88 – Great Video Means Great Sales: Tom talks $50K Video for pennies

Episode 088 How to Make a $50,000.00 video about you and your company for only Pennies on the dollar. We’ve estimated mine has brought in about $6 million.
087 Meghan Grace Told us all about how to understand and work with Generation Z. wow what a conversation we had.
Podcast App. Now available that will do all kinds of good stuff and make it easy to listen. We’ve got directions on how to use it. It will do all kinds of cool stuff so that you can take “Screw the Commute” with you on the road. NOT WHILE YOU’RE COMMUTING HAHAHA. We don’t want you commuting. Use it if you’re going on vacation that’s a perfect time to listen to “Screw the Commute” LOL If you’re going to the grocery store that’s another perfect time to listen. https://www.ScrewTheCommute.com/app
We are starting our monthly youth episodes where I highlight a young person doing great entrepreneurial things. Young means up to early 20’s. Heck I’ve had students in my mentor program where their 8-year-old wrote several books. Email me at orders@antion.com for details on how a young person can apply to be featured. Our first young person was Tiffani Hockings who is a young girl helping other young girls. Check out her episode.
Sponsor
OK. Our sponsor is the VIP Video Weekend where you have two full days of video training. On day one we shoot a bunch of videos of you in our high def studio. Then you get tutoring on cell phone apps that can do outrageously good edits of your videos. Then you learn lighting, YouTube Marketing and Social Media Marketing using video. Then on Day two we go out in the field where I teach you how to make a marketing video on location no matter where you are. At the beach, at the park and at various unique locations around Virginia Beach. We only do this once or twice a year, but you can get together a group of 4 or 5 people (that’s maximum because it’s a very small group with high touch) and we’ll do a custom weekend for you.
The link to check it out will be in the show notes.
Main Event
How to make a $50K video about you and your company for only pennies on the dollar. First of all, why should you bother doing this? I’ll tell you why. It sets you far above your competitors. When you have a high-quality video production showing people what you’re all about, you will move to the top of the heap when it comes to people making a decision of who to hire. Of course, there are plenty of other factors involved when people decide to buy products and services, but if everything else was equal, your video will help put you over the top. And even if the competitor is a little better than you, your video could totally pass them up.
So, I’ll give you the basic concept and then I’ll get in to the money saving details that can save you a fortune. The idea is that you shoot as much footage as you can using your phone or a camcorder. It doesn’t matter so long as it’s HD (high definition) and they all are nowadays. Then you will tap cheap and free sources for video extras (which I’ll explain a little later). You find a video editor to put it all together for you on a freelance basis. That’s the basic idea. You shoot stuff and someone else edits into a final production.
And before I go any further. Make absolutely sure you back up everything you shoot both to a local portable hard drive and to the cloud.
So, what equipment will you need? You don’t really need very much. A modern cell phone or camcorder with an external microphone. A tripod and Some cheap lights. You don’t even need the lights if you’re pretty good at using natural lighting.
With regard to the external microphone it has been somewhat problematic to plug in microphones to late model iPhones so, if you get a mic, make sure it’s compatible with your iPhone.
One thing you should do to better understand some of the things I talk about today is to go to https://www.GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com and watch my video. It’s on the homepage and you can click on the little TV monitor icon which will take you to the video. Do that whenever you can because this will make a lot more sense if you do.
One thing you’ll notice as soon as you start watching my video is a beautiful animated opening. As you go through the production, you see a similar bit of video every time we make a big transition to another section of the video. You’ll also see a graphic with text in it from time to time that appears near the bottom of the screen. These are called lower thirds and they match the look of the opening and transition video. Here’s your first giant moneysaving tip. You just purchase this video footage openings, transitions and lower thirds from stock footage places like https://www.RocketStock.com and https://www.FootageCrate.com Absolutely don’t let your video editor talk you into creating all this from scratch. That would cost a fortune and take a long time. And what they would do is probably go to the same place and buy stock footage and charge you as if they created it from scratch. Don’t let that happen to you.
The next thing you need to know about is called a CVB. This is a GREAT tip. That stands for convention and visitors bureau. It’s an agency that’s entire mandate is to encourage people to come to your area. You have to live in a decent sized area to find them. Your tax dollar funds them so you can get access to all the spectacular video footage they use to promote your area. You might have to pay a small fee for duplication, but some of the footage would cost you tens of thousands of dollars if you had to shoot it yourself. When you watch my production over at https://www.GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com you will see aerial footage of the beach, the ocean and marinas around Virginia Beach where I live. I’ve got footage of fine dining and shopping and parks and all kinds of things I used in my video. So, this is not only an enormous cost saver, it really ups the production value of your video.
See so far you are shooting your own footage and collecting footage that you have rights to use. That’s what we’re doing here.
So, what should you shoot?
Here are some miscellaneous things you could shoot and then I’ll get into more specifics. You could shoot your office or home office. Shoot shots of the area you are in. Shoot you working with a client. Shoot what you do when you work behind the scenes for a client. These are called “Candids”. For instance, let’s say you refinish furniture. Show the steps you go through when working on a client’s job. Show the care you take. Show the high-quality products you use. Show how much time it takes. Show the tools you use. Just shoot anything you do to work on a client’s job.
Shoot your business philosophy. Talk about the benefits the client will derive from working with you. Show any publicity you’ve been in. If it’s mostly print, make a collage of it and either shoot it with a video camera or shoot still pictures and tell your editor to creatively fly in the pictures or use the “Ken Burns” effect. A video editor will know what this is.
Testimonials:
You’ll want to shoot testimonials of happy clients and I’ve found the best way to do this is what I call 45degree testimonials. You see, most people are not comfortable looking directly into a camera and spitting out a great testimonial. What we do, and you’ll see it on my video, is put the camera at a 45-degree angle to the person. Then we have someone who is not in the picture ask them a question. They repeat the question and give their answer. Then we cut out the voice of the person asking them the question. Here’s an example.
Off camera person: “Joe, what did you like best about your visit to Tom’s retreat center?”
Joe: “What I liked best about the Retreat Center was the close access to Tom to see what he does on a daily basis.” Then we cut off the audio from the off-camera person and you get a beautiful testimonial very quickly because the person giving the testimonial doesn’t freeze up and is all nervous looking directly at the camera.
So those are some of the shots you want to get. If you are missing anything, after your editor gets into the project, he/she will tell you what other shots needed to finish off the production.
“The Bed”
Now let me talk to you about the backbone of the video or basically the structure where all the shots you took revolve around.
I call it “The Bed’. In my production everything revolves around me sitting in front of my fireplace. The way this evolved, the guy that taught me this method told me to write down all the major points I wanted to get in the video. I sat in my chair across from the video camera and said all the things I said in the final production. So will see them right there when you look at them. And guess what? The things I said while sitting in the chair are not in the same order they ended up in the final production. The editor moved them all around to fit the flow of the production.
Another thing you will notice about my video is the framing of my face. In the beginning of the video the camera is pulled back showing more of the fireplace…..hahaha maybe the camera guy thought it was too scary to do a closeup hahaha. Actually he’s right. In the beginning when you don’t know me well, it’s too intrusive to have my big intimidating face filling up the screen of your computer or TV. As the production goes along and you get to know me, the camera gets tighter and tighter to my face. I.e. the shot is more intimate. All this was done in editing. The actual camera never got closer and it didn’t zoom in. If we would have used the camera to zoom in we would have been stuck with the exact order of the shots as I shot them. Letting the editor do the electronic zooming when needed is a better way to go and gives you way more flexibility of where the shots end up in the final production.
As I was sitting in the chair talking about all the great stuff about my program, the editor found shots to insert in the video that illustrated what I was talking about. If was talking about scammer marketers telling you how to get rich but they’re broke driving broken down cars, the editor showed a picture or video of a broken down cheap car. If I was talking about all the nice things about the retreat center, the editor showed video myself and my staff shot of the hot tubs, massage chairs, theatre, pool, tennis court etc. All the while I’m sitting in the chair talking, but you can’t see me. You just hear me. This is called “Voiceover”.
I really suggest you watch the video over at https://www.GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com and you’ll see these elements in a real production that’s made tons of money.
Music:
Appropriate music can really put a fine polish on your production. We happen to use SonicFire You can find it at https://www.smartsound.com/sonicfire/ You probably don’t want to buy this. What you should do is discuss what experience your editor has with copyright free music BEFORE you hire them.
You must absolutely confirm the music is copyright free. You do not want to get a federal lawsuit against you for using popular music or music that’s copyrighted. Yes, you could buy a license to use popular music, but it’s a big hassle and not necessary for the success of your production. Another place to get Copyright free music is https://MusicBakery.com
Calls to Action:
Many salespeople forget the most important part of their sales presentation and yes a video is a sales presentation. They forget to get people to do something. Call for an appointment. Email for information. Download a catalog or whatever you want them to do should be in the video. Remember, you will not be there when they are watching the video. It must get the sales job done for you.
Credits:
Another easy to do addition to your production is to put credits at the end. Now if you were the videographer, talent, editor, duplicator and caterer LOL it would look stupid to put your name over and over again and that would actually detract from the overall production and make you look stupid. But, if there were lots of people involved, you could name your clients and their websites. You could name your employees, the editor, duplicator (if you make DVD’s) We even put the names of a dog that was seen in the video. Check out my credits to see what I did.
Editing:
The bulk of the money I spent on my production was in editing. For a half-hour production I spent 200 hours of editing at $15.00 per hour for a total of about $3000.00. Quotes I got on the open market for this production ran from $36,000.00 to over $50,000.00 so my production was quite a bargain. That’s what I’m trying to teach you here.
I made mine purposely 28.5 minutes so I could show it in half-hour time slots on leased access TV. I only did that a little. You could easily cut your final length down to as little as ten minutes and still have a spectacular sales tool you could be proud of and save lots of editing time and a lot of money too.
Distribution:
Currently we primarily distribute the production on DVD and on my website. No doubt it will find its way on to the TV on demand channels I’m developing for Roku TV and Amazon Fire TV. As part of my contract when I speak, my DVD and other promotional literature must be given out at registration and this has made me a fortune when people take the DVD up to their room and watch it before the speaking event even starts which primes them to buy my stuff before even considering the other speakers. Now you may not speak for a living but you can give this out in your store, you can put it on your website, your could give out a DVD to really good prospects. You can do all kinds of things with it.
One other thing I do with the video is have it running continuously at my booth when I’m at a speaking engagement or you might be at a trade show. I put it in a portable DVD player with several sets of headphones so people can watch and listen to it in the midst of the chaos normally at the trade show part of a public speaking event.
Duplication and labeling:
My volume is high enough where we bought our own CD/DVD Duplicating machine, but that’s pretty pricey so look for DVD / CD duplication in your area to save on shipping or you could try https://www.discmakers.com
Here’s a couple Miscellaneous tips:
• You MUST have good good audio. People will put up with shaky video, but if they can’t hear it, you’re sunk.
• Speaking of shaky video. I’ve had two retired Hollywood people work for me over the years. One was an Emmy nominated editor for the “Winds of War” miniseries and also started on the original Star Wars movies and the other was a celebrity promo producer that worked for just about every celebrity you ever heard of. Both of them told me to shoot everything like crazy and shoot tons of handheld footage. They said a good editor will take the motion of the hand held shots and create excitement in the video. (That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use a tripod on certain shots that need to be still, but don’t be afraid to shoot handheld). The promo director also said he used to have 50 people to run and get him coffee and million dollar cameras and million dollar light setups and he stopped and looked at me and held his hand out as if taking a selfie and said, “nowadays this is an acceptable video shot”. And I know that because I’ve made as much as $53,000.00 in a couple days with a selfie video I shot while standing out in front of my house.
• Pay attention to lighting and just make sure you can clearly see faces. Be careful with bright sunlight because it causes shadows, squinting and sweating if you’re outdoors. Be careful with backlighting where a bright light behind someone makes their face go too dark like maybe if they were in front of a window.
• Another great cost saving tip is to review all your footage and mark the time of the best shots. If you make the editor look at every piece of out of focus footage or shots where your finger is accidentally over the lens, you’ll just be paying them for nothing to sift through all the garbage. However, don’t be too quick to throw away a shot. The editor might see a half second of the shot that he/she needs to finish an great edit.
OK. So that’s it. At the very least start shooting as much of your business operations as you can. Collect the footage all in one place and BACK IT UP in another place off premise. Don’t have it on your laptop and save it to a hard drive in your house. Fire, flooding, damage can all make your backups disappear. Have the stuff backed up to a portable hard drive and also in the cloud. I just can’t emphasize this enough.
Sponsor:
OK. Our sponsor is the VIP Video Weekend where you have two full days of video training. On day one we shoot a bunch of videos of you in our high def studio. Then you can tutoring on cell phone apps that can do outrageously good edits of your videos. Then you learn lighting, YouTube Marketing and Social Media Marketing using video. Then on Day two we go out in the field where I teach you how to make a marketing video on location no matter where you are. At the beach, at the park and at various unique locations around Virginia Beach. We only do this once or twice a year, but you can get together a group of 4 or 5 people (max) and we’ll do a custom weekend for you.
The link to check it out will be in the show notes.
Next Episode Episode 089 Stan Walters “The Lie Guy” He’s been to prison 36 times to date and he’s offered to take me with him hahaha. Stan is a deception expert who trains law enforcement and military in interrogation techniques. Subscribe and Review
New to podcasts?, we’ve got instructions on how to do it at screwthecommute.com/89
Join my distance learning school: https://www.IMTCVA.org
OR
Join the mentor program PLUS get a FREE Scholarship to the School: https://www.GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com