71: Dan Bennett: Founder of 1 Minute Media, Digital Media Freelancer and Consultant
Dan Bennett: Founder of 1 Minute Media, Digital Media Freelancer and Consultant
My guest today is Dan Bennett. Dan was born and raised in the gritty city of Flint, MI. He is the Founder of 1 Minute Media, a company that empowers individuals to tell their stories with great video through coursework and a private membership. He is also a digital media freelancer who offers direct consultation for companies as well as decades of experience in video production, video editing, motion graphics, sound design, graphic design and digital content development. His https://1minmedia.com/ is video coursework and private membership that shows people how to create awesome video content with something as simple as a smartphone.
Episode Highlights
His early beginnings of helping businesses communicate better, through videos and storytelling in order to generate more traffic and revenue
He created 1 minute videos for restaurant owners during the pandemic, providing them a platform to share their stories
Generating 30,000 organic views 1 minute media was born; with great content, Dan was on a mission to teach others how to be great storytellers
In this episode Dan shares the story of how 1 Minute Media evolved by providing a platform to help others share their stories. Listen in to hear his inspiring story of the steps his company took during the pandemic to assist restaurant owners in Flint, Michigan. Recording their stories, he gave them a 1 minute video, creating a platform for them to share their journey to keep their doors open. In a short period, he generated 30,000 organic views for six restaurants. Telling their stories and sharing with the community, he helped them increase their revenue. He provided a hopeful future with authentic, heartfelt 1 minute videos, all done pro bono and in return, he created great content and established many followers.
Tune in to see how Dan empowers business owners to create content, by telling their stories with just enough tools to make great videos.
Mentioned In This Episode
Transcript:
Speaker 1 (00:01):
And today I have a special guest with me. I have Dan Bennett. Dan was born and raised in the gritty city of Flint, Michigan. He is the founder of one minute media, a company that empowers individuals to tell their stories with great video through coursework and a private membership. He is also a digital media freelancer who, who offers direct consultation for companies as well as decades of experience in video production, video editing, motion graphics, sound, design, graphic design, and digital content development. One minute media is a video coursework and private membership that shows people how to create awesome video content with something as simple as a smartphone. Dan, thank you so much for joining me. I'm super excited to dig in with your story and hear about your entrepreneur story today.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Hey destiny. Thanks for having me on. I'm excited to talk about it. Anytime I can help people in this arena of sharing their expertise and possibly making part of their living doing so I'm excited to be apart.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Well, let's jump right in. And why don't you take a second and tell the audience how you, you know, you can go back as far as you want, and just tell them a little bit about your entrepreneur journey and how you got into online course creation in your membership.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Awesome. so 2014, I started a company and my main objective was to help businesses communicate better. In late 2018, early 2019, I started to get away from doing video and storytelling for corporate and started doing it more for small business and solo preneurs, small business owners. And in part of that effort, I started to just kind of naturally find people having this need to set up a video on their own because they couldn't afford to have us out time after time as a video production company. So we would help them get the right gear set up, maybe a home office or, you know, some sort of a room inside their brick and mortar facility where they could just pop in, hit record, create great video content. And then we would help them, you know, edit Polish music, do all that fun stuff to it.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
So it was a great piece of video content when it went out, I started finding, as I slowly moved away from corporate work that even though some of those big names that we did work for and they were fun to talk about they weren't as fulfilling as helping a small business owner create great content and being from Flint, Michigan, there's not a lot of you know, start up there. There's not a lot of cashflow there but I'm from there and my heart's there. So I would always think, okay, I fly out and I make this video content for this big company and they got a budget and they're happy, and that was fun. But how do I empower these smaller businesses that don't have that kind of budget? And I started doing that through what eventually was to be called one minute media.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
So it started in real life IRL. And like I said, it was, it was mostly gear, acquisition consultation, helping people get set up with their gear and then helping them, you know, in the post-production part after they created their assets. And as we started to kind of approach, COVID looking like lockdown, so we're going to happen and all that sort of thing, we really shifted our attention to making sure that one minute media was something that people could access digitally as well as in real life. So that's been the last couple of years of my entrepreneurial journey.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
So going back to 2014, that's when you started your business, was this more like freelance type work or what would you call it? Yeah,
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Yeah. I started out as freelance built to a small team and it was a really anything digital media. So anything we could do to help a company, not only create those assets, but tell a great story while we were doing it. Cause there's tons of digital agencies and there's tons of graphic designers and video professionals. So we really wanted to focus on the storytelling element and we worked with a lot of people one-on-one and those would be individual projects that would last anywhere from four weeks to six months. And then slowly over time, we moved to a little bit more of a retainer, monthly retainer type of a format, which if I'm being honest, I was never a fan of it. It was never fun, but it brought in revenue and let us grow up until the, the shutdown that happened. So that was kind of the main focus was being small and nimble freelance for the most part. And being able to complete individual projects very quickly for companies.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
What kind of companies were you working with at this time? Were they like big fortune 50 companies or small, small type businesses?
Speaker 2 (04:39):
I consider myself very fortunate in that regard because I got to have a lot of fun doing a lot of different things. So within one month in 2015, I worked for a local community or a community college and worked for Harley Davidson in the same month with their marketing department. So I was very fortunate to just kind of through word of mouth and some industry connections in the film industry, get my name out there and kind of be able to do all kinds of things. I never really niched down to a certain industry. I did everything, you know, from manufacturing to medical to university and even not-for-profit work as well. So I I've always considered myself pretty lucky that I never got stuck doing one thing.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
So what work did I have to ask? What work did you do for Harley Davidson? Were you filming people, riding the motorcycles?
Speaker 2 (05:29):
I wish I wish the work was super fun because I got to work directly with their marketing department. So I actually got access to all of their marketing assets. And if you're a designer like me that's heaven because you have all of their fonts and their, their color palettes and promotional materials that are built by some of the best designers in the industry and access to all these things. And they were doing a promotion with some of their larger dealerships to coincide with captain America, winter soldier, I believe it was called because Harley had product placement in that film. So we worked with some of their larger dealerships to kind of coincide some of the promotional work they were doing with that film as it released. But we did get to film at one of the bigger dealerships in the country and still get access to like their dyno horse horsepower testing machines and, you know, their, their mechanics and their salespeople in this huge facility. So it was still a lot of fun.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
That sounds like a lot of fun. We have a Harley Davidson dealership right near us and my kids are always fascinated to go there and look at the motorcycles. Yeah. So you did this for about four years and then in 2018 you started really focusing or kind of switching your gears to focus on more of the small businesses and the slopes solo preneurs. Tell me about that switch, kind of what, what was driving you to do that?
Speaker 2 (06:54):
It ended up being pretty literal. Although, you know, name-dropping some fortune 500 companies is fun especially if you're trying to pitch for a new job or working with some of those really talented people in industries that are outside of your own. You know, we worked with like Pantene and Nerf and Camaro and just all these people that they, they got their stuff together. They know what they're doing. You're just there to kind of capture and provide assets. And even though it was fun and fun to talk about, you know, it's that old creative thing I just was unfulfilled. And while I was doing that work, I was still doing work for small business independent companies head of marketing for companies that were nimble enough to make decisions quick about the, you know, video assets they were making. And that was just always more fun.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
It was easier to get out of bed. It was easier to do the edit and turn in the the final assets. And it was also like easier to kind of stake some claim and how well these assets did once they went out, because I knew these people, you know, they were, they were in my region or they were people that I got to talk with on a, on a regular basis. So just over time my, my heart went that way more and more and more. And then with the shutdown, we actually had to close our company. We had a huge shift very quickly and in retrospect, I'm glad it happened quickly where all of our outstanding clients and outstanding proposals, evaporated in about an eight day span. And we pivoted very hard because of that quickness that came with it. And in restarting, if you will, I was like, well, if I'm going to, if I'm going to start this over, I'm going, I'm only going to do jobs I want to do, you know, so that was the full transition all the way over to just you know, if it's, if it's not a heck yeah, for me, I'm not doing the work.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
So did all of this. How did you, you mentioned shutting everything down. Did that happen in March of 20 last year? 2020,
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Yup. February to March. Again, looking back at, I call it the bandaid grip in my life, but it, it happened so quickly. And like I said, in retrospect, I'm glad it did because I watched a lot of other small businesses kind of slowly bleed out, excuse me, over time. And that was, that was hard to watch. But yeah, we had a, a business conference in the works that was already set up keynote speakers flying in from all over the country, tickets were already selling. And that was all around storytelling and video. And then we had our ongoing work that dried up in the first, like three days of shutdown. And then our proposals dried up in the following three to five days. So it was a very quick, kind of 150 to $200,000 swing to zero. And I was like, okay, well, we, we got some free time now, what are we going to do?
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Wow. That, that is quick. So in a matter of, you know, it sounds like less than two weeks, you, you realize I have to do something different and it sounds like you really wanted to anyway, you were kind of leaning towards that. Anyway. Tell me about the process. What did you do who was involved? Was it just you making this decision and what, you know, kind of what your process was to create your one minute, one minute media program?
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Yeah, so the the digital version of it was in the works, but because we were growing decently rapidly at the end of 2019, a small team, just a couple of people, but they were new hires and it was going well. You know, a lot of the focus was on that. And one minute media was slowly being built in the background and I was doing the building. So it was when I had spare time on top of running a company. And when we started getting some word that it looks like shutdown type stuff might happen, we had to pay really close attention because we were trying to do a live event with about 150 to 250 ticket holders. So we had to really think about it and think about it hard because we didn't want to keep an event like that going, and not only be forced to shut down possibly and have to refund tickets, but also put anyone in danger.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
So it was a lot of meeting in person and trying to figure out, you know, what we were going to do. The final decision was mine, but we all pretty much agreed that, you know, the right thing to do is start shutting things down, let people out of contracts. And, you know, we had an understanding for all the proposal work that came back you know, as we're not going to move forward, cause everyone was kind of tightening the purse strings and, and trying to figure out what they were doing as well. And in some of those talks, one of the first things that came up was, well, we're going to be able to build one minute media, the digital version a lot faster now because we have free time. And because I still have people on staff, if you will, it was like, you know, what are we going to do with our free time while we have it?
Speaker 2 (11:42):
So as a collective, we came up with the idea for what we just called the one minute media initiative, which was putting the word out that we would do short, punchy videos for businesses that were deemed essential. And we did a lot of, a lot of work with restaurants and stuff like that. So we went all over Michigan and filmed these restaurants and just to really simple work you know, who are you appeal to your crowd? How do people still continue to order from you? How can they help and how can they share this? And we ended up with about 30,000 organic views for about six different restaurants that happen in a very short amount of time and brought a lot of revenue into those places. And it was so fun because it was just proof that this works proof that telling your story and sharing your heart, especially through video content is a really powerful way to communicate to your audience.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
So that's a very interesting story. So you just started doing these one minute videos with restaurants in your area.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Yeah. Yeah. We put out the call. It's funny because some of the news organizations that picked up on it were like, you're going to get inundated with requests. You're never going to be able to do them all. And what they didn't know is I have decades of experience in this industry. So I know that even when something is amazing, not everyone takes advantage of it. Right. So we got about 15 requests total. We did about 12 of them in a two and a half month period. So we did not get overwhelmed. And one of the really cool stories is a local DDA manager was like, Hey, I saw what you're doing. I also saw you talk about it in front of this panel, how no one's really capitalizing on it. What do you think if I line up five or six restaurants in my city and you do them all in one day and I'm like, if you want to be the producer, that's amazing. So let's do it. And I had a blast going around and meeting all these, you know, really hardworking entrepreneurs and helping them tell their story. And it, it just felt like the right thing to do. We didn't do it for media attention, but it got some just because we were trying to help. Cause we're like, okay, we got some free time. What can we do well in building one minute media in the background,
Speaker 1 (13:38):
Did you get paid for these videos, for these restaurants and these essential businesses?
Speaker 2 (13:43):
They, they were all pro bono and that's the way that we sold it. And the cool thing is I'll just be a little Frank here. The cool thing is the reason that the videos did so well is because everyone got out of their own way. The fact that it was free and the fact that they're currently struggling and trying to figure out what to do themselves, they really took direction well, and they just got out of the way and did what they were told. And that sounds a little bit harsh, but that's why it worked so well because we know what we're doing and you know what you're doing. So just share your story about what you're doing and we'll do the rest. And I think that's why those videos did so well, because you could feel the heart of these business owners, just talking about trying to keep their doors open and how their audience can be a part of it. So they were pro bono, but we got a lot of a lot of portfolio work and a lot of kind of networking, building and stuff out of it because no one else was really helping out in that way in our area, at least.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
And I love that story. And you got a lot of free PR sounds like, which is a huge, but you know, a huge bonus.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Yeah. And a lot of that, that press was people just kind of scratching their heads. Like, why would you do this? And for us, it just made sense. We didn't do it to get, we did it because that's our tool set. And we have free time now that we lost all this business. So what can we do? And it was really straight forward. It was, well, this come shoot with you for half an hour. We'll make a video if you share it. And, you know, just say, thanks at the end, that'd be great. Just give us a little credit. And that's the way we did it. And they worked out really well.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
So you were doing all this and in the background too, you were building your course and your membership. Tell us about that process.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
Yeah, so I have I, I, again, I'm someone who always keeps it real. I have the benefit of being, you know, a professional video production person and having time spent in scripting and filming and editing and marketing and all these things, and it was still hard. And that's one of the things that I don't think enough people talk about when it comes to coursework and stuff. A lot of the I'm making air quotes right now, gurus who are out there are like, ah, just make a course and sell it. It's easy and it's not. And I like to keep it real with people. It's doable, definitely doable, not necessarily easy. So you know, I, I just got to work. I did all of the the web development, the software implementation you know, all the promotion materials, marketing efforts.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
We ran ads in the beginning, which didn't work well for us. I know it does for some courses. So we built all of those ads and worked with an agency to run those on our behalf. Just a lot, a lot of work. And we shot a 10 hour day to get everything done in one day. And there was some problems on day one the, the professional video producer that I had helped me. So I didn't have to do it alone. Took responsibility for those things that went wrong and we went and shot reshot everything on another 10 hour day and got it all right the second time. So I like to tell those stories, because you never know what you're going to get into. You never know how smooth it's going to go. A lot of us want things to be perfect, especially if you're doing something that's in your industry. But at the end of the day, the relief came with, Oh, it's built, okay. Now it can sit there and work for me. And that's kind of the trade off in my opinion, for doing all that hard work of building out a course and doing it the right way.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
So did in your videos, did you do like a face to camera type course? How, how did you structure them, or did you have any type of slides that you were doing voiceover? What, what are your videos look like?
Speaker 2 (17:27):
It was very much talking head and I want to keep them short and punchy. One of my kind of taglines with one minute media is I'm not trying to turn anyone into a professional videographer. I'm trying to empower business owners with just enough tools to make great video. So I wanted them to be relatable. Something you could understand, get the skill you need, like framing or lighting or audio, but not overwhelm people with trying to turn them into a filmmaker. Cause that was never the intention. So it's pretty much straight to camera. I shot in 4k so I could kind of punch in and out and get around my mistakes. And then I happened to be able to, you know, do motion graphics professionally. So I do have some screen animations and stuff like that here and there just to keep it entertaining and drive home the points as I make them.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
And a little bit of B roll, just a little bit of secondary footage that might show what I was talking about. One of my videos is about being over-prepared and making sure you have extra batteries and extra you know, memory cards and all that. So I might show those things on a table while I'm talking about and just kind of documentary style, just simple B roll cause I wanted to keep it easy. And I also wanted to show people what they could do with video and hopefully, maybe subconsciously start to instill in them that you could do this to not necessarily make your own course, but talk on video and do it in a really professional way without too much of the headache of learning, how to become a professional videographer.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
I love that. Dan, tell me a little bit about your launch plan and how that process came about. Sounds like you did some type of Facebook ads. Did you do a webinar? Did you already have an email list built? Tell me a little bit about that.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
Yeah. again, I'm gonna continue to keep it real. So during the one minute media initiative where we were doing some of this free work some other large marketing agencies in Michigan saw what we were doing and kind of put together a panel of business owners like myself from all different parts of the marketing industry. And then as kind of almost like a supergroup, if you will. We used all of our email lists collectively. I was a small fish amongst some big fish and they had bigger lists than all those things, but they, we put out to all of our lists, Hey, here's the panel, we're doing free consultation and discounted work for companies that need help right now. And one of those people who was a part of that kind of Avengers type group, if you will ran one of the more successful Facebook ad agencies in the Midwest.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
And he saw what we were doing with the coursework as well and wanted to help. I've made a lot of Facebook ads for companies, but I've never really ran ads in my own company. I've always been very warm leads and word of mouth and referrals. That's just kind of the way it's been for me over the years. But he wanted to help and I was open to the help. So we did a full build off their wireframing for our landing page and ran ads. We didn't have a lot of money cause everything just shut down not too long before that, but we put a few thousand dollars behind it and drove a lot of traffic, had incredible numbers. If anyone's familiar with, you know, the percentages that you hope to get a hundred people land you know, hopefully half of them stay and hopefully half of those click through and actually fill out a form or by we had really low bounce rates.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
We had really high retention and click-through and zero sales. And looking back, I have a really good understanding of why now, but it actually frustrated that owner so much that he did the work for free. He didn't even charge cause he was like, I can't believe this didn't work. I've sold $40,000 pieces of medical equipment cold before. I don't know why this didn't work. And it was a learning experience. But for this particular product and this kind of angle, it just didn't work for us. My email list was small. So what I did was during the one minute media initiative, I spoke about a lot of people were interested in what we're doing, just kind of as supporters and kind of like fans, they just liked what we were doing and they got ahold of us along the way. So we threw them all in a private Facebook group just to keep them up to date with what we were doing with the initiative and building out one minute media.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
We got about 50 people in there and then toward the end, I said, okay, I'm clearing out the group. Thanks for being part of this journey, by the way, if anyone wants to partake in one minute media, we have beta pricing for just you guys. And we're also going to give you some free consultation to get you started, if anyone's interested in making your own videos. And we had about 15 people stay and that was kind of our launch group. And it was really cool cause they watched what we were doing the whole time. So they knew exactly what they would be getting and they still keep that pricing to this day. So it's kind of exciting to know some of those people got in really early and they're still reaping the benefits of making that decision.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
So you basically, so you had 15 sales in total, right? May I ask what your pricing was for the people in that group?
Speaker 2 (22:26):
Yep. It came out to 188 for a year. So that was our old pricing and that got you lifetime access to the coursework, which currently is 15 videos hitting on all those topics. You need to shoot great video. And the private group I do like live Q and A's I put video content in there in units to help people with storytelling. I often joke that because stories at the heart of everything I do, it's kind of the medicine in the cheese. Like when your veterinarian says to get your dog to take a pill and you put it in peanut butter or cheese. So the cheese is video, everyone knows they need video. It's a great medium to tell story. And the medicine is story and that's, that's what I'm doing most of the time is sneaking story in while people learn how to shoot video, because once they're ready to do it, I want to make sure that the content they're creating is really impactful. So yeah, it's been a kind of a fun little experimental type journey. Definitely not. The way I would do it next time and I'm actually working on a new course right now. So my thoughts towards marketing and launch for this new one is very different than the first time around. But you got to get that first time out of the way. So,
Speaker 1 (23:35):
So when did this take place? When did you actually sell it? Last year?
Speaker 2 (23:39):
We launched in April, 2020 April 1st. So yeah, we just came up on a year, not too long ago and that was like the beta round. So for the first month we were onboarding those people, having zoom calls with them, making sure that they got all their questions answered. So they could be great ambassadors for our brand as we did an official launch at full price. And then right around May 1st is when we kind of opened up to everyone. So it's been right around a year.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
Have you launched it again since then?
Speaker 2 (24:12):
I haven't, I'm actually, I'm in the middle of retooling right now and we're about halfway through luckily I can do my own web development work. So right now the way the landing page sits is still kind of in it's cold traffic format. So there's something there when people land and they can learn quickly about what we do. But we're actually retooling that currently. And I'm hoping for a June 1st official launch of the new kind of new approach to it same great materials, same great private group, just a little bit different approach on the landing page.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
So you're, you're going to relaunch this in June of this year. And you mentioned also that you have another course that you're working on.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Yeah. the working title for that course is Teller and it's all about storytelling. And it's very interesting because video is so tactical. You can get something as simple as a smartphone led panel and a inexpensive microphone and make really great video content. And then we also offer a One Minute Media members, discounted rates for our services. So I have a fair amount of clients who create the asset and then we edit and polish and give it back. So it's very kind of like straightforward. Storytelling is very, very different. It's it's a lot more nuanced and it's, it's kinda different from person to person and there's not necessarily gear that you have to go by to tell a great story. So we're taking a more of a four time, a year, eight week cohort approach to it, and I'm going to be involved myself.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Some of it will be framework based, you know, what is story? Where does it come from? What are some of the frameworks we can use, but a lot of it's going to be real life education and testing and experimentation. And at the end of the day, what works really well again in real life when I work with people on story development is giving people permission to be great storytellers because we really all are. We just don't know it most at the time. So it's very interesting because this approach is very different, not only in the framework of the course itself, but the approach because storytelling is just so different than capturing video, but it's the two things that I do. So I hope one day that someone might see the value in having both together. And yeah, I look forward to completing that as well because storytelling is powerful and it's, it's technically what we're doing right now.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
It is. Are you planning on launching it this year or what, or do you have a schedule for it?
Speaker 2 (26:41):
I don't for that. I do it's this year. I do have my map of when these cohorts would need to happen and where the breaks in between the eight week chunks will be. But I don't know when the first one's coming, cause we're really being careful about how we construct this. Because it's so nuanced as, as opposed to, you know, the video side of things. So not yet, but I will definitely,
Speaker 1 (27:06):
Yeah, I'm interested in that. It sounds like something we all need. What do you see as next steps in 2021? I know you have the new launch coming out in June. What else do you have planned for your business?
Speaker 2 (27:22):
So in starting over there's a very long story. I'll put in a very short sentence losing everything and starting over. I literally went into the Michigan wilderness to just do some soul searching. And one of the things I found and kind of brought back was you know, wanting to, to educate, empower and entertain, and I've been on YouTube forever, but coming out of the forest, if you will I finally was like, you know what, I'm going to do it on purpose. I'm going to create content on purpose on a channel. That's very niche and talks about storytelling and video, and I'm going to put it out to the world as kind of my top of funnel, my awareness. And you know, I've had videos that have gotten over a million views in the past, and I've worked with other companies and been credited for direction and production and all that fun stuff, but I never did YouTube on purpose.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
So coming out of the forest, I'm like, you know what, I'm doing it. And I've man, I've been having a blast doing it. We're making an impact. Growing very fast for a super small channel. And a lot of people are like, wow, I needed that, whatever that thing might be, whether it was a little bit of video knowledge and a little bit of storytelling knowledge. And I really am focused on growing that channel. Not necessarily to be a YouTuber as far as build the channel and get revenue from it. It would be great if that happened, but more so as a way to educate and give value upfront as well as create awareness for things like one minute media. So that's a big part. And then making sure I do things that I own. So really putting a lot of time into the courses putting time into my newsletter development and my own website.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
So just in case whatever platform I'm built on goes away, I still have all of my real estate that I own. So that's really where my focus is. And then doing freelance work will always be a part of what I do because I love helping people directly. So the kind of entire approach for me was going from having this business where I did a lot of service work for clientele and trying to shift that more to having digital products available for customers. And as that grows and fills up, you know, my base needs covers my bills and things like that. Then I can continue to be super picky about who I freelance with and in my universe, that's a perfect world, is where I can do whatever freelance work I want because I'm not reliant on the dollar. I'm more concerned about passion and fulfillment. And then the educational products that I'm making are helping people as well and paying the bills
Speaker 1 (29:53):
And a lot of business owners and freelancers that that's one of the things that they, they tell me. So I think that's, I think that's great. So you've been doing this for a while. I mean, you've been in business since 2014. What advice you have for other online course creators or entrepreneurs out there?
Speaker 2 (30:12):
Yeah. So one of my approaches and it comes just from my love of storytelling is two things, pattern interrupt, and conflict. It's two of the greatest parts about storytelling. And a lot of times in business, people shy away from it. Businesses tend to lean more towards features and benefits and shiny things, and what's on sale and price points and all those, and all those things are important. But I think too many companies shy away from, you know, the reason story works, which is conflict. So the advice I give a lot of my clients and a lot of startups I even recently did some consultation with some college students who are in an entrepreneurial pitch competition and I helped them do their last batch of videos and tell a great story inside those videos. A couple of them actually won that I worked with.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
So that was super exciting. And I, I tell them all the same thing, which is like, everyone's got some dirt under the rug. You don't have to air all your dirty laundry, but you might want to give someone a peek at the dirt because that's what makes story great is, you know, a conflict and a great example that I use all the time is you might see a Lincoln navigator commercial with Matthew McConaughey in it and it's over. And you're like, what did I just watch? Like he was shooting pool and then he's fishing at the Lake. Like, I don't even know how this was a car commercial. And then you might see a Subaru commercial where, you know, a dad is looking at a memory of a crashed car and then, you know, his child runs out and the car is new and he's having these memories of surviving that crash.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
And that's why he gets to have this, you know, brand new day with his child. And that is impactful. And that storytelling Lincoln still sells plenty of cars. So it's not like they're doing it wrong, but I'm always more impacted by a story that's just a little bit more of a, the conflict or the gritty stuff upfront. So I talk about that a lot and then pattern interrupt my moniker for my podcast. And a lot of my personal stuff is the anti preneur. And it's not anti entrepreneurship, it's anti flashy stuff and magic pills and silver bullets and, you know, Anti Guru's and people wasting their money and stuff that doesn't work, or it's not proven. You know, I just, I have a disdain for that stuff. So I like to lead with being very transparent about what I'm trying to do and helping people to interrupt pattern like that name does I wear a t-shirt with the entrepreneur on it always gets questions and I'm interrupting someone's normal pattern even on digital calls and stuff that the way we're networking now is still works.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
So always think about how to show some conflict upfront, talk about the problems and how you're going to overcome them. It's okay to show a little bit of that dirt. And then anytime you can try to interrupt the pattern of what's going on, I kind of call it my 180 approach. If I'm looking at how a lot of courses are marketing, I try and go 180 degrees the other way and see if I can do it completely differently. And then there's always some, you know, rules and regulations and, and maybe even the loss of physics or whatever, they keep you in check and bring you back from 180 degrees. But if you start doing it different, you're going to end up doing it different at least a little bit. And that might be how you interrupt someone else's pattern of looking at what you have to offer. So those are probably the main two things that I tell entrepreneurs, if it's a true startup or someone's first time in the journey, I also tell them to buckle up
Speaker 1 (33:26):
Cause it's a ride buckle up and get ready for the ride I love. And I do love the transparency that you shared with us today. I want to see a picture of that anti entrepreneur. That sounds like that sounds awesome. So Dan, where can people find you?
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Yeah, so I'm trying to make it real easy. I'm imtheantipreneur.com/linkstack And if you put a little forward slash and right link stack, L I N K S T AC K, all of my social buttons are there. You can, you can find me anywhere. I am. I have a podcast on YouTube, LinkedIn all the social media platforms, you know, we're there. And then also I built something just for your listeners, if it's okay to share. And that's the story spine it's kind of a Disney Pixar tool set that a lot of people use to just get the bones of a story kind of going, and I've used that with a lot of my clients. So I put together just a tiny link and I'm sure it'll be in the show notes as well.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
And that is the number one, 1M I N .dot M E D I a forward slash story spine. 1min.dotmedia/storyspine And it's just a PDF that kind of outlines how to use a story spine to get your own story going. And the fun part is this story can be about you, your product, your client, the next business you're starting. It doesn't just have to be once upon a time, there was a hero it can really be used for just about anything. So people can go and download that, let us know what they think. And it's a really good starting point to start thinking about how to use video and story together you know, to make sure that your communications are impactful.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
And thank you, Dan. And we will make sure that all of those links are in the show notes. So people can just click on them and get to you. And thanks so much for sharing all of your insights today. I love hearing about your story and your entrepreneur journey.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
Awesome. And thank you for doing what you're doing. Us course creators need the help, and I love that your website has so many resources on it. That that makes me happy. When people take, take the time to share really great resources for people trying to do something, maybe a little out of their comfort zone. So thank you for that.
Thanks, Dan.