Binge Factor Media

With TikTok videos, YouTube Shorts, and Facebook and Instagram Reels, videos have undeniably become the biggest form of content today. If you have a podcast, then it should be something you need to take advantage of. Ken Okazaki helps you do just that! He is the founder of GoBox Studio and 20X Agency, where he helps coaches and businesses simplify their marketing efforts, establish their authority, and attract customers through video content. In this episode, he joins Tracy Hazzard to share the video marketing framework that can maximize your podcast’s reach. Ken is also the host of The Content Capitalists podcast. He shares some of the wisdom he has learned from businesses and brands on how to see actual conversion from the content you’re creating, making money off your show. Plus, Ken dives deep into different types of video content—from long form to live stream—and weighs in on which ones are more effective. He then gives a couple of tips and tricks to optimize your show, producing content from your other content. Tune in and discover the ways you can grow your podcast through video!

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Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

How This Video Marketing Framework Can Maximize Your Podcast’s Reach With Ken Okazaki Of The Content Capitalists

I have Ken Okazaki as my guest. I’m so excited about his approach to everything. I love his show, The Content Capitalists. It’s such a great show name, and the impact of that cover art is so brilliant. Ken is an entrepreneur who specializes in providing tools, services, and solutions for professional coaches looking to grow their businesses.

He’s the Founder of GoBox Studio, which is the world’s most professional video studio designed to be a carry-on size and easy to set up in under two minutes. I played with it, and it was so much fun. It’s this great box that you look brilliant, and mind you, it has all the top-notch video content creation equipment that you need. It’s super simple.

If you wanted one in your office and you didn’t have room for a big studio, that’s the thing to do. We didn’t even talk about that in this episode. We mostly talk about his agency work. At the 20X Agency, Ken and his team curate, edit, and syndicate video content across all platforms. It helps coaches simplify their marketing efforts and establish more authority with results-driven strategies. That’s the key here.

They’re doing a lot of video work, and that’s what we’re going to discuss in this episode. They’re doing a lot of video work that has good results. They’re seeing the views on YouTube and the resulting butts in seats for events. They’re seeing an actual conversion from the content they’re creating, which means they’re making money off their podcasts, YouTube, and content creation. That’s why he has called The Content Capitalists as his show title. Let’s talk to expert Ken Okazaki.

Ken, thanks so much for joining me. I am so excited to have you. You and I have gotten to know each other. I’ve been on your show and gotten to appreciate what you do. I love the title of your show, The Content Capitalists, because so much of this is like content for content’s sake. Content because you should do it. Let’s think about this differently, and I love that method of thinking.

There are too many people who have looked at making money as an unnecessary evil. I want to flip that on its head. It’s like putting the money right up next to the creativity. If you don’t have both those engines running, then you’re going to be going around in circles, quite literally, in your business.

It’s not just going around in circles. It’s like it makes it hard to continue to do something that is an integral goal and an important part of your business. You may not understand that but if you don’t have the technical and vehicle for the capitalist side of it, it feels like it’s not of value. Until you remove it and find out what a big black hole is, you now have a lead generation or something.

I’ve seen so many people start off strong, then a month or two later, life gets in the way. In other words, “I need to make money.” Instead of figuring out how to monetize their content creation, they look at it as a separate thing, like a hobby, then they get to do their 9:00 to 5:00 to support their hobby. That can work, but the passion and the amount of quality and effort you put into making a good show, whether it’s a podcast, YouTube, or any creativity. It’s going to double when you realize, “This also makes you money.” It’s a win in every direction. You enjoy doing it better. You make better quality content. Your audience enjoys it more because they can see the effort and the time in it. There’s no reason not to do it that way.

That is such a hard thing that the monetization fall doesn’t happen quickly enough for a lot of people or the value. Everything in life starts to get in the way. The, “I’ve got to take a sales call. I don’t have time for content creation.” It makes it a rollercoaster. That’s what we used to call it at the beginning when I used to give a lot of speeches about it. It’s a marketing rollercoaster like you. You do a great job of all this content creation. You get some clients and get too busy surfacing those clients. You hit the bottom and realize, “I forgot to keep marketing all along the way. I forgot to keep pushing out my content.”

What you’re describing there is I don’t think it’s ever going to completely level out, even for people who are doing eight-figure businesses. I think you can smooth it out instead of being these ten-meter drops, ups and downs. It’s going to be more like little bumps in the road that you can course-correct on when you get to the level where you have a system in place where everything is planned ahead of time before the shoot. Everything that happens after the shoot is automated, either with humans or with software. I like automation. I call it all automation because I’m not doing it.

I don’t see too much difference in the way that I interact with it because the software runs programs. Program is listening to SOP in a different language that a computer can read. You create the same program in the form of a checklist, and you train someone to do it. You can look at it the same way. It’s not artificial intelligence. It’s real human intelligence behind it. It’s a step above now.

Sometimes, we need real human intelligence, and that shows in the production value that you provide. You have a 20X Agency and predominantly, I would say, have video clients first and foremost. Maybe they’re podcasters also, but they were video first. Is that correct?

That’s correct. We coined the term and it hasn’t quite taken off yet, I’ll admit. Instead of SaaS, Software as a Service, we do video as a service and video-centric content creation. Now, that can also mean a podcast that features video. It can also mean blog sites that are derived from the video, but video first and everything is a derivative of that. We create the full suite of creatives. For me, video has been the central focus around everything we do.

Video Marketing Framework: Instead of SaaS, Software as a Service, we do video as a service and video-centric content creation.

Why is video so powerful now? What do you think?

I’m going to take one minute to talk about my history so then you understand the context of the video. First of all, at sixteen years old, my dad was a surreal entrepreneur. He got this contract with NHK. It’s technically the world’s largest broadcasting station in terms of viewership, like the biggest one in Japan. He got a contract to make a kid’s show for learning English to Japanese. He’s using what he has.

He turned our living room into a TV studio set. He went and got the trusses, lights, moving cameras, and dollies. I was like, “What the heck is happening here?” I loved everything I saw. I’m like, “Technology, lights, fancy things, and a clapper board.” I got so enamored by it. Mind you, I’m sixteen at the time, so old enough that I can help. I asked my dad, “Can I help with this and that?” I learned, and I was loving it. We’re editing on actual magnetic tapes back then if anyone is old enough to remember what those things are.

You don’t look old enough to remember what those things are.

We had decks of the jug and shuttle and all that stuff. That’s how I got my taste, and then I didn’t do anything for a while until I started a business where I was doing large-scale events in Japan. Anywhere from 2,000 to 8,000 people at a time. I’d run these events every month, and we hired people that were world-class speakers. We had Robert Kiyosaki, Tony Robbins, Jordan Belfort, and Les Brown. I could go on and on. I’d bring these speakers to Japan. I’d fill the room.

If you know anything about large-scale events or you don’t put a button on every single seat, you have failed. If you have 8,000 seats to fill for someone like Tony Robbins, you have to deliver. We tried every marketing method possible. Affiliate marketing brought in some email marketing and ads. The thing that consistently helped me fill seats and made sure that I got the best ROI on sales was video.

I realized, “This video thing works.” I went all in on learning everything I could about video. Eventually, I exited that business but kept the creative part of that business, the video creation thing. I started my agency. I called up some of these speakers and said, “By the way, I’m exiting the business.” The conversation, I phrased it differently.

I’m like, “Do you remember that time we came to Japan? We did that huge event, and thousands of people showed up.” They’re like, “Yes, it was awesome. When are we doing the next one?” I’m like, “That’s the thing. The next one is probably not going to be in Japan. It’s going to be somewhere else. It’s probably going to be with another promoter because I’m not doing that anymore. It’s too bad, but would you like to work with me? Would you like to get my help to put butts in seats all over the world for you?” They’re like, “It works for me.” That’s how I got my roster of clients, and that’s why I was able to get what I call a jumpstart working with industry leaders. I continue working with these guys and helping them market and brand themselves. Now, we’ve moved from ads to social media because that’s all the nurture and the brand.

It’s as much organic as it is push advertising nowadays, probably more so, or the organic is working.

Now, the methodology we use is everything starts organic. We test it, season it, and when we see what pops, we turn those into ads, and then their ads team starts running a lot of money behind that. You’ll get through your best bang for the buck by doing a whole bunch of organic, figuring out what works, then turning those into ads. That’s a history of how I got into it.

Video Marketing Framework: You’ll get through your best bang for the buck just by doing a whole bunch of organic advertising, figuring out what works and then turning those into ads.

Thank you for giving us that framework and understanding it. That makes so much sense because you were seeing a direct capitalist. As we were talking about before, direct conversion results from what you were doing on video more. At what point in that process did you decide, “I’m going to check out this podcast thing and add the podcast into the mix?”

Not long ago. If you go to my show channel, you’ll see we’re at 40 episodes in or so.

I think you’re about 50 when we’re recording this.

We hit 50, so that’s how many weeks I’ve been in.

Almost a year. Congratulations.

The reason I started was simply because a lot of my clients were asking, “Could you also take our long-form video content?” By the way, we’ve been taking it already and turning it into shorts and things like that. “Could you take that and make podcasts out of it?” We’re like, “Sure.” We did a little bit of research, hired somebody who had a bit of experience and started doing it.

I wanted to know a lot more experience than myself so that I could do better for my clients. I thought the best way to do it is start my own podcast. That’s why I got into it. That’s why I started simply because my clients wanted it. I thought if I didn’t deliver something that I know what I’m doing, then I think that it would be a little bit hypocritical, even though I can hire experts. I started by interviewing my clients. My clients are people typically doing $1 million or more a year. I made the criteria. You got to be making $1 million or more from content. I don’t say this to everybody. I say all my guests are my clients, past, present, or future.

I love that thinking. Now you all know why I invite Ken on. This is what I told you before. I invited him on because he walks the walk. That’s critically important here. Not only is he trying to experience this so he can be ten steps ahead of his clients. Also, he’s experimenting with it in terms of the exact same thing all of you are doing, which is, can I use my show to lead generate for new clients? Can I use it as a nurture for my existing clients? What you are using your podcasting for is what Ken is experimenting with, which means that he can advise better.

Thank you for that. Where are we going with this?

I’m going to touch on the next thing. Now that you’ve seen the way the podcast is working because you’re in it and seasoned now. You reached 25 episodes or more. You’re in the elite 10% of podcasters right at that moment time already.

Only 10% make it to 25 or more.

Isn’t that sad? You make it 100 and you’re in 2%. That’s how dramatically different that is.

I think I’ve already shot 70.

You’re on your way. I’m very convinced you’ll make it. No problem there. Looking at that, what differences have you seen or have you not seen? Are you finding it very similar to video content creation besides the equipment?

The thing is, they’re all busy CEOs. I’m getting to what’s the difference here. The thing I do my best to do when I shoot videos, I have found that when we try to be creative and try to make stuff up as we’re talking, which as entrepreneurs, are good at bullshitting. I could say, “Could you talk like an authority on Japanese sushi?” I’ll bet you could riff for five minutes about it and make up a bunch of words that sound Japanese.

It’s one of my favorite foods, so I’m very sure I could.

We’re good at making stuff up. By the way, it will be helpful. It’s inspirational. It’s going to be from our experience most of the time but it takes a lot of calories. When I say calories, our brain is working hard up here so that our mouth can keep moving in sync with what we’re trying to say. This is a balancing act. We typically do 20 to 30 with our clients every hour. That’s why we are part of the service you provide. If you’re trying to be created the whole time, you will gas out fast. In the end, your stuff will look dead. You’re going to be blabbering. Your mouth will be flapping and not making sense. The energy is going to be gone.

We have frameworks. We have tight frameworks. For example, one of the ones that are working well in short form is three and three. There are three stages. We say, “Stop doing this. Do this instead, and here are the three steps to do this thing.” For example, Tracy, I could say, “Stop doing podcasts and expect to get paid. Instead, host your own podcast and get people to pay you to be on the podcast. Here’s how. Number one, set up your bio to say these five lines. Step two, reach out to fifteen people every day with this script. Step three, whatever that is. This works well.”

I teach these frameworks then we take their framework and a hook that we compose for them ahead of time. They could riff fast. We get a ton of videos done. Now when it comes to podcasts, it’s not a tight framework. I’m finding it’s much more conversational now. Nothing we’re talking about now is scripted. It’s not planned ahead of time, except there’s a loose theme, and we’re vibing on a mental, psychological, and spiritual level. I’d say that the biggest difference is something called vibing. It’s more like sensing each other’s energy and being a back-and-forth instead of a director and talent relationship.

It’s more like a collaboration.

That’s what I feel like. The other thing is I do use a framework, but it’s much more loose. My framework is past, present, and future. That’s it. In the beginning, we talk about how you started and got to where you’re going. Present, what’s working now. That’s the part where the past sets up why the present has context and what the tips and tricks are going to teach you on the podcast. It makes sense, and there’s more value. What are you thinking about in the future? Everybody wants to know what the industry experts are sitting around the beds.

What’s next? I always end that too. You’re going to find that. We’re going to get to that.

They get to pitch also. Soft pitch like what they’re doing, then we’ll provide links to all their stuff in the podcast. That’s my framework for podcasts. It’s much more loose.

One of the things that is that authentic with vibing you’re talking about happens naturally in conversation. As a speaker, we rise to the occasion when we’re talking to someone else in a very different way than we do when we’re alone in front of that camera. It’s one of the reasons I like livestreaming some of my content because I’m much more cognizant of the person on the other end of that. It becomes a little bit higher energy, more performance, and less of that dream you talk about. Let’s talk about that because you livestream, and you do quite a lot of that. Are you finding that the bulk of the video views you get are happening on the livestream and not as much on the replay? How is that working?

My primary platform is Facebook. A lot of people who are reading are probably on LinkedIn. I see this correlation between podcasting and LinkedIn. They’re pretty tight. Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok have this fuzzy line between those. I don’t know why. For me, most of my clients come from Facebook. I livestream to my private group there. We’ve got 7,700 people. Everybody that’s in there, we got their contact information and emails. They’re in my email system as well.

When I livestream there, it’s usually something that I’ve been talking about. I relaunched with a new set of rules and stuff. I relaunched the group and changed a lot of things about it, but the point is that what I livestream, I go for about twenty minutes. I have a simple framework for that. I engage with the audience, but that also gets livestreamed to the group.

Your livestream is appearing because I can see it on YouTube. There must be a stream through to YouTube as well because it is showing upcoming. Your next live is going to be there. I can see it there. Your team has set up.

Now I know.

I can see when it’s upcoming. I also see that you do have it for when the video part of your podcast releases. It has an up-and-coming and planned. You can see something there. I don’t think a lot of people take advantage of that.

Again, my team is way ahead of me.

I think they’re planning it like it’s an event, then it’s going to air.

They do the premier thing.

That’s the name of the tool. I’m not a U2 girl. I’m getting way into it now. I always like to test everything out for our clients too. Now that we’ve had YouTube Shorts for quite some time, I am making some new recommendations for best practices. I’m diving into some of the things we used to do and now what some of the things we are doing. The more I dive into it, the more I feel like it’s a foreign language.

It’s very different. When I’m on LinkedIn, I feel like everything is a foreign language. What’s interesting is you brought up Shorts. Typically, on Instagram and Facebook, when I record these conversations like we’re having now, I’ll have my teams pick out anywhere from 3 to 6 short-form content bits, things that the audience will appreciate.

We’ll edit it nicely in the vertical format. Put it up on Instagram and things like that. Lately, on YouTube, you can go look for yourself at The Content Capitalists channel. Our videos are typically getting on the low end, like 300 or 400. Every other video will hit at least 2,000, and a few of them are 6,000 or 7,000, which is going up.

The YouTube Shorts videos are what he’s talking about. The short videos are getting those plays.

The full length is 10 or 20, maybe. We created the medium form, which is getting a couple hundred. What I’m trying to say here is that when you make short-form content, I feel like you’re on the walk-a-later. It’s like an escalator but you’re walking. It’s like a sidewalk at the airport.

Video Marketing Framework: Making a short-form content is like being on a walkalator.

I don’t think that’s the name of it but I know exactly what you’re talking about.

It’s a walk-a-later from now on.

It sounds good to me.

They put more juice behind that type of content.

It’s like an assist, right?

It is, and I’m not doing anything extra. It’s the same content, just in a different format. It’s getting a whole bunch of views and the views are translating into not necessarily subscribers. There’s not a correlation there. I don’t think people are scrolling and seeing a Short. It’s like, “I need to subscribe. Maybe I need to give them more reasons to.” Instead, what’s happening is I’m getting more hits to the podcast because everything is watermarked with Content Capitalists. People are like, “What’s that? Where can I see more?” They go straight to the podcast. There’s an interesting correlation there and I’m still playing with how we can keep people in the ecosystem.

You’re doing something right there. From our experimentations, we’ve been finding the same thing. There’s like a boost going on to it. That’s the best time to be using something and diving all in. It’s more reason to be doing it. I’m so glad you said that because my next question was, how many are you doing per show? You’re doing like 3 to 6. That’s what we’re seeing as well. That sweet spot, depending on how long the episode was, whether or not we get 3 or 6 out of it. We’re finding the more we do, the better off it is and the more circulation that heads to the full-length episode.

Here’s the important thing about this. There are countless people who came on as my clients. What they say is, “I want to work with you because I’ve hired freelance video editors.” What happens is I send them full length and they send me these short forms. They’re wondering, “Why the heck did you pick that and not this? How come you’re not understanding what is interesting and what’s filler?” What happens is the editors are good at editing.

What’s the video editor’s job? It’s to make video look good but they’re not good at figuring out the marketing angle about what spots to pick to make it look good in the first place. What happens is they say, “That’s not it. You need to pick some other ones.” They pick more wrong stuff then eventually, the guy has to go back, watch this whole episode again and give the timestamps. The editor goes and edits it, and they might get it. This is back and forth thing, and people usually end up settling not for what they believe is the best stuff but for what they can afford to spend time on.

Video Marketing Framework: People usually end up settling not for what they believe is the best stuff but for what they can afford to spend time on.

They’re like, “I don’t have time to go back and give you all my timestamps.” Like your worst client, I would never do it. I’d be like, “That’s why I hired you,” and I’d move on.

Now in our company, we don’t allow editors to choose the spots, period. We have a third role and that’s the content curator. This is somebody who’s grown up in the same culture as the client in the same country and has a marketing or copywriting background. They’re going to transcribe the whole thing and scan through it. they highlight what the title of every single video is going to be, what the spots are going to be, and how to arrange it so that there’s a great hook at the beginning.

They can go through these fast, then they give the instructions to the editors, “This is the onscreen title. This is the opening hook. This is the body,” then they’ll mark 3 or 5 or 3 to 6 from every single episode before the editors get their hands on it. That’s been the magic sauce that allows our client’s stuff to go viral. We stop letting the editors choose. The editor’s job was like, “Make it look good and make it sound good.” The curator’s job is to pick the right stuff to make it look good and sound good. It’s an absolute game-changer.

In real TV and broadcast media, they have a producer who does that, not the editor. It is a very different role. The other thing is you’re maybe being a little generous and nice to some of those editors out there who are “podcast producers.” They don’t have the time to do it themselves and they’re using an AI tool. The AI tool pulls junk 90% of the time.

I tried a few of them.

That’s what’s happening. That’s why it picks filler because it’s like, “It’s soundbitey and it’s in this stage.” They don’t always work with what’s good in your niché, industry, and country, as you put it. The tool doesn’t understand that and no one’s guiding it.

Full disclosure, our team is very diverse. I’m in Japan. We’ve got a few people in Japan, Canada, the US, and the Philippines. Now, my creative team is mostly in the Philippines. They’re good at making stuff look good but the people who curate the content are people who lived or grew up in the US. I don’t allow that line to cross.

If someone in the Philippines had grown up, got schooled in the US, and learned marketing there, they could be living there. By the way, we don’t have any. That’s the only reason I would allow that to happen. It’s not because they’re not good at it. It’s just a different culture and it’s hard to understand. For me to expect you to make jokes that are relevant to the Japanese audience, that’ll be asking too much because you don’t know. It’s the same in the Philippines, like the references, jokes, TV drama, and pop culture. Maybe South America, the Philippines, or even India can’t do it at the level that somebody who understands it can or grew up with it.

It’s so interesting and I think that’s also niché related. I have a ton of real estate podcasters. That lingo is like a foreign language sometimes. You have to be in the know to figure out what’s important. I also want everyone to go and listen to your show because you take those clips that are going to become shorts. They’re a teaser at the beginning of your episode, so they’re before your formal intro plays or the formal music. I love your music and voiceover.

It’s nice and short. It’s high energy. It’s to the point, but the teaser before it, they sometimes choose some things that are very personal and some things that are professional, like good tips. You got a nice mix of it in that teaser. That’s the key to drawing you into your show. Especially if somebody is checking out a video or something for the first time, when they hear that little piece on it, they’re like, “I want to listen to the whole thing.” It’s going to draw them through. You do a great job of that. Your team does.

Thank you. They’ll be tuning into this one. I’ll tell them myself, “Tracy has approved.”

Tell them I said this and they can clip me on that for your promo. That’s one good reason to listen to it, but I want you to go and check out the YouTube on this. I want you to check out The Content Capitalists YouTube channel because it is so well-designed. Everything has a great pop of color. There’s customization. Ken and his guests are both appearing on each of the thumbnails that are there, but the thumbnails have a pop of topic information. That is the key.

When you dive in and look at it carefully, you’re like, “Those are two different people. I see the difference.” That pop of the words in the center of your thumbnail stands out. You choose the episode you’re going to start in or the video that you’re going to start with. It helps make those choices easy for you and draws you in without having to read the long titles of anything. They’re tiny when you look at these. When you’re scrolling through your phone on all the videos, it’s hard to read them and get into them. You do a great job of that popping out and drawing you in. That’s a great thumbnail.

Thank you.

Ken, we wanted to talk about what’s next. Now that you’ve been doing this podcasting thing for a year, are you going to mix some things up? Are you going to try some different things? What’s up next for you?

All my podcasts have been one-on-one interviews with people like you and exploring stories. I’ve had a lot of people, and that’s an overused phrase. Everybody asked me, so let’s be exact. I’ve had two good friends, people who are around the same business level as me and probably about fifteen guests, reach out and say, “Ken, could you just teach some stuff, too, instead of interviewing?” That’s something I’m starting.

The way I’m going to do that is we’re going to still going to continue the weekly interviews. I’m going to start doing two podcasts per week. One is going to be me teaching stuff that we do in our agency, stuff that works, and that’s going to be interspersed so that we have two episodes coming out a week. I’ll probably have to record a new intro. The way I’m going to be doing this is I’m going to be teaching it live inside my Facebook group once a week. Are you interested in the mechanics of this and how I’m setting it up?

Sure. There are some of us techies in here that want to hear about how it’s going to work. I want to hear your framework.

First of all, I looked at all of the videos that have done well for my clients. We broke down why we believed it did well and how someone could replicate that with a framework. What framework did we use? What reference did we use? For example, I’ve got frameworks for hook. One of my favorite hooks is called the how-did-when-in. Whenever I say that to my co-operators, they know what to do. It’s how, then name, did, impressive feed, in, limited constraints, like how Tracy Hazzard went from ghost designer to millionaire podcaster in, how many years was that?

It was a couple of years. The first time around, it was only ten months.

Now that’s a great hook to start. I would explain, “This is the hook we use and the framework we used, and stuff like that.” I’ll break this stuff down. What we’re going to do is I already have about 50 of these trainings planned. They’re all in Trello. I’ve got a Trello-like system. I’ve got a list called the Hopper.

What’s going to happen is my team is going to make a landing page for every single one of these videos where we’re going to embed the full video in. There’s a call to action that says, “If you want a worksheet on how to apply these frameworks to yourself, click down below.” When I go live once a week, my team already has the landing page with a dummy video in there. We’ve got a PDF worksheet, which I will be filling out as I train.

I’m going to train it live on Facebook. My team is going to take that live video, trim off any engagement stuff I have with the audience, add a few titles, and stick it up on YouTube. People can watch it for free. Embed it in the landing page, and at the end of the week, after I go live, I’ll put up a popup in my email and my social media saying, “I did a training that teaches you A, B, C, and D. Did you see it? If not, check the link in the first comment.”

That comment is going to take them to the landing page. The training will always be free. If people want to download the worksheet, they got to give us their emails so we can send it to them. That way, we can continue to train them and remind them. That’s the system. Because it’s live, I get to get the live feedback.

It’s going to be live but it’s also going to be enshrined in its own lead magnet landing page. Now, when I’m doing this, I’m creating this library. If anyone ever asks me a question, my team or I are going to know, “I covered that in this episode. Here’s the link.” The videos will always be free, but we’re going to capture the information for them to download the worksheets that go with it.

Video Marketing Framework: The videos will always be free, but we’re going to capture the information for them to download the worksheets that go with it.

That should drive people out from the description on YouTube as well to the landing page if they’re like, “I want the worksheet.” They go right there and now you’ve got them. That’s great.

I don’t want to have to think about inventing stuff much, so I concentrate and make a 50-episode plan. All I got to do is for my team to send me the worksheet. I know the title. That’s enough. I train for 15 to 20 minutes, and we’re done.

We do something similar. We do our livestreams every week. We do our livestreams to our group. e livestream out to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. We livestream it outside of our group but our clients are within Zoom with us. They’re the only ones who can do Q&A. No one else gets to do Q&A. It gets cut off after we do the lesson. The lessons out there live then we then take it afterward. Our team does the cutoff and does all of that. Sometimes there’s step-by-step and sometimes it’s more advice than it is step-by-step. We don’t do PDFs or step-by-step for everything. If we do, it’s in our resource library. That’s in our tip section. We do it that way but I love that spin on doing a landing page or doing that much more as a lead generator.

There is going to be an aspect of it where we include it all inside of a subscription or membership portal. For now, we’re creating a whole bunch of landing pages, then afterward, it’ll be easy to reorganize.

That’s a great plan for you. Honestly, that’s the advice I would’ve given you too. It’s time for you to give some more of yourself into your podcast. It’s right at that stage where a lot of podcasters, about a year, look at that. The first consideration that I always have is this. Is your show ripe now for growth from your own advice? Mixing that up and doing that is going to be great for your show.

Thank you. I’m glad I’m on the right page.

You’re right in line with it. Ken, do you have any other advice you want to give to our podcasters out there on the video side, podcasting, or anything from an agency perspective?

Two things. One of them is technical and the other is going to be not technical. I’ll start with the not technical one. If you’re a business owner, you need to be a lot more fearless. When I say fearless, it’s if there’s something that scares you. I know there are so many versions of this quote, but I found that every time I do something that, I’m like, “No, I can’t do that,” but then I push through, it’s always the best results.

When I do it and I’m a little bit scared. I’m like, “I signed this contract where I’m going to guarantee these results for somebody.” Now I’m going to work twice as hard to make it happen. I might even overextend and throw a little bit of my life out of balance to make it work. When I do it once, I can reflect back and say, “I could have done that in half the work by doing this.” I do it again and again.

If you want to gain market share and more clients, be more fearless than you are if you’re not getting the results you want now. Making bold claims, commitments to the public, and promises that you don’t know yet how you’re going to fulfill but you know that you have the energy, the will to do it, and the fortitude. Make content that you care about. Not the stuff that you think your audience wants.

Here’s the second thing. I was watching an interview with Mr. Beast. He says, “Whenever you complain about the algorithm, change that word algorithm out for the audience. The algorithm doesn’t like you. Your audience doesn’t like you.” The algorithm is not the problem. You’re not connecting with your audience. If you keep blaming the algorithm, then what’s going to happen is your brain is going to switch to, “How can we game it? How can we stuff it with keywords? How can we make the thumbnail?”

There are all these hacks, tags, hashtags, and SEOs. There are so many things you could focus on, which are important, but nothing will hold a candle to creating good content your audience likes. There are great videos that have crappy technical setups, bad thumbnails, bad titles, and no SEO. Nothing, but they performed super well.

Someone named Myron Golden, who a lot of people have heard of. When he started, he didn’t set anything up correctly, but his content was so darn good that his audience, not the algorithm, pushed it to the top of all the newsfeeds. It’s because it was so darn good. It was long form. Everybody is saying, “Do a short form. You need to do the correct thumbnail.” He did no thumbnails.

In the beginning, he was doing everything as if he was an amateur, yet it worked. Don’t blame the algorithm. You’re not connecting with the audience. Focus on the audience first, then fix up the algorithm as all the technical stuff. That’s a minor step to creating great content. That’s it. That’s what I got.

We can’t fix bad content with all the technical tweaks. There’s no amount of that.

Stop trying to game the algorithm. AI is too smart these days. You can’t. I remember way back when I was trying to learn affiliate marketing. There was this tactic where we’d stuff it in the metatag. We stuck all these keywords to try to rank. It worked until it didn’t because it got smarter. I realized, “Instead of in the metatag, let’s put all the texts on the page that will make the font white so that nobody could see it.” It worked until it didn’t.

Now it’s too smart. It looks at how long people are watching your video and how often they share it. You might be able to trick them to start watching the video, but whether it gets shown to the next person depends on how they react to it. Stop trying to game the system. Care about your audience. Make good content.

Video Marketing Framework: Stop trying to game the system. Actually care about your audience. Make good content.

That is such great advice. Ken, thank you so much for being here. I am so glad we are connected and have gotten to get to know each other. That’s been a lot of fun and I look forward to hearing what you do next. You’ll have to come back on and give us a report about how those episodes, doing solo shows as we call them, go for you.

Invite me back in maybe 3 to 6 months, and I’ll give you the full rundown.

Sounds good.

—

You could see the gorgeous lighting around Ken. It got brighter in here because my shades started to droop as it got hotter outside. It’s like my shades started to drop. I was getting more washed out, but his lighting looked great, which is a sign of a great video producer. He knows what he’s doing over on that. I’m so glad he could come here and share that brilliance with us.

Often, we get video people on and they’ll talk all about like YouTube tech. All the technical side about hashtagging this, playing the algorithm, and the things that Ken was talking about there at the end. They talk about those tactics, or they come in and talk about telling stories, but Ken is talking about frameworks. That aligns with what we think and see working in podcasting too.

When we have a structure to our show that’s not overly tight, we don’t want something too rigid. We want to be able to flex. We want to be able to go there when we have a great client that we want to get their path on. When we have great guests who have a fabulous model for tips and other things that they could share, we want to let them dive deep into that. We don’t want to run rigid in our structure, but having that framework is what makes for an easier ability to market that content, repurpose that content, find the great nuggets that you need, keep the energy up, and keep it doing more for you. That’s the whole purpose.

If we’re making content for content’s sake or I’m doing this to hear myself speak, it’s not going to be engaging to you but also not going to be useful on the other side. That’s critically important to us not wasting our time being content creators. We are hidden experts that need to bring our voices out there. We need to bring our faces forward on video. We need to bring our voices out there on our podcast.

We need to make sure that our message is getting through in the TikTok world, the Instagram world, the Pinterest world, in all of it. We’ve got to rise above the digital noise, and the best way to do that is with these frameworks that Ken was talking about. It’s brilliant. I do want you to check out Ken’s show because The Content Capitalists is extremely important. There’s going to be a link to Ken’s site, his YouTube channel, and Podcast YouTube channel, which I want you to check out because it’s brilliantly structured.

Technically, it’s flawless. It’s the best podcast YouTube channel I’ve seen. That’s one of the things I want you too. Many people’s YouTube channels, including my own, are muddied with things that we did before experiments, but because he’s done this with already knowing the best practices. His YouTube channel is brilliantly built just for this show. It’s working so well because you can see it in the views number and his subscribers.

He doesn’t have off-the-chart or tens of thousands of subscribers, but those subscribers are all watching. They’re all listening because you’re seeing consistent plays and growth through every single one of his episodes. That means those people are there to follow him, hear what he has to say, and hear what you have to say as his guests when that occurs. This is a brilliant model. That’s why I want you to check it out.

Brilliant advice. Be fearless. Analyze your results and make sure it’s converting. If you want to get butts in seats and make some money, think carefully about that, but pay attention to what your audience wants first. It’s such great advice Ken gave us. I will be back next time with another podcaster or video caster. It might be both next time here on The Binge Factor.

Important Links

• Ken Okazaki
• Content Capitalists
• GoBox Studio
• 20X Agency
• The Content Capitalists – YouTube
• Hopper
• Myron Golden
• YouTube – Ken Okazaki

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