How Can Video Marketing Build Trust and Visibility for Your Business? | Justin Vajko

Some agencies are doing a form of this, but it's basically designed for written content and it's not designed for video content. The difference between a session with us is that we're optimized for short-form only video. That is it.

Welcome to another episode of The Profitable Creative, the only place on the interwebs where you will learn how to turn your passion into profit. I am your host, Christian Brim. Special shout out to our one listener in Post Falls, Idaho. Uh, actually went to Idaho for the first time last year on my way to Wyoming. I, I don't think I was lost. I was following GPS. I don't know why it took me into Idaho, but I really couldn't tell the difference between Idaho and Wyoming. It was beautiful, absolutely gorgeous. Uh, in any case, thank you for listening. Joining me today Justin Vaco of— don't tell me, hold on a second. I'm going to— Justin Vaco of Dialogue Video Marketing. Welcome to the show, Justin.

Thank you so much, Christian, for having me.

No, that's my— my brain is addled.

It's okay. It's the afternoon right after lunch.

That's bad. So why don't you give the listeners a short CV on who you are and what you do.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I was born at a young age. Now we'll go that far back. I am the founder of a marketing agency specializing in short-form video thought leadership. So the problem everybody has with video, just having a conversation today on LinkedIn with another potential partner, is that, you know, these agencies, they want to get video from their clients. If you're in digital marketing, if you're in ads and They struggle to do it. Uh, so the old model is broken. Clearly, if you ask for it, clients won't give it to you. So the way we solve that is we get on the client's, client's calendar remotely. We coach them on how to use their phone to record a video. We do it with them. We're asking them questions, they're answering, and we add those and send those to our client who are very happy to now have all this beautiful, rich, short-form content. With their client in it that they can use for whatever purposes they want. So that's our business in a nutshell.

Okay. How long have you been doing that?

2022 was our first client. It was kind of a eureka moment. It's like we had this client out in LA. He wanted to do video, but he didn't want to fly us out there to do the recording over 2 days. He had a very— he had a fraction of a budget. And we're like, well, we know there's a way to do this with Riverside. Which I noticed is the platform we're using, and we know we can get some 4K video using, um, that. And, uh, that was the start of our journey in this space.

Before that, what did you do?

Uh, we were actually in recruitment marketing, uh, for a few years before that, which is the, the active marketing for the purpose of filling jobs, not for getting sales.

Okay, but you were an agency specializing in recruiting for others?

Recruitment marketing for our clients. So we tended to work with a lot of manufacturers here in Wisconsin where I'm based. So we'd have a handful of clients still today. We still have a few of those clients. I'll call them legacy clients. But that's how we got into video in the first place was doing work with them because you can't tell a good story without good video.

So, so this is where the, the candidates for the job are submitting video to answer interview questions?

No. So this is where we interview the employees at a, let's say, one of our clients down the road, an hour away. We interview their employees every quarter with video, and then we turn those into short form, and then we publish those on Facebook and LinkedIn so that when they go to— that employer goes to advertise their jobs on Indeed, people are checking them out, they see these videos, and they go, oh, look at this employer, they're doing something that I would want to know because everybody wants to know what goes on behind the scenes of every employer. And so we were doing that for a few years before we pivoted into this thought leadership play with video.

Okay, so what precipitated the pivot?

So it was that client in the fall of '22. Um, I had come across a— and I was doing some work on the side as a graphic designer. That's my original field. And, um, and this was an agency owner and he had a client in LA. It was a broker. And this, he knew that I had done video and he knew his broker needed video. And so he posed the question, can you do video for them? And like I said, the broker was not really interested in the big price tag of flying us out there for 2 days of shooting and all the planning around that. He had never done video. He'd been, he was a, this guy was hobnobbing with Hollywood celebrities for 40 years and he'd never done video himself. Uh, so he's very uncertain, just wanted to test the water. So we did a remote video session and took 30 minutes, asked him a few questions about the market, what's happening in the market, what do you see coming, you know, down the pike, things like that. And we turned his answers into short-form clips that this agency, uh, partner of mine posted to his Instagram. And his views went through the roof once he showed up in his content on his own Instagram page. And that was the moment I went, mm, I bet he's not the only founder out there, the not the only subject matter expert who is really smart, but they don't have an effective system to do video. Um, and that was our start into this niche.

And so do you work primarily directly with the founder, owners, thought leaders, or do you go through agencies?

Both. We do both, and we have a mix of clients. We have clients we pass through. It's probably about 50/50, um, and it works the same either way. Uh, the only difference is for some— for our partner clients, sometimes they want to see the questions we're sending ahead of time, uh, and often they don't care, so they just trust us to do our job well.

That's interesting because I, I was actually having this conversation a couple of weeks ago with a videographer, uh, and he was describing what he did and he was talking about two different customers, one of which was, you know, direct to the business owner, the other was through an agency, and how different that— like, the mechanics, the deliverables were functionally the same.

Yeah.

But, you know, the buyer, the payer is, is different. The expectations, their experience, how they communicate, like, all of those things are different. Have you Have you run into that trying to serve both of those?

Yeah, it is fair. And I have thought about— so marketing to those audiences is very different. Like, it's very straightforward when I find an agency partner like the one— like I mentioned, the person I'm talking to on LinkedIn. Like, if I ask them, hey, are you doing video for clients? Oh yeah. And are you getting those videos? Wow, it's really pulling teeth. Once I know that's a pain point, I say, hey, I got a system and it's like It's like super straightforward because they know their clients need video. They've been trying to get them to do it for years and all they need now is to get— if the price is right and they can figure out how to build a new model and upsell it, whatever, that's, that's it. Like they're sold on the concept because they're already doing it. They just have a hard time doing it. Selling directly to the people who, um, are the buyers is a completely different sales cycle. It can take— sometimes it's taken me a year. Uh, we don't even sell high ticket. Our plans start at $900 a month. So that is a frustrating thing about what we do is like, I'm— it's because it's video. You know, if you're selling to somebody who's put off something for 10 years, it's going to be very tough to convince them to change that. Putting it, you know, humans are creatures of habit. I know this. If I put something off for 10 years, it's gonna be very hard to get me to make it front and center, um, anytime soon. So We— I do have systems to, to give people that confidence and, and break through those barriers, but, um, it is— it's a completely different sell on the front end. But once we're getting into fulfillment, it's, it's virtually the same, right?

Right. And, and I would assume— well, I don't know this— in the case of this videographer that I was talking to, his price points were distinctly different. Um, do you have different price points depending upon agency versus direct?

Yeah, so there's a slight discount for, um, if whether a client wants to do their own publishing and writing, they get a slight discount and the agencies get the same and then they can mark it up. But agencies, I'm finding agencies don't work with us based on the discount. Like they're, but they're working with us because we're solving a very real problem for them, which is like, we've been trying to get this client to do video forever. We know it's going to make all their stuff more effective. Can you please help us?

So, okay, now I'm, I'm gonna play stupid here. Um, it, it seems to me that what you came up with as a solution, which is getting them on a recording and essentially walking them through or coaching them through it, is something that the agency could do. Uh, they just didn't come up with it or don't have the bandwidth for it, or—

Some agencies are doing a form of this, but it's basically designed for written content and it's not designed for video content. The difference between a session with us is that we're optimized for short-form only video. That is it. It would be very strange if you took the whole session, tried to turn it into a podcast. Uh, you couldn't turn it necessarily into a blog because the video points are designed to be 60-second little snippets. And we're actually coaching the client on hooks in the session. Like, all right, Christian, I heard you say, here are 3 mistakes every agency makes with their financials. Can I have you say, here are 3 mistakes every agency does with their financials? And then you would say that verbatim. Then the editor would know it's at the end, he'd put it at the front, cut off the on-ramp, walking up to your point thing that everybody does. And then boom, you've got your short-form video. Anyone can copy that model, um, but very few do because it's a completely different skill set and it's a completely different use case. It's optimized for short form, and most agencies are looking to write blog posts or get content to do a thought leader, you know, white paper or whatever. And the, the video content is, is, uh, if we get it, great. And then when they do get it, it's very low quality. And, you know, the CEO is like framed all the way down here because they didn't opt, you know, I was like, hey, or they're looking down their nose. So many things can go wrong. Um, I, I've talked to so many agencies, like, they're doing the, the recordings, they can't use them. Um, they're using Zoom to record, which, you know, somebody coughs, you, good luck trying to isolate that audio because it's all in one audio file. So So there's so many little nuance to, so much nuance to what we do that once an agency decides they want to get into it, anyone can technically, but it is not worth the juice. That's not worth the squeeze just to add this whole nother like system on, tack on this whole new system to your agency, which is what we bring to the table right out of the box. Yeah.

And I would think if you're dealing with business owners and they're dealing with an agency and they say, okay, we need you to record some videos. And they're gonna like, I— yeah, okay, I don't know what—

it doesn't happen. Yeah, it doesn't happen, right?

Well, because there's not enough direction. There's not— they don't have the experience. Um, they don't have the, the just the basic technical skills like, you know, being in frame, those kind of things. Um, you know, technical requirements of, of the recording, you know, what software you're using, those things. But to me, what sounds more powerful about what you do is the prompting, the coaching. Like, okay, because you get what you need as opposed to them just, you know, to me the worst, I had an agency we worked with a couple of years ago and they sent me a script and I'm like, no, no scripts. I can't read off a script. Even I never can get it timed right on Riverside. Like it's either going too fast or too slow, but it just does not feel genuine. I mean, even if it's my words, it doesn't— it just, you know, maybe if I repeat it enough and memorize it and act, you know, that's, that's exactly right.

To get a script to work, you have to get into acting. And I don't know who has time to get into acting because that is an art form that, you know, right? We can all tell when somebody's reading something, and that completely defeats the point of doing video because the point of doing video is to show what you know. And build a connection and like a conversation. Like it's— I liken video to a coffee chat. If you would sit across the table from someone drinking your tea or coffee or whatever and have a conversation with them, that's bourbon. That's what you're trying to do with your video. Anything else, you're missing the point.

I said bourbon. You kind of just—

Oh, sorry, I didn't hear. I said perfect or bourbon. I mean, you can try bourbon in a coffee shop. Let me know how that goes.

Usually if you're going to put whiskey in coffee, it needs to be Irish whiskey.

I mean, there's no other way to do it. I've never tried it. I'm a big fan of my coffee. I've never tried it with this.

It's a different experience for sure. It's kind of like Red Bull and vodka, you know. I mean, the taste is completely different, but you get the same effect of caffeine and the depressant.

I'll have to try that. Tell my wife that next time. Buy whiskey.

What's that? Don't blame me. Okay, for anything that happens.

There's this guy on the internet.

Yeah, that's anonymous enough. If you just say the guy I met on the internet.

That's right. You know, just, yeah, you know, as one does trusting someone's advice on the internet.

Yes, you get what you deserve. Okay, so I want to, I had on the last episode a marketer and had been in the game for a while as an agency owner. And you've been in the space for a while. So I want to ask you some similar questions about what you see. You use the word the agency model is broken. What do you see the lay of the land with the new disruptions in technology everybody's running for cover, trying to figure out which end is up. Pricing's all over the place. Some people are doing great, some are like sucking air. What's your perspective of what's going on as a marketer?

Well, I can only speak to my own perspective, first of all. I don't want to position myself as some kind of thought leader in this space, but I've had a lot of conversations with agency owners. I'm in a couple different networks myself and I'm seeing this interesting conversation happen around strategy where strategy has been sold to agencies as the differentiator for your agency for over a decade now. If you listen to the Two Bobs podcast, which is classic podcast in this space, they will preach that and it's not a bad thing. There's been the way they talk about is you have two rooms, the strategy room and the execution room. And historically, agencies were an execution partner. And then you got to get into strategy to charge premium prices and actually be a partner, not just an execution jockey. And I think what I'm hearing is that really the future is you have to be in both spaces. You cannot be in the strategy room only, and you cannot be in the execution room only. And for our agency, it's been interesting being— hearing those discussions and thinking about where we sit because we're primarily in the execution room. I never, you know, because the nature of what we do is getting people on video. You know, it's like, it's— that's— if you can't, good luck putting a strategy together if you can't even get your C-suite to be on video in the first place. Like, we optimize around let's get people on video and then let's figure things out from there. And it's kind of been working well for us. We kind of do the strategy backwards, I want to say.

And yeah, that's what I mean. I was— that was what I was thinking as you were describing it.

Yeah. And where I'm not saying we're perfect yet, uh, we don't charge high ticket, right? We're trying to figure out, well, how do we charge high ticket? My goal is $1 million one day. We're at $250,000 right now. And, uh, so trying to figure out how to get there with, you know, if you charge— our average price per client is $1,000 a month, and we have all recurring clients. That's a lot of clients. That's like 80 clients a month to get to $2 million. We could get there. We could do that. We have the means to scale, but it's It's, um, with as difficult as it is to convince people to do video, you know, it's, it's a percent of a percent of, of people that are like, oh, I, I think this is important and I will do this, uh, and I'll commit to it for, for a year. Um, as difficult as it gets people to do that, um, I've realized, you know, we probably need to add some other higher ticket item to our, to our list. So we're looking at that and we're trying to figure out what that looks like. And we have a— I have a plan to test out. We're, we're actively testing here right now. But, um, to answer your question, I do think there has to be a balance of strategy and execution because of things like AI. And, um, you know, there's so much disruption in the space with AI, especially marketing. I feel like marketing is, if not one of, probably the most impacted— I guess copywriters would be number one, but in marketing would be number two impacted space because of AI adoption.

Hey listeners, are you ready to turn your passion into profit? Then grab a copy of Profit First for Creatives. Click the link in the show notes to purchase a copy. And if you're not ready to make that full commitment, you can download a free copy of the first chapter. Check it out right now. Do you see— and I, you know, I— my— most of my business colleagues are accountants, which they're usually awful marketers. I mean, I say that lovingly.

Yeah, of course they are.

Yeah.

I'm a terrible accountant.

Well, yeah. So, you know, they don't have a lot of conversations around marketing, but they do get, they do kind of get jazzed up if they think that they can use AI to do their marketing for them, right? Um, but you know, my contention is that AI is going to do for marketing what it did for accounting with QuickBooks. And stick with me here.

Yeah, I'm listening.

The technology is not as radical, but it was still a technological disruption in a space. And when QuickBooks came around, you had accountants literally saying, I was 28, 29 at the time, I didn't have enough experience to know, but a lot of these older guys that I was, you know, palling around with are like, oh my God, we're going to be out of a job. People are going to use QuickBooks. They're not going to use us anymore. And I'm like, okay, maybe. What transpired was you had a lot of people that bought QuickBooks. It didn't make them any better bookkeepers or accountants. And frankly, it caused more work for the accountants. And I see a similar thing in that, you know, if you weren't going to hire an accountant anyway, then maybe QuickBooks is a good option for you.

Right?

Yep. And so if you weren't going to hire a marketer, then maybe AI and, and ChatGPT is, is a good solution for you. Yeah, but it's not going to replace hiring a marketing agency. But this, this gentleman that I interviewed last time, he said he thinks the, the, the reason why AI has been so disruptive in the marketing space is because there was so little trust in the marketing space between the buyers and the sellers. In other words, I could see that the, the, the— and I think especially with small business owners, it's like, you know, they, they do a merry-go-round of changing marketing agencies every 1 or 2 years and don't get what they want. And they're like, well, screw this, I'm just going to go do it myself, as opposed to I, I'm not getting what I want from the marketer anyway, so I'm going to go try it myself. What, what do you think about that statement?

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot behind that. There's a lot to unpack behind that. I think immediately of, you know, yeah, there's the bad players in the agency space, just like in any agency, any space. I know there are bad accountants. I know that for a fact. There's bad players anywhere. But, you know, the second thing I think of is like marketers are like the number 3 most untrusted job title in the United States behind like, I think lawyers and something else. I can't remember what it is. We just don't trust them because there's so much spin, which I would say is lying. So much lying going on, trying to make something into nothing. And then the third thing is I think there's a lot of misunderstanding of what marketing is supposed to be. And so that gets lost in translation. And most marketers are not good at communicating the expectations on the front end. They just kind of hope and pray, hey, if I sign this client, I hope they're a good client. I hope they believe in this and this and this other thing. I hope they see long-term versus short-term, which is one of the biggest things. I hope they have all these other things that should be working for us to be effective. You know, you see that a lot with marketing agencies. I used to be me signing a client and then you realize, oh my gosh, this client is missing a salesperson and they're hoping that I do this one thing. For example, we've had clients in the past with video, like they sign us with video and then 3 months later they leave. And why did they leave? Because we were the only thing they were doing for their marketing. They were not networking. They were not— they didn't have a salesperson. They were not doing any webinars. They were not doing anything. And they're like, They're putting the weight of all their business development sales on this one video that goes out once a week to 150-ish people that watch it in their network. And there's nothing wrong with that, but that's not designed to be the vessel for your biz dev. Your biz dev has to be multi— what do you call it in the stock portfolio world? You know, multi—

diversified.

Diversified. Thank you. You have to have a diversified portfolio. And so I think that that's the third part I think of is like there's this miscommunication between expectations and actually, you know, the marketing agency says, yes, we'll do this. And then they hope that all the pieces are working behind the scenes. But honestly, for most businesses, I've done this for a long time, been doing marketing for over 15 years. Most businesses are not set up to be ready for a marketing agency or any marketing in general. There's so many things that are broken, you know, messaging, positioning. I was just writing an email about this, you know, basic things that if that agency doesn't know or doesn't know how to fix, or they don't have a referral partner that can fix that, uh, it's not going to help you do anything but put lipstick on a pig. And then you try to fix it yourself, and then you burn out. So that's one of the common, you know, things I see with that. Anyways, not saying it's the only one. Some agent—

no, I, I, I think, you know, this gentleman was— he, he actually pivoted out of the agency space entirely, and now he works with business owners as a marketing— his company is called Anarchy in a Day, and it's essentially a program to work with the business owner to get them educated on what they need for marketing.

There you go.

Right. Because he's— yeah, he's going to make them a better buyer. Right.

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I wanna pivot back to what you were saying about goals, if you will go along with me.

I'm here for the conversation.

You're at 250, you want to be at a million, and you've run the numbers like, okay, that's 80 a month. One of the things that I find fascinating, and it's one of these business principles that you learn and you know, and then you forget. And then somewhere down the line, someone reminds you of it. It's like, oh shit, yeah, I remember that.

That happened to me just a couple weeks ago. That's also in the email I was writing. I was like, oh, I knew this, head slap, you know, moment.

I knew this, I knew this, I knew that one, uh, Jeopardy. Yeah, um, so the, the, the principle is, is that, uh, Perry Marshall's, uh, 80/20 Marketing and Sales, that human behavior is fractal in nature and that it is a continuing fractal and that I heard a really good analogy from Vincent Paglisi a couple of weeks ago at his Unconference. And the way it opened up for him was someone described it sports. So you take a professional sports franchise, and you've got the general admission ticket is price X. And that represents 80% of the people that are going to walk into that, stadium. Now understand, the 80/20 is not set in stone. It's, it's some iteration of that. It might be 70/30, you know, whatever. 20% of those people are going to pay for premium seating, right? Uh, but then he goes even a, a step further. If that fractal continues, 20% of 20% is 4%. 4% of them will pay for an ultra premium experience. Yeah, so they're in the luxury boxes. But then he flipped it back around and went down. He said, you know, the people that didn't go into the stadium at all might pay for broadcast access, or they might buy some logoed gear, right? And so, you know, if the entry to the stadium is $200, they might spend $50 or $20 Right. But if you look at the continuum, it's all just one big 80/20 fractal, right? Yeah. And I'm like, you know, that's brilliant. That's a great example.

I like that.

So my question to you is, in thinking of what could the 20% of your existing customers pay for that is not in your basic service?

Yeah.

Or maybe you do, but you could carve out and charge more for it. What comes to mind?

Yeah. Oh, so what we worked on so far is different models. One is doing podcast as a service, and then another one was doing webinars as a service. And because these are all things I do myself and I have a lot of experience with, and like, well, we could sell this. I— there'd be some bumps to get over, but we can figure it out. Like, I'm confident. And then you can charge high ticket because it's closer to the lead, closer to the outcome somebody's wanting, which is, I want market qualified leads now, you know. And I can say, I do one webinar for you and I can get you 50 to 150 people to attend. Any portion of those will be ready to buy now, and the portion of others will be added to your email list. Like, you know, so I've been thinking through that and doing the math in terms of like complexity. I'm a huge fan of simplicity. And I go, all right, well, we're doing short-form video. We're optimized around that. And then forehead slap moment. The third option, um, I had put on the back burner. Uh, I'd actually even tried this last year and I think because it was just enough complexity, I wasn't ready for it yet. It was do what we're doing now, but add things to it. So what I mean by that is, for example, right now a client works with us. They're getting organically posted video content on every platform they want to be on. You know, you work with us, you get a— every week, you know, our plans start $900 a month, 5 videos. That's one video a week. You get a video on YouTube and LinkedIn and so on and so forth. That's organically posted. But especially on LinkedIn now, we serve a B2B audience. You got to pay to play to get your videos seen, to get any content seen. And everybody, anybody that's listening, watching this, that's been on LinkedIn for a hot minute will know that, um, reach is down on everything. And ironically, what's not down is, is if you spend money on a specifically a talking head video, and it's a good one, it's helpful, it's thoughtful, it's the right amount of information in the right amount of time. It's the least expensive type of advertising you do on LinkedIn. And so there's this opportunity that we're seeing with thought leader ads that we're investigating right now. So what if we do what we're doing now, but then we manage the ads and then we have a VA in there making sure that comments are getting responded to. And then if there's somebody that likes the thing, that are they added to a list? And then we're trying to, you know, help them with some, maybe some lead magnet stuff. We got to figure out how far we're going to go, right? Because there's always one more thing you can add. But that's what we're investigating right now is, all right, this one, this is for visibility organic, and this one, this is for paid visibility. And we, we know that if we do this, after 3 months in your space, you know, will get you so many market qualified leads and things like that. So you pay premium for the certainty of knowing that there's a higher chance of return versus just generic— it's not generic, but, you know, visibility in general.

Yeah, because all marketing— and, and this is the thing that just kind of gets, I don't know, lost. It's like the elephant in the room. Like, I don't know how you see it, uh, don't see it— is, is that marketing at the end of the day is, is to drive sales. And if there's not an increase in revenue, customers spend whatever, it's not quote unquote effective. Now, I used to get so pissed off talking to marketers because I'm like, well, you know, this stuff takes time. I'm like, stop with that bullshit. Everything's, you know, SEO takes a long time, all this stuff. And I'm like, yeah, I get that. You know, it's not an immediate cause and effect. I understand that, uh, you know, Coca-Cola's brand was not built overnight. It, it does take time, but there should be some cause and effect relationship and some testing and iteration. But the, the point being that, just like you said, the, the, the more of that problem you solve, which is I need a, a, a client a new customer and it, and then it can't cost more than X, uh, is, is the ultimate problem that you're solving. It just depends upon how far up that chain you want to go.

The chain, exactly, how much ownership you want. And you guarantee if you're working with an agency, you're going to pay beaucoup bucks for the highest point of that chain. And for us, you know, with our current pack, you know, package, if you just want a standard level of I know it's healthy and good to be visible. That's why I do networking events. I know that, you know, those are helpful. You know, there's this baseline of visibility that's healthy. Then that's what our original packages do for clients. And we can say sometimes, yeah, you'll get opportunities, but we can make no guarantees because it really depends on your offer and your space and your experience and et cetera, et cetera. But yeah, that's what I'm trying to aim the hype, higher ticket ship, so to speak, is toward owning more of the outcome for the client.

Yeah, because you phrased, I don't know if you used the word risk, but see, that to me is the key. You're taking more risk off of them and that's going to cost. Yeah. Yeah. If I have more, if I'm taking on more of the risk, I'm going to get paid for for it. Yeah, yeah. Um, nobody thinks about marketing in terms of insurance, but, uh, we're all actuaries at heart.

Um, no, we're not.

Uh, what— I'm gonna pivot here. What were the one or two— what comes to mind when you think of the biggest challenges you had when you pivoted? Like, what, what was What was most difficult?

That's so easy to answer. It was the frickin' other pivot. I mean, I remember that moment so well. I had just started working with a coach at that time. Shout out to Brent Hafley. If anyone's looking for a really good coach, he's out of the price range of most agency owners. He serves executives of huge firms. We're doing it. I got him because we're doing a fantastic trade. But he was like, Justin, you got something here on your hands. I really want to encourage you to look at it. And I'm like, yeah, but I pivoted probably a dozen times, half a dozen times, enough times to burn oneself out at that point.

Okay.

Recruitment marketing was, um, something I'd found, but I was tired of it at the time. It was very difficult to sell to HR. You could sell to the CEO and then they pass you off to HR, and then HR is like, what are we doing? What is this? What is marketing? Do we have to do that? And they pick everything apart and you're like, con— every month you do the check-in. I was I was getting like stomach ulcers, like trying to justify my existence in front of this HR team every month. And so that was the latest pivot. I was like, do I have to do like this whole emotional journey again? You know? So I knew I'd found something that was interesting, didn't know how to sell it. And it was just that resistance internally to, to try again.

Did this one feel differently in the sense that you used the phrase like when you were talking to these agency owners, like, yeah, that's their pain point. And like, I, I go back to Victor Chen's Extreme Revenue Growth, and he starts the book with the, the requirements, and it's the customer that has a problem, the customer knows they have a problem, and that they are willing to pay for the solution. Well, that sounds very pedantic on the surface. Well, no shit. Yes, that's true. But looking at it, you described like the HR didn't perceive a problem and they didn't want to pay for it. So you were having to— you had a very large slog in convincing them to buy and then justifying your existence, as you said. Did this feel different out of the gate? Like, okay, people, people really know they have a problem and they're like throwing money at you. Like, please fix this.

That's a great question. I've never thought about it and like never contrasted the two niches. And, you know, no, it is, it is similar and different. So, so no, it is not too different than it was before in that I said earlier, when you sell video, you're always going to be selling to a percent of a percent, if not to yet another percent, because so many people are middle schoolers on the inside. When you tell them, hey, we're going to help you with your marketing and we're going to do video, and they're like, wait, wait, what? Video? No, timeout, not doing that. I'm sure you've seen it. I'm sure, you know, we've all encountered the family member, or maybe it's ourselves. We're like, oh, don't take my picture. Oh no. Even at family gatherings, you're like, get over yourself. You're not that ugly. You know, the kind of stuff that pisses us all off. Pisses me off. Like, get over yourself. Like, this is pride at the end of the day. Like, you're not any better than the rest. Like, you look perfectly normal.

I have a face for radio. I don't know what to tell you.

See, that's something that pisses me off is people that put themselves down. It's just not true. Like, Christian, it's not true of you. I'm just going to say it's not true of you. So many people use that as, you know, self-deprecating. I get that. If that's what it is, fine. I get that too. But so many people, and this is what I've learned, is like we just don't see the value in ourselves. And that's one of the biggest blockers that come up against, against over and over and over is like this, either this middle school insecurity or this lack of valuing one's own self, whether it's knowledge or even the way you look. Like, I believe in a God who's made everyone beautiful, even people with disabilities. Like, Humans are beautiful people and humans have inherent worth. And so it just kind of gets me going when I— I've never talked about this in any podcast ever before. It'll be interesting to see the replay. Like, thank you for letting me air my grievances. Like, that's, that's a big, that's a big, uh, problem I have is like, I have never interviewed somebody ever. I've done probably close to 200 interviews now. I've never interviewed somebody that's like ugly or they just they're just full of crap. Boring. People want to be helpful and they want— that's why people do video content. Like, it's why we ever do content. We want to be helpful. We love being helpful as humans. Who doesn't want to help out their fellow neighbor with some, if nothing else, 60 seconds of information that could change your life or give you a better experience with XYZ? So that's the biggest blocker I run into is just people putting themselves down. That, that middle school insecurity of not wanting to be judged, which I get. That was me when I started out. I do my own video content now, um, and I, I felt it, um, and, and it comes back. It's just that negative self-talk. It's there. That's my competitor. And, uh, it's— so it's a different source, but it's a similar friction point of getting people to be convinced that this is the right play for them.

Yeah. And, and I, I've experienced some of those same feelings about, like, to me, uh, I was very anti-self-promotion. I had a roommate in college that was very quiet, soft-spoken, and he was a Golden Gloves boxer. And I saw him kick the shit out of somebody once and I was like, holy cow. And his statement to me— I lived with this guy for 2 years and he never talked about himself being some kind of badass. Never. And his statement to me was like, if you're good, other people will talk about you. And that always just kind of stuck. And but then I had somebody tell me last year, like, if you're really good at what you do and you really help people, then you have an obligation to be known.

That's it right there. You owe it to people to help them with what you know.

Because you can't help them if they don't know about you.

Right.

Yeah.

And I'm like, okay, that's how I see marketing. It's like, this is not— you're not being salesy. You're not being— you are— even when I started, you know, I put myself out there many times over the years just learning, okay, how do I get on video? I tell my clients to be on video. I should probably do it myself. That was my story, how I got into it. Don't want to be hypocrite here. All right. Oh, I probably need to figure out how to do sales on LinkedIn. I remember the first time I was being genuine and helpful. You looked at that first DM. I was just asking questions like, what are you experiencing? I felt salesy, but I was actually helping that person out. And that since then, like, you, there are, there are fantastic experts who are going to their grave as complete unknowns because they're not putting themselves out there.

And I think that's not, that's not fair to the people that they can help. Right. And I don't think if you, if you phrase that to them, that they would disagree with that. Right. And, and to your point, it's, it's a little bit of get over yourself, like, It really is. I mean, because if you're put here for a purpose to help people and you're unwilling to— you're willing to help people, but you're not willing to be visible. That, you know, that's kind of like saying, well, I'm going to have the cure for cancer, but I'm going to go live on a mountain in Tibet. And it's like, if you come find me, then I'll cure you.

Yeah, that's the extreme, but valid. Like, if this is true, then this must also be true. Like, at what point do you get to decide that your stuff should be hidden. And I don't think we should— we're very good judges of that. I suspect a lot of that comes from what we think we have to do. You know, I, I'm always busting myths about what it takes to be on video. People think, oh, I don't want to do those silly TikTok dances and I don't want to look like this and I don't want— who, who said you had to? Did you know? And it's a lack of awareness, really. And that's what I do with my content, constantly making people aware, hey, there's a simple way to do this that's not salesy, that's not self-promoting, that is helpful and useful. You know, and here's examples, and people see the examples of the videos we do. They're like, oh, oh, I could, I could do that. Oh, you help do that? Oh, great. Like, it's just, I think it's awareness thing. We've seen, you know, TV, you know, 3 AM sales guy on TV trying to sell us a sham. Wow, we think that has to be us. That's not— you don't have to do it that way.

No. And, you know, that's what gets all of the attention, the Grant Cardones and the, you know, Mr. Beats. And, you know, it's, it's, that is not what I mean. I, I think at the end of the day, like, if that's who they are and they're being genuine, fine. I, I think the, the key is being yourself. And that, because otherwise you're, it becomes very difficult. I, I had my head of, of revenue, um, she gave me, I don't know, 20 different questions to do short-form video recently. She goes, I just want you to read the question, answer the question. So I got on Riverside and I did it. And for some reason I was in a mood and I was kind of grumpy old man, like, and some of my responses were kind of like, you know, I'm just over you telling yourself these stories. Like, you know, and I just gave it very direct and And, um, you know, if that's who you are in that moment, then give it to them. Like, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't re-record it. I'm like, could I on a different day? You would have got a different tone, but for that day, I just was in a mood.

Yeah, yeah, that— I think there's, there's a— I think that also comes from having you— I'm guessing you've done that a little bit, and you've done a few of these podcast episodes where you've, you've recognized it's It's okay to, you know, maybe old Christian would have deleted that and started over, but I suspect you probably let that happen with, uh, with Justin Brim.

Somebody still edited it. Somebody still edits the podcast, right?

Somebody wants to cut out the swear words.

Bleep, bleep, bleep. I'm not left to my complete own device.

There you go. You got at least one layer of filtration happening there.

Exactly. That's funny. Uh, Justin, how do people find out more about Dialog and what you do?

Now we have our website, dialogwith.us. Dialog is spelled D-A-L-O-G. And then I'm on LinkedIn. I post virtually every weekday. Those are the two places that I want people to know about.

We'll have those links in the show notes for you listeners. If you like what you've heard, please rate the podcast, share the podcast, subscribe to the podcast. If you don't like what you've heard, shoot us a message. Tell us what you'd like to hear, and I'll get rid of Justin. Until next time, ta-ta for now.