BETA (TEST) CLIENTS An off the cuff episode... - Episode 131 - Film Pro Productivity & Success

Episode Transcript
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(00:01):
This episode is sponsored by Matt Herbert. Hello, and welcome back to Film
Pro, Productivity and Success, thepodcast that helps creative people to live a
more focused, effective and happy life. My name is Carter Ferguson, and

(00:21):
this is episode one hundred and thirtyone working with beta clients. Unfortunately,
the client that exists today is stillpretty much the prototype design Sean Fanning unquote

(00:42):
and the astute amongst You may havenoticed that I changed the intro to that
one, just dropping the reference tofilm professionals, because really this was never
particularly aimed at film professionals. Tosome extent, it was aimed at filmmakers
because that was the creative world inwhich I was working. I think it
works fine. Like what I've justdone there. It gives me a little

(01:03):
bit more room to get it inas well. Sometimes I have to rush
it if I've got a long title. But if you really don't like it,
give me a shout and I'll maybechange it back. I'll see how
I feel about it myself after aweek or two. Anyway, I'm back
on recording a new show here.It's right at the end of twenty twenty
two. It's the thirty first infact, and I'm recording two new shows

(01:25):
because I've got a busy time comingup. And this first one I'm going
to get into it is called,as I say, working with beta clients,
and this is one which is possiblyof more interest to those of you
that are in business or those ofyou that are freelancers, just as a
heads up, but I'll fire straightinto it. And in software development,
a beta test is the second phaseof software testing in which a sampling of

(01:49):
the intended audience tries a product out. Beata being the second letter of the
Greek alphabet, and originally the termalpha test meant the first phase of testing
and a swear development process, butI'm going to refer to it here in
a slightly different context, in thatof working with clients. And I'm going

(02:09):
to be completely honest with you here. I worked out this show in quite
extreme detail earlier in the week.I've took a full day to develop two
shows, and I've completely lost mynotes this episode. Oh god, there's
so much going on with this crowdfunderthat I've got running at the moment,

(02:31):
and the film i'm shooting that i'veasked up. So but I do have
my initial initial notes from this one, which I'll try and put something together
for you from. But yeah,I have searched everywhere. It's not in
my word documents. And what Ithink I might have done is I say

(02:53):
I worked on two episodes and itshouldn't have happened this way, because I
do remember renaming it. Possibly Ishut down one before I saved it,
and I've been going through all thesavings and it's just not there. But
there's a lesson for you, aproductivity lesson. You don't want to be
doing the same job twice. Unfortunatelyfor you today, I don't have time
to do the big number on itthat I did before, so I'm just
going to sketch it out for you. So beta clients are a test client.

(03:16):
In effect, you want to findsomebody that is perhaps your friendly with
or that isn't going to give yougrief if you perhaps don't deliver exactly what
you are hoping to. But atest client, a beta client is good
if you've got a new business idea, or you want to expand into an
area you have not got much experienceof. Working with a beta client can

(03:38):
help you to understand what the problemsare and find solutions before you're in a
situation where money is changing hands.So this is almost a follow one to
that doing stuff for free episode thatI did a few episodes ago, and
I have found myself doing this fairlyrecently on Mercy Falls, with which is

(03:59):
Ryan Hendricks. He shot that featurein March and I was on his fight
coordinator, and it just so happenedI had brought a camera one day.
I shot some behind the scenes stuffand I said to him, who should
have send this too? And hesaid, there's nobody doing behind the scenes
video. We've only get somebody doingbehind the scenes stills. So I kind
of made an agreement with him atthat point. I'd shoot behind the scenes
stuff for him and put behind thescenes video together. And it was good

(04:24):
for me because I wanted to learnthe camera that I had, the GH
five, and I wanted to knowit's quirks and it's problems. I also
had a number of lensies that Iwanted to try. I was trying to
work with vintage to Kumar lensies,which look fantastic, by the way,
but it's much much more difficult toget sharp focus, etc. If you're

(04:45):
on a manual lens and in someof the modern lensies, and I also
wanted to try it out Da VinciResolve, which I have edited a few
things on in the past, butI haven't done any anything particularly complex on.
And so there was a whole lotof benefits for me in doing it,
and I did think although I didn'tspecifically want to be shooting behind the
scenes stuff, so maybe maybe theniche it was maybe a mistake to do

(05:08):
that as a niche, it justseemed to like a good opportunity for me
with Ryan as the beta client,to get some learning. And but I'm
going to go through some reasons maybewhy I shouldn't have done that, although
it was a worth way of exerciseas far as I'm concerned at this end
of it. But there's a fewthings that maybe will come up in my
notes here rather than my detailed organizedinformation in my initial notes that might kind

(05:30):
of make you question whether that decisionwas the right one or not. And
these are questions which make them upyourselves. One thing I'd say is having
the wrong beta client can hurt youas much as it can help you.
It didn't in that particular instance withRyan at all. But I think if
I had maybe went into it withoutan awareness of what I was trying to

(05:54):
get out of it, I couldjust have wasted an awful lot of time
and given an awful lot of thattime away for but without any real return
from it. Because basically, ifyou've got the wrong beta client, you're
wasting your time. You're getting informationthat will not help you to grow as
a business. And what you wantto be doing is finding the right person,
the right company that is going togive you exactly what you want out

(06:17):
of it, the learning you wantout of it. And I think that
kind of was brings me to pointone and all this, which is to
ask yourself, are you sure whatyour niche is? You kind of need
to know exactly what your niche downinto what exactly you want before you commit
to doing something which is going towell give you a commitment to deliver something

(06:39):
somewhere down the line. Having betaclients from everywhere won't help you. You're
just working for free, you see. You need to be mindful of what
your niche is, and when youpick that niche, you need to know
that all of the beta clients thatyou are considering work and work within that
niche and are going to give yousomething back from that niche if it makes

(07:00):
sense. And the second thing,and I'm working from notes here, folks,
I know, maybe not wordying thisas well as I usually do,
but the second thing I've got writtendown here is be careful that you're not
giving away more than what you're getting. Yeah, Basically, the information that
comes back from a beta client hasgot to be enough to help you to
move forward to for example, gointo another job, paid job with the

(07:23):
knowledge that you know how to addressthe new client's problem and provide a solution
to that new client. You know, that's that's what you want to be
learning from your beta client. Andto say, if it's the wrong client,
the wrong beta client, you're goingto be learning the wrong stuff.
You're going to be going in thewrong direction. So stick to that niche.
The third note to have got hereis your beta client. Well,

(07:44):
yet, beware that your beta clientdoesn't block you from having the information you
need to learn from. This wouldcome up, come up, come up,
perhaps in marketing numbers. Let's justsay you were helping our band,
say, to promote their music video, so you make a music video for
it. You're really doing it becauseyou want to see you right, Okay,
I can make the music video,but I want to know the figures.

(08:05):
I want to know who's watching it. I want to know if we're
putting good lads out or whatever intothis. We need to know what the
effect is on the numbers. Andif you're getting blocked from knowing what the
analytics are, perhaps then you're notreally going to be able to go to
the next music video client to sayI did this before and we got this

(08:26):
number of viewers. You know,you know what I mean. So you
need to have access to the informationthat's going to be valuable to you as
you move on, and some peoplemay try to block you from that information.
And the fourth thing I've got onmy list is they have a long
list of things for you to doinstead of you being able to focus on
the one thing. Yeah, beaware with a bit of client that they're

(08:48):
not suddenly giving you stuff to dothat you've not really agreed to. In
the first instance, you could findyourself getting taken off in directions that suit
the client, and they're basically usingnew as a free resource to create stuff
for them, but it's not thedirection you want to go in. So
I'd say you want to really layit on the line when you initially agree
to work with a beta client exactlywhat they're going to get, and if

(09:09):
they start diverting from that and askingfor new things and clicking things on,
you probably want to be talking tothem about actually costing money or just to
leave you alone so you can deliverthe one thing you've agreed to. So
just be careful. These things don'tgo arms and legs. And what is
it, I've called it before,done an episode on it, Mission creep.
It's mission creep. So you agreeto one thing and suddenly you find

(09:31):
you're doing three, four or fiveother things. That's not good, especially
if it's all distracting you from theinformation you're trying to learn. The things
you're trying to learn while working witha beta client. Another problem to watch
out for it is that you're workingwith somebody who's chaotic. They just don't
have the information that you need becausethey don't know where to look for it.

(09:52):
So I find this sometimes if I'mworking with working on a fight sequence
for someone and that they've ever hadto deal with fights before, and not
a BEATA client in this example,but I've spent, see, spend an
awful lot of time teaching that personwhat my job is or that company what
my job is, and it justdistracts from from destructs. It takes up

(10:18):
time that I don't have to give, or I do have to give because
they're paying me money. But Ican find myself spending hours sorting out stuff
that if I'd worked for another clientthey already knew. Also, you want
to find a client that's at acertain level already that understands let's just say
we use a music video analogy again. You want to access this information about
how it's, how the analytics aregoing, where it's playing, if people

(10:39):
are watching it, etc. Ifthose people you're working with don't actually know
how to generate that information, they'renot going to be able to give it
to you. So trying to ensurethat the people you're working with have got
at least a little bit of aclue of what they're doing and like that
again, will help me depend downif they're the right people for you or
not. Numbers six and my listhere, And I had to stop the

(11:01):
recording and reread this a few timesbecause but I don't really understand what my
notes are sometimes is be sure whenyou originally approach your b TOW client to
ensure that they understand the relationship thatit's kind of what we're saying a minute
ago, that you present yourself inthe correct way basically, and you do
lay down exactly what you're trying tohelp them with, what problem of theirs

(11:24):
you're trying to solve, and ifthat's not agreed and clear at the start,
you could get yourself into trouble somewheredown the line. The next one,
I've actually got got here. Ithink I've already covered it. Yeah,
be careful not to You're not lookingfor somebody that you're going to have
to teach everything from the beginning.It's what we're saying earlier. Find somebody

(11:46):
that's at the right level that you'restepping up to learn from, rather than
somebody that's that's at a lower levelthan you and you're really helping them,
but you're they're never going to beable to give you the help back that
you need. And finally I've gothere. Ye, Yeah, this is
an important one. I've found thismyself in the past. Ensure that you
have a relationship with the actual decisionmaker. If you're working with a business

(12:09):
of any sort, if you don'thave a relationship with the right person,
then you're wasting your time. AndI did help my brother out on something
he was needn't done and I shot. I wasn't expecting anything back from it,
but I shot some stuff for him. He said it was going to
take me five minutes. It tookme five hours to get there. It
took me about four hours to shootit, and it took me with five

(12:31):
hours to get back. I'm exaggeratinga little bit, but not by much.
It was a nightmare. And thenI had like a day of editing.
Anyway, that was to help mybrother out, and that went on
up the line, and that wasusing. It was all fine. However,
there was no benefit to me indoing that. And yes I was
doing them a favor, but ifthat was a beta client at my relationship
was not with a person that madethe decisions. So if that person at

(12:54):
the top liked what I had done, they wouldn't know that I was anything
to do with it. So it'sreally really important that you're working with the
right person and not somebody down theline, because as people down the line
will take and not give back remindsme of a situation a face more than
once. When working with a millionaire, you think, oh, this person's
a millionaire, this is going togo well. In my experience, someone's

(13:16):
a millionaire because they are that pennypinching that they will not part with their
money. And I have spent alot of time and effort developing stuff for
somebody in the hope that that wasgoing to go to a directing a big
directing job for me, and it'skind of went nowhere, kind of relevant
to what I'm talking about here atmaybe not as precisely as I would like.

(13:39):
And this is what you get whenyou get an off the cuff episode.
But yeah, that's the kind ofeight things I think I went through
there that allow two them might havebeen the same one to be fair.
Eight things to be aware of whenyou're looking for a BEATA client. But
BEATA clients are useful, they arehelpful. I enjoyed working with Ryan on
the Mercy Falls, behind the scenesstuff. I've actually delivered it now,

(14:01):
although I didn't not I did notdeliver a fully finished, polished product.
What I did is I am delivereda first draft and then I got so
much work that I couldn't. Wewere talking about it and it was going
to get refined, and I wasinto that really really busy period of it
with fourteen weeks of fight contracts,and so I didn't know it was going

(14:22):
to be fourteen weeks. I justkept unfolding and unfolding. And Ryan had
said, well, I've got timemyself to work on it, and I
thought, right, the right thingto do here is I've delivered draft one
of the edit. Is I'll deliverthe entire edit to Ryan, and Ryan's
going to do his own polished versionof it, which it's possibly how it
would have went anyway. But Igot out of it what I wanted.
I got to use my software,I got to use the cameras. I

(14:43):
got to face a few problems alongthe way. I got to make a
few mistakes, but it didn't reallycost me. Ryan's happy that he's got
a bunch of stuff, didn't costmething. I'm happy that I got a
bunch of learning from that relationship aswell. So that's all good. But
I've not get any fing astic quoteson hand. I'll find one for the
end of the show, though,but that's that's really all I've got to

(15:03):
talk about today. I do apologizefor being a little bit ropey, but
I'm hoping there's something to learn inthat lot. Let me just say quickly
here though, that I have gota pot and this is the podcast.
I've got a crowdfunder running when thisepisode goes out. It's for my feature
not feature film, for my shortfestive horror film, The Traveler. It's

(15:26):
on Indiego Go, And if yougo onto my social media, go on
to Fight Underscore Director on Twitter,and it's the same Fight Underscore Director on
Instagram, and or you can findme on Facebook somewhere or whatever this information
is around. I'll tell you what. I'll go onto the website and I'll
put a link to the Indigo Goat the top of it. But I'm
looking for your support financially. Ifyou can, there's there's the usual you

(15:50):
know, what's it called perks.You can buy into the film itself.
I can tell you a little bitabout It is about a salesman called Elliott
who's heading home on Christmas Eve toJohn in his family, and unluckily for
him, something evil joins with himinstead. So a little short horror thing.
It's got quite a lot of movingparts to it. Logistically, it's

(16:10):
really very, very difficult. Andit's my attempt, after a few years
not shooting any short films, toget back on the directing filmmaking horse,
as it were, and shove somethingout that is of quality. And I've
got some fantastic people working on it, but I can only really afford about
half the budget myself, and I'mtrying to raise two thousand pounds, which

(16:32):
sounds like a lot of money.It is a lot of money to some
people. Certainly after two and aboutyears of COVID, I do not have
the finances I had before it,so I do need to run the crowdfunder
to make it work. But Iam hoping that if I can find like
one hundred and I think i'm somethinglike thirteen percent of the money at the
moment, if I can get likeone hundred and seventy people or thereabouts to

(16:53):
just done eight ten pounds to thecrowdfunder, then I will hit my target.
So if it's of interest to you, if I've describe it in any
way well at all, there asI say, I'm feeling very much on
the back foot with this episode.If it's of interest you please go and
check it out. And if youcan't afford to financially back it, please
are really, really really would appreciateit if you would share the links,

(17:15):
because it's all about reaching that crowd. But that's enough for just now.
Deep apologies that I asked this episode. I hope there's something worth listening in
there. This one goal going downin the annals as the least prepared of
all the shows I think I've everdone. But yeah, that's it for

(17:36):
now, and yeah, next week'sshow it is there. I have got
it, got here, all mynotes full. It's about gatekeepers, and
that's the kind of last point Iwas making there in the eight points I
was bringing up. You know,make sure you've got a relationship with the
decision maker when you're talking about betaclients. This is all about gatekeepers.
Gatekeepers are people that will block youor the people that will let you in

(17:56):
and whatever you want to do.And they are very very important if you
want to proceed in life. Andthere's ways of dealing with them, and
there's ways of getting around them,and I talk about that sort of stuff.
But quite an important episode for now, though, I'm going to leave
you with a quote from I'm goingto pause it here. I'm going to
look up a quote and I'll beback in a second. Okay, I

(18:18):
went and looked one app and here'sa good one from Peter Drucker, who
always looked to revisit for a goodquote now and again. He says that
quality and a service or product isnot what you put into it. It
is what the client or customer getsout of it. So bear that in
mind if you go to start lookingfor beta clients. That's as important as
anything else I said here, probablymore important. But for now, let

(18:42):
me say, take control of yourown destiny, keep on shooting and join
me please next time on Film ProProductivity and Success. Music that you can
hear right now as Adventures by AmhuMitsu and the executive producer of this season

(19:03):
is Christopher mc phillips from our Tossdigit All. You can view the show
notes for this episode on the officialwebsite Film Pro Productivities dot com. Hello,
I'm not sure of what they willbe at this point. You can
also follow my personal accounts on Twitterand Instagram at Fight Underscore Director, or
follow the show on Twitter at filmprol prod pod or on Facebook at film
pro Productivity. Please support the showby subscribing, spreading the word, and

(19:29):
leaving an awesome review.

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BETA (TEST) CLIENTS An off the cuff episode... - Episode 131

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}BETA (TEST) CLIENTS An off the cuff episode... - Episode 131