Barbara Bennell Testimonial

So I'm here today with Barbara Bennell, and Barbara and her family, who are extremely charming, I might add, are the creators of One Stop Happy. One Stop Happy is a lifestyle blog. I'll actually let Barbara describe better what One Stop Happy is, but it's a really great endeavor. Barbara, thank you so much for being with me today. Why don't you explain a little bit about what One Stop Happy is?

Hello, Cheryl, and thank you for having me today. Yes, One Stop Happy, it's a lifestyle blog we created not very long ago, The point is to celebrate our life in Canada and hopefully to encourage families like ours to live a little bit healthier life. And what is even more important to us, to encourage them to spend quality time together.

So tell me about, and I know it's a little bit weird, right? Because I'm like, tell me about working with me. That is what I am doing, is like, tell me about working with me. But I want you to be completely honest about it. What was your biggest takeaway from our time working together?

The biggest one was to not be afraid to be yourself in front of the camera. Actually, this is the most important thing we can do in order to spread our message and to connect with our audience, to be authentic, to not try to pretend to be someone else. Before I start the program, I thought that it would be to my benefit, actually, maybe to go to broadcasting school, anything like this, to give me the confidence in front of the camera. But actually, during the program, I learned that to my benefit, it could be not to have any professional background and to be simply myself.

Yeah, absolutely. And I remember when we first had that initial conversation and you had mentioned to me a little bit of apprehension around your accent, which I love your accent. And you know what? I love how you were able to see that almost as a benefit. And that's something that really helps to distinguish you and differentiate you from other people. At least that's how I see it. Is that how you see it?

Thank you. I do see it, um, as my benefit, as a benefit right now, definitely something that creates me who I am. And that's once again, it's thanks to the program, it's thanks to you because you kept saying this from the very, very beginning, don't be afraid, just be who you are. And so many people here in Canada comes from so many different places, we all have accents, we all have something, and we have to embrace it rather than try to hide it.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I'm so proud of you for that. I'm proud of your entire family because your videos are absolutely charming. And I want to talk about one video in particular. So during the program, remember once I— and of course I give— I ask you to create videos and then send them to me and then I give you feedback. And one time you sent a video link and I watched it. It was a longer video. I want to say it was— I think it was around 10 minutes. It might have been 12 minutes. I can't remember. But I watched it. It was they were really, I mean, your videography is fantastic and the elements were there, but I said to you, "Uh, it's a little long. I'm not sure that it's going to capture people for, you know, that length of time." And then I gave you a really simple framework to apply to your next outing. So the next time you go out, use this framework that actually stems from television, right? It's like a news report style kind of outline to do your video. You did it with flying colors. Tell me about that experience.

So this is, that's what I call it my aha moment. Because thanks to one of those classes that we had together, I finally was able to distinguish the difference between home style video, video that we making for our family members and they don't mind seeing with us or while having their coffee for hours and hours and enjoying seeing us.

Yeah.

From the, let's say, kind of advertisement video, which is not really advertising, but something that in a very, very short time can grab people's attention and give as much value as possible. So as I said, that was my aha moment when I finally realized that this is the difference. This is the path we have to go through. And with your help, creating this very simple simple but brilliant, in my opinion, formula, it not only allowed us to create a video, I believe the next one was under 2 minutes, minute and a half.

It was 1:42. I actually went back and looked at it. A minute and 42.

Yes. So it was under 2 minutes. We showed so much value that probably all our videos together didn't have that much value until this point. It saved us time., and it saved us lots of frustration too. So that was actually really the breaking point for us.

Well, yeah, and you know what's interesting when I think back on that conversation, it was like, it's like, here's a home, here's the difference between a home movie, right? And a video that converts. A video that, like a marketing video, or a video that converts, that has value, and that really captures people's attention. And I wanna share some of the results of that. As of, I just checked now, that video has had comments on it and tons of likes, and it's reached 2.6 thousand people compared to the one that was the home video, the longer length one, which I don't remember the stats on it, but it wasn't reach of 2.6 thousand people. It was shared and it started to get shared by some really big players out there, right?

Yes, yes, it was shared because we made the video while we were visiting Royal Botanical Gardens here in Burlington, So I think you mentioned to us to just try tag people, people who are part of the video, the places that we go to, and that's what we did. And the Royal Botanic Gardens actually really liked it, and they decided to share it on their website. And the rest is history. This is the reason why the video got 2.6 thousand likes— I'm sorry, views, and also why we got significant amount of likes on our page.

Yeah, and Burlington Tourism shared it as well. And I think it just goes to show that when you can apply these principles and make videos that convert and that capture attention, that are engaging, that add value, and like you said, you know, you start to get the attention of just the right people who start to share it and propagate that video, then all of a sudden you can really see a huge, exponentially larger reach and also engagement on that video. So you guys did really, really well with that. You got several more likes on your page. Very quickly right after that as well. And that actually, those extra likes on your page were able, then you were able to create a username for your page. So there were so many benefits that kind of happened as a result of that one framework, that very simple framework.

Absolutely. Absolutely. I will never forget it. And I know for many people, 5, 6, 10 extra likes on a Facebook page is nothing, but for us it was huge because we went from whatever, 16 likes for the past year to 26 within hours. So this is very, very big only because the video was very captivating. It was very lively and just because it had amazing value.

Yeah. And I think the thing is too, we have to— I think sometimes we feel like, oh, I don't have enough likes and everyone starts at zero and everyone has to build slowly and everyone— we have to appreciate every single like that we get on our page. The thing that's really exciting, for me at least, is that I was able to impart on you a very simple framework that you can now take and do that every single time. Right? So you can continue to repeat that same process and hopefully get the attention of people who, you know, who are interested in it and maybe have it shared. Your likes can then start to exponentially increase very quickly as a result of one simple framework. So I want to congratulate you and your family on it because your videography is fantastic. It's really great. You guys are great storytellers. It's so engaging. You guys are charming as anything, and it has been a real pleasure to have you in the Program because you are someone who does the work, and I really appreciate that about you, and that is why you are getting those results. So, thank you so much.

Thank you so much. Thank you for being a wonderful Coach, and what was very important for us, especially for me, was the ability to work directly with you and how really approachable and how accessible you were. I remember our calls, our weekly calls, they were very often going off the path just because we had so many questions and you never hesitated to answer those questions, to do research for us and to come up even with the formula. The formula was probably simply most important thing that allowed us to create those amazing videos and that was something that wouldn't even part of the program. It just came because of our conversation, because of us getting to know each other and understand— you understanding our needs. So that was extra, and, and I am very thankful for that.

Oh, well, thank you so much. I'm humbled, and I, you know, I take great pride in that. I really do. I take great pride in better understanding you and all my clients' needs so that I can really be of service. That's ultimately what it is, right? It's about being— just as I'm teaching you, be— provide value value and be of service to people. I feel the same way about what I do in my own profession. So thank you so much for that, Barbara. I appreciate everything that you've done so far. I'm going to continue to watch you and watch One Stop Happy, and I hope that all of you watching will go and visit their lifestyle blog because they are an absolute charming family. Thank you so much, Barbara. I appreciate your time today.

Thank you so much, Cheryl, and all the best to you.