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Visual Storytelling Q&A

first question I really want to ask is is talking to stew directly because you had this. You've had an awesome journey, and and you you've created some amazing things. I'm able to help other people make a lot of money and gross, very successful businesses. But where did it all start for you? And how did you kind of know that you were on entrepreneur on the right path? So this is a story that James had asked me backstage to share, and I get nervous every time I share it, because it's it gets its really emotional for me, but I'm willing to share because we're talking about storytelling. So the, uh, my career started many years ago when I wanted to sell products and services online, and I really wanted to, uh I loved the concept of being able to, you know, make money selling, create a product wants and sell it many, many times over. And I'd heard over and over again about this dream of being able to sell products and services on the Internet. And so I decided to give it a try. And, you kn...

ow, much like what you guys are experiencing, right now, like anything you try for the first time is really difficult, right? You bet over after you do it multiple times gets easier and easier. Well, my first time I created this little information e book, and it was called ideas for Halloween, and I just I'm an idea guy. I love come up with different ideas. So I compiled all these different ideas on different things that you could do for Halloween. Different costume ideas, party ideas, etcetera. The problem was that I started this in late August. And, of course, I have a deadline, right? How the words coming up. People are only gonna be searching for that information for so long. So I was really under the gun, and so I hired somebody to help me hired a ghostwriter to help me flush out all the ideas and, um, s So I paid $600 to have this ghost writer help me put it together. But I wanted to do it right, so I hired a graphic desire to help me create some nice graphics. And, um then I thought I was working myself trying to figure out the website and the auto responders and almost stuff this was many, many years ago, and so a long story short, I finally got it ready. And my brother in law was living the experience through me because he was working with me at the time. And so I finally get it up online, and I'm ready toe for the sales to just come rolling in. And they did not come rolling in on, uh, it was like, OK, no problem. I just need to buy some advertising. So I didn't know very much about Google AdWords, but I had heard that this was how people were, you know, driving traffic to their sales letter. So I started buying Google AdWords and I was buying lots of Google AdWords and my brother in law would come in every day. You know, have you made a silly it? I was like, No having. But it's just a numbers game. It's just a numbers game. I just need to buy some more ads, so I'd buy some more eyes. He'd come in the next day. Have you made a salient? No, but I'm confident that it's gonna happen. It just takes a little bit of time. And so I kept buying ads and I kept buying ads. And then finally my wife and I flew to a conference and, of course, we land and we get up to the hotel room and what's the first thing I dio? I checked to see if I've made any sales. You know, it's like all of a sudden model on the plane. This, you know, flood of sales are gonna come in. But I checked the stats and there it waas $7.95. Baby is my first sale. I was like, Yeah, and so I am we celebrate. I was high fiving. I'm like babies. You got captured this this is history. So she took like, a picture of me. I'm sitting at the desk like like this. The fact that even have it in my backpack. I was, you know, And so this is what it was like a big time meaningful to me because at that point I knew that it was just a tweaking process, you know, like I have spent at that point, you know, several. But it was over $1000 in total on advertising and to make a $7.95 sale. Not the best business math, but I knew it was a tweaking process. And so, since then, you know, um, that one sale has led to literally millions and millions of dollars being sold online. Fast forward after that first sale a few years, and we were at our wedding, and my brother in law is retelling that story, and he's telling the audience how every day you'd come in and he'd ask if I'd made a sale and I'd say, No, I haven't. But I'm hopeful it's just a numbers game. Did you make a sale? No. Did you make a sale? No. Did you make a sale? No. And he was telling everybody. He got so depressed himself of hearing the fact that I had put all this effort in and had not made a sale, that when my wife and I flew to that conference, he asked his girlfriend who I didn't know if she could just by the darn product. And I will never forget that moment because I'm sitting there and I looked up at him and tears just started rolling down my face because, like, for me and like this is where I get all crazy because I'm getting goose bumps thinking about it again. Like that First Sale was so meaningful to me because it gave me hope. It gave me the realization that this could happen and that sale has gone on to generate millions. But it would. None of the millions would have happened had it not been for the 1st 1 And so you know, when we're here, we're talking about creating YouTube videos and having that lead to, you know, generating leads for a business and all that stuff. Here's the reality. None of that, you know, making the tens of thousands of 100 thousands of millions of dollars. None of that happens until you make that first sale. And, you know, we talk about bringing out your personality and your characters in your stories. I really believe in that, because for me, it's like you gotta build that relationship with people and you gotta care for every customer like it is your first sale, because it is gonna lead to so much more. And so I'm really you know, it's a great story because it gave me hope that first sale gave me hope. But at the same time. It's also led to so much more. And I just think back to him and I'm so grateful to him because I would I be here. Would I have the business I have today? If it had not been for that, I don't know, I probably would have given up and to believe. And the crazy thing is, there's millions of dollars being made and it was on a fake sale. You don't like fake hope, you know, it's kind of crazy, but yeah, that's That's where it all began. I love led to where we are today. Yeah, that's a good story. Moving forward a little bit. Um, we had a question yesterday that actually came in, and I didn't I probably didn't have the best answer, and I think you could have such a better answer. It was. Does all this stuff work? If I have a nonprofit, um, and you run a nonprofit and I love you to just share a little bit about that. And how you guys have collaborated to use videos as well because you guys didn't show any any videos for your charity today? Yeah. So my wife and I. We have ah, nonprofit called World Teacher aide and we helped build schools over in Kenya, and one of the things that we realized was that video was an integral part of connecting our donors with the people that they were helping. Because so many times, especially for non profits. There's this gap of like I give money and now where does it go and what happens? And you really got to connect that. I give money. Here's what happens. And so we commissioned Dean. Actually, Dean volunteered his time and came with us. He's been with us for two years on the trot, back to Africa, and the first time we just told the story of like, what happens when a donor contributes to building a classroom and it was a great moment because it was able we were able to bridge that connection, and in this past year and Dean, I'd love to get your thoughts on it, too. But we decided to do a campaign with the kids in Kenya, and it was awesome to be able to see them come alive and incorporate them into the video. But there were a lot of challenges with that, too. And perhaps you can kind of speak to how we overcame, like the language challenge and different things by using visuals to again tell words without them having to communicate some things. Yeah. I mean, working with Children is, uh, you know, can be challenging and then working with Children and other countries can be even more challenging. So we decided this time, instead of doing a documentary, wanted to do more of a campaign more, more of a promotion to try to raise awareness. And so, with the limitations of language and time and all this, we just used our creativity. And we just came up with an idea, you know, kind of influenced by earlier sort of artistic endeavors by other artists and sort of using signs, sort of running a couple words on each side and having the Children tell the story through the signs. And I've seen this is a great video. Where can people find this Lincoln viewed on? We're about to launch its OK. It's not even live the whole campaign that we're getting ready to launch. But the key thing with that video was that the music really helps tell the story and we go from It's got two different scenes and it tells what they're. The kid's life was like before the problem, the conflict and now what their life is like now that the school is in their area, you know the resolution and the characters are obviously the kids. So it incorporates. All the things that we talked about was storytelling, and it's all done through visuals and music and at the end, like the end part is, it's a really uplifting happy moment because a lot of times, especially depending on the non profit for anything over in Africa, it's usually like doomsday like Oh, it's so terrible over there. You know, nobody's happy, but that's not the case. The kids were actually really happy. It's an amazing place to be, and we wanted to show that side, and that was really important. So when that launches, we could find that it is that world teacher and doctor. Future aid dot org's world teacher aide dot org's Please everyone, go check that out and you can see another demon stew creation over there. Uh, Dean, I got a quick question for you because we had a question. I think you probably heard it in studio before you guys came up about people having challenges with transferring footage and stuff like that. And I know you. You have clients outside of stew and guys you can find more at rainy media dot com. Is that correct? It's not dot c a or no. So rainy media dot com. Uh, and Dean does does work not just first to, but other people. How do you deal with that whole barrier of people like on the other side of the culture of the management is a huge thing, with file sizes being huge and everything, I guess keep it simple. My tip would be nowadays, when you're shooting on more consumer great cameras, the files are very compressed, and when they're compressed, they're small and you can transfer those. So usually your editor. If you understand the other side of the world, you might send him the compressed files, and then he would un compress them so that he can work with them in case there's some color correction or special effects. He's going to dio, but for me, a lot. I travel for work and then I come back and you have the client actually fly you out to the location because it's nice to I'm assuming it's nice to be part of the whole process. Absolutely. Just like the footage in the work. If I just brought in at the halfway point, you can guarantee the whole concept is gonna be delivered. How I've pitched it. If I'm not involved in that, the other thing, too, Like Dean will send hard drives when I mean, doesn't new project for a new client part of the what? The client paste Board is a new hard drive. So that deacon store all the files for that client on the hard drive. So, like, we have multiple hard drives for our company has multiple hard drives for other companies because of that reason, you know, it's just easier for the hard drive to be in the location of where the, uh, footage is being captured. Yeah, that's great. Well, I could geek out with you guys all day. We are running out of time. I want to take one question from you guys before we we move on. Do we have some questions from you, Christa? Um, I had a question for you guys. I loved the information you shared about all the different types of videos and how you can sort of storytelling each one of them. But I was wondering if you guys have gotten into in the product launches that you've done and how you've sort of built your brand with this storytelling. If you've gotten into a rhythm of when you sort of do each one of these videos, you know, I could imagine doing a sales video you know, right about when it launches or promo video before tips and tricks and demo videos after it launches to keep momentum. But can you guys give us any information about, you know, Do you have a schedule you follow like OK, two weeks after launch were doing a demo video to make sure that we keep that mo mentum going? Or do you know what I mean? Yeah, absolutely. In fact, we sat down but a month ago and mapped out the entire year in terms off the types of videos that we want to do, and it incorporated a variety of the ones that we went over. There's definite case study videos that we're gonna do with our customers, and a lot of those are captured when we're a different location. So, you know, we're not. I'm on the business owner. I'm trying to save as much money as I can. So if I'm flying somewhere, I want to maximize that opportunity as much as possible because the flight and the hotels are already paid for. So can we capture some clients in that area and tell their story? And so, case studies or some We we've got a variety of promotional videos, and those are dependent on when you're looking tow, launch the products or you're looking to do that promotion. So October 23rd is our anniversary slash birthday for a company. So we know that we want to have a promo for that time frame. So then we basically we mark out our dates in the year and we work backwards. So this is where Dean comes into play. So if I say Dean, we need a video for that promo, you know, for that date, he'll say, Okay, we need to have the footage by this time, which means we need to shoot it this time. And so typically for us like we have a case study videos. We have tips videos, which are a lot faster to crank out. So we basically exactly what James was saying. We Bachar stuff will dedicate a day or two, and that's where we'll just crank out a whole bunch of tip videos. And now Dean's team will go to work in terms of producing them, and we release those is ongoing content. And then then we have the promotions, and then we'll do cornerstone video. So, like I'm in the midst right now, um, of tryingto also build my personal brand at stew dot me. And so it's a totally different feel than my company brands. And so we're mapping out. We've got a bunch of ideas in terms of how we're gonna do those, and when we're planning to do those do you want? I just think it's important that you have a strategy for your marketing and that because you know your strategy. But you've also got to get your video producer on board with that because you have other marketing to write, you'll have, you know, just opt in pages or whatever you have. Maybe some prints and brochures or whatever. And he needs to be across all of that, right, Because then you've got a budget. You need to, you know, allocate different funds for different things. And if each one is sort of working in a bubble, then they're not going to help each other. That's the big point. Because when Dean sees all the stuff that I want to do, then he could be like, OK for this. You're really going to need more of your budget here because this is gonna be a higher production video, But we can save some of the costs on some of these other videos so that we have more to build. So he looks at it from a big picture like Okay, I've got this big block to be able to work with in terms of funds or the budget for all these videos. Now, how do I allocate them? And so the tip videos are gonna be a lot cheaper to produce. They're not gonna be a Z involved. They're not gonna be so many characters and costumes and all that kind of stuff. But the cornerstone videos are there gonna be higher production, and so he'll he'll look to allocate that accordingly, and they'll be consistency, right? You need consistency across all of your marketing. So if your artwork looks like this and you're brochures, it needs to be the same in your videos. And same with characters carrying the characters through the different videos. If he knows all the different videos we're gonna do throughout the year, he can start toe. We've the character storylines across all of the different videos, so that's that's another really important piece. Bottom line. Your homework is to go out and find a dean ready Media that the bottom line, I think for an entrepreneur is to plan out your year, Just take out my My suggestion is take out a 12 month calendar and ask yourself what promotions you want to do each month. And then based on that, then you can start breaking things down. Okay, maybe you're not gonna do a big promotion every month. Maybe it's gonna be every three months. That'll be a bigger production video, and perhaps you could have a couple teasers leading up to that, and so you kind of work backwards. But it all starts with taking out that 12 month calendar and saying, What do I want to do each month to keep the business moving forward? Awesome. Great. Awesome. Uh, well, like I said, I could talk to you guys forever. And by the way they flew in here from Canada. They were flying all day yesterday. Their flight was delayed. I'm so appreciative and thankful that you guys So everyone, please. Given some thanks. And some love student me is It's to McClaren's personal site. The Your wish is a wish list member dot com wish list member dot com For all his awesome wish list membership products and plug ins and rhino support dot com to improve your support and, um, helping with your charity, it's World world teacher. A dot org's Thank you, I always I always stumble on that and Dean Rainy at rainy media dot com for, um, if anyone wants to Facebook and Twitter rating Fantastic and show your love and say Thanks time. Let's get around the Plaza