Episode 235: The Benefits of Video Marketing Justin Andrews and John Antonacci

Hello, friend. I just want to let you know that we are officially changing the name of the podcast to the Entrepreneurship Elevated Podcast. But it is still the same show and it is still the same content. We just wanted to make sure the name was a little bit more reflective of all that we cover. Our aim is still to bring you ultimate profitability, but it's also to elevate you in all aspects and to bring you some joy and ease and fulfillment to your business. That being said, please enjoy the show.

In today's episode, we're going to be talking about video marketing with Justin and John from a company called Animus. And you're about to hear that and so much more on how to grow your business in today's episode of the Profit First Podcast. Go, go. Yes. Here we go. Dancing over there.

Good job, Dan.

Da. So, Kels, we're renaming the show. Yeah, as I was saying, off air, this is a very clunky transition. Like, we're gonna rename the show Entrepreneurship Elevated. And the reason behind that is we're tackling so many topics outside of profitability. Profit always comes first, but outside profitability that we are really encompassing all of entrepreneurial endeavors.

Yeah, I'm excited.

Yeah. So we need new music. We need to screw it.

70S foreign music, 70s porn music. You got it.

So next. Starting next week, we'll call it Entrepreneurship Elevated. And then over time, we'll start phasing out this music and getting our new music, which your responsibility is to find us the music. That was a horrible cut I just did for that.

I wish you didn't tell anybody that. Now they know I'm responsible.

I know. Well, if it's crappy, I want them to piss at you. And if it's good, I'll say you pick crappy stuff and I overrode it and choose some new stuff. Hey, guys. My name is Mike Michalowicz. I am the author of many books. Prop First, Clockwork and so forth. But I am here for a specific mission to eradicate entrepreneurial poverty. I'm joined by my very good friend and colleague, Kelsey Ayers.

Hello, everybody. You can find us on itunes, stitcher, TuneIn Radio, ProphetFirstPodcast.com or any podcaster anywhere.

Spotify.

Yeah, Spotify and iHeartRadio.

And tell them about the bribe we're doing. It's working. It's working.

Yeah. So we really need some ratings and some subscribers. So please subscribe and please leave a rating and take a screenshot and send it to me. Kelseykemckellock.com. and that's K E L S E Y I mikemikalowitz.com.

Was that kind of cool, me saying we're so desperate behind that? Like, you know, as you were talking?

Yeah, except nobody's gonna hear it, and they'll be like, well, what I could understand.

What was that? Send us your screenshot of a review and you get a free book. And Kelsey, got a question for you.

Yes.

Before we go into all this stuff, my wife is listening to a show about murder, and I don't know the name of the show. It's two women talking about murders, and the followers, the listeners to the show, they call Murderinos.

Oh, no way.

Yeah, so my wife got this box of stuff, showed up at her house. I'm like, what is this? Opens up. It's a. It says, I'm a murderino. And it has these funny sayings. It's like, you know, dress well and never get murdered is like one of the shirts or something. Like, there's always different phrases that came out of the show. So I think for our show, we need a name.

Then every wrong word that you say, we'll put it on a piece of clothing and we'll send it to you.

I think that would be good. Yeah. Wait, what was the word you bust my chops about recently? A grosius. A grosius. Well, that is a word. Yeah, it is a grochas. We should. Can we make a grocerious shirt? Make a note of that.

Buy genetically.

Make a grocerious. Yeah, make those. Make a T shirt. I want. Let's get, like, 15 T shirts, and we'll give them out to our listeners. A grocerious. Well, here's the thing. I think we need it. Like, they have murderinos. So my wife's like, oh, murderino. I think we need something. So I try to think of names. All I could come up was our listeners could be profit. Perverts.

No.

Is that horrible? I couldn't think of anything use the word pervert. But if you have a name that we.

You did use pervert in the wrong way the other day. What did you say? Pervitus or something?

Or perverted.

But then you. No, it wasn't perverted. It was something.

Oh, I don't know. I don't know. All right, so, hey, Kelsey, let's get into. Well, what have you been up to first before we do a listener shout out?

What have I been up to? I mean, getting ready for the holidays.

Yeah. So Thanksgiving, as of this recording is Two days away.

Yeah.

When? This broadcast will be the next Thanksgiving we're doing so far in advance. What are you doing for T Day?

So I'm just going to my sisters for T day, but the weekend after, my sister Jordan and her husband Joe are coming to stay with me, and I'm super excited. I can't wait.

What did Delaney. Is that your onesie?

Yes.

What did she think about that? Me, Paul, you. We all start emailing her stuff. Does she think we're weirdos?

No, not at all. She loved it. But then after she was like, what was that song? And, you know, we were just talking about being able to guess.

Oh, she judging.

And I felt like you threw me off because you said that you were picking songs that were current and you picked an ACDC song.

Yeah, I did. Touch Too much. That's. That's one of my favorites. I know. I didn't say. Well, some of the songs were current, not all of them. Is that the one that she said? What is that all about?

No, the E Double one.

Oh, she didn't like that?

No, she didn't listen to it, but she was like, I didn't know that song.

Oh, she's got to listen to it. Yeah, she'll get into it. Yeah, it's kind of motivational. Sadly, E Double the rapper passed away from a infection. Like, how often you hear that? He's in his 20s. This really innovative rapper passes away his 20s. Hey, do we have any listener mail?

Yeah, we do. We have a. This is a review that Danielle from Montana left on itunes. Thank you. So another benefit of leaving us a review you get to be read on.

Oh, my God. It's a two for one deal.

So she says. I just came across Profit first about two months ago and the podcast shortly after. It's changing the way I run all three of my businesses. And it's pretty entertaining as well.

Triple exclamation mark.

Yeah, thanks, Danielle.

Because you don't know if that's a facetious pretty. The word pretty is tough. Like, it's. It's pretty entertaining, you know? Or is it? It's pretty entertaining.

It's pretty entertaining.

Well, that's how she said. Because he's a triple exclamation. It wasn't a facetious like, eh, it's pretty entertaining. We want your shout outs and listener mail too, so you can email us anything you think about the show. Put it in the podcast notes. We'd love to hear it and we'd love to read it and give us your domain name too. So we can promote your business. You know what I'm saying? All right, Kels, I want to thank our corporate partners. Before we kick the show off, I want to thank nextiva. That's our voice over IP phone system, and we've been with them for a long time. We encourage you to check them out. We'll tell you more about them at the end. And Receipt bank, which I had a call today with someone who's like, oh, I love your podcast. And I'm like, oh, thanks so much. What do you love about, like, oh, we need to talk about Receipt Bank. Was it the weirdest thing ever?

That's so.

He's like. It's so funny. He's like, oh, you said there's something about Receipt Bank. It's like something in your pocket. And he goes, it was so funny. That's the best part of the whole show.

What does that say about the rest of the show?

I know, I know. It's not our guest. It's nothing. It's just, you know, it's a sponsor.

Read receipt in your pocket.

I know. All right, so let's talk about our guests. We have Justin, Andrews and John, which I didn't ask how to pronounce his last name, so I'm going to just make it up. Antonasi.

Antonacci.

Antonacci. Antonacio.

Antonacci. Don't allow it. Don't worry. I've gotten so many bad.

What is it, John?

What? Heritage.

No. Yeah, what heritage is.

Yeah, that too.

Give me a hint. Don't tell me how to pronounce it. What's the heritage?

Italian.

Italian. Oh, that's Anthonacci.

That's much, much better.

It's all about the emphasis.

Yeah, good job.

That's how we always say interaction.

They don't call it spaghetti. They call it spaghetti. What I heard is actually bull. I think they actually do pronounce the last letter. I think it's the Americanization of Italian. John, what's your feedback on that?

That's right.

The last spaghetti.

Bit of spaghetti. Right.

I have no idea what you guys are talking about now.

Well, have you. Have you been to Italy?

Not that cool.

We're talking about spaghetti.

You're talking about. You went from. That's. That's just a leap right there. Spaghetti. Antonacci. Italian. I don't understand how.

I'm just saying the Italians. The Italians, supposedly, according to Americans, don't say the last.

I think, like mozzarella or regatta.

Yeah, they don't say mozzarella. They go mozzarella.

Yeah.

And they don't say.

The way of boiling it down is we really try to take the language and ruin it here.

Yeah, yeah.

That's what's it thing we do.

I don't want to drop too much knowledge on you guys about Italian ways, but I'll let you know that in certain regions of Italy and then when they came over here to the States. Each state. If you went to each state in the United States, I'm sure if you had Italians, each one would do its own little thing up here in the Northeast. But we are. We've taken words like exactly what you're saying, like, I cannot order a stuffed manicotti. It's manicott Manaquat. There you go.

I have a question. Do you guys. Have you ever heard of a Goobileen?

No, I haven't.

So my family has, like, taken bastardization to a new level where they literally just make up words, so they call those, like beanie hats. Goobileens and. But it doesn't exist anywhere. Yeah.

What's a beanie hat?

That could be your new T shirt.

Actually write that one down. We got one for you, Goobile.

Yeah, that sounds like a whole episode we could have.

We should. We should at times. Let's break into our. Our American Italian as we do the interview. But let me introduce you guys. So I got Justin and John here. Justin is the co founder. John is the VP sales at Animus Studios. And. And they are here specifically to teach us about video marketing, business admin. They've been in business for seven years. And they got a lot to share with us because I think you've done over $5 million of business with clientele. So you know this space. Gentlemen, welcome to the show. Officially.

Welcome.

Yeah, it's awesome to be here. Thank you.

Or as I should say, I don't.

Know if you can hear the. They're half clapping. At the very end. They stop clapping like this.

Yeah.

That crowd didn't seem as enthusiastic as.

Most Italians are, like, oh, whatever. I've seen this before. Hey. So let's get right into it. Video marketing. You know, that already sounds expensive. It doesn't apply to small business. And some of the video I've seen out there is horrible. Is really. Is video marketing, first of all, is even applicable to small business, or are we talking already businesses that have some serious coin?

Yeah, of course it is. I think that no matter what, in terms of barrier of entry, I think when you're thinking it's expensive, you're probably going back a Ways and thinking how expensive equipment can be. And granted, granted, we do have that expensive equipment. But when it comes to video marketing now, you know, Mike, I'm sure you have one. Kelsey, you probably have a studio in your pocket with your cell phones. So from that standpoint, video marketing doesn't need to be as expensive as what you fear it could be.

Yeah, I think the easiest way of saying it is if you're talking about video, there are so many different things that you can do, and there are those perceptions of the big TV spots that we see in super bowl commercials. But you have to be leveraging video as a business owner. And when we talk about it, we don't just talk about the things that we're out there producing. We make recommendations like use video conferencing more frequently. If you're in sales and marketing and you're not taking advantage of video for some of those foundational things, listen, it just helps you communicate better. It helps you communicate like a human being and put your face out there and talk to your customers more frequently. If you can't figure out a way to take advantage of that, then you're misperceiving what video marketing really is.

Gotcha. But. But I've seen videos that are just ridiculous. They're so bad.

And we made one for ourselves, actually. It's a. Oh, yeah, that's what you guys do.

You make the bad videos.

Yeah, we were drinking the other night and we were like, let's make a Black Friday deal. So we did, because we thought it'd be really funny. So it's terrible, but it's terribly good. It's like, good terrible.

Oh, yeah, there's good terrible. There's terrible terrible. I mean, like, someone that. Especially these YouTube videos, like, someone's like, I will give you. They're more educationally oriented. But I had an issue with drain flies, or these little flies that come out of your drain. And so I looked it up, and this video, it was like this podunk horrible video. This guy says, yeah, I own, you know, such and such insect repellent company or insect control company, and here's the technique to do it. And I was like, there's one guy I never want to do with business with is that guy. Like, if he shows up my house, he could be a murderer. Like, I mean, candy, don't some work against you if you don't do it right.

That's the dangerous side of anything that you do in marketing. Right? Like, everything you do represents your brand. And if you decide to do something Cheap and clearly cut corners. It's going to look that way. So what we like to say is embrace the right medium for the solution. So I was at a talk in Chicago recently and. And we've done videos where we record them in our studio and post them up on things like LinkedIn and add closed captioning because that's a good thing to do. Go to Rev.com, you can add that type of service right on. But I just took out my phone and I recorded something before the talk and I had 3,000 views and a chain going on that thread and then connected with people after the talk that were commenting on it because it's a medium that the expectation is that you're just going to use your phone to make things sometimes. And that's okay. The key is always having at least a reason that you're jumping on and a story behind what you're recording and how it connects with your brand. But yeah, it's doing the right thing at the right time. And if you're gonna make something that's terrible, you're probably better served not doing it. Unless you want to be perceived as that cheap person that's gonna do something for dirt cheap. There's the option there.

This is. So let's talk about the benefits about video around video marketing first and then we'll see how we go about it. Why would someone want to do video marketing?

Oh, I'm sorry, this is. This is John, the Italian guy. I just want to make sure we get that clear. So. Justin, Diane.

Hey, how you doing?

Video marketing.

Sorry, you have to talk like that.

The whole time so you make a video. I'm sorry, so your question was Mike, because I got too caught up in my benefit, I would.

Why does someone want to do video marketing in Italy?

I'll jump start it with the. The first reason, I believe is it's about human marketing. It's about how people communicate in this day and age. Like what's missing from this podcast right now. And I'm a podcast junkie. What's missing right now is the two of us. Aren't you Mike and John? We're not all looking at each other right now. There's the benefit of seeing each other, seeing how you're engaging. And before we turn the mics on here and start recording, I would have loved to see in the video of our initial conversation because I'm sure it was really fun, funny, and I can imagine the facial expressions that you were making because we don't just communicate with our Voice. So that's the number one reason is how can your brand communicate more like a human would? So that's the number one reason about video marketing. We'll hit on a few other things.

And you know, to me, I agree with Justin on that and also the fact that how people process information and how quickly video can convey that info. So if somebody is trying to tell you something like, you know, even in our discussions, kind of like what Justin was saying in our discussion and talking, it is a difficult thing to just listen to somebody or read it. But when you see all the different elements, someone's facial contortions or whatever the image is, the sound, the music, everything in there is going to convey the message in a much shorter period of time. And nowadays, I mean, we all know how important time is and how fast you need to make your impression and.

Help your customers, right? Like, I remember something as simple as we had our windows replaced at my last test. We went from like the wood windows to the new vinyl windows. And I was getting frustrated with like this really stupid thing that you had to turn or twist to get the window to go up or down. The most simple thing. And maybe I'm an idiot, could just be missing it here, but I would have really loved, like, here's the install and here are the how to videos that just quickly explain the things that you're going to forget that you, you want to remember because they're super simple. And I do it now when I'm, when I fire up a new tool, like we're in New England here getting our snowblowers ready. I'll take a video and record something that reminds me of exactly how I need to turn this thing on so I don't forget.

So you're saying you're marketing to yourself?

I market to myself all the time. That is our number one amazing.

This guy, I buy anything from him.

It's actually pretty easy from a standpoint of technology now and what everybody has available to them. So if you can imagine a product like Justin, if he had gotten that window and there was a barcode on that product, a QR reader that he could just scan, put into his phone and it's going to show him in video everything you need to do. Because I don't know about you guys, but you know, I am not a direction reader. I don't do it. But if I, if I visually can see it, it's going to, it's going to take me a lot less time than to go through step by step to figure something out and realize I.

Missed a step and that's one. So that's one of the big areas that I believe that video helps is on the education side. And YouTube is a great platform for education. When you think about what YouTube is, it's owned by Google. It's the number two search eng. That's where people go if they're searching how to figure something out. Right. So there are a lot of businesses, especially smaller businesses where you can be putting out those types of how to videos and there are actually websites that you can go to to search where people what, what's like trending what people are searching in terms of topics. So education is a big platform. The other side is the inspiration and the emotional side of things that communicates a brand. And I firmly believe that a big part of marketing, part of it is just to look the part just to show up the way that you want your brand to show up and that that creates a perceived value. So when you're thinking about how to lure people in, you want to lure people in with that type of emotional content that gets them to buy into your brand. And then you want to hit them with educational content that builds trust and actually gives answers to their, their challenges and problems. And the educational content is stuff that's typically easier to produce.

Yeah, there's a time and place for all of that what Justin's talking about. But to take a step back entirely, if you're thinking about video marketing, that's great. You understand the importance of it. But like you guys, how you're profit first and that's what you guys are thinking of. We think creativity first. So what we do right in the beginning is come up with the formula that's going to work for you. And that takes a lot of work. And people don't realize that. And when they, when they want to make a video, they think like your bug guy. I'm just going to put myself in front of a camera and boom, done. But a lot more planning needs to go into, into effect right in the beginning. Otherwise you're going to fail. So. But the creative portion of it is where we like to put most of the weight in the beginning for us.

Okay, well that's what I want to dig into. You've been convinced I want to do video, I want to do video. Let's just want to do video. How do we go about the planning? Who do we pick to do the video? I got a few colleagues here. I don't even know where to get started.

Yeah. And I think that's the tough part with video right now is there isn't like a big GEICO type of company you can go to and they'll solve your problems for you. Right. There's different tiers. So there are the bigger types of companies that are still out there using agencies, using high end production companies and they're spending a lot of money on their videos. They're spending $200 million like it's chump change. And then there, oh yeah, and then there are kids graduating with degrees in filmmaking and communications that, you know, they just start buying cameras. And someone at the company will say, hey, we can use Johnny's, not you, John, Different Johnny, Jimmy's cousin, he graduated with a degree. He could make our video. And sometimes that's the right thing to do. But the starting place, no matter what, is making sure you're actually thinking about a challenge first and not just prescribing the solution and saying, oh, we're making a video, boom. That's what we're doing. You have to back up and you have to look at it and say, what are we doing? Where are we gonna put it? And once someone watches that video, what are they gonna do next? And really kind of map out what you think the strategy looks like. Because I'm a firm believer that you could do a bunch of things half assed and they're going to come out like that. So you really need to think through the strategy and what you're trying to do. And this is what we do for clients all the time, where we back up before we move forward. We get a lot of people that come in and say we want to do this thing and we're the ones that slow it down and kind of ask why that's funny, we want to hire you.

Why? What's the outcome that most people are aspiring to do? Clicks, views, sales.

I mean, the bottom line is profit.

Okay, to make money. How is this going to make me money? And the idea now is, okay, that's you, that's your end game. Okay, so what is it right now? Is it, do you need to raise awareness of your product? Do you want them to do an actual action? Is there something actionable that they need to do? You know, what is that particular goal? Are they just going to consider you?

That's it.

I mean it really is like stages of marketing that you have to implement with making these videos. And again, that should get hashed out right in the beginning.

Yeah, I mean, at the top of the funnel there are two goals typically. One is like how can you not create a viral video? Because that's a fool's gold. How can you create something that lures in the right people and or uses it as a qualification marker, like helping to weed out the wrong candidates right off the bat so you're not wasting your time talking to the wrong people. So how can you increase the top of the funnel and then middle of the funnel is. How can you improve conversion? How can you educate them before the sale so that they're coming at you with less questions? They're more inclined to just buy off of your website, for example, because they've gotten some answers to their question. I also think it can be used to just surprise and delight current customers and leads in the pipeline to create an experience that people haven't experienced before. Because we are all competing with the Disney experience, the Uber experience, whether you like it or not. If you're only doing $500,000 in sales a year, it's easy to think, well, I can just do what I'm doing. Right.

Right.

But we'll have this perception that they've experienced what it's like to buy from Uber or etc. I get frustrated every time I go to hire an electrician or a plumber or something like that, because often it's just feels like you're dealing with a business from 50 years ago and it's like, wait a minute, why can't we just set up like a calendar invite so that like we both remember the appointment? I mean, you remember the appointment, not as me. Yeah, going through those headaches every time. So always trying to improve the way that you, you create a customer experience.

Well, as an aside, if you know a good electrician that's willing to come down to New Jersey, I can't find one. I literally can't find.

I could help you out. Everything takes me like seven attempts and I get shocked a few times as I go. But I'll go down there if you're.

Willing to take a hit of, you know, 20amp circuits you're in. So, okay, so I want to do a video. I now know the goal is to clearly define my outcome. Sales being the number one thing, but it could be delighting surprising customers, you know, furthering retention once I know that.

Recruiting employees is a big one right now too.

A lot of really special outbound. We've talent that. That's juicy.

Well, if everyone talks about the talent market right now being so tight and we work with a lot of tech companies and with tech companies it's even more fierce. And if you're trying to recruit the right talent and retain talent, you have to constantly have an employer brand. You have to be out there, your stories have to be out there. And we're not great at this ourselves, and we own a company that does it, but you have to be good at talking about yourself and sharing your story with the world. So Big one is attracting the right talent, putting out the type of content. So we're actually flying out to San Francisco, highlighting three employees, and we're actually filming in like, Muir Woods. We're filming one of them surfing. And this is for a tech company, so we're not going with like this obvious story, although we're doing some of that. We're doing some of those YouTube type videos of how. What's the interview process like? Like, what's the culture like? But then we're doing these three more emotional stories about sort of showing what these people value at a human level to attract the same sort of cultural type of folks. Because it's about cultural fit as opposed to skills fit.

So much about emotions too. Like when you're taking a job, particularly, it's how you feel about it. So that's such a great way to qualify people from the jump.

Yeah, I really like that. Could you imagine having a video of the office here? But, like, what I'm hearing from you gentlemen is it's not necessarily a commercial. It's a little more personal where you're inspecting people's humanness.

Yeah, it's like a showcase.

I mean, that's really where it's at right now in terms of what people are remembering. Storytelling. I'm sure that's the word you get. Well, you know, Mike, you write stories in that vein. That is the big subject matter, storytelling. And I think we all understand why. It's because, number one, people remember stories. They can relate. There's an epithet element to it. So to find those fascinating stories, that's, that's what we, we pride ourselves on, is to find out those particular people, who's this guy surfing, what makes him tick? And try and make the viewer, the audience, empathetic towards that hero.

I, I think if you subscribe to, like, doing the same marketing things year over year over year, that is going to lead you into a world of pain. I love when I see a television commercial, especially a local television commercial, where they clearly hired two. There's one I'm thinking of, and it's this kitchen remodel company in my town, and it's clearly two actors who are not married. Saying, hey, you know, if you're looking into buying a kitchen or redoing your kitchen, you want to do it at this place? And the wife goes, yeah, honey, wouldn't it be great? Because they give us great service. It's just like, this isn't how humans really talk. So you should be looking for stories that are really authentic. Now, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't come have the idea or the ability to think about, you know, what would this look like as a TV commercial, right? What would this look like as a funny, scripted thing that we're just playing around, having a blast with and hiring actors and whatnot. But when you're talking about real people, I'm kind of a fan of using real people in this, this world because authenticity is what matters right now. We live in pretty skeptical times. People are afraid to buy things. You're being bombarded with sales all the time. Like, I have a. I use same later for my filtering my emails, and it's filled with hundreds every day of people reaching out, trying to sell me something, and I just don't care. So it's about authentic relationships for most, especially service providers and looking real and honest. That goes a long way.

So I don't buy that. But how do you break through with video? I mean, I'm just thinking about email. Whenever I receive an email with a picture embedded or video, I use Gmail. It blocks it. It says it could be spam or something. Is there a way to even get in front of people with this onslaught that's out there? Does video give you an advantage of breaking in?

Oh, definitely. And there's other avenues other than email that you can use, and that's part of the planning of it, is where are these videos, where are they going to live? Where is your audience? And where should we put these videos to make it the most impactful from a business standpoint? LinkedIn is great. They've updated their platforms, they're adding more features so that if you're uploading video there and you've got followers, it's a terrific tool to use. And, you know, Justin was kind of obviously building a house or something, right? Because he's got all these people coming to his house. But there, I just wanted to touch back on that. There is a place for those types of videos where, you know, in terms of psychology and you know, not to get too deep on it when somebody's buying. There are certain aspects of how your brain works where right now you need to find out something quickly to make a Rational decision. So those kind of videos, if they're done right, should work well, where the guy saying, oh, you need me, and this is, this is what I can offer you. So that is a video that takes place there. The emotional ones, you got to keep in mind that those are more for a longer tail, that's for building your brand, and that's for a different part of your brain altogether where eventually you've earned their loyalty and their trust.

What about. You guys mentioned storytelling and the importance of it, but I don't really understand how to structure it and put it into video. I mean, do you start off like, you know, with the dark and stormy night and start telling us or.

So the first thing I'll say is like I. Everyone talks about storytelling to the point that it just really bugs me because like, not everything is a story. I have a slide that is this. They're back to back slides. Not everything is a story. Right. Like when you're doing a 15 second social clip. If you're worried about story and you're trying to build a story arc, which is like a character that has a problem, that meets a guy that undergoes action plan and results in something great, that's storybrand Don Miller. If you're trying to put that framework into everything, you're going to lose your mind. However, everything is sort of a story as it relates to your brand. So that 15 second thing that you're doing should be some story arc is turned. The customer starts here and then they go to this next piece of content as opposed to just like putting something completely random out. But I don't believe like everything needs to subscribe to a storytelling.

So it's kind of like a larger story, but not necessarily an entire story.

Right. It's like Russian dolls of stories.

Yeah.

If you, if you go to that Black Friday deal, you'll totally get what Justin's talking about right now. Because that video is not a story.

Yeah, it won't even be available after.

Well, if this year is not Thanksgiving.

But I, I want to go back and make sure we answer your question from before Mike, because I think it's important, which is I think a lot of people will make a video. Right. And if you're just going to email it, if that's your only strategy, hey, we're going to cold email this video. That is not going to work.

Right.

I mean, that's the reality of it is it's not a bad strategy. We use something called Wistia Soapbox where we do a lot of account based Marketing. So we'll pick targets. We'll record a video of us talking. We might make a quick slide deck. So Soapbox allows us to pair those two things together. And it's free. There's a paid version where you can actually track views and whatnot. And we'll send that. And there's a button with a play button. You press play there. It does typically improve open rates, but at the same time, we as a company do test just doing rich text emails, very simple emails with no, like real weight to them. So no image files or anything like that attach. And those have good open rates as well. But I think you have to have a more robust strategy than just a cold email strategy. You have to have a landing page. You have to have some degree of social presence out there. Even if you're a company or an older school person that's thinking now, what's social gonna do for. For me, if you put time and attention into it, that is where things are going. That's where sales conversations are happening.

Is video.

Is.

Is video something that you have to be all in persistently? My fear is someone hears this and says, you know what? I'm going to do video. And they do one or two videos and they never do them again. I presume that wouldn't work. Does it have to be all. And you see, I stick with this for years.

Well, really, it depends on what your goal is. You know, is it something that has a time limit on it anyway, you know, whatever your offer is. But no, you really should stick with the video platform just because of how effective it is. And this isn't just because of what we do, but it is an effective platform. And how you use video is so flexible, you know, like Justin's talking about Wistia Soapbox, which is a great tool. And I want to add my 2 cents in that. Always have in your mind, the back of your mind, what is the reward for them for watching this video that I'm about to do? You know, if you're talking to somebody, it's like, why are you going to invest your time? And this is a reason for this as a payoff. Listen to it. And whatever that message is, I don't know what it is, but in some form you're helping them. But no, you can't abandon anything too quickly in terms of marketing. Right?

Yeah. And the other way of like reframing it is just not even thinking about video. It is video right now. But we're, we're really a communication company. We choose video as Our medium, because that's what works. Right now we're also looking at, like, 3D interactive stuff. We play with all of that because that's the type of content that's coming. It's just this question of, like, 50 years ago, you might not have been using email. Now you're using email. Email's kind of phasing out and being replaced by Slack. So it's really this conversation around, well, what is a better way of communicating? And this really is a better way of communicating. So if you're a company, hey, if you can justify and say print ads are the thing that work best for us, then stick with print ads and do it really well. Don't lean to video right now. Maybe start doing some research on it. But to just think that you have to jump over to it, that might not be the right strategy for certain folks out there. We believe that it's something that you should commit to. Even if committing to it means we're gonna do an overarching brand piece around. This is what we are. Then we're gonna do a few product pieces, and those will probably last us a year or two years. And then on a monthly basis, we're going to post one social thing with a thought leader from our company just talking with a webcam, right? So it doesn't have to be this massive endeavor. And it shouldn't be viewed as it, but it should be viewed as, how can we use this to help our company and our people at our company communicate better?

You know, you guys earlier said viral is kind of the fool's gold, but I think about dollar Shave Club, I don't Kelsey ever saw that one, like, funny video. And that guy sold his company for a billion dollars. Right? Then there was. Before that, will it blend? There was a blender company called Blendtec, a series of wacky videos blending stuff. That's what we all want, I think. Why not pursue trying to make something viral? Or is that not what you're saying?

And that is a good way to think. If you have a product that makes sense. For a lot of B2B marketers, it's unlikely that you're gonna come up with a viral marketing campaign. You're better off thinking of the accounts that you're targeting. B2C, slightly different story. But you can't look at things like dollar Shave Club and think that it was this haphazard thing similar to when we talk to people. We've helped people with Kickstarter campaigns, and we always just interview them. Right? We get a sense of where they're at, the amount of work they're willing to put in. So Dollar Shave Club, I remember looking at that when it was launched. And then I called the company that helped them distribute that piece, and I can't remember their name right now, but they had like a $10,000 budget, so it's $8,000 production. They just used a friend of theirs pretty cheap.

Yeah.

Had a $10,000 budget for distribution, which guaranteed them something like 2.5 million views. And any extra views were free through select networks that were in line with their target audience. And I'm sure they had pre done their research in terms of press releases and things like that. And it wasn't just, hey, let's make a video that's funny and then we'll launch into the world and it's going to work. Now. They did a lot of research and they spent money. A lot of times we're finding is people have forgotten about the budget that should be there for advertising and there doesn't always need to budget. I don't want to get people like thinking that they have to. Even if you're on the low end of the spectrum that you're thinking, I need to spend five grand on a video and ten grand on budget, I can't do this thing. But you should at least think about what are the avenues for distribution, what are organic avenues, like what are we going to just naturally do with this and what paid opportunities would benefit us. So you can't look at most viral things and think that they happen haphazardly.

Well, I like that, that if those are the actual numbers, 8,000 to produce, 10,000 to distribute, 18 grand, you know, a super ball ad costs on 100 million or 50, whatever, something ridiculous. And here's an $18,000 cumulative cost that, that made that put that business on the map overnight.

Right.

And I think that comes down to a couple of things, right? When you're talking about how they decided how they're going to disseminate it. But the other thing is the content, you know, with everybody right now we mentioned earlier, you can have your cell phone in your pocket and if everybody just jumps on and just starts making videos for the sake of it, it's going to be awful. So more and more people we're going to have to. The creatives in this, in this world are going to be tasked and challenged with coming up with these unique ideas that do stand out. And that's the challenge where you need other people in the room. It can't just be One singular thought. You need to include other folks from your company, other customers, get their stories and find out what works and communicate that message. Because other than that, it's going to get lost. I think what forbes is saying, 20, 19, 80% of web traffic is going to be video. It's a lot. That's a lot. So you know, you got to stand out from that.

Well, to your point, you know I go on YouTube. If you went on YouTube 10 years ago and you typed in drain fly that challenge I had, you'd be lucky. Find one video. Now, literally there's probably 30 or 40 videos. So the one that's going to win is the one that is the most exceptional and however you define exceptional, but one that stands out. I want to learn a little about what you guys do before we let you go. So Animus Studios, you specifically create videos for clients. Can you just give us a little heads up on what you do and how you work with clients?

Yeah, so the easiest way of putting it is we're really dedicated to helping businesses find their fascinating and unleash it into the wild. That's like the best way of saying it. Now we're also advocates for video. As you're hearing here, we want to be communicating, hey, these are, these are old school practices that need to be broken. And especially when talking about like the super high end premium stuff, there's a lot of times where you can cut five people from a line item and save a bunch of money. And on the bottom end, we're advocates for, hey, if you're a smaller business, we still want to give you some tips and tricks for how you can use video because we believe in it. But I think the most powerful thing and sort of thinking like you have talked that we're so profit first. It's this idea of the things that you value, cash in your case, profits. And as a business owner, I get it, you want to block out that first. You want to block out the time for that first. Gain time is another thing I've heard. I think that's, I can't remember who that was. But gain time is this idea of like blocking out time in your calendar for strategic planning because you value strategic planning. As a business owner. For us, we've started preaching this idea of creativity first. So find your fascinating is what we've been talking about because I think a lot of times that just gets lost in the shuffle. People point to we're going to do this thing, but they don't block out the time to say, let's be creative. And for us, creativity isn't just something that is fun to do. It's rewarding. It really does fuel you. And when you do that creative process, I think you end up getting better ideas, not just in video. The conversation around video is just. That's what we do. But you end up with ideas that help you beyond video. That's something that we're big believers in. And if you can work on one or two projects of the year that literally fire you up, you're going to be really excited. And we like to be the sort of change agent that brings that to the table.

Love it. Love it. You guys also have a podcast out there, the Video Jungle Podcast. I want everyone to listen before we let you go. Justin and John, where can our listeners go and learn about animus?

They can go right to our website, animistudios.com A N I M U S studios.com youm can look up find you'd fascinating. They'll find stuff on there. And the Video Jungle podcast, you can find that everywhere. Where you can find your. Your podcast too.

Beautiful. Awesome. So our podcast is in Stitcher. That's about. About it. All right, guys, thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate the insights.

Thank you, Justin and John.

Thank you, guys. Enjoy. Hey, enjoy.

Don't throw that, Dino. I love it.

We're looking for that. Looking forward to those crazy shirts.

Oh, yeah. Can you make sure those get made? Didn't I ask you last time, Callison? We didn't make those things.

Yeah. For ProfitCon, it was just do it.

Do it, do it. Put it on video.

Yeah, Mike, before you go, though, I would really. I'd really tell you to have your wife stop watching these things. My wife was addicted to the ID network, and I'm like, she's a. She's a murderonius. Whatever.

Yeah, it's like. It's like, terrifying. And she and my wife actually doesn't even, like, sleep well at night because of all the freaky stuff she's listening to. Oh, my God. So, all right, we'll let you guys go so we can wrap things up here.

Cool. Thank you, guys.

But don't really go because we upload the recording. You know the routine.

Yeah. X Ray Dax. We got it.

Kellis.

Yeah.

What were you laughing about? We are.

I just am. Reminiscent of in the beginning, before we started, when you're like, we do it our way. Really clunky and ungraceful. It's like a perfect example of it.

I know. That's so funny. Like, it's the most ungraceful show ever. But we have a fandom growing. You know, I went to the profit first movement. Or not Profit first movement. The podcast movement.

Yeah.

Talking about profit first. I was the podcast movement. And they're like. At the show, they're like, don't have any banter. Just get right into the content. Like, this is how good shows run. And I'm like, oh, my God, we are the antithesis of it. But we had the biggest following of every show there that I met, at least.

Well, I think it speaks to what they were saying in terms of authenticity. I feel like it gives them a glimpse of who you are, particularly. And I feel like I help you be you in this kind of situation.

By busting my chops all the time.

Yeah, exactly. I show your, you know, your other side, you're less polished.

My moronic sides.

And so I think that, you know.

You have more than I do. I just want that to be known.

That's not true.

No. For the further podcast you do. Oh, no one comes up. And Mike, I love your podcast. You are so great. I love your podcast. Kelsey's awesome.

It's always that they just feel bad gushing over you.

Oh, okay. That's right. All right, here we go. Here's what we got to do. Kelsey, I want to recap what we learned from these gentlemen. I want to hear your best Italian word. New one's. Got me a new one.

Okay.

And then we can do. Answer a question. If we have one. Do we have one?

We do. Yeah.

Okay. But first, let's thank our corporate partners. So it is nextiva and Receipt Bank. Whatever happened with that coffee company? I was like, oh, we have a big, big potential sponsor. I'm not gonna say a company is.

Yeah, we don't know yet.

Screw them. Now I hate them. Unless they're our sponsor.

You just jinxed us.

It's true. And then if they come on, put.

It in the universe.

If I come on and I mention a coffee company, they'll be like, oh, that's one that Mike hated.

Yeah, yeah. Please sponsor us.

Please sponsor us. We hate you. I hate you. I love them. Maybe so. Nextiva is a voice over IP phone system there. It's remarkable. Just the technology overall. You're speaking over the Internet anywhere. My parents made a nextiva phone call for the first time ever, which I. I recorded it. I got to get this thing off. It is unbelievably ridiculous. I don't know how every geriatric Person is the same on the phone. There's, like, squealing, and I don't know how the phone still squeals and screeches. Mike? Mike. I'm like, hey, dad, are you there? Who is this? I'm like, it's your son, Mike. He's like, what? Hello? And it's 10 minutes and he doesn't know who I am. It's ridiculous. But he did on the next TV phone because he can save money. It's ip, is Internet based. Yeah, they're that good. Even your geriatric parent can use them. And then Receipt Bank.

Yeah.

Do you know, I still haven't reactivated the new system, so Karen sent me a new login. Do you mind making a note of that? I gotta install it. She's like, oh, install this. So I've been doing receipt bank and I've been sending it to the wrong. You can. Essentially the right accounting system for Obsidian, but not. Not for the other one.

Oh.

So Karen got all jacked up with me. But it's great because any. Anytime you go shopping or whatever, you can scan it and it goes right in. But then, of course, you get criticism from your business partner. So today, Ron's like, Nordstrom's. What'd you get there? Some vests. Actually got a vest. First it was for speaking, so I think it's an expense.

Of course it was a vest. It's part of your brand.

That is my brand. It's my brand. All right, Kels, so you're up first.

I love the idea of, I guess, creating a story with your brand. Obviously, story, branding. But I think really letting it be a more effective way to communicate who you are with your audience and it'll capture their attention maybe faster than otherwise, but I just. I think in general, the idea of this being a super saturated market and becoming more saturated, I think you need to invest the time to be really creative and be really authentic. Just not mimic what other people are doing.

Yeah.

Do it in a way that speaks to you and that you would, I think, be moved by.

I like them. They said that you have a studio in your pocket. It's actually a banana, but no, no. I like that anyone can start filming. And the quality on your smartphones are ridiculously good. I like that they said viral is fool's gold, because it really is. And so people try to do these things. Maybe people translate viral to funny, and that doesn't actually mean viral, but people will try to artificially be funny, and it just ain't working.

You know what I'M saying, no, I.

Do not like my own humor. It just ain't working.

I do.

Yeah. Then I also loved. I loved. I loved use it to recruit employees.

Yeah, me too.

What?

Yeah. What?

We've never done that. We've used it to have employees respond to us. But we should have a recruitment page.

Yeah. And that's what I always say. Like, I feel like once we get them in to interview with us, it's like they're sold.

They're sold.

I feel like we could get so many more folks if they met us first. You know what I mean?

Oh, my gosh. I know. We have to do that.

Yeah, yeah. Because our sales ad could turn them away potentially. But I think for the right candidate, they might be lured in by us.

Yeah, our sales ad can turn them away. What do you mean?

Well, I'm just thinking, like, the price because our. Our.

You mean.

I don't want to say a trick, but that we only pay $10 an hour?

Oh, you share that strategy real quick with our guests because I think this is a powerful strategy that I don't know of any other business really doing the $10 an hour.

Yeah, yeah. So we have. We start our employees at $10 an hour, usually part time, minimal hours. And the idea is we want to find candidates who are here because they're, I guess, move by the mission of it beyond just the pay. Like, they're not looking for just a paycheck. They really. Because otherwise there's not much other than the culture and working with us and it being kind of a learning experience, they're not going to gain financially. Right. Like, it's that person who's in that perfect position that can afford to work for us without getting paid a lot because they're just so enthusiastic, you know, like, when I started, I feel like it was a leap of faith because I was in a position where I needed money, but I could make sacrifices to work here because I thought that it was a learning experience. So no matter what would be worth it, even if it never advanced to anything else.

Yeah, yeah. I love that term you just use, moved by the mission. And that's. That's why we do it. So it's kind of a spin on Zappos. Zappos. If you work there for X number of months, they offer a big check, $5,000 or something to leave. So if you decline the check, clearly you've made this visceral commitment, but ours is like, no, no, we don't want a visceral moment defining you. We want you to buy into the culture. And we know that if money is your deciding factor to come here, that you'll be blinded to the mission. But if even the money doesn't matter, so to speak, the mission's that important, then we know you're an amazing cultural fit. And then, you know, we can make. I'm afraid to say this, but we can make a very comfortable life, hopefully, for people here. I'm afraid to say it because I don't want people to say, oh, it's just a waiting game. It's not a waiting game. It's not like. Because we've had people come here and we said, sorry, it's just not working, or you're not a fit.

And that's the other benefit as a manager, I think it gives us a little bit of freedom. When somebody's not working out. I don't have the pressure of feeling like if I let them go, this is going to devastate them.

Yeah, they'll actually make more money if they leave.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They'll go unemployment. They'll get richer.

I know that they can get another job that will at least, you know, cover them.

That's funny. If you dare quit this organization, you'll make more money.

Good luck out there.

Good luck out there in Hellsville. That's funny. All right, cows, do we have anything. Oh, do we have a listener mail or anything like that? You've got mail pattern baldness. Actually, it's getting pretty bad on me. I got to figure something. Seriously, it's thinning, that my hair is thinning out.

I don't think it's bad at all.

Well, the. It's the crown.

Yeah. So from the back, you're saying, yeah.

Like, I'm not gonna bow my head down, but, like, back up here. I was. They. I was at Robin Robbins doing a keynote to their event. 600 people in the room. This is two years ago or a year ago. They had a drone flying over, and so they do an overfly shot. And I can see it on the confidence. They have a thing called confidence monitors. So you can see yourself. I look down, and all of a sudden I'm like, what is that?

Baldy?

Yeah. Who's the baldy? Who invited the old guy? It was freaking me.

Freaking you.

I would say it's disgusting.

It's definitely not.

It was gross.

That's a more appropriate word.

Yeah. So what's the listener mail?

So this comes from Glenn Carlson.

Hey, Glenn.

He says, I do have a question that I couldn't find an answer to. And my accountant is pushing back. Why a separate account for income and OPEX if money is being protected by the profit owners comp and tax accounts? Isn't it just creating more admin to move money from income to opex?

Glenn, Glenn. Step one, go to your accountant. Step two, slap him in your face.

Don't do that.

Okay? Don't do that. Here's. Here's why we do it. The income account is a serving tray of money for your business, Kelsey. You'll be celebrating Thanksgiving and eating your 20 pies with your uncle. Right? Are you gonna have that battle?

No, he's not coming.

Oh.

But I mean, I will eat lots of things.

You'll make up for it, so. But you'll be having Thanksgiving and here's why. I suspect I've never been to Thanksgiving. I never been invited actually to your house, so that's kind of awkward.

But you can come.

Oh, okay. I don't want your pity invite. I wanted to genuinely.

You don't? Well then why did you just whine like that?

Cuz I'm saying I've never been invited. Wanted to point it out. Yeah, never.

Not once Field trip or anything?

Mom.

So I assume, though. What the hell is that? I assume. Write that one down. It's a good one. I assume, I assume, I assume. I assume that when the meal is served at your house, it will be on a serving tray. The turkey. But your mom or whoever's serving doesn't say, hey, everyone, fight for it. Everyone eat off the serving tray. You give a portion to everyone's plate so everyone can eat. Right? That's called apportioning. Well, that's what we do with this money. The income account is a serving tray of cash. You never eat off the serving tray. We need to carve it up. The reason is it shows us very clearly what our inbound cash flow is, what our cumulative cash flow is before we divide it up. And we even have an internal report you did today of how much cash is piled up in our income account to give us clarity on what we should expect for deposits any given week. We do it weekly and then the money gets carved up, including to the OPEX account. So never make us assumption. I hate when you assume things. Oh my God. I hate when you assume things. Calisthenia Ferocious.

Really? Well, thanks everybody for listening. You can find us on itunes. Stitcher tunein radio. Please leave us a review and I will send you a copy of profit first Clockwork pumpkin plan. Just send us a screenshot or are.

Those ors between that. Were you saying the whole or or. Okay, I just heard, like, every book was being mailed to you. How do. How do people email these?

The screenshot to you to Kelsey. K, E, l, s, e.ykemicalitz.com.

Yeah, make sure you spell with a K. Someone emailed me and said, how do you spell Kelsey? I'm like, with a K. So it's K E, L, s E, Y. MikeMcAllitz.com sends that review, and we'll send you one book of your choice. And by the way, we're giving away another one of my books for free. Instantaneously. Like, you could literally start reading in the next 10 minutes. Next five minutes. If you go to mikemotorbike.com that's a shortcut to Mike McCallow. It's because no one can spell that. Let's be honest. It's long, it's Polish. But go to mikemotorbike.com, go into the site, and then you'll see a graphic at the top that says, get your free copy of Surge. Click on it, fill it out. I will send you a million immediately. The entire book. The same ones available on Amazon? Yes. You can spend your 27 bucks there, or you can get the book for free. No shipping cost, no nothing. Because we download as a PDF because I trust you, you're not going to share it on one of those Bitstorm, BitTorrent websites or something like that and ruin my career. All right, all right, we're out of here. Yeah, you should never see anything. All right, we're out of here. See you guys. And, oh, next week, is entrepreneurship elevated? Get ready for the new music that Kelsey brings to the table.