Hey everyone, welcome back to the second event in our Launchpad series, Creating Stories That Elevate Your Brand. Good morning, good evening, good afternoon, depending on where in the world you are. Before I go any further, I want to highlight that we'll have some exciting news coming up very shortly about in-person events for the Launchpad series. These will be taking place all across the country. So make sure that you've signed up for an event or you are subscribed to our daily newsletter. We'll be sending out more information there. I'm Anthony Del Conte, Entrepreneur's Director of Audience Development, and I'm joined here today by my good friend and someone I work closely with on a regular basis, probably daily, Brad Gage, who's the head of Entrepreneur Studio and the mastermind behind our video efforts. He's the executive producer of Entrepreneur's flagship show, Entrepreneur Elevator Pitch. He oversees production for all of our video, from TV to some of the social platforms we'll be talking about here today. Over the past 15 years, he's served in more or less every capacity you can in front of and behind the camera. He's hosted, he's edited, he's been a producer. So I really can't think of anyone better than Brad to touch on the topic of how to use video to build brand authority and connect with your audience. He'll be sharing some production tips, storytelling techniques, and platform-specific best practices to help you create compelling video for your audience. So without further ado, I will turn it over to Brad. Anthony, thank you so much. You can't think of anybody better than me. That is a type of rate. We tried to get Steven Spielberg, but he wasn't available. Well, I mean, yeah, that's we were, you were close though. You were close. Okay, good. Um, you know, we throw away our weight around a little bit here at entrepreneur folks. Um, yes, as Anthony said, uh, I'm the head of the video department, head of entrepreneur studios. So, um, Today, I'm here to help you tell better stories, right, to get your story out there, to get your brand out there, to get maybe your face or your staff's faces out there in the right way, the most dynamic way, hopefully the most viral way. But aiming for virality is not as helpful as aiming to tell a great story. So I'm going to really break down soup to nuts how I think is the best way to do that and how to, you know, make sure that it's staying true to your to yourself and your brand. So let me just pull up my little Diddy presentation here. It's creating stories that elevate your brand. Perfect. And so As Anthony said, I live in New York. If you watch anything that Entrepreneur does, I pop up from time to time on camera. I also am executive producer of Entrepreneur Elevator Pitch. And so this is kind of my jam. This is what I do. And so I want you all to level up. And also, we are going to be taking questions from the chat. So jump in the chat. and ask about whatever, literally anything involving video from TV, which we do, we pitch TV projects quite often, focus mostly on social aspects of video here, but anything from, as I say, TV to TikToks, we can talk about it. So today's goals, let's go over these four things for the most part. I want you to, and I'm sure a lot of you have already figured out some of this, know some of this. This is kind of a wide ranging talk today, kind of for beginners, but there's going to be a lot of stuff for intermediate and experts as well. So today's goals are figuring out your brand and who you want to emulate. And I am going to ask all of you to really think about this. It's a little bit of a workshop. And then when you're making that next video, that first video, just choosing a topic to speak on, even sometimes that can be difficult. You can get frozen in choosing which is the right video to start with. let's push through that today. Shooting your video with best practices in mind. Super simple. I'm sure you know a lot of it, but some of them are a good reminder. And then lastly, the biggest thing is being brave. That is something that only comes with time experience and taking swings at the ball, posting your story often and making sure that you're consistent. So Let's get started a little bit. And Anthony is going to jump in with any questions or maybe contradictions. We like a hearty debate here at Entrepreneur. Him and I do work together most days and we have a lot of strong opinions. And we want to hear those from you as well. So first things first, we want to get started with you. And introspection can be difficult sometimes. It's not always easy. to know who you are. I think maybe that's what we're searching for in life, but also in business. You need to know what you're all about. And to do that, you know, I would ask all of you to be able to describe your brand in two sentences. I know elevator pitches is such a cultural touchstone, but just being able to help people understand what you do very quickly so that they can contextualize the rest of the conversation, the rest of the video, the rest of the podcast that you're doing is so essential and reminding people a million times. So really figuring out those one or two sentences of like actually what you do, what is your brand? is so, so helpful. And then, you know, that one or two sentence breakdown also applies to the actual video you're gonna make. You do not wanna make social videos that are 60 seconds long about more than really one topic. Like it needs to be one subject, one topic. That's what people expect. It's the title of the video. It's what people are kind of latching into. Longer form stuff, of course, multiple topics, multiple ideas, but for social video, telling your story, hone in. And so you know, make a plan and observe how you get your attention held, and how you are going to hold other people's attention. And so that part about getting people's attention and kind of retention comes up in the next slide here, which is a big question I want to ask everybody. And I'm going to check the chat to see if people are chiming in here. But, you know, tell me, list them off in the chat. What are some creators you love? And maybe also tell us, why do you love those creators? Right? Like, really think about that. When you are opening up Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, whatever it is, And you see someone's video and you get excited. Really think about why. Like just because you like them, there's actual reasons there. Are they a dynamic speaker? Are they really funny? Do they just have it? And maybe you can try to boil down what it is to you. But that's a really, really helpful step here about telling your story. because all we are ever doing are pulling in ideas from those people around us. What's the old saying? Your personality is a combination of the five people you spend the most time with. Nowadays, we spend a lot of time with creators, you know, and they influence us just like maybe actors and actresses did when we were children. And they kind of change our personality. Maybe they change our brand and maybe they change the way we make videos. So really important to look at what works for you and what you like. Let's look at ideation. You are looking to make a video. You're looking to tell a story. Like I just said, spend some time, actual time, like put it in your calendar. I say five minutes here, probably more than five minutes, maybe spend 15 minutes scrolling, but like scroll intentionally, right? Look around, see what grabbed you and more than what even grabbed you into watching an actual video, but what retains you to watch it till the very end, because that is really what's rewarded most on these social platforms. What are the checkpoints and really kind of break it down scientifically, maybe even take some notes here, right? I mean, I'm sure ChatGPT would be helpful with this as well, but do a little bit of homework because once you write these things down, once you find a structure that you like, then you're gonna be able to emulate that and plug in your personality, plug in your brand, plug in your information. So, Brad, I'll put in a plug for Perplexity and then Claude here. I think those are two AI platforms that are really good at this kind of work. Gemini is pretty good as well from Google. But I would also say, can you walk us through an example? I know there's one in particular we were talking about earlier today in a different context, but an example of a series you like and then kind of what you found and just kind of give us an example of how you would break this down yeah was it the the the subway takes thing or was it something yeah yeah so um you know i i am a user of instagram tick tock i i have my favorites and i'm a new yorker and so you know subway takes uh maybe you've seen it maybe you haven't it's a very simple format uh a guy on a subway just asks a comedian or usually a comedian or a celebrity because they're good talkers, they're funny, they're dynamic. What is your hot take? And it's super simple. It's short. And really, like any kind of good storytelling, it has a strong POV. They have to take a strong stance on something. And usually it's a little bit it stirs up maybe controversy or at least the conversation in the chat. And so I love that format. And so, you know, this is a very similar thing to what happens in TV. Like you look at reality TV, there's only like four or five different formats. There's like a dating show, there's a documentary show, there's a competition show, there's a game show. And then there's like something, you know, kind of that blends all of them. And for social media formats, there aren't too many, you know, there's question and answer, you know, Hot Takes is kind of a boiled down version of that, almost like a man on the street, Jason Tucker: adjacent thing. And so we have we have started doing business hot business takes on an entrepreneur even this week, and they've done fairly well. And so you know, that was something that I wanted to try out try to, you know, put the entrepreneur spin on it and it is it feels very, very different. It looks very different than hot take than subway takes but definitely inspired by and the type of thing that, you know, you can kind of see where you want to change things and push things in a different direction. And you touched on this too, but it's also like, it's it's such a great idea because you can just iterate it on it endlessly right like episode one you know what that looks like episode 200 you know what that's gonna look like right it's always gonna start with like what's your take right which is also it's it's a really good hook right right off the bat you know what that video is about you know that it's an opera like okay I'm gonna stop scrolling I'm gonna watch this And I think what's also cool about it and another good sign is like if you are looking through and you're looking at content and you see something and then you click into someone's profile, that's probably a pretty good indication that they're doing something right. Right. Like that you're going and you're trying to find that video and then you're trying to find like the 10 before. That's that's a good indication that like they might be onto something. Yeah, 100 percent. And just it. it's media literacy is kind of what we're preaching here a little bit today, right? Like watch stuff, but watch stuff with intention, be aware of why you're watching it, what you like, just kind of take notes in a more extensive way than you might already be doing because that's research, that's R&D, that's, you know, All of you watch videos all day long, probably on and off. And you do it because you enjoy it or you're taking a break from whatever. But like, there's a reason why you watch what you watch and just give your audience those same reasons to watch you. And so that's in ideation, make some plans, but you got to move on from ideation and you got to actually make the darn thing. And so pre-production is a big part of that. Again, sounds simple, but just choose a topic. Just get started for sure is my mantra. But beyond that, when you are kind of getting in the thick of it, figuring out what your strategy is going to be, YouTube, TikTok, other platforms do provide insights and thought starters in their creator studios. as to what people are searching for, what might work well for your audience, as in just titles and topics. I don't know, Anthony, if there are specific tools that are helpful in that way. So I'll hop in here. One thing that we talk about all the time is don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Right. And I think you've really hit on something here, which is like, at the end of the day, you've just got to start creating. Right. Like I think so. I did the first launchpad webinar that was about, 15 days ago. And one of the things I talked about was a creator who she did 20 or 30 videos a day on TikTok when she was starting out, right? Just throwing stuff out, seeing what works. I kind of sum this up as like iterate, produce, publish, analyze, iterate, right? It's a feedback loop. It goes, I think Brad's absolutely right. TikTok and YouTube in particular have really good analytics tools, both in terms of like suggesting what you know are potential topics for your audience you can also look at similar videos your audience watches and then also like they both have great performance metrics so you can really see like Where are people tailing off? How long am I retaining them for? How are they discovering my video? This is also a great time to mention a couple of people have asked about watching previous webinars and then watching this webinar on demand. If you go to entrepreneur.com/webinar or webinars, you can find all of our webinars there. But Brad, I'll kick it back over to you. Yeah. Maybe put that link in the chat as well, if possible. But yeah, I mean, I love that cycle that you talked about, the iteration, 'cause, you know, and I think a lot of us can get stuck in this. Once we start making videos and maybe we see a little bit of traction, maybe we don't wanna evolve or it's too much work to figure out what other direction to go to. And so there does need to be an analysis of what is working and what isn't. And, and as we find out, as you make more content, if you don't follow what the algorithm is enjoying, that you're making, it's going to start kind of burying your videos as well. So really keep that in mind. Not to say that, like, if you get internet famous or go viral for something that's completely off brand, that you should continue following that thread. but maybe find a way to blend the two um for sure but uh anyways let's go back to my beautiful deck that i made here this presentation and talk a little bit about um once you get a topic uh being smart about the scripting and being smart about the production which is Finding a hook and utilizing maybe some sort of ending tricks, especially in Insta Reels and TikToks that help people finish the entire video and then it actually loops back around to the beginning. And I'm gonna show you an example of a video that just explains hooks very directly that in itself went viral because it was so helpful and was just a bunch of hooks in a row. I'll actually show that right now. Give me a second. I'm gonna find... Where I'm sharing that. Here we go. So it starts very quickly, like literally the beginning of the video. So just be ready to watch once I push play because there's no intro and that's on purpose. This is a hook. This is a hook. This is a hook. This is a hook. This is a hook. So... - That is super simple, right? That is an extremely simple list of examples of hooks, but they work. It's like, why? I don't know. I don't understand the science of someone taking a sip of water at the beginning of a video. Maybe there's anticipation, but just trying one of these at the beginning of a few, or trying all of them in a row for your first five or six videos is worth trying because it's funny when these little hacks work out 'cause they do. And so, yeah, that creator, I'm going to put it back up on screen here so that you can see who the creator was. Maybe we can share that in the chat just so you can find them. And maybe I'll put a link to it later. But basically, understanding that just starting on camera with the millennial pause is not the way to go. And the millennial pause, if anyone doesn't know that, is let's say the video started now. And then I started talking and there's a gap there. That's the millennial pause. So got to cut that out. People want to just flip and start the next video. So that's pre-production. And then we're moving on to production next, which there are some best practices that you may or may not know about. So here's the four pillars, my four pillars of production. That's good lighting, good sound, clear captions, and making sure that it's a 60 to 90 second duration. Specifically right now, I'm talking about vertical aligned Insta Reels, TikToks, or other social videos that are watched when the phone is like this. And why these are all important is because We need to understand who you are and what you're saying and not confuse anybody. These are... harder than they than they seem to be honest unless you have a studio set up at home like you're seeing i have right here good lighting is not always available you think you can just shoot it in your kitchen uh you might have some real weird shadows going on in your face you might have two different types of light sources and by that i mean daylight and a light bulb or tungsten light Those have two different what are called color temperatures. And if you have a daylight bulb or daylight and a tungsten bulb shining on your skin, it kind of looks bad. And that's a blending of color temperatures. That's not cool. So figuring that out, daylight, usually the best way. So in front of a window is great. Good sound. By that we mean you don't have to have the best microphones in the world. Nowadays, you can just, I mean, People are using little hand mics they buy off of online for $30 or even just whatever is on your phone already or on your camera. But by good, we also mean quiet, making sure the room is quiet. There's no noises. Nobody's stomping upstairs. Nobody's yelling from the other room. There's no notifications going off or texts or anything. It just needs to be very, very clean and clear sound. And even after doing this for 15 years, that's not always easy for me to pull off. And so, especially when you're in an apartment building. - I was gonna add in, like, this isn't, you know, like, this is something that occasionally we don't even get right. Like, we shot something at an event the other night, and I think we were there shooting before or after the actual event, and they were kind of breaking down the room or setting up the room. And we had to kind of play around with the audio a little bit. Just, you know, there's that joke about like fix it in post, like try to fix it in pre. Yeah. No, and I want to thank Anthony for calling out my production sound on that project two weeks ago. That's fine. I know exactly what you're talking about. And yes, it was almost lunch. And we did not get as clean a sound as we could. And you're absolutely right. Sometimes when you're producing stuff, you need to just get it. I'm joking with you, Anthony. I appreciate that because it is a good example. There was plates clanking in the background. It's distracting and it's not helpful. Fix it in pre is 100% true. And so, all right, we'll go back to this. Next pillar, clear captions. You're gonna wanna use, I will give a strong suggestion with CapCut. I know that there is, you know, there's sometimes a paid version of that that's needed, but you know, Adobe Premiere also does free captions or, you know, directly into the program. Whatever you're using, just double check them, make sure they're correct. Anthony and I are sticklers for good captions that are clear and that the syntax and grammar are correct because it just throws people off and it looks less professional if you don't have good looking captions that are readable and aren't confusing, right? The other common issue we see with captions, just to hop in here, is sometimes words aren't on the screen for enough time. Right. It becomes very hard to read, right? And captions are one of those things where it started out as kind of an accessibility issue. But if you think about it now, you'll see stats where it's like, depending on the demographic, you have up to 90% of people just watching without sound or watching without headphones. So just keep that in mind. That's going to help you kind of retain some of that audience. Whereas if they get there and there are no captions, they might jump off. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, the auto captions are good, but they're not perfect and they're not always the right way. You're going to want to edit your captions no matter what. I don't think I've ever run a video through an auto captioner and not had to edit them. And yes, all of this takes extra time. I get that. But it's worth it. You want to be known for quality. And this is something I think of all the time. when I'm producing video and I might wanna think about cutting a corner is you never know when this is gonna be somebody's first impression of you and you can't make a first impression twice. And so really having that kind of integrity in your work is essential in my opinion, because otherwise you just truly don't know when someone important to your future is gonna find your content. And then, okay, so the fourth pillar of best practices in production is keeping that duration short. A lot of that is in scripting. So when you script something out, read it and time it before you shoot it, because otherwise you're gonna be editing a lot of this later and maybe cutting out things that make later parts make sense. You really need to shape this and time it out before you record. keeping it in that 60 to 90 range. Again, Anthony, maybe you can chime in on this. The reason for that is that's what the algorithm likes and also is more kind of distributable across platform, right? Over 90 seconds, it's not a reel or Insta reel or something like that? - So it has to do with, the reason you see 60 to 90 is like with all these platforms, you are to some sense, like optimizing for watch time, but you're also optimizing for percent watched. So like you can make a longer video, but it's gotta be engaging and worthwhile. And it's much harder to do that, which is why you get these suggestions to keep it shorter at the same time, like keeping it focused on one topic are important. or is important. There's a question here about mobile friendly video editing apps for social media. Brad, do you want to take that one real quick? And then I want to get to one about different platforms as well. - A hundred percent. Yeah. I mean, there's a reason why everyone uses CapCut and it's because it is super mobile friendly. It's intuitive. You know, I can't speak to really any other mobile editing apps or platforms just because I am a little bit old school and also like the controllability and the kind of durability of using Adobe Premiere for all of my editing. I just, I, I, i i learned on a computer i want to edit on a computer i know where everything is but i have had to in a pinch edit things on cap cut um and uh and they you know they have everything in there and whether it stays around um because it is owned by tick tock or not uh uh i hope I hope that it does just be for the editors out there because it is kind of a nice all-in-one social editor. I know that some of the platforms are trying to kind of modify their Instagram. There's a bunch of bugs and all that stuff. And I'm sure it'll get better. But for now, CapCut is kind of the gold standard, I believe, on the phone editor. yeah um i so i do more of my editing on the phone um and i think like cap cut is definitely the best uh interface i've seen or the one that's most intuitive and it's you know it's the same thing where you might have to play around with it for you know 20 or 30 minutes but like you'll figure it out pretty quickly and there are a lot of you know features in there that you would find in premiere but you'd need to know like a whole set of hot keys for Exactly. The other question, and this is, you know, again, something else we'll get to in a little, but I think it's worth touching on now. Someone asked, so I feel like some of the creator videos are mostly for entertainment versus business. What works on TikTok or Instagram do you think is the same thing that works on LinkedIn? So I don't think the topics are the same, but I think the framework Brad is giving us for exploring how to create video, I think that's pretty universal to all of the platforms. Yeah, totally agree. I mean, it's LinkedIn, you know, it's business. Like you're not going to put up just, you know, random movie quote fact on LinkedIn and expect that to do well. It's It's not for that. That's people aren't on LinkedIn for they might watch it quickly, but they're going to LinkedIn for for networking and business and maybe business comedy, business entertainment, you know, like office style jokes about, you know, using Slack or video chat or, you know. kind of relatability content like that. But for sure, Instagram, they each just have their own flavor. I think X has its own kind of flavor for video as well. It just depends on what you're doing. But as far as storytelling and sticking with your brand, this whole kind of webinar that we're doing is gonna apply for sure. Let me pull back up that presentation. Okay, so we already went through duration. You got it, 60 to 90 seconds. So a little bit about posting now, right? This is this is that that final step and, and this is a part that can feel a little superfluous or not as important or, or rushed. I think that's a big issue that I think a lot of folks face when they're creating content is they spend a lot of time creating fantastic content, a lot of TLC has been put into that video. And as far as the distribution goes, they don't think about it that much. And they don't put the proper amount of time into creating a title, writing a caption, writing a description that has keywords in it that relate to the video that are searchable and are getting searched and have to do with your brand. And then making sure that if there needs to be captions on or just figuring out per platform, what their best practices are for publishing of the content. So as far as keywords, again, TikTok and YouTube provide suggestions for topics and keywords in their creator suites, just like they do ideas. So whether to use hashtags or not, that's a totally different conversation. I still use them from time to time, especially on YouTube shorts in the title. But whether they're working or not, that's so much AB testing and really needs its own strategies. So definitely pair your video production strategy with a video distribution strategy. - So I'll jump in on hashtags. I don't think they carry the weight they did. a few years ago um interestingly enough I there's a group I'm in that's kind of social media and influencer professionals and one of the things that we talked about was like they don't necessarily carry the same weight but some people bear the scars of like trying to convince the c-suite to use them for years so like it was a hard-fought battle and now they keep using them I I'm I'm not really a fan uh you'll hear people go either way In terms of like the distribution strategy, I think like we talked a lot about this earlier as well, particularly with, you know, TikTok and YouTube, these are search platforms, right? So like the more info and the more metadata you can give them about your video, the easier it's going to be for folks to discover that content. Same thing goes for Instagram, even though that's more of like a passive discovery feature, right? Like I don't search as much on Instagram, but the metadata in the video kind of gives context for like what it is and will I watch it or not? Like Brad said it and it goes, it's like, it can't be stated enough. Like you got to make sure the content gets in front of the right audience. So I would encourage you to pay attention to that as well. And this is one place where like, looking at what your competitors are doing, looking at what similar accounts are doing, that's going to help you out. So, yeah, it's really easy to not distribute your video content the right way. It's really easy to not do it right. And so it might seem like extra work. That's because it is. It might seem like extra research. What Anthony just said, look at what your competitors are being successful with. It is, you know, but the more you give, the more you get in all aspects of life and especially with video and content creation. So absolutely, you know, essential to be thinking about that. All right. So back to it. Anthony's going to have some opinions on this because this is a little bit more what he knows about, but times and days of posting, right? Figuring that out. Everyone has different opinions, which platform is best, which day, which time of day. Again, it's AB testing. It's a lot of gut checking. Don't post something at midnight on a Friday when everybody's out. I think that's at least one of the true ones across the board in your region, but also maybe that's wrong. What do you think, Anthony? Yeah. So this is another one I go back and forth on. I think if you look at platforms these days, there is less linear or chronological discovery. With that said, you do think about your content in concentric circles. that first circle is the people who are going to be most likely to watch your content, right? So people who followed you, people who've watched content in the past, if they're not watching it, that's a really bad signal to the platform, right? So like some of that is going to be when the content is served to them. But if you know there's like a particular audience that engages with you heavily, it might be worth trying to target the content around them. I'll give you an example. Like we've done we've done some Instagram reels that are, they kind of reference like a lesson learned from Bollywood, right? And we'll put this out during the US, like normal US business hours. And the videos will kind of sit there for a while. And then you'll wake up the next morning and they'll have done really well because they'll hit India, right? So like that's one where maybe it's worth, you know, starting that sooner to when people are actually going to watch it. But for the most part, I mean, each platform kind of has a tool of like, when is your audience on? Take a look at that. It is worth incorporating some of that data. Absolutely. No, that Bollywood example is a great example because, you know, stuff, you can't judge it right away. You need to give it a runway. And that's a really big thing I want to talk about. When you are creating a content strategy, you need to have actual date runways. Like you can't just put out three or four videos that you think are great and they don't do well and then you give up on it because you're like, oh, I guess I'm not good at this. I guess my audience doesn't wanna hear about my brand or whatever. You need to give yourself time to figure it out, to ideate, to shift, to change and evolve. And if there needs to be a budget associated with, excuse me, if a budget associated with that, that's important. Just a real runway. You need to give yourself a real chance because jumping off this ship that you've already built too quickly makes it all for nothing. Like you do need to actually commit to an amount of time producing video consistently to actually know who you are online, what audience will find you and what they like. So that's huge. And so the last kind of takeaway, and I think it is the most important part is to be brave. And I know that making video content is maybe not the most direct and immediate thing you think of when you think of bravery, but it really is. It's your inner world. It's your true self. It's putting yourself out there, shining your light. And for many people, or even most people, even me, many times, it can be the scariest thing to do. And so, again, it's about that commitment to leaning into it. I will say this wholeheartedly. You got to embrace cringe a little bit, right? Anthony, you got to embrace cringe. You got to understand that you are not going to be perfect and the way you look or the way you're coming off. some people are gonna like it some people aren't gonna like it that's fine if you think you're being cringe if you think you're being embarrassing uh that is the that is the kind of the obstacle that is the way and so you have to continue making stuff finding out figuring out what your personality is on camera if it is you creating the content um uh and so you know being brave is just It just goes with the territory. Yeah. I talked about this a couple of weeks ago. Like, don't read the comments, but also we kind of have to read the comments, right? Because you're going to get a sense of like people want to see X, Y, and Z, right? Or here's a topic or here's who your audience is. But like, yeah, don't, don't beat yourself up over small feedback. We have, we have a question I want to take. It's about KPIs and data points to measure the effectiveness of a brand story. I like, yeah, as I talked through it like maybe this is one for me to mention and then there's a follow-up that I can kick over to you with brands it's really going to depend on what the objectives are right so there's that like awareness consideration conversion funnel um that's going to impact what the KPR KPIs are right if you're more in awareness you might be going for overall views engagement is usually a pretty good uh data point that brands like to see. And then again, like down to the conversion into the funnel, you're going to be judged on cost per acquisition and then acquisitions. And then there's also so there's a question about balancing emotion and information in a story without losing brand clarity. So do you want to go ahead and take that one, Brad? Yeah. I mean, emotion and information. The emotion comes with the way that you convey the information, right? Like it's that talking about emotions is not the content. It's being passionate. The passion and the emotion and the commitment behind the information that you're conveying is what comes through. And that's your personality. And that's you find your personality on camera by being on camera more. And so how do you balance all of that? It's like a sport, it's like going to the gym, you find it all along the way. I think bouncing scripts off of somebody outside of you, either within your company or a friend or family member is a good way to see if by the end of them reading the script that there's clarity around what you were trying to convey and accomplish. And just asking them how they feel after they read the script might be helpful. And then again, just committing to to not being precious, right? You know, if you think a script is so good, and three people don't think it's good, change it before you shoot it and put it out there, you know, you need to trust the wisdom of the crowd to a certain degree, because they are who you're servicing. So I think, yeah, it's not, it's not a very specific example. I know it's a little general, but you find that balance through practice. And so, yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, all of these things, and I'm going to go back to kind of our main goals here. All of these are just to be reminders. Come back to this video if you forget about any of them on your journey. I think that... Really, if you do the homework and you practice reading that teleprompter on CapCut or memorizing the lines and again, emulating those who you truly are engaged by, you're going to find success. You just are like, you follow these steps. You're going to find success. Your personality will come through as long as you, as you commit to doing it right. And, and not quitting after, you know, 10 videos kind of thing so Anthony anything else before we uh before we wrap this up yeah I'll I'll say so we'll open up to questions um go ahead and drop them in the chat we can you know we'll take a couple I think I I want to ask you a question right and not to put you on the spot like we talk a lot about being brave here can you kind of talk about something you worked on where Maybe you learned some of these lessons we've discussed today the hard way and kind of like what your big takeaway was. - Yeah, I mean, when I first started creating content, it was i was i mean i have lived many lives i i used to be an actor and comedian in los angeles for many years um even just putting myself out there through improvisation was was difficult but um in recent years when i've i've really kind of committed to content creation um i realized that uh people were not craving me asking other people questions and these other people giving good answers. Like I have a podcast and I do interviews and those are great videos, but those videos never do as well as me speaking directly to camera from my heart, from my experience with fun and funny examples. That's kind of just me speaking directly to the audience. And that's why they follow me. That's why my audience follows me. That's why they subscribe. They find other people's conversations and POVs interesting. But in the end, I found the most traction and the most virality when I'm just being the most vulnerable. And so that's a big side of it. Because we are so separate, disconnected IRL, we all crave vulnerability more than ever. And so if we see someone being brave in that way about their issues, personal problems, business problems, you know, the hurdles they've had to go through, the hardships, the difficult moments that they're maybe even going through right now that is so relatable. And it takes bravery to be that vulnerable, but it pays off. The fear of looking weak or bad or wrong um is always going to get in the way of you of you connecting with other people um and it's not very helpful you know so um that would that's the the biggest takeaway in in content creation and being an on-camera personality that i've had yeah i think you you kind of answered one of the questions we have here, which is someone saying, you know, I have, I'm excited, but then I get in front of the camera and I have this fear and how do I overcome it? I really think like, not to sound cliche, but the only way is through it, right? Like you've got to do it and keep working at it. And like, again, that's the only way through it. - Well, and I would suggest for that, right? Even if you're just like totally starting out, you're afraid, make videos and show them to friends and family and don't post them to start, right? Baby steps until you feel comfortable enough to put it out there. But I, 'cause you know, just, I will, there is a line, right? Putting videos out just to put videos out that are not good and you're not committed to and that you're not, you know, that you haven't honed in on some of the things we've been talking about today. That, I think, can be a detraction that can actually not be good. And so. getting your chops up, getting your swings in and making videos just for yourself. Cause that's practice. Like that's okay to do. And that could be very helpful. So I think that that's what I would suggest to you, John. If, if that fear is there, just get used to hearing your voice and seeing your face in videos. And then if you make those, if those test videos end up being pretty good, then then put them out. Yeah. Another, another thing we, We see a lot here at Entrepreneur, and this comes up in the people we profile who have these multi-billion dollar, billion dollar companies. They'll all say some variation of like, I just started doing it and put one foot in front of the other. And yeah, I did some research, but it was always about what's the next action, right? What's the next thing I need to do? And a lot of people say, like, if I had stopped and really thought about the sheer magnitude of what I was doing, I probably wouldn't have done it. Like, there's so many opportunities to not do the thing. And I think, like, if you take one thing from this, it's like, do the thing, try it out, see how it does, figure out what you learn, do the thing again. Yeah. I mean, I ask myself often, I'll procrastinate making videos. And the question is, what am I here to do? And I mean here, like here, like living. What am I here? I'm here. If you have a business, you're providing a service, you're creating a product, whatever that is, that's amazing. But it's only as good as the customer base you have and the knowledge base of who you are and what you do. And so stepping into my bravery and going, hey, I'm here to shine my light. I'm here to tell my story. I better start working on that script. I don't know if I'm shaming myself or bullying myself into it, but it is the type of thing that looking in a macro sense has been helpful for my productivity when it comes to this. Absolutely. We had one other question where someone was talking about the opposite, where they're good at the on-camera side, but it's kind of like the technical part where they lose steam. What are your similar advice for that? Just keep doing it and persevere? Well, no, I think... Get yourself a setup, make it easy. This wasn't easy to do. I built this set. This is a regular white wall behind that wood. - That's not a fake background. We discussed this earlier. - It's not a fake background. No, this is, I'll show everyone. I have a split unit right above, like this is my real background. So it costs money and it was a lot of work to do this and put up these curtains and all this stuff. But again, I can just come down here and shoot a video. And so if you find yourself having trouble just finding time or whatever, set aside a little bit of time on a weekend, maybe two hours. Pick a spot that looks good with good lighting and is quiet in your home. Get yourself, if you're gonna shoot on your phone, get yourself a little tripod. You don't have to hold it every time. Buy a cheap handheld microphone that plugs into the phone so that the sound is better. And it's a little lav mic. They make those. Or get a Shure. I'm not trying to plug here, but this is kind of a standard podcast mic. Get something like this, invest in that. And that's another reason that will motivate you to actually make the videos because you've invested hundreds of dollars, thousands of dollars in this stuff. I got to use it. But you know, the technical aspect, you're not good at it. YouTube tutorials are the best for using CapCut, for using Adobe, for even getting a setup for what gear to buy. You know, YouTube has those answers and they can show you how to set it up as well. It's such an insanely useful resource. And so So if you're not good at the technical aspects, just put a little bit of time in it or hire somebody to help you. Hire a tech person, ask around, ask a friend who knows an editor, knows a technical person, and throw a little bit of investment money into that aspect of it, and you will not be disappointed. You'll feel better. you'll look better, you'll sound better. And then, you know, the videos, the quality and I'm sure the feedback will get better. Awesome. And all right, so because we're coming up on time here, I'll take a second to again plug the Launchpad event series. So in addition to the digital ones, we have some in-person events coming up that are going to be in select cities across the US. So, again, make sure you've either signed up for this webinar and we'll reach out to you, or if you haven't, you can sign up for our daily newsletter, which is, again, on the site. If you're trying to find older webinars, you can go to entrepreneur.com slash webinars. Sorry, webinars. For some reason, I want to make it singular, but it's plural. There are many of them. And yeah, beyond that, Brad, I guess, there we go, there's the right one. Brad, if you had one piece of final advice to give everyone here today, what would it be? - I would just stick with the be brave thing, but have fun with it too, because people can tell if you're having fun or not, if you're not enjoying it, if, you know, levity, lightness, humor goes a long way. There's a reason why the internet was based on cat videos. You know, this is in the end what we crave is to just have a good, while on our phones, is to just have a good hang with somebody we like. And so, you know, let your true personality come through, but keep it fun and light. And so, yeah, I mean, if anybody is looking to check out my stuff, you can follow me on Instagram. It's Bo Radley. I was never able to change it to my real name, and that's why it's that. I'll just explain real quick. Boo Radley is a character from To Kill a Mockingbird. My name is Brad Bradley, and I couldn't get Boo Radley, so I did Bo Radley. Long explanation. What's that? I was going to say you weren't early enough to get at Brad. i was not i was not unfortunately but uh so check me out there uh linkedin as well you know just brad gage and and then also of course if you aren't already follow entrepreneurs social channels for the most part you'll find it at entrepreneur yep well thank you again to brad um we have some comments pouring in telling us how this is helpful you've gained at least one follower from this uh which is thank you fantastic news goodness Again, make sure to subscribe to our daily newsletter. We'll do updates on the Launchpad in-person event series, entrepreneur.com slash webinars, plural for past versions. And yeah, I hope everyone has a great day, evening, morning, depending on where you are. So thanks, everyone.