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In today’s Q&A, we are helping Kathy figure out how she can create awesome videos for her online business with affordable video equipment (or what she already has).
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Resources Mentioned in this Episode
- Today’s expert is Amy from SavvySexySocial.com
- Amy on Youtube
- Amy’s Podcast
- iRig Mic
- Rhode Lapel Mic
Let’s dive into this week’s question!
JOCELYN: Hey y’all! You’re listening to a Q&A with S&J.
Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast, where life always comes before work. We’re your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. Join us, each week, as we teach you how to flip your lifestyle upside-down, by selling stuff online. Are you ready for something different? All right, let’s get started.
SHANE: What’s going on guys? Welcome back to the Expert edition of the Q&A with S&J and today we are bringing back one of our favorite guests to talk about video and how it can improve your brand. It is Amy Schmittauer; Amy, welcome back to the Q&A with S&J.
AMY: Shane and Jocelyn are my favorite people in the world, thanks for having me.
SHANE: Love it.
JOCELYN: Yeah, we are like super pumped when we talked to Amy a little bit ago that she is in the Eastern Time zone. There are very few people in the Eastern Time Zone.
SHANE: This is the only podcast we get to record in the Eastern Time zone is when we get to talk to Amy.
AMY: It’s so funny because most people don’t even believe me when I say I’m in the Eastern Time zone –
SHANE: I know.
AMY: – they’re like, “You’re in Ohio, so what does that mean?”
SHANE: “Do you even have internet?”
AMY: “Is that central time?” I’m like, “Yeah, exactly. I’m on Eastern Time, it’s all good.”
SHANE: I always say, we have to like plus or minus four from everything we do because of all the people in California.
AMY: Oh no.
JOCELYN: East Coast represent –
SHANE: East Coast is in the house today.
JOCELYN: Let’s jump into today’s question. It’s from Cathy, a Flip Your Life member, and she says, “I cannot afford expensive equipment to make videos; what should I do?”
SHANE: If we get any video questions, it’s this one because you know, when people start out affordability on everything, you got to get hosting and domains and blah-blah-blah and you got to spend some money to get started. But then we’re like “Okay, how are you going to use video?” And they’re like, “I can’t afford a camera.” That’s impossible. So what do you say to people when they come to you and they are like “I don’t have anything to record with; what do I do?”
AMY: Well, it’s a bunch of crap, is what it is because you do have something to record with – Cathy, no disrespect. So, most of us have a smartphone and there’s no reason to think that if you are going to get serious about video content that you can’t use what you already have. I mean, it’s actually sort of mind-blowing when you think about the abilities of the cameras that are built into smartphones. This is why the flip camera got discontinued and there are so many other hand-held video cameras nobody is buying because you just have it in something you carry around anyway. So, other than maybe a memory issue, there’s no reason for you to say like “I can’t use my phone” and there’s so many accessories out there to enhance even that product alone if you are worried about internal audio being an issue ‘cause you like to do stuff outside a lot. There’s a way of getting a microphone that can just plug into your phone and then you automatically have an upgrade there. So, often times when people are trying to sort of drag their feet on video, they are always talking about equipment and it’s just very hard to wrap your mind on what are all the things we need: lighting, sound, quality everything; but if you just start with what you have at that point in time, you are going to prove to yourself that you need better equipment in the future. Again, I was dragging my feet even to get a professional-grade camera, which is, for most people on YouTube, just a DSLR and it’s about a thousand bucks or something, but I waited a long time to get that and it wasn’t because I didn’t want to have the quality, it was because I wanted to prove to my audience that I could use a cheap and easy camera, and not have to upgrade and not make it feel like the video is so out of reach because that was what I was trying to preach. So, eventually I did upgrade just because it was the progression of my brand, but I proved that I needed the better equipment by actually executing.
SHANE: I think a lot of people buy – I think that goes for podcasting, anything technical; like even your computer, I think a lot of people see people using a Mac or a 600-dollar Heil microphone and they are like, “I got to get all that stuff or I can’t do these things” and it’s like, no, you don’t. You need a 50-dollar mic, you need a computer that works, and you need your phone and you can pretty much do a lot of the stuff to a certain level. The first lesson that anybody watches in our Flip Your Life community is a video of us that we recorded with a 150-dollar, Sony handy cam and we’re like, “Listen, if you think you need a big-time equipment to make money online, you are looking at a video that was filmed with a camera from Wal-Mart.” And then we just did some sales videos, we used our phone and our iPads to record –
JOCELYN: We went to a park and we set it up on a rock, we set the iPad on a rock –
SHANE: We leaned it on a rock.
JOCELYN: Serious [Crosstalk] like we’re in the middle of a forest –
SHANE: So we just went up to a boulder and we put our camera on the boulder basically – [Crosstalk] we actually saw Amy speak at the Tropical Think Tank in the Philippines and when we came back – you said on stage, you said something like – it was similar to this question like, just use what you got. And we were like, we don’t have enough video on our sales pages and we were like, “Let’s just set something against a tree and film it because that’s what Amy said to do.” So that is awesome.
JOCELYN: And nobody cares.
SHANE: Nobody cares.
JOCELYN: I mean, people don’t say, “Well, your video is no high-quality enough so I’m going to stop watching you.”
AMY: No.
SHANE: Yeah.
JOCELYN: And if they do think that, then they are probably not your ideal customer.
AMY: Right; well if they think that, then maybe you take that information in your stride and be like, “Okay, good feedback, maybe we do need –” most of the time, people are killing their video not by having the right camera, but by just not by having the right audio because any really bad audio will kill a video very quickly.
SHANE: So what do you think is the – is there a good mic for an iPad or an iPhone or something like that out there that’s cheap, that people could afford?
AMY: Absolutely; like the base level microphone that I was using for a while, and actually I still have, it’s like an interview-style boom mic, and it’s like – anyway, it’s pretty basic. It’s by a company called iRig. It gives you the thought that it’s for iPhone only, but they actually made it compatible with all smartphones. So any microphone with iRig works really well with smartphones. Recently however, I did upgrade to a lapel mic that is wired from Rode and I use Rode products predominantly in studio or on the phone whatever, but even that lapel mic is so convenient and easy. I actually see a lot of people with this whole live streaming movement that’s happening with Periscope and Meerkat, lot of people using these little lapel mics to enhance the audio when they are live streaming ‘cause a lot of times they are walking around, doing crazy stuff and you just want to make sure that your audio is pretty consistent throughout all that craziness.
SHANE: So before you upgrade a camera to a 1000-dollar camera or do something crazy like that, go buy like a 100-dollar mic –
AMY: Exactly.
SHANE: And now you are going to be able to like rock it out and record with your phone and you’re going to be A-okay for a while.
AMY: Right, as long as you are recording with your phone turned to the side, it’s horizontal, it’s not vertical, you can use a front-facing camera, you can get a cheap little desk tripod, you can get a little lapel mic, I mean, like there’s just so many little mini accessories that actually enhance the experience of using your smartphone to get started. And I guess, if you want to get outside of that, if you do want to step it up a little bit, the cool thing is that I have just been using Canon digital cameras for years. Since the beginning of my time on YouTube, I was just using this little digital camera that you would take on vacations and take pictures back in the day before we all had smartphones, and it would just take flawless video. So if you’re strolling through like Wal-Mart or something like that, they have these cameras set out, just take a look at what’s out there and if you want something different and quite frankly if you like to edit, it’s a lot easier to use a different camera than your phone because you can just take the files off the SD card, dump it on your computer and go from there; rather than trying to upload from your phone –
SHANE: And those are so cheap these days.
AMY: Exactly. I was just shopping for one – I wanted one just to buy ‘cause it’s like they are literally a 150 bucks, maybe even a hundred bucks especially on Amazon, and then you have just something completely different that might be a little bit easier for you to maneuver if you are one of the people that have a hard time not looking at yourself on the screen, and forgetting to look at the lens of the camera, then that’s also another thing to think about. Okay, maybe I just need to have something that –I can’t see myself so I am not looking off to the side and people think I’m crazy. That takes some practice, so there’s things that you can do to just take steps. I still carry around a Canon digital camera because it’s just easier for me. I actually was on the bus at Tropical Think Tank with the speakers to the speaker dinner and I pulled out a Canon and started taking video and they were like, “What is that?”
SHANE: “Can I make a phone call with that? What is that thing?”
AMY: So it was pretty funny, it was very good.
JOCELYN: That’s hilarious; I love that answer and how you can just keep it simple starting out. That’s what we talk to people about all the time. So that is fantastic. Amy, remind us about where we can find you online.
AMY: I am at savysexysocial.com, three videos a week, Tuesday through Thursday, and a couple of podcasts if you want to hear more from me on Mondays and Fridays, the Marketing Lifestyle Show.
SHANE: All right guys, that wraps up our Expert Q&A with Amy Schmittauer; check her out online, she has a very entertaining Twitter feed as well, you need to follow Amy on Twitter because it is awesome. It’s one of my favorite things to scroll through in my newsfeed all the time and until next time guys, get out there and flip your life. We’ll see you then.
JOCELYN: Bye.
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