Online! EP23 How to use storytelling to market your business

Note: This transcript was auto-generated

SUMMARY KEYWORDS:
people, business story, Instagram post, clients, short video, websites, creative, audience, business owners, marketing,  content creation

SPEAKERS
Mo Hedayet, Amr The Internet Guy

Announcer:
online with Amr the internet guy stream it today on your favourite podcast platforms. This podcast focuses on entrepreneurs and business owners helping them become more successful and conducting their business on the web without being stuck with technology, getting a headache, pulling their hairs out or buying expensive software.

Amr The Internet Guy
Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 23 of online. Today we’re talking about storytelling. I know I’ve heard this word before so many times, but I wasn’t really sure how can it benefit me? And you know, most of the times when I hear it, I hear it in different contexts. And I’m not really sure. You know, as a business owner, what do I need to do here? Today, we’re not only discussing storytelling, but we’re discussing how video is the most important thing or the most important tool that you can use in storytelling. So instead of me telling you how this works, I have decided to interview the expert. So without further ado, let’s meet our guest. Okay, guys, so today I have Mr. Mo Hedayet here with me. Hey, Mo, how’s it going?

Mo Hedayet
Good. Thank you. How are you?

Amr The Internet Guy
Oh, good. Thank you. So we’ve had some, like, very interesting conversation before. And I thought that this is too interesting. So I wanted to capture it, so our audience could listen to it with us. So would you please tell them what you do? Where are you based? Okay.

Mo Hedayet
Hi, guys, how are you? My name is Mo Hedayet from Kaifko creative. I’ve been a video producer creating content for initially, weddings is where I started from. But it led me into telling stories and connected with companies and businesses. It allowed me to have a story to tell. So I’ve been creating content and videos and working with photos as well, for companies and telling their stories essentially, to their audience to to showcase their product or services there. So you do photography and videography both say initially I did both of them. But then over time, as I, as I’m growing, I you know, you have to realize at one point that you need to delegate some of your work to make sure you focus on what you really are talented for photography, I can I can do it, I can do a great job. But I focus more of my attention to motion photography, which is film and telling a story from that perspective. So then, throughout your journey, naturally, you’ll find people within your industry. So I connect with a really good photographer. And he does all my photography when I get projects. And we work well as a team, because we have suggested ideas and strategies to each other. And I think when you go in there with somebody else from a different perspective, it also, you know, sparks your creative side as well to do a little bit different from what you usually would do if you were alone.

Amr The Internet Guy
Perfect. I mean, as a business owner myself an example like I produce these episodes of the podcast, right? Yeah. And I can’t say that I hate video production, like when I do it, because it takes me so much time. But man, that’s difficult. Yeah, like it is like, even if you’re doing something small, like even if you’re producing a five minutes video, it could take you hours to just get it to look, not just to look good, but to serve a purpose. Like you know, it’s a there’s the goal to the video, every video has to have a specific goal so that it’s interesting for people to watch. Absolutely. And I think, you know, it’s hard for somebody who’s never done it before, to realize how much time it can take, even if you have good skill, because people think you know what, I’m gonna learn the software, right and do some editing. It’s not about the editing part. It’s about the idea. Like, there’s a strategy and there’s so I wanted to ask you, you know, what are the different types of videos first, like, what kind of videos can be done out there? into

Mo Hedayet
for business or for anybody?

Amr The Internet Guy
Yeah, for, let’s say, for businesses like what? I’m sure it’s not just a one?

Mo Hedayet
No, I mean, the usual advertising that we see, or we saw when television was more of a thing where we had cable television, and it allowed us to kind of see a quick little promotion about McDonald’s, you know, or a company that that would have Pepsi, Coke, and do these fun, enjoyable commercials within that environment that they’re in. But, of course, that was expensive over time. And as smaller production companies, I think, from the 90s that it kind of progressed. And they were charging quite a bit but still much cheaper than what these bigger production, things cost. And it was a lot of work. I went to one of those back in like 1998 and I saw it you know, these strings attached for the next furniture shop and now these cameras and they took a whole day to shoot. And I thought oh my god, that’s such a big production just to shoot a commercial for commercial furniture.

Amr The Internet Guy
It’s like what two minutes?

Mo Hedayet
Yeah, and do some Exactly, but then, but then now that whole process can be done with very limited amount of gear, essentially, as long as you have the creativity because the cameras have gotten a lot better. So the shots will look better without having all these things and gimbals of coming to your hand and you can do smooth shots. So I think the type of videos that most people are used to our furniture style kind of videos, you know, combined my furniture, we have to 20% 50% off sort of thing. And that’s one style. But I think, as we’re going into, you know, the, the New Years of you know, technology and you know, in the past year, we’ve all kind of moved towards online. And our attention span is sometimes longer sometimes with Tick Tock and you know, these shorts that are much, much shorter, we have to create something in between the works for everything I have or repurpose that same type of a video for that. And the only way to keep people engaged is entertaining them with a with something whether you doing something funny, that doesn’t really have much of a story, but it just something funny that something gets or something interesting. That’s very short. And it will, it will complete what your message is essentially about your message is what I kind of broke it down to, from my perspective, what is your message? What do you tried to express based on that you will break it down into is this going to be a long form, which is a story based or is this going to be something that is a quick commercial 10 seconds, 15 seconds, boom, we get adapt, and we got our point across. So there’s different ones that can be done. And that’s the beauty of it, because there’s so many different ways that you can advertise yourself. Whereas you no longer have to do one TV commercial, give it to a TV station, and a lot of money and you get to see it once, once a week or once a month, depending on how much you buy into that advertising. Now you have the ability to use the web and broadcast for free, and then put money behind it and push it further. It’s amazing. We live I think in a in a really good time that we can express ourselves and our business much easier to our audience. I had a conversation yesterday with somebody used to work for yellow pages. And my first question was, when did you guys realize that he’s dead? You know, she said, I think she said 2005. And it’s the same thing for everything. Like I still enjoy some of the TV commercials. Some of them are funny and hilarious. And those are the ones who stick. You know, some of them are so annoying. But the jingle which is annoying what it stays in your head for a long time. And I think subliminally This is what the advertisers or the creative behind the ads are trying to do. Yeah. But I would say we’re extremely lucky now. Because online, we don’t only have one channel, there’s so many of them. Yeah. So you can do what you do. You can do social media. With social media, you can you can have basically kind of video everywhere. like LinkedIn, you can have a video. TikTok, Snapchat, Twitter, everywhere. Yeah. So basically, you can shoot a video, and then soil, the internet space with it. Right? Yeah, absolutely. Well, you know, The other thing I always tell my clients is that, essentially, you have an entire network at your disposal. Right now, you have all these avenues where you can reach 1000s and millions of people based on what you’re projecting all at once, without pretty much any cost in a way of broadcasting to these networks. And you can change your story based on where you putting this advertising out on LinkedIn, it would be a little different than it would be on TikTok, or on Snapchat or on Instagram. So every one of them even the formatting has to be modified to fit that audience or that viewership. And that’s really interesting. Because I know, for example, I don’t use Instagram a lot. Well, I have an account. That’s an old account, right? But I know that the video size itself has to be different from let’s say, what you put on YouTube? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So well, I came across this, you know, when people start to use more Instagram, using the vertical format, and especially with a story that became more of a thing that that your newsfeed more than just your post. So I used to give my videos that would compete with my clients landscape in a standard format that I will shoot because to me, that’s the best, you watching a movie and you want to watch it in full and see everything. And the way I compose the shots and create the story. I use all this space, all the background within that that’s why I choose that space, civic space. Or if I zoom in, I’m trying to get everything as much into the frame as possible to make sure you know, I’m focusing over I’m giving attention to the product or whatever I’m shooting. But unfortunately, when you zoom in, and then you have to crop it into a vertical. Yeah, you’re losing some of your stuff. Exactly. Now, right now Instagram kind of has three different formats. You have the square, they have the mid vertical, which is for posts and then they have the story which is Thought, which is essentially the ones you shoot on your phones in a vertical format, it takes entire thing. But if you post that, as opposed, it will cut it short. And you can get the head cut off, or, you know, the feet cut off, based on how you want to do it. And if it’s zoomed in, then it’s going to get even more. So that’s why the way I do it is now I let the clients talk in which Where are we advertising this, where we pushing this, or based on what it is even on Instagram, I put my videos as full, just because I want people to enjoy exactly how I meant to shoot it. But then I also then create a vertical format of that, where I center every single frame to make sure that you know as it jumps, because you can cut it but then side of the face can be cut off. Yeah, so and I used to give that to my clients. And these are just posted as a square. And then I would call them say that posted that you just destroyed that that thing that we wanted to pull. Yeah. And yeah, and they realize that because it’s the Oh, I didn’t know, I’m sorry, can you tell me and I realized,

Amr The Internet Guy
you have to give them all the different sizes that are ready, and then call it Instagram, video, YouTube video, whatever. So they know which one goes where,

Mo Hedayet
exactly, and I do name them at YouTube format, Instagram post format, and we

Amr The Internet Guy
have the one yeah, wherever it goes is gonna look different,

Mo Hedayet
it’s gonna look different, it may not look as appealing as you want it to, it’s gonna get distorted, the quality that we shoot is higher resolution, and then all of a sudden, not only systems reduce that quality down to a certain point anyways, because they want to stream it a lot faster. But at the same time, you’re also cutting out so you’re zooming in if you shot a vertical shot to do it. Now, the way it works is I think I tried to when I discuss it with my classes that, hey, we’re going to create this video this way. But I’ll give you a format vertical format based on the agreement that you have a contract. And we can include that because it makes a life a lot easier. I send them the white one, this is for the YouTube channel. This one is for the post. So they know they won’t make a mistake when they post they don’t have to do anything else. I’ve even like discovered this way of in the first frame of it. And this is something anybody can use. In the first frame of your video, you can put an image where with writing just how to do on YouTube for your needs to be able to get thumbnail Yeah, and you can do all these graphics on it and make it look good. On Instagram, you can do the same thing, although Instagram, it picks the first frame or you can pick a frame from the video. So you have to you can write Exactly. So I included within the video and the first frame because automatically, it will pick up the first frame. So the first frame can be a picture of a play button or the name of the actual video. So that’s and that will show up on your post. Your post will show that as the main image

Amr The Internet Guy
that you’ll set is good because like I didn’t know that I thought that everywhere you go, you can have your separate thumbnail. I didn’t know that on Instagram. There’s no you cannot upload the thumbnail. That’s where it has to take the frame. So what you do is you include the thumbnail inside the video. Yeah, it becomes the first frame.

Mo Hedayet
Yeah. And it’s so fast that it when it’s playing, you can you can tell one frame, you know, yeah, it’s just like go so quickly. It goes quickly. But the system will recognize that and pick it up and you got your first clip. It’s better than a black screen. I can tell you Yeah, of course. Right? Because that will confuse everybody. But I think that’s one way I tried to kind of help my clients by realizing that if we can kind of tackle your marketing plan strategically, it will help you kind of utilize video to grow your business and to grow your audience from that perspective. Because if you have a story to tell, I think that’s why when you said earlier, is it going to stick you know, at some, some commercial stick to my head and some commercials do not. There’s one commercial from many years ago that sent to my wife. It was very interesting was a English speaking one. But there was something about a German, the German accent. And it was just funny. It just the whole commercial was extremely funny until this day, years later, I still every time I think of their memory. Yeah, you’re also laughing because that that question was so funny, that it connected me. And I think that’s the kind of stories that we need to tell about, about ourselves and about our businesses. Because let’s be honest, anyone that gets into business, they work very hard. They have they decided to take that route of being your own business owner versus being an employee for a reason. And, and it’s not yesterday, only

Amr The Internet Guy
sometimes you work more and earn less. Let me tell you that happens.

Mo Hedayet
We all do. Absolutely.

Amr The Internet Guy
Like sometimes you feel like, you know what, if I’ve done this for another company, I would have been earning double and working less. Absolutely. But on. On the other hand, enjoyment is the enjoyment exactly in an alternate universe, that other version of you that’s living that life. You know, they’re

Mo Hedayet
saying, you know, well, I’m here, but if I had my own business, I would work many hours, but it’s my own business. The

Amr The Internet Guy
grass is always greener on the other side. Absolutely. I’m interested to know because we touched on it like and we’re talking about commercials and I don’t want people to think that you know, because we all know that TV commercials are mega expensive and What I wanted to tell people that the reason why they’re mega expensive is because you’re buying time on the network is not the video itself, it’s actually the showing of the video, like where it will appear? Is it a busy time of the day or not? Is it in one of the most favorite shows that people are watching? There’s so much that goes into it. When it comes online, we don’t have all that we just have different networks. And it’s good to be on more than one network. But also, as a business owner, you need to figure out who you’re advertising to, like, Where is your ideal client, and who they are? And where do they live? As an example, for my specific business, my ideal clients are over the age of 35. So I don’t think I should be on Tick Tock anyway, right? I’m not saying that there are no people on Tick Tock for over 35. But if there are, they’re not going there to purchase a service, they’re going there for pure enjoyment. So it’s not really the right channel. But I think if I can tap into my ideal clients on places like Facebook, and Instagram and YouTube, that would be my ideal world. Same thing for a business any let’s say, for example, we have a landscaping company, right? So what can we do for them? Like, in a video, how much? Because also, does it have to be long does it have? What’s the let me rephrase my question first, like, how, what’s the like, what’s the ideal length of a video? You know, for a small business?

Mo Hedayet
Well, I mean, let’s use a contractor business as an example. Depending on what you what story, you’re telling, that that video can be short or long, and that means that if your story is interesting, and it’s engaging, it can be longer. Okay? And, and everybody will stay attached to it. And they’ll continue and they’ll be engaged and invested in that time. But if it’s something that, you know, they just want to get a quick point across, like a little, you know, promotion about a sales that you’re having or something, or you’ve done something, hey, we did this project. Yeah, there you go. done. It’s done. But if you want to get into details, for example, if you say, well, let’s do a story about why you got into this business, or how do you how do you do as a construction? How do you do something interesting that you feel is unique to your business to your company that nobody else possibly does? Let’s write, let’s create a video and a story about that. Because your audience, obviously is a lot of contractors, they’re all, you know, building an at the end to the average person who just looks like they build a house or they renovated a house or something. Yeah, they don’t see all the hard work that went behind it, and all the cool things that you guys had to do. And sometimes you have to be innovative on a certain corner of a wall, you use a different way of doing things. Because it’s a certain pole in the way that you have to kind of modify. And that’s the kind of story I think is interesting for the people who are watching. Because from my perspective, the contractor comes to me and says, I want to do a story. But I want to do something that people can connect with me. Great. What do you do best? And what is it something that you want to express your audience, as that’s the one that they should know about? from like, for example, if I do this, this is if somebody thinks of this, they think of me automatically my company? Yeah, so let’s give them that story and tell them why they should consider you over all the other competition. And to do that we need to connect with them emotionally. Now when we connect emotionally that’s where it sticks to us. Movies. You know, I’ve connected with us emotionally throughout years. And we’ve always over and over watch the same movies even though we know the

Amr The Internet Guy
story. You don’t want to make people cry, though. They know exactly. But when

Mo Hedayet
we have a story, we end up connecting better with our audience. Because then they know us that hey, I noticed you do that I’m sure I can when you go out and they see your podcast. Yeah. Hey, you do a podcast.

Amr The Internet Guy
So the long format can be anything, right? Because you’re telling kind of you’re telling the full story. Exactly. Well, what about the short format? Is there like a specific dying for the attention span? Is it like because? As an example, this podcast? Yeah, every episode is more or less an hour, some are 45 minutes, some like an hour and 10 or an hour and 15. So we’re dancing around the one hour mark. Right. But many of the podcast podcasts I consume myself are like 1520 minutes. Yeah. And I, I don’t know, maybe because I talked too much. My episodes take a little longer. But also the idea that I like why I created the show was to put the spotlight on small business owners and get their stories into you know, the same thing. So get them to kind of tell the audience why you’re doing what you’re doing. And, and I feel like if you do it, if I do it in less than an hour, if we won’t get the full story. Yeah, right. But I’m also told that the best videos on some of the network Some of the network’s are below whatever I don’t know, below three minutes or so what’s your take on that? Well, when you look at social media, when you look at Instagram or Facebook 60 seconds is that limited? Instagram has as opposed and then it goes into and that’s the story part or generally, well, you can fit

Mo Hedayet
a good story within one minute. So majority of my clients end up doing short videos with me. So as

Amr The Internet Guy
you can do, you can have maximum impact for just a one minute. Yeah,

Mo Hedayet
one minute of engagement, the most impact right now these days because of the 15 seconds that Tick Tock and stories and all these other ones do those ones. Also, because YouTube recently launched their YouTube shorts, which is a toy format, and that’s 10 to 15 seconds, essentially, okay? I and you can put longer, but the engagement is not as much. And I’ve tested these programs. So I’ve tested the Instagram real second section, as well as your YouTube story, or short, short. So what that does is and I put it, I tried it in different formats even put it in a wide but you know, cropping Yeah, and then it didn’t work on an Instagram reel. If you put it as opposed, what I realized is that if it’s a post size, that vertical but not the complete full one, it doesn’t have barely any engagement. But if you make a goal completely full screen, it will go much further. I mean, you will get within a within a few hours, you’ll reach almost 2000 hits, which on a post that same one that you have, as opposed to you probably may not get that much the audience of course, yeah. And it’s just an average audience of whatever somebody that has between 300.

Amr The Internet Guy
And we can capture the essence behind the story in a minute.

Mo Hedayet
Absolutely. Yeah. Like you can’t wait. I mean, I’ve done stories where it’s based on a service that a company provides where multiple people are talking. And what I do is I use B roll shots to tell their stories. So when I’m looking at someone’s face the whole time, and be able to pitch information from one to the other, where multiple people are talking about their services, instead of just one person speaking for one minute, and with different shots in between of them engaging and talking and showing their work environment. Yeah,

Amr The Internet Guy
because you can get the whole team in, right, you can get like everyone can say, can have an input. Yeah. And you’ll be lucky while you’re filming, if there are some clients there, too. And then you can ask them like, you know, why do you come here or whatever like

Mo Hedayet
way? Absolutely. Yeah. So within a minute, you know, as long as we discussed that, this is one minute, we have to think of our guide dialogue and our speaking because we only have so much to talk. We also want to allow for some music, so people are not listening to talking the entire time. So we do that, for example, one minute videos can be dialogue based, as well as it could be just like a B roll kind of a short like I’ve done a real Yeah, like a bar cocktail video, which is very snappy. And the camera goes all over here. And it just shows a bartender making a drink from scratch to its completion. Tom Cruise. Yeah, yeah, actually, I think I flipped the thing. And I reversed it, which is makes it look make. Look, I play with speed in your slow motion and speed ramping to allow, you know, certain parts to be more impactful and more enjoyable. Water dropping in a slow motion. As always, we enjoy watching that. So any liquid that’s dropping, and it’s slow motion or something impacting it would mean make it look cool. So that whole point of view, you were saying psychologically, some of these commercials are playing a certain role when they started showing something else. I mean, the bar commercial, I mean, yes, it’s a drink for a specific restaurant. But at the same time, nobody needed to know, you know, how many you know how we do the whole process? Yes, they just get the drink at the table and the drink. They’re not gonna stand and watch the bartender do it. Yeah. But we’re not giving them an opportunity to see behind the scenes of this bar. And see that little story about that specific cocktail. And I think every business has so many smaller stories that we can tell. Yeah, but all the work that they do

Amr The Internet Guy
that they’re the one that I remember, for example, and I don’t know, I don’t know the owner of the pizzeria. And I think I’ve said his name on many of my episodes before, right, which is Spacca Napoli here in Port Moody. Nice. Yeah. Because the first time I went right after they opened before COVID, of course, so they had these big menus. And on the first page, they tell you the story of what does the word sparkle means, which is like a long alley. And then they do have in Napoli in Italy, a big alley that actually separates two sides of the town. And that is what’s called Spacca Napoli. And then they give you the story about the clay oven that they have, and they’re to import it from Italy. And I haven’t spoken with the owner because I’m intrigued. I mean, I go there to eat pizza and leave, right? Yeah, but because I read this story, I’m still interested to figure out why you could not build the clay oven here. He kind of like what was what’s so special about this oven that you had to import it all the way from Italy. And I think that this story is a great story for me at least as a as a con humor, because I’ve always said that the taste of the pizza there is different from anywhere else. I’ve eaten pizza in so many places. And this one, I’m not saying is the best or is better or worse than others, but in, it’s different. It’s certainly different. And I remember a few things about it, like they used to give you a big, the pizza comes to you on court, right? And they give you a big pair of scissors, and you have to cut it yourself. So these are brilliant. Yeah, I don’t find this in a video about the place like they probably don’t have a video. And the story of importing the oven was on the website, but it wasn’t, it didn’t appear as something important. Like, it’s almost if, if I had to give them advice, I would say like, you got to put some focus on the story, you got to put some focus on, you know, the enjoyment that people have when they get it for the first time or even being baffled, because you get the pizza and it’s not cotton, you look like how am I gonna eat this and then you realize there’s a big pair of scissors like literally had to use both hands. It’s a bit smaller. Now, they have a smaller version, but a couple of years ago. I’m not joking. It was at least this long. It’s like cutting a tree by gutting a pizza.

Mo Hedayet
I should go visit though. I mean, I enjoy pizza that so yeah, go try them. But I think if you look at it from that perspective, and I’ve we all we’re all guilty of it from to a certain point, it’s not easy for us to talk about ourselves, you

Amr The Internet Guy
have something really cool. And different from every other business that is in a similar or in the same industry. Yeah. But you’re not showing this to the people. And I feel like we’re all guilty of it anyway.

Mo Hedayet
Yeah. And I think if you look at it from their perspective, you know, they feel it’s important, but maybe they haven’t been into a situation where they somebody has brought that to their attention, maybe you should talk about this. And sometimes when you work with companies, you know, to create, you know, when I go in, and I create content for my clients is like, you know, I want to know more about them. Because the more I get to know the more I see things that they’ve it’s normal for them. It’s now saturating them. Yes. But to me, it’s a bad

Amr The Internet Guy
thing. Because we do we do what we do day in and day out. Yeah. So for us exceptional is normal. Yeah. In in our industries, because we’ve seen it like 100 times already. It’s no longer exceptional. Maybe it was the first time you did it. Yeah. And so that’s the thing with every business, but when you get an outsider who comes and tries to help you market your service or market your product, the outside there will be fascinated by stuff that you think is normal. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And that that’s that in, for example, web design, some web designers and certainly when I started early in 2001, sometimes we wanted to show our craftsmanship. So we put stuff on the website that has no purpose, the only purpose that it does it still make other web designers jealous, because they look at it, and they think, Oh my God, look at how powerful this design is, or whatever. But over the years, as you learn and you become a CSS perfect a seasoned professional, you realize, Oh, my God, like we used to put at the time, it was flash animations, right? And things will be like lighting up and moving on the page. And like, you know, these websites when you land and music starts in the background automatically is utterly annoying. But like 20 years ago, people thought it was

Mo Hedayet
a great idea. Yeah, my website had that. Oh, yeah, I thought that was a coolest thing. And enjoy music.

Amr The Internet Guy
Exactly. And things that are moving around. And we put things there only because we could, it didn’t serve a marketing purpose. It was not promoting the business. It was not, you know, we didn’t know any better. The business owner didn’t know any better. But we’ve come a long way to understand that. These things are tools that you as a business should be using. So videos, but video is a tool that you can use to promote your business, or to tell your story to highlight your talent.

Mo Hedayet
Absolutely. Right. I think it’s important to, to have a balance of everything. I mean, as a business owner, you have a lot of costs a lot of things to think about. So when you think of video, sometimes a lot of people feel like Oh, is it going to be too expensive? Can I can actually do this? Yeah, this

Amr The Internet Guy
is what I wanted to ask you the question not only about the cost, but what are the pushback that you normally get when you speak with people not necessarily leads that you’re speaking with in order to convince them that it’s going to be good for them but in general, the misconceptions about video, what

Mo Hedayet
we say is the fact that everything when you look at it as a business, they pretty much are looking to be able to accomplish what they have seen somewhere else. Whether their competition or somewhere across the world that was that’s inspired them to say well Want to create something like this, but then when you dig deep into it, and sometimes you may come across people that may give them a price that’s way above their budget, or maybe quality, that’s not exactly what they’re looking for. And sometimes I find, you know, build that communication, because when I work with clients, it becomes a bit of a relationship. Now, we’re, we’re kind of partners in this, you know, I need your input to be able to create what I want. Yeah. So sometimes that communication, if you can connect with what someone who’s able to hear you out and express what you’re thinking, and brings your imagination to life, visually, then, then that that’s what some of the time and the effort that you put into it. Because it’s not just money invested into it. It’s really, as a business owner, you have to now think of what do I want to express? And you get nervous, it’s like, okay, I want to talk about this, do I not want to talk about this? Should I embed tradition, they need to know this, right? So I pretty much a good producer, essentially, when I start working with them, it’s like, you know, let’s, let’s break it down. Let’s simplify it. And let’s talk about one thing at a time and go from there. So the pushback usually comes back from everyone, they love the fact that, hey, we’re going to do this, and we’re going to do this, but it pushed back. So it’s like, so what am I going to get out of how you know, people are going to see it, you know, as you’re going to get very far. Although I gotta be honest, in the past, since 2021, has began, it’s been a little bit different. Because for the past, you know, over a year, people have been inside, on their knees in person. Exactly. So them themselves as a business owner, as a person who was stuck in that same environment as everybody else. So they’re kind of living the same life that their customers had lived, you know, and how are you consuming information through their digital media? Which is their phones there?

Amr The Internet Guy
Yes. And I don’t think this is going away anytime soon. Anyway, it’s not because of COVID or Windows now as with discover that it works. Well. Now. Now we’ve covered that you can sell online. Yeah. Wow, I can have e commerce. Yeah, you could have had that 20 years ago, but you’re waiting for COVID to tell you is that?

Mo Hedayet
Well, once you discover a wheel, then then you can just you know, go back, go back to anything else. It goes a lot faster. So it’s the same procedure. I think, when businesses one is you know, now they’re starting to realize that maybe I should consider video and I’ve come across people that hadn’t thought about it, and that they’re considering it or now they’re strongly

Amr The Internet Guy
thinking about, I would say the chief concern that people think video is expensive. That’s the, that’s the main thing. Yeah.

Mo Hedayet
Right. Because they feel like it, it is going to cost them too much. Or if they get a quote, a mean, be above that. And sometimes they lock out the some companies and some production companies have a specific price tag that they don’t want. Yeah, yeah. But keep in mind, there’s so many out there that you can work with. And each one of them

Amr The Internet Guy
isn’t expensive in general, like, would you would you say video is expensive?

Mo Hedayet
video isn’t? I mean, I wouldn’t say I know

Amr The Internet Guy
that. There’s no one size fits all because everyone has a different requirement. And story is the same thing with web design, right? Yeah. And with web design, okay, you’ve got different options. You can do it yourself. Yeah. You don’t need to hire anyone, right? Just like video. Yeah, many people can just go do them. Like with video, you have your camera, you just need like, few bits and pieces, like lighting a tripod for your phone, whatever. Okay. And but, and it’s the same thing with website like you could pretty much WordPress as an example WordPress is free, right? You buy hosting for whatever, $10 a month, you buy your domain name, install WordPress, which is free. And go ahead and you know, the world is your oyster. Yeah, right.

Mo Hedayet
All the other sites like Squarespace or Wix or Wix,

Amr The Internet Guy
or whatever you choose, you even choose they let you choose WordPress does it too. Yeah, they let you choose a template. And all what you need is to make changes to the template. But the funniest part is, every time I’ve met with somebody who designed their own website, and I asked one simple question, how many hours did it take you until you actually published the website like went live with it? The average? So some people said like 30 Some people said like 100 hours, some people said 60 hours, whatever the average, if I just calculate all of them and divide them to reach an average was 40 hours, right? So okay, 40 hours? What’s your hourly rate as a business owner? So if you’re a coach, or if you’re a yoga, you know, studio owner or whatever, how much is your hourly rate? Right? Because you got to factor that in. And if you say that your hourly rate is whatever, $50 for example, okay, so you spent 50 hours for 3040 hours times $50. Then that website cost you $2,000. Is it worth it? Like, you know, could you have hired somebody else for the $2,000 who would give would have given you a website that looks way better. works way better. And saved you that time so that you could use this time for something that you really love. Yeah, you know, either focusing on your business or you know, being out with the kids or going on a hike, or you know what I mean, going to the beach, whatever, you know, whatever that makes you tick. Yeah. And it’s the same thing I think with all these elements of having a business, I mean, you can, most people just start the business, they’re capable of doing majority of the tasks, or at least having, you know, anything they can do, then they get somebody, but and, for example, websites which have been have been created, so you can create things yourself, and invest your time, as you know, you’re giving you’re investing your equity of yourself, essentially into or you can hire somebody else to do it. Same thing with videos and stuff, you have your camera, you can shoot and you can do that. But I find that businesses that have succeeded and have a good clientele that are consistent, that their businesses rolling, are the ones that, that rely on a team of professionals that allow them to do it, for example. It’s simple as an accountant, every business needs an accountant. Now, just because you can crunch the numbers together. It doesn’t you know, and you’ve studied accounting in school, you know, many years ago, it doesn’t mean that you’re going to want to do your taxes. You want exactly want somebody else, just like an accountant. Oh, believe me? I tried, right?

Mo Hedayet
I’m sure most of us,

Amr The Internet Guy
oh, my god, no, I don’t get this

Mo Hedayet
money. Exactly. And sometimes you calculate, like you said, your time, is my time worth spending on. Or if I were to take that time and apply it to other parts of my business? Maybe I can grow it while this is costing me But actually, I mean, making much more once I get this other thing, imagine

Amr The Internet Guy
your whatever like, okay, a small bakery, right? Do you really want to spend your time learning WordPress, or learning a video editing tool? After hours? Like you’ve been in your bakery for the whole day? And you close that? 7pm? Do you want to go home, spend this time with your family or go home spend this time on YouTube? Trying to learn how to make this work? Yeah. And then once you learn, guess what, a few days later, there’s a new problem coming for you. You just don’t see it. Because that’s not your bread and butter. Yeah, like you’re not a web designer, you don’t know what’s around the corner. you’ve built your website, it looks great, right? But the form that people fill is not sending an email. So you’re not going to get any inquiry from her website. And that is a port that with Dr. YouTube, you haven’t reached that port yet. So it’s coming for you. So there are I always say like, you know, you can do every business owner, you can do so much. Yeah, there’s so many things that you can learn. And it’s good to learn something new every day. As long as you keep focused on what makes you special. Why you started your business at the first place. You didn’t start your business, so that you can learn accounting, HR and marketing and all by yourself. Yeah, you started your business because you have a passion for something very specific. Yeah. Which is your talent, right? So don’t let this out of your sight. By all means, if you have the time, and I’ve been told this like for starting up, you know, somebody who has an idea of a business, they’re starting up is sorely, they are not making money yet, so that they don’t have a budget to spend on anything. Right? Yeah. So they want to do everything on their own. But the fact is, because they get pulled in so many different directions. They’re focused on what makes them special, isn’t complete, because you still have to worry about all these other. There’s a whole world out there, that when you’re starting up, you have to know about, right?

Mo Hedayet
Absolutely. And I think that’s if you look at it from a perspective of that same point, you started this business, a bakery shop, let’s say, you’ve decided to open up a bakery shop. And you’ve worked all the hours, you know, before you began to register the name all that stuff. Yeah, this is what its gonna look like. You know, maybe you are an amazing Baker. Yeah, right. I have all this talent, I want to be able to make a stuff I want to bake stuff in my own cafe and sell it to people. That’s what I want to do. So you come up with this, and it’s a brilliant idea. And you’ve picked a location, you got everything going. But now we get to a point of it’s like, Okay, well, I don’t have the money to spend at this point, even though that’s as part of your business plan. Marketing is a major section in there, along with the numbers and analysis. And this is because

Amr The Internet Guy
I want to make this very clear, right, because I think there are many people out there who get the priorities reversed. Yeah, people always and I hate that like when people say sales and marketing, not the same thing. Like even when I worked in the corporate world. I hated that title. Like I hated to meet somebody. Not I didn’t get the person. I hated that company still combined the two in one. Yeah. It’s a completely different, in my opinion, and I think the right way and I could be wrong, but I think the right way is marketing first, then sales, because if you don’t market, you’ll have no sales. You can’t go like, no matter how good of a hustler you are, you can go convince somebody to buy a product they don’t know from a company, they don’t know. I mean,

Mo Hedayet
you can start with your family and friends and start to say, Oh, God, but then not ever. No. family? No, I mean, we understand that a lot of business owners if they if you’re talking about startups, yeah, you know, the first support comes in from family and friends, they’ll go on to buy something that comes to us. Yeah, no, but that’s, that’s your first customer, your first customers are usually your family and friends. But then after that,

Amr The Internet Guy
unless you’re selling insurance or skin products, then that’s not a good idea.

Mo Hedayet
But once you get once you pass that the family and friends phase of kind of supporting you, you need to have a plan been in place, which is your real customers. And that’s when you want exactly so your focus doesn’t

Amr The Internet Guy
matter how good you are in what you do, if nobody knows about it, if nobody knows about exactly, okay, you could um, like guys, like, I want to say something like, you could even have I’m sorry to say that I know I’m shooting myself in the foot, you can have a shitty website that has good content on it. Like it’s not even about the design and how great it looks. It’s about the content that’s on the site. Yeah, right. If the content is the right content that people want to consume, they will forgive you for a bad design. It doesn’t matter. Like the design does not matter whatsoever. Of course, if you have a good design, it’s icing on the cake, but you need to have the cake. Right. The cake is the content, that content could be text, images, video, yeah, that that’s what gets people interested. That’s what gets people engaged. That’s what gets your story out to. And so let me ask you one question. Once a video is produced and is given to the client, right, right, what do they need to do now?

Mo Hedayet
Well, good question. Well, I mean, that’s something that we discuss before we even begin to shoot. Because it’s like when we when we talk about the concept of this of this video. Okay, well, the message is a major part of the concept and in the story and how we’re going to build it in. And then, okay, well, if that story is tied into what is it going to be, you know, projected pretty much what is the audience who’s going to view it? Where are we posting it, and based on that we created accordingly. And because of that, at that stage, when we do that, it allows them to know, okay, well, when it finishes, I want to post it on Instagram. And it’s kind of like, I usually let them know, this is free Instagram, this is pre YouTube, where you want to do is you want to get your post out on Instagram first. Yeah, you can introduce this video, then start putting it on

Amr The Internet Guy
on your user, Id give them like a plan of action. But

Mo Hedayet
we didn’t discuss it with them exactly. Okay. Sometimes they can, as soon as they posted that I also, you know, certain videos I posted on my platforms, and tagged them and kind of, I also don’t know, yeah, I can help

Amr The Internet Guy
guide you on your path clients also see what you’re doing with the new clients, because there might be some synergies,

Mo Hedayet
exactly. And at the same time, I want to be able to support them, I mean, I, I’ll be one of the people that was involved in it, you know, I obviously believe in your service and product to be able to help you with this. So therefore, I don’t mind sharing that with my audience, maybe they’ll come in to you and utilize it. And to me, if I can provide my audience with some information or someplace that they can go enjoy food, or go to a place of, you know, you know, fitness or something, then might as well be these guys, because these guys are my clients, if I can feed them clients, and help their business grow. You know, that is the purpose I’m doing this I’m not doing it just to take their money and create a video that they’ll end up throwing away or it gets lost

Amr The Internet Guy
on their hard drive on their goes nowhere, right,

Mo Hedayet
then there are their clients are going to produce all these commercials. And at the end of the day, the next steps Yeah, or they take longer listeners, they have strategies in place, but sometimes they may not. That’s that video may pass a certain peak that they wanted to reach. Now they’re not in the same mood. And that’s their decision. However, I try to help them by letting them know that FDA needs support. FDA needs resources with management of social

Amr The Internet Guy
media. I’m beginning to think as we go through with our conversation today that businesses don’t just need a one video like it doesn’t make any. I don’t know like it’s not going to be powerful enough. You probably need to have more than one. Yeah. And maybe is like the first one is an intro to tell the story why you’re doing what you’re doing. But maybe if you have a sale going on, you need something specific to the sale. If you have a new product or if you have a new office or you know something else got you’re motivated. You want to share this with your clients or with your followers or whatever. So I’m beginning to think that it’s an ongoing relationship, it’s not like I’m going to get a videographer, who’s going to give me a vote one video, I’m going to post it on all the networks, I’m going to sit there and watch my, you know, my money box stick, or whatever

Mo Hedayet
exactly a bullet. The key is consistency. Now, in whatever you do, when, whenever space that you sell a service, or food or product, you know, your inventory has to be consistent, your service has to be consistent. And that same thing goes for your marketing and advertising and creating content, your content has to be consistently coming out. Because when we discussed, you have a network to broadcast, now you have an audience, just like a YouTube channel that you have, or just like, you know, Netflix broadcasting to us, and we watch all these shows and movies, we’re not their audience, we’re waiting for new episodes to get new stories to come out, you’ve created one, now you set the expectations that the bar up,

Amr The Internet Guy
something else is coming. Yeah. And it doesn’t come. It doesn’t mean that it all has to be you don’t have to be a slave over it as well. Like, it’s not like, Hey, you know, if you do one every week, you have to keep doing one every week, it’s not the case. But the cases, you don’t do one disappear for six months, people forget about you. And then on the next one, you’re kind of trying to re engage the audience. That’s harder. Yeah. But at least if they know that, roughly every month something, you post something or whatever, then it becomes an expectation and people are waiting for it.

Mo Hedayet
Absolutely. And that’s, that’s the key. I mean, if you if you plan it out, and I let them know, there’s no specific guest who is explicit in metrics that you can get on Instagram, it’s like, if you post this many times, you’re gonna get this much engagement, but it comes down to whatever your consistency is. So if your consistency means you’re going to put two posts per week, you know, versus some people might put a post every single day. Yeah, or one, one professional video and a few other you know,

Amr The Internet Guy
exactly, you had one done for you. And then you can have a few of them, you just doing it yourself. And

Mo Hedayet
that’s what I do. Most of my clients, we create packages based on how many videos we want to project each month. So you know, whether it’s for videos, one, once a week, or every other week, we’re gonna do professional in between that I kind of help them and I

Amr The Internet Guy
advise you on a little script that they can use or someone like an idea,

Mo Hedayet
I give him ideas of you know, hey, listen with your phone, this is where you can talk about and start posting on stories. Yeah, you’re building that everyday thing, because I can’t be there every day watching a business, you’re gonna see things that I may miss. But if you can take out your phone and shoot a little small clip, and then just posted as a raw thing that will be or your more amateur kind of shots that everybody’s kind of used to now with protect dog and all these things. Yeah, which will still increase your engagement a lot. Of course, yeah. Because when you take all these little, it’s a window to your world. Yeah. And it’s teasers to building up to the next video that will come up, which will be kind of nice. And that’s why we do behind the scenes, we do little shots or photos of every shoot that we go to, we just taken it I posted on my Instagram story. This is what I was at, it’s giving the audience a teaser, that this is what I worked on, maybe you’re going to see the video in upcoming weeks. And that’s the idea.

Amr The Internet Guy
Just don’t post what you’re eating guys, it drives me nuts.

Mo Hedayet
Every single workout that’s happening. So I think for like I’m a customer, from a business perspective, have the consistency of putting stuff up. And it doesn’t mean that you have to do it every day. It can be me, it means as long as you’re repeating that every single week. So your audience can get used to getting information content like that you you’re giving content, right and forget about the algorithm of what Instagram handle.

Amr The Internet Guy
I was telling you before we started that, in my opinion, at search engine optimization or SEO is way overrated, right. It’s essential, but it’s overrated, because people think I’m going to stop all other marketing activities, I’m going to be doing nothing. So you know, they’re not posting on their blog, or on their website. They’re not networking, they’re not meeting people. You know what I mean? Like, they’re not sending anything to the past and existing clients. You know, like an email, Hey, how’s it going? Is there anything else we can help you with? Or, you know, it depends on your industry, of course, like, you know, not everybody has the data, or the email of the clients, but I’m saying in general, but not connecting with people. And all of their doing the thinking by just buying some ads on Google, the business is going to grow and have more sales, right? It doesn’t work. Well. It’s a combination of tool. It’s the SEO is one tool in your marketing arsenal. Right? You have you have so many tools like it’s like you need to have a toolbox, right? If I’m going to be building Let’s not say building a house because that’s very hard. If you go to IKEA and you buy furniture, yeah, right. They give you the tools to build the furniture. If one of these tools is missing, you won’t be able to build your bookcase or your chair or whatever is that, that you’re building, right. So it’s the same thing with marketing your business, you can just have a one tool, and things that this alone will give you. The ER will make you reach the target that you want to reach that. So it’s not a one tool, you have to have a mix of certain things together. And when they all work together in harmony, you’re going to reach your target. So SEO is part of the mix. But it’s not all the mix. digital marketing in general, is not all SEO, SEO is just one part of it.

Mo Hedayet
Absolutely. Every everyone plays a key role in, in making your business grow. And you have to be able to use the right team to deploy that. So you know, my job is to create content, to tell stories and create content. Now, I do that part. And then it gets to a point, okay, it’s kind of really, I cannot pass the torch on Yes, I’ve created content to social media management team, which then they have to do that that management team can be you. Or you can be your nephew or cousin or daughter,

Amr The Internet Guy
or somebody or somebody working in your business, or your admin. Exactly. And they don’t have to have tech skills anyway, they just need to have access to the social media channels.

Mo Hedayet
Exactly. Now, now you can do this again, same thing, just like you can take a camera and film something and get it ready. As a content or hire professional to create the content is for you strategize with you to tell your story. And same thing applies to posting, either you can do it yourself and schedule your day to, hey, at three o’clock, I’m going to post it

Amr The Internet Guy
or you can even have a tool like there are so many social media scheduling,

Mo Hedayet
what will you wear, now it comes down to your time, if you have the time to do it, by all means, go ahead and do it. But if you can apply yourself to a different part of the business that can make you more money, then give this to somebody else. And just let them do it. So you can

Amr The Internet Guy
so my goal here, I’m not trying to scare people. No, no, there’s only so much that you as a business owner can learn and can do on your own. Yeah, right. Once you have some content that has been made for you, written for you, or videos that have been done for you, or you know, some aspects of your website that have been done for you. Now, the next step is how are you going to share this with the world? And where are you going to share it. Most people who are on social media kind of everyday now, like we’re I don’t know, we’ve grown, I think even with COVID, it became more, we’re increasing, you know, the dependence on social media for so many things, including entertainment. So it becomes easier for you to post it yourself. You don’t need to hire a social media manager. But think of it this way as well. If you have somebody taking this off your hands, and you can regain another hour or two hours a day, Isn’t that better for you to spend this one or two hours on something more productive than you trying to push everything out? You know, on the social media channels. So there’s always this kind of balance that we have to create a cost versus benefit.

Mo Hedayet
Yeah. And again, as it when you’re starting off, and if you want to cut down a cost or they are not exactly where you want it to be, you know, yes, you want to try to, you know, pay somebody to do one thing, but then you’ll do the other job. And then maybe you know, get something so

Amr The Internet Guy
so yeah, don’t get you’re not paying somebody to do something for you. And you use this time, like as a wasted like, you know what I mean?

Mo Hedayet
Exactly? Like if you have the time and energy to do it. Absolutely. Go ahead and do it. Because yes, chances are you’re well capable of posting something on online your own. And that’s perfect. Everyone is Yeah, which is, which is awesome. Take advantage of that. When you get to a point in your business where you’re starting to see that grow, and you’re making that money, then then maybe it’s time to consider hiring a team because that will take you from here much higher. Because now you have another team doing it. And you’ve reached a certain point where you’ve maxed out your time capacity. And not only you’re thinking, well, I don’t need to do this anymore. I can apply myself to my customers who are not coming in, I have to focus on servicing them. And that I think, as a business owner, we always try to find ways to save costs, but more importantly, how to make sure we’re servicing our customers to keep coming back for more business with us.

Amr The Internet Guy
And that’s what it is, is like I always tell you 80% of your business comes from 20% of your customers, right? Yeah, the 8020 I think it’s called the Pareto rule or something. Anyway, and when you say that 80% of your business comes from 20% of your customers, these are existing customers, right? Yeah, if you’re going to ignore them, and then keep hounding, you know, for new leads and new customers and new leads and like it’s good to be a hustler. But the most successful customers Are those who are hustlers with good customer service? Because I’ve seen the other side. Yeah. Which is hustle, hustle. Also, I mean, phone companies do that all the time, like a mobile phone companies, they and internet service providers, they always give the best discount to the new customer. Like who’s not yet a customer? Yeah. And only a few of these companies would extend those savings to existing customers. Yeah. So in the past, this won’t get

Mo Hedayet
me as far as a cut you off. But it’s almost a we don’t call them complain. They won’t give you the exact when you do. It’s like, okay, fine, we’ll give it to us.

Amr The Internet Guy
You get me very upset. Like I was upset because I’m thinking I’ve been paying you for 10 years. And the new guy who’s coming to join you today is getting a better deal. How does that work? Who

Mo Hedayet
Yeah, who’s the loyal one here? Exactly? Where

Amr The Internet Guy
how much money have you made out of me already? Am I at the end of my customer lifecycle to you. Because if I am, tell me, I’ll move, you know what I mean? So this is the idea. If you are, if you’re to focus on your 20%, or your existing clients, you will find more business there. Even more referrals, if your existing customers are not doing anything. Like for example, for me, nobody’s gonna change their website every two years, right. But there’s maintenance, there’s optimization there is fixing, because guess what you will the website for somebody, you give it to them, they play around, they break something, sometimes they don’t want to come back to you, because they feel a little bit ashamed that they broke something, and they tried to fix it on their own. Sometimes they don’t want to come back to you because they feel like Oh, he’s going to charge me an hourly rate now. And, you know, if I can just go to YouTube and learn to do it myself or whatever. But some of them say, you know what, I don’t want to have anything to do with one with one with my website, apart from writing content. So all these maintenance and updates and upgrades and hosting and whatever, I don’t want to worry about that. So I’m going to pay you a monthly fee for you get one of your maintenance packages. And it gives me peace of mind that I can focus on creating content, rather than worrying about breaking something on my website. And that’s brilliant. for them. They it takes a lot of the time and the worry away. For me, it’s recurring income. And that’s what we mean, you know, by 20% of your customers will generate 80% of your business. And it goes for everything.

Mo Hedayet
Yeah, well, it goes for every business. I mean, in our business. So you know, I’m sure you mentioned the same thing. You know, majority of my business comes from referrals of my existing clients. Of course, not only will they continue doing business with me, but they’re constantly passing my information on to others. You know, which is amazing, because, obviously, they have confidence in what I provided for them. You’re lucky your service is very visual. Yeah. Which makes it easy, because it’s look at this video, and everyone said, Oh,

Amr The Internet Guy
how did you get that done?

Mo Hedayet
Yep. And I’ve had taken one of my clients that, you know, people ask me, you know, hey, you know, who did the video and then he refers them. But recently, he passed on a client to me, and she called me and I spoke with her. I’m like, So have you ever seen any of my work that I’ve done? No, I haven’t seen it. But you’ve come

Amr The Internet Guy
swearing by you. Yeah,

Mo Hedayet
get in. Touch get good referral, I thought, you know, we’re working together. So before we start working together, let me send you some links to some of the videos that relate to your industry. If you like what you see, then we can discuss it. And I mean, I knew that it wasn’t an issue because that style, she obviously liked it. Yeah. But I wanted to kind of let her know that. You know, yes, it’s great that I came with before, but have a look. Because then if you see my work, you’ll see my style, then you’ll know what we can work with. And we’ll be able to mesh well together. And, and that’s, that’s the key to a successful relationship in an environment like this. Because if we can get to know each other better in terms of what is it that you’re trying to express with your business, and I can get intimate with you and your business, in that sense from

Amr The Internet Guy
that word. Let’s say it again, if I can get intimate with your business Exactly. Like you know, you kind of know the business inside out first so that you’re able to tell the right story.

Mo Hedayet
Yeah. And I think that’s one thing I love about doing corporate stuff and doing business stories, and somebody was asking yesterday is you know, which direction you want to go, Why do you want to do that? If Don’t you want to make a film one day? So of course I do. But I said, What I love about working with different customers and different clients that are business owners that are have a service or a product to sell, I get to know them and what their thought pattern is for the business. At the same time, I get to learn their stories, as these are amazing stories that everybody has to give for them to get from where they were five years ago and how they are now. Ways to project this is a

Amr The Internet Guy
video yeah, I said no other medium. If you’re right about it is going to be 10 pages that you can capture this in a three minute video. Exactly.

Mo Hedayet
And I said by doing that by doing these videos with them. I’m learning so much I’m learning about finance, Aye. Aye. Aye. I had an automotive company that I was working with. And I had to go in and watch them in to do wiring and film them and kind of ask them, you know, why is this car like this? Why is it stable like this? And that gave me a lot of information. It’s like, Oh, that’s cool. And, and it also is going to I become a bit of a walking marketing for them. So if someone if I’m with another kindness, I have this issue with my car, or whatever the case may be, by the way, did you go there?

Amr The Internet Guy
Yeah, there’s all this problem already.

Mo Hedayet
Yeah. Like, I like this kind of food. Oh, by the way, if you’re in this side of town, you should check these guys out because they’re good food. And then the only reason I’m saying that is because I get to work so closely with them, I see the quality that is you. And I, we have a motor for them. I’m naturally, I can’t help but to talk about them not because I’m trying to push them to say that I did this for you. It’s more like, these guys do a pretty good job. Because I’ve seen how much hardware they build it. I edited it for hours. I watched that scene over and over again.

Amr The Internet Guy
It’s the behind the same. Yeah. It’s very important, because sometimes people look at the ready product at the end. Yeah, right. Like for you, for example, people will see the three minute video, they don’t know that you had six hours of shooting that were kind of condensed to make the three minute video.

Mo Hedayet
Absolutely. Yeah. Or they can have the 15 the 20 hours of editing.

Amr The Internet Guy
Yeah, exactly. And everything was amazing. Oh

Mo Hedayet
my god. So that’s, that’s and that’s what, but to me that the passion is in that when I create these videos, and I’ve watched them over and over again, and people have asked me say, don’t you get bored of watching this? If you saying you will Domini hours. And it’s one minute, how many times have you watched us within that 40 hours? And I tell them I can remember but all I know is that I know how to make a good meal. Now because of this because I’ve been through step by step. I know the recipe. I know the process, or I know how they’ve done this thing. I did a gelato place not too long ago. And I didn’t know how they were being made. I

Amr The Internet Guy
was I love you. I love to learn exactly how is your stream man?

Mo Hedayet
So I went to I said, Can we make a video about how you do this? Do you mind sharing that? And he was sure. And we followed all the recipes and the video came out really cool. And the nice thing was like how did you get into this? Well, I went to gelato University, gelato University. There is a there is a gelato University. Right? And I said, I have no idea. But he did. And he was from Italy. And he had this beautiful Italian accent. I’d love to go to a gelato University. Right. And that’s what and his gelato is amazing. Yeah. Because you know, and I said this store needs to

Amr The Internet Guy
know all the difference between gelato and ice cream. Right, right. I think gelato is a little bit. I don’t know, I don’t, I don’t want to say softer. But when I eat something called gelato, I feel like it’s a little bit stickier than regular ice cream. Yeah, it is got this kind of mixture. And

Mo Hedayet
yeah, absolutely. And I think and that’s the things that we need to learn. So the next video that we did with him was a good like three minutes story about where he came from, why he got into what he got into, and how he does everything. And, and it allowed me to learn about gelato, which I didn’t know. And it helped me become more knowledgeable, because of my customer where I had to do a story on them and tell their story. So I was trying to figure out what would be so enjoyable. If I can tell somebody this story that I love. I enjoy. Now I share it. So I become invested in their story exact matches, then

Amr The Internet Guy
you kind of it’s not just client as per se, it becomes part of your passion. Yeah, right. Yeah. Because you want to project this story to the world you feel the urge is like everyone needs to know about this, because it’s so cool.

Mo Hedayet
Yeah, yeah. Right. And that’s a key role, even the music that you choose for each video, I try to make the music connect emotionally with somebody because I mean, I watch movies, and they have dreams and violins and stuff like that. And it’s a sad scene. It’s like I’m feeling it, I’ve cried in movies before it, you know, which is, which is when you get to a point where you’re really upset, or really happy or really sad, then you know that what they were trying to express was perfect. Because they’ve connected with you emotionally, and you’re engaged, you’re invested in that

Amr The Internet Guy
word, you’re trying to make them sad so that they eat MORE Gelato!

I’m weary of your time. And I’m also I don’t want to you know, have our listeners have a two hour episode. Yeah. But my, my parting gift. I don’t know how long we’ve been here, but my parting words are think business, then figure out the technology, what technology will serve your business purpose. And your 14 words, sir.

Mo Hedayet
I guess my parting words is you know, if anyone’s looking at content, or considering videos for their business, essentially it just a conversation with somebody that you know, as a creator, reach out to them, just ask them questions, figure out a budget and I think if you go into the composition, knowing that, hey, I want to invest this much money into it. Yeah, they’ll be able to work with you a lot better. Instead of you saying well give me a number and if the To give you a number, you may not be what you were expecting. Either it’ll be more or you’re not really happy with it. So it’s sometimes better. I always tell clients, if you can come to me with a specific idea, because when we go shopping for anything, we always have a plan of what you want. What you want to spend, I want to spend between, you know, 10 to 15,000 on a car, you know, yeah, when you go into a dealership, you know, you kind of any monthly payments, or whatever the case may be, you have an idea, there’s no way you would walk into any, any transaction environment without knowing what you’re actually saying. Yeah, sometimes you’ll be more someone’s trying to

Amr The Internet Guy
sell you the $50,000 car, you get scared and leave. Yeah, but if you know your budget is 10 to 15,000 for a car, you may end up buying a car that’s a little bit more expensive, because they showed you more value. Yeah, but you’re not gonna you know what I mean? You’re not exactly you might buy the $20,000 car but not the $50,000 car. Exactly. They need to understand your motivation. The goal of buying the car, what do you want in a car? What do you want it to do? Absolutely. And what’s important in the car for you as well, even

Mo Hedayet
when it comes down to video and creating stories, you know, one, I can’t say that this, every single video was the same price. So no, because it’s a custom video, it’s each story is different. Each story has different elements, yes to tell, and different ways of shooting and different ways of telling you so there’s nothing cheap or expensive? No, it’s essentially the idea you want the right fit the right fit. Exactly. Yeah. And that’s why when I think as a business owner, if you’re connecting with anyone to create content or create anything for you from marketing side, you know, if you go in there with a budget saying I want to spend this much this much on my budget, is this realistic? Does this is going to give me something valuable? Or Yeah, This to me is it’s not enough for me to get it

Amr The Internet Guy
there is a key here as well is the return on investment, or ROI, right. It’s not about hey, I’ve got I don’t know $4,000 to spend, because that’s my marketing budget, and I want to do something new. Right? You need to maximize the return on your $4,000. Yeah. Even if you have $500 $200 $300 to spend $10 to spend. Can you do marketing for $10? Yeah, you can you can put some ads for $10. Right, yeah. But what’s the return on that investment? How much are you going to make? For every dollar spent?

Mo Hedayet
Yep. And that’s why I was telling my customers, if I ever, if we get to a situation where we’re discussing price, in terms of like, when we get to that present situation, where the price comes at some point, it’s like, Okay, well, you have this much budget Do you want to spend?

Amr The Internet Guy
How much do you want to make, I always ask this question, how much do you want to make out of this like yours, you’re investing in something, whatever that is, it could be a video, it could be buying ads, it could be a new website, it could be a piece of equipment, whatever you’re spending something, to get something in return, the best way to go about it is to maximize the return, what’s going to give me the best return on my investment? And how am I going to measure the return? Because it’s the same thing people sometimes get sidetracked again into tech. Oh, SEO is about traffic. I’m going to draw 10,000 people to my website. Brilliant. Okay, who are these 10,000 people, maybe 9000 out of the 10,000 have absolutely no interest in what you’re doing. Is that good traffic?

Mo Hedayet
Yeah. And I think that in terms of getting your return on investment, I think when you consider investing in marketing, it’s not about essentially money return on investment, it’s essentially about awareness exactly how a majority of the time there’s awareness factor that’s involved in it. So when you put out a video, and it’s shot well, and it’s telling a story, the return that you can expect on that is, how many people are gonna engage with it? How is it? How are people aware? And even if it’s, for example, if you’re expecting 10,000 people, and only 1000 people watch it, that those 10,000 people enjoyed it.

Amr The Internet Guy
Maybe that’s 1000 people are better than the 10,000. Because these are 1000 people who have interest in what you do exactly. Because they’re targeted. Yeah, it’s not just about hey, let’s just get as much traffic as we can. Yeah, exactly. And

Mo Hedayet
again, the production costs can vary. I mean, that same type of video can be done with a lot of money or with less money. Yeah, it can have higher impact. Yeah, it all depends on one. What are you trying to tell? And when I when I talk to a budget is, okay, well, if you give me samples of this is what I’ve seen, this is what I want to create from a competition or another video that you might have seen. Great, that’s awesome. We look at that. And then we say, okay, based on what you want, this is it makes sense. You can we can align your product or service with this type of style. Now, this can cost you, you know, it is flexible, depending on how big of a production you want it, but if you want to reduce down on it, then let us know what the budget is. And what I do is that I discuss with them, okay. Realistically, what your budget, you can apply this module, you can get this with it. Yeah, this way, you’re still not getting something but now you’re excited. of Dallas, because you don’t understand how much it’s going to cost you. You either think it’s going to cost too much, or you think it’s going to cost you $100. Because Yeah, just a one minute or 32nd video, it shouldn’t be that long. I’ll give you a little bit of money. Or it could be like, you know, this video looks great. I know, yeah, I’m guessing it’s going to cost a lot of money. So there’s two perspective of the mind that they wanted really cheap. But do you think it’s going to be too expensive? Maybe that conversation will allow you to understand that maybe your expectations can be met with this type of a budget, because it’s going to give you the quality that you’re

Amr The Internet Guy
able to do this consultation, right. Like, this is not something that they have to pay for. Absolutely, that to me, I just have a conversation with somebody understand what they want to do. Yeah. And give them an honest advice. And then based on that, they’re on their own, they want to use you they want to do it themselves, whatever they absolutely, yeah,

Mo Hedayet
if because if you have that information, and even if you decide not to work with me, you’ll at least have something to do with it. And you know, next time whether you want to reduce it, and maybe in the future, whenever you’re ready. And if my rate is too much for you or something, you know, that didn’t work, click in there, you’re not ready at this point to make.

Amr The Internet Guy
I know, I rarely find like, I rarely find that money isn’t is the issue in general. And mostly people are looking for the good fit. Can we work together? Am I do you make me feel at ease? Do you make me feel motivated to tell you more? And then we can capture this? Or, you know, do I feel like I’m going to get a good value, then money comes next. And even if it for some people, I’m not saying that money is not important. But for some people, they’ll figure it out. They’re like, maybe split it somehow or whatever, like, you know, and it’s not always you always need that. Like, as we’re saying, like you can, you can spend $100 and get something in marketing, you can spend $500, you can spend 2000, you can spend 50 sounds like it depends what you’re trying to achieve.

Mo Hedayet
That will reflect your expectation in return. Exactly. I mean, you can get anybody can do video, and they’ll do really cheap. There are guys out there, they can get your kids to do a video for you. Yeah, and they’re also the guys out there they go and sell really cheap videos. But really you are getting on

Amr The Internet Guy
video templates. And there are video software’s and there are video that doesn’t notions other

Mo Hedayet
people get on their phones nowadays, anyway. And again, anybody can do it. It’s just a matter of where your budget lies, what your expectations are? And what are you trying to get? how to best return on your investment and that return meaning or you can be proud of this video. Every time somebody watches it. Do you want to see all that data this way? Just this way? Or do you want to say, Hey, that was an awesome video? When is the next one coming out? Or tell me more about your business

Amr The Internet Guy
more? How do people find you? Where do you want them to go to find you?

Mo Hedayet
Awesome. Well, my website cave co.com.

Amr The Internet Guy
Okay, I’m gonna, as usual, I’ll put that link on our conversation and also below in the details. Absolutely. So

Mo Hedayet
koco.com I have on YouTube. Okay, co creative. Is my YouTube channel that you can search and find me there on Instagram. I start using my personal one, which is h two M L. Okay. So which is my initial?

Amr The Internet Guy
share all these links? Yeah. Yesterday, Instagram,

Mo Hedayet
on my website, on LinkedIn, all these different avenues it can be reached at what I always say to people call me have a conversation. Let me know if there’s something I can help you with. Even if you have a question you just want to get answered. You know, take a few minutes, you know, we’ll have a chat. And if I can leave you with some knowledge and information that you can use in your journey.

Amr The Internet Guy
Yeah, you better have them when you started, then the job is done. Absolutely.

Mo Hedayet
Absolutely. And again, I don’t encourage everybody to work with me just because we have that conversation. The idea is, understand what you’re going into. So you’re you now know what to work with. And as a business owner, you’re definitely smart enough to know at which point you want to make certain decisions. And when you’re ready, you’ll make

Amr The Internet Guy
me smart now. Yes, you are. Thank you, sir. Thank you guys for watching and listening. Have a great day.

Mo Hedayet
Thank you so much. Hey,

Amr The Internet Guy
everyone. A quick reminder before we go here, all the links will be down in the description. I also wanted to point your attention to my courses promo video, which was done by Kaifko creative and Mr. Moe was the director. Everyone who watches this video has to laugh. I have had great feedback. So you can watch it too and the link will be down below. See you in the next episode. Bye