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He Built A $600,000 One Person Business (with video editing) - YouTube
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I never made more than like 40 50k a
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year out of college and that's pre-tax
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so I was broke so I packed up my car
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drove like 1200 miles away that's where
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I kind of learned how to like talk to
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people Network do customer service write
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blogs all right so today we're meeting
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up with Scott he makes 50 000 a month
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making videos and he's going to show us
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exactly how he does it
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[Music]
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so yeah tell me tell me about what you
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do what do you want yeah so we run uh
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basically it's a productized service for
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B2B SAS companies so think about like an
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agency service except you're able to buy
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it kind of like an e-commerce product so
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it's it's short animated videos for B2B
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SAS companies to run as paid ads and and
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get customers in the door what's a
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typical client for who we work with we
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work with software companies that are
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primarily B2B so they have platforms
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like you think of stripe like a payment
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processor or something like that and
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they're typically also funded so an
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important part about selling something
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like a productized service is making
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sure that the people have the money to
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actually buy what you're selling so we
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found that companies that are VC backed
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or have gone through like
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um seed and series a funding they
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typically have the money to to purchase
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what we're selling so that's what works
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best for us and companies want this
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because it helps sell more of their
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product or helps their brand Market
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better the main goal with the videos is
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not necessarily
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to directly get our clients more
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customers it's more so to get the
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potential customers to like stop
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scrolling or to maybe go book a demo or
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something like that right it's more of
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like the scroll stopper some people call
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it where it's super attention grabbing
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but it doesn't give you enough
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information to actually like go buy the
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service or product tell me a little bit
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more about your background you were
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doing actual video agency work yeah so
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I've done I've done everything I've done
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like music videos event Recaps you know
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me and a friend used to shoot weddings
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and just like basically everything I've
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also been a designer built websites all
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this stuff and for me videos what really
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stuck and then it was hard for me to
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scale and it was it was hard to get work
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I didn't really know what I was doing so
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I ended up stumbling onto Twitter and
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meeting you know a lot of the people
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what they call Like Money Twitter right
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and that's really all about how can you
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take what you already know how to do
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which for me was the video production
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stuff and monetize it at a higher level
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and then that's when I kind of got into
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all the technical technical business
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stuff you go to college or anything like
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that uh I went for two months and
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dropped out I think why did you drop
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that what happened yeah so I ended up
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meeting this guy and he's like hey I'm
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I'm starting this business in Colorado
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you know we're going to try to like help
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people manage vacation rental properties
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like I think you'd be a good fit for it
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so I packed up my car drove like 1200
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miles away I hadn't had any actual
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business experience prior to that but
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that's where I kind of learned how to
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like talk to people Network do customer
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service write blogs stuff like that that
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was in 2019 I think so I was 19. yeah
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when I did that so now you're only like
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what 24 23 yeah I didn't really make any
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money until the last like year even
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though I tried all this stuff after
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college I mean it was all just learning
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you know I never made more than like 40
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50k a year out of college so I mean and
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that's pre-tax so I was broke yeah you
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know the three and a half years after I
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left but I was able to leverage my
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skills and this is something for like a
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lot of people too that they can they can
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use is like if you have a specific skill
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if you can find ways not just to make
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money with it but like for me for
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example because of the video stuff I've
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gotten to like go shoot at NASCAR in the
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pit and just a bunch of cool stuff even
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though I wasn't getting paid very well
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for that it was stuff that I was able to
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add to my resume of just things that
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you're able to do has video always been
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your passion I've been doing videos
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since 2016 and it it started off
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actually as I opened up Adobe
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Illustrator Junior High School to make
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like these presentations for some
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business class I was in and then that
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evolved into me getting a camera and
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trying out photography and then
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photography got boring so I tried out
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video
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um and then now it's kind of an
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intersection of of all of them with what
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I'm doing because it's like design but
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it's moving and all that stuff but
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really personally like I enjoy anything
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creative so I've I've painted I've you
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know I used to like play some
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instruments just really any anything
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like that so your business took off and
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you said you're making fifty thousand
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dollars a month now is that right yeah
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on average it bounces around a little
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bit with any business right like it
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could be like 35 then it could be like
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55 right yeah just depends on your lead
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Insurance you know before that you were
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making maybe 50 000 a year and you grew
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to pretty much 10x that was there any
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mindset shift or was there anything that
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really set this business apart from
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others if if I was going to choose one
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thing it would be switching from a
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scarcity mindset to an abundance mindset
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and it sounds really I guess like cheesy
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or like or whatever if you make the
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shift to taking those same resources
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again whether it's money the knowledge
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Network you have right in just full-on
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like utilizing them to try to produce
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more of what you have and grow that I
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think the whole game changes before this
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business you had kind of a lot of
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creative type jobs you were doing video
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how could someone who is is also
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creative an artist a videographer anyone
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in doing production how can they turn
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that into a business and be able to work
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for themselves speaking from what worked
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for me I think that the biggest thing
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one get on social media right and I'll
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use Twitter as an example because that's
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again what worked for me so what I would
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do is be posting every day sit down for
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an hour schedule it out be consistent
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and write things or make reels or
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whatever you're going to do about things
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specific to what you're doing are so if
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it's video make educational content for
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Brands about how they can get more
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customers in the door with video right
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that's kind of what I did and then once
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you have that down once you're
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consistently posting you get a feel for
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it and you're learning about
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the specific platform that you're
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posting to then that's when you can
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start actually selling a service what
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works best for that is the productized
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model we talked about so again if you're
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doing something like video right there's
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a ton of different things you could do
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you could design thumbnails for YouTube
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you could do an on-demand video editing
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service you could do a color grading
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service right and come up with like a
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specific offer and packages to sell or
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some kind of offer structure where let's
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say your main package is three thousand
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dollars a month then you can have a down
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sell or an upsell or whatever right and
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so what that might look like is certain
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deliverables inside of a package and a
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deliverable would be like we'll color
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grade this many videos in this specific
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way for this amount of money if you can
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have a service that people need is
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recurring and you can find the people
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who have the money to buy it then
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there's there's really no stopping you
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yeah and you think that's more effective
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than just I guess selling your time to
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do some some video work for you know a
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few hours 100 packaging your your skill
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set is much more effective because
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you're in control of what you're
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charging you're being paid for your
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expertise not your actual time so if you
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had an a person and a b person and they
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both had 10 years of experience maybe
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you say a person is getting paid hourly
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even if it's 500 an hour right like
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they're a lawyer or something and then B
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person is selling a a productized
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service they're still going to make 10
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times more because they could sell what
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person a is doing for 500 an hour maybe
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it takes them 10 hours and then person B
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can then charge five thousand dollars
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give them the same result and so
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technically person a and person B are
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being compensated the same the person B
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can go and then hire people to help them
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fulfill that right and so it's just this
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whole this whole scaling thing is is
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where you make the real money do you
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have any employees or is it just you
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yeah so I started off by myself and now
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we have a team of about four so I don't
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have any full-time employees but I have
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like a couple full-time contractors and
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then some like a closer in fractional
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roles that help me do certain things
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operationally yeah and my team is is
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also International as well how's that
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work it's great because I mean for a lot
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of reasons but they get paid you know
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more than they would make where they are
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and my team's pretty young too like
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younger than me so it's cool to be able
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to give people you know like when I back
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when I was 18 like I would have loved to
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be doing what they're doing now yeah and
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so it's it's cool to bring that full
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circle and be able to pay someone what
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they're worth more than they would make
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where they live you know they can work
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remote they're not my employees so they
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take trips and stuff and take work off
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so that's that's been enjoyable too and
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how do you find really good talent
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there's a lot of ways but when you start
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building an audience people will
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naturally want to work for you because
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they believe in what you're doing and
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they think that what you're doing is
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cool so all the people that are working
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for me right now reached out to me and
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the reason I hired them is because I
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know if they're reaching out to me that
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they're really dedicated and motivated
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to get done what they want to do and
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it's turned out to be true so far so how
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much does it cost to run your business
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like generally speaking monthly
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so we have a tech stack that is and then
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there's also Payment Processing fees and
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stuff like that
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um in terms of like labor it's hard to
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put a put a put a pin on that because
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it's completely dependent on how many
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videos we're doing are gross profit
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margins
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um are about 65 and then net is probably
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between 40 and 50 just depending on a
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couple things but in terms of our the
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tech stack is really the only one thing
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that we consistently spend money on yeah
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on a monthly basis what do you mean by
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Tech stack so okay so we have the cold
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email sending software the software that
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we run the list through I have to pay
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for slack you know we use stripe which
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is free but we paid the fee on that Tech
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stack specifically is probably like
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twelve hundred dollars a month and
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that's so that's just what we use to be
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able to actually execute the services
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that we sell right
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I notice you mentioned building an
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audience what does that look like for
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you just posting consistently
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um and finding a niche too when you
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think of a niche like it has to be
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really specific like super specific so
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at first it was just videos for me and
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then it became short videos like no
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longer than 60 seconds right and then it
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became short videos for online Brands
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and then it went to short videos for
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online brands that are B2B SAS companies
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did you see the business grow when you
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kept niching down like that yes because
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it made it very obvious like who our
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product was for it's counterintuitive
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too because like when you the more
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people you say like no you're not a fit
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then the faster you'll find people that
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will actually buy from you have you been
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able to raise your prices because of
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this niching down that you've done yeah
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we've we the first video we sold was
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five hundred dollars and we've basically
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Timex our prices so now our average
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order value is like 3K but we sell we
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just introduced some new packages that
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have been selling really well from
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anywhere from six to twelve what advice
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would you have just for anyone that
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wants to get started with an online
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business what's the first step do things
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like go on YouTube and do research on
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what you actually want to do and then I
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would spend as much money as you can
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afford on coaching and programs that are
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fit on what direction you wanna you
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wanna go from people that are reputable
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not not lamb burgers
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this is where I get a lot of my work
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done we got the the nice aperture light
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set up here and trust the old 16-inch
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MacBook Pro so we actually
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coincidentally just closed the deal
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right as we started filming this so nope
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it's got a 400 sale we've got starter
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stories a good luck charm so we're gonna
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send this contract out and then talk a
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little bit about how we got here in the
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first place you said you'd grown it from
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zero to fifty thousand pretty much in a
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year what did that look like did you
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start with just like 5 000 a month how
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did that grow we kind of started how we
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are still now but we sophisticated our
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offer so before it was you'll buy one
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video it'll basically be whatever length
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and it's a flat fee essentially what we
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did now is we created a package so
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you're not only buying you can still buy
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one video but we use this as a down sell
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now if someone doesn't want to buy the
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package with the packages it's a set of
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videos and then we reformat that set of
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videos so that people can run it on all
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the platforms and things like that and
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then we also will set up retargeting ads
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for them we won't run them but we'll do
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a bunch of setup and stuff like that so
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that it's an offer that's more inclusive
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of what the end goal is rather than just
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here as a video it actually sets them up
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for Success yeah so when you started
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repackaging your offering like that is
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that when you started to see the growth
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in terms of I guess like financially
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yeah because in terms of monthly like
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Revenue it was like 7K then 5K then 9k
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and then we went to like 12 23 33 and I
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would say what we introduced that offer
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when we were struggling to get above
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like 12km Yeah because it just wasn't
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the one videos were sophisticated enough
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and the ticket price wasn't high enough
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to bring us past that right how did you
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find your first customer what's been
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your main channel for growth yeah so
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there's been a couple different ones
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some work better than others but
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primarily we've done Twitter we've done
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cold email we've done like direct dming
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so like on sales navigator on LinkedIn
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or through Twitter and really I mean
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keeping it simple like it's just really
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cold Outreach and then the organic
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content reaching out to people for the
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viewers who don't know a lot about cold
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Outreach what does that typically look
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like like how many uh cold emails are
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you sending and what what's like your
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lead response rate that sort of stuff
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you got to send a lot and for our ICP
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which is stands for ideal customer
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profile specifically the open rate or
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reply rate for software is only about
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they're two different things the reply
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rate is really only like four four
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percent typically on average so you know
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you're talking about reaching out to
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thousands of people and then when you
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get those people to reply now all of
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them will book a call with you either
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right um so it's kind of you just have
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to do the math depending on what your
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numbers look like
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um and in terms of you know what a cold
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email looks like it's basically it's
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really simple it's
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basically two sentences it's like hey
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you know we noticed on your site that
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you don't have a video like above the
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fold on your landing page that's
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something we do like have you ever
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looked into that and that's it you know
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a lot of people will write like a huge
[937]
paragraph and like no one has a title
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right so how does the sales process work
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for anyone that's running kind of a
[942]
productized service what would you
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recommend doing or yeah so to break it
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down really simply you'll basically have
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like top of funnel you have like the
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middle of the funnel and then you have
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bottle funnel so top of funnel for us is
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organic social posting the DMS in cold
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email and then the ads right so like
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those three things what happens is a
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certain amount of people convert from
[963]
top of funnel to the middle of the
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funnel so someone will open the email
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someone will see a post of ours or even
[968]
both sometimes people will open an email
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and then go check out my LinkedIn
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profile right and then they'll book a
[973]
call either directly to our socials or
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on the website and that's kind of the
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middle funnel and the bottom of the
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funnel is like getting on a sales call
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with my closer then either buy or not
[984]
buy essentially yeah so it's yeah it's
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basically those three main parts where
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did you learn this B2B and
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um so the coaching and then just trying
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it out yourself yeah so the coaching is
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good for like at least for me like I
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felt like pretty directionless I was
[997]
like oh you know I know I want to have
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an online business but I don't know
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where to start I don't know like what
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kind of stuff to watch but you're
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dedicated and you know you want to do it
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so I spent the money in the coaching the
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coaching gave me an hour line and
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Direction and then I took that direction
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and I tried it myself so for example the
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cold email stuff I knew enough to
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actually just try it I didn't know
[1021]
enough to do it and then you start doing
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it more and through repetition you get
[1026]
you get better at it yeah so same thing
[1028]
with the sales calls like
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I'm not a salesperson like I don't like
[1033]
doing it and but I've probably taken
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like 150 sales calls and then once I
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took enough sales calls to have a
[1041]
structure to it I gave that to someone
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to do for them what's your schedule
[1045]
what's a typical day for you like wake
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up at 7 30 start working by like eight
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or eight thirty drink a ton of coffee
[1051]
and in terms of actually working I
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probably sit at my desk you know eight
[1056]
hours a day pretty normal working amount
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and then you know an hour or two is also
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just spent like thinking like walking
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and stuff like that when I'm actually
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sitting at my desk what I'm doing is
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project management so I'm in slack
[1069]
channels you know communicating with
[1071]
clients implementing feedback delivering
[1074]
products to them things like that a
[1077]
certain top portion of my time is spent
[1079]
doing organic content so writing I'm
[1082]
going to be recording more videos
[1084]
um planning stuff out for that and then
[1088]
um also consuming a certain amount of
[1090]
content you know obviously try not to
[1091]
consume too much yeah but maybe threads
[1094]
about building your business and stuff
[1096]
like that so like a certain amount is
[1097]
fulfillment some of it is sales and
[1101]
overseeing some of the people that work
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with me and then just trying to get
[1105]
better every day yeah do you work on the
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weekends
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yeah
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um so the thing about weekends for me
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personally is if I if I don't I don't
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work like eight hours on Sunday and
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eight hours on Saturday but
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I find that if I don't work at all on
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the weekends I lose some sort of like
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momentum or I feel like I'm coming back
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into my business and I've been gone for
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a week exactly so on that same note
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vacation you take time off or do you
[1134]
take time to recharge or anything like
[1136]
that yeah so I actually recently took
[1138]
off that's the other cool thing about
[1140]
having a business though is like
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you don't have like PTO necessarily you
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can kind of do it when you want as long
[1148]
as you have some sort of system in place
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um but yeah I recently I recently went
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out to California for like a week and
[1155]
then another cool thing is because it's
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fully remote like I could go on like a
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working trip and still work but have a
[1163]
refreshed you know environment to work
[1165]
in yeah
[1168]
foreign
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if there's one last thing something I
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hear really often is like you know
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follow your passion
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it's kind of like
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follow instead of following your passion
[1182]
like save your passion for what you want
[1184]
to do outside of work
[1186]
what you should really be doing at least
[1188]
in my experience is following what
[1190]
you're good at and you like doing
[1191]
because if you find something you're
[1194]
good at and you enjoy doing you're ahead
[1197]
of 99 of people already yeah
[1199]
and then you can just save your passion
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for
[1202]
because you don't want to make your
[1203]
passion yeah yeah so and if you're good
[1206]
at something it's a lot easier to just
[1208]
kind of do it every day even when you're
[1210]
not making any money it's like if you're
[1212]
good at something it feels good to do it
[1214]
therefore and yeah and so for me that
[1216]
was video I used to do them for free you
[1218]
know like way back when I was like 16 I
[1221]
used to do them for free and my mom was
[1222]
like you need to start charging money
[1224]
for these I was like oh really like and
[1227]
now we're here so yeah yeah
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