Finding Work in the Right Budget for You and Your Business
Having bigger budget clients and making more money sure seems like the thing to do. In reality, it’s not always the best thing for your business. That’s just one of the topics that came up during a recent coaching call with Kenny Morg. In fact, there were so many great nuggets of wisdom in this call that I want to share some of it with you.
Deciding if it’s Best to Do a Big Budget Project
It might seem logical to assume that bigger budget projects mean making higher quality films and more profit. I’ve found that that’s not always the case. It turns out that there are a lot of other factors to consider here such as the speed of production and the relationships you’ve cultivated. In reality, the quality of human interaction is much more important than the quality of the video. Additionally, you can often make more from a few small jobs with less overhead than a single big-budget project.
Setting Expectations with Workshops
We go over why I always workshop with clients at the start of any project. It helps establish a budget. It also allows the client to clarify and communicate their vision. I can then guide them to the type of video that will serve them best. With this information, I can be confident that I can deliver what they want, when they want it, for what they’ll pay for it.
Building Connections and Staying Happy at Work
We also discuss how to leverage existing clients to find new ones. You can’t passively wait for them to make referrals for you. You need to be proactive about it. Once you have a good relationship with a client, ask them to refer business your way. Furthermore, actually get out there and meet the people you’d like to work with.
Video often sells an emotional idea. Consequently, the success of this is difficult to measure. It takes a lot of work to successfully stay in this business. In order to maintain my love of the job, I’m careful to outsource the parts that don’t bring me joy. With that out of the way, I can seek out the parts of the jobs that excite me. This is the key to maintaining a healthy work-life balance.
What can you do to focus on the parts of your business that bring you the most joy? Let me know in the comments on the episode page!
In This Episode:
- Important considerations to have when looking for high budget work [6:00]
- Workshopping with clients before the start of a project to clarify visions and plans [17:56]
- How to ask clients to make referrals and bring in more business [27:51]
- Understanding how your videos do the marketing for you [33:38]
- The differences between working with agencies versus directly with businesses [35:22]
- Using social media and YouTube to fuel growth [41:00]
- Getting expert advice to build a great website [47:27]
- Maintaining a love of your craft by avoiding burnout [53:40]
- The key to maintaining a healthy work-life balance [55:25]
- How to avoid over-checking your inbox [1:01:22]
Quotes:
“The right partner is going to pay you when you’re obviously going above and beyond.” [8:07]
“We can’t just sit back and wait for the referrals to come in. We’ll ask our clients for referrals.” [32:58]
“We’re storytellers first. We believe that if we can create some kind of emotive connection with the person watching the film, then we have a better chance of getting them to do the thing that we want them to do.” [34:50]
“We are typically selling emotion. We’re selling a brand video or story and it’s really hard to measure what the emotional connection is.” [44:02]
Links:
30-day guide to jumpstart your video business
Additional Links:
Check out the full show notes page
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