Simplicity, Saving Time & Sustainable Success for filmmakers Ep94

“Simplicity is the Ultimate Sophistication”
- Leonardo da Vinci

In the 94th episode of the Moonshine Moonshot podcast, host Sue Collins discusses the beauty of simplicity; an art that is at times overlooked or not considered, but in reality, keeping things simple may just be the key ingredient you need to make things happen.

Do you have a goal in mind but not sure how to achieve it?  The answer is simple - planning. It’s pretty hard to get your production off the ground without a clear plan of what you want to achieve and how. Lucky for you, Sue delves into the formula she swears by to hit those production goals, and shares 5 simple steps that could help save you time, and ensure it’s smooth sailing for your film from the get-go.

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello, hello, and welcome back to podcast number 94 of the Moonshine Moonshot. It has been a frantic week since I last spoke to you, so there is a lot to talk about. On the weekend, I went to see a new exhibition on Leonardo da Vinci and one of his quotes really resonated with me. Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. Welcome to the Moonshine Moonshot Podcast. I'm your host, Sue Collins, and if you've landed here, it means you're wanting to find out more about how to make filmmaking a sustainable career. And you're also curious about how to make meaningful work that fills your cup. You're ready to learn how to make movies that matter, build a sustainable career, and have a positive impact on your audiences. So you are in the right place. Filmmaking has so many parts, and I'm sharing what I've learned over the past 15 years producing impact films that reach their intended audience and support real-world change. So let's get started. So simplicity. Understated, but I see so many people sending themselves into a tailspin because they are not using the principle of simplicity in their planning, or worse, they're not planning at all. And you may have heard one of my previous episodes where I talked about the five-step process to achieving any goal or project, and it was back at episode number 73. And if you want to head back and find it, it's a great system to make shit happen. So I do recommend going back to episode 73 after this, if you're interested in learning more about a five-step process to get pretty much any project made. Today I am going to talk about it again. And what if I told you there were only five steps to make your project come to fruition, start to finish? Yeah, I know. Yeah, right. If only and oh if only that were true. But you can plan out your project or your goal by using a five-step formula which gives you the plan or the roadmap on how to get to start to finish, and you can achieve it. And so I hope now I have your attention to get into the rest of this episode. Did you know that Harvard did a study and found that people who spend twenty minutes planning a day achieve more in forty hours than those who work a sixty hour week without a plan? Now this is something that you need to pay attention to because wouldn't you rather achieve all of your work in 40 hours than in 60 hours? And over the course of a year that is massive. If you work a 40 hour week for a year, that's 2,080 hours. Now if you work a 60 hour week, it's 3,020 hours a year. That's an additional 20 hours per week and it adds up to being over a thousand hours more per year that you could save yourself time-wise. In other words, you could save yourself around 25 weeks worth of work. So let that sink in. 25 weeks worth of time is saved simply by spending 20 minutes each morning planning out your day. It is completely unrealistic to work a 60-hour week every single week. So that means that it will take you an extra 25 weeks over a longer period of time. So what I'm talking to you about is how to make the most of the time you do have efficient and get the best work done in the best possible way. And planning is a really big part of this. So even if you don't like the idea of planning, I'm really hoping that those statistics that I just told you about how much time you can save get you inspired to think about maybe even just trying some of these techniques. Because I watch a lot of very busy people doing a lot of hours. But I always ask, are they being efficient or just expanding the work to fit the time that they have available? Because we are all guilty of that. We have a deadline and sometimes we just leave things to the last minute and cram to get it done. It happens to the best of us. But you can't run your life like that long term and get good results. So if you want to bring your film projects to fruition in a reasonable amount of time with the best chance of success, then you need to plan it out. It is that simple. Plan your time. And you don't need to reinvent from scratch every time. I think this is something where people really come undone. And this is where systems and processes are extremely useful. If you start documenting your processes for how you do things, you will find it much easier to rinse and repeat, which is a really efficient way to get things done. It is not cheating, it is a way to create systems that work, that are robust and help you stay on track. So I reckon some of you probably had your eyes start to glaze over as soon as I said systems and processes, but believe it or not, they are liberating. Oh, I was just looking for a place where I could learn everything I need to know to make an amazing film that changes the world. It's such a shame that that place doesn't exist. Oh what? Hang on. It does. Oh, if you're looking for inspiration, ideas, tools, and ways to learn how to make movies that matter, head to Moonshine Communications Academy over at Instagram and all your problems will be solved.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

Warning results may vary depending on the questions, and success is not guaranteed. Always read the label Magic is Anecdotal and the Genie is not included.

SPEAKER_01 6:06

We are just about to start a new digital marketer into our team, and I am really excited about having the new support, and I can't even begin to tell you how relieved I am that we've found a really great person for the role. But to get them started and working efficiently, they need a really clear plan on what we want their role to achieve. So I went to my marketing plans from past years, and what do you know? I'd already created a marketing plan for YouTube, another one for Instagram, and another one for Moonshine Agency. They are still solid plans. I just haven't had the capacity to realize those plans, but they're solid. And so I've modified them and I've updated them for each of the new projects that we want to work on. It's so much easier and quicker than having to do all of that thinking all over again from scratch. Let me tell you, systems and processes are gold. So what I was just saying is that I found work that I'd spent a lot of time on two or three years ago, and I've now been able to refresh it rather than starting from scratch. There you go, huge amount of time saved there. So it is worth documenting your processes. Now, what is the five-step process to achieve any project? Look, as I said before, I recommend you go back to episode 73 for all the details. But in a nutshell, it goes like this. First, what are you trying to achieve? What's the goal? And then you've got to apply this really simple formula, X to Y by when. For example, if I say wanted to grow an Instagram profile from 250 followers to a thousand followers by July 2024, the formula would sound like this X is 250 followers, and the Y is a thousand followers, and the deadline is July 2024. It's specific and clear. X to Y by when? 250 followers to a thousand followers by July 24. You can apply this formula to just about any goal or plan you have, but that is not enough. Having that goal is not a plan. It's like saying you want to run, you know, a marathon. So you want to go from walking once a week to running a marathon in six months. Okay, that's a goal, but how? How are you gonna do that? How are you gonna go from pretty much a standing start to running a marathon? Think about the Instagram goal. How will we achieve that? How can you go from 250 followers to a thousand followers? What are the five big steps that will make the X to Y by When goal a reality? So I think I would start with a brainstorm. First, I'd go and research best practice on how to gain followers on Instagram. So step one is research. This research is going to reveal the next four steps. So let's imagine that I've actually already done this work. So step one is research. Step two is implement the learnings from the research. Step three is create the content for Instagram. Step four, schedule out the plan. Step five might be to monitor and analyze what's working and what's not and iterate based on that. Now, of course, within each of those steps is going to be a list of sub steps or tasks. For example, step two, implement the learnings from research could be update the bio on my Insta profile to be clear and contain keywords. Step two might be update the profile picture. Sorry, it's not steps. These are these are sub steps. The next thing I might need to do is research hashtags. Maybe what sort of content to create and posts and reels and stories. How often to post those images, how often to post those reels and stories. Comment on other people's posts and get social. Some advertising, giveaways or competitions. There are so many options and these will each have actions that need to be taken. So within each step, you will have an action step, and these could have sub lists, and ultimately you will create a master plan which is almost like a checklist of things that you have to do. And the key to all this is then you have to do it. Plan it, schedule it, and do it. It's simple. I did not say it was easy, I said it's simple. It is going to take time and tenacity, but the plan is clear and simple. So I hope all of this has made sense. And if not, please, as I said, listen to episode 73 for a more in-depth details on how to use the five-step process. But essentially, there are five big steps you need to take to achieve just about any goal and make it become a reality. And I think part of the reason I'm sharing this with you again today is because I love it when you listen to a podcast and you hear really useful advice. And I was just listening to an episode of Julie Solomon's Influencer podcast, and she was interviewing a person called Brock Johnson, who's an Instagram growth coach. And he had a lot of great stuff to say, but one takeaway that he said that was about Instagram profiles, and he was talking about defining your niche. And that is something I am always banging on around as well, because I even produced a course on how to define your ideal audience. So I really feel like I'm across this topic. And I spent time crafting a great bio for the Moonshine Communications Instagram profile. And to be honest, we didn't we we haven't been getting a lot of traction on it, which is partly why I was listening to this particular episode to get some pointers. And Brock mentioned how important it is to specify what your account is about and who it's for up front in the bio subheading. I checked ours and um I had put our tagline as make movies that matter. But oh my gosh, he is so right. This is vague. It does not speak directly to what the profile is about, which is about how to make documentary films. So I've immediately changed the tagline to documentary filmmaking. And I think the rest of what we had there actually fits. But with his suggestion, just doing this one seemingly small detail, if I hadn't made it crystal clear who the Instagram profile is suited to, I wasn't being clear and it wasn't a simple thing to understand. So I hadn't clearly defined who the ideal follower is. I couldn't believe it. I was such a aha kind of slap the palm to the head moment. And that's really what you want to get out of a podcast when you're trying to learn something new, isn't it? You want useful, engaging information. So I really hope what I've told you, I hope there was an aha moment for you in this podcast today. And if there was, please leave me a message over on Instagram, direct message me, and let me know what it was that you found useful and engaging around the five-step plan to get your project made. Anyway, happy creating everybody, and I will be back next week to talk to you. I'm actually going to dig into the wonderful world of production bibles. So I will speak to you again soon. Thank you for joining me today and every week here on the Moonshine Moonshot Podcast. If you're wanting a deeper dive into the topics being discussed on the show, then I would encourage you to head over to Moonshine CommunicationsAcademy.com and sign up for the weekly drop of moonshine via your email. Being on our newsletter community means we can support your filmmaking journey in a more tailored way as well as keeping you up to date with the resources we share on how to make movies that matter and so much more that we deliver inside your inbox every single week. So head over to Moonshine CommunicationsAcademy.com and at the bottom of the homepage you'll see a little box to add your email address, and as a thank you for signing up, we'll also send you a bonus ebook to support your messaging. So voila, you'll be on the way to receive all the best content weekly.