EPISODE 21 – Who’s Controlling You?

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Dec
02, 2020

EPISODE 21 – Who’s Controlling You?

By mick | December 2, 2020

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Hi and welcome to another episode of Builders Business Success Podcast!
 
The podcast that is specifically for the established builder, helping them with better time management, better financial management better quality customers, all of those things. 
 
And all of our content is designed to help you in those areas with your building business. 
 
So we’ve got a really action packed show for you this week. Our special guest is Ian Segail. He’s a good buddy of mine. 
 
In fact, he was my very first face-to-face personal mentor many many years ago, back in the days when I was selling life insurance. 
 
The reason I bring it up is because it was, well first I met Ian through it. It was the one thing that got me started on this whole personal development journey. And I ended up here teaching and helping builders through this whole working on ourselves process. 
 
The whole thing started in that life insurance. 
 
But as I said, I met my very, very good friend, Ian Segail. He’s going to be sharing with us some really cool stuff. He’s written a very amazing book. It looks like a kid’s book, but it’s actually for adults and we’ll be talking to him about that. 
 
It’s gonna be super helpful for you, particularly if you get stressed, if you feel pressure, if you perhaps behave or respond to things in a way that you don’t want to and would like to change that, this is gonna be super helpful. 
 
The camera’s were rolling again, as they do each week when we’re having a conversation with our Builders Business Blackbelt members. 
 
To be able to capture something valuable. If I said something valuable during the week, apparently I did. We’re gonna share that with you. 
 
We have a conversation with our Builders Business Blackbelt members, every single day of the week. It’s a fun hour. We have a good time. We share wins. We share lessons, they ask questions. It just really speeds up their process. 
 
And we want to give you a window to that conversation in what I say. 
 
Also, we’re going to answer a very common question that we get asked all the time by builders in our Q & A.
 

*Transcription of the show*

Hear my conversation with Ian Segail!

 
Okay, let’s have a chat with my buddy, Ian Segail. He’s just recently written this book, “Who’s controlling you.” 
 
One of the first things I asked Ian was why did you write this? What was it about how we think and how we behave that caused you to want to write this book.
 
– The three brains. Most of us think when we actually are responding to a question we think that we’re actually bringing some consciousness to the decision or to the answer.

When in fact, really what we’re doing is just bringing all our programming and all our programmed responses to that, to the answer. Stephen Covey in his famous book, “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.” wrote that between stimulus and response, there’s a gap.

And it’s in that gap that you get to choose your response. Trouble is most people don’t choose their response because they’re flying on automatic, on autopilot.

Or the responses that are given are programmed responses. And I suppose where does the program come from? Or we can have a whole discussion around that. But you have to understand that for most of us, and the way our brains currently function is that if we just simplified it and said, okay you’ve got three paths to your brain.

You’ve got your ancient brain or your lizard brain, which is basically your fight, flight, freeze or form a response. And this is kind of like if you can imagine a gatekeeper to the decision-maker. It sits there and any anyone that wants to talk to the decision maker, being your conscious mind or if you like your central cortex, the main part of your brain.

They’ve got to go through this reptilian brain. Reptilian brain has been trained over centuries, multiple centuries to be on the lookout for any kind of threat. What is a threat? A threat to my cause might be a different threat to Ian Segail because of his program.

So, if all of a sudden let’s just say that you’ve been programmed as you’ve been filled with a program that says the bulldogs suck. And that’s what you’ve grown up with it. The bulldogs suck. Now, all of a sudden, you start talking about the bulldogs as being, and we’re not talking about the exo animal here, we’re talking about the team. You talk about the bulldogs are awesome.

Well, that’s gonna trigger a response in me because, hold on a minute this is very anti what it should be. Because I’ve got program that say the bulldogs suck.

Now, all of a sudden I get triggered. My lizard brain is on full alert. Where’s the risk? Survival, fight, flight fear or form. And so this is how most of us are triggered into responses that we don’t actually want to make or give.

And so, if we get through the gatekeeper, so to speak, then we arrive at the emotional brain which is the second largest part of the brain. And it’s the middle brain. And this is where essentially we’ve developed emotional acuity.

Because we were triggered in the lizard brain now our emotions are triggered and this is where things heat up.

And then finally, if we can get through the emotional brain and we can now get into the central cortex. This is our thinking brain.

This is the brain that’s been around for a couple of hundred years and it’s grown. And this is where we do our thinking. But if you think of all the journey that the thought has to go through to find the get into that mind, is it any wonder why we get triggered so easily?

And so in order to calm the lizard brain and to allow the lizard brain space, that takes work. That takes practice. And the practices, mindfulness, it’s meditation. It’s just thinking about your thinking.

Do you know when you talk about planning, we say if you don’t plan to plan and you didn’t actually didn’t have a plan. If you don’t think about your thinking, then you’re always not thinking.
 
– That’s pretty deep.
 
– Correct, so I suppose that the first question we’re gonna go ask is, firstly why are you frustrated? Because see, frustrated means that have my emotions been triggered yet? There’s some people that don’t get frustrated by what’s just happened. Or there’s some people that don’t get frustrated when a customer lies to them.

They look at themselves and go, oh, hold on a minute, what was it about my communication that I didn’t communicate properly? Or how can I take responsibility for this?

Or was it my just grabbing any customer because I’m feeling desperate so I just took on anybody as opposed to really choosing the customer I want to work with? In other words, I’m taking responsibility for my thinking as opposed to pointing the finger out there. I’ve got three pointing back at me.

Frustration and the moment you said that, that for me is the signal.

So emotions always will follow your thinking. So if you’ve got shitty emotions you probably having silly thoughts. If you’re feeling frustrated or angry, then that’s a signal. Hello, something’s triggered that.

Now then it takes some acuity to go back and say, okay, well what was I thinking that got me so hot and bothered? And at the end, look, nobody likes to be lied to. But again, that’s just a perception anyway. Were they’re really lying? Or was that their perception of the event?

Do you just think that you actually gave them clear instructions? Or did you actually give them clear instructions? Why are you being triggered like this?

Was there something when you were growing up as an apprentice that your boss got off all over you because you showed up five minutes late and ever since then, you’re really rigid. And anything that’s anything more than five minutes late you get into an absolute tizzy about?

So there’s all this other stuff that’s going on that you actually have to unpack and understand that it’s as they say, it’s not what’s happening to you, it’s your interpretation of what’s happening to you that is causing the issue.

If all you do is, again, if you just pause, take a deep breath and say, okay hold on a minute, just hold the phone. What’s really going on here? What’s going on with me? Not what’s going on out there ’cause you can’t control what’s going on out there. And I need you do your best to try and control what’s going on in here.

That’s where you start to actually become empowered because the moment you’re frustrated. And it’s, you did this and she said that, where’s the power? You’ve just lost the power. The power is in you. You’re now giving it out to the event or the person or whatever.
 
– Giving the voice in your head, a name, that seemed to me to be a really good technique for kind of breaking the pattern and going, oh, that’s not me talking that’s Eduardo or whoever.
 
– In the book ” Who’s Controlling You”, I referred to an imaginative name by the name of Doris. And effectively, everybody has their own form of Doris.

Mine is Norbert. I don’t know who yours is, but when you give that voice inside your head, a really stupid name but then you start to recognize when it’s your Doris doing the talking or is it really you?

So your Doris says all your unconscious catalyst that’s go, that literally is with you when you go to sleep to the first thing when you wake up. And it’s generally, how do you recognize your Doris is generally?

It’s not saying that very nothing, nice things to you. It’s telling you all the things you aren’t or what you should be at or what you should be doing. And what you could be doing, or why aren’t you doing this?

And you not good at this. And you not good at that. Kind of like this judging, belittling guilt finding, shame making voice that goes on in your head. And it’s just your programming, it’s not actually you.

So when you can start to separate you from your Doris, from that voice, that alone gives you relief because you go, well, hold on a minute, really? And I’m not frustrated, actually I’m really cool. I’m just a calm, groovy guy.

It’s this voice inside of me that’s saying, “You need to be frustrated!” “You need to be frustrated!” “Why aren’t you angry?” And just goes on and on and on and on. And so, when you can actually give the voice a name it separates you.

Now I’ve taken it one step further. And I’ve said, okay, well, hold on. If we give that part of you, which is, just call it the negative part of you, that voice inside of you that keeps talking. The inner critic or the roommate inside your head, you give that a voice. What about giving voice to the empowered person? So when you actually do something that’s empowering.

So giving an example, I was coaching a young girl today and I said to her, “How do we let the empowered woman come out as opposed to the little girl?” And I said to her, “Who’s the most powerful woman you’re know?”. And she said, “My mother.” I go, “What’s your mother’s name?” “Susan.” great, “How would Susan respond in this instance?” And you could literally see her stand taller and just be broader because now she’s like, okay, I now know how I can respond.

So now she’s got an inner critic voice and now she’s got her Susan voice. And she also knows that when she’s being the little child, the little Elizabeth, who’s cute and nice and sweet and has fear about conflict and confrontation, well Susan doesn’t have fear of conflict or confrontation. Susan says, hey, that’s the job that needs to be done.

Let’s just cut through the crap and get it done. And so you can use the chat in your head. You can actually use it to your own advantage. And you call the negative voice one thing, call the positive voice something else and actually use it to actually fuel you and help you through the garbage, really.
 
– Two things, where can people find you to be able to tap into your genius and your services and so on. And second thing is, I want to find out where you can get a copy of the book.
 
  • Okay, so if they just got to iansegail.com. That’s i-a-n-s-e-g-a-i-l.com That’s got me and or what I do. The book, if you just go to either to the dorisbook.com or just to whoscontrollingme.com, that’ll take you directly to the book and you can read about it and find out.

    And in fact, if you go to the dorisbook.com you can even get the first chapter for free. And there’s an audio version. Look forward to seeing you and hearing from you and more than happy to help.

What’d I Say? 

The key to this. And this is for everybody is to become the business coach for your subcontractors, rather than having a focus of getting them to perform the way you want them to perform. 
 
And all of that sort of stuff. Become a business coach to them and help them overcome their challenges. Because again, that’s positive deposits in the emotional bank account with them. 
 
If you’re showing that you understand their problems from their perspective, then they’re more than likely interested in hearing your solutions. 
 
Obviously, you’ve got a lot of knowledge being in this group that you can pass on to help them build a better business. Andrew came back and said, I’ve got no interest in helping those guys that don’t wanna work with them again, which I totally get. 
 
That’s totally fine. I’m talking about the lesson from this is that the guys that you do trust, and you do want to keep on, go to this next level where you become their business coach. I know it’s gonna take a little bit of time and a bit of effort, but I think it’s a wonderful, wonderful thing to do because you’ll create this incredible loyalty between you and them. 
 
They will want to perform better for you. They will give you better treatment than anybody else because of what you’re doing for them. But at the same time, you’re building a team around you that really understand that the product is the customer’s experience, not what they’re being paid to do. With the plumbing or the electrical or whatever the case may be. 
 
So, that was a really valuable discussion that I thought you got started and worthwhile having a bit of a chat about it in this forum. Everybody would have challenges with it. 
 
And even if you have a business now where you are quite happy with your subbies, what I would suggest to you is take this what we’re talking about on board anyway, take it to a whole other level and really have a real red hot go at asking questions and getting in communications with your subbies to offer help to overcome the problems that they have. 
 
So, it’s not necessarily the problems that you cause when they’re working with you, it’s other things which you’ll more than likely have solutions to. And I just think it’s a real win-win. 
 
Well it’s a win-win-win because the customer also gets massive benefit as well. So that was a good thing to bring up.

Q & A 

One of the questions I get asked a whole lot is, how do we find better quality staff? How do we find better quality team members? 
 
The answer that I often give is what we’ve got to remember, and we’ve got to try to live by is the quality or the team’s performance is a direct reflection of the quality of the leadership. 
 
We need to work on us. We need to work on our leadership skills. 
 
Our communication skills and everything that Ian was saying in our conversation plays into this. Because if we can start to take control of how we think, how we behave, we become a great example for our team members. We become a great leader for our team members. If we can get this here under control. 
 
So as Ian said, some of the techniques you need to use are to give your voice a name. So we know, oh, that’s only Norbert speaking. And I know by doing that, and a bunch of other Blackbelt members ’cause we’ve had Ian speak with our Blackbelt group and they absolutely loved his presentation. 
 
And they all gave their little voice inside their head a name. When they started to do that, you could just see that they said, oh that’s Norbert or Hubert or whatever speaking. 
 
And they distanced themselves away from voice in their head, if you like. And it allows you to sort of have that third party perspective about what you’re thinking. Gives you a space to choose a better response to what’s going on. 
 
And that is really powerful with leadership. Instead of reacting, instead of just allowing your programming to respond or react to your team’s performance or situations, if you step back and think about it, you become a great example for your team members to do exactly the same thing. 
 
You can even talk to them about the book here, “Who’s controlling you”. 
 
You can give them a link to listen to, or watch this podcast so they can start to understand it as well. It can be really, really powerful. 
 
So what we need to do is instead of starting to look for really good quality team members, start to nurture them. 
 
Start to grow them. In fact, in Blackbelt, we talk about a thing called the Management Matrix. And it’s basically four quadrants and it goes from the first quadrant where you have to micromanage a person to someone who’s a little more autonomous, a little more, until you get to quadrant four, where a person can basically run your business for you and potentially better than you can. 
 
They don’t need any guidance at all. They need support and they need recognition and appreciation like all humans, but they can do it all. And we’d all love to have those people in our business. But if you think about trying to buy someone who’s a quadrant four, they already know they’re really, really good. 
 
You’ve got to pay them a lot of money. They don’t necessarily have the loyalty. Whereas if you nurture, if you grow someone who starts at a quadrant one then moves to two through your leadership to three and eventually becomes a four. 
 
They are very loyal, a very valuable. Invaluable team members to your business but it all starts with you. That’s the answer to that question. 
 
Stop looking for the right people start to grow the right people within your business, through your leadership skills.

Summary & Takeaway

So what’s the takeaway from this episode of “Builders Business Success Podcast”? What I’d like to think it is, being a successful builder is far, far more than being able to be a quality builder and build fantastic homes and extensions and renovations and things like that. 
 
Because one of the beliefs that I have is that a successful builder understands that their product isn’t the house at the end of the driveway, it’s the customers experience. 
 
The customer experience comes from their interaction with the builder, with the builders team and the systems and processes that the builder puts together. 
 
And so, the takeaway I would like you to think about from this episode is, what do I need to do to be able to nurture my team, to have better quality systems and processes that really suit my ideal client’s fears, frustrations, wants and aspirations? 
 
Everything that they experience from your business is frictionless. It makes sense. It has them feel like you really get them. You really understand their problems and their preferences. That’s no mean feat and I’d love to help you to do it. I want you to book a call if this makes sense to you. I want to talk to you. 
 
If you want to be able to have a better team in your business, if you want to be able to have better quality clients that really love your processes, are more than happy to pay premium prices. Wait for you. You know, they’re not the type of people that want everything done by Christmas or everything done by a deadline. 
 
They see the value in what you offer so they are prepared to wait and they work with you as a team, which means they enjoy the experience more, you and your team enjoy the experience more. 
 
They get significantly more value. And you get significantly less stress. It’s a very, very cool way to build a building business. And if that’s of interest to you, let’s just jump on a call. 
 
So all you need to do is hit the button underneath this video, it’ll take you to a form, gives us a bit of information about your business. 
 
Then you can schedule in a real quick phone call or you can go to our website, buildersbusinessblackbelt.com.au. There’s a scheduler call button right there in the middle of the screen. 
 
If you’re listening to the audio only version, that’s the advice I’d give you. Just jump on the website, buildersbusinessblackbelt.com.au. Hit the scheduler call button. Let’s get to talk to you in person. 
 
See if we can help point you in the right direction. I hope that’s been helpful. I hope you enjoyed the show. I hope you’ve got a whole bunch out of it. I hope we get to talk to you in person in the not too distant future. 
 
So, that’s it for this episode of, “Builders Business Success Podcast“. I’m Mick Hawes, Builders Business Blackbelt. That is all, bye for now.

*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.

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