Three months ago, I posted Will Your Show Scale?”. I hadn’t really thought about scale much since then, but thanks to an IRL encounter, I’ve realized that the consideration of scale has become a part of my “listening” when it comes to business plans.

So the other day, somebody brought up a REALLY, REALLY DUMB idea for a video to create. I mean, *REALLY* DUMB! :D So dumb that I’m not even going to mention what it was. We talked about the equipment we’d need to make the video and the funds we’d need to produce it.

Based on the $$$ we’d need, which was only a few hundred dollars, I then asked this person what his plan was for recouping our initial investment. He said he wanted to sell DVDs. I said “Cool. For how much?”… He says $5. I did some basic math and informed him of how many DVDs we’d have to sell to break even. THEN, I informed him that the only way this project was going to be worth our while was if our return was MUCH larger than our initial investment.

Let’s say we would have needed $300 to make the video. That would mean we’d need to sell 60 DVDs @ $5 to break even. That means we’d have to sell ANOTHER 60 to MAKE $300 on the whole project. Then, we have to split the money, meaning we’d need to sell *ANOTHER* 60 DVDs for me to receive my own personal $300 profit after recouping my initial $150 investment.

However… That’s not actually “profit”. The video’s not going to film itself. The video’s also not going to edit itself. The video’s not going to cover equipment fees or suite fees. The video’s not going to cover transportation to and from the location. The video’s not going to cover the time spent getting all the elements together for the shoot. The video’s not going to jump onto a DVD on its own.

This means that my “profit” is actually my own self-payment for making the DVDs. Now, we have to work backwards. By selling 180 DVDs, I get my investment back and receive an extra $300. This means that my ability to work on this project ends after the amount of time that I’ve determined is worth $300. This amount of time would have to cover travel to and from the destination, shooting the video, loading, editing, encoding for the DVD, authoring the DVD, burning the DVD, and making labels. Needless to say, we were going to have to sell a whole hell of a lot more DVDs than THAT! :D

Of course, this entire scheme was dependent upon being *ABLE* to sell 180+ DVDs in the first place. If we couldn’t do that, the project’s just wasted time and wasted money. Like I said in the beginning, the idea was retarded from the giddyap, but I wanted to see how far he had thought this out before he started running his mouth about “business”. Without some sort of guarantee, the project doesn’t even get off the ground, because there’s no incentive for the technicians to work and MAYBE get paid for it. As the one with the idea, he should have pitched taking financial responsibility for the project. He should have told me how *I* was going to make money regardless of whether he could sell his DVDs or not. Since he didn’t do that, *MY* ROI was based on the success of his venture, so I moved the discussion to distribution.

So I said something like “So once we get it done and put it on the net, we…” and he interrupts me with “OH! NO!… I don’t want to use the internet!”

……

………….

So I held myself back from laughing in his face long enough to ask “So… Let me get this straight… You intend to walk around town selling DVDs hand-to-hand?” (‘Cause I know that *I* sure as hell wasn’t going to be doing that, evAr). He was like “Yeah”, which was when I disallowed my mind from processing .not .even .one .more .nanosecond of his project. :D

There’s too much automation these days to deal with the archaic process of hand-to-hand distribution. Throw your work up on Cruxy.com, put a price on it, publicize it and see if anyone wants to buy it. If you depend on yourself, when you stop selling, the store closes. When you go to sleep, the store closes. When you go to work, the store closes. When you don’t have any DVDs on you right now, the store closes.

Forget all that. Welcome to the new world, Neo. Get with the program.

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