Go Build It! s1e1: Business Owner Introduction, Systems for Consistently Generating New Clients

Overview:

In episode 1 of Designing Growth's "Go Build It!" miniseries, Sam speaks to photographer, videographer, business owner, and close friend Sean Greene. Sean explains his recent decision to jump into running his business full-time and Sam shares his tips for systems & processes Sean can implement to avoid boom and bust cycles and consistently generate new clients.

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https://youtu.be/3voujvR8QtQ

Episode 44 Transcript:

[00:00:00] Sam Chlebowski: What's up everybody? Sam Chlebowskihere. Today's episode is going to be a little bit different from our normalepisode, so I wanted to come on and provide some context. If you've beenlistening to this show for any amount of time you know that typically I speakwith entrepreneurs that have what I generally refer to as “well-establishedbusinesses.”

[00:00:19] Sam Chlebowski: Meaning entrepreneurs who havea core business that provides them enough income to where they can work on itfull time without also having to be an employee somewhere or do unrelatedfreelance work to pay the bills. Across the 42 episodes of designing growththat we've put out so far, when I ask these types of business owners to tell meabout how they got their start doing what they do now, By far and away, themost common response I received is that they originally started the business asa side hustle and eventually reached this critical point where they saw enoughopportunity to jump into entrepreneurship and work on building one specific businessfull-time time.

[00:00:58] Sam Chlebowski: Because I know there are quitea few people out there who listen to this show. Who are earlier in theirentrepreneurial journey,

[00:01:04] Sam Chlebowski: maybe you are wanting toevolve from full-time freelancer to owning a business. You can at at some pointsell or at least take a step back from. Maybe you are picking up clients on theside while maintaining that full-time job. Or maybe you have enough clients toquit your nine to five.

[00:01:20] Sam Chlebowski: Looking to reach that nextlevel of growth where you have more flexibility and your income isn't quite astight.

[00:01:27] Sam Chlebowski: If this sounds like you or ifyou're a business owner who's just interested in the process, This new miniseriesthat I am calling, go build it with an exclamation mark is for you across eachepisode, on each season of “Go Build It!” I'll be following a real-lifeentrepreneur in the process of turning their side hustle into their main gig

[00:01:45] Sam Chlebowski: with the ultimate goal ofbuilding a scalable and sustainable business That provides them the freedom,flexibility, and income they've only ever dreamed of.

[00:01:54] Sam Chlebowski: Every few weeks on the “GoBuild It!” miniseries, we'll be checking back in with the entrepreneur thatwe're following, to hear about the [00:02:00]challenges, stressors and triumphs that they faced since we last spoke.

[00:02:03] Sam Chlebowski: In addition to hearing abouttheir experience firsthand, what I'll also be doing is leveraging my decadeworth of business growth experience

[00:02:10] Sam Chlebowski: to help them develop scalablesystems and processes across their business. We'll be talking about sales andmarketing. We'll be talking about customer success. We'll be talking aboutonboarding. We'll be talking about project workflows and tools you can use toautomate things.

[00:02:23] Sam Chlebowski: All of that.

[00:02:24] Sam Chlebowski: So I kind of look at theseepisodes as a mix between a really cool, firsthand account of an entrepreneurwho is in it right now, but also throwing some elements of a consulting call inthere. providing that type of specific advice and guidance you might only geton a paid consulting call or hidden in some course or resource behind apaywall.

[00:02:45] Sam Chlebowski: I'm incredibly excited torelease this episode because it features one of my closest friends,

[00:02:49] Sam Chlebowski: he actually produced a amazingfilm for our wedding. He shot it on Super eight. He edited it. It looksawesome. It was his wedding gift to my wife and I. but the reason why he wasable to do that is what Shawn has been doing for years now

[00:03:02] Sam Chlebowski: working with brands primarilyin the outdoor space and doing a lot of work on ad campaigns, photo shoots atevents, all sorts of stuff. So he is been doing that for years and he's finallyready to start going full-time with that after he landed a couple of bigclients in the last year I said, oh, well this could be cool.

[00:03:19] Sam Chlebowski: Let me help you out with someof this stuff and it would be cool if we could just occasionally record a quickepisode where you tell me about what's going on with your business.

[00:03:27] Sam Chlebowski: So without further ado, let'sgo talk to Sean and jump into episode one of Go Build It.

[00:03:33]

[00:03:40] Sam Chlebowski: Happy Thursday everybody, andwelcome back to Designing Growth. Sam Schabowski here, host of this podcast andco-founder at motion.io today I am very excited to introduce a special series.That I'm gonna be doing. Have my buddy Sean Green here with me today, and we're[00:04:00] talking kind of about his business,couple weekends ago and how he's in the process of scaling it up. He's workedwith some big clients, he's getting people who are referring to him and he'sready to kind of take his business to the next level of scale.

[00:04:13] Sam Chlebowski: with that, Shawn, great tohave you on the podcast today.

[00:04:17] Sam Chlebowski: first just tell me how youdoing today.

[00:04:18] Sean Green: Doing great. Appreciate you havingme on here. seems you guys doing great work, so happy to part of it and yeah,forward to.

[00:04:25] Sam Chlebowski: I would love to know, Sean,like your background. What brought you to this point where you are ready tostart scaling things up?

[00:04:34] Sean Green: Yeah, yeah, of course. So, went toschool for, and media, studied that in Rhode Island and. Spent some timeworking with production companies out there working as, you know, a pa. workingunder art directors as, treatment designers, visual researchers. and then fromthere went to New York. sort of did similar things, working on productions.

[00:04:54] Sean Green: and then Covid hit and sort ofmessed up all of that. And I moved out to Colorado took some time out thebusiness Reset. And in the last couple months I've started working again,shooting, photos for brands, working with production companies so it's a bit ofa restart for me and, just trying to get the ball rolling, and making sure I'mdoing the right steps to create a successful business

[00:05:14] Sam Chlebowski: One of the things that we weretalking about is like you're at this point where sometimes the work is supercrazy, you have too many projects, you know, you're saying no to projects,those, peaks, there's also like a valley where the work kind of dries up.

[00:05:27] Sam Chlebowski: you had mentioned you focusyour work in sort of the Recreation, area, working with cycling brands outdoorbrands, things like that, and doing photos at events. but then you also found,a niche where you can also do treatment design.

[00:05:42] Sam Chlebowski: Can you talk a little bitabout that?

[00:05:44] Sean Green: Yeah, my main gig at the momentis, uh, photography and, it's been pretty busy the last few months, especiallywith. Industry, you know, there's always gonna be down months within, film,photo. that's just the, the nature of the business and nature of working foryourself. as of late, it's been a little bit slow [00:06:00]and I've been trying to be comfortable in the discomfort and, in those momentsyou know, it pushes you to figure out new things and trying to figure out myskillset.

[00:06:07] Sean Green: worked in treatment design before,out in LA and in New York, and, it's something you can do from your house on alaptop, and I really enjoy doing it as well, so. just realized that, you know,there's room for growth here and opportunity to grow my business in a differentway. and what treatment design is, is when you know you have multiple differentcompanies working on, bidding a project and they need to, Present a treatment.

[00:06:30] Sean Green: I'll work with the director on thevisual style, what that looks like, to give us the best, chance to win thisbid. so I'll work with the production team and mainly the director on, adocument to show how we would. execute this, if given the chance to create it.

[00:06:43] Sean Green: So, that's sort of what it is andit goes across, multiple different, fields. But my field is, film production.

[00:06:49] Sam Chlebowski: And I can instantly see howthat would be valuable because I could see treatment design being thisoverlooked part of producing an advertising campaign, producing, visualadvertisement or visual assets for a brand. Because they don't bring anyone onto do it specifically.

[00:07:07] Sam Chlebowski: Sometimes I could see itgetting overlooked and production company missing out on a deal, so I couldimmediately see the value of you coming in as an outsider with your ownperspective, your own stylistic approach that is going to really support thatproduction company in pitching this and eventually closing that deal it wasreally, really exciting to hear that you've kind of identified this serviceoffering that can also support your current work. And also open up theopportunity for you to, bring on more photography clients. Like if you do atreatment design for a production company, or a brand, maybe they bring you onas a photographer for that next deal.

[00:07:44] Sam Chlebowski: . You had said when we werespeaking a little bit earlier that you were actually in the process of reachingout to a bunch of people about this treatment design service that you'vedecided to offer Can you tell me how you felt about that thus far?

[00:07:57] Sam Chlebowski: Is it overwhelming? how werethings [00:08:00] going, with that process?

[00:08:01] Sean Green: like I said before in thisdiscomfort, it's pushing me to find new ways to, bring in money. You know,creating, you wanna put your best foot forward.

[00:08:08] Sean Green: So I'm creating a bunch oftreatments. That are in my style for these companies to see you because theyall have people that have been doing it for them or they know people that havebeen doing it. So it's about getting in the door giving them that wow factorand wanting to work with you.

[00:08:21] Sean Green: So on one hand, I'm building theseassets, to, present to them. And then also It's definitely a lot to reach outto 20, 30, 40 upwards of, you know, 50 and more clients. You know, this is allvery new to me. working as a individual, uh, as a photographer and director atthe moment, it's just me, so, there's no one answering my emails or anything.

[00:08:42] Sean Green: It's just me. I think that it isdaunting to. Maybe 50, 60 responses come back. and how do you deal with that?And what does that look like for, my business structure and how do I moveforward,

[00:08:52] Sam Chlebowski: it is a big step too,especially because you have this new service. It, broaden the pool of thepotential people that you can work with, Even already in your network. itsounds like you are doing a key piece of this the right way, which is you'reworking on your portfolio, you're getting together past work that you've donefor clients.

[00:09:09] Sam Chlebowski: you are creating new work thatcould act as kind of samples of what it could like to work with you. And Ithink that that's really smart. One of the things that. We're gonna be doingthroughout this sort of mini series is I'm gonna be checking in with Sean everycouple of weeks and I am also going to be suggesting things for him to dowithin his business.

[00:09:31] Sam Chlebowski: we will get to how he's gonnafunctionally be able to use Motion IO for parts of his business in the future.But right now, one of the things that I see as the biggest opportunity is, Withyou, Shawn, you know, you clearly have a really great network of past clients.You have people that like working with you.

[00:09:48] Sam Chlebowski: You have people that arereferring new work to you And the first step that comes glaring to me let's getall of this down on paper. I know you had said when we had spoke previouslythat you are kind of doing [00:10:00] back ofthe napkin stuff, looking through your s sent folder, seeing who you reachedout to, and I think a perfect place to start.

[00:10:06] Sam Chlebowski: For any small business whohasn't used a CRM before, is like, , let's just build a spreadsheet ofeverybody you've reached out to, some details about the project, if they're aprevious client, what you had said to them last time. Just a couple of quicknotes. So I'm gonna send you that template to fill out and you can kind of justmark down who you've reached out to and what service you had.

[00:10:26] Sam Chlebowski: mention to them in any ofthose emails, because then If you decide in a month, two months that, hey, it'stime to like start automating things a little bit more, make it a little bitmore, streamlined. Great. We take that spreadsheet, we import it into a crm,and that's gonna be something that's really easy to do. the other piece ofadvice let's get some basic email templates set up. let's get. An emailsequence for when a new potential client gets referred to you. Number one,let's get an email sequence set up for when you are reaching out to someoneyou've worked with previously.

[00:11:00] Sam Chlebowski: And then let's get a finalemail sequence set up of when you are reaching out to someone cold like you'venever spoken with them, but you wanna send them kind of a portfolio of yourwork and hope that it can kind of start a conversation. I know that one of thethings that you had said, specifically when we talk about, email templates andthings like that, is like, you are pretty casual about it.

[00:11:21] Sam Chlebowski: . People like to work withyou, they like to circle back up with you, but at the same time, you do have tobe following up and that's what's gonna allow you to win more of these deals.And there's a way to do this, With email templates they're not something thatyou send off blindly. you're gonna be customizing them. You're gonna be addingpersonalized tweaks to them, depending on the person you talk to. But at thesame time, I think that for any business owner who's trying to go to that nextlevel, let's remove.

[00:11:47] Sam Chlebowski: Some of that friction fromyour brain. It's like, why Steve Jobs, mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, all of theseentrepreneurs wear the same exact clothes every day because it's decisionfatigue. So let's remove some of those [00:12:00]decisions and systematize things so you can focus on the other more creativeaspects of your business that I frankly can't help out with.

[00:12:06] Sam Chlebowski: I don't know how to dotreatment design. I don't know. Anything really about photography, but one ofthe things I do know is, how to build systems for a scalable business. And Ithink that over, the next couple of months we can do that and we can really,you know, get things rolling.

[00:12:22] Sam Chlebowski: So,

[00:12:22] Sean Green: Yeah, man, I'm excited. I thinkthat, those emails can get a little bit bogged down by the, personality and,it'll be nice to have ground to stand on, especially when you're asking forsomething. So I think that building those out would be super helpful and I'msuper excited to work on this.

[00:12:36] Sam Chlebowski: I mean, we've been friends fora long time and when I heard about the things that you were doing and thesuccess that you had, achieved over the last couple months, , I saw that youwere, making a conscious decision to go into this business full time. And I waslike, great man. Like let's do it. If you need help with anything, like let meknow. And I think it'll be fun to chat and see like where you start. To whereyou end up and see how fast we can get there. Honestly, because I have the fullconfidence that, you were totally capable of all of this success and capable ofconsistent revenue, consistent clients so that we can kind of eliminate thoselike peaks and valleys.

[00:13:10] Sam Chlebowski: The decision to systemizethings within your business. It seems daunting until you come out on the otherside and you realize, wow, I'm saving a lot of time.

[00:13:19] Sam Chlebowski: One of the other things, thatyou had mentioned too were like the things that you need to send to clientsthroughout a project. What are some of the things you need to have clientsreview or they ask for before work can begin?

[00:13:34] Sam Chlebowski: Because I wanna make sure thatI know about this ahead of time as well to make sure we're not missinganything.

[00:13:38] Sean Green: typically it's a lot of likebudgeting stuff, what your day rate. if they need insurance, I'll send thatover as well. sending photos, sending videos, sending files. and then as far astreatment design, we do a couple different, variations, sending it back andforth to the team.

[00:13:53] Sean Green: So, keeping those, very structuredand a good place to view for them and me. And, that's sort of what I'm dealingwith at [00:14:00] the moment. Just sendingout. and then also just pushing things along as far as production andlogistics, if there's flights, accommodations where all that lives.

[00:14:09] Sam Chlebowski: and that's a big thing I thinkwe'll be able to do with motion.io. I I think one thing that would be helpfulto understand let's say you get somebody to respond to an email and they'reinterested in working with you.

[00:14:19] Sam Chlebowski: What types of questions areyou asking them? Are there any like consistent questions you ask across,clients that could be helpful to have in a form?

[00:14:28] Sean Green: for every project there's gonna bedifferent deliverables. So I think what is the deliverable in their ask? is ita film that's 60 seconds long? Is it a minute long? Is it 20 photos? 10 photos,50 photos? Are we shooting on it for, a week?

[00:14:42] Sean Green: Are we, uh, shooting a day? Thoseare all. great things to know before hopping on a call. So you can give themthat rate on that call instead of, you know, having to rehash, rethink, andthen have another call. so I think that's definitely a really good idea to,have a form where we can sort of put all of our thoughts in, allow, a note sectionto elaborate on these things.

[00:15:01] Sean Green: But, Streamlining that call. Youknow, everyone's busy, everyone needs something right away. So I think that's areally good idea.

[00:15:06] Sam Chlebowski: So we have kind of like threepieces that we're gonna be working on, um, before we chat the next time. Thefirst is this spreadsheet that I'll send you. the email templates, and thenI'll, look at them and see if I have any suggestions, for how we can kind ofperfect that language so you can reuse these things as templates.

[00:15:22] Sam Chlebowski: then the third piece thatwould be really helpful I think, is if you could think of each of the differentservices that you're gonna be offering. if it's a photo project, a videoproject, a treatment design project, for each of those projects The questionsthat you would ask clients they don't have to be the exact same for every newproject.

[00:15:40] Sam Chlebowski: We can customize that stuff ona per client basis. But if you could think okay, what are the 5, 6, 7 thingsthat I need to know from these types of clients going into that call so I canprovide them with a quote?

[00:15:52] Sam Chlebowski: So when you have that personwho says, Hey, I'd like to discuss this further, you send that off throughmotion.io. They fill it out. [00:16:00] Youhave that information going into a call,

[00:16:02] Sean Green: Yeah, it sounds incredible. Thatsounds great.

[00:16:04] Sam Chlebowski: Awesome. Awesome. I guess Wehave plenty to talk about, plenty to do before next time. but yeah, Sean, man,thank you so much. I'm really excited about this. I think it's gonna be reallycool to kind of see where this takes us over the next couple months.

[00:16:16] Sam Chlebowski: That is all for today, folks.We will be talking to Sean again in a couple of weeks. It’s gonna be a specialseries And then between those, we will be back to our regular episodes ofdesigning growth with other guests.

[00:16:27] Sam Chlebowski: Sean, I think you’ll becomeour first repeat guest on this podcast, which is cool. So, thanks again man,and we'll talk to you soon. Everybody. Take care.