Timestamp:
Getting connected with people stirs up business
4:02 - 4:24
Social Media is Networking online
4:51 - 5:27
The power of know, like, and trust
5:38-5:54
Trusting someone is better than being the best
5:55-6:19
How to scale the network effect
6:23-7:01
What I Learned About Video To Gain Trust
Hey, everybody, it’s Craig with Clipscribe. So, I want to talk to you about something I learned when I had to basically do a reboot.
I had to start over from scratch. I had a business that after about 10 years went through a number of struggles and had to shut down. After all that time I had to completely reboot.
Starting On A Rough Patch
I had to start something new. I had to do something new and because we kind of put everything in, trying to save this business, I was starting over from below ground zero.
I always kind of had this entrepreneur ego that I’ll just start something else up. I had some ideas in my mind. Things that I could do. But I always thought about that, you get that question a lot of times and you see posts about it. If you had to start over today, what would you do?
Then my mind always thought, well, I’ve grown my own companies with advertising, web development, creativity, Facebook ads, and Google ads, and I know a lot about that stuff, so I can help others do that. But one of the things that I feel like I did not do with both of my previous companies was network and connect with people. I’ve always been "sitting behind my computer creating and advertising, creating an advertisement," and I’ve never been the kind of person to go to networking events or conventions.
Who Networks?
If I go to a convention, it would be the kind where you could sell a product or something like that. I didn’t comprehend that as a solopreneurs or a bootstrapper, it’s important to spend your time doing those kinds of things.
So here I am, having to start over needing customers, needing clients, and at a stage of my life where I don’t have a lot of money to spend on advertising. So that’s a problem. And even though I tried some advertising, advertising doesn’t always work for certain types of things.
It’s kind of something you do as a side to your other ways of getting business. As I was trying to get local customers for web development or paid ads, it wasn’t working for me. Somebody said, “Hey, Craig, you need to go to a networking group; you should go to a local networking group and connect with people."
I thought that was kind of insane, like, "Why would I do that?". What is that going to do? But I was in a state where I really couldn’t argue or question it. So I went to a local networking group at a time of the day early in the morning – I wasn’t really much of a morning person – I sat there. It wrapped up, and I met a couple of people, and that was it... I thought this was a big waste of my time.
What Is The Worst That Can Happen?
I didn’t have a lot of options, so I went back again, and this time, I met somebody with whom I talked, and we ended up having lunch – and this guy ended up hiring me to do some things. It wasn’t anything big, but he did end up hiring me to do some things.
So I started going to some other groups like this, and I still felt like this was not really doing much for me, but over time as I dug in and as I got connected, people started hiring me more.
I started getting clients. I started to do web development and paid ads and videos for people in that business. That little consulting business grew pretty well, and I was able to do what I had to do to take care of my family and get us going. It got me to the point where I was able to start something new like Clipscribe, and that was always my goal.
Finally Getting To Chase My Dream
I always wanted to start something, another software product, or something similar. I knew that I had to get to the point where I would have the time to be able to focus on that. So I really started thinking about video at that time because this was when video content was very new on all the social media platforms.
Guys like Gary Vaynerchuk were all creating a lot of video content at the time, and they were on the top of people who did YouTube and who created videos for YouTube. That’s where these two ideas came together for me because I started looking at networking through a totally new lens and started thinking, "Wow, this is actually really powerful." The reason it’s powerful and a lot of people do this is because people want to do business with people they know, trust, and like. And if you can get somebody to know, trust you, and like you, the likelihood they’re going to do business with you I think skyrockets at that point. It’s interesting when you start seeing this, how often people will do business with somebody – and I saw this several times – which maybe isn’t the greatest at what they do, but there’s somebody that this person knows or trusts, and they would rather have somebody they know and trust, than maybe somebody who is the best of the best.
Know, Like, and Trust Are Now Scalable
So, I started thinking about how you can scale this, like how you could scale this networking effect. Because if you can scale networking, you can scale everything else. You can scale paid ads; you can scale search engine optimization. You could even potentially scale sales, you could hire a lot of salespeople, and they could make outbound calls or whatever. There are lots of ways to scale things, but how could you scale that "like and trust" factor?
That was when that all came together for me, and I realized it’s video content on social media. Video content where you are putting your authentic self in front of people every day, and all of a sudden, you’re giving people all over the world the ability to know you like you and eventually trust you with almost no limit on it.
When you go to a local group, or you go to a convention, you’re rather limited. That’s not scalable. But social media, video content, and videos like this give you the opportunity to get people to know you, like you, and trust you. You can amp that up even more by using paid methods to get your videos in front of people or just by posting consistently so that you eventually build up an audience. Maybe you’re not going to have the biggest audience in the world, but it will build up.
You Don’t Need Millions Of Followers
Maybe your authentic self is more niche, and you’re going to connect with a smaller group of people. That’s okay; you are more likely to have a more passionate audience group if that’s the case. Then maybe somebody who’s very, for lack of a better term, very vanilla will appeal to a broader audience.
So don’t be discouraged if you feel like you can’t – "Maybe I can’t be this kind of person that’s going to have millions, millions of dollars" – maybe you’re going to have thousands of very, very dedicated followers by putting yourself out there and giving people the opportunity to know you and like you and trust you. Therefore the chances they’re going to want to do business with you in some way is definitely going to amp up.
I Want To Hear From You
So let me know what you think about that. I totally get it. As I said, I’m late to the party on this, it’s kind of embarrassing, really, but I’d love to hear what you think about that and share any stories or feedback you have on it. I’d love to listen to that in the comments.
If you haven’t tried it out, Clipscribe. You want to create video content like this with headlines and automatic subtitles, and branding and then pour that out to a bunch of different layouts for other platforms. Check us out at clipscribe.com. Thanks for reading, everybody.
It’s Craig Lillard, and I’ll see you on another blog.