Ken Okazaki, How to Create High-Converting Videos with Just Your Phone | Marketing | YAPClassic

Ken Okazaki first got the bug for producing videos when he was a teenager. Years later, he went into the event business where his job was to “get butts in seats.” Every day, he was surrounded by crew, equipment, sets, and gear. Ken decided to pivot, take the video marketing part of the business, and start his own video marketing company. In this episode, Ken will teach you the skills that optimize video content to gain more views, leads, and sales. He will also break down his 7-Figure Video Funnel Framework. In this episode, Hala and Ken will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (01:39) Leaving Home at 17 (03:09) Ken’s Exciting Start in Video (07:36) Are You a Video Dabbler, Part-timer, Pro, or Rockstar? (09:51) Tips for Looking Your Best in Videos (13:33) The Eye Contact Hack for Better Engagement (15:13) Bringing Life to Your Videos with Movement (16:56) iPhone Lighting Hacks (17:51) What Is the Toilet Strategy? (22:49) Ken’s 7-Figure Video Marketing Funnel (26:50) Grabbing Attention with the ‘Hockey Puck’ Title Strategy (28:37) Crafting Magnetic Hooks (30:42) Using AI for Video Content (31:58) The HILDA System for Locking in Engagement (38:44) Delivering Value Like a Pro (43:12) Breaking Down the Video Marketing Funnel (53:37) Common Funnel Problems (55:40) Key Takeaways from Ken Ken Okazaki is the head of Oz Media Global and loves helping businesses plan, optimize, and launch their video campaigns. He offers done-for-you video agency services and done-with-you video coaching programs. He also specializes in helping promote and market personal brands. Through working with him, his clients have generated millions of dollars in extra profit from video marketing. As a side benefit of working with world-class clients who are household names, he’s been able to take what’s working for them and systematize the process to help businesses of all sizes. Connect with Ken: Ken’s Website: https://kenokazaki.com/ Resources Mentioned: Ken’s Book: The 7-Figure Video Funnel: https://www.amazon.com/Figure-Video-Funnel-ultimate-marketing/dp/B09KN7ZQM5 Ken’s Video as a Service Agency: https://20xagency.com/ Go to youngandprofiting.co/goboxstudio and use coupon code YAP for a 10% off discount! LinkedIn Secrets Masterclass, Have Job Security For Life: Use code ‘podcast’ for 30% off at yapmedia.io/course. Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap Youtube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ Social + Podcast Services: yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new Entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship podcast, Business, Business podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal development, Starting a business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side hustle, Startup, mental health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth mindset. Marketing, SEO, E-commerce, LinkedIn, Instagram, Social Media, Digital Marketing, Content Creator, Storytelling, Advertising, Social Media Marketing, Communication, Video Marketing, Social Proof, Marketing Trends, Influencers, Influencer Marketing, Marketing Tips, Digital Trends, Content Marketing, Online Marketing, Marketing podcast,

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Hala Taha?

  Today's episode is sponsored in part by HeyGen, Shopify, Indeed, and Northwest Registered Agent. HeyGen helps you create AI avatar videos without being constantly behind the camera. Get your first three videos for free at heygen.com/profting. Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you grow your business. Start your $1 per month trial at Shopify.com/profting. Indeed helps you attract interview and hire all in one place. Get a $75 sponsored job credit to boost your job's visibility at Indeed.com/podcast. Northwest Registered Agent gives you the tools and guidance to build a complete business identity. Start using free resources at NorthwestRegisteredAgent.com/yaapfree.

• 0:45Hala Taha?

  As always, you can find all of our incredible deals in the show notes or at YoungAndProfiting.com/deals.

• 1:03Hala Taha?

  Oh man, Young and Profitters, if you're trying to figure out how to market yourself through online video, you're going to want to tune into this Yap classic. Today, we're taking it back to episode 230 from June 2023, and it's an interview that I did with marketing megastar Ken Okazaki. It's an absolute masterclass in how to post high performing video content. Ken is kind of the guy behind all the guys. Like, he is the mastermind behind so many popular influencers that you know and love. Ken has been producing videos since he was a teenager, and now he's the head of Oz Media Global, where he helps his clients generate millions of dollars from video marketing. In this episode, Ken shares how to optimize video content to gain more views, leads, and sales.

• 1:48Hala Taha?

  He breaks down his seven-figure video funnel framework and also his famous toilet strategy. And I shit you not, you're going to want to stay tuned for that one. So let's stop procrastinating when it comes to online videos. Take that plunge right now and start your education with the one and only Ken Okazaki.

• 2:09Hala Taha?

  So Ken, thank you so much for being here. I definitely want to jump right into your story. Through my research, I discovered that when you were 17, you left your home in Japan and traveled to several different countries. So tell us about that journey and how you first got interested into video marketing and what led you to your career today.

• 2:28Speaker 01

  Wow, you did do your research. So 17 years old, I, this actually started when I was eight years old. And I'm gonna compress this as much as I possibly can to honor everybody's time. But there was a time I was sitting in the back of the classroom and I realized the teacher was teaching the same thing that was being taught a week ago. And I went to my dad, I said, Dad, why do they keep teaching the same stuff? And he says, well, maybe someone in the class didn't get it. And at that moment, I realized that they're teaching everything to the pace of the slowest person. And I started feeling claustrophobic. I started feeling stressed about it. And I said, how much more of this is there? And he explained, you're in elementary school, you know, then there's junior high. And I was like, then I'm done, right? And he goes, well, then there's high school. I said, and then I'm done, right? And he goes, well, you know, then there's college. And at that point, I was like, there's got to be another way.

• 3:12Speaker 01

  So, long story short, he got me enrolled in American curriculum in Japan. I'm Japanese. I live in Japan. I've never lived in the States, even though I sound kind of American. It's because I got enrolled in an American school. So this allowed me, because there was a correspondence course, to go at my own pace. So by 17, I'd finished everything. And I told my parents I wanted to leave home. And I literally did that thing where you take a globe and you spin it, you close your eyes and you pop your finger down. It ended up in India. I told my parents, I'm leaving home, I'm going to India. And I did that. And it was 11 years of, you know, after leaving home, going to India, that I traveled to multiple countries, got married, had kids, 11 years before I came back home to Japan.

• 3:55Hala Taha?

  Wow.

• 3:55Speaker 01

  So that's how we got started, the backstory.

• 3:58Hala Taha?

  That's amazing. And then what first got you intrigued with video marketing? How did you first start dabbling in video marketing?

• 4:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, really good. After India, I was trying to figure out, hey, what's next? And I had a friend who was commissioned to create a documentary series in Uganda. And he asked me, hey, I need some help. You know how to like operate a camera and stuff, right? And I was like, sure. And I thought Uganda sounds like the next great stop for me. So I went and borrowed a camera and just started playing with it, figuring out the settings. And this is 1999, actually. So that shows you how old I am. So I just figured it out because I wanted to get on this guy's team and make documentaries in Uganda. So from there, I just always had a camera in my hand. It was just second nature to me. We got to fly Air Force One with the president. We got to go silverback gorillas.

• 4:47Speaker 01

  I went into war zones with the Congo at the time when there was a civil war going on. So that was a lot of excitement and adrenaline kind of stuff I was looking for at that time. That's how it all started.

• 4:58Hala Taha?

  I love that. And so also from our research, we found out that you used to put on really big events with your dad for people like Tony Robbins, and you actually completed Tony Robbins Platinum Partnership. Tony, hopefully, is coming on the show soon. He asked to come on my show, but we still haven't booked it yet.

• 5:14Speaker 01

  Excellent.

• 5:15Hala Taha?

  And I'd love to understand, did you learn anything from Tony Robbins when, or like, did he inspire you in any way?

• 5:21Speaker 01

  Let me just get this straight. So Tony Robbins is asking you to come on this show, yet here I am before him. So that, you know, that's, that's a pretty big deal, right?

• 5:28Hala Taha?

  Tony Robbins asked to come on my show.

• 5:31Speaker 01

  Amazing.

• 5:32Hala Taha?

  And then we've been trying to book it and it hasn't happened, but I'm like, hey, he wants to come on. We're just...

• 5:37Speaker 01

  He's got a busy schedule.

• 5:39Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 5:40Speaker 01

  But I've seen the caliber of guests that come on your show, so I'm not at all surprised if in just a few short months, you'll have a US president on here.

• 5:47Hala Taha?

  Oh, thanks, Ken.

• 5:49Speaker 01

  That's where I think this is going. But about the events, I used to do large scale events in Japan. Tony Robbins is one of the speakers we hired at one point. I did work with other partners. But people like Jordan Balfour, Les Brown, Nick Vujicic, Robert Kiyosaki, these are the kind of people that if you hire them and you get them to be the main draw of your event, you can put 2,000 to 8,000 people in a stadium. And that's what we do every other month. And that was the business we did. And we did it primarily with video marketing. So that's why I got really confident. What I do is I had the experience of putting butts in seats by telling a compelling story with video on social media.

• 6:28Hala Taha?

  I love that. So let's get into the meat and potatoes of this interview. We have the video marketing guy, guys, on this podcast. We all know how important video is, but to really give us some foundational knowledge in terms of why video helps us convert more sales. Why is video the best marketing tactic to actually convert leads?

• 6:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'll answer that slightly differently. I don't know if it is the best for everybody in every situation. I've seen situations where people are running ad campaigns and they split test a video against an image, they split it against just text, and I've seen it not perform the best. So I'm not the guy who's gonna be shouting off the roof, saying, everybody needs to do video all the time. I think video is a great tool among a whole arsenal, you know? You need paid ads, right? Sometimes it's text, sometimes there's a book people will be more attracted to than a video. So I think video is great to have in your arsenal, but don't make it the sole focus and shut your eyes off to all the other great things that are out there. Blogging is still, by the way, extremely effective for getting SEO and ranking on Google.

• 7:35Speaker 01

  So now that I've made that disclaimer, I think the great thing about video, there's this thing about being human. I think AI is getting pretty close to catching up, but when you can look someone in the eye and you see the whites of their eye and you feel the passion they have in their voice, that is something that a trained copywriter may be able to attain after a lot of experience. But anybody who's passionate about what they do, a person on the other side can feel it. And that's why there's this shortened gap of time from when someone starts making video to when they can start effectively communicating not just the words that they're saying, but what they're feeling to the viewer. And that's the magical thing about video.

• 8:14Hala Taha?

  I love that, and I'm happy that you made that distinguishing factor, because it's true, everybody can, like, there's different things that work for everyone and different scenarios, and so you've got to make sure that you use the right tool in your toolbox. So speaking of having to, sort of how people are on a spectrum when it comes to their video skills, you talk about this in your book, you say that they're either a dabbler, a part-time Or a pro or a rock star. So talk to us about from all the way to a dabbler to a rock star. What are the elements of each person?

• 8:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, the dabbler is the one who's gonna see somebody else, maybe a friend or an associate on social media. And they're gonna pick up their phone and say, I could do that. And they shoot a few videos, they get exhausted and they, what happens, they put in the effort, but they don't do it consistently enough that it becomes a habit and they start getting traction. So they've got no money as a result of it. Ninety nine point nine nine percent of the time, it's not gonna go anywhere. Then at the next level, you got people who actually do this consistently, but they're not at the point where they can get people to the point of a sale. Like maybe you don't have a product, you don't have a business set up. And you're gonna reach some success and we'll call that bonus money. Every now and then, somebody might pop up and they'll, they'll Google you and find what you've got to offer and they'll buy it, but it's not consistent.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  Then anything above that, what's happening is consistency, systems, and processes so that it's no longer when you feel like it. You're treating it like an occupation, a career, a job. If you don't show up, things don't happen. And that's when success builds on success. And that's when people start realizing, hey, this person is a pillar in this vertical, in this niche, in this industry. And the more they hear you, the more they wanna hear about you. I'm not gonna go into too much detail here for the sake of time, but the rock stars are the people who, in a nutshell, you're no longer pushing your content. It's your audience is pulling the content from you. Like the demand for it is greater than your effort to push it out there. You're getting more people to share it.

• 10:12Speaker 01

  You're getting people requesting to be on your show. You're getting so much engagement that you'll never run out of ideas because you could just look at the comments and use that for your, your content ideas. And that's that feeling of getting pulled. And once you reach that, there's a lot of people who just realize that there is this, I guess it's like the flywheel type of feeling. And that's flow. And that's where, that's where I want all my clients to get.

• 10:38Hala Taha?

  I love that. I hope that we all get to that place with our videos. So let's talk about how we can look pro without necessarily having pro equipment. I know that you're a big advocate of using our iPhone and that we shouldn't really make an excuse when it comes to equipment. So can you talk to us about that?

• 10:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was like I chased Jarvis. He's the one who said that phrase, the best camera is the one you've got with you, right? And we've all got phones. Real quick, one of the things women always ask me is how can I look thinner? And the simplest way is to just raise your phone if it's like here, just, just at a slightly higher level than your eyes. What's going to happen is it's going to taper your whole figure down to more like a V where your eyes are going to pop a little bit bigger. Your forehead's going to look, well, hopefully not too big.

• 11:21Speaker 01

  But what happens is you get that really nice pointy jawline and everything, as it goes further down, looks a little bit slimmer. And it's just this, you know, working the angles, right?

• 11:31Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 11:32Speaker 01

  Ideally, most people are going to want to be exactly at eye level. And there's this experiment I did where I sat people across from a diner table with me and had conversations with them. And then I, I've met people in person. And the thing is that people consistently told me they felt more connected to me when they're sitting across. And I realized what's happening is the length of your legs are canceled out. And you're much more likely to be seeing exactly eye to eye with someone. Because when you're standing, the height difference really makes you feel either short or tall, inferior, superior, child, parent. There's these, these relationships that our psychological brains have already embedded in there. But when you get the camera exactly at your eye level, then there's that phrase, seeing eye to eye. And people no longer feel threatened by you or they don't feel superior to you.

• 12:17Speaker 01

  They feel like they could have a one-on-one conversation with you. And right now I'm looking at your camera setup, you're exactly eye to eye. My camera is slightly higher simply because the way my room is set up, I can't get it lower. But ideally, if you got a phone, then you don't know where to start. Get it right at eye level. A lot of people have it low. That's what I call the nose hairs zone where people are literally seeing your nose hairs, not the most attractive angle. So I think one really simple thing is just figure out your angles. Do you want to look a little bit more petite, slim? Do you want to look eye to eye like you're having a conversation? Or do you want to be a little bit more dominant looking, a bit of a bigger like father figure? Then you bring it a little bit lower, not too low, you get stuck in the nose hair zone.

• 12:57Hala Taha?

  Yeah, this is really great. And I don't remember who told me this, but to your point, when you're looking up in your video, you actually look like you're less authoritative. If it's slightly lower, you look more authoritative. But like you said, you don't want to have people look in your nose.

• 13:12Speaker 01

  And here's one small trick. I've had so many female clients and they're deathly afraid of showing a tiny bit of a double chin, which I do sympathize with them. And there's this, I call it the chicken move. And this is something that I learned because I watched it behind the scenes of Tom Cruise at one of his debuts. And from the front, they're about to take the group photo, right? And he's standing there. What he does is he cranes his chin out as far as he can toward the camera. And I realized that when he was sitting natural, he had a tiny bit of a double chin. And I only installed this because there was a side angle. Someone shot a view. There's like three, two, one. And he goes like this. But then here's the thing, from the front, it actually, you can't really tell, right? And if you're looking right at the camera and you're

• 13:53Speaker 01

  deathly afraid of the double chin, you just kind of stick your head forward like a chicken.

• 13:58Hala Taha?

  The turtle move.

• 13:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, or a turtle. And then I started seeing it everywhere. In Hollywood photo shoots, if you look from the side angle, all the women are doing that right before the photo or for like a close up shot. I thought that is so brilliant. Nobody even knows it happens because they're not looking for it. So it's just a hack, especially because I know women are very conscious about how they look. And they should be. It's just a little trick that might help you.

• 14:22Hala Taha?

  Yeah, I love that. And I know that you have this phrase, love the lens.

• 14:27Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 14:27Hala Taha?

  What does that mean to you?

• 14:29Speaker 01

  Right now, I'm looking right at the camera. I'm looking right at you. And hopefully the viewer can can see that I'm looking right at the camera. If I were to look just a little bit off, then it feels different. Right now, I'm looking at the monitor where you are. And I've tested conversions on this. And when you're looking right at the camera, and even if it's the difference of looking right at the camera here, or at your own face, the conversions on the video will change. I don't know if you've heard of someone named Alex Hormozi, but I audited his stuff on Instagram and on Tik Tok. And we look for the things that the algorithms can't find, because we manage a lot of people's social media, and we want to make sure we're giving good advice. I don't make predictions. I look at data. Data and I look at how can we use that to help them move forward, right? And we look for patterns in the top performing videos and the bottom performing videos.

• 15:15Speaker 01

  And we look for the commonalities and one of the commonalities that we found is when he's looking off camera. Those are like eighty percent of the videos that were in the bottom ten percent here, he's looking off camera. And eighty percent of the videos in the top ten percent, he's looking straight into the camera. And when I saw that, I was like, where else can we see this pattern? And most people, it's the same thing. So loving the lenses, disciplining yourself to look at the little black dot. I call it a black circle confidence. That black circle is your audience. It's not looking at your own face is vanity, right? So if you can get to that level, then then without effort, you're going to be getting more engagement. People will feel like they're more connected to you on video.

• 15:55Hala Taha?

  Yeah, and it makes sense because eye contact works in real life. Of course, it's going to work online, the same things with human behavior transfer online or offline. So makes sense. How about having movement in your video? What is the importance of that?

• 16:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, movement is, I took this from an evolutionary perspective where as hunter gatherers, when we were looking for the prey, right? Anything that moves is where our attention will go. It could be danger or it could be food. And our brains are tuned to snap to where the movement is. And there are simple ways you can do this in your videos. When I start my videos, a lot of times I start with, hey, guys, how's it going? I put my hand real close to the camera. Every fifteen seconds or so, if you're holding your phone, I just pivot about ninety degrees, changes the whole background. But I'm still in the frame. A lot of videos that are really successful are the ones where there's a monologue of some inspirational quote. But then you just see someone doing things, something like laying bricks or cutting lawns. But that movement is what keeps you engaged.

• 16:52Speaker 01

  So whatever you do, keep resetting people's attention with movement. And for example, in this podcast, I'm going to guess that there's going to be cuts. There's going to show your face, my face, that's movement, right? But if you're not going to be editing, you could do things like moving closer to the camera, further from the camera, using hand gestures. There's all kinds of ways you can do that.

• 17:09Hala Taha?

  Yeah, and I see lots of influencers like walking with their phone outside and things like that. So this really helps me because I'm thinking about a lot of my Videos, I'm sitting down and like on a couch. I should probably be moving around.

• 17:21Speaker 01

  Well, there is that what you do well. I've been researching you too is you can either do the movement with your hands and with the camera and get that uploaded right away. Or you could send it to an editor and they do the movement with titles, with emojis, with little animations on screen. All of that is movement. So if you're not at the level where you can edit like that, then use practical movement. But if you have an editor, then they can do that for you.

• 17:45Hala Taha?

  Okay, that makes sense. And then in terms of lighting, using your iPhone, what do we need to know?

• 17:51Speaker 01

  Well, there's two things you gotta know. Number one, avoid direct sunlight. It's gonna make you look 10 years older. If that's what you're going for, then go for it. Most people are not, but the most important thing is to just hold your camera up, look at your face and turn around 360 wherever you're at. And then you'll very quickly see where there's more light coming from in front than behind. And that's really the most basic tip you can keep that will be effective everywhere. So you go into a hotel room, you want to make sure that you're facing the big window and you're not having it as your background. Because that's gonna make you either look like a silhouette or make the background look like it's totally white. So face the light. And if you got that, then I think that everything else falls into place pretty quickly.

• 18:33Hala Taha?

  Let's hold that thought and take a quick break with our sponsors.

• 18:40Hala Taha?

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• 19:41Hala Taha?

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• 21:36Hala Taha?

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• 21:57Hala Taha?

  So fun fact, and I've heard you talk about this a few times. Eighty percent of men and sixty nine percent of women use their phone while on the toilet. And you've taken this data and created something called the toilet strategy. So what is the toilet strategy? And what does this data tell us about how we should be conducting video marketing?

• 22:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know about you, but I happen to use my phone in the toilet. And when I realized that there's that huge percentage, because that's that's kind of like literally your downtime, right? So that's when you're like, you know, you're checking messages, looking at social media. And there's a couple of things going on here. And right now it may seem obvious, but when I first presented this at a conference, everybody was like, oh, you know, smack my head. Like, that's so obvious. Why didn't I think of it? But when your audience is in the toilet, you have to, well, put it this way. Tune your videos as if you're speaking to someone on the toilet. So there's a couple of things going on. Number one, you want to make sure there's captions on every single word. Because when you're in a public bathroom, it's very rare that you're going to want the speakers blaring while you're in there, right? So immediately someone's going to mute. If they can't hear you or read you, then they're going to skip off, right? So that's rule number one.

• 22:59Speaker 01

  Rule number two about the toilet strategy is the length. There are so many times on where I've seen a video, I thought this is great. And then what we've done is eye tracking tests. The first thing we look at is the title to see if we want to stop. The second one is the person's eyes. The third place we look, believe it or not, is the play bar to see how long it is. And that's through eye tracking data. And if the video is too long, like you probably want to spend five minutes in the bathroom max. If it's a twenty minute video, what happens is this is a great video, but I don't have twenty minutes to save for later. Which, by the way, nobody ever goes to the save for later video and actually watches them. It's it is a black hole where things go in and never come back out. So you never want to get saved for later. There's the length, you want to keep it two minutes max.

• 23:43Speaker 01

  Nowadays, it's under a minute, it keeps getting shorter. The third thing is really the big title on top. Now, that's kind of changed because nowadays with the way TikTok format videos have really taken over. The algorithm chooses what shows up. It's not what you subscribe to, so it doesn't matter quite as much. But I think it's quite effective on some platforms where the thumbnail is going to be much more prominent than the actual video itself. For example, YouTube.

• 24:09Hala Taha?

  Yeah, let's take it to LinkedIn for a second. So you may not know this. I'm one of the biggest influencers on LinkedIn.

• 24:15Speaker 01

  I do know it. You are everywhere.

• 24:18Hala Taha?

  Oh, thank you. And I have a LinkedIn masterclass. And one of the things that I discovered when I was preparing this masterclass is that a lot of people are watching videos with the sound off. And I realized that on LinkedIn especially, everyone has a job. Everyone is college graduate, serious professional, but the most engaging times on that platform is 10 a.m. in everyone's time zone. So they're watching videos at work. And I was like, duh, everyone's watching videos at work. That's why any video that's either super long or needs sound performs terrible on that platform. It needs to look really different. Pattern disruption, needs to be engaging with the sound off and be short.

• 25:00Hala Taha?

  Otherwise, videos do not work on that platform unless they're LinkedIn Live and people are treating them like an event.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 25:06Hala Taha?

  So I would love to understand your perspective on the importance of engaging video with the sound off.

• 25:13Speaker 01

  I think that people have been fighting for, like say, fighting against it for so long because radio came up before TV, right? There are silent films also where, but they had to have an orchestra right in there. So sound has always been such a big part of it. But sound is something that is most enjoyed as a group setting. Now everything is going to individual entertainment where every single person, I have six kids, by the way.

• 25:38Hala Taha?

  Oh, wow.

• 25:39Speaker 01

  When I grew up and there was movie night, we all sat together around the one tiny TV. Like that was the whole family. Now it's like, let's movie night. Everybody's just like, I'm watching this series and I'm watching that series. I'm on my phone. I'm on my iPad. We're on the TV. So it's becoming an individual experience. And just like at work, you're not going to get a group of coworkers to sit around and watch a program. Everybody's like at the cubicle, in the bathroom, in the hall, you know, on their, getting a cup of coffee. It's an individual experience. And as an individual experience, sound is becoming less and less prominent. Now, I know a podcast experience is completely different and we're not, that's a completely different category. But when it comes to the decoupling of the visual experience and the audio experience, the main reason is because it's becoming an individual experience

• 26:21Speaker 01

  where sound radiates in all directions, whereas light can be directed just toward your eyes.

• 26:27Hala Taha?

  Yeah. And so I think the moral of the story is that especially on a platform like LinkedIn, I don't know if Instagram is necessarily the same. You've got to make sure that your videos are engaging with and without the sound on. It's got to make sense with captions, whatever it is.

• 26:41Speaker 01

  Very true. You finish the edit, then watch it back without sound. And if it's not fun, then fix it. That's the quick hack around that. If you're not enjoying it without sound, then fix it.

• 26:51Hala Taha?

  Totally. And that's such a big hack. Okay, you already told me about the timing of videos. I think it's a good time to transition into your seven-figure video marketing funnel. So first of all, define video marketing funnel. What does that even mean?

• 27:03Speaker 01

  So a lot of people have looked at courses, right? Like somebody teaches you, here's how to make money and here's how to get clients. And I've gone through a lot of them myself. And almost all the time, there's going to be some form of like, okay, you got to sign up to ClickFunnels or High Level or, you know, whatever other platform there is. And there are a lot of great ones out there. And I've surveyed a whole bunch of people who actually went through courses. And one of their frustrations is that every course or coaching program tells them they got to sign up to this 300 to 500 or they're buying thousands of dollars of SaaS products. And I thought, what if I run an experiment on myself where all we're doing is using free tools, social media, the phone in your pocket, and just a payment system, Stripe or PayPal or something?

• 27:46Speaker 01

  Can I actually convert leads and sales with that? And I did an experiment and that was the premise of the book. I scaled something to over seven figures where all I did was shoot videos on social media, engaged with my audience through the videos, directed people to a payment page, and then actually started coaching them on Zoom. And this is something that a lot of people don't realize that, like if you don't get the messaging right, if you don't understand how to connect with the audience, forget these complicated funnels and tripwires and automations and SaaS. That comes later because what you're doing is you're taking something that works, an interaction with your audience, something that works, that turns to money and systematizing it. But a lot of people go and create the system first and then try to connect with their audience.

• 28:29Speaker 01

  And then they realize, wait, we built this domino tower in the wrong direction. It's a sad story I've seen over and over. So that's the concept is use what you have. Don't get into the tech and the craziness unless this is your third or fourth or fifth time around, then go for it because you've done this. If it's your first time around, use your phone, use free social media, get clients. And unless those three tick boxes are marked, then don't go and buy fancy software.

• 28:54Hala Taha?

  Yeah, I love this approach. I give the same advice. I see a lot of people who are creating products and they don't even know if people want these products and they go down this whole rabbit hole, investing all this money, and then they have no demand, right? So that's a problem. I just actually interviewed the president of Shopify, and we were talking about how things are changing now where creators are sort of flipping the script on how businesses are made. They're building an audience first, figuring out what they want, and then selling to them rather than building something and then finding the audience, right? So I feel like this really fits nicely with what you're teaching. And just to clarify, so you're not suggesting that these videos are paid ads against them. You're just saying organically.

• 29:36Speaker 01

  Organically, yes. Now, when it comes to paid ads, here's how I feel about it. And this is what I do with my clients. And by the way, I have turned away a lot of clients or potential clients who said, hey, I've got this stack of cash. Could you build this thing for me? And I say, well, what have you sold so far? And they said, it's nothing. It's brand new. I said, what have you done in the past? And they say, nothing. I said, I think you're too early, because I don't want to have a one-year relationship with a client and then not get them results because I don't have anything to build on with them. So, you know, they say, well, you're the expert. I'm like, I'm the expert at blowing up what's working, not at inventing something from scratch for you.

• 30:08Hala Taha?

  Yeah, you need product market fit, sir.

• 30:11Speaker 01

  Exactly. But let's get back to the thing about ads. Here's what we do. You've got a lot of videos that have gotten hundreds of thousands of views. I feel that have gotten millions. And those videos have been tested organically, and they've been proven to convert better than anything else. So what I tell my clients and what we do is we just push them out organically on social media. We come back a month later, see what the highest performers are, and then turn those into ads. We don't invent an ad from scratch, because we want the most return on our ad spend. So you're going to get the most reach with the videos that do well organically. So we go organic first, then convert them to ads, and it's that simple.

• 30:48Hala Taha?

  That makes so much sense. So put the money behind the things that get the high engagement because you know they work.

• 30:53Speaker 01

  That have already been proven to work.

• 30:55Hala Taha?

  Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Okay, so let's get into how we create this video funnel. First step is coming up with a hockey puck title. So what are hockey puck titles? And why do we need to actually plan our content around a title rather than do it the opposite way?

• 31:12Speaker 01

  Really good question. Hockey puck titles, when I was a kid, I was really into hockey, ice hockey. And Wayne Gretzky said that famous quote, "I don't go to where the puck is, I go to where it's gonna be." And when it comes to the title, it's no longer thinking about like, I'm gonna create some content and then figure out how to get people there. It says like, no, I'm gonna figure out how to get people's attention. And then I'll put a tail end on it. And for me, the tail end is really the content. So hockey puck title is about composing great titles. It's about researching and figuring out what words are gonna rank, what kind of triggers your audience. When I say trigger, I don't mean that in a negative way, but you know, what's gonna get them engaged psychologically? And once you have a list of titles, you can talk to that. For example, Hala, if I asked you

• 31:53Speaker 01

  if there's a title that says, "The two biggest mistakes that first time podcasters make that's costing them thousands", I'll bet you could riff on that for five minutes or an hour straight if you wanted to, because that's your expertise. So we go into what's people's expertise and then we, we make the eye catching titles that they can talk, speak to, or, or fill the space on.

• 32:16Hala Taha?

  Yeah. And so this is relevant to YouTube, like you said, could also be relevant for like live streams, LinkedIn live streams have titles. Now Instagram, TikTok, you don't really have titles.

• 32:26Speaker 01

  So instead of a title, you just use that as your opening statement. And if that doesn't get people's attention, then you're doing something wrong. So the title can be the opening statement, which other people would call the hook, the actual visual title, it can be in the thumbnail, but just think of it as the first information that hits your viewer.

• 32:44Hala Taha?

  Yeah. And that example that you gave in that hook, you did some things that I noticed, right? I'm a marketer too. So use a superlative, the best, the worst. Use numbers. For some reason, people love numbers and hooks. And you made it relevant to me. It was about podcasters and you even give monetary value, which also will pique people's interest more. The more numbers you can stuff in a hook, the better. So let's move on to Hilda, which is your framework for building a video. What else do we need to know about hooks?

• 33:12Speaker 01

  Let me tell you one real quick thing, though, about the title.

• 33:15Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 33:16Speaker 01

  It's the shortcut. The left brain, right brain theory, everybody's got their opinions on that. But I'll tell you what has effectively worked is you want to engage both sides. You want big numbers. And for some reason, even if it's, you know, zero with dot 20 zeros, that's a big number. Psychologically, it's going to look big, right? And you want an emotional word. And if you put an emotional expressive word and a big number together, then you got to wrap the context around that. So I try to think of that first. Then you're hitting the left brain, right brain. And whether the person is leaning one way or the other, what mood they are in that time of the day. Hopefully, it's going to be the biggest dragnet to get the most attention to your content.

• 33:55Hala Taha?

  Give us an example of doing that strategy.

• 33:57Speaker 01

  Emotional word might be something like, I quit, right? That's an emotional, like a statement, right? And then a big number would be something, you give me a number and I'll make up something to go with that.

• 34:07Hala Taha?

  10 billion.

• 34:08Speaker 01

  10 billion, okay. So I could say, my path from zero to 10 billion dollars, I quit. I was just like, what the heck does that mean? Now you're laughing, you might, you might actually click that, right?

• 34:19Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 34:20Speaker 01

  Now, it's got to be contextual to who you are as a person. You know, don't make up stuff that has nothing to do with you. And if it was for me, it's 10 billion, I would, oh, I might like pick up a camera and say, 10 billion pixels, I quit. Like, I might make some content on like, where are we going to go as far as, you know, like, the resolution and doesn't really matter at this point. That could be something you talk about.

• 34:42Hala Taha?

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• 35:23Hala Taha?

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• 35:59Hala Taha?

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• 36:44Hala Taha?

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• 37:23Hala Taha?

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• 38:05Hala Taha?

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• 38:28Hala Taha?

  So for hooks lately, I've been using ChatGPT for anything that I have to come up with some sort of title. I'm like, say this in 10 different ways, right? Have you been using ChatGPT for that kind of thing?

• 38:40Speaker 01

  We have this one-on-one coaching with our clients because a lot of agencies, they actually provide all the tools. They say, just send us the video and we'll do everything else for you. Send us the podcast, we'll do everything or we'll give you all the gear. The gap in the market is actually someone to show up and live direct and coach people. A lot of people, they don't create it because they don't have the time, their schedule's too full, or they get set up and then their hour turns into 15 minutes because of all the other stuff they have to take care of, but the accountability. So our coaches actually now, using some AI, using their own experience as marketers, will create all of the content plans and that's the hook. Whether it's a question you ask and that they can answer, whether it's finish the sentence, whether it's a framework, I have a few frameworks, like what I just showed

• 39:22Speaker 01

  you, the number and the emotional word, there's 100 others, but we'll get them all planned out and then we'll have a conversation for an hour and shoot anywhere from 10 to 30 videos within that hour. And that's the short form content. So the hooks nowadays, using ChatGPT does help us get there faster. So we're no longer starting from zero, we're starting from maybe 60 or 70 and then our coaches will finish the rest.

• 39:43Hala Taha?

  Yeah, I love that. So let's talk about the acronym Hilda. So this is how you break down your video steps. We already covered hooks. And I'm sure in your book, you probably have, like you said, so many different formulas for hooks.

• 39:54Speaker 01

  I run these as quickly as I can. Okay.

• 39:57Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 39:57Speaker 01

  So medium format content, this works really well. Medium format is anywhere from 10 to 12 minutes. And that's my definition. Start with a hook, introduce yourself, lead their anticipation into something you're going to deliver. And then finally ask them to do something at the end. Hook, intro, lead, deliver, ask. Hook, we explained that a bit earlier, but you've got about, by the time I wrote the book, I think you said it was about seven seconds. Now, especially in the short form videos that are less than a minute, you got about three seconds. And I can show you the numbers behind that, the data we have based that on. Introduce yourself. Now it's not as necessary as it used to be. But if you must, if you feel like you must say, hey, my name is Ken Okazaki and I'm blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Always put that after the fact that they're bought into what you're about to say.

• 40:39Speaker 01

  But the truth is nowadays, if they want to know who you are, they'll just tap your little profile, you know, face and they could see that. If you're going to say it, keep it short. First name, who you help, what you do, five seconds or less. And that's, sounds cruel, but it's real. The longer you're talking about yourself. I'm sure you've looked at those engagement graphs on YouTube, right? That's where people drop off is when you're talking about yourself. But some people have got it. So I say, if you must, make sure you hook them in, right? Lead, this is where you start telling a story. This is where you start giving context. Like I read this newspaper article the other day and it got me thinking about this. I was talking to my friend, or the way I discovered this, the importance of what I'm about to share. You're just setting up the big reveal and that's what you're going to deliver next. So this is where you actually spend the most time.

• 41:22Speaker 01

  Because the moment you've released the tension, when you deliver something and release the dopamine, so D can also be for dopamine. That's when people feel satisfied, satiated. And you gotta build this tension, release it. It's a classic Frank Capola, you know, strategy in video directing. And then at the end, and this is a, there was a marriage counselor who was asked by this woman, just like, every time I ask my, my husband anything, he always says, no, I want to buy a dress. No, I want to go on vacation. No, I want to buy this vacuum cleaner. No. And he says, well, here's what you gotta do. You gotta. One day, light some candles, cook him an amazing meal, put on your sexiest negligee, give him mind blowing sex, and then afterwards, ask him, she goes, what? He goes, just try it. Did it absolutely work?

• 42:05Speaker 01

  I'm like, and then she goes back and says, why did that work? He goes, he's got so much dopamine running through his brain. It's so easy to get a yes. So I thought, well, if we get that level of dopamine, and I'm not sure if we can match what she did for her husband, but we want to get some dopamine going where they feel like they had an aha moment. Right then is when you want to flip it and say, hey, would you please join my group? Or download this or click a certain link? And it's the timing that's so important.

• 42:32Hala Taha?

  This is so interesting. So I want to, I want to ask some probing questions on each part. So for the intro, based on what you said, it sounds like if it's a cold audience, you probably should, if it's paid cold, probably should introduce yourself to show some sort of social proof, right? And if it's warm or like on your own social media, maybe don't do that because mostly it's going to be your followers seeing it unless it goes viral and then they'll click on your profile if they want to learn more. Does that sound right?

• 42:58Speaker 01

  It's really hard for me to cover every situation because right now, like for example, I'm a guest on your podcast, there's YouTube videos, there's super short form, but generally, yes, I think that's a good guideline.

• 43:08Hala Taha?

  Okay, cool. Something that I thought was interesting is that you suggested, don't use your last name from my understanding. Why just first name in the intros?

• 43:15Speaker 01

  You want people to feel friendly toward you. And like when I speak to you, I'll probably just say Hala, you know, and you might say Ken. While we're having this conversation, we're not consistently using full names because we feel comfortable with each other. And what we're doing is assuming rapport. We're not assuming formality. And when you assume rapport, the other person is more likely to get on board and assume rapport back with you. And then later on, they might feel more open to sending you a DM and say, hey, I checked out your video, would love to learn more. It's more likely to happen because they feel more rapport because that's how you started the conversation with them.

• 43:49Hala Taha?

  Oh, that's so interesting. I always say good branding is making people feel like you're an old friend. So that that makes a lot of sense to me.

• 43:56Speaker 01

  I think we're on the same page.

• 43:57Hala Taha?

  Yeah. Okay, so let's talk about this step in terms of leading their anticipation. This is where a lot of people get stuck. Why do people get stuck in this part? And can you give us some like real tangible examples of how you can do this?

• 44:11Speaker 01

  This part is more art than science because there are a million ways we can do it. So let's give a live example. Let's say the thing I want to teach someone is with the GoBox Studio, which you have, there's this cool feature where you can draw right over the video screen. And a lot of people first saw that when I actually invented that that process. Couldn't get a patent too bad, but there's tons of people were asking me, how do you do that? So I made a quick video about it and then leading up to showing, you know, the exact steps, one, two, and three, I talked about all the frustrations of the processes I tried. I was like, you know, I really wanted to get this effect while I was drawing on the screen. So one was I actually bought this piece of glass and I had it lit like a light board, but it was big and clunky and I couldn't take it anywhere with me.

• 44:55Speaker 01

  And it took a lot of time to build. And then I tried this, I tell them about all the failures and people are bought into this journey. And then when I teach them how to do it, they're just like, oh, my God, compared to all the effort that you went through. Thank you so much for this cool hack. It gave more weight and gravitas and more value to what I actually taught them because I gave them a bit of the journey to how we got there. So that could be like a little bit of an origin story on something. That's one way. One of the favorite ways that I see work effectively is how, because most of my clients are business coaches, is they tell a story of the before and after of the transformation their client had, and then explain the process for how they do it. You might say something, you know, I worked with this man, he's 55 years old.

• 45:40Speaker 01

  He's got three beautiful kids and a wife, but the wife was constantly stressed because he was never home and the kids were not, he wasn't going to see the kids grow up. He was making good money, but his health was deteriorating. He already saw his wife and they, he never got to keep his promises for vacations. Came to me saying, I gotta get this fixed, but I don't want to sacrifice my income. So what I did is, and they teaches that one, two, three steps. Now people are bought into the steps because they might be that 50 year old person who has their life out of balance and they have money, but no time. So that's, those are some examples of how can you give context, tell a story, or paint a picture that sets up what you're about to share.

• 46:18Hala Taha?

  This is so good, Ken. Like, you are so brilliant. I've had video marketers on the podcast before, but by far, I feel like you are giving the best advice.

• 46:26Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 46:27Hala Taha?

  You really know your stuff. You really, really know your stuff. So let's talk about delivering value. One thing that I just want to stress to my listeners is, from my understanding, what you say in your hook is the value that you're promising, right? So you need to make sure you deliver on your hook. Otherwise, people are gonna leave your video and be like, "You didn't... I watched this for no reason." Clickbait, right? That's what clickbait is.

• 46:51Speaker 01

  It is.

• 46:52Hala Taha?

  So, talk to us about how we can frame up delivering our value and what we need to know about that.

• 46:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, let me paint a quick picture for you. Say you're a drug dealer. And social media, by the way, I see the closest analogy. It's like a farm. And like, you gotta plow the land on the farm, and the person who owns the farm is, you know, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube. They own the farm, and you are leasing a plot. Now, what's going on is when you create content, then the product is your content. And they use that, and they sell it. The only thing on social media, universally across all platforms, that is a universal currency is time. People buy time. The advertisers buy it from the farmer. And you're just the person who's volunteering to create, to work the farm for them, which is amazing that they convinced

• 47:38Speaker 01

  us to do this. So, now that we've got this analogy where time is a monetizable product, it actually is money. It's bought and sold every single day, millions of times, billions of dollars. And when you understand this, then what you gotta think is like, well, if I am buying and selling time, and that's the currency of social media, when someone watches a video, let's say they spend three minutes, they pay you three units of time. And what are you getting in return? What you gotta give them is a dopamine hit. Because otherwise, they will not get addicted, they won't come back, they won't feel like they got their money's worth. So, if you say, "Hey, get over here, you know, spend three minutes with me, and I'm gonna give you a dopamine hit." They come, they pay their three minutes, and you don't give it. Two things are gonna happen. Number one, they're gonna feel like,

• 48:21Speaker 01

  "Hey, you are a scumbag." And number two, "I'm never coming back," and I might even tell people to avoid you. And that's what happens when... The promise doesn't meet the delivery. So what you want to do is give them a dopamine. And I think another way to say this is aha moment. If you could have get people like right now, I see you're nodding. I love that. When I see people nodding, I'm like, that's we're on the same page. They're having an aha moment here. And that transaction was successful. Very likely they'll come back. So you just got to deliver what you say you can deliver. If you say, I'm going to teach you the most mind blowing strategy to use chat G P T. That will earn me $12,000 in the next 30 days. And then you actually show screenshots and demonstrate it. That is a good fit.

• 49:02Speaker 01

  But if you say it and then give some general advice without showing anything that's actually believable, not a high chance that people will continue coming back. They'll be disappointed. That's the kind of the match you're looking for there.

• 49:13Hala Taha?

  Yeah. So the dopamine is actually what gets people coming back and addicted to our videos and gets you super fans. Okay. So the last step is asking for the right thing. How do we know what that right thing is?

• 49:27Speaker 01

  A lot of people spend a lot of time talking about how, you know, really ballooning up their, whatever their free thing is. And a lot of times it's, you know, it's a PDF, maybe it's a book or something, right? All I say is there's three columns. There's who, what, how? And it's just like, hey, if if you're a business coach and you're looking to do a what? Which is use video more effectively in your business. And you want the X thing cheat sheet or free download or the 30 minute course on something. And then I would usually instead of saying click below for the link, because nowadays people don't like clicking link. I'd say comment X below or share this with a friend. These are things that people are more likely to do.

• 50:11Speaker 01

  And besides clicking a link, clicking links is, I don't know. I think everybody has a little bit of a phobia that they're going to get shot down a rabbit hole or something. So I usually get them to comment something. That way they're initiating their reach out to me. I use that comment as a starting point for what we call the smooth segue, where we segue people from viewing to engaging.

• 50:33Hala Taha?

  And then you'll retarget them in the DMs or something like that, it sounds like.

• 50:37Speaker 01

  I have a conversation with them, you know, I just chat and say, hey, thanks for the comment. I think you're looking for X resource. Is that right? And they say, yes, I'll send it to them. Then I'll probe a little bit into whether I can help them with my business.

• 50:50Hala Taha?

  We'll be right back after a quick break from our sponsors.

• 50:57Hala Taha?

  Got it. Okay, so moving along your framework, the next piece is the missing link. So in your book, you write, you've got to offer something that's priceless to your viewer, free, free to give. That is the missing link between where they are. So tell us more about this concept.

• 51:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, between where they are and where they want to be. So a lot of times, like if I said to you, Allah that you can absolutely earn enough money to have a 500 foot yacht. Now, you might get a picture of yourself cruising this yacht, you know, hanging out with Elon Musk and everything. And I'm exaggerating here for demonstration purposes, but then a lot of people will start dreaming about that. But it's really hard for people to actually identify what are the steps to get there. And then I might say, but the thing you're missing is the right connections to the people who can make that happen. The vehicle, which is going to be your business, and I'm not sure what I'm making stuff up here. I'm going a little bit far fetched here, but you paint the picture of what's possible.

• 51:55Speaker 01

  And then remind them of where they're at, and then talk about the few steps that are in between. Now that the thing they never knew they always needed can be, for example, a software tool. It can be a free training, but it's something that you can give infinitely for free without costing you money. And that's what's important. Otherwise, it's very hard to manage a free marketing with physical products. And there are, there are people who have figured that out. So an example I gave before was I give them new information. And this is back when, this is before TikTok really blew up. I wrote this book. So just for context, I used to say with the toilet strategy, I said, you know what? When 60 to 70% of people are sitting on the toilet when they watch video, number one is number two. And I found that if you have captions on the video, then it's going to make the engagement go much higher.

• 52:40Speaker 01

  And I give some stats around that. And number three, and you want to put out these videos every single day in order to build on that engagement. Now, everybody's thinking, I need to create videos with titles on top, captions, and they, I need to make them every day. And then I say, I've made a free tutorial that will show you how to use some free tools. Shoot this on your phone and get it done in under three minutes for one minute video. Would you like it right now? So I gave them information about where they want to be. And then they, they get excited, but they don't realize that there's a free tool that's going to help them do it. Now, everybody wants to download this tool and I give it to them for free. Now, you could just go to TikTok and that'll do it for you pretty much. But that's an example of something that worked really well. I give them new information and then reveal that there's a gap and then offer it to them for free.

• 53:24Hala Taha?

  So if I was embarking on a video market strategy, I think I would A, start to think about all of my customer pain points and then start to think of many free solutions that I could create. I think you call them micro solutions, right? That I could create for free, or it might cost me a little money, but I could be able to give it away for free. And then you would want to then upsell them to some higher ticket offer once they're hooked in and they got some value from you.

• 53:51Speaker 01

  Exactly. Or you just nurture them in your emails until at some point when they're ready, they'll come to you. Just keep writing them here. In your example, what I would do is I would look for like research data, like specific data that's, that's a little bit obscure, but that you can apply to what you do. You could say something like, did you know that videos that have this certain type of animation in the beginning get higher conversions than others? Or did you know that there's four words I use toward the end of all of my call to actions? That makes the ads convert better? I'm not sure what that's going to be. Did you know that when I wear the certain combination of colors, you know, or have this kind of guest? Or there's a question I ask whenever I get stuck in a podcast that will get the show back on track? Then everybody's just like, what is that question? And you say, just DM me question down below or comment question down below.

• 54:35Speaker 01

  And I'll send you the free three step PDF for all the questions I ask to keep my podcast interviews on track. People will go for that. They will eat it up.

• 54:43Hala Taha?

  I love that. And I love that you're saying, don't put a link because I'm doing this kind of stuff all the time. And I find the same thing when you just give somebody an action like comment, it's, it's less salesy, I guess. And people get scared of the sales language.

• 54:56Speaker 01

  Here's what's important is you give them a specific word to comment. And if you say, you know, like if it's a three step process, you say, comment three below. If it's a conversion process, say, comment conversion below. Now it's meaningful and it's intentional. And when you DM them, then there's no question about why they commented something. Like you could jump right into that conversation. Hey, great. It looks like you're trying to come for raise conversions and you're looking for my tool. Is that right? Yes. Great. Here it is for free. And then you could start probing a bit.

• 55:27Hala Taha?

  Okay, so let's talk about smooth segues. This is the last part of your funnel. What do we need to know about this part of the process?

• 55:34Speaker 01

  This is where you take people from passively viewing to actively engaging. And we're segueing from someone doom scrolling randomly finding your video. And just like we described earlier, they're going to engage with you. But the conversation has what I call three stoplights, right? Three hills, right? The first one is permission to share. So first, they're going to have asked for something and you're going to say, confirm that they actually want it. Some people just randomly comment stuff and they're not really engaging, right? And you don't go further until they say, yes, I want it. Say, great, you give it to them. Now, it's a bit of an uphill to get there. Like, you're making a bit of effort, like, hey, Hala, thanks so much for the comment on the video. Get them to respond, right? If they don't respond, then it's a dead conversation.

• 56:18Speaker 01

  I saw you commented, three, I think you want my three step resources to achieve blank. Is that right? Yes. So you take number one. Number two is you want to share some examples of other people who are in the same boat as a person you're having a conversation with. Hey, I worked with so and so and I had these kind of results. Would you like to see a case study on that? Now, they're starting to buy into the vision of what's possible for them. But you're doing it directly to someone else. If they say yes, you send them some information. And the third one is really getting permission to actually send them a way to have one-on-one conversation with, if that is what your sales process is. And that might be with your sales team. It might be with, with somebody else who's prospecting. But you gotta have a conversation flow that follows these three frameworks.

• 57:03Speaker 01

  Because if you don't get permission at these three steps, a lot of people skip ahead and they, you know, you've seen these, these DM pitches and man, that just, nothing clogs up my, I call it constipation. What you're doing is clawing up their system with big chunks of lumpy text. And it's like, come on. And it's copy pasted. It's not at all authentic. So you want to break it up into small bits, have conversations, make sure that they're engaging back. And then just remember what those three checkpoints are and you're good to go.

• 57:31Hala Taha?

  This is such great advice. I'm actually really excited to dig deeper into your work and see what I can leverage for my business. So I know that we discuss different iPhone hacks, and that's great for people who are on a budget. But in terms of people who have more budgets to spend and really want to level up their on-the-go video marketing, I know you have GoBox Studio. I just want to share a story in terms of how I found out about it. I was at a podcast conference, and I see this like really cool suitcase-looking thing with two lights and a fancy camera. And one of my friends was actually manning the booth, and he helped build the studio. And I walk up to him, his name's Janade, and I'm like, what is this? This is the solution that I've been looking

• 58:16Hala Taha?

  for as an influencer, because historically, to record my podcast, if I was going to conferences and things like this, it was like lugging around two mics, lights, stands for my mics, a computer. It was just too much work, and I would often avoid it, which meant that I would like have breaks in my schedule, and it would be really tough to travel as a podcaster and having a number one show. I can't just like not put out an episode, right? So I loved it, and I was like, sign me up. I want to be an ambassador, whatever I can do, because I knew that this was a pain point that a lot of people, especially business influencers, were probably experiencing. So I'd love to understand the genesis of this and more about this product.

• 58:58Speaker 01

  I've been creating digital media for my clients for several years, since 2016. And somebody who is in a lot of the same circles as me, he reached out to me, his name is Alex Hormozzi, and he said, can I hear you? You're the guy who's good at video. And I said, yeah, that's I've been, I've heard that once or twice. And he says, could you create something for me where I can take my stuff on the go? I've got a great studio set up at home, but I'm about to go on vacation. I need something to take with me. At first, I said, no, he's a very persuasive guy, and that's probably why he makes a hundred million dollars. And he got me to build him a prototype. And I sent it over. He loved it. He's, and this is about 18 months ago when he first started his YouTube channel. I think it was already

• 59:41Speaker 01

  Going, but not really like as regularly as it is now. He loved it. He started using it. He was shooting his YouTube videos with it. And then he snapped a photo on Instagram and he's put it in his story. And he got about 5,000 comments. Most of them are saying, where can I buy one of these? So he calls me up and he says, Ken, I think you should make a business out of this. And at that point, I had no intention of starting a hardware business, but he planted that seed. And then I started making more iterations on this, sending it to my clients, the kind of people who are sending us videos. And a lot of times the videos, with all due respect, were shit. And we had to go and, you know, like, get very creative about making them look good. But once we started sending these kits, they started sending us amazing 4K crisp video, much like the quality you're seeing with me right now.

• 1:00:24Speaker 01

  So we just kept iterating. Our clients gave us suggestions, ideas, requests, and we just kept adding or subtracting things to make it what it is. And in October 2022, I've been working on this for almost a year. And I had to decide, is this a hobby or is this business? So I didn't want to guess for the rest of my life if this was going to take off. So I went and rented a, I sponsored a booth at a, at an event in San Diego, targeted at agency owners. And our booth was completely packed the whole time. Everybody around us was complaining that they had no foot traffic. We had a crowd constantly. We had sold, I think, 25 of these units and that's like a quarter million dollars.

• 1:01:08Speaker 01

  And I was like, okay, I think it's a business. So I went back and started restructuring things and thinking about how can I get this to more people and help more people with this tool?

• 1:01:17Hala Taha?

  Yeah, it's an amazing tool and I'm very excited to have my own GoBox studio. So thank you. Okay, so as we close out this interview, I thought it'd be really fun to do something quick fire. So it turns out your video marketing funnel could be used as a diagnostic tool. And so I'm going to list out some common problems that people face. And you tell me where the issue is in the funnel and what we can do about it. Okay?

• 1:01:41Speaker 01

  Oh, boy, you're putting me on the spot. Let's see. Let's go for it.

• 1:01:43Hala Taha?

  Oh, you're gonna crush it. Come on. Views are low.

• 1:01:48Speaker 01

  Well, that could be a whole number of things, but the first thing I would look at is what's the opening statement? What's going to get people in? I'd look at the thumbnail, the hooks, because a view, just three seconds counts as a view on most platforms. So if they can't, if you can't keep them for three seconds, a lot of times it's the title, it's the thumbnail, and that's the first thing I'd go to tweaking. So I would look historically at what did the best among your previous stuff, and then look at how can we use more of that and then expand on it.

• 1:02:13Hala Taha?

  Love it. Retention is poor.

• 1:02:16Speaker 01

  So that usually means that your hook sucks. Like, you didn't promise them something later on to give them a reason to stay. Watch Mr. Beast, he always talks about what is going to happen as a result of watching his roughly 10-minute episodes. So that's pretty important, is you set them up for a reward at the end, then they'll stick through.

• 1:02:34Hala Taha?

  Low engagements. They don't comment and like.

• 1:02:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. No compelling reason to engage. Maybe you didn't even tell them to. So there's, there's two ways. Outrageous content, that's humor or something shocking. People love sharing that. I don't suggest doing that too much, otherwise you could go down a rabbit hole there, a dark rabbit hole. But just remind people why they should comment. Hey, comment, agree down below if you think that this is something you agree with. And if it's something important you share, then they will.

• 1:03:03Hala Taha?

  No converting customers.

• 1:03:05Speaker 01

  That's your smooth segue, you know, like, you gotta take people from passive viewing to active engagement, and then that's the segue point that would get people to convert.

• 1:03:15Hala Taha?

  Amazing. Well, Ken, you dropped so many gems. I think everybody's gonna have a page of notes after this interview. Thank you so much for your time. We asked two questions to all of our guests at the end of the show. The first one is, what is one actionable thing our young improffeters can do today to become more profiting tomorrow?

• 1:03:33Speaker 01

  Pick up your phone, shoot a video, upload it. Don't even look at it, because it's the compounding effect of doing it daily that gets good. I say it's not quality or quantity, it's quantity that creates quality. It's you put in the reps, you get good. You get good at speaking by speaking, you get good at running by running, you get good at video by doing video. So that's one. There's two. I think the second thing is stop looking at your competition. Because everybody who's very successful, including you, didn't start with where they're at now. They started with something else and they evolved to that. And if you try to skip steps, you're a trip. I've seen it happen too many times. Find your own path, even though it may be a bit scary because there's no blueprint.

• 1:04:16Speaker 01

  But that's the way every single person who's doing really well right now, they've done it. They found their own blueprint. They created their own blueprint, found their own path. So stop looking at the leaders and mimicking them. Get inspired by them, but don't mimic them.

• 1:04:29Hala Taha?

  That's great advice. The last question is, what is your secret to profiting in life? And this can go beyond financial video, it could just be anything.

• 1:04:39Speaker 01

  I think you gotta design your career around your non-negotiables. I quit my seminar business because it wasn't satisfying me. So I decided on five non-negotiables and built my current agency around that. Number one is I need to have cameras around me. Number two, I wanted to have very stable income. So recurring revenue business. Number three, I wanted to travel. Number four, I wanted to continue hanging out with the caliber of speakers I had on my stage by making them my clients. And number five is I wanted the freedom to leave my family as much as I wanted. So when I decided those, it was no longer what can I do that's gonna make money? It's like, what business can I invent that will satisfy these five non-negotiables? So if you figure out your non-negotiables, design your business around those.

• 1:05:21Speaker 01

  And then I think that you end up a lot happier in the long run.

• 1:05:26Hala Taha?

  That's beautiful. Thank you so much, Ken. Where can our listeners find more about you and the things that you do?

• 1:05:31Speaker 01

  I think the best place to find me on Facebook, Ken Okazaki. But just look up at Ken Okazaki on any platform, you'll find me. Or head on over to our website, twentyxagency.com. That's where we do all the services for our clients.

• 1:05:42Hala Taha?

  And if somebody wants to buy GoBox Studio, where can they go?

• 1:05:46Speaker 01

  So we do have a special deal, which is only that you can only get with Hala.

• 1:05:51Hala Taha?

  Ooh.

• 1:05:51Speaker 01

  Go to goboxstudio.com/yeap. And then you'll see the special deal we created just for the listeners of this podcast.

• 1:05:59Hala Taha?

  Amazing. And I'll stick all those links in the show notes. Thanks again. Really appreciated having you on.

• 1:06:04Speaker 01

  Amazing. Thank you so much. I enjoyed it.

• 1:06:25Hala Taha?

  Hey Yap fam. If you're growing an audience on social media but struggling to turn those followers into actual customers, I've got a podcast recommendation for you. It's called Build Your Tribe, hosted by social media expert and entrepreneur Brock Johnson, right here on the Yap Media Podcast Network. Brock shares practical strategies to help entrepreneurs and creators grow their online presence and turn engagement into revenue. Whether you're trying to create content that gets noticed, grow your email list, launch a digital product, or figure out how to monetize your audience, Brock breaks it all down into simple, actionable steps you can start using right away. Because growing a following is one thing, building a profitable business around it, that's a whole different game. If you're ready to grow your audience and turn that attention into something bigger, check out Build Your

• 1:07:10Hala Taha?

  Tribe. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen or watch podcasts.