I Can Beat a $5,000 Agency for $3. Here's How. | Lazy Leverage #130

We mention a lot of books on this show and never write them down. Fixed that.61 books, 39 essays, 88 episodes, free: https://lazy-leverage.saganpassport.com/

Jon can hand a model 35,000 of his own tweets, 250 newsletters he wrote himself, 400 hours of podcast transcripts, and a swipe file of 5,000 hooks he bought for three dollars. Then he can ask it for 50 LinkedIn posts. If you charge him $5,000 a month to write those posts, that is what you are competing with now, and his argument is that you have to beat it noticeably, not narrowly.

Peter has made about twelve short form videos. He started with a DSLR, a teleprompter and scripts written for him, and they were flat enough that Jon told him so. He switched to an iPhone, moved to a different corner of his office, swapped the teleprompter for bullet points on a sheet of paper, and stopped trying to sound like an expert. Now he just does the news. Those ones worked.

In this one: the two advantages every business owner has over a full time creator, and why most of them use neither. Why there are fewer people who can make good plumbing content than there are plumbers who can replace a water heater. The barbell Jon thinks every business should run, and the middle most people land in instead. Why Peter sells the sponsorship before he writes the newsletter. And the person already on your payroll you should put in front of a camera full time.

Chapters:00:00 - Intro00:47 - Welcome to Lazy Leverage02:13 - Why Video Is a Superpower04:16 - Proof of Human07:06 - You Already Have the Content and the Customers09:48 - Hiring Global Talent With Sagan Passport11:03 - Plumbing Content Is Rarer Than Plumbers12:33 - Why Talking to a Camera Alone Is So Hard15:12 - Make the Format Your Own17:54 - The Only Platform Left With Discovery21:00 - Do the News26:15 - Smile With Your Voice27:55 - Promote the Person Who Likes Filming30:05 - The Barbell, and the Middle Most People Land In33:55 - Sell Sponsorships to Force Yourself37:20 - Done For You Agencies Get Squeezed

References Mentioned in This Episode -

People & Frameworks Cited:Proof of human, Jon's memo to his team, becoming a newsletterSmile with your voice, the cold calling habit that fixes a flat takeThe camera flattens you by about twenty percent, so overdo it past the point that feels ridiculousLook through the lens, not at itPark on the downhill, Peter's habit of stopping mid task so tomorrow starts with momentumRay Bradbury, David Ogilvy, Gino Wickman and EOS Level 1