Go video or go home with George Thomas

Speaker 1:

If you’re going to take the risk of running an agency, shouldn’t you get the benefits too. Welcome to Agency Management Institute, Build a Better Agency podcast, presented by HubSpot. We’ll show you how to build an agency that can scale and grow with better clients, invested employees and best of all, more money to the bottom line. Bringing his 25 plus years of experience as both an agency owner and agency consultant, please welcome your host, Drew McLellan.

Drew McLellan:

Hey everybody, Drew McLellan here. Welcome to another episode of Build a Better Agency. Today’s topic is one that, if you’re not talking about it on a regular basis, I promise you, you’re thinking about it, you might be afraid of it, you might be excited about it, but this is a topic that every agency owner, leader, account exec, whatever your role is in the agency, this is a topic that is on all of our minds because, we’re trying to figure it out. So my guest today is going to help us figure it out. So let me tell you a little bit about him, and then I want to dig right into the conversations.

So, George B. Thomas is a recovering youth pastor, a former pub bouncer, but he’s always been around helping people, just at different points in their journey, clearly. Now he is the Resident Nerd at the Sales Lion, which is an inbound and content marketing agency, helping businesses become rock stars in their markets.

George believes that video, which is what we’re going to talk about today, is the next step of the inbound marketing evolution, and he loves helping businesses, in a lot of ways. One podcast like this in his own work at the agency, and even running a video marketing workshops. He is a branding guru, a video marketing ninja, inbound Jedi, I’m not putting these words here. Clearly you are learning about George already.

When he’s not running workshops or speaking around the world, he’s hanging out with his family, enjoying the beautiful world that is North Carolina, and what I love about George is that he’s got an energy and a passion for this, and you’re going to feel it, you’re going to see it, but he also brings the goods in terms of expertise, and he’s going to get down to the really nitty-gritty of telling us, not only what to do, but how to do it. So without any further accolades, George, welcome to the podcast.

George B. Thomas:

Drew, I appreciate it, and I always love when that gets read, because I know when we start throwing out words like guru, ninja rockstar, you’ve got half the audience, which is immediately mad and like, “Uh-uh, really?” And then you’ve got the other parts of like, “Hmm. Oh, this might be good.” So, you guys can judge when we’re done, but I think you’re going to enjoy the ride.

Drew McLellan:

Well, I think the other words are common, but I think the minute you throw Jedi in, then they’re like, “Okay, I’m in for this interview, all right.” So, let’s talk a little bit about video. I don’t even want to waste a lot of time on talking about why video is important, because I don’t think there is an agency person on the planet, who does not know that video is coming like a freight train, and we had better figure out how to jump on that moving train.

George B. Thomas:

Yeah. I mean, just in case like, sometimes we live under a rock, Drew. Sometimes that happens. But by 2019, 80% of the content consumed by your visitors leads, potential customers will be video-based. Bottom line is, if you’re not there, if you’re not in the game, well, then you’re sort of out of business or in the unemployment line. And that’s nowhere that any agency owner or employee wants to be, especially one that is listening to this podcast.

Drew McLellan:

Well, I want everybody to listen to this conversation through parallel tracks. One is, I want you to listen to it from, “How do I serve our clients and what do we need to be good at, to make sure that we are relevant for our clients?” But the other track I want you to be listening through for is, “How do I sell the agency and my agency services?” Because, while many of you are dabbling in video, and some of you are doing a lot of it, most of you are not really doing very much of it for yourself. So, please as we’re talking today, really hear what we’re saying, not only in terms of services you offer clients, but also in terms of your own Bis Dev.

George B. Thomas:

Yeah. Drew, I’m glad you brought that up because when we talk about… A little bit later we’ll talk about video workshops, and I want all the agency owners and employees to know that, we’re not talking about coming out and giving you, the agency, a possible video workshop, but I even go out to agencies and do this thing that is, transforming your agency into a video-based service machine, where we talk about the funnel and what videos and all sorts of things in that. So, I really am glad that you said like, “Look, listen to this as an agency, and listen to this as what you should be doing with your clients.” Because that is key to their success.

Drew McLellan:

Absolutely. So, I think one of the challenges is, especially for agency owners that are my age, that are over 50, I hate to say that, we grew up in an era of agencies, where video was a big deal and a big budget. So you didn’t touch a video for less than 40 or 50 grand, and it was a multi-day shoot, with lots of cameras, and we were shooting on film and… You know what I mean? It was awesome. That’s not the world that we live in anymore. I think every once in a while, we get the opportunity to do that kind of video. But for the most part, those aren’t the videos we’re doing. So, talk a little bit about how we have to change our mindset around quality, because I think for a lot of agency owners, that is a struggle.

George B. Thomas:

Yeah Drew, and here’s the thing. I love that you brought that up, because there is still those big budget like creative videos, and creative is good, but revenue is better. And the type of videos that we’re talking about, our revenue driving videos, they’re the ones that don’t necessarily have to be perfect, but they get produced, and therefore their interview styles, their email signatures, they’re the 80% of the questions that your sales team always gets. They’re the type that you can go ahead and do down and dirty with a mobile device or a prosumer camera, or even using an ad-on like Soapbox from Wistia or GoVideo from Vidyard, where you’re literally using the camera in the machine that you use every day, to do some type of customized like, “Hey Bill, this video is for you.” And Bill’s like, “Oh my gosh, this is amazing.” And then it’s a custom message for that lead. And notice, I’m talking right now in a very specific sales-centric manner, because I want to really hit home the video.

The reason that it is important, there is that consumer conversation I started out with, but it’s also important because video is the ultimate bridge between sales and marketing, and creating content.

Drew McLellan:

Do you feel strongly about that George?

George B. Thomas:

Do you feel strongly about that Drew? Good you tell.

Drew McLellan:

I could feel it. So, help us understand what that really means. So, when I think of a video that is 40 or $50,000, it’s creative, you’re doing storyboards, and it takes weeks of set up, and pre/pro, and we’re going to shoot for three days. I can remember being, early in my career, I would sit in an edit suite for two or three days to put together a 30 second spot.

George B. Thomas:

Yeah, yeah. So let’s talk about this. And I’m going to drop a couple knowledge bombs amongst the story that I’m going to tell here. First of all, what I’m talking about, and let’s just use 80% videos as an example here. And what 80% videos are, it is the questions that your sales team gets 80% of the time, because you want to be able to answer those on your blog, you want to have that content for the sales teams to be able to leverage. So instead of writing a 10 to 15-minute email, they’re able to write a two-minute email and send a link to the video, that is produced and now consistent across your organization, so everybody’s answering it the way that it needs to be answered. Those type of videos, you’re talking about like a little five-second intro, a five-second outro, some texts that might fly in when they make major points in this, but these are the type of videos that you should bulk create.

And what I mean by that is, a lot of companies will say, “Well, video takes so much time, and it’s so difficult because, we set the camera up and the lights up and we do a video, and then, a week later we’ve got to set all this stuff back up and tear it back down.” This is how we teach our clients to do it, is that you do these videos in bulk. So we have at the sales line, this thing that we call rockfest or videofest, where we’ll have our team come in, because we’re virtual. Which by the way, this works for virtual companies, or companies who have all of their employees in the same spot.

But a once a quarter we’ll come together in one spot, we’ll have these things called rockfest, we’ll set up all the gear, and over a day and a half, we will have a list of videos, a list of those questions or a list of other things that we want to do as far as interview-style videos, and we’ll just sit there and do one after the other after the other. Look, the first time, Drew that we did a rockfest, we were able to get in a day and a half 23 videos done, in a day and a half. The second time we did it, we got up to 36, the third time we did this, we did 54 videos in a day and a half. Now this is just raw footage that we’re going to edit and drip out over time, but we have the content to move forward. Now, I will give you a little caveat.

Drew McLellan:

Hang on for just a quick second hold. Hold on that caveat thought. If you shot 50, let’s just call it 50 videos, and that was raw footage, then how many finished pieces came out of those 50 shots?

George B. Thomas:

50.

Drew McLellan:

Okay, so you weren’t slicing and dicing it even more?

George B. Thomas:

Nope. That was 50 concepts, 50 videos, and they would have intros and outros, but here’s the caveat. Don’t try to do 50, because when we got to 50 at the end of the day and a half, we’re like, “We will never do that again.” We realized that about 30 to 35 videos in a day and a half, if you set it up where you have the list beforehand, and you know the bullet points of what you’re going to talk about beforehand, and depending on who you are, you can just talk about the topic without a script. If you can do that, that’s cool.

Or, you have those scripts in place and ready to go as well, depending on how the talent you, the employees, the sales team, the CEO, the CFO, the CMO do this. Because what we’re totally talking about, bigger strategy word here, is insourcing your videos, instead of outsourcing for that 20, 30, $40,000 budget that we talked about originally.

Drew McLellan:

So, if I’m doing this with clients, same model, same methodology, I may or may not be more comfortable in front of a camera. So again, I might have to go a little slower, I might have to have a script, I might have to have a teleprompter to help them with the script, yes?

George B. Thomas:

I love this part though. So here’s what you do. And now, flip on your agency brain for a second, and selling services, you can sell the culture, before you sell the video services. And what I mean by that is, before you go out for that day of shooting, you should have a day workshop. And you’re charging them anywhere from 3500, 5500. I don’t care, charge them $7,500 for a day, and you go, and you get in front of their sales team and their marketing team and their leadership team, and you do a workshop on the principles of communication. And you teach them things like, yes and, that they’re not allowed to stop, but they can always do a retake.

You talk to them about things like, shaking it out and practicing and all those things so that when you get there for the shoot, instead of having the mentality of like, “Oh, being on camera is difficult.” They are like, “Oh, I’m ready for this. We’re educated, we’re smooth, we’ve practiced, we’ve got this right.” So that’s a whole different… So first of all, you’ve made money off the workshop, because you’re teaching them to be amazing communicators in front of the camera, now you get to make money on the actual services of recording, editing, slicing, dicing, and then publishing that content for them as well, if that’s what they want to pay you to do.

Drew McLellan:

Okay. I’ve sold this to a client, or I’ve decided I want to do it myself, what kind of stuff do I need? And I’m sure this is a moving target because, whatever the hot camera is today, by the time someone’s listening to this in 2022, it’ll be something else. But for today, what kind of stuff do I actually need?

George B. Thomas:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we’re quickly flipping into gear. And again, this depends. Because if you sell this, you can sell in two different ways. You can sell the fact that you’re going to teach your clients to insource their own video, and you’re only going to do the production side of it, or you can say, “Hey, I’m going to just do full production for you.” Then you’re worried about what gear that you walk in with. So, to be honest with you, it depends who the videographer is that is going to be running this. Like, what are they comfortable with? You can use anything from a prosumer, Canon XA35 to shoot, the latest Canon Mark IV. Whatever, really it comes to the person who holds the tool.

Drew McLellan:

What am I into Price-wise for a camera like that?

George B. Thomas:

Yeah, yeah. So anywhere for a prosumer, you’re talking about 1500 to probably $2,000. If you’re talking about upper end DSLR, like the Cannon, I think they run around 35 to 3,800. So it can get pricey, but here’s the thing. There is also a mobile option.

There are so many people out there that have the misconception of like, “Oh, mobile video? That’s not even real video.” However, if you look at your phone, your camera, it’s just the ultimate computer that you in your pocket, it will shoot at 1080p, it will shoot at 4K, you can shoot 24 frames per second, you can shoot 120 frames per second, and what’s really crazy now, is you can go to companies like beastgrip.com and get Pro lenses where you could have a Canon 50 mm lens on the end of your phone, and shoot something that looks professionally made. So, how I truly want to answer this.

Drew McLellan:

That’s crazy.

George B. Thomas:

It is, it is really crazy, but it’s possible. It is actually one of the parts of video that I dove really deep for like six months, looking at how a company who had about $800 or less to invest, could actually do video with the mobile devices that they already have, and add pieces to it. So, it’s totally doable. So what I want everybody that’s listening to this, is to realize, if you have $1,000 to spend on gear, or if you have $10,000 to spend on gear, there’s a way that you can do it. You might have to get a cheap set of lights, you might have to use the sun. Last time I checked that’s free light.

You might be able to get a $2,500 pair of lights or, a cheaper mic, a more expensive mic, a cheaper tripod, a more expensive tripod. It doesn’t matter, as long as you’re paying attention to good audio, good video, good lighting and stability, you’re going to be able to create a video that people will engage with.

And here’s what I want everybody to understand. No consumer ever, went to a website, watched a video, and after the video said, “Oh, I think that might’ve been shot with an iPhone 7 Plus, I really wanted to buy that product because it really solves my problem, but dang it, they didn’t use a professional grade camera or outsource the video. So I’m out of here.” No, never. Never has that been said. So just create the video, and put it out there and tell your story. I’m passionate about that too, Drew.

Drew McLellan:

I’m sensing a theme, George. But even on the high-end, what we’re talking about is, less than 10 grand, and you sell one or two video packages, and you’ve recouped it, and now you get to use it for yourself for free.

George B. Thomas:

Oh, absolutely. And here’s the thing. Drew, if you think about it, let’s say we’re going to spend $10,000 on video equipment, which by the way, would give you some sweet video equipment. You’d walk in like a baller. They’d be like, “Oh, look at all this gear.” Because they’re not used to seeing it. If you sell that workshop before the shoot, sell the workshop for five grand. Now, they’ve paid for half of your gear. You’ve really got $10,000 worth of gear for $5,000 worth of an investment, and you’re probably going to charge them more than five grand to shoot the videos and edit it. So really, the first job, if you book it right with the workshop and the production, it’s paid for your gear the first time and everything else after that is butter.

Drew McLellan:

Right, yeah. So let’s talk about the editing tools too, because you can shoot all you want, but you still have to make a finished product. So, there are lots of tools out there. Are there ones that you think agencies should give more credence to than others?

George B. Thomas:

Again, just like with cameras, it depends who’s going to be the user, what they’re comfortable with, because all of this comes down to understanding what we’re using, especially in an agency, the speed at which we can use it, because time is money. I know that sounds like a bullcrap phrase, but if you can do it faster in another platform, then use that platform. Don’t just use a platform because it’s got the name. However, with that said, depending on what I’m working on or what I’m teaching somebody, if they have minimal budget, I’m telling them to go look at something like DaVinci Resolve, because it’s super awesome, and there’s a free version of it, and you can totally kick butt take names.

If they’re not real advanced users and they just need something to kind of slice and dice intros, outros, and I think I’ve told people, “Hey, get Camtasia by TechSmith. It’s the most simple editor ever and it’ll work, and you’ll also be able to double up with it and do screenshots, if you want to do any type of tutorials or teach people on a real down and dirty level, there’s that as well.” And of course, let me just mention this before we get the haters, this final cut pro.

Drew McLellan:

Sure, right.

George B. Thomas:

Then there’s the software that I love to use, and if we can get our clients into what we do, and that is Adobe Premiere and Adobe After Effects, I just love the workflow, and I love the pricing model of a monthly, kind of inexpensive price, so people can get into it, and there’s just like 10 bazillion tutorials, like lynda.com on YouTube, and then you go over to videocopilot.net, which is Andrew Kramer for after effects. There’s like a bazillion and one people that will teach you to do everything that you think you can’t do, until you watch the tutorial and then you’re like, “Ah, man, this video is awesome. Thanks YouTube.”

Drew McLellan:

Great. I can do it, right?

George B. Thomas:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Drew McLellan:

So does it matter who’s behind the camera? Because again, back in the old days, picking the shooter was a big deal, right?

George B. Thomas:

Yeah.

Drew McLellan:

So does it matter today, with the kind of video we’re talking about who’s who’s behind?

George B. Thomas:

It really does. For instance like me, if I’m behind the camera shooting, I have this ability to make people comfortable. I have the understanding of knowing, I need to make them smile. I need to be able to have the technologies or the ideas or the strategies in my brain to tell them, “Hey, let’s go ahead, we’re just going to do a practice run, I’m not even going to record this, [inaudible 00:20:42], I’m hitting the recording button, let’s just go and give it a dry run.” Knowing how that person is, and being able to take them to a place where they’re incredible, is really an important part of this. But also, you have to have somebody, who kind of has a creative vibe. Because, just because you’re doing an interview style or a standup educational, like sales type of video doesn’t mean that it can’t be interesting or cool or creative. So that person, they have to be good with people, a great communicator, have a creative eye.

And I’ll tell you one thing. Whenever we’re looking for videographers, one of the biggest thing is, we talk to folks about, other than the technical skills, is like, “Hey, you’ve got to make sure that they take criticism really well, and that they don’t fall in love with their ugly baby.”

Because there are so many creatives out there, Drew, that fall in love with their ugly baby, and it’s like World War III, when all you just wanted was something moved like six pixels to the left, and it would’ve looked awesome.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. I think agencies struggle with that. I think anybody who’s been in the business for a while, has either gone home crying every day, or they’ve learned to sort of check their ego at the door because, how people perceive our work, and the brutality at which clients or somebody else just goes, “That’s ugly.” Or, “That’s crap.” Or, “That’s whatever.” “Who pooped on the page? Who pooped on the page?”

George B. Thomas:

Yeah, exactly.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. You have to be able to weather that, otherwise you’re in the wrong business.

George B. Thomas:

Yeah, exactly.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. What about in the edit suite? What are the skills that are required there?

George B. Thomas:

So, when I look at this, when I think of this, it has to be somebody who just wants to learn, every single day. I don’t want somebody that thinks that they’re already awesome, that they’ve already arrived, that there’s nothing new that they can achieve, I want somebody who is like, “Oh, I think you can do this in after effects, let me go learn it.” “Man, I don’t know Cinema 4D yet, let me go try to learn that.” “Oh, AR and VR are 360 video? Oh, cool.” So they need to be paying attention to the trends, they need to always want to be learning, and two, they need to be fast, but good. Right?

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, yeah.

George B. Thomas:

Those are the major things I think of.

Drew McLellan:

Now I’m thinking about, okay, so if agency folks are listening to this and they’re thinking, “Well, we should do more video for ourselves.” I want to talk a little bit about what kind of videos you think agencies should be producing for themselves. But first I want to take a quick break, and then we’ll come back and talk about how agencies can use video to promote their own services and products. One of my favorite parts of AMI are our live workshops. I love to teach, I love to spend two days immersed in a topic with either agency leaders, agency owners, or AEs in our AE Bootcamps. But most of all, I love sharing what I’ve learned from other agencies, from 30 years in the business, and all the best practices that we teach.

If you have some interest in those workshops, they range from everything from money matters, which is all about your financial health of your agency to best management practices of agency owners, to new business, to AE Bootcamps and a plethora of other topics. Go check out the list and the schedule at agencymanagementinstitute.com\livetraining. Okay, let’s get back to the show. All right, we are back with George and we are talking video. So before the break, George, I asked the question or I posed the question that, if agency folks are listening to this and they’re thinking, not with their sales hat on, in terms of selling, helping clients do videos, but now they’re putting their own Biz Dev hat on, and they’re saying, “Okay, we should probably have some videos on our own website about what we do. What are some of the effective videos you’ve seen agencies produce that drove sales and results?”

George B. Thomas:

Yeah, definitely. So I’m going to go a couple of different ways with this, Drew. The first thing, I want to put a very micro-actionable tip out there. If you’re listening to this podcast, and you open up your email, and you don’t have a video email signature, that’s immediately the first thing that you want to create for every employee in your agency, because it’s the most used sales and marketing channel that you have. And here’s what you want to do. You want to have a video that’s probably 30 seconds to maybe a minute and a half at the most, and there’s three things that you want to focus in with those videos. And actually every video that I’m about to talk about, even after this tactical strategy, there’s three things that do you need to focus on in these videos.

One, is being human. Two, is being happy, and three, is being helpful. Okay. So let’s just get to that. I do a email signature video, I talk to people about how I’m human. Who I am, what I do for the company, but also, that I have a wife and four kids and I like long walks on the beach, or whatever. If I’m funny, I’m funny in my video. If I’m serious, I’m serious in my video, but I want people to immediately understand who I am, and how I’m going to interact with them when we get into an email conversation, or a real world conversation, they can see my face here. Here’s the key to this. I’m going to go marketing nerd for a second, Drew. So just stick with me.

Drew McLellan:

All right, all right, let’s go there.

George B. Thomas:

70% of the buyer’s journey is done, before they ever pick up the phone, before they ever fill out a form, before you even know they exist. So video, what it helps us to do, what needs to happen is they need to see us, they need to hear us, they need to know us, before we do any of that for them. So video does all three of those things. And if they can see us, if they can hear us, if they can know us, then guess what? They start to trust us. And that’s the baseline, just most impactful thing about video is, positively, you can get trust.

However, if you don’t do this right, you can also degrade trust. So keep that in mind. But the idea is it’s the ultimate trust builder. So that email video signature is like, “Here, let me first show you something that 90% of the market isn’t doing, and let me gain a little trust right in our inbox, so you start to see, hear and know me.” Okay. Now, human happy, helpful. Keep those words in mind, because when you create videos that talk about your company, your products, your services, you don’t want to be salesy, you want to be helpful. Because if you’re helpful, that will sell itself. Trust me, I’ve watched it work, company over company overcome company.

Drew McLellan:

Absolutely.

George B. Thomas:

Happy because whenever you start a video, you should start with a smile. Like we have this thing we do when we’re shooting videos, Marcus and I will be like, “Smile, smile, smile, smile.” And then we’ll be like, “And go.” And because our cheeks are raised, our eye has a twinkle in it, we’re happy, they’re smiling because they see somebody else smiling, so they’re like, “Oh, it’s infectious.” Like, “Oh, I like this guy or girl.” And then human, because you’re not trying to be the smartest guy or girl in the room.

You’re not trying to have an ego, you’re not trying to have a persona, “Oh, hi. This is George B. Thomas, and today we’re going to talk about…” No, you’re not trying to do any of that. And this is why people, I think, sometimes feel like they’re crappy on camera, because they’re not focused on being human, which, when I say that, what I mean is, just be you.

Just communicate like you normally communicate. So be human, be happy, be helpful. Now, what I want to say is any of those videos for products, services, landing pages for conversion, do that. The other side of this and it’s super important for agencies that they aren’t quite paying attention to yet is, getting good employees. You’ve got to show the culture. You’ve got to talk about the work. You’ve got to talk about the vision. You’ve got to show the mission. Because here’s the thing Drew, no matter if you’re a customer, or you’re a potential employee, we’re all facing the same problem. And that is, if we can’t see it, we don’t believe it. So video is truly the only way that you can show the world that everything that you’re talking about, the things that we say, that they are true.

Drew McLellan:

I love it. So, basically I should be doing intro videos, if I’m an agency?

George B. Thomas:

Yeah.

Drew McLellan:

I’m assuming the agency owner, I should be talking about the mission, vision values of our agency, I should be doing a video, and maybe this is an employee video talking about the culture of the agency.

George B. Thomas:

You’ve got to… You all do a chili cook-off, you all do a salsa thing, great. Do a Facebook Live. Show the 17 dips that everybody brought in, and how you’re going to have a party, and show the refrigerator full of beer, or a Cherry Cola, or whatever it is that you drink at your agency, because then it’s real, and I get excited, and it shows some of the projects.

Drew McLellan:

So, let’s go back to Facebook Live for a second. I think a lot of agencies are hesitant to use or do Facebook Live because it’s live. So, talk about that fear a little bit. What are some best practices around that?

George B. Thomas:

Yeah, this amazes me. So, I am going to give a caveat to this though. If you’re not a great communicator, then live video, whether it’d be Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or the next new platform that comes out, might not be for you. Or you realize, “I’m not the greatest of communicators, let me focus on how to be a great communicator, so I can leverage that because Facebook Live in general is super powerful. Facebook is giving special treatment to live videos.” And then if you do it on a page, you can also boost that live video, so it gets special treatment, “And I can throw some dollars at it.” Anyway, if you can communicate, great. It’s awesome. But here’s the part, Drew that actually amazes me, is people will be like, “Yeah, but that junk is a live, man. What if I mess up?”

And if you just stop for a second, and you think about, when you wake up in the morning, and you go into your office, and you talk to an employee, you’re live. When you get in front of a group of people around the conference table, and you’re selling your services, you’re live. Never, ever, in any sales or marketing scenario, do you get mid-sentence and go, “Uh-oh, I screwed up, hang on. Do you all mind if I start over?”

No, no, no. You just keep going. And that’s exactly what you do with Facebook Live, or any other live platform. There is this improv thing that we love to teach called yes, and, it just basically, whatever happened was supposed to happen, so keep on rolling. And I can’t tell you, out of all the Facebook Lives, I don’t know if I’ve ever had one that was perfect. Like I flubbed up on a word or I forgot part of my story, but the fact is that I’m not… I want everybody to hear this. I’m about to preach, this is tweetable. I’m not paralyzed by perfection, because I’m focused on publication.

Drew McLellan:

Nice.

George B. Thomas:

If it’s out there, it exists. If it’s out there, people can see it. If it’s out there, then it’s “Real”. There could be a whole bunch of jokes right there. But anyway, that’s what you got to focus on. I need to publish, I need to hit that button. I need to get over myself, and I need to realize, even though I think I have a face for radio, that I’m about to drop some bombs for people to be able to understand how they… Especially agencies. You can literally teach people how to change their business, their life, their community, and through that, the world. I know that’s some big thinking, but that’s the power you have, if you would just be like, “Hey, I’m going to get on here and just teach people how to be awesome.”

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. And that also rolls into one of the reasons why agencies don’t do more video for themselves, it’s because they’re uncomfortable on camera in general, right?

George B. Thomas:

Got to fix it. Got to fix it.

Drew McLellan:

And what is the fix? I mean, is the fix just doing it more often so you get more comfortable? Is the fixed going to a Dale Carnegie, and learning how to speak better? What is the fix? If somebody is self-conscious about their appearance, if somebody feels like they look older, taller, shorter, fat, or whatever their thing is, and they hate the way they look on camera or in pictures, how do you help clients or yourself get over that?

George B. Thomas:

Yeah. There’s so much to unpack there, there really is. So the first part, and this is the part that I had to deal with because, as an aging old guy, whose beard doesn’t grow in, and is about 50 pounds overweight, and has this thing with his eyebrow, that it doesn’t grow in one area, nobody paid attention to that, until I just mentioned all of that.

Drew McLellan:

Don’t they have pencils or something, you can draw that in?

George B. Thomas:

Yeah, yeah. My daughters, can you draw that thing for me? No, but see the thing is, nobody paid attention to that, for any of this podcast, if they can see it on video, obviously if you can hear it on audio, well, then I don’t know what to tell you. But just envision this older plump dude, who feels like he might not be good enough to be on camera, but what you have to do is you just have to let go, right?

Drew McLellan:

Yeah.

George B. Thomas:

So, for me, what it comes down to, and there’s this fundamental piece that inside of your own spirit, you have to realize that the people that you’re going to help are more important, than the person that’s holding you back, which is yourself. So, if you truly position yourself to that, “I’m going to put a dent in my universe, and the way that I’m going to do that is help people to be better, to be awesome, to do business in a certain way, to create these awesome pieces of content, or a brand or whatever it is.” Then you’re like, “I’m sort of insignificant in the mix, other than the knowledge that is coming out of my brain.” So that’s one thing. You just get over yourself, trust me. Everybody’s going to love you, you’re going to be awesome.

The other thing is yeah, you do have to put some time into becoming a great communicator, or a better communicator, and it’s what… You mentioned Dale, I’ll mention normal people, not normal people, but today, I would look at Michael Port, right?

Drew McLellan:

Right.

George B. Thomas:

He has a great podcast, [crosstalk 00:35:35]-

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, yeah.

George B. Thomas:

Yeah. But the reason I love the podcast, it’s because it’s like micro-sections of the book. But anyway, just look up Michael Port communication, you’ll find it, and focus on that. Here’s the other thing. I’ll tell you what? This is cheating, sort of. The other thing that I did for a long time is, in YouTube, I would set my my subscriptions to people that I wanted to watch speak all the time. I can not tell you the amount of time that I sat and watched Jay Baer, Seth Godin, Marcus Sheridan, Gary Vaynerchuk, and just watched the way that they would speak on stage, until the point where you’re almost ingraining it into your subconscious, of that’s how you’re going to communicate.

Again, is it cheating? I mean, we’ve got the internet people, use it. Is Google cheating? No, it’s just something we can do. so get over yourself, pay attention to the way that other people communicate that you want to communicate, invest some time in communicating, probably. But then I think you mentioned the biggest thing also, Drew, is that, do your first, do your second, do your seventh, do your 50th, do your 100th.

On of the things that I love showing people, is I show them the very first HubSpot tutorial that I ever did. Which by the way, just a side caveat, this is all about video, but where my brand got big and kind of, I don’t want to use the words blew up, but became a little bit of something, is in the HubSpot marketing automation space, because I’m the only guy on the internet that has created over 400 video tutorials for the HubSpot and HubSpot CRM platforms. And I don’t even work for the company. But I show people the first video that I did, and oh Lord, is it crazy? And I make fun of it. Like, I make fun of it.

And then I show them one of the most recent ones that I’ve done, and you could just see night and day. And I sit there and I tell them, “Look, folks, you’ve got to practice,” and there’s this acting term, “You’ve got to embrace the messy.” So you just know that for the first 5, 10, 20, it might not be great, but it’s going to be out there, because you’re going to start to feel-

Drew McLellan:

But you published it. I mean, I think that’s the key. It’s not to practice it, and then delete it, or throw it away. So the video that you make fun of, the very first video you did, how many how many views does it have?

George B. Thomas:

Oh, several thousands.

Drew McLellan:

So no one’s not watching it because it’s not your best work, right?

George B. Thomas:

No.

Drew McLellan:

They’re watching it because… And I think this is of the things we have to sort of wrap our head around too. They’re watching it because you have knowledge or information that they need to have, and they’ve gone looking for it because the Google knows all, and they come up on you. So, they don’t care how great the video quality is. And I’m not suggesting for a minute, that agencies put out crappy video. That is not what I am saying, and I know that’s not what you’re saying either. But what we’re saying is, do it enough that you get good at it and better, but it’s okay if it’s not perfect.

George B. Thomas:

Yeah. And here’s the thing. By the way, there’s nothing wrong with recording a video and deleting it. We’ve [inaudible 00:38:58], but there’s enough that we still left out there. And what I want you to think about on this one is, think of somebody who, for the first time is learning how to do the high jump in track and field. Which just is a funny example for a short white dude. But anyway, when they do the high jump, they don’t put it at the first top notch, when they’re first learning how to do this, they put it a level that they’re sort of comfortable with, and they jump, and they get over it, and then they practice their technique.

They practice their technique where they’re comfortable. And then when they’re like, “Ah, this is good. Let’s raise it up.” And because they practice their technique, they can raise the bar higher, and higher, and higher, and higher. And that’s what you need to do with your videos. Practice your technique where you’re comfortable. Snapchat, it sort of goes away. Instagram Live, it it sort of goes away. Facebook Live, you can delete that post when you’re done if you don’t want to see it anymore. But practice, practice the technique, and then, then get in front of a prosumer camera, a phone with the camera on, a DSLR with a camera on, and crush it, because you’re raising your own bar, because you practice your technique over and over and over again.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, yeah. Really a great point. So let’s say an agency has made all these videos, I want to go back. So we should do intro videos, we should do mission, vision values, we should do culture. What about, actually, we should show some of our work. What videos should an agency be producing that are actually more sales-oriented, or should they not do that?

George B. Thomas:

I think answering the 80% questions, is really sales videos, I think having an email signature is a sales video, I think that going more custom, with somebody’s name and actually doing a custom video for one person is very salesy, but in a very helpful way. I think it’s not so much the type of videos that they need to create because, I don’t want to limit anybody. If it’s out there, do it. Although, I really have an issue with animated videos. I don’t know why, but anyway, I’m talking about videos with like human beings, because at a fundamental level, this is truly about showing how human your brand is, how the humans inside of your company actually are, because we all buy from a human. We don’t buy from a company. We end up buying because we liked the guy’s shoes. Or we liked the way the girl sold us, or talked to us about the thing, educated us on the thing. We buy because they seem to just be kind of cool.

That one individual or two individuals that we actually had contact with out of the company. And if we’re going to take this to a very salesy place for a second, what I want any sales rep that might listen to this because the agency owner has like, “Hey, Bob listen to this podcast. You’ve got to listen to this.” If you’re a sales guy, and you’re listening to this, first of all, thank your agency owner, and then start to listen. Back in the day, we used to have two to four minutes to sell ourself, and you know as a sales person, in your core, if you can sell yourself, you can sell anything. The consumer has taken that away. You don’t have that two to four minutes anymore. The only way that you steal that two to four minutes back, is by having videos on the website that show you, who you are, how awesome you are.

The 70% of the buyer’s journey, that’s where you’re stealing your two to four minutes back. That’s why it’s important for sales. What I will say to agencies though, is something more along the lines of this. Are you creating videos specifically for social, that is creating a buzz? “No.” You should. Are you creating videos specific for your proposals, so that you can explain the complex and make it simple? “No.” You should. Are you creating videos for your landing pages to help conversion, because people truly know when they fill out that three to five field form, what they’re going to get on the other side? “No.” You should. Are you creating video instead of eBooks as a 5, 6, 7 video series, where that’s what’s on the thank you page, talking about email marketing, or pistons for jet airliners, or whatever it is that you sell? “No.” You should.

You see, those are the types of things that you need to focus on is, where do we fill the funnel to the brim with video, which Drew, not to be like… And also at the workshop we teach, “But I’m going to be there for a second.” Part of the workshop that we’ve gone to for agencies is like, “Here’s your funnel. Awareness, consideration, decision and delight, after their customer. Here’s the types of videos that you should create in each one of those funnel areas, and this is why you’re creating those types of videos.” And we show examples of set videos. So the roadmaps out there, you’ve just got to get it and go with it.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. And teach your clients.

George B. Thomas:

Yeah, absolutely.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, absolutely.

George B. Thomas:

An educated client is the most amazing client. And some agencies, and this is going to get philosophical for a second. I feel like there’s a lot of agencies out there that try to keep their clients dumb, because they feel like by doing that, you’ll always be able to provide them services. Like, “If we keep them dumb, we’ll always have them in the hopper here.” And I guess, I just live in a different world, where I’m trying to educate my clients, to the point where they’re pushing me to be better. I’ve already taught them all the tactics and strategy, so, I better learn some new ones.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. Well, and I think it’s easier to have more sophisticated conversations with an educated client, who understands the value of what we provide. I think it’s difficult when a client is unsophisticated, for them to attach the right amount of value to the price tag that we’re putting in front of them, whatever that price tag is.

George B. Thomas:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You guys do this in like two minutes. I mean, this is like-

Drew McLellan:

We do it on a computer. How hard can that be? So what’s the biggest mistake, other than not doing it? What’s the biggest mistake-

George B. Thomas:

Oh. [crosstalk 00:45:13].

Drew McLellan:

I’m not giving you the Slam Dunk, George. Other than not doing it, what is the biggest mistake agencies make, in terms of video?

George B. Thomas:

They assume too much. So, I’m going to tie video, a mentality around video to a mentality that most people agencies or consumers, business owners, not really consumers, because consumers actually don’t believe this at all. Business owners, agencies believe. As people, how many pages do you think that people will read of your website? And it doesn’t matter if you’re in Boston, if you’re in LA, if you’re in Scotland. The answer that we always get is, one to three pages. So the biggest issue that I see with agencies who have done it, is that they feel like they’ve done video because they have something on their home page. “Oh yeah, we do video, we’ve got a video on our homepage.” No. That’s not doing it. There’s an agency buddy of mine, who is just finishing up 129 videos-

Speaker 1:

Holy Buckets!.

George B. Thomas:

Yeah. Because he did a website relaunch for his agency, and he knew that for every page, he wanted a video on every single page. Every landing page, every product page, every service page. So they sat down and they figured out, “How much time will it take? How long should the videos be? What do we want to talk about?” But he just finished up 129 videos, that will be on his site when he relaunches. Now, that is doing video versus just like, “Oh yeah. We’ve got one on our homepage.” So your consumer will watch… The moral of the story is, usually consumers will read anywhere from 30, 50, 100 pages of your website. When they’re going to buy something, consumers will way more video than you’re going to initially give them credit.

So continue to produce consistently over time. Like one video a week, two videos a week, whatever, and do it consistently. And here’s the thing too. I’ll give you another thing that agencies sometimes mess up, is they’ll create one video, and they’ll think that means that they can publish it on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, wherever. No. You should have a strategy that is like, “Here’s the master video. It’s going to live on YouTube, but we’re going to create teases for Facebook that point to YouTube.” Or, “The master’s going to live on our website, and we’re going to tell part of the story on YouTube. Hey, you want to learn more? Go over to…” Blah, blah, blah, blah, “And we’re going to tease out YouTube on Facebook, or the website on…”

But it’s not that like, “Oh, here’s our three-minute video and let’s just publish it everywhere.” Plus you might even want to have different messaging, right?

Drew McLellan:

Right. Depending on the audience.

George B. Thomas:

Yeah. If I’m on Facebook, I’m going to be a little bit more loosened, a lot more funny because I know that like, “My aunt, my cousin, my mom, and my next door neighbor might watch this as well.” But if I put it on LinkedIn, I might be a little more buttoned up, actually throw a suit jacket on, because I realize that it’s a business community that’s going to be paying attention to this.

Drew McLellan:

Right, yeah.

George B. Thomas:

Yep.

Drew McLellan:

Well, George, you did not disappoint. I knew that you would have a thing or two to say about video, and I knew that you would have some enthusiasm around the topics. So, thank you for delivering on both of those expectations exponentially.

George B. Thomas:

Absolutely. This has been a ton of fun.

Drew McLellan:

If folks want to learn more about your work, what’s the best place for them to find you?

George B. Thomas:

Yeah. I’m going to give you a couple of things. First of all, if you’re trying to figure out where to start with video, and this, by the way is not a lead gen opportunity, there is no form that I’m asking you to fill out. A lot of people want to know, where are we at to where we need to get to. I’m just going to tell you to go over to the salesline.coms/assessment, that’s a free video assessment you can take. If you’ve heard us talk about workshops a couple of times during this podcast, and you want to see what in the world is a video content, a workshop, a production video workshop, then just go over to the salesline.com/video, and you can check those out.

However, because my three words that I live by are, being human, being happy, and being helpful, if you just want me to help you, if you just want to have a conversation, if you just want to see my smiley face, then you can go over to Facebook at Mr. George B. Thomas or the Twitters, at George B. Thomas, and then we can just communicate over there.

Drew McLellan:

Awesome. This has been great. Thank you for your generosity. Thanks for sharing so much and packing it into a brief of a conversation, I appreciate it.

George B. Thomas:

Drew, I totally appreciate it. Thanks for having me on.

Drew McLellan:

You bet. That wraps up another episode of Build a Better Agency, hopefully you found it incredibly helpful and inspiring, and that you are ready to go out and do some great things. I also want to talk to you about another tool that we’ve built, that I would love to offer you. So, as you’ve probably heard me preach, I believe a lot of agencies chase after the wrong new business prospects.

And I think we do that because we have not taken the time to clearly define who our sweet spot clients should be. And the way you do that is by looking at your current clients, and then developing out who your prospects should be, based on your best current clients. So we’ve put together a Sweet Spot Client Filter, say that five times fast, that I would love for you to take advantage of, and for you to use inside your shop, to figure out exactly who you should be targeting for new business. To get access to that free tool, all you need to do is text AMI, for Agency Management Institute, as you might imagine. AMI, text that to 38470. Again, text, AMI to 38470, and we will get the Sweet Spot Client Filter out to you right away.

Thanks again for listening, if I can be helpful, you can find me as always at [email protected]. Otherwise I will touch base with you next week with another great episode. Talk to you soon.

Speaker 1:

That’s all for this episode of AMI’s, Built a Better Agency, brought to you by HubSpot. Be sure to visit agencymanagementinstitute.com, to learn more about our workshops, online courses, and other ways we serve small to mid-size agencies. Don’t miss an episode, as we help you build the agency you’ve always dreamed of owning.