How to get paid on time

One of my clients in The 6-Figure Filmmakers asked this question of the day and I thought it was really gonna be helpful to share it with you and it's all about getting paid.

Now generally speaking creatives are not very good at asking about the money upfront and this is where I think most people are making a massive mistake.

If you have a conversation with your client at the early stage when you're discussing the creative and you say:

“...look Bob and we're a small company we're not a bank, we promise we'll deliver you an amazing product and we'll do it on time and we'll do everything that you've asked for in your brief. Can we just ask one thing in return? would you make sure we get paid on time? The 50% up front and then we deliver the final video the remaining 50%. We don't to wait a week ten days two weeks because it really affects our cash flow. Is that cool? Is that an agreement we can come to upfront? “

And generally speaking, people will...

How to qualify a prospect up front before you start doing any work.

I was on a coaching call last week with one of my F8 Accelerator clients.

We were discussing the amount of time he was spending putting proposals together and then not always winning the jobs.

One of the things we discovered was that there just wasn't enough pre-qualification going on. If you don't pre-qualify a prospect upfront you are driving blind 

What is pre-qualification?

In its most basic form it's simply asking the client do they have a budget in mind?

In most cases, they won't tell you how much they've got.

But what you can say is look we're probably not going to be the cheapest quote you're gonna get. So what are you looking for you're looking for speed are you looking for quality or are you looking for the price because generally speaking, you can pick two of the three.

Now we tend to work at the higher end of the market think of us as more of your Mercedes-Benz than your Ford Falcon, so just let me...

NEW PODCAST IS LIVE!

What You Need to Know about Scaling your Business with Charle Valher

Business for Creatives Podcast #EP01 - Charley Valher

Watch the rest of the interview over at: https://youtu.be/KPZwYuk3bc8

Listen & Subscribe on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/den-lennie

Subscribe on iTunes : https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/business-for-creatives-podcast/id1435564760?mt=2

#001 - What You Need to Know about Scaling your Business with Charley Valher

Do you want to know how to grow your business that does not require you?

Success is about mindset first, strategy second, and then implementation third.

The final step is accountability.

Accountability to yourself, and accountability to those who depend on you.

I've been running training programmes for the last eight years around the filmmaking space. Firstly, in technique, around specific camera use, and then I evolved to coaching on lighting technique, filming technique drawing on 25 years of experience to help others overcome some other hurdles to creating great looking content.  Every year the business has evolved based on industry trends, technology shifts and market demand.

As with all business, the only real constant is change.

This is something I've come to realise is completely normal in business. If you embrace it, can actually be your friend. 

First of all, you have to become comfortable with this discomfort that, when running a business, nothing is ever constant. What worked last year may not work this year. In fact,...

You Can Only Be Right or Wrong in Hindsight - One of my favourite quotes from last week's Gary Halbert Memorial event in Las Vegas.

I invest in my own education...  It is a non-negotiable in my view if you are serious about growing your business.  

It's exactly why  I flew halfway across the world last week, spent over $9179.56 on attending an event to spend three days in a room with some of the sharpest direct response best copywriters to ever live...

I learned a long time ago that learning anything in business is not free and you generally get what you pay for.  I have never regretted investing in my own personal development and while the returns are not always immediate, they always end up being profitable.

Gary Halbert was highly regarded as the world's greatest ever direct response copywriter.

Last Tuesday marked what would've been Gary's 80th birthday, and Gary's sons, Bond and Kevin along with their mother Nancy Halbert have gathered in Las Vegas...

Whether you run a regular business or are a creative business owner if you are reluctant to embrace marketing then your business is doomed...

Marketing (even for creatives) is simply about putting the right offer in front of the right audience at the right time.  Word of mouth is marketing but its not scaleable or predictable. 

In order to grow a business you want predictability in all areas...

• If you have no leads, then its unlikely you will make sales...
• Without sales you have no cash….
• Without cash you cannot invest in marketing to grow leads and sales….

It's a vicious cycle at times...

And... if you are not clear on who you serve you cannot target your marketing effectively.

Being clear on your business purpose and then targeting your ideal clients with relevant information and offers is the simple strategy to growing your creative  enterprise.

Whether you choose to accept it or not - marketing is everything and everything is...

We know running a business is tough , but is it made easier with support? or are business coaches & mastermind groups a waste of money?

It seems that wherever you turn there's an advert with some guru offering to transform your business and life by attending their webinar, or attending their free event. The challenge with these is often in the stories that are being sold to the audience.

Now I say this from a position of being a business coach, I specifically coach filmmakers in how to improve their business.

I've been a member of many masterminds over the last ten years, and there's always value to be had by going into a room with other business owners.

It was in the book, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, that the notion of a mastermind group was first hatched, and absolutely the value of sitting around the table with other business owners and talking about the challenges you're facing can certainly have a lot of ideas generated on how you might solve some of...

Look Back for Reference then Move Forward

As 2017 draws to a close, I'm sitting here, reflecting on the year, and looking back on my achievements, but most importantly, my failures. I think this is a really important process to go through as a business owner.

If you're going to really truly embrace extreme ownership, you have to look in the mirror and really be open and brave enough to dig into what you see and accept that you have a lot of failings. Those failings can manifest themselves in a way that presents an outcome in your life and business that perhaps you weren't expecting. Either way - you gotta own it

This year has been a year of so much change, but  actually, every year since I started this business has been a year of change.

When you leave the safety and security of a job, or even the relative security of being freelance, and I say that because when you freelance, as I was, I was  a cameraman. I got booked as a cameraman, that's what I did. My only focus was...