A “quick and dirty” guide to social media marketing with Adam Forgione. EP #282

Hey, guys, it's Dan Lenny here with the how to Scale a Video Business podcast. And today I'm talking to an old friend of the show, Adam Forgion from Penny Lane Productions in New York. Now, Adam was on the show probably three years ago and shared some incredible insights around structuring your business and wearing different hats as, like the CEO, as the operations person, and as the kind of marketing, the cmo. CEO. CEO. And so I wanted to get back on the show to share more about his business philosophy. He's a powerful contributor if you've ever come across Adam. He's a great guy, incredible character, has strong views, and I absolutely love talking to him on this show. In fact, he's one of my favorite people to interview on this podcast. Today we're going to go into some real depth around customer service and how important it is to. To deliver exceptional customer service in a world where customer service is automated. So I think you're really going to enjoy this episode.

So, Adam, I was just saying in the intro, it's been three years since we had you on the podcast, and the last time you were on, you were sharing some incredible information about the idea as a business owner wearing the hats of a CEO for, like, in a strategic direction, the COO for operations and the CMO for marketing. And I, we reconnected because I saw you doing a ton of stuff on social. And so I guess the best place to start is there, like, you're back very much focusing on, on your social campaigns. Why is that? And welcome back for a start.

Thanks, man. It's great to see you. Always great to see you. I love our conversations and I know organically we just go to great places. You know, I love business, so, yeah, I mean, I guess the way I look at it is, you know, the CEO, top level, but then obviously for the three cmo, or I'll just say sales and marketing. So could be sales and marketing, but cmo, operations, COO and finance, which I put finance and analytics in that bucket. So cfo. So I always look at it with three blocks and just say sales and marketing, operations and admin, just running the business day to day. And then the third box, you know, finance and analytics. And, you know, I actually just put one of those social posts out. But, you know, in a nutshell, the basics of how I look at it is we all start out, you know, when we, when we create a business, we all start out because we fall in love with the thing that we do, you know, but that's always operations. So we put all our energy in the operations. And, you know, before you know it, you wake up and you're like, I don't, I don't, I'm not putting any energy in sales and marketing. I don't even know how to read a balance sheet or a profit and loss statement. You know, am I doing the right thing? But the reality is, what I've learned is that you need to put equal energy in all three. I mean, you personally will outgrow it, and hopefully you'll have, you know, somebody to run each of those departments. But I, I'm very much putting equal energy in all three right now. And what the cool part about it is, I'm, I'm really every day taking a step away from operations because, you know, if I'm in operations all day long, I'm working in my business and not on my business, you know.

Exactly. So look, for anyone who, who doesn't know you, and I can't believe there's that many people that don't know you, but.

Let'S assume there's people out there who still don't know who you are and what you do. Give us a bit of an insight into Adam Forgione and Penny Lane Productions.

I mean, the short story is in 2000, I got married and I shot, you know, camcorder footage. I wasn't a professional, and we got married in Long Island. All my friends use video cameras, you know, that were, you know, handycams. And then I, I called them all up and I said, hey, can you send me your footage? I'm playing with this software called Final Cut 1 and I'm checking it out, you know, and I'm. So, I got all this footage and I just, you know, played on Final Cut for a while and I, I edited my own wedding video, you know, and I, I, I, I can't even imagine looking at it now, but I loved it back then, you know, all black and white. And anyway, that gave me the bug for video for, for, you know, for the, the visual side. Before that whole thing, I was in music. You know, my music was my whole life. I was a professional musician and I was doing that. So that was like a turning point for me. And then, you know, year years went on and I, I started to edit for, you know, cookie cutter wedding companies. Then I opened up Penny Lane Productions probably in like 2002, and I basically did, you know, cookie cutter weddings for a while. Then I started to shoot on my own. And then, you know, I just got obsessed with it. It was One of those things. And then, you know, 2005, 2006, 2007, I was really heavy into it. By, you know, 2012, I was starting to think about getting out. You know, it was. It was getting to me. But I wanted to go all corporate commercial. I really love that space. And by 2018, I done my last wedding, and I haven't turned back. And I'm happy about that. I can't stand weddings. I love them back then. I don't like them anymore. And so, you know, Penny Lane is, you know, basically, it's a video company that produces videos for businesses and nonprofits. And that's really our focal point.

So one of the things we talked about in our previous conversations is marketing and the importance of marketing and what I've always loved about. And I can't remember how we've actually met. Maybe sort of, it might have been Weaver 2009 or something. That rings a bell in Florida. It's definitely one of those ibc Neb. One of those kind of things. But you always stood out as someone who understood that running a video business was not just about the videos you make, but about how you communicate with your prospects and your customers. And you've never been afraid to.

Embrace marketing. And marketing is something like a dirty word around filmmakers. Right? You know, it's like this kind of, oh, I don't want to be sleazy. There's an automatic assumption if you're going to do any sort of marketing or sales, you're like this sleazy car salesman. But. But of course, that's not the case. I mean, marketing is about putting your message in front of the right people at the right time and building a awareness, nurturing the relationship so you can build trust. You've just started a kind of new campaign, a new focus. Tell me about what's triggered that and how you've sort of decided to simplify your life in some regards by not having too many projects going simultaneously. And by projects, I mean different business projects. So you're sort of squarely focused on one thing. Tell me about that journey and that decision.

All right. So, you know, the way I look at goals is it's. It gets. It gets so overwhelming to think about. I have to reach 150 goals to. To get to this point, this milestone. And, you know, you really start to go crazy if you start to really lay out all the goals and. And start looking at them every day. So the way I start to look at this is, what do I want to accomplish within the year? And what do I want to accomplish within each quarter? So now I'm looking at goals as annual goals and quarterly goals. And so I knew this, I knew we had a company meeting last quarter and we said, you know, for Q3, we need to go nuts on social and on SEO and, and just in general, other aspects of our website. And each one of those is a doorway into, you know, your business. It's, it's, it's potential lead building in, in all different ways and they're very powerful, all three.

So.

For social, what in, in, in a, at a high level, what we said was I have a lot of educational material that I've taught in the past and you know, that I've been filmed talking and you know, stuff that I, I have today that I can just pick up an iPhone or if I'm in the car or, you know, I even do local seminars, business seminars. So now I'm just starting to film every possible thing I can and create, you know, cut out gold nuggets of these long form talks that I do and even the stuff from the past. So I'm basically stockpiling that and putting that out every day on every social media platform. And right now it's, it's on TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube. So I made a goal to myself. I'm gonna make sure that this goes out one video once a day for 90 days straight. And then, you know, we'll see where we're at. I mean, it's, it's a long sprint. I'll be out of breath. But I, I, I, yeah, I might miss a day here and miss a day there, but that's, that's my goal and I really believe something will come of that. Not sure what, but I really believe in it. SEO, search engine optimization. You know, I, I knew a lot about it already from many years ago, and then I kind of fell off the horse and I didn't do anything. The good thing about SEO is you have to do a lot of work to get things to move very slowly. But eventually they'll, they'll move slowly like, like, like a big ship in the sea. Takes like, you know, two miles to make a left turn, but when it, when it turns, when it gets there, it stays there or it's hard to move. Right? So all the work that I did from many, many years ago, still around today. But I knew I wanted to take it to a whole different level. So I went after, you know, even bigger, more competitive keywords and, you know, a bigger Bigger space to get more of the lion's share of the leads that come in through, you know, websites every day. So that, that was another heavy thing that we went in on, on Q3. And just in general, the website, you know, if, if you look at your website and you go through the homepage and you're like, you know, this always bugged me. What can I do to make it better? So we're, we're always improving that. And then if you start going through each one of your pages and we have hundreds of pages, you know, you, what the hell did I write here? Why would I put this online? What the hell's wrong with me? So you start finding all these pages and you, you fix one at a time and it, it's going to take us a year to get it where we want to get it, but we chip away at it every day. And so those three major vehicles for marketing are really the, the, the, the lanes that we've chosen at least for Q3 and Q4 for this year. But as you know, there are many other ways to market. We don't do any paid, you know, advertising right now, but I know we will. I just want to get these balls in the right place and I want to get these ducks in a row first. And then we'll probably start to add, you know, PPC into that as well. But that's my marketing efforts right now.

You may not be doing any paid advertising, but you are paying to resource this content engine because what you're doing is creating an omnipresent approach. So you're on every platform. Tell me about the practicalities that, because that, you know, consistently posting every day on one platform is a job. But to be platform posting on like all the main ones. How are you, how are you managing that on a practical level?

I'm not managing it well. I purposely don't use any sort of software to manage it, like bulk manage it right now because I'm still experimenting. So I'm very new to TikTok, but I, I've become obsessed with, you know, consuming content on TikTok. And you'd think, all right, you know, my kids are on it, what are you doing? You know, but, you know, I'm, I'm a big fan of crypto investing. So I really got involved with TikTok and, and started following, you know, other content creators in that space. But obviously I started to leak right into the business and the marketing and the sales world. And I love it. I mean, there's so much gold. You just you find good people to follow and there's always great nuggets and like, man, I have a lot of this stuff. I could be putting this stuff on too. 30 seconds here, 60 seconds here. So now I'm just trying to learn the format. Learn, you know, should I use an emoji? How, how, how am I writing my hooks for the first couple of seconds before things, you know, come out, you know, on the TikTok video that I'm making or you know, how my captions produced or you know, what's the, what color of the titles. And I'm experimenting right now and that's just tick tock. So I'm doing exactly the same thing for Instagram. Primarily. I'm using reels for Instagram because I notice I'm getting a lot more interaction with those than I am with like, say, posts or stories. So I'm just going heavy on reels and then YouTube shorts. That's a pretty, that's basically like TikTok too. It's their version. So, you know, I'm going heavy on those and you know, hit or miss, like I'll get something that's got like 50, 100 views and all of a sudden this thing's got like 5,000 views. I'm like, whoa, you know, you get lucky. And then, you know, LinkedIn is something that I've always believed in and I never put as much energy in it as I'm putting in now. And I think it's a great resource. Obviously it's a whole different game. You know, you're playing with professionals. You don't have kids on there with hats on backwards in their daddy's basement, you know, giving you advice about something they really know nothing about. You got real people on there and you know, real businesses and there's some amazing connections and that you can make throughout that network that, that can really change your business. So I'm put, putting a lot of energy towards that too, as well. I would say for aspect ratio for the, you know, for video nerds like us. Right now I'm playing with nine by 16 and one by one, that's it. So I'll put 16 by nines on YouTube for long form content, but all the other ones are for short form content. And I will put 16 by 9 on, on LinkedIn if it makes sense. But I'm putting a lot of one by ones on there, which is like the old school Instagram style. Now Instagram's trying to veer towards 9 by 16. But I notice, you know, I'm looking at it and the 9x16s don't look good on mobile, on Twitter, they don't look good on, on Instagram sometimes. So I'm, I'm careful. I, I put, I'm sorry, I'm going around in circles. I do the reels on Instagram and Those work great. Nine by 16. But if I was doing, say a post, I would probably do a one by one on that. So there's so much of this I'm learning and I'm, I'm messing up every single day. I'm like, well, all right, I'm going to tweak that next time. So what, 90 days, maybe I'll.

But also, this is going to give you such an incredible edge for Penny Lane, because when your clients come to you, like I remember not so long ago, uproar in the kind of forums and Facebook groups, in the videographer groups going, oh, vertical video. This is a disaster. People aren't doing it properly. But the fact is that's how people are consuming content on their mobile devices. So, so you're actually testing, and this is really smart. You're testing by doing every single platform. So you're learning what works and what doesn't work for your business that you can then say to all your clients, hey, we've actually done a 90 day test on every single platform. Here's how this works, here's how that works. And actually.

I'm in a mastermind in the US and we were having a conversation yesterday on a call about content needing to be omnipresent. You need a presence on every channel to hook people in, to become fans of your work. Because if, if you don't, there's just too much distraction. And I think what we want is, we want to have a handful of people we go to who are our experts in a particular field. So that's very, very, very smart. Also, one thing that I've noticed is that the Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, you get instant kind of likes, gratification, feedback. I've noticed on LinkedIn it works differently. Have you noticed that you don't always get as much engagement on LinkedIn as you do on other platforms? And I've learned through doing that it's because business people, there are a lot more people watching what you do on LinkedIn and not interacting with you, but when they're ready to do something, they'll say, oh, actually I've seen loads of your content. What's your experience been like that?

Yeah, I think LinkedIn, I mean, @ least I can only answer all these questions from my perspective. So, you know, if I was in a whole different industry, I might have completely different results, you know, So I don't think 90 days is nearly enough for me to say, okay, I'm, I'm an expert now. Let me teach you how to do it. But I, I know I'm doing it for Penny Lane. I'm doing it because I'm interested in, you know, just creating a bigger base that will eventually come to us in the form of leads. But for LinkedIn, yeah. LinkedIn has always been like the, the most difficult platform to get interaction on, I've always found. And when I do see posts that get, like, crazy interaction, I'm always like, I'm looking at the content, the comments, I'm, I'm watching the video or I'm reading the article that they wrote or something. I'm like, what is it? I think I've noticed that very long form content and sometimes opening up like, listen, I'm going to get real on this.

I normally don't say this, but I can't hold my tongue anymore. I'm going to say this and you get something out. A little controversial. I noticed those are the types of posts that really go crazy with interaction on LinkedIn, and I haven't done any, any of those. Like, I'm not going to go on these platforms and just get political. If I got political, I'm sure I'd get a lot of likes and I'm getting a lot of hates, you know, because, you know, there's definitely a.

There'S definitely a strategy for being controversial. And I've seen big marketers do this where they'll drop a really controversial post because they get so much engagement that raises awareness. But I'm with you. It's not, it's not who I am, really. And I, I feel like I want to balance testing marketing with, with my, my, my own.

Authenticity. Yes. I mean, so the, the most daring. I'll go. And I, you know, I get daring on Facebook. My personal. Sometimes I'm in and out, so just get in a mood and I'm like, I can't hold my.

Tongue.

Yeah. But, you know, that's a mix of my, Everything in my life and everything else I kind of keep separate and I really keep politics out of it. I mean, if I was even going to do something controversial and like, hit the political cord, I would probably say something like.

It'S amazing how much we as a country get nothing done when we decide to pick a side and focus on the things we disagree on. But I'm curious how we would do as a country if we all focused only on the things we agreed on. Yeah, just leave it at that. Now, I'm not saying I'm a Democrat or Republican. I'm just saying, hey, can we all figure this out? And yeah, and so I'm sure somebody would bring up Trump, somebody would bring up Biden and it would just.

Happen and then it becomes territorial. But maybe my side's better than.

You. So. Yeah, but maybe that's a post that would go crazy on LinkedIn. I'll let you know if I try it. I'll give you a heads up before I do.

It. I'm sure I'll see it. I'm sure I'll see it.

Naturally. But the whole, you know, we can be controversial in different ways. Like for example, I'm, here's a controversial topic that I'm about to post. I don't know, sometime within this 90 days. I don't know when I have it all stockpiled. I don't really know what I'm going to post tomorrow. But the one here's, here's a post that I have no problem talking about because I'm just sick and tired of.

Businesses doing wrong by people. I'm sick and tired of businesses going against the golden rule. You know, I'm sick and tired of business is screwing people over. We, we should be, we should have more integrity. So here's, here's a conversation that I'm about to post at some point and that is customer service on phone. I have a big beef with that. There is not one big large company that you could call up and have a pleasant experience talking to them on the phone. Not one. Yeah, I have yet to hear one large company be brought up where somebody lose looking forward to making that phone call. You're not going to talk to a human being. And if you do, you got to work your ass off to get there. This is wrong. This is not how business is supposed to be. Smart businesses know that you always treat the customer with respect. You treat the customer with integrity. The worst thing you could do to a customer is have a robot answer your phone and have them jump through hoops and actually think that they're going to have some automated answer that's going to answer their specific unique problem and they're okay with spending 15, 30, 45 minutes, 60 minutes on a phone to, to, to conduct business that's disrespectful, that's inhumane, that's what every single large company in the entire world is doing right now, if one company invested millions of dollars, 2, 3, 4, millions of dollars, test marketed one area and put human beings on there to answer the phone and literally treat people like that, right? They would corner the market, they would put everyone in their industry at a business they did. But nobody does it. And I don't understand, you know, that's, there's, that's. I got a big beef with.

That. I think there's also something that's happening with larger companies. So I have a personal experience with Qantas Airlines, Australia's national carrier, and I'm a very proud member of the Australian community. I love Australia, I love Australian culture. That's why we moved here. But Qantas, the national airline, I was booked to go to Bali on a men's retreat about two years ago, and I booked a return ticket. And then the pandemic happened and I got a flight credit and I redeemed some of that flight credit to take another flight. And during that time, the flight was to Melbourne. We were about to go into another lockdown, and so I basically left Melbourne to come out and. And the ticket was quite clear that if you have to change your plans because of a government decision to lock down a state, then we'll just credit you the remaining of the journey. So to cut a long story short, this happened and I got on the phone to Qantas. Three and a half hours, I was on hold. When I finally got through to someone who was an offshore operative, they were like, yeah, no problem. That's all great. And it was like, I think it was something like $1382. I remember exactly the number that I was due back. So it like, not the kind of money you just go, hey, no worries. It's like, that was like a decent chunk of change.

It never showed up in my account. I had this flight credit, 150 bucks, and I'm like, I got confirmation on the phone now. I then wrote to them when I could, when I could finally find a way to write to them. I wrote to them over 18 months ago. And all I've had back from an organization is, we are acknowledging that you've written to us. We'll get back to you when we can. They've never responded and they're probably.

Backed up because of the pandemic, because everybody evidently is.

Overstepped.

Exactly. Come on. That excuse is so old. And the other one is try to find a phone number on a website. Yeah, there's no phone numbers. On websites.

That'S. Have been in the news here in Australia about the fact that they're just literally just not caring. And, and It's. Meanwhile, the CEO is getting pay rises. He's. He's about 10 million a year. Anyway, the long story of it is is that the outcome of that is that I will never. I mean, I'm never going to get that money back because I'll have to sit on the phone for another four hours and I might still do it one Sunday, just log in and have it on speakerphone. And just from the point of principle, there's a part of me that wants to resolve this. On the point of.

Principle?

Yeah. I'm at the point where my kind of time is so valuable to me that I'm just so done with them that I'll never fly that airline.

Again. Doesn't that make you feel.

Disrespected? Oh, it's.

Hugely. I mean, do companies realize this? Every company. Try to call an insurance company, try to call a major electronics company, try to call. I don't know, you know, I can't.

Even. You know what? There's actually, there's a company in Australia here who we get our home insurance from and we live in subtropical climates, so there's a lot of El Nina, La Nina, there's lots of weather events that make insurance quite expensive here, buildings insurance. But they have real people and when you call them up, you speak to a real person with a real name and it's amazing. And they're not the cheapest supplier, but I enjoy the fact that you can speak to a human being. But yeah, I think overall, companies of this, this culture, and I think how we can tie this back to video businesses is that, you know, we are small businesses who build our businesses on relationships.

And it's really important that we maintain that and don't look at any bigger company and go, let's start automating this. Because I think that's a slippery.

Slope. Yeah, it really is. I mean, the.

The I'm at a loss of thought here. The lesson to be learned here is care about your.

Customer.

Yeah. Give a shit about your customer. If you do, first off, it's going to, you don't need to prove it. The customer is going to know and feel disrespected or feel respected. You treat people the way you'd want to be treated. I can guarantee you that every single stakeholder that's responsible for these incredibly crazy, robotic, automated, horrifying systems that everybody uses, I guarantee you there is not One stakeholder that thinks that it's a good idea and they wouldn't mind experiencing that themselves. It's only about money. That's it. It's only about money. I don't care how you feel. I'm going to disrespect you, Mr. Customer, because I know I'm going to make more money this way and I'm not going to try to connect with you on any other human way. And by the way, what I did find it within my journey of this and I'm hoping that I can, like, I don't know, get enough people riled up so that some business goes, ah, we make an announcement and we're going to try something, I hope one day. There's a website called Get Human and it's, it's not perfect, but it'll get you to a voice and it'll tell you exactly how to get to the voice. Press 2, then 3, then 1, and then ask for this. So I've used it and it has worked. You still got to jump through hoops.

But. So this is like, this is like someone who's researched for each organization what the number numbers are to press on the phone to get to the human.

Quicker. In some cases, in some cases, they literally have the right number that you'll never find on the website. You know, instead of 1, 800, it's like, you know, 9223, like a local number. You're like, oh, my God, this is.

Gold.

Yeah. And then sometimes, you know, you call Verizon and it's like, good luck. You know, I don't, I don't know if we, we have Verizon here.

But. Yeah, I mean, we have all sorts of. Yeah, it's always the same. So, so how can that, so how can we. So, so there's a frustration that.

Everyone experiences and knows about.

How can we as video production companies.

Do it better? How can we. What are some of the things you see in the video production space? You've done coaching, you've done events, you've done business strategy sessions and toured the country. What are some of the pitfalls you see, perhaps video production companies making in the customer service.

Space?

Number one, you know.

Communication is key. Everything, everything will fall apart with bad communication. So first off, communication, when there's a conversation, there are. Think about, think about it. There's a, there's a bunch of Cliff Notes that you need to take or you need to retain. And then if you don't retain that and you come back to them and you don't have that information. You know, there's a chance that they're sitting there saying, I already told this person this information. And they're asking again. They sound like they're not really paying attention. I don't know if I want to do business with them. And it could be as simple as a date or a time or, you know, some, the name of their customer or something like that. So we're. Anytime I have a call with a, a prospect in my CRM, I'll enter in. As soon as the call's done, I'll take a minute or two and just like, here's what we talked about. I went over, you know, I, I do chicken scratch notes when I'm on the phone itself because I don't like the typing noise. And then I, I put that all on my CRM. Boom. And then sure enough, two weeks later, I look at the CRM because I have to make a call or they're calling me or what. I don't remember any of this stuff. And I'm like, oh my God, thank God it's there. So communication number one, number two, call people back the same day. You know, if you can call them back in the same.

Hours. Huge calling people, full stop is huge number of people I speak to who, like, I got an inquiry. I sent an.

Email. If you, if you don't call somebody back the same day, you're killing your business. It's okay. Occasionally you have a crazy day, all hands on deck. You just couldn't. You call them the next day. You wait two, three.

Days.

Well, what it's doing, I think as an inquiry comes into your business, I don't care enough about.

You.

It is so true. Every, every little thing here screams, disrespect, screams, I don't care about you. If, if I don't, if, if I don't call back somebody the same day, there's a really good reason and I'll even apologize for not calling them back the same day. So there's that one aspect. And, you know, every now and then, I'm not perfect. I've dropped the ball and completely forgot. I'm not going to sit here and say, I do it this way. This is the, I'm perfect at it. So, you know, I, I mess up all the time, but I'm aware of it and I practice this. So that's one aspect that, you know, the, the, the communication. Also trying to, I, I remember a lot of colleagues avoiding customers because now they got their money and now all of a sudden customers are very smart. They know when they give you money, and they're completely aware of when the level of customer service goes down after they give you money. Yeah, they're all smart. We all understand how that works. Yeah. So you got to maintain that, that level of customer experience. You know, you really got to maintain it. I think, I think a huge part of your question is all related to customer service. And you know what? Most companies suck at it. So if you're good at customer service, you're already killing your competition on that level. I, I, this is me being blunt. It's amazing. A lot of bad customer service out.

There. A lot. I think that's a great place to hold this interview. I want to come back and revisit this topic and talk about how to do it well. But, Adam, for today, thank you.