252: Why Setting Expectations is Essential to Your Business' Success w/ Guy Giaimo-McClung

Grow Your Video Business

Have you ever fallen into the trap of taking any job that pays? While it’s healthy to try a bunch of different stuff to see what you enjoy, you also don’t want to spread yourself too thin. Today’s guest explains all these considerations and what he learned while building his video business.

Key Takeaways

Setting expirations for proposals and bids will push clients to act faster and allow you to get more work done in a shorter time frame.

If you have a partnership between multiple people, make sure that one person is a majority owner. That way hard decisions will ultimately fall to just one person and impasses can be more easily avoided.

About Guy Giaimo-McClung

Guy has been filming since 2012 in one avenue or another. Today, he is the owner and operator of Skinikid Productions. From wedding videography to political and industrial work, he has experienced many different facets of the freelance world. He is currently working on the challenge of building a business while balancing the demands of family life and parenting.

Being Clear with Clients From the Start

In this episode, Guy and I discuss the importance of setting proper expectations for clients. In order to eliminate unnecessary work for both you and them, be clear on your process from the very beginning. For instance, communicating your revision process and timeline will ensure that you’re not working endlessly on a project.

One way to do this is to set expiration dates for proposals. You don’t want clients sitting endlessly on a bid. Let them know from the start that they need to act by a certain date if they want the price you quoted. It also gives an extra incentive for them to work with you now rather than later.

Considerations When Forming Partnerships

Guy also explains the structure of his business, which is a partnership between him and one other person. These arrangements have a lot of benefits. But they can also be fraught with potential strife. I share my advice that one person should be the majority owner. That way, bickering, and standoffs can more easily be avoided when tough decisions arise.

I also urge anyone entering into a partnership to prepare for its possible end. No matter how awesome working together may seem at the start, it’s best to have all eventualities covered. Having contingencies planned for and expectations set from the start will prevent possible complications and strife further down the road.

What do you always communicate to clients to set proper expectations? Do you provide statements of work? How do they help you avoid issues with clients later on? Leave a comment on the episode page!

In This Episode:

• Balancing work and family life while starting and building your business [6:00]
• Learning what type of work fulfills you the most [9:00]
• Our responsibility to communicate the process and set expectations for clients [11:50]
• Building partnerships as you grow your business [17:00]
• The importance of segmenting and having specific language around your niche [23:20]
• Doing extra freelancing work that you’re passionate about [28:30]
• Learning how to learn from your mistakes as your business grows [33:00]

Quotes

“It’s been super beneficial to narrow down the type of work that I like to do, and probably more importantly, the type of work that I don’t like to do.” [10:04]

“If clients have a timeline that they’re trying to get this done by, we have this bit of time open for now. It’s not yours until you sign the contract.” [15:45]

“In retrospect, I feel that I really would have appreciated if I’d made the effort and invested in myself and went out and figured out how to make it happen and learned on the business end what I didn’t know.” [33:45]

Links:

Join the Grow Your Video Business Facebook Group

Core

Find Guy Giamo-McClung online

Follow Guy on Twitter | Instagram | Facebook

Additional Links:

Check out the full show notes page

Do you have something to share on this podcast? Fill out this form here.

Be sure to take the Grow Your Video Business survey for a chance to win some incredible prizes (if we do say so ourselves!)

Stay up to date with everything we're doing at Grow Your Video Business

Tune in to our weekly Facebook Lives

Follow Studio Sherpas on Facebook | Twitter | Instagram

If you haven't already, we'd love it if you would take 1 minute to leave us a review on iTunes!

Related Episodes:

Episode 250: The Biggest Takeaways from 5 Years of This Podcast