SPEAKER_00: 0:25

Welcome back to Plan Like a Boss. Most entrepreneurs know they should be using YouTube to grow their businesses, but they feel overwhelmed, unsure of what to post, or afraid of being on camera. That's where Lisa Mellick comes in. She's the founder of Stone Groove Social, a Las Vegas-based marketing agency that specializes in YouTube strategy, video editing, and social media marketing. Lisa helps business owners simplify their marketing, show up with confidence, and finally turn their online presence into consistent sales so they can stop stressing about content and start thriving in both business and life. Lisa, welcome to the show. I'm so happy to have you here.

SPEAKER_01: 1:05

Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. I am so excited to get into this with you today.

SPEAKER_00: 1:10

Excellent. Let's start out by you telling us just a little about your story, how you got here.

SPEAKER_01: 1:16

Okay, so YouTube. We're kind of seeing how did how did I get to YouTube? So Tanya and I, we've known each other a long time. So I'm gonna kind of divulge our secret here. We've been friends for years. You know what? I was figuring it out. It's been almost 30 years. So we we have similar backgrounds where we're musicians. You know, we we went to music school together, actually, and then we branched out and did our masters, did our doctorates at different places. But we both have that entrepreneur spirit, you know. Being a musician, you're an entrepreneur. Whether you like it or not, you are, in order to even work as a musician. We we both have that experience, and and I know that the music career really helped me with video. You know, getting on stage helped me get over the fear of what do people think? Am I doing okay on video? So my background is music originally as an entrepreneur. And similar to Tanya, I know our stories are just so similar, branching out from music into the world of online, right? What is online business and online entrepreneurship doing things online? And I love YouTube. I've always loved YouTube since the beginning when I would perform concerts with my duo. I had a flute and guitar duo and we would perform concerts and I would put all these concerts on the YouTube, but I had no clue what I was doing. I would just post these concerts hoping that people would just watch it and be inspired and have a good day. But I had no clue that we can use YouTube as a device. I mean, as a what's the word for it, just to bring people to the world. You can do a lot with YouTube to bring them into your world. So not only when you get on camera, so I know a lot of you in the audience right now, you're entrepreneurs, you're business owners, you're people maybe trying to make it maybe changed careers. You're really lucky to be here because I want to talk about how YouTube can help you, even from the very beginning, get in front of the right audience, get in front of your people, and start sharing what you do, sharing what you love, and go from there. So from music and doing that with um YouTube, the shutdown. Let's talk about that. So COVID happens, everyone's world changed, right? Everyone's world changed. And as a musician, I was not considered one of the what essential essential workers, yeah. Essential. So it was kind of what else am I gonna do? And so that's when I started doing more online things. And I I was exploring uh YouTube in ways of, well, how can I share other information that I know in a fun way? So one aspect of my story is I'm certified in the Enneagram personality system. So I decided to start a YouTube channel with that, and that's where I got a lot of my experience with filming and editing, and I just fell in love with the editing process of videos. It's just so fun. Now, most people are probably like, You're crazy. It takes so long and it's so complicated. And how are how do you do that? But I love it, and so that's kind of my introduction to the video editing world. And through all of that, I started working for a YouTuber. So I shout out, I'll shout out her name because she's amazing and I love her. She's the minimal mom. Her name is Dawn Madsen, the minimal mom. She knows everything. She's been on YouTube more than a decade doing her minimal mom channel. So I got to just learn directly from her every day, learning how this works. And as far as bringing people into your world, and she's the queen of that. And after that, just learning from some other people in the YouTube world and then starting my own marketing agency. So this is I brought you to today is the marketing agency where we specialize in YouTube strategy, we specialize in video editing and social media marketing. And through this business, I've been able to implement all the stuff that I've learned from throughout the years of for YouTube and social media into what I'm doing. And the results are insane for YouTube for people, and I just get so excited, and that's present day. That's what I'm doing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 6:07

So Lisa and I, we went to college together, and like she said, we we separated for a while. We still kept in touch. And then now it's come full circle because full disclosure, Lee Lisa is my YouTube strategist and she is my video editor. So I I only bring guests on the channel that I really believe in, and she is someone I really believe in. So as entrepreneurs, we know people tell us we need to be on YouTube, but we don't always know why. So why is it that businesses need to be on YouTube right now?

SPEAKER_01: 6:38

That is the question. Because how many people go to YouTube every every month? It it keeps raising every single day, basically. But 2.9 billion people go every month to YouTube to search, watch, and enjoy videos. So if you're a business owner, why would you not be there to be found?

SPEAKER_00: 7:02

Excellent. That's that's a really good point. That is a really good point. I go there all the time. So now a lot of entrepreneurs that I know, they're thinking, okay, so yeah, I know I need to be on YouTube. I know, but I don't even know where to start, or I hate being on camera. What advice do you have to those people on where to start or or what do they do if they just they're bad on camera? They hate it.

SPEAKER_01: 7:28

Okay, so I'm gonna tackle the first part of like where do you start? Because that's the overwhelming part. And if you go on YouTube and you're you're wondering where to start, sometimes it gets confusing. Um, and you're thinking it's gonna take a lot of time. You're gonna you're thinking you don't have the tech, like the gear, you don't have the cameras, you don't have the lights, you don't have the stuff you need. How do you even create the videos? How do you script all those things? So to boil it all down, when you first start, you don't need all that stuff. Like you don't need it at all. Do you have a window in your house? Like, can you be sit in front of your window? And do you have a phone that records video? And that's all you need. Sit in front of your window, record with your phone, and you can do amazing videos. Our phones, they're very high quality nowadays. So you don't have to worry about that. I would say just start. Just start. Your first videos are gonna be your worst videos, and everyone needs to start in the beginning, and they everyone needs to have bad videos. Everyone. So just my suggestion is just start. Start with your phones, start with the window right there. Mics, you don't need to invest into anything really fancy. You could get a very small, you know, little lapel mic or something that, you know, 20 bucks. You could get that on Amazon if you really want, because sound is is key as well. So that's kind of how you get started. And we'll talk about video editing because I know that's the hang-up. Like that's where people get hung up. So we'll talk about that. But I want to jump over to well, jump getting on camera, that can be terrifying for people, right? So let's let's talk about that. How do you get on camera and have the confidence to do this? Is to just do it, get the reps in, just keep doing it, keep doing it, and you'll get used to doing it. And you you don't even have to record it at first. You could just record yourself throughout the day being on camera and just get used to the fact that it's on, you know, that it's recording. You don't have to post it, is what I'm saying. As you get used to it, your confidence grows. But I would say for people who are just completely scared about it, I want to say these, I guess it's three words. It's, which is two words, it's not four words, about you. Four words. Think of that sentence. It's not about you. So before you jump on, tell yourself that. It's not about me. It's about the person who you're trying to help on the other side of the camera. So talk to that one person you're trying to help and take yourself out of it. And every time I do that, I'm not even nervous at all. So that's that's one of my top go-tos for video. What about you, Tanya? What kind of do you have any advice?

SPEAKER_00: 10:25

I totally agree with you on that. As far as getting confident on camera, you just have to do it. You just have to get used to it. And those first videos, I go back and look at my first video videos, and they're so cringy. So cringy. But the fastest way that you can learn to do something is by doing it. We both know, as entrepreneurs and everybody out there listening to this, you can take all the courses in the world, but nothing is going to prepare you like on the job training. And that comes to video as well. One hack that I had when I first started out getting comfortable is I would I have this little monster that I picked up at like HomeGoods or something for Halloween. And it was in my office, and I just sat it in the chair across from me and I talked to the monster. And now I just talk to the camera like there's somebody there. It's not a big deal. But I've been doing this a while, and I've been growing my YouTube channel for over a year now, and it's, you know, practice. You get better at it, and you're my editor. You you've seen that I've gotten better at it. And and back to the the equipment situation too. People, you watch these YouTube videos. Oh, you need all of this lighting setup, and you need this and you need that. I literally started with my phone and a$20 lapel mic, like Lisa said. Now I've upgraded my microphone now, and I use a a hundred dollar lapel mic and it gets a lot better sound. But all of my first videos were just fine with that lapel mic. And as far as lighting is concerned, I own fancy lights and I don't even use them because they don't give me the lighting that the window that I'm sitting in front of right now give me. I'd still record in front of a window. So yeah, 100%. Same here. I prefer natural light from the window more than anything. Okay, so now I know that you let's talk about the video editing side of things. Cause for me, this was this was no-brainer for me. Uh at this point in my business, I edited my videos myself early on with very minimal editing. I knew it needed to be better. And frankly, I just did not have the time to learn. And I did not make the time to learn. Instead, I hired you to do it for me. And my videos look great. But say people don't have the budget to hire somebody to do it all the time because video editing is not cheap. It's not inexpensive. What are a few things that they can do easily on their own? Like what software should they be using? What matters when it comes to editing versus what doesn't?

SPEAKER_01: 12:57

Yeah, that's a great question. I think the first thing that you'll ever hire out for your YouTube channel would be video editing, just to let you know that that's gonna save you so much time. As we talked about the time aspect, it takes hours and hours of your time. So, so I want you to really chart it out. Like, what's your hourly rate for yourself? Like, how much is your time worth in your business? What could you be doing besides sitting at a computer video editing? So I really want to just encourage you, the listeners, to think about that. You know, what's your time worth? And um, so that would be the first hire for a YouTube channel. But say you just start out and you're like, there's no way I have no money, I can't hire. You you would start out with a simple system. I'm not gonna tell you to go over and do Premiere Pro, which that's the system that I use, but it takes months, if not years, to be an expert on it, as well as like DaVinci Resolve or any of those systems. You can do it simply on a free editing software. So I used to always recommend CapCut. They've had their issues if you haven't heard about all the things going on with that as far as using your content. So you just have to kind of look at what their laws are right now or what to kind of read through what's happening. So I'm not really, I'm not using Cap Cut right now, but there's other programs. There's one that we started, I started. I say we because my daughter actually is also doing a YouTube channel. I'm not gonna promote it, but she's started one and she's she's only 11. So I'm showing her how to do video editing. So if she can do video editing, she used to do Cap Cut, now she's doing Philomore. So if you've heard of Philomore, I really like it because it's similar to Cap Cut. So it's a very easy software to learn. You could do it on your phone, you could do it on your computer. It's it's fine. And minimal edits are okay. To get you started, I don't want you to be overwhelmed. Do the minimal edits, just like what you said, Tanya, doing minimal edits got you going, right? In the beginning, and it was perfectly fine. It was good. So that's why I'd encourage people do as much as you can, but the time aspect is the the the bottleneck for will be the bottleneck in your business.

SPEAKER_00: 15:21

Well, yeah, it was it was totally the bottleneck in mine, and I use DaVinci Resolve. And when I I do a little bit of my video editing because I Lisa does my main four videos a month, and then the additional ones I edit and put up, but they're very, very simple, usually top-down filming plan with me's. So they sometimes I don't edit them at all, they just go up as they are. But those don't require B-roll or anything like that. But I also I don't know if you've used a script for any video editing. I have used it, I was using it a little bit for podcast editing, and what I like about it is it has a text editor. So you can go out and cut out all the ums or anything pretty quickly and easily. And they give you like so much for free to start out with, and then you have to pay after that.

SPEAKER_01: 16:12

Yeah, Descript is a really good software. I love it for that reason with uh the text. You can visually see just all of those words. You just want to cut them out, and it's very quick and easy, and that's a it's a good software.

SPEAKER_00: 16:25

Excellent. So now talk to me about long form versus short form content and specifically what kind of videos should people be making? Because I know they're probably out there going, you know, you know, I'm an entrepreneur, I run a plumbing business. What's there about plumbing on YouTube? Or, you know, I, you know, I'm I'm an attorney and I'm an injury attorney. What what kind of videos should I be making? Okay, that's that's a good question.

SPEAKER_01: 16:54

Can I jump back for a second for the editing question? I'm in the editing. I'm in the editing world right now. I'm thinking of all the editing because I want to be helpful to everyone as far as which programs to use. Use the one that you have. And so if that if you're an Apple person, you have an Apple computer, you have you have it right on there, right? The software. That's how I got started. Yeah, my very first ones were done on iMovie on my computer. Yeah, that's that was my very first the way I edited, and it's great. It's fine. It's do do iMovie, you know, do do it. So whatever you have, go ahead and do it. That was my two cents with that. Okay, so let's jump into another question. Okay, so do you mind uh repeating it for everyone?

SPEAKER_00: 17:39

Yes, of course, of course, of course. So you have entrepreneurs out there, and what kind of videos should they be making? What what topics should they be covering? Because you know, people who listen to them podcasts, they do a little bit of everything. So say you're a plumber or you're a lawyer or you're a hairdresser, what kind of videos should you be making? And the second part of that, long form versus short form, which should they be?

SPEAKER_01: 18:06

Okay, good. So we're in 25, 2025, 2026. We're going into 2026 already, and we are in a great spot. If you're a brand new creator, it's the perfect place to be. The algorithms on most of the platforms are favoring the views, they're they're favoring what kind of content. So the idea of what you is the most important. Like, what are you talking about? Are people interested in it? And so people will find you on YouTube on the Discover page. Like that's the main thing that we need to focus on right now is having a really good thumbnail that people they'll see that picture and it will intrigue them, maybe with just a couple words, two to three words on the thumbnail that makes them intrigued, coupled with the title, having an intriguing title. But you know how you scroll on YouTube and you see that, that's how you're going to gain views and people wanting to watch the rest of your content, and they'll binge your content that way. So when we're talking about long form and short form, people can also find you obviously on the shorts. So there's there's contra, it's kind of controversial. Should you do long form or should you not do shorts, or should you people have differing opinions actually on this, but I've found a lot of success with business owners creating that one video and then cutting it up into shorts and using those shorts to draw people into their long form video. So people who are not doing that, I don't know why. Well, I do know why. I understand the other side of what people are saying not to do shorts. So I'll give you that side. I'll give you that side right now. The other thought of not doing shorts is most YouTubers, most creators that are more YouTubers, not so much uh business owners. I'm not gonna group them all together, but there have been a few who have said it ruined their channel. Having shorts ruin their channel because a certain viewer who wants to view just short form content will come in and view their short form and never view their long form, and they're not the algorithm, it kind of screws up their algorithm and it's just not good. So keep that in mind. But I would suggest trying the method that I explained in the beginning of the shorts, putting them out, draw them into your long form video.

SPEAKER_00: 20:37

100%. Um, that's what we're doing on my channel, and it's working really well. Now, I'm guessing a lot of the people you're talking about right now are channels that already have like 100,000 subscribers, in which case, you know, they may not need those shorts. But especially if you're a business owner, you know, you could do like how-to videos, like that could be in a short or in a long form, or quick tips. All of those could potentially bring in clients.

SPEAKER_01: 21:05

Right. Some of the that's a good point. The those creators that may have a hundred thousand or more subscribers, they may not need to, but I've seen business owners, I'll I'll just tell you because it's public knowledge, even Dave Ramsey, you know, he has what a million or I don't know how many, but he has a strategy. He has people who cut up his video on make sure that it's the best points of the video. They look at the analytics and they cut up those and they put them on there and it draws them into the long form. So, so people are doing that even at the higher scale, and it's very successful. Now, I don't want to forget about when we're talking about long form and/or how how you're found with the long form videos and people are scrolling on the home page, that there's an update now. So I don't know if everyone's familiar with this update, and it's so exciting because if you know that right now we can test the thumbnails, A B testing on thumbnails, which one performs better. But now we have title testing. So we can test three titles, three thumbnails. I don't want to get too complicated for people, especially if they're not on YouTube right now. But I wanted to tell you just go to your YouTube studio and check out if you have that feature yet and start using it. It will uh it'll put your content out in those different ways and see which one resonates with your audience and with other people, draw them in.

SPEAKER_00: 22:39

I love A B testing. Love a good A B test. That's where my business geekiness just comes out because we do that in business all the time. I do that with my ads. I currently have ads running right now, and I I'm A B testing a graphic ad versus a real ad and whether video or graphic is performing better. So yeah, A B testing is fabulous.

SPEAKER_01: 23:04

Good. What's what's winning out right now?

SPEAKER_00: 23:06

Um right now, the no, the static is actually winning out at the moment, which surprised me because I I went out there and looked beforehand and to to see what what some of the other big people were doing, and most of them were all video ads. And then there were a couple static, and I was like, okay, I'll try this. And I put up two video ads and a static, and pretty much after a week turned one of the video ads off because it wasn't really performing at all. And yeah, the static seems to be bringing in more than the other.

SPEAKER_01: 23:39

See that speaks to the fact of the thumbnail theory that I was talking about, that it can really bring people in. So if you have a really good static post, sometimes that does m more than even having a reel. So that's great. That's interesting.

SPEAKER_00: 23:55

Yes, and also let's talk briefly about thumbnails because thumbnails are so important on YouTube. And a mistake that I see a lot of people make, and I know this because I used to make this mistake until you told me not to do it, is they just put their title on their thumbnail. So talk about talk a little about about the thumbnail and the title, what should be on each and why it's important.

SPEAKER_01: 25:25

Yeah, so thumbnail and title. So this is your most important thing is your thumbnail and your title. So you want those to work together. So think of the one as like your thumbnail is the king and your title is the queen, and they're married. And so they're married. They're not the same person, right? But they work together and they're a team. So with your thumbnail, let's let's give an example. So maybe you you do home design, and so you have a really cool picture of a home. This is a good if you do this, take the take what I'm saying now, because you have a before picture and the home looks terrible, awful, and then do the after picture. And people will want, people love transformation thumbnails. Transformation thumbnails do really great. So on that thumbnail, you could have just one word or two words. Well, you'll say before, after, and you could you could say something on there like me something, Tanya, as far as if you were, if you want to say one word for this, let's come up with that. For the before and for the after? Yeah. Mess masterpiece. That's good. So it's kind of intriguing, right? It's like, oh yeah. And then for your title, you obviously you don't want to just put mess masterpiece. It's the same you're just saying the same exact thing that's not doing anything. So if you work it together, let's think of a title that would work together with mess masterpiece. And usually like how to people want to know how to do something, how to transform your living room from a disaster to perfection or something like that.

SPEAKER_00: 27:11

I like it. And then on the thumbnail title, you can have the word mess over the before and masterpiece over the negative over the after, and even tie it in like mess is in red because red is bad, and then masterpieces in green because yeah, that that means go. That means good.

SPEAKER_01: 27:29

Exactly, exactly. And I want to jump back to what type of content business owners should make because that was a really good question. I know I didn't talk about it. Um, so that was a really good question. If you're a business owner, there's many different types of content you can make and you can build up a strategy for what works for your audience and what works for your industry, your niche. It's gonna be a little different for everyone. But for the most part, like I talked about being found on uh YouTube is good, but another thing is how YouTube is evergreen. So if someone's searching for something, your video will pop up if you if you are talking about a certain thing. So I always suggest mixing uh the evergreen content with content that might be trending or things that people will find on the homepage, but having that mix. So say that you were, like you mentioned, an attorney, and maybe you're um an auto-injury attorney and you want you want people to start finding you. You can create these videos, you can create them for both, actually. But what would people be searching for? Say that someone got in a car accident. What would they search on YouTube to find you and hire you? What would they search? Ooh, dealing with insurance companies after an auto accident. That's good. So there's your video. That would be your video. And we think that we have to talk about a million things in a video, but my suggestion always is talk about one thing. And you can do a listicle. You can kind of have it as a list of things that um pertain to that one thing. But sometimes we complicate everything by talking too much about random things. We have to really focus on kind of one issue, just like with the attorney.

SPEAKER_00: 29:26

Yeah, because people don't have time to sit around and watch hour-long videos.

SPEAKER_01: 29:30

Yeah. They want to know their answer to their question. They got in a car accident, they're trying to figure out the insurance. They need to know an answer now so they can get on it, get on with their life. And that's what they that's what they come to YouTube for. So you can think of anything with your business. Think what what are people asking me all the time about? What am I talking about constantly? If you are constantly repeating yourself in your business, have your YouTube channel where you can just tell people to go watch a certain video and you won't have to repeat yourself. Just watch this video. And it works for everything with your customer service. Say that you get a lot of customer service, a lot of emails coming in about a certain subject. You're a plumber and you know you're just always getting people asking these questions. Just say, hey, watch my YouTube video and shoot them over there.

SPEAKER_00: 30:22

That's a great tip. That's a great tip because plumbing YouTube videos and I are very familiar. Any any homeowner will tell you, you'll do anything to have to hire for somebody to fix something if you can. So, any final tips for business owners who are now like they're inspired now, they're ready to take the leap to video. What are some final tips?

SPEAKER_01: 30:42

Okay, my final tips are come over and come to my free class. I just have such a desire to help, to help you in this because I know how overwhelming and frustrated is. And you feel like you're alone and you don't understand the next step to take. And if you just had a checklist, what do you do for second and third? That would be so much easier. So I I want to be there for everyone. And so what I'm offering is a free class on how to uh how to use YouTube for your sales. So it's called YouTube Sales Simplified two hours a week, no following. So we're going to go through these points of how to start your channel. What could you be posting on there? What types of videos like we were talking about? And let's make it easy and simple and break it down into tasks that we can do together throughout the week, throughout the month, and go from there. So this class, YouTube Sales Simplified, is on October 1st, 22nd, and 23rd. And you can pick the day that works for you. They're live classes, but you can pick the day that works for you. You just go to YouTube.stonegroove Social.com.

SPEAKER_00: 32:06

And then we'll go ahead and make sure to put that down in the show notes as well. So you don't have to, if you're driving, don't write this down right now. They'll be in the show notes. You can check that out, no problem. And just one more plug for Lisa for me. And this is this is not sponsored. Lisa's not paying to be on here. She's not giving me any sort of discount on my editing. This is just because I value what she does and I think everybody could benefit from it. And uh and just just remember if you get totally booked, keep me as a client. Just like just like search engine optimization, which is one of my specialties, stuff constantly changes. And because of that, your strategy has to change too. So having a YouTube strategist in your back pocket can help you grow. It can help you continue to be seen. I know that I've I've messaged Lisa and been like, hey, these videos aren't performing as well. Let's hop on a call and come up with a new strategy to try out. So it's definitely, definitely worth it. It's worth, it's a worthwhile investment and saves you a ton of time. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. Well, it's been great having you on here. Hopefully, everybody got a good nugget of wisdom out of this, and they will sign up for your masterclass. So get out there, get on YouTube, and in the meantime, keep planning like a boss.