138. Shorten Your Sales Cycle with Short-Form Video – with Brad Powell
When you have a service business it’s just not as easy to sell your offer. People want to know a lot more more about you.
They know that if they’re going to hire you for your service, they’ll be working closely together with you, so they need to feel like they want to spend time with you.
You need to show them who you are as much as you need to tell them about your offer.
And you’ll need to create a nurturing experience that helps them get to know you so they’ll feel like they’re a good fit for your offer.
So, here’s the golden nugget: 🌟
You can have a shorter nurturing experience IF they feel like they already know you and trust you by the time you’re actually making your offer.
And the easiest way to do that is through short form video. 🎥
So, today I’m sharing a feed drop from Sarah Noel Block‘s podcast, The Tiny Marketing Show, where she interviewed me all about how to use short form video to build relationships with your followers.
We talked about how your nurturing experience with your followers can be a lot shorter because it’s such a personal experience when you’re watching a video people see your personality.
Because they see what you know, how you think & how you see the world – you’re building trust.
And your teaching them how to solve their problem through your short-form videos
You can really shorten your sales cycle because you’re quickly answering the questions in their minds like:
- “Do I want to hang out with this person??”
- “Do I believe that I’m going to get what they say I’m going to get?”
Because they’ve already proven that to themselves after watching your videos.
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Transcript
Brad Powell:
When you have a service business, it’s just not as easy to sell your offer. People want to know a lot more about you. They want to know who they’ll be working with, so you need to show them who you are as much as you need to tell them about your offer. You need to create a nurturing experience that helps them to get to know you so they’ll feel like they’re a good fit for your offer.
Brad Powell:
But here’s the golden nugget you can have a shorter nurturing experience if they feel like they already know you and trust you by the time you’re actually making your offer, and the easiest way to do that is through video. So today I’m sharing a feed drop from Sarah Noel Block’s podcast, the Tiny Marketing Show, where she interviewed me all about how to use short form video to build relationships with your followers. We talked about how your nurturing experience with your followers can be a lot shorter because it’s such a personal experience when you’re watching a video. So stay tuned. Here’s Sarah Block interviewing me.
Sarah Noel Block:
Hey, brad, how are you?
Brad Powell:
I’m doing great.
Sarah Noel Block:
Can you tell me a little bit about your business before we get started?
Brad Powell:
Sure Well, my business is called Awesome Video Makers, and what I’m really talking about is all of my clients, in fact, all of the people in the world who could become really awesome at making video, because I really believe that for anyone who’s in business especially a tiny business, or at least a business that has a tiny marketing department- one of the biggest opportunities is to get on video so that, with the least amount of effort, you’re getting the maximum amount of exposure.
Brad Powell:
And for individuals who are business owners, it’s particularly important because you, as the owner, as the leader of the movement that you’re creating and the change that you’re trying to make, you’re really the single most impactful marketing asset for your company and for your brand, and so it’s really behooves you to get out there and show up like actually be the human who’s the face of whatever thing that is you’re up to.
Sarah Noel Block:
Yes, it is so hard, though, for marketing leaders and business leaders to do that. So how do you get people over that hurdle when they’re really comfortable on video? I am always dragging people in front of video and they’ll know, please know.
Brad Powell:
Yeah, well, definitely for a lot of people, and this was true for me when I was starting to do my own content creation. I had a lot of experience of being the video producer and being the person behind the camera, and I had done literally hundreds and hundreds of interviews for people. Now they don’t think I really understood what I was putting people through when I said, oh, it’s going to be fine, we’re going to have fun, and they’re all going oh no, this is terrible, I’d rather go to the dentist. Yeah, first of all, I got out and I actually went through my own thing of like oh yeah, actually I’m actually fairly camera shy and I need to get over my own inner critic and my own limiting self-beliefs about how good I am or how deserving I am to be somebody who has something to say on camera to other people, and that’s a process that a lot of people need to go through. But, honestly, the technique that I’ve developed with my clients is really making it as easy and as simplified as possible for them to go through this process, and so my method is to treat them kind of like we’re doing right now.
Brad Powell:
Everyone has had some experience of being a guest or being interviewed by someone, and usually that’s a very simple thing to take on.
Brad Powell:
It’s like, oh well, I’m going to show up as quote the talent and someone’s going to ask me easy questions and I’m going to be able to just say the stuff that I know about and that’s going to come fairly natural to me and it’s not going to be necessarily the same kind of trepidation of standing up on stage in front of thousands of people or even just sitting down in front of a camera all by myself trying to figure out what I’m going to talk about.
Brad Powell:
So when you have someone who, like myself, who has done a lot of interviewing where I’ve been able to pull out the insights and the wisdom and the thought leadership of the person who I’m talking to, so when I’m hearing stuff that they’re saying, I’m going, oh, that’s really interesting, tell me more about that, or how do you feel about this. And in that time together I can get them to basically come out of themselves and be quite natural in what is basically a casual conversation between the two of us. So there’s no script, there’s nothing they have to memorize. All they have to do is sit with me in a remote interview setting and basically, I’ll meet with someone for an hour long call, just like we’re doing now, and after a single hour they’ll produce a month worth of video content that is promoting their brand and is promoting like what do they believe in and what do they stand for and what’s the cool thing that they’re up to, and show that they really understand the customers of the clients who they’re wanting to serve.
Sarah Noel Block:
That does make it so much more comfortable when someone else is there. I think that’s really the crux of it is that people feel uncomfortable talking to the camera, but when they’re working with you, they’re talking to a person and you’re there to prompt them and to help them move the conversation forward and take them out of that headspace where they’re thinking too much about what they’re saying, because you’re there to say that’s really good, let’s expand on that. That’s like every conversation I have with a client is like hold on, let’s pause right there, because I love what you’re talking about. Dig deeper there.
Brad Powell:
Yeah, for sure. I think really, it’s much more about having a conversation. I think this is once to be the approach that every single person who is marketing wants to do is. What you’re really wanting is create a conversation with your ideal prospect.
Brad Powell:
It really wants to be not a broadcast, not an announcement, not like here’s all the things that we do and why it’s so amazing. It’s really almost like call and response, like when you’re in church on Sunday. It’s like I’ll say something and hopefully people are going to respond to what I’m saying. When this material goes out on social media, you’re literally creating a conversation with people and so they’re going to have. You’re going to say stuff that may be provocative, or things that you really believe in strongly, and what do you stand for. People are going to respond to that. Some people who will not get what you’re up to, or they’re going to go. No, this is not for me. Well, that’s fine, they’re going to go away and you don’t really want to be working with them anyway.
Sarah Noel Block:
Yeah, that’s intentional and I think that makes so many people uncomfortable that you need to attract and repel, especially as a service business, because if you’re attracting everyone, then you’re going to be working with a lot of people that are going to be a bad fit and you aren’t going to enjoy working with them. They’re not going to enjoy working with you. You want to repel them early on. It’s okay that people don’t like you.
Brad Powell:
Yeah, I mean what you’re talking about service providers. When people are going to hire you for your service, they’re not actually hiring the service, because whatever service you’re doing, there’s a thousand other services that are in the same lane as you. They’re really hiring the person behind the service, or the people. If you have a team of people, the more that you can show this is who we are, these are our quirks, this is our personality, this is the way we look at things, this is the way we treat each other, this is how we treat our customers, etc. Etc. All that kind of stuff. People want to know who am I going to be working with. They will pick you because they resonate with you. There’s no better way to have that resonance happen at scale than with video right now.
Sarah Noel Block:
Yeah, I am 100% with you on that. It’s the only way that you can Get people over those obstacles and hurdles. When it comes to picking a specific service provider, let’s say they’ve shortlisted you, but video is what says okay, I’m going to go with that person because you’re teaching them, you’re earning trust with them, they can see your personality. It’s a really intimate relationship. When you’re working with someone, because you’re actually face-to-face with them and having real conversations with them, you need to be able to, early on, say, okay, I’d want to hang out with that person.
Brad Powell:
Yeah, absolutely. The other thing that I found really interesting in this last little bit of time is that the way businesses used to use video isn’t working as well now, and that what I’m referring to is the sort of long-reform explainer style of video. The number one thing that people often come to me with is we want an explainer video, we want one of those cool animated things.
Sarah Noel Block:
Yeah, those are out.
Brad Powell:
Here’s how to use our software, and that’s good. That definitely has its place, but that’s not what we’re talking about here. And the other thing that’s really shifted is all of the platforms, and this is started with TikTok, who made short form like a video that’s short, like a minute or 30 seconds or even 15 seconds. That is the popular, the most popular way for people to be consuming content, and TikTok completely proved the model. It’s become the most used video consumption platform on the planet, bar none.
Sarah Noel Block:
I do love TikTok.
Brad Powell:
Yeah, and it’s shown that not only does it work but it’s really addictive and people go on TikTok and they lose an hour or two hours, just sort of.
Sarah Noel Block:
That is so true. That is exactly what happens.
Brad Powell:
Right, exactly, well. So all of the other platforms looked over there and said, oh my gosh, we need to catch up with this. And so Instagram and Facebook has reels, and YouTube has its shorts, and even on a platform like LinkedIn, which is where I put most of my effort in my content, the shorter form videos are the ones that are performing the best, and so when you are expressing your ideas and when you’re sharing whatever it is that you want to share content-wise, you definitely want to keep it down to a minute or less and get used to, and practice to, talking in one minute sound bites.
Sarah Noel Block:
Yeah, yeah, that is really hard to get used to, especially if it’s something like this, like a podcast.
Brad Powell:
It’s a definite challenge. I mean I come from a long background of doing live streaming. I mean I was doing live streaming for musicians back in the early 2000s, before there were any platforms that enabled live streaming. You basically had to build this Clujie thing on somebody’s website on a landing page and then you had to invite people to come to that location to show up at this virtual live event, and it was way before live streaming was cool at all.
Sarah Noel Block:
Well, that is cool. That’s like the beginning, the origin story of it.
Brad Powell:
Right, and that was super long form kind of presentation. It was very engaging. A lot of people would be there live and there’d be a lot of back and forth and commenting and that kind of thing. And live streaming is still a really good way to engage with your audience, but when you’re wanting to increase your brand awareness, the short form nothing is better right now. And so I had to go through like how do you do this? Like how do you take that long rambling stuff that you’ve been doing in this long like half hour or even longer presentation and bring it down to, you know, 45 seconds?
Sarah Noel Block:
Yeah, so how do you do that?
Brad Powell:
Well, it takes practice and it also takes editing. And this is the thing where, again, like tiny marketers, you don’t want to be your own editor. And this is the thing of people are looking at video. They’re thinking, oh, it’s too daunting, like I have to get a camera. I got to figure this all out.
Brad Powell:
There’s a lot of technical stuff to learn about, and when I’m done with the making of my video, after I stumbled through what I was going to say or I read my script and I had, you know, lots of bloopers and stuff, I need to somehow figure out how to edit it all down so that it makes sense to people and I leave out all my mistakes. And so you don’t want to do any of that Like you’re the owner of your business, you’re the marketer for your brand. You don’t want to be this guy who, or gal who makes videos and you become an expert videographer or an expert video editor. You don’t need to do that. You can hire someone. Hire me, but you can hire.
Brad Powell:
There’s lots of lots of people who are really good at video editing, and I’m especially now with the short form. There’s tons of people who are very skilled at taking content and cutting out all the parts that you don’t need and making some kind of thing that you went on for maybe three minutes and turning into a 50 second video. And this again is partly what I do for my clients is that we’re having this conversation and I’m listening for the nuggets and when I hear something and I go, yeah, that’s it, I know we’ve got it and we can move on to the next topic and or the next prompt that I’m giving them and from that time, like I’m literally taking an hour long piece of footage and I’m taking little bits and pieces out of it Sometimes it’s not even linear. Like I’ll take a part that was said over here and I’ll bring it to the beginning, because a lot of us, you know, we bury the lead, like the best thing we want to say. We leave it till the end.
Sarah Noel Block:
Yeah, but your ears are trained to find that, that hook that’s going to pull people in, and those sound bites that are going to work in 50 second videos. What’s funny about TikTok, though, is that they’re expanding, like now you can go up to 10 minutes.
Brad Powell:
It’s true.
Sarah Noel Block:
And they’re like. The algorithm of TikTok is preferring the longer videos now.
Brad Powell:
Yeah.
Sarah Noel Block:
It seems so funny to me, considering there were the starters of the short form.
Brad Powell:
Yeah, it is interesting the evolution and it will be interesting to see where this goes in terms of you know, will things swing around and people start? You know you meet someone and I think this is really true. Like there’s a lot of YouTubers who are spending a lot of time growing their audience on platforms like TikTok and Instagram and then they are nurturing that group of people to come and be subscribers on YouTube to get longer form content. So if you really want to go deeper, if you really want to get like the full thing that you know and all the information that I have to share, come on over here to my channel on YouTube and you can get you know 10 minute longer, even longer videos where I’m really going to take you by the hand and lead you to the promised land.
Sarah Noel Block:
Yeah, that is a good. So I told you, I pre recorded my intro based off of our topic, but during that I was talking about discovery mechanisms and how you need to have some sort of nurture experience to get people to purchase. But in the example that you’re giving, like YouTubers, their purchase would be subscribing to their channel because they’re getting add dollars for it.
Sarah Noel Block:
So, TikTok might be the discovery mechanism because it’s short form, there’s not a lot of commitment, and then they nurture them through that and pull them over to YouTube where they’re getting that add dollars for for watchers.
Brad Powell:
Yeah, exactly, and I think this that model works really well for creators, whose business model is basically developing revenue based on their content creation, their content creator entrepreneurs, and their whole business is basically around being a media company that produces content For most of us, regular business types.
Brad Powell:
That’s not our model like our revenue is coming from what we actually do and what we deliver for our customers and clients. So my feeling is that TikTok looks really attractive and by all means, test it. Try it out, because there’s huge discoverability on a platform like TikTok, because it really does show your material to lots and lots of strangers and, by some accident or goodness fortune or you know, however you describe it, your content can explode and be seen by tons of people. However, those tons of people may not at all be the right people for you.
Sarah Noel Block:
Yeah.
Brad Powell:
And I really think the focus wants to be how can you, you know, really focus and speak to exactly the right type of person who will? Then, you know, your content will resonate with them and they’ll start coming in and and seeing your platform and then start consuming and being nurtured by you, in whatever format you have, in terms of the funnel that you create behind this initial content. And to me, I think the platform of choice, rather than TikTok, is linked in, and the reason that I say that is because of the contrast between LinkedIn and all of the other platforms that host video. You know, now Instagram and Facebook are becoming video centric because of TikTok taking the lead, tiktok and YouTube it’s only video, and so when you’re posting video on those platforms, you’re in the crowd of cacophony of all this stuff. A lot of it is very mediocre and you’re kind of lost in this huge, huge amount of stuff that people have the choice of either seeing or ignoring.
Brad Powell:
And, however, on LinkedIn, if you’re making video and whatever it is that you provide as a service like, let’s say, you do accounting stuff or maybe you help realtors you know, grow their business or whatever lane that you’re in, whatever that is for you and you start making good, solid, short form video content about the problems that your customers are facing and the headaches that they have, and showing that you really understand them and also show them your unique way of seeing the world, which is distinctive and different and actually works better for people in terms of how you, how you accomplish the tasks that they would like to accomplish. Well, you could be the only one, or one of the very, very few people, who is talking like that in video format on LinkedIn, because it’s less than 1% of the users on LinkedIn who are making video on a regular basis, and so this is just a huge opportunity right now for people who are willing to do this kind of content creation.
Sarah Noel Block:
Yeah, I see what you’re saying. It breaks up the feed because we’re used to seeing text based posts and so when a video pops up, it really pops up, because we we are not seeing that consistently as we scroll. That’s probably the same reason that those slide decks why my carousels on LinkedIn are doing so well.
Brad Powell:
That’s right.
Sarah Noel Block:
Is because it breaks up the feed and you’re not seeing them as much.
Brad Powell:
Yep, yeah, and I don’t necessarily recommend that. Video is the only thing that you do on on LinkedIn that you know, varying the kind of content with text based posts, carousels posts with images. You know those are all really good ways to be posting content on the platform, and when you start adding video into the mix, it completely personalizes your branding and so people really want to see, especially with the advent of artificial intelligence. I mean, oh my gosh, I mean we’re only seeing the very beginning of content that is AI generated. It’s already at least partly a generated, because people are coming up with their hooks and their you know, basic texts that they edit, you know from using these AI tools, and it is driving us into a less human thing.
Sarah Noel Block:
I literally just had this conversation. Some rush reached out to me to do like 2024 trends, and pretty much what you’re saying right now is exactly what I said. People are going to want more live video is what I said, because they’re sick of AI and they want more human connection, and that’s the only way you can really do that without a robot interfering.
Brad Powell:
Right, exactly. And again, like these two things work together. If you’re doing short form video and people are meeting you and they’re seeing where you’re at, and then you announce a live event that you’re hosting, you know they’re going to like, yeah, great, awesome, now I get to talk to you, like I get to ask you questions, I get to come, yeah, and so I live, you know, a million miles away. I can interact with you directly. And, gosh, you know, post pandemic people are starving for this kind of interaction because you clearly were just not fully recovered yet from all the isolation.
Sarah Noel Block:
I really think that’s. That’s true. I was. I was talking about that on LinkedIn the other day that just people are lonely, where we spent a year completely isolated and we haven’t really recovered and figured out how to rebuild those relationships, and During that time, so many people are like I’m not seeing humans. Anyway, I’m going to go move and I’m going to live in another country, so, like all of those relationships that you had previously are not there. So, but this is a way to reconnect and video We’ll be able to do that, and then live video takes it one step further, where you’re having those actual conversations in real time.
Brad Powell:
Yeah, absolutely. I really love using live. I think in my view, it’s it’s probably one of the best ways to build community and to absolutely learn, like from your audience, so that all the stuff you’re doing in terms of content creation is being audience led. Because when you’re literally in the room and this is a virtual room but when you’re in the room with your people and if you’re doing a live event, like if you create, let’s say, a monthly experience and go live once a month and it’s always on a particular topic, you could even bring other guests in to help lead and you’re the moderator of the conversation.
Brad Powell:
Or do a panel thing, do like a mini, you know one hour summit with three people, something anything like that is great, because you’re hosting an opportunity for anyone in your circle to come and collaborate in a sense of they want to. You’re talking about something that wants to be talked about. You’re leading a conversation that people may already be talking about and they want to go deeper. And then if you bring in experts and people who really know about a particular thing, the average person is going. This is great, like I get access to this particular individual and I can ask them questions and they’re going to respond to me. Yeah, and this is like. You know, does Microsoft do this? You know, does Facebook do it? Like big, faceless corporate brands aren’t able to be as open and transparent and literally just personable as tiny marketers who pick up the torch and do this kind of thing.
Sarah Noel Block:
Yeah, yeah, it does build community around it, and your suggestion works twofold where you’re building relationships with influencers within your niche If you’re inviting people to join your live streams, so there’s that. That’s a great thing, and you could also create like a referral network with that. If you’re all in the same, like you cater to the same audience but you’re doing different things, well that’s a great place to start for referrals, yeah.
Brad Powell:
And another thing that people can think about is the idea like this format here you can be doing a video podcast, which, again, is relatively simple thing to set up, and your podcast this is what I do, my own podcast is set up as a live stream series and it’s almost always an interview setting where I’m inviting someone in. We pick a topic and we’re talking about how to, you know, grow your business in a very distinctive way. The show is called the standout business show, so the tagline is making a bigger difference by doing business differently, and so the idea is that I’m hosting an event every week and I’m bringing on a guest, or sometimes I bring on two guests and I’m both me and the guest invite people to come to the event that we are collaboratively hosting, and so people can come and they can ask questions and we can respond to them, and we’re having this conversation around a topic that we’ve picked together. In fact, sometimes I’ll be saying, hey, look, I’m talking to this person and I’ll ask my audience what should I focus on? Like, what topic should we do? This person does all this really cool stuff. Well, would you like to learn from them? And that can be part of what and ends up being the topic for the episode.
Brad Powell:
And the other cool thing with this is that when you’re doing this kind of thing, you can meet anyone you want. Like you know, no cold DM needed on anything. You can just reach out to someone, say, hey, you know, I’m doing this weekly series. It’s on this subject. You’re a great person to talk about this particular thing. I’d love to have you come and explore this together and we can do this live, so that we can bring other people in and hardly anyone says no to that. They’re going to say yes, of course. And now you have this long, in-depth conversation with them, which is really about building rapport and a friendship with this new person who you know you’ve never met until you actually go on live with them.
Sarah Noel Block:
That is exactly how I built my business. Accidentally, I started a live stream show and I just asked all of the people I have marketing crushes on if they’d be on my show. And they were. I just I built such a great network from them and they ended up referring clients to me and that was completely unexpected. It wasn’t part of my plan, but I’m glad it happened and, yeah, now that’s moved into a podcast first, because, well, the live streams, you know the tech was always wonky, but all of a sudden my lips are not synced with my audio.
Brad Powell:
Well, it’s getting better, I agree, like especially like maybe three, four years ago, doing a live stream was always a bit of a risk, because that’s when I was doing it.
Brad Powell:
All kinds of all kinds of stuff happens Nowadays. It’s it’s pretty solid. I’m actually quite surprised at what you can do and like right now we’re recording on StreamYard. Streamyard actually allows you remotely to record both sides of the conversation. So when I do my show I’m getting a separate recording from each guest that is uploaded, and so I’m getting a high definition video file of just the guests all by themselves and then I get the same thing for myself and I can take that and do any number of things with it, which, going back to like short form, most of my content right now is coming from my show. Like I just take the you know the half hour conversation and I know like there’s golden nuggets that the guest said and there’s things that I had to say, and that just makes for a terrific content and I can hand that off to one of the editors that I use and it’s turned into pretty good content, like better than pretty good.
Brad Powell:
And it’s also a way to really do something like. My goal with the show is. One of them is I want the guest to come on and have a really great experience, and part of that experience is after the show is over. I’m going to continue to showcase the things that they said in this way, so that I’m literally giving them content and posting and tagging them and then they can take that stuff and use it however they want.
Sarah Noel Block:
Yeah, that’s a huge benefit, Amplifying their reach. What tools would you recommend for small marketing departments that have to like if they have to do this themselves?
Brad Powell:
Yeah, well, there’s a. I mean, first of all, you don’t necessarily need to go out and change anything that you don’t already have. So the simplest way almost everyone has some form of webcam. They learned how to do this during the pandemic, when they’re doing all the zoom calls, and they couldn’t actually meet with people in person. So people have some kind of set up pretty much already in terms of how to be on camera, and that may already be good enough in terms of do you have a webcam that you know shows you in a fairly clear way?
Sarah Noel Block:
Yeah.
Brad Powell:
And the other thing to think about is are you well lit? And the biggest mistake that a lot of people make when they’re on a webcam is they’ll sit with the window behind them and so that they’re in civil way, they’re all backlit.
Brad Powell:
Yeah, right. And so their face is all dark and all you can see is this bright window behind them. Don’t do that. Turn yourself around so that you’re facing the window and you’ll have all the light you need, and that’s probably the simplest thing to do, that you don’t need to go buy anything, just like I’m sitting in front of a window right now, and it’s perfect, it’s great. And then the third thing that I’ll say is a good microphone is worth everything, because Gosh, it took me so long to realize that.
Brad Powell:
Getting a separate microphone like the microphone I use. I think it costs around $100. And it plugs literally right into my computer. You know, no extra anything needed, and that’s all you have to do is you plug it in and it works. And so it’s on a little stand here on my table.
Sarah Noel Block:
I’m going to pop mine up so you can see, right, right. Yeah so there you go, you’re having a sure this one.
Brad Powell:
I like this one because it’s it just looks kind of cool and this is one made by a company called Samson and anyway, it’s really simple, but it makes a huge difference in how you sound. You really want to strive for good audio. Good audio, like your video, could be sort of fuzzy and crummy, but if your audio is bad, no one is going to keep hanging in there with you.
Sarah Noel Block:
Yeah, there are some really live streams where I listen to the audio and like this was awful.
Brad Powell:
Right, yeah, and the other thing I mean people often find themselves in a room that has a lot of echo and so if you’re using, you know, your microphone that’s embedded in your computer, if you’re using the microphone on your, on your earbuds, that will pick up all the new room noise and you’ll have a lot of echo and that’s not a good sound, whereas a microphone like this the only noise this microphone gets is the noise coming directly from my mouth. It blocks out everything else in the room. I’m in a building where I can hear the central heating system rumbling in the basement. I’m in a town where the fire truck could go roaring by with the sirens going, and none of that will be heard by this microphone.
Sarah Noel Block:
Yeah, I’ve only ever heard you. My dog is digging into his pillow in the corner of my room.
Brad Powell:
Right and that won’t be heard either. He could probably bark at me. That’d be fine.
Sarah Noel Block:
He just can’t get comfortable. It’s not his fault.
Brad Powell:
Right, and these are really all the things that you need to be thinking about. You don’t necessarily have to run out and go do anything really radical. It helps. I am a videographer, I use a really good camera for my setup and I’ve built my studio in a very intentional way so that I’m looking and sounding as professional as I can. But that’s my brand. You just have to decide what your brand wanting to be in terms of how do you want to show up? This is something that when I work with a client initially, we spend time literally overhauling their setup, so that I call it grooming your Zoom so that you can. We all want to look, to a certain degree, professional. At the same time, you also want to look in a way that is your way. It’s showing something about you. I always say, well, dress in the way that you would for any kind of business meeting and make sure that we’re seeing something that is meaningful to you. So, like behind me, I’ve got this French horn.
Sarah Noel Block:
Oh yeah, if I see it.
Brad Powell:
And it’s a good conversation starter and people are going why do you have a French horn back there? And I have lots of stories that I can share about the horn and how I got it and what it means to me and my music-making background.
Sarah Noel Block:
Yeah, I guessed about your music-making background from your origin story of working with musicians on live streams.
Brad Powell:
Yeah, well, that was a very interesting thing. In those days I had a music business that I was up to and I was chasing international musicians, and these were people from literally all over the country, all over the world, you know, europe, brazil, parts of Africa, latin America and what I was doing with them was I was licensing their music and their video and then relicensing it to media companies here in North America that wanted to use it in their programming. And in the middle of all of that, this large company, national Geographic, decided I haven’t heard of them.
Sarah Noel Block:
Can you explain?
Brad Powell:
They thought maybe we should do something with music, like we’ve never really done anything with world music, maybe that would be a way to attract young people.
Brad Powell:
And so the person who was in charge of this digital marketing initiative of theirs reached out to all the different media companies that I was already partnered with who were doing some kind of world music programming in their programs, whether it was radio or television, and every single one of them said oh yeah, we’ll work out with this guy named Brad. He has this amazing catalog, and the reason was that I had discovered that, even though many of these artists were super famous and well known from where they lived, they were unknown here in North America and none of them had any video. And so I start as well. I have an outlet, like there are companies that want to show this video and they can’t find enough of it. So I started producing live music video, and after about five, six years of doing that, national Geographic called me out of the blue and said well, we have this new little project We’d like to talk to you about. You know working with them.
Sarah Noel Block:
That’s amazing.
Brad Powell:
Really, and so like if I had gone to them knocking on the door and saying, hey, you guys, I think I got this thing for you, would you like to do it? I would have gotten zero response. But by some happy accident, like complete good fortune, they called me and then, you know, like literally overnight, you know, they said we want to bring you down, we want to buy you out, we want all of this, we want to own it, we want all of your catalog and we want you to be in charge of this new music initiative that you’re doing. So, within no time, I became the music guy from National Geographic, of which there had never been anything like it before.
Sarah Noel Block:
That is so cool.
Brad Powell:
And it just shoved me into okay, now I have to be really serious about, you know, making a deal. This is no, I’m not just fooling around anymore. This is the big time.
Sarah Noel Block:
Yeah, National Geographic is a is a cares now, so I need to care.
Brad Powell:
Yeah. So I mean, it was a huge adventure. It took me to all kinds of cool situations. I could go to literally almost anywhere where music was happening and people would invite me into recording studios they would bring and I have a backstage pass to shows, you know, and I would meet artists. I’d be able to, you know, interview them, and I learned, like literally the hard way. You know how do you do good interviews with people who may not even speak English very well, and get and get the stuff that you’re looking for, you know, and make sure that that’s going to work. And then connect that. Connect this person that no one has ever heard of to an audience in North America who would probably fall in love with them if they only knew their music. You know how to put those two things together.
Sarah Noel Block:
That sounds amazing.
Brad Powell:
So yeah, that was the, the genesis of the kinds of stuff I do now.
Sarah Noel Block:
Good lord, I would love that. I am obsessive about music. I am one of those annoying people that I discover bands early and then, when everyone else catches on, I’m irritated, I’m like they want to meet.
Brad Powell:
Right, I know that feeling. That’s right. I knew these guys before they knew it. You know anybody. How do you?
Sarah Noel Block:
like them, I like them and I like them way longer.
Brad Powell:
Right right.
Sarah Noel Block:
Oh my gosh, my husband makes fun of me a lot about that. Like I discover, it sounds like 10 years before everyone else.
Brad Powell:
Yeah, well, I think there’s actually a lot of lessons for the average entrepreneur to learn from the music industry about how can an entrepreneur who happens to be a musician develop a fan base that’s loyal, that will literally come and buy everything that you put out and will travel around with you and, you know, see you when you’re in Pittsburgh and then also show up in Cincinnati, kind of thing. You know, which fans do you know? You look at the people who are like Taylor Swift. They’re completely loyal.
Sarah Noel Block:
She’s a brilliant business person. Yeah, I am so impressed with how she’s built her brand. Yeah yeah, I am also one of those people that I plan my vacations based off of concerts that I want to go to. Right. It was like Noah Khan’s going to be in Colorado this summer. I think we should be in Colorado this summer. I just want to see a show at the Red Racks.
Brad Powell:
Right, right, exactly, yeah, right, and this is a mindset that people have. So if your business can create an experience that’s anything akin to what an artist can do in a live music concert Like, obviously you’re not going to get people up on their feet and dancing, all that kind of stuff, that’s not going to happen. But there’s all kinds of other stuff that goes with concert events that’s part and parcel to the experience, and businesses can take a lot of lessons from that and apply them to the own kind of marketing campaigns that they’re doing, so that in this supply we’re talking about live video. Like, if you’re doing a live event that’s virtual, there’s all kinds of things that you can bring into that experience that mimic the experience of the live concert. And the biggest one that I’m going to point out is just that people who go to a live concert because they love the artist want to be there.
Brad Powell:
Not as much as about the artist, it’s about being with the like-minded people who are the tribe that follows that artist. Because, you know, bands that are big have something going where it means something to be a fan of theirs. It’s a choice, like you now have an identity, that I am a Taylor Swift or you know whatever person you want to mention. I’m this person’s fan, I’m part of this crowd and that is part of your identity. And so when your business can create meaning behind being someone who is part of your brand and part of the thing that you’re doing and part of the mission that you’re on, and you’ve got a bunch of people like look at, say, harley Davidson, this sort of extreme example, people who ride Harleys. They are a complete breed of themselves and they know it and they hang out with each other and they tattoo Harley Davidson on their chest.
Sarah Noel Block:
When is someone going to tattoo tiny marketing on their chest?
Brad Powell:
I’m waiting Right exactly yeah same thing. Put awesome video makers on your elbows.
Sarah Noel Block:
Yeah, yeah. Well, HubSpot is a great example of that too. Like they have built a community with I think they’re called hugs, around the country with local user groups, and it’s such a brilliant way to make your brand the center of a community and they’ve just killed it. I’d love to emulate that.
Brad Powell:
Yeah, and I think the whole idea of doing meetups again similar political campaigns, completely grassroots have completely come out of nowhere, simply because the people who were loyal to a particular candidate organized themselves and started hosting meetups around the message and the mission and the campaign that was being run, and often the candidate and the people around the campaign the leaders didn’t even need to do much of anything. And so if you can instill that kind of activity amongst your users now you’re looking at user generated content creation, that they’re doing stuff, and there’s reciprocal stuff that can come back to you in terms of what’s going on with them, whether it’s they’re just simply taking selfies at an event that they’re doing, or they make impromptu videos there, or they even just simply the event itself being turned into a live stream. All of that kind of thing is possible If you can create something around like let’s do this let’s do this together.
Sarah Noel Block:
I was just going to say you can construct this to happen, Like, let’s say, you’re doing a virtual workshop. You can say okay, let’s take a selfie with, like, the background as the workshop and post it on Instagram. Let’s tag each other you can make it happen and start to build that out.
Brad Powell:
Yeah, and this is where, again, from the tiny marketing perspective, you can really amplify what you’re doing, because users are the ones who are sort of taking the reins and they’re generating content for you.
Sarah Noel Block:
Can you tell the audience how they can work with you and find you online?
Brad Powell:
Yeah, sure, well, probably the best way to connect with me is to check out my podcast, the Standout Business Show, and the best way to do that is to go to standoutbusinessshow and there you can actually subscribe to the show, which means that not only will you get notified when the new episodes come out, but you’ll get all the extra stuff that I put into the people who subscribe and bonus, I will give you my endless video ideas. Worksheet.
Brad Powell:
So if you’re inspired to jump in and say, okay, I’m going to try my hand at making video. I will give you a set of prompts some of my favorite prompts that I would give you if I was interviewing you, and you can take this and you can literally forever create brilliant content based on stuff you already know about.
Sarah Noel Block:
I love that.
Brad Powell:
I’m mostly on LinkedIn and you can find me. Just search for Brad Powell. I’ve got it. You know, linkedin slash dot com, slash in slash. Brad Powell, it’s me, it’s sweet.
Sarah Noel Block:
Thank you so much for joining me and Brad in this enlightening conversation about how video can really attract and repel your ideal audience. It’s the fastest way to earn trust, get discovered and to help people understand hey, do I like this person? Do I want to work with them? So consider short form video and live streams. This combination is a beautiful combination to be able to get in front of your audience and build trust with them so they feel comfortable buying from you. So your homework today is to do batching.
Sarah Noel Block:
I want you to sit down for one hour that’s it, one hour and use Brad’s prompts to record your video and then just break it up. You can use a tool like Opus, ai or Descript to turn that into a whole month of content. Or you could work with Brad directly and he’ll interview you and he’ll make sure your content is beautiful. So you have two options. You can work directly with him and have an expert who has done this for decades do it for you, or you can DIY it using tools like Opus, descript and his free guide on prompts. So that’s your homework Get to it.
Brad Powell:
If you’re listening here at the end, I just want to remind you that if you’d like to go and binge the entire archive of the standout business show, just go to standoutbusiness.show and it’s all there, all the audio, all the video, all the extra resources you can binge to your heart’s content. We go live every Thursday at 11am Eastern time. And until the next time, so long!
