#468: Everything You Need to Know About Demo Videos with Shawn Hanks [Transcript]

Grant Baldwin:

Hey, what’s up, friends? Grant Baldwin here. Welcome back to The Speaker Lab Podcast. Good to have you here with us today. I’m super excited to have one of my close friends here in the speaking industry, Mr. Shawn Hanks, who is president of Premiere Speakers Bureau. We’ve had him on the show multiple times. I always provide the caveat, hey, don’t harass this guy to book you, anything like that. My advice I always give is, don’t worry about bureaus. However, Shawn has a great perspective just on the speaking industry and specifically on the topic we’re going to be talking about today, which is going to be demo videos.

Shawn Hanks:

Grant, how many demo videos do you think you’ve seen in your life?

Grant Baldwin:

You know what, I’m going to give you my counselor’s phone number. Call and ask.

Shawn Hanks:

We used to have a VHS dubbing machine to send out people like you videos to prospective clients. So yeah, Grant, that was a thing. Things have gotten simpler the industry.

Grant Baldwin: 

There’s been a lot of evolution to demo videos, but still, whether whatever format they took, they still play an important role for speakers.

How important is the demo video for speakers to get booked and paid to speak?

Shawn Hanks:

Incredibly important. I tell speakers that it is the silver bullet in the speaking world. I won’t be so hyperbolic to say that you can’t get speaking gigs without a demo video. But you cannot be a professional speaker without a great demo video over time.

Grant Baldwin:

Why is it that important?

Shawn Hanks:

Because it answers so many questions for an event planner that they don’t have to ask if you send a video and it’s one shot for ten minutes of you in one suit or your power dress or whatever. That thing is on one stage with one camera in my simple brain and a lot of other people’s simple brains. Also, they think you’ve done it one time. If you send me a video and you’re in three different dresses or you’re in three different suits or three different vibes, different crowds, all that stuff, it just says, “I do this for a living all the time. I’m great at this thing.”

You can answer so many questions that you never get to talk to the event planner to actually ask, because especially in the corporate space, you’re never considered in a vacuum, you’re always being compared to other speakers similar to you, and pretty often you don’t get to have deep conversations with the event planner to sell yourself.

Grant Baldwin:

So your video is the thing that’s selling you. It’s your test drive.

Shawn Hanks:

Totally. And I’ve always explained it like event planners, decision-makers, they’re in the risk-mitigation business. And so a demo video gives them some sense of what it’s like to work with me. Maybe you’re a phenomenal speaker, you’re just not what they are looking for. I always equate it to music preferences. There are great artists and musicians out there that I just may not like. It doesn’t mean that they’re bad musicians or that they produce bad music or anything like that. It’s just not what I’m looking for. Same thing for speakers. And so a demo video helps to mitigate and reduce that risk for an event planner to say, no, I feel comfortable and confident hiring this speaker and putting them on stage, putting my reputation on the line as the event planner to report to my committee or board or boss or whoever it may be.

Grant Baldwin:

So what are the elements that make a good demo video? What are the things that make a video stand out from others?

What makes a good demo video?

Shawn Hanks: 

To state the obvious, every clip of you speaking has to be great. When people tell me I was great on stage today, I go, okay, well, that’s what I got paid to do. That’s the starting point. Being amazing on stage is just the barrier to entry. Most speakers’ videos are always living and breathing and changing. So take what I’m saying is this is the highest element that you want to aspire to. There’s always going to be something. You watch your video and go, “Man, that joke landed harder in the room,” or “I’ve told it better,” whatever that is. Well, great, get that video and then replace that 30 seconds in your preview video with the new version of it. But every element needs to be electric.

We represent some great speakers who have very compelling emotional stories that don’t come from a place of, oh, what a wonderful experience, oh, I achieved my bucket list. Some things are awful and they survived it and they’re communicating that, Grant, you can do something hard because I went through something atrocious and have come out on the other side. So even if you’re telling a story that’s powerful, make sure the power conveys through the video. That’s the starting point. Because I get a lot of videos and even if they’re friends and they go, “Man, this killed,” and I watch it and it just doesn’t seem right, because they’re remembering the energy that happened.

To answer your question directly – make sure you get crowd response. So if you tell a joke or if there’s a very powerful moment where you let it sit for 5-10 seconds and the room is just kind of in an “Oh my goodness, I get it” mode, put that in there. Because the event planner or me sitting and watching at my office in this case, I don’t have the value or the experience of being in that room when it happened. So make sure your video doesn’t have to have some kind of preconceived idea. It needs to show. If this is a funny joke, you better put the audience laughing.

That gets expensive, right? I mean, hiring a crew at some point in time or one guy to do two cameras is a great investment. But making sure it’s great from start to finish, there isn’t a weak point where you go, “Man, that’s kind of embarrassing that people are watching that.” That’s going to lose you to gigs. I always say make sure it’s more than one attire. Not to be too specific of those types of things, but if you’re wearing the same shirt every single time, the implication is you’ve done this one time, right? Look different, feel different, different stages. The larger the audience is, most of the time, the better because it communicates to the event planner, the buyer, I can do this in front of a crowd of 5,000 people.

MDRT built an empire off of saying, come speak almost for free and we will give you the best video you’ve ever seen. And they do. They’ve got three camera shoots and all that stuff. A lot of speakers videos come from that. And the value there is you’re going to have electric video that you can use to splice up and use to market yourself well. Any other elements that need to go that are just like, hey, it doesn’t matter where you are in your speaking journey, in your speaking career, in your demo video, you got to have this.

What are some of those other things?

Shawn Hanks:

I would say if you’re using any kind of specific on-stage items, whatever it is, zoom in. There are a lot of great people out there who do illusions. For instance, a couple of times people have sent me videos and they were totally lost on me. I can’t see what you’re doing. I would say what I’ve already mentioned, making certain you have at least two to three different attires, crowd shots, balanced audio. The thing about a video is it’s very easy to remember what it felt like in the moment. So I always say show it to a bunch of people who care about you, but care enough to tell you like, “Oh, that wasn’t the best version of you when you did that.”

At Premier Speakers we say, to spend one speaking fee on your video. That way it’ll scale up over time. So, if your fee is three grand, we’ll hire a $3,000 videographer in town to shoot it and edit for you. When you’ve been blessed, and your fee is ten grand, that will always scale with you. When your fee is 30 grand, you’d better have a 30 grand-looking video because the people around you who are 30 have electric videos.

Grant Baldwin:

Are there any things that are just absolute no, no’s. That you’ve seen? I hate when speakers do this or this always just doesn’t land well.

Don’t do these things:

Shawn Hanks:

The first one that pops to mind for me is just a continuous ten minutes of telling one killer story or whatever it is – I call them fastballs. You’ve spoken for a long time, Grant. You know that if I woke you up at 2:00 a.m., within five minutes, you could be on a stage and you’ve got a story or two that could capture this room. And that’s not arrogance.

You’ve worked hard at it, and you can jump in. I’ve got a lead line that opens. It kind of gets everyone’s attention. So you want to capture those few fastballs. Some of those are jokes. Some of them are three-minute stories. And some of them may be more touching, so there’s not a huge crowd reaction. But don’t just have ten straight minutes without any cuts, with any kind of writing or anything. Our metrics tell us the two videos that are most valuable to you are three to five minute sizzle reel.

That means a lot of things to different people. But if you’ve been on a bunch of cable channels, TV, all that stuff, put that in the first 20 or 30 seconds. It doesn’t need to be three minutes. If you say, I was on CNN and you show a picture of Grant Baldwin chatting with someone on CNN, that’s all people need. They don’t need to see 45 seconds of that, but a sizzle reel that really showcases who you are probably three, five minutes is really long because we all have short attention spans. And the best case is you have two of those.

You have a three, four, five minute sizzle that kind of captures attention. And then from a buyer’s perspective, once they’ve narrowed it down, and again, my perspective is always a buyer who’s looking at multiple speakers, not one that’s just stumbled upon your website and is deciding if you are their fit in that buying process.

A sizzle reel that captures their attention and then a longer form video that’s maybe eight to ten minutes, that really showcases more of those two to three minutes of speaking time of those fastballs that, you know, like, this is my story. This is what I want to be known for. This is kind of my keystone story that would be my book title. You want that in there. But that can be longer form, because if they’re deciding, okay, Grant is my guy or speaker X is my speaker, they’re going to want to watch something longer than just a quick snippet.

But even then, what’s funny is we have buyers who spend a lot of money on speakers, and we can see their metrics, and they still click through a ten minute video. So it’s almost like they want to know it’s there. They will watch it often, but it just cracks me up that, okay, you’re going to spend 30 grand on a speaker, and you can’t sit for ten minutes and watch their video for ten minutes. And that’s just how we are, man. It’s in Netflix, it gets slow. You skip forward 10 seconds. It happens here, too.

Grant Baldwin:

So you kind of touched on it there – what’s the ideal length of time that video should be?

How long should your demo video be?

Shawn Hanks:

Yeah, if you have one video, I would say eight to ten minutes, max. If you’re investing in one video, especially if it’s your first video, I would say let the first 30 seconds be that sizzle. Put some quick hits of you doing things that are interesting. If you have a specific story to tell, if you’re ex-military and we’re involved in a known mission, or if you founded a company and it’s well known, tell that story in the first 20 or 30 seconds with quick hits. Especially if you’ve got some notable media appearances because that establishes you as an authority.

So if we’re talking about one video, eight to ten max, let the rest of the video tell the story. And sometimes you telling your story on stage in different places, you’re going to take your best two minutes on this one thing. Boom. Swipe. Or a quick review from a client. We’ve seen a lot of great videos utilize this technique in probably the last four or five years, grabbing an event planner and saying, “Hey, Steve from Allstate Insurance, will you give me a ten second review?” And Steve from Allstate Insurance standing in the hall of the convention center saying, “Grant just spoke at my conference, and he crushed it. It was amazing. Everyone was left all inspired,” whatever it is, that’s a cool way to segue to your next video elements, but eight to ten minutes is probably the max you want.

Grant Baldwin: 

Yeah, you kind of touched on this – anytime anybody clicks on any video of any kind from a friend or whoever, like, oh, you got to check this out, everybody immediately looks in the corner and says, “How long is this?” And if it’s more than a few minutes, that’s an eternity. Ain’t nobody got time for that. So you have to keep it tight. You have to keep it short.

A couple different types of elements that could go in this. I’m curious how you feel on these. So one thing you touched on was, okay, I’ve been on media appearances or interviews or podcast stuff or Facebook lives or so some of these other ancillary things that may provide a little bit of credibility depending on it. How much of that is necessary, if “necessary” is the right term?

Shawn Hanks: 

I would say 30 seconds max. And I lean into short and sweet on those because the only purpose of this is to establish your credibility. If you say, “I am the world’s leader on relational selling,” we’ll make up a topic that’s a good topic. If you say, “I’m Grant Baldwin, the world’s leader on relational selling,” well, over time, you should probably have been on some CNN or whatever, and they’re going to have your book cover up and they get to say, “Grant Baldwin’s the world leader on relational selling,” that’s super valuable.

I will say, as a caveat, local media appearances, while they’re cool, sometimes work against you because it feels kind of secondary to a national media brand. So ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox News, CNN, you want that logo down in the corner. But the only purpose for that isn’t to kind of showcase that you’re impressive and you got to do it. You just want quick hits. So the event planner, again, we’re answering questions they don’t have to ask: is Grant Baldwin really the world’s leader in relational selling? He was on CNN saying that he was or they were saying that he was, so the answer is yes.

But the shorter the better, because the purpose of the video isn’t to show the clip of you saying what you’re going to say, it’s just to say I was on there and they agreed that I’m the world leader in relational selling.

Grant Baldwin:

So again, you mentioned like 30 seconds there of a five-minute video. So that’s a relatively small percentage in the scheme of things. Another type of thing that you touched on there was testimonials, so interviews with audience members. Maybe I just came out of a grand session and yada yada yada, or an event planner or anything like that. How important are the testimonials to be in there? Is that also like a 30 second thing? Should they be in there at all?

Shawn Hanks: 

Yeah, I like when videos use those as segues from one story to another. So we’re talking about a 30 second opener of five different shots of you on CNN or you on Fox. A great use for that is really to describe who you are. So it just may be two or 3 seconds of your audio. Actually, what you’re saying, maybe it’s even better for that. The only audio is the host introducing, saying, this is great. The world’s leading expert on relational selling. So boom, boom, boom. You’re just hitting snippets of that as you jump in. Then you’ve got two minutes of you telling a compelling story that’s one of your fastballs, that’s in your book. And then maybe you’ve got 10 seconds having an event attendee say, “I just saw Grant speak and it was the best thing I’ve ever seen.” That’s not bad.

But having the person who booked you and you put their first name and then Allstate Insurance, for example – that is incredibly valuable. I mean, if you tell your story, that’s 90 seconds and then boom. The person who’s sitting and watching this video is watching it to decide, “Do I want to buy this thing?” And you’re showing them a video of someone who’s in their chair, took the risk and they’re saying the risk paid off in spades. It was amazing. Those are super valuable. Event attendees are not a bad way to segue or to tag a couple of different things. It’s just less punch or less power. Because maybe there’s 1,000 people in the room. The person who spent money and booked you and took the risk is the important part there.

Grant Baldwin:

Another element, pros and cons. Whether or not this should be in there is someone’s kind of like bio life story, almost the James Earl Jones narrating in the background. Grant always wanted to be a football player, and unfortunately he is not, but he turned out okay. How much of that should we have, if at all?

Should there be a bio section?

Shawn Hanks:

You’ve got to tell it in the story of you communicating because that’s what you’re doing on stage. Probably the exception to that is if you crashed your plane into the Hudson River and saved 100 people’s lives and your name is Sully. Of course you want that. Or if you were, there’s some great speakers who are known for being a part of a significant battle. Those types of things that are more momentous and historic, really, they’ll be talked about 100 years from now. Saying Grant had a hard childhood, you only get a few minutes to educate these people on who you are. You should be better at telling the story in a couple of clips from stage than James Earl Jones narrating, because people are going to check out in 10 seconds.

Grant Baldwin:

Another element: You see a lot of B-roll of behind the scenes. They’re sitting in the green room reviewing their notes. They’re getting mic’d up. They are sitting at a desk. They’re reading a book, looking out a window, pondering life. They’re throwing the starfish back in the ocean. How much of that B-roll, the production, the flashy bells and whistles, is necessary?

Is b-roll necessary?

Shawn Hanks: 

I think it helps tell the story of I am a professional speaker. So that’s not bad. That became really cool and invoked a buddy, Vin Zhang, who’s a videographer separate from being awesome at all the stuff. He upped the game on video production when he showed up ten plus years ago. And he’s a great dude, great guy. And it just made everyone go, oh my gosh. The standard used to be, just have a video. And now the standard is like, I need Steven Spielberg to direct my video. The reason you and I can sit and joke about it is because we’ve seen some videos. We get it, you’re preparing your notes. We really needed three minutes of you preparing your notes.

You and I have a mutual friend that has this, where the last thing he says, talking, headstyle to the camera, is like, “Here we go.” Or I can’t remember exactly what he says. And then the camera follows him on stage and then he’s in front of 1,000 people. The first time I saw that – hair on the back of the neck. Because it’s what it feels like for you as a professional speaker or your clients to walk on stage. We kind of get to be in that thing for a second. That’s probably been overused, but it’s still a cool thing if you can pull it off.

Grant Baldwin:

Another element of just sitting and talking to the camera, of I’m excited to work with you and your audience, and I’m looking forward to it, and I can help them transform through relational selling and more like just face to camera sitting in a studio or whatever, kind of talking about what they’re going to talk about. Is that work? Is that necessary? Or is that just dumb?

What about talking heads?

Shawn Hanks: 

I call that “talking head footage” because that’s kind of what it is, and we’re way more accustomed to it now. Seeing our torsos upright felt really weird before COVID because it wasn’t a regular thing. I don’t dislike that. It’s just got to have punch. I mean, you and I know if you see three seconds of that and it just drones on, like your brain just automatically turns off. If you’re setting something up or really framing a specific value prop from you, like, this is what I’m going to do for your audience. That’s not wasted time, but 15-20, maybe 30 seconds is max.

I would suggest it’s better to not do that in your preview video. And this may be a separate conversation for another day. Do that in individual videos if you’ve got a client that you’re chasing or bureau hits you up and says, “Hey, I got a client interested in this thing,” record a 60 second video of you saying, “Hey, Steve, I heard you’re considering me. Thanks so much for that opportunity. I want to quickly tell you three things that I want to do for your clients.” That’s super valuable because you say their name and you’re talking about the event in Orlando on October 17. That’s way more valuable as a talking head thing than a generic because it has to be so generic in your preview video, it’s going to be hard to really capture someone’s attention with it.

Yeah, I’m not the one hiring speakers, but my personal pet peeve is like, let’s take a five minute video, and 1 minute of it is actually watching someone on stage talk. No, that’s the product. That’s the thing that should be the high majority of the video, if not all the video. And all this other stuff is like seasoning. Like, sure, some of it’s okay. But if the whole thing is just like this, I don’t know this high-produced video, but you don’t actually see the person speak, I’m not a fan of that. But again, that’s also coming from perspective of a viewer, not someone who’s actually hiring a speaker.

Comes from the perspective. It’s just common sense. I showed up on the lot. I had already done a ton of research, and I told the dude, like, here’s my driver’s license. Just give me the key. I want to test drive the car. I don’t want you to talk to me about it and all that stuff. It’s a similar deal. We’re not selling cars here, but it’s a similar deal that’s your test drive, and you get three, four, five minutes max with a potential buyer.

I will caveat this reminder until I die. They very rarely consider you alone. You’re being compared to other people, and they’re comparing your speaking, not your background, your story. Now, of course, that’s part of the stew that you’re selling, but they’re comparing your speaking like, what is Grant going to do on stage in front of my 500 attendees for 60 minutes. That’s your product.

Grant Baldwin: 

Now, just as a caveat here, and you kind of touched on this earlier, you work with the top tier, top echelon of speakers who are 10, 20, 30, 50, 100 thousand dollars speakers. So these are speakers that have most often been in the game for a long, long time, who oftentimes have gone through 19 different demo videos. So the one that you see today, where you’re like, well, of course they’re a $50,000 speaker. You don’t see all the crap ones from years and years and years gone by.

So I’m thinking for myself, when I got started, my very first demo video, I spoke to a youth group of about 30 teenagers. I borrowed a little handycam from a friend, set it up in the side of the room. The audio was bad, the acoustics were bad, the lighting was bad, but there was enough there that it worked a 30 minutes talk. You boil it down to three or four minutes of the best clips, the best content, the best punchlines, all of that. And that worked.

I had that for a year, and it booked thousands of dollars worth of gigs. And there’s zero chance I’m using that to book a $10,000 gig. But that worked in the beginning, to book $1,000 gig and $1,500 gig and a $2,000 gig over and over and over. So what encouragement would you have for speakers who are in those earlier phases who are just getting started, or maybe I have a demo video, but I’m looking at Vin’s video or Clint Pulver video or whoever video, and just like, gosh dang it, that’s so good. My video will never be that good. And it can just be intimidating. What do you say to that speaker who’s a sub $5,000 speaker who’s just trying to build that momentum?

How to think about investing in a demo video?

Shawn Hanks:

Yeah, first I would challenge you, Grant. You got a lot of people who respect you and who come to you and say, “Make me better at this or help me become this.” I think it’s really helpful for the people watching this to see your first one. And I bet it stunk, man, from today’s perspective. But in that moment, I bet you and Sheila watched that and were like, “Yeah, this is it, right?” Everybody’s on a progression. When you were 23, you were a very different person. You also had different resources, time, relationships, all of that stuff. Spending $1,000 when you’re 23 and scrappy feels really painful and it’s risky. If you’re 40 and you’re a professional speaker, you better spend more than $1,000. So everything scales, right?

But I always encourage people to go, “That was awful. But man, it launched me, right?” I mean, it was the launching pad for something. So don’t be ashamed of it and be proud and encourage the next Grant or whomever it is. The reality is, I’ve seen speakers develop and grow. The large majority of the speakers that Premier is blessed to represent are just speakers who said, “I want to do this thing,” and they built it. They hustled, they hustled, they hustled.

We have a lot of mutual friends who did that. And the reality is, you and I sit in Nashville, it’s the same story, the ten-year overnight success that someone blows up. Where’d they come from? Well, they waited tables at Applebee’s in Spring Hill, Tennessee for ten years to get there. Your video is a similar thing in the sense that start with that lousy video. Of course there are expectations for it to be better, but the reality is that video reflects where you are in the market in your fee range in comparison to other speakers in that moment.

So you’re not going to be compared on that three minute video that you came up with to a speaker who’s $40,000 and has a production budget of $40,000, but you’re also going to get whatever you got paid for that video or for that keynote. To do that video is probably what you’re going to get more of. So, I mean, you’re using $1,000 bait to get more $1,000 gigs. Just be intentional and say, “All right, I’m going to grow this and I want my video to look like a $3,000 or $5,000 video.”

That’s a tough thing. But some of that’s just finding other speakers where you go, that’s something I want to try to recreate in terms of how that looked or how it felt. I’m not saying rip off their stuff, just be inspired by the quality of their videos. But I tell you, and I mentioned it earlier, one thing that I’ve seen a lot of speakers do well is don’t think of your video as a one time thing. And I put it out there and just see what happens.

Think of it as a developing product all the time, so you don’t have to go completely recreate your video to improve it. When you tell that story that you know what it feels like to tell it in a room, most of the time, it gets a great laugh. Well, this time people erupted. It exploded. Take that 60 second clip and replace that in your current video. So that current video isn’t static forever.

You can constantly change it, refresh that with newer stuff. Even if it’s the same story, but it just felt different, like you had a time when the room. Loved it. Well, update this video while you’re looking towards the next video that’s going to look and feel totally different. But don’t think of this as a static product and you can better it, and that’ll increase your value. As event planners are seeing that video get better, they won’t know that, but the video they will see tomorrow will be better than the one yesterday.

Then over time, as I mentioned, roughly, as your fee increases once a year or once every two years, you got to make a new video and it needs to reflect the value that you’re attaching to yourself. So if you say, I’m a five grand speaker, your video better be the same or better than other five grand speakers around you.

Grant Baldwin: 

So to that end, when speakers are thinking about raising their fee or they just raised their fee, how important is the demo video in relation to raising fees?

Are your fees and the quality of your demo video attached?

Shawn Hanks: 

I would say they’re definitely attached to each other. I wouldn’t raise my fee without launching something new. My calendar is literally packed for the year. Now, if you say that, you got to be honest about it and it better be packed because when you increase your fee, you’re going to throttle opportunities. But if I was a speaker, and I coach speakers on this often, don’t raise your fee without launching a new video and without having some amount of new product out there. A new video is a great thing to communicate out to your if you’ve got a list of clients that are interested in you announcing to them, hey, I’ve got a new video and my fee is bumping up from $5,000 to $7,500. It gives you something to talk about other than just saying my fee has gone up.

Grant Baldwin:

All right, before we wrap up any other final words of wisdom, advice, just any observations just in general on the speaking industry, what’s your pulse right now? What are you seeing?

Shawn Hanks: 

Grant, my only observation is one of excitement to say, and I can’t remember the exact stats the EIC, the Events Industry Council a few months ago released a report that’s probably a little bit dated at this point, that our industry is thriving and it’s beyond pre-COVID levels. And for all of us who have been in this industry long enough to remember how awesome it was before COVID the impact of COVID and just how much that impacted so many families and people who live on the road and do this, and more importantly, felt very strongly this is what they were made to do. And then it was taken away from them. The fact that it’s come back and then some, I’m giddy with excitement every day to tell people that because it’s objectively true in the numbers that the market is strong.

So just for speakers who are building a new thing or launching for the first time. It’s hard work. There are no shortcuts. His team can give you a lot of great tools to avoid mistakes that other people have made. The only thing better than learning from your mistakes is learning from other people’s mistakes. But at the end of the day, hard work is it. But there is a huge market out there for speakers that just want to get out there and hustle and to work hard. It’s a rewarding thing, and I love that it’s back.

Grant Baldwin: 

Shawn, thanks for the time, man. Always good to chat with you. Appreciate you and your friendship. I’m glad to serve as your travel agent on the side.