Rob Burns — VSLs Suck - Make This Kind Of Video Instead
16 Jul 2023 · 92 min
Rob Burns argues VSLs are dead and shows what works instead: short, story-driven videos with real people and product demos. He cites Dollar Shave Club and explains why attention spans have shifted toward authentic, fast-paced content over long sales pitches.
Chapters
This is an intro. Intro, intro, intro.
Hustle and Floatshark with your boy, my boy, Matt Wolf.
Joe.
Hey, what's up, everybody? I was fast with that one.
Quick on the trigger. I like it. Sup, y'? All?
Joe was giving me the evilest laugh when I went, what's up, everyone? He went.
It was like a Darth Vader laugh.
Well, if you want to know why we're not gonna explain it right now. Go to Gina's episode that was released prior to this one, most likely. But don't go there yet. Just bookmark it, and if you haven't listened to it, you'll know the story.
Of why this evil laugh happened. We're talking about party diapers.
I don't know what's up with this episode. I love Rob. Rob Burns. He's a brother from another mother. He just. We all share a brain, and I think that brain is fun. We do cool shit, but we also have a lot of fun.
And I'm gonna make it. Although it may sound like it, we were not high while recording this.
Hell, no. I've just had coffee and Mexican food and water.
I had rolled tacos and water all day. That's all I've had.
I'm sure Rob had the same. Yeah, and we're all. He literally went to high school, like, down the street from where we all grew up, in the same school district. So, dude, the San Diego born. I was gonna say born legend. He's a fucking legend.
Sure.
Hell, yeah, Rob. You're a legend. Remember that. Remember this whole episode? Rob is gonna be on repeat all the time. Yeah, we're talking about.
This is Rob's new alarm clock.
It's like Groundhog Day. But, yeah, man, this episode. So Rob's just a total. With video, really. Actually, not even just video. It's attention. It's copy and persuasion. And he's now encapsulated that into these videos that he does at Video Telepathy, his company. And they're just badass videos, but they're different, and they convert a lot higher.
Well, I was thinking about titling this episode. So this may be the title, it may not be, but I was thinking about titling it. VSL suck. Do this instead.
Ooh, I bet Rob would like that.
Yeah, because basically what Rob's teaching us is he's breaking down a formula for making online sales videos, but not the typical VSL method that you're used to. Like, he's actually going and filming with people with faces on cameras and microphones and drones and like doing crazy ninja shit to get like professional polished looking videos like you'd see in like an infomercial or a TV commercial. He's doing that with online e commerce brands. And we also dig in a little bit about how you can implement it if you don't have an E commerce brand, like, you know, let's say your software info product like we are, or even a podcast, you can use some of these sort of viral video strategies. But yeah, we're gonna dig into sort of the formulas he uses for video. We're gonna talk about the evolution of video marketing, we talk about some of the ways to make videos go viral and get seen by more people. We break down some examples from historical videos. And all along we are just goofing the hell off and having a good time.
Oh my God. So if you can last with the goof and the crazy stories and the weird analogies and all the party diapers. Party diapers. T.M. i mean there's. If you hang with us, I promise you're gonna get a lot from the episode. And Rob is one smart mofo. So yeah, it's just gonna be a fun time. Yeah. And I think this is probably the like the loosest podcast we've had and it's just, it was so damn fun. So I hope you have as much fun as we did because we were legitimately, like at one time. I think I was crying, laughing. That's not a joke. I forget where it was. But we went all over. We also talked about Wim Hof and some interesting people that he studies from. He's actually studied with Wim Hof. You don't know him, Just Google him. Or ice. Ice. Go to YouTube and you'll check out Crazy it is. Rob basically studies under that guy and does that. So if you could just imagine, if you can succumb yourself in your mind to these weird, interesting things, that just shows you how much of a badass you could be, that is.
Robert.
Yes. So my wife was just texting me.
And the last text I saw was help with an A. H A. So it was H A L L L L, L, L P. And then I looked at it and she's like, what do you want for dinner?
Oh, jeez. That's like a false flag. I mean that's like bad help. I mean that's like, go, go help.
So I got quiet for a second. Cause I'm like, oh shit. Is something wrong? Oh no. She's trying to figure out dinner. She just wants food.
Well, it's about that time. So we.
It is about dinner time. We're gonna go dive in with Rob. Before we do, I wanted to quickly let you know that you can get the notes for this show. We're taking the notes for you. We've got an amazing, amazing person on our team. His name's Steven. He runs the Hustle and Flow Shorts podcast, which is.
Gotta go check that out. If you don't know what Hustle and Flow Shorts is, it's basically all of the episodes here chopped. Not all of them yet, but trickled out, chopped up into bite sized.
Yeah, it's the best sound bites from the podcast, basically, and Flow Shorts. But anyway, Steven, he also takes notes on every single one of these episodes. So every episode, he listens through and takes detailed notes on the tools that are mentioned, the books that are mentioned, the step by step processes, the tactics, everything. He puts these all into a PDF doc and just breaks it all down for you. So if you can't be taking the notes yourself, you can go download the notes. I'm going to put a big banner in the sidebar that says grab the notes here. If you don't see the banner, that just means I've been through lacking. Go to the actual show notes page and a little slide in will slide up.
Do I get a. If it's not live by then, am I allowed to do what Rob did on Fiverr?
Yeah, you can hire somebody on Fiverr to punch their boyfriend.
No, no, no, you.
Oh, no, no, you can't.
Fisticuffs are coming out. Okay, get that banner up there, boy.
All right, we'll have a banner in the sidebar that says grab the notes here. The thing about these notes is we're making them available for a limited time, so when this episode goes live, they'll be available for like, roughly a week from. From the date that this episode goes live. Make sure you grab them in that time window or they go away.
It's worth it. Go check them out.
They're free.
They are free currently.
We should make a URL for it to make it real easy. Why am I thinking about this stuff while recording the intro?
Seriously, the last intro we did for Gina, we figured out this banner idea and now let's stick with the banner. For now. Let's talk off here about this other idea.
Let's plan that out a separate session.
This is already a crazy enough episode, so. All right, just go to evergreenprofits.com, get them notes. There should be a banner. If there's not, go find the Episode. You'll. You'll figure it out.
Yeah. When you listen to this, just remember, you're not high. We're just crazy.
But you be high. It's fine.
Well, I mean, unless you are high.
Robert Burns.
Hey, you're not supposed to speak yet. I'm supposed to speak for. Hey, we're live now. Robert Burns. How are you?
Rob, Speak when spoken to, damn it.
We're live. You can talk.
I'm not. I'm not speaking now. I'm not speaking.
How you doing? Welcome to the show.
Hey, thanks for having me on.
Of course. Well, it's probably obvious to the listeners that we kind of know each other.
How do you know Rob?
I have no clue.
Rob, how do we know you?
I think it was like jail in Tijuana, wasn't it?
Sounds about right.
With the donkeys and the cocaine and all that whole story.
The whole, you know, Tecate beer, the whole burrito incident. It was. Yeah, it wasn't pretty.
But. But, you know, we've. We moved a lot past that event. We've learned a lot, grown as people.
Yeah. Never tried to run. Never tried out run the police on a. On a borough with, like, two pounds of cocaine. You just can't do it. It's just because they had cars, and it was. It was just terrible.
Luckily, we blend in.
Luckily we just had really good kilos.
Because it's Mexico and it's a metric system. Sorry.
Yeah, good point.
Luckily, we did a lot of SEO. We pushed all those news headlines off the front page. When you Google our name, that's one.
Of the advantages of knowing SEO really well.
Content, I think if you Google, I think it's still there, but.
I think. Remember way back in the day, I did this $5 experiment, like how the biggest bang you could get, marketing bang you could get for $5. So I went on Fiverr, and I basically, I paid this girl $5 to make a video of her punching her boyfriend in the face saying, rob Burns rocks. And it's gotten, like, hundreds of thousands.
Of.
Views on YouTube, but.
I think it still works. But if you Google, rob Burns is a face puncher, I still rank number one.
Rob Burns is a face puncher. All right, we're gonna Google that. But I'm actually really honestly drawing a blank on how we actually met. I think it was just through, like, a crap ton of mutual friends, I think, probably.
I mean, over the last, what, 10 years or whatever.
Yeah.
I think the first time we ever met you was actually we were invited over to your house. The Treehouse. And we did a mastermind with you and Dan Ryan, and we had to.
No, we knew him prior to that. We were going maybe through.
Through Amish.
Yeah. I think I might have known you a little longer through Amish.
And then you and Matt, you were with. Working with Bradley.
I was working with Bradley Will for a while. Yeah.
Because I knew you. Yeah. Then. And actually even before then. So. Yeah. Could have been spin. Who knows? Back in the day, we just watched.
That video of a guy getting punched in the face.
So that's $5. Like, how much heat can you get for $5? And that's. That's my heat.
And I like that. The. The related video that comes after you is Wet Fart Prank.
Wet Fart Prank. It's apparently a girl on an elevator.
So mine, like, I have three. Like, you know, the little YouTube carousel or whatever.
Yeah, yeah.
And so I paid a girl $5 to punch your boyfriend in the face while saying, rob Burns rocks. And then the next video is Rob Burns facial reconstruction.
Oh, man.
So, Rob Burns, how the hell do you make your money? He just makes.
Stuff like this, you know.
This interview is going great already. We're watching YouTube videos of people getting punched in the face. We're watching people farting on elevators for your people.
Because I know your people, like, they, you know, they want something that's going to help them up their game. And I. I hope I'm bringing it.
You're totally bringing it.
I know they like a laugh, too. Yeah. Hope they're getting that.
We try to mix laughs in with the education, so we're happy it's going this direction.
But I will preface, though, Rob Burns, you are a magical motherfucker. We'll say it. When it comes to video, just like, thinking out of the box, you always have been. Dude. I don't know. You've always morphed. Now what? You have the company Video telepathy is the big thing you got going on, but it's more from what, PR days, press releases. And you've always been one to figure out how to gauge or, like, capture attention in using platforms or media or somewhat other interesting content pieces. I feel like that's what you've been good at. And you're always witty, you're always really funny. So you make this stuff, like, not boring and lame. So I don't know. That's like the extent. I'm like, that's my Rob knowledge. And you're uber connected. Everybody knows you. Amazing, dude. You do Wim Hof Sitting Ice Baths with a crazy man.
I mean, you're just a fun guy.
Super cool.
I should just.
Like, in the morning, I'm just gonna set my alarm. You guys could call me up and you just tell me all this cool stuff about me.
Well, this will be on recording. You can just have this play every morning.
Yeah, I'm just gonna play it every morning. I was like, I didn't. Did I really? That's. I'm.
It's like Groundhog Day.
Super cool.
Just don't start hitting the machine next to.
What was that? Sally Fields, which got the Academy Awards. You guys love me.
See, it's true. Rob, remember that.
Well, let's. So let's go back a little bit, get slightly more serious. I have a feeling this is. We're setting the tone already for this.
Episode, but if there's anybody even left.
On the episode now, how did you get into business? I think when we did First Connect, you were doing PR Reach, you know, the press release service.
How did you become an entrepreneur? Like, what path did you travel down that led you to where you are today?
Yeah. So I'll try to make a long story short. So kind of pre Internet days, I had actually done agency work and copywriting and all that good kind of stuff. And then.
We actually had a company called Banyan Publishing. Banyan Publishing. We did kind of marketing and pr and we actually even had a commercial printing plant where we printed marketing materials and advertising stuff for hotels and resorts. And we pretty much had just like every national chain and.
On lockdown. And then.
September 11th hit. And basically every CFO from. From every hotel chain, you know, that we were doing stuff for just said, hey, this is act of God. And, you know, nobody's going to be flying or traveling for at least a year, you know, because at the time, remember, they just, like, they shut down all the airports and nobody knew what was going on, so everybody just canceled contracts. So literally, like in a week or two, I was just. We were just dead in the water. And I had, you know, 5,000 square foot building and staff and all these people. And so in two weeks, we just. We just wound it down because it was, you know, it was just too expensive to just kind of sit there dead in the water. And so I was trying to figure out what to do next. And one of the things I did is in college, I used to. I take a semester or two off and I'd go to BA and go surfing and I'd go back. Then you could kind of go in these little towns and Villages and stuff. And, like, families would just adopt you. They just take you in. I was like, hey, you can come stand with us. And so I'd always help out on these surf trips, and I'd always help out and kind of buddy up with the moms or whatever and help cook. And I guess I should rephrase how I say that.
Not buddying up too much, but not too much.
Buddy, buddy.
Just helping her cook. And so I kind of came up with these hot sauce recipes, and I kind of adopted one of my own. And so.
I started making them for friends, and it wound up, like, every couple months, I'd literally make, like, 25 gallons of stuff because people would just be like, hey, can you more hot sauce? And so when we shut down and a bunch of people were like, oh, well, you should just start a hot sauce company. And in my. In my brilliance, I'm like, yeah, that's a good idea.
So that's really.
So how that led to me really getting in Internet marketing is that's just about when the Internet really kind of started taking off and people were paying attention to it. And even with Banyan Publishing, we had started to do things like websites and. And things like that. But.
It was so long ago that literally there wasn't really payment processing. Like, we knew it, and there weren't even shopping carts or anything like that. So people.
And I decided, well, let's try selling this online, because this whole new Internet thing is kind of cool. And what I did is I would do, like, I had three different kinds of hot sauces. So I would mix and match, and I would just sell them by the case. So you get like four different bottles of each and sell it by the case. And. And so I started to sell it online, and it was so long ago that there wasn't payment processing and there weren't, like, shopping carts or anything. So people would literally. It was just like when you bought stuff in the back of a comic book or a magazine, people would mail us checks in, and then we would mail out the hot sauce when they bought it online. And so that's the very first. So my very first online stuff was actually an econ biz. And that was pretty og.
And we evolved, and I wound up.
Getting really good as far as ranking. Ranking stuff on our business. So I was ranking, like, number one for the keyword hot sauce and all that good kind of stuff. And so I wound up selling that business. And when I sold the business, a bunch of people that were also kind of migrating towards Internet Stuff were like, hey, can you. What you did for your hot sauce business, can you do that for us? And that's really how I kind of evolved into that. And so I kind of took what I knew from all the agency stuff and then, you know, learn, you know, kind of the new techniques and just kind of rebranded and. And you think about it like a lot of these, you know, a lot of. I know I'm gonna get on my soapbox here.
That's all right.
You know, a lot of the. The old school gurus and all these guys that are teaching all this new stuff, and it. Seriously, it's. It's super, super old school. Like, the copywriting, all of that stuff is this old school pre Internet, you know, day stuff that's just been kind of, you know, had a new coat of paint on it and rebranded it and, you know.
Sure.
You know, you know, even, like copywriting stuff. I mean, you know, you know, you know, if, you know, think of, you know, the big name people that teach copywriting, and I'm not gonna say any names, you know, and they learned it from Dan Kennedy, and then Dan kind of got stuff from Ogilvy and. Yeah. So. Yeah, so that, you know, so I just basically, you know, took the old school stuff I knew and just repurposed it and then. And moved it on to the Internet. And then that's kind of how I've been, you know, ever since. And then I just.
Take it from there.
That's cool. And what that morph to the pr? Pretty close. Yeah.
So. So, yeah, I.
Did a lot of. I was kind of like a bot, kind of behind the scenes, you know, Swiss army knife guy, where I would just do a little bit of everything, you know, and I was just doing it for the bigger guys and the.
You know, because I didn't really care about being a guru. I just like doing this stuff kind of thing. And so I would partner up with somebody and I would be the guy that, you know, that did the copywriting, or I would be the guy that did the, you know, SEO and copywriting are probably been my two biggest strengths. And. And so.
I did a lot of that for the longest time, but, you know, it really was kind of not really a business model. It was kind of more of a.
Hustle where I just don't have a mechanism to drive you.
Yeah, yeah. And he'd load up on a bunch of money, and then, you know, you're off to your next partnership or project or whatever. And so. So I wanted to start doing things on my own. And I think the very first thing I did is I launched a link building service, you know, because I was doing a lot of SEO stuff and then, and then I got back into PR because I looked at, you know, what is.
What'S out. I was looking for businesses that were.
Had maybe been dinner, been around for a while, but were ready for something that was kind of disruptive. And I looked at PR.
And I didn't look at it good enough, obviously. But I mean, because, you know, it's something, it's really. Press releases are really pretty much the same as they've been for 100 years, you know, except for they just put them online. And that's really. And so I thought, well, I'm gonna add, you know, I'm gonna change, you know, the technology and I'm just gonna add all this new stuff and add social media and social sharing and.
You know, video and actually, you know, created the world's first video press release service. And so you'd have like a spokesperson that would actually read the press release. And you know, I didn't try to make it like fake news, which is kind of a fluid term now these days. But yeah, I didn't try to convince somebody like it's real news from a news station. It was just like a video or a video press release kind of thing. And it was a spokesperson reading a press release.
But what I didn't really look into is like, how big is that market and how receptive are the people that are in that market. And you know, the. Actually the PR market's really small and the people that really kind of do things in the PR market are super, super old school and they're anti technology. So it was just kind of like, yeah, and so launch the PR business. And it was actually, you know, it did pretty well, but it wasn't going to get to where I wanted it to be. Like, it could have been a good living and I could have been happy. But.
But one of the things that came from the PR business were all these other E commerce people that I knew from back in the day and they were saying, well, hey, you're doing these video press releases. I can't really find anybody to do these product videos for us. I know you know how to write for conversion and you know how to do video. Could you do a product video for us?
So I just started doing them on the side. And so then I really did do a lot of market research. And I think just in the US I think E commerce is $67 billion industry, something like that.
Huge.
Yeah, yeah.
And so I really, you know, I really did kind of do my due diligence on that and said there's a huge market and there's just not many people that are doing it and they're not doing it at, you know, something where, where, where it's affordable to somebody that just has an E commerce platform. I mean, you know, so like they're selling on Amazon or Shopify, you know, they're not going to pay 30 to $300,000 for a video. You know, they're going to, they might pay 1000 or 500. And so what we did is we figured out how to streamline that and we figured out, you know, what are, what are all the things, you know, and all the components. And I just hit a. Basically every big person that I knew that had E commerce platforms or was teaching E commerce and said, you know, what do you guys wish you had? And you know, what's working for you? And then I built a platform and.
Integrated all that stuff in there. So like net. So, you know, we can, we have like product demo videos that are, you know, five, six hundred dollars, which, you know, everywhere else is going to be like 3,000. And I'm not trying to pitch that, but I'm just saying what we did is we just made it so streamlined that we can handle this huge volume and we can create things that convert really well and manage it through the back end. And so that's what we did. So we launched video telepathy and that was just off to the races. That was just kind of an exponential growth right from the beginning. And then we've actually kind of divided up into two different divisions now where we do kind of the E commerce and we call it kind of like the entrepreneurs, where it's people that have their own businesses and they want to have videos done or marketing videos. And then we, we also have it the agency side and the agency sides where you're, you know, we're doing kind of the bigger. And I tend to gravitate now. It's all the rage. It's kind of funny now. It's all the rage. But, you know, I did kind of do kind of the abstract, you know, comedic style, you know, kind of a squatty, potty style stuff.
You know, you're one of the OGs if you're paying people to do videos like this for you for five bucks.
Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. Way before. Yeah, Poo pourri or whoever those guys are.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But so, so we kind of have those two different visions, you know, divisions. And so the bigger ones, you know, we do for agencies, those are like commercials and, you know, bigger kind of viral humor videos. And basically I'm getting paid for all the stuff that got me kicked out of high school a couple of times.
But, yeah, that's why it's always. It's always fun hanging out with you. It's just like, you never know where the conversation's going to go. You're quick wit, you're funny, but now you've translated that into videos that actually sell stuff I could actually get paid for. Dude, how cool is that?
It's awesome. She's just like, I can't believe. It's like, finally.
Finally he's made something of himself. The pain has stopped. It's like, I don't know if the.
Pain'S ever gonna stop.
But going back to, like. Well, I believe prior to this podcast, going live. Robo Hendrickson. Rob. Oh, yeah. You made the introduction and we did a video. You know, Matt and I starred. That's air quotes more. Our dog starred in the video for one of his products, you know, in a full bucket. Yep.
Sweet.
Nailed it.
Canine Kush.
Canine.
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah. Basically CBD pet pet treats with, you know, therapeutic benefits and all that stuff. And. And we experienced being on the other side of the camera, not recording, but being like case studies, basically. And they were, you know, and it was cool because you came on scene with your team and Matt and I were there with our dogs. We had three dogs there, freaking four humans, five humans. And we're just like. It was just chaos, but it was amazing. You knew what you guys were doing and you were telling us, like, dude, these style videos that we're doing are just absolutely crushing it. Crushing things like VSLs and all these, like, well scripted videos.
Yeah, let's break those down a little bit, actually. Like the style video that you're doing for Full Bucket and the, you know, in the sort of Internet marketing world, the hot thing has always been like, the VSLs, right. You make slideshow presentations, record the audio. You're kind of flipping that on its head, and you're making kind of highly polished videos with people on camera and product demonstrations and things like that. You know what? Can you sort of explain the, like, conceptually what these, you know, what these kinds of videos are and what goes into making them. And let's just kind of dissect these a little bit.
Yeah, yeah. And I've been kind of. And I'll Just bore you to death until you tell me to shut up. But as far as like, you know, anything is kind of like brain evolution and psychology and how people think. And I'm just the biggest, I'll just go way down a rabbit hole and just until people just want to stab themselves in the air with a pencil or something.
We'll stop if we need to shut.
Up about onion brains and lizard brains. And.
I swear, listeners, if he rambles, it's okay, the guy's brilliant. You'll come out with some gold. Hang with us.
So anyways.
So I started looking at that kind of stuff and I also started. Just because we have this platform, we can just do it a lot of videos. And so it gives us an opportunity to say, hey, you know, we want to try out this style of video and we want to, you know, kind of go through this format and, and then, and then we can kind of test it, we can get feedback. And so.
You know, with the VSL style videos, you know, kind of those long, you know, you know, the ugly vsl, you know, is kind of what.
The, you know, the text on screen, white background.
Yeah, exactly. And, and it's all, you know, it's basically a long form sales letter, you know, put in video format. And, and for the longest time, you know, gurus would teach, well, long form sales letters, you know, you know, they're super ugly, but that's the only way that things will convert. And.
And honestly I think it's. They said it's ugly because, you know, it's easier to sell ugly stuff. If people say, oh, we have to do stuff that's, that's right. And polished, you know, then, and you know, the people that, that kind of stuff, when you sell it, you're not really selling a brand. You're, you know, it's usually like a mom and pop and they're just selling a thing, you know, and they're not really even trying to sell a. There's a big difference. And that's the thing is if you're a brand, then you really do have to really take those things into consideration. So evolving into these newer style videos and they're really not even new. They're just.
People are using them in different ways. And so like the one for Robo, for Rob is we call it a market review video. And basically what we're doing is we're telling a story, but we're telling a story by.
Having people use the product and then asking a series of questions.
That really kind of.
Let somebody that actually Uses the product and believes the product, talk about it. As opposed to having a spokesperson saying, oh, this stuff's great, or.
A VSL where people are just talking about how great their product is.
Because there's not much edification in that. And you know, usually with an ugly vsl, the way to get those to convert would be through some kind of fear thing or something, you know, that.
You know, hook at the beginning. Yeah.
Remember like end of America, you know, that's probably what, you know, super famous, you know, ugly vsl. And you know, it was all about, you know, you know, commie liberals or whatever. We're gonna take over the world and we're gonna have to survive, you know, after the zombie apocalypse and that kind of thing.
Scare tactics.
Yeah, yeah, the scare tactics. And there's other things that help that ugly VSLs will convert. But with these.
You don't really have much convincing to do because it's showing the product being used and it's people that have actually used the product and believe the product, that aren't paid actors that are talking about the product. And so that's, you know, you know, super, you know, super old school. You know, sales, one on one is, you know, the best converting sales is to look somebody, you know in the eye and shake their hand, you know. And so this is the next best thing because it's like these people are using it and they're, you know, they're, they're saying, hey, this stuff's great.
Yeah, it's real. And I feel like in the wake of like social media and all this, you know, we have live videos, all the different ways to show off our, the way, you know, the things we're doing in our day to day life, it's almost an extension of that. So these videos can be used in not only places like that, but people are used to hearing what others have to say about a product or their experiences. It just like falls in line with the timing of things right now.
I'm actually always sort of blown away that VSLs, like the ugly VSL still work because me personally, I can't remember the last time I've sat through one.
Dude, I used to make these as a living and I hated watching.
I know there's an element of like, you know, you're not your market and I get that. But still, like when I land on other people's VSLs, I still don't watch them. So I mean, I'm other people's market and I still don't watch your vsl.
True.
Yeah. But yeah, and it kind of sucks for me because like every TV show I'm deconstructing the copywriting, you know, and every like, commercial that I look at, I'm going, okay, here's what's going to happen next. And go to the movies. Like the first five minutes I'm like, okay, here's what's going to happen. This movie is like, da, da, da. Because it's all this kind of formula. And that's kind of what the challenge is with the VSL is that.
That kind of BSL is where you're not your market. So those people weren't exposed to those things as much as we were in general on the Internet. But now they are a lot more. And the other thing is too. And it's kind of going down. That whole how the brain works rabbit hole thing is.
We'Re really, in the last year and a half, two years, people have just really changed just.
How they view things and what their attention span is and all that's completely changed. We've noticed when we first started rolling out with video telepathy two years ago.
The videos that converted the most for us were we had these spokesperson videos where it was almost like a QVC show. And it was like, hey, I just discovered this new face screen and it's super awesome. And those still convert pretty well. And those were like three to five minute videos. And again, we didn't try to be like fake, whatever. It was just like it would be on qvc. And so.
Those are really great. And we noticed like they just started dropping off. Like people would just drop off sooner and sooner and sooner and sooner on these different kinds of videos. And we started looking at, looking into things. And one is our attention span has just changed in two years. I was reading a study that they did this study in the 80s and the average American attention span was measured in minutes.
And then they did one, I think it was 2017. It was. Microsoft did this huge study. The average American attention span went to 19 seconds.
Jesus.
And then they just recently did another one, a couple series.
And I think it was now the average American attention span is 8 seconds. And to put that into perspective, a goldfish's attention span is 9.
So where these longer format things that unless they're just super engaging and there's a reason, you know, to stay into that, then most people are just, they, you know, they just want something quick and fast and they want their information and they want to make it, you know, basically they want to make a connection very, very fast. Whereas, you know, this whole warm up thing and getting led through. People just don't have time. And then even you think about it. I mean, I'm, you know, this, this is going to date me. But, you know, my job when I was a kid was to stand behind this, the TV set with tinfoil on the rabbit ears and do these crazy yoga poses until this TV screen that was 8 inches by 8 inches and it was basically just white snow and you could barely see forms of people. And it only had three channels. My job was just to stand there 24, 7 and rearrange these antennas until the family could see the tv.
That's so old, Rob. No, I'm just kidding.
I had a TV like that when I was growing up. It had a little like, it had a little like analog knob that you turn to change the channel.
Yeah, now we've been there.
Yeah, yeah. You know, my dad and family's throwing popcorn at me and hurry up, son.
And now like, you have all these different modalities and there was only three channels, so. And it was amazing. Like, you were just like, wow, this is crazy. You know, this is so cool. And now, I mean, you know, there's literally just hundreds of different ways that you can, you know, take in that same kind of information. And they're all competing for each other. And so they're all, you know, just that much more sophisticated on getting your attention. So some, you know, and we're just kind of in social media, so the average person looks at their smartphone 168 times a day. 168 times, you know, because they're just like, like how many times have you gone to dinner, like with friends and want, you know, somebody's just sitting there and all they ever do is like they're looking at their phone and they're talk to you, and all of a sudden they pick up their phone, you know, and I'm just, I hate it because we're just getting trained that way. So, you know, as far as, so what we look at when we do videos now is, you know, how do we capitalize that and how do we make the biggest connection the fastest and get our message across? You know, and that's. So that's what, that's really what our big goal is. And so.
We kind of gravitate towards doing things that are a little bit different than what everybody else would do, just because it's a pattern interrupt and making connections and having real people talk about real things is just huge.
It's real.
We do a different Kind of video, just a demo video where it just shows the product being used. And it's really designed to put the viewer in place of. They're imagining themselves using this product. And those are 30, 45 seconds. And those convert way better than the three to five minute videos used to convert. And so it just, it changes. And, you know, in two years from now, it's probably going to be something completely different.
Probably, yeah.
It's interesting. A lot of this stuff is fairly unique to video too, because in the podcasting space, you know, we're kind of always got our finger on the pulse of what's going on in the podcasting world. And they say, like a Facebook Live video, the average person watches about 6% of a Facebook Live, 6 to 7.
Or something like that.
And then on average a podcast, an audio podcast, people will listen to typically like 60 to 80% of a podcast episode. So it's interesting that, like, one medium people have almost no attention span for, but another medium they're, they're willing to, you know, spend even longer with.
Yeah, yeah. It's strange. It's.
Yeah, yeah.
I don't know what to make it. And obviously we still need, you know, we need all these other modalities too. I don't know if we need. But they help, you know, further whatever we're trying to do. Podcasting is one modality. Video is another modality. And if you're optimizing the experience in each one of these formats, because even podcasts, you can totally dive on the engagement if your shift sucks or it's too long.
I mean, nobody's hearing this. They all dropped off within the first four minutes.
Oh, yeah.
Just kidding.
For real or do they just accidentally just post this up?
We're not even recording right now, so.
Yeah, Just humoring. Thanks for making me feel special.
It's benefiting you or happy.
Interesting. Like, you know, you're mentioning, like, back in the day, you only had like three channels. I was listening to another podcast recently, and they were talking about how, like, Johnny Carson just had like this insane viewership. Like, like just massive, massive viewership. Every time there's a Johnny Carson show, it would like, anybody who went on that show was famous overnight by just being a guest. But the difference between then and now was then Johnny Carson was one of three shows you had the option of watching when Johnny Carson was on. Now. Yeah, you know, the late night shows. There's 10 late night shows going at the same time, plus an option of 500 other channels to watch, you know.
Yeah.
Well, it's the inverse, too, because it's. Back then, what was on TV really molded and had an effect on society, and now it's the opposite. And it's not even tv. I mean, most of the things like Netflix and Amazon and hbo, all their online stuff actually has a larger viewership than tv. But now, you know, society really molds what people are trying to present, you know, as far as shows and entertainment. And it didn't used to be that way because it was. We were, you know, they were captive audiences.
I mean, feedback loop now.
Yeah, yeah, almost. And it's interesting with video, too, because video really, its trajectory from a marketing standpoint is almost the inverse of most other stuff. So, like, you think about, like, say, funnels, you know, three years ago, funnels were, oh, my God, it was just, you know, you pay $50,000 for somebody to, you know, make some kind of marketing funnel for you. And now you could go to, you know, different services and literally with a push of the button and it's just done and it's. And it's automated and it's in and it's robotic. And with video, it's not like that. It's completely different. Because.
When you think about it, three to five years ago, just having just any video was just amazing online. And you could just. You would just crush it with video because nobody was doing it. And there was just challenges with bandwidth and things like that. And then.
Video just became, you know, more and more sophisticated too, and people started just doing more, you know, creative. And it was almost that gap between what broadcast media and Internet media.
Really started to converge as far as just the quality and the level of production. And so.
For a while, there were all these services that were kind of popping up that were kind of these robo video services where you could take clip art and stock footage and you can make ads and things like that. And that stuff worked really well for a while. But again, your viewership changed so much that people really started recognizing and they can see, well, this is like another one of those, you know, just stock footage videos, somebody trying to sell stuff, things. And so, so the quality just keeps going up and up and up, whereas. And. And having to produce, you know, that kind of stuff, you really have to be really conscious of your audience. Whereas, you know, some other things like, you know, say, funnel building or. Or whatever, you know, you can just build a machine and it'll just happen. And you can't do that with video because.
The people that watch the videos just evolve so much. And they become so discerning that you're always having to lift up that game. We used to put a lot of stock footage back in the day into our videos, and now we do. Unless it just really, really, like, hits a nail and applies. Almost everything is shot from scratch just because. Because people can tell, and it makes that much of a difference.
And that makes you better than the Los Angeles Chargers. The Los Angeles Chargers just released a video of all of their upcoming games this season using 100% stock video footage.
Yeah.
Oh, my God.
And they were making fun of themselves, but still they did it. And it's like, it kind of shows if they're making fun of themselves. That's the sign of the market knowing, hey, you know all those billboards down the street. Because I know I point this out to Heather, my wife, all the time. I'm like, yeah, that's a stock image. I've used her in a sales video like, five years ago. Dude.
75. 75% of you're still using it. 75% of the pharmaceutical videos that you see online for, like, Zell Gens and Ziplify and fucking Cialis and all that shit, it's all just stock videos that they mash together and then put their voiceover. Because if you ever watch it, it has nothing to do with the pill they're selling.
And even if it isn't, even if it isn't, it should be because. Because it's just. You're just like, oh, kill me. It's like, yeah, I just hate to.
Be that, like, you know, the dude in the. In the ED commercials or something. Yeah.
You get a stock video. Next thing you know, you see yourself on TV in an ED commercial, and.
Then everybody's blowing up my Facebook, like, joe, I didn't know you had this. I'm sorry, bro.
Hey, Joe, how's it hanging?
Oh, man.
All right, dude, I want to break down. I'm curious. And I'm sure as other people floor, as. I'm, like, sweating, it's, like, hot in San Diego. Yeah. Just having too much fun.
I have that effect.
What's the structure?
Yeah, they're like formulas.
Yeah. What's the format? The structure of something? Obviously, it's very custom. It's driven by the customer, too. But what's the flow look like? So we can kind of picture this here.
Yeah. And I would like to say it's this crazy, just super hard, you know, magical thing that nobody can do. But it's honestly the simpler, the better.
You're losing yourself. Sales here Buddy, I know he's an honest man.
Most people just won't, they just won't believe it.
They won't do it either.
Like they have to. Yeah, but.
So say for. And it really depends too, as far as social platforms. Those are some really very specific formulas. And then.
So it would be how the, how the video is used. So say you running a YouTube video ad. So a YouTube video ad usually is going to be like a pre roll ad and a pre roll ads, you know, it's basically that annoying video that you see before you actually see the video you really want to watch.
The five seconds, you're like, when can I skip this thing?
Yeah, it's killing me. Yeah. So, so with the YouTube free roll ad, you really want to create.
You want to have a hard, hard, hard hook the first five or 10 seconds. And what I mean by that is something that's really going to.
Whoever you're targeting, they're going to go, oh, I need to know more about that. It's going to catch their eye, catch your attention.
And cause them to click off page or whatever before they get to watching that video that they're going to watch. And then, you know, after that first five or 10 seconds, then.
I like to just create, you know, maybe go another 30 to 45 seconds where it's again, kind of informative, engaging content, where it's showing that product that's being used, whatever the benefits are.
I would say the big mistake most people do as far as like when they're doing their own videos for their own businesses is they're very feature driven. Talking about too early. Yeah, yeah. You know, nobody, you know, nobody unless you're like an, like a 1970s audiophile or something. Nobody really cares about the technical aspects or the features or how much you went through to make this product really cool. They only care about what's in it for them. So the, the number one thing that I would say that I, that anybody should think about it when they're working on, on doing a video or scripting it is, you know, imagine you're the viewer and what's in it for me. And so that's what that next 35 seconds are about. You know, what's, what, what do they stand to gain from it? How's it going to make their life better, you know, with, you know, erection stuff? That's pretty odd.
Well, let's, let's get off the ed topic and maybe we can like use the case study of robos, you know, like the CBD tree.
Well, I'M curious with the YouTube thing, like, if it's a YouTube pre roll ad, are you, are you doing anything to try to grab the attention, like, real quick, right off the bat or.
Yeah, yeah, we'll do a lot of really cool imagery, things like that.
So.
We were doing one for. It was, it was, it was a picnic backpack. So we did like the first five or 10 seconds, we just did like this whole collage. Like, we did one where it was like just kind of a time lapse where all the stuff in the backpack just came out and you're like, oh, my God, look at all this cool stuff. There's like wine bottle holders and glass holders and da, da, da. You know, and it all like the first five. So. So it's just kind of this weird thing that just kind of caught your eye. And then we did, you know, some drone shots where there was people, like actually hiking with the backpack. And then, you know, you're doing things like that. And then, and then it was just kind of going through and putting people in the place of doing the backpack. And then we also did.
Where we were talking about kind of the market review style, where we actually gave the backpack to people and had them try it out and then talk about it and what was cool about it and what they liked about it and what they didn't like about. So that's. The other thing is talk about pain points. What are people's problems? What problem is this product solving?
And then how can the product that you're presenting fix that problem? Those are, you know, it's huge. That's, that's a huge, you know, as far as video concerns, again, and this is all like old school stuff that probably most people listening are like.
Yeah, I know, but this is good, though. And yeah, you're honest and yeah, you're taking what's been proven, but you're molding into this media type here.
Yeah.
Timing, market.
Yeah, it's almost like, it's almost like pulling pieces of what really works with like infomercials on TV and just leveraging them as online videos.
Yeah. So, you know, and infomercials, yeah, they're brilliant at doing that kind of thing. And, you know, they're a little more hypey and they're a little more, you know, because, you know, you know, a lot of the infomercials, you know, they're running an hour or whatever, however long sometimes, so that they're really trying to compete to keep your attention. So they're always trying to do these things that are, you know, sucking you in. And I think you said you're gonna have Ron lynch on for. Yeah, Ron, he's like the grandmaster, that kind of stuff. Yeah. And he's, you know, and he evolves a lot too, you know. Has evolves a lot. He has evolved quite a bit as far as, like, some of the stuff he's doing, you know, more of the agency stuff where.
You know, it's. It's more. It's a little. It's a little less obvious, you know, what's going on, but it, you know, still has that same effect.
Sure, sure. So that's like the grabber in the beginning, and then you have that. The benefits. You're laying all that stuff.
Yeah.
And then. So what's the length of, like, we're Talking about a YouTube video, I guess, after, like, is there a desired length for a YouTube video after you get past the whole skip part, you know, the pre rolls.
Yeah, I keep it under a minute.
Okay. Yeah.
You know, somewhere around 6. Most of the stuff that I do for social media, Facebook ads, unless it's a story or like a comedic commercial type thing.
I'll keep that on a minute. And Instagram, definitely, because you want to. You know, Instagram is 59 seconds or less as far as if you're. If you're running a sponsored ad.
And Instagram is one where.
You just want to grab their attention. It's almost like the whole video is a hook and it's. You're trying to. So whatever kind of weird, quirky thing you could do with your product, that's just kind of a pattern interrupt or, you know, like, there was this one good one, this guy had, like, it was like a. One of those thermos glasses that you couldn't knock over, like you put on a table. And so, you know, he was just like, whacking the glass and it wouldn't fall over, and, like, all these people would try to knock it over. And it was just. It was just mesmerizing, you know, to watch, to watch it. It's not. It's not as mesmerizing to listen to it on a podcast, but if you actually saw it, you'd be like, oh, my God, that's great. It's so.
So I'm curious. Yeah, because that makes sense. All the grabbing, like, all these things that are, like, have the imagery and like, the wow factor. It's like, we used to say this when we were a content marketing agency. Facebook videos would be like the scroll stopper. Like, what's the scroll stopper that we could do that catches their eye. Yeah.
And it's not just. It's not just imagery for the sake of imagery. Like, you really have to have a purpose. Like, if you're doing something that's kind of weird, that's a. That's. That's kind of going to interrupt whatever their little thinking pattern is or whatever they were doing to stop and see what you have for them. It has to have a purpose. That's the one thing, too. I do see a lot of people where they try to do that, where they try to create something engaging, but there's no real purpose or story or linearity behind it. And then it's just like, oh, it's. They're just trying to be cool.
Yeah.
A good example is. Do you know Chris Stoikos?
No.
So Chris Stoikos started the Dollar Beard Club.
Okay.
Okay.
Yeah.
No, I know of him. I've never.
He has a beard.
He has a beard.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah. They all have beards. Like, everything. It's this weird little beardy cult, you know, the whole group. And like his first video, like, they just, like, literally.
They shot it in this warehouse and they just use their own people and it. But. But it was just this brilliant thing. It was, you know, because they just hyper focused on this kind of, you know, alpha male with, you know, level 12 testosterone that, you know, this beardy guy and, you know, and if you don't have a beard, then you're just, you know, not a man. You know, like, there is one scene where like. Like he just. And they shot him for like $5,000.
Wow.
And. And yeah, it was. And it was. It was just brilliant. And it just went. It went crazy. Like on YouTube. They post on YouTube and he had no funnel. He didn't have an email list. They didn't have all the traditional whiz gimmickry. Like, they didn't have any yet. They were just selling it off this one video on YouTube and they were doing like $1.2 million a month.
Damn.
Yeah. Nice. I subscribed to Dollar Beard Club for a while because, I mean, I do agree, if you don't have a beard, you're not a man.
It isn't. I mean, like, you watch pretty quick because.
Because they thought so much about who their people were and just. I mean, they just drilled down and just nailed it. Like, if you're that guy, you're that guy. And the other thing is, if you're not, they were very good at like 90 year old grandmothers would hate it.
Oh, yeah.
And they're just like, this guy's an asshole. Or, you know what?
They repel people. Yeah. They know. They know who their market is and, like, screw their ass. Like, don't eat them.
I guess that's like a big key to, like, what worked for them was they. They spoke directly to who they wanted to buy, and they actually. They kind of spoke to who they didn't want to buy to repelling those people away.
Yeah.
Yeah. So then the next video they did, they're like, well, we're gonna go big. We're gonna make this the coolest video ever kind of thing. And so they, you know, they had, like, a grizzly bear and they're like, riding the camels. Yeah. Remember that one? Yeah.
Yeah.
I think they said they spent close to.
Think they said, like, $300,000 and these guys, like, are doing their own stuff. They're not even having agencies, but they spent that much money. Like, they rented this mansion and there's a whole funny story about the mansion and all that kind of. Yeah. Get into trouble.
And it tanked. And it tanked because, you know, all they did was just make this super cool video with super cool stuff, but the message kind of just slipped away. And.
That'S kind of. The beauty is like, you don't really have to spend a lot of money. And, you know, and sometimes when you spend a ton of money just to make something just really kind of cool and funny and creative, if you do it just for that and not. And you miss the message, then it's just, you know, you might as well just smoke $300,000.
Seriously.
Just for, like, a real quick, like, easy, like.
Which would be kind of cool.
It would be kind of cool. Yeah.
I can think of a lot better things to do with that $300,000.
But sure, yeah, there's a lot better uses of it.
Yeah.
So what would you say are, like, the elements that kind of. Any video designed to sell something should have these elements, at the very least.
Even digital products, too. Because I was going to ask that.
That was going to be kind of the next line of question.
Cool.
Yeah.
Get their attention. Really, really, really understand the audience who you're speaking to and speak their language.
Figure out what their pain points are and how your product solves their pain points and how that product is a solution, and then make it easy for them to get that product.
And find that solution. So it's kind of like, you know, hook them. Hook them in it. Hook them in the Beginning.
It'S really just super simple, three part, hook them in the beginning, kind of, you know, run them through that story and have them put themselves in the place of the person using it. Talking to all their pain. And, you know, it's kind of Bill Clinton, I feel your pain kind of thing. And then, and then, and then at the end, you know, then it's, you know, call to action.
Yeah.
And you're basically doing this with like, you know, actual on camera video. These aren't like slide presentations, screen share type things. These are like people talking into the camera. These are drone shots. These are.
Interviews, testimonials, B roll, all that kind of stuff, right?
Yeah, testimonials are amazing. And that's. Most of my clients don't because on our platform they can actually send us video and stuff and we'll integrate it in there for free. And I tell them, I go, man, if you've got just people like theirself, this is where bad video. One of the places where bad video is actually more advantageous and really slick, polished video is when, you know, people have testimony, real people, like, they just send in testimonials. Then, then those, those are, are just just like, like gold and, and just tack those on the end of your video because then it's just more and more edification. It's more and more like, you know, we're, you know, we're all, we're all kind of tribal people. And you know, up until a few hundred years ago, we, you know, the way we figured out things were good or bad and things were safe or not were, you know, through other people and their experiences.
And we're pretty much hardwired for that. And so that's why, you know, just having testimonials like that is just so great at the end to convert. And that's something I would say.
Yeah.
Now, have you, have you figured out any. I know we've had some phone calls about this kind of thing in the past. Have you figured out any sort of elements that make a video like, funny or go viral or get people wanting to share them? I mean, have you figured out like, I know there's people out there that claim that there's like sort of formulaic ways to make videos go viral? I don't know if I necessarily believe that, but I'm curious, what's your take on it? Like, are there any things that you found that when we do it in this way, they have a better chance of going viral?
Yeah, I would say any video that I wanted to go viral. Like, I never want. I never think about it going viral as a purpose, because if you do, then it will almost 100% not go viral. So.
One of the exceptions to, as far as doing like a shorter video versus a longer video are humor. And that's why I was saying, like, when I do some of the agency stuff, I tend to go towards humor because you can go longer and you can tell stories. So when you use humor, you know, you're not using humor for humor's sake. You're using humor as a tool and you're using it to get points across and to educate people. And so I would say.
Absurdity is probably the best. You know, so it's basically kind of, you know, whatever message you're going to, you know, you're putting across, then, you know, you kind of want to have something that, from a humor standpoint, that's the inverse of whatever that point is. So.
Well, absurdity, like if you're thinking dollar Shave Club, they kind of did that. They basically, it was like a totally absurd video, but they walked you through kind of this whole journey. They like took you along a journey, but it was absurd the entire time. But it was also like, oh, this guy's got a really good point.
When I think of absurdity, I also think of like the Old Spice commercials where they're writing like a six legged horse and shit like that.
Yeah. Or even like you were saying, the Chargers commercial where they're using all. They're deliberately using really bad stock footage.
To make a point. And so that's the thing. Doing funny for just being funny is not.
It rarely works. But, you know, if you have so kind of a process that we would use is we'll literally.
We'Ll literally say, okay, what is the goal for this product? And then we'll have a bunch of people.
And we'll just sit around and we'll just write skits for each section and then we'll connect the dots for those skits. And then how does it actually relate to the product? So each little skit's got to relate to, like, what is that point and how does that happen? You know, kind of thing. So.
Yeah, and how often are these little, like, brainstorm sessions where you're trying to come up with funny stuff fueled by outside substances?
Quite often in the writer's room, it kind of helps. Yeah.
So lock yourself in there and anything goes.
I'm. You don't have to ask.
Most of them are legal now in California. So.
Yeah, I know it's legal.
Damn it. I was talking about alcohol.
Clearly, of course that's legal.
Yeah, yeah.
So I'm curious, like, you know, we were talking about VSLs, all that stuff and we've been talking about kind of like shorter videos here in client case study stuff. Is a vsl. Like if we were, or someone were to take this approach and apply it to replace a vsl, would you recommend it still being a shorter video or just elongate? Pretty much the same formula you laid out here.
I would probably test it. Honestly, it depends on the product because usually for a VSL it's like a non physical product. So you have to spend more time convincing, I'm assuming where it's like, oh, I need eye cream or whatever kind of thing.
Where, you know, vsl, you know, a big reason why they were so long is because, you know, you're convincing somebody that they need something that they didn't know they needed kind of thing. So.
I, I think, you know, you can go shorter on a VSL if you do it visually because it's almost like we're, you know, there's that saying, you know, a picture, a picture is worth a thousand words.
A video is worth, you know, a million. So, so you can get, you can put more in. So.
Because basically, basically Those long form VSLs were really just audio files with, with text, supported by text. So yeah, so if, if you can do that visually you can condense down a lot of that stuff. You can tell a story. So what I would probably do is, is I would probably do some kind of a funny like sitcom style story where it's, you know, like a parody of a sitcom for something but you're telling the story, but you're also, you know, you're going over, you know, the pain points and convincing somebody that they need something that they didn't know they needed as far as a physical product or things like that.
So no, I think it's true. And you said the whole story thing. You said that like numerous times there. Perry Belcher, we were hearing him talk just recently and he used to have this big old 23 point checklist for his copy. And he said now he's like, dude, I just go straight up into story mode. It's all story and like it's not selling, it's just taking them on a journey. But then the very end is like, I think you said it's under a hundred words or maybe even less for the call to action, actually telling someone to go, you know, about the product specifically and why they need it. But the. Everything prior to that was story.
Yeah, yeah. Perry's really good at that. I mean, he's just, you know, because he's just, he's a good old country boy and he's just, he's just good at telling stories, so.
Yeah.
So how would, how would you translate. This is kind of sort of a similar question to what Joe just asked. But I'm curious how you would translate this to like, you know, so we promote a lot of info products and a lot of software products, and a lot of them have that old school VSL and.
Right.
You know, obviously, like you were just saying those, those VSLs, they need to be a little bit longer because you need to sort of educate them a little more on why they need this. So how would, how would you translate some of your concepts to something like a software or something like an info product?
Okay, you know what? Because this podcast will probably be out after we launch this, so I'll go ahead and talk about it now.
So for us, internally, we're working on.
Kind of this internal marketing project. In our, on the agency side, our superpower is we're really not for everybody. And we're, you know, our message is we're not for everybody, but for those people that are really kind of, you know, well, everybody's, you know, bobbing. We're weaving kind of thing that's not like a porn thing.
So we're actually creating this video that's kind of a parody on a physical product. So we're doing.
Party diapers. So.
I feel like this is a joke that you brought up randomly years ago, and now you're making a thing.
Now it's a reality.
Yeah.
Explain party diapers too.
Yeah, that's the whole thing. So the party diapers.
So far, for the storyboard, it's going to be kind of like, I don't know if I'm gonna be in it, but we'll probably like, you know, three or four guys and it's gonna be like torso up. And it's gonna be kind of their, you know, sunglasses, kind of Reservoir Dogs looking slow motion with smoke or whatever. And then, and then, you know, playing some kind of cool, you know, kind of slow rock, keys, kind of, you know, music or something. And then. And you know, and then also boom. It's gonna be like, you know, it goes like to the full pan out shot, you know, and these guys are like wearing dia.
And then it's like. And then it's like party diapers. And then basically I'm gonna go through and break it down where it'll be like, you know, like. You know, like. Like, we would have, like, benefit points. And then. So, like, though it'll probably go into a scene where maybe it's, like, at a frat party, and, like, you've ever been in those frat parties, and then. And then you're.
You're.
You're. You know, this guy's, like, talking to a girl, and all of a sudden, he has to go to the bathroom. So he goes to the bathroom and some other guys talking to him. Well, you don't have to worry about that with party diapers, you know, so it'll be like.
You'Ll just see this guy, like, oh, he looks a little uncomfortable. And all of a sudden, he had, like, this relief smile on his face while he's talking to a girl. You know, he's like, I still got her. Have you ever been in the middle of a yoga class and, you know, you're. You know, and all of a sudden you have to go to the bathroom, and then. So we'll kind of show the yoga class. It'll be like a guy in the back, you know, with his party diapers and, you know, kind of have that little.
You got to get a. You got to get a video of a girl in her yoga pants but wearing a yoga party diaper under the yoga pants. Yeah.
Yeah, that's a good idea.
So my lead videographer, she's actually going to Coachella this weekend, so we're trying to get her girlfriend. So. Because Coachella is like, you're rock concerts, you know, now you never wait in line for the bathrooms at a rock concert. So they're actually going to get, like, all these girls in party diapers.
This could go big with festival goers, man, because that's a huge thing.
Yeah, so. Yeah, exactly.
So.
So, you know, it'll be that kind of stuff, you know, and then at the end, it'll. It'll be, you know, and we might actually even send it to, like, we might even actually have, like, a party diaper site and kind of thing. And then. But then it's like, people start figuring out, oh, hey, this is like a video company, you know, and they're doing this stuff, and, you know, and that's the whole, you know, at the end of the party diaper commercial, it'll be like, you know, video telepathy, you know.
I think it's a brilliant way to market your brand, because I'm pretty sure anybody with a product would be like, dude, these guys are Thinking out of the box. They're making it fun.
I'm surprised you're not actually making the party divers. I thought you were actually going to tell us you were going to legit sell them.
I might.
Another one was, we were thinking about maybe doing a burrito koozie.
We talked about that one in the past. Coming up at a Mastermind.
Yeah, there's a couple other we can't really talk about on the show, but.
Yeah, I remember some other words that I remember. There was like a very niche bib.
Because, you know, and it really is who, who we are because, you know, if you're, you know, if you're some, you know, super, you know, stuffy, you know, traditional agency that's, you know, doing like, you know, SDG and E. Electric commercials or, you know, you know, pharmaceuticals. Yeah, we're not going to be those, those people, you know, and we're probably going to be the people that, you know, that in the, you know, when we're in the middle of a pitch, you know, and they, you know, we're just going to tell them the fuck off because we're going to do whatever we want, you know, kind of thing.
And as far as like, like info products and software and that kind of thing is, it is basically like, maybe this isn't the best style video for those types of products. This is kind of more suited for like E Comm type stuff.
No, no, I think you can totally use it. I mean, and that's why I was saying like, like what we just did, you know, is an example of, you know, we, you know, we're not an E Comm company. We don't. And we don't sell.
I see what you're saying. You're saying, okay, so like, you can use this kind of video to drum up more awareness and get people over to your business.
Totally.
Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, for us, you know, our message is, you know, we're a little bit outside the box. We're a little bit odd. You know, while everybody's doing this, you know, we're doing that kind of thing and if you're that kind of company that's, you know, on the doing that side, then, you know, we're, you know, we're your huckleberry. But yeah, if, if, you know, you, you, you want us to just do what everybody else is doing, we're probably not going to be the best, you know, the best fit. And so it really, one is, it attracts the kind of people that we're looking for and the other Is it repels the kind of people that we're not looking for?
Totally. No, that makes sense. And you just, you know, for. In our case, being affiliates, we could totally make videos, you know, short videos like this. Figure out what the market's into.
Yeah, we could do. Yeah, we could figure out like for you guys, like there's all kinds of stuff we could do. All kinds of stuff.
I kind of want to start an E Commerce. Commerce business now just because we have so many friends that are doing amazing shit in the E comm world and we don't have any sort of E comm stuff to play with the amazing shit that our friends are making.
We can partner up.
Yeah, partner up somehow. No, this is fun. And your website, I've just been browsing around randomly as we've been talking, just getting inspiration and just the videos you have on your site with the physical products, they all just look fun. So they have that feel and it makes sense why it gets attention. It's just different, you know, And I.
Think just personally, I mean, everything is just so dark and serious these days. You know, the world's going to come to the end or, you know, whatever, you know, I'm just like, just have some fun with some stuff. Because again, it's. It's kind of the opposite of what everybody else is teaching and preaching right now. So now do you have a studio?
Do you have like an actual, like professional setup still where people come in and actually shoot like on location?
Yeah, yeah. And then, you know, and that's mainly for, you know, really E comm. The product side stuff. And then also we. We have a deal worked out. There's a guy in east county who's actually a big Hollywood movie producer and he want to go to Hollywood to like, he's like, I got four movies to make and I hate Hollywood. So I'm just gonna build a studio. And so we have a deal worked out with them where we can actually use their studio and soundstage. And so if we need to build sets or things like that or go really big, I mean, we literally could just shoot a movie. And so we can go in there and do that too. So we can do.
With our little studio, we can just run things through and do all kinds of products. And then if you need something really specialized or bigger, then.
We kind of share that space with those other people too.
Yeah.
Interesting.
We've got two studios.
Yeah. Who would have thought we would have had a big wig Hollywood producer living out in our neck of the woods?
It's Crazy. I was like, what? Because originally, you guys know Stu Siegel Studios.
Stu Siegel. I think I know the name because of you.
There's actually a big movie studio here in San Diego, and they used to do stuff like that. And I reached out to him because we had his commercial we had to shoot, and I reached out to him like, oh, no. I guess the military just used. Like, they just took over the whole studio, and now they just use it for doing military training stuff or whatever.
Military's got a lot of money.
So they were like, oh, we're just call this guy up. He's got a movie studio over in San Marcos. Wow. There you go.
Really?
In San Marcos?
Yeah. No, we should check that out sometime.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. If you guys ever want to do a. Do a little tour, I'll take you down there.
Sweet.
Well, let's get little cars. You could drive around like you're in a. You know.
So fancy.
Universal Studios or whatever.
Oh, nice. In San Diego. I love it. The undercover. Well, dude, did we touch or not touch on anything that you felt is, like, super necessary to talk about this or.
Absolutely no idea.
Honest, man.
That Robbie Burns.
Well, we got our questions answered.
Three seconds ago. I was like, what do we talk about? It was like, are we ready to start?
Joe and I got our questions answered, and that's all that matters.
Yeah, man. Is there anything. Yeah. Anything else you guys want to know?
One other style of video that Joe and I have been meaning to shoot. Maybe we can touch on it real quick before we wrap up here. Is that.
I don't even know which one.
I think they call it, like, the hero style video. Right, where like.
Oh, right.
Basically like a video where when somebody lands on our website, it's just kind of like, got testimonials and, like, lifestyle shots and like, hey, here's why you should pay attention to us kind of thing.
And it's got, like, a slow build and. Yeah. Kind of dented it.
Yeah, those.
There's always a picture of, like, somebody sitting on their laptop, like, at a beach or a coffee shop to show. Show, like, hey, look, I'm location independent. Even though, you know those people.
Like, have you ever tried to work, like, on the beach with a laptop?
Yeah.
No.
And I would never want to.
I brought a laptop to a beach before it's done.
Oh, my God.
That is the stupidest thing. Whenever I see. And I know some of our friends have done it. I'm sorry, but. Sorry, that was a stupid shot. You know, you're not working on the Beach.
They're just targeting stupid people. Demographics. It's like, if somebody's dumb enough to think, like, it's actually okay to. And fun to sit at the beach and work on your laptop, then I want that idiot.
Yeah, well, James Schramko actually has, like, a. Like a meme image that I've seen going around, and he said, like, success is going to the beach and not having a laptop.
I mean, that's the thing. I mean, really? Yeah. Schrammy's a smart dude.
Yeah, he is. He's probably listening, too, so.
Yeah, so, yeah, so you owe me some money, Shrami, so.
I'm not getting in the middle of that.
I'm not the middleman. Surfboard. He's been riding short boards lately, though. Like little skateboards on the water.
That's right. No, but that's. Yeah, the. Here. I want to make videos of us just, like, mocking all the hero stuff. And it's like, this is why you should listen to us. And we're just like, oh, you're watching Rob Burns video of, you know, the girl punching the guy in the face.
You do a video of us at the beginning, but we're sitting too close to the water. You drop the laptop in the water by accident.
Oh, there's so much sand in this thing.
Yeah. Every time I hit the keyboard, it's like.
Yeah, you could do kind of like a, you know, in a world kind of thing.
I feel like it's been done to death. But you could always do one of those videos where you go and, like, stand in front of, like, a Ferrari and then, like, like, somebody walks up behind you and gets in the Ferrari and starts the engine. Beep, beep.
Yeah.
Get off my hood. I always wanted to do one, like, kind of like a toothless dude in a Yugo in a trailer park, you know, and just, like, doing the whole thing, you know, about. And you, too, can make money.
But it's true.
Look at my beautiful car. Like, a wheel falls off or something.
Well, now that we have your brain going on this, you know where our head's at for our quote unquote, hero video.
We want to make a hero video.
We don't want it to be a series. I'm in. I'm 100 in. I've already got a bunch of stuff. And see, this is the thing. So you guys don't have a physical product. You don't have an E Commerce product, but you want to tell a story. You want to make that connection. And so you guys are kind and.
You guys really are.
You're kind of like that anti.
I am World people. We've had that conversation, too. Like. Yeah.
Where.
You know, just where. And that's the thing, is because everybody. Everybody's. It's always like this. Somebody comes out with this one thing, and then everybody's like an expert in this one thing. And all really, they did is just hear the last person talk about that.
Regurgitated. Try it.
Nobody's actually ever done anything. They're just selling stuff that they haven't done.
Hey, it's. I mean, it's truth. Obviously. There's a lot of great people making lives and stuff, but at the same time, there are a lot of just. It's. I don't know. I just feel like people can think.
A lot out of the box. Yeah, that's what I mean. Because why do stuff. I'll just make stuff up and then, like, all the stuff we've been talking about, I don't actually do any of this stuff. We're all.
We're all just the blind leading the blind, aren't we?
Yeah, it's just the masses. At least we're honest about it.
He's like, oh, he's cutting edge.
We're the voice of reason.
My favorite thing is to, like, make up concepts that I've never tested and then go on podcasts and teach them.
Oh, and then listen to somebody ripping you off. You know, once I knew that, this whole new course.
Yeah.
Are we talking about that?
Like.
Like, trolling? Like, hey, I wish someone. Yeah, we were talking to someone about, like, how LinkedIn, there's some scams or whatever, make money at home things. I'm like, I wish one of the listeners actually go and, like, troll. Whatever company does that. Just see what happens. Yeah, yeah. Squeeze their time.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
And, like, videos like that are the type of video that'll get shared around if we put them out there.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah, because it's real. I'm in, man. Let's do a little series.
Sweet, man.
We'll make this big going.
Are there. Are you. Are you a big reader lately?
Yeah.
As opposed to before? Well, it's weird. I've asked this question before. I've been like, hey, you know what? What sort of books do you recommend often? What are you reading right now? And I've definitely had people go, yeah, I don't really read.
Oh, my God. Off the top of my head, I've actually kind of gotten a little bit away from.
You know, as far as, like, you know, the marketing Stuff and.
You know that we read like none of that.
So yeah.
I'm trying to think of what was the name of his book.
Describe it.
We might have heard it. This British dude named Ross Edgley and he just did the great. It's crazy guy. So he's like this guy's just a monster. He's just huge. But he literally just swam around.
Great Britain. He swam like first. He was literally in the water for six months except for when he climbed on the boat. And.
It'S called the World's Fittest Book. And so he's done all this crazy stuff. And I found him through because he does Wim Hof stuff. Like he did this one thing, he climbed the height of Mount Everest on a rope one time, set a world record and he did the Ironman triathlon with a hundred pound log tied to his back. So just all this crazy stuff because I'm always kind of like this, you know, like besides brain hacking biohacking stuff, just you know, what is a human potential. And so it's called the World's Fittest Book. It's really, really brilliant.
So he does like the like David Goggins type stuff where he just like purposely tortures himself like on a daily basis.
You know. Goggins is always just kind of miserable and angry to me. Hey, that's what's crazy about this guy is like, he's like just like the sweetest dude. He's just always like happy and kind and just you know, he's, you know, he's just doing these miserable things and he ran a triathlon or he ran a marathon towing a truck one time and you know, just crazy stuff like that. And he's always just like super happy with a big grin on his face and, and his, his whole kind of, his whole thing is, is that.
You know like marathoners are usually like emaciated or that you can actually control your body type and still do these other things that you body can't. Weren't supposed to do. So you know he's, he does this huge, you know he's like set these powerlifting records. But then again he's set these, you know, ultra distance records too.
Sounds like. What's that guy? Joel. Joel from Impossible.
Oh yeah. Joel. Oh Jesus.
Drawing a blank on his last name. But he basically he does stuff like this. He did what seven, was it seven Ironmans on seven continents?
It was something like that. And I think there's a certain amount of marathons he does and he travels, travels the world doing. Yeah, he Puts all these impossible goals and he has a whole community around them. But yeah, he just checks them off. He's like, yep, did that. It's like a big bucket list thing, but it's crazy stuff.
Yeah. And then what was the other one?
Stu just wrote a book about Wim Hof. What doesn't kill us? Scott Carney. And it was basically this whole, he's kind of like a fitness debunker guy and you know, all these, you know, kind of fitness gurus and they'll say, well, you can do this. And he'll go out and test it and kind of shut them down. And so he did that for Wim Hof.
And.
If anybody doesn't know Wim Hof, he's like this just literally just batshit crazy Dutch dude. That's just a genius and freaking amazing. Yeah, he's basically figured out how to control your autonomic nervous system through breathing and cold exposure. So he can control his immune. Like they shot him up.
Not neurotoxin, but like it was a.
Bacteria or some something. And he basically fought it off with his own thinking, meditation and breathing. Yeah.
And they're like, oh, well that's real, you know, but you know, we just think you're freaking nature. We don't understand why. And he's like, oh no, I can teach anybody. And like in two weeks. So they did this whole control test. He got like 10 other people that he taught how to do this in two weeks. And then.
They had like, you know, a whole other, I think they had like another hundred people where they didn't do it. And the control group and like all the other people just like, you know, they just barely broke a fever, you know, and these other, other people were just like, oh, there's miserable.
I can attest to Wim Hof. It works.
Yeah, he went to the death zone in Everest in his tennis shoes and shorts, you know, set a world record in Mount Kilimanjaro, like in 36 hours, it's usually a four day climb. Like he brought like a 67 year old cancer patient with them that he taught how to do this. And they were all wearing like shorts and T shirts and tennis shoes where everybody else was wearing like, you know, space suits and oxygen and all this other stuff. And taking four days, they did the whole thing in 36 hours. And so anyways, Scott Carney basically went and lived with Wim Hof and he was actually one of the guys that set the record and just talks about, you know, what he did. It's pretty amazing.
And so that's called what doesn't kill us, it looks like.
Yeah. What doesn't kill us. Yeah.
Are there just, you know, since. Over the years, there. There's. I'm sure there's some, like, business or marketing book or something that's had a big impact. Is there. Is there any that you can think of off the top of your head that, like, maybe is in the business world?
Let me think, Let me think. Was it subtle art or not giving a fuck? But, you know, everybody reads that, so.
I've literally never read that book.
Let me see here. Let me think.
You don't need to do that.
Anyway.
Yeah, that's a little bit of pressure.
Yeah. You're just making him more anxious about.
Let me see here.
I read a lot of stuff on Joseph Campbell.
Oh, okay. Yeah. So, like, the Hero's Journey kind of stuff.
Yeah. Because really, like, every movie, every kind of copywriting.
So anything that really kind of breaks down Joseph Campbell or any of his stuff.
That'S pretty good.
He has a. I have one of.
His Newport so good. They can't ignore you. That's kind of a good one. It's kind of how skills trump, you know, it's basically.
Yeah.
Blake Snyder wrote this book. He's kind of a Hollywood screenwriter called Save the Cat. And it's basically kind of taking a Joseph Campbell stuff and how it translates over to, you know, writing commercials or movies or TV shows.
I mean, that's plenty. Unless you have more that you want to give.
I'm just trying to think. Yeah.
I have one of the Joseph.
Campbell books, but I've actually kind of struggled to get through it. I think it's called the Hero of a Thousand Faces or something.
I'm so bad with. That's my. It's like I have this photographic memory, but, like, I can't remember names.
I'm the same way, man.
Like, literally, like, when we cross the border and people like, the border. The border guy's like, what's your name? I'm like.
I start confessing to stuff. I haven't even done anything. And I'm just like, what? It's like, oh, no, there's drugs in my.
What's your name? I swear I don't have weed on me. You didn't say you did.
That's not your name.
Bored and brilliant. This one, I highly, highly recommend. It's by Manoush Zomadori, which is actually a lady. And actually, basically the first couple chapters is all you really need because it's a premise, and it's basically talking about.
The creative process. How, you know, because we're. You know, as I was talking about earlier, how we're just so. We're basically just input machines nowadays. Like, all we do is just input stuff into our brains and bored and brilliant talks about how that, you know, if you can just sit for, like, say, an hour a day and not think about anything and not do anything.
That. That your mind kind of freaks out because it's not used to it. Especially now.
Because we have such short attention spans that your brain just starts creating things on its own. If you ever get in that stuck creative process and the harder you try kind of thing, and it just gets worse and you're just miserable. Go somewhere and just sit with the least input you can and just try to sit for an hour. You'll lose your mind. You'll just freak out. It's the hardest thing you'll ever do. And I'm not even talking about meditating or anything. I'm just saying, like, sit and stare at a wall or go sit under some trees or anything like that.
So don't try to fend off thoughts or anything as they come. Just sit there and whatever flows into your head, let it flow.
Yeah.
But just have as little input as possible and your brain just freaks out. And then all of a sudden, like, that thing that makes your brain creative and comes up with ideas and stuff, it'll just go off the Richter scale. And it. It's. It's actually pretty cool. It's pretty amazing. It's. It's miserable for that hour. And I've actually gone for, like, days and done it. Like, I've gone up and just set in a cabin for, like, three days and done nothing.
Whoa.
And, like, it's. It's horrible. Like, it really is. Like, you know, they talk about people, you know, in prison when they go in a solitary confinement, they just lose their minds, you know, And I. I can kind of see, like, how that could happen. You know, I always knew, well, you know, I'm only going to do this for three days, so I have wanted to do that.
Yeah. The whole cabin thing, specifically, like, there's, you know, Idlewild up the road from us. It's only like an hour and a half drive. Yeah, exactly. That's. You go up there. Is that where you went?
Yeah. Yeah. Idle wild. Yeah. I'll usually just actually just pitch a tent. There's this.
That's true. You just come to a backyard and just pitch a tent.
Yeah.
Wherever.
But yeah, I love, like, Borrego Springs camp out there, if it's not too hot or I like the desert.
Yeah. Yeah, But I love that. Just leave the. Leave the tech, ideally, you know, and then just let your mind go and just freaking. Would you allow yourself, paper and pencil, like, to write down thoughts or literally, like, nothing.
Usually, like the first day or two.
No.
And then towards the end, because you just really want to do that really bad.
Because you want to get it out.
Yeah, you want. You want to kind of get it out, but, you know. You know, give yourself like a little, you know, I would say half of that. Whatever time period that you're, you know, you're doing things, you know, don't do that, because it just makes your brain fight that much more and want to create that much more. So that's a really, really good book.
Cool.
I already added by Manoush Zomodori.
Sweet.
Which is.
Thank you. Yeah, we're gonna. We're gonna link them all up, of course, in the show. Notes here for everybody.
So last question. Where do you want people to go after listening to this episode?
Knock that off.
In N Out Burger.
In and Out Burger.
Not Shake Shack.
Yeah, we went to Shake Shack yesterday for the first time, and I'd actually.
How is it?
I saw that the burger was good.
It's different than In N Out, you know.
Yeah, the burger was good. I had a stomach ache afterwards, so that's saying something. And the employee that worked with us was interesting. But that's a whole story for a different time.
Yeah.
Cool. Or if you don't want to go to In N Out Burger. And if you're looking for videos, that videotelepathy.com is always kind of a cool.
Place to check out Video Telepathy.
Just go to In N Out Burger. Unless you're on the east coast, then you're just fine.
And then go to Video Telepathy.
But what if they're listening and they're, like, on the east coast or they're in Australia or they're in the UK or something.
Then. Oh, for a burger?
Yeah.
In N Out's not over there.
Well, Rob will mail you a burger if you sign up for video telepathy.
Well, if it's like, London, then it's. Yeah, they get like chicken tikka masala or whatever.
There you go.
I didn't go to my site, find the equivalent.
Is chicken masala the equivalent of In N Out in London?
I don't know.
I think so. It's the most popular food in the UK and was not invented in India. It was actually invented in London.
I mean, I do remember in the British Airways flight I took from San Diego to London, tikka masala was offered on there very prominently.
Yeah.
So I think you're right.
Just like, almost all the Mexican food we eat here in the US Is actually American food.
California.
Oh, yeah, yeah. Taco Bell is not Mexican.
What?
I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
But it's funny because right next to me.
What's that?
I remember eating at it. Speaking of just London and British food, I remember the first time I ate a British pub, it was actually for breakfast. And I'm like, what's good? And the girl's like, well, would you like some bangers and mash? And I was like, well, I'm actually currently seeing somebody, but thank you.
That's your first impression of the UK or London.
These people are.
These people are friendly.
I like it. Very open.
On that note, go to Video Telepathy and you'll talk to Rob there and his team. They're amazing. If you just want to have a good time, just call Rob.
Oh, man. Exactly.
But seriously, that Rob's the shit. It. And, yeah, just check it out. There's a lot of amazing stuff there. And, yeah, use this stuff. There's a lot of great things here. And, Rob, this has been fun. I don't know what the hell this is going to be like, the listeners thing.
Are we going to start now?
I actually did forget to hit record.
Thank God.
No, I think there's a lot of value and entertainment all dropped into one episode, which. Which is the formula for a perfect podcast.
That's what people tell us that they love.
Yay.
So we're gonna.
Yeah.
I just did the video formula for your podcast right there.
True D. All right.
I didn't even know what's happening.
Thank you, brother. Thank you, bro.
All right, guys. Thank you. Thank you for having me on.
Yeah, man. See you.
All right. See you.
Thanks, everybody, for listening to this episode of the Hustle and Flowchart podcast, for taking the time to listen. We want to give you some. Something a little bit special. Every single episode that we do, we actually have somebody on our team take notes. We basically have a Cliff's 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 and give us your email address and we'll send you the notes. Thanks for listening.
Go get it.
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