Scaling Your Business Using Videos with Ray Karpuska

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Scaling Your Business Using Videos with Ray Karpuska

I’m here with Ray K. Ray, how are you doing?

I’m good.

Ray has been at it for years, worked with some of the biggest leaders out there, working with them on growing their sales. His weapon of choice is the video camera, using video to help scale businesses. Ray, we’re going to talk about all that. First, let’s take a gigantic step back. Talk to me about growing up. Were you a rebel? Were you a straight A student? Did you know you want to be an entrepreneur?

My story is not like the usual one. Basically, I left my home at fifteen. I had a big fallout with my parents. Our relationship went down. I didn’t have any examples whatsoever about business, about marketing. We are much like you, living with the people that are working all their lives and have no idea. I had no skills. At fifteen, I left my home. I went into culinary being a chef, but I found a computer the second year and that’s it. I knew that it’s going to be that. I learned pretty much everything. Without parents, you want to feel your power back again, you’d belong. Instantly I connected and felt that computers, graphics, all of that was my thing. I started learning video. At nineteen, I was planning suicide. The first thing I decided was I want to live. I had this moment where it was like, “I’m going to go or I’m going to stay.” I realized how much I want to live. I just didn’t know how. That’s why I was probably planning somehow to get away from it. I didn’t have skills. I tried to tumble. My idea about making in life was taking advantage of people, trying to somehow force things and you ruined the relationship, etc.

People are buying not what you’re selling. People are buying what they’re buying.

I was at the point where the second decision in my life I made was I’ll never ever again do anything that’s going to hurt people. I’m only going to contribute and instantly the secret came into my life, these amazing things have started happening. I started teaching that because they all came in with depression. The video was always part of my life. When I moved to UK probably about when I was 25. I couldn’t find any jobs. I was working as a security guard. I was always taking my CVs to animation video companies and nobody took me on. I was working factory jobs, taking trash out. I decided that was it. I’m never ever going to do anything that I don’t want. I became five days homeless. I slept in the car that I borrowed from my ex. I did one thing, and this is where my marketing and sales understanding came from. Before I left the night job, I was also working, taking leaflets out. I was putting for a window company.

I wanted to change my job and do what I want. I said, “I know so many things. I do graphics. I do videos. I know computers. I know how to fix them, all of the networks.” I printed everything. I had this idea I’m going to print it out and I’m going to take all these houses around where I live. I found the guy that connected through four or five connections. From that point, from living in the car and three years later, I’ve been working already with Russell Brunson, Jordan Belfort, the Wolf of Wall Street, Tony Robbins, Dan Kennedy, Bill Glazer, just to name those guys. That’s the short story about who I am, how I became. Along the way I had to learn because the first decision I made when I wanted to share with people this excitement, the things that I’m capable of, nobody cared. Everybody was always going into arguments with me or trying to prove. I need to make somehow people that they will come to me. They will ask for my help. They will pay me for my services. They will pay me for advice. That’s how basically marketing and sales came into my life and all these amazing people.

What makes a good marketer nowadays? What makes a good marketer back in 2015 probably isn’t the same as now. You’ve worked with some of the best. You’ve helped some of the best. What separates an average marketer from a good marketer?

It’s about psychology. It’s about understanding what people want, what people need. People are buying not what you’re selling, people are buying what they’re buying. You have to sell what they’re buying. That’s one of the key things. It looks like everything changes, but television doesn’t change. It changes the medium, the quality. Games, they don’t change. It’s complexity and all of that. If you look at marketing, even the best ones learn from somebody who never was on the internet, who was never doing even videos. They’re just writing copy. It was always messaging. When you think about video, that’s like one of the most important things. Video is a messaging that is wrapped in a different format. There’s a difference between the book and the movie, but the movie is usually based on the book and has the same story told in a different way.

What makes a good story?

Russell Brunson, when he was trying to understand how to develop stories, brought in somebody called Michael Hauge. He talked about two stories, two journeys every hero comes. If you look at any story in Hollywood, there’s always a story between the old personality that’s stuck somewhere and he’s on a journey that wants to achieve something, but there’s another journey happening. In Cars, he doesn’t win the race at the end. He actually stops at the end because it’s not what he wants. What he wants is to have friends. A great story is a transformation and shedding your skin pretty much. That’s the inner self. If somebody wants to achieve something, they had to become somebody. That’s basically how all the stories come about. It’s about being in this stuck place. There’s something that you need to do that needs to happen and this is what inspires people to go on the journey. The stories that were told from when we were little, it was always the stories. That’s what the thing, that format, because that’s what we used to.

Let’s say a sole entrepreneur out there, maybe they are a small business with three to ten people. How do they tell their story via video in a way that the audience will understand and resonate with?

I worked with Jordan Belfort and one thing I learned, selling, it looks like there are a lot of complicated things. You think about there’s like tonality. There’s how you look. There’s how you present yourself, the company. Behind all of that, there’s only one thing that drives that. There are three details of that. One is you have to show and convince people that you are like them. The second thing is you care. The third one is I’m the person to help you to fulfill your dreams. You have to achieve those three. If you think about like any business that’s not successful, either they don’t show that just like you, they don’t care and they are not the person. They don’t have expertise. They don’t have the qualifications. You don’t need to tell them, “Here’s our story and how we got the same thing you want, but also, here’s why we’re sharing this.” It’s not we’re going to share, “I’m so successful in eCommerce, now I’m going to share with people.” It doesn’t make sense like, “If you’re making this money, why would you need to show somebody?” You need to justify why you’re doing this because otherwise it’s bragging.

A great story is a transformation and shedding your skin pretty much.

Those are not effective videos. You’ve seen them out there. People bragging about how much money they make or whatever it is and that doesn’t convert. I agree.

The third one is about showing that you’re an expert. I don’t think LeBron James can teach you basketball well because there’s a coach for that. He was trained by a coach that he’s not the best probably in the basketball. He’s best at coaching. We also need to prove and show that you know the path. Do you think Warren Buffett will teach you how to be successful in business? He might show you the principles. It doesn’t mean maybe he doesn’t know his path, how to transfer that to somebody. This is a thing also you have to be careful. The person that makes a lot of money is not the person maybe to learn to make money from.

Most people, they’re shiny object effect especially with a working service business, “This guy has money, so he can pay.” No. Working with the best is just like the more money they make, the more they are going to be cautious about where they spend, the more they’re going to weigh the values, the pros and cons. Maybe the person that has the most money is the one that’s going to be stingy about his money, the less money you’re going to get from them. You have to think. Instead of like, “This guy has a lot of money.” No, you have to think what he buys. He’s going to pay for something that he values and you need to understand what he values. I would say don’t judge people. Don’t create those prejudice about whether he has money or not and that’s how they can make decisions based on.

Let’s talk about people that are making videos right now. Maybe they’re putting out a lot of content. What are some quick things that they can do to make their videos just better?

First of all, there are three types of videos. One is filmed videos. We have a camera phone and that’s like one type. The second one is animations. It’s something graphics. The third one is PowerPoint, keynote slides or that type of thing. The reason we use mainly PowerPoint-type of slides or animation because we don’t need footage. If you’re not making that, it’s hard to plan and get it and you have to pay for samples for videos. If you want to show, for example the Sahara Desert, you’re not going to go to Sahara Desert. You have to be cautious. We can take pictures and we can create or take video samples or clips from somewhere like videos, animations give us more freedom to tell the story. If you’re making just simple videos, a few things you want to do. One is you want to have a good lighting so it looks good.

The second thing is you want to have either a steady cam or simple tripod, so the frame is not moving. You want people to focus on the things that they have to see instead of all this jiggering, all noise. The third one is sound. It sounds different than just something. Even videos, we can buy it for $10. You can buy it for $15.You can buy a lapel mic, plug in your phone and that’s it. The sound on the phone, it could be good. With the iPhone, if you have a tripod, a good light and sound, they actually did a comparison. On the steady cam, they filmed with a $10,000 camera and the iPhone, it’s not much of a difference. If you get those things right, it’s like only professionals can see that difference. You don’t need that. Adding to the video is having a branding. That’s the most important thing. TV shows have a way, radio shows also have the jingle. You need to create some branding.

Any last tips about video?

The most important thing is a lot of people coming into this industry now, especially marketing online, everybody’s teaching webinars and NCL, putting out videos on Facebook. You have to think about when there was no video, what was the main thing? It was always the SEO because somebody is searching for a business. There are only two ways people can find you. One is they’re searching physically for something or they’re searching mentally. You need to reach them out. If you’re doing videos, for example, the best strategy would be if you’re using Facebook Live, for example on iPhone. I have an iPhone. You can save the video after the live is finished. You can save it on your phone. With the app on the phone, you can add your jingle, upload it to YouTube and name it correctly with the keywords. That’s how people are going to find it.

If you have 1,000 likes on your Facebook fan page, only like 100, maybe 200 at the most will see. If it’s not interesting, people won’t comment. You only get 200 people watch it. That’s not searchable on YouTube when you put it. It’s also on Google. You can find it. It looks different. It’s a video thumbnail instead of the link. The thing we always do when it comes to the business are two things. One is we’ll look at what type of keywords are there so we can start focusing on those to dominate the Google first page. We do with video on YouTube, on other sites, doing video SEO work. Even a simple one can make a difference because most companies, they don’t do that. If you look at most companies when they do great videos, they don’t name them correctly, so they’re not searchable. On Facebook, with the videos, we do giveaways. We give away to any business. We help and give away the first product for free. The way we do that, we basically create comments from that. We use chatbots to send the messages and build the audiences.

Ray, thanks so much. Where can people find out more about you and what are you excited about?

At Funnel Hacking Live, we did an insane, amazing video. We got Dean Graziosi, Billy Gene, Vince Reed create the video. I put together a process how we basically took from the idea level when Russell Brunson came to us saying we have this crazy idea about design. It was like Thanos and Mark Zuckerberg combined. We’re going to do this video. I made people disappear. I brought an ax to the stage. It was crazy. I put together a step-by-step process of how we took from this idea level to the final video. I know 4,500 people just in the event alone were watching five screens and what it took, how we got people, voiceovers, frameworks, everything. Pretty much that anybody can take this process and build out similar videos or any type of videos. They know exactly what’s the framework, how to save time and energy on that. That’s one of the most amazing things for me now because I can share what I’ve been doing behind the scenes most of the time. I’m looking to the next event and create something even crazier. It will be 3D. It will be fun, a short 3D movie with Russell and other people.

Thanks so much for coming on.

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About Ray Karpuska

Ray Karpuska is the owner of Ray Animation, where he creates high converting sales videos for digital businesses and entrepreneurs.