Alastair McDermott 00:00
If you’re like most business owners, you are probably thinking about creating content for social media. But you just don’t have time to do it, you don’t have the cycles, you don’t know what you should be talking about. And it’s just hard to find the time or prioritize it. And that’s what we’re addressing in this episode of The Recognized Authority.
Voiceover 00:18
Welcome to The Recognized Authority, a podcast that helps specialized consultants and domain experts on your journey to become known as an authority in your field. Here’s your host, Alastair McDermott,
Alastair McDermott 00:29
Today’s episode is a little bit different, you’re going to be tuning into a live stream that I recently did with a friend of mine, Josh Elledge, and he took the reins as host, because it was actually on his live stream that we did this conversation. Before we dive in, I just want to tell you a little bit about Josh, just to give some context for this because he doesn’t really get into it on his live stream. He is the owner of an agency called up my influence, which focuses on building authority. He knows an awful lot about media. He has over 2500 media appearances. He is a syndicated columnist, I think he wrote for 11 different newspapers. He has over 2000 podcast episodes under his belt. And his previous venture was called Savings Angels. And he built that up to I think, $6 million in sales without spending any money on ads all through media appearances and building authority. And so he really knows a lot about this topic. Josh was actually a pilot program member of many Service Authority accelerator, and he stepped up as a guinea pig to help me test the waters and give me feedback on it.
Alastair McDermott 01:27
In this episode, we’re talking about building authority through video clips in general. And then we’re also specifically talking about the service. There’s no affiliate angle on this at all. Josh is genuinely a very enthusiastic guy anyway. And I think he likes the program. And so that enthusiasm comes across, but there’s no affiliate or referrals. Deal being done here. It’s just all straight up. So his genuine enthusiasm, I really do appreciate, and you’ll hear that. So you’ll hear a lot from Josh on this because this is his live stream and him talking to his audience. But Josh is a guy I would recommend that you listen to anyway because he really knows his stuff. Okay, that’s enough of an intro here is Josh.
Josh Elledge 02:13
And friend, Josh here and with me, I got my friend Alastair McDermott. Alastair, we’ve worked together for a number of months. Now I love what you do. And we’re gonna talk about a topic I think, is on the minds of a lot of content creators today, or Aleister, what I would say is your people were very good at what they do, right? And maybe sometimes they feel like their own best kept secret. Maybe they’re really struggling, I’ll tell you what we did.
Josh Elledge 02:44
We, we appreciate this. We invested close to 20k on a lot of market research. And even though it’s a little bit unrelated to what we do, one of the biggest challenges that we found among our clients are, you know, kind of our population that we work with. And again, we typically work with consultants, coaches, b2b service providers and agency owners that are doing six figures and beyond. One of the biggest confusions even in that population is just not knowing what to do today with social media that there’s a lot of frustration that either it’s not working or they just don’t want to create noise, or it’s just getting lost or not connecting. They’re not getting engagement. It feels really inefficient. It’s not really working. It’s certainly not driving conversations, connections in business. And so Aleister we’re gonna get into all that stuff. Alistair, thank you so much for doing this. So we’re gonna have about a probably about a 30 minute conversation your to our friend, it’s stumbled upon this
Josh Elledge 03:46
locking load, because I’m gonna tell you right now, what we’re about to talk about is there’s a lot of kind of like, kind of very, very recent insights just based on available tools. When we’re thinking about how we create micro content, what content is working very well, how we leverage social media, how we connect and grow audiences. And so again, oh, sorry, sorry, but no bloviating here. Alastair, welcome.
Alastair McDermott 04:17
Welcome. Thank you. We’re saying welcome. I’m so used to being the host. But it’s a pleasure to chat with you here, Josh. Yeah, we’ve got a ton of different things that we could talk about. So I’m gonna let you drive for once. Yeah, for sure.
Josh Elledge 04:31
Okay, so what I, what I’m let’s start off by maybe just kind of kind of get Have you just give you just a quick intro to who you are and what you do. We’ll go from there.
Alastair McDermott 04:41
Okay, sure. So, I’m a content marketing specialist. I guess content marketing strategist is one way I introduced myself. I have a podcast called The Recognized Authority, which has over 100 episodes, I think 120 530 We’re at I’ve got two other podcasts myself and then my host to a podcast for, for publishing for a series of books as well. So I’m an experienced veteran podcaster. I’m also an author. And I have been running my own business in kind of consulting and web design agency type model for about 17 years now. So I’ve been there done that book, what the t shirt when it comes to content creation. But recently, in the last kind of three or four years, I’ve really doubled down on content creation, particularly around podcasting. And so there’s, I’m a big believer in content and creating content, which you put out into the world, which builds this kind of body of work that people can stumble across, and all of the different places that people can find your content, and then come into your world to kind of attract it to you like its gravity. And then they reach out to you when you’re top of mind for what you do. And you’re seen as an expert. And that’s why I call my business The Recognized Authority: you want to be seen as The Recognized Authority in your field,
Josh Elledge 05:58
huh? Yeah. So I love this. So what we’re going to talk about in this session is going to talk about how to effortlessly create infinite pieces of comment or content using the greatest latest tools. But doing so in a way that’s not going to feel cheap and AI created, right, where it just feels generic, it doesn’t really connect with audiences, but again, kind of how to leverage those tools. And then Alastair, of course, you know, this is what you do professionally. And, you know, the work that you do with your clients, is quite masterful, and I love how you engage, because you’re able to engage with business owners on multiple levels. Both is what I would say, I don’t know, how would you describe your role as I look at you as kind of like a kind of a fractional Content Director, in addition to kind of being able to assume more and more of those roles with you and your team? Is that would that be accurate?
Alastair McDermott 06:57
Yeah, I mean, I like to be the arm around the shoulder for people who are finding it tough to create content and kind of directing people in the right way. Because it’s very easy to create a whole wealth of content, that is totally ineffective. And that’s the real issue that we’re trying to fight against. Because there’s you can create high quality content that doesn’t do the job that you need. And that’s really frustrating when you spend a lot of time and effort putting it into the quality. So it needs to be effective. And you also need to create it in an efficient way. I think that’s really important as well. And then there’s all of this AI, I don’t know how else to say it, but crap, this AI generated rubbish that people are are posting. And that sea of mediocrity and AI content, is what we’re fighting against, we got to try and create content that that kind of rises above that. And so, you know, I think that there are certain ways that you can do that. And, and we can get into the details of that.
Josh Elledge 07:52
But you know, I think that’s, that’s really what it’s about is about, how can you actually stand out against all of that, when there’s people who are using, you know, Chuck GPT, please write me a LinkedIn post about X, you know, and that kind of rubbish, you know, so, like, how can you stand out? That’s what it’s all about. Aleister, what you’re saying, I want to kind of point this out to someone who might be thinking, Wait a minute, AI is, you know, this amazing gift, and it’s, it’s making all of our wildest dreams come true? How would you answer that? Or what do you see as a potential risk? If you have marketers who ruin everything?
Josh Elledge 08:34
That lovingly, you know, who, you know, it’s like, I just think of like, all of the things in my life as a, you know, it’s kind of a relationship oriented, thoughtful, like, I love to do what I do, I love to connect, I love to create great outcomes for our clients. I love to work very, very, you know, I love to co create awesome stuff. And so but yet I, you know, historically, you know, like every other agency, Owner, consultant or service provider, you know, you have to make those connections, right. And so if we think about all the different ways that we make those connections, you know, there have been a lot of things that have worked historically, Alastair that no longer work very well today. And I feel like that’s kind of we’re at an inflection point with AI driven content right now, where I think that there’s some big risks.
Alastair McDermott 09:27
Yeah, so I mean, I love AI. I think it is fantastic. What we can do with it. I’m certainly not on the anti AI bandwagon. I think that AI can make us exponentially more productive in our work, and that’s, that’s what’s amazing, but
Josh Elledge 09:44
you’re not competing. We’re not talking about you versus your friend that’s watching this right now. We’re not talking about you versus AI. We’re talking about is you versus a sea of other people or marketers that are going to use these tools. polls which are amazing, amazing tools. And they may use them in ways that are going to crowd out. You know, those of us who are very thoughtful and good at what we do a really good book on this, I apologize Alastair, I feel like I stepped on you for just a second. But a really good book on this, Mark Schaefer, it’s called Marketing rebellion. And he pinpoints again, kind of this cycle of what marketers do time and time and time again, they find something really good. And then they abuse it, and then they ruin it for everyone. They decimate the field. So we think about things like LinkedIn Sales Navigator, you know, connecting with people cold via email, and DMS, you know that a lot of those things are kind of ruined now. They’re just not effective platforms for lead gen today, just because they’ve been so abused by amateurs, and you know, just kind of creepers. Really. I’m sorry, Alister, back to us.
Alastair McDermott 10:55
Well, Mark Schaefer is one of the few people who I’ve interviewed twice on my podcast now, actually, yeah, I fan. I spoke to him a lot about AI last time he was on. And one of the things like he had a great analogy. He said, you know, attack GPT. And these kinds of tools, they’re a bit like a calculator, you know, it’d be insane not to use them, but we can’t expect them to generate and create all this amazing stuff for us. Like it needs somebody pressing the buttons that needs to be human there right now. Now, maybe later, like, AI as it is, today, is the worst it’s ever going to be, it’s only going to get better. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And that’s the same, and that’s the same tomorrow. And that’s the same the next day, so they will improve. But there are certain things that AI can’t do, and are probably not going to be able to do in my opinion, I think it’s gonna be very difficult for AI to make a human connection with another human. And that’s where I think things like video, like the two of us are on video, and both of us are very bought into video, we discussed this a little bit beforehand. We both believe in the power of video. But that that is what’s going to make a human connection with somebody who’s watching this or listening to this, they’re going to see us they’re going to hear voices, AI just can’t do that right now. And I think that it’s going to be a long time.
Alastair McDermott 12:06
And I’m talking about decades, where where it’s going to be actually able to fake a human on the fly, you might be able to create something pre produced something beforehand, but on the fly, I don’t think it’s going to be able to do that. So I think that using the using tools like video and audio right now, to develop your own platform and build your platform is really important. And this is something else Mark was talking to me about, like you, you just held up one of his latest books. The reason why people will buy his books in the future is because they know they’re from Mark, they know they’re written by Mark Schaefer, they know that it’s a human being has written that, and that it’s him and his point of view. And so he has built that platform. And that’s why we’re discussing him now. I don’t think that an AI is going to get to that stage, anytime in the near future. Yeah,
Josh Elledge 12:53
and even if it does, as a business owner, you don’t want to wait, you don’t want to wait five years to build your but you gotta use the best available resources and tools and expertise and advice based on what’s working today. And so that’s we’re gonna talk about, you know, before we continue Allister to our friend that’s watching, do me a favor, comment below, I may or may not see it on the live stream just based on the platform that I’m using. But if you comment below, just say, Hey, Josh, Hi, Josh, thumbs up, like give posted emoji or something like that in the comments. Um, just to let me know that you were here. And I will take that as a Hey, thanks for doing this, I appreciate that. That’s all you got to do. You don’t have to, you don’t even have to ask a long winded conversation or a question or anything like that. But just some sort of engagement that lets me know that you are here really makes a huge difference, just to make sure that this is in any way valuable for you.
Josh Elledge 13:48
And as always, it’s always fun to see, oh, I know that person. So if you ask a question or post something, we’ll put it on the screen, or I think in some of the platforms I’ll actually see in our platform, and I can ask Alice, we can kind of talk about that. Okay, so who you have here today, my background is immediate consulting and training. You know, I teach these sorts of skills like performance, you know, that sort of thing. And, you know, as well, what we want to do is we want to make sure like we don’t want Aleister, to spend all of this time and you know, it being like a tree that falls in the woods, and nobody hears it. And unfortunately, you know, kind of the feedback that we found in our market research was that was happening far too often is that, you know, leaders would make all these investments in content, or they would spend all of this time creating content. You’re like, all of that for what I had like 37 people watch it. What’s the point? It’s so frustrating. All right, Alastair. Take us away. What What are we to do today?
Alastair McDermott 14:53
Well, I think that you shouldn’t swim against the tide when it comes to social media. The social media plan forms have a lot of power with their algorithms. And if we’re if we’re swimming against the current, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s pointless, we’re not going to make any progress. So take what they want us to create, and go make more of that. And right now, that is short video clips, that might change in the future. But we know for sure that short video clips, and carousel style posts are huge on all of the social media platforms from the Instagram TikTok War, where both of those platforms or to YouTube who are investing heavily in the shorts platform, and even on LinkedIn, there’s a huge amount of people watching video on LinkedIn, and shock horror, most of them are actually watching it in vertical format on their phone. So I know a lot of people are like, No, I want my video to be horizontal. I know you do. I prefer horizontal videos too. But this is what the users are telling us they want. So it’s it’s it’s don’t swim against the current. It’s go with the flow. And so if the social media platforms are going to promote short, social media video, more than other types of content, I think you should create more of it. And you know, that’s the end of the show. Just
Josh Elledge 16:15
want to give a shout out to my good friend Craig Andrews. Really, really smart guy. Thanks for the comment, Craig, great stuff on LinkedIn. Thanks so much for commenting. Yeah, so no, it’s absolutely true. And you know, what I, I don’t know if it’s just the type of like Facebook account that I’ve have right now as a content creator. But every single time that I make a post, if there’s if it’s visual in any way, Facebook always prompts me to turn it into a real, and I do sometimes. Can you talk about that just a little bit about like, so social media platforms are really pushing short form video, can you share maybe a little bit more about that, why
Alastair McDermott 17:02
it’s fairly simple, it’s as human beings. So first of all, the short form videos that you’re seeing typically have human faces on them. So you’ll see that most of the videos have a human being. And this maybe is where the vertical clips are more suited than horizontal, because you get to see more of the person. But that’s that’s the way our brain is primed is to we stop the scroll when we see a face. And so they get more engagement. And so what they’re seeing is they’re seeing in their statistics and their analytics, that people are spending more time watching video content than watching the other types of content and then spending time. And that’s why they’re, you know, that’s why they’re doing this, because people are watching these videos far more and spending time, you know, and the way that we can use this is we can use that to build a connection with the people who are watching. And we can become known by them. And that’s, that’s what the that’s what we’re trying to do here is great content that makes a human connection to people and starts to build a parasocial relationship, which is this kind of one sided relationship where the person feels like they know you. And hopefully in time, that will develop into a two way relationship. But at the start, it’s a parasocial relationship. And then, as they start to see more and more of our content, they start to plant a flag in their head for you that you are the person who does x. And that’s part of the kind of the strategy is to make sure that that you’re being connected with the right thing in their head, so that when they’re looking for somebody, or they get interested enough, they’ll click through to your profile.
Josh Elledge 18:38
All right, so what is Alastair? The best way that we can kind of what’s the strategy here that in terms of best practice, for what a really and again, I want to advocate for the exceptionally overworked, burnt out or not burnt out, but like, they don’t want to add the word that here’s what they don’t want to do, Alister, five hours and TikTok dances. I can tell you that. So that was again, part of the research that we found is, you know, just like, I just don’t want to I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to do that. I am the main character kind of nonsense. You know, I love delivering value, but I don’t want to feel like I’m being salesy or smarmy, or whatever, like, I just want to do good stuff that’s going to be valuable for my audience. I hope that that turns into meaningful conversations. So how do we begin that process? Like how can we develop workflows? And again, we’ll certainly feel free to kind of talk about how we’re where you come in with leaders as well with this too.
Alastair McDermott 19:38
Yeah, well, for me, because I’ve been podcasting for so long, and I’ve done so many. I looked at podcasting as the ideal. And not everybody wants to start a podcast. But there are a lot of times where you’re on video, for example, we’re both on video right now. And we can take this video and we can chunk this up. If if one of us is speaking about something where we’re making a salient points that’s important and valuable to the audience. And we then go back later and cut that out, we can actually turn that into a clip. And so the extension of that is me just doing that deliberately. And that. So that’s what I’m doing with the authority accelerator program is I’m saying, Okay, I’m going to go and deliberately interview people in such a way as to create those clips, and make sure that they’re on point that they’re, you know, part of their content strategy, talking about the things that are important for them and for their audience. And let’s go and make those clips deliberately. So and using some of the technologies that we talked about, you know, to help the process and smooth it over.
Josh Elledge 20:35
Yeah. Okay. So, so again, just kind of sum up, here’s an I absolutely agree. I’d say for that type of Persona, the, the busy business owner that doesn’t want to add a bunch of content, because it’s, it’s stressful. I, you know, number one, is coming up with the ideas. And so, do you want to talk? You know, let’s talk about that blinking cursor? And how we can overcome that? How do we know what we should be creating? Or what should we be teaching or, you know, that can be multi or repurposed into that, you know, infinite numbers of pieces of content?
Alastair McDermott 21:17
Yeah, well, I think that goes back to the basics of actually having a content strategy in the first place. And that’s something that I work a lot with people on, because if you don’t have a content strategy in the first place, then you’re just going to be talking about whatever comes off the top of your head. And that’s not the right way to that won’t resulting in kind of a good use of your time. So have a have a strategy in place, where the content that you’re creating is actually on point for your business goals and for your kind of your overall goals, and then having something to say about that. So that’s having a point of view. And this is important as well. And I’m like, I’m a software engineer by trade back in the day, 20 years ago. And so I was looking at this point of view thing and saying, look, there’s got to be a structured way that we can create, or develop or document our point of view, so that we can then use it. So if any of your viewers know Alan Weiss, if you read a piece of text from Alan Weiss, he’s written nearly 100 books at this point, he has a very distinct point of view in his writing. And so you can recognize there, I can certainly recognize and a lot of people would recognize, just by reading, you know, a couple of paragraphs of text. Oh, that’s Alan Weiss that wrote that. So that’s what looks like a really boil down point of view. And, but everybody has a point of view. And it’s just about uncovering that. And so I think it’s really important to so you’ve got your content strategy, you know, the topics that you’re going to be talking about your content pillars, and you’ve got a strategy around how you’re going to talk about those. And then it’s about actually creating the content. And, again, I can’t think of a better way than to have somebody interview. And that’s, that’s why I will add into the program, it’s the
Josh Elledge 22:51
easiest way, in my opinion, is if you can set up that process, where you have someone that knows what they’re doing, right, because the can you talk, maybe talk a little bit more about the that interview process, right. And so again, what we’re talking about is you would again, if you’re, if you’ve got great domain expertise, you know, a few things, you’ve got some decent authority, like chances are you have volumes of books that you could potentially teach on a variety different topics already in your head, it’s already up here, right? And so what we need to do is extract that out of your brain and into this content. And so and again, how you do that, it’s, it can make a huge difference. You know, if you have someone that knows what your strategy is, knows what questions to ask you, then this is easy. Aleister Oh, you have to do is just show up and just answer the darn questions. You’re the talent, the spotlights on you, you just sit in the chair, answer the questions. You’re done. All right, Josh out. And then, you know, again, with the great tools and systems, processes and teams that you could put together. And I mean, you have no excuse today, the tools are so good, that it’s never been easier. And in fact, I don’t mind let’s let’s talk about, let’s take a little detour here. Let’s kind of pull into the rest stop here, along the highway. Um, because I want to, I think it’s a perfect time to just kind of introduce very specifically, how you work with leaders. Just again, to our friend that’s watching. I think you might not find this valuable because what I can tell you is that historically, there have been repurposing agencies that will do this work for you. Or, you know, certainly tools in the past. And Alastair we were spending many 1000s of dollars monthly, to create this content, because of today’s tools, the quality that you can get
Josh Elledge 24:59
Create now, and I’m just going to put your let me put some links on the screen here. Because I want to share what you do, because I think this is going to stimulate some some ideas, or maybe about potentially engaging or working with you. So what we have here, there’s a link that I’ve put on the screen, you’ve seen it in the ticker, it’s up my influence.com/authority, you’ll see that and I’m not going to put it in the post, but I’ll put it in the comments later. But if you just go to that link up my influence.com/authority, you’re going to see what I’ve put on the screen right here.
Josh Elledge 25:39
And, Alastair, do you want to maybe just kind of go through this, and I’ll kind of scroll through and talk about how you work with leaders. And I know you’ve kind of created a little bit of this for us as well. But how do you work with with with Vox?
Alastair McDermott 25:55
Yeah, so I’ll give the example. Like when when I did the the initial pilot with you, Josh, what I did was I got a 21 minute interview with you. I know, it’s 21 minutes, because that’s what the video was afterwards. So I interviewed you on Zoom. And we had 21 minutes of footage at the end of that. And the questions that I asked you are very strategic, we did no pre planning, I, we just gotten the call and I interviewed you for 21 minutes. At the end of that we had 10 clips that we created. So we created 10, short video clips of up to 59 seconds each. And we keep it just under that minute mark just to because that gives us the maximum kind of optimal usage for all of the different social media channels. And so what we resulted in, was we have 10 clips. And then we also wrote 10 pieces of text as as social posts to go along with that. And so you have 10 days worth or two weeks worth of social media videos with with text to go along with that, just on the basis of showing up for 21 minutes. And that’s effectively the whole thing in a nutshell, is having somebody who has the right questions to get the right answers from you. And I think that’s the key thing, like every expert that I’ve ever talked to has more than enough expertise to answer the questions that I’m asking. And what we’re doing is we’re creating content that then resonates with people that is demonstrating and positioning you and demonstrating your point of view and making a human connection. And that’s, that’s what it what it’s about. So, you know, there’s lots of people who are spending huge amounts of time and you can, you know, you could be like Gary Vee, and you can have, you know, videographer full time following you around and videoing every single thing you do. But most of us can’t do that. Most of us don’t have a lot of time. So if you can show up for 2030 minutes, and then have your month’s worth of social media done. You know, that’s, that’s the, that’s an ideal scenario for me. So that’s what it’s about.
Josh Elledge 27:59
I want to let’s just kind of talk about, like what that engagement looks like. And again, this isn’t for everybody. But if you’ve got, like if you have the desire to connect with more audiences, again, we’re just going to review the elements here. You need strategy don’t want to be haphazard. And thus you need to know what it is that your audience is interested, what are their pain points, how Who are you, and you want to think about the whole user journey. But again, you could either come up with all of that on your own, or, again, you could be a little bit more thoughtful on how that’s done. And you can actually work with someone who can come up with that strategy guarantee these big guys. They’ve got someone that that’s kind of their job. They’ve got teams of people, like Alex probably has a few ideas. Alex or Mozi, for example, probably has a few ideas to what to talk about. But he’s got a team that says, All right, Alex, here are the four things we’ve researched and found that we probably should be promoting and talking about this week. Here’s some bullet points, we’ve come up with a couple of stories and some facts and figures. And he’s like, cool, and he’s the talent, right? It is so much easier to podcast to be a YouTuber to do live streaming to do social content for social media. If you’ve got some notes and some bullet points and some someone telling you, this is all you have to do you show up and you this is I’m going to ask you the questions and you do this. And so that’s kind of exactly what this is. Now, one thing I want to point out is your pricing. This is no joke. This is 50% Based on what you provide. This is 50% of what we were paying last year. AI has streamlined so many processes. But again, Alex Do you want to use it in a very intelligent way so that it doesn’t feel generic so that it doesn’t feel Like, it’s kind of feel like your voice, it’s got to connect at a human level with people not just regurgitated machine generated garbage. And like aI copy is good. But again, you really have to coach it very, very well, so that it connects authentically with audiences. But the advantage here, and maybe you can kind of talk about what your processes are, you leverage some AI tools. So you got the best of both worlds here. But again, right now, like I said, it’s like, this is half of the price that we were paying last year, to have a repurposing team kind of do all this for us.
Alastair McDermott 30:40
Yeah, yeah. So that the the way that we use AI, it’s all under human supervision. So there are certain things that an AI can’t do. So the way we work it. So first of all, the interview process, there’s no AI involved there. No, right, the very first interview that I do, I typically have a set of preset questions that I’ve created over time, which will get the most effective. And that’s where we got all of those clips for you from, by, by having those questions, I have a very strategically created list of initial questions for the first interview. And then, when I’m working with people on a longer term, what we do then is we work on the positioning and the messaging and the point of view, and the content pillars to create those topics and to create the next list. So So typically, I’ll work with people for three months at a time. Now, with the exception being the starter pack, and we could talk about the starter pack, which is kind of like a taster. But typically, I work with people at three months at a time. And what we’ll do is we’ll work on the content strategy, particularly, that first month is really important to get that nailed down. And then the rest of the content will flow from that. Like, I promise you, nobody has ever said to me, I don’t have enough ideas, they might say at the start, but we have so many potential things that you can talk about that they’re, you know, now what we need to do is we need to make sure that we don’t get overwhelmed by too many things we need to sort and organize and prioritize what you need to talk about. Because we need to be creating content at all points of the funnel, we need to create content at the bottom of the funnel, which people are really good at creating the kind of content that leads into sales. But we need to do middle and top of the funnel, which people business owners are typically quite bad. In my experience. They’re typically bad at doing top of the funnel content, because it’s a bit more kind of just awareness. And it doesn’t really get into the details and experts love to go right into the details.
Josh Elledge 32:35
Oh, yeah, yeah. And it’s just it’s so hard Aleister to again, you got to have that, that. This is like what we experienced with media training, right? Because, again, most marketers, you know, especially like, if, listen, I’m doing this because I want to make a lot of sales. Cool, but it’s too early to do that. Right? You need someone to say, Ah, you can’t do that. Right. And, you know, that’s why it’s so important to have someone that sticks to the strategy when your brain might want to go to hey, I need to make sales here. It might not be the appropriate level to do that. Hey, you know, on that note, I just want to mention this again, full disclosure, Allister, you and I are friends you and I do business together to our friend watching this. I am not doing this for affiliate money like Aleister and I are just we do great work together. I love the work that he does. Aleister if you give me money based on if someone were to find you through this video, I’m just gonna donate it to charity. Like I’m good. I don’t need I’m good. Like we’re not doing it because Josh is trying to make affiliate money. Like, we’re good. I got my bills paid. I’m doing this because I know that there’s, I know, the emotional stuff that I’ve struggled with, historically, in the past where I’ve just been so exhausted with feeling like, oh, like I gotta go walk around with my phone and like, shoot funny videos or something like that. Like, I don’t want anyone to have to worry about that anymore. So again, just wanted to throw that out there just in case you’re second guessing my intention. I assure you my intentions are pure. Alastair’s a good guy. Okay, back to you, sir.
Alastair McDermott 34:08
Well, you know, just on the stress, and you know, the effort that people need to go through and like I’ve gone through this myself, in learning how to speak directly to a camera and record solo videos, it is really hard to record a video where you’re doing what I’m doing right now and looking directly at the camera rather than Josh, who’s down there on my screen. It’s really hard to get to the stage where you’re able to do that. But it’s much more natural to Gatling zoom call and just talk to somebody about your area of expertise. And that is so much like the effort level is so much less. And then to have somebody just take care of it for you. Like, this is what I do myself, I don’t do the editing. And if you look at my social media channels, you’ll see loads of examples of where I’ve done this. I’ve put up one of these clips every day for the last two months or something so you can go back and see all the clips that I’ve put up and You know, you’ll see, you’ll see that on my LinkedIn, and my Instagram, and my YouTube and my TikTok. So, you know, all of all of those channels and getting lots of views and engagement and people contacting me on all of those different channels, all from one piece of content where I sat down and talk to somebody for 30 minutes. And that’s where you know that that’s, you know, you’ve got a month’s worth of content from 30,40,50 minutes, I don’t know, depends on some people are not as good as you, Josh, you are brilliant at speaking in sound bites your media. Like, let me Josh, Josh is insane.
Josh Elledge 35:37
Well, it has nothing to do with talent, it has nothing to do with like innate ability. It just has to if because I can assure you of this, because if you go back and look at my early stuff, Aleister is so bad, it’s like, I just like, I’m so uncomfortable for me watching myself do that. And listen, you know, for those of us who struggle with that, right, because we’re afraid or, you know, kind of getting in our own head, like I remember for me, like, I was watching Pat Flynn or listening to his podcast. And that was, you know, I went back and I listened like his first like five episodes of smart, passive income. And when I heard which episode, but there was one point in the interview, where you could tell he’s getting frustrated with himself, and you hear him just kind of stop. And he goes, and then he kind of starts over. And he left it in. And I just like, I’m so grateful. I told him this. Could we were doing some media stuff together in Orlando, I told him, I said, Listen, that maybe unintentional moment, that was the thing that that really gave me the confidence that I could get into podcasting. And again, if you go back and listen to like, my first episodes of the Savings Angel show, it’s not good. It’s not great. And so we’ve launched my influence, we’ve launched over 200 podcasts. So I like I go through this with folks a lot. So listen, your first 10 episodes are probably not going to sound awesome to you. It’s okay. Right? You, you got to get it out of your system. And then you’ll start to get more and more comfortable. And you’ll realize, oh, okay, I did this thing and nothing bad happened. Okay, you know, my biggest thing, you know, is that I was afraid that I was going to be criticized, you know, I don’t know why that’s just my own insecurities kind of creeping in, you know, I felt like I’m going to, you know, with, especially with long form content, you know, or I’m going to put this stuff out there, someone’s going to say something mean, and then I’m going to feel bad about myself. And that was probably one of my number one fears. Aleister and any observations from that standpoint?
Alastair McDermott 37:46
Yeah, well, like I said earlier, genuinely, I do want to be an arm around the shoulder for people who are a bit afraid of this stuff. If, if there’s somebody watching this, and they’re, you know, like, I don’t need an arm around the shoulder, I just need to get this done. Okay, you know, we can do that. I could be incredibly efficient, like I was with you, Josh. I’m, I’m really like, we created 10 or 12 clips from that, we actually probably could have got another five or six, because it just felt like everything you spoke was a soundbite. So it was incredible. So
Josh Elledge 38:15
it’s taken some time to just that’s taken. Your 1000s and 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of times. And it’s just like, it’s like me learning the bass guitar right now. Right? Like, I just got to, like 24 days ago. And like, when I first picked it up and started playing, like, I had kid fingers, man, I was like, you know, just like making all this ridiculous noise and stuff. Now 24 days later. You know, it’s, I feel so much more comfortable with it. Because I’ve been practicing every single day for about 30 minutes. So it’s Arthur Schopenhauer that said, do the thing, have the power, not read the book and have the power or watch somebody else and have the power, you have to do the thing and that activity knowledge is just so powerful? Now, if you have someone guiding you and interviewing you, and it’s going to make you look good, it’s going to advise you on Oh, hey, let’s adjust your lighting really quick. Oh, let’s do this. Let’s do that. Oh, so much better. Let’s fix your mic. That sort of thing that really matters. Hey, no, you mentioned that Elektra wouldn’t let me just ask you about that really quick. You’ve done some pretty good research and you’ve you’ve had conversations with people. Quality Matters, big time. One thing to our friend that’s watching this, you might notice Hey, those guys have good web webcams. What’s going on there? You want to talk about like just really quick audio video quality, why that stuff matters. Say listen, if you’re doing sales on Zoom, pay attention, Aleister take it away.
Alastair McDermott 39:52
Okay, so you talked about the learning curve. And what I want to do is help people jump over the really Bad stuff and get get get to where, hey, this is pretty good now and let’s just improve from here. So that’s why that’s part of it is is about jump starting the process. And let’s let’s start at the bottom, let’s learn from other people’s mistakes like my mistake and your mistakes judgment we’ve made, we can help people by by jumping over those. And one of those crucial mistakes is poor audio and video. Now I interviewed a guy called Professor Norbert Schwarz from the University of Southern California. The reason I interviewed him was because he did a study along with some colleagues from Australia, where they looked at audio and video quality. And they found something really interesting, they found that if your audio and video is poor, that you seem less smart, less likeable, and that your work is less important. And that if your audio and video are good, you see more likeable, more smart, and that your work is more important. Now, which do you want. That’s That’s it. It’s, it’s, it’s straightforward. Like, if you want to be seen as really good at what you do, if you want to come across well to people, if you want to be seen as more of an expert, then you’ve got to have good audio and video. Like that. That’s a that’s a no brainer. And so So yeah, so I put a lot of work into that for my setup, and I hope I’m coming across well here on camera for you. And, you know, I’ve written a book about this is a free book on Amazon, people go download, if you look up, just search my name on Amazon, you’ll find a free book for me about audio video setup, but it is absolutely crucial. And it’s insane. Like we were talking beforehand, but anybody who’s in sales, or anybody who’s even doing like a remote interview, or anything like that your audio and video don’t make people struggle to have to figure it out to hear you because like, what did what did they say, I couldn’t really hear that, you know, none of that, like you want to be, you know, you wouldn’t go to an interview, you know, wearing wearing a dirty suit that you know that that doesn’t look good. So like, why would you? Why would you show up on camera, you know,
Josh Elledge 41:56
effort into all of that knowledge and the impact that you have in the world and in the outcomes that you help create. And unfortunately, you know, to have all of that marred by a simple, easily fixable technical problem. And if you are not, a lot of times, you know, again, we if you’re not trained in this, there’s a lot of stuff that you just won’t realize in terms of best practice. But again, ask any podcaster who knows their stats pretty well. If you have a guest as bad quality audio, it doesn’t matter what the topic is people bail. It’s, it’s sometimes it’s very unconscious for the audience. They won’t even know that, you know, oh, this is bad audio, they may or may not think about it. But in unconsciously their brain is like, Nope, it’s no, I got to get out of here. It’s not flowing to me. There’s too much noise. You know that too much friction? That’s getting in there. Yeah, this is it’s really important stuff. And again, you know, Alastair, that’s one of those things you can quickly kind of flight check with somebody, Hey, I want to get I want to kind of get to this really quick. And that is to our friend is watching this, test this out and illustrate you want to talk about this starter pack, which I love that you do.
Alastair McDermott 43:20
Yeah, sure. So because I’m looking for a three month commitment for people, because we have to do a lot of setup, I wanted to create this simple bite size thing that people can just say, Hey, okay, I’ll check that out and see what see how it goes. And so that’s what this is, this is an insane special offer. Because the price is so low, this the lowest I could possibly make this price, I don’t actually make any money on this. It’s just for people to test it out. And how it works is I’ll interview you on Zoom for 20 minutes. And what we’ll do is we’ll take that, we’ll go and produce videos and write texts posts and come back to you with five days worth of content for your social media. So we’ll come back with five videos, along with text posts, all from that 20 minute Zoom video. And that will just give you a taster of what it’s like to work with me and my team and the quality of the stuff that we produce. And, and sit with and that’s affordable under $500 Just for people to test it. And so I just want to make it accessible for people to try this and just see if it’s if it’s if it’s a good fit for them.
Josh Elledge 44:22
Yeah. Hey, look, it’s me. So yeah, if you want to see that there’s only a few things so this kind of stuff, right? Yeah, immediate cool interview requests. No, you can’t do this right now what I’m pretty much it but if you want to look like this. So invoke right now this stuff performs so well. This gets such great engagement. The social media platforms want you to make stuff like this you get why that’s what you need. So you’ll waste in that 497 starter pack which by the way, like just don’t worry got the big investment don’t worry about right now, like, you know, unless you’re, you know, unless you know, you know, you know what you want and that sort of thing. But if you’re kind of new or you’re uncertain about this, this is wonderful. And this might be a likely outcome for you. But But I would say try this, just give it a shot, I think, Alistair, you’re probably going to give a lot of good advice, or they’re going to be exposed to some best practices, that even if they don’t decide to work with you long term, it’s probably they’re going to gain some insights are going to be valuable for the rest of their business.
Alastair McDermott 45:34
Yeah, absolutely, I would, I would hope so. And like, I’m naturally I want to help people. Like, I’m a coach, that’s what I do. So I want to help people create great content and put breakout, because, again, I see so much rubbish on LinkedIn, on social media. And, you know, we’re better than that people, you know, we really are. And if you’re an expert at what you do, and you’re not demonstrating your work, you’re not sharing your knowledge in public, then that’s a shame, because your competitors are out there doing that. Yeah. And so here’s an easy way to do it. So like, all I want is 20 minutes of your time. And let’s go and make some some great content for your socials. And, you know, see if that works for you. And that’s, that’s it. And look, I know that there’s people out there who can’t afford it, or want to do it themselves. And that’s fine, too. There’s loads like you can do this yourself, that the really hard thing to do is talking to the camera by yourself. And so that’s where the interview part comes in. And I think the interview part is like, that’s important part of my process, because I know the topics that people want to talk about, I know the right questions to ask them. And, you know, sometimes I’ll say to somebody, look, you know, can you say this again, but you know, repeat the repeat the question in the answer, because sometimes people say, Yeah, that’s a great point. But you know, and then they, and that turns out not to be as valuable a clip. Because what we want is we want you as an expert, demonstrating your expertise in public in a way that attracts people, because people will see you on camera, they’ll hear your voice, they’ll hear your point of view, they see that, you know, you’re talking about that, you know, your area of expertise, and they’ll want to work with you naturally. Like that’s how it works. You know,
Josh Elledge 47:07
think about this, like, let’s say that you’re like a pet salon, or a dentist or an attorney, or like you like lawn care, right? Like you the the folks that are doing this sort of content are crushing it because this is what audiences want today, they don’t want your crappy ads, what they want is they want to connect with you, human to human, and the most human company wins. If you’ve given me value, right? Let’s say you do lawn care, for example. And you’re like, let me show you, hey, you know, we service lawns in Florida. And let me point out the top most the three most common problems we see and how to solve those problems, Allister. I am watching that video. And especially again, it’s like you’re building this relationship with your audience. And it’s trust, right, and it’s like, thank you so much for leading in generosity, right? Really take a bob Berg, go giver approach to this, just give away your best advice, and you will earn the trust of audiences. And they won’t go anywhere else, because they already have a relationship with you, you’ve already helped them solve problems. And so then when they need you, they are going to come to you because or they’re certainly going to recommend you to to others. So if you have an audience of three, four or 500 people that when they think of who solves big lawn care problems, oh, well, it’s, you know, Josh, and son, lawn care company or whatever, right. And that’s what you want. If you can get to that point, you’re it’s game set match. That’s all you have to do today, in order to win. And unfortunately, a lot of other people are spending all this money on paid ads, which, again, is gotten a lot more expensive, and it’s a lot less effective than it used to be. And I’m not saying advertising doesn’t work. It’s just, this is easier. And again, you know, you’re going to create good in the world, you’re going to truly build an audience that just likes and appreciates you because of all of your generosity. Alistair, any thoughts on that?
Alastair McDermott 49:26
Yeah, well, you know, I’m, I’m a big fan of, well, there’s a lot of different parts of what you just said there. So I think Pat Flynn talks about know, like, and trust factor a lot. And that’s, they have to know you, they have to like you and have to trust you. And how can you how can you create that? Well, if they start to see you turning up in their social media, and they start to see you and they hear your voice and they see you and they see that you’re passionate about what you do they see that you know what you do, then they will start to know you and like you and trust you that’s as simple as social media
Josh Elledge 49:56
platforms are going to reward you for this kind of content. This is what they want, they don’t want people incessantly selling on their platform they’re going to is they’re gonna, you know, you’re gonna get shadow banned for stuff like that. Here, this is what social media platforms want you to do.
Alastair McDermott 50:13
Or I’ve seen this, I saw this with a with a client recently where he has 1000s of followers, I can’t remember, I think it’s like 18, or 20,000 followers on LinkedIn. And he had hired a social media company who were putting up text posts for him and some image posts. But none of his posts had any engagement. And he told me that he doesn’t log into LinkedIn himself anyway. But none of us posted any likes or comments, but he has, you know, a year or two years worth of posts, where he’s been posting, you know, once or twice a week, but there’s no engagement on any of it because people don’t care. And that’s, that’s the issue is, is you might be creating content that people just don’t really care that makes no connection with them. And it’s about creating content. And again, I think this is where a video really makes a big difference. And that’s why I would urge people, you know, if there’s nothing else that you take from this is just to experiment more with going on video. And again, it is much easier if you get somebody to interview you, because then it becomes just a conversation, and you’re just recording a conversation between friends. But and having having that conversation, it’s much easier to have a conversation with somebody on video than it is to look at a camera. And you’re looking at that black, the black lens, the black eye of the camera, and you’re thinking, Oh, what am I supposed to be supposed to be doing a video on top 10? What? You know, and it’s so much harder to do that. So when you do it with somebody who you’re just talking to them, I you know, I genuinely I believe in this as a process. And I would urge people to do it, regardless of whether they want to work with me or do it themselves and work with somebody else. I think that you need to get on video, because that’s what’s going to beat AI
Josh Elledge 51:46
for the DIY errs out there. Are there any tools that you’re that you’re kind of excited about right now?
Alastair McDermott 51:53
Well, so I’m using Chat GPT, several times a day every day. And I’m using that I’m not using to generate new content. Typically, I’m using it to tidy up existing content. And I’m using it for brainstorming. And so I’ll be asking you to reformat. I’ll be giving it like for example, we could transcribe this conversation here, Josh and I could I could give it the transcription. And there’s other API’s like Claude, by the way, which can take in larger chunks of text. And can can do things within the Chat GPT contract now because of the kind of the token size, but you’re able to say, Hey, can summarize this and pull out the important points? Can you format this as a blog post, and rewrite it in a different way? Can you give me suggested titles, for example. So the title that we’re using here today was a suggestion, I asked to suggest 15 different titles, and I give them all to you. And so that was where that came from. And so you can use it to, I think it’s where you’re using the tools in a way to support you, rather than to just generate something for you. Because if you just use it to generate something for you, it’s going to be mediocre, it’s going to be average, because that’s what the tool does, it creates the average of all the input it’s ever received. And so it depends on the way they’re using, I think that we’re using those kinds of tools. There are some other tools in terms of video editing. And there are some tools that like we use Descript a lot, which is a really cool video editing tool, because it particularly for the removing filler words part. But the other – I just used a filler word there!
Josh Elledge 53:27
they’ll pull it out.
Alastair McDermott 53:28
But the the the only way to say in terms of the other tools, there are tools that will help you to create video clips, what I find with those is they’re not quite there yet. And I will be the first person by the way to use these tools when when they’re working properly. They’re still not great at identifying. So we still manually identify the clips, we go through transcripts, myself and my writers, I mark because because I’m the I’m the tool that we use, because we’ll probably graduate past zoom and start using Riverside or something like that for our edit for our recording, because it gives you a better quality video. But we have a way to mark clips. So when somebody says something, you can mark it and say, Okay, that’s, that’s something that we are going to pull out as a clip. And so I’ll use that to let my editor know. And we’ll let my content manager know, this is a clip that we want to create. And so and then there are other ways you can also look at the look at the waveforms in the audio to see where where there are good good things to talk about as well. But anyway, there are ways of pulling out these these clips that that AI is not quite at the stage where it’s able to do that yet. But I think that in a year or two, it probably will be there. And at that point, then we’ll be looking at using those tools when they’re there. But right now we’re doing a lot of that type of work still manually, we’re still we still have a human being writing the titles based off of some suggestions that we get, we still have a human being picking the clip. I have a team of five including me who work on this. So because I also have a web design agency in the background. So I have I have Have a kind of a team, there are systems and processes in place already. But, you know, there’s still a lot of humans need to be involved in this process. Yeah, I don’t think that we’re going to be able to just click a button and have aI take care of all of it not anytime soon.
Josh Elledge 55:13
On strategy, you know, and again, to make sure that the work gets done as well, you know, it’s kind of like having, you know, a workout coach or something like that, just to make sure, like, I like that I want that I don’t want to have to, I need someone who’s can come in and kind of a leadership level and just say, Okay, here’s what we’re doing. And I’m like, great, I’m glad you’re thinking about it and worrying about it, because I don’t want to have to. So that’s why, again, you probably like, if especially like, if you’re doing okay, in business, don’t don’t try to worry about this yourself. Alistar just kind of share this one last time on the screen here for folks that are interested, you know, again, you’ve kind of got a DIY version, where you’ll provide the, you know, the expertise and the leadership, but then they’ll be expected to fulfill and you’ll, you’ll kind of coach them on all the right tools they should be used, you’re constantly evaluating new tools. So you’ll give them exactly what they need to get done. That is a bargain right there to not have to worry about that, and have someone with the muscles in the experience to always be studying best practices to come in and say, All right, here’s what we need to be doing this month, based on your goals based on who your audience is. And based on what the latest greatest technology, what the trends are in social media to have someone who’s watching all of that, and I don’t have to, that is a bargain and a half. But again, even if you’re not ready for something like that, this is a great offer.
Josh Elledge 56:37
Just try out working with Alastair and his team, if you want a bunch of great multipurpose, or repurpose content, and again, with some thought behind it, and again, most importantly, having an expert who can interview you to evoke this in a way that is going to provide what the social media platforms are looking for. So that you can get the engagement and impact that ultimately you’re looking for. I put the link on the screen again, full disclosure, I make no money. I’m just like Alastair’s a good guy. He’s, I love your solution. I love it. Because I just know how much we were really struggling and how much I personally, emotionally psychologically, was struggling with this until I mean, we had to build it internal most of this internally. And then you and I still kind of talk about good notes back and forth because of our relationship. So I get I feel like I get the best of all worlds. Um, but yeah, and we don’t we pay more than this, I think. Just do it, just do it this way. Anyway, I put the link on the screen up my influence.com/authority. It’s not an affiliate link, Ellis just a good guide, recommend him to anybody. If nothing else, just have a conversation. And again, you may find that it might make sense to do kind of a starter pack together. So that you can just kind of test it out, Alastair, you’ll do a 20 minute interview with them on your produce a bunch of posts, and video clips that they can upload into their social media platforms. See how it goes. And, again, it’s really nice to not have to kind of stress and worry about that. Alastair man, this has been a great conversation. Any plans for the weekend?
Alastair McDermott 58:20
Yeah, we’ve got an air show happening – I live near an airport, that small airport in the west of Ireland. And so I don’t know if you guys heard any airplanes going across, but this is there’s some airplanes arriving at today and getting ready for the show on Sunday. So I’ve got my tickets booked. We’ll head down there so that that’ll be fun.
Josh Elledge 58:38
Do you know if that’s like with armed forces of Ireland armed forces or Ireland? Irish? Not many?
Alastair McDermott 58:45
No, there’s there’s there’s, we have a very, very small air force. So you could probably can’t count them on one hand. But the more there
Josh Elledge 58:55
are rowdy crew, yeah. Fun, fun fun folks to hang out with. I bet
Alastair McDermott 58:59
that’s That’s right. Yeah. No, but we do have the rescue chopper, which is based here locally. So it’s it’s it’s it’s the bane of my podcast, by the way that rescue chopper. Yeah, because it’s loud. It’s one of those huge, huge like, it’s the size of a bus. But it’s Yeah, so they’re down there. And that’s a big part of that, like the local community. And yeah, I live in a surfing village in the west of Ireland. So I live in the place that most people want to go on holidays, which is nice. So yeah, so I’m going to chill out. Go enjoy the air show and have a beer.
Josh Elledge 59:34
All right. One last time. We put Alastair I put your link on the screen right here. It’s up my influence.com/authority. And the reason I did a little shortcut link there is just so I can see. I just want to make sure I’m helping make as many connections as possible. So the only thing I’m doing is just kind of tracking the number of folks that that shows so I know what to produce content around. So if you appreciate this, just hit the link on So I know that this is valuable and then you certainly like grabbed grab a conversation Alastair with you. You’re good guy. Um, you do great work and I only recommend, you know again just very thoughtful non “bro-y” like salesy, non salesy type folks, folks that are legitimately like they’re just really good at what they do. And like their pricing is very fair. Like they’re truly great at creating great value and impact for the folks that they get to work with. So I’m pretty picky. I get requests for a Can you do that with me? It’s almost always, like, I also I only work with like, friends, like I’ve done like, you and I have worked together for many, many months, like so just just note to our friend that’s watching this, like, I don’t bring on randos I don’t do affiliate stiffs. Normally, it’s mainly like folks like no, this is really super valuable content and very important content. In the face. Alastair Have a think a lot of bad guru advice and or just, you know, charge just trying to sell this crap. You’re legitimately one of the great, you know, service providers out there and thought leaders in this space. So I just want to say thank you so much for doing this. Coming up on a full 60 minutes went a lot longer than I thought but
Alastair McDermott 1:01:16
lots of content in there for us to repurpose.
Josh Elledge 1:01:18
How many pieces of content do you think we can get from this? My gosh,
Alastair McDermott 1:01:22
I could definitely get a month’s worth. Yeah,
Josh Elledge 1:01:24
no kidding. All right. Well, your friends, thank you so much for watching. Enjoy your weekend. I’m gonna go grab my bass and play some grooves right now and enjoy the air show. Aleister. Awesome.
Alastair McDermott 1:01:35
Thanks, Josh. Thanks for listening, I know that you’ve got a choice of podcasts and shows that you can listen to so I really do appreciate your time and your attention. If you did find this episode. Interesting. I would truly appreciate if you could take 30 seconds to rate the show in your podcast player or even leave a text review. It won’t take you long but it has a huge impact on the growth of the show. And it also helps to motivate me and continuing to do it. So it’s right where you’re listening to the show. You can also find a link in the show notes which will take you to rate and review. Thank you again. See you in the next one.
