An Interview With Kenny And Travis From Kajabi

SEAN: Hey what's up, Sean here with video influencers helping you build your influence and your income with online video and today I'm sitting with the co-founders of Kajabi, Kenny and Travis. How's it going?

KENNY & TRAVIS: Hey great. Good.

SEAN: And we just wanted to talk about briefly about the power of video and online video content marketing in a business arena.

One of the things that, if you check out what they're doing, you are creating YouTube videos, educational content, you're creating all the social media content, and you have a business with employees, and one of the things we talked about off camera is that you are kinda like are treating yourselves, your software company that this site's kinda like being a media company and you're putting all this media.

What's kind of your philosophy in your strategy with online video content marketing?

KENNY: It's kind of funny, we have an awesome like software style office but we tour people through there and say and this room is our video studio and people are like 'what are you shooting?'

They assume we have clients come in or something we are like that no is for us.

Yeah but our strategy is people want to buy products, whatever that product might be, from someone they know, like and trust, you know. And how do you do that if your software company with stock photography on your website for example.

You know its like, no, just be yourselves and be out there in front of the video because people are going to buy from someone who they relate to and they can trust like I said and video content marketing is the best we found to do that.

TRAVIS: Yeah it really like sparks their interest even further, so these are the guys that built this thing, this is how to use it. It's really it's almost like the old school you met the sales person at the door and they show you the shoes or they show you the car.

It's kind of that strategy, but it isn't selling, its more personality and it's encouraging and it's kind of raw sometimes.

But I mean we do have a studio, but you gotta understand we started when we didn't have a studio and we literally would shoot maybe from our computer at first, iPhone, then we eventually bought a camera that we saved enough amazon points to get a nice canon and then...

KENNY: For years I was editing.

TRAVIS: Yeah Kenny was behind the camera or Steve was behind the camera and I would talk or do something. And so not only do we have to evolve in equipment and learning, we also had to learn how to be on camera 'cause it was pretty hard for us at first.

Like you have to get used to seeing yourself - how the rest of the world sees you and you need to hear yourself - 'cause otherwise you'll be so, I mean, I would be petrified sometimes having to hear it again the second time.

But you have to overcoming 'cause it helps... I mean you can even be selling like pluming anything and if you have some video behind that people are gonna wanna work with you.

SEAN: Yeah, yeah, I saw a recent stat that without doubt especially with sales on the website if there's a video behind a product or a service the conversion is off the charts with a difference

KENNY: I don't understand why everybody doesn't have at least one video on their site.

I was looking the other day for a flat screen TV installer you know and I'm looking at these dead, stock looking sites. And it's like, just shoot a video yourself to say how you're going to like do the best job ever, that's it.

TRAVIS: Yeah it's, don't even be salesy, you don't like don't make it some cheesy cable tv commercial (unless you're doing that for fun, because it is fun to shoot those and be silly).

But like just be yourself, just show behind the scene stuff. Show yourself talking about your philosophy, like why did you get into that business? You know, what do you love about your business? What do you hate about your business? What are the best customers?

There are so many things anybody can start doing.

SEAN: So, do you think then that this could be applicable in pretty much any niche? That so business owners and just kind of those entrepreneurs that are launching something, that you get started with video and that should be producing content?

KENNY: Yeah anybody.

TRAVIS: Obviously you start with YouTube 'cause it's so darn easy - it's so simple to just get content up there and you can shoot all this from your iPhone for a long time. You can produce some really cool stuff with your phone.

SEAN: I love it. And then maybe, just lastly, what are some of your best tips and maybe mistakes that could help shorten the learning curve. 'Cause I love that you shared your progression; you editing, you did some stuff in front of the camera. Now you have some better stuff. And now, it's always that if you can be like, ok hey, it's unreachable the stuff you're doing is so great.

What are some of the time savers and mistakes you made along the way that people could save on?

TRAVIS: I think learning from others. I know we started using Wistia as a hosting platform and they had so much cool content about what kind of camera to use, what kind of lighting. That helped a ton.

Learn from other people like have kinda your mentors of how they're shooting like their content. Like not only did Wistia teach us, but they shot really really cool content, so I was like 'oh how are they doing this, oh they're standing this way they're doing this kind of lighting.

And then you gotta just start doing it. I think the more we did it, the better we got at it... that sped up a lot.

KENNY: Just think about lighting and audio, not like pro quality or anything. But like you know when you sound all muffled then it's kind of weird.

TRAVIS: And the technology is so good it's pretty easy to do that but make sure you watch it back. Like some people post some stuff and I'm like why would you post that, I can't see you, I can't hear you. Maybe you shouldn't be like, 'I already filmed it'. Well shoot it again! I mean really, you have to be your own camera person your own editor and your own producer at first.

There was a couple of us at that point so we could do that. But now we have Joe, a full time video guy, who's focusing on that all the time. But you don't have to start with that. Just start now.

SEAN: And so philosophy-wise you see it is valuable enough to make that investment in really content you are not selling. But if that is building the brand and building the business, and you think that business owners should be thinking that way. Like lets up level our gear, our team to help build up this content?

TRAVIS: Yeah you don't necessarily have to hire someone, but we knew that was part of our strategy. We wanted to get to that point, but you can hire an outside service if you need to...

SEAN: Or just per project.

TRAVIS: Yeah exactly. I mean we really look a company like apple and the way that they're constantly telling stories behind their hardware and software, everything they build. And that's the approach we take, as we want to tell the story of you know why did we come up with the idea. Who are we? We are real people you can trust.

I mean in software, you never know - was it built off shore? Was it built by a bunch of people that just don't care? but once you're in front of the camera and you're talking, and even like live a few days, we've done that where they're either on periscope or they're instant messaging and answer questions. Anybody could do that in their businesses.

KENNY: For software in particular most competition, most competitors are talking 'feature, feature, feature' and we want to go out and talk quality and aesthetic and easy to use you know. And I think having like a dedicated video person helped us do that and really put out a top notch stuff

TRAVIS: And talk about things that are important to you like things that you have a passion about. Like I started doing these chalk talk videos and sometimes they weren't even about our business or anything. It was about life and we got a lot of cool buzz from that.

I think that's eventually how we kinda connect with Selena at first. She saw those videos and she's like, 'Oh' she contacted, 'good job you guys'. 'Cause you don't know what a good video might do for your business or your career, you can be shocked sometimes.

SEAN: It's really good. And then just to close what are the kind of - the world has changed, online video has changed the world - what are you closing thoughts, motivation, inspiration for those watching to literally leverage this game changing opportunity of online video?

TRAVIS: Yeah there's so much new technology it's incredible. So I would say, try things - like we're trying out periscope right now - we've tried it before - just try anything but just don't get stuck in your ways. But then again, we also live by a simplicity philosophy, so if something like periscope isn't really working on our mix we'll drop it eventually. But we do try to keep it simple.

In the airport the other day this lady has this giant bottle of water and they said you have to throw that out. So she tries to drink the whole thing, and then didn't you read an article about someone?

KENNY: A lady did that with like a bottle of cognac and then she passed out!

TRAVIS: It's like, 'I already have it'! But maybe you need to drop it? Like test stuff - is YouTube giving you a result? Is Facebook giving you results? And then keep doing that.

SEAN: Yeah. That's really good.

KENNY: And then I love lately the word 'iterate'. Like so, put out something, it doesn't matter what it is and then, that's not the final instalment in for ever you know. Sure things on the internet stay around forever, so you don't want it to be embarrassing or anything. But then come out with something better and better and better you know and work your way up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHVJCZAoTeI