New Biz Flow
Feeling a new sort of energy. Partly because of Ryan’s RIFF Radio episode with Nikhil Krishnan and partly because I’m finally establishing and setting up a couple systems.
For the last year I have operated as a video production person. Man with a cam if you will. But Ryan talked about all the wide ranging projects Nikhil has had since going solo. I’ve done a lot of other things outside of video production like selling prints or making a book of Kanye’s tweets. And while in-house I ran events, organized a few pop-ups/experiential events and made merch like hats, pins, and other things.
And it got me thinking. Would it be better to play to my strengths and operate this way instead of trying to focus just on video? I feel like my creativity is very seasonal at times and there’s different ideas I like to pursue. Is this what it means when a studio calls themselves full service? There are lots of things I can’t actually do myself but I’m pretty damn sure I have a friend that could help.
The other thing I have thought about are systems and processes. I am revisiting HAWRAF’s public archive of docs and things they used to run their studio. I’ve known about it for a while but honestly it didn’t really click as to what it was all for and why. It was one of those things that I knew was generally good but just kinda felt lazy to implement since things were going pretty well without them. But now I realize I’m probably limiting my growth in terms of client size and just wasting a lot of time because I don’t have some of these things. It’s kind of like reading any general advice on twitter or self-help business book/blog post, until you’re in the situation where the information is actually useful its just entertainment. Feels good to know and tell other people about it.
Here’s what I did today:
New Biz Flow on the desktop (contract and deck template in there instead of copying and pasting it out of the last client folder)
Target companies spreadsheet (who I want to work with)
Hubspot account (looks great hoping it’s as essential as it seems)
Sounds dumb but just looking at this makes my anxiety go down. I had to think about each step with every client last year and it really took a lot of energy. Not every client I work with will go through each step or every process but it feels a lot easier to opt out of steps than to having to remember what should be next.
I do have some of these things in one format or another like like a whiteboard with a leads/bidding/won and a project/client tracker in notion but it hasn’t felt as sticky for some reason. I think I’ve got okay intelligence but not making these template folders / decks earlier makes me feel mad dumb. Also the switch from freelancer to “studio” hasn’t been as direct or intentional until now. Thats definitely a contributing factor to the systems not really being super tight.
One thing I’m not sure of is when it makes sense to build a capabilities deck. I am literally one person so it feels mad dumb to make one but maybe I should do something more condensed and tailored to my size of business.
Hubspot is something I’ve known about since I used to read their blog, my friend Niran has talked about it, and it’s just been there but I’ve never actually signed up or used it until today February 04, 2021. After 2 minutes in the UI, I totally understand its value. And it’s free? Let’s go.
For anyone reading it could seem like I may be boxing myself back into a j-o-b but the difference here is I’m setting up these things for myself so that I can maintain my freedom and continue to work with clients and on projects that I’m excited about. Long game. It’s been tough to be on social and see so many people working and not feel like I’m a failure tbh. I’ve accepted this is part of the game. I’m in my slow season. There are things I can do to make it unslow.
I stopped working without anything actually in the books for when I came back. I felt unsure how to actually start working again. There’s some dumb luck with people hitting my inbox or DM’ing me but that is passive and unpredictable. I need something based on my inputs. That is why the target spreadsheet is so helpful. I have some other ideas and stunts I want to try for generating leads but they’re still pretty half baked and I want them to be a surprise. If I do them I’ll write about it next month.
January overall was tough, 0 productions but luckily I still had some editing work and was able to scope out some research + concepting work. Learning to break down work into these other buckets has helped make sure I get paid for my time off set as well. I understand not every client will be open to this though. Although we didn’t get any shoots going we did make bigger swings and it feels like I’ve leveled up overall. Have two smaller shoots happening this month that I’m pretty excited about. And I’m scheduling lots of calls and chats with writers, directors, and DPs. I’ve also started setting up chats with marketing colleagues. Some of my data from when I was in-house is old - I need to refresh it.
Last thing I want to talk about is during a 1-on-1 years ago I stupidly complained to my boss. I didn’t really like preparing budgets, planning, and making all these documents that essentially were just telling me what I was going to do. I just wanted to be creative. Eventually as the company grew and I had to hire people I understood it a little more but I still hated doing it. I cringe hard at that now. I was so immature and dumb. Now the tables have turned. I get it and I’m sorry. These things make it much easier to repeatedly do creative work and spend less time reinventing the wheel for each project. Apparently life will teach you the same lessons until you get it and now I do. Now I can play more offense and be proactive about getting more work.
Thanks for reading. Peace.