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

[00:00:00] Sam Chlebowski: What’s up everybody? Sam Chlebowski here. Today’s episode is going to be a little bit different from our normal episode, so I wanted to come on and provide some context. If you’ve been listening to this show for any amount of time you know that typically I speak with entrepreneurs that have what I generally refer to as “well-established businesses.”

[00:00:19] Sam Chlebowski: Meaning entrepreneurs who have a core business that provides them enough income to where they can work on it full time without also having to be an employee somewhere or do unrelated freelance work to pay the bills. Across the 42 episodes of designing growth that we’ve put out so far, when I ask these types of business owners to tell me about how they got their start doing what they do now, By far and away, the most common response I received is that they originally started the business as a side hustle and eventually reached this critical point where they saw enough opportunity to jump into entrepreneurship and work on building one specific business full-time time.

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

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

[00:01:20] Sam Chlebowski: Looking to reach that next level of growth where you have more flexibility and your income isn’t quite as tight.

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

[00:01:45] Sam Chlebowski: with the ultimate goal of building 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 “Go Build It!” miniseries, we’ll be checking back in with the entrepreneur that we’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 about their experience firsthand, what I’ll also be doing is leveraging my decade worth of business growth experience

[00:02:10] Sam Chlebowski: to help them develop scalable systems and processes across their business. We’ll be talking about sales and marketing. We’ll be talking about customer success. We’ll be talking about onboarding. We’ll be talking about project workflows and tools you can use to automate things.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[00:03:33]

[00:03:40] Sam Chlebowski: Happy Thursday everybody, and welcome back to Designing Growth. Sam Schabowski here, host of this podcast and co-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 worked with some big clients, he’s getting people who are referring to him and he’s ready to kind of take his business to the next level of scale.

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

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

[00:04:18] Sean Green: Doing great. Appreciate you having me 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 to start scaling things up?

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

[00:04:54] Sean Green: and then Covid hit and sort of messed up all of that. And I moved out to Colorado took some time out the business 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 of a restart for me and, just trying to get the ball rolling, and making sure I’m doing the right steps to create a successful business

[00:05:14] Sam Chlebowski: One of the things that we were talking about is like you’re at this point where sometimes the work is super crazy, 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 focus your work in sort of the Recreation, area, working with cycling brands outdoor brands, 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 bit about that?

[00:05:44] Sean Green: Yeah, my main gig at the moment is, uh, photography and, it’s been pretty busy the last few months, especially with. 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 for yourself. 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 moments you know, it pushes you to figure out new things and trying to figure out my skillset.

[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 a laptop, 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 different way. and what treatment design is, is when you know you have multiple different companies working on, bidding a project and they need to, Present a treatment.

[00:06:30] Sean Green: I’ll work with the director on the visual style, what that looks like, to give us the best, chance to win this bid. so I’ll work with the production team and mainly the director on, a document 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 and it goes across, multiple different, fields. But my field is, film production.

[00:06:49] Sam Chlebowski: And I can instantly see how that would be valuable because I could see treatment design being this overlooked part of producing an advertising campaign, producing, visual advertisement or visual assets for a brand. Because they don’t bring anyone on to do it specifically.

[00:07:07] Sam Chlebowski: Sometimes I could see it getting overlooked and production company missing out on a deal, so I could immediately see the value of you coming in as an outsider with your own perspective, your own stylistic approach that is going to really support that production company in pitching this and eventually closing that deal it was really, really exciting to hear that you’ve kind of identified this service offering that can also support your current work. And also open up the opportunity for you to, bring on more photography clients. Like if you do a treatment design for a production company, or a brand, maybe they bring you on as a photographer for that next deal.

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

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

[00:08:01] Sean Green: like I said before in this discomfort, 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 of treatments. That are in my style for these companies to see you because they all have people that have been doing it for them or they know people that have been doing it. So it’s about getting in the door giving them that wow factor and wanting to work with you.

[00:08:21] Sean Green: So on one hand, I’m building these assets, to, present to them. And then also It’s definitely a lot to reach out to 20, 30, 40 upwards of, you know, 50 and more clients. You know, this is all very new to me. working as a individual, uh, as a photographer and director at the 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 is daunting 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 move forward,

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

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

[00:09:31] Sam Chlebowski: we will get to how he’s gonna functionally 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, With you, 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 are referring new work to you And the first step that comes glaring to me let’s get all of this down on paper. I know you had said when we had spoke previously that you are kind of doing [00:10:00] back of the napkin stuff, looking through your s sent folder, seeing who you reached out to, and I think a perfect place to start.

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

[00:10:26] Sam Chlebowski: mention to them in any of those emails, because then If you decide in a month, two months that, hey, it’s time to like start automating things a little bit more, make it a little bit more, 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 of advice let’s get some basic email templates set up. let’s get. An email sequence 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 someone you’ve worked with previously.

[00:11:00] Sam Chlebowski: And then let’s get a final email sequence set up of when you are reaching out to someone cold like you’ve never spoken with them, but you wanna send them kind of a portfolio of your work and hope that it can kind of start a conversation. I know that one of the things that you had said, specifically when we talk about, email templates and things like that, is like, you are pretty casual about it.

[00:11:21] Sam Chlebowski: . People like to work with you, they like to circle back up with you, but at the same time, you do have to be 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 that you send off blindly. you’re gonna be customizing them. You’re gonna be adding personalized tweaks to them, depending on the person you talk to. But at the same time, I think that for any business owner who’s trying to go to that next level, let’s remove.

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

[00:12:06] Sam Chlebowski: I don’t know how to do treatment design. I don’t know. Anything really about photography, but one of the things I do know is, how to build systems for a scalable business. And I think 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 think that, 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 for something. So I think that building those out would be super helpful and I’m super excited to work on this.

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

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

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

[00:13:34] Sam Chlebowski: Because I wanna make sure that I know about this ahead of time as well to make sure we’re not missing anything.

[00:13:38] Sean Green: typically it’s a lot of like budgeting stuff, what your day rate. if they need insurance, I’ll send that over as well. sending photos, sending videos, sending files. and then as far as treatment design, we do a couple different, variations, sending it back and forth to the team.

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

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

[00:14:19] Sam Chlebowski: What types of questions are you 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 be different deliverables. So I think what is the deliverable in their ask? is it a 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? Those are all. great things to know before hopping on a call. So you can give them that rate on that call instead of, you know, having to rehash, rethink, and then 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 section to elaborate on these things.

[00:15:01] Sean Green: But, Streamlining that call. You know, everyone’s busy, everyone needs something right away. So I think that’s a really good idea.

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

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

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

[00:15:52] Sam Chlebowski: So when you have that person who says, Hey, I’d like to discuss this further, you send that off through motion.io. They fill it out. [00:16:00] You have that information going into a call,

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

[00:16:04] Sam Chlebowski: Awesome. Awesome. I guess We have 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 really cool 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 special series And then between those, we will be back to our regular episodes of designing growth with other guests.

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