IAM1606 – Business Owner Develops Creative Video Products and Strategy

Sharon Sobel 0:00
So that is part of my process with my clients initially, to ask them what they had in mind for their video but just as important where are they going to put the video and what are they going to do with it. Because, especially now there's a lot more options besides just putting a video on your website. Putting a video on social media means that there's different formats it might need captioning so all of those additional follow-up questions also have to be asked.

Intro 0:29
Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share it with you. Precisely the information you are in search of. This is the I am CEO podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:56
Hello hello hello, this is Gresh from the I am CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Sharon Sobel of picture this video. Sharon it's awesome to have you on the show.

Sharon Sobel 1:05
Thank you so much, Gresham.

Gresham Harkless 0:07
No problem, super excited to have you on, and before we jumped in I wanted to read a little bit more about Sharon so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing. Sharon is the owner of picture this video, a video production company in the metro DC area which has been in business for over 20 years. Picture this video develops creative video products and strategy to businesses and organizations by listening to their
clients goals and respecting their budgets. With the background in all aspects of video production they can not only see the big picture but consider all the brush strokes required to get there. They help their customers create authentic, engaging and targeted videos that get seen and deliver results. Sharon are you ready to speak to the I am CEO community?

Sharon Sobel 1:48
Absolutely.

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Gresham Harkless 1:49
Awesome let's do it. To get everything started and to hear a little bit more about you, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit through what I call your CEO story and let us know how you guys started with your business.

Sharon Sobel 2:02
Sure so I was a very young CEO as you can tell 20 years.

Gresham Harkless 2:06
Exactly you were just born.

Sharon Sobel 2:11
I started my business while I was still employed for Fairfax county public schools I was looking eventually to take my business full time but was just kind of dipping my toe in the business waters there so to speak. I started with personal events, weddings and things like that just because of the scheduling. I had a daytime job and personal events were happening on the weekends and evenings when I had availability. In 2003, though I decided to take the leap into owning my business full-time, and that was the real gist of figuring out where am I going to go next. so I left the personal events behind and decided to focus completely on businesses, non-profits, and organizations.

Gresham Harkless 3:05
Yeah that makes so much sense and I think so many times when we hear or see like all the awesome work and  the end product of what you provide to clients and all the great things that you do, we forget and don't see the kind of the steps it takes to get there. I think so many times people don't realize whether it be the expertise but also the business itself often can evolve and change and you start sometimes part-time and then it starts to evolve into doing different services. so it's great to kind of hear a little bit more about that evolution.

Sharon Sobel 3:34
Well, let me speak just a little bit more about that then because before I was ready to make that leap full time, I realized one of the things I didn't actually have was business skills. I had gone to high school and college studying tv production, getting a major in that but I'd never taken business classes and I recognized that as a weakness. So, in 2002 I made a strategic pivot if you will, I left the school system and I took a job as a production manager and office manager at a production company in Alexandria Virginia. They knew that I didn't really have the skills but they told me we're willing to train you while you're here and so it was a perfect opportunity for me to learn about what it was like to be on the other side of the desk. Not the freelancer side of the desk but the side of the desk that writes the checks, hires the freelancers, manages the production budgets all of that and so I took everything I could from a year of that until I felt I'm ready to leave this place, I want to do this myself and I really learned so much during that strategic turn. It made me feel much better when I went full time with the business in 2003.

Gresham Harkless 5:05
Yeah, absolutely. You hear so many times to be able to get that expertise especially if you're able to do an internship or externship or actually have a job to be able to get that experience. Because when you were mentioning that, part of me was going back to a lot of people might have heard the book Behemoth and how important that is, where sometimes you really love what you do but when you run a business that thing that you're passionate about and that you love doing, whether it be video or whatever that might be is often not what makes up your day, and you have to do so many other things so you have to have that business experience and understand those kinds of behind-the-scenes aspects.

Sharon Sobel 5:42
Yeah.

Gresham Harkless 5:43
Awesome. I wanted to drill down a little bit deeper, could you take us through how you work with clients and how exactly that process works.

Sharon Sobel 5:51
Well, even that has evolved over the years, when I first started, for probably the first 15 years almost I was basically just doing the videos that my clients requested the way that they wanted them done, and it always  didn't always match up with my creative vision but my creative vision might not have been in their budget, so I needed to respect that.
I started learning though when I would follow up with those clients and ask them, do you need a follow-up video done, they would say well nobody really saw the first one that we did so we're not really too energized around making another one. I was like, what you what did you do with it? and they'd say oh we put it up on YouTube and then? and there wouldn't always be a follow-up and I realized that there was this hole where people were kind of checking the box their boss had asked them to get this video done but then they didn't actually have a distribution or marketing plan with that. I didn't know that because I never asked. Because I never saw myself as a marketer or distributor, I always assumed that, that was covered on their end one way or the other and I was wrong. And, so as I just decided I'm not doing my clients any favors by not asking those questions and being able to provide a partner or some resource for them to make sure that the videos get seen. So that is part of my process with my clients initially to ask them what they had in mind for their video, but just as important where are they going to put the video, and what are they going to do with it because especially now there's a lot more options besides just putting a video on your website. Putting a video on social media means that there's different formats it might need captioning so all of those additional follow-up questions also have to be asked.

Gresham Harkless 7:55
Yeah that's extremely powerful, and I think it obviously speaks to every industry especially but obviously video as well too has evolved and so many different ways that you can leverage video. But it's so funny when you're saying that too, I have this post I think I wrote where I said if you if you build it they won't come because I think so many times as you create a video, you create a website whatever that might be you think people would just run you know to you virtually to be able to knock down your doors or watch your videos and listen to that, but in reality, that's one aspect and it's a very very important aspect but you have to be able to drive those people there as well too, which is if not equally important definitely very important.

Sharon Sobel  8:33
I might have to steal that Gresham, that was pretty awesome.

Gresham Harkless 8:36
There you go I'll send that over to you later. I wanted to ask you now for what I call your secret sauce and this could be for yourself personally or your business but what do you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique?

Sharon Sobel 8:48
Well from what I can tell I think that I have spent the past few years really honing in on my business skills and putting myself in line, with not just being a freelancer that goes out and shoots something and does that for you but really I've taken on the idea of CRMs and the networking and all of the other things that normal business owners do instead of just producing the project in my little silo. I'm very keen on being on the pulse of the business community to understand what their pain points are, and where I might be able to fit in and help them with those pain points, sometimes it's with videos sometimes it's not but just trying to get an idea of how they can grow their business with the use of video particularly in ways that they may not have thought of and trying to create products around that.

Gresham Harkless 9:49
Awesome. I wanted to switch gears a little bit and to ask you for what I call a CEO Hack, so this could be like an app or a book, or habit that you have, what's something that makes you effective and efficient?

Sharon Sobel  10:02
For many years now I've been using(I hope I can promote another company) a tool called Sanebox. It's like an email manager but it makes me look like a rock star, it's my secret sauce because what I can do is I can send a message basically back to myself at a certain day and I can even do it like every Tuesday put this message in my email box so if I have a customer that says I can't make a decision but get back to me in a month I don't have to remember that. All I do is I take that email and I send it to nextmont@sanebox.com. And I put it out of my head and so a month later they're involved in that and I can filter things into specific folders so that's my hack.

Gresham Harkless 10:58
Awesome. now, I wanted to ask you for what I call your CEO Nugget and this is a word of wisdom or a piece of advice or if you can hop into a time machine what might you tell your younger business self.

Sharon Sobel  11:10
Oh I guess it would depend on what time the time machine starts. I will say three years ago I had a part-time job for 14 years that really helped give me a steady income every month and it was it was a great job for that reason but mentally it was killing me. That job ended not by my choice of full disclosure, and at the time I was blindsided. so I was a little devastated and I didn't know what was next and so I think at that time I would have told myself and I did learn it, don't worry so much, you now have a hundred percent of your time to devote to this business that you opened up full-time 15 years ago. This is an opportunity not a problem, it's an opportunity. I did learn that and my business has really flourished since that part-time job got out of the way. But at the time I really needed to hear that very strongly from the time machine.

Gresham Harkless 12:31
Yeah, absolutely. You're not the only one. when your time machine stops there be sure to stop by my time machine because having gotten laid off and experienced that you know that frustration personally, you know now you can say oh that door closed but another one opened as a result. But at that time you know you're seeing it as a frustration of a problem when in reality it's really a gift and an opportunity. Once you understand that or the quicker you understand that I should say then that it really allows you to go ahead and put the pedal in the middle to get you to know exactly where we want to be.

Sharon Sobel 13:05
Yeah, yeah.

Gresham Harkless 13:06
Awesome. Now, I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO and we're hoping to have different quote and quote CEOs on the show so Sharon what does being a CEO mean to you?

Sharon Sobel 13:22
Okay for me being a CEO may not be the same as being a CEO of other places but for me it's wearing too many hats honestly. It's understanding that there's marketing, bookkeeping, accounts payable, accounts receivable and the actual production work all of that for me is my job and I outsource the stuff that I'm not so good at. I think that a good CEO outsources what they're not good at, so I have a bookkeeper and an accountant and when there's video stuff that I don't consider myself an expert in I bring in the experts to subcontract that work too. So it's knowing what you're good at knowing what you're not good at and making sure you bring those people in on your team even if they're not an employee to represent your company in the best light possible.

Gresham Harkless 14:22
Yeah that's absolutely powerful and it's so funny because you know you think that even if you're capable or aware of or able to do all of the things, you don't want to do all of the things because that's why you have experts. That's why you have people that you can call on for video production or a CPA or an accountant that you talked about as well too. I think it takes an incredible amount of leadership and even humility to understand that this is my zone, this is my lane, this is what I do best and the more time I get to spend time in my zone of genius the more opportunities I get.  The better I can impact the world, impact the clients that I work with as well too.

Sharon Sobel 14:57
Right. Don't be greedy just give the money out to help the economy, there's people who do it better than you just give them money, just give it to them.

Gresham Harkless 15:06
Yes and I think there's a very powerful principle as well too when you have that mentality and you're not greedy and you understand there's a tremendous amount of abundance in that opportunity that is out there. Not only do you give away those opportunities but you get better opportunities when you have that mentality.

Sharon Sobel 15:23
Yeah.

Gresham Harkless 15:24
Awesome. Sharon truly appreciate that definition, appreciate your time even more what I wanted to do is pass you the mic so to speak just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know and of course how best they can get a hold of you and find out about all the awesome things you're working on.

Sharon Sobel 15:40
I just wanted to say that right now I'm creating lots of packages that are very easy for business owners to take on depending on what specific thing they're they're working on and struggling with. I'm still open to producing the things that clients already have on their desks so that's still on the table. The best way to get in touch with me
is through my website it's got all my contact information my telephone number, my email, and more information about my background. There's some samples of work that I've done there so you can get some ideas about the kinds of things that I produce.

Outro 16:22

Thank you for listening to me I am CEO podcast powered by Blue 16 media tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I am CEO is not just a phrase it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, subscribe and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I am CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless, thank you for listening.

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