It's always a good idea to try and visualise what your ideal business looks like. Given you are about to (or are already) be spending a large proportion of your waking hours for the next 5-10 years working on or thinking about your business then you may as well make sure you know where you are going with it.
Now everyone is different but I find that writing down goals and aspirations helps me to rmaintain focus on the final destination.
Step 1- Pick a niche
One of the most common mistakes I see filmmakers make is they try too hard to be a 'jack of all trades' they'll advertise themselves as corporate video production, event filmmakers, PR films, commercials, weddings in some cases and a whole host of other services. (web design, video duplication and so on).
Stop!
Generalisation is a big mistake, actually, make that a huge mistake.
When you dilute your product or service offering, you commoditise yourself and are opening yourself up to price based buyers. (more on pricing in a later chapter) You do not want to compete on price. (it's a dirty race to the bottom)
It's far better to specialise and become the number one choice for your customers in that field. This can be very counterintuitive and will feel uncomfortable for some of you. But remember if this was easy, then everyone would be doing it.
You want to be working towards becoming a specialist. When you are a specialist and more importantly the very best in your field, pricing becomes elastic. If you had a busted leg, you'd want a specialist orthopaedic surgeon working on you right? not a GP. Think about that for a moment. |