The Difference Between Working ON Your Business, and Working IN Your Business with John Rodriguez

Episode #274

Overview

Are you spending your time working ON your business, or working IN your business? This week on the Grow Your Video Business Podcast Ryan chats with John Rodriguez of 1UP Creative to talk about building a successful business using the Video Blueprint Method to guide his clients and position himself as a trusted advisor that has led to growth for not only his clients but his business as well. John also shares some of his goals and roadblocks that he has run into as a small business owner and different ways to overcome them.

Key Takeaways

Providing value to your clients is the best way to keep them coming back to your business.
Creating a roadmap is important to save time and money.
Networking is key to develop your career.

About John Rodriguez

John has a diverse parentage. His father is Latino, and his mother is of Jewish descent. He grew up super poor but had a good support network where his family hammered hard work, persistence, and education.

He is a life-long learner, and learning new things is almost an obsession with him. He was a professor for almost 8 years. He built a digital media concentration at a university where he was employed with the promise of tenure but left to go full-time freelance (which failed the first time).

He’s always had a side-hustle; taught himself to code websites back in 1998/99 when he was fresh out of high school. His undergrad is in graphic design, and he has an MFA in digital media.

His savings dried up after he left academia and couldn’t establish a reliable client pipeline; got a gig as an entry-level management producer at a big corp., loathed it, and felt like his soul was being crushed, left that and contracted for a company based out of FL as a traveling producer. Learned about business networks, sales, and relationships from that company. Left that in March of 2018, went full-time as a freelancer, set up his LLC (now converting to S-Corp), and have been able to increase revenue each year by God’s Grace.

He is a very faith-driven person who believes in service. His mission is to produce the best work that he can for each client, and should always give God the glory no matter what the task is. He strives to serve and help those who entrust him with their money and business’s success to the best of his abilities. He is always learning more so he can always better serve.

In This Episode

Meet John Rodriguez and his business [04:46]
What are John’s goals [07:32]
How to provide value to your clients [09:01]
How much energy does he put in his roadmap? [17:33]
2 big roadblocks in his business [24:03]
How many business conversations does he have usually? [29:41]
The Video Blueprint Method [ 36:07]
How to get in touch with John [48:42]

Quotes

[08:44 - 08:56] "Being able to get to a point where I can work more on my business and kind of set back from it some, but still provide maximum value and serve our clients as best as I possibly can."

[45:49 - 46:05] "You don't have to feel guilty about spending time in pre-production, which you should be spending in any way, but you don't have to feel guilty that you spent all this time. They didn't hire you. Don't be mad at them. Be mad at you because you're like, wow, I should have positioned that totally differently."

[50:31 - 50:51] "If it's something that somebody wants to do, if they're passionate about it, I fully and firmly believe that anybody can do this. Every freelancing is kind of like a pick your passion sort of career choice. So, you know, if you put in the effort, you do it right then, you know, it could be whatever is your passion."