Andy Black
Help people. Get paid. Help more people.
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Recently, I've been trying to create and deliver value via talking head videos.
It's been a big learning experience for me, and the whole video/audio/presentation rabbit-hole is deep and inviting.
Talking head videos are also generally tough to get started with because our minds put obstacles in our way so that we don't get out of our comfort zone.
"You're not good enough Andy. You should take a course on videos and talking head videos first."
"Your sound quality should be better Andy. Go buy some mics first."
"Your lighting isn't great Andy. Go check out lighting on Amazon first."
It's a very common problem, and dare I suggest, THE biggest problem for all of you just getting started in business.
You may have seen the very first talking head video I did (after I'd given myself a stern talking to).
I link to it in the first post in this thread:
I'm now onto video 32 in my #AndyTalks series!
#AndyTalks 032 - Get started. Keep Going.
To get anywhere, we have to get started, and then keep going.
The hardest part is always getting started.
By far our biggest obstacle to getting started is ourselves.
In this video, I give my hack to getting started.
Once we're in motion, we then need to keep going.
I find that having a daily habit helps me get into a rhythm and keep going.
A daily habit is much better than a weekly or monthly habit.
Here's the video, and the transcription is beneath:
TRANSCRIPTION
Good morning, guys. I've been for a run this morning so I kept the deal I made with myself and I'm pleased, not just for the run, but for having kept that deal with myself.
You probably know what it's like when sometimes you say you're going to do something and then come the time, you come up with excuses in your head and you end up not doing it.
I was battling that demon this morning because it was raining and I was coming up with excuses in my head as to why I needed to do this report first or maybe I should go to the gym instead, but when I actually stepped out and brought the kids off to their child-minder, I realized it was drizzling, not raining.
Of course, once I got started on my run, wow, because of the rain and the drizzle, the air was so clear and clean and fresh. It was lovely. That's my tip for this morning (well, first of many, maybe): Get started. Keep going.
This is funny. I'm just actually snapping Joshua Van De Broek (@joshuavdbroek) at the moment talking about something I'm literally going to talk about on this next little section.
Okay, the hardest part of “Get started. Keep going” is the first part. Getting started is always the hardest part.
A hack that works for me is to think about other people and how I'm trying to deliver something to help them. It doesn't have to be perfect to help them.
If I made my goal being perfect before I launched something or got started, then it would never happen. I would just get caught up in perfectionism.
What I've been doing for the last few months is trying to find a way that I can deliver value daily and easily.
I've been trying to find a simple way of doing it so that I can make it part of my day and a daily habit.
Snapchat has been amazing. Since I've found the app, it's just so simple. I'm not even bothering with my hands free kit, it's just easy.
My goal, in my head, has been to try and create a video every single day and add a bit of value. Here's a picture of my camera roll and you can see that every single day for the last X number of days I've created a video and uploaded it.
Two of the days I forgot to finish the day with a good night snap, because the habit after the good night snap is to remove everything up to the start of the current day, all those little snaps, and then save to my camera roll.
For two of the days, I forgot to save to my camera roll and by the time I got around to doing it, Snapchat had deleted some of my story for that day.
Now I'm in a daily habit of producing videos and then I found, through Joshua's suggestion, Rev.com so I can get transcriptions created, which I can load up to my blog to help me get a bit of SEO love for those videos.
That is becoming part of my new daily habit going forward, but what I'm not doing is going back to all of them and getting transcriptions created for the thirty videos that I didn't get transcriptions created for.
Eventually I will, but I'll probably get it outsourced, but somebody will get it, somebody will just manage it all and do it. It's up to me to find the process.
Because my cadence is daily, I'm doing something daily, I'm learning faster than before I did something once a week.
What I'm not doing is creating videos daily and then at the end of the week sit down and in one big batch job, upload to YouTube and then get them transcribed. For us to do that, I wouldn't catch mistakes early enough.
That would actually then also be a weekly cadence, not a daily one, which is slower. I want to move faster.
Then the third benefit of creating the video, uploading, getting this transcribed, put it on my blog all in one go, rather than say for the weekend, is that come the weekend I am just going to have this tedious task of doing it for seven videos. That's going to demoralize me and I'm going to put that on a long finger on a Saturday or a Sunday, sorry that's the Irish way of saying "It will be the last thing I do."
Then I'm going to miss it once and then through the week, I'm not going to want to do my daily videos because I know I'm just adding to this bank of stuff I'm behind on.
Before I know it, I will have got out of my daily habit and I will have failed on the “Keep going” part.
The trick to getting started is to do something small enough that you can start with and start.
There's a whole list of things in my head that I would like to do better with these videos.
There's a whole list of things, but I'm not going to do it yet. I need to just start.
Then I'll need to gradually introduce into my daily habit and my rhythm into my cycle a new thing.
Guess what? I won't know that best little new thing to add into my daily cycle will be until I'm actually already in motion. As of now, that new thing is to get a transcription done, so that's obviously going to have to be at the end of the day.
For me to do that, I'm going to have to finish my day earlier, upload to YouTube, send the link off to Rev.com. They seem to come back within half an hour with a transcription. Then I'll grab that and upload it to my blog.
Now that I'm getting transcriptions back and I'm reading through them to maybe edit them very quickly, I'm realizing I'm not speaking in full sentences.
If I want the transcription to be readable by human and to be a pleasure to read, rather than a transcription be there just so that the search engines can index the content on that blog post, then I'm going to have to talk in more complete sentences and think a little bit better about what I'm trying to say.
Just by adding the transcription into my daily cycle, I've realized I can and should improve the way I deliver lines.
It's been a big learning experience for me, and the whole video/audio/presentation rabbit-hole is deep and inviting.
Talking head videos are also generally tough to get started with because our minds put obstacles in our way so that we don't get out of our comfort zone.
"You're not good enough Andy. You should take a course on videos and talking head videos first."
"Your sound quality should be better Andy. Go buy some mics first."
"Your lighting isn't great Andy. Go check out lighting on Amazon first."
It's a very common problem, and dare I suggest, THE biggest problem for all of you just getting started in business.
You may have seen the very first talking head video I did (after I'd given myself a stern talking to).
I link to it in the first post in this thread:
I'm now onto video 32 in my #AndyTalks series!
#AndyTalks 032 - Get started. Keep Going.
To get anywhere, we have to get started, and then keep going.
The hardest part is always getting started.
By far our biggest obstacle to getting started is ourselves.
In this video, I give my hack to getting started.
Once we're in motion, we then need to keep going.
I find that having a daily habit helps me get into a rhythm and keep going.
A daily habit is much better than a weekly or monthly habit.
Here's the video, and the transcription is beneath:
TRANSCRIPTION
Good morning, guys. I've been for a run this morning so I kept the deal I made with myself and I'm pleased, not just for the run, but for having kept that deal with myself.
You probably know what it's like when sometimes you say you're going to do something and then come the time, you come up with excuses in your head and you end up not doing it.
I was battling that demon this morning because it was raining and I was coming up with excuses in my head as to why I needed to do this report first or maybe I should go to the gym instead, but when I actually stepped out and brought the kids off to their child-minder, I realized it was drizzling, not raining.
Of course, once I got started on my run, wow, because of the rain and the drizzle, the air was so clear and clean and fresh. It was lovely. That's my tip for this morning (well, first of many, maybe): Get started. Keep going.
This is funny. I'm just actually snapping Joshua Van De Broek (@joshuavdbroek) at the moment talking about something I'm literally going to talk about on this next little section.
Okay, the hardest part of “Get started. Keep going” is the first part. Getting started is always the hardest part.
A hack that works for me is to think about other people and how I'm trying to deliver something to help them. It doesn't have to be perfect to help them.
If I made my goal being perfect before I launched something or got started, then it would never happen. I would just get caught up in perfectionism.
What I've been doing for the last few months is trying to find a way that I can deliver value daily and easily.
I've been trying to find a simple way of doing it so that I can make it part of my day and a daily habit.
Snapchat has been amazing. Since I've found the app, it's just so simple. I'm not even bothering with my hands free kit, it's just easy.
My goal, in my head, has been to try and create a video every single day and add a bit of value. Here's a picture of my camera roll and you can see that every single day for the last X number of days I've created a video and uploaded it.
Two of the days I forgot to finish the day with a good night snap, because the habit after the good night snap is to remove everything up to the start of the current day, all those little snaps, and then save to my camera roll.
For two of the days, I forgot to save to my camera roll and by the time I got around to doing it, Snapchat had deleted some of my story for that day.
Now I'm in a daily habit of producing videos and then I found, through Joshua's suggestion, Rev.com so I can get transcriptions created, which I can load up to my blog to help me get a bit of SEO love for those videos.
That is becoming part of my new daily habit going forward, but what I'm not doing is going back to all of them and getting transcriptions created for the thirty videos that I didn't get transcriptions created for.
Eventually I will, but I'll probably get it outsourced, but somebody will get it, somebody will just manage it all and do it. It's up to me to find the process.
Because my cadence is daily, I'm doing something daily, I'm learning faster than before I did something once a week.
What I'm not doing is creating videos daily and then at the end of the week sit down and in one big batch job, upload to YouTube and then get them transcribed. For us to do that, I wouldn't catch mistakes early enough.
That would actually then also be a weekly cadence, not a daily one, which is slower. I want to move faster.
Then the third benefit of creating the video, uploading, getting this transcribed, put it on my blog all in one go, rather than say for the weekend, is that come the weekend I am just going to have this tedious task of doing it for seven videos. That's going to demoralize me and I'm going to put that on a long finger on a Saturday or a Sunday, sorry that's the Irish way of saying "It will be the last thing I do."
Then I'm going to miss it once and then through the week, I'm not going to want to do my daily videos because I know I'm just adding to this bank of stuff I'm behind on.
Before I know it, I will have got out of my daily habit and I will have failed on the “Keep going” part.
The trick to getting started is to do something small enough that you can start with and start.
There's a whole list of things in my head that I would like to do better with these videos.
There's a whole list of things, but I'm not going to do it yet. I need to just start.
Then I'll need to gradually introduce into my daily habit and my rhythm into my cycle a new thing.
Guess what? I won't know that best little new thing to add into my daily cycle will be until I'm actually already in motion. As of now, that new thing is to get a transcription done, so that's obviously going to have to be at the end of the day.
For me to do that, I'm going to have to finish my day earlier, upload to YouTube, send the link off to Rev.com. They seem to come back within half an hour with a transcription. Then I'll grab that and upload it to my blog.
Now that I'm getting transcriptions back and I'm reading through them to maybe edit them very quickly, I'm realizing I'm not speaking in full sentences.
If I want the transcription to be readable by human and to be a pleasure to read, rather than a transcription be there just so that the search engines can index the content on that blog post, then I'm going to have to talk in more complete sentences and think a little bit better about what I'm trying to say.
Just by adding the transcription into my daily cycle, I've realized I can and should improve the way I deliver lines.
GET STARTED. KEEP GOING.
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