Hey, now welcome to another edition of the inside BS show. I'm Dave Lorenzo. And today we're talking about the media.

That's right. We're talking about how you can build your own personal brand, how you can command a fee premium, how you can be the person that is irresistible to your ideal client. Does that sound good? Well, it should sound great.

And if this is something that's appealing to you, we've got the exact guy you need to talk to. You don't want to miss this episode of the inside BS show. My guest today is Rafer Weigel and he is a, an Emmy award winning TV news guy, somebody who you probably seen at some point on television.

And he's now an entrepreneur. He's just like you and me. He's a professional and he's doing everything he can to help you grow your business through the power of the media.

So please join me in welcoming Rafer to the show. Welcome Rafer. Thanks for joining us today, Dave.

Thanks so much for having me on. This is really fantastic. I really appreciate you.

And I love your energy, my friend. I absolutely love it. You're, you're, you're a great spokesperson.

Thank you so much. Let's talk about the transition from being somebody who's, you know, can't walk into the supermarket without somebody going, Hey, you're that guy. I just saw you out in the snow storm, or Hey, I just saw you on TV.

The transition from that to now being the guy who has a business, you got to worry about a P and L statement. You got to worry about getting new clients. What is that transition been like for you? What are the ups? And what are the downs? Well, there was a lot of downs initially because, um, I mean, my story is well-documented.

I was fired from my job at, uh, as a news anchor at the Fox station in Chicago. And I was on from 4 AM to 6 AM. So I didn't get stopped a lot in the grocery store.

Our ratings were not that great. Uh, but I was the reporter that broke the Jesse Smollett story that Chicago police didn't buy it. And I did get a lot of attention on some of the larger cable networks.

And, uh, well, let's be honest, Fox news were the only ones that had me on because it fit into the, into that particular narrative. Um, but you know, I, I and a lot of people can identify with this Dave, you know, I, when I was pursuing my career, um, I really put all of my energy and effort on my personal or my professional development and none of my personal. And I was so focused on climbing that corporate ladder and getting to market three that my personal life just completely fell apart.

And it was like kind of Pagliacci, the sad clown. I mean, I was, um, divorced. I, my son was in a complete halfway across the country away from me.

The woman I fell in love with post-divorce I left behind because in this business, you have to move out to move up. It's not like any other business. And that's why, you know, people who go into journalism, I say, don't buy property if you want to move up truthfully.

Um, and as you mentioned the snow, I mean, yeah, I don't, I mean, look, being down in the media is a cliche, but it was, you know, I got into journalism because I'm passionate about storytelling and the stories that most media outlets want to tell are the snow on the North side and the shooting on the South side. And that's pretty much it. Um, so when I got fired, it was just because of some bad personal decisions I made.

It was the best thing that ever happened to me because what I had realized is that, you know, I was serving my ego and not serving others. And so it being able to make the transition now to being the guy behind the camera, telling other people's stories and bringing my expertise from working in the media, uh, and telling people, look here, the bottom line is, you know, whatever your company is, if you want to be relevant in today's day and age, if you're a pool company, a rug company, a car company, you need to be a media company who sells cars or sells rugs or sells pools because we're in a virtual world now and people, and there is so much noise out there. Um, and I know you're very passionate about this subject as well.

Um, you know, and I think you're, you're really, you're living by that philosophy, Dave, but with this podcast and all the work that you do. So I just want to suck up to the host here for a second. There's, there's no limit to the amount of sucking up.

We will accept. So I appreciate that. Thank you so much.

And to your point about storytelling, let me, let me let the folks kind of behind the curtain. I interviewed someone gotta be over a year ago now, dr. Amanda Barry and T's.

And she's someone who coaches people on money. And within the first two minutes of the time that we spent together, first two minutes of the show, she talked about, she told her story and the narrative arc started off how she was at rock bottom and she was on welfare and she didn't know how she was going to feed her kids and her marriage broke up because she had an affair. And let me tell you something that her, the, the show was the probably the best show I've ever done.

It was, it's the show that everybody comments about. It's the show that a year later, people are still asking me how she's doing, what's going on with her. And by the way, she's incredibly successful now, but the fact that she was vulnerable and told her story and was honest was the thing that really sucked people in.

So Ray for help us with what a story arc is and how it is a magnet for people, especially when you demonstrate vulnerability because the people who are listening, the people who are watching this show, probably a lot of them are professionals and they think that they got to appear to be invincible. Right? So share with us the arc of a story and why it works so well to draw people to us like magnets. Well, it's twofold Dave.

Um, so first of all, by, by, by giving that window, I will go a little bit deeper into mine before I go and give away the secret sauce. Um, when I lost my job, I almost ended my life. I was living in a high rise in the South side of Chicago.

I walked up to the top floor, was ready to jump. And the reason I didn't was because of my 12 year old son. And I'd already put him through a lot of heartache as it was.

And I realized that if I could pivot from this and, and turn this around, then he would learn from my mistakes, uh, and going forward. So the beautiful thing about storytelling, the art of great storytelling and Donald Miller has this in a book called building a story brand. And that book, you are not the thing that always people need to remember.

And this is what I always tell my clients. You're not the hero of your story. This woman was telling a wonderful, wonderful story about herself.

But at the end of the day, it's the audience that is the hero. When I was a reporter telling a news story, I wasn't telling that because it was about me. Well, I was in a lot of ways, which is one of the reasons why I got off track, but it's really about the viewer.

Why does the viewer need to know this? And that's the way marketing storytelling also needs to follow that paradigm. So what, but what we, but what we are is, well, we're not the hero. We're the guide in the story.

We're the Obi-Wan Kenobi. We're the Yoda helping the viewer defeat Darth Vader. Uh, and they're the Luke Skywalker.

So this, you know, so this woman telling the story and being vulnerable, um, first of all, vulnerability and authenticity builds trust. And I tell people that all the time, I never want your marketing pieces to be way too polished. I want them to be authentic.

It doesn't mean you have to break down and cry, but it does mean that you have to be, you have to be real to establish that human connection. Number one, but then number two, you know, what's in it for me, I guess, is the, is what every viewer is going to be asking. Um, and you know, my hope is that when people hear my story, you know, what's in it for them is that they don't, you know, I did not put enough of a premium on my family first, on my personal mental wellbeing first.

You know, I came from a generation, uh, you know, growing up in the eighties where it was like, uh, you know, a macho generation. If we had, we had those six figures and that great job, everything else fell into place. And that is not true.

I'm here to tell you that is absolutely not true. The good news is now since being an entrepreneur, I do have more time with my son than ever before. I'm engaged to that woman now that I left behind in St. Louis and we are getting married in June.

And it's absolutely fantastic. I'm, you know, and I'm actually happy serving others. I can actually say, when I go to bed at night, I feel, I feel a sense of accomplishment.

And I didn't feel that, you know, reporting in front of dead bodies under sheets doing the news, you know? So it, it, it, it, there's a lot of different facets to it. I don't know if that answered your question. I, I heard the Emmy music telling me to stop.

No, I listen. First of all, I'm, I'm really glad that your, that your journey has taken you to where you are here now. And I'm glad that you're in a better place.

I will tell you that I have a, I have a similar story in my background. A lot of people who who have heard me or have seen me before and know my story. I was I was a big shot consultant.

I ran a $250 million business. I had over 300 people working for me. I was summoned to deliver a command performance in front of my biggest client, a client that was worth a huge amount of money to my firm.

I, I was living in New York. I ran downstairs in the middle of December to, to deliver this command performance. And I got into a crosswalk and there were probably 30 of us in the crosswalk.

29 people successfully avoided the taxi that struck me. I was paralyzed from my armpits down and I made a deal with God. And I said, look, if you let me out of this, I am going to figure out how I can create something from a, an employment perspective that enables my lifestyle.

And you know, here we are 15 years later, you know, everything works. Those of you who are watching me, see me moving around. I've had two kids since then.

It's important to me that everyone listening knows everything works. Um, but you know, that's what it took. And sometimes for really driven, focused people, it takes a shock to the system to get us back to what is important.

And now our mission, yours Rafer and mine is to be that shock to the system for the person who's watching or the person who's listening. So they don't have to hit bottom. So they don't have to go through that experience.

Right. And that's the beauty of us being able to do something like this. So thank you for telling the story and thank you for, for allowing yourself to be vulnerable because it just may make a difference to somebody else and they won't have to go through what you went through or what, what I went through.

So good, you know, good on us for doing that. And you know, it's a really valuable service that we provide. So now you're on a mission to help people make a great living and live a great life.

So am I, let's talk about what resistance you get most often from people who have to be, who should be in the public eye to build their brand or should be in the public eye to make a difference in their career. Talk about the resistance you receive and help us get past that. Because I know a lot of fantastic people, lawyers, CPAs, entrepreneurs who would be great on video or would be great on a podcast or would be great as guests on a radio show or on TV, but they're self-conscious and they can't break through that.

So tell us about that resistance and tell us how you coach people through it. So, I mean, I, the majority of the resistance that I get is that people fail to see the ROI. And I'll put that on me as maybe not being as good of a salesperson as I can be.

I mean, the content builds the know, like, and trust factor. And there's a great book and it's by Marcus Sheridan called, They Ask, You Answer. I recommend it to any, anybody who's a, you know, a business owner.

And he basically talks about how content is going to be king and key to building that brand empire. And it's got to be consistent and constant because people need the multiple touch points. People have short attention spans, and that's the only way to break through the noise.

And by the way, 90% of all decisions now are made virtually. So if you don't ask or answer rather every question that your potential customer could have by being able to look you in the eye and do it on their time, not on your time, you're not going to be able to stay afloat with your competition. In my opinion, lawyers, especially, you know, and financial advisors, you know, these are people that I need to be able to trust.

Like, look, I'm going through a divorce. It's the biggest moment of my life. How do I trust you're the person for it? I need to be able to meet you.

I need to do it in my time, not in your time. Same with financial advisors, the hurdles that I run into. And I welcome your thoughts on this being a sales guy.

I said, well, what's the ROI. So, you know, let's say I've spent, you know, $5,000 for, you know, three to four, three to five videos or whatever it might be for my website. You know, what am I going to get out of that? And it's trying to explain that, look, you're going to have more qualified leads.

Number one, you're going to push people. You know, if people get a chance to know you in their time, it's going to make it easier for your Salesforce to convert, um, that you can do assignment selling depending on how many videos and blogs you do. Um, and it's going to lead to a happier Salesforce.

It's going to lead to a Salesforce because the reason they're going to be happier is because they're converting. You know, you're moving the football from your own 20 yard line to the opponent's 20 yard line. By the time they get on the phone with you after having watched two or three videos of you showing off your area of expertise and your knowledge, your purpose, uh, the proof of why you're good at what you do.

Um, and the problems that you solve for your customers. Those are the things you need to address. Um, and that, and that is going to end up leading to, to more qualified leads.

The, the, the problem with, you know, what's the ROI. It's, it's really not one I can answer because it's really, well, what is your Salesforce going to do with this? You know, this is where marketing and sales really have to come together and work together as opposed to working independently from one another. So the ROI, in my opinion, is a direct relation to your sales and marketing infrastructure, in my opinion, uh, if that makes any sense.

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. And the way, the way I, uh, try to get people to see it is look at, look at it from this perspective, right? If you, if you were a boxer and you were in a fight, you're not just going to walk in with that big right hand and try and hit him in the mouth with the big right hand. You're going to, you're going to throw combinations, you're going to throw body blows and you're going to chip away round after round after round.

Some of your punches are going to pack more in them than others. And for me, video is one of those punches that packs a lot behind it. So you can jab with email marketing, you can jab with direct mail, you can jab with sales calls.

You can, you know, uh, you can throw a right cross with a good event. And then that video comes out of nowhere and bam, that's what puts them away. That's the punch that puts it over the top for them.

So, and the reason it does is because regardless of the generation you were raised in, including the generation that it sounds like your son is in, probably my son and my daughter are in, they watch things on a screen and they ascribe relationship to the people they're seeing on a screen for you and me. It might've been the guys on sports center, or it might've been, you know, uh, somebody on, you know, in a, in a TV show that we loved, a sitcom that we loved for our kids. It might be Mr. Beast or it might be a dude perfect, right? No matter what, there's a premium placed on people who are showing up on a consistent basis and delivering value to us.

And we're, we're, we're having eye contact with them and we feel like we're, we're being pulled into a relationship. That's the power of this and it's not the knockout punch by itself, but it's part of a combination. And to me it's essential.

And it's never been easier. Look, if you, if you want to experiment with this before you hire Rafer, right? Shoot something on your iPhone and send it around to people who know you like you and trust you and look at what their feedback is going to be. Wow.

I didn't know that. That was really impactful. That was really powerful.

That was great. Now imagine if you did it professionally, right? Imagine if you did it with somebody who knows what they're doing. All right.

So Rafer, talk to us about, you mentioned the three things, right? So talk to us about if, if I want one of my clients to give a testimonial, how do we, how do we set the testimonial? I, it can't be cheesy, right? How do we set it up so that it's, so that it's genuine and it moves the audience to take action? Well, you know, I mean, there's a couple of different ways to do it, but I want to, I want to kind of back up and back up some of your points that you just talked about. You know, I always tell people, if you're, you know, if you're doing one video, you might as well not be doing any. I mean, one video isn't going to do it.

And, and so, you know, and I'm not saying we're the only game in town that does this, but one of the things that we looked at in terms of the marketplace and the videography marketplace is how can we figure out a bulk model that'll make financial sense for somebody? So for us, you know, we, in that one shoot, we want to get enough content for anywhere from four to 14 video, video pieces. Some of those are going to be two minutes. Some of those are going to be 30 seconds.

Some of them might be five or six seconds for quick scrolling for social media, because like you said, Dave, you know, those are all the different you know the different, you know, the different punches that you can throw to to make that conversion. So in terms of your question, could you repeat the question? So what we were, what I, what I was asking is if you, you know, one of the, one of your three, your three legged stool that you, that you mentioned there was credibility, right? So how do we present a testimonial without it? You know, I see these, I see these these lawyer testimonials all the time and there's this person like a hostage video with a check, right? And they're like you know, Schmecky law firm got me $3 million and it, and it's, you know, it looks like they're a lottery winner and you know, okay, I believe that that's true, but it's not very well done. How do we do it so that the testimonial has credibility with the public? Well, I mean, so I'm a big fan of interview style videos.

I just feel whenever somebody is looking right into the camera, unless you're somebody who's really a seasoned veteran like yourself or, or you know, just trained in that on camera delivery it can be awkward. It can be awkward for the viewer. Whereas if I'm looking off to the side and I'm answering a question to somebody and I'm answering it with this person in a, in a sincere authentic, slightly passionate way, that's going to be more engaging to the viewer.

So number one, in terms of a testimonial, I, I, uh, we do do testimonials for clients and we can do them on zoom. I mean, not everything needs to be, I always say the production value of the video should never distract from the message. And that means I don't believe it should be too rustic.

Sometimes a cell phone's okay, but no, not, not all the time, but it also doesn't need to be too polished. You don't need to spend 50 to a hundred thousand dollars on some, you know, motion graphics and all this other stuff. Cause nobody cares.

They care what's going on in your heart and in your mind. So what is going to be the best, you know, frame around that piece of art to, to frame it in a way that's makes you digest the information. So it's kind of a combination of, of all of those things.

Um, what I've also done a lot of is we'll take client testimonials and, um, make them into a nice motion graphics, speak into motion graphics. And so when people are talking, uh, and they talk about how they solve problems for their customers, you know, we'll bring that motion graphic up, but the best way for, and this is, you know, going back to, um, another way to answer your question, the best, the most important thing that the video should do is it should position you as an authority in your field as a teacher. So if you can teach the viewer something, yes, it's very important to have the culture and branding piece of, you know, why we're different, our onlyness as I like to call it, but then they're all, and also, you know, your purpose, your bio, why did you, where did you, you know, why do you do what you do? But the proof can also be not just testimonial.

It can be you, um, teaching the viewer about something. So let's say if it was a divorce lawyer, you know, talking about what's going on, what, what, you know, what, what does the process entail? What does it mean to co-parent if it's a financial advisor, cryptocurrency as an investment, for instance, or, or, you know, what has COVID done to, to life insurance rates, things like that, that also have a little bit of a news value to it. Um, and then when you have that, that element of a news value, now you've got people, I always say that the story should transcend the subject matter.

So even if you don't care about widget making, if you tell a good story about widgets, that's informative, it has to be informative, then people are going to pay attention. So that's really kind of, you know, the key. And if you're, and depending on your field, I mean, there's probably like unlimited amount of things that folks can talk about to show off their, their knowledge and their expertise.

All right, Rafer. So I want you to think about this question while we pay a couple of bills here. I want you to think about how do we select, cause you just said it.

There's a million things we could talk about, right? How do we pick the topics that we're going to use? If, whether we're doing video or whether we're doing, you know, written copy, how do we pick the topics to put out to the audience? How do we know that they'll resonate? And I want you to ask that in just one second, but first I want to tell the folks that the show is brought to you by Sandrowski Corporate Advisors. Without them, we wouldn't be here. So I'm grateful to them and you can be grateful to them too, because they can help you save a ton of money on your taxes.

You see for over 35 years, Sandrowski Corporate Advisors has been helping people minimize their tax exposure. Now, what does that mean? That means that you will pay the government less and you will take more money home. Who is this valuable to? Well, it's valuable to you.

If you're an entrepreneur, perhaps you haven't given much thought to your business structure. Well, the time to think about it is when you're setting up your business. The second most important time to think about it is when you're selling your business.

So if you have plans to sell your business in the next five to seven years, you got to give Sandrowski Corporate Advisors a call today because they will look at the structure of your business and they can help you reshape your business so that when that sale goes through, you take home more money. In addition, if you're a lawyer and you're a litigator and you need help with litigation support, you need help with a business valuation. You need forensic accounting.

Sandrowski Corporate Advisors is there for you. You can reach them by calling 866-717-1607, 866-717-1607. Sandrowski Corporate Advisors is my go-to accounting firm.

They should be yours too. They're a big sponsor of the show, but I am also a client. I wholeheartedly endorse them and I think you should give them a shot whether you're selling your business in five to seven years or you just have that big case and you need some forensic accounting.

We're also brought to you by my Revenue Roadmap Guide. That's right. You want to know how to develop business.

I've got a guide for you and I want to give it to you for free. I appreciate you watching the show. I appreciate you listening.

Here's what you need to do. Go to revenueroadmapguide.com, revenueroadmapguide.com. Enter your contact info. You can download a marketing plan that will help you build your book of business.

It's easier than falling out of a boat. It's free because I appreciate you. So thanks for joining us today.

My guest is Rafer Weigel. He's an expert on the media. He's got his own company and he can help you get more clients through using the media assets that you probably have overlooked or maybe you were intimidated to use.

Rafer can make it easier for you. If you want to reach him, you can call him at 312-914-8690, 312-914-8690 or you can visit his website, weigelmediagroup.com. We're going to put all that in the show notes. All right, Rafer, I asked you a question and the question I asked was, how do you select the topics to put in the video or the topics to put in your, in your marketing or your media copy? What's the, what's the best way to select those topics? You start with the customer and the clients that you're trying to reach and, and you start with, you know, what are the most common asked questions by your customers and your clients? If you can answer those questions on your website, in a video or a blog, then you're going to lead, it's going to lead to, to a better sale.

So again, making about the customer or the client, but like for instance, when you were reading the copy for Sandrowski and talking about, you know, structuring your business, if you're ready to sell, that would be a great video. You know, how do you know when it's ready to sell? What do you need to do before you sell your business? I would love to hear their, their expertise on that and their insight, you know, because I would love to, I don't know, do I want to sell? I'm not sure, but I would love to hear, you know, their insight into that because they know stuff that I don't know. Um, I always tell people, it's like, look, if you're going to hire a videographer, my feeling is anybody can shoot a video, but not everybody can tell a story.

Make sure you hire somebody who is going to take a journalism approach. And by my, what, what I mean by that is you, you, you address the question you just asked me, how do you know what topics to cover? And you know, somebody who's got a journalism background, who's, who doesn't have an agenda and their only agenda is just to serve is going to, is going to dig, is going to ask questions, you know? So before we, we go to the, uh, to the studio and start shooting or to the office, you know, we sit down and I, and I just start, you know, interviewing them and asking them questions about everything, their process. And then from there we'll uncover stuff.

Um, but it's really one of those things where I feel like you should be doing it every single month. If you've got a great case that you're talking about right now that might have relevance to, um, you know, beyond just, you know, that, that would be interesting to people. I am not a big, I, you know, I came from media.

I used to get 20 press releases a day. I'm not a big fan of traditional PR. Uh, I don't feel that I feel it's a, it's, uh, I feel it's a waste of money.

I just don't feel it's a good marketing strategy. Instead use that money to tell the story that you want to tell, control the narrative, and then put it out on social media, put it out on your LinkedIn, your Facebook. Um, and that's going to get you a lot more traction.

Rayford, tell me a little bit about the pressure. The traditional media is feeling from stuff like this, right? There's, there's so much content now. I mean, forget about like the streaming services that, that we all subscribe to the Hulu's and Roku and Netflix.

Forget about that. I mean, my kids and me from an, from a news standpoint, we're on YouTube searching for very specific narrow topics, right? Can I get Omicron a second time? Right? I put, I punch it in YouTube. There's 30 videos there.

I picked the person that looks the most credible and it may be the biggest knucklehead, but that's what we're doing now. Right? What kind of pressure is traditional media under, but you know, how can we use that to our advantage? Yeah, that's a good question. You know, when you were mentioning about, you know, my son's 12 years old, he's never read anything unless he was assigned to it by a teacher, but he'll watch 300 videos a day.

And, and he was the one that said to me, he's like, dad, you're turning people into social media influencers. And he said, the way to do that is consistency and, uh, and constant. They need to do it every day.

They need to post it at a certain time every single day so that people are used to it. And then it has to be constant every week, every other day, whatever the case may be so that they're used to it in terms of the traditional media. I mean, unfortunately, I, I, I don't have a lot of positive things to say about it.

I feel like, you know, when my dad, I got into this business because my father was an iconic sportscaster in the, in the eighties in Chicago. And back then that was pre cable. And it was like the movie Anchorman.

There were five channels and I remember one news anchor telling me there was one night where they got a 50 rating share. That means 50% of all households in Chicago were watching the newscast. It was like, it's not like that anymore.

When I was doing the morning show, I remember we got a 1.5 rating and that was a big day. And, um, so the revenue's not there. So the salaries aren't there.

Um, so the resources aren't there. So they're cutting back on a lot of, you know, on a lot of their staff and that kind of thing. Um, so one of the things where I think PR is going to be taking a shift to, and we, and we're doing this as well is, you know, my feeling is by creating blogs and creating articles and videos that are camera ready, AP ready, that are newsworthy.

When you send those to traditional media outlets, your chance of engagement is infinitely higher because then they can just simply cut it and paste it. They have the need for the content. They don't have the resources to produce it.

So if you solve that problem for them, rather than sending the press release and hoping a reporter shows up at your door, send them a written article and hope that they paste it. So that's another thing that we do, but that is like an ancillary offering. Cause if you lead with, you know, give us X amount of dollars and maybe you'll get media coverage.

People are going to be disappointed if you lead with, give us X amount of dollars and we're going to create for you a plethora of amazing content. Oh, and by the way, the media might pick it up. That, you know, but what, at the end of the day, what does that even get you? Really? Yeah.

I think, you know, one of the greatest values you can provide and people can, they can see it if they're watching the video now. I don't think it translates as well in audio, but they can see it. Is this, is the presence, right? You've been in front of a camera so long.

You have a presence. I bet, you know, at some, at some point we're going to meet in person. I bet when people meet you in person, they can feel that presence, right? That comes from the, the understanding, the level of energy you have to project, understanding the inflection you have to have in your voice, picking things to talk about that you're passionate about.

And all of that are, those are things that you probably don't give a ton of thought to, but you teach your clients when you're teaching them how to be a part of the media. So the value in what you provide can be translated very easily to someone who has to speak in a courtroom or someone who has to speak from the stage. I mean, if you take me, for example, I didn't, I didn't learn to be like this from doing a hundred videos.

I've done 700 videos, but I learned to be like this from giving live speeches, from doing standup comedy. I understood that the energy I put out, I always got back and the camera can feel that. So the power of what you're doing has, it transcends video.

It can help people in a way that can allow them to feel a presence. Do you consciously focus on that? Or is that something that just came from media training and it just, it just shows through the camera? Well, initially, I mean, I'm going to tell you, man, when I first got on the air, I sucked. I mean, I'm not going to lie.

I was pushing so hard cause I was so nervous. Uh, and that's why, you know, when I, I like working with people who are camera shy, cause I'm like, I've been there. I know what it's like.

I know what it's like to get up in your head and feel like, you know, and, and, and, you know, when you're pushing, but there's no substance behind it, people can feel that. So I always say if you focus on what you're saying, not about how you're saying, well, obviously you've got to have, you know, good English and you, I shouldn't say good English. You have to have good communication skills.

Let's, let's leave it that way. But, um, but if you're focusing on the message and rather than, than your personality and again, making it about the viewer, you know, make it about the other person. Um, then that's going to lead that.

And if you have passion for what you're talking about, then just lead with that and everything else will be okay. You know, I don't, I feel like people don't need, you know, I feel like people feel the need that they need to be perfect when they do these videos, when they're on camera and you don't need to be perfect. You just need to be purposeful, personal and passionate.

And that's it. And that's also the beauty of editing. Perfect is the enemy of progress.

If you try to be perfect, you're never going to get anywhere. I, you know, I've done two videos already today. This is my third.

And so far, this is the best one, but they're all going up. So here's, here's one of the things I think that, um, that people need to hear from you because you're, because you're an industry veteran. And I think it's so important that that you share with folks how the media can influence other people.

Uh, and you know, there, I know it's, it's, you know, it's, it's a, it's a cliche these days because we have cable networks dedicated to specific points of view, but there, there is a network now dedicated to Scientology, right? So, you know, if the media can influence people to see a point of view on something, you know, as complex as the way they live their life, you can use the media to advance the fact that you're the best trust in a state's attorney in town. Talk a little bit about how it's okay to do that. You're not, you know, this, you, it's okay.

If your intentions are good, it's okay to use this as a vehicle for that. Yeah. Using it for good rather than evil.

Well, I mean, and, and that honestly really led to, you know, early on in the podcast, we talked about, you know, the existential crisis I was going through, you know, basically reporting on tragedy and if it bleeds, it leads. And you know, how that really was kind of hard on my soul. Cause I really felt like I was perpetuating, you know, stereotypes, fear, and nothing really of any value.

Um, but when you focus again, when you go back to the customer, you know, if you're, as long as you're giving value, you know, that's another mistake. A lot of people make in PR, right. I would get these press releases and the press release would talk about how company A is so great and company A's poop doesn't stink and company A did it.

But then in paragraph four, it would talk about the fact that, oh, and people who, um, let's just, you know, use an example are, who are, you know, paralyzed from the waist down may not be able to walk again. Yeah. You know what? That should be the first thing.

Yeah. That's the first thing. It's not about company A. It's about what you can do.

Anyway, we've talked about this ad nauseum. So yeah. I mean, when you, when I, somebody turned on Fox news for the first time or MSNBC for the first time, and they didn't necessarily become, you know, uh, you know, evangelists for Tucker Carlson or Rachel Maddow in that first episode, you know, Oprah Winfrey became a household name.

It did not happen after one episode. It took years of repetition and consistency. Um, if you're giving value and if you believe that what you're doing is helping people, then people will keep coming back.

You know, whether you agree with Carlson or Rachel Maddow, they believe that they're, they're giving information that helps people. Oprah Winfrey believed and, you know, arguably did give, you know, put people on there that would help others when they would watch her guests. So, so that's really what it comes kind of down to.

And, and I don't, I think people shouldn't shy away from it. I mean, you just mentioned it, you know, YouTube is the second most search engine after Google. And I look at some of these YouTube videos and these people are like, man, and they got a million views because they're giving information.

They're giving value, focus on the message, focus on the value you're giving to the customer, do it consistently and just let it go, put it out into the ether, but you got to keep doing it over and over again. All right, Rafer, I want you to think about the three big things we should take away from our time together today. Think about those three big things.

And while you're thinking about those, let me tell folks that the show is brought to you by Sandrowski Corporate Advisors. Without them, we wouldn't be here. So we're grateful to them.

Remember, if you're thinking about selling your business, you need to understand the tax implications of doing that. The best time to think about the structure of your business was when you started it. The second best time is right now.

Reach out to Sandrowski today, 866-717-1607. Okay, Rafer, what are the three big things we need to take away from our time together today? I keep forgetting that I'm on video. I was like, I had my thinking face on there.

That's perfect. We want people who think, we like that. It's like, you know, the bubble came up.

The first thing I'm going to say is, you know what? Get over yourself. I had to get over myself. When it comes to doing marketing and video marketing, don't worry about your hair and your makeup.

Oh, I didn't like the way I look. Get out there, start doing it and do it consistently. Number two, realize that what you're doing is being of service.

If you're telling, if you're telling your customers information that they need to know, and you're doing it without necessarily wanting a sale involved, you're going to probably get that sale. And number three, listen to this podcast all the time because this is the greatest podcast I've had. I've been on a few of these and this is fantastic.

Thank you, Rafer. It's about the customer. That's the thing.

Rafer said it over and over again. Think about them, make it about them, and you're going to win every single time. Rafer Weigel, it was a pleasure.

Thank you for being here. I greatly appreciate it. If you want to reach out to Rafer, go to weigelmediagroup.com, weigelmediagroup.com. I'm going to put it in the show notes.

You can call him. 312-914-8690. I'm Dave Lorenzo.

This is the Inside BS Show. And until tomorrow, here's hoping you make a great living and live a great life.