Straight answers on pricing, sales, marketing, positioning, hiring, growth and mindset for video production business owners. Den Lennie is an author and business coach for video production company owners, and this is the reference for the questions owners actually ask.
Author and coach for video business owners. Three decades in production, five books, and VBA members generating $52M+ in additional revenue.
Coaching, community and tools: the Elite and Ascend programmes, the AI toolset, and SceneOps. Who each is for.
$52M+ in additional revenue across members, and what video business owners say about the coaching and the room.
The five disciplines a video business grows through: Survival, Control, Alignment, Leverage, Expansion.
Five books for video business owners over more than a decade, from Business for Filmmakers to The S.C.A.L.E. Method.
A video edit that blew past its agreed revision rounds and ended in a walkout. What the missing boundary really cost.
A hundred quotes in and still freezing on every one. How a real method ended the pricing anxiety.
Envying a competitor's calendar, not their clients. How a monthly retainer turned spikes into a rising floor.
The full ladder: the Growth Strategy Session, VBA Ascend, and VBA Elite, with prices.
The cost-of-delivery method: time, gear, overhead, margin. Build a price you can explain and hold.
The four things you give away for free (travel, delivery, storage, admin) and how to name them up front.
Name them, count them out loud, and have the money conversation before the work, not after.
When a budget is lower than the work, hold your rate and reduce what's delivered.
Margin, cost of delivery, break-even. Financial literacy is the quiet foundation under every confident price.
Give a real range, make scope the variable, and open a conversation instead of closing one.
Don't send the showreel and wait. Ask a diagnostic question first and quote the outcome, not the footage.
Authority isn't performed with jargon, it's demonstrated by asking better questions.
Stop asking permission. State the next step. A follow-up creates momentum, it doesn't ask to be chosen.
Drawing a line isn't losing the relationship. Absorbing the cost teaches the wrong lesson.
Warm is a wasting asset. The money leaks in the follow-through, not the introduction.
Owners over-engineer content and under-execute outreach. Pick one channel, execute, adjust from data.
Mine what you've already delivered before you commission the next shoot.
You don't have a lead problem, you have a "who am I for" problem. Niche on where your profitable work clusters.
Your background is usually your strongest positioning asset, and most owners walk straight past it.
Turn a deliverable into a monthly system so your business stops resetting to zero every month.
Account expansion is faster money than new logos, and most owners reach for the new logo first.
Interview to filter, pay to decide. Never hire on the showreel alone.
Many tactical questions are a proxy for reassurance. The answer is usually evidence, not another tactic.