Networking at Scale: The Power of Video | Chris Weiher

PROFITABLE TALKS...

In this episode of the Profitable Creative, host Christian Brim speaks with Chris Weiher from Cleaver Creative about the journey of building a successful video production company. They discuss the importance of B2B video content, the power of networking through video, and the challenges of navigating LinkedIn's algorithm. Chris shares insights on scaling a creative business, the significance of training and delegation, and the economics of hiring. The conversation concludes with Chris's vision for the future of Cleaver Creative and the importance of authenticity in content creation.

PROFITABLE TAKEAWAYS...

• Cleaver Creative was inspired by a family legacy in butchery.
• B2B video content is a growing opportunity, especially on LinkedIn.
• Video allows businesses to network at scale and build trust.
• Understanding the intent behind video content is crucial for success.
• Hiring a virtual assistant can significantly increase productivity.
• Training and documentation are key to scaling a business effectively.
• Finding the right talent is essential for maintaining quality standards.
• Profitability should guide hiring decisions in a creative business.
• Creatives often overlook the importance of understanding their business metrics.
• Authenticity in content creation resonates more with audiences.

Ready to turn your PASSION into PROFIT?!? Let's get CREATIVE ➡️
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Transcript

Christian Brim (00:00.901)
Welcome to another episode of the Profitable Creative, the only place on the interwebs where you will learn how to turn your passion into profit. I am your host, Christian Brim. Shout out to our one listener in Wheaton, Illinois. Good morning, Wheaton. Joining me today is Chris Weir from Cleaver Creative. Welcome, Chris.

Chris Weiher (00:25.614)
Thank you, Christian. And interesting you bring up Wheaton, Illinois. I'm originally from Downers Grove, Illinois, right down the street from Wheaton, Illinois. Maybe it's like an old neighbor or something.

Christian Brim (00:34.317)
Well, that is odd. Like I have a list of single download cities and that was just one I picked off the list, so who knows? Yes, where is Wheaton? I've never been to Wheaton.

Chris Weiher (00:47.514)
Shout out to Wheaton.

Chris Weiher (00:52.442)
They are both western suburbs of Chicago, about 40 minutes west of Chicago.

Christian Brim (00:58.171)
The only place in Illinois besides Chicago and the suburbs I've been is Champaign, which is a lovely city. like how it was nice. Nice. Yeah. Well, tell us, you told me before the show, but I think the listeners need to hear this. How do you come up with the name Cleaver Creative, which as most people do, I misread it the first time and thought it was clever.

Chris Weiher (01:07.898)
went to college there. We got a lot of commonalities going here.

Christian Brim (01:27.815)
creative, which made more sense. But Cleaver, tell us more.

Chris Weiher (01:31.742)
Yeah, well, I mean, there is that alliterative connection to I thought, that's kind of fun. But as I was saying before we started recording, my dad was a butcher for 30 years and his dad was a butcher for probably 30 or 40 years. so growing up, I worked in the butcher shop in downtown Downers Grove. And I always thought that the image of a cleaver was a very strong, cool image at the time when I was

getting my degree in Champaign, Illinois. I was considering film and I was like, well, that could be kind of cool for cutting film, the image of a cleaver coming down. So when I started my company, I was like, that could work and it's worked out pretty good.

Christian Brim (02:09.936)
Yes.

Christian Brim (02:15.751)
I, the image that comes to mind with the cleaver is three blind mice. don't know.

Chris Weiher (02:22.766)
That, yeah, it comes up, I think there was also a, there was a French film that featured a prominent butcher who was wielding a cleaver. I'm trying to think of, it'll probably come to me later on in the show, but it's a pretty, no, no.

Christian Brim (02:38.329)
Edward Scissorhands. No, he was a barber, sorry. All right, so tell us the story of Cleaver Creative. How did it come to be?

Chris Weiher (02:49.274)
Sure, so in 2011, I was working for another production company and they were still reeling from the 2008 financial crisis and got laid off and had just gotten married at the time and was like, my wife at the time was like,

So, you what are you going to do for your next job? was like, I don't think I want to do another job. And she's like, okay, great. That sounds awesome. Yeah, super. I was like, no, I think I'm just going to do my own thing. And so I started freelancing and, and, built a small team. And then, I started at a startup about a year later and that kind of fed what we were doing with Cleaver and, did a lot of animation work.

Christian Brim (03:24.837)
Nice. I'm married a psychopath. Great. Thank you.

Chris Weiher (03:48.096)
And then about four years ago started creating content on LinkedIn and saw that as a pretty big opportunity for video content because at the time people were posting like gifts and goofy stuff on there. But I was like, there is no video content really on LinkedIn at the time. So I started making videos there and very quickly it was apparent that like, okay, B2B video here is a whole new space to play in. Yeah.

Christian Brim (04:16.027)
Yes. And so is that what you specialize or focus on is B2B for the LinkedIn platform or just B2B in general?

Chris Weiher (04:25.482)
That is a piece of it. Yeah, so I would say B2B is the main group of companies that we work with. We don't really do any B2C stuff. And it's become kind of a combination between content on LinkedIn and content on YouTube. And sometimes that stuff is intermixable. But yeah, it's those two platforms are the primary place now.

Christian Brim (04:50.403)
And so who is your ideal or target customer?

Chris Weiher (04:55.444)
Usually a company that is, I would say, at least five to 10 employees, possibly more, depending on the content that we're making for them. We've also done a lot of work for big companies like Accenture in Chicago and done big sales videos and things like that. as the landscape has been changing, more companies have built more

bigger in-house department specifically for video. And so I think there's a interesting place to play in with smaller businesses now that also need like a production arm, but perhaps don't really want to have a full-time production staff employed. So we're finding like a neat niche between that area of, know, five employees at usually the minimum and then up to 10, 20, 50 maybe.

Christian Brim (05:26.822)
Right.

Chris Weiher (05:53.804)
at the larger sizes.

Christian Brim (05:56.475)
I hear a lot of, we have a lot of videographer clients and a lot of conversation in that space is around the intent of the video. And, you know, I've had conversations on this show about people coming to marketers, which I'm loosely,

lumping you in there for the purposes of this discussion, but they come and they say, well, we need video. and they're not, I mean, that, that's about the extent of it. Like they're not real sure why they need video. It's like everybody else is doing it. I see a lot of it. I, I, I need it. what, what do you see when people come to you? Do they have a clear idea of, of why they want video?

Chris Weiher (06:54.2)
Actually, oftentimes do. I sometimes agree with them and sometimes I don't. That was actually the very first video I made for LinkedIn was why you need to be making video on LinkedIn. And for a smaller business where the business owner

is oftentimes the largest single asset of that company, video should be kind of a no-brainer because essentially you are the face of your company, you're getting out, you're having meetings with clients, and video allows you to meet them before you've met them and they can make a decision about do I like, know, and trust you through your video content. So essentially I call it networking at scale.

Christian Brim (07:26.471)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (07:50.96)
Okay.

Chris Weiher (07:51.771)
You know, that's the greatest part I would say about LinkedIn and YouTube shorts right now is that you get a really far organic reach. And particularly in LinkedIn, if you are a small business, if you are doing B2B work, a lot of your work is going to be coming from your existing network or a network that you're building.

And so it's the same reason why people go to networking events. It's like you go to a networking event, you don't immediately jump on a table and start going like, hey, buy from me. You you go there for, you can, it's not recommended, but you shake hands and you have coffee and you go there for six months and six months or a year later, someone goes, hey, you know what? I need to introduce you to somebody and they need what you do. And the same is true with, think,

Christian Brim (08:24.583)
Well, you can, you can, but, you know, no.

Chris Weiher (08:43.034)
creating video content for that space.

Christian Brim (08:46.783)
I like that phrase. said networking. Say it again. You had a phrase networking. Networking at scale. like that because I, you know, I've been on LinkedIn a long time. and it, the, it has become very spammy, many times as an entrepreneur, said, I wish someone would create an alternative to LinkedIn because

Chris Weiher (08:51.316)
Network, I call it networking at scale.

Christian Brim (09:15.393)
It feels like I am constantly having to ignore or accept requests to connect. And, and I filter those pretty hard, but it's, it shocks me how many people, you know, try to take me to bed immediately and start hitting up my messages about like,

Hey, you need this, right? And it's like, no, dude, I didn't connect with you to hear your pitch. just, you you seemed interesting and we had some commonality, you know?

Chris Weiher (09:55.866)
Yes, I would say it's the platform has really changed a lot, especially in the past four or five years. And it has like people, you know, make that, it's becoming like Facebook and kind of is sort of becoming like Facebook. The main difference is that. Yeah, I think people have more to lose there, so they still are more, more cautious than they would be on Facebook.

Christian Brim (10:10.245)
Yeah, yeah.

Christian Brim (10:23.932)
Yes.

Chris Weiher (10:26.258)
and yeah, it's, it's, it's tricky navigating some of that. think, like you say, like curating your network and being very specific about who you connect with and why, can be advantageous, as opposed to just like, I think there was a while there where people were like, I got 10,000 connections. It's like,

Christian Brim (10:42.982)
Right.

Christian Brim (10:49.285)
Yeah.

Chris Weiher (10:49.594)
LinkedIn does not care. They're not going to push your posts further because you have 10,000 connections. They're still going to test it out with a small group. If it performs well, they're going to put it out further. like people thought it was going to be like TikTok and be like, my God, I got 10,000 connections.

Christian Brim (11:02.309)
Well, and it's fascinating to me. I did this post as a joke, but then I realized that it probably ran afoul of the algorithm because I took a picture. I have Canadian geese in the yard at my office and they're in nuisance. And I took a picture of Canadian geese and I railed about the illegal immigrants, about how they're...

Here, all they do is eat and poop and they're annoying, right? But there was a picture of these Canadian geese and my last line was, go back to Canada. I mean, looking at the analytics of the post, I mean, was just crickets, right? And so then I reposted it saying, LinkedIn is suppressing my post. I don't know how long I'm going to go on this diatribe, but it is interesting where

The algorithm definitely, which we all know, I mean, we all know that it, it curiates it based upon what they want us to see. How do you, how do you work in that framework of not really knowing? mean, I guess you can test about what's going to perform, what's not going to perform.

Chris Weiher (12:22.714)
My advice on this is very simple and I think people can really over complicate it quite a bit by going, well, you gotta like make sure you got your target demographic and it's like, yeah, you do. Like that's just the basics of business. Like you have to know who are you trying to really sell to, you all these different things. So you do need to know those things. But.

I think people get caught up with that feeling. I certainly do sometimes when you post something like, I only got 10 likes or maybe no likes, right? Basically, my advice is if you care about it, post it. If you genuinely care about what you're saying, put it out there and you will attract people who feel the same way. That is my general advice is like.

Christian Brim (12:54.956)
Right.

Christian Brim (13:13.029)
I'm pretty passionate about geese.

Chris Weiher (13:16.632)
Yeah, it's like, yeah, as long as you care about what you're talking about, talk about it. And people who agree with you will hear what you're saying. They'll be like, I think that is true. And I like this person. I like what they have to say. That's kind of interesting. And it's oftentimes the post that you least expect is going to be big is big. Like you just cannot predict it. And the advantage, you know,

sometimes it can feel like maybe a little bit embarrassing when you do a swing and a miss and you think, people saw that. It's like the advantage to the algorithm not working is that not that many people did see it. Like there, you know, if you get a post with 3000 views, that means 3000 people kind of liked it or had something to say about it, had a take on it. If you get a post with 10, that means, guess what? Only 10 people saw that. And you're kind of, you're spared that embarrassment.

Christian Brim (13:57.393)
Fair enough.

Christian Brim (14:11.367)
I think it was like two or three views. No interaction, right? I the geese are not important to a lot of people, I guess, on LinkedIn. I'm going to pivot here for a second. So it sounds like you have had a couple of businesses where you've had built a team. And a lot of businesses never get over that hump of hiring their first employee.

Chris Weiher (14:14.606)
So that's great. Yeah.

Chris Weiher (14:20.004)
They are annoying though.

Christian Brim (14:38.865)
Talk about that journey and that decision to scale.

Chris Weiher (14:44.794)
Yeah. So I think it came from, I was following a podcast called the Passive Income Podcast with Pat Flynn. I don't know if you've ever heard it or anything. It was very popular, you know, 10, 15 years ago when podcasts were just starting to kind of to blow up. And his advice was like, if you're going to get an employee, make your first employee your virtual assistant.

Christian Brim (14:55.334)
No?

Chris Weiher (15:13.376)
and he recommended looking in the Philippines for someone and he even recommended a company, it's called Virtual Staff Finder to help find a VA. So when I first got my first couple big projects, I was like, okay, I think I'm gonna give this a shot and see what it's like. And Joe, who is my VA, she's been working me with me since, yeah, like 11 years now and has just worked out fantastically. Just very hardworking person.

Christian Brim (15:13.574)
Hmm.

Christian Brim (15:22.235)
Right?

Christian Brim (15:37.69)
Nice.

Chris Weiher (15:43.522)
very dedicated and over the years she's moved into different roles and I've hired different people for different projects but she's always been a core part of it and now that we've been doing some of these smaller videos we've built up like kind of a bigger team in the Philippines of editors and stuff like that and producers and you know kind of like this this little organic thing. So I guess that would be my

Christian Brim (16:01.308)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Weiher (16:12.694)
Still my general advice, I'm actually kind of surprised to some extent, like a couple of my clients do very well, but they don't have a virtual assistant. And I'm like, just like, I mean, as I'm sure you know, saving an hour a day of doing something tedious can give you an hour's worth of sales time. And so if you can just carve out these chunks of time and figure out really,

what do you not need to be doing, it can be a total game changer for people.

Christian Brim (16:47.653)
Yeah, I think that's the low hanging fruit is getting stuff off your plate that you don't like to do. What about when you're hiring people to do things that you used to do? What's that been like?

Chris Weiher (17:03.802)
That's a trick. I think it's easier than most people think. I read a book a couple years ago called Clockwork by Michael Mikalowicz that I really like.

Christian Brim (17:20.228)
You know, I was just about to say at the beginning of the episode that your voice sounds a lot like Mike. We just had him on the show a couple episodes ago, but your voice is... Like if I didn't see, I don't know that I'd be able to tell you two apart. It's weird.

Chris Weiher (17:30.863)
that's wild.

Chris Weiher (17:37.018)
That's really funny, wow. Well, I do feel like I have kind of a unique voice. Sometimes I think it's a little bit too Chicago and up in my nose, that's funny. Anyway, in the book, maybe you took, I'm guessing you've read it or, okay, so for the listeners, I don't know if you guys talked about it in episode, but he talks a lot about taking that chunk of time, taking 20 minutes per week initially and using that for training.

Christian Brim (17:53.507)
I have. I have.

Chris Weiher (18:06.702)
And we didn't really do that until a couple of years ago. And now we've kind of done that on steroids. So now everybody on the team, and now it's up to like 12 people, a couple full time and then freelancers are encouraged to work on a training video every single week, either updating existing training or creating something new.

Christian Brim (18:14.402)
Mm.

Christian Brim (18:35.876)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Weiher (18:36.014)
And that at scale is so powerful because then you have everything documented, especially now with ChatGPT. It's so easy to take that video, the transcript, put it in ChatGPT and say, turn this into a checklist. It makes a beautiful checklist. And it's just go, first you go here, then you go here, then you post the video over here. You name it this way, da da da da da da. And when, so when people submit videos for review, it becomes very easy for us to go.

Christian Brim (18:51.75)
Right.

Chris Weiher (19:06.158)
This is wrong. And there's a checklist that you can follow. I don't even have to tell you what you did wrong, but I can tell it's wrong, and here's the checklist to go and check and figure it out. So that, to me, was the biggest thing as far as outsourcing was that book. And actually carving out some time every week for training, I think, is really, really valuable.

Christian Brim (19:10.746)
Right, right.

Christian Brim (19:28.603)
Did you have any mental block getting over of like, people aren't going to do it to my standard or to my timeliness or, know.

the way I do it.

Chris Weiher (19:44.418)
I think that was the thing that I learned with my initial team when we were doing some of these bigger higher end animation videos was the difference between hiring an After Effects animator who could deliver something above my standards versus somebody who was trying to meet my standards. And I think that is the key is that they sort of say, you know, if you're casting, if you're directing a movie, 50 % of the work is casting. The same is true with.

hiring it's like 50 % of the work is getting the right person in the right place you can have an editor who is trying to meet your standards and it's just not there because they haven't been editing as long and it just may not have the right aesthetic choices or you can have someone who's just Been doing it for long enough knows how to take care of their clients knows how to do the work and every time you get something from them You're like, wow, this is amazing. So I think that's it more than anything. It's like

Yeah, to some extent, like you can have the same training and, and if it's not the right person in the right spot, you're going to get a different result, you know.

Christian Brim (20:49.083)
Yeah, and that brings to mind a book. I don't remember the author who not how, but the principle is that it is the who. And then they can figure out the how as opposed to trying to figure out the solution to the problem and then finding somebody to do that. And for me, that was

Chris Weiher (20:54.362)
Hmm.

Christian Brim (21:16.507)
kind of revelatory because I, I like to solve problems. And so I, I, I tend to want to solve the problems rather than find somebody better at solving that particular problem than I am and letting them do it. so I don't know if you've run into that, but it was a, it was a big challenge.

Chris Weiher (21:39.569)
100%, yeah. Like, there's one thing I've learned. I think it's like, I'm not really very good at doing anything. I am pretty good at working with people. I'm pretty good at working with clients. I'm pretty good at working with my team and going, I like this, but maybe we do it this way, et cetera, et cetera. But I've tried a bunch of stuff and messed a lot of it up. Like being like, we're gonna do Google.

Christian Brim (21:49.2)
Yes.

Christian Brim (21:52.763)
Yes.

Chris Weiher (22:07.794)
ads now and I'm gonna learn them all and I'm gonna figure out and like spend a bunch of time, spend a fair amount of money doing it. I mean like never really mastered it. You know what? I would rather have somebody else who really that is what they do and say let me work with you until you tell me why it's working, why it's not working, what can we do to kind of get you what you need. So I think that's a big learning curve just in general for people.

Christian Brim (22:16.675)
Yeah. No.

Christian Brim (22:34.716)
Yes.

Chris Weiher (22:35.854)
But definitely for entrepreneurs, it's like figuring out really what your superpower is, is so much a part of it. And then trying to get so many other people to do what they can do better than you can is everything. Yeah. If you have the budget for it, which is another question oftentimes.

Christian Brim (22:49.497)
and then get the hell out of the way. Yeah, yes, yes. That's been my.

Well, and that actually leads me to my next question is when you look at the economics of building a team, how do you justify, what's the thought process about hiring? What do you pay them? Can you afford them? Those kinds of things.

Chris Weiher (23:14.722)
Right. mean, typically, so this would be interesting to hear your take on this.

Chris Weiher (23:23.172)
Wait, that Prophet First is also Michael McCalliwitz book too, isn't it? funny. Okay, yeah, yeah, that's funny.

Christian Brim (23:26.681)
it is, yes. I wrote that one.

Chris Weiher (23:33.361)
You wrote that? You co-wrote it?

Christian Brim (23:35.38)
I know I wrote it. He did the forward profit first for creatives is my baby. It came out March of this year 2024 and I'm gonna send you a copy when we're done, but that's you you beat me to it

Chris Weiher (23:43.64)
my gosh, okay, okay, wild. Yeah. Fantastic. That's awesome. But yeah, so I typically look for like a 30 % profit that I want to be setting aside to then do things with in the future. Depending on where we've been in different years that has ranged, you know,

Christian Brim (24:02.055)
Okay, that's a target.

Chris Weiher (24:11.386)
to up to 50 % to, you know, there was a year where we lost money. But that's usually my goal. That's what I'm trying to hit is that number.

Christian Brim (24:16.656)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (24:23.877)
Yeah, I did a presentation a few weeks ago to a group of videographers. one of the topics, it was a small group, so it was more like a workshop. And we were talking about hiring people, whether it's an employee or an independent contractor, doesn't matter. The economics are the same. And the...

standard that I use and I talk about in the book is professional services. I mean, it's different for every business. But professional services, I think the minimum that target that you should have is two to one. that's, you know, essentially saying if you're hiring somebody and you're going to pay them $50,000, they're going to make you another hundred thousand. Now,

That's not just gross sales. there's any direct costs involved with the project or the work, that comes off first. And then that net amount, the gross profit, you need to be earning two to one. that concept has really transformed my business.

I got the idea from author Greg Crabtree. He wrote the book Simple Numbers and Simple Numbers 2.0. And I make fun of him every time I see him that the book is in fact not simple. It's short, but it's thick. It is deep.

And one of the key concepts he talks about is this labor efficiency and how in most businesses, that's where most of our leverage is and most of our decision making is, is around people. And having that target of two to one keeps you from what it's done for us is it keeps us kind of put guardrails around us. Like say, okay, do we need to hire somebody or not? Well, you know,

Christian Brim (26:39.655)
Our labor efficiency is this. If we add that salary, are we going to be able to make that much more money?

Chris Weiher (26:49.688)
That's a great way of looking at it. it's interesting because it's like for most of my team, they are working on our client work. But most of the stuff that we're doing now is content creation. So it's not necessarily creating ads, but it's like helping companies figure out what content should they be making to bring people in organically.

Christian Brim (27:03.91)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Weiher (27:20.334)
But yeah, I would say that makes a lot of sense as far as hiring on someone full time. You're looking to make sure that you're gonna be almost guaranteed that return.

Christian Brim (27:31.239)
Yeah. And I think the timeframe is different, but I think, you know, 18 months is the absolute max. Like if you, you, if you don't have a clear path of how you're going to make money on this person in the next 12 to 18 months, I'd really look at whether you need to hire them or not, because, a lot of times what happens is you need to hire somebody because you've got some other inefficiency, or maybe you've got a bad employee that you really just need to replace them.

and one of the things that I have found is that, a certain amount of profit and a certain amount of success can hide a lot of problems, right? Like, so you, you don't realize that you've got problems until later when something else happens. But these, these numbers and these metrics help, help you kind of get a 30,000 foot view.

of, you know, are you on the right path?

Chris Weiher (28:36.32)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think that is probably true for a lot of companies. It's like when things are going well, it's very easy to start to become inefficient and start to have more waste and not be tracking like where you're actually making your money because you're like, well, we got to get this stuff out the door. We got to meet these deadlines and money's coming in. Money's going out. Yeah. Yes.

Christian Brim (28:57.424)
Right.

Christian Brim (29:04.709)
Well, and, and, and a lot of entrepreneurs and I was, I count myself among them, just grow, grow, grow. And, and you end up working more and making less money. And it's like, that's not a sustainable thing. You've, you've, you've got to, if you're going to grow, you need to make money at it. And it should increase the bottom line. You know, sometimes there's a lag and that that's totally fine, but having a realistic expectation that.

If I'm making this investment in whatever thing, it could be equipment, could be people, but can I increase my profit, my gross profit first and my bottom line second within the next 12 to 18 months? And if I can't, I need to really be sure I'm on the right path.

Chris Weiher (29:52.442)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, I think there's Especially in the creative field. I was just talking I went to over to a friend's for Thanksgiving brunch yesterday and His sister was working for a company that does kids classes creative kids classes and She was saying well person

Christian Brim (30:11.847)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Weiher (30:17.306)
She's got a lot of ideas and she's just people sign up for the classes, but she's kind of over here and she's kind of over there. And yeah, like the last thing that I wanted to do in college was take a business class. I just want to like make stuff and like make some money, you know, and learning those lessons around what your margin should be and how to make those decisions.

Christian Brim (30:31.961)
Right. Right.

Chris Weiher (30:45.868)
I think often gets put on the back burner for creatives because it's just like, well, that's not the fun part. it's not the fun part, but it becomes more fun when it's working and you're like, I actually do know these numbers. okay. I can look and see in six months, like what is our bank account going to look like? What is our revenue going to look like? All these things. So it's a tricky thing to enjoy.

Christian Brim (30:58.886)
Yes.

Yes.

Christian Brim (31:11.878)
Yeah, I-

Well, I mean, as a business owner, you wear a lot of hats and you got to know a little bit about a lot of things. And, you know, I don't particularly like marketing, but I've got to know enough about it as a business owner and the same thing with, you know, how to manage people and legal concerns and, know, there's a lot of stuff that you have to know. you know, ignoring the fact that you don't know it doesn't

eliminate the need. just pushes it further down the road until you have until your business is going to make you learn it.

Chris Weiher (31:52.21)
Do you have to sit down and be like sit down with your accountant? They go you should have learned this three years ago

Christian Brim (31:58.467)
Yeah, exactly. So where are you? Where is Cleaver Creative in three years? What are your plans?

Chris Weiher (32:08.386)
That's a great question. We are, we've been spending most of this year building the team and building that new set of training and internal processes. So I would like to that moving and it may be a combination of things. It may be a combination of services. Right now we really are focused on that organic.

content creation, but I could easily see us taking some of that and moving with some of our clients and say, let's actually maybe start doing some more conventional marketing. We have a client who is an industrial engineer and he's got a team of five people and they do really great work with really big companies and make big changes and they have a mastermind now. So they do a monthly mastermind where they get CI professionals all to kind of come to this one hour and they

I'll talk about things that are going on in continuous improvement and Six Sigma and stuff like that. mean, that's a really kind of a fun model that I would love to replicate with other consultants and go look at like you do something really, really well. You can put out a few ads, bring in 10 or 20 people monthly that are in your space that actually want to learn from you. You want to learn from each other, build a small community.

Christian Brim (33:19.367)
Mmm.

Chris Weiher (33:36.098)
And then guess what, if you record that, you've got an hour's worth of content you can chop up in different ways and share on social. And then you also can like potentially work with these people. So it's like, it's a very kind of interesting place in that B2B space that I think is pretty untapped. Like when you talk about that feed on LinkedIn, yeah, there is a lot of stuff there.

Christian Brim (34:01.799)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Weiher (34:02.276)
but there's not a lot of super high quality, in-depth content on continuous improvement in industrial engineering. There's just not.

Christian Brim (34:10.183)
No, and I think you're onto something. think that definitely is a need, whether LinkedIn's the platform or not, mean, YouTube, whatever, I think the key to really good profitable growth is to go deeper rather than to expand what you're doing necessarily.

like adding services, like in your case, you, you know, adding, adding a pay-per-click and AdWords, you know, is that makes sense? I think to me, it makes much more sense to dive deeper with the clients that are already paying you. And you already have that relationship. It's much easier to sell something to them. And especially in the marketing space, there's a lot of confusion around among small business owners about.

what marketing they actually need and what actually works. And I don't find that marketers in general go deep enough with the clients to understand their business, asking questions and trying to solve their revenue problem really is what it is.

Chris Weiher (35:26.062)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (35:28.903)
And there are all kinds of components, right? that's the confusion is like, well, do I need to do this? Do I need to do that? I mean, I don't know. Unfortunately, it seems like there's a lot of marketers that don't ask those questions and they're happy to sell you something. And it's like, well, is that really what I need? Okay, I'm going to come up with a new phrase. They're the...

they're the pill mills of marketing. like, you know, I need my narcotics. So I know the doctor that's going to prescribe it to me. So I go and I get it from them and no one ever asks any questions. Like, do you really need this? Should you be taking it? That's kind of the attitude of, well, yeah, if you'll buy it, I'll sell it, but really not asking, do you need it?

Chris Weiher (36:13.282)
Right. Right.

Chris Weiher (36:21.974)
Yeah, no, I really enjoy working in that more consultative way with folks to be like, what are you, what do you really want to do in the next five years? Like, are you looking to grow or are you looking to kind of keep at the same pace that you're going? Like, what do you want to accomplish? And then figuring out the package or the strategy that works for that, that client within our wheelhouse. Like, I've seen a lot of people.

Christian Brim (36:33.223)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (36:48.741)
Right.

Chris Weiher (36:51.03)
on LinkedIn who started making videos. Maybe they started as a video production company and they started doing, you know, photo posts and text posts and they got really good at social media. And I'm like, well, now I'm a social media company. I'm like, I don't want to be a social media company. I want to be a video company that does things with video. And that might be content creation. It could be ads potentially, but really it is like, I don't want to just be your go to advertising companies like, well, we will.

build your website and we'll do and we'll do photo posts and we do this and we do SEO and we, that's not for me.

Christian Brim (37:29.187)
Yeah, yeah, and yes, 100%. I think the power of your business and all videographers really is the storytelling component. nothing beats it. And it's very powerful when it's used right. It's obnoxious when it's not.

Chris Weiher (37:50.006)
Yes, it can be used for like good or evil.

Christian Brim (37:52.084)
That's right. And with much power comes much responsibility.

Chris Weiher (37:56.512)
Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It has been interesting because I've been creating a vlog now on LinkedIn for those four years and it's effort, you know, it takes a lot of energy, but it's like you cannot replace the authenticity of someone just hearing you speak your mind and go, this is what I believe in.

Christian Brim (38:08.209)
Sure.

Christian Brim (38:20.859)
Yes. So how do folks find you if they want to learn more about Cleaver Creative?

Chris Weiher (38:26.666)
They can go to our website cleavercreates.com or they can find me on LinkedIn and just search for my name. Chris C-H-R-E-S we are W-E-I-H-E-R three pronouns we I her is a way to think about that.

Christian Brim (38:47.399)
Or for our German speaking audiences is it's Chris via Via yeah, yeah Thank You Chris for your time We'll have all of those links in our show notes, but thank you for your time and your experience sharing your candor. I appreciate it

Chris Weiher (38:53.546)
Vaya. Yaa.

Chris Weiher (39:06.17)
My pleasure. This was a blast. I really enjoyed it. The only thing that we missed was the whiskey and the cigar. We should have... Okay. All right.

Christian Brim (39:11.385)
Well, we can do that when we meet. Listeners, if you like what you heard, please rate the podcast, subscribe to the podcast, share the podcast. If you want to hear something different than me and Chris, shoot us a message and let us know what you'd like to hear. Until then, ta-ta for now.