Storytelling in a Small Town

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Trent: Welcome to, Storytelling in a Small Town.

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Trent: Welcome back to Storytelling in a Small Town. I love that. It makes the videos so much more interesting when y'all are jamming out to that afterwards.

(Both Laughing)

Brian: Awesome new intro by the way.

AJ: Yep. Oh yeah, looking good man. Intro sequence, woo. Yeah, I wasn't prepared for that.

Trent: I have to admit I got it as like kind of a pre-pack for around podcasting and stuff. And yeah, it's the first time I've used it for anything. And I'm like, oh, this is actually a lot cooler than I was expecting to be. It works really well for ours, I think. Yeah, that looks really good. We'll keep that going. And today we're gonna talk about why story matters more than budget. Cause I think this is something a lot of people, businesses kind of struggle with sometimes, right? Cause we really want to dive into how do we help these small businesses? How do we help you get your stories out there? How do we make it so it's relevant and you can get benefit from your storytelling in your business in terms of dollar amounts, right? So talking about dollars, how can you tell stories and make stories that matter and not have to be shelling out a lot, but still get a lot back? But I think that's really, yeah, that's a challenge, right? Like it's hard to think about. There's always the, you gotta invest money to make money or spend money to make money. And there's still a lot of other things you can do without having to do that. So I just wanted to get your thoughts on how does story matter more than the budget?

AJ: Maybe some examples are fun, right? About like places where, how about where it doesn't work? I know a friend who we do some nonprofit board work together. Her company, she's a, I think she's a lawyer. They asked me about doing a new production and the example they showed me was exceptionally cinematic. I mean, it looked like the Netflix drone shot with like the single like guitar note, you know, like I mean, like these big sweeping like sunset visuals and like all this stuff. And I said, I was like, oh wow, like what was, this looks amazing. This is really great. It's a little bit long. It was like 15 minutes long, I think. But they had all these testimonials and stuff. And it was really like impactful. And then she said the budget for it was 15,000. And that it was one person that did all of it.

AJ: And then I started looking at like the effectiveness of it, you know, and like what they conveyed and whatnot. And I don't know that it sold anyone on $15,000 worth of production work. Not because it wasn't good, but because it didn't necessarily like tell a cohesive story that was succinct enough to get the viewer to like maintain their eyes on it. You know, it's great that you have like all this good content, but it's kind of like, What are you trying to accomplish? Yeah, it's sort of like long and drudging. And even though it's like, it's beautiful, when I'm trying to figure out if I want to hire a lawyer, I don't necessarily want to see two minutes of her standing in an open field with like glory shots and like the wheat and like the like apple trees and stuff. You know what I mean? Like I would much prefer to know about her like litigation skills.
Brian: Right, yeah.

AJ: So I think that's one kind of interesting example, right? And then on the other side of that, you can take something like there were what during COVID in the lockdown era when like my business first like really took off. It was the era of we've literally never held a camera before and I don't know anything about production and we can spend, you know, $500 on like a phone gimbal and some super cheap lights and whatever. And we spent our $500 budget but told our businesses story super, super well to the point where like that video form I got copied multiple times by other businesses in the area. So, you know, $500, $15,000, both ends of the spectrum, the possible conclusions. But I think the, you know, the detail level about how you tell the story obviously is the part that makes a huge difference and leading with the why of what you're doing is usually like one of the most effective methods that I've ever found for transmitting that information.

Brian: And we've talked about this a lot before but it's just like ROI. A lot of times comes back to ROI especially when we're talking about budget. And so I think, you know, can I justify spending $15,000 on a piece of content? Maybe, depends on what you're trying to accomplish with it. Like if you're trying to change the way that someone sees something or if you're trying to do something that takes a high level of production and storytelling to accomplish, then yeah, maybe it's worth investing in something like that.

Trent: Well, I think it'd be great if you could talk about when you say takes a high level, takes a lot of budget. What are some of those examples? What are some of those things, right? Cause I think a lot of people were used to that. We know what that means. But for those that are running small businesses they're not in the production world. What are the kinds of stories that would require that higher budget, that more production?

Brian: I think, I mean, man, it, creative intentionality is like this weird abstract concept of like, how do I communicate creatively through film? And there are cinematographers who are incredible at what they do, who are crazy good storytellers through the art of cinematography and they're experts at their craft and how they use composition and lighting and set design and all this stuff to tell a really compelling story. And the more intentional you want to get about storytelling through a craft, the more it either costs to pull that off or the more of an expert you need to be able to help do that. Right.
Trent: And I think where I am great definition and delineation there. And I think the other part is from a small business owner. What are their kinds of stories when they would want that? Is it like, hey, I'm putting something on social media to highlight a sale. Am I rebranding everything? Like what kind of scenario would a small business really want to be spending that amount of money?

Brian: Why am I making a Netflix documentary for this thing? And for most small businesses, you don't need a Netflix documentary to do that.

Trent: But maybe what are some examples of when you might.

Brian: When you might need it.

AJ: Oh, when you might need that.

Trent: Well, let's just start with a few examples so they can kind of start delineating that.

AJ: When you're thinking about, okay, why would this cost, like why would I end up spending $1,000 versus $5,000? One of the biggest things that factor, especially for like a small business trying to figure this out or looking at it from the outside is gonna count how many days, like how, not just how many days of shooting, but how many days is it going to take to get what you want? If we're not going to curate that experience, like if we're not going to hire or find someone to come in and be Tom and Jane to be at the store, to make the transaction and walk through the pretty Christmas stuff and create this whole experience and the people in the background and all that, if we're not gonna do that, how many days is it gonna take for me to come down here, be in the area to organically find that opportunity? And that's, I mean, it could be one or it could be five or it could be never. You know what I mean? So there's like a almost like risk that goes along with that, right? Are we ever really gonna find the thing that you actually want to see if we just try to organically make it happen? So like how many days is it gonna take? How many hours am I gonna need to be here? Just hanging, how many days of my day rate do you need to pay for to ensure that this goes on? Like that's like one starting factor, right? And then depending on how complex is the production, how many fancy camera angles, how many like camera cranes and sliders and how many different shots and lighting scenarios, how much editing am I gonna have to do? And not just how much, but how complex is it? When we first started, I would rate edits in a tiered system like so that they could see why we were charging them so much for edits. Like, okay, well, if it's like four hours or less and like we're not really like doing, this is a tier one edit, it's like basically nothing. If we're gonna spend eight hours on this and it's gonna, you know, this many effects or whatever, this is like a tier two. And so you can think about it like how complex is the time I'm gonna spend in post if I'm the one that's doing the edits? How much time is that gonna take? I think those are kind of like important starting considerations whenever I sit down like at the beginning of a project and they're trying to figure out like, what are we thinking about, you know, cost-wise? Or how many days of shooting are we thinking?

Brian: And then the other aspect of this is like, how much is your brand worth to you? Like, there's literally a stadium with the company's logo on it that they're paying millions of dollars each year because their brand to them is super valuable in this industry that they're in. And so it's like in the industry that you're in, how important is it for you for your brand to be the table's stakes? Like everyone around the dinner table knows your name because of all of the money you're putting into this ad campaign that you have sports celebrities and all these people doing all this stuff to help build the value of your brand so that you can stand out in your industry. And that can rapidly increase the scale of budget because not only of production and all the other elements you want, but like, is name recognition important to you? Is celebrity important to you? And all of that comes with a bigger price tag.

Trent: So kind of what I'm hearing from both Eva's summary of it from a small business. So let's say you got less than 10 employees, you're super small, you're not doing a lot. The only time you're really gonna want to spend and drop that amount of money is one if you're trying to capture that like, really in the moment interaction in your store or, I mean, summary of both of them. When you have that one story that you really wanna tell, that's gonna make you stand out. That's gonna make people connect with you that make you feel there, right? And it's something very big. It's like when you're launching the company for the first time, when you're doing a big rebrand, when you're announcing a big partnership or something, right? It's one of those big milestone moments, I would say is kind of that summary, right? Cause then it's worth it. Cause like you said, it's creating that memory, it's creating that emotion, and it's claiming your stake pretty much. And the other side of it too, is it also allows you, that's when you're also adding that, have a chance to get that emotional connection, really show that interaction, right? There's so much that goes into filming one thing, that waiting till that milestone to do so many, both of the things that you really talked about, play together and one can play together in those big milestones. But until then, your story is going to be, yeah, it's not required for that big budget stuff. It's more, yeah, you can do it much cheaper budget.

Brian: Yeah, I think so. I think you do any range of budget from filming people with your phone and posting it on your social media, or doing like a fun little live video with like a group of people that you're, hanging out with at the store. There's like no budget options for you, but then there's also the sliding scale, which is why it's so hard to just, when I have a business saying, how much would it cost me to do this? And it's like, depends on what you want. And it depends on how much you wanna invest into storytelling as a business, but you can do it at any budget level.

Trent: To help out these small businesses, let's look at the zero budget option. How would you all go about, and again, I know we've done a little bit of this in the previous season, but I think it's good to kind of refresh and as we've learned more, how would you go about doing some zero budget video to help tell these small businesses stories? I mean, I know we all know a lot that we've worked with, we're all small businesses. How would you go about doing with just your phone, maybe because we already have cameras, we could get our cameras out and just do something simple. But what would that look like? Depends.

Brian: Let's take a specific company. Basically what I tell businesses is like, what problem are you trying to solve? And then we work backwards from there. So let's take a carpet cleaner company. Love it. Who is...

AJ: Are we talking about someone specific?

Brian: No, I'm trying to specifically think of someone that I'm not working with.

AJ: It just felt familiar at the moment.

Brian: Let's take a business that does carpet cleaning, and they just had a really messy transition of ownership. And they're a 30 year old company. The new owners took over three years ago. Previous owners had a good system down, but maybe didn't treat customers well. And they're trying to reestablish trust with their audience. Love it. Let's start with that scenario. How would they use Story to improve their brand for free? Or for the cost of an employee that they already have doing it?

AJ: Yeah, yeah. Yes. I think they should start with a strategic conversation about what their why is. They bought this carpet cleaning a place, but why did they do that? What motivated them to get into carpet cleaning?

Brian: I'll be the carpet cleaner owner.

AJ: So you can just interview me. So tell me a little bit more about your business. What was it that motivated you to get into carpet cleaning?

Brian: I started carpet cleaning as a high schooler. Wow, that's incredible. It was super fun. And it was like my first job doing it. And I just kind of grew up in the business and it was my uncle who ran the business. And so I kind of got my first job doing that. And I moved up into a manager role. And then I was sort of like operations manager. And I just saw my uncle was getting really old. He was getting close to retirement. And I saw an opportunity potentially to buy it from him. And kind of family business sort of thing. Like my parents didn't do it, but my uncle did. And I kind of wanted to keep that in the family, but it got kind of awkward with him because when you're an owner and you're trying to sell, there's a lot of like sticky stuff with that. And so I bought the company and all that, but he sort of like hung on. And then there's also once I did that, kind of realized that there's a lot under that I didn't know about from like customer interactions and they weren't up to date on all their books. And there's a lot of stuff that came up because of all of that. But I love doing it because it's just like, it's what I've always done, family business.

Trent: Can I just pause our next episode? We're gonna dive more into how do you find your business's origin story. So for those that are curious. And I think we're getting close to it there. So just know this conversation, we'll help you walk through that a little bit more in the next episode.

Brian: So anyways, it's just been in the family for a long time. And I love that we can kind of help people do that. Yeah. Yeah.

AJ: I'm amused by like how good of a job that you did. It's almost like we've done this like many times. This is like such a critical like component of the whole interaction, of the whole story, right? Is just that like asking questions of the business owner of the client to figure out what it is that we're talking about even. And like as Brian's like telling this story, which is, I mean, I'm assuming completely fabricated. I'm gonna assume you pulled some elements from my real life, so whatever, right? But when you tell this story, I can see like the video, right? I can see that, what was the character's name? I didn't even come up with the name. I can see Carl in- Carl the carpet man. Right, I can see Carl in the carpet store and he's like rolling some rolls of carpet with his uncle, you know, and they're like in the warehouse part. And then he like stops and like the camera, you know, switches from the uncle to the nephew. And he's like smiling like, man, this is so much fun. And these are such good memories. He's a little tear in his eye, you know?

Trent: I think that might be a little complex for your normal person just being asked to film.

AJ: Man, I really went from my small businesses to like, I want you to come all the way up, man.

Brian: Don't- Well, another good question. I think that I would like to be asked by a creative would potentially be why, what makes you guys different from other carpet cleaners? Like why work at this carpet cleaning company versus the other 20 that are in the area?

AJ: I love it when they, like when you ask them like the why question, just, you know, a general like, tell me about where you started and they will go out of their way to tell you what that component is. They will like to give you that information.

Trent: Well, and I think it's really interesting too, because I actually had what you were talking about, what makes them different. I had, I was at a meeting before this, a bunch of kind of different entrepreneurs and someone asked this, someone else like, hey, what does make you different? And he gave one of the most impassioned speeches. And I'm just like, there's your video right there. Just have someone ask you that question and then you gave perfect answers. The energy just changed, right? Like this person was kind of stoic, like have fun, but like had this like very professionalism. As soon as you start talking about the why, just like a different energy came out. I'm like, you had me so hooked. And I'm like, that needs to be your video. That needs to be the first thing people see on your website even, right? Like, yeah, you both know what I'm talking about. For those that don't know, sometimes it is as simple as that, right? Like you can have a whole conversation and as us as creators, we'll have these deep conversations trying to get to the why. And honestly, most of the time we have these conversations and these questions to get to that moment. Or you're suddenly like, oh, this is it. And we see that change. We're suddenly like, oh, you're ready to go on camera to talk about this. We know this is what really matters to you. This is what your core focus is. Cause we don't want to create content for the sake of content either. So that's how you should be thinking about it. Like if you're assigned to do this or you have someone in your company that you're wanting to do more of this with, just ask them like, hey, I need you to come up and kind of ask me some questions and let's think about the ones that like make you interested and want to know more. And then that can even help give you a lot of ideas of like, Yeah. Even just a video of that.

AJ: Yeah. I think that's like a good strategy right there, for your zero dollar production, right? If you're trying to figure out what your scripting is gonna be, you're like, what are you even gonna say? You could start with asking questions of yourself that you would want to know as like an external party, as the customer. Why would I want to buy your product? What makes your product better than anybody else's? Why should I get your service, et cetera and so forth?

Brian: And I would take it a step further, especially for people who are uncomfortable with being on camera. As a lot of times someone will say something really beautifully articulated, and then you turn on a camera and nothing. They just don't know how to do it. And so part of what I've talked to businesses about for the zero cost option, even for the paid options, it's like, how do you want to communicate the values that you're talking about through other forms of storytelling? So family owned is a really important thing for this fictional carpet cleaning company. Great, like what about doing a dinner table conversation with someone, or even just filming like team building events that you have as a team, and you're talking about the importance of community or whatever, and like you can story tell without the talking head video thing. But it's like you pull the importance of your story and then you make that happen through the content that you're creating. Does that make sense?

Trent: Absolutely. I love your strategy. And I think what's cool about it too, is there's so many different ways to do it. Like you talked about the mediums, like you can just show all those videos and just have a popular song over it. People can't say it on camera. Maybe you record the voiceover of it that still has that impact and showing all of those clips. Maybe you have, I don't know, a cut in between all that stuff. And it really gives you a lot of opportunity to get to whatever comfort level you are with video and creation, right? Because it doesn't need to be like, oh, perfect, cinematic, like I'm gonna frame this up. Some of the most candid stuff is the best you can do, right? Like not worrying about, oh, oh my gosh, just frame perfectly. It's like, all they're all together, aww. And then put it together. And it's like, well, maybe it's not perfect, but it's better than what you had before.

Brian: Yeah. Yeah. What are those values that you have and how do you make content to support them? And it can be anything from taking a selfie and writing a heartfelt post under it. Like the things that I've experienced as a business and seen other businesses do the most successfully is just to be, I hate this word because it's so overused, but like be authentic on social media. And it's like, when I've made this like ad for Snow Homage Film Company and we storyboard it and we shot listen, we do all this stuff to make it, it does okay. And then when Sam takes a selfie of us and then we post it with like thoughts on the last year or whatever, and like that gets so much more engagement because like on social media, because the fans on social media that are like fans of our business care about us and our story. And then the businesses see that and they're like, oh cool. They have a bunch of trust from the community. Like maybe they're worth talking to or whatever. But it's like the authentic part of social media is what people want on social media. Yeah. Now more than ever.

Trent: Yeah, legitimately. And honestly, it's really funny. Because if you go look at all of our social media accounts, it's so different. Brian Snow Home Film Co. Yeah, it's just through the roof compared to mine. Like I'm at barely a hundred and I'm like, I've been doing this for a while. I've had people go out and try and do consistent stuff. And I'm just not good in the moment. Like you and Sam are just like, oh, I'm gonna take this picture and caption it. I'm just like, I don't know why. Like that just doesn't come naturally for me. And it has not been a priority to make that something. So it's just very different approaches we take. I'd probably, it's just interesting. I don't follow yours as much, AJ, but. Well, what? Your social media is for your business. What's that? Okay, perfect.

Brian: Yeah, right. Perfect.

Trent: But no, I love the way that you said it too. Like people just really wanna connect with people.
Brian: Yeah, totally. And social media may or may not be part of your business strategy. Talked to a lot of businesses who are like, we don't use social media. We get all of our business from referrals. The biggest thing we need videos for because we have a really complicated product and no one understands it. And so I'm like, great. Like let's make a series of sales videos that you can then have your sales team send out to people of like, this is this product and this is how it works. And like, that's a different way of sharing your story in a way that works for your business.

Trent: No, and I love that one too, sending that out. Cause it's also one of those things of, oh my gosh, it sounds so complicated. Like I have to come up with a whole video of how to do this. No, literally go look up like old, like early maze, like sales, like right. Find the kind of video that you like and just be like, okay, what are they doing? What are the key components? And then just do something similar. Yeah. And it doesn't need to be complicated. And no one's gonna be like, hey, you did it just like this. Yeah. No, no one's gonna be here. It's like, oh, cool. Sweet. I love that you're informing me more about this. So don't be, yeah.

AJ: I feel like people frequently, it doesn't really matter if you're no budget or if it's like a $10 billion budget. Fricking smile. Fricking smile, dude. Like your stone faced RBF isn't doing you any favors. Like you need to like look like a, you need to look like.

Brian: You enjoy what you're doing.

AJ: I wanna come knock on your business's door. Like I wanna like call this person. I wanna text them. You need to like look friendly. Not if you need to look friendly. You need to look like somebody that I want to make contact with. That's definitely a struggle for some people. And if you make, you're trying to figure out who from the business is gonna be the person that's our face or our advocate or our, the voice or whatever. Put some thought into that person's presentation and how they kind of come across so that you're putting the person that's going to build that connection forward instead of keeping them kind of behind the scenes or whatever.

Brian: That's so important. That's again, talking about budget, people are like, why does things cost so much? It's like, that's why people hire spokespeople.

AJ: Exactly.

Brian: Because they're consistent, trustworthy face. Jake from State Farm is one of the most recognizable faces in America and he better get paid for that because like you're paying someone for the trust of a business. And like the owner is the probably the person who's going to be at a company for the longest amount of time. The receptionist who you're like, oh, you're pretty and you smile a lot. Like, they might not be there long-term in the company and you're building trust. And so it's like, if you want that person who you think is pretty and smiles a lot to be the face of your company, maybe elevate their position. I've seen so many people just like take a underpaid job and force them into this spokesperson role. And I'm like, you need to be thinking about that because your reputation of your company rests on that person.

AJ: And I feel like, and not necessarily in the ways I feel like people think, it's not just in the manner of like what they say on camera has this direct effect of speaking to your company, but even counts like off camera, right? Like, when have you heard about Flo Jake from State Farm, the emu from whatever? When have you ever heard like, oh, Florida emu arrested after like wild drinking scandal or whatever. The other thing you're paying for is for this person to live their life as your advocate. And I think that's also where it kind of gets messy, right? You think the difference between hiring like a spokesperson and hiring an influencer or like working with an influencer, right? You know, your spokesperson, this is a person that is supposed to be working like directly with you for you versus this person who is like, oh my gosh, I tried, you know, the carpet cleaning company's new spray bottle or whatever. And it's just so good and I love it. But then that person can go and, you know, in their next video, say something super inflammatory.

Brian: Here's my hot political take that I want everyone to believe, oh.

AJ: Like the risk level could be different there, right? Like, you know, you kind of wanna know how dangerous it is spending this money with this person, right? Interesting thought on the cost, right? How much are you gonna spend on making sure this person represents you the way you want?
Brian: Which is why I think it's so important. Like if an owner wants to do that, why so many owners choose to be that face or why maybe I talked to a lot of owners about, hey, it's important to have you as the face because you're the one building this thing. And so you should put your face to it because it's sort of like, well, do you accountable in a lot of ways to it? And there's ways for owners to learn how to become more comfortable in cameras and, you know, there's ways to do that. But, yeah.

Trent: Well, we have covered way more than I thought we were going to. We got so in depth about so many things, but let's really bring it back and just low budget, right? Story, why is story more important than budget? That's what people are gonna connect with. Like we just talked about even with the spokesperson, quote unquote, that person that people are gonna be seeing the most, how are they representing you? That tells part of your story too, right? How they're acting, how they're behaving, how they make you feel, as silly as that might sound to some people. That's literally what happens when you're doing videos. So really focusing on having that story. And again, simple things. How did you get going? What's the thing that lights you up? What makes, separates you from everyone? Starting like that, even just with your cell phone, pictures of actually what's happening, like you said it best. Hey, I just took a selfie and wrote a thoughtful note about it. That's gonna do so much more for your business sometimes than even trying to put together a $15,000 video. So just really stick to your story and your truth. I think so many times we think, oh, we need to be something special. We need to be something different than really what we are, but you really need to lean into what makes you you and just kind of have fun and play around with it. Yes, you can get budget, you can go out do that. And there's so many different topics that you can do, so many different things that you can reference as, hey, let's try this. Let's be the next Billy Mays. Like whatever you wanna do, so many ways that you can start there and it doesn't cost you a dime. Anything else in this episode that y'all are like?

AJ: Don't be afraid to not take yourself too seriously. Your video doesn't have to be, your storytelling doesn't have to be so serious. It's a serious topic, but the levity is another really strong connection point. So don't be afraid to have it be, it can be fun, it can be silly. And just shoot it, just shoot it, shoot whatever it is and come back to it. And if you need to shoot it again, then shoot it again if you're not happy with it. But shoot something and just like get started, get figuring it out, get working on it, just shoot something. Yeah.

Brian: May not cost a dime, but it does deserve your time.

Trent: And on that one. That's what I got. We'll see y'all next time. Yep.