Hey guys, what's going on? It’s Seth here.
I want to show you something I did earlier this year,
a little experiment with video cards.
So, this is something that I've known about for a while,
but I've never actually spent a bunch of my own money and tried to apply this myself
because I think in most situations, this doesn't make sense to do it just because
it's really expensive to do it. But if you have really high-value recipients that really need to
hear a very special message in just the right way and you want to take the time to really
craft that message and deliver it to them in a way they can't miss, so it's a very high-impact
message that they're going to get.
This is one way to do that.
So in my situation, I had bought a vacant residential lot,
and I was trying to get this lot rezoned from residential to commercial.
And I'd suck a fair amount of money into this with the assumption that I would be able to do this.
And I knew that one thing that would potentially sabotage my effort in doing this
was the neighbors.
If the neighbors got tipped off by the township and they
were not happy about the zoning change, if that were to happen,
the neighbors could possibly derail my efforts to get this thing rezoned.
And so what I wanted to do was reach out to these people ahead of time before they heard from the township.
So I could say, Hey, I just want to introduce myself. My name is Seth.
I just became your neighbor. I bought this property. Here's what I'm planning to do with it.
This is why I'm planning to do this. This is why I think this is going to be good for you and good for the area.
But at the same time, I want to hear what you have to say. If you have any questions or concerns
or suggestions, please give me a call or send me an email. Let me know.
And basically just trying to put forth a really good first impression
and almost like befriend them in a way through a video
without actually meeting them in person. And one way that I could have done this
is go up and like knock on their door and talk to them in person.
And I thought about doing that, but there were a few drawbacks to that. First of all,
during the time when I was trying to do this, it was right in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.
And I didn't want them to feel weird about this stranger knocking on their door
At same time I didn't really want to do it and catch something from them if they had Covid.
So, I wasn't super excited about doing that. And also, just speaking for myself, I know I have this
flaw where I can potentially not word things just the right way if I'm put on the spot
or if they ask a question that I wasn't planning on.
And I just thought if I can really think through
what I'm trying to say in this message and record a video and edit it and show other visual elements,
just a very clearly explained everything in a short video so that there isn't the opportunity
for me to mess something up. It's just right there. And if they have questions after that,
then they can call me. But at least that first impression was put up there.
They have all the basic information and we can start from there.
And then lastly, just being totally honest, like
I find it uncomfortable to knock on doors and talk to strangers, especially when it's a very high
stakes situation where I don't want them to be mad about this and this needs to go well.
And I just felt like if I could put this in a video, I would be able to do that.
So it kind of killed three birds with one stone.
So, there are a few different companies out there that do this kind of thing.
But the company I worked with was called Cards in Motion, and they're based out of Canada.
And basically, the way this works is you have to order a number of these video cards.
I think their minimum order is typically 50 at a time, but I was able to put in an order for 10
simply because I had promoted them a little bit in the past and they were willing to basically do me a favor.
There's a number of different sizes of these LCD screens you can get.
It's kind of like looking at a little iPhone or iPad depending on the size screen you order.
And you can also customize what you want the card itself to look like. You can have something
printed on there. Or in my case, I just got a white card that was totally blank.
And when you open it up on the inside, there was a little clear window
where I could insert some kind of a written document If I wanted to, which I did.
I basically put the transcript of my video right there,
but really once a person opens up that video card, it just automatically starts playing in.
Once I ordered it, it cost me, I think it was about $850 for these 10 cards.
So, it's not cheap, but again, for what I was trying to accomplish,
it was totally worth it. But once you get these cards, it's up to you to create this video file
and then manually upload it onto each individual video card.
So, you get the card, you get an individual USB cord with each one and you plug it into
your computer and you drop the video file on there, similar to how you would do
this for a flash drive. And then once it's on there, when that person opens the card,
it just starts playing it. So it's really up to you to put together the best video you can.
And I can say with my experience with making videos, I'm a pretty good person for this kind of thing,
just because I know how to do it. If you're somebody who's never made a video before
you could probably do it too, but it would depend a little bit more on your ability to like
convey the message well, in one shot. Whereas I'm actually pretty terrible about that.
I have to shoot it a few times and say it a few different ways to make sure
that I'm getting the message across as well as possible and then edit it all together.
So, it definitely helps if you know how to edit video, but you don't necessarily have to,
it would just depend a little bit more on your ability to get a good video shot of yourself,
talking with good audio so that people can hear you in that kind of thing. I think some people
are better at this than others. Some people are just naturally really good on camera and have
a good personality for this kind of thing. And others don't so much. So it's kind of up to you
to decide if that's something you want to do, but I just wanted to show you exactly
what my video looks alike and I'm going to have a little shot at the beginning just showing the outside
of the actual card and what happens when you open it and it plays.
And after a few seconds, it's going to transition to the actual video file itself, just so you can see
what my video looked like and what I said it just so you know, the results of this.
So of the 10 video cards that I sent out. And by the way, I sent them all in these
USPS priority envelopes so a person would be a fool to not open this thing up.
This is not the kind of mail that a person gets and they throw it away without looking at it.
So, it kind of commands attention. And the reason I sent out 10 is because all the neighbors that lived
within a 300-foot radius of my property, they were the ones that were going to get notified by
the township when I was going to try to change the zoning. So, I basically want it to get to them
first so that they hear it first for me. And if those problems they can talk to me first,
not show up at that township meeting and pitch a fit at that point. Luckily that didn't happen at all.
And just so you know what the results of these 10 cards I sent out.
So there was only one response I got. One person sent me a text. It was from the neighbor
who lived to the north of me. And she was basically just saying, hey, when you develop this thing,
can you leave a few trees on the north side between your property and mine so that we can maintain some privacy,
but she didn't have any problems with what I was trying to do.
So no response is the best response. And the response I did get was not a big problem.
So it really worked out well. And I don't know if that's just because I got lucky or if it's,
because I'm just such a brilliant video maker, I'd prefer to believe it's the latter, but who knows.
But anyway, without further ado, let's jump into the video and I'll show you what it looked like.
Hey, how's it going? My name is Seth and I wanted to send you this video card because we just became neighbors.
Not long ago, I purchased the parcel of land
that's on the Northeast corner of old 14-mile road and Lincoln Lake road.
It's about 6.7 acres of vacant land. You're probably familiar with it. And I'm sending out this video
introduction to all the surrounding residential neighbors because I want it to let you know
why I bought this property and what I'm hoping to do with it in the not too distant future.
So, I'm a local businessman and I live just about 15 minutes away from you.
And not long ago when I saw this parcel of land up for sale, I thought about it and just the location
and given the traffic, that's already running through that intersection, particularly on Lincoln Lake.
And just given that it's right across the street from a couple of different gas stations.
And it seemed to me like a really good property that could be rezoned from residential to commercial use.
But at the same time, even though there are commercial properties across the street,
and there's a fair amount of traffic already going by Lincoln Lake, I recognize that there are also
residential properties on the other side of this parcel of land. And I want it to be mindful and
respectful of you and just make sure that if we do change the zoning of this property to commercial,
that it doesn't have a big impact on you or on the surrounding area. So, with all that in mind,
my objective, if we're able to get this property rezoned to commercial is to over the next few years,
develop this property into a small self-storage facility.
And why self-storage? Well, it's really because this particular property in the location
and the traffic that's going through this area is going to make sure that this parcel of land is used for something that again
is low impact and it's not going to have a whole lot of traffic going through there.
I also want to make sure that anything we do on this property is going to look good.
Anything we build is going to be brand new and it's going to look neat. It's going to look sharp.
And like I said, I live just down the road and I'm going to be at this property on a regular basis.
Now tentatively the plan is for us to try to make this request for a zoning change
in the late spring or early summer of this year.
So probably some time around like May or June is my guess at this point.
And when that happens, when we actually submit the paperwork,
you should be getting a separate notification from Oakfield township,
just giving you another heads up. But before we even go that far, I just wanted to, first of all,
reach out and again, introduce myself, let you know what's going on.
Let's you know what I'm thinking. And really most importantly, before this goes anywhere,
I wanted to reach out to you and just get your thoughts and get your feedback on this.
Do you have any questions about what we're thinking about doing here?
Do you have any suggestions or input on what you'd like to see happen at this property?
As you're watching this short video and hearing what I'm saying,
if you have any thoughts, suggestions, concerns, any of that, I want to know about it.
I want to hear what you're thinking.
Our goal is to make this property as useful as possible for the surrounding community,
and really only make changes in a way that's going to add value to the surroundings.
At this point, we have some very, very basic drawings put together for what might
potentially happen at this property in terms of how this might eventually look.
Again, If you have any input on this, I would invite you to either give me a call or send me an email.
Either one is fine. I'm going to include my phone number and email address right here on the screen.
If there's anything whatsoever that you want me to know about, or keep in mind, I'd love to hear from you.
And if you don't have any input, that's totally fine too.
I just wanted to, again, introduce myself, make sure that you knew who I am.
If you do happen to see me walking around on the property at any point, I'd love to talk to you.
Feel free to walk over and say hi.
I just don't want to be a stranger. And again, if you do have any thoughts or opinions or suggestions,
you're more than welcome to get ahold of me and let me know what you're thinking.
So thanks again. My contact information is included here.
Hopefully, we'll talk soon. See you.