What's My Video Strategy - Ask Evan

Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael. Welcome to another edition of Ask Evan. In today's video, I'm going to answer a question from one of my readers in Auro who is asking about the videos that I make, how I make them, and why I make them. So specifically, Rodin asking, "Hi Evan, you are just a great guy for being consistent with your messages." Thank you. I have two questions for you. One, in what way do these messages you send to people positively impact your business? I mean economically or financially. And two, do you have people working on them and sending them out for you, or do you have to write and work on people's questions, new ideas continuously, when you have the core of your business to take care of as well? I want to say something like this, but I need to know if it's worth my while. Thanks. And oro. So a couple of ideas here for you on how I create these videos. Most of the videos that I create come from reader questions, just like this, just like the one that you wrote in. I don't make money from these videos. Sometimes they're sponsored by a corporate partner, but most of the videos are not sponsored. I do the videos because I really like helping out entrepreneurs, and this is what gets me excited. I'll usually create the videos once a week and then send them out during the week once a day. And it's the best part of my week, you know, answering your questions and being able to create these videos for you guys. I do almost everything myself, so I'm staring at my camera that I set up myself. What I usually do is print off the questions that I have for the week, so if you see here, I've got my pages of questions and I'll write notes under what I want to say, but usually I'll just be freestyling whatever comes into my mind as I'm talking about whatever question that's been asked. The only part that I outsource right now is the video editing. So I started doing all of that myself, and I found that I wasn't the best video editor. I was okay at it, but time to bring on somebody a little more professional. And so I've hired somebody, Saad, who is my video editor. And once I'm finished with these recordings, I put them on my computer, put them in Dropbox, send them over to Saad, and he makes them look great with the intro and the music and all that, sends them back to me. And then I'll be the one posting it on YouTube and posting on my Facebook channel and Twitter and all of that stuff. So I do most of the work myself, and right now, you know, the only revenue model from it typically is when I get some of the videos partnered with a corporate sponsor. But for the most part, I do it because I really like it. You know, it's one of the best parts of my week, and I really enjoy helping entrepreneurs. When I first started my website, I was just sharing information. There was no business model behind it. I was just following something I was super excited about really passionate about and trusted that somewhere in the future the dots would connect. In terms of my regular business, I have a team working with me and they run most of my business for me. So I'm lucky that we built it up to a certain point where I'm not really doing much on the day-to-day stuff, so I can spend more time doing this kind of stuff, which I really enjoy, helping other entrepreneurs. So I'm following the same path with the videos. Right now there isn't really a big business model behind it. But I'm trusting that somewhere in the future the dots will connect because I'm doing something that I'm really excited and passionate about and hopefully adding value to my clients, the entrepreneur community like you guys. So in terms of if this is something that you should focus on or not, I would really say make sure you're super excited and passionate about it. That way you'll put in the work to make sure that it's a good product and that it will start to take off. If you're not really excited about it, if you see it just as a marketing opportunity, then it may not be something that you will end up committing to. You'll probably quit at the first giant hurdle that you face. So when I started these videos, I did it super low budget. You know, I had a tiny flip camera that was under $100 and didn't have a tripod, didn't have any lights, did it out of my home or against a backdrop in my office. And they were pretty bad. If you go back and look at some of the videos, you'll see that, uh, they were pretty bad. And then as I got a couple of them funded by a corporate partner, I was able to invest in a better camera and lighting, and I also learned a lot about, you know, how to make these videos a little bit better. And so slowly, slowly, slowly they get better as money's coming in. So one of my business principles is not spending money until you're making money. So I didn't want to spend a lot of money on a project that I didn't know if I was gonna stick to or not. And then as I got a little bit of money coming in from corporate partners, I was able to invest and make these videos better. But again, most of them is just because I like having fun with you guys, I like answering the questions, um, and it's just something I'm super passionate about. And hopefully that leads somewhere down the road, but, uh, can't predict it right now. So hopefully that answers your question. If you guys like the video and you like all these videos, please give this one a thumbs up, and I'd also love to hear what you think about the videos and any comments you might have if you want to leave one below this episode. And stay tuned for the next episode.