Welcome to another episode of Builders Business Success Podcast!

We’ve been on a little bit of a holiday. Our man who does all of the production has been away shooting a TV show.

So and due to a little technical glitch.

We didn’t sort of have enough episodes in the bank but we are back and really looking forward to delivering some great conversations with some great guests, a whole bunch of information to help you build your building business.

So this show is really for the established builder.

Now, if you’re not an established builder you’re still going to get a lot of value out of it. The types of things that we are talking about generally are problems that you’ll find in an established building business.

The focus of the content is really to help that established builder, to be able to get rid of those ugly bits that we commonly find in a building business with working with team and having people waste your time and all of those sorts of ugly bits that we find in a building business.

So in this week’s episode, talking to a very cool dude, he’s a really good friend of mine.

His name is James Cooper, he’s an absolute legend when it comes to video, creating video, creating magnetic video, video that gets you on the edge of your seat and gets people to really engage and tell powerful stories through video.

In this day and age, it is the single most important part of an effective marketing strategy for any business, but in particular, a building business.

Looking forward to picking James’s brain and giving you some ideas on what you can do to help you make your video marketing significantly more effective.

We’re also going to drop into a bit of what do I say and the camera’s rolling just in case I said something valuable, it turns out that I did.

Also, there’s a very common question that I get asked all the time. We’re gonna cover that in our Q&A section.

*Transcription of the show*

Hear my conversation with James Cooper!

So one of the first things I asked James is how important is video? Because a lot of people, they don’t like the sound of their own voice. So definitely don’t like watching themselves on video but this is important enough to get over that.

– I’ve noticed that it’s just become more commonplace. It’s more the norm now to have video than not, before it used to be that, half the people would do videos and half websites would have text and stuff. Now it’s kind of the rarity that you don’t see video on websites or people don’t have a social profile, whether it’s Instagram or Facebook or LinkedIn and they don’t have videos.

So it’s become just more commonplace. So, there used to be a time when you could get away with it. But now the challenge is that people who do have video and who are putting out content on a consistent basis are just attracting more traffic and more leads because social media platforms like video content for their consumers.

Almost 80% of all content consumed is video, it’s video-based and so, if you don’t have video content you’re missing out on the ability to attract your your ideal clients. You’re gonna get swamped by people who are using video, especially people who are using video strategically.

I think that the hesitancy to do video because you don’t have expensive setup or cameras or gear of any kind. I think that is an excuse that people use to not make content, when the truth of the matter and the fact of the matter is, is that I’ll take passion over pixels any day.

I don’t really care about what you film on. In fact, if you have one of these, you have all you ever need to make great content.

If you focus on the message and who it is that you’re here to serve. I think messaging trumps the quality of the pixels in your camera any day of the week.

I would much rather watch somebody’s video on a cell phone, smartphone that has clarity, connection with the audience and passionate about what they’re talking about over somebody who has a beautiful setup. And they’re dull as wood and I can’t even get through, 10 seconds of their video–

– Though I hope you’re not referring to me there, are you?

– No, I’m not referring to you at all. If you look at you, you look at somebody like Gary V, Gary Vaynerchuk, he built a media empire but he didn’t do it with fancy equipment. When he started, he just had a little tiny, a little flip camera and he was making videos.

Now what he was doing, he was making videos consistently. That’s one key is that you’re consistently, putting content out there because honestly half of your videos are gonna be crap.

I mean, it’s just the fact, I mean, not that your delivery is going to be bad but the messaging is not always gonna hit home or resonate with your audience, which is why you need to keep putting out different messaging and different things out there ’cause some of them are gonna nail it.

And those are the ones that you put more energy into and say, okay, my audience is really interested in that. Let me make content on that, ’cause that seems to be what they’re interested in.

But when you’re just getting started, you don’t know what your audience is gonna want to listen to and what they resonate with more.

So it’s a matter of being imperfectly consistent so that you start learning from your audience, what type of content is gonna resonate with them.

– I wanted to ask James, what some of the tips and tricks are to really make your video not only impactful the content of it, but have the viewer really feel like that you’re speaking to them. This is what James said.

– You wanna speak through the lens, not to the lens. It is definitely awkward to speak to a piece of glass or a piece of plastic when there’s no connection, we connect with humans. So it’s tough sometimes.

Like, even now, like I’m talking to the lens even though you on the screen are a few inches lower but I see you in my mind’s eye. I see you out of the corner of my eye, but I’m talking to the people who are watching.

So I’m looking through the lens and I see your face and I can hear your voice but I’m talking through the lens as if you’re right there.

And that takes a little bit of practice because people aren’t used to talking to a camera even people who speak to audiences, who go into rooms and whether the room is 10 people, 20 people, it could be hundreds of people.

You’re able to connect with different people in the audience, people in the balcony, if you speak to a big convention or something like that.

All of a sudden you have to speak to one focus, and so that’s why, what I always coach people to is to speak to the one, find one person that you’re talking to and see them through the lens.

And I like to always picture somebody that I know or somebody I care about or somebody that I have an actual connection with because that makes it easier for me to have a natural conversation which is what you want in all your videos.

You should feel as natural talking to the camera. As you’re talking with your friends, sitting over coffee.

– I’ve been doing video for a long time and people seem to think that I’m comfortable. I’m not actually all that comfortable doing it but I’ve done a lot of what my coach calls, dirty reps and we’ve all got them in us.

And unfortunately, there’s no way to get to the good videos until you get rid of some of the bad videos.

So you just got to do it. I asked James about his opinion on this. This is what he said.

– Competence breeds confidence and confidence is tying your shoes. You don’t have to think about tying your shoes. You just tie your shoes and it’s the same thing with making videos. Video one is gonna suck.

I’m telling you that right now, it’s going to, and there’s really nothing you can do about it. It just is.

But the thing is video five is gonna be better than video one, video 10 is gonna be better than video five and video 100 is gonna be better than video 10.

You’re gonna get better at this, our mutual colleague of ours, Jason Everett who does Facebook lives like almost every day. And somebody asked him, he said how do you get really good about doing Facebook lives? He’s like do 100 Facebook lives, you’ll get better. You will get better at them. And so that’s the first thing.

So the first thing is just time in the saddle. The more you do it, the more confident you’ll be at it the more competent you will be at it, it will get easier. Somebody asked me to do heart surgery on somebody tomorrow, I would not feel confident, because I’ve never done it–

– I would not either if it was me that you were doing the surgery on, no offense.

– Yes exactly. The second thing is focus out not in. When you obsess over, see then here’s the truth. People are not afraid of the camera.

They’re afraid of being seen in the way that they don’t wanna be seen. Just like when people are afraid of something it’s rarely the thing they’re afraid of.

It’s what they picture in their head will happen. People aren’t afraid of dogs, they’re afraid of getting bitten people. People aren’t afraid of planes, they’re afraid of crashing.

So it’s the scenario in their head that they picture so when people is afraid of the camera they’re afraid of the people watching that video. We’ll watch them and go, oh, oh, yeah, you know, all that uncomfortableness. They’re creating a scenario in their head and that’s all in, that’s all internal.

So it’s like, what will people think of me? Or what if I sound bad? Or what if I look bad and all that. And that’s all in. And so what I get people I work with to do is always focus out, focus on who you’re here to serve, focus on how you want them to feel, focus on what you’re passionate about.

Put your love and focus into your content and what you’re here to say and what you’re here to do. All of that is external.

And when you’re focused completely external and talking through the lens to the person that you’re here to serve, all that internal self-talk doesn’t have time ’cause you’re too busy focusing on them and putting your energy in service rather than focusing on yourself.

– Procrastination is an absolute killer.

So I asked James what’s the best way to get started because I know from being a Performance Coach for over 30, almost 35 years, that once you get going, it’s all okay, it’s pretty good. It’s just that little moment in your mind when you’re going, “Should I, shouldn’t I.” It’s that first step.

So I asked James, what ideas does he have? What tips or suggestions does he have just to get us going?

– There’s a slightly different process, if you’re going live versus going, recording a video. If you’re going live, sometimes I recommend that people go live first because when you go live, there’s taking it back. There’s no turning back, when live happens, you’re live.

And if you happen to mess up on your words or you don’t know what to say, whatever, you just have to roll through it ’cause you’re live. There’s really nothing else that you can do. And once you’re live, you’re live to the world.

That’s why a lot of people are terrified of going live because they don’t know what’s gonna happen. And what if they mess up and all that stuff.

So sometimes it’s like jumping into the cold pond, right? You just go all in and when people get comfortable doing lives, I think, they tend to make their videos easier because they don’t concern themselves so much about the little mess ups or the flubs in the language.

They just keep rolling through it. And then if they really need to, they can have those little bits edited out.

So I think that there’s a lot of benefits to going live. Also the benefits of going live is that you don’t ever have to worry about the editing and all the post production stuff. You just go live and that’s your live.

When you’re focused on recording the video for both live and recording, lean on structure, find a simple structure that works for you. I like either a three section or a five section structure.

It makes it easy to just then focus on, these are the three things I’m focused on or these are the five things I’m focused on.

And the bookend pieces are usually always the same. It’s the intro and hook, which is like, this is what I’m gonna talk about and this is who I am, for people who have never met you before.

That’s like act one, that’s like, okay, here’s what this video is about, why you’re here and here’s who I am and what I do. And that’s like the first chunk. And then the ending chunk is, so if you like that, and you’d like more, here’s what you do or here’s where you go, that’s the call to action.

So those bookend pieces pretty much get, you get used to doing those a lot. And those become really easy for you to nail the opening and nail the close. And then we’re just focusing on the middle. And the middle is either one, one thing that you’re talking about the whole time or it could be a couple of little tips or things like that.

And so when you look at that kind of a structure you know, here’s what I’m gonna promise and deliver. Now I’m gonna deliver it. And then the end, I’m gonna recap what I just talked about and here’s what’s next for you.

And when you lean on that structure for your videos it makes it really easy to just go through those bullet points and make your videos something that is just easy for you to scribble out and just a basic outline.

And don’t focus so much on a word for word script.

I personally, I don’t like scripts. Sometimes there are a necessity, but even when I script out specific things that I want to say, I read it several times.

So I kind of get it in my body and then I’d let it go. I rarely follow word for word script when I’m recording. What I do is I kind of write out all my ideas. I put them into that three section or five section outline.

And then what I do is I just, I kind of come up with a word or sentence that that whole section is going to be, and that way I can just focus on those words or sentences. And then that gives me an easy flow to work on.

So that’s basically what, when you’re recording your videos, when you first start doing it, find a structure that works for you, and then lean on that structure. And really all you need is like a post-it note or two. And just write down a few things on those post-it notes.

You can literally stick them on your phone and go live or record. And you’re basically going from section to section to section, just with that outline.

– Yeah, the poor man’s teleprompter. I love it.

– Yeah, so lean on structure, lean on structure especially when you start. And then you kind of start going on autopilot later on when it becomes really second nature to you.

– Yeah as I mentioned before, James is a really cool dude. He’s very knowledgeable, he’s extremely helpful and supportive.

It’s made a lot of sense what he said so far and you wanna reach out to him, or you just wanna stalk him and start to consume some of his content. He’s very prolific on the Interwebs. I asked him, where do we find James Cooper?

– There’s two ways you can always find me on Facebook. I spend a lot of time on Facebook, so you can always message me. I have a free Facebook group called Six-Figure Storytelling.

And it’s a great group and recently started it with a small community of people who want to get better at making videos and video storytelling. And we’re alive in there every week.

And anybody who asks questions in the group I always go through the questions and answer the questions but it’s a great place for people to come to learn about storytelling, to record videos and post them for feedback from myself and the group, for people who wanna get better on a specific thing, you just post your video and say any feedback, I’m working on this, this and this. And then I can give you feedback on it.

So it’s a great free community to come and connect and learn how to make videos that move people and learn about storytelling.

What’d I Say?

You know, even during all of this pandemic, everything produces opportunity. And it’s those who are close to the opportunity never get the opportunity. If we can get rid of those limitations and start to talk to people, our customers and our prospects about what opportunities are presenting themselves in this situation.

All of a sudden we become the voice of certainty and people look to us for guidance through these challenging times. That can happen.

The goal setting like challenge yourself to create and write down bigger goals. I mean, a goal is fundamentally worthless if it doesn’t get you up early and keep you up late, like, what’s the point of it. If it’s something that doesn’t do that it’s just the to do.

And then of course, the fourth step is the prioritized daily action list and I’ll guarantee you’ll never ever master that.

You can always learn how to just apply those categories, the A, B, C, Ds and you can get deeper into the question or the answer to the question, what will happen if I don’t do this today? And I’ll guarantee you that the deeper you learn how to apply that question, the more control you’ll start to feel.

You’ll start to go, hey, all of this shit that’s been keeping me up late at night and I’ve been worried about and sweating about, it doesn’t even really matter.

And there’s all of these other things over here that do really matter that never get my attention.

Like imagine developing that skill. The majority of people listen to Jim Rowan, and he has a famous saying that, “We major in minor things.” We spend major time, major effort, major money on minor things.

And the opposite of that means that we spend minor time, effort, and money on major thing.

Another great quote is, “Most men live lives of quiet desperation.” If you look at us as a nation, how well are we doing health wise? Shit House. How well are we doing wealth wise? Shit House. How well are we doing relationship wise? Shit House.

Like as a team, as a gang, we’re awful. Why? Because we major in minor things. People spend their nights watching the frigging bachelor. Alright, we major in minor things.

Q & A

One of the most common questions when it comes to video how long should my video be? Like, when we’re talking about marketing videos how long should it be?

Here is the rule that I stick to because you will find people a little, give you statistics and say, you know, over three minute videos on Facebook tend to be more engaging and so on and so forth. And that’s potentially true.

The statistics are the statistics but here’s what I believe in. Here’s the rule that I endeavor to stick to is there is no such thing as a video that is too long. It’s just too boring. And so having a video structure is really important.

So it’s punchy, it’s powerful. It makes sense, it flows and it’s to the point, if you can get those sorts of things happening, people will lean into your videos.

And the time goes really, really quickly. I’d like to think that, and please give me some feedback if I’m delusional, I’d like to think that the Builders Business Success Podcast is a little like that. It goes for 30 minutes, sometimes it goes a little over because I have been, the thing has been pointed at me that I can’t keep the time.

So I go over time a little bit, but the feedback that we get just for this show is it goes really, really quickly. And your videos need to seem like they go really, really quickly as well leaving people a little bit hungry and wanting more.

So the key for that is making it very focused. It really addresses the fears, frustrations, wants, and aspirations of your ideal prospect.

You speak as if you’re speaking one-on-one as James said through the lens to one person that makes it really powerful but having a structure also makes it powerful. Now I’ve got a thing called the video flats, a simple six box sheet. It’s a great tool that you can use to keep it focused, keep it punchy, but also have structure.

So it makes sense also, it has a really good flow to it. If you want a copy of that all you need to do is let us know either in the comments section, or you can send me an email [email protected].

And I’ll just send you out a copy of our video flow chart. If you like, it’s just a six boxes, as I said that make sure you’ve got everything in the right order and you don’t miss out on the important things.

So if you want one, just put a comment underneath depending on where you’re watching this. If you’re only listening to the video, sorry the audio version, just send a request through to that email address, [email protected]. And I’ll send you out a copy, ASAP.

So what’s the takeaway from this show? Well, it’s been all about video and my takeaway that I want you to to get from this is video is super important. And the cool thing about video is in this day and age it’s so simple to make good quality videos.

I mean, we’ve got different camera angles on this show, totally unnecessary, like I could have just done the show with one camera’s just stuck in the corner but we like all of this stuff.

We like oh mucking around with all of the kit and making it look pretty and making it look professional. You don’t need to do that. You can literally get your phone, the camera quality in phones these days is off the charts.

And maybe just invest 60 or 70 bucks in a little lapel mic, you can get one from Road, R-O-D-E. I think it’s called a smartLav and it’s specifically for phones. So it’s got a proper plug in it that fits in your phone.

Normal microphones won’t work in your phone but if you just spent 60, 70 bucks for that you can literally hold your phone in your hand plug the mic in and you get really good sound.

You can have conversations with your clients with video, write testimonials, you can be getting a whole lot of footage of stuff happening on your building site. So get your phone out, start shooting video.

There’s a lot of guys on the Interwebs that you can get to edit your videos to make them look to professional, put an intro and an outro on them, chop them up.

So they’re really tight for not a lot of money. So you go to places like fiverr.com but you can find a bunch of places that can edit your video but start to get used to it.

Start to get used to speaking to your phone, shooting videos, get some systems together so you can get them out, and start to have a quantity of video.

The quality will come, but it’s gotta start with quantity. You’ve got to get rid of those dirty reps. So get your phone out, get a little mic, start talking to it.

Start interviewing your sub-trades, start interviewing your customers, interviewing anybody who has it got anything to do with your projects and start to get your content out on the Interwebs.

Where to go from here

So I hope we’ve given you some value in this episode of Builders Business Success Podcast.

I would love to talk to you if you are an established builder, if you’ve got some leads flowing through, if you feel that you’re having your time wasted by customers, if you’ve got some high maintenance customers, if you’ve got issues with the finances of the business, if you find that you’re under the pump time management as if you don’t seem to get time to yourself I wanna talk to you.

And the reason I wanna talk to you is being, we’ve been working super hard on creating a really simple process that can give you all three of those things, answers solutions to all three of those areas, super fast.

And the results that we’re getting with some established builders at the moment is absolutely game changing. They’re coming in, they’re pulling their hair out.

They’re not making money. They haven’t got time to scratch themselves. They’re having a whole lot of time wasted by clients. And just after a number of weeks everything has turned around. They’re getting things done in half the time.

They’re getting really good quality clients instead of wasting their time doing free quotes they’re being paid for their proposals. Everything has changed in just a short amount of time.

So if that sounds like it’s a bit interesting to you. All we need to do is have a chat. You can go to our website which is buildersbusinessblackbelt.com.au.

You can schedule a call from there. You can hit the button underneath this video if you’re watching it on video and as I said, if you’re listening to the audio only version, just navigate to the buildersbusinessbelt.com.au.

Click the button, answer a few questions, schedule a call.

We’ll be talking before you know it, and turning your business round in those places.

So hope this has been valuable. Hope we get to talk to you in person real soon, stay tuned we’ll be back with another episode of Builders Business Success Podcast. Before you know it.

I’m Mick Hawes, Builders Business Blackbelt. Bye for now.