560: The Ultimate Guide To Short Form Video Marketing And Getting Results Fast

00:00
You’re listening to the My Wife, Quit or Job podcast. The show where I cover all the latest strategies and current events related to e-commerce and online business. Now today marks the beginning of a four part series on creating content to promote your business. And we’ll be covering everything from video and blogging to email marketing and podcasting. And to kick things off, we’re starting with one of the hottest trends, short form video. But before I begin, I want to let you know that tickets are now on sale for Seller Summit 2025 over at sellersummit.com.

00:28
The Seller Summit is the conference that I hold every year that specifically targets e-commerce entrepreneurs selling physical products online. And unlike other events that focus on inspirational stories and high-level BS, is a curriculum-based event where you will leave with practical and actionable strategies specifically for an e-commerce business. Every speaker I invite is deep in the trenches of their business, entrepreneurs who are importing large quantities of physical goods and not some high-level guys who are overseeing their companies at 50,000 feet. Now, I personally hate large events,

00:56
So the seller summit is always small and intimate. Every year we cut off ticket sales at around 200 people, so tickets sell out fast, and we’ve sold out every single year for the past eight years. Now if you’re an e-commerce entrepreneur making over 250k or $1 million per year, we also offer an exclusive mastermind experience with other top sellers. The seller summit’s gonna be held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida from May 6th to May 8th, and right now this is the cheapest the tickets will ever be. And finally, if you haven’t picked up my Wall Street Journal bestselling book, The Family First Entrepreneur yet,

01:26
It’s actually available on Amazon at 30 % off. My book will teach you how to achieve financial freedom by starting a business that doesn’t require you to work yourself to death. Plus you can still grab my free bonus workshop on how to sell print on demand and how to make passive income with blogging, YouTube and podcasting when you grab the book over at mywifequitterjob.com slash book. So go over to mywifequitterjob.com slash book, fill out the form and I’ll send you the bonuses right away. Now onto the show.

01:57
Welcome to the My Wife, Quit or Job podcast. In these next series of episodes, what Tony and I are going to do is we’re going to just talk about some of the fundamentals of content creation and each week we’ll cover a different topic. Today we’re going to hit video, which is ironic because your video is not working today. Yes. I did a Windows update right before this call and all of a sudden my camera is not working.

02:25
I’m having so much with this. I’m having so much fun that you’re having technology issues because you constantly harass me because I have all this series of bad luck and now you are having bad luck and it makes me feel really good. So I’m starting off my day on a positive note. You know what I don’t like about Windows now? They force you to do the updates. You can’t really easily disable it. I’ve disabled it, but then they undisable it. anyway, we don’t need a camera anyway. It’s all good.

02:53
You can’t see the faces that I’m making you right now. I know what you look like. It’s enough. I thought we’d start with video. The reason why we’re starting with video is I think video is by far the best way to create content today if your intention is to make money, whether it be through affiliates, memberships, digital products. We actually have a quick success story with

03:22
our course, so we’ve been running these video challenges throughout this year, just really pushing people to put themselves out there, create that video content, because it can be tough to get started. So one of our students, Kevin, who’s the grumpy sysadmin on YouTube, has really taken off with the video creation. He’s gotten super into editing, but he’s struggled a little bit with like, okay, when’s the money gonna come in, right? Because he’s like an over-editor.

03:49
unlike you and I that don’t do. I do very little editing. You have an editor, but your editing is still pretty minimal in the scheme of things, especially compared to what he’s doing. He posted a video. We did a critique with him a couple of weeks ago, and you gave him some ideas. I you rewrote the hook for his video. I don’t remember what he was talking about. I think like Wi-Fi mesh systems or something in that realm.

04:18
you know, we reminded him that, you you can put those affiliate links in your either YouTube description or your comment, your first comment. And he did, and I can’t remember exactly what it was, but the video actually didn’t have a ton of views, but he had already made 60 some dollars in the first, you know, couple days of this video being up.

04:40
and had driven a significant number of clicks to those affiliate links, like in the hundreds of links. And compared to the video only getting hundreds of views, the link clicking was pretty high. So anyway, it just goes to show you that it’s not just about monetizing video with ads and things like that. The affiliate play does work, even if you have a small following. You know, it’s funny, I just got off a one-on-one call with a buddy of mine who actually runs an event, but

05:10
Uh, things are kind of getting harder right now for him with his event and, and what he does. So he is pivoting towards YouTube and. Not in so many words. He just asked me, what’s the secret of getting views on YouTube? Because he, he has like 2000 subscribers, which is, you know, which means he’s been doing it for awhile now. Cause getting that first 1000 is tough, but he can’t seem to crack, you know, that, uh,

05:39
I guess that thousand views mark on his channel. And so I took a look and he was just basically posting interviews and just stuff he’d already had just and just posting it. Which is what a lot of people do. They just throw up like kind of right. Like we record all of our podcasts, audio and video, and we don’t do anything with the video. But a lot of people just throw up these interview type.

06:06
videos on YouTube without any of the basic fundamentals of creating a successful video. Or even just like he actually made an effort to and edited those videos. Like the interviews, trying to pick out like the best clips, kind of like what Rogan does and some other popular YouTubers. But it just hasn’t been, it hasn’t caught any traction. I think.

06:31
In general, podcasts are pretty difficult to get a lot of views. I think the advantage with podcasts is that they’re long, so you get long watch times. You can get it to work, but I would say still the first minute’s got to be interesting enough for someone to want to sludge through the rest of the podcast. Do you know where I see podcasts actually performing better when it comes to the video is actually on TikTok? I see a lot of people putting their podcasts on TikTok, not the full podcast, but clips.

07:00
And they obviously pick the juiciest part of the clip for TikTok. those are in my feed, probably because I’ve watched many of them, but they’re in my feed all the time. And they always have in the tens of thousands of views, if not even higher. Yeah, I’ve seen those too. Of course, the ones that we see are always going to have higher views. So one thing I always do is I always actually click into it and just see if it was a fluke.

07:26
And most of the time, you know, it’s that one clip that that’s done really well and the rest of them aren’t doing so hot. But yeah, I started doing that with mine also where, you know, I’m just using AI right now and occasionally one does okay. But in general, what I found with content is that the more effort I put into it, the better results I get. And anytime I take like a shortcut, uh, it just doesn’t do as well. But on the flip side, posting.

07:56
is in general better than not posting at all. That’s what I think the hardest thing to unlock about video because we give people a lot of advice such as have good lighting, put your camera on a tripod or your phone on a try. Don’t have a wiggly camera. Use a microphone even if it’s an inexpensive $20 Amazon microphone. We give people these basic

08:23
tips for filming. Use a teleprompter if you’re long-winded, things like that. But then there’s always people who have success holding their camera in their car, no microphone, like breaking every single rule, right? And they have grown their channel to 100,000, a million plus. I think that’s only the case for short form. I think for like a long form YouTube video, I can’t think of anyone who doesn’t use a mic.

08:54
I told you I found that person the other day that, well, I guess she had a mic, I don’t think it was working terribly well, but the audio quality was garbage on most of the videos. I mean, I think that’s the exception. Yes, hopefully. Whereas on TikTok or short form, anything goes, right? Actually, because I want it to be easier for me to film short form, I think I’m going to start doing them without a mic. That way, whenever I’m just kind of out and about, I can just pop up my camera and film something.

09:23
Any barrier to anything related to content creation is going to stop you from creating it. That’s what I found over the years. So I think the rules are different even on YouTube for short form to long form, just like you were saying. I think you can get away with a lot of things with short form that long form, you know, it might work a little bit, but it’s not going to work as like a long term strategy. You want to elaborate on that?

09:50
Well, just like you were saying, you know, lot of people create the short term video without a microphone. A lot of people are holding their phone as they’re walking or like the, you know, the there’s movement, right, which can get like on a long video that can get like kind of nauseating after a bit. You know, they’re not they don’t use any B roll or, you know, side by side. It’s like it’s literally a lot of times just a person in the camera.

10:14
talking on short form video or someone talking over all B-roll, right? There’s just the short form creation process to me seems like it’s become very different than the long form creation process. Yeah. So let’s start with the basics then. Long form versus short form. I think both can make money. I was just actually chatting with one of my buddies and he’s been making money.

10:44
by taking clips of popular people, mixing them up, joining the Creator Program, and just getting a lot of views on the backs of people who are famous. OK, can you give me an example? Because I’m not sure what you’re talking So for example, let’s say, OK, those guys at My First Million are reasonably popular with their podcast. So someone will take one of their clips, a viral clip.

11:11
mishmash it in their own clip, publish it on their own channel, get millions of views, and they get paid for it.

11:21
Interesting so that what are the rules about that like how much of a clip of someone else can you use? So there are rules, but if you know that that person’s not going to go after you In the case of my first million they welcome it because that’s perpetuating their brand online, right? So you take someone famous or semi We’re not talking like a list celebrities or anything like that. Although you could but anyone who who if you see online You know is going to get a lot of views just by nature of seeing their content

11:50
Like Gary Vee, for example. I’m not sure what his policies are, but you take those and you get a lot of views. You can get paid about one, I think it’s like $1,000 per 10 million views. Okay. That seems like a lot of views to get paid. It does, but if you’re piggybacking on someone famous, you can do this. In my eyes, I think doing that doesn’t really perpetuate your brand or anything.

12:18
Like I heard what my buddy was doing. He was making some decent money out of it. But in general, like what’s the point, right? It’s like temporary money. Well, it’s sort of that short-term play. It almost reminds me of, well, I know Spencer Hawes did a whole experiment. Didn’t he do something with AI writing all the blog posts? Was that Spencer? Yes, that was Spencer. Yeah.

12:42
So like to me, that’s like a short-term play, right? Like you might get traffic initially, it might, you know, earn you some quick money, but it’s not going to be like a long-term, it’s a long-term brand play for Spencer because he’s doing commentary on what he’s doing, right? So it works for him. But if your goal is just AI everything all the time, it’s not an experiment. I think over time, it’s not gonna be like a long-term brand strategy. Yeah, so if you wanna do, let’s start with short form, because that’s easier. Maybe we can actually split it up.

13:11
between short form and long form in a separate episode. But short form, like if you want to promote something, you have to focus on the actual script. You can’t just take something, break it apart using AI and have it really do well. Right, which a lot of people are doing. Right, which is kind of what I’m doing right now because short form is kind of like an afterthought for me right now. I focus all my efforts on YouTube, the long form, and I break those apart into the short form.

13:41
They don’t do that great. They do okay. Occasionally I’ll get like a 10,000 or like 20,000. Actually, I got lucky the other day and I had like a 200,000 view thing, but for the most part, it’s not going to happen. Yes. I think the other key with short form is that if you are talking, you have to be succinct. This is where all of the filler words and I don’t know whether it’s best to script it, use teleprompter, bullet points.

14:10
But most people are pretty long-winded. And so it’s hard to get good points made and information passed from you to the watcher or the consumer of the content in a way that is 30 seconds or 45 seconds. You know what I mean? It’s pretty tough to put that information together quickly without using some sort of script or outline.

14:38
I just wanted to take a moment to tell you about a free resource that I offer on my website that you may not be aware of. If you are interested in starting your own online store, I put together a comprehensive six-day mini course on how to get started in ecommerce that you should all check out. It contains both video and text-based tutorials that go over the entire process of finding products to sell all the way to getting your first sales online. Now this course is free and can be attained at mywifequitterjob.com slash free.

15:07
just sign up right there on the front page via email and I’ll send you the course right away. Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash free. Now back to the show.

15:19
So I disagree. I think it just depends on the type of content that you’re going to make. Right. If you’re doing teaching content, I think what works well, at least for, for what I see in my feed and I know your feed is completely different, right? You’re getting like real housewives content on your feed. The Mormon wives of TikTok or whatever. Yeah. That’s what I’m watching. But anytime someone weaves a story into teaching something that always works well. And when you’re storytelling,

15:46
You don’t have to be like completely succinct. You just need to like grab me in like those first five seconds. And I think that’s like the most important thing. Grab me in the first five seconds with a story and then weave in like a little lesson into it. You can’t really do this by cutting apart things that you’ve already done. You pretty much have to come up with the idea from scratch. Although there’s some people I follow where they’re just doing it all in one take and it does not look like they’re reading or anything. Yeah.

16:15
And I think they’re just good storytellers. Yeah, but I don’t think most people are. I think in general, you become a good storyteller. So when you’re starting out, if you’re like, once again, getting back to the basics, if you’re just getting started in this, you have to do some sort of scripting or outline before you if you’re trying to get everything in in 30 to 45 seconds, even down to, you you’ve redone a couple of students’ videos in the past several months in the course. And one of the things that I think is interesting is

16:44
A lot of times in email, we use a question to get people to open the email. But I actually feel like in video, it’s better to make a statement. And I remember the one, you rewrote one for once again, Kevin, who was talking about, was it like Google, I don’t know, incognito, right? Yeah, it was incognito mode, yeah. Yeah, and you changed the intro to…

17:09
Google incognito or whatever, Chrome incognito almost ruined my marriage. Right. And so that was really interesting to me as someone who writes a ton of subject lines for emails, because I probably would have started with, do you think you’re safe using incognito or something like that? Like I would have made it a question, but I think in video it worked so much better with that statement of fact, basically.

17:37
Yes, and think it weaved in a story that people would care about. If you lead with incognito mode, think most people will just scroll on by, right? Right, because they’re like, don’t use that or whatever. I know everything there is to know about incognito or who knows what they’re thinking. Whereas with email, I think you already have a captive audience of people who you know are interested in your stuff, Yes. In theory. That brings up what you’ve been talking about and something I’ve been thinking a lot about in the past couple of days because

18:06
Well, we’ll go into that in a minute, but so many people, like I think you can repurpose your content. I’ve done talks about this at conferences about repurposing your content. Create one thing, use it a hundred different times. But I do think it’s nuanced in how you can use it. And I think so many people just take the exact same piece of content and dump it in 50 places, right? Which is problematic. Whereas just the small nuance between,

18:32
You know, your email list being a more captive audience, a short form video being people scrolling mindlessly on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, know, YouTube, wherever, right? So the, you know, what you don’t know about incognito mode or incognito, you know, this almost ruined my marriage versus you’re not as safe as you think you are with incognito. You know, just that small change when you take content and move it from one place to another, right, is really important to do. So you can’t just take the exact same thing

19:01
and just put it everywhere, in my opinion. I mean, I’m of the belief that if you want to be good at any one platform, you need to create custom content for that platform. Right? So what works for TikTok might not necessarily work for Instagram. What works for Shorts might not necessarily work for TikTok. So really, you have to make a choice. You can repurpose, and I repurpose all of my stuff. It’s just not going to be as effective going from long form to short form.

19:31
Whereas you can usually just get away with, in a lot of cases, posting the same short form across all the platforms. Because they’re all kind of similar. Yeah, I think for short form, definitely. I just think people run into a lot of trouble when they’re hacking up their long form into short form. Yeah, I guess it just depends on what your goals are. Like my goals are to just basically be everywhere. Yeah. So that’s why I’m breaking up the short form. For some reason, I just can’t get myself to keep up

20:01
producing short form every single day. Well, that’s another fundamental short form, right? Is that really short form is a volume play. The more content you create, the better you do. You saw this when you, I think you did this like a year or two ago where you like posted a TikTok every single day. And we did that with the class where we did short form every single day for 30 days. And every single person that participated in that challenge grew their YouTube.

20:29
subscribers, right? Every single person increase their views. Like literally it’s a foolproof method, right? But with that comes you’re posting a video every single day, which means you’re creating a video, not every single, you you, probably batch creating, but you’re investing a lot of time into getting that content out every single day. And what it, what is the long-term play for that? Like what is the reward? Are you going to be able to grow your YouTube account only offshore form?

20:57
Maybe, but I don’t think that’s the best strategy. Not if you want to make money, but I don’t want to scare people listening to this either, but my buddies who do short form very well, they post three times a day. I think Alex Hormozzi was famous for saying he was posting 180-something pieces a day. Yes, Something crazy like that. I can’t remember what it was. Something crazy. It was something that don’t try to do it at home kind of thing.

21:26
So unfortunately, like if you want to be really good and your goal is to grow your channel as quickly as possible, you’re going to have to produce at least minimum one piece of content per day, preferably like three pieces of content per day. Yeah. And you never know what’s going to hit. Right. And then once you have like, once you’re in the mode where you’re not trying to grow your subscribers, then you need to just mix in some really good pieces that require a lot of thought. Yeah.

21:55
in their intermix. So this is why I’ve never been able to get myself to maintain the short form. Like I’m not a three times a day kind of guy. No, I’m more like a once or twice a week kind of guy, which is why YouTube works really well for me. Like sure, takes a longer time to put together a script that’s 10 to 15 minutes long, but I can just do that. My leisure bank up a bunch of episodes and just post once.

22:25
at most twice a week. It works for me. Anything I have to do multiple times per day just seems like work. That’s why I haven’t been able to do it. Here’s the other thing that I actually was thinking about this too, because I have all this video content right now for Amazon that I’ve been creating. I have 70 plus short form videos that I’ve made over the past two and a half weeks. I hate the fact that it’s only on Amazon right now because I could in theory be putting it on other platforms. It’s like, should it go?

22:54
But what I realized was back when I was just blogging and all I did was I had Happy Housewife and that’s the only thing I did all day every day, right? All my content for Happy Housewife came from everything that I did all day long, right? Cause I had all these little kids, you know, we were doing things every single day, making, was cooking three meals a day. So if you are,

23:19
creating content about your everyday. And I’m not saying just like a vlog, like that’s not, think that’s the hardest way to make money is just like talking about your day. Most people, you can’t hook most people with that. But let’s just say like you’re an auto mechanic, right? And you could in theory create videos about every car that comes into your shop every day, right? You could create 30 second videos. Or if you are, my nephews used to work for that exotic plant nursery, right? Where they had like really rare species of plants.

23:49
My nephew had no issues coming up with content about plants every single day, because every day they were getting new plants and new varietals and there’s only 100 of these, all this stuff, right? So if you are doing something that is directly related to what you do every day, I think it’s actually not terribly hard to create a lot of short form content, right? Because you literally can pick up your phone and be like, hey, making my next batch of sourdough, right? And this sourdough’s got

24:17
I was watching this sourdough guy the other day and he’s like, this sourdough is jalapeno and whatever. And I was like, that sounds disgusting. But like he’s clearly just making content throughout the day about what he does, right? Which is so much easier than like me who now sits in front of the computer for eight hours a day doing all sorts of stuff. That’s not super interesting, right? Like, oh, here we go using AI to test subject lines. I mean, it might be interesting for some people, but like it’s not as interesting as like, hey, now we’re trying this new granola recipe or

24:46
I’m going to show you how to scrub your baseboards because that’s what I’m actually doing right now. So I think if you are creating content around your life, what you’re doing and you’re teaching people about that or informing people or educating people, however, that actually isn’t too hard to get a lot of short form out of. I 100 % agree with you. So my buddies who do it well on three times a day, the first thing that they do as soon as they start working or wherever they’re at, and a lot of these people are e-commerce folks, they sit down in the office and they just

25:16
pump out three short form videos and that’s that. And they always have content because they can share their orders or whatnot. This is something that I’m gonna start doing for Bumblebee. I was just gonna say you could do it for Bumblebee. Right, because unfortunately I’m just not here in the office. Like I come in maybe once a week or twice a week. But I think I could just come in here and just film some random videos. I think I have an advantage now that I have an editor, but.

25:45
taking something off the cuff on your phone, I don’t feel is publishable unless I get it right like the first time. Yeah. So. The other thing that I’ve come to learn very quickly after doing all these videos this month is the batch recording, if possible, for short form. think batch recording with long form is a lot harder because those videos just take a lot longer to make. Yes. But, know,

26:12
I’ve been making these 29 second or less videos for Amazon all month. And like this morning before we recorded, I think I recorded 10 videos. Just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And then I’ll edit them, you know, this week, like in batch two, I’ll edit all 10 at the same time. And so if you think like, oh my gosh, I can’t put up one video a day. Well, in theory, if you’re doing 30 to 60 second videos, you can probably knock those all out in recording in under 30 minutes.

26:41
And if you’re not doing crazy editing, which I don’t recommend for shorts anyway, unless you’re like known for your editing, like what’s his name? Zach King, right? Like who’s literally got to start with crazy edits. If that’s not you, then just put together the, you know, simple and sweet. And, you know, I timed myself. So to edit a 30 second video, takes me and I probably have six or seven like video clips that I have to edit together and cut stuff out. It takes me about six minutes.

27:11
That’s really fast. Okay. Yeah, but think about it. It’s a 30 second video. you know, you literally only have 30 seconds and I’ve experimented with because I’m doing videos of like I’m demonstrating things. So I’ve I’ve experimented with leaving the camera on, leaving my phone on and filming everything and just chopping that up or filming in segments and then having like six or seven, you know, segments that I have to edit together. I found for me, it’s actually easier to let the camera run and cut

27:41
from the one piece of footage because of importing time. Just that one thing, because I’ve got to get it from my phone to my computer, my computer to CapCut because I’m using the desktop version. So like, but just little things like that that I’ve learned over this month. And when you start creating that content, you’ll learn for yourself, like, oh, it’s easier for me to put together five separate clips or I’d rather just cut up one. Little things like that. And that actually makes a big difference in your time of how long it’s going to take you to do something.

28:09
So if any of you are listening to this and thinking to yourself, I don’t want to do any video. Like this is not for me. This is the way that people are selling going forward. It’s easily the most effective way. That’s why TikTok shop is taking off. Just video commerce. Everything is moving towards video. Yeah. Right. I I’ve realized that I was even listening to podcasts on video the other day.

28:34
Just I was letting it play on my computer. was just letting it play on my computer. was like a YouTube that I was like letting play while I was working. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, I just think that people are just becoming so much more comfortable with consuming the video content. And I actually read a stat just this past week about I don’t know what the names of the gents are anymore, like Gen Z and Gen Alpha, like

29:02
They plan on doing the majority of their Christmas shopping on TikTok shop. It’s crazy. Like 50 some over 50 % were like TikTok shops. My first stop. I thought you were going to say Timo for a sec, but then you. Yeah, honestly, I’m surprised it wasn’t because my kids like Timo and I can’t stand that they like Timo. But anyway, I just think like you’re right. Video content is.

29:29
Like you just, have to do it. I wish I could say like, oh, you you can still just do, you know, put out white papers. Eh, I just don’t, I don’t think you can anymore. I think you have to have some kind of video component. Yeah. So even though I kind of detest doing this, I mean, I realize that it’s something that needs to be done for Bumblebee going forward. Yeah. So I think the other thing to realize is that

29:59
you’re never gonna like what you video, you’re never gonna like yourself on video for the first year. Just be prepared that you’re not gonna like it and just do it anyway because you’re the only person that thinks that about yourself. Everyone else thinks it’s fine. No one else cares. You care more than everybody. So you have to get over that and just keep putting the content out there.

30:26
So let’s switch gears a little bit and just kind of talk about the process for creating one of these short forms. I have my own process, but I’ve always been curious about what yours is. My process actually always starts with AI now. I tell it what I want to talk about, and I say, give me a five second hook for this video that tells some sort of weird story.

30:49
and then I have it give me 10 versions and then I see if I actually have a story that matches what they talked about. You’re like, no, none of these relate to me. Right. Then I go with it and then film something out. Do you start with like, I’m a Chinese engineer so that the stories will make sense for you? When I was got my first B in the 11th grade, just so it can correlate.

31:13
So I actually, you’re joking, but I actually say in the voice of Steve Chu now, if my wife quit her job and it knows kind of who I am because there’s so much content out there now. Yeah. But yeah. So it’s interesting because for short form, I do not do any of that. I literally just go. And I have done so when I’m on. So I make two forms of short form, some where I’m completely off camera. It’s all voiceover and that’s all like demo stuff. And then I have the short form where I’m actually giving like a quick tip.

31:43
on how to do something. And I have found in my kids, this literally, I’ve been told, I had a kid block me on social because she doesn’t want her friends to see my content because she’s so mortified, right? I know, I’m like, yes, your mom is so cringy, yet who pays all your bills? So I found that like jumping into the screen, like with your which.

32:08
My kids are literally like, one of my kids was like, I was literally terrified in my bed when I saw you in my feed. And I was like, oh, I’m sorry, you were terrified in your bed in the home that I pay for. So I have found that I just start, I jump in the screen and I talk and I almost don’t, when I’m talking to the camera, I know the tip, right? One of the tips I had was,

32:33
how to store a paintbrush. If you’re painting projects, you have to stop for the night. You don’t wanna wash out the brush, because then it might not dry by the next day. I know none of this, you have any idea how to do any of this. So there’s some ways that you can store a paintbrush with paint on it, so that when you use it the next day, it’s not all stiff and gross, and you don’t have a clean line. But I already know all that, so when I start the video, it’s like, hey, blah, blah. Here’s the tip. And then I sometimes have B-rolls, sometimes I just show it right there.

33:01
And I’m done very minimal editing. So I don’t use a lot of like tools, but after listening to your office hours last week, where you talked about how to get that hook using, um, you always say it wrong. It’s Claude, right? Yeah. Yeah. Um, I might actually start utilizing that to, uh, to do for some of the short form. Cause I actually thought that was a pretty clever tip on getting it to create those hooks. And I thought the hooks that it came up with were actually pretty phenomenal.

33:30
I’ve never been happy with like chat GBT’s hooks. I agree. Even in the paid version, I always felt like they were like, I’m like, I don’t use those words. So I might change that around a little bit. And then for the for the video, that’s just B roll. I just film as much B rolls I think I need and then I edit it. And by the time I’m done editing together, like in that six minutes.

33:55
I pretty much have figured out what I want to say about the product or whatever I’m doing because I’ve watched it like four times. So yeah, don’t use any for short form. I don’t use any script. I don’t use anything. I probably should. I probably should work on a hook better. But my fat face coming in there seems to work just fine. You I don’t think you should because I was looking at it’s different using a teleprompter on a phone versus a teleprompter like for like a long form.

34:24
Because when you’re using a teleprompter on your phone, like it’s like right up against your face and you can actually see eye movements. Yes. You know, and for sure for me, you know, because that first five seconds, like my best ones, I’m actually not using the teleprompter in the first five or 10 seconds. And then if I forget what I’m going to say, then I’ll stop. I’ll like, I’ll have the teleprompter up, but I’m not using it. Yeah. And if I forget what I’m going to say, then I’ll stop and then go towards the teleprompter part.

34:53
memorize it and then say it and then I’ll stop. And that way my editor is the one who kind of pieces everything together. Yeah. I think Jim does it that way too, right? Except he films it directly in the app. He films it directly in the app and just pauses and then goes to the next point, which is another way to do it actually. I have my kids film everything in the TikTok app too. I do not because I’m not 18, but Jim has mastered it. And he basically

35:22
Jim just basically says, know, have you ever wondered why your money’s not insured and whatever, you know, and then he has his standard intro that he, that he does. And then he goes in, but you know, he’ll say two or three sentences and then it’ll cut to like the next section. So I’m sure he can like, he also is talking about subjects that he knows infinitely more than most people about. So just the cutting probably allows him to gather his thoughts and, you know, go on to the next piece of information.

35:52
Which is another way to do it. Yeah, this is why I say it’s a volume game. Like there’s this Chinese guy I follow. All he does is he presses up his face against the camera and just says something that’s really interesting. Okay. Like there’s no hook really. He just answers a question and it’s mostly about like the tech world and that sort of thing. He’s got millions of followers. Literally he’s dry. But he always says interesting things, you know, but without a hook or any of that stuff.

36:22
And I’m pretty sure it’s just a numbers game. Like I see that guy’s face and I just want to hear what he has to say. There’s also this stock guy that, that I watch and it’s really the Chinese guy that just talks in front of like a whiteboard. Well, no, no, no, no, this is a Chinese guy, but he’s dating like some 20 something blonde, like he’s like 50 something or maybe even 60 probably probably mid fifties, but he’s dating like this 20 something blonde girl. So the blonde girl just goes and asks,

36:51
Hey, what are your thoughts on like Nvidia or something? And then he just talks for like 30 seconds. Kind of dry. And she’s not even in the picture. Like she was in the, the only reason I know she’s blonde is because she was in some of the TikToks. But for the most part, she’s not even in them. And it’s just straight Q and A and it works really well because what he says, like he he’s established like an authority in my mind. Just cause the way he talks and the way he’s dressed, he’s always in front of his computer with like millions of charts, stock charts.

37:21
He must be an expert. He’s got tons of followers of what he says, the content. That’s what I think people who are listening and probably now in a full-on panic about doing this is that it’s so much easier to create content about things that you know a lot about.

37:44
You know, there’s because we always get these like, well, I don’t know. I have these four topics and one of them is all there’s always one topic that like they have no knowledge of it at all. But they’re like, but I’ve always been interested in monarch butterflies. And you’re like, yeah, but like you can’t talk about like I know, like I have a friend that’s like a PhD bug guy, right? He’s an entomologist. And he literally if you if you ask him a question about any bug, he would be like, let me talk to you for six hours about, you know, the common red ant, right? Because they’re like he just loves bugs.

38:14
So if you can find a topic that you love and know a lot about, like those people, to me, that’s like a guaranteed success, right? Because you never run out of things to talk about. You’re never bored with what you’re talking about. And after you create, you know, certain amount of content, people know that you’re an expert because it comes through and how you tell things and talk about things. Yeah. So I think that’s great advice. And I think if you’re going to go into this,

38:43
If you’re going to script anything, just script like the first five seconds and then go off on your own. And any barrier that you have to making the video, you need to eliminate it. Earlier in the episode, I mentioned like, I think I’m just not going to use a microphone now because by the time I bust out the microphone, like even something stupid like busting out the microphone and hooking it up to my phone, that takes like 30 seconds. That’s actually going to stop me from making the video.

39:12
especially if I just happen to not be carrying the microphone on me. Yeah. You know what’s so interesting about that? And I can, I think if there’s one tip that you take away from all of this podcast, it’s that remove all your barriers because you know that technology and I have a love hate relationship. I’ve had issues in the past, like couple of weeks with my microphone and my computer, not working together. Right. We’ve had issues like I’ve had to like restart my computer and do this and all these things. Right. So

39:40
I go to edit video on Monday and I had filmed like, I think I filmed 15 videos on Sunday and I was like, okay, I got two hours this morning. I am gonna easily knock out these 15 videos, upload them, be done, like pat myself on the back and go to lunch, right? I could not get the narration to work on CapCut with my microphone. And…

40:05
I tried the desktop, I tried the web app, I tried recording in Camtasia, I tried the voice recorder, like I could not get my microphone to work. And I knew that because of the types of videos I’m making, the audio recording is actually super important, right? So I can’t just use a pair of AirPods. And I probably spent 45 minutes trying to get this to work. And I finally got it to work, but by the end of that time, I was in such a bad mood.

40:35
I didn’t wanna record. And these things like I’m getting paid to do this, right? Like there’s guaranteed money to do this. So think about if you’re doing it and you’re just like hoping to get views, right? Or you’re hoping people click on your affiliate. So like I didn’t wanna do it and it was guaranteed money because I was so angry and irritated and frustrated. was like, why doesn’t anything ever work? And like, why can’t I just get something done and required amount of time and like all this stuff. I just spiraled into this like, you know.

41:03
technology hatred. So I can imagine people that are like new and we see this with our students, right? New to tech, certain types of technology, or maybe they’ve never, I mean, most people haven’t hooked up a microphone before, right? If you’re not a content creator or an audio guy. And so if you can get things set up to where you like even have like a separate laptop or computer where you like turn and that’s the little studio area or

41:27
Everything’s set up on a tripod and like, like right now I’m filming all this stuff in the kitchen. I literally have a tripod set up in the kitchen on my kitchen counter. It has not moved for two weeks. So when I need to film, I literally go snap my phone in and like get going. But it’s like, I’m not looking for the tripod. I’m not trying to find this. Like I have everything like in these little buckets so that I can get them and find them. it really does eliminate 90 % of the problems with video creation. But the second you hit that first hurdle, it’s very easy to just spiral and then be like, I’m not doing it anymore.

41:57
not worth it. Yeah, I’m just thinking to myself also, like the more natural the delivery, the better also. Sometimes when I have the teleprompter and for some reason it’s natural when I do long form and but whenever I do short form, I feel like I’m in a rush or something. Yes, you talk fast. Yeah. So I I’m not as natural on the teleprompter. So I’m thinking about dropping that too. Well, because it feels like you’re reading something really quickly.

42:24
Yeah, I mean, some of my best videos are one that I just did completely off the cuff and the audience knows. Yeah. You know, whether you’re reading or not. And you don’t you do not need a teleprompter for short form. I do not, but it makes it more efficient. maybe I’ll. Yeah. I don’t know. As you guys can tell, I’m kind of in this experimental phase, trying to figure out that flow that works for me, you know. But if I said to you, like literally off the cuff,

42:54
give me three reasons why people should not drop ship from AliExpress. You could tell me pretty succinctly three reasons why people should not drop ship from AliExpress, right? Like you have enough knowledge to talk without a teleprompter in a 30 to 60 second video. Yeah, the key point that you just said was being succinct. Like I can easily whip out the answer, but can I whip out the answer in as few words as possible and still have it flow? That requires thought.

43:24
Whereas just answering the question is easy. Right. Right. And that’s why I think like what I said very early on is getting that message out in a succinct way is really important in the short form. Because it’s I can’t like and that’s probably one of my own personal pet peeves is when I see creators and it’s like they’re going to tell you how to do something but they just drone on and on. like I’m like no like I don’t mind hearing the story but I don’t need to hear the story plus.

43:51
some more plus a side note in a 60 second video. Like just give me the information. Yeah. So the other key takeaway of this episode for sure form is it’s really about it’s really a numbers game. You know how they say like dating is a numbers game like sure form. It’s it really is like the more content you have out there. The goal for you is hey you know I have seen that Chinese guy before. I think I like what he had to say before. I’m just going to listen to what he has now and just

44:20
over time, people recognize you instantly and want to hear what you have to say. Yes, because the reality is the first time you show up in someone’s feed on any platform, even if they listen to you, they’re probably not going to follow you unless it’s so earth-shattering. They’re going to have to see you in their feed a couple more times before they make a commitment. That’s why I think the numbers game is so important because if you have a lot of content,

44:46
that’s being published, then the chances of you appearing in someone’s feed, especially if they’ve watched a good percentage of your video, is pretty high.

44:57
Hope you enjoyed this episode, but don’t forget that this was just part one and there are three more coming. For more information and resources, go over to mywifequitterjob.com slash episode 560. And once again, tickets to Seller Summit 2025 are now on sale over at sellersummit.com. If you want to hang out in person in a small intimate setting, develop real relationships with like-minded entrepreneurs and learn a ton, then come to my event. Go to sellersummit.com. And if you’re interested in starting your own e-commerce store,

45:25
Head on over to mywifecoderjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening.