E49 – Video as a Sales System: Strategy Before Content with Chris Inman

E49 – Video as a Sales System: Strategy Before Content with Chris Inman

In this episode of the Pipelineology podcast, Gary is joined by Chris Inman, founder of I.D.E.A. Cleveland, who shares his path from high school video work to sports broadcasting and corporate video production before shifting to helping small businesses use video to grow. Chris explains the “content treadmill” and argues most businesses fail with video because they don’t decide what each video is supposed to do for sales. He emphasizes strategy before content, setting goals and KPIs tied to leads and revenue, and building trust and authority over time through a customer journey that turns cold audiences into warm leads. Chris outlines a framework to ask before hitting record – who the content is for, why they would subscribe, what questions the show should answer, and how viewers go deeper through a non-lazy call to action rather than “book a meeting.” He discusses consistency as consistency of messaging, not posting frequency, and recommends evergreen topics based on common prospect questions and sales conversations. Chris suggests growing faster by being a guest on other shows and promoting content beyond YouTube, including creative uses like QR codes on business cards. He closes by inviting listeners to connect with him on LinkedIn and to check out his book, “Stop Wasting Money On Marketing: A No-Fluff Guide to Building a Plan That Actually Works,” available on Amazon, and his website ideacleveland.com.

Discover:
00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro

00:32 Chris Inman Origin Story

03:05 Video System Not Treadmill

05:25 Strategy Before Record

08:32 Customer Journey to Trust

12:10 Who Why What How Framework

14:23 Calls to Action That Convert

18:09 Avoiding Burnout With Cadence

18:47 Consistency Is Messaging

20:29 Evergreen Topics From Sales

21:02 Repurpose And Drive To Website

22:26 Use AI To Mine Questions

24:05 Intentional Content For Sales

24:50 Simple Video Setup That Works

27:07 Audio First Gear Advice

30:27 Be A Guest To Grow Faster

32:30 Promote Beyond Algorithms

33:47 Objection Handling Video Library

35:01 Where To Connect And Learn More

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ideacle/
https://www.ideacleveland.com/about
Chris’s Book: Stop Wasting Money on Marketing: A No-Fluff Guide to Building a Plan That Actually Works

Transcript: 

 

[00:00:00] Gary Ruplinger: Hello and welcome everybody to another episode of the Pipelineology podcast. Today I’m excited to be joined by a very special guest, today I have Chris Inman with me. He’s the founder of I.D.E.A. Cleveland. Chris, welcome to the show.

[00:00:14] Chris Inman: Hey, thank you so much for having me, Gary.

[00:00:16] Gary Ruplinger: Yeah, I’m, I’m excited to kind of jump into what we’re covering today. But before we kind of jump into video and YouTube and all that, for anybody who’s not familiar with you and your background, can you just kind of give us the,

you know, the Cliff Notes version of, who you are, how you got here, all that

[00:00:32] Chris Inman: I was the AV geek in high school, and I loved doing videos. I was the, the one that, you know, went out and recorded the high school basketball games, the plays. Went to Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh and wanted nothing more than to work in sports broadcasting. And I made that dream come true and I did it.

And I was working with like LeBron James and the Cavaliers when he made his first stint

here in town. And then an opportunity came and I started realizing I don’t want to live on the road. And that’s where those sports people live. They live on the road because they travel, they do the Super Bowl, they do the final four.

They do all those great things every weekend. And I’m like, oh, I really love my wife. So I turned on that whole dream, which 14-year-old me would think was crazy, and I started going in the, in corporate video. And then in corporate video, I’m doing high-end productions with large corporations here in the Cleveland area, and I started not really enjoying it because, let’s be honest, I’m just making the rich richer. And I’m like, how can I help small business owners make video and actually grow their business? That wonderful thing COVID happened and that changed everything because we can have conversations like this. We’re using StreamYard for this conversation. There’s all kinds of other apps out there, and now we can have conversations and create content digitally so easy. And so what we do is we help businesses produce content just like this for them, but in a, in a positive way to actually grow their business.

[00:02:05] Gary Ruplinger: That’s, that’s cool. And I, I’m curious to know that making that transition from kind of high end. Production value, all of that kind of stuff with I’m sure hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of video equipment, to the small business owners. You know, more, more, almost, I’d say more, more casual perhaps,

but

[00:02:30] Chris Inman: I tell everyone, if you have a cell phone, you’re a videographer. Yeah. And it all started with my business coach who asked me what my life dreams were, and that was to live in an RV. So I’m building a business where it satisfies my life goals, and that’s in seven years I hope to be traveling the country and and seeing what this country has to offer in an RV.

And you can’t do that if you’re driving around a box truck full of gear.

[00:02:55] Gary Ruplinger: Now that’s, that’s, that’s all your space right there is just the 

[00:02:59] Chris Inman: Yes. Yeah.

[00:03:02] Gary Ruplinger: Oh, cool. Well, yeah, I’d, I’d kind of like love to jump into it then. I know kind of what I had down here is talking about kind of video as a system, not a content treadmill. So could you kind of lay that out a little bit for us? Because what’s, what’s the content treadmill?

[00:03:18] Chris Inman: All right. Let’s start with everybody want, thinks you have to do more videos and more content and, and this and that, and it becomes exhausting. And it becomes overwhelming, but most businesses don’t fail a video because of effort or quality. They fail because they never decide what the video is supposed to do. How are the videos going to lead to sales in their business? And I think that’s the big thing. If you just constantly creating content and you’re, you’re chasing likes and you’re chasing views, but you’re not supporting sales with the videos, you’re just creating more noise and you’re just on that treadmill of content creation. And that’s, that’s something I want, we’re gonna talk about today is how does sales, how do video sale, how does video support sales? We’re gonna talk about who the video needs to be created for, and some questions that you need to ask yourself before you hit record. And why are we doing it? Why are we building these videos?

And ultimately, the secret sauce is we’re trying to build trust and authority in our spaces, and that’s the only reason we’re making videos. So I hope that kind of, teases us up to where we’re going today.

[00:04:30] Gary Ruplinger: Yeah, I, I, I, I’m certainly interested in, you know, trying to figure out how to turn, even the stuff that we do is how do we make this more, how do I use, you know, on my podcast and more as a, as an asset for, for, for what we’re doing? I mean, that’s, that’s everybody’s goal, right? I’m not, because I know, here’s the thing, I’m, I’m not an influencer.

I’m not 22 and pretty and all of that, where it’s, you know, like where I can make it look effortless. Now I’m a middle-aged guy, you know? Nope, nobody’s coming to watch these. because they’re like, oh, I really like how he, you know, how, how polished all that is. It’s, you know, for, for the information. So, so how, how do you kind of start thinking about, you know what, what to do, because I know one of your things is strategy before content. How, how do you approach that? Like, because I know in a lot of, a lot, I see a lot of advice. It says just push record. Just go, just go do something. So it seems a little bit counter to that.

[00:05:25] Chris Inman: It really is, and the people that are just hitting record without a strategy, they’re, they’re just, as we say, running down that treadmill and not going anywhere. But the first thing we really need is any marketing tactic that we decide we’re gonna do. We need to start asking ourselves some real honest questions. How many leads do we need as a business to make this valuable? Because this is gonna take you time, it’s gonna take you money, it’s gonna take effort, but everything we do in marketing has to lead to a sale. That’s the only reason we’re doing this. I have a joke that if your marketing isn’t bringing in leads and bringing in quality leads, go buy a boat. The old saying, bust out another thousand is what boat stands for, and boats are more fun than just spending money on marketing. So let’s think about this. If you are a business coach, a business owner, and you’re a professional service provider of some sort, how many leads are you looking for in a month? If you got four quality real warm leads every month, is that worthwhile? How many of those can you close? Now, remind you, we’re talking about warm leads. We’re not just talking about, white pages leads. We’re talking about real leads. And let’s say you can close 25%, which is a very low close rate for most people. That’s one new client a month. That’s 12 new clients in year. What would that do to your business? Is that what you’re trying to accomplish? If you can accomplish one new client a month, will that change your business? And is that enough to provide you the energy and effort to do this? And I think that’s where everybody gets wrong when they start doing any marketing tactic, is they don’t think about what are we ultimately trying to achieve?

A lot of people want to talk about, oh, branding, we want to get our name out there and this and that. That’s wonderful. I’m not against it. At the end of the day for something such as YouTube and podcasts is a big lift and it’s a lot of effort. So if you’re going to do that, you need to actually set real goals and KPIs that matter, and that’s leads and sales.

[00:07:28] Gary Ruplinger: Oh, very cool. I know one of the big things when, when I was thinking, you know, I’m gonna start a pod like everybody else, right? And you know, that that was kind of the initial thought is, okay, is it gonna bring in all these extra leads? And over time what I found is actually it’s a, it ends up being, for us, more of a support tool where it helps, helps kind of people who are thinking about us or talking to us.

Because we, we do outreach as a, as a company. Which means, you know, it’s me and, you know, a thousand other people are like hey, I’ll help you get more meetings with people. Because I work with consultants. And the, the podcast ends up being a differentiator because, it’s, it’s like oh, this, the know, like, and trust factor.

It kind of gets, let’s them get to know you a little bit before they, they come talk to you. So going back to your bringing in warm leads, right. Now, what was, that was a cold lead has had a chance to warm up and now they’re, now they’re actually interested in working with you versus oh yeah, there’s another, just another guy out there chasing deals.

[00:08:31] Chris Inman: Yeah, exactly. You have to think about what was the customer’s journey in all of this, so. Let’s say you, you have a, a LinkedIn video. A LinkedIn short. It’s like 60, 90 seconds. Well, that led to somebody’s interest in you. They, they start following you more often on LinkedIn and they, they like more of your content.

They eventually jump over to your website or they learned on your LinkedIn, you have a YouTube channel or a podcast. Alright, now they’re starting to listen to that podcast, watch your YouTube videos. You’ve now become a trusted partner of theirs. Hopefully what you’re doing is eventually helping them become better at something, and you become that trusted partner in whatever arena you’re expert in. And now you’re that go-to person. Now today might not be the day they’re willing to write you a check. There will become a time where you have built up that kind of trust and that authority with them, that they will contact you and you will have a relationship with them in, in the sense of customer and professional service provider. And you have to do that through time. And if you think you’re gonna create a YouTube channel and immediately you’re gonna get 5,000 views, that’s great. You have 5,000 people that are watching. That doesn’t lead to anything in sales. So if you’re, if you’re only gunning for views, likes, and KPIs and metrics that don’t matter to the business. You’re not building an actual marketing strategy with your YouTube channel. You’re building a YouTube channel strategy, because you’re trying to build a YouTube channel, but that doesn’t necessarily equal building your business and getting leads. So we gotta really readjust our whole brain and stop thinking about, I need thousands of views on my YouTube video. Okay, do you need a thousand views? If you got 20 views per video and three people went to your website and downloaded your call to action, which actually brought them into your sales cycle. That’s three warm leads. That’s actually more valuable than a million people watching on YouTube because you don’t know who those people are.

You don’t know who’s watching. You don’t know who’s listening to your podcast. You don’t know until you go deep enough where they have enough interest to actually engage with you. Maybe in the real world, it could be a, a live event, it could be download a, a, a white paper, whatever the case may be. But you need to know who they are. And I think the problem is a lot of businesses obsess about how many people are on the, the YouTube channel, how many views this and that, things that don’t matter. And I think that’s what gets people stumbled and really struggle with video because they, they’re not focusing on what is actually important. Does that make sense?

[00:11:21] Gary Ruplinger: I’m, I’m kind of, I’ve, you, you’ve got my attention now because I’m, I’m thinking, you know, I set up a YouTube channel years ago and have done nothing with it in, you know, 15 years. But you know, it’s one of those prop, it’s like, I should probably dust that off. And I’m like I’m, again, not an influencer. I’m, I’m a consultant by trade.

And that’s, that’s been kind of the, the, the thing that’s kind of stopping me is like, I, I, I watch, like I watch a lot of YouTube, there’s a lot of channels out there that I enjoy and everybody’s got their algorithm tuned the way they like it. And I say, where, where does a consultant or a coach or somebody doing, even somebody doing sales, where, where does that fit in?

How do, how do you make a YouTube strategy out of that type of content? What, what is, what is that? How does that work?

[00:12:10] Chris Inman: Yeah. Okay, so let’s, let’s discuss my basic framework of,

of before you hit record. You need to start asking yourself who, who do you want, to watch your YouTube channel or listen to your podcast? What are some traits? What, what’s some pain points? What’s some things that that could take that person and make them like that is an ideal client?

You have to start really thinking about who your ideal client is. And then here’s something a lot of people have a hard time with, why? Why are they listening? Not why are you doing it? Why would they actually subscribe to your YouTube channel? Why would they drive in their car, walk their dog, listen to your podcast every week? Why are they dedicating their time to you? And I think there’s so much content and people go oh, I’m late to the game of podcast, I’m late game to the YouTube, whatever the case might be. You’re not late if you are specializing in helping a certain someone, the who, with a certain problem, a why. Then you’re figuring out what questions does your show need to answer, and that’s what ultimately leads to you building that relationship. Now you’re just, you’re becoming that trusted partner. So who, why, what, and then we gotta talk about how. How do they go deeper? So you’re only gonna give them so much information. I’ve gone as far as I’m willing to go to give you all the free advice. Which let’s be honest, that free advice that we’re all giving away, it can all be asked to ChatGPT, AI and we, it’s all the same. None of us have a secret sauce. 0%. But, what we are though is giving it in a form, in, in, in a language that they understand, in, in a area, in a direct words that they understand. If your clientele have certain jargon that they use, use their jargon. Because now you, you’re in their world. You have to think about how you’re building this relationship.

It’s the same thing as if you’re in a personal live event and or a networking event. And you meet somebody, oh, what do you do? Oh, blah, blah, blah. Oh, and you start going having this conversation. That’s essentially what you want to do with your YouTube and podcast. Have these conversations enhance your engagement with your ideal clients.

Now, the end, you’ve given up all you’re willing to do for free. Now you have to have a call to action, and this is where people really drop the ball. Their call to action is, let’s book a meeting. I don’t know about you, Gary, do you like meetings?

[00:14:34] Gary Ruplinger: If, if I’m the one selling, yeah.

[00:14:36] Chris Inman: So you’ve said the key word. If you were the one selling. Salespeople like meetings, customers do not. And how many times do we see everybody’s call to action on LinkedIn, on YouTube, whatever the case may be. These business owners, they go, let’s book a meeting. Let me show you a demo. Nobody wants your demo.

No one wants to book a meeting. I am so sorry, but that is a horrible call to action and they need to stop calling it a call to action. It’s lazy. What you could do is you can do an analysis. You can give them a, a free white paper. You can sign them up to a weekly newsletter that actually gives them things in value every week that makes their lives better. You need to help them become better at whatever you’re an expert at. That’s what takes that relationship even deeper. And that’s all private, you know, behind the gated. So now you know who they are, because if you don’t know who they are, they’re just listeners, they’re just viewers and you’re never gonna be able to engage with them any deeper. So that’s really important to think about. You need to figure out how to actually get their information. So if you are the salesperson or if you have a team of salespeople in on your, at your company to actually say, Hey. This person is deeply interested in X, Y, Z. They’ve gone through this marketing funnel and this is what their pain points are based off of what they’ve watched, based on what they downloaded. Now go have a deeper conversation. Now that salesperson can call them or email them, and odds are they will book a meeting. Because now they’re really deep and they can be very particular about hey, I would like to get on a phone call and discuss X, Y, Z. Now let’s, let’s have a meeting. Let’s actually talk about you and your business or your, your problems or whatever your case might be. And now the sales team, they have a layup. They’re not trying to show up and figure out what your problems are or why you might be interested and, and deal with, with very easy questions that should have been answered during the marketing cycle, you know, during that marketing funnel. So I think that’s a, a key thing of where to start.

Does that make sense?

[00:16:40] Gary Ruplinger: It, it does. And it’s, definitely kind of mirrors some of the experiences I’ve had with scheduling, you know, calls with people, is that when we slowed it down and that wasn’t the immediate thing we were trying to do. Like when, you know, running ads or something like that, you know, there’s the people will say, here, here’s how to, you know, triple the number of calls you schedule from your funnel, whatever.

And I look at what they’re doing, I say. Sure that’s a way to triple it. And you know, the quality will just crater just go to go in the tank because you may now that’s the thing you’re trying to do and they’re not really ready to talk. They’re not really interested in talking. They’re probably, they probably won’t even show up, but you made it so easy.

They said, sure, why not? Versus they versus, okay, here’s the thing you asked for. Go take that thing you asked for. Let me check back, you know, in a little bit. And here’s some more, you know, here’s that newsletter, here’s some more content. But when you’re ready, here’s where I’m at. You know, it’s in my little PS of my emails, we can chat then.

[00:17:41] Chris Inman: Yes.

[00:17:42] Gary Ruplinger: And those people are way, way further along. They understand what you offer. They’re, they’re just more fun to talk to. They always show up for the meetings.

[00:17:52] Chris Inman: Yes,

[00:17:53] Gary Ruplinger: It was like, oh, but we get in such a hurry with, with those other metrics, they’re like, well, how many people clicked and how many people scheduled and how, like from the view, what’s my conversion rate?

And he’s like, just take time out. Time out.

So I’m, I’m kind of guess I’m kind of curious then, from a, you know, to kind of avoid that, that treadmill side of things where it’s constant daily. Like what, what type of cadence and what type of schedule do you kind of start with, with people who are trying to, you know, not burn themselves out by, you know, like at a release three shorts today on YouTube before, you know, or I’m, I’m gonna get no, the algorithm will give me no love.

No love or something like that. So.

[00:18:38] Chris Inman: All right, so I’m gonna take this consistency phrase that everyone talks about. How consistent should I be doing any kind of marketing tactic? And everyone thinks of time is consistency. How often should I be doing it? I want you to start the real rack your brain, wrap your brain around what is the consistency that you are telling your ideal prospects and clients, how you help them. You need to be consistent with that. I’ve been seeing a lot of LinkedIn posts and social media content and all kind of stuff. You look at it, you read it, you scroll past, you have no clue what that person can actually do to help you. You’re not being inspired, you’re not being educated. You’re not taking anything out of that content to actually improve your personal or professional life, and it doesn’t go deep enough.

And that’s, I think that’s the big thing, is consistency. Is about being consistent about your messaging and consistent about who you can help and how you can help them. Now there’s always fun posts and stuff like that and, and personal, but I think consistency only really matters in the sense of consistency of your messaging. Who you can talk to, who you want to talk to, who you can help. And part of that is really to stop chasing trends and algorithms. So. You can put out one YouTube video per week, that’s cool. But then you have to create the, the shorts and all that, and that’s the consistency part. But what is in that video? What is the topic? And you’re recording with a purpose and a reason and a topic that matters to your ideal clients. And if you’re creating that on a consistent basis. That’s when people start following you, that’s when people start trusting you and that’s when you start building authority. So stop thinking about, oh, I need all these more ideas and I, I can’t, I’m getting topic overload and, and, and I’m also getting fatigued because I can’t even think of any more topics. So the idea is of your topics, of your videos and content, they should be things that are what we call evergreen, things that last a long time. Think topics and conversations that you have all the time, topics and conversation that your sales team has all the time. Questions that come up with your ideal clients and your clients constantly. Record those videos.

Then you can repurpose them. You can turn a long form into shorts, put them on your TikTok, you put them on your LinkedIn, you put them on your Facebook, put them on your Instagram. Whatever the case would be, you can put them all over the place. But leading back to your website, your home. That’s for the long form.

Embed that long form video onto your website. Have a brief discussion, description, and that’ll help with your Google SEO, but then have that strong call to action to get somebody deeper into that conversation. So if you consistently use your, your long form assets and you figure out what the keywords are and the searches that people are searching for on YouTube, on Google, and that, that accelerates your trust and accelerates your authority in your space, and that then makes it easier for sales to close deals for you. So you need to stop overthinking what topics you need and start listening to your sales team as well. I think that’s, that’s where the gold actually comes from. You need to think about, ask them what is something that they, someone always asks in every single meeting that you have with a new prospect. That is what you need to answer, because that’s the question people have. So I think consistency is about your messaging, not about posting. That’s my little spin on that.

[00:22:26] Gary Ruplinger: You know, hearing you say that, and all of a sudden now the gears are turning in my head saying, I need to go into like all my Zoom meetings from the past, you know, a few months and say, you know, tell ai, here’s, here’s the summary of all of them. What are the like 10 most common questions that keep coming up in those meetings?

because yeah, those should probably be turned into, into content, to use to kind of, you know, build, you know, further that 

[00:22:52] Chris Inman: Absolutely. If you think about we have these AI tools now in these virtual meetings and everything, even if, if you have an in-person meeting, you could pull out your cell phone and record that conversation. You could tell. Hey, I have an AI tool that, that I record these so I take notes so I can be engaged with you more instead of just writing things down.

And they’ll be like, oh, that’s cool. People think it’s cool that you’re using technology they won’t be against. And then you put that, like you said, into your, your AI assistant, Gemini chat, whatever. Pick your favorite. I don’t really care. I’m not selling any of them. But ask them what were the questions?

And that’s where you start really, yes. You’re right that that’s, that’s the gold right there that I think so many people over overlook so easily and then they’re like, oh, I don’t know what to talk about. I’m like, I think you do. We just, you’re not asking the right people.

[00:23:41] Gary Ruplinger: So your, your goal here with like the YouTube with like the videos in a lot of cases is not, it is not so much to feed the, feed the almighty algorithm. It’s more, long term assets, I think is the, the phrase you’ve used for 

[00:23:55] Chris Inman: A hundred percent. 

[00:23:56] Gary Ruplinger: people are gonna, the, the people that you want to work with are gonna be searching for.

[00:24:01] Chris Inman: Yes. 

[00:24:02] Gary Ruplinger: That they will find your, your video that way.

[00:24:04] Chris Inman: Yeah. And you think about, you want to, you want to think about those, those topics and, and such, because ultimately you’re trying to shorten a sales cycle. You want to have all the, the objections already handled. You want to have those repeated questions already answered in your, in your marketing material.

This should be for all your marketing material, not just YouTube and podcast. If your YouTube and podcast only cares about views, if your LinkedIn only cares about likes, you’re missing the boat because you’re, you’re chasing the algorithm. You’re trying to beat something that’s irrelevant. So I think all your marketing material needs to really be more intentional, I guess, would be the phrase I like to say.

[00:24:49] Gary Ruplinger: Makes sense. So, so you’re a video guy, so I’m, I’m kind of curious then here kind of thinking about, hey, if I’m gonna record these format wise. What should these videos kind of look like? Are they like, do I need, do I need a really fancy studio with all the, the lighting and everything? Can it be, you know, me sitting, you know, could it be somebody hey, I am sitting in my office and you know, there’s some people walk by once in a while kind of trying to think what’s right.

I mean, some people are like, can I just do a PowerPoint? And, you know, then eventually it’s like, well, can I just make an AI video? And so like kind of what, where, where? What, what’s working, like, what’s kind of helping, what is supporting sales here? Like what are the videos that help build that trust, that shorten the sales cycle that actually work to get, you know, new clients signed on?

Because I think that’s what we’re all trying to do with this stuff is it’s not for our health.

[00:25:44] Chris Inman: Yeah, I think the first thing is no one’s hiring you for your production quality. They’re hiring you for your production quality in the sense of the conversation. So no one’s gonna judge you if you are sitting in your office as long as there’s not a buzz and there’s all kinds of action behind you.

because people are walking back and forth and all this. If you just have a DI have a TV set behind me. This is what I use. I have a TV set up with a big giant screen of this is the bridge in Cleveland that, you know, with the guardians and such. And it’s just something basic. And you could do that if you have the ability. Gary’s sitting in his office, he has the office behind him. No one thinks that he has less value because you see the office behind him. The conversation is what we’re really caring about in, in this whole thing. And there’s people listening that don’t even know what we look like and that’s okay too. So they’re not, the production quality is not in lights, camera, in action, but you do have to have a light because you gotta be able to see your face. You gotta have a decent, camera. It could be on your laptop. Most laptops come with good cameras these days, but you could also use your cell phone. The iPhone is an amazing thing. I mean, it shoots in 4K. It has great technology. They have microphones that connect right up to it and they’re Bluetooth. So you have a little clip on microphone so you get better quality audio, and that’s what you really want to focus is on audio. Audio quality is so much more important because you can’t fix audio quality and people become annoyed if you got a buzz or they can’t hear you, or there’s background noise. You gotta have clean audio. So if you’re gonna invest in. Anything. Invest in a good microphone. And when I say good microphone, let’s say we’re doing a podcast and we’re having a conversation like this, you could jump on Amazon or whomever you want to buy.

You can get like a Blue Yeti for like under a hundred bucks, which is a really nice microphone. You don’t need to spend thousands of dollars. You don’t have to go get, okay, this is a short microphone that costs a little bit more, but. I also do this for a living and you know, I have clients and it’s a whole different element.

You, you have very nice equipment in your world too that, that I would never invest in. So don’t overthink the, the equipment. Go on Amazon, go on wherever you want to show BNH wherever you want to do. I don’t care, I’m not pitching anybody, but just find things that have high ratings and that do spend a little bit of money and the investment that you make. Should last you a very, very long time if you invest a little bit more. There is a, a light kit, two soft boxes. You put them up or one soft box right in the middle, whatever you want to do, if you do something with a soft box, so it’s basically a square with a light in the back and, and like a piece of cloth in the front that spreads the light and it makes it softer. And so the, the shadows you can see on my face and such, they’re not harsh. I do the traditional news setup where I have two lights on my left and right at 45 degree angles, and it just cast enough light on my face. You don’t have a big reflection in my glasses. My camera’s right here, which connected is the little PTZ camera, pan tilt zoom so I can take a remote and change it up if I need to and reframe myself.

There’s all these little things you can buy. But don’t feel at the beginning you need to go out and spend $5,000 on equipment. You can buy a $20 light on Amazon and a microphone, hook up your laptop, and be off to the races. It doesn’t have to be overly complicated.

[00:29:22] Gary Ruplinger: Yeah, I feel like that’s one of those like, things that just kind of sucks you in that, you know, all of a sudden you’re like, oh, I, I need a better, microphone. And then you’re, you know, spending a thousand dollars on a microphone and then you’re like, oh, I don’t even know how to hook that up because I don’t know what an x what’s an X LR cable?

I thought this would be a USB deck, you know, but I, I, I will say that, you know, the audio quality thing is, is definitely noticeable when you do it right. It’s the first thing. When we hopped on today, I told you, I was like oh, Chris, your audio sounds great. Because you get the, I get, I do talk to people and you know, some, usually it’s through whatever their webcam is and we can make that work.

But I’ve, I’ve had ones where the person’s got their little AirPods in and I’m like, oh, you know, I was like, it sounded okay when I was talking to them and then we got to trying to process the recording. I was like, I, this is, this is gonna be tough and you can’t really, it’s hard to fix bad audio.

[00:30:16] Chris Inman: You can never fix bad audio. I mean, Adobe has some tools that they’re try to help you with. You can try to EQ things, but fixing bad audio is probably the biggest pain in the world. And it also, we we’re talking about being and having your own YouTube or podcast, I think the greatest thing for people to want to start off is be a guest. Buy the microphone, buy a kit. Use other people’s audiences. I’m here, I’m having a conversation with Gary, which is amazing because now Gary’s community gets to be introduced to me. I will reshare all this content on my own social media and everything, and now Gary gets introduced to my community as well. If you’re just doing something on your own and you don’t know who you’re gonna host with and be a partner with in the process, go out and be a guest. Because there’s so much content already being made that that’s an opportunity for you to, to broaden your reach and, and get in front of new people.

[00:31:14] Gary Ruplinger: No, that’s, that’s great advice. I, I tell people the same thing is when, you know, talking about how do we get more exposure? It’s like, go, go on some other people’s. Like, should I start my own? Eventually, if you want to, but go to other people first because it’s gonna be faster. You’re gonna get more exposure. You’re gonna, you’re gonna kind of figure out what formats you like long before, you know, you, you would’ve ever figured that out doing it on your own when you’ve got three listeners.

[00:31:40] Chris Inman: Yes. And it becomes frustrating because you only have three listeners and you’re like oh, it on Buzzsprout and nobody listens. I’m like, and if you think about just in our own lives, how often do we search for a new podcast to listen to? We get introduced to them in other ways. Social media, maybe a friend, but rarely do we just pull out the old, whatever, spotify and be like, alright, I’m looking for a, a podcast for entrepreneurs about marketing. You rarely do that. I rarely do. You do that too often, Gary?

[00:32:12] Gary Ruplinger: I, I can’t think of the last time I went and pulled that out. And because I, I’ve got the ones I listened to. I, I not, I know what I want to listen to now. It’s like we’re on a road trip, I’m gonna listen to these two with my wife. If I did by myself in the car, I’ve got a different set. But, I haven’t had, I have enough content.

I don’t need anymore.

[00:32:30] Chris Inman: Yeah, so you need to promote your YouTube, promote your podcast out in the real world or out on other platforms. You can’t just post something on YouTube, be like, oh, there it is. Now, now it’s out there and now everyone’s gonna watch it and people will magically find it. No one is gonna magically find your content. You need to build that yellow brick road. You need to do some marketing. You need to, to promote it. You need to find ways. It could be a simple, I think one of the biggest underused piece of marketing material in today’s world is the business card. I get so many crappy business cards, networking events if you don’t have a business card with, with some value on it. Or thickness or touch that someone’s gonna feel guilty throwing it away. Also, on the backside, why can’t you have a big QR code? Check out my podcast. Oh, okay. They scan it, boom. They open up to the Spotify podcast or whatever the case might be. I think that people aren’t thinking about those creative ways of using a business card to lead people into their, what I consider top of the funnel is YouTube and podcasting.

Is it like that top of the marketing funnel where you’re being introduced and you’re understanding how you can help them and you get deeper down. You can have more videos and that that’s, that’s a whole nother conversation about videos, like on your website, on your, on your frequently asked questions, does your sales team have a library of video content that they can use to push out If, if somebody has an objection. Like oh, I don’t want to purchase because of X, Y, Z. Well, I have three people that had the same objection and they actually decided to buy, and here’s their testimonial video. And you have a little video about the testimonial from them about the objection that your sales prospect just has said, and why that’s not true. Okay. You’re still, you’re starting to build up some authority there that hey, okay, we have already tackled this. This is why you, you’re getting too, too much in your head. We already have this handled. Here, listen to what three of our clients say about it. So if you think about all these different areas, you should be using content because it should be enhancing your conversations, not confusing your conversations.

[00:34:47] Gary Ruplinger: It. Chris and I, I know we’re, we’re just kind of scratching the surface here. You shared some great insights, but I know we’re, we could probably talk for about, for hours about 

[00:34:56] Chris Inman: I, yes. Unfortunately I do.

[00:34:59] Gary Ruplinger: So, but I, I know we’re gonna run out of time for that. So if somebody’s looking to get a little bit deeper, a little bit more information, you know, from you and kind of how, how they can go about doing some of this stuff for, for themselves.

Where, where should we send them?

[00:35:13] Chris Inman: Yeah. So first thing, Chris Inman with I.D.E.A. Cleveland. Search me up on LinkedIn, let’s connect. Let’s follow each other. Let’s get to know each other and see how we can help each other and help our businesses. Second thing is if you own a business and you’re like, my vendors aren’t doing what I think they should be doing, my marketing vendors. I hire someone for my website.

I hire somebody for my social media, I hire some, maybe you have somebody that does your videos already. That’s awesome. If you already have these vendors, as somebody in that world that’s a vendor, a marketing tactic vendor, I’ve discovered some of the problems that you have as a business of why we don’t succeed.

So I created a whole book, Stop Wasting Money On Marketing: A No-Fluff Guide to Building a Plan That Actually Works. And the whole thing is about you gaining control of your messaging and your purpose of your marketing. So you could tell your vendors how to be better vendors. because they’re probably asking you questions. You’re giving them the answer of my CTAs book a meeting. They’re rolling their eyes, but at the end of the day, they’re not gonna fight you and be like, well, that’s a horrible CTA. You need to do better. We need to sit down and make something more. Because if your only job is the newsletter, okay, I’m gonna focus on that because that’s what they’re paying me for.

They’re not paying me to help them create a whole drip campaign over here for their sales team. And so you gotta think about what, what are you doing that hurts your vendors and how you can make them actually succeed? Because most likely they’re great at what they do. You’re the one holding them back.

[00:36:50] Gary Ruplinger: Very cool. So, that book title again was Stop Wasting Money On Marketing.

[00:36:56] Chris Inman: Yep. Very simple. 

[00:36:58] Gary Ruplinger: Alright. 

[00:36:58] Chris Inman: And you can find out on Amazon. 

[00:37:00] Gary Ruplinger: Easy, easy peasy. So Stop Wasting Money On Marketing, available on Amazon. Check chris’s website, ideacleveland.com. Correct?

[00:37:10] Chris Inman: Yep.

[00:37:11] Gary Ruplinger: We’ll make sure we put those in the show notes as well. I know we were talking about that earlier as well, that not everybody reads the show notes, but when you, when you want something, you go and check those, those show notes.

Even if you’re in the car, you make a quick little note and say hey, I need to go back and, and review that one because sounded, sounded valuable. And I think some of this stuff is, is pretty valuable. So Chris, thanks so much for coming on today. It was great. Thank you so much for sharing your, your insights with us and, and taking the time to talk to us.

Appreciate it and hope you have a great day. Appreciate it.

[00:37:41] Chris Inman: Thanks. You guys have a good one.