Creating video for business with Mike Faraci

We spoke with Mike Faraci from HitTheRedButton.com about creating content for business. I actually did a session with Mike and we included one of the editted videos at the end of this conversation. It was great experience. I came with a few topic ideas, we chose a couple, and then off we went. We “Hit The Red Button” as the name suggests (AKA: Hit record) and off we went. I got good feedback and guidance from Mike along the way which was very helpful and the end result of the videos are awesome.

Here is our conversation. I hope you find it helpful. Transcription is below (half proofread).

Transciption of this Video:

Anthony Balsamo (00:00):

So I’m here with Mike Faraci from Hit the Red button. Mike and I actually just finished a session. We recorded some content. His team’s going to edit it, so it’s kind of an “eat your own dog food type thing.”

Mike Faraci (00:13):

That’s right.

Anthony Balsamo (00:14):

I just went through the process. To be continued on the end product. I’m excited for that. But I just wanted to talk to you a little bit about what you’re doing because video right now, it’s a piece of the puzzle and it should be a piece of everybody’s puzzle. So

 

[00:00:30] we [Vonk Digital] only focus on loan officers, branch managers, brokers, and mortgage lenders. Can you talk a little bit about what you’re seeing out there and what you’re doing?

 

Mike Faraci (00:38):

What I’m seeing out there is a bunch of people trying to make video to drive business, especially in mortgage and real estate. But the habit that most salespeople have, especially when getting on camera for the first few times is falling into their comfort zone and their comfort zone is selling and they treat the camera and that video as if

 

[00:01:00] they’re presenting to a group of people. But at the end of the day, when you’re creating video to post for organic reach, your audience is not captive. They’re not going to feel bad for taking that phone call of in the middle of a sentence or walking out in the middle of your spiel, right? It’s one person on their device scrolling and they will scroll right past you faster than you could ever imagine. So what I’m trying to explain to people is, listen, we’re not making video just to make video.

 

Mike Faraci (01:30):

[00:01:30] We’re making video for business and video for business in an industry like ours where we sell, sure, mortgages are a commodity, but what we’re really selling is the service that we give leading up to the securitization of that commodity. So in a services industry, your content can’t convert for you. It’s just one touchpoint along the roadmap. So your video shouldn’t try to sell or convert people. Your video

 

[00:02:00] should start conversations and that’s really it. You provide enough value through your content to become trustworthy enough for somebody to be willing to reach out to you. And then once you start having those conversations, then you can do what you do best. You can sell, you can convert, you can pitch, you can do all those things, but that’s not for these initial kind of top of funnel touch points. And what we’re doing is helping people quickly, easily, and efficiently

 

[00:02:30] create that video for their business so they can post and host it on their websites and use it in one outreach campaigns and all the good stuff. But they’re not on their own. They’re not just left to do it the best they can on their own. There’s coaching involved, the edits are handled, all of that stuff in between all the stuff that you guys hate doing. I’m one of those weirdos who likes doing it. So it

[00:03:00] tends to be a complimentary relationship.

 

Anthony Balsamo (03:03):

A lot of the people that I talk to that, I mean they could have been in the business for 20 years. So it’s not the expertise they don’t have. It’s the recurring theme that I hear. And a lot of people, let me look right at the camera; A lot of you, this is what you’re saying to me, “I don’t know what to talk about.” I get that all the time. And niche is one, but any quick thoughts on that?

 

Mike Faraci (03:29):

Yeah, [00:03:30] the things that you need to talk about are the things that you take for granted all day, every day. You got to realize the basis of education that the people you’re trying to reach have is so much lower than you think because you’re in the thick of this all day every day. You know how much down payment it takes to buy a house. Everybody in the industry does, but everybody out there has no clue. It was a recent study by NAR, I think it was in 2022. So still plenty recent, plenty accurate information.

 

[00:04:00] 70 something percent of the country thought that you needed more than 10% down to buy a house.

Anthony Balsamo (04:08):

Yeah, that’s wild. I saw that.

 

Mike Faraci (04:11):

When that’s the basis of misinformation that we’re really working with, then the things you need to be talking about are not how bank statement income is calculated for self-employed borrowers. The things you need to be talking about are not like DTI calculations and how a lender qualifies

 

[00:04:30] you. It’s hey, if you can afford a housing payment, the down payment isn’t holding you back as much as you think. Reach out and I’d love to talk more about this with you. Again, just starting the conversation, addressing people’s pain points, the thoughts and misinformation that they have that they feel is holding them back in their path to home ownership. And then just letting them know that there is a solution, there is an avenue. I can teach you more about it. Let’s have

 

[00:05:00] this conversation.

 

Anthony Balsamo (05:01):

You think people want to hear about DTIs, DT I calculations.

 

Mike Faraci (05:05):

If you want people to scroll past your videos and not watch them, just start doing math. That’s all you got to do.

Anthony Balsamo (05:13):

Well explain. So if I’m somebody that’s considering getting more video, what’s the process like with you?

 

Mike Faraci (05:24):

Yeah, a

 

Anthony Balsamo (05:25):

Little walkthrough.

 

Mike Faraci (05:26):

Yeah, our kind of cornerstone product, it’s called guided content creation, [00:05:30] and the way it works is that you get a full month of video content in one hour of your time.

 

Anthony Balsamo (05:37):

I don’t want to cut you off, but that is super important because the biggest excuse I get from all you is I don’t have time. I hear that and I make that myself. That’s a huge one.

 

Mike Faraci (05:51):

That’s right. So the program is built around getting you on a consistent posting schedule and consistent doesn’t necessarily mean every day. So don’t get overwhelmed 

 

[00:06:00] here. We have two core plans on this. It’s eight videos a month and 12 videos a month. So it gets you on a twice a week or three times a week posting schedule because make no bones about it. You shouldn’t be talking about business all the time in your content.

 

Mike Faraci (06:15):

You just shouldn’t. You got to let your personality shine through. Sometimes you got to post some personal content once in a while because if all you do is talk about mortgage, how often do people refinance every five to seven years, something like that. If all you do is talk about mortgage and real estate, they only have a reason to pay attention to you every

 

[00:06:30] five to seven years. That’s not what we want. We want you to be the star of your online presence obviously, but in your video for business that tries to educate and start conversations with potential referral partners, recruits and clients, that’s the stuff that we focus on. And you’ll hop onto a one hour long recording session through. It’s basically a glorified zoom through a different program that records in higher quality, but we coach you through making all of your content.

 

[00:07:00] We help you ideate on topics with you. Anthony, you can speak to this. We just went through this process with you. How did that go?

 

Anthony Balsamo (07:07):

It went great and I do a decent amount of video for our ads and for content and you still get hung up. So actually having you there was helpful because I started doing a little bit of a motor mouth, just super run on sentence. We backed up, redid it. That whole process is helpful. And then

 

[00:07:30] just through the reminder of, it’s almost like when people are telling the comedians, they say when you tell a joke, the best joke had the least amount of fat on it. They say just all the other people stuff. So that was helpful for me. So the process is very comfortable. I appreciated the guidance. And I think another thing is you can’t edit your own essay. You think you have all these thoughts and things you may want to say. So there are people that have a lot to say and don’t know where

 

[00:08:00] to start. It is just having somebody there to bounce some of the ideas off of was helpful too.

 

Mike Faraci (08:06):

And the thing we did with your first piece especially, it was really good content. It was great value that you were providing. It was just going really long. So instead of just prompting you and letting you go, we ended up breaking it down into three or four little micro parts and we did a little q and a session because I know that through this process we’re not just trying to get one take that’s perfect so

 

[00:08:30] you can post it. We’re shooting for the edit because after your one hour session, when you make your eight 12 videos, after all those are done, you get to log off, you go back to your day job, we pull down the recording, we cut it up into clips, we put edits on them, we cut out all your breaths and the word gaps and the filler words and the ums and all that stuff goes away. And all you do is wait until the next week when you get your pile of fully

 

[00:09:00] finished professionally edit videos ready for you to schedule out for posting over the next month. That way it’s one day, it’s one hour, it’s one simple recording session for you and you have your video for business that actually works

 

Mike Faraci (09:15):

For an entire month. And

 

Anthony Balsamo (09:17):

What about platforms?

 

Mike Faraci (09:20):

What about them? Platforms are great. I love all the platforms when it

 

Anthony Balsamo (09:24):

I was just going to say, if somebody focuses on, we have clients that focus

 

[00:09:30] on TikTok, we have clients that focus on Instagram, some focus on, well, I guess Facebook is the same as Instagram, but different channels like

 

Mike Faraci (09:37):

That’s right. So the platform thing is a conversation that we usually have in an onboarding call. So anybody who signs up with a six month or longer commitment, we do an onboarding and strategy call first before we book any recording sessions. And that way we can help ideate and develop some target viewer personas for you, some content pillars, some things like that. So that way we can just kind of prep you with content topics before

 

[00:10:00] your recording sessions even happen. That way you’re doing even less work coming up with the ideation and things to talk about and who you’re talking to. And along with that is what platforms are you going to be posting these on? Are these going to be hosted on your website? Are they going to be used in CRM campaigns? Are you going to be doing one-to-one text with them? Do they need to be on TikTok?

 

Mike Faraci (10:22):

Are they for LinkedIn? Do they need to be Instagram reels, YouTube shorts, Facebook reels, anything under the sun? We want to know how

 

[00:10:30] you’re planning on using that stuff so that way the finished videos look the best that they can on those platforms. If your main audience is on Facebook and Instagram, then we’re going to make sure that everything is vertical 16 by nine and 90 seconds or less because that will fit into a reel. If you also want to post them as YouTube shorts. Well now we got to make sure they’re 60 seconds or less because that’s the length limit on YouTube shorts. If you’re only

 

[00:11:00] using these for B2B content and your kind of main digital homes so to speak is on LinkedIn, then we’re probably going to crop them at four by five because that shows up a little bit better in the LinkedIn feed. And it’s okay if they go 2, 3, 4 minutes now. And again, because that platform is a little friendlier to longer form content. So depending on each individual person’s use case, we will tailor the content to fit wherever they are

 

[00:11:30] hoping to gain eyeballs. That’s the whole thing. It’s all about going to where the attention of your target viewers are and we want to make sure that we show up right for that space.

 

Anthony Balsamo (11:41):

Yeah, no, that’s great. You just blew my mind a little bit With the CRM campaigns, there’s a lot of people have these big databases, especially the ones that haven’t gotten into social yet, and there’s such an opportunity to personalize that. And if you’ve been in the business for a long time, you probably

 

[00:12:00] have a pretty significant headstart like me campaigns, that’s a gem of an idea.

 

Mike Faraci (12:08):

And with video, it’s an interesting thing. I was doing some research on that stuff last year and I found a study that LinkedIn actually had put out about email open and click through rates when video was and was not included. They were trying to see if video moved the needle. And my favorite stat from that entire study

 

[00:12:30] was that they saw a 6% increase in email open rate if they put the word video in the subject line. There was no actual video in the email, there wasn’t even a link to one. All they did was put the word video in the subject line and they saw a bump to open rate. So people are looking for this stuff. People want to see this stuff.

 

Anthony Balsamo (12:49):

That’s great. Well, I love what you’re doing. I think what we’re going to do is maybe at the time the people and you guys are watching this, I’ll already have the final

 

[00:13:00] video. They can see where that ended up, which would be pretty cool. But what is the best way? If somebody, I’m going to put it, I’ll put it wherever, however they’re seeing this, I’m going to put your web address or if there’s a calendar, what’s the best way for people to get to you?

 

Mike Faraci (13:18):

Best way to get to me is the website, hittheredbutton.com. That’s what we’re doing at Red Button Media, trying to help more people hit the red button, make more video and my digital home. Because

 

[00:13:30] for my business and myself, I try to network with as many business professionals as possible. I’m on LinkedIn all the time, so find me on LinkedIn, Mike Faraci, give me a follow, send me a connection request. I’ll probably immediately accept it and we can go from there.