How to Use Video to Attract Business to You
Rather Than Having to Chase it Down

I knew this guy back in 2008 who seemed to have it all together. World class corporations hired him to make their videos. He brought newspapers into the digital age. He was a very busy guy. But he wanted more. He wanted security.

Then the bottom fell out of the economy, and security was beginning to look a lot further away.

This was a time when a thing called “Internet Marketing” was gaining traction. So he looked for a mentor to show him the ropes. He didn’t have to look for long. Many were preaching infinite riches from doing nothing. But they seemed to be the only game in town. 

So he soaked up all the knowledge from them he could.

Yet he always felt they looked a lot like those medicine men proclaiming the virtues of “revitalizing juice” from the back of horse-drawn wagons.

Only this time it was all “copy my methods and watch a flood of prospects begging to give you money!”

And since he saw no alternative, he held his nose and “copied and pasted” their identity over his own.

This made him deeply neurotic. And surprise, surprise, his videos did not draw many customers.

Why did he (you know it’s me, right?) fall for such a scam? 

Well, it’s almost impossible to see all the places you have betrayed everything that’s true for you and replaced it with trying to be somebody else.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, this approach to success just doesn’t work. You can’t “make it” by pretending you’re someone else.

This letter is an invitation to stop doing that and to start trying something better:

The only way you can truly make it is by being YOURSELF. And by figuring out how to make that valuable to others.

The Good News and the Bad News

The “bad news” is that you’re the one who believed the myth the gurus were selling. The “good news” is that you’re also the one who can do something about it.

All those slimy sales techniques come from the same place: a fundamental belief that you being you isn’t enough to create what you’re trying to create. Do this long enough, and you actually do risk become slimy.

It was pretty bad back when I started, but today the situation is much worse. The infinite riches market is more crowded than ever, churning out more disciples of greed than ever. 

I suspect the only ones getting rich off all this activity are the psychiatrists.

The road to becoming a Visible Authority is one where you “make it” as yourself, not anyone else, no matter how cool or rich or sophisticated they are.

This is about having the courage to face that. Part of it is giving up the fear of what people will think about you. The only thing a Visible Authority really fears, if anything, is failing to be themselves.

Let me be as clear and direct as I know how: 

You can “make it” by being yourself.
In fact, that’s the only worthwhile way TO make it.

When you adopt you, people don’t need to be sold anymore. They sell themselves on you. 

You no longer spend your days taking call after call with people who would not be good clients for you. You know already who they are. 

More importantly, they know who you are. You go from being the hunter to being the hunted. Many times, they just sign up, no matter what the current price may be. So that salesman hat you’ve been wearing 75% of the day stays in the closet.

By the way, I’ve learned that there is no such thing as “security”. That’s an illusion that says you’ll get everything you want “someday soon”. I’ve learned that there is only the now. 

The now is where you take your stand. The now is where you build the value that others come to understand is for them. It’s where attraction is born.

NOW is your only point of true power you can use to create the life you want to live.

The now is where the energy of love replaces the energy of fear. And this is the heart of what makes the system so different.

So why don’t more people allow themselves to tap into this power? Well, as it turns out, they have a good reason not to. In a word, it can be scary.

Fear is not attractive. But it can be awfully persuasive. 

And that’s how they get you. They persuade you that if you don’t follow their “teachings”, you’ll end up living under a bridge.

I think the percentage of people now living under bridges by following the fear message is proof enough it doesn’t work for most people.

If you’re tired of all the tricks and gimmicks that work today and not tomorrow…

If you’re sick of believing you can’t afford to be who you are meant to be…

If you’re worn out by producing light weight messages that don’t move anyone…

If you’re frustrated with presenting an image that isn’t congruent with who you are…

If you’re ready to build yourself into a Visible Authority, then here’s the simple 3 part process I recommend…

Part I:
Develop a Message That Resonates

This doesn’t mean you show up as whoever you have to be to make the sale. It means you do the work required to build a bridge between what you have, who you are, and what people want.

Part II:
Commit To World-Class Delivery

World-class people notice when you pay attention to the details, because they do that too. By your commitment to excellence regarding how you show up in video, they will recognize in you a kindred spirit.

Part III:
Adopt a Systematic Approach to Success

True success is not like a treasure hunt. There’s no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. You don’t follow a trail of breadcrumbs or the yellow brick road to the apple orchard and pick the magic apples. You don’t find the masterpiece in the attic. You paint your masterpiece. You grow your own apple tree. You mint your own gold. You amass your own treasure.

How do you do this? By ending your chase for success and building a system that helps you create success.

What does that system look like? It looks like this:

This is a diagram of what I call The Hands-Off Selling System.

It’s a simple set of guardrails that keep you safe and centered on the narrow winding mountain road we call business. 

It helps you make the connections between your knowledge of technology, content production methods, packaging up what people want in a way they can immediately understand, doing it all with the right kind of energy, and producing messages that resonate strongly with the right people.

In other words, unlike what the world tells you, it acknowledges that success is not something that always leaves obvious clues for you to pick up and follow. It’s something you build for yourself. And that’s a lot easier when you have a simple structure like this to help you do it.

The result is that sales happen without you having to push. Without you having to “persuade.” Without you having to venture anywhere near the slimy selling type approach you see littered all over the internet.

A New Approach to Success…
One That You Can Achieve Just By Being YOURSELF

If you’d like a place to work this out with guidance from someone who’s been where you are now, consider The Inner Circle. This is where each member masters each of the stages of the Hands-Off Selling System plus a whole lot more.

This is our “laboratory,” so to speak. A lot of thinking happens here. A lot of action happens here as well. Inside the Inner Circle, we work through all of the steps of the approach I outlined above. We apply them to YOUR situation and help you create real success.

The Inner Circle exists to help YOU get results. Here are just a few examples from Inner Circle Members:

• Vernon built a green screen studio in a small rented space with videos that rival many pro studios. He uses it to raise awareness about his engineering authority in marketing analytics.
• Christy started a successful online course in holistic health care with almost zero prep time using little more than live Facebook videos.
• Kathy posts hours of massively profitable video content every week in the crafting space and teaches her methods to dozens of online video creators.
• Carol has built a growing YouTube channel in the field of dream interpretation, a niche she loves, but until recently was too intimidated to try.
• Jim is launching several new products for his insurance company producing his own videos as the primary means of marketing them. He had never used video before.
• Michel, an attorney specializing in business law, has just launched a YouTube channel on Canadian emigration. His prior experience with video? None.
• Jeremy, a surgeon, now produces marketing videos superior to many created by professionals, a must in his hyper-sensitive and regulated niche.
• Kevin is making a name for himself in the corporate ethics space by producing remarkably good-looking and timely videos with his iPhone.
• Philip is creating synergy among a group of holistic physicians that could change the face of medical care in France. Video is one of his many tools.
• Robert is leveraging his investment banking experience to teach business owners the gentle art of making their companies salable. He uses video to bring more awareness to his innovative concepts.
• Jay, an accomplished Estate Law and Trusts attorney, has gotten so good at editing his own videos, that even in pre-launch, his competitors are begging him to edit their videos.
• Jaime, a business video producer, won an unprecedented number of film festival awards for his first-ever documentary.

Each group inside of the Inner Circle is kept small…on purpose.  That way, everyone gets my full attention and that of the other members. 

You may have noticed that I haven’t written much about video yet. That’s because video is the least of our concerns. I can turn anyone who wants it into a pro inside a couple of months. That capability alone has taken me ten years to perfect.

We use whatever means necessary to get you there. It might be a course, dialogue, an online resource and occasionally even direct intervention on one of your videos.

So while membership in the Inner Circle can help you master video, understand there is so much more to the journey. We cover all of the stuff the “gurus” just gloss over and leave you all alone to figure out yourself.

Is the Inner Circle Right For You?

We have a simple test to see if this might work for you. You just have to answer 3 simple questions, and all the answers need to be "YES".

Here they are:

1. Do you have a product or service to sell?
2. Are you convinced that video will help you make the biggest impact in the world?
3. Are you open-minded enough to learn new techniques and strategies that leave all the slime behind?

If it's yes to all three, regardless of your experience level with video, then this is likely the right path for you.

What’s It Like to Be
in the Inner Circle?

You pop into a Zoom room and see 5 - 8 of other members via webcam, camera phone or DSLR. I’ll start the session by working with anyone looking for feedback or support on an ongoing project. Then we move into the topic du jour; anywhere from video cameras to writing copy to strategizing on a course or launch, to being your best self on camera and whatever else touches on the art and science of attraction using video. There’s quite a bit of support, instruction, members helping members, coffee, humor, and takeaways that at the end of the hour result in immediate action-taking.

If you want to continue the discussion, you post in our private forum, the Greenroom, to get feedback on a video, script or strategy. 

Now, I can’t prove this, but it’s always seemed to me that our members frequently experience powerful insights about what they are really capable of, and that may be the reason for our retention rate…

A study of 5,400 coaches by the ICF (International Coach Federation) revealed a 3 month retention rate for 83% of their clients. 50% stayed more than 6 months. 

I’ve read gurus in the marketing space boasting about their members staying for 3 whole months. Our average retention rate is well over 90% and has been for more than 5 years.

There’s a reason people stay. My hope is that you get to discover exactly what that is.

There are no lock-ins or contracts. You can quit anytime you find it doesn’t meet your needs. (By the way, there are plenty of other venues that will happily keep you hostage if that’s your thing. They call it, getting you to “stick.” I’ve developed a nice long list of these folks if you want it. Yuck!)

If the buttons below are active, you may join. If we’re full at the moment, they’ll lead to a waiting list and I’ll get back to you if a spot opens up.

If you have any questions, I’m at steve@visibleauthority.com

INNER CIRCLE PRICING