Filming 365 Videos in 2 Days (ft. Left Mind Media)

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Kyrill Lazarov02:18All righty. So, on today's episode of Creatives Grab Coffee, we got Jason from Left Mind Media. Welcome, Jason.

Jason Weitz02:25Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Kyrill Lazarov02:27So just before we kind of jump right into it, tell us a little bit about yourself and, the backstory behind left Mind.

Jason Weitz02:34The backstory is I mean, I could give you guys my entire career if you want, but.

Dario Nouri02:39Just the good stuff.

Kyrill Lazarov02:41Just the good stuff. Yeah.

Jason Weitz02:42I okay, so my background personally the good stuff is I have loved video from the beginning in back in high school, my buddies and I made a spoof of Gone in 60s, and I thought that was like the best thing ever. I, you know, long well, a while later, just realize it was because that video really engages both parts of your brain, right? It engages the there's a lot of technical stuff you gotta know, but there's also a creative element to it. And I've really liked that kind of balance of it. And so, somewhere along the way, you know, after we created that, one of my buddies was like, I'm going to go to film school. And I was like, that's the thing. That's a job you can have. Like, that's awesome. So that's what I wanted to do. So, so he, he, he went, totally different route. He went off the, the Hollywood rules. He's he's down in California now. But I kind of wanted to that that path took too long for me, so I wanted to create my own stuff kind of faster than that. So I went the video route, and, you know, it's not quite as as glamorous as you will, as maybe that, you know, Hollywood director, lifestyle, whatever. But you do get to kind of create your own stuff and you get into it a lot faster. So I really enjoyed that. So I worked at a place called, called Funnel Blocks for a while. I did some freelancing for a while. Started a wedding video company and eventually started left wing media, which is designed to be the business aspect or the business branch of my company. And the idea behind the name is that the, you know, left side of the brain, supposedly. Anyway, is more kind of logical and analytical, and the right side of the brain is the creative side. And so I'm here saying that I'm here to solve business problems first and stroke my creative ego last, because that's what I wanted this business to be, was about solving business problems for for businesses. And, you know, not not being all about, you know, I make the prettiest videos or anything like that. I want to make videos to actually solve problems for folks.

Dario Nouri04:51Where can we see the gun in 60s spoof?

Jason Weitz04:55I think it's on YouTube somewhere. Actually, it's called not not here anymore. In about a minute.

Dario Nouri05:01Okay. And here it is.

Jason Weitz05:03Yeah. It's awful.

Dario Nouri05:05We got we got to we got to overlay it on top.

Kyrill Lazarov05:08It's like a meet the Spartans type, it type, spoof name, you know. Oh my.

Dario Nouri05:12God. Yeah. Spartans.

Jason Weitz05:15Yeah. It's it's it was terrible, but, you know, it was a lot of fun.

Dario Nouri05:19As long as you had fun. Yeah, that's the most important part. We did. We did, two short films ourselves, and they are so bad. I don't know if they're not.

Kyrill Lazarov05:28They were 48 hours. They were 48 hour. Films.

Dario Nouri05:31Okay. Not putting them on YouTube, ever. And you. No.

Kyrill Lazarov05:35Because we got, like, such weird, things that we had to include in the, in the short films to the point where I was just like, there's no way we're going to make this work. And then the second one was like this weird comedy spoof of a zombie apocalypse that we were trying to kind of do, but it it didn't work.

Dario Nouri05:53Yeah. That's crazy.

Jason Weitz05:55It's man pulling that 48 hours. That's really hard. That's a it's insane challenge.

Dario Nouri06:01Trying to come up with that story was wild, but there were some people that that submitted theirs that we were watching on the whatever the last day or whatnot. And some people went all out and it looked awesome, like we were looking at each other like, damn, we just got schooled. Like, how do I how did these guys come up with that?

Jason Weitz06:18Well, I mean, some of those he's been doing it for a while, right? So they've got stuff kind of canned and ready to go. And then there's like, what elements we have to add into this. Then they just add them in and, and you know, put out some great.

Kyrill Lazarov06:30Back then back then we had just started we had just started back then. So we were kind of like still learning the industry, learning the ropes. And we found, I found that a lot of like really good 48 hour short films. A lot of the time people had kind of like a few different caveat ideas and, locations and stuff all prepped up for. And then they would just wait to see what kind of elements they needed to include, and then they would just kind of adjust their stories and their filming based on that. Whereas, I don't know, we just had a we just had a condo apartment. That's all we had prepped a couple of gear, like a little bit of gear. And then it was like, wait, what was it? I remember it was like, a story about trying to. It was like a zombie apocalypse, but, like, everyone would be very happy. I don't remember that. Oh. You're right. Yeah.

Dario Nouri07:17Oh my God. Yeah. You know, you mentioned zombie apocalypse, and I was like, when did we shoot a zombie short film? But you're right, it was called, like, happy something.

Kyrill Lazarov07:25It was a plague where everyone would be very happy, very happy reality. People were supposed to be bitter. Like the last bitter person in the world was left.

Dario Nouri07:33We did another one. Where the, protagonist, like, has to steal something. Do you remember? We did it at Moto's jewelry store?

Kyrill Lazarov07:42Yeah, yeah, it was.

Dario Nouri07:44Anyways, it's. They were garbage. The only thing I remember from those two shorts was how tired I was.

Jason Weitz07:49Oh, yeah.

Dario Nouri07:50Like I was exhausted. I don't know about you, Carol.

Kyrill Lazarov07:53Yeah. I mean, yeah, you were asleep while I was editing them, so I was really exhausted.

Dario Nouri07:59Yes, but they were also long days.

Jason Weitz08:02Yeah. I like the concept, though. The concept of that Zombieland sounds good.

Kyrill Lazarov08:07The concept sounded better than the execution at the time. You know, I feel like if we had that concept now with our current capabilities of execution, it probably would be a lot better than what it was back then.

Dario Nouri08:17To do it. Cool.

Kyrill Lazarov08:19Maybe. Maybe why not just do like a before and after?

Dario Nouri08:23Before? Way before. So how long have you been, working?

Jason Weitz08:29Well, I've been making and selling videos for, since about 2001, so. Oh, a while. And I can say that legitimately because, back, you know, when I was first getting interested, my, church would put on, like, kids musicals and my high school or my sort of my elementary school, my ex-military school put on, talent shows, and I would film them and sell copies of the parents. So I was, you know, I was only making, like, 200 bucks, you know, shot between me and, my, my buddy who I mentioned, but, you know, I thought it was, I thought I was pretty, you know, hot shit, cause, you know, making that kind of money, and and I was doing what I love doing. So, that was back in the day when, so my particularly my church putting on the kids musicals, I had seen some of the videos that they had paid videographers to do, and it was kind of like a guy in the back, you know, with his, you know, camera. He would zoom in, zoom out, and I was like, now we're going to do this multi-cam. And so I, I borrowed people's cameras and got them together. And we shot the thing. And I remember one year in particular, I had four cameras and I only had iMovie to edit on. And this was back when it was, you know, like, linear platform. You only had one, camera on the timeline. And I remember having to go through and manually, like with math, I had to say like, how many frames was this, you know, shot when no one does the cut. And that's when I had to cut into the next, you know, shot. And it was just like a real headache.

Dario Nouri10:09But why did you have to use mattes for it? Like, were they all different frame rates or I.

Jason Weitz10:16I don't know, there's something about I just remember doing that. But there's something about the cameras that weren't lining up because I couldn't, stack them on top of each other. I only had the one, one timeline to work with so I could only have one camera on the timeline at a time, so I had no way of syncing them. So I just had to figure out, like, now I'm here in the the end of the clip. So where am I in this clip? So then go to that, that timeline and then cut in cut into that. So that was, it was it was a true nightmare. As soon on my like on my dad's computer at his, you know, print shop that he owned and, late into the, you know, late into the night to try and get this thing done. But, Yeah, it's crazy.

Kyrill Lazarov11:02I know how, like, final Cut in Premiere Pro can be very difficult softwares even like from when we started. But just hearing this, I'm like, oh my god, back then that must have been like that must have been like ten years advanced. What software was that that you were using?

Jason Weitz11:16It was just iMovie.

Kyrill Lazarov11:18Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah. It's just old school. I mean, like in very.

Jason Weitz11:23Old school library, like, like probably 2005 or earlier. So yes, it was it was a nightmare. But, you know, I made it work.

Kyrill Lazarov11:34A you learn with the hardest way. Honestly, it's it's interesting to hear how some people learn different ways of, like, how to edit certain things. I mean, like, I got my first roots of learning how to edit things from music editing back in like 2005 and 2006 from like an old software called Techno Edge. And that gave me the that gave me the foundation to understand how timelines worked. And I never knew that I would actually need it later in life. When were you.

Dario Nouri12:01Editing The Roots and Star.

Kyrill Lazarov12:03The Root? Yeah, old school techno. The roots, said storm. Like it's probably somewhere in old files. I don't even know if it even exists anymore. But like it had a very similar kind of timeline, set up so that when I actually got on premiere, I was like, oh, this is almost the exact same thing, just with a video element added. And so, yeah, like the roots for how to learn editing is always interesting to hear. It's like, how did you kind of start Frankenstein in your first few videos together?

Jason Weitz12:35Yeah, for me, that was the original iMovie. That's that's how I started.

Kyrill Lazarov12:40That's wild. Nowadays we noticed that, like, we saw that these days you're kind of like, focused on a lot of social, batch content making, which always kind of intrigues Darwin AI because it's, we know how it is to kind of like jump into a video shoot for like, a single day and like creating one video like, that's very specific and targeted. Whereas we're seeing, somewhat of it. Not maybe, maybe not a trend, but certain companies coming in with like creating huge batches of content. And your specifically, it was interesting because you said 365 days worth of video content in, what, four days? Like give us a little bit of a backstory on how you kind of came up with that and how that's working out.

Jason Weitz13:21So I, there's a few elements that mash together to create this, and it was just kind of the perfect time to create it. So I had, you know, tried creating some of my own content and doing in batches. And, I made about, I don't know, like 40 videos ish for myself. And then, like, I posted like three of them, you know. So that was that was headache number one was, first of all, when you create this content, then what do you do with it? Right. It's got to be edited. It's got to be posted. You know, you have to follow up with it, do all this stuff. So I first that was kind of the first problem that I wanted to solve. The second problem that I wanted to solve, this came out of a book by, I think it was by Phil Yoon, who talked about how he, you know, spent the first, like three days to four days of the year doing his content, and he would do all of his content for the year in that first, you know, 3 to 4 days. And that was that was wild to me. But he had ways of, manipulating footage on the back end so that he would create long form content, short form content, like podcast content, blog content, all this stuff from his original content by by multiplying it and using it in different ways. Right. He would do things like users use the the transcripts to create his blog content. And so we had that. And then there was, the platform, repurpose that io which can read, your, your content or at least your short form video content on one platform and then send it out everywhere. And, you know, they try to kind of junior size the platform. But I saw it working in a very specific way. So what I did was I came up with a oh. And then the other thing was, a, a buddy of mine on a Facebook group had created this kind of, ideation method, which allowed people to come up with about like, you could do like three days of content in two hours. But, you know, I looked at that again and said, all right, if you're doing 30 days of content in two hours, that's still two hours every single month that you have to dedicate to your content. So I wanted to come up with a way for people to create like a massive amount of content in a really short amount of time. And, another, another factor in this is there, that YouTube shorts limit your content to be one minute long or it's it's not considered short. And so this short, this kind of wave hit of you've got all these platforms coming out, you have this short form content that's limited to one minute if you want it to be the same across all platforms. And you've got also the influx of AI makes it a lot easier to come up with the ideas for the content, because that's the first challenge. And then, you know, filming it is is cake at that point because you're doing these sub one minute talking, basically talking head videos. So with that, I've been able to do it successfully with I think like 6 or 7 clients so far have, done it. One gentleman I'm going to, going to fly down to San Francisco later in September to film his second six months because one thing, that one thing I discovered the hard way is that people really only have a tolerance for about two days of this. After that, they're kind of done, even if they have all their content planned out. You know, they're just kind of burned out of of doing this stuff all day, you know, for, for two days, for a whole week.

Kyrill Lazarov17:21Yeah. It was four days. Wow.

Jason Weitz17:24But I found that it really only takes about six hours, including a lunch break to get, you know, the 90 days, worth of content that you need each day. So because they're sub one minute clips, people can just kind of just get through them really quickly, you know, after you kind of get them started and get the momentum going for the day. So it's it's actually not too hard to pull off. And then I just got editors just editing them like crazy, going about, I'm getting right now. I'm getting about two, two a day out of my editors, out of one editor so I can be shooting. So I'm getting that means I'm getting 40 a month, so I'm about ten days ahead of posting, and then I'm, Yeah, just posting them, using, a scheduler and repurposing a video and that, you know, that's that's it. That's all I'm doing.

Dario Nouri18:18So you're probably you're posting it for them or you're just delivering the assets.

Jason Weitz18:22Yeah. So, so we're we're posting it for them because I think that's, that's another challenge that people have. Right. The idea that in solving the, the headache of content creation, because number one, it takes so much of their time. Number two, they don't have time to post it or the staff to post it for them. Like there's all this stuff that goes into content creation that if if I can take it all off their plate for them, it solves a massive problem that they're going to have.

Kyrill Lazarov18:47In terms of planning that many videos at once, because I looked at some of them and when when I usually hear that much content is being produced in a in a single day, I think of something super basic in terms of what is being created. But from what I saw, it's like some of them are a little bit more in depth, like not so much in the editing aspect, but more so in the specific content that they're talking about. It's like it doesn't sound like it's just different variations of the same content that you're doing. Like, is it like all different, like different kind of scripting, or are you also including, for example, like a 16 by nine or a nine by 16, like how do how do you typically break it down with someone?

Jason Weitz19:29So it's it's all of it is, purpose created for social media. So it's all shot, you know, nine by 16. And the idea behind the content creation is I have, like, multiple message which, which I share with them, with the client on how to come up with the ideas for the content. So there's things like, you know, search, you know, find questions that people are asking on various websites, you know, related to your niche, you know, like, just basic brainstorming, you know, how do you come up with the stuff on your on your own? And then we put it, through I and I have, about a paragraph long prompt followed by like 500, different kind of posting, headline formats. And we ask it to create, around 50 to 100 at a time. So what you wind up with is about these blocks of like 50 of the they're all basically the same, idea or around the same, you know, kind of set of ideas. And then we take those, you know, once you have that list, we, put it, put it in, spreadsheet and then randomize it. So they're right next to each other. They don't seem to be about the same thing, but you have the same ideas mix in there. And that's, you know, that's because it's, it's short form content, right? Not everyone is tuned into the same piece of short form content all the time. So it's perfectly okay to reuse ideas. In fact, you can reuse the exact same video sometimes I've I've seen, short form content where someone posts it, they get a million views, and then they just repost it later and get another million views. You know, I have the exact same content. So there's there's really no point in, you know, if you're if your platform has a point, there's no point in just saying it once. You should say it multiple times. So that that's kind of my idea is you just don't want this stuff right next to each other to be exactly the same. So that's why we do the, randomized mixing. And, as long as you're doing that, you're going to be fine.

Dario Nouri21:41So you said, you come up with, sorry, I'm just curious. Well, something so, you tell your client, like, these are some of the ways to generate, like, the initial concepts for it. Do you do that work for them, or do you just tell them, like, this is how you should do it and then wait for them to send you? Like, so.

Jason Weitz21:59My clients are always going to be the subject matter experts in their field, so I don't I don't come up with the ideas for them. I tell them how to come up with the ideas because and a lot of the time some of my clients do is they they start with this plan and then they say, oh, wait, I've written a book about this. I can pull content ideas from that, or I've written all these blogs about that. I can pull content ideas from that. It's really just a way to get them started, honestly. Half the time they're not using my methods at all, and I don't really care, you know, as long as the ideas are coming from somewhere. So, it just depends really on the client and what they've done previously. How much of, kind of my advice they're relying on. But my advice, like I said, it mostly just kind of gets the ball rolling and gets them doing something that they weren't doing before, which is to lay out what all this content is going to be, because that's that, like all of this, all through the editing, even relies on a spreadsheet being organized. And, you know, we know what each video is about because we're just going down the list and checking them off. And we can tell that, you know, I can tell that to my editor. I can say like, well, if we put notes in the spreadsheet or something like that on the day of the shoot because, you know, how shoots go, they get kind of crazy and messy so we can take notes. I can put that in the spreadsheet. And then my editor, you know, knows, whatever is there. So it's all it's all about organization and preparation. And the pre-production becomes kind of the most important part. But, but it's really not that difficult to do at the end of the day.

Kyrill Lazarov23:36Well, you kind of also answered one of the questions that I had, which was like, how do you convince someone to go into doing that much content at once? Because I know how it is sometimes even doing like one interview for a couple of clients and it can be very exhausting after a little while. And then you basically answer that where instead of doing four days, you push them for two days. Like, do you find that even that two days they're still feeling a little bit burnt out, maybe keeping it back to doing only 90 day chunks? Or how are you finding it now?

Jason Weitz24:07I've considered doing 90 day chunks. I feel like the problem with 90 day chunks is, again, it's it's 90 days is not dissimilar enough from 30 days that they're going to feel the difference. Like having six months of your stuff done at that. That's saying something. But if you have only 90 days done, then I'm going to be calling you in 30 days to, you know, to set up the shoot for the next 30 days so that we can have because we want to have, 30 days. One thing we do is we edit 30 days of content before we start posting so that in case there's anything that goes wrong, you know, their stuff is still coming out every day because that's important to us. So we so with that, you know, with that 30 day, you know, kind of advanced window that really only gives you 60 days to do the other shoot. So at that point, it's like you've barely seen any content come out by the time I'm saying, hey, you want to do the next shoot? Like, like let's schedule this.

Dario Nouri25:09I can't see the results yet.

Jason Weitz25:11Yeah. So I feel like two days is a good amount of time. I feel like no one's really burned out on that until, like, the, like, maybe like last hour or so, and then they're, they're just willing to, like, push through it, you know, because they're like, I'm almost like it's like the end is in sight at this point. So I feel like that's been a good amount of time. And then that gives us loads of, of, you know, footage and we can, we can edit that for six months or even more, possibly ahead of time. And again, like there are only six hour days. So they're not like super long days. It's not like, on a film set where you're like, pushing ten, 12 hour days. It's it's six hours with a lunch break. So it's really not super, harsh to put a client through that.

Kyrill Lazarov25:55Is it just you who's, shooting it or do you, like, like in terms of, like, how does the production typically go?

Jason Weitz26:01Yeah. So that's a good question. It is, I shoot the ones that are local and I'll shoot them if my client wants me to come out there. But because the the organization piece is so important and the editing piece is so important, when you look at the actual production, it's kind of the least important part. So, so if, client doesn't want to pay to fly me out to where they are or to fly to me, then I'll just hire someone local. And as long as, you know, I can interview them and, you know, they're they're good, and they have enough batteries to film for six hours straight. Then it really, anybody can do it like anybody who can check off, you know, that there that they're doing it like they can they can all do it. And that's kind of the like the whole thing behind my company is I don't want to be one of those videographers who gets hired to do something like this, right? I want to be someone who's doing the hiring for a job like this is producing this. Yeah. Producer. And really who's, you know, because I'm solving business problems. Like, that's where my my value lies as a business owner. They're they're, I can tell you there was one, clients who, they were actually, there's partners and they're in separate cities. I don't I don't know how they run their, you know, I guess they just run their business online, but they're partners in separate cities, and they're meeting in Salt Lake City. I think, to do the shoot. And the day before, the videographer who I had hired, let me know he can't do it. So I'm like, that's super cool. But I was able to just go back through the, Facebook, you know, ad that I put out and all the response that I got, because you put out an ad like that in any city and you're going to get 100 responses, and I was able to find someone who is able to do it the next day. And they loved him. So it was totally, totally fine. I, you know, save the day. And, it worked out great.

Dario Nouri28:02I have a question on the amount of deliverables. So, you do it in four days and that gives them enough content for you. You said, is there how many days was it? 90 days.

Kyrill Lazarov28:13Well, two days is 180 days worth of, content he mentioned. And then he gets editors to produce two videos a day. That's. That was the next thing I was also going to ask about is like, how has that been going?

Dario Nouri28:27So hold on. The the question I have those how many how many videos then are you technically filming in the six hours?

Jason Weitz28:36We're shooting about 90 videos. So we aim to get we aim to get about 184 videos done in two days. So roughly, you know, Net takes about 90 videos a day. 92 if you want to be specific.

Dario Nouri28:50Okay. That's a lot. Okay. That's I would love to just like hang around for like six hours and see how you do it.

Kyrill Lazarov28:57It's like five minutes of video basically five minutes a video. Yeah, literally.

Jason Weitz29:02But yeah, but I mean, again, like you're only filming these are, these are one minute videos or even less than one minute in some cases. So because you're limited to the one minute, you know, and the way I watch for that is just by watching the, the clock run on the camera. And, you know, I'm like, all right, ready to go. They're like, ready, go. And they do their thing. And I'm watching the time and kind of, you know, I have kind of my editor sense because sometimes they stop and have to start over or, you know, whatever it is. But I can be like, yes, this, this is, this will be a minute or occasionally, you know, it'll run for, like three minutes, four minutes. I'm like, all right, this is part now, and this is part one. Part two. I'm just going to make that note and we're going to split it into part one. Part two. So we do do things like that often. The I had one gentleman who he could barely do 30s at a time. So which is, which is fine. You know what you want. You do you do want to algorithmically aim for that, like 34 second mark. Because the watch time is the most important thing. And if it's if they don't, if they don't hit that about 34 seconds, then they have to get 100% watch time or it's not going to, like, log anything good in the algorithm for you. So you you do want to kind of push him for a little bit more if they're kind of, you know, if they're short.

Dario Nouri30:30Oh, so if, if they're if so, you might have some videos where they're not even a minute long. They might be half that. Yeah.

Jason Weitz30:38Okay. Yeah. It's just it totally depends on the it totally depends on the person. But the, the short ones, if they're really short, you gotta be like, all right, can you give me a little bit more? Because I need, like, I need more than this. Like, 20s here. Me like, give me, give me more. But some people just kind of, you know, for lack of a better way of saying it, they won't shop. They just roll through it. But that's it's actually easier to break that up than than to extend something that is too short. So I kind of prefer those people.

Kyrill Lazarov31:11Yeah. Because the longer content is easier to just kind of split up in half, whereas like the shorter content, you're getting them to elaborate. And sometimes that elaboration is very vague or not really tying in the content super. Well, I'm wondering though, also like because it's become like a system, I'm assuming that it's kind of like a package that you're providing all these potential leads and depending on also like how how you charge for it, is it something you work with? Mostly small businesses, or is have you found like a little bit of a range?

Jason Weitz31:44So what I found lately, or I guess what I've discovered is, if the business is too small, number one, they can't really afford this. And, you know, I mean, it is we are we are, like, doing all of their effectively. We're doing all of their social media stuff, like because video is such a powerful, platform to be doing social media on because right now, short form content is kind of dominating it. You don't technically need anything else. You don't have to have, like, Instagram, you know, photo posts or anything like that. Like it's not necessary. So there's, there's there's that to consider. So we are providing a camera a full social media management. We're doing the like descriptions and the tags and all that stuff. So we're, we're providing a kind of a premium service there. It's not so expensive, though, that, you know, I would say a what I consider a medium, not like, not, the SBA considers a medium sized business, have like 200 to 500 flies or something crazy like that. But what I would consider a medium business from my perspective, they they can afford it, but I think I, I really feel like it's got to be the right fit for the company because they have to, they can't use this as a direct. So let me backtrack a bit. So one thing that I've, I've been pushing for this is again, because coming back to my company, you know, wanting to solve business problems, the other thing we're solving is that you're you're not just if you're doing this right anyway, you're not just creating content for content sake, but you're creating this as a, lead magnet. So you're, you're trying to drive people to a website or to take some kind of action, to click a link in your bio to, you know, to do whatever you want them to do, to do something at the end of the video. So I have a whole, system in flow where I show people, you know, exactly how this works, but they can basically, put a call to action that's going to drive, you know, customers eventually down the line. So with that said, though, this cannot be your only, lead generation source and be reliable because it's because, again, this is organic social media we're talking about. So, first of all, if you're like a local company, it's not going to work for you at all because, you know, you might get a million views. But if your business is here in Portland and those million views are in New York, none of them are going to lead to any, any kind of business. So you do have to your your company has to fit a certain profile, such, you know, that you have some kind of national offering and then, secondly, you know, it's a it's kind of a big, slow moving ship because you're growing a social media account which takes, you know, upwards of, of a year, you know, on average, if you're doing everything right. And then also, if you need to make changes, we can make changes, but we're already edited 30 days in advance. So we've already got 30 days of stuff, you know, going out by the time you make a change. So it's going to take a month or two for any changes to implement. And to actually be seen. So, so it is a big slow moving ship, which is kind of one of the weaknesses of it. And again, like your company has to be ready and willing to invest in a social media campaign which like, honestly, I, I don't recommend for every, every single company. You know, like I said, like local companies, smaller companies, like, there are better places to spend your money. Honestly, which, you know, I can also help you with. But that like this is not that, you know, it's a it's a really sexy offer, and that's why I offer it. But it's not always the best thing for every single company. Which is why I love to talk to companies, to find out if they're going to be an actual good fit for this, or if there's something else I can offer them, or if I can refer them to someone or, you know, that's because that's what I love doing at the end of the day is helping companies grow.

Dario Nouri36:04It's not even the small ones. Sometimes it's even the the large sized corporations where, you know, we've chatted with them and then they don't want to focus on social media at all. It just doesn't drive their business forward.

Kyrill Lazarov36:15So it's it's great. It's great that you've come up with a very specific customer profile for this, because that's sometimes that's one of the biggest challenges for people in our industry, is coming up with the exact target market of who they're trying to kind of sell for, like or the niche basically. So you've kind of niched out something for this specific product rather than more so like a niche that your company in general focuses. It's like these types of videos are only for these types of, clients, and those are the ones I'm going to target. I also notice that you have some content similar to that that you did on your own social media and Instagram, like how have you found your own product working for you over the over the last little while?

Jason Weitz36:58If I'm perfectly honest, it hasn't worked very well for me. I haven't seen much response from, my own content. And I you know, haven't I haven't had the time, you know, as a, as a, I mean, technically I'm not a soul preneur, but it feels like I am a lot of the time because I'm running the run the whole show. And, I haven't had the time to really analyze that closely and see why it's it's not working. But I feel like one of the, elements that I have been missing, of late, which I'm going to be incorporating into this in the future, is, the, basically, the account growth. So getting more eyeballs on it faster then kind of the organic process. And that's kind of, you know, in an unfortunate, unfortunate place we find ourselves in on the social media front is like, you got to you got to pay someone to get eyeballs on your content, or they're not, you know, or get very lucky, it seems like.

Dario Nouri38:06Have you, like I noticed your TikToks off offline on on the website. Have you used other social platforms aside from, like, maybe Instagram to try to push it because.

Jason Weitz38:16Yeah, well I'm sorry.

Dario Nouri38:18Go ahead.

Jason Weitz38:19No. Go ahead.

Dario Nouri38:20I was going to say I noticed, when we were posting our, creators grab coffee reels, on Instagram, like, the views were random. Some would do really well, some would do. Okay. But then we noticed that on TikTok, it was doing pretty well. And then the views were consistent. Like we could see, like, a pattern. And then we noticed on YouTube shorts it was totally random, like some of the all over the place views. Some of them will get 1000, like there was. I had no idea how YouTube runs our algorithm. So I wonder if you're running into the same thing with your Instagram, because I was looking at your your Instagram page over there and, they're they're pretty low. But maybe if you tested it out on like TikTok, that might be higher.

Jason Weitz39:05I so I'm running, the ones that I was running, we're, we're going to everywhere. So they were going to TikTok. They're going to Instagram. They they started on Facebook. They went on my LinkedIn. And, I think I think that's it. I don't think I was doing Twitter or anything like that.

Kyrill Lazarov39:25I was going to say, just before you continue, do you think it might be the solution? Do you think that left mind might not fit your own target market criteria? Do you think that could be potentially it?

Jason Weitz39:37I always, try to drink my own Kool-Aid. So with that, you know, I was like, I got to. At least you know, do this for myself, try it out for myself, test it on myself. Do do all that stuff. So I got the system working, for me, and it works like I put out a whole ton of content. People were commenting on it, but again, they were mostly people who I already knew through, you know, local networking or something. They're like, I'm seeing your stuff everywhere. I'm like, that's great. You're not who's supposed to be seeing it? But, you know, it's cool.

Dario Nouri40:06You're seeing.

Kyrill Lazarov40:08Yeah, I've had I've had that too with like, people within my network where they've seen like our videos and, and and like, I'm seeing it's like, great. You're not really going to be a client of mine though. So it's like, great.

Jason Weitz40:20But the worst, the worst is when you pay for ads and they say that and you're like, you're not paying for that view. I paid for that.

Kyrill Lazarov40:27But you don't click. That's three bucks.

Dario Nouri40:32But, you know, we've we've gotten work out of out of people seeing us do the podcast because then they know we do podcasts. Right. So then they say, hey, we were thinking of doing and, I was going to ask you something. Oh, with regards to how you're posting your stuff, do you post, or even for your clients? Do you do everything manually or do you have like some type of services?

Jason Weitz40:57Yeah. So I mentioned before repurpose.io, which which sees any content that automatically posts it to other places. It even takes care of the, kind of, irritant of like, watermarks, like you use a post on TikTok and they have has a watermark if you, if you save it elsewhere. So this doesn't have that. So it's really nice service because also kind of side benefit is when my clients, if they want to make their own short form content, that's totally fine. They just need to posit their Facebook and it'll automatically post all over their network in about two hours. So that's been really nice having that system so I, you know, I'm using these tools in a very specific way, to set that up. And, you know, for then for posting, we, you know, you can use technically the, because we're using Facebook as our base so you can use the Facebook scheduler, but that only allows you to post out ten days. So I wanted to be able to post out further than that. So we're using, post that I and

Dario Nouri42:06Like, is there any risk of maybe like these social media platforms seeing, like the, like the repurpose that I website and, and maybe like blacklisting your account or like blocking you because I remember in the past, like they used to be an issue with some schedulers, like some people might run like it might trigger something on on their end and then your account might get blocked.

Jason Weitz42:29I don't think there's any risk of the account being blocked, but there's some debate still on the internet about whether or not the algorithm prefers it. You know, so if you post something to like directly and natively on TikTok, for example, it's supposed to do better, if you post it natively on Instagram, is supposed to do better. There's counter arguments for all of it. You know, there's arguments and counterarguments for everything. So that's the way we've been doing it for now. We haven't tested, we haven't had enough clients really yet to test if if it makes a difference if we post it individually everywhere. But the problem with posting it individually everywhere, especially these days, is the two factor authentication. And so you'd have to like every single day. You know, you'd be messaging your client saying like, hey, can I get into your account? And it's like, no, I don't, I don't want to do that. I it's annoying enough when, you know, something goes offline, you know, in repurpose or something, you have to message them and do that. So I don't want to do that. So that's why I'm sticking with repurpose for now.

Kyrill Lazarov43:37How long have you been now. Been doing the system or kind of like been trying to start have you been executing it so far?

Jason Weitz43:46About a year, I think, probably.

Kyrill Lazarov43:49So fairly new. Still, it's not, you're still kind of like trying to figure out the ins and outs of it as you go, right?

Jason Weitz43:56Yeah, a little bit. I mean, we we brought on a client, recently, and we go, we got it all up and running pretty smoothly. So I don't think there's any major hang ups, but I haven't really had the chance to, scale it or anything like that. Or, like I said, like, do any major testing with it. It's been a fairly slow, rollout over the year.

Kyrill Lazarov44:18Yeah. Like, as you mentioned, it's, it's a slow burn where, like, even making adjustments on the go for the client, it takes at least 30 days to even see the changes being posted, which also for the algorithm takes another probably 30 to 60 to 90 to 120 days for it to actually make an impact on the algorithm. So, yeah, when it comes to trying to do anything organic, it's going to take a while. So you'll probably get a better sense of how effective it can be within like another year or two, at least from at least like with some of the earlier clients. Right?

Jason Weitz44:51Yeah, yeah, I believe so.

Kyrill Lazarov44:53Do you still, do other types of video content as well, or do you mostly focus on this now? Like what's the kind of balance that you're trying to kind of figure out here.

Jason Weitz45:03Yeah. So I mean, I do a lot of, a lot of other stuff. So, I, I, you know, just I honestly like these last few, months, I've been doing a lot of shoots for restaurants, like in my. When I have the extra time, I just have shot it for an agency. So I've been doing that. I still do a lot of video business cards, which have been, which were kind of the thing I got started on. You know, it's their brand videos, whatever you want to call them. It's every business videographer is kind of bread and butter is those kind of, videos. And, I've made a few, ads. I'm starting to run Facebook ads and do full funnel offers now. So, yeah, I'm doing a bunch of other things.

Dario Nouri45:55Are you having success with the the ads, the Facebook ads?

Jason Weitz46:00So my I have had I've had, I've had a rocky relationship with Facebook ads and in the past in the, to the point where they blacklisted my account, and they wouldn't accept my.

Dario Nouri46:16Well.

Jason Weitz46:17So the funny thing about that is, at the time, I was in a, like a training program I was going through, and I was putting out this ad that was recommended, and it was like the exact same ad that, you know, me and the six other people in this group were putting out all at the same time.

Dario Nouri46:35Oh, that's what it was. It's a video. It.

Jason Weitz46:38Yeah, video ad. And for some reason they chose me to to block my account and, you know, all those other ones were running just fine, but mine got lucky.

Kyrill Lazarov46:49You're the sixth one.

Jason Weitz46:51Yeah, I guess so. So I, and the worst thing about it, the worst thing about it, is they will not tell you why. They just say you violated our terms of service. And you say what? Which terms of service? And they're like, we're not telling you.

Dario Nouri47:07You know what.

Kyrill Lazarov47:08I get it, I get it. It's it's the same with Google. Google has this weird thing, especially when you're trying to verify your business. Sometimes that that is something they're having like a problem. Right now.

Dario Nouri47:20We can't figure out a way to verify our new address.

Kyrill Lazarov47:23Like they're basically telling us. They're telling us we have to film the whole video from start to end. No cutting has to be on their platform. We did it several times and it said video couldn't upload. It's like.

Dario Nouri47:35You're like, it doesn't tell. You want us to verify this thing that.

Kyrill Lazarov47:39Like.

Jason Weitz47:39What I heard about that.

Kyrill Lazarov47:41Like it's it's now a thing because like before we had the issue of basically where they would send a code to your in a letter to. Yeah, that's.

Jason Weitz47:52How I did it.

Kyrill Lazarov47:53Yeah. That's how everyone did it. Like a few years ago. And then for some reason we did when we finally changed our address, I think like two years ago, they sent us, they said they sent the code. We never got it. Turns out what happened is that it went to a wrong address, but we didn't find out till later. But it was like a West versus east kind of thing. But when we were trying to get in touch with them, we basically were starting to, we told them we didn't get the code, and then they started telling us, okay, let's do a live call, and then you need to show us this, this and this. And so I would do a live call with them once and then show them like three of the things that they were asking for. And then they would say, oh, but do you also have this? And it's like, what are you talking about? You didn't say I needed this for the call. It's like, well, you need to do it. So I schedule another one. I get that one. I show them the new stuff and the old stuff, and then they're like, oh, what about this? It's like, can you just tell me all the parameters that you need included? I got no three calls. I had the third call. It still didn't work. And I like during that call, I said, so you guys also send these codes, right? They're like, yes. It's like, so if I sent this code to a random address and in that address, I just even if I'm not actually there, I just grab the code and then I input at home, it's going to work. And then the guy's like, yeah, it'll work. I'm like, you do realize how dumb this whole thing is, where you're making me jump through hoops over video call when I could just get the code, and then like a week later, we got the new code finally. And I just did it through that.

Dario Nouri49:24Thank I like I went back to the address. I'm like, something's missing here. Like, what are we doing wrong? And yeah, that's when I notice I'm like, oh, there's the same address on the east side or on the west side. We're on the east side. So whatever, Eglinton Avenue East, that's ours. But it was going to the west then.

Jason Weitz49:43Cheese. Yeah.

Dario Nouri49:44So dumb, so dumb.

Kyrill Lazarov49:46So we finally got it. We had the address for two years, but we wanted to change your address to somewhere downtown, like, get, like, a remote, working space downtown that we could work out of. And now they change the system where they don't send out those codes anymore, and.

Dario Nouri50:00And I don't know. I don't know if. I don't know if it's not uploading it, because when I was trying to figure out a way to do it, I was trying to see if there was another method. So I select the like. I went through the menu system, which was a fucking disaster. Like god damn like Google. I don't know who they hired as the to design their, their their system because I was trying to figure out an alternative way to do it. So I don't know if that now triggered something in their system where we have to do the live call, like, what the hell?

Kyrill Lazarov50:28But it's not even a live call that they're making us do. They're making us record it through their system.

Dario Nouri50:32So no, you have to. It's buried. It's buried. You can figure out the way to do a live call, but it's like within the settings. Like it's a it's a nightmare.

Kyrill Lazarov50:43Yeah. They they've made it next to impossible for small businesses to have a Google address.

Jason Weitz50:50Serial.

Kyrill Lazarov50:51Okay. I think we're nearing like the one hour mark already with the episode. How did you come up? Well, I guess you already mentioned how you came in. I just left mind. Yeah.

Dario Nouri51:01He's left minded. That's how he came up with it.

Kyrill Lazarov51:05But. Yeah. Jason, thank you so much for for joining us in the episode. Did you have any, before we go, did you have any questions for us or anything like that, or.

Jason Weitz51:14Would you want to start a new episode?

Dario Nouri51:16I was going to say, cool. Now it's not the time. We could talk about a post show if you want. Yeah, yeah.

Jason Weitz51:24But thanks for having me on, guys. It was a lot of fun.

Dario Nouri51:26Yeah. Let me, let me just do a shout out for you your, your, URL and whatnot. So guys, if you want to find Jason, go to left mind media.com and your socials are the same. I'm going to guess. Let me see you at left Mind media. Yeah yeah on Instagram. Are you on TikTok still or. Yeah okay. Perfect. Yeah. Go get my follow. And he's based out of Portland. So we'll end the episode there.