Do Something Out of the Ordinary
This podcast audio served as the source for the blog post “Say “Yes” More Often.”
The transcript was rewritten to produce the blog post, which is the cornerstone of the Shortcut Content system.
Shayla: Thank you for joining us for the Shortcut Content podcast. I’m talking with founder Dave Young. Dave, why should we start saying “yes” to more things and just putting ourselves out there a little bit more?
Dave: Yeah, it’s interesting. We’ve talked in a previous episode about the Farmer’s Insurance agent who did the YouTube viral thing about the rancid shark or fish guts can and I think the thing about it is, you never know what’s going to be a hit with people. You never know what’s going to take off and not necessarily become viral, but it’s going to be your most maybe impressive piece of content, or something that resonates with people. And so, I think the thing to do is just to keep coming up with ideas, and just keep putting things out there and not be afraid to do that. I spent twenty years, maybe a little bit more than that, in the radio business. And when you repeat to yourself enough times, “hahaha, I’ve got a great face for radio,” you start to believe that you probably don’t belong in front of a video camera, that maybe that’s not the direction you should take yourself, because maybe you’re self conscious. Like I look on myself on video and I think, “Well, I’ve got way too much chin to be a guy that’s doing videos on content.” But nobody really cares about that. You probably care about it way more than anybody else. One of the things I used to know in radio is that people would be self conscious about their own voice. They’d do a recording of themselves and listen to it back and say, “Oh my gosh. That doesn’t sound like me. I don’t sound like that.” And the dirty little secret is, in fact, you do. All of us recognize your voice from the audio recording, because that’s what your voice sounds like when it’s not rattling around in your own head.
And it’s one of those things that you just kind of have to jump in. It’s like getting used to a swimming pool that’s maybe a couple degrees colder than you’d like it to be. But you know once you get in, you’re going to enjoy swimming. So don’t be afraid to put yourself out there.
My story about that is here I’ve been in the radio business, and it was a small town, so there were several thousand people who knew who I was, because I was on the radio every morning. And it was a town of thousands of people. It wasn’t a town of millions of people, like single digit thousands, six thousand people. At least half of those people had heard me or knew who I was. So that’s sort of being famous in a little pond. And now for the last fifteen years, I’ve been trying to increase my footprint a little bit, increase my visibility as someone who knows a little bit about marketing, knows a little bit about content, creating content, telling stories, creating videos, podcasts, blog posts, those kinds of things. All of that was eclipsed about three years ago, like, you think this is what you want to be known for, right? Turns out that I got asked to be in a video by a friend, a friend with a couple of little kids in Austin, Texas, were shooting a little fan movie about Batman and Robin, the old Batman, Adam West. And so we had this plot of story and he ended up making about a 25 minute YouTube video, fan fiction video, of Little Batman and Robin. You can search for it on YouTube and you can find it, Little Batman and Robin. And because I was in Austin at the time, he asked me if I’d be willing to do one of the parts, to act in this thing. And so I agreed. And Adam handed me this thing, so the old Playskool motorcycle cop helmet. I was going to play Commissioner Gordon in the Little Batman and Robin movie. And in the two or three years since Adam did that movie, it’s gotten over 8 and a half million views.
Shayla: Wow.
Dave: 8 and a half million people have seen me like this that have no idea that I do marketing or anything. Now that doesn’t seem like it would help with Shortcut or with my marketing or those kinds of things, right? The simple fact that if you’re willing to put yourself out there, just take a little step across that line, you might become known for something or at least become known as somebody that’s willing to step across the line and do something that’s a little out of the ordinary and let people get to know who you are a little bit, then they’ll give you a chance to sell them.
Shayla: If you need help putting yourself out there, if you need content for your website, Dave and the team at Shortcut Content can help you do that. For more information, find them at ShortcutContent.com.