Wisecracking entrepreneur and author Morry Morgan joins me from Beijing, and we talk about how he has made a behind the scenes TV show for the SchoolofHardKnockKnocks which features on Apple TV, and how to get rated on the Amazon operated international movie database positioning his comedy training school as the authority in Australia.
Jim James is the Founder and Managing Director of the EASTWEST Public Relations Group. He recently returned to the UK after 25 years in Asia where he was an entrepreneur. Whilst running EASTWEST PR, he was the Vice-Chairmanof the British Chamber of Commerce in China, he also he introduced Morgansports cars to China, WAKE Drinks, founded the British Business Awards, The British Motorsport Festival, EO Beijing, and was the interim CEO of Lotus cars
In return, I will continue to bring massive value with two weekly shows, up to 3 hours per month of brilliant conversations and insights.
Monthly subscriptions start at $3 per month. At $1 per hour, that's much less than the minimum wage, but we'll take what we can at this stage of the business.
Of course, this is still free, but as an entrepreneur, the actual test of anything is if people are willing to pay for it.
If I'm adding value to you, please support me by clicking the link now.
Wisecracking entrepreneur and author Morry Morgan joins me from Beijing, and we talk about how he has made a behind the scenes TV show for the SchoolofHardKnockKnocks which features on Apple TV, and how to get rated on the Amazon operated international movie database positioning his comedy training school as the authority in Australia.
Jim James is the Founder and Managing Director of the EASTWEST Public Relations Group. He recently returned to the UK after 25 years in Asia where he was an entrepreneur. Whilst running EASTWEST PR, he was the Vice-Chairmanof the British Chamber of Commerce in China, he also he introduced Morgansports cars to China, WAKE Drinks, founded the British Business Awards, The British Motorsport Festival, EO Beijing, and was the interim CEO of Lotus cars
In return, I will continue to bring massive value with two weekly shows, up to 3 hours per month of brilliant conversations and insights.
Monthly subscriptions start at $3 per month. At $1 per hour, that's much less than the minimum wage, but we'll take what we can at this stage of the business.
Of course, this is still free, but as an entrepreneur, the actual test of anything is if people are willing to pay for it.
If I'm adding value to you, please support me by clicking the link now.
Today, I am delighted and honored to have interviewed Morry Morgan who's all the way in Beijing and is an entrepreneur and author whom I have met in different cities around the world over the last 20 years. Morry now brands himself on LinkedIn as "The Wisecracking entrepreneur." I went straight into it with my first question for Morry which was what he's learned over the last 15-20 years on creating a brand around your own personal skill sets. Morry begins by sharing that his personal skill set started as a microbiologist. He studied microbiology in university. He was in the Australian Army as a member of the Medical Corps, as a microbiologist in that capacity, so there was no way he would have ever imagined that his skill sets would be in training, in China, in stand-up comedy, and in entrepreneurship. He says he'd use a microbiologist to describe what he's learned, and that is, "Chance favors the prepared mind." Louis Pasteur, the French microbiologist coined this, and Morry absolutely agrees. He says the more inputs you give yourself through life experiences, whether they're intentional or not, the more ready you are when an opportunity presents itself. He calls himself "wisecracking," because he likes to consider himself relatively intelligent but with a sense of humor. He sees opportunities where others have not. Currently, Morry has a web series entitled Is This Thing On?, because anyone who grabs hold of a microphone, particularly in comedy, says that especially if they're a bit unsure of themselves. Only the first two episodes are on YouTube while the entire six episodes will go to Apple TV. Morry says this whole thing is actually a marketing and PR exercise. What is the purpose of this PR and marketing? It is for the stand-up comedy school he founded called the School of Hard Knock Knocks. I then asked him how he came about with his stand-up comedy school. According to him, it was through a motto that he developed in Shanghai prior to meeting me in Beijing. Go big or go home, he says. When you're in China, everything's difficult, nothing's impossible. That's what he thought with the School of Hard Knock Knocks. They only have a few competitors, and in order to differentiate themselves from the market and create a barrier to entry for anyone else thinking about it, he created a TV show. In terms of setting it all up, Morry helped out an Australian friend in Queensland who was filming a project for his own business and was doing his own PR and marketing, and there he met a director by the name of Steve who was filming the production. Morry befriended him, and they got on really well. He found out that Steve was an ex-stand-up comedian and was even on a TV show. So, when the idea came to him to make a show himself, Steve was the first person that came to mind. He happened to also live about two kilometers from where Morry was living at the time, so he considers it quite serendipitous. When it comes to his show, Morry says there's two ways of looking at it. If you're a small business and you're thinking,"Oh, this is beyond me," Morry's here to give you some numbers.$50,000 AUD was spread out over two years, so it's not a huge chunk of change in one go. The show went through a couple different ideas, but eventually, they settled on a factual show versus one that was scripted. That meant that they were a fly on the wall. They had 10 wannabe stand-up comedians from different backgrounds. They had a couple of people in their 50s, some in their 20s, and then people in their 30s and 40s. They had an equal amount of men and women. Some were from Sydney, some from Adelaide, and some from Melbourne. It was basically a good mix of personality types and backgrounds, and they put them in a room for five days. The activity was to learn stand-up comedy, and they occasionally had a relatively famous guest comedian. In terms of PR and marketing, Morry says he's always been a big fan of KOLs or Key Opinion Leaders, so they embedded names like Greg Fleet and Glynn Nicholas, a great Welsh-born Aussie comedian and performer, and they took a day for each of the five nights. Morry's team filmed them, and what they filmed them doing was quite unusual. For example, on one of the nights, Mayumi Nobetsu, a Japanese-born Australian comedian, took them to do life drawing. That's nude painting to the layman, but then she told them that everyone had to get naked as well. She forced a group of 10 strangers to strip off except for an apron (so you wouldn't get paint on you), and that was the second episode. You get to see them learn stand-up comedy, but you also get to see them go through these emotional challenges and rollercoasters. They have a behavioral analyst as well who does hypnosis on one of the people, Steve Mackey, and makes him forget his name. Generally, it's a bit more organized than just walking into the factory floor and pressing the record button. My next question was about Apple TV, why he chose that platform, and whether it was difficult or not to get on Apple TV. Morry says they chose Apple TV by accident. Initially, he thought they would be able to get onto the ABC or the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (it's the BBC of Australia). But unfortunately, the timing was wrong. They were going through turmoil, a new CEO, and no one wanted to take a chance on an Australian unknown. So, they looked at alternatives, and Morry reached out to Netflix, Apple TV, YouTube Premium, and he found out through Apple TV that almost anyone can get their own show on Apple TV. You just have to go through a company that augments and brings everything together. They ensure that the quality of the video is great, that any captions are included, and that the format itself is the right format for Apple to stream. In Australia, there's five such companies, so Morry spoke to them. They said, "Look, this is what we can do for you. There's a cost." Morry believed that at the end of the day, in terms of PR, if they had given it to the ABC, they'd pay them a chunk of change, stick it in a warehouse forever, and then Morry will lose that PR and opportunity, so they decided they'd rather put it on YouTube, at least Episodes 1 and 2, plus a teaser, and run that continuously. Now, they've got over 5,000 views on both. In fact, the trailer on Facebook has got over 13,000 views, and then they built up that subscription for people watching them on Youtube, and then they'll put all episodes onto Apple TV. The big advantage of using Apple TV is that it allows them to get ranked and pulled onto IMDb which is the Internet Movie Database. This creates an IMDb account or listing for them. Amazon owns the IMDb, and Amazon has one of the highest authorities in SEO. IMDb also has one of the highest authorities in SEO. So by adding Is This Thing On? to IMDb produced by the School of Hard Knock Knocks, and that this show is a comedy, they're immediately attaching the brand of the School of Hard Knock Knocks to the word comedy at a massive level in terms of SEO. That's the goal of PR. That then gives Morry the chance to put it on YouTube. They're able to get YouTube views which is good for PR, and they can link that to Facebook ads. Currently, Morry says they're paying $0.08 per view at the moment on Facebook which again is unheard of, because you're typically looking at anywhere between $0.40-1.60 minimum to get a view. Remember, it's essentially an ad. It's a show about his stand-up comedy school. The great thing about Facebook, Morry says, is they can send those $0.08 just to people in Melbourne, Sydney, or Adelaide. You can geotarget. I noticed on the School of Hard Knock Knocks website that they use a tool called Proof Factor, and I asked Morry to tell us about it and why they're using it. He heard about it on a podcast, and of course, he had already known that testimonials help, and that led him to start investigating. Proof Factor is a free tool that can be attached to WordPress sites, and it's a tool Morry would recommend. I noticed Morry also has Google My Business for three venues around Australia. He's got five-star ratings, which is what one would expect. When I asked how he got his customers to write reviews, he simply said that he just asked them. It depends on the relationship you already have, he says, but there will be those that will say yes. Remind them again, put extra pressure, and if they're part of the community, which the School of Hard Knock Knocks is, then publicly tell everyone, "Hey, it was fantastic. Cheryl just wrote a great review. Thank you, Cheryl," and that reminds them. The important thing about his business, Morry says, is they don't actually have a location. They use the services of venues. They are playing with the algorithm a little bit to be listed within an existing venue, because they're a service. To get around the technicalities that Google My Business requires, such as a postcard address, every time Morry does a show in a venue, they bring 100-200 people on a Thursday night, they love it, and of course, that's food and kitchen sales. Morry just gives them a call and says, "Do you mind if we list in your venue?" and they say they're perfectly fine with it. This is why they have venues listed in Adelaide, Melbourne, and Sydney. Their competitors started doing it as well, but they don't have 65 reviews. With that, I hope Morry has shared some useful insights and tools that you and I can use. The idea of making your own TV series which then becomes an infomercial is very powerful, and Morry's the only person I know that's done that. If you want to find out more about Morry, Is This Thing On?, or the School of Hard Knock Knocks, you can reach Morry on LinkedIn. Just mention that you heard this on SPEAK|pr, and he says he'll know exactly what you're talking about. You can also check their website out here.