Viral Videos Joseph Wilkins Joins Us On The Steve Jobs Inspired Join Up Dots Podcast
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Introducing Viral Videos Expert Joseph Wilkins
Joseph Wilkins joins us on the Steve Jobs inspired Join Up Dots podcast today.
He is the Founder of Funny Sales Videos.com and Host of the podcast How to Make a Video Go Viral.
Back in 2000, Joseph founded ProCreative Studios, an agency that produced infomercials, TV commercials and web sales videos.
Joseph directed thousands of videos for clients including Google, Linkedin, McDonalds, Goldman Sachs, Chevrolet & Home Depot.
As viewing habits shifted away from TV, Joseph launched FunnySalesVideos.com where his team now creates attention-grabbing “viral style” sales videos that entertain viewers into action.
With two decades experience, hundreds of millions of broadcast and online views and over $50 MILLION in tracked sales attributed to his content… Joseph clearly knows the secret to Funny Sales Videos .
So we all know that funny works and drags us into watching the whole content, so why do people get it so badly wrong?
And what quick steps can we all take to give our content a bit of humour without it looking stupid?
Well lets find out as we bring onto the show to start joining up dots with the one and only Mr Joseph Wilkins’s from FunnySalesVideos.com
Show Highlights
During the show we share such weighty subjects with Joseph Wilkins such as:
Why funny isn’t the key to making a viral video – making sales is always the number one metric to aim for.
Joseph shares the steps to meander through the rules and regulations that can cause issues on the social platforms nowadays.
Why every video that Josephs shares has to pass the eight steps he outlines to make it stand as good as chance of performing the way his clients want.
and lastly……
Joseph talks openly about the difficulties that have jumped up in front of him throughout the growth of the business, and how he has passed them all.
How To Connect With Funny Sales Videos
Return To The Top Of Viral Videos
If you enjoyed this episode of Andrew Kap why not listen to some of our favourite podcast episodes such as Bruce Van Horn, Ted Yoder, Sean Swarner or the amazing Adriana Alvarez
Or if you prefer just pop over to our podcast archive for thousands of amazing episodes to choose from.
Full Transcription of Viral Videos Expert Interview
Intro
Life shouldn’t be hard life should be a fun filled adventure every day. So now start joining up dots tap into your talents, your skills, your God given gifts and tell your boss, you don’t deserve me. I’m out of here. It’s time for you to smash that alarm clock. And start getting the dream business and life you will, of course, are dreaming of. Let’s join your host, David Ralph from the back of his garden in the UK, or wherever he might be today with another JAM PACKED episode of the number one hit podcast. Join Up Dots.
David Ralph
Yeah, good morning. Good morning, friends and listeners. Thank you so much for being with us on a Join Up Dots. Yeah, I don’t know when this episode is going out. So it might be 2022 it might be 2023 We might still be in lockdown. Who knows what’s happening, but I know it’s going to be a great episode because this guy, he’s from England. He doesn’t always sound English, American Twain, but it’s gonna be good. And he’s the founder of funny sales videos.com And he’s the host of the podcast, how to make a video go viral. Now back in 2000. He founded procreative studios, an agency that produced infomercials, TV commercials, and web sales videos and he donated 1000s of videos for clients, including Google, LinkedIn, McDonald’s, Goldman Sachs, Chevrolet, and Home Depot. Now or depo, I should have said as viewing habits shifted away from TV, he launched funny sales videos.com where he’s team now creates attention grabbing viral style sales videos that entertain viewers into action. And with two decades of experience, hundreds of millions of broadcast and online views, and over $50 million in tracked sales attributed to his content. He clearly knows the secret to funny sales videos. So we all know that funny works and drags us into watching the whole content. So why do people get it so badly wrong? And what quick steps can we all take to give our content a bit of humour without looking sort of contrived and stupid? Well, let’s find out as we bring onto the show to start joining up dots with the one and only Mr. Funny sales videos.com. himself, Mr. Joseph Wilkins. Morning, Joseph.
Viral Videos with Joseph Wilkins
I’m great. Great. Good. Good to be here. David.
David Ralph
It’s lovely to have you here. It would be nice if you was closer, but for some reason, some reason you’ve turned your back on England and moved over to Salt Lake City in Utah. What has the Utah Aryans got that? We haven’t got? Sir.
Viral Videos with Joseph Wilkins
Sunshine,
David Ralph
you’ve swung it you just swung it instantly just looking at on my window? Yeah, that’s a big winner. Is it? Is it something that because I think to myself, if it was sunny, where I work, I don’t think I’d get much done. I like to be a bit crap where I think are at least a might as well stay indoors and get work done. If it was sunny all the time, I’ll be out there mountain climbing and stuff. Is it difficult to keep focus when it’s glorious?
Viral Videos with Joseph Wilkins
You know, I I work in a studio that really doesn’t have Windows most of the time. So I kind of, you know, I’m on set, I’m focused. And that kind of helps me. But a lot of the times we’re filming outside and it is glorious. I do I do love the sun, even when it’s cold. It’s at least bright and sunny here. So yeah, it could be a distraction. But for the most part, you know, it helps.
David Ralph
Alright, so let’s get straight into it. And we’ve classic Join Up Dots territory, we’re going to sort of bounce back and forth. But let’s talk about family. First of all, because family is very subjective. And what I might find funny, I love that really non politically correct stuff, which now is getting less and less people are finding but they’re either frightened to say it or frightened to sort of demonstrate it, but it’s still funny. It really is. So what is funny, and how does it work?
Viral Videos with Joseph Wilkins
Well, it works. That’s the most important thing that I can probably give you just a quick synopsis of after 20 years of doing any kinds of commercials with the goal of making sales, right? So it’s not just about being funny. In fact, it’s not about it being fun. It’s about making sales funny is just a vehicle to get to those sales. And you know, after first 15 years in business, and companies would call me up and say, Hey, we want to fund the video. I would always say no, we don’t do funny because you’ve got to do it right. Or don’t do it at all because you just end up looking silly. And so we spent a lot of time about five years ago is when we launched funny sales videos and we spent a couple Certain effort, figuring out the formula. And also, you know, just total transparency. We went through a big mentorship course with a company called the Harmon brothers who taught us how they do what they do. And you’ve you I don’t know if you’ve, if you know who the Harmon brothers are, but they did you know, Squatty Potty they did poop hurry.
David Ralph
Alaikum already true. Never heard of him. Yeah, like, I’m already.
Viral Videos with Joseph Wilkins
Oh, they’re probably the world leader in these kinds of videos, hundreds of millions. In fact, I think over a billion views between their sales videos. But coming back to your question, what what is funny to us? Funny is just a hook. It’s a way in today’s overcome, communicated oversaturated online world, it’s a way to get someone’s attention. That’s really all it is. And to keep their attention, while we kind of trick them and spoon feed them sales copy points, that ultimately leads to a sale. So really, all we do is all we’re doing is we’re tricking you into watching our videos. And then while you’re watching them, we’re gonna sell you stuff.
David Ralph
Right? Okay, so I remember, Howard Stern, the DJ had a film out many years ago called private parts. And there was a bit in it, where basically the regulation, people were trying to bring him down. And they were looking at his data. And it was that the people loved him, listened to free hours every day. And the people that hated him listened for three hours every day because I wanted to find things to sort of criticise him for so he’s he’s sort of like, stats went through the roof. Is that something that kind of works in your world as well? It doesn’t matter. If so, you know, you can offend people, and it wouldn’t work.
Viral Videos with Joseph Wilkins
So So what he does is completely different. It’s a different world, right? He’s got his own radio station, or whatever it is, in my world. So a typical customer will come to me. They’ll say, you know, we’ve been in business for X amount of years, we’re running ads online, they’re just not working, what can we do to improve our results. And so immediately, I know that I’ve got certain platforms that I’m probably going to run this video on. So you know, it’s either Facebook or YouTube or Instagram or tick tock. And all of those platforms have rules. You have to play by their rules. Facebook is probably the most, you know, anal about making sure that you don’t do certain things that will get you flagged. So in our world, yes, it has to be edgy, yes, it has to be somewhat polarising. But it can’t be offensive, and, you know, trigger certain things that will get it banned on those platforms. So
David Ralph
how do I decide jumping in there Josie? How do I decide what is offensive? Because what’s offensive to me is not you know, my wife, she’s offended by everything. And I’m kind of offended by nothing. I just think myself either makes me laugh, or it doesn’t, you know, so how do I how do I decide? And how do you meander through that?
Viral Videos with Joseph Wilkins
Yeah, that that is a great question. And the answer is, we really, you know, off the five years of doing these kinds of videos, we kind of have a finger on the pulse, but the Facebook, you know, black hole, really, I don’t know that I can give you X, Y and Z. But I’ll give you an example of how ciliates gotten during Donald Trump’s campaigns. He said certain things about how I think climate change or this or that wasn’t real. And so that that became a politically charged issue, where we had a client that was creating a product that basically let you do your laundry without buying these big plastic jugs and their whole campaign was helped save the environment. Or guess what we got banned on Facebook for saying that plastic is a contributing factor to environmental issues, which in my opinion, was just ridiculous. But Facebook saw that as a politically charged statement. And so in all of those videos, we were not allowed to use the word plastic. That’s how ridiculous it is. And so, you know, I wouldn’t have known that unless we created an ad and then found out by Facebook Nope, you can’t use that. So it’s I mean, that’s a whole nother conversation that I’m, you know, probably not completely qualified to tell you exactly what but you know, avoid things like obviously foul language, nudity, anything. We try to make our videos Family friendly, while still being very funny, which in my opinion is actually harder. I think clean comedy is harder to do, but it’s more intelligent, it’s safer, so that you don’t get banned. And I genuinely think that good storytelling is is the better way to go, then, you know, go into the data.
David Ralph
So just so I can get this in my head. If you’re on Facebook, it’s okay to help rig the American elections. But it’s not saying the word plastic. But that’s that’s what is it? Yeah,
Viral Videos with Joseph Wilkins
I think you just summed it up pretty well.
David Ralph
So let’s take you back in time then. So back in 2000, you founded procreative studios. So there’s always the dots join up to that point. It’s not normally the case. But somebody just has this idea. Were you somebody that was very interested in making little films and sort of videos? Did you have your own webcam in the early days?
Viral Videos with Joseph Wilkins
Oh, yeah. What? So going back even further, you know, I was born and raised in London. My dad was a fashion photographer. He actually did. You know, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Paul McCartney did the Queen of England’s portraits at Balmoral Castle one, so he was pretty good. And so I kind of grew up in that creative environment. And so I was always interested in, you know, advertising and photography. And that led to video. And so when I went to college, I started that, but then just basically started the agency as a side gig while I was working as a graphic designer for for a company here in Salt Lake City. Sorry, my mind’s gone blank, I kind of forgotten your question. I’m prattling here
David Ralph
now. Now you would do it. You have bang on track, really? So it was just did you have an interest back in the day as a as a youngster? And you sort of are you basically told Yeah, yeah, you were on there. Now, what always interests me is, we do a lot of building online businesses through Join Up Dots is one of the things we do. And so many people seem to want to run away from their back history, and start something totally new, where they’ve got no idea on it at all. And I always try to bring them back and say, Look, you may be fed up with 90% of what you were doing. So let’s find the 10%, which is really transferable, and other people want and try to find yours that you can enjoy in that process. Now, as you proceed through through TV commercials and websites, videos and stuff, there’s going to be an awful lot that isn’t transferable. But there’s also the stuff that you can take with you. What what is the stuff that really engages you, has been the theme that dots that run through everything?
Viral Videos with Joseph Wilkins
Yeah, that’s a great question. I mean, I’ve always loved telling stories. Ever since I was a kid, I always loved watching reading stories. And I think stories come in many, many forms, not just you know that what comes to our mind when we say that you can stand up in a room and give a presentation, you’re telling a story, you can be you know, sit down and write copy for your website, you’re telling a story, people lean forward to stories, they lean away when they think that you’re giving them copy points, and you know, trying to have an agenda and sell them something. But so, I love stories when I started the company 20 years ago, you know, the stories that we told were a little more, you know, straight laced corporate style stories. But you know, still it was a challenge to go into a business that what I would consider a pretty boring business and, and still tell a story. And so when we started to do the funny side, it just felt like, you know, I had all of the tools in the toolbox to tell the most engaging, fun, entertaining story that we’d ever told before. And the results speak for themselves. I mean, just to give you, your listener, listeners are probably interested in well, why should we tell these kinds of stories? And the answer is, in 20 years, our biggest video that we ever got in popularity online was about 100,000 views on a video we did about 10 years ago, when we started to decide that we were going to gather this team to create Comedy Based stories. Our very first video after we launched funny sales videos got 7 million views. And then fast forward today that laundry detergent product that I was just telling you about true Earth eco strips between I think it’s a handful of videos, we have 100 million views. Now views for the sake of views don’t really mean that much when When you’re a business owner, and you’re looking at the bottom line, but, you know, millions and millions and millions of dollars in sales have come because of those videos. So it’s not only that it’s way more fun for me now to create these kinds of videos. It’s also way more effective for our current customers. Because they come back to us time and again and say, that worked better than anything we’ve ever run on Facebook before. Let’s do another.
David Ralph
Now, this intrigues me, and I’m easily intrigued, but you’ve particularly intrigued me. So when you create something that goes from 7000 views, let’s say to 100,000 views to 100 million views, is it that the quality of the video has got better. And I’m going to preempt this because you see so many people putting dreadful videos online, but they filmed in their car, I have a real pain of the ones where they look like they’ve pulled up in a car park. And they’re trying to just talk them to their phone, to the point where they’ve overproduced it, and it becomes like a mini epic, and just becomes a bit flat as well. So what is the element? Do you think bad? People really get engaged with it? What Where should people aim?
Viral Videos with Joseph Wilkins
Well, there’s two sides to answering that question. And stop me if I go too far. But they’re really people need to understand that. If you see a video online right now, that is a commercial from a company that’s making money. And it has millions and millions of views. The dirty secret is that those views on organic, meaning that that video didn’t go organically viral where that company just made the video, uploaded it to YouTube. And everyone just started watching and sharing it, those days are gone. Facebook and YouTube and Instagram, they want to be paid. If you’re a company, and I’m making money off of a video that quote unquote, goes viral. So instead, when you see a video like that, that has millions of views and videos, the same, the way that those videos have millions of views, is because the companies that we make them for are paying for those views now before you say, Oh, that’s terrible. That’s not at all what I thought they were, let me explain. It’s like, if I was to say to David, I’m going to build you a vending machine, it’s full of $100 bills, or 100 pound notes. And all it costs is 20 pounds, or $20. To use that machine, how many times you’re going to want to use that machine,
David Ralph
you’ll be doing it all the time when you exactly, that’s what
Viral Videos with Joseph Wilkins
these videos are, when you see videos that have millions of views, it’s because the people that own the companies have paid to promote it, but they’re only paying $20 to use it. And every time they’re promoting it, they’re getting, you know, three, four, or five times the return on adspend. And that’s what it’s all about. So if you see a video that has 10 million views, that means that video is very highly converting, it’s profitable, or else that company wouldn’t have continued putting those $20 bills in the vending machine. Because they it’s obvious that that’s making money or they’d stopped paying to play a long time ago. So the first half of the question is, you’ve got to realise this isn’t, you know, catching lightning in a bottle. This is a strategy that anyone can do to create a huge top of funnel, lead generation or sales generation. The other half of your question is yes, these videos are highly produced, but they’re produced in a way that is predictable and repeatable. And I take every single one of my videos through eight steps. And I actually have a free ebook that your listeners can download. Maybe you can link it in the show notes that goes through every single one of those eight steps that takes it from a you know, let’s go to Vegas and throw everything on black 12 and says no, this isn’t gambling. This is because we’ve gone through these eight steps we are confident that this video will outperform any other video that you’ve run on Facebook or YouTube and in terms of sales conversions.
David Ralph
Now this is brilliant stuff. And we’re going to be coming back to Joseph after these words. If you’re inspired to live a life on your own terms work and when you want where you want once you sit back and make the decision of how much you want to earn to and it’s all totally doable and nowadays easier than ever. Head over to the start a business got it. Join up dots.com. And check out the video testimonials from just a few of the students that are now building their dream businesses after going through our coaching sessions and if that excites them book a time to speak to me one to one, to make sure you have what it takes to become the next success off our conveyor belt back started business school at join up dots.com. So we’re talking to Josie Wilkins from funny sales videos. And so I want to take you back because as she was talking about paying our thought, yeah, that’s totally understandable. You know, that’s commerce. That’s how it works. I remember a couple of years ago, my wife kept on showing me this video from an airline company that had somehow magically arranged for presence to be landing when the people landed, there was presence and Santa knew what they were. It was some American company Blue Blue jet or something. Now, I just naturally assumed that was so lovely and warm, that everybody wanted to share it. But even something back then would need a kickstart it would need some kind of financial Yes. For us to go. Ah, this is lovely. Have a look at this.
Viral Videos with Joseph Wilkins
Yes, exactly. It’s like a snowball it takes energy to start or a boulder takes a lot of energy to start it rolling. But once it starts rolling, and it gets out to a critical mass of people, you will start to get a viral boost to your video and people will you know our videos, probably five to 10% of the views are organic, meaning they weren’t paid. But still five to 10% of you know, 100 million views is a huge amount of free traffic. But it does all start with paid ads.
David Ralph
Right? Okay, so let’s step away from that. And let’s take it into the realms of somebody who’s here. They’re listening, they’ve got a, an editing device on their phone, or they’ve got one on their, their laptop or PC. And they get your ebook, which we will link to the show notes. And so they get their eight steps. Is it something that once they’ve got all that in front of them, now they’ve got ahead of the curve? Or does it still take natural creativity to come up with something funny.
Viral Videos with Joseph Wilkins
So the eight steps just really quickly, let me run through them. But the first one is doing your research, making sure you understand what your message should be, who your audience is. Step two is brainstorming as many different ideas as you can for the basic principle of the video. Step three is doing the scripting. Step four is out in the comedy. Five is the productions, six is the editing seven is testing along every step of the way. And then eight is forgetting going viral, and having a plan for paid media. So with that in mind, I always tell people, you can absolutely do all of those steps by yourself with two exceptions. And obviously, you know, results are going to vary as far as what you will be able to achieve once the video is done. You know, if you’re going to hire a professional agency to do all eight steps, you’re going to get a much better finished results, then, you know, if you try to do all eight yourself, but I still tell Small Business solopreneurs if you’re gonna do this, there are two of the steps that you should not do yourself. And they are the writing and the acting. So in our videos, even though we have very good in house writers, we always bring in at least six other out of house writers to help us on the writing because it’s like building a house if the foundation isn’t solid, no matter what you put on top of it, it’s gonna be a disaster. And so what we do and his power tip for your listeners is we find all of our writers and over the years, we’ve kind of got a team now that we are we go to every time, but there are really creative writers out there that are on sites like Fiverr and Upwork. And all these freelance marketplaces where, you know, specifically we we go through different stages of the scripting, we, you know, we start with a marketing copywriter to make sure we’ve got all of the sales points right. Then we bring in a creative storytelling writer to create the story arc, then we’ll bring in at least five professional trained comedy writers. Now these are people that you know, during the day they they may they may be full time stand up comics, so that’s flying from city to city doing gigs and during the day, they’re on aeroplanes and they’re doing freelance writing for us where they can do the same thing for you. And so bringing in the right people who know comedy. And that’s the difference between good comedy, and most of the videos that you’ll see online when people are trying to be funny. So the writing is something that I absolutely would tell you spend some money and find really creative people, it doesn’t have to be a lot of money. But there are really good writers that are willing to freelance for you right now. The second thing, like I said, is the actor. Now, let me just qualify, David. Marketing is like a salad, you should have all sorts of different content in your marketing salad. So you know, those videos that the people shoot in their car, you know, they’re okay. But if they are they’re not
David Ralph
rubbish, Josie, they are. They’re beyond rubbish. Well, it depends it No, it doesn’t. Again, they’re they’re just awful. I hate them. Come on, come on. Well, no one listens to you, you can come on my side.
Viral Videos with Joseph Wilkins
I just I think that there is a time and a place for, you know, user generated content, things that people know are not highly produced. But this kind of video that I’m talking about, it will live or die based on whether or not it’s well produced. And the most important part of that, once you’ve got a great script is to audition, we will audition 100 actors before we pick our main role. And so finding a really good comedy actor who understands timing, who can deliver the punch lines, just right, more importantly, that has experience doing improv and can bring more to this on this day of the shoot than what we have on the script. And so those are the two things I would tell people do not try to do yourself. But you can do the rest of the stuff steps on your own.
David Ralph
Because the world is full of people that are just not funny. You know, we we’ve been to dinner parties and sat I went to a dinner party recently. And every single man there, say we think we’re funny. Well, no, we we also we don’t want to sit next to someone. So hopefully, he’s not listening because they know it’s him. And we all sat at one than the table. And if anyone comes on to Join Up Dots, or they pitch to come on, Join Up Dots, and they say I’m funny, amusing and engaging. They never are, they never, no one tells you that they’re funny. If they’re funny, they just naturally know it will come out. So if somebody’s sitting here, because what intrigues me that the one thing that keeps on coming to me is I come along to you. And I say to you, I want a Bible video, and you say, yeah, no problem at all. Let’s do this. And you come up with something that’s really funny. But I don’t think it’s funny. It just doesn’t tickle my thing. Is it something that you had to sort of like, convince your your clients to just let it go? And it’s not about you? It’s about the clients and you know, all that kind of stuff?
Viral Videos with Joseph Wilkins
No, so nothing we do is guesswork. And I’ll be frank, David, if you’re the client, you come to me and you say, I don’t think this is funny. I’m gonna say I don’t care. I’m gonna say, Okay, I’ve already
David Ralph
signed up. Why?
Viral Videos with Joseph Wilkins
Because here’s why, unless David, you are the primary customer avatar. And that’s step one of our eight steps is figuring out the customer avatar, who is it that you want this message to connect with, nobody would ever write a letter, then walk to the mailbox or the postbox and decide then who to address it to, you’ve got to clearly define who it is that you’re writing the script for. Long before you ever present it, you know, as a ready to produce script. And so if your demographic is, you know, teenage girls, I don’t care what you think of the script. I think I care what they think of the script. So part of our process is always testing. We’re testing every phase to make sure that those people think it’s funny that those people are getting the message. And most importantly, that those people after they watch it, or after they read the script, depending on what phase of the process we’re testing, that they’re asking the buying questions once they’ve stopped watching the video. So again, it’s not about what you are. I think it’s funny. It’s what’s going to create the sale and connect with the customer avatar.
David Ralph
It this has kind of blown me away because it’s literally the same process as movies, where you get oh, yeah, nationals, you get professional script writers, you do test screenings, you might change the ending if it doesn’t, you know, work with those people. I remember what was the film for weddings in a funeral. When for weddings, and a funeral was first released. I thought it was a rubbish feel. And nobody laughed, and then I had to go back and edit it and edit it and edit it. Little by little, it got fine tuned until you know, it’s a classic and we still watch it now and law. So we’ve yourself how big is your team then? Or, you know, how big is the actual structure? Because do you have people full time? Or do you just get freelancers in whenever you need them
Viral Videos with Joseph Wilkins
both. So we have, we have a small team in house, but most of our writers, again, their most of the people that we hire are freelancers off of Fiverr because they’re really good at comedy, because they’re travelling from gig to gig every day. Most of our writers are full time stand up comics that are working, some of them are even working on cruise ships at night, and they write for me on the beaches of you know, St John’s or whatever. So, the in house team is more the production team, the, you know, the camera crew and the people that are actually making the script happen.
David Ralph
Now with the Fiverr group, because I know a lot of my listeners use fibre. And there’s gold, there is gold, I’ve had certain certain things done on Fiverr, my introduction of the podcast that’s done on Fiverr. brilliant guy, I just use them all the time. But others are just dreadful. So how, Yep, yeah, how would you that’s a crap they there is utter crap. How do you test somebody? Do you say, I want you to write for jokes about a Throg? And then see what they come back with you? How do you test them?
Viral Videos with Joseph Wilkins
Yeah, unfortunately, that’s the hard part, you kind of will the first place first thing you do is you look at their reviews, right? If you’ve got a guy that has three reviews, I’m not, I’m not even going to give him a chance until he’s proven himself with other people’s money, if that makes sense. But then with the guys that have a decent amount of reviews, obviously, I’m going to ask for samples, show me a few examples of stuff that you’ve done. If I like their vibe, they might be good, but they might just not be right for the kinds of videos that we do. So I always read through stuff that they’ve written before. And then you know, I kind of pull, take the plunge and just say, here’s a get his a gig, show me what you can do. So what we typically do is we’ll have our script and you know, our videos, normally about three ish minutes long. And I’ll just send them a script, and I’ll say, you know, punch this up, give me 10 jokes. And I’ll know very, very quickly if this is someone that I’m going to bring into my team full time, or not full time, but on an ongoing basis. And over, you know, over the five years that we’ve been doing this, I’ve weeded out, you know, the good ones from the bad ones. But you do you know, you have to start by giving them a project. And you know, just seeing if they fit. And sometimes they do sometimes they don’t,
David Ralph
because that is a tough gig that pull that guy from Fiverr. Because if you look at like, say Jerry Seinfeld, and these stand up comedians, they write 10 jokes, I stand up on stage, and two of them work and eight don’t. And then I go to another place and they buy another 10. And then a one works and nine don’t. And so they’ve got three, you know, and so over sort of 10 years, I suddenly looked like the funniest person on the earth. Now these guys getting a script through where they’ve got to sort of come up with 10, phonies, bypass tough work in it.
Viral Videos with Joseph Wilkins
Yes, but that’s why I won’t just say, Okay, you’re the writer, you’re the comedy writer for this script, I’ve got five guys that are all doing the same thing. So each of them come up with 10. And I may use two from each of them, just like you said, but here’s the key. You some of the funniest jokes never get used, either, because back to our earlier point, they’re a little bit too edgy, or they may be funny as can be. And they may be just fine. As far as you know, not getting flagged, but they don’t further the sale. Again, it’s not about being funny, it’s about making sales funny is just a vehicle to get to the sale. And so, you know, as the creative director on pretty much every video that we’ve done, I’m there overseeing the entire process. I personally am not writing it. But I’m working with all of these writers and I’m deciding which jokes make the cut. And I’m testing on other people to see if they think it’s funny, and then obviously to make sure it’s furthering that sale. And so it’s kind of a fine line that you that that you walk between all of those things, but you know that that’s what we do, and that’s how we do it.
David Ralph
And as long as you don’t have the word plastic in it, you’re going to be good. I’m sticking to that. Now. That’s right, we’ve been skirting around this, but it’s pretty much you know, is is out there. This this lunacy that we’ve got of the council culture, where one person says something 15 years ago on a tweet and Many gets dug up, and then they suddenly lose their job for it. And you think, Well, that was funny back 15 years ago, and it’s just that times have changed. And the world is becoming more sensitive, the world is becoming more critical and other people’s points of view, I suppose. So when you look back five years ago, are there some videos that are out there? But you think, Oh, maybe I wouldn’t do that nowadays. And, you know, if I could go back and change them, I might do something different.
Viral Videos with Joseph Wilkins
Not really, I can, I can’t think of anything that we’ve done that has pushed too far, that it wouldn’t be acceptable today. Again, that’s we we really tried to walk that line of being different, disruptive, edgy, but not offensive in any way so that we don’t get anything that backfires on us.
David Ralph
Because I am really offensive. I’ll be honest on on the show, I’m very, I tried to be very generic, you know, but get me away from the microphone. You know, I say terrible things. You know, I think they’re funny. And my kids, you know, that stuff. And because they’re very much into the sort of politically correct. And I say, Dad, you can’t say that, Oh, you can’t say this. And you can’t say that. And it’s just funny. It’s just funny, you know, let you know. But I always know that there’s going to come a time, I think the comedian Jimmy Carr from the United Kingdom, he said that he already knows that his career will end by something he’s already said, you know, but you can’t do it. I saw somebody the other day a comedian, go on to a website called tweet, delete, and clear off anything that he tweeted six months prior? Because he knows that effectively, it’s a safety mechanism. What is your actual feeling of where you are, professionally? And where you would like to go? Is there a bit of you like me, that would really like to push the barrier more and more and more, but you know, that you can’t because of the environment?
Viral Videos with Joseph Wilkins
Not really, I mean, I’m, I’m, I’m a little more conservative, maybe than it sounds like that you are. But I really think especially when we working with some of the bigger companies, I mean, we’re right now we’re in the middle of a campaign. I can’t say who it is. But it’s, it’s a brand that you would know. And we have just finished about, you know, two months of almost, I won’t say fighting, but this company is like to the extreme conservative, but still wants to do a funny video. And like, you’ve got to you’ve got to go to some places, or else it’s just gonna be boring. And so, you know, I, I think the level that we’re that we’re out, that we like to stay at clearly is working. I mean, we have, you know, we have campaigns that within 24 hours of releasing, have made back four times the amount of money that they spent on hiring us, we have campaigns that have doubled month over month sales, clearly they’re working, but they’re not, they’re not edgy enough that I worry at night about you know, is is it going to get flagged? Or is it going to be affected by today’s cancelled culture, it’s just, I think being safe, when it comes to business is the safe way to go.
David Ralph
Because I think that anyone should be able to say whatever they want. And, you know, I agree. If it offends somebody, then sorry, you’ve been offended. But my opinion is my opinion. And your opinion, is your opinion. And you know, let’s all have a discussion about it. And sometimes when I’m having a discussion with somebody about something, I actually think, yeah, actually, I think you’re right, and I was wrong. And you know, I will turn, but just disability to say, You’re wrong, you’re cancelled without a discussion. I think it’s wrong.
Viral Videos with Joseph Wilkins
I totally agree. But again, in my world, it’s about sales. And so it can’t be about my opinion, it can’t be about my philosophy, it has to be about what’s going to what’s going to help this product to sell. And you have to take into consideration the culture and especially the online culture, where you know, everyone gets a say, and everyone can can share it or not share it, your video is more likely to number one, convert into sales. Number two, get adopted quickly by the communities that you’re targeting. In other words, get people to start talking about it, and sharing it if it fits in with their values. So, again, you know, this is about business. It’s not about personal ethics and the kinds of things that that you’re mentioning,
David Ralph
I’ve always had this image and I don’t know why I’m even sharing this or santur having to do each round. With a terrible bout of diarrhoea, and when he was coming down the chimney you know he’s he’s looking for the the near his toilet on every single house. And I’ve always thought that’s a funny concept, you know that that there should be something that we can do on that. But I, I’ve never seen it. I’ve never seen it. I touched into something there, Josie, but you’re scribbling down and thinking that our work for my next campaign,
Viral Videos with Joseph Wilkins
I was mentally scribbling that down, David, thank you.
David Ralph
That’s a gift for you. That’s a Christmas gift. As he please words, we hear him all the time. Let’s hear him again, Steve Jobs.
Steve Jobs
Of course, it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards. 10 years later. Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something, your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well worn path. And that will make all the difference.
David Ralph
Now as a guest, Joseph, you sound like you’re totally on your game, you know what you’re doing, you know who your clients are, you know, where the next sales coming from, you know, your strategy. But obviously, there’s been a journey towards that. Was there times when you felt like he was off the well worn path? And you were making it up by the seat of your pants, like Steve Jobs said, Were there times when you just had to trust that it would work out? Okay. Oh, heavens,
Viral Videos with Joseph Wilkins
yes. I mean, what stage do you do want to talk about but you know, the first time that I decided I’m going to quit my corporate job 20 years ago, when I had a, you know, wife and kids in a mortgage to pay that was, that was probably the biggest leap of faith is how do I actually do this that I, I think I can do and, you know, 20 years later, I’m still thinking I can do. But and I think if there’s anyone listening that’s at that stage, you know, you obviously have to have a minimal viable product that you know, that you can sell, and that you have at least some track record that you that you that there are people out there that want that. But then then I think the next time that that happened was in the crash over here in what was it 2008 When everyone was saying the sky is falling down at the same time, my business partner at the time, passed away, tragically. And I was again thinking, okay, am I gonna have to pack this in because he brought a huge part of the business that we don’t have time to go into. But I again, had to pretty much say, Can I do this alone now? And, you know, 1314 years later, it’s it’s worked. But many times, you know, I kind of stayed up at night wondering, you know, is this going to work? But I think you just like, just like Steve Jobs just said, and it’s been a long time since I’ve heard those quotes. And I’m just seeing them coming into my mind right now, Matt absolutely is true, that things will line up. But you’ve got to work your butt off to make sure that they do.
David Ralph
Yeah, I know. I agree with that. Totally. I’ve had time to Join Up Dots where I didn’t know the next step. I’ve had times when I’d run out of money in the early days, I’d had time when I lost my mojo for it. And I was thinking, yeah, if I if I don’t like this, then what the bloody hell yeah, this is what I quit my job to do, you know. But little by little, you just keep on moving forward. And you look back and you say, Yeah, okay, that that was a bit crappy. But we got past it. You know, and I think that’s the key thing. I think too many people out there, want the dots to join up without understanding. It’s up to them to make the dots join up.
Viral Videos with Joseph Wilkins
Yeah, yeah. And I’ll throw in another one. Just recently, what was it a year, maybe a year or so ago, when when Facebook and Apple had their war and all of the privacy updates change the way that online marketers tracked and, you know, did did their remarketing, all of a sudden, we had to really, really struggle to figure out, you know, how do we still get the results and for our clients that we’re used to, but again, creativity Trumps, or at least helps with a lot of online marketing problems. And, you know, we just had to up our game and continue coming up with better ideas that we’re going to help our customers through that, you know, transition that they’re still going through and shifting away from Facebook and going to YouTube and other platforms that that we hadn’t focused on as much. You know, Facebook has always been the biggest, you know, player As far as the success of the kinds of campaigns that we do,
David Ralph
our versity comes creativity, doesn’t it? Exactly. Yes. It’s interesting times, well, this is the part of the show that we’ve been leading up to Joseph. And this is the part that we called a sermon on the mic, when we get to send you back in time to have a one on one with your younger self. And if you could go back and speak to the young Joseph, what age would you speak to? And what advice would you like to give him? Well, we’re going to find out because I’m going to play the music. And when it fades, is your time to talk, this is the Sermon on the mic.
Unknown Speaker
Here we go. With the best bit of the show us sir man on the mind, the sermon on.
Viral Videos with Joseph Wilkins
Gosh, so I would probably go back in time to a couple years after I had finished college, and I was working as a graphic designer in a company that didn’t really enjoy my job. And that’s when I made the decision to jump ship and start my own business. Which, you know, look, looking back was the best thing I ever did. At the time, I was absolutely terrified to do it. I mentioned earlier, you know, I had, I had a young family and a mortgage and all of the responsibilities that that a lot of us have. But the advice that I would give is, is just, you know, go forward with faith. Like if you really believe that you can do something and you have a valuable product or service that needs to get out to the world. Just put everything that you have into it. You know, I’m constantly inspired by people. You know, like Steve Jobs, and Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos, these people that have just been transformational in the world. And it all starts with just committing, and then throwing 1,000% into building what it is that you’re going to build. And, you know, I love a quote from Will Smith, where he talks about, you know, you may be better than me, you may be stronger than me, you may be faster than me. But if you and I get on a treadmill, there’s no way I’m coming off before you, you know, it’s just having that determination, that you’re going to outwork other people smartly. I’d also give myself a couple of tips, I’d say, use other people more, don’t think you can do it yourself. I think looking for a mentor and getting involved in networking groups, that’s something I still hate to do. As a somewhat introverted person, I hate going to those kinds of events, but you know, you you can’t do it by yourself, you have to involve other people. And treading in the footsteps of others is something that I probably didn’t do as much as I should have. And then the final advice I would probably give is, you know, don’t ethically Don’t, don’t be afraid to fake it till you make it. You know, just just be who you know, you can be an act in that way and things will happen. So that’s probably that would probably be my advice to my pre launching self.
David Ralph
And it’s great advice for everybody else. That’s listening. So Joseph, what’s the number one best way that our audience who have been listening today came connect with you?
Viral Videos with Joseph Wilkins
Well, first, I’d encourage them all to go check out some of our funny videos so that you can actually see what it is that we’ve been talking about funny sales videos.com If there’s a business there that would be interested in chatting, brainstorming, I do a 30 minute free session with anyone that wants to you can sign up for that to the bottom of our homepage at funny sales. videos.com. And then the final plug had put in is for our podcast, if you know we’ve just scratched the surface of what we do and how more importantly, you can do the same thing. So if you’d want to have a deeper dive, check out our podcast, it’s called How to make a video go viral.
David Ralph
And we’re linked on that to the show notes as well. Joseph, thank you so much for spending time with us today joining up those dots and as always, please come back again when you got more dots to join up because I do believe that by joining up those dots and connecting our past is always the best way to build our futures Joseph Wilkins thank you so much.
Viral Videos with Joseph Wilkins
Thank you David. It’s been fun.
David Ralph
Mr. Joseph Wilkins from money sales videos.com So if you want that ebook showing you the eight steps you can come across to either their website or come across to Join Up Dots and look for the podcast episode. And it will be linked on there as well. But um, yeah, interesting stuff on About one, if you want to make a video go viral, what did we learn we learned about you, you’ve got to go through the eight steps, we learned that you’ve got to hire the right people, you’ve got to get that snowball rolling, which may need paid adverts paid a push. Before it sort of takes hold. He knew he stuffed in a lovely guy, lovely guy. So for everybody out there that is interested in starting their own businesses and stuff. As I say, we’ve got the Bisco now going, it’s very interactive. So you come across, sign up for it, totally free of charge. You tell us what you’re struggling with what you want to do, and we will build videos to help you along. And you can find that at Join Up Dots forward slash Bisco. Join up dots.com forward slash Bisco. Until next time, you look after yourselves and I will see you again. Cheers. See ya. Bye bye.
Outro
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