Marketing Needs Soul | Devon Thomas | Full Battery Media

In this episode of the Full Battery Media Podcast, I sit down with Devon Thomas, who helps business owners fire their ad agencies and learn how to run their own ads. 

What I loved about this conversation is how honest Devon was about why so many businesses spend money on marketing but still do not get customers. It usually is not because the business is bad. It is because the message is unclear, generic, or too focused on the company instead of the customer. We talked about Google Ads, small business marketing, content creation, customer psychology, websites that fail to convert, and why simple content with a strong message can outperform fancy production. Devon also shared how he started with almost no budget, learned through trial and error, and built his skill by treating advertising like a muscle. 

This episode is a reminder that great marketing is not about bragging louder. It is about understanding what people care about and communicating it clearly.

What is one part of your marketing that might be clear to you, but confusing to your customer?

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I want to tell you about this new special that we have on car insurance. And you can do this and you can do that and you can do that. And they talk and they talk and they talk. And after about 10 minutes, I say to them, Um, I don't have a car. And they're like, in, You just let me talk for 10 minutes without telling me you had a car. I said, No, no, no, no, no. You never asked me if if I had a car. You just went on talking, following your script. So that's not my problem. That's your problem. So the first thing we want to do is, as a business owner, is you want to make sure you're targeting people who actually care about your ads, right? Don't show um car insurance ads to people who don't have cars. Okay? That's just the fundamentals, the targeting. The second part of it is when we're communicating, when we're giving this messaging out, are we talking about what's important to the client, or we're talking about what's important for us? That that one thing right there will make you $5 million or you'll lose $5 million because of it. Give you an example. If you have a car wash and you know a lot of people come to the car wash, you can advertise that you have the best machines, the best this, the best that. But if you go and you read the reviews that you're actually getting, you might find out that people are just coming to your car wash because it's the closest one. Yours is like maybe uh two miles away, and the other ones are maybe like 30 or 40 miles away. Like the other ones are just further to drive, and people don't want to drive that far just to get their cars cleaned.

SPEAKER_01 1:44

Welcome everybody back to the Full Battery Media Podcast. I have an awesome guest with me today. Would you like to tell people who you are and a little bit about what you do?

SPEAKER_00 1:52

Hey there. Thanks so much for having me on the show. I basically help people fire their ad agencies and I show them how to run their own ads. My name is Devin Thomas, and I've been doing this for the past eight years.

SPEAKER_01 2:05

How did you get down going down this career, man? What was it that kicked you off down this path?

SPEAKER_00 2:10

Oh, I knew this question was coming up. So I was a broke business owner who did not know what to do next. I literally quit my job as a used car salesman. I had about 250 bucks in my bank account, and I was supposed to somehow figure out how I'm gonna turn this 250 bucks into a business. And what I ended up doing was I ended up um selling a lot of people websites. And every single client I sold a website, they came back to me and they said, Hey, I love this website. It's beautiful, but I'm still not getting any clients. And I said, Oh, okay. So what does that have to do with me? And they're like, Yeah, but I I want clients. And I was like, Well, I must be getting something wrong here because I'm building the websites, but people aren't actually making money from them. And that's when I discovered this beautiful world of Google ads and doing marketing and generating leads and getting sales for people. So that's my journey of discovery.

SPEAKER_01 3:12

That leads me to ask because like it's so interesting that people can do things, but it doesn't mean people show up. Like, I have a video production company. We do videos for people, I help people make fun videos, and the thing is people make them and they're like, why is no one watching? It's like, well, you you you have to figure out that secret sauce. You gotta figure out how to get them out there, you have to figure out how to get reach, you have to figure out all these little things. It's not just like everyone thinks that, like, you remember, I don't know if you know the movie Field of Dreams. It's like an old Kevin Costner movie, and there's this line in there that if you build it, they will come. But that's not true. Like, that's not always true. If you build something, it doesn't mean people are gonna magically like come into your business. There is a restaurant right down the alleyway over there that is phenomenal, but there's not a ton of people that go there because it's down this alleyway and people just don't know what's there. If more people knew about that restaurant, and I praise her all the time, she's one of my favorite, it's one of my favorite places to eat. It's duck noodle soup. It's ridiculously good. But if more people knew about it, she'd have like a Michelin star. She doesn't because it's about the the awareness. Now, I want to ask you this like, why do you think so many businesses spend money on ads and still don't get customers?

SPEAKER_00 4:22

Oh man, beautiful question. I like to think about marketing like falling in love, right? And so I love that. Yeah, yeah. So you could have a girl who's attracted to a boy or a boy who's attracted to a girl, but if the boy approaches the girl and he doesn't communicate that intention properly, he's gonna lose the date, right? He's gonna try and ask her out, but it's not gonna come out right, and she might think, oh, this guy's a little bit weird or he's a little bit awkward, even though she's attracted to him, and they just the love won't happen. There won't be a love story. And that's what's happening with a lot of business owners where we know what we do and we're very good at what we do. I've I've been doing this for eight years. I haven't seen a lot of business owners who are not good at what they do. Where the problem comes in is how do we communicate to clients that this is my superpower? And that's where a lot of business owners feel stuck because we have mastered our skill, but we haven't mastered the communication part.

SPEAKER_01 5:31

Ooh. I um I used to be a children's teacher, and I would teach them how to communicate. And I uh I always think back to one of my teachers, and he's like, I'm gonna teach you how to be confident and talk to anybody on the planet. And I was like, What do you mean, talk to anybody on the planet? And he says, and get them to talk back to you. And he said, What it is is it's about paying attention. He said, he would make us walk up to someone and and pay attention to them. It was an acting teacher, and I I was like, What do you mean? And he's like, find something about them that's unique and then talk to them about that. And so I was like, Yeah, how is somebody gonna do that? And it'd walk up and be like, you have a really interesting shirt. Tell me about that. And the person's like, You saw my shirt. I'm so glad that you, you I I really love this shirt. And I was like, Wow, wow, it gets people worried like talking because it's not just about you. I think this is one of the problems that what I'm gett alluding to. Like, I married a famous uh singer in Vietnam. She's way out of my league. But when I went and talked to her, I was just like, I, you know, I found ways to connect and I knew how to get someone to open up. And I said, talk to me about your music, talk to me about this. And it gave me the chance as a as an okay human being to shine. And I think as a brand, you have to figure out the brands always want to make it about them, but they forget that if you are doing marketing, you're in a conversation with your customers, and you need to make it about your customer, not about you. You need to make it about the customer. And that's this mindset shift that I see so many brands have a hard time making.

SPEAKER_00 7:16

Yeah. I mean, how many times have you watched a YouTube video and you're genuinely interested in learning a new skill? And then the guy in the YouTube video is like, I've made $1 million, I've worked with top brands out there, and he brags about himself for the first two minutes of the YouTube video, you're not interested anymore because it's like, yeah, I I wasn't asking about that. And unfortunately, business owners these days, they think that you have to show up and give all of your credentials and say every single thing that you've done in your life, and then only then do you deserve the client. If they could just quiet down and just listen to the client and say, hey, how are you today? Um, tell me about the problems that you're going through. How can we serve you? It's it sounds so simple, but really, when you do marketing and you see these businesses day in and day out, there are some obvious things that we're just missing completely in our dialogue with the customer. And that's why people struggle with ads. Because I can spend a million dollars on ads. If I don't know how to talk to the people who are actually looking at the ads, I'm gonna be losing money all day long. And that's what's happening. People are clicking on your ads, people are viewing your ads, but nobody's actually taking action because they don't understand why you're different and why they should work with you. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:36

I want to ask you this because if if if someone has a really small business with almost no budget, where should they start first with online marketing? I mean, do you need to try to go big? Do you need to try to go make a big splash? Or should you sit there and be, you know, you know, consistent, but in uh a smaller way?

SPEAKER_00 8:54

Yeah, that's that's a that's a good question. And I started off Google Ads with like I had a dollar a day, okay? In South Africa, uh third world country, my marketing budget was one dollar per day. And every day I would run these ads for a dollar, which you could do on Google Ads back then. And most days I'd lose money, but I'd actually end up at the end of the month with like four or five leads. And it's just like communication, right? Um, when your teacher was telling you go and talk to everyone, you don't start with the famous actress in Vietnam. You just start with the people around you. And so I think a lot of business owners need to understand that like it's just the muscle that you have to flex. Advertising, marketing is just a muscle that you have to flex. And the sooner you start, you can go through the phase where you have the horrible ads that you don't want to look at, the super cringe ones that you don't want to see anymore. Right? And you yeah. Like if I look at my first stuff, man, oh my gosh, what was I think? Yeah. But yeah, you transition out of that, and then eventually you become that confident communicator. But you have to go through that process. There's no magical amount of money that when you have that money, you start advertising and you just win. It goes with trial and error. You have to try different stuff, hit the wall, go back, regroup, replan, and eventually you get there. I love it.

SPEAKER_01 10:25

I I like that it's iterative. You know, you don't start, you want to run a marathon. You don't start running, you know, the full thing. You put your shoes on, you get outside your house and you walk around the block. Like that's literally your first step. And I think that's one of the things because you're coaching people with running ads. I'm coaching people with making videos. And like when they come to me, go, I want to make a lot of video. And I'm like, make your first one. Like, just get your camera up, press record, because you're gonna come back to me and tell me how much you hated, how much you did this. I should have done that. I had a client today who was like, he watched my his videos and he's like, Oh, you guys did a great job, but I wish I had ironed my shirt. You don't understand how many times people come to me complaining about their shirt, saying, I didn't iron that. Oh my God, there's a spot there. It's a big spot right here. Are people that are like, oh, I have this stain on my pants? That's the most common thing. And what I say is, no one's gonna notice. Just keep creating, keep posting. And you know, if it's really, you know, uncomfortable to you, be there like, well, you know what, guys, I've got this big stain on my shirt, and I'm still here talking to you right now. Just use it.

SPEAKER_00 11:37

So with me, what happened was I used to be super awkward in my YouTube videos. And whenever I pushed record, it's like I turned into a different person. I didn't know how to blink, so I was like, like I'm like blink now. Okay, blink, we're blinking. And I had this weird thing that I did where I always turned my head at an angle. I don't know if I had it since I was like 16 years old, but it was always like sort of tilting. And it took me about 53 videos just to slowly orientate my head so that it was facing upwards, vertical. It's actually so yeah. Fully understand where they're coming from.

SPEAKER_01 12:17

You're one of the few people that's actually said something that I've actually I trained as an actor, right? And you know, when I worked in Hollywood some, I got to work in some fun movies, and they say action. And the craziest thing is, and my daughter, I she was doing some acting classes, and she's like, Dad, I don't know what to do with my hands. I was like, Yes, you don't. It's like this weird thing. You start acting and you're like, what are these two things in front of me? And how do I use them? What are they doing here? Do I just, you know, put them out like this? You know, it's like it's wild like that. But it's like you just get used to it. And like with reps, you start getting better and you start realizing that these two random appendages are yours and it's okay. Yeah, you know?

SPEAKER_00 13:03

Yeah. That's exactly what happens with ads. They're not the companies are trying to communicate using this when they should be using every single part of them, the hands, the the expressions. And that's what I help companies do communicate properly. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 13:22

Well, I want to ask you this because one of the things I know that people ask me, and I see with video, but like with running ads, what's the biggest mistake people make when they try to run ads themselves?

SPEAKER_00 13:33

Um, not paying attention to what the customers want, um, and also not making sure that the the stuff surrounding the ad campaign is ready. I'll I'll give you an example. Um Imagine that you're gonna open a restaurant, right? And so you think the most important thing is to put a sign outside that says restaurant open, which is great. That's fantastic. But what happens if somebody actually walks in? What experience do they have? Um, is there somebody who's gonna lead them to the table? Um, do you have a beautifully designed menu for them? And so everybody thinks that what they're gonna do is they're just gonna put an ad out that says 25 years experience. We're plumbers and we're located in Las Vegas. And boom, run the ad, it's gonna get you leads. And then what happens is a whole lot of people click on the ads and go, Well, your website doesn't look good. Why would I care about a business that does not care about their website? If you don't care enough to design a proper website, why should I care enough to put my important contact details in here? And I mean, it's such a simple thing, but you'd be amazed, like nine out of ten businesses don't do that. And so the experience somebody has with your business, it's like a first uh first impression. And if it's a bad first impression, that's just gonna stay in their minds forever.

SPEAKER_01 14:59

I I had the wildest thing that the other day I was trying to talk to my team about this person who I highly respect. I won't throw them under the bus right now. Very reputable figure. And I was like, you guys don't know. This is one of the coolest people ever. This person is so good at what they do. And I was like, let me show you. I searched their name. I was like, oh, this is their website. Clicked on the website, and I was just like, and they were like, what a horrible website! They're like, this looks like it was made in like 1998, like, you know, and I was just like, yeah, probably older than that. Like, my God, early, like first generation website. It was horrible. Like, it made Craigslist look fancy. Um, it was real that's saying something, right? You know, so it was wild, like, but it was um it was so basic. And this person is so good at what they do, one of the best at what this person's job is, right? But yet you would never know it because everything forward facing is not. Everything forward facing is not as professional as they are.

SPEAKER_00 16:05

Yeah. And so let's talk about that that beautiful um uh restaurant that you love to go to, that you feel like it's it's uh it's a hidden gem, you know? Yeah. But you go in there and you love the food, you love the experience. But if you go and you look at their marketing, it's almost like the soul is not there. The real essence of what they do is not there. And so you find these business owners, and I find them all the time, they they really love what they do. But when you go to their website, it's either bland, it's either corporate, or they just it's it's just that generic. And so we're we're we're trying to serve food to people, but it's got no flavor, and then we're wondering why people don't like the food that we're serving to them. You gotta add flavor to your marketing.

SPEAKER_01 16:55

I was blown away by that because one of the things that I think is really interesting is that people think they are more interesting than they are, but I wouldn't say better than they are, but they just really think that they're more interesting than they are. And really, what actually moves the needle is something completely different. I think about I work with a bunch of wineries because one of my many podcasts is I have a wine podcast and I have quite a few things that I do, and you know, it's it's wild because um when I work with wineries for their media and content, one of the things that I notice is that they are all super obsessed with drone shots. First of all, they love the drone shots. Everyone thinks that you're gonna sell a wine by showing a building and flying over some grapes, and that is the thing that's gonna pull everyone in. And I was just like, wow, yeah, okay. I mean, who doesn't love a beautiful drone shot? But that's not why people are drinking your wine. They're not sitting there going, I wish that I could fly over this winery with a drone right now and have a glass. No, they're thinking, what does your wine taste like? What does your winery have? Like, are you offering fun events there? Is it cool tastings? The other day there was a winery that had the coolest thing. They had flower arrangement and uh wine tasting. And my wife was like, I would love to do that. I'm like, well, I don't know about that. But they're like, but we also have all of this weaving and pottery and all these crafts. And I was like, I wouldn't mind some pottery, you know? And it's like, what type of winery is pottery and wine? But they have it, and people are showing up because it's different and it's unique. And they're not trying to tell a story. They were sitting there going, what would make people show up? What makes people because what they found is like they were leaning in all the influencers, like, let's get all the influencers to come. Um and they're like, and then people like, well, I want to get some experiences, I want to show cool stuff. And it was in a weird way, an organic way, for them to do something fun for people, but they listened to what people wanted, you know?

SPEAKER_00 19:11

Yeah, it's exactly that. We went to um we live by the beach um in Cape Town. Um, and so we just moved here about a year and a half ago, and so we haven't explored all of the food places around here. So we go into this waffle place, it's a rainy day, and we're sitting there, and this woman next to us on the table next to us is just painting watercolors. And we're like, What? Did you come here with the watercolors? She's like, No, the waffle place actually just gives you cool watercolors if you want to paint, so you can just paint if you want while having a waffle. And I thought to myself, That's right. Like, no marketing, no advertising, no, like these are the beautiful things that make people fall in love with your business, and you're skipping over all of that. And you could say, Yeah, but I'm a plumber, I'm an accountant, I could you could have the most boring business ever. I promise you this sometimes it's your personality, sometimes it's the way you do things, but in every single business you will find something that delights the customer. So most of the time when I speak to somebody and they're saying they're struggling with marketing, my job is not to go and fix your ads or do anything crazy. It's just to find what makes your business unique and surface that, put it in the ads, and then all of a sudden you just start getting results, and it's like in whoa, this is this is crazy, this has never happened before. Yeah, because you've never been yourself before. You've been trying to be every single waffle shop instead of just being your own unique version of your business.

SPEAKER_01 20:52

I love that. One of the things that I think is is so you have to know who you are, you have to know your truth. And everyone has a different truth. And if you can figure out what it is that makes you special and you tick, it's so powerful, you know? But I want to ask you this because how can a normal person tell if an ad is actually working or if they're just wasting money, you know?

SPEAKER_00 21:20

Yeah, well, the the fast answer to that is usually go broke. That's how you know your ads aren't working, right? But before that, if you see that your ads are getting lots of clicks and lots of engagement, and you're noticing that that clicks and the engagement are not turning into leads, it's usually a bad sign. Also, if you run an ad campaign and the ad itself does not get much engagement, um, that basically means that they're not really paying attention, and that means your message is sort of watered down. Now there's a whole diagnostic process that you could could go through, but the simple Fixes are if you see that your engagement is lacking, or if you see that there's something happening once somebody comes onto your website, they don't sign up, most of the time, 99% of the time, it's just because of messaging. If you dive deeply into every single marketing problem, at the core of it, 90% of the time, it's messaging. It's how you're speaking to the client. We've had some um lawyers that we work with, personal injury lawyers, and they kept on using very high-level terms that a normal person wouldn't understand. And I just told them to speak like a normal person would. And when they did that, they got far better reactions from the ads because we're not lawyers, not all of us are lawyers, so we don't know what you're saying. Simple stuff like that, oh man, it happens all the time.

SPEAKER_01 22:55

Happens all the time, and it's such a common thing that I see as well with videos. Like everyone tries to get they want to sound smart. Yes. And I'm like, stop trying to sound smart, stop. Because the I was I had one of the best like advice I ever heard, uh, some of the best advice was by Ginny Hoyos, who's famous YouTuber, and she was saying, 10 years old, trying to get your fifth grade, fifth grade is the the level that you want the readability at for your videos. You want to kind of hit that level. Not that everyone's like at that level, but that people just don't want to have to think up here. Like on my financial podcast, I just try to keep it really dumb. Here's how you save money. How do I save money? How do I want to know that? Spend less than you make. Well shit, that's that's how you get rich. That's it. Like that's it. And here are here are five simple things you can do. 24-hour rule. What does that mean? Means that anything you want, take 24 hours before you get it. And it's even better if you can do 48, because most of the time you're gonna be like, ooh, I like that thing. 48 hours later, you're like, I like something new now, you know, because that's the way our brains work, you know? Exactly. Um but I I think that that's something for me that's always really helped. But I want to ask you, why do some ads instantly grab attention while others feel like annoying or boring?

SPEAKER_00 24:25

Yeah. The attention-grabbing ones is usually the ad people that have done their homework, the agency or the business owner that has done their homework. So I'll give you an example of this. Um, whenever an ad comes on and immediately you're like, oh my gosh, it's another ad, it's usually because that ad is not targeted to you, right? Um, so for example, I get this all the time. I don't know why it's happened, but I'm in Cape Town now, so moving to Cape Town, I have these telemarketers that call me and try and sell me insurance. So the conversation goes, Hi Devin, how are you? I'm like, I'm great. I want to tell you about this new special that we have on car insurance. And you can do this and you can do that and you can do that. And they talk and they talk and they talk. And after about 10 minutes, I say to them, um, I don't have a car. And they're like, in, you just let me talk for 10 minutes without telling me you had a car. I said, No, no, no, no, no. You never asked me if I had a car. You just went on talking, following your script. So that's not my problem. That's your problem. So the first thing we want to do is, as a business owner, is you want to make sure you're targeting people who actually care about your ads, right? Don't show um car insurance ads to people who don't have cars. Okay. That's just the fundamentals, the targeting. The second part of it is when we're communicating, when we're giving this messaging out, are we talking about what's important to the client, or we're talking about what's important for us? That one thing right there will make you $5 million, or you'll lose $5 million because of it. Give you an example. If you have a car wash and you know a lot of people come to the car wash, you can advertise that you have the best machines, the best this, the best that. But if you go and you read the reviews that you're actually getting, you might find out that people are just coming to your car wash because it's the closest one. Yours is like maybe uh two miles away, and the other ones are maybe like 30 or 40 miles away. Like the other ones are just further to drive, and people don't want to drive that far just to get their cars cleaned. That is what you lead with. Say, we're the local one, we're two minutes drive away or 10 minutes drive away from you. That's what you want to lead with. That's the first thing. And that's gonna get somebody's attention versus just saying, hey, we're the best car wash, we have the best machines, people are just gonna go, yeah, yeah, yeah, I just want a clean car. I don't really care. And so when you get those attention-grabbing ads, the first thing they do is they tell you the one thing that's important to you. And then they tell you the second thing that's important to you, and then they tell you the third thing that's important to you, and they serve it in an exciting and entertaining and delightful way, but they're still talking about things that you care about. Like, I'm pretty sure we've all seen these ads about retirement that make absolutely no sense. They've got like people walking on the beach, and then you you've got a guy playing with his grandkids. For us, it doesn't make sense because when we were growing up, we weren't close to retirement. But somebody who's 65 years old, those are like their golden most treasured memories. It's like, what legacy am I gonna leave behind? Am I gonna have enough money for retirement? And that's important for them. So sometimes you can have a great ad, it's just directed at the wrong people. I love that.

SPEAKER_01 27:54

Like, you know, one of the things I learned in business school, I didn't learn a lot in business school, but one of the best things I learned in business school uh is that there is always like um, you gotta be marketing in the right place, you know? And so it was so interesting to me. Like, if you have uh you are marketing um the famous one we have for kids is lemonade in America, you know, the lemonade stand. Like, but if you're marketing lemonade in the middle of Boston, in the middle of wintertime, that ain't gonna be something that converts. Like it's not gonna get, you know, you need the the the hot chocolate or the coffee, you know? Yeah. You you have to have context. You have to know when and where something's actually gonna work better. But I want to ask you this because like if a business owner business owner only had one hour a week to make content, what should they focus on?

SPEAKER_00 28:52

I think the best type of content, the content that is really good, is the content that somebody finds valuable that has helped them forward in life. A lot of business owners are out there making content where they're trying to sell a product or a service instead of just helping someone. So, for example, my all of my ads basically tie back to consulting, right? That's what I do. I do coaching, so on and so forth. But people are only interested if you are generous and if you give them information that is good information first. And so we talk a lot about this content thing, like you're supposed to go out there and just make a whole bunch of content. But usually when you watch some business owners, all they're trying to do is sell to you for an hour, and that's why it doesn't work. Like imagine walking up to somebody and telling them that you're the greatest person on earth and you can do this for them, you can do that for them. They're not even listening, right? But if you make a piece of content, like let's say you're a relationship coach, and you make a video about five reasons why he's probably not gonna call you back. That's something that somebody's gonna go, ooh, okay, I need to listen to this. And in that piece of content, you have some real talk where you're explaining to them that maybe the way that you're acting right now is giving off desperate energy, and maybe that's why he's not calling you back. Maybe you're being too much like his mom, and maybe he doesn't want to be smothered, and maybe that's why he's not uh um calling you back. And so when you make content that hits at the heart of the pain that they're feeling right now, there's a different vibe to it because it doesn't even feel like advertising, it doesn't even feel like marketing at that stage. It just feels like a real conversation with a real human being that actually cares about you and wants to move you forward in life. And I highly recommend, especially business owners, if you only have one hour to make content, spend six days deeply thinking about the state of mind that somebody is in, what they're going through, especially your ideal client, and think about how you can build a bridge from where they are right now to where they want to be. And it doesn't always have to be crazy long or crazy in-depth. You could be a tire repair company and you could just make um videos about how to choose the right tires for your car, right? Uh these types of cars usually do well with this, these types of cars usually do well with this. Just purely information-based videos. That will do you so much better than, like you said, getting the drone in, doing something cinematic, showing that you're changing tires. Like, what are we doing? Come on, come on. You're on mute.

SPEAKER_01 31:48

You're on mute as showing. My daughter walked in. So if someone could make a cinematic tire change video, though, I would watch that video. And it might be the thing that actually moves the needle, though. But you know, you're right, you have to speak to people. But like, see, if you make a cinematic tire change video, it's probably gonna be tongue-in-cheek. You know, it's probably gonna be a bit of a joke because you're aware that like your target customer is aware that that doesn't work and you're gonna make fun of that, which is gonna be fun, and it's more comedy, you know? But you know, that's what comes back to the thing like do businesses need fancy stuff, fancy cameras, expensive videos now, or can simple content still win? Can simple stuff still move the needle?

SPEAKER_00 32:32

Most of the YouTubers I watch are the guys who are in front of the camera. They have the boring background or they have a wall behind them. Um you had Jul Kim on your show, big fan of hers, and she's so profound in what she's saying and how she gets to the heart of the matter that it doesn't matter like what she has. And and this is the thing. I don't want to say that your production quality is not important. It is because people also love to watch something that's beautifully put together. But I think that we are starting to get obsessed with the quality of the content, but not with the quality of what we say in the videos, and it's a very dangerous place to be at. You should have both, ideally. But if you could choose one, be the person with a quality message first. And then once you get money, once you start getting a few clients, you can add to that quality, you can bring in that video editor, you can change your lighting. Like, I'll tell you what, when I started off, I had I had like a Nokia, an old Nokia smartphone on a rickety, on a rickety um camera stand that was like sort of rocking back and forth. And I had like the worst camera quality ever. But what I did for my YouTube videos is from day one, I said, I want to give them more. I want them to walk away feeling like, wow, this video gave me more than what I came with. And that's what I did. That's what I focused on. And then I just leveled up the production quality around it.

SPEAKER_01 34:13

I love that. Well, I want to ask you a question. Because, like, where can people go to find out more about you and what you do? If someone wants, says, you know what, I need the help that you can provide, where can they go and find that?

SPEAKER_00 34:25

Yeah, so there are two things that we do. Um, I mentioned earlier that I help business owners like get rid of their ad agencies. There are there's a lot of ad agencies out there that aren't doing their jobs. So we do it with two vehicles. The first one is just coaching, where I show you how to run your own ads. Um, and the second one is we have a product called uh Rescue My Ads, where we literally come into your ads account, we fix your ads for you, and then we hand them back to you, obviously with feedback and support, and we show you how to run them. So go to neptune design.co.za um and you can find out all about those two services over there, and you can see all the lovely people that I've worked with before as well.