Why Video Production Owners Shouldn't Decide Alone EP #408

Three video production company owners brought a half-formed idea to one coaching call this week. By the end of it, each had a new offer to battle-test, and one had a website live the same day.

That only happens in a room of peers. Most video business owners try to grow alone, second-guessing every move with no one to pressure-test it against. Episode 408 is what changes when you stop deciding in isolation, told through the three very different conversations that came out of one VBA Elite boardroom call.

What you'll take from it:

• How a peer group turns a vague idea into an offer you can test in days, not months
• Why smart video production businesses are building a second, fixed-price brand (the Qantas and Jetstar move)
• The Richard Branson question that tells you what a client's pain is actually worth
• Why chasing a shiny new offer is the wrong move while legacy clients and a 180-day-late invoice are still leaking your margin
• How AI workflows are becoming the real competitive advantage on the back end of a production business, not just in the footage

Den Lennie has coached 178+ video production company owners over eight years, with more than $52M in added revenue across the room.

If you run a video production company past $250K and you are tired of making every call on your own, the VBA Elite Boardroom is the room. Details at the link.

Mentoring options : www.denlennie.com

Connect with Den on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/den_lennie

Transcript

 So I was finishing up a call with my elite clients this morning, and I was reflecting on the fact that on that one call, we developed three new business ideas to battle test for those clients. And that only happens because we get into a room and someone says, "Hey, I've been thinking about this idea. What do you reckon?" Now, what makes that so powerful is that we do that every single week. And when you have that level of connection with your peers in a boardroom, magical things happen. In today's episode, we're gonna talk about the power of being in a group of peers. And if you can hear the snoring in the background, that just might be my pugs. I'm in a slightly different location today, so I'm just giving you a heads-up. This is the Scale Your Video Business podcast. I am your host, Den Lennie, and this is episode 408. So let's get going. I wanted to kind of reflect on the call we had today because three separate people had ideas for a part of their business they could develop. One is having a record year, so he's looking at ways to expand. Another , has been playing with an idea to offer some sort of embedded delivery system that can be tracked. I don't want to say too much because it's obviously , an idea that he's not put to the market yet. And then someone else came in and said, "Oh, I like the sound of that. How can I do that for my business?" And there were three very different approaches to how we nurtured those conversations. Conversation took place over about 30 or 40 minutes. The first client, um, someone I've been working with for some time, we started ... We basically, we saw something that someone was doing in the US, and for a while we'd been nu- noodling the idea of how could this company take a version of that and present it to the Australian market. And,, that was a really interesting one because we had discussions about whether or not we roll it in as part of their overall brand or as a separate brand. And one of the analogies that we came up with is like the airline brand. Here in Australia, you've got Qantas as the main carrier, but they've got their low budget, pared back brand, which is Jetstar. And a lot of bigger brands will have their primary a la carte service, if you will, and then a more restricted menu for their lower budget carriers. And I think the same can happen and work very well in video production. And this is all anchored in the fact that everyone in the VBA is embracing, in quite a significant way, AI workflows. Not necessarily for the generation of footage. That's the kind of obvious first layer for video production companies. But actually the secondary layer is more the back end, the operating system for your business. And, we're gonna be heading into Sydney next week to deploy the operating system for those video businesses, and this is something that we're not gonna talk a great deal about because I think the folks in the VBA have a massive competitive advantage being ahead of the curve on this. So I'll talk about what we're doing, but I'm not going to produce anything that's gonna show you how to do it. That's gonna be restricted to my VBA clients. I think that's fair. I think it's reasonable. Unless you're coming to the workshop in London, we're gonna be sharing what's happening there, and that's obviously specifically for that. But I feel like the landscape is changing and, , information is everywhere what I think people will pay for is deployment, is having their hand held and having someone to battle test the ideas against. So coming back to the conversation we had this morning in the VBA Elite call, one particular client, we've gone away now and over the last couple of hours we've been working together on Signal. So Signal is a, a platform we use for essentially one-to-one communications with my Elite clients. So if you're an Elite, we're basically on, on speed dial. And we've been working on a new offer for his website, and I'm now currently running the updated concept through an AI tool that I've built. So we'll be able to proof this idea very quickly. Think of it as rapid prototyping. It's like a, I guess one of those machines, you know, , a 3D printer that, you know, you can come up with an idea and print it. This is the same but in a business sense. Second client came along and said, "Oh, I've been thinking about this idea, separate idea for a while," and they work a lot in safety, and they were like, "A lot of people are running their safety videos on, unlisted YouTube videos, and there's got to be a better way." And so we started asking questions around, well, rather than getting too bogged down in what you would call this, why not go to some of your top clients and, interview them and ask them, you know, "What is it that frustrates you about the way you currently do things?" Richard Branson always said, , the way you build a successful business is find a problem that no one else has solved, and solve it. And so one of the greatest things you can do when you are doing this is just simply ask your clients lots of deep questions about the frustration they experience in the way they currently do things. Because if you can understand the pain point and if you can really get to grips with the core of the pain, and then you can understand what it would look like if you solved it, then you can start to understand how expensive is this pain, how much is it costing. And if you're able to, , solve that problem for a price that, that doesn't make them wince, this is where, a secondary business offering can come into play because you've got your a la carte, all singing, all dancing, how how big is your budget, you know, the limit's the sky. Or you create a more segmented- offering, but you make it fixed price. And the person comes in and chooses one of six menu items, and then they hand over their credit card. So you know, we're just looking at, at the elite level of different ways to expand the business opportunities at a time when, you know, the market is a little bit constrained. So we're working on that. And then a, a third client said, "Oh, I really like the idea of this. I'd love to do that, something like that for us." And I actually pushed back a little bit on this particular client because they're still fixing a lot of leaky bucket problems in their business with legacy clients. And, you know, legacy clients are the areas of clients that are very tricky because you're often stuck with old pricing. And when we start our businesses, we tend to give our earlier clients, lots of concessions. We, we don't charge quite enough. We give them a lot. And it can be very difficult to convert those, and this particular client's had an issue with a, quite a big brand . Two or three of their invoices are a bit late, and one's, like, one hundred and eighty days late. And they've just hit a bit of a problem where the person who hired them is not really solving the problem for them, so they're having to negotiate and navigate how they go to accounts. And some of the discussion this morning was about, you know, how heavy do we go in, and, and what's the context and, and how can we get this to a resolution? But at the same time, that's almost half a year for not being paid. And I'm sure if you're listening to this, you have a story or know someone with a story where that's happened, where they have been waiting a long time to be paid. And it's not on. You know, we, we are running businesses. We're not there to bankroll these companies. But it happens increasingly, you know. There are many, many stories of bigger clients just not paying their bills. And their argument is, "Well, if you want to work with us, you've got to handle our sixty or ninety-day payment terms." Which is fine if you're doing a lot of work for them. There's a flywheel that happens. If you wait the first ninety days. But if you're doing regular work, you know, soon those ninety days become closer in proximity to each other. And so I actually said, "I think I'm gonna push back on this for the time being. I don't think it's a terrible idea to be exploring this, but, but not right now." Because you see, , one of the benefits of the VBA is it's, it's not just a one size fits all. I meet you where you're at in your business, and I'll guide you towards the next step. And really, my role is to be that wall that you bounce things off, and I can ask you deeper questions. And so we ended up deciding that wasn't the right move for them just at the minute, and what's really more of a priority is, is building their roster of clients up. Because this person said, the new clients are great. They pay fifty percent upfront. They pay on time. We even offer them a discount for payment in full, and some of them take us up on that offer." And so the nuts and bolts of all of this is that there are many different ways to grow a business, and where you are at in your business journey is completely unique to you And so I wanted to share that with you as a live example today of us solving a real problem in real time. Now, the benefit of the elite program is that I'm now working alongside one of my clients to, to get this offer figured out, and we will prototype this today. And that is something that is really fascinating when it comes to this kind of thing because with the advent of AI, I've got multiple AI tools and engines running and operating systems that can rapidly battle test these ideas to the point where I can actually have a website up for this new business for him today. And that's, what we're doing. We are accelerating the deployment of new ideas, as well as making sure businesses are safe and growing at a rate which is, meaningful. So yeah, it's pretty exciting. That's our last meeting before we meet in, Sydney next week, and I'm looking forward to that very much. We get together twice a year for two or three days, and we, we hang out together. Next week we've hired a big Airbnb. We're all gonna stay there and spend just day and night working on our businesses. Have a few drinks, have some coffees, have some dinner. It's a really nice thing to get away from the day-to-day. And then I'm off to London for the AI workshop. Now, we do have a couple of seats still left for the AI workshop, if this is something that, that you've been thinking about, but for whatever reason dates haven't worked or something's not working, please reach out to me. I'd love to make this work for you. You know, we're at the point now where we've reached our target. Anyone else in the room is a bonus, but that's not to say we don't still have a couple of seats, and I think it's the kind of thing that those people that are attending will be like, "Oh my God, this is the greatest thing we've ever done." And there'll be people who didn't come who will miss out, and that's a great tragedy. But hey that's life, right? But yeah, there's still a couple seats there, so if you wanna come along, drop me a line. We'll figure out something for you. And, yeah, I will see you on the next one.