Jason Hsiao - Creating Drag-N-Drop Videos That Grow Your Business

Boom, boom, boom.

Boom, boom. What's up, everybody? You're listening to the Hustle and Float Shark podcast with your boys, Mount Wolf and Joe Fear.

Good morning, Joe.

Good afternoon, Matt. Are we in different parts of the world?

No, but this episode comes out at 7am wow.

It's definitely. I'm not awake yet.

You're not awake yet.

I should be rising right around now.

Well, thanks for doing this intro from your bed.

Yeah.

While sleeping.

And thank you to the team for posting this podcast at. Right at 7am thank you. Appreciate y'. All.

Yes. There's somebody sitting there at a computer at 6:59am looking at their watch, waiting to press the button. Right at 7:00am, go. Yeah, that's how it works.

What are you doing at 7:00am, Matt?

I don't know.

Be honest.

It depends. Is it a weekend or a weekday?

Weekday.

On a weekday, I'm probably. I'm probably up starting to like, not functioning fully.

Oh, yes, that's true.

Yeah. Not functioning. Full. Probably awake, wandering. I mean, my kids get to school at 8 and sometimes I take them to school. Usually Alana takes them to school, but sometimes I have to take them to school. Back when they went to two separate schools.

I was gonna say prior to this.

Yeah. Back when they were at two different. Now they're at the same school. So Alana takes them both to school. But back when they're at two separate schools, we had to split duty. So I actually sleep in a little bit more these days than I used to.

Oh, see, the truth is coming out. I love it. That's the truth. That it's. It's the truth.

But at seven o', clock, I'm typically awake. I may not totally be out of bed yet.

Same. I'm. I'm the same. I'm pretty much the same schedule. Probably going to change with the baby, though, in the house.

Definitely going to change with the baby in the house, I'll tell you.

But there's definitely like this period of. Yeah, I don't know, I actually get.

Up and read book. I don't get up, I wake up and I'll read a book for like 30 minutes before getting out of bed now. So, like the first morning, first 30 minutes of my morning is actually reading these days, which is a fairly new thing, but it's like, you know, kind of lights up my brain a little bit before I get going.

You know, what I've been doing is, you know the book Cyber Cybernetics Psycho.

Cybernetics Psycho. Jesus. Maxwell Maltz.

Yeah, that could be A spin off cyber cybernetics. It rolls off the tongue. Not really, no. Psycho cybernetics. I've been doing the whole visualization. I forget what you call it. The mental theater. Theater of your mind. I think it was one of those two. And I've been doing that in the morning, which is pretty cool. But unfortunately, sometimes I fall back asleep because it's like, oh, focus on your.

But no, that's actually what instead of reading, I've noticed, like, oh, a little meditation. Mental theater. Theater is a good theater is how they pronounce it most of the world. Yeah, we're just all backwards in the US here.

I don't even know if that's true because it's an English word and most of the world isn't English.

The Queen's English.

There you go. It's the Queen's way. Theater. The queen goes to the theater.

The theater. The mental.

So I think we're going to talk to somebody today eventually. So have you ever. Do you remember the tool Animoto?

I actually surprisingly do, yes. Yes. How do you know?

Today we're talking to one of the co founders of Animoto.

I love it and I love the tool too. I used it a lot, like I think I said like five or six years ago. I think it was actually further than that or longer ago.

Yeah, no, I think it was roughly like 09. Probably 10. Somewhere around there is when we were playing around with it. But you know what? After this episode, I think we're going to be playing around with it a hell of a lot more.

I think so for sure.

So today's episode is with one of the co founders of Animoto. His name's Jason Xiao.

He's the co founder and chief video officer, the chief Video officer cvo.

And in this episode we talk quite a bit about how Animoto came to be. You know, he. He actually did filmmaking for like MTV and Comedy Central and stuff like that and transitioned into making online video easier. So we talk about that transition, the development of Animoto, how the idea came to be, the types of features he wanted to put in it. And then we really dive into how to use some of these videos to grow your business. We talk about LinkedIn, we talk about Instagram, we talk about Facebook, we talk about all the different ways that you can leverage these videos. And if you're not familiar with Animoto, basically it's like a drag and drop video tool where you can like take images and little video clips and then, you know, pick a theme and pick some music and it just compiles it all into a video for you, like, easy. Like it's just drag and drop easy. And you have a video that it spits out.

Yeah.

And, you know, we've used it in the past. We're going to start using it again and we're going to dive into all the various ways that somebody can use this tool and the various ways that you can leverage it to grow your own online interweb business.

Yes, that was a very long interweb business.

Yeah.

Yeah. We're obviously super fans of content repurposing and that's exactly how we would use it. So expect some sections of, you know, this podcast to become videos and maybe they sprinkle into the Facebooks and the youtubes and all the other ways. But we really dig into Instagram and LinkedIn as the two things that he's just like, you gotta be there with video. So he lays out a bunch of strategies around that.

Well, you can talk about using video to, like, you know, manage your team and to like, offer support to customers and things like that. So quite a bit of rabbit holes that we go down in the video realm. So I think you're gonna.

Video realm.

Dig this.

Yeah.

And what were you gonna say?

I was going to say that if you want some notes on this here episode, which I believe you should get because there's always a lot of actionable strategies, we. And if you go to hustleandflowchart.com comp c o m p o m p hustleandflowchart.com Comp get those notes for free, be quick, because they go away after about a couple weeks and then they have other episodes in there, not the one you're looking for. So make sure you go over there to hustleandflowchart.com comp go get the notes. Because we literally have someone taking notes on this episode.

Absolutely.

It's not like some transcript thing that's all hacked up with Jason's name spelled wrong or Animoto is like, like. No, it's like 100% like, we got pretty legit note takers, so go get them.

And also Jason Xiao, he gave us a special link that's gonna give you some cool Animoto stuff. So if you go to animoto.com hustle, he's hooking you up with some goodies there for those interested in Animoto. So check that out for sure. And also, you know who's a cool.

Company, I believe I know who you're Talking about, but I'm curious to wonder.

I was gonna say Intercom.

Who were you thinking it was? Intercom.

Intercom.

How did you read my mind? I don't know.

They're one of the companies that supports our show.

That's probably it then. Okay, so Intercom is pretty dang legit, so yeah, their tools are very. It's all the conversational marketing stuff, which you've heard us talk a lot about. So there is no room for idle chat and marketing. Have you heard that before?

I've heard that from you.

I just said that. So if email is your only money maker, make some room for something that's actually new.

Intercom.

Ooh, nailed it.

Good timing. So Intercom's the only business messenger that starts with a real time chat and then keeps growing your business with conversational bots and guided product tours.

Beep boop.

Is that what the sound of product tours sound like?

That's the sound of a bot.

Oh. Oh, yeah. Beep boop. Beep boop boop. Conversational ones, though. I thought they actually use words.

No, that's.

That's. That is. That is bot words. So do I have to under. Okay.

Oh, no, no. This bot actually uses words.

Okay, go ahead. Intercom's cool. All right, so take care. Yeah. There's an intercom customer named UN. In just 12 months, they actually converted 45%. That's a lot of percent of more visitors through Intercom's messenger. So the little beep boop, the young man said. So make some room for new revenue, a new revenue channel. If you go to intercom.com marketing, that's intercom.com marketing. You'll love it. And they'll hook you up with some sweet, sweet software and you'll see whole bunch of ways to use Intercom in your business.

You know who should use Intercom? Who? People that want to make more money.

Yeah. And we've proven that it actually works, this whole conversational marketing thing. Yeah, people like conversations and do talk to other people. We're all kind of starving for conversations and connection.

I agree. Go check out intercom.com marketing. Let's go talk video and Animoto with Jason.

Let's do it. Hey, Jason, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me. And congrats on the success for everything. It's been really fun to watch you guys.

Thanks, man. Yeah, the podcast is an interesting beast. It's like this whole space seems interesting right now, which I'm sure you've been watching with Animoto as well.

There's a lot of you guys kind of caught the wave just right.

Definitely been fun to watch. Lots of other people are just kind of floundering all around, but you guys have done it right, so congrats.

We're also trying to create the wave a little bit, I think. I feel like a lot of times I'm trying to force podcasts on people and create a wave that other people aren't on board with yet all the.

Time, but that's part of evangelizing something that you love. Well, it seems like I remember, like we were chatting right before is I used Animoto, your company, years and years and years ago. It was probably like six or seven so years ago. I was doing a lot of video animation back then and I think you were the very first or one of the first companies I saw that were doing it right with that space. So I felt like, you know, when you're catching the wave, it's almost like you caught the wave at a really good time back then as well.

Yeah, certainly. But then the, but then the crazy thing is, you know, literally everything just changes year after year. So just kind of keeping up because the waves come in waves.

As you guys know, the challenges never stop.

Yeah, yeah, no, I think Animoto was probably the first sort of automated video making tool that I ever remember seeing when I was kind of getting into, you know, into video stuff online.

Can we, can we go back to how Animoto got started? Like maybe what were you doing before Animoto? And you know what, where did the idea come from and what's sort of the evolution so far?

Yeah, no, certainly. Well, I mean, we've been at this for about, you know, gosh, about 10 years. Prior to Animoto, I was actually a TV producer here in New York. I was producing stuff for like, Comedy Central and mtv. And so I was. So my whole career I've kind of always been doing video related stuff. And really, you know, it was just a friend of mine here in New York who was working for abc. We would, we just get together for drinks every once in a while. We're just always kind of brainstorming stuff. But we always just kind of had this idea that, you know, we're, we're working in this industry where everything takes, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars and, and huge teams of people to put out like every minute, every second of tv. And we're like, it just seems inevitable that all this is going to change soon because kind of everything happening around us was like the Internet and Mobile. And it just seemed inevitable. Things like, what if one day mobile had Internet or had a camera? And sure enough, a few years later, all that stuff kind of came to be. But we kind of just knew that things had to change. And we had no idea what we were diving into, but it seemed like something that we wanted to, to get into. And we were really, we could really kind of started off the whole company just as total kind of technology and product nerds. We were just like, let's lock ourselves in a room and just do cool shit and see what happens. And you know, it's been kind of a journey from there. But in the beginning it was like, yeah, what if you could just press a couple buttons and have something that looks as awesome as you would see on mtv? And I have no idea who would use it, but let's just go make it, you know? And here we are. Here we are today through lots of ups and downs.

Wow, that's interesting, man. And you're the co founder and what, the Chief Video Officer.

That is my role now, although I've kind of played a few different roles in the company along the way. But I am the Chief Video Officer.

I love that.

Now, was the concept of Animoto when it first came out, was it kind of the same? Have you had any pivots? Or was the concept that it is today kind of the initial concept that you came up with way back 10 years ago?

It is all very similar. I think really there's kind of been one major.

I wouldn't necessarily say it was a pivot as much as like, oh, we actually really need to get focused and figure out what we really want to do. Because I think kind of, and this is maybe not surprising to a lot of very kind of technology and product oriented founders, but when we first got started, despite thinking we were customer centered, we were really just building stuff that we thought was cool. And the great thing was in the early years, the first couple years, it actually turned out that.

A little bit of everyone was making video because we just said, well, we started with photos because we figured everyone has photos and music.

And we never said editing or anything like that. So it was just kind of a fun way to just turn all your stuff into something like almost like an MTV music video. And it turned out that a lot more people started using it than we thought. We had schools, nonprofits, businesses, photographers, travelers, bloggers, skateboarders, all sorts of people using Animoto. And so for the first couple years, that actually seemed and probably was amazing. And then I think we just started to realize that we were kind of just being pulled in so many different directions, and our product was almost becoming like a Frankenstein, like, patchwork, quilt of a mess, just kind of a patchwork. But because we were trying to do something for these guys and something for these guys and stuff for these guys and. And even just kind of internally trying to run a company where no one really knows kind of what the most important thing is, it just kind of ends up being a bit of a. Kind of a sprawling mess. You know, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but, you know, when you're in the thick of things, that's what it feels like. And so at some point we were just like, all right, well, let's just step way back and say, would we rather be, like, kind of good at 20 different things or kind of be best in the world at one thing? And so obviously, you know, the latter sounded more interesting to us. And so we really wrestled with that for a bit of, like, what do we really think we could be best. Best in the world at? And by the way, that actually has to be like, you know, a real market there and a real need there.

And so we started really getting focused on small businesses needing video. That's where it seemed like the next big wave was going to happen. Something that we were passionate about because we're kind of a small business ourselves. And so just to kind of make other people's, you know, business, to help them, help their businesses grow and come alive was just super interesting. And it seemed like an actual market where people would, you know, we could actually build a real business around. And so that's what we got, you know, really focused on. And in fact, we started to try to evolve our existing product. And it was just such a. It was just so hard because we had built the original product on a completely different premise. It was a lot based on, like, music analysis and perfectly visualizing what was going on in the video, depending on exactly what was happening in the music. So you could put like a hip hop piece and a classical piece, and you get two totally different videos. I mean, it was really cool stuff, something that no one actually really cared about paying for, but we thought it was cool, and we had patents and everything, so we thought we were so cool. But turned out there was no real business around some of that stuff we made. But then we basically. We literally started from scratch, and that was really hard to say. We have to build. You know, we said something like this. We said, if we woke up one day and someone else had built some product that we would just basically like cry, cry. What would that product be? And how about instead of waiting around for that to happen, let's just try to build it? And we thought it was going to take a year. It took us like two and a half years. So it was definitely kind of a big investment. But.

We took a lot of inspiration from stuff happening around us. Like we saw Squarespace and wix and all these other kind of like drag and drop builder type products and we're like, yeah, that seems like that's kind of what we've been trying to do. And so if it's happening with websites, if it's happening with email, you know, what can we learn from those industries? And you know, we've always just believed that video is going to be one of the next big waves of what, you know, businesses really need to kind of add to part of their kind of marketing arsenal. And so that whole kind of awakening, I guess, or kind of.

Step into maturity or puberty, I guess I think we're still immature in a lot of ways. That was like four or five years ago. And so now we're. Now it's great. Now looking back, we're like, okay, all that hard work and hard decision making was really worth it because now we feel like we're kind of in our zone and it's a fun place to be.

Yeah, I love that perspective of, you know, if somebody was to make a software that would just really make us cry if they made it.

One day.

Someone else had made it, you're like, well, we're out of business.

Yeah.

What would that be?

It could have been me.

Let's beat our non existent yet competition to the punch.

Yeah, it's almost kind of like what would it take to disrupt yourselves? Right. That kind of mentality.

That's a cool question actually to pose to yourself. What would it take to disrupt yourself?

I like that a lot of not enough big, big, big companies are asking that question these days.

Right? Yeah. Well, Jason, I'm curious what you guys did in that two, what do you say? Two and a half years of development when you started from scratch was like, were you still focused on sales as a company with that previous version? Or like what was happening during that two years of development? Was it just purely focused on development or were you like, how do you sustain the company during that time?

Like, did cash flow stop because of it, you know?

No, we've been lucky. I mean, first of all, we're a subscription business, so There's a lot of benefits to having kind of a subscription business and those kind of recurring revenues to lean on. Our existing product was already had, I'll call it kind of our flagship product. Already had kind of enough momentum that it could, with, I'll say with just some marketing kind of support and efforts we could continue to do. And actually today, even though we've kind of stopped developing on it for a while, there are still kind of long time users that still have a product and use it. So I bet, you know, if you go back in your animat account, you might still have it. You have to like choose between the two products. But so there was, there was enough there that it could kind of help help bridge the gap. I think we would just realize that it's. It was almost even like the, the old product. It was almost. It kind of became one of those things and any kind of technology or product people would, would probably resonate with. This is like when you've built kind of an outdated technology, it just seems like it takes 10 times longer to do something that should only take a few weeks and it takes several months. And so we knew that it would feel like a step backwards, but ultimately would be three steps forward. So it was, yeah, that, you know, that kind of that year of trying to get, you know, refocused and having to build up a new product from scratch were certainly tough years. But it was also kind of exciting to kind of say, like, hey, yeah.

We'Re not just kind of building something now that's just kind of a whim. Just like, oh, this would be cool or this would be cool. Like now we actually kind of have focus and we know what we're trying to be best in the world. And so I think just that level of focus really was motivating because everyone was pointed in the same direction. And I think when everyone knows they're working on the most important thing, there's just something kind of exciting about that. So I actually look back on that chapter. I mean there was definitely a lot of blood, sweat and tears, but it was important and it was very rewarding.

Sure. Oh yeah, it's super crucial for. Because I feel like most businesses go through this transition phase where, yeah, it's like the waters get a little murky, but energy is kind of going all over the place. So it's definitely a sign to refine whatever you're doing because that's typically not sustainable.

Yeah. And I feel like, man, I remember in those early days we're like, well, look at well, Google says their strategy is you try a little bit everything, and you see what sticks. And I think you, you know, everyone listening, right, who's a real kind of a small business owner or entrepreneur who's done something from scratch, you realize that that's actually not really strategy. Like, when you're Google and you have kind of endless cash in your bank and you can do whatever you want to see what sticks, then, great. But 99.9% of us don't have that luxury. And so it's all about just trying to figure out, you know, making tough choices and what, what, what do you do and what you. And what do you not do and why and having to, like, be really scrappy and resourceful and get focused in the right way. And so I think, yeah, we learned a lot of that, you know, sometimes the hard way. But that's, I think, you know, all part of growing up as a company.

Right? It's part of business.

Did you or your co founder, did either of you have any sort of background in software development or did you have to go and hire developers once you had the idea for the product?

Great question. Well, we had four. We have four co founders and two. Two of the co founders, they're actually brothers, Stevie and Tom Clifton. It turns out they're actual technical geniuses. So luckily I kind of partnered with the right folks because they could just roll up their sleeves and develop and whatever they didn't know, they would just figure out how to teach themselves. So they were just kind of like those kind of guys. So I think certainly if you're doing something kind of on the technical side, it certainly helps to have, you know, a partner who knows what they're doing. Whereas I was kind of focused a bit more on the. Still on the kind of product development side, but also kind of on the business side of things and just kind of help shape, like, the product in the early days. But yeah, they were like, legit developers.

Definitely helps. Yeah.

Yeah. I always like hearing that Genesis story because I know, you know, when people think of ideas for software, that's always like, the hardest thing is I've got this idea, but, you know, now what? And then you start going and talking to developers and, you know, you'll go and talk to a developer and they might quote you $50,000 to develop out this software for you. And you know that that's. They're probably coming in under budget if they're telling you that much, they probably actually need more than that. And, and then just people never get the Wheels moving, they never take that next step because, you know, it's a scary leap of faith to go down that path. So, you know, it's awesome that you, you know, you, you managed to find some, some great partners that can, that could carry that load of the business.

Mm. Yeah. Yeah.

And the other thing we did, the other thing we did, that's, that's a bit more of like the stuff that people don't actually tell you when you're trying to figure out how to start a business. This is kind of like a bit of like the step by step. But we, it's not like we just like had the idea and we quit our jobs and like, let's go for it. We, we started working on it on kind of nights and weekends to try to, you know, prove it out. And then everything was kind of like one year at a time. So let's say, okay, let's give ourselves a year of working nights and weekends and see if we can actually do technically what we think we want to do. And then kind of once we hit that spot, we were like, okay, well now what should we do? How about we give ourselves six months to see if we can ask our friends and family for some money and see if we can get enough money to support ourselves for, you know, eight to 10 months in New York? How much would that be if we had to live off literally as the minimal life in New York eating top ramen for 8, 10 months? How much? Okay, so if we could raise that, okay, then, then we can quit our jobs. But then let's give ourselves one year to see if we can actually start making some, some, you know, some money. So it wasn't, it's all very, you know, it's all very kind of step by step. It wasn't just like, let's just tell our boss f you and go buy this giant building and start a big company, you know?

Yeah. Unlike most startup owners or founders that's kind of their M.O.

You have a ping pong table before the software is even ready.

Yes.

That's scary. Whenever we see that, we're like, no, don't, please don't.

Well, cool. So now Animoto has definitely gone through its iteration, its phases and all that stuff, I guess Give us some of the highlights of the software now and then. I think it'd be cool to transition into what you're seeing is working best with video online, different social media networks where you could distribute all that stuff. So let's start with Animoto.

Yeah, well, I mean, the Basic premise is how do we give folks, people who literally have zero experience with video, the ability to create powerful and professional videos and literally just kind of drag and drop. Animoto's based on basic building blocks, so it's kind of almost like a toy. There's like no way you can actually create a failed video. You're just dragging around these big building blocks. And similar to this trend that we've seen of these builder type products.

And most notably with the website builders, is it's not only building block based, it's.

Also.

Typically you have templates, starter templates to choose from.

And it's a WYSIWYG experience, meaning what you see is what you get. So it's real time. You're seeing it being put together right in front of you.

And you can customize things for businesses. It's important that it has the right colors and fonts and, and that you can include your logo and stuff like that. So just basic stuff to make it actually look like, you know, it's, it's yours. But I think the most important thing is that it's, it's, it's, it's kind of like idiot proof, right, that most people don't actually have any video experience. And so we're just, the basic idea is just trying to empower folks with the, you know, the power of a video and they're, they're finding all sorts of ways they want to, you know, they want to use video. Now it's not just kind of like on your website, it's like, okay, on.

Landing pages for SEO purposes, it's with email, it's obviously on social media, it's at live events, it's at trade shows, it's to promote your next podcast or whatever it is. People are finding all sorts of needs for video. And.

The nice thing is just being able to, trying to keep up with that never ending demand for what people need video for and how to kind of pair our expertise with what they need so that they can kind of shortcut their way to success is what we're trying to do.

I think that's great.

I'm curious if there's any real interesting or creative ways that you've seen it being used that maybe you didn't initially think it would be used in this way.

Good question.

We'll certainly see people get really. I think that one of the things I wasn't really anticipating is people actually using it.

In store displays or.

At actual, I don't know, adventure trade shows. Because I just always thought These are just like, these are videos for the web. But it's funny. Sometimes I'll walk around New York and sometimes I'll just see like I'll pop like I was at a deli in the East Village and they had like a animoto video of their, I don't know, their various kind of deli foods playing on the screen. I was like that's really funny slash cool. I would never thought like a deli would be a video in there. But you know they're trying, they're all trying to figure out how to just stand out and be, you know, and be different and look professional. So yeah, I guess there's just, it's, you know, your, your imagination is the limit. So.

Well that almost like that proves your mission even the best is like hey, someone in this deli in New York that you didn't know and probably not Internet savvy, most likely, you know, at least not digital marketers, all that stuff. Video producers. And here they are producing something with Animoto. Like you said, it's idiot proof. So it's like if it's just building blocks then awesome. Everyone can use that. That's cool. Good.

I was going to say I imagine, I imagine you've probably seen some people using it like in the adult industries as well. But you know, we don't have to go down that path.

You know, it's a little bit of everything but I mean I think that's kind of what's going. Even though that we think we've gotten really focused on small businesses. If you think of the gamut of small businesses out there, it's like it's, it's, it is kind of a little bit of everything. Like I'm even thinking, thinking of some of the business owners I've talked to recently. It's like Metal Welder, a dj, you know, events promoter for who's like a part time dj. Someone who does like baby gender prediction and you know, so it's like all sorts of stuff and for me it's really interesting to see like what these businesses are trying to do, you know, trying to do and how do we kind of like create something that's can help all of them, you know, in a, in a common way. So.

Well, how are you seeing? Yeah, I love like the, just the widespread of types of businesses and I'm sure you have silos of your go to you know, best avatar companies. I'm curious of any, you know like on the marketing side. So after they produce the video, have you Seen any thing really stand out as, like, oh, man, like, that crushed it. In terms of marketing, that video. Maybe it went viral, quote unquote, or really brought in some good results for that client of yours.

Yeah, no, it's. I think one of the things I feel like has been a big aha for us in the last couple of years is, is it's almost kind of like the anti kind of viral messages that a lot of folks out there are saying. So I'll kind of give you an example of when you go to these marketing conferences or you list action. And when you listen to some of these business podcasts, people will be like, all right, everyone, look at this video that we did. This video got 16.9 trillion views. Actually, now it's 17.8 trillion. So. So all you have to do is do something just like this. Make sure it's hilarious. Or make sure you just capture Beyonce at that exact moment and turn that into a meme. Right? Or make sure you think, like, Steven Spielberg and tug at the heartstrings, right? And you're all excited and you listen to the stuff and you start writing it down. And then you go back, you know, to your office and you kind of, like, start looking around and you're like, you know, unsurprisingly, nothing actually looks actually hilarious. And look at your boss, and he doesn't look anything like Beyonce. And you're just like, and what. And by the way, I. You know, we're selling insurance, so how are we supposed to be funny? So it's like, a lot of the stuff that people are saying about what makes for a successful video just doesn't actually relate to, you know, to 99% of us. Right? Like, of course, if you have access to, you know, Beyonce or you or anyone. Like, I don't like DJ Khaled, where every word out of his mouth, even if it's kind of like sitting in a hot tub, is like, Internet gold, then great, you should be. Or you have access to some super amazing ad agency that has a track record of hilarious stuff, then great. But most of us, which is like, probably everyone listening, doesn't that we don't live in that world. And so it's trying to figure out, how do we. How do we talk to real businesses and real marketers and real business owners in a language they understand? And it's not actually about, you know, being the most funny. It's. It's. It's. It's. You know, I think it's. I'd much rather have you Know, I think a lot of folks would say they much rather have a video that just resonates with several thousand people that are.

Act.

That actually matter to them most than to kind of, you know, something that's hilarious but has nothing to do with their. Their business and, you know, doesn't actually do anything for them. So I think it's just trying to teach people about, you know, or just kind of have that discussion with folks about what matters. What. What does your audience care about? And I think the, you know, the.

And I think too, it's. It's. There's kind of. With the explosion of content and social media, there's also been kind of a, you know, I guess an explosion of distrust and mistrust, you know, because there's just all sorts of crap out there.

There's more noise.

Yeah, a lot more noise. And so it's like, how do we, you know, a lot. For a lot of these businesses, like, they're trying to figure out how to connect with their audience in it in a genuine, you know, in a genuine way. So talking about, you know, like, there's a lot of people where, like, authenticity is a buzzword, but, you know, but what does that actually mean? Like, what am I supposed to do to actually convey myself in a more authentic way? So I kind of feel like that our job, my job, especially as someone who's just trying to talk with these businesses, it's kind of like video marketing for the rest of us, not for Beyonce's social media manager. Right.

It's a good angle. And you brought up a good point, and we see this in podcasting, is you don't need the millions of listeners to have a loyal following that takes action, that spreads your message around, that buys your stuff. You, you know, like, if that's the point of the podcast, it's like you could just have a crew of like, Maybe it's just 300, 500 people that are just consistently listening, they're subscribed. It's just like with video, you know, YouTube channel, you don't need the millions of subscribers, just a hand, like the thousand folks. You can create a great business with that alone.

And I think, I think one of the biggest changes that's happening to.

Just marketing right, in the last few years, especially kind of with social media, is the reason why I think that some of this stuff about number of eyeballs or big number of viewers is because that's kind of like the world that we came from, where there's a handful of super bowl commercials or there's one billboard. So you have to really figure out what's the thing I can do to appeal to the biggest number of people in the hopes that, you know, 0.1% of those people might do something or come to my website or whatever, and. Because that's just how kind of marketing and advertising, you know, worked for dozens of years before social media. But the amazing thing that's happening now is it's kind of twofold. One is, you know, we no longer have to. As businesses, we no longer have to.

Actually kind of sit around and wait for people to come discover us and get to our site. Right. We. We have the opportunity to take our message to where the conversation is already happening. And that's on social media. Right. So it's just a totally different mindset. And more specifically, what social media has brought is this just crazy ability to get super targeted. So. So for me, like, you could post a video, you know, on Facebook, and you could say, I want this video seen by everyone within 10 miles of 15 Grand Street, San Diego, between the age of 22 and 35 who's female and who has interest in running nature and kids or, I don't know, whatever. But you can get that specific and you can say, you know, between the hours of X and X or whatever. And it's. So because we have that level of precision with targeting, we can just be a lot more precise and kind of efficient and economical with our efforts instead of kind of the old world of marketing, which I kind of cause, like, spray and pray. It's just like, do something big and hope something happens. But now we can say, hey, I actually happen to know that because I have a shop on Grand Stream in San Diego, that I should probably target the people that live in that area instead of wasting a bunch of time and efforts on. On something where someone's laughing hilariously in Australia, like, well, great, but that doesn't do anything for my business.

Yeah. Now, you brought up a cool strategy that we know works extremely well with, like, Facebook ads is very targeted ads around a geographical location. Like, we have. There's a buddy of ours that does a lot of Facebook ads called, named Kurt Molly. And that's his strategy. He'll go to events, specifically ones he's speaking at, and we'll run these ads in a geographical location. You know, maybe it's just like that address for the period of the conference. And he gets so much. It's like, way better than sponsoring or having a booth where you're paying, you know, maybe 10,000 bucks but like with Animoto you can create a very laser targeted video to that group. Run an ad and then it's like yeah, instead of the spray and pray it's like very narrowed down and. And your efforts are a lot less too. You're talking to the right people.

Yeah. So I think that this whole mindset of just like kind of like the most eyeball isn't actually the most important thing anymore. It's about how relevant can you be to the people that matter most. And it's pretty just when you just kind of think about what's happening, it's pretty amazing to think how game changing social media has been in general. Like the fact that you know, some small, small beauty company in the Midwest, I mean there's one click and curl. I think it's like they're 10, a 10 person company in Wisconsin or something like that. They can have a video seen in the same, you know, thumb scroll as you know, Dior, you know, some international powerhouse with $100 million marketing budget. Like that's just crazy that that type of opportunity never existed before social media. So everything is kind of changing and I think just kind of coming full circ the idea of the super bowl commercial and how many eyeballs can you reach, that works for some countries, but for most companies we're kind of at a smaller stage and we're trying to figure out how to make the most of our very limited dollars. Right.

Yeah, it works well if you're selling beer or junk food, but most of us aren't.

It's the wide market audience.

I'm curious if there's been any other things over the last 10 years that you've sort of witnessed the evolution of. You mentioned earlier on that you're kind of, you know, you have to kind of keep up with the trends and the changes to the platforms and the way people are using video. Are there any other changes other than the ones we've already discussed that like that you've seen evolve over the 10 years of doing this?

Well, yeah, probably the most obvious kind of thing, the kind of attention grabbing thing that's happening now is everything on Instagram. Right. So that's probably where almost all my questions, you know, I get asked about Instagram the most right now and it's, it's the fastest growing social network. And so that kind of makes sense. Facebook is still the biggest.

And YouTube, although a lot of people don't necessarily call YouTube a social media platform. They're kind of more of like a search engine for videos. But Instagram is just kind of going crazy. And not only that, just Instagram is just doing a lot of things different with stories and vertical videos. And, and so it's a little bit of the wild west. But I think one of the, there's a bunch of really interesting things about Instagram. The fact that it's probably the first platform that truly is kind of both mobile first and video first and kind of the way that it's evolved. But I think one of the craziest things is that there's a stat that's something like 80% of Instagram accounts follow a business. And you're just, and you're thinking like, wow, it used to be just like in all these other kind of, you know, social media platforms or any kind of like advertising type play. It's kind of like you get the big audience and then you try to figure out how to shove advertising and business or sneak it in here and there and kind of force it on people. But it's kind of crazy that this whole world has emerged where.

You know, it's not just businesses are kind of accepted, but people actually actively follow a lot of their favorite brands and stuff. And so that's pretty, kind of like, that's pretty fascinating that 80% of Instagram accounts actually follow a business. And just the amount of time that people spend on, I think it's something like the average Instagram user spends 53 minutes on Instagram a day.

Oh, wow.

Which maybe is not surprising a lot of people because you're like, I already used, I've already been on it for 92 years. But like 53 minutes, like, that's kind of crazy for something that really most people weren't yet using just a couple years ago.

Sure.

And like you said, it's mobile first, so, you know, it carries around with everyone.

So it's right there and it's, and it's vertical and it's, and it's. Most people are actually watching stories with sound on, whereas just a couple years ago it was more like everything's like, you know, without sound and on the go and so everything is just kind of evolving but, and changing really quickly. But Instagram is super fast because they're just doing a lot of things different and people are really kind of gravitating towards it. But I think, you know, I'm always a bit biased because I'm just, I've lived my entire life in video. But I think the main reason that Instagram has really taken off is because it's really been centered around just video as a form of communicating. And I think video has really. The reason why video is everywhere now is because this is kind of like the way that people, you know, that people increasingly prefer to kind of consume a lot of their information. So as businesses, we have to learn to remember to, you know, increasingly communicate stuff the way that. That people want it. You know, our message, our. Our content, our ideas, our. Our. Our information. So I think it makes sense to me why Instagram is. Has become so popular.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, and it's interesting too. So Joe and I, we've been podcasting for nine years, going on 10 years now. And I swear, in the first, like, eight years of that, I could probably count on one hand how many times the topic of LinkedIn has come up. Nobody was ever really talking about it. And just in the last, like nine months, we've probably had 10 or 12 people come on our podcast and talk about how well videos are doing on LinkedIn as well. So, you know, that. That's something that's really interesting to me too, because I kind of felt like LinkedIn was in favor for a little while, and then it fell out of favor. And now, just like this year, all of a sudden, LinkedIn is sort of having this resurgence. Is that something that you've also kind of been seeing among users of your platform?

Yeah, I've heard that a lot. And we've been experiment. We run like, tests all the time and of experimenting a lot. And essentially LinkedIn has, I mean, because they seen everything. You know, the success of Facebook and their emphasis on video and the success of Instagram and YouTube and it's. I think they've.

Smartly so have really invested a lot in supporting video in the way that businesses need. And we know, because we talk to those guys a lot, we're actually talking about, you know, partners, marketing partners with them. And so we know that especially in the last year or so, they've been investing really heavily in supporting video and the type of tools that businesses need to, you know, to use their video successfully. And now that they've made that investment, they're also starting to really favor video content. And so that's why, you know, in the last few months especially, you're seeing a lot of companies have a lot of success with that. And they're. And it's still. Still kind of early days for them, too. There's a lot that they're trying to do, but I think it really comes back to that, which is videos, how folks, video is Kind of what stands out. And video is how people want information. So if we need to be able to make sure we arm businesses with the tools to communicate that way. LinkedIn is interesting, too. It's especially. I think a lot of folks are like, yeah, but, you know, Facebook, Instagram, that's kind of more for, you know, B2C. Right. Well, what if I'm a B2B company? So certainly anyone who's any type of B2B company or any involved in sales in any kind of way, like LinkedIn is, I used to say Facebook, just start with Facebook no matter what. But I'd say probably starting this year, it's like, if you're a B2B, you know, make sure we start with LinkedIn. And Facebook still has a lot of sophisticated tools to get to the right people. But LinkedIn has really come a long way.

Yeah. And it's because we've heard it so often on our podcast. Like, I posted a video on LinkedIn just the other day for the first time in, like, a long time, and I immediately noticed there are different people. There are friends of mine and of course, a lot of people I don't know that are on there, but I don't normally see them pop up on feedback Facebook, even though I'm their friends there. And then Instagram has its own, like, groupings of people. So there's all these, like, audience pools. And if you're not distributing your content on these channels, of course you could pick one to, like, favor the most. I'm just noticing, like, we, like, have been neglecting the LinkedIn audience that's been following us. I'm like, oh, my God, there's a bunch of people here that are ready and video, you get reactions and, you know, distribute distribution. Kind of like we've heard it related to is Facebook, like, three years ago with video, where you get a lot of that organic reach right now.

Yeah. And the other thing I think that I like reminding folks too, is videos, especially when you think about what Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn are promoting. Video has actually a pretty kind of wide definition. So, you know, like, for example, if you're running a podcast, you're like, well, but I don't have video. I might not have video content, but. But you have all sorts of great content because you've interviewed so many amazing people with so many just, like, gems of statements, that all of those are kind of these quotable things that you can. A video can be an image with some text, animated text over it, and it can be 10 seconds long. And that's enough to really capture people's attention. And when you think about people flying through a Facebook feed or a LinkedIn feed, if there is text animating on some quote that your last guest said, that's just amazing. With a picture or maybe even without a picture. There are videos with just text. I think some people are like, yeah, I don't have a video crew or camera or whatever. Well, you can take the stuff that you already have some of the great photos or images on your website, on your Facebook page, or in some of your marketing material or, you know, if you just have some great quotes or testimonials, you can use that too. So video is not just, you know, video content.

Yeah, no, I think that's super important. I'm curious about LinkedIn because you said you're. And you guys work closely with them on that. Are there specific ways to best optimize your, you know, like your videos on LinkedIn when you post? Like, are there certain, I guess, principles that you would recommend folks to use when posting on LinkedIn to get the best results?

Yeah. So I think here's one kind of broad kind of statement across all the platforms and then I'll kind of answer specifically with LinkedIn, one thing I see folks doing sometimes who are new to videos, I'll take the same video and kind of they will plaster it all over all of social media. And while you can do that, I think what's important to remember is that folks actually use these platforms differently. Right. So if we think about like face Facebook or Instagram, Facebook people are, you know, are, they're going there to fight to for updates. They want to know what's new on Instagram. People are, are looking for inspiration or something. That's, you know, what's interesting. A lot of times people are like killing time on Instagram. That's why like visual content works so great on Instagram, they're looking for something inspiring. On Twitter, it's much more like what's current, like what's literally happening right now, you know, so you might be like, I'm about to go, you know, speak on stage at this, you know, hope to see you. And YouTube is like we said, is almost kind of like become like a just almost like a search repository for video. And people are going there to, to be educated. They're looking for something.

To learn. And so you think about how people are using all of these and it's important to kind of cater your kind of content to how people are using these different platforms. And not just kind of plastering the same video across everything. So on LinkedIn specifically, people really are. The main thing people are on LinkedIn to do is actually network. And that kind of happens in two forms. One is for folks that already know you and are familiar with you is making sure that we're kind of keeping them kind of abreast of what's happening in our world or with our business. And then there's the networking of just.

You know, people who don't know you or don't know anything about you. And so in general, I think that falls into kind of two types of content or two types. There's. What's the type of content you can put out there that it doesn't actually matter if they know anything about you, it will be interesting and valuable to them, right?

And then when people get to know you or take interest in you, what's the type of content that will make them even more interested in you? And if you think about that, like, how do I use, you know, video to create interest? How do I use video to convert interest? Or if you use the term leads, which oftentimes in B2B businesses, how do I use video to create leads? How do I use video to convert leads? It's basically, you know, starting to sound like a marketing, like a, you know, a typical marketing funnel. Like, sure, yeah. But the most basic kind of, you know, the step by step, right, is like, let's start with the create interest and convert interest. And then as you get more involved, most kind of bigger companies have slightly more elaborate marketing funnels that are like three or four or five stages. But if we're just thinking about LinkedIn, about there are two types of people I need to get in front of, the ones that are actually, that actually care to know what's happening and what's new with me and my business and the ones that, that don't know anything about me. And I need to make sure I'm catering to both those folks. And then I just say, like, just remember, like, you know, LinkedIn is not any different from a lot of other social platforms where people are, you know, kind of increasingly short on attention and they're flying through their feeds faster and faster and faster every, every month, every every week, every day. And so just remembering, like, keep things like less is more. If you made a video that you think is.

That'S 60 seconds, I bet you could do an even better video of that same stuff in 30 seconds. Or if it's 30 seconds, make it 15 seconds and just Remember that one second on the Internet is actually kind of an eternity these days.

One of the pieces of advice that I get most annoyed at sometimes is back to the Stevens, think like a director. We're telling stories, stories on the Internet. And I'm like, no, no, no, no. This is actually very different because unlike Steven Spielberg, where you know your audience is going to be in their seats at the end of that two hour movie and you can save the best for last on the Internet, it, you know, it's actually the opposite where by definition you start with 100% of your audience. And I think you'll be lucky if halfway through your video you still have half, half the people watching. Right? So we don't the best for last, we save the best for first and we go from there. So there's just some kind of basic things like that that we have to remember that video on LinkedIn, video on social media is not the same as sitting down as watching a Steven Spielberg movie. So you are not producing a two hour masterpiece. You're producing.

A quick message to keep communicating with your audience.

Right?

Yeah. So I'm curious what this might be. One workflow. This might be two different workflows, but let's say somebody just released a new piece of content like a blog post or a podcast episode or something like that, or somebody just, they have a new offer that they just put out there, like maybe a sales letter or something that they just put online. What sort of workflow do you recommend they flip follow once this piece is online to get a video created and dispersed?

That's a great question. So anyone that has any kind of regular output of either physical product or virtual product, or like in your guys's case, like actual episodes or something you guys kind of have, you all have kind of an unfair advantage because you have just stuff to regular work with. So it's about kind of like figuring out how do we build this into our workflow and making sure that, you know, for every new product that comes out or every new episode or every new something, you know, book that comes out, that I'm kind of following the same formula of, you know, creating something to, you know, to kind of include as part of my marketing arsenal and ultimately what we're trying to do, right, is kind of create awareness around. We're all trying to promote something, right? So if you have a new product or a new episode or something comes out, it's like, okay, thinking about what would I, you know, what might I. A piece of advice I love to give folks Is start with what kind of works. Like, what have you been doing? So the thing that you have been doing is selecting, you know, two or three of your favorite sound bites from that episode or capturing two or three images of that new, you know, hiking boot or whatever it is that you make. Take the stuff that already works, that you're already kind of posting and turn that into a video. In many ways, when you think of video as not like this whole new type of marketing, but really just kind of a way to amplify what you're already doing, it actually becomes much less stressful and anxiety filled. It's like, let's take what already works for you and turn that into. So if there's a blog posts, how are you already kind of promoting that? If you already have images that you're using in that blog post, great. If there's already kind of quotes that you're surfacing or making bigger or that you know, are really important, then use that. Are there stats, you know, in your blog post? Like, let's surface those because people love stats. So it's kind of like this mentality, like, let's think about what already works and start there to kind of, you know, to with that content in our video. I'd say kind of another great workflow thing. And I'm kind of, I think probably a lot of listener, a lot of listeners on this podcast in particular are kind of like.

Workflow nerds and how do I kind of reduce all repetition stuff? And the amazing thing is if you think about all the things that you're kind of doing or saying, having to say over and over.

In a given month or a given week.

That oftentimes shockingly enough, or maybe not surprisingly, is actually perfect fodder for video. Because if you're finding yourself saying something over and over, answering a certain question, or having to explain why your hiking boots are different from others, or who's coming up in the next episode, whatever, or there are things that you're doing over and over that means people actually care about, you know, about that content. If people, if you're responding to things on email and you're finding yourself having to answer it, you know, more than a couple times, then great, let's capture it in video. Because once it's in video, you can help reduce some of your repetition and workload. And it's kind of like two birds with one stone. Save yourself time and, you know, capture some content that you know is important to your audience.

And your audience will be rewarded for that. So that's kind of a fun thing to think about. And it doesn't even have to be for those folks with larger teams. If you're, every time you bring on a new salesperson to your team, if you find yourself, let's capture that in video and you can save yourself some time in internal process when you're onboarding new folks onto your team or you're explaining certain things to.

Your freelancers or designers or whatever.

Sure, yeah.

Now would you use Animoto for that type of video or would you use some other screen capture software for that kind of thing?

I think it depends. I think Animoto is really great for kind of the more short form punchy stuff, which is why I think most, most people tend to find success using Animoto on social media. Because social media is just about kind of short attention spans and short punchy videos. So for some of that kind of like longer form stuff that might take 10, 20, 30 minutes, you don't need Animoto quite quickly. Animoto's taking content you have and punching it up and making it exciting in kind of a short form social media type format.

Well, that's why I love what you're saying is you're not starting with a blank slate. So with Animoto it's perfect to go look at some of your content that's resonated best. Maybe emails that have been open the most or clicked on. You know, there's a lot of ways to judge and then create some Animoto videos and then maybe there's FAQ style videos like you said. So you know, we all have support questions that come to us in some form and smart business owners and you know, we'll have processes to log. What are the constant questions? Well, it's like, boom, there's your content.

Yeah. What are the top five things that people are asking and try to capture that video? There's a company, our friends over at, there's a company called Buffer, they do like social media management tools and stuff, but they also are known for just incredible super rich blog content. They do all sorts of research and studies on all things having to do with marketing social media. And they were trying to figure out how to get in the video. And so literally Aleda is a sorted, you know, all their blog posts and blog posts and they started with the top, you know, like four most popular blog posts and they started creating videos out of those. And some of them were just kind of either short recaps of what was in the blog post, some of them were like Just teasers. And like, if you want, if you want to learn more, you know, click here. And they didn't have to shoot anything because they could just use some of the same either stock images or graphs or charts that they already had, you know, in the blog post. And, you know, within a few hours they had four super popular videos that they knew would resonate with their, you know, audience. And that was just a great way to start. So again, it's just that message of like, what already work? What already works for you. That's a great place to kind of to, to start if you have no idea where to start.

For sure. Yeah, and that's exactly what we always recommend too. And we do ourselves with the podcast and we're like, yep, we, you create the content. You work so hard to create it once, why have to redo it all over again? You know, it's like just leverage the good stuff out there.

Yeah, I mean, we'll literally just take our blog posts, our written blog posts, and just literally make a video of the identical content that's on the blog post and use it on YouTube. And usually if it does well as a blog post, it does well on YouTube as well.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And you think about just all the different ways that people are right. I mean, why podcasts and why you guys have ridden such a huge wave is there's just, everyone's just on the go, right? And so everyone's on there. And some people can actually, if they're on the subway, can actually look at their phones. And so that's why, you know, videos. A lot of people are driving or just, you know, walking from place to place. And so there's, there's avenue all. There's so many more avenues for content consumption than there ever have been. And so, so I just love that idea. Just take what works and let's figure out how to get in, in front of people and meet them where they're at.

That's it, man. Yeah, it's not rocket science. Just don't reinvent the wheel. That's awesome. Well, definitely. Everyone listening. Go check out Animoto and sign up for an account. All that fun stuff. Is there anywhere else that you would want to send folks to?

After listening to this, we covered a bunch of instance. I feel like I could post some. I'll set up a landing page that it's like. Animoto.com would be easiest from hustle. Yeah, we'll do animoto.com hustle and I'll put some kind of Relevant kind of articles and stuff related to things we've talked about. And then also I'd put all my contact information there too, if anyone wants to. I love chatting with businesses about what they're doing and, you know, where their challenges are and stuff. So I'll put that all on animoto.com hustle.

Perfect. Thank you, Jason. That's radio. Awesome. And we always like to ask too. This is just like one of those because we're always trying to stock up our reading list too. But do you have a book or some kind of maybe resource online that you just reference often or you find sharing to business associates or clients of yours that just resonate big time for you? Could be life or business, doesn't really matter.

Yeah. Well, let's see. Two that come to mind that I feel like I talk a bunch about. One is.

Called Radical Candor. I can't remember who it's by, but it actually has really helped us a lot here in our business. And as it sounds, it's just all about how do you create a culture of being just very transparent and honest with your feedback and not being shy and not letting things become personal and just being able to be really productive with your feedback.

It's just very practical and it's great. But one that I feel like has really shaped our company a lot from the beginning is I. There's a book, Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh, who's the CEO of Zappos. And there's just one part. The whole thing is great, but there's one part in particular I think that I always remember, which before Zappos.

He was the founder of some company called.

Linked Exchange or something like that.

And he ended up selling it to Microsoft for like $285 million something. And you're like, well, that's the American dream, right? That's awesome. But he actually talked about how much he hated, hated, hated, hated that company, like to the point where his alarm clock was going off in the morning and he would just snooze like eight, nine, ten times because he just didn't want to get up and go into work. And a lot of it, there's a bunch of stuff, but it just, kind of, a lot of it was just about that he hated the people there. They were just like bad people. It was very political and. And I was always like, well, dude, you're the founder. Just change it. It's your company. But you kind of realize that at some point a company's take on the life, the culture of the company takes on a life of its own.

Yeah.

And so not to kind of like, take that for granted in the early days. And, you know, life's. Life's too. When you're spending most of your time, you know, at work, life's too short to kind of like, be at a place that you hate. So I just always remember that. And that kind of impacted me a lot in terms of, like, how we. How we've built Animoto and to be a place that people actually want to be at.

So that's smart.

Yeah.

And Matt and I had the. The honor to go there and we took a tour of Zappos before.

I did that once too.

It's awesome.

I love that.

It's super cool. And you could see, like you said, the culture is insane there. Like, there's like, jungles and stuff made inside the office. I mean, we went there years ago, so it could have changed now, but it's just like.

Oh, yeah, you can tell everybody loves working there.

Yeah. It's just like a whole different environment, like, world you walk into. You're like, whoa, okay, this is happening.

Yeah, it's. It's super. It's super unique. And it's not to say that everyone can do that, but I think just that that spirit of, like. Yeah, I know we're all trying to, you know, like, get to a certain place, but, you know, there's. There's something to be said about, you know, trying to enjoy it along the way, right?

Oh, yeah. I love it, man. Well, sweet Jason, I appreciate you. And go check out animoto.com hustle. There'll be some cool resources there for you. I think that's a wrap, man. Thank you very much.

Thanks, guys. Appreciate it.

All right, man. Have a good one.

Hey, thanks for listening to that episode. Hopefully you enjoyed it.

You Dang right you did.

Of course you enjoyed it. What's not to enjoy?

We weren't gonna publish it unless you. And we're gonna enjoy this.

If we don't enjoy it, we. We don't publish it. Therefore, we only publish the stuff we know you're gonna enjoy.

We listen and read the notes as well.

So.

Very, very true. Well, you know what I wanna do? I wanna actually start reading some reviews of some of the people that listen to our podcast because we're getting some really cool reviews. And also, I wanna kind of incentivize people to leave more reviews. Cause then we're gonna read them for you.

Hey, man, this is our shout out section. Yeah, that's kind of what this is gonna become for sure, the outro shout out section. So yeah, let's do some reviews and prior to that, let's talk about some.

Of the guys that have supported us.

Yeah, and there's a couple shout outs from our friends and some other folks that reached out to us. These two actually are our friends. They're pretty close friends of ours and they support our show. So, you know, if you want to get more of like an exclusive shout out, reach out to us. We have a couple spots available occasionally, so it depends. But the first buddy of ours actually, Steve Ulsher, he's one of our masterminds. He runs a podcast called beyond eight Figures. And they're chatting with just amazing entrepreneurs who do have either exited or they currently run a business that is above 10 million. And they basically grill. So they have three hosts over there, Steve Olsher, Mary Goulet and Richie Ote. They're all buddies of ours as well, all in San Diego. And they basically grab grill them until they figure out their methodologies, the tactics and action steps that actually got them to accomplish that, which are what few companies ever would ever get to that point for sure.

It's a great podcast. They cover a lot of ground. And you know, the whole thing is trying to uncover what goes into creating an eight figure business so that other businesses could sort of reverse engineer the success. So. Amazing podcast. Amazing. That's Steve Olsher's beyond eight Figures podcast. Definitely go check it out on Apple podcasts and everywhere where you listen to your favorite shows.

You gonna like it. It's very similar to this one with different approaches. So I think if you're a fan of this, you're gonna love his show, beyond eight Figures.

And then our other supporter for this episode is our good buddy Casey Zieman's Easy Webinar.

Bam. And both these guys have actually been on our show too, Steve and Casey. So if you like him, you can even check out an episode too.

Yeah. So check out EasyWebinar.com hustle because Casey put together a 20% off deal for listeners of Hustle and Flowchart. So EasyWebinar.com Hustle Now Easy webinar is kind of a webinar tool, but it has live webinars, it's got automated webinars, it's got kind of hybrid webinars, it's got all sorts of social media functionality. It's got pretty much like the only webinar platform you would ever need. It's got everything all in a single platform, a Lot of the other platforms you got to buy one product to go live and one product to go automated, and one product if you want to. And this one is just, you know, you get easy webinar, you're covered. You got it all. So if you want easy webinar, get it for 20% off. Go to easywebinar.com hustle and again, I just want to thank our partners and our supporters on this show. Casey and Steve, we love you guys. Let's go talk about some of these cool reviews we're getting.

Yeah, let's get into them.

All right, so here's the review we're checking out today. Today we're reading our first ever, ever. Only it is one star review.

And everyone can look this up and bring out the pitchforks.

Here we go.

We love this one.

We love all of our reviews and we love all of our feedback. So thank you for taking the time to give us this one star feedback. I mean, we're going to give you our feedback on your feedback, but we're happy that you gave us feedback.

Feedback is very welcome. Yes.

So this review comes from Carrie in Canada. She says, hey, guys, this was the first episode that I listened to of yours. I was really excited to listen to Jason Katiesenbach of asm, Amazing Selling Machines. I have to say that your intro was so long and annoying that I almost stopped it. Wow. Mindless droning on about a little lot of nothing. Won't tune in again. So thank you, Carrie. We appreciate the feedback and the input and your insights into our podcast.

And now we're going to draw on a little longer right now and ramble and be a little happier that you might not be listening because we appreciate the feedback.

Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, so our podcast is a filter, right? And so Joe and I, in the first five to 10 minutes of every episode, we like to give you a little insights into our life, into our sense of humor. What you're hearing in the first 10 minutes of every episode is me and Joe just having fun, talking about what we do normally. Like, if you were to sit around and have beers with us, the conversations would sound very similar to the first 10 minutes of these episodes.

That is exactly what I was just thinking is we have been stopped countlessly at events and halls, at event wherever, masterminds and stuff. And people say, like, first time they ever met us, but they listen to the podcast. You are exactly the people who I listen to in my car and all when I wash my dishes and all that. Like, you're not A different person when you're in person. Like, that's. And we think that's amazing. So it's like, yeah, the filter aspect. Like, well, yeah, if you don't like us, well, that's okay. There's a million other podcasts out there.

Yeah, we filtered out one person that is not a good fit for this podcast. And also I think it's a little shortsighted to go. Well, I don't like the first eight minutes of your podcast. Therefore, I am going to throw out the baby with the bathwater and not get all of the valuable info that we're providing. I mean, we're bringing on millionaires and seven figure earners and mindset ninjas and just gurus in all aspects of business and life. And because you don't like the fact that we add a little bit our of personality into the first 10 minutes of an episode, you're going to throw the baby out with the bathwater. So, you know, best of luck to you, Carrie. We do appreciate the fact that you took the time to leave the review.

Hopefully she got the notes because that was in the intro. So maybe she got the value she was looking for from Jason Gatsit Bag. So if she went and freaking subscribe for free, then, hey, maybe she got the value and then all is well.

Yep. And we appreciate all reviews between one star and five. They're all good. We use it all as feedback. But, you know, we appreciate the higher star reviews even more. And the negative reviews. You can damn well guarantee we're going to pick them apart, sometimes make fun.

Of them, but in a good way.

Oh, we have fun. We love everybody who's taken the time to listen.

We're always grateful, 100%, even the negatives, because that's helping us spread the word more.

Yeah.

So that's okay to the right people.

But yes, thank you to everybody who's left reviews, especially the ones who enjoy our show and, you know, even the ones who don't. But, you know, thank you everybody who's left reviews. Keep them coming. We're going to keep reading them and having fun with them at the end of these shows. So thanks very much.

Love y'.

All.

Thanks everybody for listening to this episode of the Hustle and Flowchart podcast for taking the time to listen. We want to give you something a little bit special. Every single episode that we do, we actually have somebody on our team take notes. We basically have a Cliffs Notes version of every episode where you can go and find all of the tips and tactics that they laid out all of the resources that they laid out all the good stuff from this episode. We actually have a nice, simple notes version that you can find on our website. So go to evergreenprofits.com find this episode that you just listened to, and give us your email address and we'll send you the notes. Thanks for listening.

Go get it, Wiki Wiki.

We love you.