The Local Voice - But It May Not Be Scaleable

Is there a point where sometimes you're trying to do something and you realize it is not scalable? Well, sometimes that happens when it comes to marketing your business. And there are times where you just have to say, you know what? It's just gotta be this way. I can't scale it. Hi, my name is Jeff Harrison. Welcome to another episode of the Local Voice. And this just hit me just the other day when I was trying to create some content for a client and they're just not available. And my goal was to go in film content and do three or four episodes to try to get ahead, and they didn't have time for one. And so I started thinking about other things as I was driving back from their location and realized there are sometimes there are things we just can't scale. And so I want to talk about this today and realize just because we can't scale, it does not mean it cannot be done and it's not a good idea. Now, some of the things that are hard to scale. Yes, even in this AI digital world, some things that are hard to scale is the actual interaction of the business owner, solving a problem, being a behind the scenes, that type of things. Because what'll happen is it means we have to send a crew out or we have to send somebody out there to capture those moments and hopefully something goes down that we're saying, hey, this is good content. That's a little challenging. I'll give you an example. Just recently we set one of these up for a client, an H vac company that we were dealing with. And the goal was to go out for two hours and kind of be like an embedded reporter to capture content that is real and authentic, that then we could put back out into the marketplace. Keep in mind the time element and the cost of this. Sometimes you gotta think that's probably not scalable unless they do it themselves. And what I mean by that is I have another client that is coming on board. They're out of Arizona, and they have a beautiful, beautiful product and they have a beautiful business and they own a business there and then it's a franchise. So there's two of them going in for their marketing together. And the best thing they could do is pick up their phone and go do behind the scenes or the day in the life. And hey, these are some of the challenges we're facing. Here's an example with my client. And they had a great experience. These are moments that quite frankly, not scalable. Like they can't call me and say, hey, Jeff, could you come out here and film this while we're here, while my customer's here, because this is a good moment. It's just not going to happen. Those are spur of the moment kind of things. So is there an answer for this? Well, again, I would say yes. The most logical answer is teaching that business owner and helping them overcome the uncomfortableness, that's a word, of being uncomfortable with being on camera or turning on their phone and getting good quality content. Now, once they do that, they're off to the races. See, from that point, they can take that, they can go to an app that we have and, and they can download the information off of their phone into a folder and then we can take it and run from there. Then we can scale it, right? We can take and say, okay, you had 20 instances this week where you went out or with somebody coming into your business and you took a recording. And it's really good because it tells a story of who you are and it lets your potential customer say, hey, these really are good people. I hear the, how they answer the phone and work with people on the phone or their service people do X and they, you know, all this kind of stuff and they drop it in this folder and then we take it from there and create the narrative around it based on that piece of content. That's a way to take it and scale it and still, and still keep it price effective price. Because here's the thing, when you're working with a local business owner, the chances are they are price sensitive or cost sensitive to marketing their business. And that's why I think a lot of them don't do it. Or they take an opportunity, take a chance and say, okay, listen, I'm going to run some ads on Facebook, I'm going to hire somebody, I'm going to do it myself. And when they do it and it doesn't work, it's almost like touching the stove. They just assume that every time they go by the stove it's hot and they never touch it again. When actually if they got with somebody who knew how to do that. And again, I'm just using Facebook as an example, could be a number of things and they do it really well. It could be very effective. But because their budgets are what they are.

When they touch it once and it didn't work, their natural response is that doesn't work for my business and it doesn't work for my customers. When in fact, there's plenty of data that shows it probably does. So here's another thing that's kind of Challenging is.

Excuse me, here's another answer for you on how you can do this. And it's taking something that's not scalable and making it scalable. I'll give you two examples. One of our clients out of Chicago, they're an author, and we're taking their book and we're uploading it, and then we're going to create content for each chapter. And what I mean by that is we take the Word document, put a chapter in at a time, using artificial intelligence to read that, and then through the prompting that we give, then generates the right pieces of content. And I'm talking about video scripts, social media posts, blog posts, emails, everything from that one chapter, based on the prompting we put into it to get us the ideal message that we want to send to their target market. Well, in a situation like that, we can scale it and keep it right on target with the tone, the voice, the intent of that business owner. Because that's another thing that when the business owner says, well, you know, I really want to be the one on camera because nobody knows it like me, or I want my staff on there because it doesn't sound just like me. This is a way to do that. Now, there are many ways now just to keep evolving of how we can capture information from you as a business owner and then properly upload it as a knowledge base. And it will understand your tone, it will understand your voice, it will understand your patterns of speech, it will understand your humor, if you have any. It will understand your snarkiness, if you have any. And then everything it makes will have you in there, except it will have your knowledge. I'll give you another example. Let's say once a month, I have a link that I send you, and in that month, you sit in front of your computer and I have created a series of questions that you just answer. And. And it probably takes about, I'd say, 45 minutes to an hour, but it's more of a conversation on these topics now. We have you on camera answering these questions, solving the problem for your ideal customer, which, once again, it took one hour of your time, and now you give it back to us again after you're done. It comes into a folder, and then we can take that and we can cut it up. We can put it together in different ways to create all your content for a month. That's another way to take the unscalable and make it scalable. Because let's face it, as a small business owner, what do you do? You're wearing a Lot of hats. You're pulled in many different directions. One day you know, you're the receptionist, the next day your service, the next day your customer service, right? Next day, you could be tech. The next day you're, you're dealing with, you know, getting the cars fixed, or, you know, your vehicle is broken down. So you're a mechanic. So it's a lot of pulling and tugging for you as a business owner. This is a way to take the unscalable and make it scalable. Now, I'm still going to go back and I'm going to say the very best way is for that business owner to turn on their phone.

And capture those moments. Just put it on a tripod, put it over there on a desk, and you're going to have a meeting with your staff about a certain thing. You know, there could be some good stuff coming out of that. And you just turn it on, right? And you don't want to make it so far away. We can't hear the audio because the audio is important. We may even get a point where we say, hey, we're going to mic you and at least one other person in the room and make it very easy to do so. So you just, you know, put it on it, put it on your sweater or put it on a jacket, whatever it is on your shirt, and then hit record and do your thing. You might actually have two cameras. One focus close up on you. And if there's more people in the room, you have a little bit of a wide shot and you're gathering all of that. Once it's done.

Put it in the folder, we'll take it from there. We can scale it up. These are things that I think even though we have artificial intelligence to do some things, that this is still important. It's still taking the things that we think. I can't scale that. Even though it's the best, I just can't scale it. We can scale it. There are answers. So today's not going to be a really long program. It's more about, hey, this is something that came up in my world in the last seven days that I wanted to share with you that I think, I think you'll find would be valuable.

The last thing I want to talk to you about is about putting this all together.

There's a product that we have. It's called the Content Accelerator. It's not expensive. Again, I'm taking the non scalable and making it scalable. So what we did is we took artificial intelligence.

We created a workflow that will create all these pieces, if you will. Because once we gather from you, what happens then? We, we then feed it into this and it says, oh, this is Jeff. This is his business. This is what they do. Here's their target market, here's, you know, their pain points. And it will take what we have in there and it will custom make all the content from a blog post to your video script, to your emails. Up to 20 posts a week.

That's four different platforms, five days a week. But here's the other thing, and this is why I'm pushing back on this a little bit, because I don't think it's quite ready for prime time. But hey, by the time you listen to this, it could have improved so much. We're saying I can't tell if Jeff is real or he's an avatar. There's a program we have and it allows me to take a video like this, that's clean and I wouldn't have my headphones on, probably not my glasses and, and I would do like a three to five minute video. I could take that, put it in this program and we create an avatar of whomever is being in this case, me. It would make an avatar for me and that avatar would then be ready to go. It's almost like, hey, we have it on the shelf now. We bring it over here. We. We put that one week's worth of. Or excuse me, that one month's worth of information in there. We might transcribe it and put some, some scripts together. And then we take that avatar, we give it the script. And what does it do? It does the, it does the acting. It's on camera. So it's me on the camera. So that's another way we can scale this up.

It's. It's really, really, really good right now, but it still feels just a little bit off. Just a little bit. I'm talking barely. I'm not talking like a, like the old days where, you know, my lips, or even some days now where the lips are moving and my voice is trailing behind or vice versa. It is so, so close. So these are things that are coming down the pike that I think will make a difference. The only thing that's challenging with that is how do I take that avatar that's in a. I'm going to call it a sterile environment. And all of a sudden I'm in my office working with somebody, you know, my staff. That's a challenging piece right now. Now, yes, granted, behind me, I could have a green screen. I Could make it look like I'm in the office or I'm on location with a client and my staff is back working with them. That definitely can work. Definitely can work. So there's a lot of things happening, and. And when it comes to the local voice, I wanted to kind of clue you in on some of these things. It's a lot of fun. The exciting part for me as a business owner in the digital space is all the cool toys that are coming out. I was explaining earlier, I did do another podcast with a dear friend of mine, and it's called the Twisted, Bent, and Exhausted Entrepreneur Podcast. You got to check that out. It's with Leslie Spohr, but you have to check that out. But we. We talk about, you know, there's a lot of pressure on an entrepreneur, and these are things that you can do using artificial intelligence, hiring an expert, that kind of stuff. You can actually use that to make your life better, your business more effective. So wrapping this up, can you do what you do at scale? That's what started me on this thought process. Like I said, it took me, you know, four or five days, because I thought, when I first thought that when I'm driving back home from that situation where, you know, my client not only couldn't he not do one, he couldn't do any that day. So that kind of threw me under the bus being able to put out content for them that week because I didn't have a video, I didn't have it, didn't have a message, and it was a little challenging. So I'm always looking for a better way, as long as it's not taking away from the quality of my client. Always at the end of the day is like, is this putting my client in the very best light? And so these AI avatars, you know, I have them, if you will, they're in the garage. They're not quite ready for race day. I don't think they're far away, and I can't wait to get them out because it will make a change. You may see it. There's a gal, her name is Julia, and she uses an avatar now to create her weekly podcasts. And her videos, they're freakishly good, and she does a great job at it. I don't know.

I think we're using the same program. The voices are the same, but her stuff has just turned out just a little bit better than what I'm getting done with my. My process. But I think it's just around the corner, like I said, not quite ready for Race day. Again, I want to thank you for joining me. My name is Jeff Harrison. This is the Local Voice. And we try to come every week with something that either I'm interviewing somebody with a great idea that can help you. Not an idea that's taking you down a rabbit hole, but an idea that will help propel you and your business forward, or I'll share things like I did today. Hey, how can we take what we do that feels unscalable and scale it? And like I said, when I first thought about this, I thought, I guess this is it. It's the embedded reporter, if you will. That's the only way we can get the story. But now I figured out a better way. Hey, thank you again. We'll see you next week. Thanks again. Bye. Bye.