bring yourself back to a neutral position.

Den Lennie (10m 48s):
Because when our pendulum is swinging, when an emotional pendulum is swinging, we make dumb decisions. When we’re feeling stressed, our IQ drops by 50% and the first seven to 10 minutes, because cortisol is being released into our system, to create a readiness for fight or flight. So our nervous system is like a kind of gas pedal in a car is you put the gas pedal down, fuel runs into the system, and we’re ready to go, but you don’t make great decisions under those kinds of situations where you’re feeling extremely stressed during extreme anxiety or extreme happiness or extreme sadness. So the important thing is to ask yourself what is going on here and what is the lesson I’m being shown?

Den Lennie (11m 33s):
And from there be grateful and say, okay, thank you. I think I’ve just learned something there. That’s really cool. I’m not going to go and react. So what we have to do is understand what’s going on there and what’s going on is the Eagle is triggering a response to protect us. It’s very cunning and you have to be very strong to outwit it that the Eagle distorts our perspective on a given situation. And what I often see is when people get a bit overwhelmed, they get really stressed and they just want to run away and hide. And so what’s important to understand is that the stories we tell ourselves, subconsciously they behave like a cord and a computer.

Den Lennie (12m 16s):
They set the cord, our beliefs and belief systems act like filters, our values, the determined, our motives, and our dent identity is determined by our purpose. So if we don’t have a clear purpose about why we’re running a business, and we’re not aware of the things that are motivating us to make a decision one way or the other, and we’re not aware of the filters, we might be applying to a situation. Then we’re going to be messing up with bad code and bad code that doesn’t run a computer efficiently and bad code doesn’t run a human efficiently. So we want to be careful to be mindful of the filters that you might be applying to the situation and the consciousness that motivate you to make a decision to do something or not do something.

Den Lennie (13m 6s):
So, what stories are you telling yourself? What chord is active in your world and what limiting beliefs might be holding you back? So, are you guilty of any of these, have you intended to reach out to five clients last week, but something got in the way are? You meant to follow up with 10 new opportunities on LinkedIn, but again, something got in the way, or you plan to call three clients and ask them for a review. And yet something else got in the way. You had plans to start a marketing campaign, but something got in the way. So these are patterns that are driven by the Eagle and the Eagle can show up in a number of different ways as deflection, denial, distortion, distraction, comparison, defense, justification, and blame.

Den Lennie (13m 59s):
So what does that look like? The flection is it’s passing something over to someone else in an attempt to draw the attention away from yourself. It’s like, I know I haven’t reached out to people on LinkedIn, but I’m in a filmmaker group and no one else is doing it. So, it’s okay. If you think about denial, it’s a defense mechanism, which is really a refusal to accept responsibility for reality. So you’re blocking external events from awareness. So, if you are keeping track of your numbers and the numbers are going down every month and you ignore it, and you’re saying, it’s the liquid, the numbers are dying, but we’ve had, COVID, it’s been a really tough year.

Den Lennie (14m 44s):
So it’s okay. That’s a denial that external forces are influencing your business, but also that you’re doing as well as you might be. Distortion. It started, reality would be having a fear of flying for example, but then concluding that planes are dangerous because give fear of flying. Distraction. I didn’t contact as many people on LinkedIn last week because I was too busy finishing edits. So, it’s like, it’s noise, or are some external factor that’s getting in the way of you building your business.

Den Lennie (15m 30s):
And we look at the comparison. When you compare yourself to others in a peer group. So you want to be careful not to be seeing things like, oh, I might not have hit the number I wanted this month, but have you seen this other guy? Cause he’s really struggling. Another one is defensiveness. I see this quite a lot. It’s being defensive when asked to follow up on something and it’s an unconscious mechanism and there’s a way for the mind to cope with stress or difficult feelings. And there are unconscious mechanisms, which means you might be using them without realizing it.

Den Lennie (16m 10s):
So, I didn’t have my marketing KPIs this week, but I’ve had a really difficult week and I have a shoot and then this edit overrun. So I just couldn’t find the time. And it’s like, leave me alone. It’s not my fault. So you gotta be really mindful of these. And some of these will be familiar too. And some of these will not be and some of these might seem really weird. Justification is making an excuse for an action, which is kind of indefensible. So, if you say, I still do my own bookkeeping because I don’t want to pay someone 20 bucks an hour. And it only takes me 20 minutes a day and I can use the Euro and automate most of the process. I don’t subscribe to inbox zero because I have got my own system for managing email.

Den Lennie (16m 54s):
It’s like a justification when it’s scientifically proven that, if you have a zero inbox, your distraction levels are down massively. And that means you clear your inbox every day, when it gets out of control, you just get distracted. Doing your own books is never a good idea because when someone else does them for you, they’re like a second pair of eyes. And the sum of the parts and the business is everyone’s team input, not just the business owners. And then finally, we look at blame. If you’re holding somebody else or some other factor accountable for your lack of success, for example. I had intended to follow up with clients last week, but oh, this client rang me up and they were a nightmare, and then the editor didn’t cut it properly.

Den Lennie (17m 43s):
So I had to go in and recut it. And if he hadn’t screwed up, it would have been fine. Again, the hardest thing about running your business is taking full responsibility for everything that happens right or wrong, good or bad, and to develop psychological robustness, it’s late going to the gym, you have to train it. And so it’s really important that you train yourself to understand how to deal with these situations. And some people find this helpful, which is a thing called five steps. The taming ego which I learned from a guy called Karen Ray. And he said, I actually read the site load to myself or internalize it throughout the day when your ego shows up UT, well, I can hear you.

Den Lennie (18m 28s):
I know we are trying to do, but you are not me. You are not your ego. I’m not going to play this game anymore. Thank you. Now I’m not someone who tends to use mantras, but it might help you. And the first thing is to be aware of what stories you’re telling yourself, what core is active in your world and what limiting beliefs are holding you back. So what are the current consequences of your current situation or perspectives? A great example is cartoons as a kid. When we’re kids, the batty’s were always carrying cash and they always looked like they were evil.

Den Lennie (19m 12s):
They were fat and bloated and like smoking cigars. So, a great analogy is my father didn’t have a lot of money growing up. And so he never bought new cars. And so he distorted the reality that said new cars are a waste of money. And there’s no point in buying a new car because as soon as you drive over the forecourt, you’re losing money. And so he was sitting very much in a space of loss and lack. Whereas and for many years I had this kind of weight around me thinking it was no point in buying a new car because it’s a waste of money. It was a story. It’s code. Until I met my wife and she had bought new cars and I had a different perspective and new cars don’t need any maintenance.

Den Lennie (19m 57s):
You can lease them and running a business meant that I could benefit from that without having to kind of, pay a lump sum for a piece of metal that needs servicing and looking after. And so I changed my perspective. And so what else is happening in your life where you may be running a certain story that may not be benefiting you? And so the final step is accountability. Accountability to yourself, and accountability to those who depend on you. So, be really clear on how you can potentially write a new story. How can you change how you think and rewire your brain?

Den Lennie (20m 43s):
If you were to decide, how do you want your life and business to look five or 10 years from now, you could write a short story on that and read it to yourself every day. First thing in the morning, last thing at night for 67 days, that’s the kind of a number of times you need to repeat it to yourself, to make it embedded and rewire and create a new neural pathway. And it will help you create the floor. Now I’m not someone who tends to do that. I don’t tend to write mantras and read them to myself, but I do use vision boards. And those vision boards helped me create a very clear vision of what I want the future to look like. And then I develop a strategic plan in order to bring that to reality.

Den Lennie (21m 27s):
So have a think about that in your own business. How are you showing up in your own business? How are you allowing stories to determine how you operate? Ask yourself this. Has owning your own video business, been everything you dreamed it would be when you first got started? It might be hard to admit, but think about whether you’re genuinely achieving everything you set out to when you made that decision to grab the camera and go it alone. Are you really working less? Are you really earning more? And are you really in control? Chances are you’re bloody good at what you do, but you’re having to work like a dog 70 plus hours a week, whether it’s filming, editing, marketing, or any of the other jobs that come with being the big boss of your own video company.

Den Lennie (22m 12s):
When you’re managing projects constantly searching out for new clients and worrying about cash flow, it’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture or make real progress. Let’s face it. That stress is the last thing you need when you’re trying to run a profitable company that supports you and the people you care about. Truth is a business that provides financial professional and personal freedom really is achievable, but maybe you’ve got that nagging feeling that you’re overworked, lacking stability, and struggling to get to where you really want to be right now. It could be that you just don’t know how to make a positive change on your own. So I created the video business accelerator coaching programs to really supercharge your video business.

Den Lennie (22m 52s):
With these unique coaching programs, you’ll learn all the tools you need to get complete confidence in the success of your video business. You can take the first step on your journey to a successful business that doesn’t control your life. Let me show you how. Head over to denlennie.com and click on accelerator.