Summary:
Welcome back to the Engage Video Marketing Podcast. This is Episode 308, and I know it’s been a while since our last episode. I’ve been busy focusing on my clients, launching my book, and growing my video business. But now, I’m back and committed to a regular weekly schedule of episodes, including solo shows, video strategy breakdowns, expert guest interviews, and more.
In today’s episode, I want to talk directly to you, the video business owner or aspiring video strategist. If you’re feeling stuck in your business, this episode is for you. I’ll be unpacking the three core reasons why most video business owners get stuck and, more importantly, what to do about it.
Key Takeaways:
- Lack of Financial Mastery:
- Understanding the financial engine of your business is crucial for scaling.
- I shared a model with five core levers: leads, sales conversion rate, average dollar sale, repeat purchase rate, and profit margin.
- By focusing on these levers, you can stop guessing and start growing your business with confidence.
- Inconsistent Revenue:
- The feast and famine cycle of income is a common issue.
- The secret to sustainable revenue is finding a hybrid model of project-based work and recurring revenue.
- I provided a thinking exercise to help you identify recurring revenue opportunities with your best clients.
- Lack of Time and Focus:
- Delegating tasks and building systems are essential to avoid burnout and hit a ceiling.
- Tools like ChatGPT and Google Gemini can help streamline your workflow.
- It’s important to have clarity on your business model and strategy for growth to effectively use these tools.
If these points resonate with you and you’re looking for support to grow your business, I invite you to learn more about my newly launched one-to-one mentorship program. We’ll work together to get clear on your numbers, structure your services and pricing, build out recurring offers, and set up systems to help you scale with confidence.
Visit engagevideomarketing.com/coaching to watch a short video, fill out the form, and let’s jump on a clarity call to see if we’re a good fit to work together.
If you found this episode of value I’d love for you to reach out and let me know on Instagram @engage_ben or email [email protected]
Rate the Engage Video Marketing Podcast on iTunes
Transcript of the Interview: ** Note: the following transcript was generated by AI and therefore may contain some errors and omissions.
G’day and welcome back to the Engage Video Marketing Podcast. I’m Ben Amos from Engage Video Marketing and this is episode 308 of the show. I know it’s been a while. See, the fact is that I’ve fallen out of the habit of regularly posting episodes to the Engage Video Marketing Podcast as I’ve been focused more directly on kind of serving my clients and launching my book. If you haven’t heard about my book yet, you should totally pick up a copy. And of course, you know, growing my video business. And that’s what it’s all about. That’s why this show exists. But over the last few weeks, it’s kind of prompted me into action. So I will be getting back into regular weekly schedule of episodes here on the podcast with solo shows planned, as well as some video strategy breakdown, some expert guests as well, and interviews. ideally with some video strategists like you as well who listen to this show. So before we get into today’s episode, I wanna ask you, do you wanna feature on this show? Do you have something of value to add to this audience? If you do, reach out to me and let’s talk. Let’s see if you’re a good fit. Just email podcast at engagevideomarketing.com. But in today’s episode, to kind of welcome you back to the show after this short break, I really wanna talk directly to you, the person listening to this show who probably identifies as a video business owner or someone who’s building confidence as a video strategist. And if you’re listening to this show, chances are you’ve probably already built something in your business, but you know that deep down there’s something more that you can do. You’re delivering great work. You’ve probably got clients coming in. And maybe you’re in the middle to early stages of building your video business and earning anywhere from maybe $5,000 to $15,000 a month. But I imagine that somewhat, you’re feeling stuck. Like you’re doing it all yourself. Like you’re guessing your way through business decisions. Like you’re reacting, not growing. So if this resonates with you, then this episode is going to unpack the three core reasons that I believe most video business owners get stuck and stay stuck. And more importantly, we’re gonna talk about what to do about it. All right, let’s dive in. So, the first reason that I believe so many business owners get stuck is lack of financial mastery. Now, I get it. This isn’t the sexy part of running a video business. Most of us didn’t start our video business because we love spreadsheets or dashboards. We got into this, like me, right? I got into this because I love creating and storytelling and working with great people. But the thing is, if you don’t understand the financial engine of your business, you can’t scale it. And this is something that I learnt from a number of business coaches that I’ve worked with over the years, and it’s something that changed the kind of perception that I have of myself as a business owner. And that came down to really understanding the value of financial mastery and understanding the numbers in my business. And that’s what I bring as well to my coaching clients. So I want to share with you a model that I teach my coaching clients. And I want you to think this through in your own business as you listen or watch this episode. So there are five core levers in any business. And these are things that actually drive your business growth. Those levers that you can pull are leads, sales conversion rate, average dollar sale, repeat purchase rate, and profit margin. Now, listen closely because this part is key. What most business owners actually want is more clients, right? But you just can’t go out and get more clients. What you need in order to get more clients is more leads and a better conversion rate. That is what results in more clients. So the levers that you can pull in order to improve the number of clients that you have is do things in your business to attract more leads to your business, and then do things with you or your sales team, whoever’s responsible for converting those leads into clients, to improve your conversion rate. So those are the actual levers you can pull. So next you might say to yourself, well, what I want in my business is more revenue, right, more income. But you just can’t decide to go out and get more revenue. What you have to do is you have to actually increase your average sale value and sell to those clients more often. So get more clients, you know, increase your prices or increase the value of those clients and then sell to those clients more often. That’s what drives revenue. And finally, you might say to yourself, well, really, at the end of the day, what I want is more profit in my business. And yeah, well, who doesn’t, right? But you don’t just get more profit. To get more profit, you need to work on increasing your profit margin. That’s the money left over after everything else. And that’s what goes into your pocket as a director or business owner, right? That fuels your life or fuels reinvestment into your business. So when I help clients track these five pillars, the benefit is that you can stop guessing and you can start growing. You identify where the bottlenecks are in your business and you know which lever that you need to pull. And more importantly, you know why things are working or not. And that’s where the real confidence comes from as a business owner. Financial mastery. Number two, why most video business owners are typically stuck. And I see this time and time again, and absolutely, I’ve felt this myself in my video business over the years, and that is inconsistent revenue. It’s really the killer of business. Now, let’s talk about that roller coaster that we all feel, that feast and famine of income. It’s one of the most stressful things in our industry, and I’ve certainly felt it you know, over the years many, many times. Some months you’re kind of slammed with business and others you’re refreshing your email inbox going, well, where did everyone go? You know, where’s the next job coming from? So the secret to sustainable revenue in a video business, I believe, is this. It’s about finding a hybrid model of project-based work and recurring revenue. Now I get it, retainers or recurring revenue can feel like a bit of a unicorn in this space. You can say, well, my clients don’t need monthly videos, right? Well, it’s not always true. And I’ve had these conversations with coaching clients and with my own team quite a bit over the years. And here’s a little thinking exercise that I give my coaching clients and I’ve run through myself. So you can just grab a notebook or just think this through as I go over the next little bit. So first of all, look or do an analysis of your best clients over the past 12 months. Who did you really enjoy working with? Who got a great result? Who already comes back to you semi-regularly? Number two, ask yourself, what else do they consistently need? Social media content? YouTube support? Internal training or comms? Maybe quarterly product shoots or monthly product shoots? event content, strategy, planning, storyboarding. What could you package up into a recurring offer? It doesn’t need to be like one video per month. It could be access to a bank of hours. It could be monthly content strategy and quarterly shoots. It could be a rolling library of creative stock assets for DIY editing or batches of video ad creatives for e-commerce. It could even be a pre-booked shooting and editing block of time, or even strategic reporting and analytics. So think creatively about what you could offer your clients. And then ask, well, how would I sell this if I was confident that they needed it? The fact is, you’re probably already doing recurring work. You just haven’t packaged it up or positioned it as a recurring offer yet. So that’s what I help my mentorship clients build, a recurring model that works with their creativity, not against it. And it fits their clients and their business model, not against it. All right, number three, that’s keeping video business owners stuck. And usually it comes down to this. a lack of time and focus. Now again, I raise my hand here and say this is something that I’ve struggled with over the years and I’ve worked to develop some systems and some ways to kind of pigeon, not pigeonhole, the word is, you know, kind of and put some guardrails around my time so that I can focus on the things that I need to as a director and a business owner in order to move the business forward. But a lack of time and focus as a pain point is not the only thing that you need to solve. Usually it comes down to how you can better leverage your time as well. And that’s why this is the third piece of the puzzle. And it can be a silent killer because if you’re still doing everything in your business, you’ll eventually hit a ceiling or you’ll burn out. Now, I’ve said this before, and it’s straight from the author, Dan Martell. He wrote a great book, the title of which will come to you in a sec. He said, you don’t grow a business by doing more, you grow it by buying back your time. Yeah, Dan Martell, his book, Buy Back Your Time. So what that means is that you should be delegating your editing. You should be letting go of your invoicing and client management. You should be getting as much of the admin off your plate as you can and building systems so that things don’t rely solely on you. And I know that sometimes systems can feel overwhelming, particularly if you’re used to doing everything yourself. Where do you even start? Well, here’s the good news. Right now, we’ve got tools like ChatGPT and Google Gemini that can literally help you build a virtual operations department if you use them right. For example, you could create a custom GPT to write your proposals or build a Gemini workflow to draft client emails, prep onboarding or standardised post-production steps. You can document SOPs using voice notes that AI can turn into clean, repeatable processes. But here’s where most people get it wrong when it comes to AI to streamline your workflow and your business. If you haven’t got clarity on your business model, on what your strategy for growth is, and what the structure of things are, then AI will end up becoming just another distraction. You need to know what to build and how to streamline it, and how to get your time back. And that’s why the mentorship and coaching that I offer isn’t just about tools or hacks. It’s about building the foundations so that these tools can become superpowers. And that’s where the clarity really starts. And the answer to that big question of when’s the right time to hire your first team member? Well, that becomes clear when you’ve developed some of those systems and processes and treated yourself as an individual in your team, like you’re wearing multiple hats and sitting in the seats of multiple roles in your business. So when you can start thinking about your business as an org chart or a structure with multiple people doing multiple things, even if right now it’s just you, then you can start to gain clarity on where you potentially can hire first to bring the right person into your business to help you scale. Okay, so to recap here, the three things that I believe are holding most business owners back is they don’t understand the five levers that are driving their growth, their income is in unpredictable, and you’re missing recurring opportunities. And you’re doing it everything yourself without systems or focus. The good news is you don’t need to fix this all alone. You see, over the last few years, I’ve been helping people like you work this out for their business through my mentorship and coaching. So if this is resonating with you, I want to invite you to learn more about my newly launched one-to-one mentorship program. The way it works is it’s just you and me working on your business from the inside out. We’ll get clear on your numbers, we’ll structure your services and your pricing, and we’ll build out recurring offers and set up systems and help you scale with confidence and support. The fact is, it’s not for everyone. But if you’re coachable, you’re ready, and you want some support to grow your business, then I’d love to help. So, if you’re interested in this, head on over to engagevideomarketing.com slash coaching. Engagevideomarketing.com slash coaching. Watch the short video there that’ll explain more. fill out the form, and then let’s jump on a clarity call. We’ll just jump on a call, we’ll talk about where you’re at, what’s getting in the way, and whether we’re a good fit to work together. No pressure, no hard sell, just some clarity for you. All right, thanks so much for listening and being part of the Engage Video Marketing Podcast community. If this episode hit home for you, I want you to share it with another video business owner you know. Let’s raise the standard together for what this industry can be. So until next time, I’ll be back with you next week, I guarantee, with another episode of the Engage Video Marketing Podcast. So until then, I’ll either see you at engagevideomarketing.com slash coaching, we’ll jump on a call and learn more, Or until then, just go take action yourself and grow that beautiful business of yours into the business that you want it to be. And I’ll talk to you real soon. Bye for now.
