Agency Forward

Chris DuBois 0:00
Hey everyone. Today I'm joined by Jason Calhoun. Jason is the founder of so long Saturn, a video editing agency that provides unlimited world class video edits for a flat monthly fee. Jason personally edits each video by hand, offering high touch, high quality service. But he's also a solopreneur, so I wanted to learn more about how he's able to stay so creative while editing at scale. Also, he's got some of the funniest marketing content on LinkedIn, and I truly believe more people need to watch his content. In this episode, we discuss the biggest mistakes companies make with video content, how businesses can set their video editors up for success, the challenges of running an unlimited video editing service and more. No one was asking for another community, but I made one anyway. So what's different? The dynamic agency community is designed around access, rather than content, access to peers who've done it before, access to experts who've designed solutions, access to resources that have been battle tested, and right now, the price for founding members is only $97 a year. Join today, so your agency has immediate access to everything you need to grow. You can join at Dynamic agency, dot community and now. Jason Calhoun, it's easier than ever to start an agency, but it's only getting harder to stand out and keep it alive. Join me as we explore the strategies agencies are using today to secure a better tomorrow. This is agency full award. That's the biggest mistake the companies make with their video content,

Jason Calhoun 1:43
I would say, overall, across the board, it is, it's a couple things. Actually, it's probably 150,000 things. But the most important things that I've noticed is companies either have a lack of human in their content, because they still approach content, video content in the way that it was done, and the way that I did it for my whole life, up until recently, which was, you spent a bunch of money on a video, and that video had to do a lot of things. So it needed to be professional. It needed to show you know that you're serious, and needed to incorporate your brand's values and all of that kind of what is nowadays, I think, kind of nonsense, because it, like, today, everything's going on social media, and so you have, I mean, this is one of the problems with, I think, content on LinkedIn, video content is it still a lot of it follows that rule of, like, well, this is my business content, so it's got to be professional, and I want people to take me seriously, and I've got valuable content to tell you about, so I'm going to present it in a very professional way, and it just doesn't hit with anybody, because your audience isn't just watching LinkedIn professional content. They're watching most of their content is hilarious and funny and human and like the stuff that makes you a human, the things that make your family and friends like you, your personality and those traits tend to never come through in corporate videos business videos, that it's definitely a trend that's shifting like I've been surprised over even the past probably six months, a lot of the clients I've talked to understand that, and that's part of the reason they're reaching out to me now. But still, the vast majority, when I tell them, like, you just need to make your content more human. And the best way you can communicate with a human, or I can think of how you meet a human on the street, a human, because I'm an alien human, you know, but you meet another person on the street, you tend to smile and you're warm, and maybe you crack a joke. And that usually when you crack a joke, or you kind of laugh about something, you're kind of in with that person. You tend to because you have, you shared this emotional experience, even though it was humor, like you shared something. So when I'm talking to a client who's trying to move off the bandwagon of like, professional serious, I try to push them toward humor. And that's the same. The reason for that is like, it connects with people. It shows that you're human. You're like them. And it's the same reason like Super Bowl ads, most of them that you remember are funny. You know, funny catches attention and and then you can go into your content that's maybe a little bit more serious, maybe talks about more of like your company's problem statements, or, you know, shares that valuable insight you have. But if you do that at first, you know, it's like you're just repel people, right?

Chris DuBois 4:24
I think there's a huge gap, and exactly what you just said it where it's like you're you're not just competing for attention with everybody else providing content on the platform or your direct competitors within the market. It's like you're literally competing for attention, against, like, having to make dinner for for your kids, having to, you know, read stories before bed. Like, there's all of these other things in people's lives. It's like, if you can create that content, that's like, gets them so hooked that they're like, oh yeah. Like, I want to go watch it right? Like, it stops them and they actually want to look at that over. Every other thing going on in their life. Like, now, I think you're on to something. You can't do that corporate, kind of professional, boring like, let me get my tie on so that we can, we can just look the part. Because

Jason Calhoun 5:11
even, like, the the trend that's been pushing, that's been at least popular, especially on LinkedIn, is the talking head content, where you just take out your iPhone and you share some valuable insight. And that stuff to me now, because your feet is filled with that, because everybody's doing the same thing. And I guess that would be the other thing that I see companies, mistake that a company will make with their video content is just copy other people, you know, because either they don't have the capacity or the they don't have the person in place on their team that's able to think outside the box when it comes to how you present yourself on social media with video. So you just look at what other people say you do the right thing to do, and you just look at your competitors and just kind of copy them, which can be okay, but very quickly you see what's happening on LinkedIn. I talk about LinkedIn a lot because LinkedIn is the worst. It's it's like the best platform is the one I use the most, because you can use it effectively, but most people don't. So your feed is just filled with like, these talking heads sharing valuable content kind of stuff. And so to a viewer, you just see that as an ad. You know instantly what that is. It's somebody selling their product or service or idea or membership or subscription or whatever. And so you just skip right past it, so you're totally right. I mean, you're competing with someone's time and attention. And generally, this isn't always true, especially LinkedIn is a little bit different. But for the most part, when people are scrolling, they just want to get their mind off of work and off of all of this, like filling my brain with, you know, five ways to, I don't know, to market that you're just like, I just want to, I just want to break and so again, if you can push into something that's different and disruptive and off, and usually humor works, you know, it'll, it'll pull somebody in, and then you got to keep them in, you know, like, that's a good hook. And then you've got to figure out how to keep them engaged with that content. But anyways, yeah, I would say those two things I see the most. Anyways, so

Chris DuBois 7:03
how are you approaching, like, I guess, the ideation of your hooks,

Jason Calhoun 7:08
oh my gosh, it's like, the hardest thing with video content, and this is, I guess, social media in general, is that there I I've been doing this for a long time, and there is no secret to this that I found. I mean, for the most part, I think the best thing that I've learned is just through trial and error, just trying a bunch of stuff. So I'll tend I get a lot of clients who come to me and they want to jump right into ad spend and just reach a bunch of people. And I'll always try to push them, like, push organic first, and just try this off, test it out on a smaller audience. Like, if there's a platform that you don't have a ton of people on x tends to be a good platform for this, where you can just test ideas, even in like, text form, you have an idea that maybe you want to develop into a video down the road, like, just try it out. Like, try the messaging out, and just the general idea for the video on X or something where you don't have a huge audience, but you can just, you can still test and see which of these general ideas may have legs to them, and then develop it into, you know, maybe a full post on another platform, and then you can develop into a video, at least, if you're doing it on your own and you don't have a lot of resources, you know, if you have somebody in house, or you, you have somebody like me who could edit a bunch of videos for you, you know, then just throw them out there and try stuff. Because as many, as much as I think I know about content, it still is always surprising to me which videos stick. It's almost never the ones that I think, you know, we'll try out a bunch of different concepts, and I'll think I know the ones that are gonna like stick. And it's almost never those. It's almost always the ones that I'm like, What is that one? That was the idea? And then you just, you know, keep going that direction, but there's still so much trial and error to, I think, to marketing in general. You know, if somebody tells you they've got it figured out, and there's a science to it, I think they're feeding ups, yeah, one

Chris DuBois 8:52
of the I just got off the call with the client, and one of the things I had to remind them was, as we're, like, working through their positioning and everything, it's like, just, so, you know, everything is a guess, right? Like, exactly only know once the market tells us, and so we're taking our best guess, and that's why you bring experts in. Like, yep, it's a guess.

Jason Calhoun 9:10
But it's also like, that's one of the wonderful things about social media today, is you can try things really quickly and get feedback so much faster and cheap compared to the old days. You know, where it would it was a bunch of money to try to test something else, right? Test something out before you really, you know, put even more money behind it. But, man, it's so easy now it's like, just put a bunch of stuff out there.

Chris DuBois 9:33
That's why I'll even echo the idea of publishing on X before elsewhere. So there's no penalty even to the algorithm. So, like, even if you do have a huge following, you can publish 20 times in a day, and it's not going to hurt you. Like, try that on LinkedIn, and you're starting to lose some of the impressions. Yep. So yeah, the what I like about your hooks, so, like, one your marketing content for your own business, I think people can learn a lot of things from this. This is. What brought you onto the show in the first place? Like, I'd become a fanboy, it's okay, like, I'll let everybody know. But I was just scrolling, and it was like, oh, there's a video with you. And I can't remember there was either Joe Rogan or, like, one of these clips, but it's like, so one, they're funny, and you, like, pick it up pretty quick. That's usually what keeps you, but the fact that it was like, you with someone famous, that's like, easily identifiable. It's like, Oh, I see Mark Zuckerberg, right, Elon Musk, Liam Neeson. It's like, when you see them on the screen, like, right away, within that hook, it's like, okay, something's going on here. And so I liked how it's a something no one else is really doing in order to, like, create good content. And I feel like even, I mean, you're using a lot for, like, just marketing your business and stuff, which I think is awesome, but I feel like there's also ways you could be doing similar things to just promote ideas and, like, get do other types of content. Nobody gets that creative with it. Is it just they like, they don't have the experience. They don't. There's a lack of understanding of what they could do. Or is it that they feel LinkedIn expects a certain type of content, and so they're going to try sticking within that, like, where do you think that that gap within their own minds is? I think

Jason Calhoun 11:13
it just comes down to fear. I you know, because I think that they, for the most part, you know, you're in that position where you're going to hire somebody, you know, to do something for you, like, it's, it's a thing you know, that's real money. And I get that. It's a there's risk involved to it. And so I think the reason they don't approach or push ideas that are a little bit more bold, a little more outside the box, is because they are a little bit less proven, you know, because you you see on LinkedIn and a lot of these content platforms, everything's you play it pretty safe, like this is kind of predictable. You know, it's like driving, I don't know Geo Metro, I don't even think they make those anymore, but it's like a safe, reliable That's so old. But, you know, just like a it's like a safe car, it'll get you to work, and it's fine, and no one's gonna notice you, but it'll do the thing. Like, if you're posting video content regularly, and it's decent, like, you'll get something out of that. But you know, if you actually want to, like, I don't know, drive with pizzazz and get people to actually notice you and look at you and have some fun and, you know, make the drive exciting. You know, then you got to push it. It's got to be a little bit more risky and and most people just aren't willing to take the risk that I found. But more and more of the people, this is the thing that I found. I've never really pushed my own marketing in the past, so I really started pushing that, really this year, heavier. I started a little bit last year, but this year, I really started pushing into it. And so I'm sure that's the reason. But most of the people who are approaching me now are people who are like, no, we want to take these risks. Like, we get it. We've tried, like, the mediocre approach, and it's gotten us mediocre results, or no results. It's just been a waste of time and money. And money. And so they're ready to jump into the deep end, even though it's a little bit scarier, because it's like the things I was talking about before, it's like, well, I still want to have a professional approach and a professional image. So they're a little bit scared about that. But anyways, I think especially people who have gone down that road and tried the kind of normal content approach. Are the ones who are more ready to like, Okay, we got to change this up, because this is just isn't working,

Chris DuBois 13:27
right? This is a great example of the permissionless demo, too, where you attract people with the core service you offer, right? So now, like, people are watching these videos and they're saying, oh, I want those videos. And now when they go into a sales conversation, like, you know what you felt when you were watching those? Like, we can replicate that for your audience. Totally just makes a much stronger pitch, because they're on the call, like it worked on them. And so they want to say, like, oh, obviously it'll work for my audience too, right? And so it's like, this is one of those perfect examples of how you can use your own core service in order to attract people and then use that in your sales

Jason Calhoun 14:05
process exactly well. It also shows off the approach that I think is coming, that you're seeing more and more that you need to see the trend, or the shift in video content is away from videos that focus so much on your brand and focus more on you as a personality. And it's best when it comes from the top. You know, it's best when it comes from a founder or CEO, because they're the core of the company. And so if you can get them to start sharing content, or if you're a larger company and you have a sales team, or you have, like, a primary sales person that's going to jump on these sales calls, having them on camera is so if you can do a good job with it, you do kind of create this like, you know it's, it's like, your favorite YouTuber, or your favorite, I don't know somebody, follow on tick tock. You feel like you know them, and you kind of become a fan of them. You just like them. You like their personality, if you do a good job with it. So when you get on the call, like, this is what I found to be true. So the clients I'm talking with now, they hop on the call and they're they're already hooked. They're like, I want to work with you. Because they feel like they know you. They get your personality. They like it. So I think pushing that direction of getting the face of your company you know, whoever that's going to be, like, I said, if you jump on a sales call, whoever that person is, that a potential buyer, a customer is going to connect with, getting them on camera, to connect with the people before you even get on that sales call, can make a world of a difference.

Chris DuBois 15:28
What? There's a challenge there, right? With, yeah, team to be able to do it as well, yeah. And this is kind of even just separate from, I think, CEO for smaller organizations, and so, like, once you go public, probably, like, now you got a board, you got to, like, keep the appearance of before then, yeah, forget those people. Yeah, they're but like, with getting a team, how would you recommend talking to your sales team, talking to your marketing team, saying, hey, all of you should be on doing some of this footage, right? Like, let's, let's get you all out of there. I feel like the challenge on two sides. One, getting them to do it, to understand the importance of building up that brand. Second, how do you not like? The worry as a leader is often going to be they're going to get poached if they start doing awesome content and they get like this, this huge like brand, like personality right out there on social media, is a good chance someone else goes and offers them more money to be able to do it for

Jason Calhoun 16:22
them, yeah, which is probably true. That's so stupid to me, though, if that's the case, because, like, you want so if you want somebody who's so good, everybody else wants them. I mean, you want mediocre players on your team that nobody else wants. Like, okay, yeah. I mean, I think it's true, man, if you can get everyone on your team so good that everybody else wants them. Jeez, you're probably doing really well, and then you just got to figure out how to keep them. But I think that the approach isn't so much finding a bunch of people, like having your entire sales team do this. It's more about finding one person on your team, or hire somebody that can be the face of your company, but ideally it is somebody that actually works for your company that you're going to be communicating. Be communicating with. That's the ideal. It's not going to work for everybody, obviously, but having one person that becomes the face, the avatar for your company is what is going to connect people across all the social media platforms, especially at the top of the funnel and potentially the middle of the funnel, every client's a little different. Their goals are different, and that plays into the approach. For sure, this doesn't work for everybody. There's a lot of different approaches and ways of of doing something like this, just depending on, you know, like I said, who they're trying to reach, and what their market is, and all of that. But at the top of the funnel. I still think ideally, if you can get the person who you're going to be speaking with on a sales call, and they're the ones that you've been, you've seen, you've been seeing content from them, that's really good. It's amazing how effective that can be, right? Maybe easier than just having generic content about your company with generic B roll and no one's actually going to watch it, yeah, nobody's going to watch or, I've seen a lot of companies who just have a ton of different people, you know, they'll try to build a subscriber base on like YouTube or something, and they have every video somebody different, you know, they're highlighting somebody in their company. It's like nobody people follow people and personality, you know, so, but I feel like that's something that more and more people I don't know, I don't know if that's actually true in my world. I feel like more and more people are moving that direction. But I don't know if that's because my content is just, you know, finding those people, or if it's true across the board that there are more and more people who are moving that direction. You probably know more than me, because you you're in this world a little bit more and talk to a lot

Chris DuBois 18:37
more people. No, I think I would see that as well. I don't know that anyone follows an agency specifically, like they follow the individuals who are posting the content from that agency? Yeah? Yeah. I think I don't know any company pages that are doing really well right now, like on LinkedIn. I think it's all, yeah,

Jason Calhoun 18:55
exactly, unless you're like Apple or something where your brand itself is a personality. It takes a long time to get there, you know. And so most brands aren't there. Nobody cares about your cool colors or your brand. I mean, it's not that that's not important. That certainly is important for the personality, but as far as content goes, you know, that's that's hard to get people to stick to that, to your core values, your message, you know.

Chris DuBois 19:17
So I want to talk about your offer now, because I don't know. Do you see yourself as an agency first? Or, like, no.

Jason Calhoun 19:26
I mean, I probably am, maybe technically, but I'm really trying to get away from the agency, like, name and rapper, because I think it has a bad rap. Like, I don't want to work with agencies, you know, so I don't know what. I'm very, very tiny, one man agency, maybe with a couple people on the side. Yeah? Boutique, boutique, yeah.

Chris DuBois 19:45
So you, for anyone who doesn't know, you have this unlimited video editing offer, and obviously that's there's constraints on that in order to be able to facilitate it. But I've had some clients even who have considered doing something like this, but there's like. A lack of understanding on how do you actually execute for an offer like this? And so I want to pick your brain on some of these, these things like, how do you maintain the quality of all of these edits? When you're basically telling the client, I'll take as many edits as you got, right? We'll do one at a time, or however you have it set up. But like, I guess, how do you maintain the quality when you're you have essentially an unlimited pool of time to be able to work from with this. Yeah,

Jason Calhoun 20:25
totally. It's that was a fear of mine when I first started it, because I came from the typical video production process, you know, like I said, where a client would pay a bunch of money for one video, and we work on it for a long time. So it's been a couple of things. One has been, for sure, AI tools. Whenever I say AI tools, people instantly think of AI generative video, and they're like, that's stupid. It's bad. But what I mean is more like using using tools outside of the generative tools, just to make me quicker. Like, for example, it used to be a client would send me, you know, five hours of footage, say, talking head footage, bunch of interviews, and we need to boil this down into a two and a half minute piece, and the client would let me know. Here's what we need to pull out of this. This is the message we want to get across. You know, used to just take days of combing through that footage, but today, like, I'll just create a transcript and throw it into a chat bot and and have it pull out the content that I need. It saves me literally days. The little things like that, little tools that have helped save a ton of time. That's what initially made me think, okay, maybe I could try this, like I really can put video content together quicker than I used to be able to because of these tools. But the other part, I probably like pulling behind, pulling the curtain. How do you say that? Pulling, pulling the curtain? What am I trying to say? That's it. That was, that was not that complicated, man, you're all videos.

Chris DuBois 21:53
I'm here for the words,

Jason Calhoun 21:57
yeah. So I've edited for a long time, which isn't, you know, a lot of editors have. I think that what a lot of people don't realize is you can edit videos pretty dang quick. I think a lot quicker than even editors want people to know, because I used to play this game for sure, it wasn't that long ago that videos did take a long time, mainly because of rendering. And that was always the excuse, like, I'm rendering. And so you use that for a long time, and even people outside of the video world just knew, like, oh yeah, I mean, you got to render. I don't know what that means. I just know it takes a long time to make these videos today. That's not the case. And after you've edited for a while, like, I've edited my whole life, you can a video that you may, you know, used to be like, you get kind of paid by the hour. You get billed by the project. So you couldn't do it overnight, you know, you had to show like, this is going to take a while. This is especially true. This is like, the point back to curtain. I found that this is just personally, and maybe it's just me, but I found that, especially in house video editors that you hire full time. They don't want to spend their days editing like a madman, so it works to their advantage to just kind of slow things down a little bit. And when they when a company comes to you with a video project, you know, it's like, it's going to take me, you know, this long. You know, videos take a while to make. The reality is that really found this to be true when once I broke out of, like, working for a company and you're working for especially the approach that I'm taking, the unlimited video approach, like it's the way my offer works. It's month to month, so a client can cancel next month if they're not happy with the service. So I'm in this world now where I've got to really push it and show them, like, look, I can really do a lot of content. So anyways, I guess, I guess. What I'm saying is that most video editors can edit a lot quicker than you probably realize, especially if they're full time on your team. So that's part of it. I could just do a lot more than I was before, and then the other side of it just kind of worked out naturally, like I am the primary editor. So every client I'm working on their projects, like personally. And so I have some clients that need a high quantity of video, but not so much a high quality. And so I have two packages, one at 3k one at 5k and so the 3k one, I let them know, like the quality is not going to be as good, but if you need a lot of videos, I use a lot more AI tools. So I have some clients that are in that camp, and then I have the other ones that need high quality video content. They tend to not need as many as they want good quality. So it kind of worked naturally, where I found like this, this natural blend that that worked pretty well, to where I didn't feel overwhelmed. And then I just kept adding clients until this was last year when I was last year was the first time I tried this approach. So it was kind of like I was discovering it and figuring it out as I go, but, but I just kept scaling up till I felt like, Okay, I'm at my cap now. And so now, going into this year, I'm trying to figure out how to scale it beyond just me, which is tricky, because the biggest selling point that I have is the quality. Quality side, because there's quite a few people who are doing the unlimited video offer, but most of them, you know, it's not, it's not great quality. So, so that's my biggest thing, is trying to figure out how to scale this thing and maybe bring some other people on even full time, but keep that quality. So that's been the trickiest thing,

Chris DuBois 25:17
right? So how do you kind of measure capacity for yourself to know, like, like, are clients having to make requests a certain like, a week out, at least, and for whatever content any made or no,

Jason Calhoun 25:30
the way it works, practical sense is I just, I worked through Trello same way as design joy. I got this whole idea from this guy, design joy. He did the same thing in the design space. So I just worked through Trello and clients will put in a request. They have one column where they put in video requests, one on top of another. The one at the top is the video that I'll pull over into the active column and I'll work at one video at a time, is technically how it works, so I'll work on that video. Once you approve it, it goes into the completed column, and then I'll pull the next one over. So it's one video at a time, but there have been situations where clients have multiple videos. They'll have one video that's like a long term video it might take us a month to work on, so I'll work on other videos in between, and then they just put in a deadline for it when they need it. And so it's just worked out weekly and almost daily, where I just go and check my Trello to see, you know, what projects have popped up and and just scaled slowly, you know? So I started with just a few clients to where that's like, this, this rhythm feels fine, and you get to know the rhythm and the pace of the client. They tend to need about the same number of videos each month. So once I figured out, like, Okay, this is comfortable, I would add one more. And then it was kind of scary, though. So I was like, I don't know what this client is going to need, but, but it worked out to where I just, I felt like, Okay, this is my natural cap. I can't, I can't realistically add any more and still keep the quality,

Chris DuBois 26:49
right. Yeah, I think that would be the hard part for most people to be able to like, okay, I can take on another client, but like, if they need a higher volume of videos like within this. So I guess you set like a turnaround time, like a guaranteed kind of turnaround time for a video, or

Jason Calhoun 27:10
No, I say most videos are turned around, at least with the rough cut within I think I say like two to four days or something like that, which tends to be true even on a longer project, I can usually get at least a rough cut. Least a rough cut pretty quick, within a day or two. So I just don't really describe, like, what's that rough cut going to be? Sometimes it's like, pretty rough, because this is a big project, and sometimes it's almost complete. The other thing I was going to say that does lend itself to me is like, I'll work with brands, and so once we get the first month of content out. I have a bunch of assets, you know, I have different animations, and I have their color grade down, and I understand their pacing and the messaging. So from that point on, it tends to get better and easy. On my end, it's easier because I can use a lot of the assets I created, you know, from the first month and reuse those, or just use them as templates, you know, to change them up for the next video,

Chris DuBois 28:00
right? So you're able to maintain quality while starting to do this at scale. How do you maintain creativity at scale?

Jason Calhoun 28:11
It's kind of been the same thing like I've done this long enough to where I look at the creative side as sort of just putting like to use automobiles as an example. Again, it's like the the underlying engine remains the same as to like, what works for video. You know, you kind of understand the basics of a video. You know, it's understanding your audience, having some kind of strategy, knowing the messaging, you know, all of those core foundational questions that you ask to build a good video, and understanding what funnel level this video is going to be for, is it top, to fill the funnels at middle, all of those things go into the core, and that's kind of the engine. And then the creative side is just like the wrapper around it, and it's figuring out, you know, like I have some, I guess you could say, tried and true methods, wrappers, that are at least good starting places depending on what kind of content it is, the trickiest content I think, to put a Creative wrapper around is when it is kind of a talking head and the person is just not funny and they're not good on camera. So it's just, you gotta, gotta get creative there. And if that's the case, and if it's not working, then I'll just say, let's try this body style for the car, you know, if you will, a different approach. So I think it's just time, and I have, like, I said, those standard bodies that I'll put over the engine that we could try out and test out and see which one seems to be best. And then once you start getting a little bit of data on, like, Okay, this is the general right approach. This is the right cover, or the right creative idea or approach for this video, then you can really start getting into the nuts and bolts and customizing it a little bit more for their audience, and tailoring it. It's just generally the approach I take.

Chris DuBois 29:50
Yeah, I'm thinking back to one of the I think it was one of your clients videos that you had done a little like promo reel on, but the where they send you a pdf. Up, and that was it. So, like, you kind of created a script and pulled, like, pulled the graphics, but like, animated stuff. And it was like, feel like, that's not something that, like, it takes another layer of creativity to be able to say, Okay, I only have a PDF from them, and I need to talk about X, Y and Z. What do I do? So funny,

Jason Calhoun 30:20
because I've heard that from a few people, and I was so hesitant to put that content out, because I thought, like, the end result of that video was so just like, eh, mediocre. But I thought it was like, I did start with just a PDF, but I've heard from so many people that were like, that was amazing. I can't believe you did that. I think it's just sort of like, you know, whatever niche you're in, or whatever your your skills are, you know, you to other people. It's like, very impressive. And you're like, how do you do this? But you do it every day. So you're just like, I don't like, I don't, I don't think that's really that impressive. It's just, I guess, the way your brain starts to think and work over the years, and it's just not really that difficult for you in some sense, that sounds so arrogant. It's not difficult for me to come up with creative ideas. But, yeah, you know, you just do it long enough, and you do it long enough and you just kind of have a toy box of stuff to pull out, and you're not even thinking about

Chris DuBois 31:16
it well. And that's, I guess, the the definition, or how I at least define expertise, is the ability to spot patterns faster than anyone else like you. You've seen this so many times that you know what comes next, right and how to do this, and you can just look at something and say, Yeah, that's it. I jumped to some another agency coach, or a guy who was just getting into agency coaching, reach out and just want to chat with me on LinkedIn. And I just immediately say, Hey, man, your offer is not going to work because you're not targeted. And I was able to work in like a five minute conversation with him there. I gave him the problem statement that he needs to make in order to attract agencies and be able to go. And his message back was just, you're really good at this. I was like, Oh, awesome. Thanks. Like, but it was like, I realized afterwards, like, okay, yeah, I've done this enough times that I can go into a meeting and stuff, and just like, I see these things that are popping up, and it's like, this is how it works, and that's essentially what you're doing with video editing. Yeah, get that many reps true.

Jason Calhoun 32:16
Then you wonder, what makes it difficult? Because then you would think that that would be the case when you're hiring somebody, you're trying to get some staffing, and so often you'll get people who it seems like you should know this, and it just doesn't work. I don't know what the case is there, if they just are no experience. Oh yeah. So

Chris DuBois 32:34
there is a huge difference between 10 years of experience and one year of experience 10 times. And when I was hiring, I I would get people who were like, filling head of marketing or CMO roles who wanted to work at our agency, and it was just so they had no results. They were just doing the same, like few tasks, not actually getting better at the SAS and trying to develop, just doing some work. And those who stood out were the ones who were actually on like they had their own growth plan, and like they were trying to continuously develop their skills and keep getting better and hone them, versus the ones who were just in it's like, I want to say, just a repetitive mode, but it wasn't the positive type of repetition, where you actually learn faster. It was just like they were doing it to check a box and not actually reflecting on what they were doing. And I think that is extremely common. People are just there. They're collecting a paycheck, and they're checking the box based off what they need to do, and they have all the opportunity in the world to really double down and just learn that skill based off those those repetitive tasks, and they're not taking them. And a lot of times now, people are finding those repetitive tasks, or some of the first ones people are using AI, you know, to replace and so, which is fine, but you got to learn, like, the skills and stuff in order to understand what, what does good look like with this? And so, yeah, I can go repeat this, and I can use AI to repeat it, but if I don't know what a great example of done looks like here, and AI could be completely messing with me, and I'm gonna get a terrible result later. But if you've done the reps and you've actually learned from them, right, you've gotten those 10 years of experience, not 10 years or one year, 10 times, I think that's what really separates like those a players from the rest of the pack. I

Jason Calhoun 34:18
felt like too. I wonder if this goes along with that, if you would find this to be true, but those who have pursued their their niche, their their skill set, whatever it is they're trying to do in the world, those who have tried to approach it from like an entrepreneurial mindset, where they've tried to make this thing work on their own, it seems like, at least in my experience, when I moved out on my own, I learned so much more because it mattered. I had to learn it versus working for an employee. Yeah, you could work for somebody for 10 years, but I feel like you, it's very easy to stay status quo that entire time. Yeah. 100% Yeah, yeah, yeah. It makes

Chris DuBois 34:58
sense. Yeah. That's. I mean, one of the fastest ways. So I had a first sergeant in the Army who said there are two ways to learn anything fast law enforce trauma and repetition. And he's like, you get to choose, but when the stakes are higher, it makes it much easier to actually focus and put in the work there. It's why a lot of people will procrastinate a ton, and it's like, oh, I have to have this paper done by tomorrow, and then they just cram it all in really fast. You could have done this a month ago, right? Like, it would have been super easy to do it, but the stakes weren't high enough. You had other things that were more pressing, and so you focus on those, instead of instead of this, as soon as you raise the stakes, boom, you're in so, so

Jason Calhoun 35:37
true. Yeah, that's exactly it. That's funny. I've kind of thought about that just in my own experience, I was like, dang, like, doing this on my own, it is, like, you just learned so much more. But, you know, I don't, I don't really talk to a ton of other people in the same space. I probably should. That's interesting hearing from your perspective

Chris DuBois 35:54
though. Middle mastermind, yeah, I've taken on projects before just to raise the stakes for myself to see, how can I better address everything within this like, how can I get faster at doing all my other normal systems? Because now I also have to manage this piece, and so it forces me to actually look at what I'm doing. And like, I had a period in the army where it was dead. There was just nothing going on. I literally had to write every note down in my notebook to make sure I could track everything. But then we'd have some of these faster pace times. And it was like, I just, I knew it. It was like someone could ask me, like, Hey, where's this unit at this time? And I would know exactly what was going on, who was running that unit. Like, what their, you know, task and purpose were, like, it's just it was in my head, and I don't know what turned on, but it's like the stakes were higher, right? Like, there you can't risk the mistakes. Versus when things are slow and you don't really have a need, it's like, yeah, whatever,

Jason Calhoun 36:47
yeah, 100% Yep, yeah. I found that be true for sure, just with the clients I work with, versus working for a company where I just, I just knew what the bar was. I knew I could hit this very easily. There was never a reason to push myself. But, man, as soon as it matters exactly what you're saying, the stakes are higher, because this client could cancel with you next month if you don't perform it changes it completely. Yeah,

Chris DuBois 37:11
definitely. So what's the 8020 for everybody if they're gonna, if someone is going to start doing video content today, what is that one step that, like that knocks over the first domino for everything else? Yeah.

Jason Calhoun 37:25
I mean, I really do think, I mean, this kind of, this is tooting my own horn, but I think it is finding the right person. The editing side of video is everything. It is at least 80% you know, because the concept, I can always tell people this, when I used to work a lot more on the production side and pre production side, you know, shooting and all of that, and editing was just part of it. And the editing side is, is literally where the video comes together, you know. So you have an idea for what the video is going to be before you start shooting. And it'll change when you go to shoot it, and it'll change dramatically when you actually cut it together and see it. So I continued over the years of working in video more and more toward the post production side, the editing side, just because I'm like, this is where the magic happens. This is where you can take you can completely alter the video entirely. You know, when you're cutting it, I feel like having somebody that you can use who isn't just like a good editor, like they can create cool, looking videos, that's, I mean, there's a lot of AI that can do that, but somebody who, really, I think, is able to think outside the box and enjoys, you know, approaching a video that isn't just following the status quo, I suppose, is really where I would, I would start and, and, I mean, there's a lot more, I suppose, but that that at the end of the day that can that really makes or breaks your video on whether it's going to be seen. And I'd say that's the 80%

Chris DuBois 38:53
awesome. So got two questions as we start wrapping this up. First one, what book you recommend every agency ownership read. I was

Jason Calhoun 39:02
thinking about that because you said the questions before, and I was like, Man, I wanted to throw out a bunch of, like, big name books that made me sound impressive. But I think, like, for me, the biggest thing that I least, you know personally, and the way that I've approached trying to grow this so long Saturn thing is books that grow me in areas that I need growth in. You know, because, like, especially if you own your own business, it is really hard to turn your brain off from thinking about the business that consumes so much of your time. So to me, to continue to try to develop that side of my brain with with books hasn't been so helpful. I feel like you really need to be a well rounded person to excel in whatever role you're taking on, especially your business. So I try to consume, I try to consume books that build up other areas of my life. And for me, there's like this book that really stood out to me. It's a super short book, and it's not. Written that well, but it's by Sean Whalen, who started lions, not sheep. I don't know if you know that guy, but he has a book called How to make shit happen. I think that's what it's called. And he, in this book, he explains this, this concept of he calls core four, which is just basically departmentalizing the different parts of your life. So I've broken that. I added a fifth element that I think is important, at least for me, that I try to focus on, which is, man, I totally lost them. It's your work, your relationships. I'm saying them out of order. So now it's all backwards. But basically your work, life, your relationships, spirits and physical fitness is that all of them anyway. So the idea is just to for me anyways, rather than focusing on, like, the work side, which I'm trying to turn off, I'll try to read books that build up my relationship with my wife and my family, or work on the physical side of my life, or something like that. But that book was super helpful for me just to lay out, like, how important it is to really focus on all the areas of your life, not just the work side. So I guess that's the one I would, I would say, really impacted me. I

Chris DuBois 41:11
definitely think it's underappreciated of just reading other stuff, even fiction, right? Like actually opening and it's, yeah, no kidding. I've had points where, like, I'll read, I'll be reading a fiction novel, and that, just for some reason, unlocks some thinking in my business. I'm like, oh, that's what I need to do. And it's that funny correlation, like, I don't know how it works, I think it's just giving your brain a break. I mean, it's the same as, like, playing guitar or some like grabbing like doing something creative, when you need to be focused on the analytical side in order to like. I don't think brains are actually right and left brain. I think they change. They got rid of that theory. But the

Jason Calhoun 41:48
idea of like, not, I don't know mine works.

Chris DuBois 41:51
You just get to like. It gives you a break from what you're currently doing so that you can refocus. And so it's true,

Jason Calhoun 41:57
I've never been into fiction so much. I've always like. I want to read self help. I want something that directly impacts some area of my some area of my life. But my son's really into fiction, and got me turned on to him. And it's so true. I'm like, what you can learn so much, exactly what you're saying from fiction. It's pretty amazing. Yeah, so I've definitely changed my reading over time and just read stuff more for fun. And then I'm like, I'm surprised at how much I can pull out of this into other aspects of my life. So

Chris DuBois 42:23
last question, Where can people find you?

Jason Calhoun 42:27
Oh, I guess probably my website. So long saturn.com, and then you can there's a, if you go to the let's chat part, it goes directly to me, probably the easiest way, most of my content I put on LinkedIn right now. So you can see, I

Chris DuBois 42:41
would strongly recommend everyone follow you on LinkedIn. Lot of great content. Again, it's what inspired this conversation and what got me to say, I need to have Jason on the podcast

Jason Calhoun 42:51
that he did. I appreciate it. This was fun. This was actually super enjoyable. Awesome.

Chris DuBois 42:56
You'd sound surprised, but I'll take it as well, man,

Jason Calhoun 42:59
because you'll get people that reach out and they're like, there's always, like, an ulterior motive, and you're kind of like, what is this actually about? Or they're just kind of odd or something. I'm always like, man, it's great when you meet people that are just like normal, good people doing good things out there. It's like, this is cool. It's fun. It's a it's a good thing. Well, I will

Chris DuBois 43:19
take it so thanks. Thanks for joining. Heck,

Jason Calhoun 43:23
yeah, thank you.

Chris DuBois 43:29
That's the show everyone. You can leave a rating and review, or you can do something that benefits. You click the link in the show notes to subscribe to agency forward on sub stack, you'll get weekly content, resources and links from around the internet to help you drive your agency forward. You.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai