0:00:00 - 0:00:25 Focus message, make better videos to reach more people pretty straightforward. We only have one slide for this whole presentation. Key number one only share what you live go read John 717 and then answer the following question. Do you really know? Do you really know what you're teaching? Are you just 0:00:25 - 0:00:48 repeating something that you've heard? Now, if what you're repeating is true, there is certainly value in sharing it with others. But the question is, is there a difference in efficacy? There absolutely is because sincerity is the gateway to the Holy Ghost. If you want to be convincing, there are two 0:00:48 - 0:01:15 ways, one is through using tricks otherwise known as manipulating people. The other is through sincerity and you can't fake that. Now, as far as value and truth shared that hasn't been lived yet. Not only is it harder to convey and harder to persuade others, convey to others and persuade others of? But 0:01:15 - 0:01:38 you can also do a great, great amount of damage by sharing things that you don't live even if they're true. Now, obviously 11 danger in sharing things that you think are true, but you have not yet lived is that it's very possible that you're completely incorrect, or at least that you're off base and 0:01:38 - 0:02:00 that's its own danger. But what I'm talking about here is something a little different and that is maybe best described with an example. And if you look at the damage done by professed Christians, they might say all the right things in some cases, but they fail to persuade atheists of the existence of 0:02:00 - 0:02:21 God and they do a whole lot of damage because atheists using logic, say if the things that you're saying are true, why don't you live them? Why aren't you showing me through your example first, in your precept second and they've got a point. So instead of making it easier to believe the truth, sharing 0:02:20 - 0:02:39 it before you live, it might actually make it harder to believe. So think about that. The second key for what to share is that caution you to only criticize things when you have something that's better and not just something you think is better. Something you live something that you know, by your own 0:02:39 - 0:03:02 experience is better all over the place. You're gonna find religious oriented videos that just tear down other people's beliefs and they say, oh, this person's bad, oh, this idea is bad. Oh You know, it's criticism after criticism, my question is this, hey fella, show me something better. What do you 0:03:01 - 0:03:20 have that's better. Don't just tear down other people. Your, your objective is to find what is best and to share that. And if the thing that you're tearing down in spite of whatever faults you see in it is actually still the best thing you know, of, then you have a duty to support that until you can 0:03:20 - 0:03:41 find something better. And I just keep coming back to this point until you become something better yourself. So again, it fuels the atheist. It gives them every reason in the world to not accept Christianity when you have a bunch of professed Christians fighting each other and really all they're doing 0:03:41 - 0:04:00 is sort of fighting over the scraps because none of them have anything worth having. And they just spend all their time tearing each other down instead of trying to be better people or at least living up to what they say they believe that's step one, right? So you tell me what's more convincing someone 0:04:00 - 0:04:18 whose whole mission in life is to tear down someone else or what, what other people believe or someone who can stand up and say, look, here's a set of beliefs that are kind of challenging to live, but I've managed to do it. And here's how my life has changed for the better. I believe that anyone else 0:04:18 - 0:04:38 who does the same will experience the same benefits. So maybe that's not gonna get as many clicks. But how much good is that going to do versus, hey, let's all, hey, team, my team, people that already agree with me, let's gang up on these people who don't agree with us and then we'll feel better about 0:04:38 - 0:05:03 ourselves. That's ridiculous. You feel better about yourself by becoming a better person, not by tearing down other people. Next key only share what's more important than anything else they could be watching. This is a huge one. Whenever you record something and you post it to the internet, you should 0:05:03 - 0:05:23 be thinking in your head. I, I believe that somewhere out there there is someone who would be better off watching this than anything else they might do. That's actually a pretty high bar if you think about it, even, even though everyone's in a different place and you really only need one person to justify 0:05:23 - 0:05:44 posting something. It's still kind of a high bar to imagine someone out there having nothing better to do in their lives than watch what you have to say about something. I don't know if you've ever thought about it that way. Now you say Rob, do you honestly think that the things that you record and post 0:05:44 - 0:06:12 are better than anything anyone could watch? Yes, I do. Not anyone but someone, yes, I do. Yes, I do. So you can call me arrogant for thinking that. But am I am smoking my own product here? Ok. I'm not only the president, I'm also a client. All right. So if all you're doing is just self therapy, I'm 0:06:12 - 0:06:34 gonna hit record and babble and then post that to the internet and hope that the number of views I get or the likes or subscribers will increase my self esteem. You're barking up the wrong tree. You'd be much better off spending that time becoming a better person and then you actually have something 0:06:33 - 0:07:02 to be proud of and you won't rely on other people's opinions to feel that way. Doesn't that sound nice? So, go do some push ups instead or whatever your, your um personal growth vice of choice is, I guess it's not a vice. It's ad v everything you post. You should be able to answer the questions of who 0:07:01 - 0:07:25 are you making this for? What do you want them to change as a result of watching it? Why should they, in other words, what reasons are you giving them and why haven't they done it already again? This is a pretty high bar and you're thinking, oh man, that sounds like a ton of work. Yeah, it is. Look uh 0:07:25 - 0:00:00 I'm getting ahead of myself here but what's the benefit of recording things and then having them available on demand for anyone to watch at any time? Well, it's supposed to be a multiplier. In other words, if we didn't have youtube or other social media sites, we could only communicate face to face, 0:00:00 - 0:08:11 right? So through the internet, we can do it at a distance, but we can also do it at any time asynchronously. So 100 different people can watch this video at any time, including at the same time, including one minute apart. And so that vastly increases the reach of the person making the video because 0:08:11 - 0:08:33 I don't have to spend 100 X to share that message with 100 people. I only spend the time it takes to produce it. So what people do is they look at that and they say, wow, I can just hit record and then post it. And I've only spent, if it's a 10 minute message, I've only spent 10 minutes of my life. Well 0:08:32 - 0:09:01 , the multiplicative benefit is much more about how many people it reaches than it is how long it takes you. So to put this in perspective, let's say I was a, a teacher and I decide to record my classes and the motive for this is so that I can spend my time perfecting that recorded version instead of 0:09:00 - 0:09:26 spending my time presenting the ad hoc best to this point presentation every time I teach the class, right? So if I had to spend an hour presenting a lecture, instead I could spend 10 hours making the perfect one hour recorded lecture. And you say that's 10 times as much work. Why wouldn't you just teach 0:09:26 - 0:00:00 the class 10 times like you're, you're going to have to teach the class 10 times before you recoup that work? Yes. But it will be 10 times better. And do you see how these things are balancing out. I'm probably not describing this. Well, if all you're doing is what you would do anyway, face to face. 0:00:00 - 0:10:08 You're absolutely wasting this platform. You should be spending the extra time and justifying that with the extra audience. So a a perfect if you go and you look at Khan Academy and you watch Saul Khan teach about the periodic table. I stood over the shoulder of one of my kids doing this recently and 0:10:07 - 0:10:26 I was amazed at the quality of the presentation. Not only is he an excellent teacher, but it was very obvious. He spent a massive amount of time prepping that class and practicing and doing multiple takes. You can't stop midway through a live lecture and say, hold on. I know I can do that. Better class 0:10:26 - 0:10:45 dismissed. I'll see you next week. I'll try again. I did have one professor do that once. He wasn't well respected, you can do that when you're recording things. But if you're just lazy about it, what are you even doing? What's the point? What's the benefit? So take advantage of the opportunities, this 0:10:45 - 0:11:05 platform gives you and make better things, this very presentation, it, you probably can't notice. You probably didn't notice. But this is not my first time through this material. How did this start? It started as ideas that I wrote down on my phone because it wasn't in a place where I was around a computer 0:11:05 - 0:11:31 . And then I recorded an ad hoc video and then I had thoughts later about it and then I took all of those. I watched the video, I transcribed my notes and I synthesized it and shrunk it down to one slide. Sometimes I'll rerecord things completely. I, I don't edit videos. I just don't have time for that 0:11:30 - 0:11:58 right now. So I don't do takes and then stitch them together. But I will trash a presentation if it's not up to standard and do it again if it's worth it. Ok? So you want to take advantage of the outsized audience to justify an outside effort, in outsized effort, in making the material. And I'm getting 0:11:58 - 0:12:16 ahead of myself because that's the final bullet. But the reason you need to do that, we'll just keep rolling with the last bullet here since we jumped ahead and we'll come back to sharing what's more important than anything else he could do. The reason you want to dump so much effort into this is because 0:12:16 - 0:12:39 people have expectations for what is valuable. They're not correct, but those expectations, they make a window and if your content isn't inside that window, they are not going to view it. They will not give you the opportunity to be valuable. You won't have the chance to convey the value that God has 0:12:39 - 0:13:03 given you to others. You have to, to, to it, you have to tango, it takes two to tango. You have to work at the intersection of their expectations and your content. Do you understand that that's the window? So if you're going to deviate from that, make it intentional in a way that's meant to teach that 0:13:03 - 0:13:27 something or grab their attention or be part of your brand. You know, if you wear a special outfit when you make videos because it's part of your brand, that's something engineered to further your message not to obstruct it. Jesus intentionally told his disciples not to wash their hands before they ate 0:13:27 - 0:13:50 and he generated an interaction with the Pharisees that was completely intentional because he deviated from their expectations. But if you do this unintentionally, all you're doing is obstructing your own message. So hopefully, that makes sense. As a rule of thumb, it should take you at a bare minimum 0:13:50 - 0:14:15 twice as much time to produce something as it does for someone to watch it at a bare minimum. Now, what you spend that time doing there are all sorts of options, but you might find you actually spend 10 times as much time making something than it takes to watch it. So when you start editing videos and 0:14:15 - 0:14:35 doing lighting and all these other things that's gonna take a lot of time, but it also might just be spending the time writing up and thinking about what you're going to say or taking multiple takes and editing the video. Those are all options. And so here's a step by step pathway to transition from 0:14:35 - 0:14:58 extemporaneous videos just saying, whatever the heck you think into more useful videos. Step one is just keep doing what you're doing. But add a second step where instead of hitting, publish, you watch the video, maybe you transcribe it and then as you're going, you or even as you're recording the video 0:14:57 - 0:15:19 when you say something and you think to yourself, I could say that better. Don't stop recording, just say it again, just say it again. And then if you wanted to, you could go back and edit the video and cut out the first time you say it or another way of doing this is don't even do a video. Just get 0:15:19 - 0:15:38 an app and there are a lot of them and they're free. There are free ones that converts your speech to text. I mean, you can just open your email app on your phone and hit dictate and start talking and email it to yourself. You know, it doesn't have to be grammatically correct or punctuated just stream 0:15:38 - 0:15:56 of consciousness and then you can go back and edit that. You're gonna find that like 50% of what you say, you can go without saying it doesn't really help the message. You're gonna think of a few additional things to pop in there. Going back to the first example of continuing to record as you do and 0:15:56 - 0:16:14 just keep rolling, but say things again in a different way. You can also watch that after making it and identify those moments where you need something more and reshoot those and put them in or you might take the whole thing and decide to reshoot the whole thing after you take some notes and change it 0:16:14 - 0:16:35 up and think of ways you could be better. So you may find yourself as you're going through this saying, what is this video really about? What am I trying to get across? Who am I trying to reach? Why? What do I want them to change? What reasons am I giving? Are there better reasons? What, what counter 0:16:35 - 0:16:58 arguments are they going to be thinking as I say these things, let me address that. Why haven't they done this already? Can I address those issues? And even if the resulting content is very short, this is not an argument that everything has to be long, even if it's 20 seconds or two minutes, all these 0:16:58 - 0:17:21 principles still apply. In fact, you could argue that they're even more important because you only have a little slice of time. Now again, you're gonna be thinking man, that sounds like a lot of work. Yes, it is. Excellence takes a lot of work and it's, it's not always apparent when you hear a really 0:17:20 - 0:17:41 good speech. You don't realize that that person has practiced that speech 100 times. They've been working on it for six months. It's not like they just show up and, and bust it out. Some people can do that. But it takes a level of skill that, that far exceeds what most people can do. And usually, even 0:17:41 - 0:17:58 then it's, it's only people who have worked in a very, very narrow field because that level of optimization you can't generalize with that. OK. Let's pop back and then we'll close this out, we'll pop back to this. Only share what's more important than anything else that could be watching. Now, I've already 0:17:58 - 0:18:20 gone over the point of what are they going to change? Why and why haven't they done it? But here's my answer to that sounds really hard. Yes, it is hard. Do you know why? It's hard for something to be better than anything else they could be doing? Because who's your competition? Think of all the famous 0:18:19 - 0:18:41 people that are producing freely available content. That's just earth shatteringly valuable and you don't even have to pay for it. It's just out there and, and they do all the work for you even so you could have this whiz bang, awesome book that every person should read nonfiction. And let's say it's 0:18:41 - 0:19:03 350 pages. Odds are that the author has given a summary talk of that book 100 times and you can go out and watch 10 of those, pick one and any one of those talks will actually be better than reading the book and it will take you 1/15 of the time. Do you see the treasures that are available out there 0:19:03 - 0:19:28 already. Now, this actually links up to why haven't they already learned the things that you're going to share with them? It's very important to think about this. Let's because, because probably the best thing you could be doing if you're producing content is actually just rehashing things that other 0:19:28 - 0:19:55 people have already produced. Probably the best way you could use your time if you're producing content is rehashing things that other people have produced. Why? Because your answer to do I have something more important to say than this is very likely, no, it's very likely that you don't if you do by 0:19:55 - 0:20:18 all means, make an original video if you don't and and then that's an even stronger argument for taking the time to make it polished because where else are they gonna get it? But if you don't have something better, then probably your mission is not to say something new, but to say something old in a 0:20:18 - 0:20:41 new way, your mission is probably not to say something old but to say something old in a new way. I mean, new man, I messed that up. Your mission is probably not to say something new but to say something old in a new way. That's a place where I would edit this. If I edit videos. What, what do I mean 0:20:41 - 0:21:04 by that? Think back to the windows of value. We already went through this in this video. Suppose there's some crazy guy out there who says all kinds of crazy things and 90% of what he says would offend the people you're trying to reach. But in the 10% he says something that's really good. And you think 0:21:03 - 0:21:30 , you know, I could pluck out one idea out of that 10% polish it up real nice. Break it down. Draw it in crayon and present that or make it a two minute short. That's all about that one idea. And if I did that, I could reach 10,000 people that he can't reach. Is this such a foreign concept? It's not 0:21:30 - 0:21:54 only in the Christian community, it's only in the religious community that this is a foreign concept. How do I prove it? Go to amazon.com? Look up any best selling nonfiction book. So let's take atomic habits. For example, if you go, I know this because I did this. Look up atomic habits on amazon.com 0:21:53 - 0:22:12 . You're gonna see it has over 100,000 reviews. If you click on any of those reviews, you're going to see the very consistently, they're exceptionally well written that these are people, they really thought about what they were going to say and they really thought that their review was gonna make a difference 0:22:11 - 0:22:31 to someone as you're reading their reviews. Ask yourself the following question, what was the objective of this person when they wrote the review? Uh the answer in every case is gonna be the following. I would like to say something about this book that persuades someone who has not read it, that it's 0:22:31 - 0:22:55 worth their time to read it. That's what their review is meant to do. Read the reviews. They do a very good job. And if you scroll to the right part of the page, you're gonna see people have actually made videos in the short, you know, two minutes, six minutes how my life changed from atomic habits and 0:22:55 - 0:23:11 they just kind of bust out a few ideas from the book. That's the reason I, I keep repeating the question, why haven't they done it already? What change do you want them to make? And why haven't they done it already? In this case? The change is read atomic habits. Why haven't they done it already? Because 0:23:11 - 0:23:28 it seems like it's too much work for the benefit they expect and maybe they've been burned in reading other nonfiction books and they think it's gonna be just as worthless. And so the person says, well, I'll make a review and let's fix that and no surprise, that's a best selling book because there are 0:23:28 - 0:23:51 100,000 people who are willing to advocate for it. Do you get what I'm saying here? Now, you might be saying, Rob once again, are you pushing this idea that we should be writing reviews of your books and making content that shares slices of the books that you've written? Yes. But there's a bigger picture 0:23:50 - 0:24:14 here that's much more important than that the best content you could be sharing might be what you find in the scriptures. So all these people who are out there making these videos where they're just babbling on for 20 minutes. How much better would that content be if they opened up and read a little 0:24:13 - 0:24:36 passage from the scriptures and said, hey, here's why I care about this or this is, this is what I think is important about this chapter. Here's how my life has changed from this one idea. Here's a story about that, whatever, it'd be massively more valuable, right? And it's much easier to answer the 0:24:36 - 0:24:54 question of why is this more important than anything else they could do? So you'd say, well, why shouldn't they just read the scriptures themselves? They don't need to hear my two cents about it. Well, they already have the scriptures and they're either already reading them and not learning the thing 0:24:53 - 0:25:20 that you would share or they're not reading them. So, what are you contributing to this puzzle? The way I would describe it is you're helping them have faith. This, by the way is one of the functions of angels. They make true things easier to believe, they make good things easier to do. And that's what 0:25:20 - 0:25:43 you'll do if you're doing this, right? That's what this is all about the specifics of what you're sharing matter far less than why you're doing it and how you're doing it, what you share, that's something you need to figure out, but it should be what has the greatest value in your view, but why you share 0:25:43 - 0:25:53 it and how you share it. There are really good answers to those questions and I hope this video has given you some things to think about along those lines.