If you’re anything like me, you start something new – stick to it for a while – I dunno, maybe a week or two – and then ditch it. Ditch it hard.
And I get it, you’re judging me. Maybe I just have ADHD and need to be medicated, or maybe it’s something else.
Nahhh, it probably is ADHD, but hey – I ain’t complaining. It’s taken me a while to get to where I’m at, but here I am.
Wooaahhh buddy, let’s get back on track. We were talking about people filming themselves for their businesses.
Ah! Yes. Alright, so. You’ve decided that you need to film yourself, you know that it’s a good idea, and you’re excited about it. You do it for a week, and then you do it maybe every few days, and then every 2 weeks, once a month… And it dwindles to a big, fat zero.
Well, you aren’t alone, and it’s actually not even that hard doing the thing is it? What I find the most difficult is to decide what to do, and then to keep the habit of doing it alive. This is what creating social media habits for your business is all about.
For me, it’s never about the habit itself, it’s actually more about the things that feed that habit. I’m talking here about how one thing leads to another. So, for example. You get the idea that “I need to film myself!” But then you stand back and look at that statement, and feel like your staring up at Mount Kilimanjaro.
Well, I’ve discovered that if you break down the task, and let it bleed into other seemingly insignificant tasks, it makes these things a lot easier. I call it habit hacking.
So to habit hack, we’re going to break things down to the simplest forms, and think of them as small lakes and rivers which are feeding each other.
Let’s look through the lens of my business. I’ve decided that it’s important to film myself. Videos of me tend to perform very well on four32’s social platforms – so by golly that’s what I’ll do.
Truth be told, I’ve put this off for a long time – because where do you even start, right? I had tried to have someone interview me and then split up what I say into individual videos.
But what am I going to do, hold someone hostage every single week to come film me? And besides – all of the separate videos were too similar in their context.
Then I tried to share tips as they just came to my head – but that felt too rushed. Too unorganized. And it never stuck. I only did it once.
So then, for a completely unrelated reason – I started writing blogs. Now listen close, because there are two lessons here.
I had written about 9 of these things, and Jon – my trusty sidekick – had known that I was writing them. Now, Jon lives about 2 hours away, and one day he says, “Jay. Bro. How ‘bouts I come up there and we film you talking about the blogs you’ve written?”
To which I tell the man that I love him. This is brilliant! So basically, all I need to do is write blogs every morning, and then I get 3 epic wins. I post the blog on the four32 site to help with SEO, I make a long form video to put on YouTube, and then we split up the longform YouTube video into cuts for Instagram and Facebook Reels.
Lesson time! Lesson One is that as a business owner, you need to drop your ego and take input from others. This was not my idea. This was Jon’s idea – and this is why Jon is the best. Thank you Jon. Elon Musk does this a lot too. That, being taking the advice of others – and he’s been mildly successful, so...
Oh, and Henry Ford did it too. I mean, I had never heard of him until recently, but apparently he invented something called the Ford Motor Company.
Anyways.
Lesson Two is just you putting the dots together. By enforcing a habit of writing every morning, there’s little to no resistance when it comes to filming these things.
So if I were you, I would get a teleprompter app on your phone, load the blog into it – and do a bunch of takes until you read through it naturally.
You can then post the full video, and also split it up into individual reels. Do what we did! Get 10 or so blogs under your belt, and then film them all in one day. You’ll have content for a month or 2 before you need to do it again.
Lastly, I’d also recommend starting to take the 2 minute rule seriously. David Allen coined this term in Getting Things Done, and it simply states that “if an action will take less than two minutes, it should be done at that moment.”
If you follow this rule, you’ll start to notice the benefits immediately. I mean this will generally start with something like tidying up your desk, or taking out the recycling.
Shortly thereafter it’s going to translate into getting important tasks done. For example, it takes me less than 2 minutes to get out my laptop and turn it on.
After that, it takes less than two minutes to write a few sentences. From there it takes less than two minutes to look up that stat that I wanted to include in my blog. This one here:
According to a recent study, 80 – 95% of college students claim to engage in procrastination from time to time. About 75% of them identify as procrastinators and 50% state that it’s a huge issue for them.
These numbers are staggering!
Now, I have always battled with procrastination myself – remember, the whole ADHD thing from the beginning of this writing. However, in beginning to use the 2 minute rule, I’ve dramatically increased my productivity, and I’ve effectively beaten procrastination (for the most part) to a pulp.
And that about does it, my lovely reader. If you want to start filming yourself, just break it up into smaller responsibilities and actionable items that feed into each other.
Every small part is a piece of the bigger whole, and the sooner you break it up and start completing small tasks, the better you’ll become at making filming yourself for your business a habit and a routine.
If this all sounds great – but a little too intimidating, then reach out to me, here at four32 MEDIA. four32 is a Digital Content Creation business – and we focus on creating compelling content with stories that drive sales and grow businesses.
To Your Success,
Jay Ashcroft
Four32 MEDIA