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Blubrry09, 2020
EPISODE 22 – The Challenges of Video
*Transcription of the show*
Hear my conversation with Joel Minor!
– At first I, didn’t really wanna do it. I guess sometimes it gets a bit overwhelming with doing the whole looking at what their problem is, and then being able to do, try to think of that person being in that person’s shoes and then trying to understand their problem, and then obviously giving information away without I guess trying to be too technical about it, which is sort of probably what I found now but, putting content out to start off with all sort of doing but not to the extent I was doing now.
So it was more just a post here and there and bits and pieces which you see a lot of other people do as well but coming back to the consistency and following, making sure that it does get one post at least one post a day or at least four or five days a week a bare minimum two or three bits of content but, I think just getting the whole just doing it part is probably the hardest.
We were talking to Tom about this other day. He was suggesting start with what’s the easiest and I thought that was a really good point because instead of trying to get straight in the deep end, because a lot of people don’t like looking at themselves on the camera just starting with what was easy and posting an article or just a post for this and that, and then, work on it from there.
– Its probably a bit of both but at first, probably coming up with the content to talk about, and then yeah, talking to the camera was probably a hard thing. That was probably my challenge. But after a while, it doesn’t take long to get used to it.
But I think the biggest thing is people worry too much about what they look like on camera, rather than even more or less what you’re talking about. Most of the time I just grabbed the button and just post it and then don’t look at it.
– Do you, did you have or do you have any tips as far as how to get over that? I mean I know some people they worry too much and it prevents them from pressing the go button right up at the start.
Like as you said after a little while you get used to it. But what advice, tips could you give anyone to just get started like press the button and just get started?
– It depends on whether you wanna own a job or a business and have something that will come really good out of doing that, and I found over time that the power of social media is pretty significant, and if you don’t keep up with the times with doing the whole thing, you’re gonna get left behind pretty quickly.
Or if you end up being too late to it you’re gonna find it really hard to adapt later on. So why not move while everyone else is moving?
Because I had this conversation with the planner the other day and I was blown away that the conversation I had with him, what he said to me, “I don’t wanna be on video”, and I thought sort of thought uh he was gonna been laugh at it, and by the time he said that I’d already recorded something, put it on Instagram, and he actually got, he found out that, from someone else that, because he doesn’t have any of that stuff.
He found out from someone else that it was on there, and he literally just cracked the shits and walked away from it, and I was blown away on how, he just didn’t want to be on there, didn’t want his face, his nothing.
I’m just, I was sort of blown away on, which is totally fine, and I respect that if he didn’t want and realize the seriousness over the time but I think moving with it.
But the easiest thing I think going back to your actual question, is just starting with something simple, posting a photo, an article, and just being consistent with that, and then, moving into videos, but the only way to do videos and videos, as pens down, probably one of the best things to get out there because the traction you get with them, people get to know you quite quickly, what sort of person you are, how you work, regardless on the overview of what you post, I think it’s more or less about just getting the content out there.
It’s just putting it out there and not worrying about what else is gonna say, think or do but within six to 12 months, people are gonna, they’re not gonna remember the first thing you posted to what you’re doing now, so, and the more you post the quicker, the better you’re gonna get, the quicker you’re gonna move but just, you don’t like being on video, on camera, audio.
A lot of make I do, podcasts and stuff and one of the other guys in the group, so first, yeah I think, audio is another good one to start even audio with your clients, just over the phone and record them if they’re happy to go with it, and just let them know and just getting some questions going and ask them, and the best part is if you don’t like it, well we either cut the bits out or you don’t post it.
So for some reason every time as soon as you hit the record button, everything just goes aaah.
– Thank God for editing. You mentioned, six to 12 months.
Tell me about that. Like the mindset and I don’t know what you were thinking back then how quickly you would get traction. I mean there are some builders who think, and I’ve been getting messages through the Facebook group, what should I put up as a post and that’s like it kinda doesn’t matter because you’ve gotta have the quantity.
What were you thinking back then?
Did you think you were gonna be able to get away with just a post here and there and then what have you learned about quantity and I suppose being regular with a minimum amount?
– Just finding out what people are doing and just, like I get into technical sort of stuff ’cause I don’t really understand it all.
But just basic, just being, there’s a lot of people out there who’ll watch your stuff that you have no idea how many people are watching, regardless of views, likes or whatever, or someone talks to someone else.
But, at first it’s like how am I gonna be able to do this and then I sort of just stripped it back and go, went to just post to what I’m comfortable with posting, and I probably more or less view off the track a little bit of going to the whole understanding someone’s problem and then giving an information, I probably do a more of like a, almost like a recorded diaries of what we’re doing on jobs and try and give you bits of information from there but, and I think just posting just get as much content out there as you can because I think yeah, I’ve had my brother say to me the other day.
He said, “Oh a couple of the guys that follow your page, “said ‘Oh you post a lot of content on Facebook, “it’s a bit annoying”, and that’s exactly what you want.
– Because the people, there’s two types when it comes to that, I feel there’s two types of people because talk to clients and they will say, “Oh I love your content. “It’s awesome, can’t get enough of it”.
And then you talk to people that you know will never, ever build or do anything with you, and they go “Oh it’s quite annoying”, or they don’t really listen to much of it Which is exactly what I’m after.
I don’t want people, I wanna annoy people enough, so they leave almost, and if they’re not leaving then get more content out there. Find someone else to help you do like, I have another, I have a couple of people that helped me out with all the stuff too.
Had a guy who does a bit of recording on site for us.
Video, he does video editing as well. I have another one who just posts some content for me, just schedules week to week, I’ve got a bank of content so make sure, I think making sure you save all your content and just having it somewhere easy to access, preferably find someone else to post it because it’s not that hard to post once it’s edited and sitting there.
It’d take someone there a week just max. Not even that, It takes longer to upload all the videos and stuff into Facebook than it actually does, to actually put a quick caption where you go, post schedule for the whole week done.
– What you’ve noticed in the reactions of your prospects/customers. So does it affect the relationship that you have when people become a customer because they’ve seen your stuff?
And what have you noticed in the difference of how your prospects interact with you, when they’ve seen your stuff?
– There’s a lot of people, that sort of hear us talk about, well, a bunch of all of these stuff, it’s really good, blah, blah, blah.
But when it comes to getting clients coming to the door, whether we have initial meeting, or we do a site inspection to I actually had a meeting last night with a lady or a couple, and I had, they had gone through and she’d come through and say like “Oh I’ve seen all your stuff on Instagram, “and stuff you post and we just want you “to build, did you our job and blah, blah, blah.”
And when you tell them, this is your process and this is how we work, and this is what we need to do, they just go “Yeah no worries”, they don’t have an issue. Probably one of the best ones I’ve had was a lady, she, so I do, I take sort of two pathways when it comes to people coming through the door.
Either do a site inspection, or we do an initial meeting for the larger jobs or bigger scale renovations, and this was just an on site consultation as we call it, and basically, we charge a fee of 150 bucks to do that, and where we come here to do it, this lady had rang me and got in contact and she’d been watching my stuff for probably about a month or two.
I could see her liking all the stuff coming through and I’m like, I wouldn’t be surprised if she calls me shortly, and within about three months of her watching my stuff, called me and then, I told her, before I could even finish the words of my sentence saying, hey, we charge a fee, She said, “Joel that was no worries”.
And within an hour of me sending the invoice it was paid, before, I’d even gone to site, and she got there and said, “I feel like I know you. “I’ve watched that much of your videos and that stuff”.
And it was a little bit weird ’cause when I went to see her, it was like I’d met her before almost, so I just go, just had to go along with it. But that’s the kind of impact it can have if you’re consistent and you just put yourself out there.
Sometimes it doesn’t really matter on the specifics of content. It’s just, people getting to know you, while you’re, putting it all out there, so.
– There are obviously builders out there, potentially builders that would be listening to this, and they just say to themselves look, you know that might be right for him.
But I just haven’t got time for that I haven’t got time for that sort of stuff or I don’t know how to do it, I can’t be bothered that, or that’s bullshit.
I am a good builder. I do good building, I don’t need to do that crap. What have you got to say to those people who come up with whatever excuse they can to resist doing this?
– I think it comes back to something that I touched on a point before, where I said depends whether you wanna own a job, where you wanna own a business.
My sort of end goal, trying to have a business that either runs itself or can, you can teach someone else to do that sort of thing but if you haven’t got time like, it doesn’t matter how busy you are, I think the best time to post content, in trawler is when you are super busy.
Because you ain’t scrounge around trying to find a way or quick solution for it to work. Like when you’re busy is the best time to dump in.
So, if you haven’t got time, you need to either make time, and if you don’t wanna do it, well that’s fine. But I think, you look at any business that’s doing quite well, the marketing or marketing sort of things or when it comes to, they produce a lot of content, and they work quite well.
So yeah, I think it’s a personal on how people, what people want, I guess rather than whether they’re just happy to do what they do, or they wanna run a really successful and have people come to your door wanting to wait in the line, no matter how long and pay premium price for it.
So I guess it’s not every builder, it depends how far you wanna go and whether you wanna do that too, so it doesn’t take a lot of time away to do it.
Start off with one video a week, then a first month, next month, two videos a week, and just keep solely up on a two videos a week and two article posts or two static posts. Ideally it’d be good to get somewhere with 10, around 10 posts a day, morning through to night.
I would say aim for minimum one day a week to start one day a week minimum but then really hit that target of one, seven days a week, every day. At least one piece of content. It doesn’t take long.
- Facebook is probably the best one, Refined Space Constructions or just Joel Minor. There’s a couple its business page there so click on and have a look. Otherwise Instagram as well, but, yeah mainly Facebook.
YouTube channel, but probably most of my content, goes on Facebook. Feel free to jump on and have a look and see what it says, it’s not that hard.
What’d I Say?
What happens is that, the issue is always outside of our comfort zone.
Your choice is to step outside the comfort zone and make that challenge.
At which time, your comfort zone increases in size. But the cool thing about it is, this is a business challenge.
But what happens when you go outside your comfort zone to make that challenge is the whole comfort zone starts to get bigger, which means that, there are issues that happen in your family life, with your health, in your social life, every other area of life’ when you step outside your comfort zone just in one area, every area gets easier to manage in life.
What the end result of that is, is life needs to keep coming up with bigger problems for you, and I’ve had plenty of people where I’ve shared this theory, with this idea, with, I just reject it out of hand because they go, “Well I don’t wanna deal with the problems “that I’ve got now, let alone get bigger ones”.
What they don’t realize is that they’re setting themselves up for, is the exact opposite happens, and I’m sure you know plenty of people like this, that if you don’t go outside your comfort zone and meet the challenges that life’s putting in front of you, the comfort zone shrinks in all areas.
So do you know anyone who is just constantly complaining and the smallest things to you come across as a major drama to them, and it’s the end of the world to them, and it’s because that they choose not to challenge themselves and step outside that comfort zone.
For me it’s really important to get the message across to everybody. There’s a little saying that says, ‘there are no problems, just opportunities brilliantly disguised’. If you can live your life like that, and look at this as an example, as an opportunity.
But you’ve got to ask yourself, what is good about this?
And what can I learn from this? Those two questions are super, super important, to the expansion of your comfort zone. It’s one of those crazy things that many of the Blackbelt members have learned early on, and I’ve implemented it.
But you forget about it pretty quickly, because I have regular conversations with people when they’ve got the shits about something, and it’s something substantial, and it’s probably something that somebody new to this environment would just freak out about.
I’ve gotta take them back to what they were thinking were super, super important priorities an end of the world sort of situations in their mind two years ago, or four years ago, and now those things still happen, and they just take it in their stride.
Like they’ve got systems and procedures, to deal with it. It just doesn’t affect them mentally or emotionally.
For both Andrew and Jeff, I would encourage you to look at this situation, as an opportunity, and it’s not necessarily an opportunity, in the specific area that it’s challenging you in, but it’s definitely an opportunity to manage your state, to ask better questions.
It’s definitely an opportunity to go absolutely 10 to the dozen with profit first. Like, to really change the financial measurement and management, of the company.
There’s lots of opportunity, it’s just your challenge to find it, and I go back to my initial comment that, the real key to this on a daily basis is to compartmentalize it so you don’t allow it to consume you. You give it a certain amount of time, from this time to this time.
So it’s a like a time block approach to it. So you ensure you have other time blocks, to work on things that are probably more important than this.
They just don’t have the same urgency as this.
Please understand that I’ve had this conversation with many builders, specifically about homeowners warranty insurance. It happens a lot.
Q & A
One of the biggest questions, I get through the Facebook group, when we’re talking to people who are applying for our Blueprint Program this question comes up a lot is, how do I get paid for quotes? I’ve been listening to your stuff. I’ve been watching your stuff.
We started telling people “we now charge for quotes”. They’re going well, “that’s nice for you. “I won’t be paying you for a quote, “I’ll go and talk to someone who will do it for free “I can’t get it to work.”
My answer is pretty much always the same. What you’ve basically done there is, it’s equivalent to going to your favorite restaurant, you’ve been going there for ages and I just put the prices up on you, and if I put the prices up significantly, you probably, you won’t say anything you’ll just leave and you won’t come back.
What happens is when people are expecting, a builder to do a quote for free, Which still grinds my gears, like people just don’t get how much time and effort goes into putting even a small quote together for a bathroom, or a kitchen or small reno.
There’s a lot of time, and it’s not even the time that’s the pain. It’s the experience and the knowledge that must be present to go in to put something together that is reliable and is going to be accurate.
If you are expected to do that for free, you don’t have a better story to tell, people are going to tell you to rack off hairy legs.
They’re not going to, go with the payment. However, if you went back to your restaurant, that you always go to, and the maitre d’ grabbed you by the elbow, let’s just assume that this is a COVID free environment again, like it used to be, and he walks you to the table and says, “so we are so excited to have you, in our restaurant.
“We’ve been working really hard to source new ingredients. “The chef has been working like crazy to create a new menu, “we’ve got a new wine guy “that marries the wine up with the food that you choose. “It changes the experience. “We’re super pumped about it. “We can’t wait for you to experience it.
“Please sit down, “I wanna talk to you at the end of it “and get your feedback, about your experience”, and you sit down and they bring amazing wine, they bring amazing food, the service is amazing, and you kind of look at the menu, and the prices are significantly more than what they used to be.
But because the experience is significantly different, you don’t notice the price difference.
Even though their prices went up, you feel that the value you received was just outstanding. So you’re more than happy to pay the price.
That’s what we’re finding with a Builders Business Blackbelt members, their blueprint members, who just within the first couple of weeks of learning the process, are getting a feedback like, “yeah, that’s cool. “In fact, this is a much better way of doing it. “Why don’t all builders do it this way?” It’s the feedback that they get.
Now I’ve gotta be absolutely transparent with you, and those very same builders, when they’re first learning the process are incredibly skeptical.
They just can’t see how it happens. Fortunately, they follow the process, and they ask the question or put the, there is a fee for this proposal on the table, and they kind of sit there, frightened, like a deer in the headlights, wondering what’s gonna happen, they’re gonna get told, no, and they still can’t believe every time it happens, it happens multiple times, and they still go, “I still can’t believe I get the response that I do”.
But everyone says after they’ve done it, they go, “I’m never going back to free quotes ever again”.
Because it’s not even about being paid for your quote, it’s about changing your focus and your communication.
The process that you put your prospects through, that’s the thing that makes the difference, and the real value in it isn’t getting paid, it’s changing the relationship dynamic between the builder and the client.
So what ends up happening, not only do you get paid for your proposal, but the client and you, have a much better relationship and a much better experience throughout the build. That’s the thing that makes a big difference.
It changes the quality and the number of referrals you get. Everything changes by just changing this one dynamic at the start of the process.
So if you’re struggling a little bit with that, I have a little tool that I’m happy to send you out. It’s called The Free Quotes Suck Explainer.
So, if you want a copy of that, it’s just got some stories in it, some guides in it to help you be able to explain to your prospects why free sucks, and why investing a little bit of money and doing it properly at the start can save your clients a ton of time and a ton of frustration.
Just one little shape, it’s pretty simple, but it makes a big difference.
If you want a copy of it, all you need to do is reach out to me at [email protected].
If there’s a comments section under where you’re watching this video, you can just pop a comment in there, and let us know that you want a copy of it and we’ll shoot it out to you straight away. Hope that’s helpful.
Takeaway & Summary
So what’s the takeaway from this episode?
For me, it is being open, being open to doing things a little different. I know when Joel first started, and he was thinking about jumping on The Blueprint Program, there was a lot of hesitation.
But I’ve gotta tip my hat to that guy. He struggles, he is challenged by things but he’s always on the momentum calls that we have every day and he’s asking questions, and he’s just being completely open and transparent and saying, “I still haven’t got this “or I’ve got this problem”.
He’s always asking questions and asking for help. I think most builders find it really difficult to ask for help.
They think that they should know all of the answers. “I should be able To deal with this”. It’s not that simple.
The key to the success of their Blackbelt program, I believe, isn’t me, it’s not the information. It is the community.
When you get in that community you feel incredibly supported. You learn from other people’s mistakes.
You learn from other people’s successes, and the people in the group are more than happy to help share resources. We’ve got a bunch of people, they all do something different and all share it.
So it increases the speed at which people progress and improve their business.
For this to work you need to be open. You need to be open to change, and I know that I get quite negative comments, from time to time in Facebook or about my videos and so forth, calling me all sorts of names and saying, “what the hell would you know, you’re not a builder?”
Well, I don’t have to be a builder to know that this works because I’m surrounded by builders who had a bunch of problems, who were open enough to implement these ideas. They give me feedback on a daily basis on how this is working, and it is working incredibly well for them.
So if that’s something that you want, to learn more about, I’d love you to book a call.
Underneath this video there’s a schedule a call button, just hit that it’ll take you to a form, fill out the form, tell us a little bit about your business, and we can jump on a real quick phone call to see, firstly if we can help, and if we can, well we’ll figure out how that might work.
If you’re just listening to the audio only version of this podcast, all you need to do is navigate to buildersbusinessblackbelt.com.au.
There’s a big orange button in the middle of the top of the website. Just click that, and it’ll take you to that same form and where we go.
So I hope this episode was helpful. I hope you got a lot of insights from Joel, he is an absolute gun. I hope that we get to talk to you in person in the not too distant future to help you overcome some of the challenges that you have.
You’ve got two options, you can keep doing it the way you’ve been doing it but as Dr. Phil would say, “How’s that working out for you?”
If you wanna get the benefits that Joel and other Blackbelt and Blueprint members are getting, it might work for you, it might not but the first thing we need to do is just have a conversation, so hit that button and let’s have the conversation.
That is it for this episode, we’ll be back with another episode before you know it.
I hope this was beneficial to you.
I hope we get to talk to you in person in the not too distant future. I’m Mick Hawes from Builders Business Blackbelt.
That is it for this episode. Bye for now.