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Hala: Oh man, young improfiters, if you're trying to figure out how to market yourself through online video, you're going to want to tune into this yap classic. Today we're taking it back to episode 230 from June 2023 and it's an interview that I did with marketing megastar Ken Okazaki. Ken Okazaki. It's an absolute masterclass and how to post high performing video content. Ken is kind of the guy behind all the guys. Like he is the mastermind behind so many popular influencers that you know and love. Ken has been producing videos since he was a teenager and now he's the head of Ozmedia Global where he helps his clients generate millions of dollars from video marketing. In this episode, Ken shares how to optimize video content to gain more views, leads and sales. He breaks down his seven figure video funnel [00:01:00] framework and also his famous toilet strategy. And I shit you not, you're gonna want to stay tuned for that one. So let's stop procrastinating when it comes to online videos. Take that plunge right now and start your education with the one and only Ken Okazaki.

Hala: 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 seventeen you left your home in Japan and travel 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 

Ken: wow you did your research so seventeen years old i this actually started when i was eight years old and I'm gonna impress this as much as i possibly can to honor everybody's time but.

Ken: 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 y said dad why did they keep teaching the same stuff and he says well maybe someone in the class didn't get it at that [00:02:00] moment i realized that they're teaching everything to the pace of the slows 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 seventeen I'd finished everything and i told my parents i wanted leave home and i literally did that thing.

Ken: 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 eleven years of you know after leaving home going to india i travel to multiple [00:03:00] countries got married had kids eleven years before i came back home to Japan 

Hala: wow, 

Ken: so that's how we got started the backstory 

Hala: that's amazing and then what first got you intrigued with video marketing how did you first start dabbling in video marketing 

Ken: yeah really good after india i was trying to figure hey what's next and i had a friend who was commissioned to create a documentary series en Uganda and he asked me.

Ken: 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 en borr the camera. And just started playing with it figuring out the settings and this is nineteen ninety nine actually so i chose 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 head it was just second nature to me we got to fly air force one with the president we got to go Silver back gorillas i went into war zone with[00:04:00] 

Ken: so that was a lot of excitement and adrenaline kind of stuff i was looking for at that time that's how all started 

Hala: i love that and so also for my research we found 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.

Hala: He asked to come on my show but we still havet booked yet 

Ken: excellent 

Hala: and I'd love to understand did you learn anything from Tony Robbins when are like did he inspire you in anyway. 

Ken: Let me just get the straight so Tony robins is asking you to come on this show yet here i am before him so that yeah that that's a pretty big deal right 

Hala: Tony Robbins has to come on my show 

Ken: amazing 

Hala: and then we've been trying to booket and it hasn't happened but I'm like.

Hala: Hey wants to come on we just 

Ken: hes got a busy schedule but I've seen the Caliber guest come i am not at all surprised if en just a few short months you have on here 

Hala: a thanks Ken 

Ken: that's where i think this is [00:05:00] going but about the events i used to do in Japan. Tony Rob is one of the speakers but people like Jordan Buford les brown Nick fuchi Robert heki 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 eight thousand people in a Stadium.

Ken: We do the business we did and we did it primarily with video marketing so that's why i really confident what i do is ahí had the experience of putting buts in seats by telling a compelling story with video on social media 

Hala: i love that so let's get into the you know mi invitados of this interview we have the video marketing Guys on this podcast we all know how important video es but to really give us some foundational knowledge in terms of why video helps us Convert more why video the best tac to actually Convert [00:06:00] 

Ken: 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.

Ken: I'm not the guy who's gonna be shouting off the wtop saying everybody needs to do video all the time i think video is a great tool among the whole arsenal you know you need paid ads right sometimes it's text sometimes there's a book people will be more attracted to than a video so i think video is great to have in your arsenal but don't make it the sole focus and 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 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 es getting pretty close to catching up but when you can look so in the eye and you see the whites of their eye and you feel the passion they have in their voice that is [00:07:00] something that a trained copyrighter may be able to attain after a lot of experience but.

Ken: Anybody who passion about what they do and that's why there is a shorten gap of time from when someone starts making video to when they can start effect communicating not just the words that they saying but what they're feeling to the viewer and that's the magical about video 

Hala: 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 and 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 on a spectrum when it comes to their video skills you talk about this in your book you say that they either a part a rock so talk to about from all the way to a da to a rockstar what are the elements of each person yeah 

Ken: the is the one who's gonna.

Ken: See [00:08:00] somebody else maybe a friend or an associate on social media and they're gonna pick up their phone and say i could do that and they shoot a few videos they get exhausted and they what happens they put in the effort but they don't do it consistently enough that it becomes a habit and they start getting traction so they they've got no money as a result of it ninety nine point nine nine percent of the time it's not gonna go anywhere then at the next level you got people who actually do this consistently but they're not at the point where they can get people to the point of a se 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 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.

Ken: That when and that when people this person is a pill in this vertical in this niche [00:09:00] in this industry and the more more they wanna I'm not gonna go into too much detail the sake of time the the people in a nuts you no longer pushing your content it your audience is pulling the content from you like the demand for great effort to push it out you're getting more people to it you're getting people requesting to be on your show you're getting so much engagement that youll never run out ideas you can just look at the Comments and use that for the your content ideas and that's that feeling of getting pulled and 11 you reach that there's a lot of people who just realize that there is this i guess it's like the fly type of feeling and that's flow and that's where that's where i want all my clients to get 

Hala: i love that i hope we all get to that place with our videos.

Hala: 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 [00:10:00] really make an excuse when it comes to equipment so can you talk to us about that 

Ken: yeah it was like i chase Jarvis he is the one who said that phrase the best cameras when you've got with you right we've all got phones real quick one of the things women always ask me is how can i look thinner en the simplest way is to just raise your phone if it's like here just just at a slightly higher level than your eyes what's 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 hopefully not too big but what happens is you get that really nice pointy draw online 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.

Ken: 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 realize what's [00:11:00] happening is the length of your legs are canceled out and you're much more likely to be seeing exactly i i was someone because when you're standing the high difference really makes you feel either short or tall these relationships that are psychological brains embedded in there but when you get the camera exactly eye level then there's that phrase sin eye to eye and people no longer feel threatened by you o they don't feel superior 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 my camera is slightly higher simply because the way my room is set up i can't get it lower 

Hala (2): but 

Ken: ideally if you got a phone then you dunno where to start get it right at eye level a lot of people have it low.

Ken: That's what i call the nose hairs some 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 like you're having a Conversation or do you wanna be a little bit more dominant looking a bit of [00:12:00] a bigger like father figure then you bring it a little bit lower not too low you get stuck in the nose hair zone 

Hala: ya 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 

Ken: 11 one small trip I've had so many female clients and they're dely 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.

Ken: From the front they're about to take the group Photo right and he's standing there what he does is he cras his chin out as far as he can toward the camera and i realized that when he was sitting natural. He had a tiny bit of a double chin and i only saw this cuz there was a side angle someone shot a view there's like three two what and he goes like this but then here's the thing from from front that actually you [00:13:00] can't really tell right and if you're looking right at the afraid of the double y just kind of took your head for like a chicken 

Hala: move 

Ken: and then i started seeing it every Hollywood Photo shoot if all the women before the like a close up 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 they should be it's just a little trick that might help you 

Hala: yeah i love that and i know that you have this phrase love the Lens 

Ken: yes what 

Hala: does that mean to you.

Ken: Right now I'm looking right at the camera I'm looking right at you and hopefully the viewer can can see that I'm looking right at the camera if i were to look just a little bit off then it feels different right now I'm looking at the monitor where you are and i 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 face [00:14:00] the conversions on the video will change i dunno if you heard hay audited his stuff on Instagram and Tik to and will look for the things at algorithms can find we manage a lot of people social media we wanna make sure we're giving good advice i don't make predict look at look 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 dos are like eighty percent of the videos that were the bottom ten percent here he's looking off camera.

Ken: Eighty percent of the videos in the top ten percent is looking straight into the camera and when i saw i was like where else can we see this pattern and most people'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 es your audience it's not looking at your own face as vanity right so if you can get to that level then then without effort you're [00:15:00] gonna be getting more engagement people feel like they're more connected to you on video 

Hala: 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 

Ken: movement is i took this from an evolution per looking for anything move will go it be danger and to snap to.

Ken: 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 put my hand re close the camera every fifteen seconds or so if you're holding your phone i just pivot about ninety degrees changes the whole background but I'm still in the frame a a lot of videos 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 [00:16:00] but that movement is what keeps you engaged so whatever you do keep resetting people's attention with movement.

Ken: For example in this podcast I'm gonna guess that there's gonna be cuts there'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 

Hala: yeah and i i see lots of influences 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 

Ken: well there you do well I've been researching you too es you can either do the movement with your hands and with the camera and get that upload right away o you can send it to an editor and they do the movement with titles with emojis with little animations on screen all of that is movement so if you're not at the level where you can edit like that then use practical movement but if you have an editor then they can do that for you 

Hala: okay that makes sense and then in terms of lighting using your iphone what do we need to know [00:17:00] 

Ken: well there's two things you gotta know.

Ken: Number one avoid it make you ten years you go 

Hala (2): most 

Ken: people are not the most important thing to just hold your camera up look at your face and turn around three Sixty you are at and then you very quickly where there's more like 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 Falls into place quickly 

Hala: so fact heard you talk about the Studio times eighty percent of men and Sixty nine percent of women use their phone while on the toile. [00:18:00] And you've taken this data and created something called the strategy so what is the strategy and what is this data tell us about how we should be conducting video marketing 

Ken: ya 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 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.

Ken: Oh you know smack my head like that's so obvious why didn't i think of it but when your audience is in the toilet you have to well put it this way tune your videos as if you're speaking to someone on the toile there's a couple things going on 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 you're gonna want the speakers blurry 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 Twitter strategy is the link.

Ken: So many times seen video i thought this is great [00:19:00] and then what we've done is eye tracking test the first thing we look at es the title see if stop second one is the person's eyes the third place we look believe it or not es the play bar to see how long it is and that's through eye tracking data and if the videos too long like you probably wanna spend five minutes in the bathroom max if it's a Twenty minute video what happens is this is a great video but i don't have Twenty minutes to safer later which by the way nobody ever goes to the safe 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 link you wanna keep it.

Ken: Two minutes max nowadays it's under a minute it keeps getting shorter the third thing is really the big title on top now that's kind of changed because nowadays with the way tiktok format videos have really taken over the algorithm chooses what shows up it's not what you subscribe to so it doesn't matter quite as much but think think it's quite effective on some platforms where the thumbnail is gonna be much more prominent than [00:20:00] the actual video itself for example youtube 

Hala: yeah let's take it to linkedin for a second so you may not know that someone one of the biggest influencers on linkedin 

Ken: i do know it you are everywhere.

Hala: Oh thank you and i have a linkedin masterclass and one of the things that i discovered when i was preparing this masterclass es that a lot of people are watching videos with the sound off and i realized that a linkedin especially everyone. Has a job everyone es College Graduate series professional.

Hala: But the most engaging times on that platform is ten am and 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 thats either super long o needs sound perform on that platform it needs to look really different pattern needs to be engaging with the sound off and be short otherwise videos do not work on that platform un les linkedin live and people are treating them like an event thats right [00:21:00] so i would love to understand your Perspective on the importance of engaging video with the sound off 

Ken: i think that people have been fighting for like say fighting against it for so long because radio came up before TV right their 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.

Ken: Now everything is going to individual entertainment where every single person i i have six kids by 

Hala: the way oh, 

Ken: wow. When i grew up that was movie night we all sat together around the one tiny TV like that was the whole family now it's like let's movie night and everybody's just like I'm watching this series and I'm watching that series and I'm on 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 cup of coffee it's an individual experience and as an individual experience sound is becoming less and [00:22:00] 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.

Hala: 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 

Ken: very true y finish edit then watch it back without sound and if it is not fun then fix it that's the quick hack around that if you're not enjoying it without sound then fix it 

Hala: totally and that's such a big hack you already told me about the timing of videos i think it's a good time to transition in two years seven figure video marketing funnel so first of all define video marketing funnel what does that even mean 

Ken: so a lot of people have looked at courses right [00:23:00] 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 got excited to click funnels or high level or you know whatever other platform there is and there are a lot of great ones out there and I've surveyed a whole bunch of people.

Ken: Who actually went through courses and one of their frustrations is that every course or coaching program tells them they or s dollars of products i thought what if i an experiment all myself where how we doing is using free tools social media de phone in your pocket and just a payment system Stripe or paypal or something can i actually Convert leads in 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 [00:24:00] 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 the audience forget these complicated funnels and trip wires and automations and zap that comes later because what you're doing is you're taking something that Works an interaction with your audience.

Ken: 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 we 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 es 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 and unless those tickbox are marked then don't go and buy Fancy software 

Hala: ya i love this approach i give the same advice i see a lot of people who are creating products and they don't even know if people want these products and they go down this whole rabbit hole investing all this money and then they have no demand right so [00:25:00] that's a problem i just actually interviewed the president of Shopify and we were talking about how things are changing out where Creators are sort of flipping the script on how businesses are made they're building an audience first figuring out what they want and then.

Hala: Selling to them building something and finding the audience right so i feel like this really fits nicely what you're teaching and just to clarify so you are not suggesting that these videos are paid ads against them you're just saying org organically 

Ken: org organically yes no when it comes to pay a how i feel what i do with my clients and by the way i have turned away a lot of clients o 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 nothing'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 wanna 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 [00:26:00] not at inventing something 

Hala: from scratch for you y you need product market fitzer 

Ken: exact 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 a few that have gotten millions and dos videos.

Ken: Have been tested org 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 ' out or organically on social media we come back a month later si high performers are and turn those into ads we don't invent an ad from scratch because we want the most return on so youre gonna get the video du organically

Hala: that makes so much sens put the money behind the things that the engagement because you know they work 

Ken: proven to work 

Hala: ya that makes a lot of sense okay, so let's get into Howe create this video funnel first step es coming up with a title so water titles and [00:27:00] why do we need to actually plan content around due the 

Ken: really good question when i was a kid i was into hockey ice.

Ken: Wayne gretzky said that Famous quote i don't go to where the pu 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 in on it and for me the tail end is really the content so back title is about composing great titles it's about researching and figuring out what words are gonna Rank what kind of triggers your audience trigger en negative way but you what's gonna get them engaged psychologically and 11 you have a list of titles you can talk to that for example hal 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 abe you could riff on that for five minutes or an hour straight if you wanted to because that's your expertise [00:28:00] 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.

Hala: Yeah and so this is relevant to youtube like you said could also be relevant for like live streams linkedin live streams of titles now Instagram tiktok you don't really have titles 

Ken: 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 the the actual visual title just think of it as the first information that hits 

Hala: view yeah en that example you gave in that hug you did some things that i noticed so use the best worst use numbers

Hala: and you made it relevant to me it was about podcasters and you even give monetary value which also will peak people's interest more the more numbers you can stuff in a hook the better so let's move on [00:29:00] to Hilda which is your framework for building a video what else do we need to know about hux 

Ken: let me one real quick thing though about the title.

Hala: Yeah 

Ken: it's the shortcut the got their opinions on that I'll tell you what has effect worked is you wanna engage both sides you want big numbers and for some reason even if it's you know zero with Twenty zero that that's a big number psychological 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 leading 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 

Hala: give us an example of doing that strategy 

Ken: emotional word might be something like i que right that's an emotional like a statement right and then a big number would be something you give me a number and i I'll make up [00:30:00] something to go with that 

Hala: ten billion 

Ken: ten billion.

Ken: Okay, so i could say my path from zero to billion i quit. Just like what Heck does that make now you're laughing you might you might actually click that right 

Hala (2): yeah 

Ken: no it's gotta be contextual to who you are as a person you know don't make up stuff that has nothing to do with you and if it was for me it's ten billion i would oh, i might like pick up a camera and say ten billion pixels i quit like i might make some content on like where are we gonna go as far as you know like resolution and doesn't really matter at this point that could be something you talk about 

 \

Hala: so for hux lately I've been using chachi bt for anything that i have to come up with some sort of title I'm like say this in ten different ways right have you been using chachi bt for that kind of thing 

Ken: we have this one onone coaching with our clients cuz a lot of agencies they actually provide all the tools they see just send [00:31:00] us the video and we'll do everything else for you send us the podcast we'll do everything o we'll give you all the the gap in the market es.

Ken: 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 fifteen minutes because of all the other stuff that to take care but the accountability so our coach is actually now using some ai using their own experience as will create all of the content Plans and that that's the hook whether it's a question they can whether its finish the sentence whether its a framework i have a few frameworks like what i just showed you the the number in the emotional a we'll get them all Planned out and then we'll have a Conversation for an hour and shoot anywhere from ten to thirty video within that that's the short content so the hook using chat p.

Ken: Help us faster we from we from maybe six y seventy and our coaches will finish the rest 

Hala: ya i love that so let's talk about the acronym hda [00:32:00] so this is how you break down your video you. And I'm sure in your book you probably have like you said so many different formulas for hooks 

Ken: a as quickly as i can ok, 

Hala: yeah 

Ken: so medium format content this Works really well medium format is anywhere from ten to twelve 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 hook intro lead to deliver hook we explained that a bit earlier you've got about by the time i wrote the book i think you said it was about seven seconds now especially in the short form videos that are less than a minute you got about three seconds and i can show you the numbers behind that the data we 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.

Ken: Hey, my name is keno kazaki, bla bla, bla bla bla 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 are they just tap you and they could see that if you're gonna say keep it short [00:33:00] first name we help what you do. Five seconds or less and that 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 th 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 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 re review 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 d.

Ken: Can also be for dopamine that's when people feel satisfied sa shit and you gotta build this tension release it's a plastic franco pola you know strategy and video directing and then at the end and this is a there was a marriage counselor who was asked by this woman like. Every time i ask my husband anything he always [00:34:00] says no.

Ken: I wanna buy a dress no i wanna go on vacation no. I wanna buy his va cleaner no and he says well here's what you gotta do you gotta one day light some candles cook him an amazing meal put on your your seest neglige give a mind blowing sex and then afterwards ask him she goes what he goes just try it it absolutely worked and I'm like and then she goes back and says why did that work.

Ken: He goes he's got so much dom running through his brain it's so easy to get it yes so i thought well if we get that level of dophine and i I'm not sure if we could match what she did for her husband 

Hala (2): but 

Ken: we wanna get some dommy going where they feel like they had an aha moment right then is when you wanna flip it and say.

Ken: Hey would you please join my group or download this or click a certain link and this is the timing that's so important. 

Hala: So i ask some que 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 [00:35:00] if it's warm o like on your own social media maybe don't do that because mostly gonna be your follow seeing un

Hala: that sound right 

Ken: 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 super shore for but generally yes i think that's a good guideline 

Hala: 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 and the intro you 

Ken: want people to feel friendly toward you and like when i speak to you I'll probably just say halla you know and you might say can.

Ken: We having this Conversation we aren't 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 we assume report the other person's more likely to get on board and assume report back with you and then later on they might feel more open to sign hey check your video more they feel [00:36:00] how you started the Conversation with them.

Hala: 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 

Ken: i think we're on the same page 

Hala: 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 par and can you give us some like real tangible examples of how you can do this this 

Ken: more there are a million ways we can do it so let's give a live example let's say this thing i wanna teach someone is.

Ken: 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 to that 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 [00:37:00] i really wanted to get this effect 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 the failures and people are brought into this Journey and then when i teach 'em how to do it they're just like.

Ken: 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 a Journey to how we got there so that could be like a little bit of an origin story on something.

Ken: One way one of the favorite ways that i see work effectively es how because most of my clients are business coaches es they tell story of the before after of the Transformation their client had and then explain the process for how they do it might so you know i work with this man he's fifty five years old he's got three beautiful kids and a wife but the wife was constantly stressed because he was never home [00:38:00] and the kids were not.

Ken: He wasn't see gonna see the kids grow up. He was making good money but his health is deter he 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 my income so what i did is and they teaches that one two three steps now people are bought into the steps because they might be that fifty year old person who has their life outta balance and they have money but no time so thats 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.

Hala: This is so good can 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 es 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 [00:39:00] like you didn't i watched this for no reason click b right that's what click be is es so talk to us about how we can frame up delivering our value and what we need to know about that 

Ken: ya let me paint a quick picture se your drug dealer en social media by the way i see the closes analogy it's like a farm and and the person whos the farm Facebook Instagram tiktok youtube they own the farm en new are leasing a plo whats going on is when you create content then.

Ken: The product is your content and they use that and they sell it the only thing on social media University across all platforms that es a universal currency time people by time advertis from the 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 [00:40:00] day millions of times billions of dollars and when you understand this then what you gotta think is like well if i am buying in selling time and that's the currency of social media when someone watches the video let's say they spend three minutes they pay you three units of time and what are you getting in turn what you gotta give them is a domain 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.

Ken: Hey get over here you know spend three minutes with me and I'm gonna give you 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 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 wanna do is give them a dope and i think another way to say this is aha moment if you could have get people like right now i see your nodding i love that when i see female nodding I'm like that we're on the same page they're having an aha moment here and that transaction was successful [00:41:00] very likely they'll come back so you just gotta deliver what you say you can deliver if you say I'm gonna teach you the most mind blowing strategy to use chat PT that will earn me twelve thousand dollars in the next thirty days and then you actually show screenshots and demonstrate 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 

Hala: yeah.

Hala: 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 es asking for the right thing how do we know what that right thing is 

Ken: a lot of people spend a lot of time talking about how you know really ball up their whatever their freeing 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 [00:42:00] looking to do a what which is use video more effectively in your business and you want the x thing che she or free download or a thirty 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.

Ken: Besides clicking 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 they 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 

Hala: and then you'll retarget them in the dms or something like that sounds like 

Ken: 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 [00:43:00] probe a little bit into whether i can help them with my business 

Hala (3): we'll be right back after a quick break for march

Hala: got it okay, so moving along your framework the next piece es the missing link so in your book you've got

Hala: that is the link between so. Tell us more about this concept 

Ken: yeah between where they are and where they wanna be so a lot of times like if i said to you a that you can absolutely earn enough money to have a five hundred foot yacht now you might get a picture of yourself cruising this yacht you know hanging out with you love mu and everything and I'm exaggerating here for demonstration purposes but then a lot of people 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 [00:44:00] 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 far fe 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.

Ken: A software tool it can be a free training something that you can give infinitely for free without cost to give money and that's what's important otherwise it's very hard to manage free marketing with Physical products 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 Sixty to seventy percent of people are sitting on the toilet when they watch video number one number two and i found that if you have captions on the video then it's gonna make the engagement go much higher like give some stats around that and number three and you wanna put out these videos every single day in order to build [00:45:00] 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.

Ken: Would you like it right now so i gave them information about where they wanna be and then they get excited 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 them the information and then reveal gap 

Hala: 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 the micro Solutions right that i could create for free 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 [00:46:00] upsell them to some higher ticket offer 11 they're hooked in and they got some value from you 

Ken: exactly or you just nurture them in your emails until at some point when they're ready they'll come to just keep writing your example what i would do is i would look for.

Ken: Research data like specific data's a little bit of obscur that you can apply to what you do you can say something like did you know that videos that have the 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 that ads Convert better I'm not sure what that's gonna be did you know that when i wear the certain combination of colors you know or have this kind of guest or there's a question i ask whenever i get stuck in a podcast that will get the show back on track then everybody's just like what is that question and you say just do a me question down enve below or comment question up and I'll send you the free three step pdf for all the questions i to keep my podcast on track people will go for that they will eat it up 

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

Ken: what's important is.

Ken: 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 conversions and you're looking for my tool is that right yes great here it is for free and then you could start prob a bit 

Hala: 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 

Ken: this is where you take people from passively viewing to actively engaging and we're segueing from someone doom growingly fighting your video and just like we [00:48:00] described earlier you're gonna engage with you but the Conversation has what i call three stop lights right three Hills right the first one is permission to share so first.

Ken: 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 y don't go further until they say yes i want it say great you give it to them now it's a bit of an uphill to get there like you're making a bit of effort like hey, jala 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 y commented three i think you want my three step resources to achieve blank is that right yes so you take number one number two is you wanna share some examples of other people who are in the same bonus as a person you're having Conversation with hey i worked with so andso 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 doing with someone else if they say yes send them some information the third one es [00:49:00] really getting permission to actually send them a way to have one on one Conversation with if that is what your sales process es and that be with it might be with.

Ken: With somebody else who's prospect y 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 clo up their system with big chunks of lumpy text and it's like come on and it's copy pas 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 

Hala: 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 [00:50:00] 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.

Hala: 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 Jena and I'm like what is this this is the solution that I've been looking for as an influencer because historically record my podcast if i was to conferences and things like this it was like logging around to my light stands for my mics a computer it was just too much work and i would often avoid it which meant that i would like have breaks in my schedule and it'd 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.

Hala: So i loved it and i was like sign me up i wanna be an [00:51:00] ambassador whatever i can do because i knew that this was a pain point that a lot of people especially business influencers were experiencing so I'd love to understand the genesis of this and more about this product 

Ken: i been creat media for for several since thousand sixteen and somebody who is in a lot of the same Circles as me he reached out to me his name is Alex hormoze and he said can i hear you the guy who's good at video and i said yeah that I've been I've heard that 11 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 quant 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 and he got me to build him a prototype and i sent it over.

Ken: He loved it and this is about eighteen 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 [00:52:00] youtube videos with it and then. He snapped a Photo on Instagram and he's put it in his story and he got about five thousand Comments most of them are saying where can i buy one of these so he calls me up and he says Ken i think.

Ken: He should make a business out of this 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 setting us videos 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 11 we started setting these kits they started setting us amazing for cris 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 en October Twenty Twenty two.

Ken: I've been working on this for almost a year and i had to decide is this a hobby o is this business so i didn't want to guess for the rest of my life if this was gonna take off [00:53:00] so i went and rented a sponsor booth at a an event in San Diego targeted a agency owner 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 Twenty five 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 more people with this tool 

Hala: yeah it's an amazing tool and I'm very excited to have my own go back studios so thank you okay, so as we close out this interview i thought it'd be really fun to a quickfire so turns your video market funnel could be used as a diagnostic tool.

Hala: 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. Ok, 

Ken: oh, boy let's go for 

Hala: oh you're gonna crush it come on views [00:54:00] are low 

Ken: well that could be a 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 of you just three seconds count as a you almost 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 look historic what did the best among your previous stuff and then look how can we use more of that then expand on it 

Hala: love it retention is poor 

Ken: so that usual means that your hook sucks like y didn't promise them something later on to give them a reason to stay watch mr.

Ken: Beas. He always talks about what is gonna happen as the result of watching his roughly ten minute episodes. So that set at 

Hala: low engagements they don't comment and like 

Ken: no compelling reason to engage maybe you don't even tell them to so there's there's two ways outrageous content that's [00:55:00] 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 comet agree down below if you think that this is something you agree with and if it's something important you share then they will 

Hala: no converting customers 

Ken: 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 will get people to to Convert.

Hala: Amazing well can you dropped so many ges 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 oli our guests at the end of the show the first one es what is one actionable thing are can do today to become more tomorrow 

Ken: helo don 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 [00:56:00] 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 that's one there's two i think the second thing is stop looking at your competition because everybody whos very successful including you didn't start with 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.

Ken: A 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 donica 

Hala: that's great advice the last question es what is your secret profiting in life and this can go Beyond Financial video que just be anything 

Ken: i think he got a design your non negociables i quit my seminar business because it wasn't satisfy me [00:57:00] so i decided on five non negociables and built my current agency around that number one es i need 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 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.

Ken: Can i do this make money it's like what business can i invent that satisfied these five non negociables so if you figure out you're non-negotiables design your business around dos and then i think that you end up a lot happi in the long run 

Hala: that's beautiful thank you so much can where listeners find about you and the things that you do i 

Ken: think the best place to find me on Facebook Ken okazaki just look up at Ken okazaki on any platform you find me or to x agency do com that's where we do all the services for our clients 

Hala: and if somebody wants to buy gobo Studio where can they go [00:58:00] 

Ken: so we do have a special is can get with jala.

Hala: Oh 

Ken: go to gobo Studio com slash yap and you'll see the special deal we created just for the listeners of this podcast 

Hala: amazing and I'll take all those links in the show notes thanks again really appreciate having you on 

Ken: amazing thank you so much i enjoyed it.