John Azoni on Building a subscription model with Dan Englander of Sales Schema

I had the pleasure of being a guest on the Sales Schema podcast recently, hosted by Dan Englander.

In this episode we discussed:

• Deconstructing a large-scale video project into a subscription model.

• Lessons learned growing an agency in the pandemic.

• The benefits of a subscription model over a retainer model.

• How to find the right talent to grow your business.

Text transcription of the episode below (created with AI so only about 85% accurate)

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00:00:04:21 - 00:00:16:03

Dan

Welcome to the Digital Agency Growth Podcast. I'm your host, Dan Englander. John, I say nice to have you on the show. I might just leave that flub in and not fix it and post.

00:00:17:06 - 00:00:17:29

John

No worries. Yeah.

00:00:17:29 - 00:00:37:04

Dan

Thanks for want to start the interview. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. Thanks for joining. So it's always great. You know, I think talking to agency creative service business owners that have sort of like honed in on a niche, and I'm always curious to learn the journey people have gone through to kind of get there and to get the service where it is.

00:00:37:05 - 00:00:44:04

Dan

So before we get into all that, you talk about, you know, from a high level what you're up to, you know, what your service looks like and and your background.

00:00:45:04 - 00:01:05:05

John

Yeah. Yeah. Great. Thanks for having me. So I have a video background. I worked for a production company, a small boutique production company for over a decade and was creative director there for a long time. We worked with all kinds of clients, you know, from PR agencies to ad agencies doing commercials to doing a lot of corporate videos in all kinds of different industries.

00:01:05:21 - 00:01:22:25

John

And so had a lot of experience in different industries and it was it was part of kind of growing the business as well. Eventually decided to break off and kind of do my own thing and, you know, really started to figure out like, what is it that I want to do? What kind of work do I want to do?

00:01:22:25 - 00:01:44:23

John

And who is best aligned, Like what kind of industries are best aligned for that? And for me, it really came down to like, I'm a dad and my husband and I have a lot going on just and I didn't want to spin my wheels chasing a lot of clients. I wanted to really work on having a few clients that really would provide the bulk of my revenue.

00:01:45:03 - 00:02:02:22

John

So I felt like higher Ed was a it was a good opportunity. I had had some experience working with higher ed at the past production company and seeing that we would get a lot of repeat work from those colleges. And so that's kind of what I went after and just decided I'm going to just go all in on higher ed and storytelling.

00:02:02:22 - 00:02:28:15

John

And those are two things I was interested in specifically storytelling, like helping colleges tell these student and alumni testimonials, stories that, you know, highlight the impact of their various programs, because that was a lot of the work that I really like doing was when we actually got to tell personal stories and less so just making corporate videos about a law firm, you know, just about the law firm in general or something, but really getting down into like the vulnerability kind of aspect of someone's personal story.

00:02:28:15 - 00:02:32:09

John

So I really wanted to bring that to to colleges, and that's what I focused on.

00:02:32:27 - 00:02:47:08

Dan

That makes sense. So it sounds like that was one of the verticals you guys were kind of dealing with when you were you were working for a production company. I guess Before we get into that, what made you want to strike out on your own? You know what what sort of form that decision and what were those early days look like?

00:02:48:09 - 00:03:06:26

John

Yeah, I mean, a lot of it had to do with COVID and this was kind of in 2020. I had I had been working with a school that was just kind of freelance on the side that was giving me a lot of work. I was doing photography for the City of Troy, where I live. And so and then I had a nonprofit client that was human trafficking stories.

00:03:06:26 - 00:03:33:08

John

And so between those three, I started to get overwhelmed with side work, which I didn't intend. And then at the same time, with COVID and the shutdown and like realizing just how hard it is to like just the need to be there for my kids more and like, be more available and just kind of have my own schedule, kind of just have all the flexibility that I wanted to and make my own decisions, that kind of thing, and really kind of drove drove me.

00:03:33:08 - 00:03:51:03

John

I just I really wanted to just be more available. And I also have an art background, so I'm a I went to art school for painting in college, and I still maintain that sort of career and I wanted more time to paint and stuff like that. And so just all those things combined was a lot is a lot of things.

00:03:51:03 - 00:04:09:15

John

But I just felt like the work, you know, I had to kind of make a decision between like, all right, I'm either going to say no to all these clients, you know, that that want me to work for them on the side or I'm just going to go all in on this. And then going all in meant also, you know, more more time with my kids, more time to paint all that stuff.

00:04:09:15 - 00:04:12:19

Dan

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And by the way, is that one of yours behind us?

00:04:13:08 - 00:04:18:03

John

Yeah, it was a print of a painting that I was commissioned to do for a church here in the area.

00:04:18:11 - 00:04:40:20

Dan

Cool. Well, it looks really interesting, so that's great. And then sort of honing in on your higher ed and then goes what? I found, you know, kind of interesting in our niche, like selling to agencies, marketing service companies is even after like however long it's been eight or nine years, there's still things that surprise me and new things that we find out, you know, every week.

00:04:40:29 - 00:05:00:00

Dan

Just going deeper into it. What is that been like for you? Like, what are you what are the things that maybe have surprised you as you've honed in on the higher education niche? Like what have you kind of continued to learn about them that people might not know? You know, thinking about an agency that might be thinking about getting higher ed as part of its portfolio.

00:05:00:18 - 00:05:02:01

Dan

What are some of those things you learned?

00:05:02:22 - 00:05:26:05

John

I think the big thing, like when I first started, I really wanted to make decisions based on like actual data rather than just kind of like assuming what the problems of my target market were and then spending a lot of resources on trying messaging that wasn't going to work. So I scheduled calls with a lot of higher ed marketers kind of at the outset of my company and learned a lot about what their problems were.

00:05:26:05 - 00:05:53:25

John

And I think that that really maybe surprised me a little bit, but it just kind of helped me form what I offered to them and what I found was a lot of college marketing departments are under-resourced. They have more video needs coming at them than they're able to produce. Whether or not they have an internal video team, even a lot of colleges that have internal video teams, they're still overloaded because they you know, they're the throughput for every video request that comes through the door.

00:05:54:12 - 00:06:13:05

John

So a lot of just under-resourced marketing teams, but also just a struggle to keep up with the constant like content churn, higher ed marketers wanting to be more consistent on social media, more consistent in emails and producing new content and things like that. But again, they're kind of being pulled in a lot of different directions. So those are a couple of things that I learned.

00:06:13:05 - 00:06:33:04

John

And then I from that figured out like, Well, how can I take storytelling, this idea of storytelling and make it not be another thing on their plate that they have to manage? How can I sort of reverse that and be like, How can I take storytelling and content creation off their plate? So that they can do a lot of those other things?

00:06:33:04 - 00:06:56:18

John

And so that's how I started to sort of build my offering of this. I do a subscription model of storytelling with with schools. And as I've promoted that and talked to a lot of schools, I'm learning that that is a really exciting model for people. I mean, almost every conversation I had with directors of marketing at colleges, they're like, Oh my gosh, that is the life changer to just say like, here you go, here's 12 stories.

00:06:56:18 - 00:07:16:26

John

Give me just drip out videos to me. Just you go produce them and drip out videos to me. I don't have to manage that. So I think that's one of the things that I learned is that just marketing teams are overwhelmed. And so putting an offering in place that really takes work off their plate rather than trying to sell them something additional that they have to manage is important to them.

00:07:17:10 - 00:07:26:10

Dan

Yeah, let's let's dig into that more. So can you talk more about that subscription offer, just what it like, what you're literally doing, how it's package etc.. Yeah.

00:07:27:00 - 00:07:55:19

John

Yeah. So what I decided to do was produce a monthly offering where we would we would batch shoot 12 stories at the front of the engagement. We would shoot six days of production, two stories per day. So it could be student or alumni and this would be testimonials, you know, positive things about the school. But really with a focus on actually telling stories of, you know, people like having some sort of transformation, you know, personal transformation because of the school and things like that.

00:07:55:26 - 00:08:20:02

John

And so you end up with 12 stories and then we would drip those out each month to the school. And as I kind of pursued that further, I thought, well, this could be a lot more than just 12 videos that they get for the year. What if we took those 12 shoots, you know, a whole half day worth of footage for each of those and really milked it for like a lot of extra content.

00:08:20:02 - 00:08:50:16

John

So, well, then what we ended up doing was, was saying, so now every month school will get one full length story of a particular student or alumni and then a 32nd cut down of that story, a 15 second cut down, and then eight additional like topical videos. Because in my experience with video production, you do an interview, a great interview with some business leader or some high profile something or other, and then you get maybe 30 seconds of their interview, actually makes it into the video.

00:08:50:26 - 00:09:08:13

John

All this other great stuff that they said sits on a hard drive and, you know, the client might say, oh, you know, yeah, we'll use that someday. And they almost never do. So I just figured, well, let's just make sure we are using every part of this interview to give them a whole month's worth of content every month.

00:09:08:13 - 00:09:30:10

John

And so essentially we're fueling their entire video content strategy for the year. So they'll get 11 videos every month in these eight topical videos that we that we do are just extra from the interview. And we work with the school to to think about like, well, while we're sitting with this student, what else can we ask them outside of just their obvious, you know, story And if they like the program or whatever, what can we ask them about scholarships?

00:09:30:10 - 00:09:49:00

John

Can we ask them about on campus housing, internship opportunities? What are those things that that particular school likes to promote about themselves? And then let's make sure we're getting them that content out of the student while we're sitting with them. So we do that and it ends up being 132 videos for the year, and it's just kind of dripped out like clockwork every month.

00:09:49:16 - 00:10:12:26

Dan

That's awesome. So there's the central like day of sweat and glucose, right where you're like recording all this stuff and then you can package it a gazillion different ways. Let's talk about the genesis of that a little bit. Like, do you mind talking about how you were selling it before? Like what wasn't working as well? Like kind of like what you were asking roughly on to exact number, but generally like what that package looked like in terms of the investment versus this.

00:10:12:26 - 00:10:20:09

Dan

And how did you know that? Like what what were the signs that the subscription model clicked versus what were you doing before?

00:10:20:26 - 00:10:40:20

John

Yeah, well, the subscription model kind of came into being right at the beginning of me starting unveiled my company and kind of going off on my own, starting that really like I got like a you know, I was really excited to like, be off on my own. I was really excited to just kind of just, you know, the world was my oyster kind of thing.

00:10:40:20 - 00:10:57:25

John

I bought this big whiteboard for my office and then I was so excited to use it. I was I woke up at like 130 in the morning and it was like once out of my office would start whiteboarding stuff and came up with the subscription idea because I, I listen to podcasts. I really like the podcast by Don Miller Story brand Building a story brand.

00:10:58:12 - 00:11:19:00

John

He's got a great podcast called I think it's like marketing made simple or business made simple or something like they've changed the name over the years, but and there there was one episode and I can't even remember who the guest was on there, but he was talking about the benefits of a subscription model that every company should have a subscription offering that brings in consistent, predictable revenue through the door.

00:11:19:00 - 00:11:41:06

John

And I thought how? I've never seen that done for storytelling, you know, like video storytelling. You see retainer models a lot, but you know, the retainer is always kind of like a jumbled mix of deliverables depending on the client. I've never seen something that was like, I was like, Well, what can we do that's repeatable? And we can just continue to improve and improve and improve and deliver a really consistent product every time.

00:11:41:06 - 00:12:03:27

John

So that's that that kind of started off the business. You know, that was kind of like my initial offering. I had some conversations with people where I'm trying to learn how to best package that. And like I said, originally it was just the 12 stories. And then I had a conversation with one friend of mine from Walsh College here in the Troy area, and he is really big on content repurposing.

00:12:03:27 - 00:12:28:26

John

And he was like, Why don't you? He's like, You could like double the value of that offering if you took those 12 stories and then made it so easy for your clients to have content for the year, just do it for them. I said, Well, we'll we're going to deliver the the footage to them anyways. And that's kind of part of the offering is, you know, we'll shoot all this stuff and we'll give you the footage and then you can have your internal person cut some different videos up.

00:12:28:26 - 00:12:46:07

John

And he said, Well, yeah, that's, that's great. But he's like, you know, I edit videos and I have hard drives full of footage that video production companies have given me that I haven't done anything with. I would say I'm going to do something with it and I never do. He's like, So why don't you just put together like all this extra stuff that you can give them from that content?

00:12:46:07 - 00:13:07:17

John

And so that's really where I think it started to take off because it became it kind of was just sweetening the deal for schools and they get excited about the idea of not just having 12 stories, but also then having all the supplemental content already cut for them. All they have to do is schedule it out. And I think it's just a big stress relief for schools.

00:13:08:01 - 00:13:27:24

Dan

Yeah, what I really like about that is that there's a really good thought exercise where it's like asking yourself or your company, what are the things that are really easy for us that are perceived as very hard or valuable to us, right? I think that definitely checks that box. I guess one question I have is how much temptation do you get to do more stuff, right?

00:13:27:26 - 00:13:42:24

Dan

Because like, my guess is with, you know, this university marketer or any marketer, they're like, well, can you also upload it to the Facebook ads portal or, you know, whatever, whatever they're up to? Do you get that pressure? And if so, you know, how do you how do you feel about that?

00:13:43:01 - 00:14:08:09

John

I think about ways that I can even add more. And originally when I was starting to think about how can I create additional content from this half day of shoot, it was it wasn't just videos. It was like, well, I could put together, I could go into Canva and I can create, you know, some quote, posts, pull out a quote that the student said, put their headshot in there, boom, like, and we can do like a bunch of those ten of those.

00:14:08:09 - 00:14:29:03

John

And then I could make a transcript of the interview and we could do a blog post and stuff like that. And I kind of was like, you know, it's going to vary what, you know, from school to school, what they like, how they use different social channels, and whether or not they would value a blog post or whether they would value these sort of like, quote, graphic things or whatever.

00:14:29:11 - 00:14:52:25

John

And I decided, you know, I'm a video company, I'm gonna stick with what I know and I'm going to stick with just videos and doing extra video content. But I still have that temptation. I'm like content creation. I want to be I'm always tempted to be like more of a content creation partner with with my clients and really help them do like all of their job, which, you know, which encompasses blogs and Instagram and whatever.

00:14:52:25 - 00:15:10:23

John

Tik Tok making videos into vertical instead of horizontal and things like that. So I'm still in that stage of like daily being tempted to do more. Sure. But I've been kind of sticking with with what's what's been working for me so far, which is package the offering that I have currently.

00:15:10:23 - 00:15:26:24

Dan

Yeah, sounds like a smart move. And to shift gears a little bit so we you know, we've done a lot of outreach campaigns for a lot of the verticals, but we've done universities a number of times. We've had some go well by using, you know, lots of commonalities and the kind of like referral based campaigns and that sort of thing.

00:15:27:03 - 00:15:46:14

Dan

Definitely not the easiest vertical though, just because of the level of bureaucracy, the level of differentiation, I think, between who who decides and that sort of thing. So with that in mind, I love to talk about sales a little bit. Like what? Where does most of your business come from? What have you found to work well for opening doors, you know, in the higher ed space and so on?

00:15:47:03 - 00:16:08:04

John

Yeah, I'm I'm real consistent on LinkedIn and that was one thing where one thing I learned about myself at the previous production company that I worked with was that I have a lot of ideas and I have a propensity to pursue all of those ideas at the same time and never really get anywhere. So I had just like squirrel, squirrel, squirrel, you know, just that kind of thing.

00:16:08:04 - 00:16:22:14

John

And especially when it came to sales and marketing was like, Well, let's try this a little bit and then let's try that and let's try this. And then you would try a bunch of things a little bit and never really give it a chance to really come to fruition and produce results. Before you said, Well, let me try this other thing.

00:16:22:27 - 00:16:51:08

John

So when I started my company, I said, I'm going to define the groove that I'm going to carve out for myself. I'm going to pick one social channel and I'm just going to try to dominate that. And so LinkedIn for me has been that there's a wealth of, you know, higher ed marketers that are active on LinkedIn and especially, you know, pursuing adult students, you know, adult candidates to come get their master's programs who are in that sort of B2B space already, maybe with their current employer, that kind of thing.

00:16:51:20 - 00:17:10:12

John

So I just said, I don't know if that's the best channel, but I'm just going to pick that one and I'm just going to do it all the way. And so I really am posting pretty much every day on LinkedIn, and that's been helpful. I've experimented with some LinkedIn automation and messaging campaigns like automated messaging campaigns that produced some results.

00:17:10:12 - 00:17:29:06

John

But what I did learn was trying to do cold reach outs on LinkedIn is has been tough because at least my audience, a lot of them aren't even reading the messages, they're not opening them. So then I figured it's hard to know if my outreach is correct or not, or if it's just they're not really checking their LinkedIn that often.

00:17:29:20 - 00:17:53:11

John

So I've actually moved a lot of my outreach on to email. You know, I use LinkedIn automation to get their dot EU email addresses that get scraped from their domain names. And then I, one by one do outreach. Then I've experimented with Loon videos doing it like an introduction in like, you know, calling them by name, giving them a compliment, you know, just kind of that kind of whole thing, like really trying to personalize each email.

00:17:53:11 - 00:18:11:02

John

And I've experimented with fully automated campaigns. I've actually had the most luck with fully automated called outreach campaigns where I'll send out, like my first steamer will be like, Hey, here's what I am, here's what I do, Here's a Starbucks gift card that you can use. It's like, ignore this email if you want, but get yourself a free coffee.

00:18:11:06 - 00:18:22:18

John

And I've found that, you know, people are like, Oh, okay, well, at least I'm going to get something out of this guy. And he's not just like a robot, you know, this is actually real money, like real coffee.

00:18:23:00 - 00:18:48:06

Dan

But it's definitely attention grabber. And yeah, let's let's nerd out on email. I think we're big believers in email as well. And there's a few things that I really like about it. I think the first is that nobody owns it. You know, it's a protocol. So and it's I don't think it's a tinfoil hat at this point to be like, Well, do you really want to get really, really good at a channel that could just shift gears overnight and then wipe you out?

00:18:48:06 - 00:19:08:25

Dan

Right. Sure. We've seen that happen so many times. Like with SEO, we saw it happen with Facebook and used to be you could have a whole giant community, but then they sort of like limited how much you can contact them. Who knows what LinkedIn's going to do? I think that's one thing. The other thing is that, you know, people go on LinkedIn, they read stuff, they read articles, you browse, you're not really doing business on LinkedIn.

00:19:08:25 - 00:19:25:28

Dan

Sometimes you are, you're not. But email, you go there to get things done. It's not perfect. It's noisy, but everything's noisy at this point, right? So for sure, I like you're doing doing it well. And I think a lot of the times when people think email's not working, it's because of technical, it's because things are getting spam, right?

00:19:25:28 - 00:19:50:13

Dan

Because you're, you're sending somebody something that they might not want to get. And then that's the reason the campaign goes down. But it sounds like you're doing it really well from there. I guess to shift gears a little bit back to to the service, I mean, how much I hate the word scale because it gets overused so much and sometimes I feel like it gets used to take people off course right from the thing that's actually working.

00:19:50:22 - 00:20:05:28

Dan

But how do you think about scale? Like, are you getting to a point where you can be like, okay, I can I see how I can hire a team to go and shoot that half day thing and then automate the rest of the process? Or do you enjoy the work? Do you always see yourself being involved in it like what's, what's your your take there?

00:20:06:12 - 00:20:29:23

John

Yeah, I mean, from the jump, I didn't want to be limited to just, you know, southeast Michigan schools. You know, there's only so many of them. And also I didn't want to be the guy all the time doing running the business and shooting the video and editing and all this stuff. I just, you know, again, like the whole reason for starting off on my own was to enjoy some time freedom and be with my kids and, you know, have a kind of a different lifestyle.

00:20:29:23 - 00:20:50:28

John

And so from the get go, I was like, I want to be I want to have a global reach with the schools that I'm able to work with. And the only way to do that is to really lean into my network of directors and cinematographers in various parts of the world. And so I'm part of a network of pretty well vetted directors and filmmakers that do this kind of stuff.

00:20:50:28 - 00:21:09:13

John

Not so much like Hollywood. I mean, a lot of them do like Hollywood type their work on Hollywood sets and stuff like that. But a lot of them also do these kind of smaller documentary kind of running gun shoots and things like that. So that's really how I've kind of been able to take myself out for myself to not be the bottleneck.

00:21:09:23 - 00:21:32:22

John

And so I will have I have a University of Chicago getting ready to work with, and I have a director who's based right there that I've developed a relationship with. And I tried to, you know, pair a director with a school as much as possible so they can really kind of remotely develop a relationship and kind of sort of decentralize, I guess, the relation or I'm not always the glue for every single task that gets done.

00:21:33:07 - 00:21:56:02

John

So that's kind of like I've been able to successfully kind of outsource the production in a way that makes it something, you know, you always have to be careful with with that because everyone's going to do something differently and everyone's going to care at a different level about the job than you would. So I've just kind of developed a system that ensures quality consistent approach every time.

00:21:56:12 - 00:22:21:15

John

And then I have a couple of editors that once I get the footage back from the crew, it goes out to the editors and they know this is the package we're doing. And pretty reliably we've gotten to a place where there's not a lot of internal revisions, you know, working with contracted editors, it's always tough because, like some might kind of get the vision, some, you know, it's always just hard to hire editors that are really going to nail it on the the first version.

00:22:21:15 - 00:22:35:25

John

So we've kind of gotten to a groove now where it's like, all right, we know what we're delivering. We know how to make one of these that's impactful that that that the client is going to like. We know what the client likes. We kind of honed in on how they like to talk about themselves, that kind of stuff.

00:22:35:25 - 00:23:13:12

John

And so it really eliminates a lot of back and forth. So that's internal scale. That's sort of where I'm at right now. But the company is still just me being like the sole owner operator. And so as kind of cash flow improves and things grow more, I do plan on hiring a salaried editor, but more so excited to hire a producer, like a creative producer that can basically do a lot of the coordinating of shoots and schedules and creative direction stuff that that I do with each school that would allow me to then kind of take myself out of that role and and grow the business a little more.

00:23:13:12 - 00:23:34:25

John

So yeah, I scale it a bit, but in it's still new. So I'm still really like building the contacts and kind of building a name for myself. So at this point I have the benefit of having a handful of schools but not having a huge influx of schools that I have to figure out how to work with really fast and, you know, do a good job with all of them.

00:23:34:25 - 00:23:58:06

John

So I'm able to kind of grow slowly. But yeah, scaling is on the horizon, but I don't see this being like a huge operation. I would like to keep it small and just have people on my staff that are making good salaries and we're all just liking what we do and liking the workload and it's providing for us what we need and that kind of thing.

00:23:58:06 - 00:24:02:02

John

There's there's not really the temptation from it for me to have this huge thing.

00:24:02:11 - 00:24:20:05

Dan

Sure is. Fair enough. And with that one thing I think you kind of touched on in the beginning there is the idea of a, you know, a talent network and that sort of thing. I think a lot of the times, you know, the agencies we work with, they might have a pool of freelancers or, you know, but it's always a slog to sort of vet people and test them and so on.

00:24:20:05 - 00:24:35:26

Dan

So I don't know if you feel comfortable sharing what that network is, but even if you don't, how did you go about landing on a network like that? What kind of goes into identifying a sort of network for finding good contractors? It could be across the board video, yeah, etc..

00:24:36:18 - 00:24:58:20

John

I don't know when I became a part of this, but there was a group that I got invited to on Facebook. It was a it was a closed group for filmmakers that do this kind of, you know, storytelling work. And I know the guy that was the admin for the group. He started it. I met him at some video conferences before, so we were aware of each other and I just followed that for a number of years.

00:24:59:02 - 00:25:24:10

John

And then eventually, you know, at the previous production company we would have these out of state shoots a lot and I would tap into that group to say, Hey, I need a director in Houston or whatever. And I started noticing like every one that I worked with was really good. Like the range of quality in video production is huge and it's real easy to hire someone that it's you get the footage back and you're like, What were you thinking?

00:25:24:16 - 00:25:49:07

John

Like, Yeah, like you went to film school, but you did, you did it this way. Like it's really easy to hire someone like that. And I've just found that this group, which is now snowballed into a different group of a lot of the same members, and it's grown to be many thousands of directors in this group. I get a pretty consistent output every time, and I'm not really dealing with that like rookie mistakes kind of contractors.

00:25:49:19 - 00:26:17:04

John

And then on the post-production side, I just I'm pretty pretty picky about the editors that I work with. And so just over my career, I've worked with editors on various things that also do freelance. And so I pretty much just use my friends that we already have a working relationship for editing. But the other thing that I do to find new editors is I'll go on Vimeo and look at the Vimeo staff picks and I'll find, you know, something that's kind of in line with my style.

00:26:17:04 - 00:26:35:14

John

That's like a really good, a really well-told story. And then there's usually the credits in the description about who edited that. And then I'll, I'll hunt down that editor and be like, Hey, I saw this video. Like, do you want to be considered for stuff and what's your rates and stuff like that? So I found a few people that way which has worked out.

00:26:35:14 - 00:26:55:00

John

And so, yeah, I mean, a lot of, a lot of the value that I bring to clients is in that network. And so that's just something that I value and I try to put a lot of stock into as if I'm not going to be the guy doing all the work and I'm upfront with the client like, Hey, I'm not going to be the one shooting editing this thing.

00:26:55:00 - 00:27:06:11

John

I need you to know that kind of thing. I need to provide them a crew that I'm like super confident in. So a lot of the value that I provide to clients is in a trustworthy network, right? So yeah.

00:27:06:24 - 00:27:26:22

Dan

It makes sense. And I think with with video, you know, there's there's one element where you can tell quality of somebody's work by looking at their portfolio, etc., and you can kind of like reinterpret that for other roles that you were hiring for sales. You can look at somebody's track record and ask, you know, where they placed in their sales team and look at how long they've been at this or that company references, etc..

00:27:27:03 - 00:27:50:22

Dan

But then there's the other element, which is the reliability and how well they feed your culture and all that. And I think that let's say it was a sales role. The thing you could do, like even if you sell $100,000 engagement, you're probably not going to expect quick results from somebody. It's probably a long sales cycle, but you could at least give them a test or it's like, I want you to book five meetings in 30 days at least and so on.

00:27:51:01 - 00:28:00:02

Dan

Is there anything like that that you've developed for gauging reliability with creatives which coming from that world in a previous life is not always a given?

00:28:01:04 - 00:28:27:04

John

Yeah, it's tough for the production side of things, the actual filming, you know, you can't say like, Hey, go film this for me for free and I might give you more work in the future. In the future, and even in post-production, you can't really do that. But I rely pretty heavily on like peer reviews. You know, a lot of times I'll post in this Facebook group and say, I'm looking for a director and, you know, Seattle or whatever, and and then someone will tag somebody that they trust.

00:28:27:04 - 00:28:45:03

John

And then other people are like, Oh yeah, like plus one for that for that guy or that Matt gal, you know? And so that's kind of how I feel confident with at least, you know, and then not trying to give them like a huge project, like right off the bat really trying to say like, all right, let's, let's maybe start small and kind of develop a working relationship together.

00:28:45:03 - 00:29:06:08

John

But with with editors, you know, at this at the company I was working for, we were at the early start of my career. We're really heavily into weddings, wedding filmmaking and finding people that could really tell a good, compelling, emotional story with a wedding was was becoming difficult. And so we actually had a contest a couple of times.

00:29:06:08 - 00:29:25:11

John

We did some editors contests and we promoted it on various production blogs and stuff like that, where we had we took a couple's wedding, made really low res versions of the file. So it's like very easy for them to download on Dropbox or something. A whole wedding's worth of footage and have them, you know, cut together two or three minute will highlight reel or something.

00:29:25:20 - 00:29:48:16

John

And the prize was, I don't know what it was back then, 500 bucks or something like that. But also, you know, the chance to, you know, we would we would work with that person constantly. And it was amazing. I mean, it you get you'd get people from all over the world submitting stuff and out of maybe 30, 30 submissions of editors, there was one that was worth considering.

00:29:49:05 - 00:30:15:28

John

So it's just it's a big pool and a very big pool of people that are editors and a very small pool of people that really know how to edit that can really tell a good story. And so, I mean, that was one way that we found. But then again, this, that Vimeo approach was another way because I'm just like, well, if I'm seeing something that inspires me already, chances are you can do that again, right?

00:30:15:28 - 00:30:31:09

Dan

And they were really good enough to get it up on video and in front of your face. So that's yeah, something to say, right? That that makes a lot of sense since the job is has been so much fun and it's great you know talking to people that are in the middle of the journey, frankly, that are learning a lot from it.

00:30:31:09 - 00:30:54:07

Dan

And I think my biggest takeaway is just the there's a lot of interesting things you're doing, but that subscription model, like the idea that, hey, you're already doing the hard work, what's hard for your clients? How can you frame shifts just slightly to produce something that's magical? You know, there's this thing that I think the seemed to leave references, which is the idea of a roller duffle.

00:30:54:07 - 00:31:13:15

Dan

Right? Like we had suitcases since the beginning of time. We had the wheels since the beginning of time. The roller Dover bubble came around when, I don't know, 67 days or something. Why did it take us that long? But yeah, just imagine people, you know, carrying a heavy suitcase through airports because they did. If you watch old movies or just lugging stuff through airports.

00:31:13:15 - 00:31:28:02

Dan

Right. So I love I love these little frame shifts and and congrats on what sounds like a good start to the new business and everything with that. Where can people go to follow what you're up to and get in touch and all that good stuff?

00:31:28:02 - 00:31:50:19

John

Yeah, I'm like I said, I'm real heavily active on LinkedIn. John is owning is my my name is the owner and then yeah, LinkedIn. And then I have a podcast called Higher Ed Storytelling University that I bring on marketing CMO's from various colleges. I also do a lot of just kind of like writing of audio audio episodes of my own, just kind of thought leadership or whatever.

00:31:50:29 - 00:32:10:29

John

But then sometimes, you know, we'll bring on guests outside of the higher ed space to kind of bring some color into how we can create better content, you know, in other from other industries, that kind of thing. So it's called higher ed Storytelling University. It's on wherever you get your podcast, Apple Podcasts, all that stuff. And then I have a free download if people are interested.

00:32:11:08 - 00:32:31:26

John

If you go to unveiled that to slash student testimonials and it's a three part storytelling framework on how to tell a personal story in a way that's compelling and you could use it. It's geared towards higher ed, obviously, but really it's applicable to any industry. It's just a basic here's a storytelling framework that just works.

00:32:31:26 - 00:32:40:14

Dan

Yeah, that's, that's really great. And I think that'll, that'll be really useful to check out kind of how your positioning thing. So we'll definitely get that linked up in the show notes. And thank you so much for your time, sir.

00:32:40:29 - 00:32:42:20

John

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.