Todd Hartley: How to Hack Your Customer’s Attention with Video

Disclaimer: Transcripts were generated automatically and may contain inaccuracies and errors.

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Mr. Todd Hartley. Thanks for jumping on learning from others. How are you doing in your well and the office there? Awesome man. Thanks for having me. This is great. Yeah. So do you, so the people that are listening that can’t see, um, he’s got this awesome workspace and he’s just all there by himself. Like, do you just, have you did a video the other day seeing it?

Was that the song you sang? Yeah, my way through the office. You just had in there by like, do you do some days at home or what’s, what’s the deal going in there, Penn so much for this big, beautiful office and you to get your money’s worth? Yeah, I mean, there’s nobody here. One, one guy will come in. Our head of sales will come in for like three days a week.

But besides that, I just don’t have the heart. I’m only like five minute drive from the house and I need to get out and do something too in this. Covidien world. So why not go to the office and, and, and use it before I lose it. Yeah. You know, you know, what’s interesting. And, and this, this is actually relevant to the listeners.

Um, so like we were hit before we jumped on hit record, we were talking about how a lot of listeners are like startups and early stage entrepreneurs. And. Out of my 13 years in being an entrepreneur for the most part, I’ve worked at home like I’ve owned commercial buildings. Like it didn’t entice me enough to be there.

So I sold those. But the one thing that I do miss is like you say in five minute drive is that five minute drive home because when I’m at home and I, you know, I got my dedicated workspace. I can put my head down and I can grind it. But then I go upstairs and the kids are like, dad, let’s go downstairs.

And I’m like, I just, I just freaking came from dad. And that five minute drive was like, The world just to mentally detach and go into a different mode. It’s important. When I was in Los Angeles working at iHeart radio and the premier radio network, my daily commute was three hours round trip. So I like giggle.

I giggled doin a little five minute drive. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. I actually want to ask about iHeart radio, but before that we gotta do our normal two questions. So question number one is why are we listening to you? What’s your, what’s your background? What are you gonna teach us today? Uh, I’m a rockstar in remote selling and really how to use video in this new world to convince and convert remotely and use your marketing assets and your sales team to create their own videos.

So your company can convince a convert faster. That’s me is, is the remote. Mentioned in that description is I assume, obviously you’ve always been a rockstar cells, but have you niched it down even more with the whole virus thing and emphasized on the remote angle? It’s funny you say this, but I I’ve been in this space for 10 years and.

It just became really trendy at the beginning, teaching people that yeah. And you know, the faster they use visuals when they’re selling and that they follow up appropriately and create a personalized video in every stage of the process. Or just to answer questions or even submit a proposal, you’re going to get so many more yeses.

And then once COVID happened, people started beaten down by the way. Yeah. You’ve been preaching the gospel about that for 10 years. Can you help us? We’re screwed. Oh yeah. Yeah. I remember you talking about that. All right. Kay. Before we talk about all those awesome things, uh, let’s talk about what you suck at.

What do you suck at Todd? Yeah, I’m not good at things I’m not interested in. I mean, just in all candor, if I’m not interested in something, like I tune it all out. I, I was, um, I had multiple learning disabilities growing up. One of them attention disorders to this day. If I have a meeting with our controller or our CPA or CFO, They must think, but I’m just not really that interested in, in the day to day numbers of the business.

And I really should be, we were crushing it and we’re doing better than we’ve ever done before, but it isn’t interesting to me. How do you check out, like, what’s your transition because I’ve, I’ve, I’ve been more definitive about like, identifying that with myself that I just don’t like small talk, like. I can’t do small talk just for small talk.

Like how you doing? I’m all right. What’s new. What’s new with you. I just can’t do it. I’ll do it. I don’t want to. Right. So how do you check out? Like, do you just straight up, it’s easy for somebody with attention disorders to check out. Maybe the question should be, how do you check back in once you checked that out in a ride, along with it, and then like you said, the people are like, man, Todd just must hate us and he isn’t caring or do you just, or did you just bring it to the table and be like, guys, I’m not interested.

Um, no, I sit through the meetings and I follow, but they’re jumping online so quickly through the profit and loss statement that, uh, with dyslexia, it’s really hard to keep up also. So I keep up and I follow along and I know what they’re talking about, but I’m looking for jokes and phonies. I really am like, that’s how I’m staying in was, is just finding things that are funny.

What, um, so have you found that those learning disabilities, um, have become a superpower in, in some ways in every way? And, uh, you know, I, here’s how I look at it. Um, I went through my own disorders with attention and now as a marketer, I hack the attention of buyers all over the world. And as a speaker, which I also do as part of my professional life, I’m hacking audience’s attention all the time.

And I recognize that if I give people just a few moments, I’m going to lose them. So I have to tell compelling stories. I have to be funny and engaging, and I have to make everything hyper relevant to that audience member so they can apply it and it could be massive value in their life. How far into your journey, did you realize that, that you could be strategic about it?

Oh, that’s a good question. Maybe when I started dating,

that makes sense that, uh, the, the, what is it, um, mother of invention is necessity mentioned then the Tony Robbins quote, which is, um, repetition is the mother of skill. And so. Both of those to me are like an essential element. It’s like the more you do things, the better you get. And before you know it, I mean, sales is ultimately the same way too.

And it’s about relationships and understanding people and making eye contact and demonstrating trustworthiness and being able to deliver it’s all the same base level skills. Yeah. Speaking of Tony Robinson Robins, give us the highlight reel, like, you know, what have you accomplished? Um, what are the types of projects you work on?

What are the types of people you work with? Yep. So Tony is a client of mine. Uh, we’ve done projects for Justin Timberlake and our other clients are like home Depot and D Anderson, AAA. Um, 23 and me the genetics juggernaut. And you know, we’ve got about a hundred clients, but, uh, for Tony, I can’t tell you what I did for him or do for him, but I can tell you on my speaking side, cause I’m one of the speakers I’ve been hosting a series of webinars during COVID for him.

He actually reached out. Like the first week of March, right at the beginning of COVID and asked me if I could start teaching his clients how to sell faster in this new world. And as everybody was running around trying to hoard toilet paper and to put my head down and write a training module for his client, I answer his website.

And that just got me started on the path of, of being out there and doing some speaking events. My last webinar you’ll love this for him. Um, for the full one hour, I retain 93.6% and the audience boom. And that’s about attention hacking through the whole process, right? Be hyper relevant, ad message value, keep moving.

So people are interested. And for me as somebody who is teaching something that isn’t, you know, it’s not the easiest thing to learn, but if I can make it interesting for people knowing that we all struggle in our own ways with attention disorders, then. Uh, then I think that’s a huge win. All right, Todd.

So I’m a listener and I’m like, wow, that’s really cool that you work with Tony Robbins and I want to skip. All of the learning processes and just work with big people. How did you get to work with big people? Right? I imagine it’s you, you can’t skip all that stuff. How did you get to where you’re at? Yeah, that’s a good question.

The let’s take the Justin Timberlake one as an example, the Justin Timberlake one happened, um, Guy at gym at my gym. And you could tell just by looking at me that I’m ripped,

but guy at gym who I’d keep seeing, um, I’m, uh, I’m a people person. I know you mentioned you’re not much of a small talker, but I think people who ice break conversations also create their own opportunities more than others. So I talk with people I say, hello, ask them how they’re doing. And I’ve started talking to a guy and he told me he was an investor in a medical company.

And so I’ve got a lot of clients in medical space. So we started bonding and then like maybe a couple of months later, he said, Hey, I’m an investor on a Justin Timberlake project. Can I introduce you to the team because they have needs for you? That’s how that one got started. The Tony one actually really, um, Really interesting.

So I got a, uh, a friend from college, a fraternity brother reached out to me and said, Hey, I’m going to be in Scottsdale. That’s where I’m located. And can I stop by and say, hi, I’d like to pick your brain. So he, um, approached me and he said, I’m working on this little side business with a buddy and can you help us lay out the digital strategy?

So right then that day we laid out the digital strategy and then. I didn’t think anything much of it. And then a year later he told me he’s been watching my videos online and that first project that I stenciled out for him, uh, did gangbusters and he’s, um, on Tony’s team, one of the senior leaders, they’re looking for a marketing speaker that talks about video and dah, dah, dah, can I introduce you?

So that’s how that whole thing got started. And within just a couple of days, I’m at. Unleash the power within and the first seat getting the full Tony Robbins experience. And from there, I went to business mastery and from business mastery, and that was like a couple of weeks later. My company’s revenue took off.

We did 76% more revenue in the next quarter, two quarters. And it prepared us to be able to kind of, I don’t want to say kind of cruise through the pandemic because we had enough of a safety net. And for the first time in my career, I wasn’t. Uh, freaking out on the money side because we just took care of business and continue to service people through it all.

Yeah. So much of that I can relate to. And I’ve I’ve actually, I don’t, I don’t think I’ve shared this story with you, but I know the listeners have heard it, but like when I started working with the Utah jazz retail division, it was almost the same thing. Like. I had, I did a post online and then this guy happened to be local and he said, Hey, let’s meet up.

I ended up chatting with them and then I don’t sell them. I go in, I educate. And they say, you know, here’s, here’s the SEO world. Here’s the pros, here’s the cons. And then they’re like, all right, let’s do it. So then, you know, within a week of a post. Client number one, client number one week of working with them says, Hey, I wanna introduce you to my neighbor, your site number two.

And then within a week of working with that guy, they said, Hey, I want to introduce you to the jazz client. Number three, like within a month of just making a post without expecting anything in return. And maybe talk about that a little a little bit, because in addition to your one story, I know you’re a big proponent of that as well.

Yeah, I think my, you know, my grandfather used to always say to me, people do business with people they have relationships with, so you always have to be in the business of developing relationships. And, uh, and, and I think that’s how it goes. It’s like if you treat people well, like really well, they will happily brag about you, to their friends.

And part of the marketing mix is, and you’re really good at this. I do this same thing as. Uh, I like to put up content regularly because it’s important for me to stay top of mind. Top of mind, I am the more, my friends and followers and believers introduced me the next time. They’re in a conversation with somebody who needs my services.

I’m already sitting right there top of mind, and that allows me to be able to scale a, an agency. Along with our clients when they graduate and get a promotion to a new company, they’d bring them. It’s just, yeah. I mean, it’s all relationships. Yeah. I can, I often comment that I could probably take like one of those, like CSI crime scene boards, where you take a piece of yarn and you go from one and I’m like, here’s client one to two to three to five to 10, 12, and I can connect 90% of the people.

So dude, how much time do you put in a video on, uh, like you talking about. Staying top of mind and doing things on social media. How often are you doing video? Well, so like, you know that, um, if I’m, if I’m dropping a knowledge bomb, um, I’m, uh, this is just like something I’m going to be working on for a speech or for my Todd cast.

And, um, when I get one of those knowledge bombs, Often I can just rattle it off the top of my head and I may take four or five takes. If it’s more difficult, I may take 40 takes. And what I don’t do is I don’t beat myself up in the process like you and I are both broadcasters, former broadcasters. And, um, and I know that you have to put in the reps in order to get something amazing.

You gotta be a polishing stone going down the river. So, um, you know, um, there are times where I crank it out. And I do it in one take. And there are other times where it takes a little while, but nobody should ever know that. Like people should just think that that’s the way it always is with me. And so when I pump up video out, like, you know, that one where I went through the office, singing the scene, Celine Dion song all by myself.

Um, I, that one was three takes and the other ones were. Good decent length too. Yeah, I’m just goofing off. Right. And sometimes I’ll use a teleprompter inside my phone. If I’m. If I want to get data out, like I’ve got a lot of data that I need to communicate and being dyslexic, I might screw it up. So I might drop a script into a teleprompter into my phone.

And as I’m reading it, get myself to the point where I’m adding more personality or I’m freelancing my way comedically through it. So it feels more natural. And then there are other times where I’m going to, um, use my phone or I’m going to put my slides up. And I’m going to teach through my slides on the screen and all those are pretty easy.

The more you do it, the easier it goes. I would probably do a video every day gay or something close to the hand. Yeah. So let’s talk about, so we got, the listeners are saying, all right, all this stuff sounds super cool. Todd, I understand your, your expertise now. Um, you’ve done these amazing things, but I’m, I’m new to this.

Like where do I start? Like w what advice can you give out here? Well, the first thing I would recommend is don’t start by getting in front of the camera and everything starts with strategy at the beginning. I want you to do no where you want people to go and what action they want. You want them to take before you start creating your videos.

So, um, typically, you know, you’re going to want to give them a call to action at the end of the video, where they go and do something for more information. So when I’m doing this, I’m creating a landing page first. Because I want to use social. I call the zone one where they discover me and the whole purpose of zone one is to build trust, gain, influence, and get them to go over to zone two.

Where do they go through some type of a journey, a landing page on my site. Okay zone, one’s going to be zone. One’s going to be social zone two will be your site. And, um, and when they get to my site, I need to make sure that that audience is hyper related to the page that I’m sending them to. So if we’re the Utah jazz, as an example, we’re going to.

He’s people are interest people with a video or something about the jazz and take them to a landing page. That’s about the jazz. And then that way you’re keeping people interested. If you don’t send them to a hyper-relevant page, your ad dollars and your conversion are going to be really poor. Yeah. Now it, I think that’s so important that people have to enter there.

There’s a psychological piece of trust that happens when they go from one piece of content to another. And if you deviate too far from that, there’s something that happens subliminally where they’re like, wait a second. Something’s off here. And then that’s what increases those? The bounce rate and decreases your conversions.

Yes. I want people to lean in. When they come to the, when I peak their interest, because I’m hyper relevant on social with something and they decide to take the leap and leave that social social site and then go to my website when they get to that landing page, I want them to lean in and go, Oh yeah, this is for me.

Yeah. So you have to make sure that that. Place you want them to arrive to is created before you start creating the videos. So right now, like everything I’m promoting that isn’t like motivation. Or self-help anything that’s about, about why or buzz related business. I’m driving people from social to a landing page about remote selling, because this is the season right now, where people are learning about remote selling.

So I have to make sure that my video that’s going to be about remote selling one way or another off of social moves people to a remote selling landing page where there’s more information, more value, and a reason for them. Do you want to schedule a meeting with me on, on those landing pages? Do you tend to do more short form or long form?

A video or text. So I want to answer both. Yeah. Okay, cool. On text, I use text sparingly to move people through the different spots that they need to go through in the decision making process. It’s like a logical thought sequence that people need. And when you understand the. Psychology. When we all go through a more buyers and recognizing that before COVID 82% of buyers said that they didn’t want to talk with a sales person until they’re ready to make a buying decision.

So people are, people are 57% through a buyer’s journey before they want to raise their hand. And so what I do on that page is I use tech sparingly because I know that people don’t read, it takes too much effort and people are four times more likely to watch video. So, whatever I’m writing on the page, I’m also going to have a video at the top of the page.

Before that text, that’s going to coalesce, what’s written there, and that’s how I optimize their transfer of information from my big brain into their brain. Do you have any statistics on, um, captions, uh, and you know, how many people listen to, uh, or watch a video without sound? Yeah. On social it’s 85% of videos are watched without the audio on this is like somebody that’s sitting there waiting to go in for their dental appointment.

Or maybe her like me hitting your back videos. And while you’re waiting at a red light and you’re five minute drive, so, you know, we all do this and, um, but on social, you really need to have the texts there and you’re going to get a much higher engagement if you put the closed captioning below. Yeah.

It’s crazy. Cause even a lot of these people that, um, That I’ve talked with that are funnel experts and paid ad experts. And they’ll S they understand the, the importance of video and they’ll do great production, and they don’t even think about the captions. And, and that’s why I was curious if the statistics are any different, because that’s what I remembered was a couple years ago, it was 80 something percent.

I didn’t know if it was more or less. Yeah. There are simple ways to do it. So I use a service called splasheo.com. Dude, I, Holy crap. I totally forgot about them. I used them years ago. Yeah. So they’re really good. Good Gideon. Who’s the owners. Great dude. Um, anybody that’s interested, I have a discount page where you get like four free videos and splasheo.com forward slash Hartley, which is my last name.

And, uh, and you just. I upload my video there, meaning I’ve already like cut it up into the gem that it’s going to be. And I select what the colors are that I want and what the title is, what I’m going to grab their attention with. And then within 24 hours later, Splasheo sends me the videos and I do that once a week and I send them off my five videos and then they get them right back to me.

And then the other cool thing is. I can also do it for multiple formats, so I could do it vertical and horizontal at the same time. They’ll even give me back the transcripts. So I can use that in my articles. And I use that just as a guide, like I copy and paste it, but then I read it right. It fits what I’m trying to do, but at least I don’t have to write the whole thing again.

That’s crazy. I just had a flood of flashbacks. Cause I remember when they very first came out. I can’t remember how I found them, but I used them for, for probably 18 months, something like that. And then, um, I totally forgot about them. I’m going to go check them out again. So cool. Well, um, what’s uh, so you’re growing through the whole coronavirus thing and things are moving forward.

What’s what’s next? What’s like the next level up for Todd. Well doing a lot of trainings right now, I’m specifically interested in salespeople. And by the way, I do trainings for marketing teams and salespeople, but I’m hypersensitive to the world that salespeople live in right now because salespeople don’t have physical access anymore.

And in most industries, they rely on that sales person be able to come in and give face-to-face guidance. Maybe it’s to a healthcare provider or maybe it’s to, uh, um, you know, in a B2B scenario. So I’m training salespeople, how to grab their phones and create their own videos that they follow up after meetings or follow up before meetings and showing them how to spy on the backend.

So they know who’s interested because what I’ve discovered is if you can track and there’s easy tools to do this, if you can track the attention span of your viewer. What you’re really getting is the digital body language of a buyer. So if somebody watches over 80% of your video, that’s an indicator of buyer’s interest.

Like for example, like I never watched knitting videos. I noticed like, seems like a shock, right? You don’t watch videos, but my mom crushes knitting videos cause she’s a buyer. So if somebody watches over 80%, what we do is we set up this for our, our, um, For salespeople that they get an alert on their phone right away when somebody goes past the 80% Mark, because in our experience, even at my office, when I started drinking my own Kool-Aid I collapsed a nine week sales cycle.

Which consists of like seven meetings on 1100 emails back and forth to schedule those meetings down into a three week sales cycle. I removed 66% of the sales time by educating people with video because I can transfer the knowledge into their head faster and it coalesces quicker. Now they know they have a need.

Yeah. Like, that’s really cool. Like I’m doing 200 people at a time and that’s really fun and large corporations. And, um, and so that I’m enjoying immensely because of salespeople are like, they’re, they’re struggling. A lot of them are choosing the big mistake to sit on their couch, take bong, hits, watch Netflix and wait for this thing go away.

And it isn’t going away anytime soon. Yeah. And even if even one. No, I like the world’s going to be different. What, what, um, all right, so we’ve got listeners and they’re saying, okay, this sounds great. Um, do I need to take out a second mortgage to afford all these tools or is it, is it, you know, can you streamline this and there’s real, there’s affordable options.

Yeah. I think there’s affordable options. So as a speaker, I’m one of my goals is to show everybody in the audience, like how easy it is to do it for virtually free. And, um, but you got to understand if your, if your business is about quality, you might want to consider investing in video. But I don’t think you have to invest in like my social videos.

Almost a hundred percent of them are filmed with my phone. Yeah. And I do that because one, I have a crew. I got people that go all over. We’d create 3000 client videos a year, but it’s stupid for me to waste money. I’m a frugal business owner. It’s stupid for anybody else to, we need to pencil out ROI in everything.

So I create these videos with my phone and the way I look at it is there are perishable videos and non-perishable. Perishable videos you’re gonna use once, twice, maybe three times, you’re going to go on social media. You might put it out in an email blast. You might use it as a teaser for a webinar that you’re hosting, whatever it is, but those are perishable.

Meaning they have a very short shelf life. Those are the ones you should be creating. With your phone, but if your business is about quality and you want to invest, or you are concerned about investing the non-perishable videos are the ones that are going to talk about your business and about your, your product or your solution.

And those are the ones that live on your website in key areas that a hundred percent of your traffic is going to go through, like your homepage, video, or a video that’s about a product or. Uh, a solution that you provide, those should be a little higher quality because we, we, I don’t want to do any breaking news here.

And we judge people by the quality of their video. We judge it by the audio. We judge them by the lighting, and then we. We project that poor quality onto what their service is. So if we can eliminate that in the videos that you’re going to have around, meaning they are non-perishable, they’re gonna be around for three to five years.

The last video wire buzz created for a company that’s been up there for a couple of years now and before that maybe three years, and we’re a video agency. So these are things that are around for while invest some money in it, and they will generate revenue for you because they’re a business tool. Do you find that there’s some value in the selfie phone videos on social media, because they are more relatable and I don’t want to say lower quality, but they’re not commercial.

Yeah, absolutely. And I, I think what we’re demonstrating. With videos on social when we are gaining influence and staying top of mind, we, we should be, if we’re doing it right, we should be demonstrating authenticity. Authenticity looks a little grainier, a little raw, or the, um, there’s gonna be some ums in some AHS along the way.

Maybe the message isn’t as tight and succinct. So all those things are important. I do caution people to not use a green screen. And don’t project like South beach behind you. Or I saw somebody today that was like, behind them was tall grass. Like they were a pillar and I saw somebody else that had waves going by.

And the reason I don’t like that, and we, you know, we, as I mentioned, we do so many videos a year and maybe like one or two or three videos out of our 3000 that this agency does a year. We’ll have a green screen. Yeah, I would recommend people don’t use a green screen because a green-screen signals to your viewer instantly a lack of authenticity.

You start thinking about their hair. I’m like, Damon’s hair looks great, but is that room with that cool guitar? Is that even real? Like, don’t let people even think that, just let them think. That you know, you are communicating and you’re being genuine with them. Totally agree. And I didn’t even go into the psychology of that, but even when I tried it just once when I started my video journey and, you know, I understand that a little bit different than a lot of other people, but when I started it, I felt fake.

And then, you know, myself feeling that, then I felt like I couldn’t deliver the messages as well. And I think if you go back into some of my videos, a couple of years ago, I might have like one or two that are still up where I had like a week. I mean, you can even see it right here. Like I got the backdrop thing still up there.

There’s no backup. There’s no backdrop on it because I tried it for like a week and I said, this is. This is just not real. I just can’t do this. And that’s why it’s great. Like when you’re doing your, your social videos, I think it’s Marley jacks who use this term with me and I love it. And she said you should be when you’re teaching people.

And it’s something you’ve already gone through in your life. Be, be comfortable teaching your scars and not your open wounds. And that’s also part of authenticity, you know, it’s like I talk to people all the time about my learning disabilities. Not because I want them to have pity for me. I do it because I know that I can teach them more about how they can better engage their target audience or better engage their prospects by displaying my own vulnerability and how I use that.

Right. In the process of hacking people’s attention. Yeah, it makes it, and it makes you more relatable too, because, because then you’re on the same team. We’re all train wrecks.

Well, thanks, Todd. We’re going to end on the note of you all being true, Todd. Yeah, it’s true though. Because a lot of times when I, um, When I prefer conversations like we’re having right now, because I think that people learn more from the relatable sides. Um, and there’s nothing wrong with the one, two, three, here’s your roadmap to success thing.

But people are going to internalize it better when they’re like, Oh, Todd’s like meeting. It’s like me. And you know, I’ve been there. He understands. So you have a really nice by the way, you have a very, um, a very nice, soft, demeanor. On camera. I know from when I interviewed you, I’m seeing it again here, and that gets people to lean in and invest more than the overblown, gregarious voice that is.

Is too powerful. And, you know, I don’t know if you’re, I’m sure you remember. Moviefone hi. And thank you for calling Moviefone like, there are people that do that in their video and that also isn’t authentic. Well, do you remember, you know, from you talking about iHeart radio, do you remember the radio term puking?

Like that’s puking? Yeah. Yeah. Um, every once in a while you’ll get on, um, you know, you do a lot of podcasts as well and, and. You and I, before we hit record both when I was on yours and you now on mine, it was just small talk, hit record go. But then you get the cringy ones where it’s a great person. You have a good conversation then, and as soon as they hit record, and then you just, for me, I just hesitate for a little bit and they go, all right, what are we getting into?

All right, Todd, I’m already, I’m always this passionate. That’s the weird thing about me. Like I’m I, you don’t hit record. I’m still over like flowing and excitable energy and thank God for it. I’m grateful. Yeah, no, these are the conversations I enjoy the most. And um, I appreciate your time. Can I ask you a question?

Yeah. I’m interested in page experience and what’s coming up down the road with, we Google it. Apparently we’ve got at least six months in. 2021, which is really hard to say, to, uh, get our act together. And start getting our, our companies in, um, in better shape for the new Google update. You have any insights on that?

Um, no. I mean the, the, so I know what you’re talking about because it’s like the, um, you know, are certain things about the fall then does this load, uh, within a certain amount of timeframe and as you know, all these technical things, but the reason why I say no is because, um, I always tell people don’t get caught up by the new shiny things with SEO because they, they all back into the same freaking things.

And it’s always like good user experience, good content, you know, intuitive navigation. So. Sure. Yeah. Like I had, I had a lead of the other day that I just said now, you know, we’re not gonna, we’re not going to engage together because they were obsessive about, I need, I need my, my. Paint my content paint window to be the certain thing.

And the certain dimension is. And the problem with that is you become so obsessed with. The fine details of the technical documentation. They ended up having a horrible website because yeah, I love it, dude. I mean, I love where you’re going because you’re, you’re, I’m the same way. I’m like just follow the rules, play the game, create really compelling content and provide great information.

In a way that people want to stay there longer and it’s usable, you know, multiple devices and so on, and the system will reward you and you don’t have to go black hat in order to get that, those same benefits. Well, here’s a simple way here. Here’s a simple comparison because basically what we’re talking about are new metrics.

Um, To to improve rankings, but let’s, let’s dumb it down even more. Okay. So a website, you add images, so it looks nice or video, right? You add visual stimulation. Well, those are going to slow down the website. So your alternative option is to have a text only website. Look how fast my website loads it loads and half a second, but it’s going to convert like crap.

So it’s the same thing with, you know, all the new fancy things that come along with this new page speed score. Sure. Yeah. Knock yourself out on getting over technical with it, but you’re going to, you’re going to end up detracting from the, just like you said, the authenticity or the message you’re trying to present or the user-friendliness of it.

So now I don’t even look at those new things when they come along. Yep. Cool. Love it. Todd Hartley. You’re the man. I want to give you the last few moments to tell our listeners how they can find out more about you and maybe they want to hire you. What’s what’s all that. Well, I can be found on LinkedIn I’m dropping knowledge bombs throughout the week, and also on my website wire buzz, w I R E B U Z z.com.

And the Todd cast drops every week. I think I’m on episode 250. 46 this week and we’re talking. Yeah, we’re talking about how you systematize your videos for your existing customers. You can tee up the next sale at accelerated rates. And that for me is like, there’s a lot of money on the table that businesses don’t even.

Realize, and haven’t learned to capture, and I’m a nerd for the optimization all the way through the process to help businesses grow like this. And, um, and that’s helped my business grow tremendously and I’m excited to help teach that to others. How, how 200 something episodes? How long, what, what does that put you in it?

Like. Three years, four years, something like that. You’ve been doing that, something like that. So I don’t know is the honest answer, but, um, maybe 2015, 2016, I don’t know, but I sure love doing it and I love teaching what I need to learn. And that’s part of the joy. I know you get it also is if you put yourself on a, on a consistent pattern of having to.

Uh, produce something that is worthy and valuable to other people by, you know, five years, you’re like an expert in your space and, you know, thank God you and I have both been in this space for a very long time. I think. What are you in like year 20 or something like that right now? Uh, I’ve been in design for 21 years.

SEL for 13? Yeah. Yeah, but it all comes together and you, you know, it’s like you you’re head and shoulders above other people because you have the design elements that come in with it. And I have those same type of a tapestry. The people that got started early when we all had to be Swiss, army knives are more valuable today than somebody who’s just, again, soon he knows how to do one thing.

Yeah. Yeah. It’s it’s, you know, it’s interesting. You bring that up is as I hire out, right. It’s super hard to find the, you know, because you and marketing know that video is not just hitting record and it’s like all these other things and design is all these other things and it’s yeah. I mean, what I always say is you’re not an expert until you’re an expert.

And so just having that broad experience makes you more valuable in so many different ways of marketing. Yeah. We’ve got it in Nvidia were a lot of people that are. The most important factor is not somebody who owns a camera. Okay. Like we all have cameras now it’s in our phone. The most important factor is can you move people through a buyer’s journey?

Can you be strategic about it? Can you tell a powerful story? Can you track on the back end? Like all those things come together. If somebody hires like a wedding videographer or something that person’s ill prepared in this. Online to be able to move somebody through a journey, they could strike emotions, but really anybody could do the emotion part.

This is about conversion and getting somebody to buy. Yeah. Yep. Totally agree. Well, I think we could go on forever. So ToddHartleywirebuzz.com. Thanks so much. Appreciate it. My pleasure. Thanks for having me.