Consistency or Perfection? How To Find The Profitable Balance in Content Creation

[00:00:00] Hey, I'm Luis. And I'm Luis. And you're listening to the Content Is Profit podcast.

[00:00:08] Yo, yo, yo, what's up guys? Welcome back to Content Is Profit. Fonzi, how you doing today?

[00:00:18] Good.

[00:00:19] Just good?

[00:00:20] I'm doing good.

[00:00:20] Say amazing.

[00:00:22] I'm doing good. I'm ready to talk.

[00:00:24] Okay, I got a text. I got a text from our dear cousin that we've been telling him to launch

[00:00:31] a podcast for how long? A couple of years now.

[00:00:33] Give more context. What is he doing?

[00:00:35] I'm talking to you.

[00:00:35] Why a podcast for him?

[00:00:37] Well, originally, you know, he, well, he is an actor. He's been in a few shows. He's been

[00:00:43] on commercials. He produced his own short films, you know, incredible. And the reason we decided

[00:00:49] to recommend a podcast was so he could connect with more people in the industry, more directors,

[00:00:55] more casting directors, you know, people of influence and connect with a lot of relationship

[00:01:00] with them and hopefully land some new parts through those relationships, right? Because

[00:01:05] obviously we've seen the podcast as a way to do that. And he's helped us, you know, move our

[00:01:09] business forward the last few years. And now he's into a new stage. He's been helping a lot

[00:01:16] of people with like his fitness. You know, obviously he eats very healthy, he exercises

[00:01:21] and he's been helping a few people and he wants to explore that route too. And now he's coming back

[00:01:25] to the idea of a podcast. So he sent me a text to be like, Hey Luis. And this was like Friday,

[00:01:32] 7 PM. Uh, how do I turn these like horizontal video into vertical video? Uh, I'm working on my

[00:01:39] podcast on my personal brand on, in my social media. And, uh, at the time I was in an event

[00:01:46] with my kids and I was like, send me a list of all your questions and we'll answer them in a video.

[00:01:50] So Victor, here's us, uh, here is us answering that. But with the preface of, you know, as we're

[00:01:55] walking out, Fancy, you, you mentioned a couple of elements, right? That we should be looking at

[00:01:59] before we even look at options to how to transform long form horizontal video into maybe vertical

[00:02:05] clips, uh, that might be a little bit more important than just a technical aspect of doing

[00:02:10] that. Right. Which are, actually I got a really, I got a really good idea and I'm writing it down

[00:02:17] here. Um, okay. So here before, while Fancy writes his idea, like, uh, you know, obviously we see,

[00:02:23] you know, I talk a lot about documenting and like catching your ideas at the moment when they happen.

[00:02:29] And I don't know if you noticed, but I was like looking into nothingness and the idea also was for

[00:02:32] me in my head. So I wrote it down in here. So clearly Fancy does not pay attention to what I'm saying.

[00:02:37] Keep going. I'm back in the conversation. Okay. So obviously, you know, in modern media,

[00:02:42] right. And if you haven't listened to the previous episode, go listen to it because we talk about

[00:02:46] the political campaigns and how they're using long form and podcast episodes to, you know,

[00:02:50] help gain some audience. But obviously we see long form episodes. We see short form,

[00:02:55] you know, vertical video talking heads, all these influencers teaching, entertaining, like all these

[00:03:00] things. And, uh, and as a consumer, we might be excited to try something like that,

[00:03:06] right. Or may make a format or model or even copy sometimes. And we have a great episode on,

[00:03:11] you know, why you should not be copying content. Um, and we go, Fancy goes on a, on a big rant on

[00:03:17] that episode, which I, which I love. I love how you get passionate sometimes. I rumble. Uh, but you

[00:03:23] know, sometimes when we sit down to the actual work of getting the content done out properly,

[00:03:29] it might seem very intimidating. Right. And that's why we see a lot of entrepreneurs,

[00:03:33] a lot of business owners, uh, or even creators, right. That they start something and then they

[00:03:38] don't, they cannot stay consistent. And we raised our hand. That was us for many years,

[00:03:43] right. We've, we've helped people that have been in that, that train for quite a while as well.

[00:03:48] So, um, that's the premise, right. It's like, okay, what are the things that we should be looking

[00:03:52] at even before trying to, you know, uh, edit the video the right way? I'm doing air quotations,

[00:03:59] um, as we move forward. First up kicking the lights. Why are you kicking the lights?

[00:04:03] I'm moving it, bro. I'm helping you. I need, we need to, uh, we already talked about it. We're

[00:04:07] going to do a lighting workshop out here. Sure. Um, but what are the things we need to look even

[00:04:12] before we get started? Is that what you meant? What you said? Yeah. Well, a few things come to mind,

[00:04:18] right? Maybe the things I wish that would have known before we got started was first kind of like

[00:04:23] resource management, right. Um, and also tuning out some of the noise, cause there's a lot of advice

[00:04:28] out there. And honestly, I'm not saying it's bad advice, but it might just not be relatable to where

[00:04:36] you are at the moment, right? Everybody's different in terms of how much time they have, how much money

[00:04:41] they got to invest in a certain task, how their skillset that they have, right? All these different

[00:04:47] things. So first I would look into what are the resources that I can, you know, put into a specific

[00:04:56] task or a specific project. So if I want to launch a podcast, I would potentially start with getting

[00:05:03] a kind of what is the time that I have available to create this piece of content. Right. And then

[00:05:07] I would go through the production process and say, okay, well producing one episode is taking me X amount

[00:05:12] of hours. Right. Do I count with those amount of hours to actually do the, do the work? And if I

[00:05:18] don't, do I have enough money to maybe outsource it, et cetera. So like I would just take account of what

[00:05:23] are my resources, but then obviously we always talk about the quality of the message over quality of the

[00:05:28] production. So I would make sure that I nailed down my message, right? Like who am I talking to

[00:05:34] specifically what problem I'm solving? Right. And I nailed it down. And we truly don't know whether

[00:05:42] your message is good or not until you put it out there and test it out into the world. Right. Like

[00:05:46] talking to people that have those problems, do they resonate? Do they convert into more

[00:05:50] conversations? Right. That lead to more opportunities. So it's not about just sitting down and writing

[00:05:55] down like, yes, this is my message. You got to go and test it out, which is going to take resources.

[00:06:00] It's going to take time and money. All right. But those were, those would be the first two things

[00:06:05] where I would start, right? Like where am I going to put my resources? And obviously like,

[00:06:10] what is it that I want to do? Right. Cause based on your, you know, Stephen Covey in the seven habits

[00:06:17] of whatever the highly effective people, that is the seven habits of highly effective people. I think

[00:06:23] the last one or maybe the first one, I don't even remember now. One of his habits is start with the

[00:06:29] end in mind. And that is such a good habit specifically for business too, which is, okay,

[00:06:33] what is the goal? Where do I want to go? And then you can break it down into smaller chunks,

[00:06:38] smaller goals, and you can move up from there. Right. So I think that is a great spot to start.

[00:06:44] For example, when we started the podcast, we're like, okay, well, our goal is just to publish it.

[00:06:49] Right. But we don't really have too much time to edit. We don't, we want to test the message. We have

[00:06:53] a message, but we want to test it out. We want to get more reps and we have limited amount of time

[00:06:58] because we do have a service that we provide on the side that takes most of our time doing the

[00:07:03] fulfillment. Yeah. So what we did was, well, to get the message out consistently, we need to do it

[00:07:08] multiple times a week and to avoid the whole production, we're just going to do it live.

[00:07:13] Right. So pretty much we were dedicating one hour per episode, right? Maybe let's say hour and a half,

[00:07:18] two hours per episode. And we're doing it three times a week. If we would have only focused on one

[00:07:24] super high quality episode at the moment where we wouldn't, you know, first we would have

[00:07:30] have less opportunity to test our message. And second, we would invest a lot of our time just

[00:07:36] into one episode that again, our message wasn't tested. We didn't know if it was going to resonate

[00:07:41] and whatnot. So, you know, I think that was our approach on, you know, having an end in mind

[00:07:47] and then starting that way. And then eventually as the podcast grew, we managed to increase resources

[00:07:51] and now we can drop them back into the podcast and have a better product.

[00:07:55] And one question I would urge you to ask yourself is like, do you enjoy the idea of creating the way

[00:08:03] that you want to create, right? It's like the process. We have this story where we had this

[00:08:08] old business. It was a screen printing business. And we had this machine in the garage of our house.

[00:08:13] We're in Florida, right? So super hot in the afternoons. And we thought of the idea of owning

[00:08:19] a t-shirt company as a very fun idea with events and do this. And the second we started selling bigger

[00:08:25] shirts that we had to print, the process became a nightmare, right? We did. We hated every second

[00:08:30] of it of, you know, created this, you know, the screens. And then because we're using a certain type

[00:08:34] of ink, it would dry up and then they will stick and we have to redo the whole process. So just a

[00:08:40] run will take us a bunch of hours and we were sleep deprived, fighting with our roommates,

[00:08:45] all these things. And then we decided to stop that business because we didn't enjoy the process.

[00:08:49] So I see that same thing with a lot of creators. And you see like these cases on YouTube where

[00:08:54] you have creators that have been creating this very specific type of content, because maybe

[00:08:58] that's what resonated with an audience that they thought, you know, they were serving at a point,

[00:09:05] right? And they kept reacting to what their audience wanted. And then they end up creating this

[00:09:10] flow that they don't really enjoy. And then they get to burnout, for example, right? So are you truly

[00:09:15] enjoying it? Like it's the people, are the people in your company enjoying the creation process,

[00:09:19] really want to go into a YouTube heavy video production type, or do they enjoy more conversational

[00:09:26] content where they can sit down and talk with leaders in the world, whatever, right? Whatever

[00:09:30] that is, do you actually enjoy it? Because that's going to help you stay consistent for a longer

[00:09:34] period of time. We enjoy this time together. We enjoy bringing guests into our show, right? It fills up

[00:09:41] with energy and that's why we do it. I think that's one of the main reasons of what being able to keep

[00:09:46] the consistency going. Once you have that base, once you continue to work on your message, then you can

[00:09:52] start adding these pieces on production wise. Like, okay, how can we get better footage? How can we look

[00:09:57] better? How can we maybe do an edit that serves the message, right? How can we hire a production manager

[00:10:04] that can help us out, right? And we start asking all these questions. And again, if you want to start

[00:10:08] from scratch, like some companies do with a higher production value, because that's their belief,

[00:10:15] and maybe they have to maintain that level of quality at some point, then consider that it might be a

[00:10:22] steeper learning curve, right? Or it might be a bigger investment in the team that's going to get

[00:10:28] you there, right? And I think that's where I always recommend, you know, start creating organically,

[00:10:34] you know, yourself and see if that's the format that you really like to like to do. And, you know,

[00:10:38] with our cousin, shout out to Victor, for example, like he's documenting a lot of his, you know,

[00:10:43] day to day because he's already working out, he's already doing this thing. So in his main social media

[00:10:48] platform, he's documenting this thing's life and puts content out there. People are having conversations

[00:10:53] with him. And then this is encouraging him to continue to create just like this podcast did for us.

[00:10:59] So I think those elements are super important for you to, you know, take account.

[00:11:03] And I think it's very easy to get distracted too, with the technical aspects of things,

[00:11:07] right? Like he, his question was like, all right, like I'm creating this type of content. How do I

[00:11:11] turn it into vertical on all this stuff? And I mean, depending on the type of person that you are,

[00:11:17] right? But I know personally that for me, those technical challenges then become into rabbit holes

[00:11:24] with them become into distraction. So I would go and be like, all right, how do I turn this into this?

[00:11:28] Oh, I need a video editing software. Let me go. Oh, I downloaded the video editing software. Let me

[00:11:33] learn every single aspect of it that I'm never going to use, but I still need to know how it works.

[00:11:37] And I go on a different rabbit hole. It's like, Oh, let me make cinematic movies, whatever,

[00:11:43] all these things, right? And at the end of the day is just distractions that are taking you farther

[00:11:48] away from your original goal. So keep that in mind. If you're that type of person that does that,

[00:11:54] right? And again, there's nothing wrong with learning new skills, nothing wrong with trying

[00:11:58] to attempt to do the things, uh, by yourself. Right. But keep in mind, you know, maybe ask yourself,

[00:12:04] is this the best use of my time? Right. Yeah. Cause if not, it might be just better to,

[00:12:09] you know, at the lowest level, go on Fiverr or Upwork and hire somebody to do that one specific task

[00:12:15] for you. So you can put your attention into what's going to yield the highest results. Right. So

[00:12:21] for example, you know, in retrospect, maybe for us where we yield the highest, you know,

[00:12:29] sorts of value from our podcast is investing our time into inviting new guests, right. Of the right

[00:12:36] caliber into content is profit, right. Rather than let's spend our time multi-purposing the content,

[00:12:42] right. Like for that, we have a team, we have a team that is doing that aspect, which is important,

[00:12:47] right. Cause it's distribution. But for us, it's more important building the relationships,

[00:12:51] that we're going to bring into the podcast. So guess what? Sometimes you're going to have to

[00:12:56] choose. Sometimes you're going to have to decide whether do I really need these clips or do I,

[00:13:01] you know, invest into meeting people and bringing them into the show, you know, and maybe again,

[00:13:09] every case is different, but for you, depending on what your priorities are, what your goal is,

[00:13:13] what yields the most value. It might be bringing new people, right. Connecting with people,

[00:13:19] or for you, it might just be, you know, distributing the content in multiple channels.

[00:13:24] So again, get clear on what is your goal, what you're going to do. And then based on that,

[00:13:28] you can backtrack and see what are your priorities, right. You need to prioritize,

[00:13:32] you know, specific actions so you can get where you want it to be. And I think it's very easy to get

[00:13:39] lost again on, you know, I need to post all this content and multipurpose my content and do X,

[00:13:45] Y and C just because a lot of big people with big names, with very successful platforms are doing

[00:13:52] it that way. But guess what? There's not one way to do certain things, right? I remember growing up

[00:13:59] or that used to sell the time, like, uh, all paths lead to Rome. That was like a saying that he would

[00:14:05] say all the time. And, you know, looking back into it, like, it's the same thing. Like Rome is the goal.

[00:14:10] Like that's where we're going, but there's no one single path to do so, right? Like there's people

[00:14:15] you know, BOPAP borrowing other people's audiences, or there's people that grow their podcasts through

[00:14:21] advertising, or there's people that grow it organically. There's many different ways to

[00:14:26] achieve one single goal. So again, taking care of your, you know, taking into consideration your

[00:14:32] resources that you have at hand, the goal, you know, that place where you want to be. And obviously

[00:14:39] you as a creator, how you like to create and do things, then you can pick the right path for you.

[00:14:45] And at the end of the day, you do need to stay consistent with what you do, at least long enough

[00:14:50] to have tangible results that can let you decide whether, yes, I want to go and following this path,

[00:14:58] right? I'm going to keep going is, is offering steady growth, or if it's not growing, you can

[00:15:03] pivot and say, okay, I'm going to do plan B, right? I have this hypothesis that if I do X, Y, and C

[00:15:10] is going to yield these results, and then you go and try that until you have measurable results,

[00:15:15] and then can form another decision.

[00:15:18] Yeah. I think a good way to look at it is imagine it's a science experiment, right? And you have the

[00:15:24] hypothesis that you think is going to be true, test it out for a fixed period of time, and then

[00:15:30] you decide it's a good thing to continue or not, and move things forward. And then, you know,

[00:15:37] to answer Victor's question on how to turn the horizontal video.

[00:15:41] Yeah, we're just going to send them this clip.

[00:15:43] Into short form, right? So, his original question is like, how do I do to turn a video

[00:15:50] that I originally recorded for YouTube that's horizontal into vertical? And, you know, so we

[00:15:55] can put it on reels, on shorts, and different things like that. So, with that said, there's a few

[00:16:01] applications that you can do. So, a lot of, obviously, any editing software, you can change

[00:16:05] the format of the video itself. But like Fonzie said, there's a learning curve for each one

[00:16:08] of them. One that we use that I personally love because I'm not that technical, it's called

[00:16:12] Descript. We're going to put the link right below. Fonzie, obviously, any Adobe product can

[00:16:17] do it. There's also our partner company, Capture, which just released a clipping feature, which

[00:16:24] you literally put the video file in there. And on top of giving you a lot of copy for like

[00:16:29] your podcast description or your YouTube video description and social media posts and

[00:16:33] different things, it extracts some video clips from it and it gives you headlines and captions

[00:16:40] as well. It's actually amazing what they're able to do. And obviously, there's, if you Google

[00:16:47] how to multipurpose or, you know, do content online, that way there's going to be a thousand

[00:16:54] companies that have popped up with this new AI that can do something similar. But on our specific

[00:16:59] case, if you, I mean, we do that as a service, um, a little bit to, you know, high end podcast,

[00:17:06] but we're happy to help you in part of the process. If you want to learn it, just send

[00:17:10] us a quick message and we're happy to hop on a call with you and kind of walk you through,

[00:17:13] through our process is what we've done the last five years. So, uh, the second question that he

[00:17:18] answered is, uh, is there an app on the iPhone? So this is, I think a very good question because

[00:17:23] a lot of people might not have a higher quality camera or maybe even a laptop, right? To like

[00:17:28] that, that can process that, that amount of footage. But these little machines that we have here

[00:17:34] have incredible quality when it comes to video, audio and different things. There's an application

[00:17:39] that I personally love. It's called captions, uh, that can do something very similar. And on top of

[00:17:45] that, it facilitates the way that you can edit those social clips, right? You can add different

[00:17:51] formats. I mean, to a point that they have, I think a feature that does a very highly edited

[00:17:56] production value, like clip. And when I sent it to Fonzie, it's like, man, this is pretty impressive

[00:18:01] that a machine can do this automatically. Uh, but then there's also, yeah, I did. You were like,

[00:18:07] you, you mentioned the name of a, of an effect that I didn't really know what it was. Uh, you're

[00:18:12] like, Oh, it's crazy that it can do that effect. Uh, but there's another editing tool that I personally

[00:18:17] don't use, but I've seen it all around social media is called cap cut, uh, which is an editor

[00:18:22] that was born for, uh, your phones. But again, like everything is gonna have a learning curve

[00:18:28] if you haven't experienced anything like this. So our advice, if this is the first time of

[00:18:32] you turning long form content into short form, identify a few ideas from those ideas, which

[00:18:37] are the message that resonates, then you can use either capture, which we're going to leave

[00:18:42] the links right below or descript if you want to process it that way. And, uh, put those clips out

[00:18:48] there, the, put the talking head with some subtitles that you like and see what happens. Do people, are

[00:18:54] people reacting to it? Is it a polarizing idea? Is it not a polarizing idea? Are you enjoying the

[00:18:59] process of learning and improving every single time? And, uh, let us know what happens.

[00:19:05] Yeah. Let us know.

[00:19:07] Why not?

[00:19:09] Well, I mean, sure. I have, uh, I have beef with that, but yeah, we're, we're already talking about

[00:19:16] that in different contents, you know, structure. There's multiple things that I don't, you know,

[00:19:22] again, I would go back and look at what are your goals, where is your attention and efforts best

[00:19:28] placed at, and then go from there. You know, like I would actually challenge you with a question. Are you

[00:19:34] just multipurposing content just because other podcasts are multipurposing content? Right.

[00:19:40] Again, if the answer is yes, ask yourself, well, why, why do I need to do it that way?

[00:19:45] Right. There's again, there's different path to the same goal that you can take and depends on your

[00:19:50] resources. It's probably going to be a little bit different.

[00:19:53] Awesome. All right. With that said guys,

[00:19:56] yeah. Thank you so much for tuning to the content's profit podcast going up for the show

[00:20:01] in your favorite podcasting platform and on social media at these bros co that is right.

[00:20:06] And today's episode, helping move one step closer towards your goal. Please don't forget

[00:20:10] to share this episode. And of course, don't forget to leave a five-star review. See ya. Bye guys.

[00:20:15] Bye guys.