The Inner Game of Building a Video Production Business

Over the past twenty years I’ve spent an enormous amount of time learning how to build a successful video production business.

Like most business owners, I immersed myself in the practical side of entrepreneurship. I studied sales, marketing, pricing, negotiation, leadership, systems and finance. I invested in books, courses, mentors and business coaches. Those things mattered, and they’ve all contributed to building a production company that I’m genuinely proud of.

Looking back, however, I don’t think any of them have been the deciding factor.

The biggest challenge has never been technical.

It’s been psychological.

Every business owner eventually discovers that success depends on far more than mastering the mechanics of their craft. You have to learn how to deal with uncertainty, rejection and self-doubt. You have to keep moving when work is quiet, remain optimistic after losing a project you desperately wanted and continue investing in the future while dealing with the demands of the present. Long before a business tests your technical ability, it tests your mindset.

Over time I’ve come to think of this as the inner game of running a business.

Many of these ideas have surfaced in different podcast episodes over the years, but I’ve never gathered them together in one place. They’re not rules, and they’re certainly not the only way to build a successful business. They’re simply the philosophies I’ve found myself returning to whenever things become difficult.

Some of them came from books. Others emerged through years of coaching business owners. A few arrived unexpectedly through experiences that changed the way I think about both business and life.

I hope these ideas resonate with you.

More importantly, my hope is simply that they encourage you to develop your own philosophy. Having a strategy tells you what to do. Your philosophy is what keeps you doing it when the strategy alone isn’t enough.

Harness a Sense of Urgency

One of the biggest differences I notice between people who steadily build successful businesses and those who remain stuck isn’t talent, intelligence or opportunity.

It’s urgency.

Most business owners already know what they should be doing. They have a website they’d like to improve, old clients they mean to contact, marketing they’ve been planning to begin or ideas they’ve wanted to explore for years. Yet those important tasks somehow keep drifting into the future, crowded out by editing deadlines, client emails and the everyday busyness of running a production company.

The problem isn’t usually a lack of knowledge.

It’s the quiet assumption that there will always be more time.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve become increasingly aware that time is the one resource we consistently underestimate. We assume opportunities will still exist next year. We assume we’ll eventually find the motivation. We assume the people around us, our enthusiasm and even our own energy are permanent fixtures.

They’re not.

I was reminded of this while thinking about mountain biking with my son. When he was younger we’d head out together regularly, and I never imagined those weekends would come to an end. As he grew older his interests naturally shifted towards friends, motorbikes and everything else that comes with becoming an adult.

I don’t remember our final ride together.

At the time it simply felt like another Saturday.

Only later did I realise it had become the last one.

Business opportunities are often like that. We rarely recognise them while we’re living through them. It’s only in hindsight that we appreciate how valuable a particular season really was.

I don’t find that depressing.

I find it energising.

If life is finite, then today’s opportunities deserve today’s attention. The business you’ve imagined won’t gradually appear while you wait for a quieter week or the perfect moment to begin.

There probably isn’t one.

Adopt a Regret Minimisation Policy

People often say you shouldn’t have regrets because every decision you’ve made has shaped the person you’ve become.

I understand the sentiment, but I think it overlooks an important distinction.

Some regrets are healthy.

If you make a poor decision, accept responsibility, learn from it and become a better person because of it, that regret has served a purpose. It has taught you something success probably couldn’t have.

The regret I worry about is different.

It’s the regret of opportunities that were never taken.

It’s looking back years later and wondering what might have happened if you’d simply been a little braver. If you’d made the phone call, submitted the proposal, hired the employee, raised your prices or finally committed to building the business you’d been talking yourself out of.

That kind of regret offers no lesson.

Only speculation.

We’ll never know what might have happened.

Early in my career, I decided I wanted to minimise that type of regret as much as possible. Not because I wanted to build the biggest production company in Australia. That was never my ambition. I simply wanted to know what I was capable of.

I wanted to see how far I could take the business if I genuinely committed to it.

That philosophy has quietly influenced many of the decisions I’ve made over the years. Expanding the business when it felt uncomfortable. Hiring people before I felt completely ready. Launching new services. Starting a coaching business. Beginning this podcast.

None of those decisions came with certainty.

They simply came with the belief that I’d rather discover the answer than spend years wondering what it might have been.

When I’m facing a difficult decision, I often imagine looking back from twenty years into the future.

Which choice is more likely to leave me saying, “I’m glad I gave it a go”?

I’ve found the answer is usually surprisingly honest.

Be Radically Honest With Yourself

One of the easiest traps to fall into as a business owner is confusing the fantasy with the reality.

The fantasy is compelling.

You imagine building a thriving production company, working with clients you admire, enjoying financial freedom and producing work you’re proud of. There’s nothing wrong with those aspirations. The problem comes when we become more attached to the image of success than the reality required to achieve it.

Every worthwhile business eventually asks difficult things of you. It asks you to tolerate uncertainty, have uncomfortable conversations, accept rejection and carry responsibility when things don’t go according to plan. The question isn’t whether those challenges exist. The question is whether they’re a price you’re genuinely willing to pay.

I’ve met people who dream of building large businesses but have little interest in leading a team. Others pursue growth because they think that’s what successful entrepreneurs are supposed to do, even though what they really want is a simple, profitable lifestyle business with plenty of time for family and other interests.

Neither path is better.

They’re simply different.

The danger comes from building someone else’s definition of success instead of your own.

This reminds me of something from my childhood.

Whenever my family went on long road trips I’d sit in the back seat with headphones on, imagining I was the lead singer of whatever band I happened to be listening to. In my mind I knew every lyric, every guitar solo and every dramatic moment of the concert.

Looking back, it’s slightly embarrassing to admit.

But it also taught me something important.

I loved the fantasy of being a musician.

I never loved practising.

I wasn’t prepared to spend thousands of hours mastering an instrument or writing songs because, deep down, I loved the destination far more than the road leading to it.

Business has a way of exposing those fantasies.

It asks whether you truly want the reality, not simply the identity that comes with it.

I’ve found one of the healthiest questions you can ask yourself is also one of the simplest.

Do I genuinely want this?

Or do I simply like the idea of being someone who has it?

The more honestly you’re able to answer that question, the more likely you are to build a business that actually fits the life you want to live.

All You Need Is One Car

Around twenty-five years ago, a friend and I hitchhiked the length of New Zealand.

It remains one of the most formative experiences of my life.

We travelled from Auckland on the North Island to almost the bottom of the South Island with little more than our backpacks and a willingness to trust that somehow we’d find our way. There were days when everything flowed effortlessly. There were others where we’d spend hours standing beside an empty road watching car after car disappear into the distance.

Those were the moments when doubt crept in.

Whenever one of us started feeling discouraged, the other would remind us of something we’d begun saying almost as a joke.

“All we need is one car.”

Not twenty.

Not even five.

Just one.

One person pulling over would completely change our circumstances. Within moments we’d be moving again, heading towards wherever we were trying to go.

I’ve thought about that phrase countless times since then because business often works in exactly the same way.

When things are quiet, it’s easy to convince yourself that nothing is happening. You begin refreshing your inbox a little too often. You start questioning your marketing, your pricing, your portfolio and eventually yourself. Scarcity has a way of shrinking your perspective until it feels as though the future of the business depends on everything changing at once.

In reality, small businesses rarely change because of hundreds of opportunities arriving together.

More often, they change because of one.

One client.

One recommendation.

One conversation.

One proposal that gets accepted.

One project that quietly turns into a relationship lasting years.

Looking back over my own business, so many important chapters began with what initially appeared to be an ordinary opportunity. A single production led to another. Then another. Recommendations followed. Relationships deepened, and before long the direction of the business had shifted in ways I never could have predicted.

The same has been true outside business.

Meeting my wife.

Finding the right business coach at exactly the right stage of my career.

Conversations that fundamentally changed the way I thought about work, ambition and life.

That’s why I’ve never completely lost optimism during quieter periods in business. Not because I assume everything will magically work out, but because experience has taught me that circumstances can change remarkably quickly.

The next opportunity may already exist.

You just haven’t met it yet.

Choose to Be Chosen

The philosophy that has probably stayed with me longer than any other came from that same trip through New Zealand.

While passing through Wellington, my friend and I stayed with an old friend. During those few days I met a man called Blake, a self-described poet and philosopher. Before we left, he noticed the journal I had been carrying throughout the trip and wrote a single sentence inside it.

“There are those who choose, and there are those who are chosen. Choose to be chosen.”

At the time, I dismissed it.

It sounded like one of those vague philosophical statements that seemed profound without really saying anything. I thanked him, closed my journal and thought very little more about it.

A few days later we arrived at Queen Charlotte Sound. We pitched our tent in a national park, and then it rained. Not for an hour or an afternoon, but relentlessly for three days. With very little to do other than read, think and wait for the weather to clear, I found myself coming back to that sentence over and over again.

Gradually it began to make sense.

Life contains things we can control and things we can’t. We choose where we direct our effort, how hard we work, what skills we develop and how we respond when things don’t go our way. At the same time, much of life remains outside our control. We can’t dictate when opportunities arrive, what the economy does or whether a client ultimately chooses us over someone else.

Most of life seems to exist somewhere between those two extremes.

I’ve often thought of it like surfing. A surfer can’t create the wave or control exactly when it arrives, but they can position themselves well. They can study the conditions, paddle to the right place and be ready when the opportunity appears. If they’ve done those things well, catching the wave almost looks effortless, even though a great deal of preparation made that moment possible.

Business often feels exactly the same.

You can’t force a client to hire you, but you can become the obvious choice when they’re ready to make a decision. You can develop your craft, communicate your value clearly, build a body of work you’re genuinely proud of and consistently show up in the places where your ideal clients are likely to find you.

That’s what “choose to be chosen” has come to mean for me.

It isn’t about waiting for luck, and it isn’t about believing everything is within your control. It’s about taking complete responsibility for the things that are.

One of the patterns I’ve noticed through coaching is that many capable business owners underestimate themselves. They hesitate to approach larger organisations because they assume someone else is more experienced. They undercharge because they secretly question the quality of their own work. They avoid promoting themselves because they’re worried about appearing arrogant or overly confident.

Ironically, that hesitation often becomes the very thing holding them back.

Clients aren’t looking for perfection. They’re looking for confidence. Not loud confidence or manufactured confidence, but the quiet confidence that comes from someone who genuinely believes they can solve the problem in front of them.

That kind of confidence isn’t something you wait to feel before acting.

More often, it grows because you choose to act.

Every proposal you submit, every difficult conversation you have and every ambitious project you take on expands your understanding of what’s possible. Over time, you stop asking yourself whether you deserve better clients and begin asking a much more useful question.

“What would make me the obvious choice?”

That question shifts your attention away from things you can’t control and back towards the things you can.

You can’t choose whether someone hires you.

You can choose whether you’re worth hiring.

Get Used to Saying Goodbye

When people think about growth, they usually think about acquiring something. More clients. More revenue. Better equipment. A larger team. A stronger reputation.

What I’ve found is that growth is just as often about letting go.

Every meaningful stage of my business has required saying goodbye to something that once felt safe and familiar. Sometimes it has meant letting go of limiting beliefs about what I was capable of. Sometimes it has meant leaving behind ways of working that no longer suited the business I was trying to build. Occasionally it has meant moving on from people or environments that had served me well but were no longer taking me where I wanted to go.

Those moments are rarely comfortable.

In fact, discomfort is often the very thing that tells you you’re growing.

I remember when I decided to move the business from a shared office into our own premises. Looking back, it probably wasn’t the biggest decision I’ve made, but at the time it felt significant. The shared office was full of good people. There was a genuine sense of community, and after spending years there it had become part of my identity.

Moving into our own office represented something different. It meant taking on greater financial responsibility, stepping away from an environment I genuinely enjoyed and acknowledging that the business was becoming something else.

There was no certainty that it was the right decision.

Only the feeling that staying where I was no longer reflected where I wanted to go.

I’ve seen the same pattern repeat throughout my career.

Sometimes you have to let go of the clients who no longer value your work so you have room for those who do. Sometimes you need to stop accepting projects that drain your enthusiasm in order to make space for the work you actually want to become known for. Occasionally you outgrow a way of thinking that once served you well but has quietly become a limitation.

None of those goodbyes diminish what came before.

If anything, they honour it.

Every stage of the journey gives you something you’ll need later, even if its role in your life has come to an end.

I’ve become more comfortable with goodbyes over the years, not because they no longer carry sadness, but because experience has taught me that almost every meaningful beginning is preceded by an ending.

Growth rarely asks, “What would you like to add?”

More often it asks, “What are you prepared to leave behind?”

Work Is Not a Dirty Word

There was a period when almost every business book seemed to promise the same destination.

Build passive income. Escape the daily grind. Work four hours a week. Spend your afternoons on a beach while your business somehow continued making money without you.

There is certainly wisdom in creating leverage and building systems that don’t rely entirely on your own time. I’ve spent years trying to make our business more efficient and more scalable, and I think that’s an important part of becoming a better business owner.

What I gradually came to question was the underlying assumption.

Success seemed to be defined as escaping work itself.

That never quite felt right to me.

Several years ago, my production company reached a point where everything seemed to be running beautifully. We had a number of excellent long-term clients, a talented team handling much of the production work and a healthy pipeline of projects. For the first time I genuinely felt as though I’d arrived.

Without really noticing it, I relaxed.

I spent more time pursuing hobbies, stopped paying as much attention to developing the business and gradually took my foot off the accelerator. I hadn’t consciously decided to become complacent, but looking back, that’s exactly what had happened.

Then business did what business always does.

One major client was acquired, and their work gradually disappeared. Another built an internal production capability and no longer needed our services. Within a relatively short period, a substantial portion of predictable revenue had vanished.

Those changes weren’t anyone’s fault.

They were simply reminders that no business stands still forever.

The lesson wasn’t that I should have worked harder.

It was that I’d stopped enjoying the work of building the business itself.

The healthiest businesses I’ve encountered aren’t built by people trying to escape work. They’re built by people who genuinely enjoy solving interesting problems with people they like working alongside. They continue improving because they find satisfaction in the process, not because they’re desperately chasing an imaginary finish line.

That’s very different from becoming a workaholic.

Meaningful work shouldn’t come at the expense of your health, your family or the rest of your life. But meaningful work is one of life’s great privileges, and I think we do ourselves a disservice when we begin viewing it as something to escape.

If you constantly find yourself fantasising about getting away from your business, it may be worth asking whether the problem is actually the work, or whether you’ve gradually built a business that no longer reflects the life you wanted in the first place.

The goal was never to stop working.

The goal was to build work worth doing.

Get Obsessed

We hear a great deal about the importance of balance, and rightly so. A fulfilling life includes far more than work. Family, friendships, health and interests outside your business all deserve time and attention, and neglecting them for too long eventually catches up with you.

At the same time, I’ve never met anyone who built something exceptional by remaining perfectly balanced every day of the journey.

Every worthwhile pursuit seems to require seasons of intensity.

Athletes understand this instinctively. They don’t train at maximum effort every day of the year, nor do they expect to perform at their peak every week. They move through cycles. There are periods of heavy training, periods of recovery and periods devoted to competition. Each serves a different purpose.

Business works much the same way.

There are moments when a particular opportunity demands more of you than usual. Perhaps you’re rebuilding your website, launching a new service, creating a body of marketing content or preparing a proposal that could significantly change the direction of your business. Those periods often require a level of focus that temporarily pushes other things into the background.

The important thing is recognising that intensity is a season, not a permanent state.

Problems arise when obsession becomes exhaustion. Constantly operating at full capacity eventually diminishes both the quality of your work and the quality of your life. On the other hand, never allowing yourself to become deeply immersed in anything meaningful almost guarantees you’ll remain ordinary.

I’ve come to think of balance as something that exists over the course of years rather than days.

Some weeks ask more of you than others. Some periods are devoted to building. Others are devoted to resting, reflecting and reconnecting with the people and activities that sustain you. Both are essential.

If there is one thing worth becoming slightly obsessed with, I believe it’s the process of continually improving your business.

Not because growth is everything, but because craftsmanship matters.

Caring deeply about your work. Refining your systems. Becoming a better communicator. Looking for ways to serve clients more thoughtfully than you did a year ago. Those quiet improvements, repeated over many years, eventually become your reputation.

The businesses that endure are rarely built through occasional bursts of enthusiasm.

They’re built by people who remain quietly fascinated by the craft long after the novelty has worn off.

Build a Healthy Relationship With Discomfort

Every meaningful ambition eventually introduces you to discomfort.

You submit proposals knowing many of them won’t be accepted. You increase your prices without knowing how clients will respond. You invest in equipment before you’re certain it will pay for itself. You publish ideas that might be ignored and create work that sometimes falls short of your own expectations.

None of those experiences are enjoyable.

They’re also unavoidable.

One of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned is that success depends less on avoiding discomfort than on changing your relationship with it.

For a long time I assumed confident people simply experienced less fear than everyone else. I imagined they moved through business without questioning themselves or feeling nervous before important meetings.

Experience has convinced me otherwise.

Most confident people still experience uncertainty.

They’ve simply stopped interpreting it as a signal to turn around.

That doesn’t mean glorifying hardship for its own sake.

Occasionally I come across versions of entrepreneurship that almost celebrate suffering, as though exhaustion, sleep deprivation and relentless struggle are proof of commitment. Stories of working through illness, sacrificing every relationship or pushing yourself beyond sensible limits are often presented as badges of honour.

I’ve never found that particularly convincing.

Discomfort and self-destruction are not the same thing.

The discomfort that matters is the kind that gradually expands your capacity. It’s having the difficult conversation you’ve been avoiding. Making the sales call that makes you nervous. Standing in front of an audience when public speaking doesn’t come naturally. Taking on a project that stretches your current abilities without overwhelming them.

Those experiences don’t diminish you.

They strengthen your belief in yourself.

I’ve found it helpful to cultivate that sort of discomfort outside business as well. Whether it’s endurance sport, cold water swimming, hiking or any pursuit that regularly asks a little more of you than feels comfortable, the lesson is remarkably transferable.

You begin to discover that discomfort has limits.

You learn that difficult moments pass.

Most importantly, you start trusting yourself.

That trust becomes invaluable when business inevitably presents its own challenges. Instead of viewing problems as evidence that something has gone wrong, you begin recognising them for what they really are.

Evidence that you’re operating at the edge of your current capabilities.

That’s where growth has always lived.

Not in comfort, but just beyond it.

Humbleness Is Confidence

There is a curious misconception in business that confidence and humility exist at opposite ends of the spectrum.

We’re often encouraged to project certainty, to “fake it until we make it” and to present ourselves as though we have every answer. Spend enough time on social media, and it’s easy to conclude that the loudest people are also the most successful.

My experience has been almost the opposite.

When I think about the people I’ve most enjoyed working with, buying from or learning from, they all possess a similar quality. They don’t need to dominate conversations or constantly convince others of their expertise. They already know what they’re capable of, and that quiet confidence allows them to remain humble.

They’re comfortable admitting when they don’t know something. They’re happy to acknowledge the expertise of others. They ask thoughtful questions instead of rushing to provide immediate answers.

Ironically, those qualities inspire far more confidence than pretending to know everything.

I’ve found the same pattern in my own business.

Earlier in my career, I sometimes felt pressure to appear as though I had every situation under control. If a client asked a difficult question, there was a temptation to answer immediately rather than admit I needed time to think. If an unfamiliar situation arose, I felt I should already know the solution.

Experience gradually taught me that clients aren’t looking for perfection.

They’re looking for judgement.

Trust isn’t built by having every answer. It’s built by approaching problems thoughtfully, communicating honestly and demonstrating that you’ll make sensible decisions when things become complicated.

Perhaps the greatest irony is that genuine confidence eventually makes you less concerned about appearing confident.

Once you know your own value, you no longer feel compelled to prove it at every opportunity. Your attention shifts away from protecting your ego and towards serving the client.

To me, that’s what confidence looks like.

Quiet.

Calm.

And entirely comfortable with the fact that there’s always more to learn.

Be the Wolf

One of my favourite characters in film is Winston Wolf from Pulp Fiction.

His role is remarkably simple. A serious problem emerges, everyone else panics, and then The Wolf arrives. He assesses the situation without emotion, develops a plan, delegates responsibility and quietly gets on with solving the problem.

I’ve thought about that character surprisingly often over the years because, in many respects, I think that’s exactly what clients are really looking for.

On the surface they tell you they need a corporate video, a livestream or a training programme.

In reality, they usually need something else.

They need a problem solved.

Sometimes the problem is obvious.

They have a conference approaching, a product to launch or a training programme that needs communicating.

More often the real problem sits beneath the surface.

The marketing manager has been asked to deliver something they’ve never produced before. Senior leadership expects everything to run perfectly. The deadline is unrealistic because approvals were delayed. Different stakeholders all have conflicting opinions, and nobody is entirely sure who has the final say.

By the time they contact you, they’re often carrying far more than a creative brief.

They’re carrying responsibility.

One of the biggest shifts in my own career happened when I stopped thinking of myself primarily as someone who made videos and started thinking of myself as someone who solved communication problems.

That subtle shift changed almost every conversation I had with clients.

Instead of asking, “What sort of video do you need?” I became more interested in asking, “What problem are you really trying to solve?”

Sometimes the answer had very little to do with cameras.

Perhaps they needed someone to reassure nervous stakeholders. Perhaps they needed help simplifying a complicated message. Perhaps they simply needed an experienced pair of hands to guide the project and make sure nothing important was overlooked.

Those are the things clients remember.

Beautiful cinematography matters.

Creative storytelling matters.

Strong editing matters.

But professionalism is measured just as much by the experience of working with you as it is by the finished video.

The production companies that earn long-term trust are rarely the ones with the newest equipment or the biggest showreel. They’re the ones that reduce stress rather than create it. They communicate clearly, remain calm when plans change, and quietly solve problems before they become crises.

When you become that person, something interesting happens.

Clients stop hiring you simply to produce videos.

They begin bringing you their biggest challenges because they trust your judgement.

In my experience, that’s where the most valuable client relationships begin.

Consistency Beats Grand Gestures

Looking back over more than two decades in business, I’ve become increasingly sceptical of breakthrough moments.

There have certainly been projects that changed the direction of my company, clients who opened unexpected doors and decisions that altered the trajectory of my career. But almost all of those moments rested on foundations that had been laid months or even years earlier.

The internet has a habit of celebrating dramatic success stories because they’re exciting and easy to tell. Overnight success makes for a compelling headline. What we rarely see are the thousands of ordinary decisions that made that moment possible.

Businesses are built in those ordinary days.

They’re built by following up with the client who hasn’t replied yet. By improving your website when nobody is asking you to. By writing another article that only a handful of people might read. By refining your sales process, improving your communication and making countless small decisions that feel almost insignificant at the time.

None of those actions seem particularly important in isolation.

Together they become a career.

I’ve found that idea strangely reassuring.

You don’t need to be extraordinary every day. You don’t need endless motivation or constant inspiration. You simply need to keep turning up, even when progress feels slower than you’d like.

There will be weeks where everything seems to click. You’ll produce work you’re genuinely proud of, enquiries will arrive unexpectedly, and the future will feel full of possibility. There will be other weeks where nothing much appears to happen at all.

The important thing is not to confuse temporary results with long-term direction.

Businesses, much like physical fitness or relationships, are shaped far more by repeated behaviours than occasional heroic efforts.

Consistency has a quiet power.

It compounds.

Usually without you noticing.

Until one day you look back and realise how far those ordinary days have carried you.

Become a Fan of Your Competitors

I don’t think anyone starts a business without comparing themselves to other people.

I certainly did.

In the early years of running my production company, I’d look at other businesses producing better work, winning clients I admired or building the kind of reputation I wanted for myself. Sometimes it inspired me. Other times, if I’m being completely honest, it made me feel jealous.

Comparison has a way of doing that.

It quietly convinces you that someone else’s success somehow diminishes your own, as though there are only so many worthwhile clients or interesting projects available.

Over time, however, something changed.

I began to realise that the businesses I admired weren’t taking anything away from me. If anything, they were showing me what was possible. They became evidence that clients valued quality, that there was room in the market for excellent work and that building an exceptional production company wasn’t just an abstract ambition.

Today, when I see another company produce outstanding work, my first reaction is usually curiosity.

How did they approach it?

What decisions did they make?

What can I learn from this?

That mindset is infinitely more useful than resentment.

It also reflects something I’ve gradually come to believe about competition itself.

Most of us aren’t really competing against other production companies.

We’re competing against our own potential.

There will always be businesses larger than yours, companies producing work you’ll admire and people who appear further ahead. Chasing them is exhausting because the finish line constantly moves.

A healthier comparison is with the person you were twelve months ago.

Is your work improving?

Are your client relationships stronger?

Have you become a better communicator?

Are you building the sort of business you once hoped to have?

Those are comparisons you can actually influence.

Ironically, the less energy I’ve spent worrying about competitors, the more I’ve enjoyed watching them succeed.

Good work raises the standard for everyone.

It reminds me that there’s always another level to aspire to, and that’s something worth appreciating rather than fearing.

Fall in Love With the Process

One of the more surprising discoveries of my career has been how fleeting achievement can feel.

There have been clients I desperately wanted to work with, revenue milestones that seemed incredibly important and projects that I convinced myself would somehow change everything. Reaching those goals was always satisfying.

For a while.

Then, almost without noticing, my attention would drift towards the next challenge.

For years I wondered whether that meant I wasn’t appreciating what I’d achieved.

I don’t think that’s the case anymore.

I think it’s simply part of being human.

Ambition isn’t really a destination.

It’s a direction.

The danger comes when we convince ourselves that satisfaction exists somewhere in the future, waiting behind the next milestone. We imagine that once revenue reaches a certain level, once we land a particular client or once the business finally looks the way we’ve always imagined, we’ll arrive at a permanent state of contentment.

In my experience, that place doesn’t exist.

Achievement matters.

Goals matter.

But they don’t sustain us for very long.

The thing that sustains us is the process itself.

It’s the satisfaction of solving a difficult problem. Producing work that keeps getting better. Improving your business one thoughtful decision at a time. Working alongside clients whose trust you’ve earned over many years.

Those experiences make up almost all of your career.

The milestones occupy only a tiny fraction of it.

Looking back, some of the happiest periods in my business weren’t necessarily the most financially successful.

They were the periods when I felt deeply engaged with the work itself. I was learning, experimenting, improving and enjoying the daily practice of building something meaningful.

That’s gradually changed the way I measure success.

Instead of asking whether I’ve achieved enough, I find myself asking different questions.

Am I improving?

Am I doing work that matters to me?

Am I becoming better than I was a year ago?

Those questions are available every day.

They don’t depend on external recognition or the next big opportunity.

They’re simply part of the practice.

And ultimately, I think the practice is the point.

The Twenty

One of the ideas that has influenced my thinking more than almost any other is the Pareto Principle, the observation that a relatively small proportion of people often produce a disproportionately large share of the results.

You see it everywhere.

A minority of books account for most sales. A relatively small number of athletes dominate elite sport. A handful of businesses within almost every industry seem to attract an outsized share of the best opportunities.

Video production is no different.

For a long time, I wondered what separated those businesses from everyone else.

I don’t think the answer is talent alone.

More often it’s a willingness to do the things other people quietly avoid.

They continue marketing when work is already busy.

They invest in relationships long before they need them.

They ask difficult questions.

They seek honest feedback.

They continue learning after many others have become comfortable.

None of those behaviours are glamorous.

Most aren’t even particularly difficult.

They’re simply consistent.

That’s one of the reasons I eventually called my coaching mastermind The 20.

Not because I believe everyone should aspire to build the biggest production company possible, but because I think every business owner benefits from asking themselves an honest question.

How good do I actually want to become?

There isn’t a right answer.

Some people want to build a business that comfortably supports their family while leaving plenty of room for other priorities.

Others want to build something much larger.

Both ambitions are entirely legitimate.

What matters is recognising that different ambitions require different levels of commitment.

Your business doesn’t ask you to become someone else.

It simply asks you to become a more disciplined version of yourself.

It’s Just a Ride

For all the seriousness with which we approach our businesses, it’s worth remembering what we’re actually doing.

We’re making videos.

We’re helping organisations communicate more effectively. We’re telling stories, solving problems and creating work that, hopefully, leaves people better informed, more connected or more inspired than they were before.

That’s meaningful work.

But it isn’t life or death.

There have certainly been moments throughout my career when it felt that way. Projects with impossible deadlines. Important pitches that seemed capable of changing the future of the business. Shoots where everything that could go wrong appeared determined to do exactly that.

In those moments, it’s very easy to lose perspective.

You begin measuring your worth by the outcome of a single project or whether a particular client decides to work with you. Success feels intensely personal.

So does failure.

Age and experience have gradually softened that tendency.

What I’ve come to appreciate is that the business was never really the destination.

It has simply been the vehicle through which I’ve been able to build a life that feels meaningful.

It has introduced me to remarkable people I never would have met otherwise. It’s allowed me to work with organisations I admire, travel to places I never expected to visit and solve problems that continue to interest me more than twenty years later.

More importantly, it has allowed me to support my family while doing work that I genuinely enjoy.

When I look at it that way, it’s difficult not to feel grateful.

That isn’t to suggest there haven’t been difficult periods.

There have been projects that failed, clients that disappointed me, mistakes I’d rather not repeat and stretches where I questioned whether I was on the right path at all.

Every business owner accumulates those experiences eventually.

They’re part of the price of trying to build something worthwhile.

What changes over time is your relationship with them.

You stop interpreting every setback as evidence that you’re failing.

You begin understanding that difficult seasons aren’t interruptions to the journey.

They are the journey.

Looking back, I don’t think any of these philosophies are particularly extraordinary on their own.

What matters isn’t whether you adopt mine.

What matters is that you develop your own.

Business will test you in ways you can’t anticipate. There will be periods where confidence disappears, opportunities dry up, and you’ll question whether you’re capable of building the business you’ve imagined.

Those moments are exactly why the inner game matters.

Strategy tells you what to do.

Your philosophy determines whether you’ll keep doing it.

If there’s one thought I’d like to leave you with, it’s this.

Don’t spend your career trying to become the perfect business owner.

Spend it becoming a little better than you were yesterday.

The rest has a remarkable way of taking care of itself.