MEDIASCAPE: Insights From Digital Changemakers
Join hosts Joseph Itaya and Anika Jackson as they dive into conversations with leaders and changemakers shaping the future of digital media. Each episode explores the frontier of multimedia, artificial intelligence, marketing, branding, and communication, spotlighting how emerging digital trends and technologies are transforming industries across the globe.
MEDIASCAPE is proudly sponsored by USC Annenberg’s Master of Science in Digital Media Management (MSDMM) program. This online master’s program is designed to prepare practitioners to understand the evolving media landscape, make data-driven and ethical decisions, and build a more equitable future by leading diverse teams with the technical, artistic, analytical, and production skills needed to create engaging content and technologies for the global marketplace. Learn more or apply today at https://dmm.usc.edu.
MEDIASCAPE: Insights From Digital Changemakers
Unlocking Digital Accessibility and Public Speaking Mastery with Cam Beaudoin
Curious about the key to unlocking the potential of digital accessibility and effective public speaking? Join us as we sit down with Cam Beaudoin, a digital accessibility guru who has transformed his career from a web developer to an influential thought leader. Cam shares his intriguing journey from IT to becoming a "Rainmaker," someone who naturally attracts attention and business by showcasing company strengths. Listen in to learn about Cam's experiences at IBM, where he discovered his passion for engaging audiences and the art of public speaking.
Dive into the lessons Cam learned on his entrepreneurial path, where public speaking became a pivotal tool for career advancement and personal branding. His transition from corporate roles to full-time entrepreneurship revealed the necessity of a steady lead flow for success, and how initial credibility often stemmed from associations with reputable firms. Cam's candid insights into the reality of building a brand through speaking engagements provide invaluable lessons for aspiring entrepreneurs and public speakers.
With an emphasis on the power of personal branding, this episode offers practical strategies for those looking to raise their professional visibility. We explore the importance of maintaining an authentic digital presence and creating quality content to capture an audience's attention in the age of AI. Join our discussion on how to harness the unique human elements of communication to stand out in an increasingly automated world, and discover opportunities to connect with a community dedicated to elevating your speaking skills.
Check out Cam's Free Speaker Lead Gen Masterclass!
This podcast is proudly sponsored by USC Annenberg’s Master of Science in Digital Media Management (MSDMM) program. An online master’s designed to prepare practitioners to understand the evolving media landscape, make data-driven and ethical decisions, and build a more equitable future by leading diverse teams with the technical, artistic, analytical, and production skills needed to create engaging content and technologies for the global marketplace. Learn more or apply today at https://dmm.usc.edu.
Welcome to Mediascape insights from digital changemakers, a speaker series and podcast brought to you by USC Annenberg's Digital Media Management Program. Join us as we unlock the secrets to success in an increasingly digital world.
Speaker 2:Our next guest on Mediascape is Cam Beaudoin. And Cam, you have such a varied backstory, going from web development, full-stack development, business analyzing, to becoming an accessibility expert, starting to speak on accessibility in the world of digital, which is something that, in our digital media management program, is so vital and so important, something we really try to impress upon our students and ourselves to now helping people understand what others are looking for for speakers, for subject matter experts, for people who can bring something new and fresh to their companies, whether it's a big conference or a team. So thank you for being here.
Speaker 3:Oh, thanks so much for having me. We've spoken before and I just love speaking with you. It's so great to chat. I think it's really easy. You're a great host. You make it easy for guests to come on and open up, so can't wait to dive in this is a topic I'm passionate about.
Speaker 2:Yes, and you're also very. You know, you're a polished public speaker, so that doesn't help or that doesn't hurt either.
Speaker 3:Thanks.
Speaker 2:So, Cam, tell us a little bit about that transition going from this world of that's more. You know, we think engineering, we think really scientific brained people who are maybe wanting to sit in a cubicle, to really showing this whole other side, being an extrovert or being able to show your extrovertedness.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so in the world of software development and I do believe that software development is a creative, problem-solving type of role. So I was the type of person to think like I'm never going to be a developer because, man, I don't want to sit behind and just like a cubicle and get people to tell me they take tickets and stuff like that, and that was my job in IT. But as soon as I went into development it was like, oh, I get to problem solve in the most creative way possible. So when I joined IBM they said, well, cam, we've got this thing around digital accessibility. You know you can go figure that out and you go take, get further in our careers. You know, you realize that. You know we're all trying to be very risk averse and managers and executives they want to be, they're very risk averse, they don't want to take the risk of, like, taking on a project and stuff like that. So let's give it to the junior and see what he can do with it. Anyway, I excelled it, I loved it. I thought it was really interesting to give back to the world in terms of so accessibility really is helping people with disabilities use technology. That's kind of what it stands for. So if you can imagine, you know, sometimes phones are set up in a way so that it reads text and words back to you. That's accessibility Zooming in on your phone. You know, usually as people get older or like you know, they'll just increase the font size in their phones. That's accessibility. Like these are all little things.
Speaker 3:And so how do I make technology adaptable for people of any ability to use it? So that's what I did, and I was always that weird guy, you know, even though I did lots of development, I was like oh, demo day, sign me up, I'll be the one to present to the customer. And so I think, for anyone who's listening, if you're in the position of being that, you know you're the tech guy and and yet you want to maybe do more, maybe you are a little bit more extroverted, maybe you are somebody who likes to talk to people and that was always me, even though I was very comfortable with technology. You know there's a place for you in business and I love it. I love that so much. And if you're not, that's totally cool. There's a place for you in business too.
Speaker 3:So that transition happened I mean, I guess it was within the first and then they start to send me out to go and speak at different conferences. Like I was really lucky as a speaker, as a junior speaker In fact, like I just started working in accessibility and I was already being sent out to conferences because for IBM it was a thought leadership thing, they wanted to send people out to conferences. So, if you're lucky, you're going to be able to bring your company forward in industry by going and speaking, and that's great. You know, I'm sure you've heard the term Rainmaker before and I didn't really actualize that until much, much later. Like you know, within the past two years, I realized oh, the role of Rainmaker is huge, right?
Speaker 3:Anyone who can bring business in, anyone who can go and brag about, shout about, you know, talk about their company in a way that's meaningful and logical.
Speaker 3:And you know, talk about their company in a way that's meaningful and logical and, you know, just like I said, bragging about their company and saying like, look, this is what we've done, this is how great it is, and let's show you how we can help you solve problems as well. That's hugely valuable, hugely valuable to the world these days, because the currency that we're never going to get more of really is attention right? We only have 24 hours in a day and even though most of us have sacrificed three hours of sleep on a regular basis to only sleep five hours a night, you know there's only so much time that eyeballs are going to be on YouTube or Netflix or Instagram or what have you, and so if you have the ability to grab attention, then that is a skill that will take you, like, very far in life, like that is pretty much the only skill that is of value, kind of, as time goes on, no matter what your core skill is, to blind people over Zoom and had their reader up.
Speaker 2:There are so many different things that accessibility means including the UI and UX right of websites and of software and of tools, so were those things that you were already working in? Is it something that you had to learn more about, or is there a little bit of a mix of both?
Speaker 3:Oh, I learned on the job, and what's really neat is you can always take that learner's mindset and teach others. You know, this is where I was three months ago and this is where I am now right. The benefit of an early learner is that you, you're just soaking so much in at the very beginning, and so I know we're going to get into a little bit more about, you know, social media and video and stuff like that. But you know, at the very beginning of your journey of learning about like really mastering a craft of any type, there's just so much coming in that you've got so much that you can try to get out as well. And what a perfect time to go out and speak about something or try your hand at teaching somebody else on how to do it or things like that. That's when it's really easy, because everything's just flowing. Everything's so new and we're so. We love things that are new, so it's easy. You know it's only after a few years where you're like, well, I haven't really grown in the past year.
Speaker 3:You know what I mean. Like you're like well, I haven't really expanded my skills. I don't know where to go next, and all of a sudden it becomes difficult to think back to what it was like as a newbie. So I was learning as I go and I was. You know what I didn't know in skill, and oh, I was corrected quite a few times. Sidebar people with disabilities, you know, to have a able-bodied guy show up on the front and try and tell people how to use technology in their way. I had a lot of people come up to me and say, like, actually, kim, if you just do it this way, it's a lot better. This is actually how we like to interact with technology and you know you're soaking it all in. As long as you're humble about it, then I don't think anyone is going to attack you for it or shame you for not knowing stuff. So it's such a great time to teach.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's such a good point, because when we think about equity, right, and we think about who's in the front of the room, you're a white male. You don't have disabilities, at least that we know of, so it wouldn't seem like you'd be the natural person necessarily, but the fact that they embraced you with such kindness and just wanting to help teach you more so that you could spread the word more, that's really beautiful.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and you know, I think it's finding a story of whatever it is. I'll tell you the story of, like, what was the light bulb moment of that really aha moment? I was at IBM, okay. So there was a traveling blind guy and I say that as in colloquial because he's a friend of mine now. He was the accessibility guy and he would come to all the different offices and teach everybody about accessibility and here I was ready to learn.
Speaker 3:He walked into the office, my boss called me over and if you've ever worked with like an a-type personality type of leader before, you know he was an ex-sales guy and then he was leading a sale, a tech team, and he walked up to tom and he stuck his hand in tom's face and said hey, tom, my name's j, it's really great to meet you. In that, like you know, and Tom, being blind, of course, had no idea there was a handout stretched in front of him and just said it's really great to meet you and my boss, like he would like, he was trying to stare him down because what do you do in these types of sales? Like you know, my hands out and your hands on out. It's like he wilted away. He didn't know what to do is, like you know, error messages on his eyeballs, and so I actually ran back to my desk at that moment, typed in how to shake a blind person's hand, and I learned that all you need to do is say, can I shake your hand? Like, can I shake your hand?
Speaker 3:Five words is all it took to create like equity, right, like that's really all it took, and I take that story with me throughout many of my careers. It's like there's these little small actions that we can all take, these little small steps, and probably the big problems that you have in life is because you haven't really focused on these like really really tiny steps. If you just did that, then a lot of other things would just be fixed by nature because you don't have that little roadblock there, right? So that was such a great moment and I could share that throughout my journey and people were like oh, he gets it right, like Cam gets it. And I always try to bring those little moments in, sorry, bring those little changes into whatever I was doing. Teach people that, look, you just need to change these little small things with your website, with your accountability programs, with your like whatever the little tiny changes can make big differences.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, where did you go next? You were on the speaking circuit. You're talking about disability. You're at IBM, which is a household name.
Speaker 3:So after that I actually continued my journey. I said, okay, so I used that to leapfrog into different roles and in fact, again, speaking is such a great lever for everybody because you become recognized. Now, I wasn't a household name, okay, no one has to look me up, I'm not famous but I was able to use that in the industry and say, like, okay, so Cam is this guy and he does this like speaking, and so people recognized me in the industry. So it's actually really easy for me to change jobs as well, because, you know, I was going in meeting with directors and senior directors and VPs of product or marketing or legal departments, things like that, because they would all go to these conferences and because I was a speaker there, because I spoke at different conferences, then it was really easy for me to introduce myself, not like a weirdo, just be like hey, I'm cam, like I just spoke, what do you think? And then we had conversations. I met, you know, the uh director of accessibility at the pokemon company and, like you know, a vp of accessibility at netflix, and it's like, oh cool, we're all here to talk about the same thing and learn about the same thing.
Speaker 3:Now, I didn't go work at Netflix or the Pokemon company. Unfortunately, you know, pikachu will have to be an ex-career choice. But I was able to go and work at different, like banks and different just choose. Like I really had to pick the litter because I was known well enough, like I had that personal brand, right, that was an option available to me. So I went to go work as a senior manager and then after that I decided I had a bank and I decided, okay, time to go and try this speaking thing for real. And I just like really grow my speaking business. And that was just after the pandemic and I started to set up okay, let's try and be a full-time public speaker. And I learned a couple of really hard lessons on a business at that point.
Speaker 2:Well, let's get into that side now, because you had this complete pivot I mean, you've had a couple of them so you decided to be a full-time public speaker. It was in a time when there weren't really a lot of speaking opportunities, at least in the physical world. Everything was moving digital. What were the things that you found out about owning your own business, achieving your goals, and how did you prepare for this? Owning your own business, achieving your goals and how did you prepare for this?
Speaker 3:Well, the biggest realization I had or you know if I knew then, what I know now is if you don't have lead flow, you actually don't have a business. Right, like plain and simply. If you look at all the steps of a customer journey, like no matter who's coming through your funnel or your flywheel or whatever you're calling it in your business, you know if you have, if you build an app yet you have nobody signing up to use the app, actually don't have a business. Like, really, it comes down to that. And if you don't have a sustainable and predictable way to bring people through that door, then you don't have a business.
Speaker 3:And that was a really hard lesson for me to learn, because I had clout. I thought I was going to be able to go out, but what I realized later on, it was the companies that I was attached to that gave me the proof to go out and get speaking gigs. Because, wow, senior manager at a bank in Canada who wants to come speak at our conference about accessibility. Well, we want that logo on our. You know everyone's collecting logos, right?
Speaker 2:no-transcript about. You start a business, you do your paperwork, you do all the foundational stuff, and then you think about where you're going to find your customers. You're actually saying we need to reverse that journey to make sure that we're offering a product or service that people actually want, that they need, that they're going to buy, and that is when you know that you have a business. So kind of work backwards from that, make sure you have some of that and then take care of the rest perhaps?
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly. And you know, to anyone who's worked in corporate for a long time, we're conditioned to just having work given to us, right, and that's very normal, right, like I was 38 by the time I quit my full-time job and said, okay, I'm going to go off and do this on my own people, just to come to me, right, and I think maybe, you know, maybe if I had built a product or if I had a software piece of technology. But I know a lot of people, you know everyone thinks there's overnight success, but really people who end up building technology. It's rare that they just quit their job and then, okay, I'm going full-time on app development.
Speaker 3:It happens, don't get me wrong, but usually what they're doing is they're tinkering before and building their app at night and all of a sudden they launch it and do a bunch of trial and error. So you absolutely have to find the customers in pain first and then build the product to go and solve that pain, right, solve the problems. And the nice thing is there's always people in pain, always going to people who have problems and lots of problems out there to go and keep solving. And just because there's already a solution doesn't mean it's the perfect solution for everybody either. So yeah, customer first and then build the solution.
Speaker 2:So how did you reverse engineer this when you'd already started your business, so that you actually had a business that still exists?
Speaker 3:Well, it was really funny. I think what many entrepreneurs do is they start to say, well, I've got, maybe I can just launch a new product line. So that's what I did. I said I was building this, I was doing the speaking business. And then what I found through friends who were speakers, I went through a cohort of speaker training. They all had a lot of problem around their video and their demo reels, the speaker demo reels and that's all to do with personal branding. I'm sure we'll get into that a little bit later.
Speaker 3:I had my feet in two camps and it was at a certain point where I realized that the video demo reels and the video production, the video agency, was growing faster and larger than the speaking business one. I had to just decide for myself. I was like, okay, I love speaking, but why don't I go serve that audience? Because they're the ones in pain. And that's when I officially decided. I'm like, okay, that was September of 2023. I said, okay, make a decision, pick a lane and stick with it. And so I did it, and that's been the journey ever since.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that brings us to the frequent speaker.
Speaker 3:We do.
Speaker 2:So talk about personal branding in this. The context of we hear a lot of that. It's somewhat of a buzzword, but it's also the reality that we live in is that if you do start a business, people are going to look at who you are, what kind of person you are right, not just in the business construct, but also in your personal life. They're going to look at your social media, your website, perhaps some podcasts or other speaking opportunities that you've had. What else have you done that can make them really know, like and trust you?
Speaker 3:Bingo. I was just going to say know, like and trust. Can we just stop talking about business for a moment. Let's talk about dating, okay? So the reason I like to to say is isn't that exactly what happens in any interpersonal relationship? That you would meet with somebody for the first time. You're on a dating app, you swipe, right, and what she was? She? Well, my sister. What does she do? You know she's gonna be like who is this guy? Let me go look him up. Like I'm gonna look at your instagram. I'm gonna facebook maybe not facebook anymore like what's on your tiktok? You know what have you got? When you search up Cambo Duane on Google, like what comes up For me it's gonna be a whole bunch of LinkedIn. Connect with LinkedIn, anyone who wants.
Speaker 3:But that's what everybody's going to do these days. If you're going to go get a job, then you're like somebody's going to look you up. Who is this person that is coming in for the interview? That's their responsibility. Maybe not an entry level, but definitely, as time goes on, that's going to get more and more important.
Speaker 3:Do you have something on your social media? Are you someone who is like are you insulting people on your social media? Are you bragging about things. You know TikTok is wide open. It's really not hard to find. You know the real Jason Brown, like you know what I mean. Like it's not hard to find you and once you find, like oh, this guy is kind of, you know, not somebody that we'd want in the company, something like that. So we have to start thinking about what our digital persona is in a lot of ways. Now let's talk about business again. Maybe you want to go and get investors, like maybe you actually want to start a business. Same thing they're going to go look at your social profiles as well to figure out who you are.
Speaker 3:So what I do now is, for public speakers who want to get out there and go and book more speaking gigs, I set them up in the best way possible using video to go and book those gigs using something called a speaker demo reel, a video reel that showcases all their best work. So I'm bringing in sales and presentation skills. I know the industry very, very well. I know it works in the industry. I know what people are looking for and the amazing thing is that you know a good speaker. They've already been doing this for a long time in like 45 minutes. They know how to build a story, they know how to share their stories and all that kind of stuff, and by weaving that in to a two to three minute clip it helps them book gigs, helps them increase their speaking rate, helps them get more attention, get noticed all that good stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what about if somebody's at the beginning of their journey? They have a personal brand established or somewhat established. They are trying to get into their dream company and they know that one of the ways to do that is by speaking about what their subject matter expert on. What can they do? Because I know from well what I think of as speaker reels right, you're taking actual talks that people have done, where there's maybe an audience, they're on a stage or where you can see some interaction. You can get a view into their passion and their energy.
Speaker 3:so I think the main goal here is what do you want like? What do you want speaking to do for you? What do you want all this to? So if your goal isn't to acquire customers or get paid to speak, then you probably don't need my services. Be very upfront with that. Like there's no sense in in paying me to go and craft a like, craft a story for you. That's, that's not what I do, what a speaker reel is for. If you are somebody who is passionate, say about I don't know, give me a topic, what do you think is someone in your audience would would really want to do Trees.
Speaker 3:Trees, okay so. Okay, let's just say, forestry. Okay, so they want to open up. They want to open up greenhouse, they want to open up a nursery, something like that. Okay, great entrepreneur, good entrepreneur, business right there. Okay, so you want to go and maybe work at, like, a large greenhouse or something like that.
Speaker 3:So if you go out and speak on your specialty, horticulture, you want to go speak on how do you build raised garden beds. You want to go speak on how do you build raised garden beds. You want to go speak on stuff like that. There are tons, tons, tons of conferences that you can go speak at and look, usually for free as well. You're just bringing out thought leadership to the world. So let's use that idea of guard, of raised garden beds, because that's a hot topic always for people who are doing gardening in their back, in their backyard. So you create a talk on raised garden beds, how you build one, how you'd, uh, where you'd install it, and you know how watering works, maybe.
Speaker 3:Okay, so you go and speak at your local home and garden show. Every city has its home and garden show. It's going to be there, you know, maybe your local Rona or Home Depot, you know, usually on Saturday mornings. Do you know that they actually have speakers? They actually have, like local speakers come in and talk about this kind of stuff. Local gardeners like ask the expert, kind of sessions like that.
Speaker 3:What would it be if you went to go create an opportunity like that? And hey, what a great day to learn how to. What a great way to learn how to speak just to random people and pitch yourself as well Doesn't mean you're going to get it, that's okay. Do you know how many? Do you know how many Home Depots there are in the average American city? There's so many. There's like seven.
Speaker 3:And then plus all the plus, all the lows that are there as well, and all that kind of stuff. So there you are. So there's some small opportunities that you could just go and start to create for yourself that would help you talk about thought leadership. So you get that recorded, whether it's from your phone, something at the back of the room. Now you can start using that as leverage. You can start leveraging that thought leadership and say, hey, I'm able to go and do this, I'm able to go and speak in front of an audience and people have nobody knows whether you've been paid or not, but people are willing to listen to me in front of an audience and that is always really, really powerful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Chase was probably not the best example.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you gave me a good one.
Speaker 2:I was just thinking about. I just got an email from a company that plants trees for every customer, so that's why that came top of mind. But I do like the idea of the construct that you're giving us. So you find opportunities in your local community where you can practice, you can hone your skills, you're learning how to speak to an audience, what's going to engage them, and you also can shoot some video, whether, like you said, it's with your phone or professional equipment or what have you. And really, if a speaker reel is two to three minutes long, you're not going to use the worst parts of that speech or of each speech. You're going to pick out the very best moments from each one to show you at your best.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly so. The way that whole process works is you want to find those best clips, and so the hero's journey. Right? For anyone who doesn't know the hero's journey, let's give you a very brief overview. So life is as it is. All of a sudden, there's something happens, a calamity that happens, so the hero is called to adventure. All of a sudden, there's something that happens and the hero, which is you who are in this story, is called to adventure and you meet a guide. The guide has a plan and the plan is used to go and defeat the big bad guy, is to throw the ring into Kazadoom. See, I know, I'm a nerd. Right Is to go and, like you know, is to go and fight the big bag.
Speaker 3:Okay, like, this is the typical hero's journey and you're going to compose, you're going to create everything in life. Anytime you have a presentation, anytime you have a meeting, anytime you have anything in life. If you just work on all stories like that, if you work on all presentations like that, you're going to find that people are going to want to gravitate to you and listen to your stories more, and that's exactly what we do for demo reels as well. So we present you here. People are normally and all of a sudden there's a hook. There's a hook that hooks audiences in, that makes people want to watch us and be like and these are big stats, this is the punchline to a story, these are, you know, something that would really get people to lean into like, oh my gosh, what is that all about? In fact, tomorrow I'm I'm doing a post on Tony Robbins and the hook for me is would you walk through fire to change your life? And we're like, you're like, oh, what is this walk through fire? What's this all about?
Speaker 3:If anyone knows Tony Robbins, there's this thing he makes you walk through fire as part of some of his, some of his talks or stuff like that, and so you can imagine thousands of people walking over this bed of coals and that's his, that's his shtick, one of the shticks. Tony's got a whole bunch of them, but like so that's the hook that you start off with. And I'm telling you, the more you can master storytelling, the more you can master how to craft a tale, whether it's a long one at 45 minutes, whether it it's a short one, whether it's just a conversation, whether it's your TikTok video. It doesn't matter what it is. The stronger you're going to be as a leader, the more persuasive you're going to be as an employee, as someone who wants to create a company, all this kind of stuff. There's just so many benefits to that long term.
Speaker 2:Yeah, fantastic. We spoke a little bit about social media as part of your brand, so I'd like to hear a little bit more on and you also just mentioned TikTok and being able to use video on your TikTok. Will you talk a little bit more about how that plays into the video reel, but also just into your brand in general?
Speaker 3:So had you asked that question three, two, three months ago, when?
Speaker 3:we met, I would have answered you completely differently. Okay, so my views have completely changed, have completely flipped over. So I recently joined a few masterminds on social media in general. I know that sounds like like I'm a I don't know what social media is, but I'm a. When you can approach something strategically, you're much better equipped to not burn out. I think that's that's something, that that's just like a lesson that I've learned throughout life the more you can do planning ahead of time, not sitting in analysis, paralysis, but really understanding and doing things with like, walking, with intent. I think that's the whole goal here. So my book's on social media strategy, and not that I want to become a social media manager.
Speaker 3:But I joined this mastermind and when I got on the phone with this, with the leader, he says, well, how long are you spending currently on writing a social post? And I've grown my following on LinkedIn up to 15,000 people and oh, I'm so good. And I would say, oh, you know, I just like slap some stuff together, put a photo on there, spend about 15 minutes and I'm so burned out from it. And he says, okay, wow, like I spent three hours on my video posts and it was like when you realize that the A players in the game are playing at like an order of magnitude higher. Like you know, I'm not a millionaire, like I'm not like. But even in business, the real business, like do you think that Jeff Bezos, do you think he's playing? Like the way he thinks about his day is just different than than what you and I would talk about, like mere mortals would plan their day because they have to think at such an order of magnitude higher. And so that really helped me reset my perspective of what social media really is, because it's all about the quality of the content.
Speaker 3:Anyone can go viral randomly, but can you go viral consistently? And I think that's the game. That's the game is that a brand that can go viral or semi-viral, like whatever you want your goals and social media to be, not to get too much into that. But if you can go, if you can choose when you want to acquire customers back to the idea of acquiring customers through organic media, then that is a very, very powerful lever to be able to pull whenever you want. Like imagine just being able to control the flow of business into your app, into your business, into whatever, just by doing a social post All of a sudden, you know there's going to be 30, 40, 50 people coming into your lead gen taking a discovery call with you. What have you like? That? That's leverage. That's really powerful. And even if you want to go do that for a company later on, right?
Speaker 3:They're speaking now about the whole idea of the creator role is going to be changing and as more companies big companies realize that, wow, you know, it doesn't matter if he's a director of marketing. We need to get that person on social media talking about our company in a way that puts us in the best light, because we all know companies who've put out actually, I can give you a good example of that. So why do brands pay for individual contributors to create content for them? Like, why They've got all the money? Why can't they just hire a bunch of people and do it?
Speaker 3:Oh, it's because a creator has an audience already with them, right? So it's all again about those eyeballs. So if a creator already has that audience and a brand will pay them $10,000, here's a bunch of sneakers, so cool, wear them and create some good stuff for that Like, they're paying for eyeballs through that creator. There's no way that somebody who doesn't have that flair is going to be able to compete with that, and so we're talking about a middle manager somewhere at Adidas. So the creator economy and that whole idea of attention is worth so so much these days. So quality over quantity at first, but you got to learn to do both.
Speaker 2:Yeah, interesting. This is such a unique take, particularly in the age of AI and generative AI, particularly Especially because a lot of people are now saying this cuts down your work, the amount of time that you have to spend working. You can have Gen AI create all your captions. It can help you with your videos cutting your videos down. It can also help you create graphics and images. It can even schedule all your posts for you. So I'd love to hear you know a little bit more about your counter argument to this in social media, but then also in the way that you approach creating video reels.
Speaker 3:Sure, so wouldn't it be nice to just press a button and make money? Like, wouldn't that be wonderful? Like that's the dream, right? That's the dream that we're being sold, that AI is going to be this thing, that we're going to be able to chain a bunch of AIs together and create workers for us and then, like one worker, when it's done, it'll pass it on to the next AI and then that'll write the script and then, when that script is done, it'll pass it to another AI and that AI will create all the visuals for it. And it's going to be this amazing thing that's going to make us millions.
Speaker 3:And what happens is that we are so attuned now to AI. Have you ever opened up listening? Go to google image search and look up a famous actor, scroll down and you will see like a good like 60 70 percent of images are now like ai generated images of those actors, and it's, it's wild. We are so like. It's gotten to the point now where I think a lot of us are saying, oh, I don't want to look at this anymore, because I've heard this ai voice before. I've seen this AI picture before. Maybe not exactly it, but I get it Like. I know where this is going and it's not going to give me any depth of value. And that's the differentiator, right there. How deep can you go? So we used to use AI to create demo rails. We've now completely moved away from it, and I'll tell you why. For that single reason the depth.
Speaker 3:So when a good speaker steps on stage, they're not just rattling things off at 90 words per minute. They don't sound like a machine gun. They're using intonation, they're using their voice, they're using their arms and gestures, they're talking quietly and going small. They're filling the stage with their arms wide. Ai can't figure that out Like. It just doesn't understand that when somebody pauses, they may be pausing with intent. Instead, it puts a period there, right, or it'll figure like that's not a hook because there's a pause there. It doesn't make any sense. And yet what we found is the gravitas that a good speaker has.
Speaker 3:You need to watch that like manually. You know, easy thing to test. Go on any of those AI cut up tools. You know there's lots of these days that will just cut up video for you. And you know what, if you look at yourself and say I don't have the time to do social media and you want to cut up podcasts like use what you have, but you know it'll only get you 80% there. You can't just throw stuff like that out anymore because, yeah, that depth of knowledge just won't be there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I had several talks with people even people who create AI tools that say the same exact thing, actually, the same exact percentage. Ai might get you 80% of the way, but it can't replace that other 20%.
Speaker 3:Yeah, totally. And so let me let me shed some light a little bit on my process now to create social media and like it's now taking me about three hours to script content and plus the editing time, so the person who's running the mastermind, like he takes everything in about three hours because he's really good at doing it and, by the way, he pops off to over a million views every four posts. It's insane, like when you talk about somebody who has mathematically figured out his perfect audience, what they want to hear, like, and the proof is there. It's not like he's lying. I go to his instagram and you can see it. So that's why you pay for the people who are going to get you where you want to go.
Speaker 3:So I still use it because I will seed ai some ideas that I have for a social media post and we're using I'm using it as brainstorming. Ah, now I know what to go research, I go and do a bunch of research now on my own and stuff like that, and then I bring it back and I write like a very shoddy first draft and I'm saying, hey, ai, use some of your templates that I've given you, polish this up and I'm throwing it over again, and so it's just like back and forth and I don't think I could do it fully manually. Yet I don't know if I'm ever going to get there, because this process is working really well for me now to be able to bounce stuff back and forth and just the time saving there. But I didn't just say that, I gave it all to AI, because it just doesn't work like that yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a great example. Thank you for sharing that, and it means that if you are in social media, that you don't need to worry about your job as much as you might think you do. If you are in content creation. If you are a creator, ai is not just going to come replace you.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I've done a lot of thinking about that because I see it a lot these days. I've seen copywriters lose their jobs and I think the people most at risk are the low skilled copywriters, low skilled video editors, because if you don't have enough depth of skill yourself to be able to get out there and speak to pain points or understand the problem really well, then it's very easy for you to get replaced by AI. Because if I can just you know in 20 seconds, if I can get someone to write an equivalent blog post, as I could hire someone in the Philippines to do, then you know that to me is a big sign. I talk to my team all the time. I say, look, you've got to do more than what I can do, because if I can just do that here, you've got to do more. That's your job.
Speaker 3:And so, yeah, I see copywriters and social media managers as probably two of the risks where you need to start learning how to speak with authority about your skill. And that is only going to pay dividends long-term when you can go to a business owner if you want to freelance this kind of thing and you tell them. You say, look, these are the pains in the industry. These are the problems in the industry. This is where you're going to be able to stand out.
Speaker 3:People want to be led Like. I don't want to give someone something and then tell them every step of the way Because that is AI, right, like that's the AI posting job. But if you can come in and take away that thought, like the thought process, now I don't have to think about the problem anymore yeah, upload an hour of you talking every day about problems that your audience experiences. I'll take care of the rest. What You'll take care of the rest and it'll be better than AI, I'll pay for that. That's the problem solving part. But if I have to go and educate you every step of the way and tell you I don't like this, tell you I don't like that, then those are the people I'd be worried about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's a very good distinction. Thank you for that. So, cam, what if somebody is new to the business world? Maybe they went straight from undergrad to grad school and they haven't had to go out into the workforce they are looking to establish. Maybe they don't have the thought leadership right, but they do have a knowledge base. They've gone and gotten more education so that they're not just a low-level copywriter or social media person, but they do have those skills. They know a little bit more than the average person. What else can they do to stand out on social media? Should they be creating some video, even introductions to potential employers? What advice do you have for them?
Speaker 3:So yes to video, but by and large, become an expert at something. Darn it. I say this so often even to like junior speakers. They say, oh, I don't have a niche. It's like stop everything, pick a lane. Like, pick us something that you can focus in on. And I'll give you an example.
Speaker 3:So I was working with the speaker recently and she was. She works in the manufacturing industry, specifically around musical instruments Super cool, right. Like you're like oh cool, but she worked in HR. So she wanted to bring thought leadership around HR. And it was like that's it, I want to bring thought leadership around hr. And I'm like, okay, there's so many people out there who talk about hr like it's very, very saturated, and like what do you? What do you do? What would you work on? She's like I've got these tool. Like you know, I know what manufacturing in general, things are being sent to mexico and now they're being brought back. And like we send this stuff to china and now it's being brought back and subsidies and tariffs and all these kinds of things are being talked about right now. I'm like, stop right there. Cool, you've got some ideas there. What if you just became the speaker on HR for musical instruments. Like, doesn't that sound cool? Like, wouldn't you want to learn something about an HR expert? No, an HR person who has an expertise in the, in the musical instrument manufacturing industry. And you know, maybe in that industry, like, maybe that side, maybe there's only like seven players who want to be in. That is not like, maybe maybe there's not much business in that space. But all of a sudden, maybe there are lessons that the musical industry, musical instrument industry, has solved that maybe I don't know the um geez, I don't know any other manufacturer I'm looking around my desk now. Like, like I don't know, like a mug manufacturing or like headphone manufacturing. Like, maybe they've got similar pain points that they would love to have somebody who's an expert in that similar parallel sister domain and they want to have them come speak at this event. Okay. So I'd say the exact same thing to somebody who is either just starting in the industry or something like that Just event, okay. So I'd say the exact same thing to somebody who is either just starting in the industry or something like that Just get known for a, something or something.
Speaker 3:And like, maybe you're the one who understands puncture I don't know Copywriters, right, I don't know. Like, maybe you're the one who can tell stories about I don't know home building more than anybody else, and so if you are an expert copywriter on like home building, who could possibly be your target market for that? Well, I know, probably like construction workers or contractors all across Canada, united States, would probably love to have someone copyright blogs for them. And if you became known as the person who could write about shower installation in century homes in Nebraska holy crap, that's a market right there, isn't that a market? Like I'm sure that's a market. So become known in a, something like get very well, yeah, you become an expert in that and that'll help you grow and it could be anything that you love doing yeah, fantastic, that's some great advice again.
Speaker 2:So thank you, cam. I've really appreciated having you on talk about your very interesting journey from full stack developer into the world of accessibility, becoming an expert advocate and speaker, and turning that into not just being a full-time speaker but then turn you know, deciding to put that aside and turning it into a full business, helping other people really realize their potential and be showcasing the best of themselves when they're looking for speaking opportunities.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thanks for having me on and you know, as you were listening to that, it's funny I was just thinking that you know, all we do in life is give advice to our old selves, right? So here I was speaking as if I was listening to myself and you know, would you just pick a lane cam and would you just get on video? And that was you know. These are two things that I wish I had done much, much, much sooner, because, going back to trees, the best time to plant a tree is 10 years ago. Second best time is right now. So just do it.
Speaker 2:Fantastic, and we'll be able to go to thefrequencespeakercom to learn more about you and everything you do. Or they can also find you on LinkedIn and we'll have those in the show notes for everyone who's listening.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thanks so much. Thanks so much. And if you're interested in speaking, if who's listening is interested in speaking on thefrequentspeakercom on the top right, I've got the community there. Come join a free community. I talk about a lot of things I talked about here, like lead gen and marketing a little bit.
Speaker 2:If you're a speaker, it's a little bit tilted towards speaking but if you, to everybody who's watching this episode or listening to it on your favorite platform, we'll be back again next week with another amazing guest.
Speaker 1:To learn more about the Master of Science in Digital Media Management program, visit us on the web at dmmuscedu. Thank you.
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