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Bill Lampton Ph.D.
Yes, welcome to the biz communication show, I’m your host Bill Lampton the biz communication guy, once again sharing communication tips and strategies that will boost your business. When you and I learn winning words and ways. Today we have a marvelous guest, Mike Stewart, Mike Stewart is president and founder of stern internet solutions, and internet consulting agency and services company located in Nashville, Tennessee, and 1996. And that’s about the time I met him. In 1996, Mike became passionate about the future of the internet, and how small businesses could benefit from the web, if they just understood how to make it work for their company. And I’ll have to tell you, that’s what he has been doing ever since then. Since then, he has become very successful consulting with small business owners on how to set up their worldwide TV stations. And really, that’s what the internet is for us, and broadcast their unique marketing message to the world. Mike is constantly striving to be on the cutting edge of technology always searching for better, more efficient ways of achieving his goals might teach his his audiences and his clients the benefits of owning the right equipment, and utilizing it to record themselves to make quality multimedia, that can be marketed for high profits. Since 1997, as I say, I’ve been fortunate to be one of Mike’s coaching clients. And I’m exceptionally fortunate to welcome him now to the biz communication show. Hello, Mike Stewart.
Michael Stewart
I bill, I’m honored to be a part of your show. And so proud of how far you’ve come with creating this content that’s unique to you and want to talk about it. I want to see what questions you have for me see if you can stop me today.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
I don’t think I can stop my coach stump my mentor stump the guy who has helped so many 1000s of people both in person and on the internet. So I’m won’t even try to stump you. But let’s go back to what I mentioned at the outset. And that is that in around 1996, you You saw some things that the rest of us did not see. You saw the potential of the internet, not only for small businesses, but for large companies and for entrepreneurs as well. I know and you might go over this for a minute or two I know that you had a background and radio commercials, maybe even TV commercials what what was it that that gave you a special maybe Head Start and also piqued your interest and the internet for the rest of us
Michael Stewart
what? For my love of music. I just wanted to be involved with the creative process of music and be able to make a living and not not let my family down but not being able to be profitable make a living. So the way I knew I could make a living in music was radio and television advertising. And in 79, I started a recording studio and was a musician in my own studio, creating music for television and for radio, corporate clients, business clients, you know, you have the dream of being an artist in the music business. And I still have those dreams you never let those dreams go away. But but a real reality business. In fact, one of the statistics in the when I started 85% of all music recording and video was not entertainment, it was corporate uses. So I knew there was a market for people who were capable of creating that kind of content. And the only way you could make that kind of content was with very expensive professional equipment. Doing it yourself like you can today was just unheard of. And so I had 20 plus years experience at content creation in the audio and video world and making a living at it and being competitive in the Atlanta market. To where we did national TV shows we did national commercials week work with major brands like Home Depot, Georgia Pacific, Delta Airlines Chick fil A, I mean, we did all kinds of things. Coca Cola was a big client And Waffle House was one of my biggest clients. And I saw the internet, you know, the Internet was in its infancy in 1996. It was very slow. It was. It was, it was just this new mystery to the world. It’s like, what’s what is this internet thing? And in fact, in fact, I’ll have to tell you that funny inspiration for me was I was a big fan of late night TV, and I used to watch the David Letterman show back in the 90s. And David Letterman had Bill Gates as a guest on his show one night. And so it his smarter aleck, arrogant interview style, he said, So Bill, what’s the deal with this internet thing? So I thought, okay, here he’s asking Bill Gates, who’s at the time was a rock star still was a rock star of the Internet and computers, I thought, what’s his answer going to be? And I thought, he’s gonna say it’s the information superhighway, you will be able to buy things, you’ll be able to research information, I thought, all these things that he’s gonna say it was exciting about the internet. And the first thing he said out of his mouth is, you’ll be able to hear the radio on your computer. And that was when a light bulb went off in my head. And of course, Dave came back and he says, Well, Bill, why don’t you just listen to the radio on your radio, and everybody laughed, and but Bill was visionary enough to realize that the computer and the Internet were not computers and this mystery thing, it was a broadcast medium. It was a way to take an audio or video content, signal and transmit it from one device to another device. And so the future of what I understood for 20 years radio and television, I knew the future of audio and video in 1996 was going to be the internet, not just what we’d had up until that time, which was cabled transmission, which was in satellite transmissions, and then more importantly, had what was called terrestrial transmissions, you know, the radio towers had to have the, the ability to transmit wirelessly a signal. But there’s limitations to that, you know, wireless signals can only go so far cables, take an infrastructure to get the signal. And you know, and individuals can’t afford to be in, even though we still have all these technologies in place that were in place in the 90s. In the 80s, the individual didn’t have access to that type of technology. But because of the internet, it’s leveled the playing field, made it so affordable to create content that can reach the world. And so I said, Okay, what’s, what’s the roadblock for most people? Well, most folks don’t know what I know, which is productions, strategies, production techniques, production tools. So after that, David Letterman show I said, You know what, I am going to show the world how audio and ultimately, video is transmitted over the internet. And then of course, I had no idea at the time that the technologies that we’re going to come about to make it better and better. And now today, what is that 20 plus years, 25 years or so later? Streaming Video and Audio has replaced all the older technologies that the day and nobody saw, I didn’t see smartphones coming, you know, you know, there were cell phones. In fact, fix the first cell phone I got was a car phone that was attached to my car. And the only place you could use it was inside of the car had a little antenna on the back of the back in the car. And it was hardwired into the car. And I remember that when those things became portable, I remember all the different technologies and watching it progress. But when they when Steve Jobs was visionary enough to combine the internet with a phone and make it basically an internet computer that had a phone in it. That’s when this streaming audio video world has just exploded. So hopefully that’s a concise but pretty much span 25 years of my life.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
It’s so interesting to think what a quarter century has done, and the area of technology and how that has impacted our business and even our personal lives. As you said, one of the things I remember from way back when Mike was when we had to put w w in front of our URL. And I remember you saying that stood for World Wide waiting. Because you said as you come in at a minute ago, everything was quite slow then. And one of the memories that comes to mind for me from way back then was I remember my brother called me one day and said have you got email? Not sad mail? What’s that? And he said it’s electronic mail. I said did you get added at the post office. And it is just astounding. And also it’s very satisfying and rewarding, the changes and the improvements. And one of the things that I mentioned in your introduction is how, because of you, and because of technology advances, and because you can teach us how to do it. You mentioned a minute ago, the cost effectiveness, which we didn’t have 25 years ago. Now for a very small investment, who can’t become a video producer.
Michael Stewart
No, it’s the cell phones that pretty much every human being has one or two of them. In fact, the statistic I read recently, there are more cell phones than humans on the planet. have better television cameras in the phones, then network television broadcasters had 25 years ago, so the camera in your phone is a better production tool than existed 25 years ago. And then, of course, they’ve invented other tools slike what we’re using today, you know, webcams, you know, $60 Webcams have better fidelity to the image and to the sound than a television camera that costs 30 $40,000 in 1980. So the equipment costs had become almost negligible. And the delivery, the internet is worldwide. That’s what www did stand for a world wide web, yes, they realized that that was a waste of typing. So they made the the equipment, you can still put www and it’ll work but you don’t need it. But more importantly, the ability to create content is in the hands of everyone. But the motivation to overcome the roadblocks, the fears. You know, this is a lens of a camera on point, I’ve got my finger in front of it. So you can see, for those that are watching the video, it’s getting used to talking to an inanimate piece of plastic. And that’s a skill that comes with experience. And in communicating, you have done an amazing job of making people feel like you’re talking to him, you’re educating you care about them. And those are emotions that you can convey by making video content, whereas no other content other than audio or video content conveys so much information, that’s in addition to the verbiage or the text, or the or the substance of the subject. And so when you want to be an effective communicator, learn to use the tools that are available to you. And, you know, I always, when I see a brand new tool, you know, that allows people to create content that can be distributed around the world and build relationships. And of course, the business side of it is that when you build somebody that knows likes, and trusts you through this content, remind them how they can do business with you, and how they can spend money with you. And that’s the equation that pretty much anybody can use. I mean, we’ve seen it from pest control plumbing roofers, to consultants, to software developers, everybody can use the strategies of using audio and video content to build relationships, and then remind people how to do business with them. And now with the tools that exist today, we can lose some of those tools, maybe put links in, in your blog post, of where you can see these things. But it’s just an it’s an exciting technologically period to live in. And it’s amazing to me how many people come up with excuses why they don’t want to create video and audio content. Because nowadays, television and radio is not even so much the computer but it’s the cell phone. They’re a world of people that consume their news, their entertainment, their music, their whatever it is they want to consume, they’re getting off that cell phone because the cell phone is nothing more than a computer with a phone in it. It’s a television set. It’s a camera. It’s it’s all these devices rolled up into one small handheld device. And my monitor is if you’re going to market you have to market the cell phone. In fact, Google has a statistic 95% of the people that find you and grow to like you and do business with you found you on a cell phone. They didn’t find you on a computer. Oh, that’s pretty remarkable. So so that’s my excitement of it. And then if everybody is in agreement of that, and then it’s the next question is, what are the tools that make it simpler and easier and that’s, that’s one of my passions is is you know, like with our coaching over the years, you know, when there was a way that was popular five years ago, and then something comes along it, it just is much better than the old way of doing things. When I first started doing video, I used to have a joke on stage is like the hardest thing you’ll encounter is learning how to get the video off the camera onto your computer. That was and now all of that is that is so distant in the past that that’s not a concern anymore. What, what the biggest roadblock I see is people making the commitment to be consistent. And I give kudos to you, Bill, I told you be consistent, learn to use these tools. And by golly, you’re doing it.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
You know very well, Mike that I had many fears to overcome. And I remember you’re saying many times across the years, especially when you were conducting many in person. In person all day training seminars, I remember, you’re saying many times that the frustrating part of that to you was that you would spend an entire day you would make it as simple as possible, you would give people all of the guidelines. And you found out a few months later that only a very, very small percentage of people would take that information and use it and it does go back I think to the fear factor. And one of the one of the items that that I often think of is I’ve been producing YouTube videos since 2004. I looked at some of them recently, and I’m hoping nobody else looks at them. But it is a matter of like any skill that you’re you’re going to learn there, there are two things you need one, you need the right coach. And the second thing is you need the determination to go ahead and stumble it the first and make mistakes. Forgive yourself for that recognizes the top professionals are making mistakes too, and then move ahead with it. But I can understand how how you must have felt when you would you would have 300 people and attendance for a day or I remember when I went to have yours was a day and a half. And then two months later, very few people were putting them into action. Might. We’ve got more questions for you. We’ll be back in a minute. And I’ve been talking about your services. So let’s have you talk about mine.
Michael Stewart
Do you wish you felt competent about giving speeches? Do you want to deal with difficult people constructively? And what about becoming more persuasive in sales? Then keep listening now to Dr. Bill Lampton, he spent 20 years in management, so he knows the communication skills you need for success. I urge you to call the biz communication guide today for a no call. But very valuable 30 minute discussion about your communication challenges. Call now. 678-316-4300. Again, that’s 678-316-4300.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
I see no one who hears that. And if you happen to see it. That’s one of the many talents that Mike Stewart has, when I was wanting to expand my podcast and make it more professional. He said, Well, you need you need this 45 Second promos. So I gave him the suggested script for it. Next thing you know, there it is with Mike’s voice, the music, the picture, which those of you on video can see. It’s just remarkable. And so I’m just saying and my enthusiasm is not something I have to manufacture in talking about Mike’s services. He’s the guy he’s he is the go to guy. Mike, we started out years ago with you being the Internet audio guy because we were moving from print promotion, print advertising, to voice promotion, and advertising and marketing. And then we move with your help and help of other experts into video. So talk to us a couple of minutes about why every one of us should be doing video production, whether we are a solo act, whether we are a large corporation, whether we are a nonprofit organization, whatever we are, we ought to be doing video talk to us and you refer to this at the outset about how it’s much easier now and it’s much more cost effective. And tell us a little bit about how we could get into that if we’re already not doing video production and what equipment we need and And how can we learn it?
Michael Stewart
Well, the biggest thing that that people need to realize that internet video is a little more forgiving than broadcast video or television. Net network television, you’re not trying to make a television show, like you would see on a streaming platform or national network, you’re trying to build a know like trust factor with people who don’t know who you are, and they don’t know what your services and your skills and your passion are. So getting comfortable talking to a camera and capturing content that conveys that enthusiasm is is paramount for everyone. So first of all, getting comfortable talking to either to a cell phone, camera or webcam, because those are the two tools, you can do what’s called a video sales message. With a webcam, you can do it with a cell phone. And more and more people are getting accustomed to that because it appears to be real information. When people are passionate and convey and communicate the message you’re trying to get across, it’s more believable. And once again, you just you the more you do it, the better it gets, and the more people you can convert from strangers into customers. So that’s why there’s not a business in the world that can’t benefit from getting comfortable creating audio visual content. Audio is a lot simpler, because you don’t have to look at the camera. You don’t have to worry about you know, what you’re wearing lighting and those kinds of things. But you can gradually grow into all those things, just getting comfortable being articulate, and passionate about how your business is different than others. What sets you apart. What’s your elevator speech? You know, what? Why should somebody spend money with you? And people spend money with people they know, like and trust. And, you know, there’s been examples in broadcasts for years and years of how that psychology of the owner coming on and talking to people. Lea Eliana coca did it the fellow with the Men’s Wearhouse. You know, they weren’t actors, they weren’t Polish professionals or announcers. They were real people passionate about what they did for a living. Dave Thomas of Wendy’s is another great example. So that psychology means that a proportion of your video content doesn’t have to be expensive production. Fact, I was at a meeting yesterday, where one of the gentleman was involved with a national football franchise. And they said they spent hundreds of 1000s dollars on YouTube videos. And the video that gets the most views was shot on a cell phone in their hand. So production value. All be it be clear, be concise. You know, I don’t give you an example here. I don’t want my camera aimed like that.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
Yeah, can’t see my Yeah, that’s a mistake.
Michael Stewart
You don’t want to be like that. You just you know, I can’t help what my hair is. But hey, you know, it is what it is. But the point is, is you just pay attention you center yourself in the frame. If you can see here I have a professional microphone. I know Bill has one because he they range anywhere for a few bucks under 100 hours to this is a more professional podcast, studio microphone, but you don’t need that you can get by with a whole lot less expensive, but having the equipment. One of the most exciting software’s that I love these days that I do a majority of my production work is the very thing I recommended here to bill it’s called stream yard. Stream yard is a computer cloud network recording production to for audio and video. And you know when Bill learned it, it just opened up doors of making more content, especially what we’re doing today, interviewing interviewing people is one of the fastest easiest ways of building content. You ask questions to somebody who has expertise. And just like Bill’s doing with me right now. We’re creating content. And so that’s what I love about stream yard. The fact that you can throw a lower third text up like that, you know, that’s that’s called a ticker. I could say be sure to call bill at 678316430. I mean, you have all these abilities to do television. What were called assets, the assets of television, we’re low with our text, multiple images, music, sound effects, and narration or script and so forth. for 20 bucks a month, you can have a worldwide television network. Now, that doesn’t mean you’re going to get viewers, you have to earn those viewers by one viewer at a time. You know, that’s that’s one of the things that in television. Back when I was a kid, there were three networks.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
That’s right. And if you had to go outside and turn the antenna a little while before that might be,
Michael Stewart
right, it’s because it was terrestrial broadcasting, it was television and radio waves through the air. But the point we is is now the internet lets everybody have a television station. And there are people in the world that that, in fact, there’s a there’s a young man on YouTube called Mr. Beast, if you’ve never heard of Mr. Lot of people never heard of Mr. Beast, he has more viewers to his YouTube channel than Superbowls do. His channels worth over a billion dollars. And he does pretty much everything with a cell phone. He came out he just found his audience and built a massive following. So it can happen, because there’s no technical equipment is only a creative and a procrastination roadblock. If you’re, if you’re not willing to be creative and create what an audience would like, if you procrastinate and never do it, then it’s not going to happen. But if you’re consistent, and there’s an audience out there that loves what you do, then you can reach them. And that’s what the technology of today allows. And it’s done by the fact that cell phones and webcams and pretty In fact, I can see the top of your snowball microphone, right there. That’s what gives you good audio. And there are so many tools now that make television and radio production. Easy for everyone. Just you know, I used to say on stage, I can sell you a microphone, but I can’t make you say something intelligent into it.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
Absolutely.
Michael Stewart
So all right, any other?
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
Well, I would like to I’d like to bounce off of what you said about procrastination. I think the best definition I’ve ever heard of procrastination is that procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday. Yeah. Because you’re not going to get anywhere until you move forward might take just a couple of minutes to emphasize pleased that what we’re doing right now illustrates that the recording if you’ve got the right equipment, such as we have stream yard, you can record on video, but it also becomes a podcast.
Michael Stewart
Well, you know, one of the things that in internet marketing that I’ve heard other mentors tell me is the concept of repurposing content. In other words, you make one piece of content, and you want to repurpose it and a multitude of areas because you don’t decide how your audience consumes your content they do. So the fact that you can make one piece of content and if you’re cognizant of reminding folks that, hey, if you’re not seeing the visuals, you know, this is what I’m talking about, you know, and describing it, then stream yard. And really, it’s always been this way to strip the audio out of the video now has the ability to become text content, and become audio only content. So that’s what I love about streaming art is the fact that when we’re doing this one piece of content, we’re making videos for Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, we’re making audio for Apple, Spotify, Amazon, and Google. And we’re making a blog post that goes in Yahoo, Bing and Google search engines. So with one sweep, we’ve built nine key places to repurpose that content, which you didn’t have that 25 years ago, but today you do what a package. So it’s my it’s the ability to make, go ahead.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
No. Okay, I want to I don’t want to interrupt your sentence there.
Michael Stewart
Oh, it’s I was just saying repurposing is a powerful way to maximize the fungibility of your content.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
Mike, this has been fabulous as I knew it would be and those who joined us on the video portion and on the podcast portion, have gotten tips from the guy who has been the go to guy for a long time. So I know people will want to get in touch with you. Give us your contact information, please, Mike.
Michael Stewart
Well, the number one place fact I’m going to put it up as a lower third text is websites you control. That is my one of my business. I have multiple businesses, but websites, you control.com will give you my phone number and links to a lot of the different things that I do. And that’s probably the best content contact place that you can get in touch with if you can. In fact, if you can remember those three words, you can put them in Google or Yahoo or Bing, and I am optimized all over the world for three words, websites you control.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
And I need to emphasize that you have had worldwide audiences, I think, haven’t you spoken in England and Australia? Both do it? And am I right about that?
Michael Stewart
Yeah, back in my traveling days of speaking. i We did Australia quite a few times we did London, we’ve been all over the US and Canada, and actually went up into Indonesia. We did Malaysia, and Thailand. And so this concept of creating audio and video for the Internet has taken me all over the world, which I’m very blessed to have those memories. I’m doing more music these days. That’s why I’m in Nashville, Tennessee, in the Box Tops.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
Is that the name of your group? Yeah, the
Michael Stewart
Box Tops, you can go check us out@boxtops.com It’s just It’s my passion. I’ve always been I told you I got into this years ago because of music. And I love being around the music industry. And I love I think there’s a huge opportunity, teaching the music industry, these same strategies that that everyone struggles with.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
Mike, the final point I want to make and bouncing off of what you just said about these countries, very distant countries that you have spoken in, coached and taught people. We can do that now without ever getting on a plane. Because of technology. We’ve got a worldwide audience, we’ve got a worldwide classroom, don’t we?
Michael Stewart
Absolutely. did. You know travel has its fun elements. And it also has its tiring elements of security and airports and haven’t been fun for many years. But nowadays with technologies like zoom GoToMeeting, and now stream yard does webinars, I have, we have a mutual friend and client, he he got rid of everything but stream yard. And he does his coaching calls, he’s does his one on one coaching. He does every piece of content he creates and every connection with anybody in the world is done through this $20 A month technology. Because they can they you know, I can hit present my screen. And if I hit Share Screen, it’ll also affect I show you here, you see this quickly, I can show my computer, nothing up there, I can switch it to just the computer, I can switch it back to me and you, you can do that. I’m an admin of your account. Everybody can’t do this. But I have that you granted me that access, because there’s strategies that we do buy. And that’s one of the great things about stream yard is you can have a partner that can add manage your client and control that particular account. So the ability to teach coach train, communicate to the world with a webcam or microphone and a computer. And you can do it on a phone. It’s a little more complex than on the phone. But you could actually do all of this on a phone. I don’t like going on the phone, I like a screen a little bit bigger than your phone because the screen is a mic phone is a micro screen. But the technology and the internet connectivity is here today. You just need to be comfortable making audio video content to maximize it.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
For sure might not achieve given your contact information. And I certainly know many people will want to follow up and get in touch with you. I’m happy to share mine, my YouTube channel where this video and many others appear. Go to the search bar on YouTube and type in my YouTube handle which is Bill Lampton PhD. And then as well after you’ve done that, I invite you to go to my website. And since I’m the biz communication guy, it’s quite logical that my website is biz communication guy.com Certainly, I invite you to call me as well. We’d love to talk with you at no obligation on an initial call about your communication challenges and problems and how I can assist you with them. Mike Stewart, thank you again so much for being with us today.
Michael Stewart
I’ve enjoyed it as always Bill and if there’s anything that you ever want to talk about, that becomes new and exciting. You know, I’d love to come back and share that with you. So
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
that will happen. That will happen. Thanks very much to those of you who joined us on the YouTube portion and also those of you with the podcast. Be with us again, the next edition of the business communication show so that you can learn tips and strategies that will boost your business because we give you winning words and ways
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
