I do things at scale, but I don't do it at scale before it's good. Sometimes people see my systems and stuff, they're like, can you help me do it at scale? And I'm like, well, are you actually creating video yet? This is the show for creative entrepreneurs who have a message to share and want to live a life of freedom. Learn how to grow your network and net worth. Hear from exciting guests and more. My name is Dylan Schmidt, and welcome to Digital Podcaster. My guest today is Stephen Pope. Stephen is the founder of SGP Labs, which develops the people, tools and technology to help businesses thrive in the video content and social media era. What drew me to Stephen was his systems approach to content creation. I think it's so easy to get lost in the creative abstract nature of things around content. And I personally find it really refreshing to have someone with a more structured approach come on the podcast. I didn't see this anywhere on Stephen's page, so I'm not sure if he actually uses this term or has ever heard it. But after listening back to our interview, I think of Stephen as a content engineer. This episode is important if you are a podcast host who has wanted to use social media to promote your podcast. And you've thought about scaling, but you're not really sure how to frame the whole thing. There's a lot of nuggets in this interview. We go really deep and kind of nerd out on all things content creation. I think you're gonna really enjoy it. A lot of takeaways here. Please enjoy my conversation with Stephen Pope. welcome to Digital Podcaster. Stephen, thanks for having me on, man. It's really great to finally meet up. All right, let's Hop in. So the first question I wanted to ask you Stephen is how do you create content? So I've been creating content for a while and I've kind of gone through different iterations. Where I'm at right now is for the most part, I call 'em selfie talking head stuff, where I just look at the camera and it's like YouTube style or vertical style. And I'll just say something, I have a certain thought process on the hook and these different things. So that's one style where I just look at the camera, deliver a message, record it, edit it, record it, edit it, record it. And then I go on a podcast quite a bit like this and I can record things off to the side. I got another vertical camera that pulls off. And so that always allows me to just continually create content. And I think that's actually a really good way of doing it because you're always getting different questions from different people, and it allows you to hone in your message and just take a fresh perspective. Because if you're always sitting in front of the camera and coming up with your own unique message, it can get a little tiring. But if somebody asks you the question and it's relevant to the kind of content that you want to create for yourself that's a really good way. Do you find it a little bit harder to create videos if you're just trying to talk, like the camera is a person asking you a question? I found that to be the case at first. It gets maybe a little easier now. When I first got started, I got some help from somebody that helped me learn how to write a script out, and then I would actually, decide what's gonna be the headline? I would go through an order of operations, right? Like what's the headline? What's the problem I'm trying to solve? Why am I the person to give you this advice? What's the actual information? And then calling someone to action. Not necessarily to book a call, but like, "Hey, you can be a better person, right?" So I did that a bunch of times, and then I would just take the script and I would put it right below the actual camera, and I would just read each line directly into the camera. And then, with editing just cut out all the mistakes and splice it together. And so that's how I did it. I don't think I could have just looked at the camera and just said something, I think that would've been too hard. Some people can just do that. Okay? If you can do that, like more power to you. But if you can't and you try to get through a whole video and you mess up and you're re-recording it over and over. I think it leads to burnout. So I think being able to kind of script out your bullet point, your ideas, just say them until you get it right and then editing it together is a good way to do it. And now at this point, I don't have to script it out, but I still do go through the same process. I'll just start talking and when I make a mistake, I'll just say it again three or four times until I get it and then the editor can pull out the mistakes. And a lot of times people are worried, like "isn't gonna look weird with the splices?" It's like, go look at most of the YouTube videos out there, all the professionals are splicing it together, so it doesn't actually look that weird. As a viewer, you know, I don't notice. Right. The splices. As long as the idea and message is coherent. So, what matters more to you, quantity or quality? So I do things at scale, but I don't do it at scale before it's good. And so, sometimes people do see my systems and stuff, they're like, can you help me do it at scale? And I'm like, well, are you actually creating video yet? Have you made a dollar from a video? Have you booked a call? If not, you should spend a hundred percent of your effort on making that good video. Now at the same time, you're gonna get better at video if you make a million of them, right? So it's a constant struggle between both. You wanna push the boundaries on both. Because the only way content is really gonna work, and I don't think people are quite honest about this, is that it's gonna have to be good content. It has to be good. Your message has to be coherent and has to matter to someone and that's the most important thing. And then the better the quality of the actual film is gonna make you look better too, right? Good quality content messaging comes first, then quality production. And then as you hone in on that and that's starting to get results, then you can start to do the kind of scale piece. Yeah. And how do you find, like, what is quality to you? So the most important part is it's a really clear, valuable message. That's number one. But there are layers to it, right? So if you have that then the next layer of quality you can add is good sound and really good video, right? Good quality, like a nice camera, right? And then if you're nailing the message, the quality of the production is good, then adding on some of the sounds and the effects and the things. All of those things are going to help the quality of it. But you don't wanna do it in the reverse order where you focus on all the graphics, all of the nice camera, because if you have like a garbage message that is gonna be ignored, all of that other stuff is gonna be ignored. So you have to layer these things in. So that's the trick is like all these things matter, but in the right order. That's such a great point. What advice would you give to someone who has multiple interests and can't decide on what to talk about? Hmm. Well, it kind of depends a little bit on your goals and the length that you want something to happen, right? So the truth that I have found for myself and for other clients is that the more tailored your message is and the more specific it is, and the more you repeat and beat that message, the easier it is to kind of pierce through all of the noise. If your goal is to try to make money as quickly as possible and you wanna make a lot of it, then honing in on a message. And allowing yourself to compartmentalize all your other interests and just maybe that you have those interests, but maybe not have it in your content, then that's gonna help you make money faster. The other trick of it is that sometimes you're gonna have to go through the phases of figuring it out. Here's an interesting part of it . So if you're an established business that you've been around for 20 years and all you're trying to do is get on video, it's probably gonna be easier for you because you've already had a product that's working and you're really just gonna start describing the things you already know, right? But if you're an early creator and you're trying to figure out a business along the way, you probably just don't know. And so making some of these decisions might be overwhelming. So just start talking about what you talk about, start to figure out what people are resonating with and then slowly kind of wrap the product around that and start trimming away the fat. I went through that process as well. Luckily I had sold a previous company, so I had a little flexibility. But I did go through that process. I just started talking about my interests and ultimately I arrived at creating persuasive video at scale. And that's pretty much all I talk about now. So you're, posting content everywhere these days? I mean, to a good number of places. I am gonna continue to expand that. I post right now to TikTok, to Instagram, to LinkedIn to YouTube. Now granted, it's important that I say, I'm partly doing this to build my systems, right? Like my systems and the capability of being able to do this. I look at it like I've kind of developed this concept, which is like you have networking platforms where your content is going there to establish networking relationships with people that might actually just rather be on that platform. Hey, there. Ever notice how I don't run any ads on Digital Podcaster? It's because I want you to have a great listening experience, no sponsors. This is completely self-funded. I do wanna ask for one thing though. If you know anybody who could benefit from listening to the show, please, please share it with them. Message them. Tag them in a post. Take a screenshot of this, put it in your stories. Wherever you share your stuff with the. With people that you care about. I wanna provide as much value as possible to as many podcasters as possible. So your recommendations go a long way in helping other people become better podcasters as well, which is the only reason I do this. All right. I so appreciate you and let's get back to the show. Like some people want to hang out on Instagram, so they'll find you on TikTok and then move over to Instagram and if your content is there, they can continue to see you there and then DM you from there, or LinkedIn, vice versa. I'm only trying to grow on TikTok and YouTube. So you have to be able to develop the maturity to compartmentalize what you're doing and how you're putting your effort, even if you're putting content out. And I don't recommend you put out content out there like that unless you have made some clients but yeah, so I'm publishing to a lot of places. I'm gonna keep, I'm gonna expand onto Twitter and all these other places, but mostly just to expand my ability, not because I'm doing it, because I think it's gonna make me more money right away. like you're dialing in the content more and more? So it's just expanding the reach? Would that be the goal? Or? So my product is all about scaling content. As I push the boundaries, I improve my product, but that doesn't mean that other people need to do that. I'm doing it for particular purpose, like when I go on to Twitter. And I start publishing threads there and stuff like that. I don't expect that that's gonna lead to business necessarily. I don't know that anybody will see it. But I'm just trying to figure out, okay, how do I systematically, how do I do that so that when someone comes to me and has a Twitter following and they want to implement that, that I have the system there to help them with that? Right. There's some nuance, there's a lot of nuance to all this stuff. And you only get that through the maturity of doing this a lot. Yeah, we are like so similar in that way in the, testing, right? To figure out what's working, how it's working, all of that stuff. I made this video on another account about Los Angeles and it was like, if you're thinking about moving to Los Angeles, here's what you need to know. And it was like five lies. None of it was true. All just lies and it spread like wildfire. And I'm like, wow. The misinformation. From what I've seen you do, like everything you do is truthful. Everything I do is truthful too. But then making a video that's supposed to be comically misinformation, it spread and people are just like, wow, that's fascinating. I should, I should, I should do stuff more stuff like that. Cause sometimes like you can get into your groove and it feels like it's working for you, but having a moment to just do something off the wall like that, I think has a lot of value in it. Totally and those accounts, I post so inconsistently and they have no goal and they're not tied to like any actual thing I do. So it's as much like a performance art rather than tied to anything that could probably benefit anything because they're just like too inconsist. Like they don't actually, they're not doing any best practices. But you're learning That's you're, that's true. You're learning alot. That's true. Yeah. It's like a personal, I can sense, I can sense a certain level of learning there that I, I kind of want Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, yeah. And it's so easy to make a new account these days although I wish they'd let you to log into more, cause you can only log to so many on your phone. Oh, can you? I like the way it's called a channel because it really is, when you start doing this a lot, you start to realize you're kind of piercing into this invisible space and these channels are just like poking into it and you can really start to own a little channel. And I think it's so fascinating. This is a whole other topic. It does bother me a little bit that I don't have control over it. And other people do, but that's what it allows you to do. And that's pretty fascinating. And I think that's why's cool is because it's all on the interest graph. So if someone's just interested in this so you can build these little channels, it's, it's your own channel That's cool. That's really cool. Super cool. And I use those other test experiment accounts just to get it outta my system. But there's still times, occasionally not as much as it used to be, where I'm like, maybe I need to talk about something else plus podcasting. But every time I've just stuck with podcasting it's always, paid back dividends than trying to cram in multiple messages in one thing. Yeah. Because there is a lot of nuance to these things. I've seen some of your videos where you're talking about how do you actually grow it. Yeah. You know, there's, there's depth to that. You could probably continue to go deeper on those things for sure. Yeah. I mean, it's something, I think it's something that resistance is like not a, a, a real one. It's like probably attached to something else because, when I actually look it's vast, it's like endless of podcasting but naturally my brain goes,"oh, that's not the thing. You gotta find something else." Well, that's partly why like going on podcast is good too, because then people ask you this stuff cause I will do the same thing. If you sit in your own bubble and create your own content in front of your own camera, sometimes it's just hard to keep going down a specific rabbit hole because your brain will just sit at rest and it will look at things on a surface level. To go deep on a subject, it takes focused energy. And so to make that one video that goes deeper you can't do that TikTok in 60 seconds. Like you're gonna have to spend 30 minutes doing that. Right? And maybe you didn't actually plan 30 minutes to make the TikTok, cause you were like, no, I'm gonna make five TikTok tos in 10 minutes. And so mentally you didn't actually give yourself the ability to go deep the way you need to. It's really interesting, we can set ourselves up to fail. We can set ourselves up to not go deep. I see so many people that will start and I'm like,"oh, they're going strong." And then I'll come across their account. I'm like, oh, they haven't posted for months and months and months. And I go, oh, they just faded. Yeah, because people can be too shortsighted, right? I was just thinking about that. It is really hard to spend an hour or two hours on a TikTok that number one, there's so many bad outcomes here. Number one, you finish it and you're like, this video sucks. I hate this video. Or two, you publish it and it gets three views. And so it's really hard to look at that time period and be like, wow, that was successful. Yeah, that was a good use of time. Yeah. That was a good, Hey, you're gonna feel pretty crappy about it, right? You're gonna be like, man, that sucked. I spent two hours. I hate the video. And everyone else did too. But that's part of the process. Now I look back at all those times only in retrospective. I'm like, you know, all those times were just required playing your dues. I still have those moments, but I don't mind it now because I just kept going and I figured it out. And so now you look back and you're like, yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. You gotta have those failures in order to arrive at something. That's good. Yeah, that's part of it. How do you help people scale their, like how do you work with people right now? I guess is the best question I can ask. Yeah. Yeah. So it's you're at two spots, you wanna do content, but you're not, you wanna make money from it. Or you're doing content and it's not making you money. So at that level, we figure out how do we get you on camera? How do we make you money? And then once you're doing that well, or you're already doing that very well, then I have all the systems to help you do the Gary V thing, right? So, that's what I do in a nutshell. Let's make really good video and then when you're doing that, or if you already have it, let me help you scale it up. So check the show notes for links to everything Stephen. You gotta check out his TikTok. You gotta check out his content. Go down the rabbit hole. Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today. Yeah, thank you man. This has been awesome. Appreciate you having me on.