[00:00:00] Ken Okazaki: This is the magical thing about video when you could look someone in the eye and you feel the passion they have in their voice. That is something that a trained copywriter may be able to attain after a lot of experience. But anybody who's passionate about what they do, the person on the other side can feel it.

There is this shortened gap of time from when someone starts making video to when they could start effectively communicating what they're feeling to the viewer. Stop looking at your competition. Everybody who's very successful didn't start with where they're at now. They started something else and they evolved to that, and if you try to skip steps, you'll trip.

I've seen it happen too many times. Find your own path. Stop looking at the leaders and mimicking them. Get inspired by them. Don't mimic them.

[00:01:05] Hala Taha: What is up young Anders, you are listening to Yap, young and Profiting podcast, where we interview the brightest minds in the world and unpack their wisdom into actionable advice that you can use in your daily life. I'm your host, Taha. Thanks for tuning in and get ready to listen, learn and profit.

Welcome to Young and Profiting podcast. Ken

[00:01:40] Ken Okazaki: thank youso much. Really glad to be here.

[00:01:42] Hala Taha: I'm excited for this interview. As a lot of our listeners know, I'm a marketer and Ken is the video marketing guy, so Yapp bam. Today I'm joined by Ken ok Kazaki, otherwise known as a video marketing guy. Ken leads Oz Media Global and helps businesses optimize and launch their video campaigns.

He also owns Go Box Studio and 20 x Agency, and he offers done-for-you video agency services and done-for-you video coaching programs. He specializes in helping promote and market personal brands. In this episode, Ken will teach us the skills we need to optimize our video content to gain more views, leads, and sales through his seven figure video funnel framework.

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

[00:02:39] Ken Okazaki: Wow. You, you did do your research. So, 17 years old, I, this actually started when I was eight years old and, uh, I'm gonna compress this as much as I possibly can to honor everybody's time, but, There was a time I was sitting in the back of the classroom and I realized the teacher was teaching the same thing that was being taught a week ago.

And I went to my dad, I said, dad, why do they keep teaching the same stuff? And he says, well, maybe someone in the class didn't get it. And at that moment I realized that they're teaching everything to the pace of the slowest person. And I started feeling claustrophobic. I started feeling stressed about it and I said, how much more of this is there?

And he explained, you're in elementary school, you know, then there's junior high. And I was like, then I'm done. Right? And he goes, well then there's high school. And I said, and then I'm done, right? And he goes, well, you know, then there's college. And at that point I was like, there's gotta be another way. So long story short, he got me enrolled in American curriculum in Japan.

I'm Japanese, I live in Japan. I've never lived in the States, even though I sound kind of American, it's because I got enrolled in an American school. So this allowed me, cuz it was a correspondence course to go at my own pace. So by 17 I'd finished everything and I told my parents I wanted to leave home.

And I literally did that thing. Where you take a globe and you spin it, you close your eyes and you pop your finger down. It ended up in India. I told my parents, I'm leaving home, I'm going to India. And I did that. And it was 11 years of, you know, after leaving home, going to India, that I traveled to multiple countries, got married, had kids 11 years before I came back home to Japan.

Wow. So that's how we got started. The backstory. 

[00:04:10] Hala Taha: That's amazing. And then what first got you intrigued with video marketing? How did you first start dabbling in video marketing? 

[00:04:16] Ken Okazaki: Yeah, really good. After India, I was trying to figure out, hey, what's next? And I had a friend who was commissioned to create a documentary series in Uganda and he asked me, Hey, I need some help.

You know, how to like operate a camera and stuff, right? And I was like, sure. And I thought Uganda sounds like the next great stop for me. So I went and borrowed a camera. And just started playing with it, figuring out the settings. And this is 1999 actually, so that shows you how old I am. So I just figured it out because I wanted to get on this guy's team and make documentaries in Uganda.

So from there I just always had a camera in my hand. It was just second nature to me. We got to fly Air Force one with the president. We got to go silverback gorillas. I went into war zones with the Congo at the time when there was a civil war going on. So that was a lot of excitement and adrenaline kind of stuff I was looking for at that time.

That's how it all started. 

[00:05:09] Hala Taha: I love that. And so also from our research, we found out that you used to put on really big events with your dad for people like Tony Robbins. And you actually completed Tony Robbins' Platinum Partnership. Tony. Hopefully he is coming on the show soon. He asked to come on my show, but we still haven't booked it yet.

Excellent. And I'd love to understand, did you learn anything from Tony Robbins? When, or like what Did he inspire you in any way? 

[00:05:33] Ken Okazaki: Let me just get this straight. So Tony Robbins is asking you to come on this show yet? Here I am before him. So that, yeah, that's, that's a pretty big deal, right? 

[00:05:39] Hala Taha: Tony Robbins asked to come on my show.

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

[00:05:48] Ken Okazaki: he's got a busy schedule. Yeah. But I've seen the caliber of guests that come on your show, so I'm not at all surprised if in just a few short months you'll have a US president on here.

[00:05:59] Hala Taha: Aw, thanks, Ken. 

[00:06:00] Ken Okazaki: That's where I think this is going, but about the events. I used to do large scale events in Japan. Tony Robbins is one of the speakers we hired at one point. I did work with other partners, but people like Jordan Belfort, Les Brown, Nick Vu, Robert Kiyosaki, these are the kind of people that if you hire them and you get them to be the main draw of your event, you can put two to 8,000 people in a stadium.

And that's what we do every other month. And that was the business we did. And we did it primarily with video marketing. So that's why I got really confident what I do is I had the experience of putting butts in seats by telling a compelling story with video on social media. 

[00:06:39] Hala Taha: I love that. So let's get into the, you know, meat and potatoes of this interview.

We have the video marketing guy, guys on this podcast. We all know how important video is, but to really give us some foundational knowledge in terms of why video helps us convert more sales. Why is video the best marketing tactic to actually convert leads? 

[00:07:01] Ken Okazaki: Yeah, I'll answer that a little slightly differently. I don't know if it is the best for everybody in every situation, I've seen situations where people are running ad campaigns and they split test a video against an image. They split it against just text and I've seen it not perform the best. So, I'm not the guy who's gonna be shouting off the rooftop saying, everybody needs to do video all the time.

I think video is a great tool among a whole arsenal. You know, you need paid ads, right? Sometimes it's texts, sometimes there's a book people will be more attracted to than a video. So I think video is great to have in your arsenal, but don't make it the sole focus and, and shut your eyes off to all the other great things that are out there.

Blogging is still, by the way, extremely effective for getting SEO and and ranking on, on, uh, Google. So now that I've made that disclaimer, I think the great thing about video, there's this thing about being human. I think AI is getting pretty close to catching up, but when you could look someone in the eye and you see the whites of their eye and you feel the passion they have in their voice, that is something that a trained copywriter may be able to attain after a lot of experience.

But, Anybody who's passionate about what they do, person on the other side can feel it. And that's why there's this a shortened gap of time from when someone starts making a video to when they could start effectively communicating not just the words that they're saying, but what they're feeling to the viewer.

And that's the magical thing about video. 

[00:08:26] Hala Taha: I love that. And I'm happy that you made that distinguishing factor, cuz it's true. Everybody ha can, like, there's different things that work for, for everyone in different scenarios. And so you've gotta make sure that you use the right tool in your toolbox. So speaking of having to sort of how people are on a spectrum when it comes to their video skills, you talk about this in your book.

You say that they're either a dabbler, a part-timer, a pro, or a rockstar. So talk to us about from all the way to a dabbler, to a rockstar, what are the elements of each person?

[00:08:57] Ken Okazaki: Yeah. Well, the dabblers the one who's gonna. See somebody else, maybe a friend or an associate on social media, and they're gonna pick up their phone and say, I can do that.

And they shoot a few videos, they get exhausted and they, what happens? They put in the effort, but they don't do it consistently enough that it becomes a habit and they start getting traction so they, they've got no money as a result of it. 99.99% of the time, it's not gonna go anywhere. Then at the next level, you got people who actually do this consistently, but they're not at the point where they can get people to the point of a sale.

Like maybe you don't have a product, you don't have a business set up, and you're gonna reach some success and we'll call that bonus money. Every now and then, somebody might pop up and they'll, they'll Google you and find what you've got to offer and they'll buy it, but it's not consistent. Then anything above that, what's happening is consistency systems and processes so that it's no longer when you feel like it, you're treating it like an occupation, a career job.

If you don't show up, things don't happen. And that's when success builds on success. And that's when people start realizing, hey, this person is a pillar in this vertical, in this niche, in this industry. And the more they hear you, the more they want to hear about you. I'm not gonna go into too much detail here for the sake of time, but the rock stars are the people who in a nutshell, you no longer pushing your content.

It's your audience is pulling the content from you. Like the demand for it is greater than your effort to push it out there. You're getting more people to share it. You're getting people requesting to be on your show. You're getting so much engagement that you'll never run out of ideas because you can just look at the comments and use that for the your, your content ideas.

And that's that feeling of getting pulled. And once you reach that, there's a lot of people who just realize that there is this, I guess it's like the flywheel type of feeling, and that's flow. And that's where, that's where I want all my clients to get. 

[00:10:49] Hala Taha: I love that. I hope that we all get to that place with our videos.

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

[00:11:05] Ken Okazaki: Yeah. It was like I chased Jarvis, he's the one who said that phrase, the best cameras one you've got with you, right?

And we've all got phones real quick. One of the things women always ask me is, how can I look thinner? And the simplest way is to just raise your phone. If it's like here, just, just at a h slightly higher level than your eyes, what's gonna happen is gonna taper your whole figure down to more like a V where your eyes are gonna pop a little bit bigger, your forehead's gonna look well, hopefully a lot too big.

But what happens is you get that really nice pointy jawline and everything as it goes further down looks a little bit slimmer. And it's just this, you know, working the angles, right? Yeah. Ideally, most people are gonna want to be exactly an eye level, and there's this experiment I did where. I sat people across from a diner table with me and had conversations with them, and then I, I met people in person.

And the thing is that people consistently told me, they felt more connected to me when they're sitting across and I realized what's happening is the length of your legs are canceled out and you're much more likely to be seeing exactly eye to eye with someone. Because when you're standing, the height difference really makes you feel either short or tall, inferior, superior, child, parent.

There's these, these relationships that this, our psychological brains have already embedded in there, but when you get the camera exactly at your eye level, then there's that phrase seeing eye to eye. And people no longer feel threatened by you or they don't feel superior to you. They feel like they could have a one-on-one conversation with you.

And right now I'm looking at your camera set up, you're exactly eye to eye. My camera's slightly higher simply because the way my room is set up, I can't get it lower. But ideally, if you got a phone, then you don't know where to start. Get it right at eye level. A lot of people have it low. That's what I call the nose hair zone, where people are literally seeing your nose.

Hairs not the most attractive angle. So I think one really simple thing is just figure out your angles. Do you wanna look a little bit more petite, slim? Do you wanna look eye to eye like you're having a conversation or do you want to be a little bit more dominant looking a bit of a bigger like father figure?

Then you bring it a little bit lower, not too low. You get stuck in the nose, hair zone. 

[00:13:08] Hala Taha: Yeah. This is really great and I, I don't remember who told me this, but to your point, when you're looking up in your video, you actually look like you're less authoritative. If it's slightly lower, you look more authoritative.

But like you said, you don't wanna have people look in your nose. 

[00:13:23] Ken Okazaki: And here's one small trick. I've had so many female clients and they're deathly afraid of showing a tiny bit of a double chin, which I do sympathize with them. And there's this, I call it the chicken move. And this is something that I learned because I've watched it behind the scenes of Tom Cruise at one of his debuts and.

From the front, they're about to take the group photo. Right. And he's standing there. What he does is he cranes his chin out as far as he can toward the camera. And I realized that when he was sitting natural, he had a tiny bit of a double chin. And I don't even saw this cuz there was a side angle, someone shot a view from, there's like 3, 2, 1 and he goes like this.

But then here's the thing from from front. But actually you can't really tell right. And if you're looking right at the camera and you're definitely afraid of the, the double chin, you just kind of stuck your head for like a chicken, a turtle move. Yeah. Or or a turtle. And then I started seeing it everywhere in Hollywood photo shoots.

If you look from the side angle, all the women are doing that right before the photo or before like a closeup shot. I thought that is so brilliant. Nobody even knows it happens cuz they're not looking for it. So it's just a hack. Especially cuz I know women are very conscious about how they look and, and they should be.

It's just a little trick that might help you. 

[00:14:34] Hala Taha: Yeah. I love that. And I know that you have this phrase, love the lens. Yes. What does that mean to you? 

[00:14:40] Ken Okazaki: Right now I'm looking right at the camera, right? I'm looking right at you. And hopefully the viewer can, can see that I'm looking right at the camera. If I were to look just a little bit off, then it feels different.

Right now I'm looking at the monitor where you are, and I tested conversions on this. And when you're looking right at the camera, and even if it's the difference of looking right at the camera here or at your own face, the conversions on the video will change. I don't know if you've heard of someone named Alex Harm, but I audited his stuff on Instagram and on TikTok.

And we look for the things that the algorithms can't find because we manage a lot of people's social media and we wanna make sure we're giving good advice. I don't make predictions. I look at data and I look at how can we use that to help them move forward, right? And we look for patterns in the top performing videos, in the bottom performing videos, and we look for the commonalities.

And one of the commonalities that we found is when he is looking off camera, those are like 80% of the videos that were in the bottom 10% here, he's looking off camera. And 80% of the video is in the top 10%. He's looking straight into the camera. And when I saw that, I was like, where else can we see this pattern?

And most people, it's the same thing. So loving the lenses, disciplining yourself to look at the little black dot, I call it black circle confidence. That black circle is your audience. It's not looking at your own face is vanity, right? So if you can get to that level then, then without effort, you're gonna be getting more engagement.

People will feel like they're more connected to you on video. 

[00:16:06] Hala Taha: Yeah. And it makes sense because eye contact works in real life. Of course it's gonna work online, the same things with human behavior transfer online or offline, so Makes sense. How about having movement in your video? What is the importance of that?

[00:16:19] Ken Okazaki: Yeah. Movement is, I took this from an evolutionary perspective where as hunter gatherers, when we we're looking for the prey, right? Anything that moves is where our attention will go. It could be danger or it could be food. And our brains are tuned to snap to. Where the movement is, and there are simple ways you can do this in your videos.

When I start my videos, a lot of times I start with, Hey guys, how's it going? I put my hand real close to the camera every 15 seconds or so. If you're holding your phone, I just pivot about 90 degrees, changes the whole background, but I'm still in the frame. Uh, a lot of videos that are really successful are the ones where there's a monologue of some inspirational quote, but then you just see someone doing things.

Something like laying bricks or cutting lawns, but that movement is what keeps you engaged. So whatever you do, keep resetting people's attention with movement. For example, in this podcast, I'm gonna guess that there's gonna be cuts that's gonna show your face, my face. That's movement. Right. But if you're not gonna be editing, you could do things like moving closer to the camera, further from the camera, using hand gestures.

There's all kinds of ways you can do that. 

[00:17:21] Hala Taha: Yeah. And I, I see lots of influencer like walking with their phone outside and things like that. So this really helps me cuz I'm thinking about a lot of my videos. I'm sitting down in like a, on a couch. I should probably be moving around. 

[00:17:33] Ken Okazaki: Well there is, what you do, well I've been researching you too, is you can either do the movement with your hands and with the camera and get that uploaded right away, or you can send it to an editor and they do the movement with titles, with emojis, with little animations on the screen.

All of that is movement. So if you're not at the level where you can edit like that, then use practical movement. But if you have an editor, then they can do that for you. 

[00:17:56] Hala Taha: Okay, that makes sense. And then in terms of lighting, using your iPhone, what do we need to know? 

[00:18:02] Ken Okazaki: Well, there's two things you gotta know.

Number one, avoid direct sunlight. It's gonna make you like 10 years older. If that's what you're going for, then go for it. But most people are not. But the most important thing is to just hold your camera up, look at your face, and turn around 360, wherever you're at. And then you'll very quickly see where there's more light coming from in front, then behind.

And that's really the most basic tip you can keep that will be effective everywhere. So you go into a hotel room, you wanna make sure that you're facing the big window and you're not having it as your background. Cause that's gonna make you either look like a silhouette or make the background look like it's totally white.

So face the light. And if you got that, then I think that everything else falls into place pretty quickly. 

[00:18:49] Hala Taha: Awesome. So fun Fact, and I, I've heard you talk about this a few times. 80% of men and 69% of women use their phone while on the toilet. And you've taken this data and created something called the toilet strategy. So what does the toilet strategy, and what does this data tell us about how we should be conducting video marketing?

[00:19:10] Ken Okazaki: Yeah. I don't know about you, but I happen to use my phone in the toilet. And when I realized that there's that huge percentage, cause that's, that's kind of like literally your downtime, right? So that's when you're like, you know, you're checking messages, looking at social media, and there's a couple things going on here.

And right now it may seem obvious, but when I first presented this at a conference, everybody was like, oh my, you know, smack my head like, that's so obvious. Why didn't I think of it? But when your audience is in the toilet, you have to, well put it this way, tune your videos as if you're speaking to someone on the toilet.

So there's a couple things that we, about number one, you wanna make sure there's captions on every single word, because when you're in a public bathroom, it's very rare that you're gonna want the speakers blaring while you're in there, right? So immediately someone's gonna mute. If they can't hear you or read you, then they're gonna skip off, right?

So that's rule number one. Rule number two about the toilet strategy is the length. There are so many times on, uh, where I've seen a video, I thought, this is great. And then what we've done is eye tracking tests. The first thing we look at is the title to see if we wanna stop. The second one is the Person's Eyes.

The third place we look, believe it or not, is the play bar to see how long it is. And that's through eye tracking data. And if the video is too long, like you probably wanna spend five minutes in the bathroom, max. If it's a 20 minute video, what happens is, this is a great video, but I don't have 20 minutes.

See Safer later. Which by the way, nobody ever goes to the safer related video and actually watches them. It's, it is a black hole where things go in and never come back out. So you never wanna get safer later. There's the length you wanna keep it. Two minutes max. Nowadays it's under a minute. It get keeps getting shorter.

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

For example, YouTube. 

[00:21:05] Hala Taha: Yeah. Let's take it to LinkedIn for a second. So you may not know this. I'm one of the biggest influencers on LinkedIn. 

[00:21:11] Ken Okazaki: I do know it. You are everywhere. 

[00:21:13] Hala Taha: Oh, thank you. And I have a LinkedIn masterclass and one of the things that I discovered when I was preparing this masterclass is that a lot of people are watching videos with the sound off.

And I realized that well, LinkedIn especially, everyone has a job. Everyone is college graduate. Serious professional. But the most engaging times on that platform is 10:00 AM in everyone's time zone. So they're watching videos at work and I was like, duh, everyone's watching videos at work. That's why any video that's either super long or needs sound performs terrible on that platform.

It needs to look really different. Pattern disruption needs to be engaging with the sound off and be short. Otherwise, videos do not work on that platform unless they're linked in live and people are treating them like an event. That's right. So I would love to understand your perspective on the importance of engaging video with the sound off.

[00:22:09] Ken Okazaki: I think that people have been fighting for, let's say, fighting against it for so long because radio came up before tv, right? There are silent films also where, but they had to have an orchestra right in there. So sound has always been such a big part of it, but sound is something that is most enjoyed as a group setting.

Now everything is going into individual entertainment where every single person, I, I have six kids by the way. Oh wow. When I grew up, there was movie night, we all sat together on the one tiny tv. Like that was the whole family. Now it's like, let's movie night and everybody's just like, I'm watching this series and I'm watching that series and I'm on the phone, I'm on my iPad, we're on the tv.

So it's becoming an individual experience and just like at work, you're not gonna get a group of coworkers to sit around and watch a program. Everybody's like at the cubicle, in the bathroom, in the hall, you know, on their getting a cup of coffee. It's an individual experience. And as an individual experience, sound is becoming less and less prominent.

Now, I know a podcast experience is completely different and we're not, that's a completely different category, but when it comes to the decoupling of the visual experience and the audio experience, the main reason is because it's becoming an individual experience where sound radiates at all directions.

Whereas light can be directed just toward your eyes. 

[00:23:22] Hala Taha: Yeah. And so I think the moral of the story is that especially on a platform like LinkedIn, I don't know if Instagram is necessarily the same. You've gotta make sure that your videos are engaging with and without the sound on, it's gotta make sense what captions, whatever it is.

[00:23:36] Ken Okazaki: Very true. You finished the edit, then watch it back without sound. And if it's not fun, then fix it. That's the quick hack around that. If you're not enjoying it without sound, then fix it. 

[00:23:47] Hala Taha: Totally. And that's such a big hack. Okay. You already told me about the timing of videos. I think it's a good time to transition into your seven figure video marketing funnel.

So first of all, define video marketing funnel. What does that even mean? 

[00:23:59] Ken Okazaki: So a lot of people have looked at courses, right? Like somebody teaches you here's how to make money and how here's how to get clients. And I've gone through a lot of them myself and almost all the time there's gonna be some form of like, okay, you gotta sign up to ClickFunnels or high level, or you know, whatever other platform there is.

And there are a lot of great ones out there. And I've survey a whole bunch of people. Who actually went through courses. And one of their frustrations is that every course or coaching program tells them they gotta sign up to this 300 to 500, or they're buying thousands of dollars of SaaS products. And I thought, what if I run an experiment on myself where all we're doing is using free tools, social media, the phone in your pocket, and just a payment system, Stripe or PayPal or something.

Can I actually convert leads and sales with that? And I did an experiment, and that was the premise of the book. I scaled something to over seven figures where all I did was shoot videos on social media, engaged with my audience through the videos, directed people to a payment page, and then actually started coaching them on Zoom.

And this is something that a lot of people don't realize that like if you don't get the messaging right, if you don't understand how to connect with the audience, forget these complicated funnels and trip wires and automations and zaps, that comes later. Because what you're doing is you're taking something that works and interaction with your audience.

Something that works, that turns to money and systematizing it. But a lot of people go and create the system first and then try to connect with their audience and then they realize, wait, we built this domino tower in the wrong direction. It's a sad story I've seen over and over. So that's the concept, is use what you have.

Don't get into the tech and the craziness unless this is your third or fourth or fifth time around then, then go for it. Cuz you've done this. If it's your first time around, use your phone, use free social media, get clients, and unless those three tick boxes are marked, then don't go and buy fancy software.

[00:25:50] Hala Taha: Yeah. I love this approach. I give this same advice. I see a lot of people who are creating products and they don't even know if people want these products and they go down this whole rabbit hole investing all this money and then they have no demand. Right? So that's a problem. I just actually interviewed the president of Shopify and we were talking about how things are changing now, where creators are sort of, uh, flipping the script on how businesses are made.

They're building an audience first, figuring out what they want, and then. Selling to them rather than building something and then finding the audience. Right. So I feel like this really fits nicely with, with what you're teaching. And just to clarify, so you're not suggesting that these videos are paid ads against them, you're just saying organically?

[00:26:31] Ken Okazaki: Organically, yes. Now when it comes to paid ads, here's, here's how I feel about it. And this is what I do with my clients. And by the way, I have turned away a lot of clients or potential clients who said, Hey, I've got this stack of cash, could you build this thing for me? And I said, well, what have you sold so far?

And they said, it's nothing. It's brand new. I said, what have you done in the past? And they said, nothing. I said, I think you're too early. Because I don't want to have a one year relationship with a client and then not get them results because I don't have anything to build on with them. So, you know, they say, well, you're the expert.

I'm like, I'm the expert at blowing up what's working. Not at inventing something from scratch for you. 

[00:27:04] Hala Taha: Yeah. You need product market fits, sir. 

[00:27:06] Ken Okazaki: Exactly. But let's get back to the thing about ads. Here's what we do. You've got a lot of videos that have gotten hundreds of thousands of views. I few that have gotten millions, and those videos.

Have been tested organically and they've been proven to convert better than anything else. So what I tell my clients and what we do is we just push 'em out organically on social media. We come back a month later, see what the highest performers are and then turn those into ads. We don't invent an ad from scratch because we want the most return on our ad spend.

So you're gonna get the most reach with the videos that do well organically. So we go organic first, then convert them to ads, and it's that simple. 

[00:27:44] Hala Taha: That makes so much sense. So put the money behind the things that get the high engagement because you know they work that have already been proven to work. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Okay, so let's get into how we create this video funnel. First step is coming up with a hockey puck title. So what are hauck titles and uh, why do we need to actually plan our content around a title rather than do it the opposite way? 

[00:28:07] Ken Okazaki: Really good question. Hockey puck title, it's, when I was a kid, I was really into hockey, ice hockey.

And Wayne Gretzky said that famous quote, I don't go to where the puck is. I go to where it's gonna be. And when it comes to the title, it's no longer thinking about like, I'm gonna create some content and then figure out how to get people there. It says like, no, I'm gonna figure out how to get people's attention and then I'll put a tail end on it.

And for me, the tail end is really the content. So Puck about title is about composing great titles. It's about researching and figuring out what words are gonna rank, what kind of triggers your audience. When I say trigger, I don't mean that in a negative way, but you know what's gonna get them engaged psychologically.

And once you have a list of titles, you can talk to that, for example, holla. If I asked you if there's a title that says The two biggest Mistakes that First Time Podcasters make that's costing them thousands, I'll bet you could riff on that for five minutes or an hour straight if you wanted to, because that's your expertise.

So we go into what's people's expertise and then we, we make the eye catching titles that they can talk, speak to, or, or fill the space on. 

[00:29:11] Hala Taha: Yeah. And so this is relevant to YouTube, like you said, could also be love relevant for like live streams, LinkedIn, live streams of titles. Now, Instagram, TikTok, you don't really have titles.

[00:29:21] Ken Okazaki: So instead of a title, you just use that as your opening statement. And if that doesn't get people's attention, then you're doing something wrong. So the title can be the opening statement, which other people would call the hook, the actual visual title. It can be in the thumbnail, but just think of it as the first information that hits your viewer.

[00:29:39] Hala Taha: Yeah, and that example that you gave in that hook, you did some things that I noticed, right? I'm a marketer too. So use the superlative, the best, the worst used numbers. For some reason, people love numbers and hooks, and you made it relevant to me. It was about podcasters. And you even give monetary value, which also will p people's interest more.

The more numbers you can stuff in a hook, the better. So let's move on to Hilda, which is your framework for building a video. What else do we need to know about hooks? 

[00:30:07] Ken Okazaki: Lemme tell you one real quick thing though, about the title. Yeah, it's the shortcut, the left brain, right brain theory. Everybody's got their opinions on that.

But I'll tell you what has effectively worked is you want to engage both sides. You want big numbers, and for some reason, even if it's, you know, zero with 20 zeros, that's, that's a big number. Psychology is gonna right? And you want an emotional word, and if you put an emotional, expressive word and a big number together, then you gotta wrap the context around that.

So I try to think of that first. Then you're hitting the left brain, right brain, and whether the person is leaning one way or the other, what mood they are in that time of the day. Hopefully it's gonna be the biggest dragnet to get the most attention to your content. 

[00:30:51] Hala Taha: Give us an example of doing that strategy.

[00:30:53] Ken Okazaki: Emotional word might be something like, I quit. Right? That's an emotional, like a statement, right? And then a big number would be something, you give me a number and I'll, I'll make up something to go with that. 10 billion. 10 billion, okay. So I could say my path from zero to 10 billion, I quit. I was just like, what the heck does that mean?

Now you're laughing. You might, you might actually click that, right? Yeah. Now it's gotta be contextual to who you are as a person. You know, don't, don't make up stuff that has nothing to do with you. And if it was for me, it's 10 billion, I would, oh, I might like pick up a camera and say, uh, 10 billion pixels I quit.

Like, I might make some content on like, where are we gonna go as far as, you know, like the resolution and, and doesn't really matter at this point. That could be something you talk about. 

[00:31:37] Hala Taha: Yeah. So for hooks lately I've been using chat G B T for anything that I have to come up with some sort of title. I'm like, say this in 10 different ways, right?

This, have you been using chat G B T for that kind of thing? 

[00:31:49] Ken Okazaki: We have this one-on-one coaching with our clients cuz a lot of agencies, they actually provide all the tools. They say, just send us the video and we'll do everything else for you. Send us the podcast, we'll do everything or we'll give you all the gear.

The gap in the market is. Actually someone to show up and live direct and coach people. A lot of people, they don't create it because they don't have the time. Their schedule's too full or they get set up and then their hour turns into 15 minutes because of all the other stuff that's taken care of. But the accountability, so our coach is actually now using some AI using their own experience as marketers.

We'll create all of the content plans and that that's the hook. Whether it's a question you ask them that they can answer, whether it's finish the sentence, whether it's a framework. I have a few frameworks like what I just showed you, the the number and the emotional word. There's, there's a hundred others, but we'll get them all planned out and then we'll have a conversation for an hour and shoot anywhere from 10 to 30 videos within that hour.

And that's the short form content. So the hooks nowadays using chat, G P T does help us get there faster. So we're no longer starting from zero. We're starting from maybe 60 or 70, and then our coaches will finish the rest. 

[00:32:52] Hala Taha: Yeah, I love that. So let's talk about the acronym, Hilda. So this is how you break down your video steps.

We already covered hooks. And I'm sure in your book you probably have, like you said, so many different formulas for hooks. 

[00:33:04] Ken Okazaki: I'll run you through this as quickly as I can. Okay? Yeah. So medium format content, this works really well. So we're medium format is anywhere from 10 to 12 minutes, and that's my definition.

Start with the hook. Introduce yourself, lead their anticipation into something you're gonna deliver. And then finally ask them to do something at the end. Silda Hook, intro, lead, deliver, ask Hook. We explained that a bit earlier, but you've got about, by the time I wrote the book, I think it said it was about seven seconds.

Now, especially in the short form videos that are less than a minute, you got about three seconds and I can show you the numbers behind that and the data we have based that on introduce yourself. Now, it's not as necessary as it used to be, but if you must, if you feel like you must say, Hey, my name is Ken Zaki and I'm blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Always put that after the fact that they're bought into what you're about to say. But the truth is, nowadays, if they wanna know who you're, they'll just tap your little profile, you know, face and, and they could see that If you're gonna say it, keep it short. First name, we help what you do. Five seconds or less.

And that's sounds cruel, but it's real. The longer you talk about yourself, I'm sure you've looked at those engagement graphs on YouTube, right? That that's where people drop off is when you're talking about yourself. But some people have got it. So I say, if you must make sure you hook them in right lead, this is where you start telling a story.

This is where you start giving context. Like, I read this newspaper article the other day and it got me thinking about this. I was talking to my friend or the way I discovered this, the importance of what I'm about to share. You're just setting up the big reveal and that's what you're gonna deliver next.

So this is where you actually spend the most time because the moment you release the tension, when you deliver something and release the dopamine, so de can also be for dopamine. That's when people feel satisfied, satiate. And you gotta build this tension. Release it. It's a classic. Frank Coppola, you know, strategy and video directing.

And then at the end, and this is a, there was a marriage counselor who uh, was asked by this woman's like, Every time I ask my my husband anything, he always says, no, I wanna buy a dress. No, I wanna go on vacation. No, I wanna buy this vacuum cleaner. No. And he says, well, here's what you gotta do. You gotta one day light some candles, cook 'em an amazing meal, put on your, your sexiest neglige.

Give him mind blowing sex. And then afterwards ask him, she goes, what? He goes, just try it. It, it absolutely worked. And I'm like, and then she goes back and says, why did that work? He goes, he's got so much dopamine running through his brain. It's so easy to get it. Yes. So I thought, well, if we get that level of dopamine, and I'm, I'm not sure if we could match what she did for her husband, but we wanna get some dopamine going where they feel like they had an aha moment.

Right then is when you wanna flip it and say, Hey, would you please join my group or download this, or click a certain link? And it's the timing that's so important. 

[00:35:42] Hala Taha: This is so interesting. So I wanna, I wanna ask some probing questions on each part. So for the intro, based on what you said, it sounds like if it's a cold audience, you probably should, if it's paid cold, probably should introduce yourself to show some sort of social proof.

Right? And if it's warm or like on your own social media, maybe don't do that because mostly it's gonna be your followers seeing it unless it goes viral and then they'll click on your profile if they wanna learn more. Is, does that sound right? 

[00:36:07] Ken Okazaki: It's really hard for me to cover every situation, cuz right now, like for example, I'm a guest on your podcast, there's YouTube videos, there's superstore form.

But generally, yes, I think that's a good guideline. 

[00:36:17] Hala Taha: Okay, cool. Something that I thought was interesting is that you suggested don't use your last name from my understanding why just first name in the intros, 

[00:36:24] Ken Okazaki: you want people to feel friendly toward you. And like when I speak to you, I'll probably just say Hala, you know, and you might say, Ken, While we're having this conversation, we are not consistently using full names because we feel comfortable with each other.

And what we're doing is assuming rapport, we're not assuming formality. When you assume rapport, the other person's more likely to get on board and assume rapport back with you. And then later on they might feel more open to sending you a DM and say, Hey, I checked out your video. Would love to learn more.

It's more likely to happen because they feel more rapport because that's how you started the conversation with them. 

[00:36:58] Hala Taha: Oh, that's so interesting. I always say good branding is making people feel like you're an old friend. So that, that makes a lot of sense to me.

[00:37:05] Ken Okazaki: I think we're on the same page. 

[00:37:06] Hala Taha: Yeah. Okay, so let's talk about this step in terms of leading their anticipation.

This is where a lot of people get stuck. Why do people get stuck in this part? And can you give us some like real tangible examples of how you can do this? 

[00:37:20] Ken Okazaki: This part is more art than science cuz the, there are a million ways we can do it. So let's give a live example. Let's say the thing I wanna teach someone is, Well with the Go Box studio, which you have, there's this cool feature where you can draw right over the video screen.

And a lot of people first saw that when I actually invented that, that process couldn't get a patent too bad. But there's tons of people were asking me, how do you do that? So I made a quick video about it and then leading up to showing, you know, the exact steps, one, two, and three. I talked about all the frustrations of the processes.

I tried. I was like, you know, I really wanted to get this effect where I was drawing on the screen. So one was I actually bought this piece of glass and I had it lit like a lightboard, but it was big and clunky and I couldn't take it anywhere with me, and it took a lot of time to build. And then I tried this.

I try and I tell them about all the failures and people are bought into this journey, and then when I teach 'em how to do it, they're just like, oh my God. Compared to all the effort that you went through, thank you so much for this cool hack. It gave more weight and gravitas and more value to what I actually taught them because I gave them a bit of the journey to how we got there.

So that could be like a little bit of an origin story on something. That's one way. One of the favorite ways that I see work effectively is how, because most of my clients are business coaches, is they tell a story of the before and after of the transformation their client had, and then explain the process for how they do it.

You might say something, you know, I worked with this man, he's 55 years old. He's got three beautiful kids and a wife. But the wife was constantly stressed because he was never home and the kids were not, he wasn't gonna see, gonna see the kids grow up. He was making good money, but his health was deteriorating at, already saw his wife and they, he never got to keep his promises for vacations.

Came to me saying, I gotta get this fixed, but I don't wanna sacrifice any my income. So what I did is, and they teaches that 1, 2, 3 steps. Now people are bought into the steps because they might be that 50 year old person who has their life out of balance and they have money, but no time. So that's, those are some examples of how can you give context, tell a story, or paint a picture that sets up what you're about to share.

[00:39:27] Hala Taha: This is so good, Ken, like, you are so brilliant. I've, I've had video marketers on the podcast before, but by far I feel like you are giving the best advice. Thank you. You really know your stuff. You really, really know your stuff. So let's talk about delivering value. One thing that I just wanna stress to my listeners is, from my understanding, what you say in your hook is the value that you're promising, right?

So you need to make sure you deliver on your hook. Otherwise, people are gonna leave your video and be like, you didn't, I watched this for no reason. Click bait, right? That's what click bait is. It is. So talk to us about how we can frame up delivering our value and what we need to know about that. 

[00:40:06] Ken Okazaki: Yeah. Let me paint a quick picture for you. Say you're a drug dealer and social media, by the way. I see the closest analogy. It's like a farm and like, let, you gotta plot the land on the farm. And the person who owns the farm is, you know, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, they own the farm and you are leasing a plot.

Now what's going on is when you create content, then. The product is your content. And they use that and they sell it. The only thing on social media university across all platforms that is a universal currency is time. People buy time. The advertisers buy it from the farmer. And you're just the person who's volunteering to create, to work the farm for them, which is amazing that they convinced us to do this.

So now that we've got this analogy where time is a monetizable product, it actually is money. It's bought and sold every single day, millions of times, billions of dollars. And when you understand this, then what you gotta think is like, well, if I am buying and selling time, and that's the currency of social media.

When someone watches a video, let's say they spend three minutes, they pay you three units of time, and what are you getting in return? What you gotta give them is a dopamine hit because otherwise they will not get addicted. They won't come back, they won't feel like they got their money's worth. So if you say, Hey, get over here, you know, spend three minutes with me and I'm gonna give you a dopamine hit.

They come. They pay their three minutes and you don't give it, two things are gonna happen. Number one, they're gonna feel like, Hey, you are a scumbag. And number two, I'm never coming back and I might even tell people to avoid you. And that's what happens when the promise doesn't meet the delivery. So what you want to do is give them a dope minute.

And I think another way to say this is aha moment. If you could ha get people, like right now, I see you're nodding. I love that when I see people nodding, I'm like, that's, we're on the same page. They're having an aha moment here, and that transaction was successful, very likely they'll come back. So you just gotta deliver what you say you're gonna deliver.

If you say, I'm gonna teach you the most mind blowing strategy to use Chachi pt, that will earn me $12,000 in the next 30 days. And then you actually show screenshots and demonstrate it. That is a good fit. But if you say it and then give some general advice without showing anything that's actually believable, not a high chance that people will continue coming back, they'll be disappointed.

That's the kind of the match you're looking for there. 

[00:42:22] Hala Taha: Yeah. So the dopamine is actually what gets people coming back and addicted to our videos and get, gets you super fans. Okay, so the last step is asking for the right thing. How do we know what that right thing is? 

[00:42:36] Ken Okazaki: A lot of people spend a lot of time talking about how, you know, really ballooning up their whatever their free thing is.

And a lot of times it's, you know, it's a pdf, maybe it's a book or something, right? All I say is there's three columns. There's who, what, how. And it's just like, hey, if, if you're a, a business coach and uh, you're looking to do a what, which is use video more effectively in your business and you want the X thing cheat sheet or free download or the 30 minute course on something, and then I would usually, instead of saying click below for the link because nowadays people don't like clicking link.

I'd say comment X below or share this with a friend. These are things that people are more likely to do and. Besides clicking a link, clicking links is, I don't know. I think everybody has a little bit of a phobia that they're gonna get shot down a rabbit hole or something. So I usually get them to comment something.

That way they're initiating their reach out to me. I use that comment as a starting point for what we call the smooth segue, where we segue people from viewing to engaging 

[00:43:43] Hala Taha: and then you'll re-target them in the dms or something like that. Sounds like 

[00:43:46] Ken Okazaki: I have a conversation with them. You know, I just chat and say, Hey, thanks for the comment.

I think you're looking for X resource. Is that right? And they say, yes, I'll send it to them. Then I'll probe a little bit into whether I can help them in with my business. 

[00:43:59] Hala Taha: Got it. Okay. So moving along your framework, the next piece is the missing link. So in your book you write, you've got to offer something that's priceless to your viewer. Free. Free to give. That is the missing link between where they are. So. Tell us more about this concept. 

[00:44:22] Ken Okazaki: Yeah, between where they are and where they want to be.

So a lot of times, like if, if I said to you all of that, you can absolutely earn enough money to have a 500 foot yacht. Now you might get a picture of yourself cruising this yacht, you know, hanging out with Yoel Musk and everything. And I'm exaggerating here for demonstration purposes. But then a lot of people will start dreaming about that.

But it's really hard for people to actually identify what are the steps to get there. And then I might say, but the thing you're missing is the right connections to the people who can make that happen. The vehicle, which is gonna be your business. And I'm not sure what I'm making stuff up here, I'm going a little bit farfetched here, but paint the picture of what's possible and then remind them of where they're at.

And then talk about the few steps that are in between now that the thing they never knew they ever always needed can be, for example. A software tool, it can be a free training. It's something that you can give infinitely for free without costing you money. And that's what's important. Otherwise, it's very hard to manage free marketing with physical products.

And there are, there are people who have figured that out. So an example I gave before was I give them new information. And this is back when, this is before TikTok really blew up. I wrote this book. So just for context, I used to say with the toilet strategy, I said, you know what? When 60 to 70% of people are sitting on the toilet when they watch video, number one's number two, and I found that if you have captions on the video, then it's gonna make the engagement go much higher.

And I give some stats around that. And number three, and you wanna put out these videos every single day in order to build on that engagement. Now everybody's thinking, I need to create videos with titles on top captions, and they, I need to make them every day. And then I say, I've made a free tutorial that will show you how to use some free tools and shoot this on your phone and get it done in under three minutes for one minute video.

Would you like it right now? So I gave them information about where they want to be and then they, they get excited, but they don't realize that there's a free tool that's gonna help them do it. Now everybody wants to download this tool and I give it to them for free. Now you could just go to TikTok and that'll do it for you pretty much.

But that's an example of something that worked really well and give 'em the information and then revealed that there's a gap and then offered it to them for free. 

[00:46:33] Hala Taha: So if I was embarking on a video market strategy, I think I would a start to think about all of my customer pain points and then start to think of mini free solutions that I could create.

I think you call them micro solutions, right? That I could create for free, or it might cost me a little money, but I could be able to give it away for free. And then you would want to then upsell them to some higher ticket offer once they're hooked in and they got some value from you. 

[00:47:00] Ken Okazaki: Exactly. Or you just nurture them in your emails until at some point when they're ready, they'll come to you.

Just keep writing them. You're there. In your example, what I would do is I would look for. Like research data, like specific data that's that's a little bit obscure, but that you can apply to what you do. You can say something like, did you know that videos that have this certain type of animation in the beginning get higher conversions than others?

Or did you know that there's four words I use toward the end of all of my call to actions that makes the ads convert better? I'm not sure what that's gonna be. Did you know that when I wear this certain combination of colors, you know, or have this kind of guest, or there's a question I ask whenever I get stuck in a podcast, I will get the show back on track.

Then everybody's just like, what is that question? And you say, just DM me question down below or comment question up and I'll send you the free three-step PDF for all the questions I asked to keep my podcast interviews on track. People will go for that. They will eat it up. 

[00:47:52] Hala Taha: I love that. And I love that you're saying don't put a link because I'm doing this kind of stuff all the time and I find the same thing when you just give somebody an action like comment, it's, it's less salesy, I guess, and people get scared of the sales language.

[00:48:06] Ken Okazaki: Here's what's important is. You give them a specific word to comment. And if you say, you know, like if it's a three step process, you say comment three below. If it's a conversion process, say comment, conversion below. Now it's meaningful and it's intentional. And when you DM them, then there's no question about why they commented something like, you could jump right into that conversation.

Hey, great, it looks like you're trying to conver, uh, raise conversions and you're looking for my tool. Is that right? Yes. Great. Here it is for free. And then you could start probing a bit. 

[00:48:36] Hala Taha: Okay, so let's talk about smooth segues. This is the last part of your funnel. What do we need to know about this part of the process?

[00:48:43] Ken Okazaki: This is where you take people from passively viewing to actively engaging and we're seguing from someone dooms scrolling, randomly fighting your video. And just like we described earlier, they're gonna engage with you. But the conversation has what I call three stoplights, right? Three hills, right? The first one is permission to share.

So first, They're gonna have asked for something and you're gonna say, Hey, confirm that they actually want it. Some people just randomly comment stuff and they're not really engaging. Right? And you don't go further until they say, yes, I want it. You say, great. You give it to them. Now it's a bit of an uphill to get there.

Like you're making a bit of effort like, Hey Hala, thanks so much for the comment on the video. Get them to respond. Right? If they don't respond, then it's a dead conversation. I saw you commented three, I think you want my three step resources to achieve blank. Is that right? Yes. So you, you tick number one.

Number two is you want to share some examples of other people who are in the same bogus as a person you're having conversation with, Hey, I worked with so-and-so and I had these kind of results. Would you like to see a case study on that? Now they're starting to buy into the vision of what's possible for them, but you're doing indirect with someone else.

If they say yes, you send them some information. And the third one is really getting permission to actually send them a way to have one-on-one conversation with, if that is what your sales process is. And that might be with your sales team, it might be with. With somebody else who's prospecting. But you gotta have a conversation flow that follows these three frameworks.

Cuz if you don't get permission at these three steps, a lot of people skip ahead and they, you know, you've seen these, these DM pitches and man, that, that just, nothing clogs up my, I call it constipation. What you're doing is c clogging up their system with big chunks of lumpy text and it's like, come on.

And it's copy pasted. It's not at all authentic. So you wanna break it up into small bits, have conversations, make sure that they're engaging back, and then just remember what those three checkpoints are and you're good to go. 

[00:50:41] Hala Taha: This is such great advice. I, I'm actually really excited to dig deeper into your work and, and see what I can leverage for my business.

So I know that we discuss different iPhone hacks and that's great for people who are on a budget. But in terms of people who have more budget to spend and really wanna level up their on the go video marketing, I know you have Go Box studio. I just wanna share a story in terms of how I found out about it.

I was at a podcast conference and I see this like really cool suitcase looking thing with two lights and a fancy camera. And one of my friends was actually manning the booth and he helped build the studio. And I walk up to him, his name's Junaid, and I'm like, what is this? This is the solution that I've been looking for as an influencer because historically to record my podcast, if I was going to conferences and things like this, it was like lugging around two mics, lights, stands for my mics, a computer.

Uh, it was just too much work and I would often avoid it, which meant that I would like have breaks in my schedule and it would be really tough to travel as a podcaster and having a number one show. I can't just like not put out an episode right. So I loved it and I was like, sign me up. I wanna be an ambassador, whatever I can do, because I knew that this was a pain point that a lot of people, especially business influencers, were probably experiencing.

So I'd love to understand the genesis of this and more about this product. 

[00:52:07] Ken Okazaki: I've been creating digital media for my clients for several years, since 2016, and somebody who is in a lot of the same circles as me, he reached out to me, his name is Alex Hormo, and he said, can I hear you're the guy who's good at video?

And I said, yeah, that's, I've been, I've heard that once or twice. And he says, could you create something for me where I can take my stuff on the go? I've got a great studio set up at home, but I'm about to go on vacation. I need something to take with me. At first, I said, no, he's a very persuasive guy and that's probably why he makes a hundred million dollars.

And he got me to build him a prototype and I sent it over. He loved it. He's, and this is about 18 months ago when he first started his YouTube channel. I think it was already going, but not really like as regularly as it is now. He loved it. He started using it. He was shooting his YouTube videos with it, and then he snapped a photo on Instagram and he's put it in his story.

And he got about 5,000 comments. Most of them are saying, where can I buy one of these? So he calls me up and he says, Ken, I think you should make a business out of this. And at that point, I had no intention of starting a hardware business, but he planted that seed. And then I started making more iterations on this, sending it to my clients, the kind of people who were sending us videos.

And a lot of times the videos with all due respect were shit. And we had to go and you know, like get very creative about making them look good. But once we started setting these kits, they started setting us amazing 4K crisp video, much like the quality you're seeing with me right now. So we just kept iterating our clients, gave us suggestions, ideas, requests, and we just kept adding or subtracting things to make it what it is.

And in October, 2022, I'd been working on this for almost a year, and I had to decide, is this a hobby or is this business? So I didn't want to guess for the rest of my life if this was gonna take off. So I went and rented a, a sponsored booth at a, at an event in, uh, San Diego, targeted at agency owners and our booth was completely packed the whole time.

Everybody around us was complaining that they had no foot traffic. We had a crowd constantly. We had sold, I think 25 of these units, and that's like a quarter million dollars. And I was like, okay, I think it's a business. So I went back and started restructuring things and thinking about how can I get this to more people and help more people with this tool.

[00:54:26] Hala Taha: Yeah, it's an amazing tool and I'm very excited to have my own Go Box studio. So thank you. Okay, so as we close out this interview, I thought it'd be really fun to do something quick, quick fire. So it turns out your video marketing funnel could be used as a diagnostic tool. And so I'm gonna list out some common problems that people face and you tell me where the issue is in the funnel and what we can do about it.

Okay? 

[00:54:50] Ken Okazaki: Oh boy. You're putting me on the spot. Let's see, let's 

[00:54:52] Hala Taha: go for it. Oh, you're gonna crush it. Come on. Views are low. 

[00:54:57] Ken Okazaki: Well, that could be a whole number of things, but the first thing I would look at is what's the opening statement? What's gonna get people in? I'd look at a thumbnail, the hooks, cuz a view just three seconds counts as a view on most platforms.

So if they can't, if you can't keep 'em for three seconds, a lot of times it's a title, it's a thumbnail, and that's the first thing I'd go to tweaking. So I would look historically at what did the best among your previous stuff, and then look at how can we use more of that and then expand on it. 

[00:55:22] Hala Taha: Love it. Retention is poor, 

[00:55:25] Ken Okazaki: so that usually means that your hook sucks. Like you didn't promise them something later on to give them a reason to stay. Watch Mr. Beast. He always talks about what is gonna happen as the result of watching his roughly 10 minute episodes. So that's pretty important is you set them up for a reward at the end, then they'll stick through low engagements.

[00:55:45] Hala Taha: They don't comment and like

[00:55:47] Ken Okazaki: yeah, no compelling reason to engage. Maybe you didn't even tell them to. So there's, there's two ways. Outrageous content that's humor or something shocking. People love sharing that. I don't suggest doing that too much. Otherwise you could go down a rabbit hole there, a dark rabbit hole.

But just remind people why they should comment. Hey, comment, agree down below. If you think that this is something you agree with and if it's something important you shared, then they will 

[00:56:13] Hala Taha: no converting customers. 

[00:56:15] Ken Okazaki: That's your smooth segue. You know, like you gotta take people from passive viewing to active engagement.

And then that's the segue point that would get people to, to convert. 

[00:56:24] Hala Taha: Amazing. Well, Ken, you dropped so many gems. I think everybody's gonna have a page of notes after this interview. Thank you so much for your time. We asked two questions to all of our guests at the end of the show. The first one is, what is one actionable thing our young and profits can do today to become more profiting tomorrow?

[00:56:42] Ken Okazaki: Pick up your phone, shoot a video, upload it. Don't even look at it because it's the compounding effect of doing it daily that gets good. I say it's not quality or quantity. It's quantity that creates quality. It's you put in the reps, you get good. You get good at speaking by speaking. You get good at running by running.

You get good at video by doing video. So that's one. There's two. I think the second thing is stop looking at your competition because everybody who's very successful, including you, didn't start with where they're at now. They started with something else and they evolved to that. And if you try to skip steps your trip, I've seen it happen too many times.

Find your own path, even though. It may be a bit scary cuz there's no blueprint. But that's the way every single person who's doing really well right now, they've done it. They found their own blueprint, they created their own blueprint, found their own path. So stop looking at the leaders and mimicking them.

Get inspired by them, but don't mimic them. 

[00:57:38] Hala Taha: That's great advice. The last question is, what is your secret to profiting in life? And this can go beyond financial video, it could just be anything. 

[00:57:48] Ken Okazaki: I think you gotta design your career around your non-negotiables. I quit my seminar business because it wasn't satisfying me, so I decided on five non-negotiables and built my current agency around that.

Number one is I need to have cameras around me. Number two, I wanted to have very stable income, so recurring revenue, business. Number three, I wanted to travel. Number four, I wanted to continue hanging out with the caliber of speakers I had on my stage by making them my clients. And number five is I wanted the freedom to leave my family as much as I wanted.

So when I decided those, it was no longer what. Can I do that's gonna make money? It's like what business can I invent that will satisfy these five non-negotiables? So if you figure out your non-negotiables, design your business around those and then I think that you end up a lot happier in the long run.

[00:58:35] Hala Taha: That's beautiful. Thank you so much. Ken. Where can our listeners find more about you and the things that you do? 

[00:58:40] Ken Okazaki: I think the best place to find me on Facebook, Ken. OK Kazaki. So just look up at Ken OK Kazaki on any platform you'll find me or head on over to our website, twentyx agency.com. That's where we do all the services for our clients.

[00:58:52] Hala Taha: And if somebody wants to buy Go Box Studio, where can they go? 

[00:58:56] Ken Okazaki: So we do have a special deal, which is only, that you can only get with Hala. Ooh. Go to go box studio.com/yapp and then you'll see the special deal we've created just for the listeners of this podcast. 

[00:59:08] Hala Taha: Amazing. And I'll take all those links in the show notes.

Thanks again, really appreciated having you on. 

[00:59:13] Ken Okazaki: Amazing. Thank you so much. I enjoyed it.

[00:59:20] Hala Taha: Yeah, bam. I hope you were taking notes today because Ken really dropped those knowledge bombs about video marketing. I've been a content creator and influencer for over five years now, but I still learned so much about video marketing from Ken. In this interview, one thing I want you guys to take note of is the toilet strategy, and this is a strategy my team uses every day for my social media videos, and I promise you it's the blueprint for high performing content.

The toilet strategy consists of three tactics. Number one, add captions to every single video for every single word you want your video to make sense when the sound is off. This is super important because a lot of people are on social media and on their phones with the sound off. You also wanna keep your video short.

It's getting shorter and shorter and shorter. Under 30 seconds is what I recommend, and one to two minutes max. And give your video a big flashy title if it's on YouTube. But on a platform like Instagram where you can't give your video a title, make sure the thumbnail is really eye-catching. And rather than writing a script for your video and building a title from that, Ken actually says that you should start with a title first.

He calls this a hockey puck title. To build a hockey puck title, start by researching what keywords about your topic perform best. Then use those keywords to come up with a list of titles about topics within your niche that you can easily talk about for a long time. Now you have a list of video topics that you're an expert in and titles that will grab your audience's attention.

Once you have that title you wanna build off of. Use Ken's Hilda acronym to outline the rest of your video. First start with H, your hook. Your hook should be three to seven seconds long depending on the length of your video. This is where you reel in your audience with a killer opening statement. People love numbers, so make sure you try to use numbers in your hook.

And don't create a hook that you won't deliver on for the sake of performance. You will lose credibility and your engagement will tank. If you do this, I introduce yourself. Never introduce yourself first. Always wait until you've drawn in your audience with a hook. Then in five seconds or less, give them your first name and a brief overview of what you do and establish credibility here.

Why should they listen to you? Why are you the expert? L, lead their anticipation. We always talk about the importance of storytelling and marketing on young and profiting, and this is a great time to tell your audience a story, to set the framework for what you're gonna deliver. Let the anticipation build up here.

D, this is where you deliver. This is where you release attention, release a dopamine, and give your audience the information. They came for a ask. Always wait till the end of the presentation to ask, because your audience will be most open to your request post dopamine release and make the ask specific so you know which viewers are truly interested in what you have to offer.

This is the smooth segue from turning your passive viewers into active engagers. And you can do this by asking your audience to comment something specific so you know they're interested, then retarget them in the dms, and you don't need fancy equipment to get started. Guys, you can record Insta Ready video straight from your iPhone.

Just remember Ken's phone recording tips. Know your angles. If you wanna make your face look slimmer. Hold your phone above your head if you wanna build an intimate connection with your audience. Keep your camera at eye level and if you wanna establish authority over your audience, keep your camera below your eyes and look down at your phone.

Just make sure to avoid the nose, hair zone and with whatever angle you choose. Love the lens. Look directly into the camera when you're recording. Video is performed significantly better when you look directly into the camera. And now they have apps where you can do this. You can actually be reading a paper or notes and not looking at the camera.

And an app, an AI app will actually make it look like you're looking at the camera the whole time. These apps are awesome. I'm sure if you Google it or search it, you can find it. They're everywhere now. And don't forget about lighting. Make sure that you use a bright light source that is in front of your face, not behind you, because then it will completely cast out your face.

And finally, movement. Movement is what sets videos apart from other mediums like text and photos. So take advantage of that. So try walking around while recording, moving your camera, or adding text and graphics to your videos after you record it. And remember, while video isn't the best tool for every situation, it's a great tool to have in your arsenal.

And for all you video rock stars out there who are recording videos every single day and on the go, I highly recommend you check out Go Box Studio. Like I told Ken, it was love at first sight when I saw this thing. It is absolutely the coolest thing that I've seen in a long time when it comes to recording content.

It's perfect for full-time content creators who are always on the go. Go to Young and profiting.co/go box studio and use coupon code yap for a 10% off discount. And we'll put that link in the show notes. Thanks for listening to this episode of Young and Profiting podcasts. If you listen, learned and profited from this episode and learned new video marketing tips, share this episode with your friends and family and drop us a five star review on Apple Podcast or your favorite podcast platform.

And if you like watching your podcast videos, subscribe to our channel on YouTube. You can also find me on Instagram at yap with Holla or LinkedIn by searching my name. It's Holla Taha. I wanna shout out my hardworking YAP team. You guys are crushing it behind the scenes. Thanks for all that you do. This is your host, Hal Taha, a k a, the podcast princess signing off.