- Welcome to another video.
Today we're talking to
Owen Video
all about how he built his agency,
how he's growing his company
using video marketing.
Owen, would you mind starting with a little intro
like who are you and why are you here, what's up?
- Yeah, I'm Owen Video and I help companies
drive traffic, generate leads, and convert sales
using video marketing.
And that's really, that's the top level,
top of the funnel what we do.
It all starts with video because that's the most
engaging media content out there right now.
But, that video does no good
if it's not connected to a funnel,
if it's not connected to an opt-in
and an email marketing sequence as well.
So as soon as we help the company develop,
you know, a video marketing strategy
we immediately start working on that funnel
to make sure that that video is going to turn into sales
that will propel your company forward.
- If you were to take a snapshot
of your business right now,
what does it look like?
- We're on track to do half a million dollars next year,
and we serve our clients in three different ways:
we help with YouTube channels
and building out your YouTube channel for you.
A lot of, you know a lot of our clients,
well all of our clients they run businesses, you know?
And one of our clients is a Fortune 100 company,
so there's a lot of like red tape there,
like what do we do and what do we say
on our YouTube channel.
We help with the video content strategy.
We help with the distribution strategy,
when we're going to publish,
what those thumbnails are going to look like.
And so that's kind of like
the done for you side of our company.
But we also produce livestream shows for our clients,
and this is what I am really excited about
because livestream, there's no editing, right?
You're live to the world,
then your product is done
and you can immediately begin distributing it
and promoting it and getting people to watch it.
So we'll actually, for our clients,
create a whole livestream show,
and that's sort of what this is here.
We built a show called Power Your Passion
for one of our brand clients,
and that show is going to be
live on Facebook and YouTube when we launch.
And then lastly what we do is an agency
is we do video ads, you know?
It's very rare that a company will say,
"Hey, we want one video."
But if they do say, "We want one video,"
then of course it's going to be part of
a video ad strategy where we're going to have
one main video
and we're going to run it a few different ways
on a couple different platforms
to see how it converts,
where it converts with
what audience it converts with and then run that.
And those are the three pillars of our company.
We've got a small team.
So we're running on a lean, mean five.
We've got a couple livestream producers.
We have an ads manager,
I have of course my wife, Theresa, who is my CMO.
We're currently hiring a CFO.
And then I'm sort of the CEO visionary.
I'm just constantly coming up with new ideas,
new product ideas.
So my role is to just be continually selling
and making new revenue for the company.
- Okay, so what I love about Owen Video,
he's got this YouTube channel,
36,000, almost 40,000, subs, - Over 40.
and his entire agency is based out of this.
We're in his garage right now,
which I'm going to do another video
where we talk about all of his equipment
because it's so interesting.
But how did you get your first few clients?
- Okay, so you know, my first client
was a web design client.
This was probably, you're taking me back like five years.
So I had made a video.
I was in my last house that was just up the street,
and so we had this extra room, right?
Where I made it my office.
And in that room we were doing a lot of web design,
so I had this idea for how to build sites
in a more SEO-friendly way, right?
It was called Silos, the Silo Strategy.
So I go you know what?
My team needs to hear this.
So I popped up my camera
and I went to my whiteboard and started talking about
here's how you develop a website silo
and I drew it all out.
Well I put it on YouTube and I forgot about it
and I just used it to show my team
how to make these websites.
It was a few months later,
maybe like two to three months later,
I actually got a phone call.
I was in my new office at this time,
and the guy says, "Hey, I saw your videos.
"I want you to design my website for me."
And I go, "Great! We'll do it. Here's the price,
"Wait, where did you find me?"
He says, "I found you on YouTube."
And I go, "Nah, you couldn't have found me,
"I'm not doing anything on YouTube."
And he goes, "No, you've got this great video up there."
I go back and look at the video,
I've got like 10,000 views,
like 4,000 subscribers,
and I had no idea, right?
So I immediately made six more videos just like it.
And those six videos continue to perform.
I got more clients from them, and that's when
we rented a 2nd office.
In the 2nd office, we got rid of all the furniture.
There's these two small offices right next to each other.
One was just, you know, my desk, my chair and a couch.
And a big whiteboard for clients.
And then I got this second office right next door
where we took everything out.
We painted all of the walls green
and now we had a green screen studio.
We put up a black curtain and a white curtain
just for variance,
and we would bring clients in there to shoot videos.
Well you know the problem is
it was too stuffy.
The guys next door are banging on a hammer at lunch time.
What we quickly realized it's not a good place to film video
especially not with multiple thousands of dollars.
Because your client is in there going like,
"Why is this hammering nails?"
A truck drives by and rattles everything
because we were right by the highway.
And it's kind of like, you know
this is not going to work.
So we moved from there into, like a co-working space
where we could prop up our green screen.
Well I got really tired of taking down
and putting up a green screen three times a week.
I mean, that's a lot of physical labor.
Hired someone to do it.
Lost my ass on profit margin, right?
So eventually it came down.
We have got this huge area right here
in what some people would call a garage.
For me, it was the future.
We decided to move all of our stuff out.
We built a studio with our own bare hands.
We painted this ourselves.
We bought the chairs ourselves.
We did hire a design consultant
to sort of help us with the color scheme.
And we built this studio out.
This wall right here is on wheels
so it flips around so we can
put a green screen on the back.
We've got the crow's nest back here.
Everything we need to run quiet,
high quality 4K live streams,
and YouTube videos all done right here.
And we've made lots of money for ourselves
and for our clients by making the videos
that we make right here in this room.
So it's been a journey,
but we're happy to be where we are right now.
And it's just the beginning.
- So the profit margin seems like
it would be so much higher from the office.
Was that something, like were you forced out
because of the way the client,
didn't like your floor setup in the office?
A lot of agency owners get trapped in this mindset
that they need an office and they need all those people.
- Yeah, no, that's where I was at.
I was like, oh I need an office, okay?
Because at the time
we were working out of my house, my home office,
and I had a girl working for me named Tea Lopez.
And that actually wasn't her name.
That's her name now.
And the reason I mention that is because
she ended up marrying YouTube sensation David Lopez
who's got over a million subscribers.
Very well known.
He had 7 million followers on Vine,
and he does a lot of great work.
Our families knew each other,
so she came in and worked for me in my home.
And then after about three months,
that relationship kind of fizzled out.
I didn't have work for her to do.
So I thought, I need an office.
So we moved into an office.
Then we got a second office.
My profit margin just kind of sank.
I liked having a place to meet clients.
I liked having a conferencing room.
Eventually I got tired of spending the money.
I was like, you know what?
We're going to find our own place that's our own place.
We thought about buying some real estate
and investing in that direction.
We decided not to do that because
it would have divided our focus into a real estate business
which is not in our lane, right?
We're video marketers.
Let's do the real estate thing
when we're closer to retirement.
We moved back into the house because, you know,
the new generation is a nomadic generation.
We want to be able to business anywhere at any time
with anybody that we please, we choose.
And so I made a deal with my old complex owner
and I said, "Can we still use the conference room
"for a fee, when necessary?"
And she goes, "Whenever you need to.
"Just come on in, let us know, give us a call."
She said, "If I don't even need it,
"I won't even charge you if I don't need to."
So we continue to use that space.
We also have coworking spaces.
And we'll meet clients there.
Other times I'll meet clients on set.
I'll just tell them to come in here, come meet me here.
And we'll have a conversation in this room right here
where they're sitting, living and breathing
in the studio.
So we didn't need an office space.
What we needed to do was build our company.
And as we built our company, we found that the clients
didn't really care where we were located.
They cared about can Owen meet my needs?
And I think we've got the case studies to prove that.
- A lot of agency owners deal with that.
For instance, I started at an agency in New York.
It was 60 people, now it's 120-something people.
They've got offices in New York and Chicago.
And so I saw all of this wasted money
that could have gone into doing client work
or reducing the risk of the agency.
And I wanted to get out.
And clients don't care whether you have the office.
- And half the time the clients don't want to meet, right?
The clients, look, the clients that are like,
"I want to meet you, shake you face to face,"
these are the guys that run me dry
and squeeze out my profit margin and don't trust.
They never trust.
So you watch 14 hours of my videos
and you still don't trust me?
You're not a good fit for my company.
But if you're the type of client that's like,
"You know what, I'm going to log into Skype."
We use a private meeting conferencing room called BlueJeans,
similar technology, a little more privacy.
We meet our clients there and our clients like that
they can pick up their kids from school
and then jump on the call from their mobile device.
- So moving from your office to your home office
has led to more clients, more revenue.
Seems like more happiness for you personally.
- Yes. Oh yeah.
- Why didn't you move from the office
to your house earlier?
What was holding you back?
- Ego is #1, right?
Because I was doing a lot of small time stuff.
I was in the Chamber of Commerce.
Which, God bless the Chamber of Commerce,
I love them for their support.
I love them that when I got sick,
I had cancer for two years,
they supported me through that.
They've nominated me for awards.
So I love the Chamber,
and I think it's a great stepping stone.
And when you are in these networking groups,
your clients kind of cap out at a certain budget.
Most of these companies are doing
less than a quarter million dollars a year.
That was sort of like for me the realization
that I needed to break out
and get into higher level thinking.
So as I recognized okay,
everyone I'm surrounded by, you know,
needs to have the office,
needs to wear the shirt and tie,
which I hate.
You'll never see me in a shirt and tie from this time.
Is, I need to break into a higher level client, right?
To do that I started looking for mentors.
And I started looking to people that could
teach me a thing or two.
A couple of names come to mind:
Tyler Anderson at Casual Fridays,
Mike Stelzner,
Jeremy Vest and of course
Bill Davis, who is my truly great friend also a mentor
and we work together on a regular basis.
As these gentlemen began to educate me
on what makes a successful business.
These are all seven-figure business owners.
Then I began to change my thinking and
it became all about efficiency
and how can we best serve our clients.
And also recognize who our client is, right?
If you don't like that I built a studio on my property,
we never say garage
because garage has that connotation to it.
We always say in our property or in the compound, right?
If you don't like that I built a studio,
television-grade studio on my property,
then you're probably not a good client for us, right?
Like, your personality style, your expectation
doesn't really align with our worldview.
And that's okay, right?
It's not wrong, it's just different.
But we're not searching for clients
with a different worldview than us.
We're looking for clients with a similar world view.
We're looking for clients that have a get it done attitude.
We're looking for clients that value visionary thinking
and forward thinking.
We're looking for that clients that believe
in the freedom that streamlined work gets done, right?
Because I want to be spending my time
with my wife and kids, right?
That's like my ultimate goal.
And my clients typically they want to be golfing,
spending time with their wife and kids.
They want to be pursuing writing
or some of their other passions.
And they want their marketing to be systematic.
That's the freedom that we provide for them.
And we do that by having everything
within 10 feet of my workstation.
I mean I work right there.
I'll come up with an amazing idea for your company.
I can come right in here and shoot it, right?
That's efficiency.
No hiring actors, none of this other stuff.
You know we've got everything we need
within 10 feet of each other and
that makes for good business.
- And that's got to give you a lot of freedom.
Now you know that you can say no to clients
and your costs are low enough that you can keep it moving.
You can keep the business alive.
- The issue of firing clients is,
or letting go of clients is something that
is very sensitive to me because
we did just recently let go of a client,
and I hate it.
I hate it every single time.
Because I want to serve your video marketing needs.
So I want to serve the client's needs, but
in this particular case there was an integrity issue.
And the client was hiding things from us
and not sort of filling us in on certain things.
That caused us to stumble in the campaign.
Doing that was hard for everybody.
Because I had producers that lost money.
They lost their commissions on it
cause the commissions were no longer coming in.
I had all this time we spent on onboarding.
Out the window.
It's gone now.
So there's this negative energy
that goes through your organization
that as the leader you have to be able
to point them in the right direction,
and say look, you know we got bruised by this, yes,
but look at where our company is going, you know?
We're getting multiple leads per week.
We have lots to build towards,
lots of people demanding our services.
So let's focus on the yes's,
and pay as little attention to the no's as possible.
I find that's healthy for your organization
and it's also healthy for your mental well-being, right?
And that, like you said, frees me up
to focus on what I really love which is client work
and not having to deal with some of this, you know,
stupid admin stuff that I hate so much.
- We do the same thing where it's let's find out what
that minimum amount of revenue that we need to survive is,
and try to get our revenue to a point
where we're making that with like two clients.
- Yeah
- Because if we're there, then everything else is profit
and that frees us up to say no to everyone.
If there's even a chance that we
don't want to work with them - Yeah
we can say no to them.
- Yeah, exactly.
You know some of these companies,
the process for getting approved is very slow, right?
We want to remain fast and nimble and out there.
So the client is like, "Well, we've got like
"three levels of approval before we can say yes."
You might want to say,
"You know, not the right time for us."
Nobody ever wants to say,
"Hey, we don't want your business."
When we have to turn it down,
we always turn it down in a way that
encourages the client on the phone,
and encourages our company too,
because we believe in not wrong, just different.
And if you're not a wrong client,
you're just a different client.
- What are some red flags you see
from bad clients?
- Yeah.
- Especially in the sales process.
- Yeah, okay.
So a big one is they talk about cost a lot.
Big red flag, right?
If you're jumping in to this worried about the money,
then we're never going to get to that creative place
where we're taking risks in your marketing.
It's always going to be about the bottom line.
And that to me is,
it goes back to my Chamber of Commerce days.
That's where you need to work with a company that's
just as concerned about revenue or costs as you are.
Clients that won't align with our technology, right?
So we make it very easy to business with us.
When you fill out a form,
you fill out the form, we send you a link to schedule.
If the client doesn't fill out the questionnaire
then they're simply not qualified to meet with us.
I need to know that you have certain
qualifications to even work with us.
And then to meet with us,
I mean that's my time we're talking about here.
If they won't align to the technology
and do things the way we do things, right?
You've got to use the calendar link.
You have to meet me for a video call
before we even do business together.
These are like, we're not just getting a new client
we're training them, we're seeing like
are you going to follow leadership here or
are you going to come in and tell us your way is better?
So I wouldn't go to the dentist and
be like, "Hey doc, you're doing that wrong."
And yet when you bring on a dentist client,
all of a sudden they see your video and they're like,
"I don't like that."
And it's like, who cares?
Your audience is going to love it.
If you can't get on our path in the beginning,
you probably won't get on our path once you're a client.
So that's another red flag.
I would say lastly, is the questions that they ask.
It's hard to put a finger on this right now, but,
you can tell by the questions that this person
is not ready to engage in real marketing, right?
They want to do coupons, they want to do
buy from me, buy from me, buy from me,
buy from me, buy from me, right?
And it's always like, "Well when are they going to buy?"
or "How long will it take, you know
"for customers to start buying from me?"
This kind of language.
But I want to hear things like
"What type of videos will move my clients
"through the funnel faster?"
I want to hear things like
"What should I say in my videos?"
I want to hear a client asking questions
that's visualizing themselves in the process.
As opposed to thinking about the customer's wallet.
If you are obsessed with your customer's wallet
you're never going to get into their hearts.
And that's where you want to be.
You want to become a part of your customer's life.
And I ran into this with a client and a dear friend
that runs a karate studio.
We went over the marketing for many years.
We were together for many years.
And the entire time there was always a struggle of
you can't just ask people to buy.
You have to make content about your process
and your system and people need to see.
We're not in the Sears Roebuck generation.
We're in the Amazon generation now.
We have to show people
what we're all about, first.
And then our clients will come to us and say,
"I want to do business with you because
"I've seen your blocking system,
"I've seen your punching system,
"I've seen your schedule."
You can't hide that stuff from the customer.
We want to give everyone a chance, okay?
So we realize maybe their questions weren't right
or maybe the way that they approached this wasn't right.
So what we do is we recognize that
this is going to be a client
that's going to take a little bit of extra work.
And so we'll pad our pricing,
maybe 10 or 15%.
We give them a little higher pricing
and that's a test.
If they come back.
I mean they scoff us (makes grumbling noises)
you know, kind of bah humbug?
We know we cleared the client out of our system
and we didn't have to tell them no.
If they begin the negotiation process with us,
that shows us they're flexible.
A flexible person we can work with.
When we have that type of negotiation,
now we're creating synergy together.
And that's how we take someone
who may be a bad prospect,
and we turn them into a great customer.
- Where can people check you out online?
And you can talk to the camera if you want.
- Best place to go check me out
is thevideospot.net
You can find out about our
products, our services, how we do business.
But also follow me
on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram.
Just search for
owenvideo.
You'll find me.
You'll find our amazing content,
and I can't wait to see you there.
- Thanks for being here.
We actually have the discovery call questions
we use to get clients.
That's at experiment27.com/discovery
if you want to get those for free.
Be sure to subscribe to Owen's YouTube channel.
That link is going to be down in the description below.
And if you need marketing for your digital agency
check out experiment27.com
Don't forget to subscribe.
Thanks.