Overcoming His Video Aversion
Robert joined our coaching program about five years ago, and one of the first things his coach encouraged him to do was start creating videos.
But he didn’t do it.
“I was chicken,” he says in hindsight. “I didn’t like the videos I did of myself.”
Then Robert found his breakthrough – somewhat ironically – when talking with another agent who was also reluctant to do video at one of our events.
The other agent had previously been in the entertainment industry. Robert himself was a former musician. Together they realized that one of the barriers to them doing video was the lack of production value in the DIY, camera phone approach.
“They just weren’t the quality that I wanted them to be,” Robert says.
Finally, he recognized a solution: He hired a professional videographer to shoot high-quality, short-form videos. Robert says ideally, he doesn’t even review them afterward. He simply trusts the opinion of his video crew.
“Sometimes you have to let go of it,” he says. “If they say it’s good, it’s good. I’ve become a lot more comfortable with the entire process now.”
Robert’s Approach to Creating Killer Content
To start formulating video ideas, Robert called on a friend in the business to brainstorm for a few hours. Together they identified different target markets and then broke it down even further from there – first-time buyers, last-time buyers, people moving up, people downsizing, etc.
Then Robert took that information and called on his 27+ years of industry experience to ask himself a simple question: “What do these people want to know?” He developed specific topics for videos from there and started outlining the content for each. However, he stops short of actually scripting the whole thing out.
“I just made them very conversational,” Robert says. “I’m not a script guy. What we do instead is just had someone on the other side of the camera ask me the questions we came up with. Then I just answer them.”
This is a great approach to ensure Robert comes across natural and “human.” (Full disclosure: I love this approach myself when shooting the #TomFerryShow. I always ask my team to frame the show’s topic in a question so I can just answer it.) After all, he has the knowledge. The more natural he can make the process of delivering it, the more his videos resonate.
When shooting, Robert and his videographer book a four-hour block with the outcome of creating five to seven one-minute videos. They’ll shoot the same question and answer multiple times and then ultimately use the best takes for the finished product.
