How Can Video Marketing Build Trust and Visibility for Your Business? | Justin Vajko

PROFITABLE TALKS...

In this episode of The Profitable Creative, host Christian Brim speaks with Justin Vajko, founder of Dialogue Video Marketing. They discuss the evolution of video marketing, the challenges of selling video services, and the importance of authenticity and coaching in video production. Justin shares insights on navigating client relationships, the impact of AI on marketing strategies, and the trust issues prevalent in the marketing space. The conversation also touches on the misalignment of expectations in marketing, innovative service offerings, and the core purpose of marketing to drive revenue. They conclude with thoughts on self-promotion and the value of visibility in business.

PROFITABLE TAKEAWAYS...

• Video marketing is essential for storytelling.
• Coaching clients on video production enhances content quality.
• Authenticity is key in video marketing.
• AI is disrupting traditional marketing strategies.
• Trust issues exist between marketers and clients.
• Expectations must be clearly communicated in marketing.
• Diversifying service offerings can increase revenue.
• Visibility is crucial for business success.
• Self-promotion is necessary to help others.
• Overcoming personal insecurities can lead to better marketing outcomes.

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Transcript

Christian Brim (00:01.41)
Welcome to another episode of the profitable creative, the only place on the interwebs where you will learn how to turn your passion into profit. I am your host Christian Brim. Special shout out to our one listener in post falls, Idaho. actually went to Idaho for the first time last year on my way to Wyoming. I don't think I was lost. I was following GPS. I don't know why it took me into Idaho, but I really couldn't tell the difference between Idaho and Wyoming. It was beautiful. Absolutely gorgeous.

In any case, thank you for listening joining me today Justin Vaco of

Christian Brim (00:43.35)
I don't tell me hold on a second. I'm Justin vaco of dialogue video marketing. Welcome to the show Justin

Justin Vajko (00:50.961)
Thank you so much, Christian, for having me.

Christian Brim (00:53.902)
My brain is addled, sir. It's... That's bad. So, why don't you give the listeners a short CV on who you are and what you do?

Justin Vajko (00:55.865)
That's okay. It's the afternoon right after lunch.

Justin Vajko (01:06.553)
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I was born at a young age. Now we'll go that far back. I am the founder of a marketing agency specializing in short form video thought leadership. So the problem everybody has with video, just having a conversation today on LinkedIn with another potential partner is that these agencies, they want to get video from their clients. If you're in digital marketing, if you're in ads and...

Christian Brim (01:10.53)
Yes. Well.

Justin Vajko (01:30.873)
They struggle to do it. So the old model is broken, clearly. If you ask for it, clients won't give it to you. So the way we solve that is we get on the client's client's calendar remotely. We coach them on how to use their phone to record a video. We do it with them. We're asking them questions they're answering. And we add those and send those to our client, who are very happy to now have all this beautiful, rich, short form content with their client in it that they can use for whatever purposes they want.

So that's our business in a nutshell.

Christian Brim (02:03.702)
Okay, how long have you been doing that?

Justin Vajko (02:07.771)
2022 was our first client. It was kind of a eureka moment. It's like we had this client out in LA. He wanted to do video, but he didn't want to fly us out there to do the recording over two days. He had a very, he had a fraction of a budget and we're like, well, we know there's a way to do this with Riverside, which I noticed is the platform we're using. And we know we can get some 4k video using that. And that was the start of our journey in this space.

Christian Brim (02:26.988)
Yes?

Christian Brim (02:35.074)
Before that, what did you do?

Justin Vajko (02:37.328)
We were actually in recruitment marketing for a few years before that, which is the active marketing for the purpose of filling jobs and not forgetting sales.

Christian Brim (02:39.48)
Okay.

Christian Brim (02:46.986)
Okay, but you were an agency specializing in recruiting for others.

Justin Vajko (02:52.025)
Recruitment marketing for our clients. So we tended to work with a lot of manufacturers here in Wisconsin where I'm based. So we'd have a handful of clients. Still today, we still have a few of those clients. I'll call them legacy clients. But that's how we got into video in the first place, was doing work with them, because you can't tell a good story without a good video.

Christian Brim (03:14.488)
So this is where the candidates for the job are submitting video to answer interview questions.

Justin Vajko (03:23.361)
No. So this is where we interview the employees at, let's say, one of our clients down the road, hour away. We interview their employees every quarter with video, and then we turn those into short form. And then we publish those on Facebook and LinkedIn. So that when they go to, that employer goes to advertise their jobs on Indeed. People are checking them out. They see these videos and they go, look at this employer. They're doing something that I would want to know because everybody wants to know, goes on behind the scenes of every employer. so

Christian Brim (03:31.555)
Mm-hmm.

Justin Vajko (03:51.877)
We were doing that for a few years before we pivoted into this thought leadership play with video.

Christian Brim (03:57.696)
Okay, so what precipitated the pivot?

Justin Vajko (04:02.565)
So was that client in the fall of 22. I had come across a, and I was doing some work on the side as a graphic designer. That's my original field. And this was an agency owner and he had a client in LA. It was a broker. And this, he knew that I had done video and he knew his broker needed video. And so he posed a question, can you do video for them? And like I said, the heat.

Broker was not really interested in the big price tag of flying us out there for two days of shooting and all the planning around that He had never done video He'd been he was a this guy was hobnobbing it with Hollywood celebrities for 40 years that he never done video himself So he's very uncertain just wanted to test the water So we did a remote video session and took 30 minutes asked him a few questions about the market What's happening in the market? What do you see coming down the pike things like that? And we turned his answers in short form clips that this agency partner of mine

Christian Brim (04:41.985)
Interesting.

Justin Vajko (04:58.277)
posted to his Instagram and his views went through the roof once he showed up in his content on his own Instagram page. And that was the moment I went, I bet he's not the only founder out there, the not the only subject matter expert who is really smart, but they don't have an effective system to do video. And that was our start into this niche.

Christian Brim (05:18.56)
And so do you work primarily directly with the founder, owners, thought leaders, or do you go through agencies? Okay.

Justin Vajko (05:24.187)
Mm-hmm.

Both, we do both. We have a mix of clients. We have clients we pass through. It's probably about 50-50. And it works the same either way. The only difference is for some, for our partner clients, sometimes they want to see the questions we're sending ahead of time and often they don't care. So they just trust us to do our job well.

Christian Brim (05:47.416)
That's interesting because I was actually having this conversation a couple of weeks ago with a videographer and he was describing what he did and he was talking about two different customers, one of which was direct to the business owner. The other was through an agency and how different that like the mechanics, the deliverables were

functionally the same, but you know, the buyer, the payer is, is different. The expectations, their experience, how they communicate, like all of those things are different. Have you, have you run into that trying to serve both of those?

Justin Vajko (06:30.907)
That's a good question. Yeah, it is fair. I have thought about so marketing to those audiences is very different. Like it's very straightforward when I find an agency partner like the one I mentioned, the person I'm talking to on LinkedIn. Like if I ask them, hey, are you doing video for clients? Oh, yeah. And are you getting those videos? Wow, it's really cooling teeth. Once I know that's a pain, I say, hey, I got a system and it's like it's like.

Christian Brim (06:37.88)
Mm-hmm.

Justin Vajko (06:56.731)
super straightforward because they know their clients need video. They've been trying to get into it for years and all they need now is to get if the price is right and they can figure out how to build a new model and upsell it, whatever. That's it. Like they're sold on the concept because they're already doing it. They just have a hard time doing it. Selling directly to the people who are the buyers is a completely different sales cycle. can take more. Sometimes it's taken me a year. We don't even sell high ticket. Our plans start at $900 a month. So

Christian Brim (07:19.096)
Mm-hmm.

Justin Vajko (07:25.755)
That is a frustrating thing about what we do is like, it's because it's video. If you're selling directly to somebody who's put off something for 10 years, it's going to be very tough to convince them to change that putting it, humans are creatures of habit. I know this. If I put something off for 10 years, it's going to be very hard to get me to make it front and center anytime soon. So I do have systems to give people that confidence and break through those barriers, but it's a completely different sell on the front end.

Christian Brim (07:30.709)
Mmm.

Justin Vajko (07:55.503)
But once we're getting into fulfillment, it's virtually this.

Christian Brim (07:57.846)
Right, right, and I would assume, well, I don't know this, in the case of this videographer that I was talking to, his price points were distinctly different. Do you have different price points depending upon agency versus direct?

Justin Vajko (08:08.026)
Mm-hmm.

Justin Vajko (08:14.361)
Yeah, so there's a slight discount for if whether a client wants to do their own publishing and writing, they get a slight discount and the agencies get the same and then they can mark it up. But agencies, I'm finding agencies don't work with us based on the discount. Like they're working on us because we're solving a very real problem for them, which is like we've been trying to get this client to do video forever. We know it's going to make all their stuff more effective. Can you please help us?

Christian Brim (08:26.892)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (08:41.356)
So, okay, now I'm going to play stupid here. It seems to me that what you came up with as a solution, which is getting them on a recording and essentially walking them through or coaching them through it is something that the agency could do. They just didn't come up with it or don't have the bandwidth for it or.

Justin Vajko (09:03.534)
Mm-hmm.

Justin Vajko (09:10.829)
Some agencies are doing a form of this, but it's basically designed for written content and it's not designed for video content. The difference between a session with us is that we're optimized for short form only video. That is it. It would be very strange if you took the whole session, tried to turn it into a podcast. You couldn't turn it necessarily into a blog because the video points are designed to be 60 second little snippets.

Christian Brim (09:14.798)
Okay.

Hmm

Christian Brim (09:25.004)
Okay.

Christian Brim (09:30.552)
Yeah.

Justin Vajko (09:38.455)
and we're actually coaching the client on hooks in the session. Like, all right, Christian, I heard you say, are three mistakes every agency makes with their financials. Can I have you say, here are three mistakes every agency does with their financials? And then you would say that verbatim. Then the editor would know it's at the end. He'd put it at the front, cut off the on-ramp, walking up to your point thing that everybody does. And then, boom, you've got your short form video. Anyone can copy that model.

Christian Brim (09:42.026)
Hmm.

Justin Vajko (10:07.257)
But very few do because it's a completely different skill set and it's a completely different use case. It's optimized for short form. And most agencies are looking to write blog posts or get content to do a thought leader, know, white paper or whatever. And the video content is if we get it great. And then when they do get it, it's very low quality. And

you know, the CEO is like framed all the way down here because they didn't opt in. I was like, hey, you can't. So many things can go wrong. I've talked to so many agencies like they're doing the recordings. They can't use them. They're using Zoom to record, which, somebody coughs. Good luck trying to isolate that audio because it's all in one audio file. So there's so many little nuance to so much nuance to what we do that once an agency decides they want to get into it,

Christian Brim (10:37.14)
Right. they're looking down their nose. That's my other thing. Yeah.

Christian Brim (10:48.896)
Right.

Christian Brim (10:54.574)
All

Justin Vajko (11:02.243)
Anyone can, technically, but it is not worth the, this is juice. That's not worth the squeeze. just to, to add this whole nother like a system on tack on this whole new system to your agency, which is what we bring to the table right out of the box.

Christian Brim (11:04.526)
Sure.

Christian Brim (11:16.91)
Yeah. And I would think if you're, if you're dealing with business owners and they're, dealing with an agency and they say, okay, we need you to record some videos. And they're going to like, I, yeah. Okay. I don't know what. Yeah. Right. Well, because there's not enough direction. There's not, they don't have the experience. Um, they don't have the, the, just the basic technical skills, like, you know, being in frame, those kinds of things. Um, you know, technical or requirements of, of the recording, you know,

Justin Vajko (11:28.859)
It doesn't happen. It doesn't happen.

Christian Brim (11:46.67)
what software you're using, those things. But to me, what sounds more powerful about what you do is the prompting, the coaching, like, okay, cause you get what you need as opposed to them. Just, you know, to me, the worst, had, I had an agency we worked with a couple of years ago and they sent me a script and I'm like, I, I, I can't, I can't read off a script.

Justin Vajko (12:10.487)
No, no scripts.

Christian Brim (12:14.158)
Even I never can get it timed right on Riverside like it's either going too fast or too slow, but it just does not feel genuine it even if it's my words, it doesn't it just you know, maybe if I repeat it enough and memorize it and act, you know.

Justin Vajko (12:16.89)
Thank

Justin Vajko (12:23.589)
Mm-hmm.

But you're.

Justin Vajko (12:30.843)
That's that's exactly right to get a script to work You have to get into acting and I don't know who has time to get into acting because that is an art form that you know we can all tell when somebody's reading something and that Completely defeats the point of doing video because the point of doing video is to show what you know and build a connection and like a conversation like it's I like in video to a coffee chat if you would sit across the the table from someone drinking your tea or coffee or whatever and have a conversation with them that's

Christian Brim (12:36.076)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (12:39.82)
Right.

Christian Brim (12:47.566)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (12:59.118)
bourbon.

Justin Vajko (12:59.801)
That's what you're trying to do with your video. Anything else, you're missing the point.

Christian Brim (13:05.996)
I said bourbon, you kind of just ignored me on that. Yeah. No, bourbon. Yes, absolutely.

Justin Vajko (13:07.739)
Oh, sorry. didn't hear. I thought you said perfect or bourbon. I mean, you can try bringing the bourbon to a coffee shop. Let me know how that goes.

Christian Brim (13:15.246)
Usually if you're gonna put whiskey in coffee, it needs to be Irish whiskey. I mean, there's no other way to do it. It's You know It's a it's a different experience for sure. It's kind of like Red Bull and vodka, you know I mean the taste is completely different but you get the same effect of caffeine and and the depressant. It's first very strange Don't don't blame me. Okay for anything that happens or anything she says yeah

Justin Vajko (13:20.447)
Okay, I've heard of that and never tried it. I'm a big fan of my coffee. I've never tried it with whiskey.

Okay.

Justin Vajko (13:34.971)
I'll have to try that. Tell my wife that next time. Buy whiskey. What's that for? It's for my coffee. you're good. This is Guy Yvette on the internet.

Christian Brim (13:46.338)
That's anonymous enough. If you just say the guy I met on the internet, that's fine.

Justin Vajko (13:49.531)
Yeah, that's right. You know, just yeah, as one does, trusting someone's advice on the Internet.

Christian Brim (13:55.118)
You get what you, you get what you deserve. Okay. So I want to, I want to, I had on the last episode, a, uh, marketer and had been in the game for a while as an agency owner and you've been in the space for a while. So I want to ask you some similar questions about like what you see you, you, you use the word the.

the agency model is broken. What, what, what do you see the lay of the land with the new disruptions in technology? You know, everybody's running for cover, trying to figure out which end is up. Pricings all over the place. You know, some people are doing great. Some are like sucking air. What, what's your perspective of what's going on as a marketer?

Justin Vajko (14:53.913)
Well, can only speak to my own perspective, first of all. I don't want to position myself as some kind of a thought leader in this space, but I've had a lot of conversations with agency owners. I'm in a couple of different networks myself and I'm seeing this interesting conversation happen around strategy where...

Strategy has been sold to agencies as the differentiator for your agency for over a decade now If you listen to the two Bob's podcast, which is classic podcast in this space They will preach that and it's not a bad thing There's been the way they talk about is you have two rooms the strategy room in the execution room and historically agencies were an execution partner and then you got to get into strategy to charge premium prices and actually be a partner not just an execution jockey

And I think what I'm hearing is that really the future is you have to be in both spaces. You cannot be in the strategy room only, and you cannot be in the execution room only. And for our agency, it's been interesting hearing those discussions and thinking about where we sit, because we're primarily in the execution room. Because the nature of what we do is getting people on video.

Christian Brim (16:05.73)
Right?

Justin Vajko (16:12.621)
If you can't, good luck putting a strategy together if you can't even get your C-suite to be on video in the first place. We optimize around, let's get people on video and then let's figure things out from there. And it's kind of been working well for us. We kind of do the strategy backwards, I want to say.

Christian Brim (16:27.576)
Yeah, that's what I mean, I was that was what I was thinking as you were describing it.

Justin Vajko (16:31.37)
Yeah. Yeah. And I'm not saying we're perfect yet. We don't charge high ticket, right? We're trying to figure out, how do we charge high ticket? My goal is a million dollars one day. We're at 250,000 right now. And so trying to figure out how to get there with, know, if you charge our average price per client is a thousand dollars a month and we have all recurring clients. That's a lot of clients. That's like 80 clients a month to get to a million. We could get there. We could do that. We have the means to scale, but it's, it's, um,

With as difficult as it is to convince people to do video, it's a percent of a percent of people that are like, I think this is important. I will do this. And I'll commit to it for a year. As difficult as it gets people to do that, I've realized we probably need to add some other higher ticket item to our list. So we're looking at that. And we're trying to figure out what that looks like. And I have a plan to test out. We're actively testing it right now.

To answer your question, I do think there has to be a balance of strategy and execution because of things like AI. there's so much disruption in the space with AI, especially marketing. feel like marketing is, if not one of probably the most impacted, I guess copywriters would be number one, but in marketing, we number two impacted space because of AI adoption.

Christian Brim (17:50.67)
Do you see, and I, you know, I...

Most of my business colleagues are accountants, which they're usually awful marketers. I mean, I say that lovingly, but they are. Well, yeah. So, you know, they don't have a lot of conversations around marketing, but they do kind of get jazzed up if they think that they can use AI to do their marketing for them, right?

Justin Vajko (18:03.685)
you

Yeah, of course. Yeah. I'm a terrible accountant.

Justin Vajko (18:23.963)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (18:26.766)
But, you know, my contention is that AI is going to do for marketing what it did for accounting with QuickBooks. stick with me here for a second. The technology is not as radical, but it was still a technological disruption in a space. And when QuickBooks came around, you had accountants literally saying, I was 28, 29 at the time.

Justin Vajko (18:38.607)
Yeah, I'm listening.

Christian Brim (18:56.822)
I didn't have enough experience to know, but a lot of these older guys that I was, you know, palling around with are like, my God, we're going to be out of a job. People are going to use QuickBooks. They're not going to use this anymore. And I'm like, okay, maybe what, what transpired was you had a lot of people that bought QuickBooks. It didn't make them any better bookkeepers or accountants. And frankly, it caused more work for the accountants. And

I see a similar thing in that, you know, if you weren't going to hire an accountant anyway, then maybe QuickBooks is a good option for you. Right. And so if you weren't going to hire a marketer, then maybe AI and chat GPT is, a good solution for you, but it's not going to replace hiring a marketing agency. But this, this gentleman that I interviewed last time, he said,

He thinks the reason why AI has been so disruptive in the marketing space is because there was so little trust in the marketing space between the buyers and the sellers. other words, and I think especially with small business owners, it's like they do a merry-go-round of changing marketing agencies every one or two years and don't get what they want. And they're like, well,

Justin Vajko (20:02.553)
Yeah, I could see that.

Christian Brim (20:17.75)
Screw this, I'm just going to go do it myself as opposed to, I'm not getting what I want from the marketer anyway, so I'm going to go try it myself. What do you think about that statement?

Justin Vajko (20:28.347)
Yeah, I mean, there's a lot behind that. There's a lot to unpack behind that. think immediately of, yeah, there's the bad players in the agency space, just like in any agency, any space. I know there are bad accountants. I know that for a fact. There's bad players anywhere. But, you know, the second thing I think of is like marketers are like the number three most untrusted job title in the United States behind like, I think lawyers and something else. can't remember what it is. We just don't trust them because there's so much spin, which I would say is a lying so much lying going on.

Christian Brim (20:37.517)
Mm-hmm.

Yes, yes, they're armed.

Christian Brim (20:48.173)
Mmm.

Justin Vajko (20:58.469)
Trying to make something into nothing. And then the third thing is I think there's a lot of misunderstanding of what marketing is supposed to be. And so that gets lost in translation. And most marketers are not good at communicating the expectations on the front end. They just kind of hope and pray, hey, if I sign this client, I hope they're a good client. I hope they believe in this and this and this other thing. I hope they see long term versus short term, which is one of the biggest things. I hope they have all these other things that should be working for us to be effective.

Christian Brim (21:05.368)
Hmm.

Justin Vajko (21:26.331)
And you see that a lot with marketing agencies. It used to be me signing a client. And then you realize, my gosh, this client is missing a salesperson. And they're hoping that I do this one thing. For example, we've had clients in the past with video. Like they sign us with video and then three months later they leave. And why did they leave? Because we were the only thing they were doing for their marketing. They were not networking. They were not. They didn't have a salesperson. They were not doing any webinars. They were not doing anything. And they're like putting the weight of all their business development sales on this one

video that goes out once a week to 150-ish people that watch it in their network. And there's nothing wrong with that, but that's not designed to be the vessel for your business. Your business has to be multi, what do you call it in the stock portfolio world? Multi diversified, thank you. You have to have a diversified portfolio. And so I think that that's the third part I think of is like, there's this miscommunication between expectations and actually, the marketing agency says, yes, we'll do this. And then they hope.

Christian Brim (22:08.706)
diversified.

Justin Vajko (22:24.153)
that all the pieces are working behind the scenes. But honestly, for most businesses, I've done this for a long time, but do marketing for over 15 years. Most businesses are not set up to be ready for a marketing agency or any marketing in general. There's so many things that are broken. know, messaging, positioning. was just writing an email about this. know, basic things that if that agency doesn't know or doesn't know how to fix or they don't have a referral partner that can fix that, it's not going to help you do anything but put lipstick on a pig and then you try to fix it yourself and then you burn out.

So that's one of the common things I see with that anyways. Not saying it's the only one. Some agent, some, you know.

Christian Brim (23:00.332)
No, I think, you know, this gentleman was, he actually pivoted out of the agency space entirely. And now he works with business owners as a marketing, his company is called Anarchy in a Day. And it's essentially a program to work with the business owner to get them educated on what they needed for marketing. Right. Because his purpose now is, yeah, he's going to make them a better buyer. Right.

Justin Vajko (23:20.805)
Yeah. There you go.

We the same problem.

Christian Brim (23:30.702)
Um, I want to pivot back to what you were saying about, um, goals. If, if you're, if you, if you will go along with me, um, you're at two 50, you want to be at a million and you've run the numbers like, okay, that's 80 a month. Um, one of the things that I find fascinating, um, and it's one of these business principles that you learn and you know, and then you forget.

Justin Vajko (23:47.749)
Mm-hmm.

Justin Vajko (24:00.261)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (24:00.534)
And then somewhere down the line, someone reminds you of it. It's like, shit. I, yeah, I remember that.

Justin Vajko (24:05.819)
Yeah, that happened to me just a couple of weeks ago. That's also in the email I was writing. I like, oh, I knew this. Head slap. You know, Mormon.

Christian Brim (24:11.912)
I knew this. I knew this. I knew that one. Jeopardy. So the principle is that Perry Marshall's 80-20 marketing and sales that human behavior is fractal in nature and that it is a continuing fractal and that I heard a really good analogy from Vincent Puglisi a couple of weeks ago at his UnConference and he

The way it opened up for him was someone described it sports. So you take a professional sports franchise and you've got the general admission ticket is, is price X and that represents 80 % of the people that are going to walk into that stadium. Now understand the 80 20 is not set in stone. It's, it's some iteration of that. It might be 70 30.

Justin Vajko (25:06.083)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Christian Brim (25:09.87)
you know, whatever. 20 % of those people are going to pay for premium seating, right? But then he goes even a step further. If that fractal continues, 20 % of 20 % is 4%. 4 % of them will pay for an ultra premium experience. Yeah, so they're in the luxury boxes. But then he flipped it back around and went down. He said, you know, the people that didn't go into the stadium at all might pay

for a broadcast access or they might buy some logo gear, right? And so, you know, if the entry to the stadium is 200 bucks, they might spend 50 or 20, right? But if you look at the continuum, it's all just one big 80-20 fractal, right? And I'm like, you know, that's brilliant. That's a great example. So...

Justin Vajko (25:43.451)
Hmm.

Justin Vajko (26:01.285)
Yeah.

Justin Vajko (26:06.651)
I like that.

Christian Brim (26:08.704)
My question to you is in thinking of what could the 20 % of your existing customers pay for that is not in your basic service, or maybe you do, but you could carve out and charge more for it. What comes to mind?

Justin Vajko (26:26.011)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Oh, so what we worked on so far, there's different models. One is doing podcasts as a service. And then another one was doing webinars as a service. And because these are all things I do myself and I have a lot of experience with and like, well, we could sell this. I get there'd be some bumps to get over, but we could figure it out. Like I'm confident. And then you can charge high ticket because it's closer to the lead, closer to the outcome somebody's wanting.

Christian Brim (26:35.918)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (26:41.271)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (26:52.088)
Mm-hmm.

Justin Vajko (26:57.699)
which is I want market qualified leads now. And I can say, I do one webinar for you and I can get you 50 to 150 people to attend. Any portion of those will be ready to buy now. And the portion of others will be added to your email list. So I've been thinking through that and doing the math in terms of complexity. I'm a huge fan of simplicity. And I go, all right, well, we're doing short form video. We're optimized around that. then forehead slap moment. The third option I had put on the back burner.

Christian Brim (27:00.61)
Yes.

Christian Brim (27:17.486)
Mm-hmm.

Justin Vajko (27:26.971)
I'd actually even tried this last year and I think because it was just enough complexity, I wasn't ready for it yet. It was do what we're doing now, but add things to it. So what I mean by that is, for example, right now, a client works with us, they're getting organically posted video content on every platform they want to be on. You work with us, you get every week, or plan to start $900 a month, five videos. That's one video a week. You get video on YouTube and LinkedIn and so on and so forth. That's organically posted. But...

Christian Brim (27:38.188)
Mm-hmm.

Justin Vajko (27:56.507)
especially on LinkedIn now, when you serve a B2B audience, you got to pay to play to get your videos seen, to get any content seen. anybody that's listening and watching this that's been on LinkedIn for a hot minute will know that. It reaches down on everything. And ironically, what's not down is if you spend money on specifically a talking head video, and it's a good one, it's helpful, it's thoughtful, it's the right amount of information and the right amount of time.

Christian Brim (28:01.678)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (28:11.31)
Mm-hmm.

Justin Vajko (28:24.259)
It's the least expensive type of advertising you can do on LinkedIn. And so there's this opportunity that we're seeing with all leader ads that we're investigating right now. So what if we do what we're doing now, but then we manage the ads and then we have a VA in there making sure that comments are getting responded to. And then if there's somebody that likes the thing that are they added to a list and then we're trying to help them with some, maybe some lead magnet stuff. We got to figure out how far we're going to go, right? Cause there's always one more thing you can add.

Christian Brim (28:27.692)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (28:37.058)
Mm-hmm.

Justin Vajko (28:52.335)
But that's what we're investigating right now is, all right, this one, this is for visibility organic. And this one, this is for paid visibility. And we know that if we do this after three months in your space, we'll get you so many market-qualified leads and things like that. So you pay premium for the certainty of knowing that there's a higher chance of return versus just generic. It's not generic, but visibility in general.

Christian Brim (29:18.464)
Yeah, because all marketing and this is the thing that just kind of gets, I don't know, lost. It's like the elephant in the room. Like, I don't know how you see it. Don't see it is, is that marketing at the end of the day is, is to drive sales. And if there's not an increase in revenue customers, you know, spend whatever, it's, it's not quote unquote effective. Now I used to get so pissed off talking to marketers because I'm well, you know, this stuff takes time.

Justin Vajko (29:41.359)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (29:48.044)
I'm like, stop with that bullshit. I'm, you know, everything's, you know, SEO takes a long time, you know, all this stuff. Yeah. And, and I'm like, yeah, I get that, you know, it's not an immediate cause and effect. I understand that, you know, Coca-Cola's brand was not built overnight. It does take time, but there should be some cause and effect relationship and some testing and iteration. But the point being that.

Justin Vajko (30:10.747)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (30:16.864)
just like you said, the more of that problem you solve, which is I need a client, a new customer, and it can't cost more than X, is the ultimate problem that you're solving. It just depends upon how far up that chain you wanna go.

Justin Vajko (30:28.546)
Mm-hmm.

Justin Vajko (30:32.303)
Mm-hmm.

Justin Vajko (30:36.111)
How far up the chain exactly, how much ownership you want. And you guarantee if you're working with an agency, you're going to pay beaucoup bucks for the highest point of that chain. And for us, know, with our current package, you know, package, if you just want a standard level of, know it's healthy and good to be visible. That's why I do networking events. know that, you know, those are helpful. You know, there's this baseline of visibility that's healthy. Then that's what our original packages do.

And we can say sometimes, yeah, you'll get opportunities, but we can make no guarantees because it really depends on your offer and your space and your experience and et cetera, et cetera. yeah, that's what I'm trying to aim the higher ticket ship, so to speak, is toward owning more of the outcome for the...

Christian Brim (31:19.692)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (31:25.41)
Yeah, because you you phrased. don't know if you used the word risk, but see that that that to me is is the key. You're taking more risk off of them and that's going to that's going to cost. Yeah, if I if I have if I have more if I'm taking on more of the risk, I'm going to get paid for it. Yeah. Nobody thinks about marketing in terms of insurance, but we're all actuaries at heart. No, we're not.

Justin Vajko (31:37.039)
Yeah.

Justin Vajko (31:43.757)
Mm-hmm

Christian Brim (31:54.794)
what I'm going to pivot here. What were the one or two, what comes to mind when you think of the biggest challenges you had when you pivoted? Like what, what was, what was most difficult?

Justin Vajko (32:08.635)
That's so easy to answer. was the frick another pivot. I mean, I remember that moment so well. I had just started working with a coach at that time. Shout out to Brent Hayley, if anyone's looking for a really good coach. He's out of the price range of most agency owners. He serves executives of huge firms. doing it. I got him because we're doing a fantastic trade. But

Christian Brim (32:15.651)
Mmm.

Justin Vajko (32:34.267)
And he was like, Justin, you got something here on your hands. I really want to encourage you to look at it. And I'm like, yeah, but I pivoted probably a dozen times, half a dozen times, enough times to burn oneself out at that point.

Christian Brim (32:46.008)
Okay.

Justin Vajko (32:46.681)
Recruitment marketing was something I'd found, but I was tired of it at the time. It was very difficult to sell to HR. You could sell to the CEO and then they pass you off to HR and then HR is like, what are we doing? What is this? What is marketing? Do we have to do that? And they pick everything apart and you're like, every month you do the check-in. I was getting like stomach ulcers, like trying to justify my existence in front of this HR team every month.

Christian Brim (33:00.597)
Right.

Justin Vajko (33:12.503)
And so that was the latest pivot. I was like, do I have to do like this whole emotional journey again? know? So I knew I'd found something that was interesting, didn't know how to sell it. And it was just that resistance internally to try again.

Christian Brim (33:17.774)
Hmm.

Christian Brim (33:29.826)
Did this one feel differently in the sense that you use the phrase like when you were talking to these agency owners like, yeah, that's their pain point. like, I go back to Victor Chen's extreme revenue growth and he starts the book with the requirements and it's the customer that has a problem. The customer knows they have a problem.

and that they are willing to pay for the solution. Well, that sounds very pedantic on the surface. Well, no shit. Yes, that's true. But, you know, looking at it, you described like the HR didn't perceive a problem. like and they didn't want to pay for it. So like you were having to you had a very large slog in convincing them to buy and then justifying your existence, as you said.

Justin Vajko (34:00.283)
Mm-hmm.

Justin Vajko (34:20.997)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (34:26.146)
Did this feel different out of the gate? okay, people really know they have a problem and they're like throwing money at you, like, please fix this.

Justin Vajko (34:34.267)
That's a great question. I've never thought about it and like never contrasted the two niches and you know, no, it is is similar and different. So, so no, it is not too different than it was before in that I said earlier, when you sell video, you're always going to be selling to a percent of a percent, if not to yet another percent.

Christian Brim (34:49.025)
Okay.

Justin Vajko (35:01.987)
because so many people are middle schoolers on the inside. When you tell them, hey, we're going to help you with your marketing, and we're going to do video, and they're like, wait, wait, what? Video? No, timeout, not doing that. I'm sure you've seen it. I'm sure, you know, we've all encountered the family member, or maybe it's ourselves, they're like, don't take my picture. no. Even at family gatherings, you're like, get over yourself. Like, you're not that ugly. You know, the kind of stuff that pisses us all off.

Christian Brim (35:13.464)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (35:22.188)
I'm that guy,

Justin Vajko (35:27.919)
This is me. Get over yourself. This is pride at the end of the day. You're not any better than the rest. You look perfectly normal. I never say that on LinkedIn. See, that's something that pisses me off is people that put themselves down. It's just not true. Christian, it's not true of you. I'm just going say it's not true of you. So many people use that as self-deprecating. I get that. If that's what it is, fine. I get that too. But so many people, and this is what I've learned, is we just don't...

Christian Brim (35:28.151)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (35:36.654)
I have a face for radio. I don't know what to tell you.

Justin Vajko (35:56.693)
see the value in ourselves. And that's one of the biggest blockers that come up against over and over and over is like this, either this middle school insecurity or this lack of valuing one's own self, whether it's knowledge or even the way you look. Like I believe in a God who's made everyone beautiful, even people with disabilities, like humans are beautiful people and humans have inherent worth. And so it just kind of gets me going when I never

Christian Brim (36:03.082)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (36:11.063)
Mmm.

Christian Brim (36:22.734)
Mm-hmm.

Justin Vajko (36:25.627)
talked about this in any podcast ever before. It'll be interesting to the replay. Like, thank you for letting me air my grievances. Like, that's a big problem I have is like, I have never interviewed somebody ever. I've done probably close to 200 interviews now. I've never interviewed somebody that's like ugly or they just full of crap. Like, people want to be helpful and they want, that's why people do video content. it's why we ever do.

Christian Brim (36:32.514)
Yes.

Christian Brim (36:45.656)
Boring.

Yes?

Justin Vajko (36:52.027)
content. We want to be helpful. We love being helpful as humans who doesn't want to help out their fellow neighbor with some, if nothing else, 60 seconds of information that could change your life or give you a better experience with X, Y, Z. So that's the biggest blocker I run into is just people putting themselves down. middle school insecurity of not wanting to be judged, which I get. That was me when I started out. I do my own video content now and I felt it and it comes back. It's just that negative self-talk. It's there.

That's my competitor. so it's a different source, but it's a similar friction point of getting people to be convinced that this is the right play for them.

Christian Brim (37:32.992)
Yeah. And I've experienced some of those same feelings about like to me, I was very anti self-promotion. I had a roommate in college that was very quiet, soft spoken. And he was a Golden Gloves boxer. And I saw him kick the shit out of somebody once and I was like, holy cow. And his statement to me,

Justin Vajko (37:41.499)
Mm.

Justin Vajko (37:51.45)
Mm.

Christian Brim (38:02.912)
I lived with this guy for two years and he never talked about himself being some kind of badass. Never. And his statement to me was like, if you're good, other people will talk about you. And that always just kind of stuck. But then I had somebody tell me last year, like, if you're really good at what you do and you really help people, then you have an obligation to be known.

Justin Vajko (38:31.129)
That's it right there. You owe it to people to help them with what you know.

Christian Brim (38:32.588)
Right? Right. Because you can't help them if they don't know about you. Yeah? And I'm like, okay.

Justin Vajko (38:38.085)
Right? That's how I see sales. That's how I see marketing. It's like, this is not, you're not being salesy. You're not being, you were, even when I started, you know, I put myself out there many times over the years, just learning, okay, how do I get on video? I tell my clients to be on video. I should probably do it myself. That was my story, how I got into video. Don't want to be hypocrite here. All right. I probably need to figure out how to do sales on LinkedIn. I remember the first time I was being genuinely helpful. You looked at that first DM. I was just asking questions like, what are you experiencing? I felt salesy.

Christian Brim (38:54.158)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Justin Vajko (39:06.703)
But I was actually helping that person out and that since then, you, there are, there are fantastic experts who are going to their grave as complete unknowns because they're not putting themselves out there. And I think that's wrong.

Christian Brim (39:06.946)
Mmm.

Christian Brim (39:17.742)
Mmm.

And that's not fair to the people that they can help, right? And I don't think if you phrase that to them that they would disagree with that, right? And to your point, it's a little bit of get over yourself. Like it really is. mean, because if you're put here for a purpose to help people and you're unwilling to, you're willing to help people, but you're not willing to be visible.

Justin Vajko (39:32.571)
I'm little bit.

Justin Vajko (39:38.0)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (39:45.358)
That's kind of like saying, well, I'm going to have the cure for cancer, but I'm going to go live on a mountain in Tibet. And it's like, if you come find me, then I'll cure you.

Justin Vajko (39:51.823)
There you go. There's that. That's the. Yep. Yeah, that's the that's the extreme, but but valid. Like if this is true, then this must also be true. Like at what point do you get to decide that your stuff should be hidden? And I don't think we should. We're very good judges of that. I suspect a lot of that comes from what we think we have to do. You know, I I'm always busting myths about what it takes to be on video. People think, I don't want to do those silly TikTok dances and I don't want to look like this and I don't want to.

Christian Brim (40:05.804)
Right.

Christian Brim (40:11.886)
Mm.

Justin Vajko (40:21.723)
Who said you had to did you know and it's a lack of awareness really and that's what I do in my content Constantly making people aware. Hey, there's a simple way to do this. That's not salesy. That's not self promoting that is helpful and useful You know, and here's examples and people will see the examples of the videos we do they're like, I could I could do that. you helped do that. great. Like it's just I think it's awareness thing We've seen, you know TV, you know

3 a.m. sales guy on TV trying to sell us a sham. Wow, we think that has to be us. That's not, you don't have to do that.

Christian Brim (40:52.289)
Right.

Christian Brim (40:57.416)
No, and and and you know, that's what gets all of the attention the grant card owns and the you know, mr beats and you know, it's it's It that is not what I mean I I think at the end of the day and like if that's who they are and they're being genuine fine like I I think the the key is being yourself and that because otherwise you're It becomes very difficult. I I had my head of of revenue

Justin Vajko (41:01.093)
Thank

Mm-hmm.

Justin Vajko (41:13.135)
That's fine.

Christian Brim (41:26.894)
She gave me, I don't know, 20 different questions to do short-form video recently. She goes, I just want you to read the question, answer the question. And so I got on Riverside and I did it. And for some reason I was in a mood and I, I was kind of, I was kind of grumpy old man. Like, and some of my responses were coming on like, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm just over you.

Justin Vajko (41:38.139)
Mm-hmm.

Justin Vajko (41:47.291)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (41:54.69)
telling yourself these stories. you know, and I just gave it very direct and, and, you know, if that's who you are in that moment, then give it to them. Like I didn't, I didn't, I didn't rerecord it. like get cut. I, on a different day, you would've got a different tone, but for that day, I just was in a mood.

Justin Vajko (41:56.389)
Mm-hmm.

Justin Vajko (42:14.713)
Yeah. Yeah. I think there's a... I think that also comes from having... I'm guessing you've done that a little bit and you've done a few of these podcast episodes where you've recognized it's okay to... Maybe old Christian would have deleted that and started over, but I suspect you probably let that happen with just the experience. Somebody will still cut out the swear words, bleep, bleep, and bleep.

Christian Brim (42:33.496)
Somebody still edited it. Somebody still edits the podcast, right? yeah, I'm not left to my complete own device.

Justin Vajko (42:43.929)
There you go. You got at least one layer of filtration happening there. That's funny.

Christian Brim (42:47.156)
Exactly. Justin, how do people find out more about dialogue and what you do?

Justin Vajko (42:53.973)
We have our website, dialoguewith.us. Dialogue is spelled D-I-A-L-O-G. And then I'm on LinkedIn. I post virtually every weekday. Those are the two places that I want people to know about.

Christian Brim (43:03.438)
Perfect.

Christian Brim (43:07.798)
We'll have those links in the show notes for you listeners. If you like what you've heard, please rate the podcast, share the podcast, subscribe to the podcast. If you don't like what you've heard, shoot us a message, tell us what you'd like to hear and I'll get rid of Justin. Until next time, ta-ta for now.