Master Video Marketing: Top Tips for Entrepreneurs with Dan Bennett

You can Dan Bennett at
Website: https://videoforentrepreneurs.com/linkstack/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/videoforentrepreneurs/

#KrisWard
#VideoMarketing
#EntrepreneurTips

Dan Bennett Podcast Transcription

[00:00:00] Kris Ward: Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Win The Hour Win The Day, and I am your host, Kris Ward. And today in the house, we have Dan Bennett and he is video expert, professional production guy.

[00:00:12] I don’t know what you want to call yourself, Dan, but you got it going on and you really rock videos. So you’re going to help us rock ours. Welcome to the show, Dan.

[00:00:21] Dan Bennett: Hey, thanks for that intro. I can feel the energy already. This is good.

[00:00:25] Kris Ward: Okay. The first thing that we’re going to say when we’re not as good at video as you is we’re going to say we were not given at birth that resonating radio voice that you got going on.

[00:00:36] So that’s a step up you got, but I’m sure you’re going to say no, it’s equipment. It’s a microphone. But I think he got a little going on there with the radio voice and I think that helps. Don’t you agree?

[00:00:46] Dan Bennett: Yeah. Yeah. I don’t shy away from it. There’s some natural stuff going on there that I’m thankful for a fun little story behind me, finding my voice as well, if we want to dive in at some point, but yeah, I don’t take it lightly because it’s a big part of me helping people more comfortably navigate what can be pretty scary, which is putting yourself out there on video.

[00:01:04] Kris Ward: I do find when I have watch your videos on LinkedIn, whatever, not only can I learn, I’m never going to have your, nor do I want your masculine voice, but there is a pacing and there is a calmness and it does remind me to slow down. Although I could have that reminder once every 15 minutes and it hasn’t yet made the impact I’d like it to, but I am getting, I hope better.

[00:01:28] All right. So let’s talk about video. So Where do we start when we’re choosing content? Cause it is just not an option anymore. Like we, as I say, suck it up buttercup, you gotta do videos. It is what it is. There is no getting around it. You have to do videos. Are we in agreement of that?

[00:01:49] Dan Bennett: Yes. Yeah. And it’s obviously something I’m biased towards cause it’s my work.

[00:01:53] But if I didn’t do this work, I would be sharing the same opinion with you. It’s just where we’re at.

[00:01:58] Kris Ward: Yeah. You can’t not do videos. Okay. So now my question is we keep yinging and yanging back and forth between people want to see you real and people want to see you raw. And sometimes I think we get too real and too raw and whatever.

[00:02:13] We crossed the line of too much sharing and… and then it’s supposed to be like, they’re in your world. And then I see someone like you where it’s more polished and you talk. I’ve just recently watched a video where you’re talking about scripting and I’m thinking, Oh my gosh, scripting. Am I not supposed to be having a casual conversation?

[00:02:30] So where does this all end, begin and end? And is there times we script and times we don’t script? Where are we to start?

[00:02:38] Dan Bennett: I love that you said, there are there times we script and times we don’t cause it reflects many of the questions I get weekly to which they have an answer of yes. And that’s not always a fun answer to give.

[00:02:48] A lot of the work I do, I call it gamut thinking, and there’s generally two polar opposites on a spectrum. And that’s what we see the most of in a piece of content or from the guru or whatever. And generally most of us are trying to aim somewhere in the middle of that. So question I get all the time is polish and publish or better done than perfect.

[00:03:07] Dan, what do I do here? And I say, yes. And the way I think about it is like a cocktail. Everyone’s got their own cocktail. I can’t tell you what you like, but I can experiment with the ingredients and with the recipe until you find something you like. So in polish or publish version versus, just get it done.

[00:03:24] Generally. I’m like, okay if you’ve never had a screwdriver before, Half orange juice, half vodka for most, maybe that’s a little strong next drink, 75 percent juice, 25 percent vodka. No, that’s not so bad. You have to do that with your work as well. So yes, we wanted to represent our brand and ourselves polish, but we don’t want to sit on it so long.

[00:03:44] We never released the video or done them perfect. And we got to find our space and almost every pain point or topic that we help people solve. We’re helping them find their place on that gamut.

[00:03:55] Kris Ward: That is interesting. Although now I’m going over the recipes of drinks, but anyhow, okay, stay focused. Okay. So if the world was a perfect world though, do you think that most of the time it should be scripted? I know we’ve gotten away from that. Hey guys, I just wanted to hop on here. Like the problem is whatever it is we’re doing all of a sudden, this is the next thing we have to do until you see 4, 000 people do it in 20 minutes.

[00:04:19] And then they say, no, we’re not doing that anymore.

[00:04:21] Dan Bennett: Yeah. Yeah. One of the ways that we help clients is through a monthly subscription video editing process and everyone who shows up and says, Hey, can you do a fill in the blank style edit for us? We turn all those people away because essentially what they’re doing is trend chasing and that could be good for the moment, but it’s not good longterm.

[00:04:38] So we focus on brand integration and storytelling because those things never get old. Of course, we do work mostly with professionals and entrepreneurs, so they understand how, what it’s like to integrate a brand. They also understand what it’s like to develop their own style. Cause they’ve done that through business.

[00:04:53] So we try and get people to open up and embrace the things they think people might not like about them on video and let them know that’s probably their superpower, your quirky sense of humor, how fast you talk. Your high nasally voice that maybe you hate, but your audience might love. We start to talk about those things.

[00:05:09] Cause that’s how you actually differentiate not by following those trends that you mentioned Hey guys, I’m just wanting to hop on. And if I hear it one more time, I’m going to burn something down. But I think a big part of being natural is exploring these things like scripting bullet points, outlines, or just the top of your head and figuring out what works for you and figuring out where you can flow.

[00:05:28] And in most of the work we do with people, really what I’m trying to do is get the gap between having a great idea and comfortably hitting record to be as small as possible. So we don’t have to get a running jump over it. We can just step over it each day and get to work. And that’s what I’m trying to do.

[00:05:42] Kris Ward: Okay. This is making sense. And you are, I am thinking, looking at it differently. And now I know, go back to the cocktail example. And I understand here’s the ingredients we have. What are we going to do with them? Because it did take me a long time in the beginning when it’s like, all right, shove, push yourself out, get out there, get on stage.

[00:06:01] It’s social media. And I really struggled with it in the beginning because I felt like If you as a speaker, when you invite me to your stage, okay, I was invited and with social media, you’re just walking by and trying to tug at your sleeve to get attention. And so I felt a bit foolish and I also felt then I was, you don’t know me at all versus somebody who invited me to speak.

[00:06:23] So then I was putting shoulders back, trying to be more professional, more grown up and a watered down version of who I am. When I just got tired of that for a bunch of reasons. And I’m like, here I am. Yes, I speak too quickly. I flub my words. I do all these things. And then all these people were complimenting me on my energy and my realness.

[00:06:42] And I’m like, Oh, all right. Like you told me that years ago, right? Cause I was trying to be a refined version of other people that I envy and that’s their strength, not mine. So I think now. I’m getting you’re saying here, the soon as we turn the camera on, even if you’re comfortable in the camera, like I’m not scared of it, but it’s still by turning that light on, you change the perception of what you think you should be delivering or what the audience wants. And therefore you get the recipes off.

[00:07:16] Dan Bennett: There it is.

[00:07:17] Kris Ward: Okay.

[00:07:17] Dan Bennett: Yeah. Drop the mic. Shut down the show.

[00:07:19] Kris Ward: I’m done.

[00:07:20] Dan Bennett: It’s all in a nice bow and I’m not just saying that you just absolutely encapsulated the whole thing. In 2020, like many people lost everything. I was also a landlord at the time. So many struggles all at once had to shut down the business and take care of some things.

[00:07:36] And I disappeared into the Michigan wilderness for just shy of a couple of weeks. No real agenda. Just trying to find myself took a whiteboard and a book and was just like, what’s next in my life? I need to reset here. Had a bunch of micro epiphanies. And one of those was like, I really need to get honed in on who I’m working with.

[00:07:53] I got to start really handpicking my clientele because I want to enjoy my work. So I sent out an email to very hand selected group of people, 34 people off my mailing list who are all like I call them colleagues, just other entrepreneurs that I’m friends with former clientele, other creators, I know just stuff like that people I could trust.

[00:08:11] And I sent out an email and was like, Hey. Like many it’s 2020. It’s crazy right now. I’ve lost everything. I’m starting over. I’m not asking for anything except for you to keep me in mind because I will be ramping back up sometime this year. And I’m not even asking for referrals or anything. Just keep me in mind.

[00:08:26] I’m just letting you guys know what I’m up to. And I got 100 percent response on that email. And it was, it ran the gamut of this was so inspirational that you were so vulnerable with us and all the way to Hey, thanks for keeping me in mind. I actually have some stuff I’m thinking of. So when you’re ready, let me know.

[00:08:40] And there was such a like vivid response that I was like, Oh, I never get a hundred percent, open on my newsletter. So I’m going to take advantage of this. And I wrote all the people again, I said, Hey, fun thought experiment. This is like a week later. Fun thought experiment. Say a journalist came by and they held a microphone in your face and they’re like, Hey, that Dan Bennett guy, right?

[00:08:58] And you’re like, yeah, I know him. And then they say to you if you were to say he had a superpower, what would it be? And I got 18 responses that time. And 12 of them all said, Very similar, if not the same thing. And it was something I’d never heard before. You know what I’d tell him? It’s your voice. When I watch your videos, I feel calm.

[00:09:16] This scary video thing comes, becomes a little less scary. Or when we worked together, even though I was anxious, you always found a way to just calmly walk me through. And I remember your voice being something that could go, I had never heard this in my life. Now, I never heard your voice makes me want to run away either, but I never heard that it actually made an impact.

[00:09:34] So I held on to that and I haven’t let go since 2020 finding that my voice is one of the tools in this toolbox or the stirring spoon for my cocktail is something that I can embrace and move forward. And a lot of times you might look at say YouTube where I exist. And say, wow, this guy’s kind of monotone and slow and he’s not all hyper like all these videos that are getting millions of views maybe this is the wrong way to do it.

[00:09:57] But then when you talk to my clientele, they love my videos, they love my approach. So it’s that sort of thing where if you take the time to find what works for you, that will attract the audience as opposed to trying to attract an audience based on what other people already have. And it’s worked for me.

[00:10:12] Kris Ward: That is a very powerful lesson because when you’re looking at other people’s stuff online or somebody says something like, I’m not good at being vulnerable. And the problem isn’t that I’m not, is that even in my personal life with the people I am closest to, if I have a situation, I always say, okay, what are we going to do next?

[00:10:31] Let’s move forward. We can’t sit in it. I don’t go into the past. If I didn’t like what was happening before revisiting, it does not work. Soothe me. So it’s just my focus, right? And so then I’ll tell you if I was going through that, I would have buckled down, worked even harder and nobody would have known, but it has its deficits.

[00:10:47] Cause then, it’s like writing a book. Like I’m much better talking about, Oh, I’m writing it. It’s coming. It’s coming. It’s coming where my mentality is. I’d rather show you what I’ve done instead of telling you what I’m going to do, which is a strength and weakness.

[00:11:00] But what I hear from that story is. We see stuff online all the time when people are sharing and sharing some story or whatever that they were ostracized or something all their life in your, cause they had whatever ABC and you’re thinking, Oh, I think that’s the best thing about you. And we all know in order to stand out, you have to be different, but then you’re right.

[00:11:21] We’re chasing the sameness. So for me, I thought it sounded very juvenile, very unprofessional, very all over the place with my energy. It just, I was like, Oh, I got to contain this. I have to look road up here, people. Okay. And then somebody just last week had put in a post. I just got off a call with the high energy Kris Ward and Oh my gosh, wasn’t that fun?

[00:11:41] Didn’t you feel better? Like I was like, what the hell? So I think whatever it is we have, you’re right. Then we need to lean into that because first of all, it’s a lot of work to try to overcome it to make a video. So now we need to get to the good stuff and the content for all our headspaces, the overcoming these things that are natural to us. And so we’re not focusing on the work anyhow.

[00:12:05] Dan Bennett: Yeah. That you nailed it again. And what’s funny too, as I said in the beginning, like I can feel the energy. This is going to be fun. That doesn’t mean I have to try and match your energy. That means I get to let your energy wash over me and enjoy that process while we talk.

[00:12:17] Yeah. Yeah. It’s the beauty of it. I would watch your stuff, not only for the content, but for your energy. And if I found another person like me, I might turn away from that because it’s wow, this guy talks really slow and it’s very boring, yeah, finding our audience through being ourselves.

[00:12:30] And it always reminds me of, especially in America, you grow up in a lot of households are like, Hey, be an engineer, a doctor, a lawyer, a dentist, whatever, go to college, make money, build a family, white picket fence. And I always found it fascinating when I was young, I’m from a broken home, single mom, who’s an ultimate mother, got us out of a terrible situation, come from poverty, all this stuff I found.

[00:12:54] Critical thinking very early on, and I would see these adults, like you got to go work at general motors. Cause I’m originally from Michigan. So that’s why everyone worked. And then when people would die and they were sad or they celebrated them, it was always the artists and the outcasts and the musicians.

[00:13:08] And I’m like, but that’s all the stuff you tell us. We can never make a living at, but that’s who you celebrate. Once they’re gone, the sports heroes and the commentator, all this stuff. And it’s like, why are we told to like stuff all that down? But then shown that’s who we celebrate later. So I love working with people and slowly over time, getting them to embrace their quirks and their personalities and the things that actually set them apart.

[00:13:31] Kris Ward: That’s very interesting to me too, because I really did think, let’s do business therapy and everybody listen in. I did think, oh my gosh, poor Dan, I could overwhelm him. Like even in the beginning I thought, all right, let’s see if he can do this because I would have thought I need to tone this down even for you because you’re all Soothing and got this great cadence.

[00:13:50] And I’m just going to be all over the place and be high energy. And this is going to be, you’re going to need a nap after you deal with me. So I still thought that, and I think it’s really interesting too, because when people want to come on the show, sometimes they’ll get like mindset stuff. And I’m like, listen, I like mindset, but my audience.

[00:14:06] They want tangible takeaways. We’ve got Oh my gosh, almost 1500 five star reviews now. And they’re always saying, I love that. I can listen to the show and go do something. And I gave you the same speech too. When you start, I’m like, what can we give them? What can we give them? But yet I do find myself in the middle of this powerful mindset conversation.

[00:14:22] Cause you’re, you said we had this conversation. You said I help in the beginning. I help my clients a lot with mindset. And I’m like, yeah, that doesn’t really rock my world. To me, it’s suck it up, buttercup, go do the video. You have to do the video. So let’s get onto the real stuff. What’s next, right?

[00:14:37] But yet here we are. And the points you’re bringing out are very salient is if nothing else, we don’t get to the real work cause we’re so busy with this foolishness that we’re trying to stuff down and contain. So it’s going to affect the output of the video and it’s a distraction.

[00:14:54] Dan Bennett: Yeah. And it can keep you from hitting record which is the big one.

[00:14:57] Yeah. And I have to say on a quick tangent, like you would be a dream client because your mindset is already Hey man, I’m going to fall down and get back up. Let’s do this. Cause that’s a beautiful thing. And it’s probably one out of 10 of my clients that feels that way. The rest, there’s some kind of journey involved, my whole thing is suck it up.

[00:15:14] Yeah. Yeah. I feel you on that. So we did talk off record. We could bring it up now. Cause I think it’s a good place about the kind of like secondary journey that happens when we help people like build their home studios. We help them get all of the technology, the equipment, the software they’re looking and sounding great.

[00:15:29] Oftentimes for the first time ever, I call it the Superman S they pulled a dress shirt back and there’s an S and they’re like, man, look at what’s possible now. And then usually within a week I get an email. That’s… what do I say? What do I do? Do I write scripts? Do I just, ah, and it starts to fall apart.

[00:15:42] And so I’m like no. You’re still Superman. You’re still an awesome entrepreneur. You don’t need help with that. Let’s just start working on this. And oftentimes scripting is the first thing that comes up. So the first thing I’ll tell anyone for a complete takeaway here is that script does not mean verbatim.

[00:15:58] Script can be an outline.

[00:15:59] I have some people I call sticky note scripters where they just have the topics they have to hit in their video on sticky notes on the monitor off to the side, and it just keeps them on track. And they know they can pause, look at the next sticky, come back. Deliver and we’ll edit those parts out.

[00:16:14] It could be an outline, it could be bullet points. And for me, it’s an actual script. So I want people to know that scripting is whatever, as you’re mixing up your cocktails and trying stuff and hating that and loving this. It ends up being your style because you’ve tried all these things and you found out what works for you.

[00:16:30] Kris Ward: Okay. That’s really interesting. So we tend to think a script is, you’re off script. So we have to memorize words, which never works. It’s gets clunky. And then I think it, it just, it’s a kind of like when you see a somebody like, I don’t know, royalty or a big politician and they’re reading a script and they’ll say, Oh, I feel.

[00:16:47] And you’re like you don’t feel like if you felt like that, you wouldn’t need, you could just tell the story. So I think we tie that into it being very academic and dry. So again, back to that cocktail, which has guided you very far through this conversation and through is. It could be whatever we need that cocktail to be.

[00:17:06] So scripting can have more words. It can have less. It can have an outline. It can have bullet points. So I would have said I was against scripting, but from the way you’re describing it, I script.

[00:17:16] Dan Bennett: Yeah. Yeah. And I always tell people too, that two of the most talented personalities that exist in the world that we often overlook our newscasters for being able to, now they have a voice and they have a cadence and we can make fun of it and all that stuff, but they do have to nail reading a teleprompter and then Broadway actors, because oftentimes in film, you can do several cuts.

[00:17:36] You can ad lib on Broadway. You have to nail that. And you’re live in front of everyone. Journalists and Broadway actors, I think are some of the most incredible people when it comes to delivering a message or a story via script. The way that I script is very unique in the sense that most of the people I work with end up going the way that I go, but I always love telling the story of how I do it because it gets people to go, Oh if that’s Dan’s way, what could my creative way of scripting be? So if you’re up for it, I can tell you my way. Yeah, of course.

[00:18:04] Kris Ward: No, the show ends here. Go ahead. Dan.

[00:18:07] Dan Bennett: Until next week.

[00:18:08] Kris Ward: Yeah.

[00:18:09] Dan Bennett: So I consider myself a decent writer a former musician and toured and wrote lyrics and I’ve done all of our web and all that stuff for years. Not a copywriter professionally by any means, but I’ve always done pretty decent at the polishing part of writing. And some of my early on scripts, I would make videos.

[00:18:25] Of course, I’m a video professional, so I would make a professional product. But when I would get feedback from people that I, know would shoot me straight as well as love me, they would say things like, it’s great. You’re good at what you do. But it’s different than when I talk to you, man, what’s going on?

[00:18:39] So I’d keep trying things and keep trying things. And then one day I turned on my dictation on my Mac book pro and I spoke into my mic and I spoke my script instead of writing it. And then I found out I have multiple personalities. And when I write, I sound like a different human, very different human.

[00:18:58] So then I’m like, Oh man, this is cool. I did it again. It worked out pretty well. And then I can go in and polish my script, writing with a keyboard, but I wasn’t changing it. I was just polishing it. And then I would put that on a teleprompter. And this is where I lose most people. Cause a lot of people try and read off a teleprompter.

[00:19:13] They sound really robotic. It’s a difficult thing to learn how to do. So they abandoned ship early instead of that maybe being a cocktail to working on each week on the side until they are ready to present and sell it. So then I found out over time that I could get good at reading. a teleprompter because I already spoke this script.

[00:19:31] This is top of mind. This is the way I talk. So I’m not reading something trying to be something else. I’m just reading it. And that’s when it really started to click for me. So my nowadays, every video you see even the short fun ones on LinkedIn are scripted and I read a teleprompter and most people don’t even know I do because I’ve been doing it so long and I’ve gotten good at it that they can’t really even tell.

[00:19:52] And that allows me to be conversational, but still acute and concise and on point. So I can help people and then get the heck out of the way. And that’s just one way of scripting is it being verbatim on a teleprompter, but being conversational. Cause I spoke instead of wrote it.

[00:20:06] Kris Ward: Yeah. You bring home a lot of really good points there.

[00:20:08] And I talk about that all the time. Cause we’re always, but I. I’m not about productivity hacks because really if you have systems set up, you don’t need hacks. It’s like a fit person doesn’t have fit, diet hacks, right? But there are things that I do that not only save time, but they’re better quality.

[00:20:22] And I’ve learned that myself as well. When you go to sit down and write at a blank page, I went to college, I went to university and then you’re writing academically and there’s, don’t end on a dangling participle and you would never end a sentence with the word of yet we speak like that.

[00:20:35] So what’s the point? So you can do that in Google. There’s voice. You can just hit the voicing at the top of the toolbar there and you can just talk, right? And you can do it on your phone. There’s a thousand different ways to do it. And I do find that not only does it sound more like you, but looking at that blank page and you’re like, Oh, what are three things I should talk to people about?

[00:20:55] But if you just start talking. It’s almost like if you just listen to yourself talk, you’ve got an immense amount of content and then you don’t get stuck in the framework of writing an essay. So I think that’s a really powerful point there. So doing that, are we now talking a teleprompter? We talk in big, fancy equipment.

[00:21:15] How do you set that up?

[00:21:18] Dan Bennett: Yeah. Again, runs the gamut, which is the beautiful part about this cocktail analogy. So mine, I run a teleprompter and I do it old school. So I just have a 50 teleprompter from Amazon. My camera sits behind it. I can’t even see it. A fun fact when I’m not recording content, I’m just on a call.

[00:21:35] Like I am with you right now. I’m staring at your face on my teleprompter. I can’t even see the camera. So then we can make eye contact. And then a little monitor that acts as like a secondary computer monitor, and it sits out there and reflects off that glass so I can see what’s on the screen and that’s it.

[00:21:48] I have a free app that I run on a smartphone. So I just clicked my little smartphone and got a little remote control to run the app and read everything that I wrote.

[00:21:57] Kris Ward: So does that mean it again, we’re talking cocktails. So maybe your drink is always going to be vodka and orange. So does that mean, what if I now want to do some videos?

[00:22:06] I like some are going to be a teleprompter, but some are going to be me walking in the park thought I had today without starting off saying, Hey guys, is that mean we can do a mixture or you can also do a teleprompter mobile or. What do we do with that? Where does that begin and end?

[00:22:22] Dan Bennett: Yeah. Yep. Continues the cocktail.

[00:22:24] There’s some apps right now that run teleprompting scripts over top of your screen, and you can still see through it. So you could actually just point your phone at your face and do it that way. The other thing too, and this does bring editing into the mix, but if you edit your own stuff, which a lot of people do nowadays, or you hire a company like ours, cause you’re making so much video a month, you just want to hand it off.

[00:22:43] You can give yourself permission. To act like an actor would in a film and do multiple takes. Yeah. So you can go to your note app and be like, okay, I want to talk about 60 seconds about like camera confidence and how men wear makeup too. Cause that’s something I talk about all the time. And so maybe I’m walking through the park.

[00:22:59] I’m like, okay. So I tell a quick story about men wear makeup too. I have a lot of female clientele and they’re like, Oh, it’s so easy for the guys. All they got to do is show up and film. And I say, yes, asterisk men are also worried about what they look like. They’re worried about what they’re wearing.

[00:23:14] And people like me wear like matte makeup and a little bit of color to just look normal because we’re going to be in film all the time. Just like a news anchor would

[00:23:21] Kris Ward: Right

[00:23:21] Dan Bennett: a lot of men ask me about that privately, but they don’t talk about it publicly. And then hit stop. Hit record again while I’m walking through the part.

[00:23:29] So men wear makeup too and take a second take because we know that we can put these all together later. So it’s still scripted. It’s still pulling from my body of work and my knowledge. So it’s not verbatim, but I know it’s going to be concise by the time I edit it because I did multiple takes of each one of these bullet points. Yeah.

[00:23:46] Kris Ward: And that is really easy. My gosh, we hire, find, hire, and onboard virtual assistants for our clients and editing. Like here’s some things off my phone just, and nowadays with jump cut and you could, it doesn’t have to be this smooth movie transition where it fades in and out. It’s very forgiving.

[00:24:03] So you’re right. We can have multiple options there. Okay. Oh my gosh. So we just have a couple of minutes left. What is one thing that you feel if everyone keeps missing in the boat on this, or we were getting stuck on it. What is it we have to get over when we’re dealing with video?

[00:24:19]

[00:24:19] Dan Bennett: You a two part because I think about these two things all the time, one, because again, we work with so many professionals and entrepreneurs, they have verticals in their business in place already.

[00:24:26] And they change and you can polish them over time, but they’re generally in place. It could be your HR department. It could be sales. It could be your VA team. Bookkeeping doesn’t matter. You’ve got these systems in place. Video can be another system. I know it’s a creative endeavor, but it can be a system that you place in your business and then just polish over time.

[00:24:45] It does not have to be making a movie every time you make a video. It can be a production process, which is just another vertical in your business. So if you look at it like that machine can end up feeding your marketing machine. On a conveyor belt and you can find consistency, which is the biggest lever that we can pull as creatives in any capacity.

[00:25:05] That’s how you actually get ROI on videos to be consistent and consistency isn’t willpower. It’s putting together. All right. Got to write a script. Got to do this.

[00:25:13] Kris Ward: You’re preaching to the choir, man. Okay.

[00:25:16] Yeah. Don’t even get me started because discipline and willpower actually erodes your battery and it’s short.

[00:25:22] It’s a short fuse. It’s reactive. So you are so right. If you have these things in play, I can’t help it. I’m sorry. You hit my hot button. So I jumped in. If you have streamlined processes in play, not only would I add to the fact that then you’ve got this consistency is key in anything, any successful story on any endeavor.

[00:25:40] But on top of that, what I find too, is you hear yourself and your messaging, even if nobody ever saw these videos, you start to realize when you sound a bit clunky or you’re talking too much, or so it really helps you. Edit yourself and hear yourself for when you’re on a sales call, for when you get to do elevator pitch or whatever opportunities where you have to share your knowledge.

[00:26:02] I find too that consistent diet of cranking out videos is enlightening to, to us as the entrepreneur.

[00:26:10] Dan Bennett: Yeah. This is such a fun conversation because I give you a whole bunch of stuff in a pile and then you filter it into a concise thought. And I need someone sitting next to me every day that does that for me.

[00:26:19] Kris Ward: Cause you’re exactly what I do with my clients too, because here’s the thing, what you’re saying is really that’s what we do is people have all this Rubbish and running around and reactiveness in their business, and then we have to streamline it. So all I’m doing is taking all their crazy thoughts and putting in a play because so many times people think SOP, standard operating procedures, they’re very static in nature.

[00:26:42] They’re not written by the end user. They’re very dry and they don’t work and you never have time to make them. So with the super toolkits we created, what happens is they’re fluid and then things are always built upon that, right? And so it’s taking ideas and putting them into streamline processes is actually what we do.

[00:26:58] So that’s why it’s working, but it does matter because what I tell people too, is when you’re working with someone like you, or you have all these great ideas and you’re all over the place and you’re like, Hey, nobody’s getting this, it’s then you’re ping, panging all the, all over the road.

[00:27:12] It, since you love analogies, it’s like driving behind somebody and they’re erratically driving and you don’t know, is there something wrong with the car? Are they drinking? Is the roads dangerous? You don’t, but you have to stay way back. And so then your team around you is okay, hopefully he tires himself out.

[00:27:26] Cause I don’t know what he’s. He’s all over the place with this idea and I don’t get it. Do you get it? No, I don’t get it. And it’s because you don’t have the foundational streamline process to build upon your next idea of the success of the last idea. It’s a building, a sort of brick wall type thing. Makes sense.

[00:27:43] Dan Bennett: So good. It does. Yeah. And I love it because I am a metaphor and analogy guy and that speaks to me directly is that

[00:27:49] Kris Ward: we can be best friends then. Oh my gosh. Okay. Dan, where can people find more of your brilliance?

[00:27:55] Dan Bennett: I try and make it easy. Danhaslinks. com is the URL and everything is there. The social platforms I’m on, my website, ways to get ahold of me for free, all that stuff.

[00:28:05] So I try to make it easy there. And I do have a practical takeaway if you’re up for it. Okay, go ahead. Last little swing. So we have a space in our community called the video sandbox and the whole reason we created it was for people to share their ideas with each other, get loving yet, critical feedback.

[00:28:21] Bye. And then put their rough drafts in there before they release them out to the wolves of the internet.

[00:28:26] Kris Ward: Oh.

[00:28:27] Dan Bennett: And that, that loving critique and feedback, not only from video professionals, but other people who are in the trenches with you, does so much good work. That being said, anyone around you that you trust, off record, I told you that my mom said, a good friend when they say you have spinach in your teeth or whatever, like anyone who will shoot you straight, but love you at the same time, show them your stuff, even if it’s just a script title or a little bit of a bullet point or something, as you continue to find that consistency plug in somewhere where, you know, even just two or three people will shoot you straight.

[00:28:58] And watch your videos and give you feedback if you have no one, and this is the practical takeaway. I still do this to all my videos. I call it the see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. You picture the monkeys covering their ears and eyes. So you make a video. It could be super simple on a smartphone, face it at yourself and just talk for a minute, try and make it relatively concise.

[00:29:19] Now turn the volume down and watch it. Don’t see any evil. Just try and pick up on how you’re moving. Is this something you would watch with no audio or just subtitles on? Does it seem like you’re not engaged? Okay, now turn the phone away from you and the volume back up and only listen. Hear no evil, but lovingly critique yourself.

[00:29:37] And then speak no evil is now watch the video with video and audio and critique it as a whole. But don’t speak ill of yourself, just try and find where you can get better. And if every video you make, you watch it without listening, you listen without watching, and then you watch the whole thing together, you’ll find all the parts where you can get better quick.

[00:29:54] Kris Ward: Okay. Hold on now before you go. But in that case cause your demeanor is so calm and like you’re doing talking head videos. And I don’t mean that in a condescending way, when you do that without sound. What are you looking for then? Because it’s not like you’re all over the place. You’re not skateboarding.

[00:30:10] It’s just you being calm and gentle and soothing. How does that translate it without audio?

[00:30:16] Dan Bennett: Yeah. My eyes and hands are a huge part of my video. So if you ever see me online and you turn the volume off, you’ll still notice that cadence. Without audio and I’m very purposefully trying to convey that. So a lot of times too, I’ll bring stuff up at the bottom of the screen to drive home my points and you’ll see my hands go right center as those things pop up.

[00:30:35] I’m trying to talk like I would, if we were out having coffee and I was telling a story about my work and then I try to make sure my hands are not moving the whole time either. So I disciplined and sit them down sometimes. So it’s not just a bunch of hands and I really try and make eye contact with the lens.

[00:30:48] And move my head like a, what if I was in a conversation? That sounds like a lot to think about, but really what it is you giving yourself permission to be yourself and not overthink it when you’re on camera and then just make little adjustments as you go.

[00:31:00] Kris Ward: No, I think in fact, it’s also showing the body of the ocean and then there’s so much beneath the ocean.

[00:31:06] There’s a whole world there. So the calm pool of water is like, Oh, there’s life underneath there. So I would have thought he’s just sitting at a desk. How can we mess this up? But you did bring up a lot of salient points. Oh my gosh. And listen, Dan makes LinkedIn fun. Check out his videos there. I’m always on LinkedIn.

[00:31:19] Share this video, share this show with a business buddy. Don’t have them out flyering about flying. I can’t even talk time to go to everybody. Boys and girls don’t have them splashing about struggling with their videos because this is purposeful and helpful. And I really think. Really it’s going to change how I think about doing my videos moving forward.

[00:31:40] So thank you again, Dan, and we will see you all in the next episode.