Roasted Reflections

Content Creation

Over the next few weeks, we’ll explore six multimedia marketing skills to make students, entrepreneurs, side hustlers, and intrapreneurs dangerous.

Skill #1 – Writing
Skill #2 – Photography
Skill #3 – Videography
Skill #4 – Graphic Design
Skill #5 – Creativity
Skill #6 – Organization

Before we begin this series, which can also be found in You Don’t Need This Book, let’s start by examining the impact of content creation. When it comes to marketing, content is the currency used to earn attention. As attention is earned, content becomes the instrument to share stories with people who care.

Telling your story is easy, but doing so without becoming too self-serving takes practice. If your voice always sounds the same, it will pave a one-way street. Instead of always pushing content, curiously pull from your audience. Be inversely charismatic and socratic by asking sincere questions and leaning into motivational interviewing habits. Actively listen and interact within these absorbing conversations.

Don’t be afraid to spread the word, but limit your storytelling until it flows into the discussion. When your stories add value within the context of an existing conversation, your narrative will be more appetizing.

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Listening, sharing, and learning from stories is how humans communicate, work together, and evolve. When applied to marketing, the narratives we share connect us to people who help us succeed.

In the information age, content is available and consumed in infinite ways. This makes attention scarce, so stories wrapped around remarkable work becomes more important. Consistency is huge, but adjust content for environments that work in your industry. Aligned, yet diversified content will optimize how the world hears your story. Formulating a combination of text, graphics, photos, audio, and video will give you an edge. Consider what content gets noticed and compare that to how hard it is to produce. No matter where content lives, make it clear why consumers should care.

As content creation continues, encourage organic engagement that can translate into repeatable conversions. In the connected era, the easiest way to do this is online. The nice thing about digital content is that it’s used in so many ways, yet it’s the easiest to create. Even if it’s taking small steps at first, it’s worth learning how to create your own content. Multimedia marketers can forge content that is quick to digest and made to share. This allows ideas to spread. You win if people share your story, so let’s make it easy.

UP NEXT: Skill #1 – Writing

By Ben McDougal, ago

Slow & Fast

“Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.” -Kerty Levy

This tweetable thought randomly emerged over coffee today. It’s interesting how philosophies on life, wealth, and happiness evolve from entrepreneurial endeavors.

Perhaps it’s the personal nature of building your own business that causes such reflections? It might be the transformative skill of verbalizing your thoughts and ideas with others? Maybe it’s less about business and more like a beautiful side effect of mindfully aging?

The reason(s) and frequency at which you allow yourself to explore big ideas surely depends on the environment, people you interact with, and knowledge you pursue.

This makes me thankful for my own entrepreneurial experiences, but more important, the immeasurable blessing it can be to expand our minds by plugging into startup communities and entrepreneurial ecosystems. A willingness to show up and the trust built through such generosity has allowed me to become apart of so many other founder stories. As I mention throughout YDNTB, consistent action over the long run is required, but the remarkable insight we pick up along the way can provide a path toward true understanding for anyone, on almost any front. As we support entrepreneurs through the art of connection, the invitation to have more diverse discussions is unlocked more often. Whether it’s strategic, tactical or philosophical, what a gift this can become.

Along with stimulating conversations with agreeable people in a support network, it’s important to weave in perspectives from a challenge network. This is a group of disagreeable people we trust to point out blind spots, which helps us overcome our weaknesses with critical feedback we may not want, but need. Curious interactions within a challenge network also unlocks humbling opportunities to be wrong. This helps us avoid misguided confidence through intellectual humility, and brings us closer to the truth.

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Smart people change their mind all the time. Find joy in discovering you were wrong. You’re now less wrong than before, and when we admit it, we’re not less competent, we’re being honest and displaying a willingness to learn.

By Ben McDougal, ago

Life’s a Pitch

Humans are innate storytellers. We use stories to relay understanding. Whether it’s a caffeinated conversation, a business networking event, dinner with friends, or on-stage in front of others, entrepreneurs must be able to translate the story of their business to anyone.

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Pitches are built to impress. Presentations are meant to share. One size does not fit all. Consider the environment, audience, and format to cater how your story is told. Preparation that includes thoughtful awareness will optimize engagement.

Startup founders and small business owners should be able to pitch in any situation, on the spot, and without props. There are many templates that highlight key areas to include within a pitch, but the overall objective is to deliver a lasting impact in the least amount of time. Honest enthusiasm, transparent vulnerability, and concise simplicity are great ways to accomplish this. To prepare for any audience, it’s wise to craft a few different versions of your story. Here’s a collection to consider:

1 sentence – Sharp conversation starter.
42 seconds – Ideal for concise intros in a group setting.
6 minutes – Time to deliver enough detail needed to support valuable Q&A.
10 minutes – Room for more details, but be careful not to numb the audience.
1 hour – A talk meant to deliver value, with details of your business included.

Slide Deck Design

When a slide deck is part of the equation, take full advantage of this opportunity. Building a slide deck establishes the cadence of your performance. Slide decks should create flow while supporting your verbal presentation with clear and impactful visuals. Slides should not include full sentences or too many bullet points for you to read aloud. Titles or short phrases may help guide the audience, but great slide decks use very few words. When it comes to slide deck design, keep transitions between each slide simple, but consider how content comes and goes on each slide. Subtle animations and thoughtful hints of movement will help you stand out without being too distracting.

With a remarkable slide deck in place, practice your presentation and sync it to the timing of each slide. Whether you use animated content or not, it’s best to have a single click to move between each slide. On stage, your attention should be on connecting with the audience, not the slide deck or the clicker.

If questions are allowed after your speak, consider including supportive back slides. Back slides are placed after the final slide. They are used to highlight material not included in the main presentation. Handy back slides include detailed pricing, competitive analysis, marketing strategies, research data, and intricate financial information. People who understand what they’re talking about can use fewer words, and back slides allow you to deliver a strategically simplified presentation. For the audience, this reduces the numbing effect of information overload. With back slides ready, you can indulge in clarifying conciseness. This makes for a more impactful tone. It can even be good to purposefully leave out a curious topic from the main presentation. When the inevitable question pops, you can use the sneaky back slide to share a more focused response. Memorize the order of your back slides and you’ll soon be leading a more authoritative exchange. In short, back slides prove you’re a pro.

To complete your slide deck preparation, export everything into one PDF and create a JPG file for each slide. The richest presentation will always come directly from the software (I prefer Keynote) a slide deck was built from. The PDF and JPG formats can be used as shareable marketing materials. More important, they are quick substitutes to counter any sort of last minute technical issues. Deliver the digital assets on time and organizing everything on a flash drive, just in case.

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Business pitch competitions and grant programs are a good way to financially supplement your business without diluting the equity structure. For example, when we were first building FliteBrite, we won a $10K pitch competition and earned a $25K grant from the Iowa Economic Development Authority.

Being prepared is obviously important when all eyes are on you. Memorize the order of your slides, but not what you plan to say. Memorizing a pitch word-for-word is safe for some, but a more genuine tone comes from the heart. We’ve all seen people lose their place in a memorized script or fumble through notecards. Avoid this embarrassment by practicing what you plan to say out loud. The mirror at home is a fine place to start, but nothing compares to a live audience. The sentiment of your pitch should remain consistent, but it won’t sound the same each time. As you tell your story, feedback from people you don’t know will sharpen the business and help you continuously evolve your transmission.

By Ben McDougal, ago

Pain Relievers vs. Vitamins

Think about the last time you were really sick. In those moments of agony, consider how much you appreciate pain-relieving medicine made to ease the torment. Most of us don’t hesitate to buy solutions that ease our pain.

Now, think about a time when everything was going your way. You may take vitamins to support a healthy lifestyle, but if you miss a day, who cares, right? Think about your medicine cabinet. For every vitamin you routinely take, how many others sit on the shelf collecting dust?

Vitamins are good, but pain relievers are great. This is an analogy we can bring into business. As you consider your product/service, are you providing something that solves the pain of a target customer, or is it a nice-to-have that may (or may not) provide clear value?

If you’re unsure, you probably have a vitamin. If people like the idea, but hesitate to buy, you probably have a vitamin. If you always find yourself explaining why someone needs what you have, you probably have a vitamin. How can such assumptions be made? Pain relievers are easy to spot. They sell as fast as the supply can keep up with demand.

Ready to mutate a vitamin into a pain reliever? Ongoing customer discovery is the best way to keep a pulse on your company and helps entrepreneurs build toward sipping from the holy grail: product-market fit. As you ease the true pain of your target customer, stories that sell (marketing) highlight how you do so. Forget the impressive jargon. Lean into the pain.

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Unrelated to this week’s reflection, I love local bookstores. I always spend more than I’ll ever make in sales of my own book on their shelf, but these places are just so cozy. It’d be hard to get rich, but the wealth of owning a bookstore must be endlessly rewarding.

By Ben McDougal, ago

One & Only

The weight of one is heavy. Something so rare makes us feel like we only have one chance to get it right. If it’s inanimate, we never want it diminished. If it’s alive, we seek the futile tranquility of immortality.

These desires pressed against the tension of time can make the uniqueness of one feel overwhelming. This can devolve into a fear of change and selfish preservation, but perhaps there is freedom within the timeline of now.

Being present is hard when we’re always reflecting on the past and thinking about the future, but what choice do we have? Altering the past is not an option. All we have is now, and yet, the present never stops passing.

Within this endless transition, gratitude provides peace. It invites us to cherish our one and onlys in life. Such appreciation acknowledges the past, allows the present to be a gift, and instills hope for what’s next. For all that is one and only, I say thank you.

By Ben McDougal, ago