7 key areas of your videography business to outsource
You are not scalable. You can buy back time and improve your impact dramatically by outsourcing parts of your business.
Disclaimer: The following information is NOT to be considered financial advice. It is for informational purposes only. It is also accurate as of the time of this writing.
Please perform your own research and due diligence before making any financial decision.
Lastly, we purposely DON’T use affiliate or referral links. So you can have confidence we are making an impartial analysis free of any conflicts of interest.
Overview
We all start off as rugged individuals when starting a business or starting to work for ourselves. We often work long hours, weekends and holidays to move things forward. We often apply brute force to hit an objective, which entails just working more hours and sacrificing sleep, time with loved ones, your health, vacations, and more.
What happens when you are sick?
What happens when you are on vacation?
That way of running a business isn’t sustainable. It also doesn’t generate the biggest impact. Fortunately, there are many ways of getting off the hamster wheel and moving up your own corporate ladder.
The biggest obstacle however is a mental shift. For example, have you ever heard yourself saying any of the following:
“I can just do it myself.”
“It doesn’t take that long. It’s faster if I just do it.”
“He/she won’t do it as good as I can.”
“They won’t have the same tenacity.”
“If you want something done right, do it yourself.”
“I tried hiring someone in the past, and it didn’t work out. I won’t be doing that again.”
“I can’t afford to outsource work.” (by the way, You can't afford not to.)
Can you imagine Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, Oprah Winfrey, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, or Richard Branson scaling their companies to the moon doing everything by themself?
Am I the most qualified person to be doing this?
This is a great question to ask as you work through each of the seven areas below. You will want to understand your level of expertise on a scale of 1 to 10. You will also want to understand the opportunity cost for doing certain actions yourself versus outsourcing them. For example, where can your efforts have the biggest impact towards your objectives?
Outsourcing Ideas
Key Area 1: Sales
An area to evaluate within your business is the process of sales, both inbound and outbound. This area of your business is critical to landing new clients. A good starting point would be doing a self-audit to understand your win rate with leads and the volume of prospects you have. Then ask yourself objectively if you are the most qualified to be doing this important job.
If the answer is a resounding No, you may consider a few options for improvement. The first could be hiring a sales coach and setting specific and measurable goals for improvement (e.g. higher close rate, higher average purchase amount, etc).
If you loathe sales and have zero interest in getting better, you may consider hiring a dedicated sales person that is mainly compensated on success. This would align both of your goals.
Key Area 2: Finance & Accounting
This area includes all of the day-to-day financial activities, such as collecting revenue, paying invoices, payroll, and creating reports to understand the financial health of your business. By default you may be doing this role yourself. You really need to ask yourself if you are the most qualified for this work. Could you hire someone to take this work over, or at least part of it? What impact would it have to you and your business by taking this work off your plate?
Key Area 3: Taxes / Compliance
Everyone’s favorite: Taxes! You may already be working with a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) or another qualified Tax Preparer. If not, this is definitely an area where bringing in a dedicated professional can easily pay for themself by identifying more tax deductions, helping with tax planning, and more.
Additionally, tax law and business compliance isn’t a trivial area. By leveraging the expertise of someone doing this work full time as compared to once per year for one client (yourself), there are huge gains to be had.
Key Area 4: Customer Support
Another area that you are likely handling. I am a big advocate of keeping your finger on the pulse of your client satisfaction and the important feedback they provide. However, this doesn’t mean you need to reply to every email, social media post, or phone call. First, you may consider outsourcing a part of this important function to a software program such as Intercom or any chat automated support that integrates with your social media and webpage.
You can buy back time for pennies on the dollar by setting up a Help Center or Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) section. You can also organize and manage support inquiries. If you use a CRM, this type of functionality may already be included.
The beauty of leveraging a dedicated software service is the ability to run reports and organize your client interactions in one place, outside of your primary email inbox.
Depending on the volume of client support and interaction, you may also consider hiring a dedicated customer support professional. This could be part-time to start, with a dedicated schedule that helps your customers most.
Key Area 5: Business Operations
This area primarily covers:
Pre-production (i.e. planning)
Production (i.e. filming the event)
Post production (i.e. editing and delivering the final project)
Arguably the most important part of your business and the most difficult part for videographers to relinquish control. For many filmmakers this is where they set themselves apart and create magic for their clients. However, if you are a one person shop this is also likely the biggest bottleneck in your business. Trying to do all of these roles incredibly well and efficiently can be a massive challenge.
You are likely already outsourcing some of this work to at least a second shooter. We will write another article in greater detail about the benefits of outsourcing some or all of your operations in order to grow your business. At a minimum, you could start with hiring someone to edit your next film. There are some incredibly talented remote video editors in the world that you can afford and will deliver value for you and your clients.
Many of the top professionals in the industry continually narrow their focus to their unique ability (credit Dan Sullivan) and find excellent people to help with the other operational areas.
Key Area 6: Marketing
This important business function covers your outbound and inbound marketing, including your website, social media profiles, email marketing, writing blogs, running paid ads, generating referrals, and more. This part of your business is incredibly important for driving new leads and creating a healthy sales pipeline. It also requires a lot of time and attention to be effective. So “random acts of marketing” may not work (credit to Allan Dib).
There are incredibly talented people on marketplaces like Upwork that you can afford and can have a massive positive impact on your business. Think of someone making daily social media posts, writing a new blog article each week, auditing your website and making improvements.
Key Area 7: Maintaining your Gear
Ah, your precious gear. The primary reason you became a videographer :) You likely spend a decent amount of time each week prepping your gear, charging batteries, servicing your gear or taking it to be fixed. This area also includes research of new gear to feed your neverending Gear Acquisition Syndrome (G.A.S.).
All kidding aside, you may consider hiring someone to help maintain your gear in perfect working order. You may also consider hiring an assistant to help with the logistics of getting your gear to an event as well as helping at the actual event. For example, you could have an assistant help set up lighting, grab your tripod for certain shots, set up your second camera with your preferred lens for the next shot. The possibilities are endless.
Having a second person help with this important part of your business can free up your time and possibly save some back pain.
How to make this actionable
The first step is making a mental shift that you CAN outsource key areas of your business and still be successful. Your business won’t fail because someone else is doing the work. It can flourish by expanding your team.
A great place to start is to identify the top one or two areas that give you the lowest return on your time. For example, there may be a necessary task that is time intensive but provides little impact to your business. This would be a great place to start outsourcing.
Conclusion
You are likely already outsourcing parts of your business (e.g. accountants, CPAs, second shooters, editors, attorneys, insurance agents, etc). This article can serve as a primer to take the next step to buy back your time and increase the contributions to your business.
Hiring experts can be a game changer. There is an abundance of experts that can do a much better job than you can. This frees you up to focus on your unique ability (credit to Dan Sullivan).
We will write more detailed articles on “How” to outsource important roles within your company. Wishing you the best success!
Author Notes
If you found value in this article please drop a comment below and let us know what other topics or deep dives would be most helpful for you.
Hat tip
Some of the concepts in this article can be referenced in much greater detail in the following books:
Who Not How: The Formula to Achieve Bigger Goals Through Accelerating Teamwork
The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It
