Meet The Video Mentors! EP #344

Are you tired of going it alone with your video business?

In this episode, Den Lennie introduces The Video Mentors and the three established video production businesses that will be sharing their knowledge and experiences. 

Andy Johnston, Caleb Maxwell, and Matt Smolen discuss the journey of transitioning from being a creative filmmaker to a business owner. They emphasize the importance of understanding the business side of the industry and how it can actually enhance creativity. 📈🎥✨

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Transcript

Welcome to this first podcast in a new era of what we've been doing here at how to scale a video business. And we're now moving into the video mentors realm. And so I wanted to just actually tell you a bit about why we're doing this and who is in the video mentor club, I suppose, or the fraternity, whichever way you look at it.

So if you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you know who I am. But as a brief description, if you're new here, I've been in the video industry 30 years, I've been coaching for the last eight, and I met all these incredible people in front of me as a result of working with them in the coaching environment. 

And what I've come to realize recently is there's an awful lot of options now available in the video business coaching space. And I don't necessarily feel they're all necessarily equal or I mean, some of them weren't alive when I started making videos, but that's another matter. So what we decided to do was  Figure out how could we give more value to you if you are in a video business, maybe you've been a freelancer for a while and you want to grow your business.

And I thought what better way to help you understand the journey than by bringing three very established businesses into the realm and over the course of however long this project lasts,  we will be sharing everything we know and love and learn and have failed on in business. So let's just kick off. Andy, why don't you kick things off with who you are?

Why you're here and what's driving you to give up your time for this project? Yeah, absolutely. So, I'm, I run expansion media. I started Expansion Media in 2014 as a freelancer, just as a video videographer. And the reason why I am here today. Is I remember in the early days of starting my business and taking that entrepreneurial leap, literally leaving my full-time job and going, okay, we're going to do this business thing and I'm going to make a living out of making videos for businesses. 

I just remember in that journey, there were so many times where I didn't know.  Slash have the confidence to move forward. There were so many times in my life where I was so uncertain and I lacked a lot of skill, a lot of confidence, And a lot of faith in myself as well. And I remember just wishing that I had some form of guidance I literally had nobody like I didn't know where to look at all I didn't even think of YouTube at the time back in 2014.

So I was You. Yeah, I was very lonely on that journey, and I remember there'd be a lot of times And I used to just sit there and think to myself  Man, I just wish I had somebody here who I could just talk to and just share how I'm feeling with Because when I spoke to my friends and my family they just couldn't connect in with me.

And as I knew that they were trying to be nice and they're always encouraging, but they don't understand the entrepreneurial journey. And I remember making a voucher myself going, when I get to a point in my business when I've cracked this code and I'm making a living out of this, and I have a team and I'm feeling confident and we're growing the business. 

I want to be the big brother that I wish I had at the beginning. And essentially here is an opportunity for me to give back. And I do this purely from a good place and everything that I share and everything that I give is things that either I've lived or it's my philosophy and perspective on things.

And people can take it or leave it, it's completely up, up to them, but it's all genuinely from my heart and from my experience, you know, and I love the fact of literally this is taking time out of my schedule, but I'm happy to do it. So yeah. I mean, what about yourself, Caleb?  I love that Andy I started it in business about the same time yeah, end of 2013 in full-time in 2014.

We run, I run Hebron Films, which is based in Bendigo, and yep. Had, similarly no idea when I jumped into video and jumped into making a business. I had a film degree and and a camera and someone else's computer and someone else's tripod and and just started doing, but yeah. 

The reason I'm here is because, I mean, I've been working with Den for ages, and Den, you got me to fill in on a coaching call in one of the groups and I was, I just came alive. Like I experienced this thing that is Providing feedback and ideas and support to a bunch of other like-minded people.

And I was like, well, there's something switched inside of me. And I was like,  I want to do more of that. Like, it is so rewarding. You get such a kick out of it when someone who.  you know, maybe a little bit earlier on in their journey. What I experienced is they asked me something and I was a bit nervous to start with going like, you know, am I going to know all the answers?

And the truth is I don't, it's lucky there's three, four of us here. But the, they'd asked me something and I was like, Oh man, that's so easy.  It's easy to me because I've walked through it. I've even made a mistake to learn it or or, you know, some way I've gained the knowledge along the journey. But to be able to give that back to them in such an easy way that made such an impact on them, that's like a massive win.

It made an impact on me just being able to help and support. And like you, Andy, like, I didn't have anyone that knew the journey knew the process, new video business specifically. So it's just a joy to be able to be able to help those who were in a similar position. 

That's me.  Matt Smolin. Smolin. Dallas. Why are you here man? You little babies. I started in 2011.  old man. Now,  . No, I in, I remember it distinctly. It was the 20th of August, 2011. I was my first freelance day and since then I have grown a team in a business to heights I never thought would be possible.

And I think I often look back on those early days as like an opportunistic. Practitioner right where I could shoot, I could edit, I was excited and I set out started working freelance and building some clients and a bit of a reputation and it got to a point where like, oh, I got busy enough that I needed to hire in other people and start sort of building a little bit of a network of contractors and then some more permanent team and all of a sudden it just seemed like overnight, like, Oh, I run a business now and I did not set out to run a business.

How do I do this? And so, you know, you have conversations with other people and you have you know, ask for guidance from your peers and mentors, but, you know, finding coaching in a much more formalized, structured way was like the little.  Unlock to all of the opportunity that was on the other side.

And I think the reason I'm here is because what I've fallen in love with over that journey is the people side of it and growing a team and seeing the development of others through the opportunity that I can give them. And for a long time, it's been just Balloon Tree, my production company. But now, 13 years down the track, I've got plenty of experience and war stories and advice and opinions on how the industry works that I can help and support others going through that journey. And, you know, I think anecdotal advice is always great because you can then go, yes, this is how it worked. It didn't work and have some real, you know, you had skin in the game.

So the advice you're giving is not just from, you know, research and theory. It's like, I've lived this is what has happened to me. But I have a genuine, like, love and enthusiasm for seeing others grow to be part of a process where people can come to me for that experience and expertise surrounded by a bunch of other like-minded, amazing individuals is like, Oh, it's just such a cool feeling to be like, yeah, I've got some information.

Pick, pick my brain. I'll give you whatever you want. I just love it because if that helps somebody start providing for their family in a much more stable or sustainable way, or can grow a team and help support them. Other families and people through what they're able to create because of some little piece of advice or thought that I've sort of provoked it.

That's awesome. I love that so much.  Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? I started this whole thing because when I transitioned out of. TV into the corporate video world. I thought that all my experience would be amazing and I just, I'd land jobs, no problem. But it was like a totally different language.

And I spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on coaches, and masterminds, went all over the world for them to learn this business thing. But  I realized that there was always something missing because the advice I was getting was very generic in nature. And I was sitting around the mastermind table once and you know, there's like a dentist and there's like a guy who sort of rents scaffolding and someone else who paints roads, giving me advice on my video business.

And I was like, you know, Oh, why don't you just do X? Why don't you just do Y? And I kind of got frustrated at people just throwing ideas at me because ideas, we're not short of ideas as creatives.  But on that topic of creativity, I think it's a really important point to sort of nourish and maybe nurture a little bit here. 

And it is the idea that we all go into this industry because we love creativity. We love making films. We love getting a camera. We love making something,  but what is it?  What is your journey and experience being like as you move more into a business owner mindset, there is less capacity for you to go and do that kind of work.

And how have you managed to process that? And what has the outcome been? In terms of like, Do you miss the shooting or have you found creativity in new ways? Maybe, Matt, that's a great question for you because you certainly have won awards for the narrative filmmaking that you've created. And I think a lot of people watching or listening to this going to be like, yeah, but I want to make all these other films as well.

I don't want to sell out. And I think there's maybe a. a starving artist identity that, that sits within that. But tell me about your story. How did you manage to go through that process? Cause when we first met, you were very much still focused on the idea of becoming a narrative film director.

Yeah. I mean, it's you hit the nail on the head to start with, right? Like we all start at this from that creative filmmaker you know, aspirations. Right. And I think that the two ideas. It seemed to be polar opposites in that it's like, you can either make films in quotation marks or make money and it's kind of the completely separate ideas, right?

But I think the idea of like selling out and running a corporate video production company is not like, I think it's just that keeping up with the Jones's rat race type thing that's put on it rather than the actual reality. Because I see running. The businesses we do today as just this incredible opportunity machine that like, yeah, we make some stuff that with like, it's pretty boring on the surface and doesn't seem like the most fulfilling thing, but my perception of it is not that because it's the people we get to work with the way.

My team gets to express themselves and learn and develop and grow. It's the opportunity that those connections or that client might open up to do some more interesting and creative work. And as a business that is offering a service or a product, you can do that. You can say our offering is creative and we challenge the brief and that's everything we do and push out there that I get that satisfaction of the creativity.

In the work we do and just happen to make money and support the team support my family because of that if i'd followed a different path that was purely narrative or something like that who's to know what would have happened but i could almost guarantee it would be a harder slog to make it as sustainable and predictable as businesses today so i think that you know doing what we love for a job for work for a business is incredible.

I'm incredibly lucky and grateful for it every single day because I could never work in an office, you know, nine to five doing accounts on death by a thousand meetings. It's like, I get to work with teams doing creative stuff, making movies that people pay for. Like what an awesome privilege it is to live that every day.

And if I can in some way help support others to do that as well, and you don't have to jump into the meat grinder that is corporate, you know, work, then. Great. Let's do it. Let's get everybody out there making movies for money.  Also, my dog's asleep next to me and snoring really loudly. So if it keeps coming in every now and then, that's what it is.

It's not me bored over here asleep. This is a great conversation. I like jumping in there. It's such an interesting topic, this one. And I love it. Like the whole managing creativity. I personally think Matt, you've done it really well. Like honestly, hats off to you, to Balloon True Productions. Cause like. 

Yeah, you still get to play. I mean, if you like, if you look at what creativity isn't just painting a picture like a, you know, people often associate creativity with an artist, right? But there are different types of creativity, like solving problems involves creativity.

You can be creative in solving problems. So an accountant can still be creative.  People will associate that with just being a mundane job, but yeah, accounting is to be credited. And I love that point where you're saying then that in terms of waking up every day, and creating films for a living, getting paid to make movies and working for a team, that in itself is quite rewarding.

It's so interesting for me, and I think Caleb, you're the same as me. I'm, I feel like we're very simple, right? I still want to make big movies.  I've got an avatar on the wall here. Well, probably, but I don't know. Maybe similar. Maybe I'm the simple one, but like I haven't. I haven't given up on the dream to to make films,  but the question I asked myself was the journey as a teenager that I preempted of what the filmmaking journey is going to look like, was that an accurate portrayal of the actual journey? 

Start making short films. Win some awards, make feature films, become a millionaire, work on all the films that you want to for the rest of your life. I don't think that's the narrative I got sold and I haven't seen anybody do it.  And when you actually go and look at a lot of the like a lot of the big directors, a lot of them actually are quite entrepreneurial,  like Lucas Films, that's a full company, you know, James Cameron, he's also an entrepreneur.

So it's like filmmaking, just the artist.  I think the idea of starting a business, if there's like a hesitancy to like start a business, cause you're selling out, I think it's like, you actually might realize you, you might actually thrive in the business world and that might actually help you get closer to the real dream. 

So, yeah, so for me, when I  shifted that perspective, I kind of went, Oh, wow, this doing this business stuff isn't hindering me and moving me away from what I want to do. It's moving me forward because business is also a character transformation journey.  And in order for you to manage a, you know, one day you want to, if it's a filmmaker, you want to make movies, you want to one day direct a 50 film.

It takes a certain person who can hold the space to manage this kind of a film. And a business is a really good playground to develop the soft skills required that one day will be needed on a bigger set.  So, you know, when you make these tweaks in your perspective, all of a sudden you go, Oh shoot, this journey is actually necessary.

I should probably go into business. You start understanding that the film industry is quite a money-orientated industry. Okay, you start looking at the resources differently as well.  Yeah, I mean, what's your thoughts, Caleb? I know me and you share similar thoughts on this. That's huge. No, 100 percent yeah.

And no, I will just say on the record, I am also very simple. But we, yeah, we are very similar in that way. Cause we've got some good, some big dreams, right? In terms of specific big things. Kind of projects, but I'm resonating with nearly everything you're saying. Right. I see what we did in business as kind of selling in rather than selling out.

I what I'm doing now is enabling a pathway. For sustainable income and smart income. Like I, I started as the creative that just wanted to be creative and was like, you know, I'm not really into business. I'm creative, but it didn't take long before I got into business and I just started.

Loving the science of business and the creativity required to manage different components of something to create something bigger and all of the different elements of business, like even sales, like I absolutely love sales. And I reframed a lot of my preconceptions and misconceptions about business into what I get to do now is literally all communication.

The whole thing, like I'm selling a product that communicates. I am before in the sales process, I am communicating and building trust with potential clients. Throughout the process, I'm communicating with my team and I'm communicating with the clients so that the process is smooth. And on the other end, like I'm, it, the whole thing is communication and that is That's what I love.

That is absolutely what I love. But you're so right, Andy, in the. The dream that I was sold and the story I was sold was exactly that of how to get to being a filmmaker.  And I did have one director come and speak to us in film school and his journey was nothing like that. It was actually, he had to mortgage three of his family's houses.

To fund his first feature, which was great by the way. But now he's in millions of dollars of debt, millions. And there was no clear way out of that for him. And that was posted up as a success. And I'm like, Oh, whoa, I'm not doing that.  I mean. All, you know, all credit to you, man, for making it happen, but I'm going to make it happen a different way, because that sounds terrible.

And the beauty of business is that, and your whole journey and creative journey is that everything's an option. You know, the, it might be cliche, but the world is your oyster, right? You don't have to follow this pathway that someone else said must be followed. You make choices and you know, you forge your own path.

That's the journey of an entrepreneur. And that's what, you know, what we've done in many, nearly all of our experiences and our journeys. We've forged our own path and stepped off the, you know, well-beaten track in a lot of, in a lot of instances. Yeah. And yeah. And that's what I love. That's what I want to contribute to people and their journey is to say, look, you could, you can do anything, right?

You can do anything. And all we're doing is sharing what we've found that works. And if you can take some value from that, then happy days, but you do not have to compromise being creative. In any stage of growing a business, because that's the other thing I always say, people are creative by nature.

People like putting creativity in a box, like you said, Andy, but a hundred percent, nearly every person is born to be creative in some way, whether that is solving problems on a spreadsheet or whether it's directing a massive feature film. And of course, you know, Caleb, you have three young children, the five, Matt, you have two Two young children under five.

Andy and I, well, I've grown up kids. Andy's not yet in the kids' world, but he's settling down with his girlfriend. He got a place together. Something shifts, doesn't it? We get to our kind of mid-thirties and it's like, ah, shit's gonna get real. We can't just continue to work the hours required to make.

Let's be honest, you know, a good hundred grand a year as a freelancer is a great year. I was able to get my business up to sort of 250, 300 on my own. Then you need help because you either need a divorce lawyer or an editor. Yeah. It's like the,  for me, it's so.  It's so crucial to work this part out, and more importantly as a creative, and this is my compelling reason, right? 

When a creative is under stress, under pressure, experiencing anxiety, and they can barely meet their survival needs, guess what? You're no longer creative.  You are in Struggle City.  Population you yep, 100 percent and you're like, the only way to come out of that is to control your own narrative and how, what's the best way to control your own narratives is to be in control and what's the one thing that you can control is a business,  they're levers you can pull in business to to manufacture a result. 

Put it this way, if you don't go into business, right, and you want to pursue the filmmaking route, what are your options, right? So you would write a script, and you would then pitch to investors to get some funding, right? The percentages of scripts landing on a producer's desk, and then getting private funding.

Equity or getting investors to then fund the film, let alone even people with credible names is so slim, right? So you need to be able to control resources. And in order to control resources, you need a business. You need to understand commerce.  Right. And when you have that, when you're in that frame of mind, you don't compromise on your creativity elevates.

And then from that point, and then from that position, that's where we, you can then now start doing your filmmaker dance, and different doors appear.  But this whole thing of like, this is coming into this world and you're kind of selling out or you're sort of watering down your creativity, it's a limiting belief.

Yeah. It's for me. It's a living belief because when you don't do that and you know, the pressure starts mounting up on You're no longer creative. And even if you are creative, it's probably gonna be crap let's be real right and in order to make a living out of this you got to do it a lot you got it.

It's a consistency game. What's the point of living a life where it's stressful at home? You got kids you can't you can barely feed Like, what's the, isn't the quality of life also important? There's no badge of honor to being a starving artist.  Like there's nothing impressive about that. 

Yeah. And I love what you're saying. Cause the Andy, you're saying that the soft skills you know, it's a training ground and looking at business as a training ground, like the pressure of managing as something as huge. Even if you had. You know, any role really in, in a management role on a feature film, for example, the pressure that it's complex, it's huge, it's a monster.

And if you've never experienced the pressure and something similar to that, it's likely to break you. And that's all butts and maybes, but to look at business as a training ground for People skills, leadership skills management skills, there is no better training ground than running your own business and either failing or learning quickly and, you know, failing to be something that's required for learning quite a lot and quite often.

But you need to be able to build up that muscle of being, being able to withstand pressure, and then prove to yourself that you can, you know, you can create something that will generate some sustainability. And I don't know,  as guys, as men being able to provide is really important.

It's kind of like a core need, right? So  I found that my journey in business has been.  incredibly rewarding, but really essential to meeting the need that I have to provide for my family. So it kind of, you know, there's all boxes are ticked, right? With that, with this whole business thing.

The other thing it does too, right, to sort of follow on that idea is that, yeah you have an amazing opportunity to provide for your family, but also you start growing and you have a team, you can then support those families to, to continue on as well, but also it then gives you.  Flexibility in the option to enjoy the time as well and not spend it on the business all the time.

You know, you don't, the free, everybody has been at that point is a freelance and I'm sure plenty of people listening and just like up to their eyeballs and in stress and projects. And they're probably listening to this while in final cut or premiere while responding to an email while sending an invoice.

Like, As a freelancer, you're doing everything and you just, you can never switch off. Whereas you get a business to a point where it can support team members, it can support more systems and infrastructure around it. All of a sudden you at the top of the food chain can be like, I'm going to leave early.

I'm going to take a day off here and there and spend time with my kids or, you know, take a holiday without stressing about it, I can't do any work while I'm away. Things can keep going in the background. And that only comes by building and developing. a business that you can manage, but you can set it up in the way you want it to run as well.

And I think that to both your points that pressure of, you know, a potential feature film and millions of dollars on the line, you don't just go from, you know, your short films in your backyard to that overnight. The training you get through running a business and the incremental scaling and the challenges you hit along the way, You will face problems you never even thought would exist, so it's such a wonderful place to develop those skills while still getting all of the other benefits of, you know, financial freedom, time freedom, and all of the wonderful things that come from owning a business that can be whatever you want it to create, and if you need help getting there, then absolutely ask for help and find support from people that have done it or people that are going through it at the same time because having that guiding hand just makes that whole process so much easier and guides you to that next step incrementally as you need to go. 

Yeah, amazing. I think what I'll just say here to anyone watching or listening, this is the first episode of this new form. And I want to invite you to engage with us. I want you to leave comments. I want you to come into our free community. There'll be a link somewhere on this page. Come and join the conversation.

Don't be one of those people that just sits back and listens and goes, Oh yeah, I'll do that. I'll do that later. Because of what you've got here. Is access to four people with in excess of 50, 60 years worth of experience combined in growing a video production business. And we're doing this to support you on that journey. 

We have a free community where we do a weekly coaching call. There's access to some training in there to help you get started. So I just want to encourage you to take some action. And as we wrap up this first episode, maybe I'll go around and ask everyone to just, you know, to share. be an insight or an anecdote of how they took that first step because I really,  we are all here because we fundamentally want to share.

our experience to help you avoid some of the mistakes. Now you're going to make lots of mistakes and mistakes are an inevitable and important part of business growth. In fact, I love failing. I fail every single day. It's how you rebound from the failure that counts. So Caleb, I'll start with you. What can you remember a particular spot a little bit here? 

Yeah, definitely. It was after I'd tried to do it on my own for a long time. I did it slow and hard and I decided I didn't like doing business and growing business slow and hard. And I, it was like, I was searching in the dark. I was, there was so many ideas, but.  Nothing was really growing. I was hitting the ceiling of revenue year after year and taking home pittance for myself.

And it wasn't until, I mean, the first year of jumping on board with you, Dan I made four times. That year, personal income four times what I had made the previous year. More in one year than in the previous four. Like, that's just wild. And I thought, why on earth did I not do this sooner? Because there was so much I didn't know, right?

And it's a no-brainer looking backwards, right? You think, why did I do it on my own? Why did I try and do it on my own for so long? You don't need to. I don't need to bother you.  I think it's just, for me, it was understanding that  I was just serious about what I was doing and I knew that like the uncomfortable path,  the uncomfortable action is necessary.

And it was like full stop at the end of that sentence, get to work. But that's literally all I said to myself. Whenever I caught myself bitching or moaning or things are too hard. Yeah, rightly so. Cause if it was easy, everybody would be doing it, get to work.  And then that's it. Like I, I didn't.  really overthink the process.

I just knew that good shit takes time.  Good people go through experiences. If I'm not having these experiences,  you know, so I was like, no, I've got to go for it. And I just, till this day, I sit and thrive in uncomfortable environments. You get comfortable with being uncomfortable and becomes a new norm.

You realize that there's a book, you kinda get addicted to it, don't you? Yeah. So good. Yeah. There's a book I've got on my shelf. The Obstacle is the Way, and a lot of the good stuff is sometimes a bit of a harder path, but you realize that conflict is necessary. Tension is required to grow. 

So, yeah.  Wrap us up, Matt.  Yeah, diamonds are built under pressure, right? And I think that there is a level of tolerance to pressure that I think everybody has a different stage of what pressure they can withstand. But as soon as you go, you know what, I don't have to do this alone and I can surround myself with support.

That pressure coming off you'll realize instantly that all of a sudden you, you've got so much more opportunity and direction that you can take.  For me, it was,  I'd run the business for years without any real structure to how we did things. It all lived in my head, all lived in emails and papers.

And then as I brought team and it lived in our collective conscience that it was like, This is not the way to do it. And I don't know how to do this better. So reaching out and getting some support and guidance that was just like, I remember to this day, it's, I fall asleep to the thing about every night, systems set you free.

It's the, like, just echoed through my turning point in my business, in my career, where I was like, Oh, they really do. And just embracing that unknown, going, I don't know what else I can do here. I need help. And whatever comes from that, being open to that, being open and vulnerable to the learning and to be fallible and understand that you don't have all the answers is the strongest thing you can do because it sets you up so well to improve and move forward from that single point. 

Anyone listening to this is probably in that stage of figuring out what their next step is, and you might have it all figured out. It might be a little step, or you might be like, God, I can't keep up with all of this work. I need to do something drastic. It might just be that little nudge, the next step into the uncomfortable area, out of your comfort zone, and sort of get some support on that pressure that just frees you up to take it to the next level.

And it's, I speak for myself, but I'm sure you will all echo it. That, that freedom is such an encouraging thing. It only just fuels you to go further and do more and scale your businesses even further. So,  yeah, awesome. Now, all I want to do is say to anyone who's watching this, listening to this for the first time,  all we ask in return is that you share this.

You share it with someone, you know, who needs some help because. We are all giving our time here to support you and it's there. All you need to do is lean in. So thanks fellas and we hope to see you all again next week. Hey, thanks so much for tuning into that episode. I hope you found it super helpful. If you want to make sure you stay up to date with what we're posting, we post regular content, smash the subscribe button, and check out more content over here.