S1E1 - Jon Loomer - Unleashed Potential: How Getting Laid Off Catapulted Him to Marketing Stardom

Jim Banks [00:00:00]:
Hello and welcome to this episode of Bad Decisions with Jim Banks. I'm Jim Banks. I'm your host today, and I'm delighted to have as a guest today on the podcast Jon Loomer, who I've been a fan of for many, many years. Jon's been one of the guys. He's been a prolific writer initially, and then more recently, he's become a prolific video creator. And it's through that I became, like I said, a real fan of Jon's. And like I said, I'm just delighted to have him join me on the episode. So, Jon, hello, welcome.

Jim Banks [00:00:32]:
Good to see you here.

Jon Loomer [00:00:33]:
Hey, Jim. No, really excited to be here.

Jim Banks [00:00:36]:
It's funny, we were talking before we came on. I was saying that I'm used to seeing Jon's head in a kind of purple logo that goes, sometimes you've got beards, sometimes you don't have a beard. So it's always difficult to know what we're looking for. But it's great to have you here, Jon, for the benefits of those who may not know who you are. So Jon is a meta ads educator who started Jonle.com in 2011. He has a private community called Power Hitters Club, which he set up in 2014. Jon focuses on the most advanced meta advertising topics, and he helps his community look good and reach their goals along the way. He calls himself an accidental marketer.

Jim Banks [00:01:11]:
I mean, he started his business with the hope of creating the freedom that he wanted to spend as much time with his wife and his three sons as he could. And he wanted to dedicate countless hours as a baseball coach. But he's actually now retired from doing that, which is probably why he's agreed to come onto the podcast. So he's now taking short form, video and AI head on as we head into the next crazy phase of marketing. So, Jon, welcome to the podcast. It's great to have you here.

Jon Loomer [00:01:39]:
Thank you, Jim. This would be fun. Yeah, it's getting more and more difficult every year to kind of summarize that bio, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's going on.

Jim Banks [00:01:49]:
So you started in the industry in 2011. What did you do before that?

Jon Loomer [00:01:53]:
That's a good question. I think the best place to start was I worked for the NBA, the National Basketball association, from late 2005 into the summer of 2008, and there I managed fantasy games, which was an absolutely fantasy job. It was ridiculous. How I got there is a whole other story. Whether or not we go there is up to you. But that was a really critical, not surprising point because before that, I was doing jobs I really had no passion in. I was in insurance, and nothing against insurance, but working for the NBA, one of the most important things that happened there, first of all, is we partnered with Facebook. So this was 2007, and that was right when it opened up to all the non students.

Jon Loomer [00:02:44]:
So the old folks and I fell in love with the platform at the time. There are 50 million people on the platform, and I fell in love with the platform at the time and a few more than that. Yeah. So I think the combination of that and the fact that I didn't even realize this while I was working there, because I have zero history as a marketer or I was a philosophy major, right? So I had no history in terms of sales or really want in sales. I was actually for like three months or six months. One of my first jobs was as a telemarketer, and I was the worst telemarketer that plants ever seen. So that's kind of the only history I had realizing when I worked there, I was actually a marketer. Like, I was in charge of content, I was in charge of promoting that content, online content, magazine content.

Jon Loomer [00:03:38]:
Some ads, some of the ads we saw on tv, some of the ads we saw in other places. We started doing things in terms of community, which in the very early stages of what community actually was. So these are basically seeds for me in terms of becoming a marketer and actually not even realizing that that's truly the accidental side of it. So I did that for three seasons. It's an amazing job, and I would have done it longer, but I bad to move my family from Colorado to New Jersey, which is quite the difference in lifestyles. So we did that for three seasons, and this was before anyone was working remotely. I begged them to let me work remotely and didn't happen. So that was it ended up creating some problems in that over the next two and a half years, I'd be laid off twice.

Jon Loomer [00:04:25]:
And so at that point it was like, what am I going to do? And it wasn't that I was trying to start a business, but it was eleven days after I was laid off the second time, and I worked for American Cancer Society as VP of strategic marketing, and I started a website. And the goal at the time, and really partially why it was named johnloomer.com, was just to be as like this online resume almost, of here's what I am capable of, here's my history, my work history, why you should hire me. Basically, when I created it, I really had no plans to start a business because I didn't know how to start one. It's just had a whole lot of time in my hands. And I just started writing and writing and writing. And the Facebook ads focus wasn't there initially. It just kind of morphed that way over time. Once I started realizing I was at least building a brand and what needed kind of a focus.

Jon Loomer [00:05:22]:
And I was using Facebook marketing and Facebook ads to build my brand. So I would talk about the things I was doing.

Jim Banks [00:05:29]:
Interesting. It's funny, again, I've been a fan of yours for a long time, but never actually had the opportunity to talk to you. I used to do insurance and I actually set up my first business back in 2000 because I got laid off three times.

Jon Loomer [00:05:42]:
I don't want it. Around the same time, I don't want.

Jim Banks [00:05:43]:
To be laid off anymore. I don't want to have some control of my own desk. So that was part of the reason why I set up a business. And I think a lot people when they do that, when they set up a business, they have a reason for doing it. And it's not always because they want to run a business. Sometimes they don't want to work for other people. Or in your case, you obviously moved your family, couldn't work remotely. Again, you look at in today's environment, it would probably be quite cool for you to work remotely, but again, it's like you only can play the cards that you're dealt with at that particular point in time.

Jim Banks [00:06:13]:
So where are you based now, Jon? Right.

Jon Loomer [00:06:15]:
I'm in the Denver area again.

Jim Banks [00:06:16]:
Never been to Denver. Funny enough, I've been to a lot of states before, but never did it to Denver.

Jon Loomer [00:06:21]:
It's beautiful out here. It really is. Okay.

Jim Banks [00:06:23]:
So again, I always try and get my guests to give me a fun fact about yourself. Right. So you said you're a philosophy major. Is there something else that would make people go, well, I didn't realize that Jon did that.

Jon Loomer [00:06:33]:
Oh, man. I think the couple of things I like to talk about most, the baseball coach stuff was pretty intense. So I was basically a baseball coach for 16 years, and for each of my three boys, one at a time, really. And it just got more and more intense as they got older. And I really kind of considered myself during that time as a full time coach and part time business owner because all of my time and energy was spent there. I'd even started a website for it to help promote that brand. And for a while there, that website was doing better than johnlemer.com was. It was kind of crazy.

Jim Banks [00:07:10]:
We start off playing.

Jon Loomer [00:07:12]:
Yeah. So, I mean, it started way back when my oldest was five years old. That's, I say, when I started coaching, I guess. And then basically up until my youngest moved on to high school, that was it for me. And honestly, that was good timing because I really needed to spend more time focusing on the business at that point. That's been part of the reinvention for me. I mean, when you go 16 years partially defining yourself as a baseball coach, because that's what was on my mind all the time, and then all of a sudden that stops. That was a big change for me.

Jon Loomer [00:07:51]:
So lots of baseball related stuff, I think in my past and obviously in.

Jim Banks [00:07:59]:
Your business and with your community, the Powerheads club, you focus primarily on meta advertising. Again, I'm sure I will go to my grave calling it Facebook ads. Like, for me, it's like, I don't know why they had to change the name, but they did. But there we, so obviously you focus on meta ads exclusively. What made you decide that? Kind of what you wanted to do? Was it because you'd done at the NBA and you thought you got a good level of understanding? What was it that kind of made you decide to do?

Jon Loomer [00:08:29]:
Know? There was some comfort level there, but I think the primary thing was, I take it back. So before I was actually talking a lot about Facebook ads, it was just about Facebook marketing. And until then I was talking about everything like Pinterest, Google, Twitter, I mean, you name it. And sometimes it was even like personal use. I was just finding my way and just write. I wrote almost every day. Like the first couple of years I wrote a different blog post. And I think the point, the line where it's like, okay, now I'm focusing primarily on Facebook was in spring or late winter of 2012 when Facebook timeline for pages was launched.

Jon Loomer [00:09:18]:
And I just wrote a whole bunch of blog posts about all the various features that came out with that. And so a big part of it was just like, I just had so much to write about, was very comfortable with the platform, partially because of what happened with the NBA, I was using it to promote my brand. And then really, once I started writing about advertising, the big thing for me and my business was once I started talking about power editor. So for anyone who maybe wasn't advertising back then, Power editor was what you used. If you were advanced with Facebook ads, it was super frustrating and buggy. But if you wanted access to some of the extra features that weren't available through the main way, you used Power editor and you kind of powered through it. Once I started talking about that, and then all of a sudden, oh, my focus is advanced Facebook ads. And it made sense that that should be my business anyway, because if you want people to actually pay you for something, you need to focus.

Jon Loomer [00:10:27]:
Or that's what I figured out. I needed to focus on a group of people who are deeply invested in it, not just people who are like, and this is fun. Again, lessons learned. In the early going, when I was like, I had no job, I wasn't getting any revenue yet. I was the breadwinner in the house. I was like, looking for free coupons and stuff for Facebook ads. I would write about that stuff. It would get a ton of traffic.

Jon Loomer [00:10:55]:
And then it's like, wait a minute, these people aren't going to pay me for anything. It's just I got traffic and that's it. So those kind of lessons learned, too, in the early days. Like, if I actually want to be paid for something, I need to cater to an audience that might actually pay me because there is monetary value. I can help them.

Jim Banks [00:11:20]:
A couple of years after the writing, you then said, okay, maybe I should create a community for people who pay me to basically interact with me and also interact with other people in the community. Is that kind of like you came up with the Powerheads Club initiative?

Jon Loomer [00:11:37]:
Well, so it started with courses first. So there was no community. And the challenge I had with courses was I'd have this big marketing blitz for this new course, sell a whole bunch of courses, make a lot of money, and then crickets, right? Or I'd make money, but it was so inconsistent.

Jim Banks [00:11:58]:
And also month to month thing, I found I had a lot of friends that would say to me, jim, you got so much knowledge, you should write a book. And I always said to them, writing a book is the minute you get to the end, and you write the end, probably 50% of the content in the book is out of date, and you got to go right back to the beginning and just start reshooting or rewriting every single module that you have about particular things because it's such a fast moving kind of environment. The advertising ecosystem is such a dramatically fast moving ecosystem. Every single year, meta will have probably 50 to 100 new things that they add, things they take away, things they give you in the business manager or business suite or whatever they call it now, and trying to keep up to date with that. It probably needs somebody like you who focuses on that all day, every day, to be able to then disseminate and say, these are the important, this is the advanced bit. This is something you probably don't need to focus so much effort on. I think people get sort of analysis paralysis. They have so many different features in the platforms that they find themselves using things that they ought not to be, but because they're there, they just use them because they think they need to.

Jon Loomer [00:13:09]:
Right? Yeah, I mean, it's funny you mentioned the book too, because I bad been offered an opportunity to write a book at one point about Facebook ads or contribute to it was about to do it. The contract was sitting on my desk and then I decided not to. And I'm glad for a lot of the reasons that you mentioned everything had become obsolete. But I think there comes a point where are you dedicating your time? And yeah, I could spend a whole bunch of time writing this book that takes me away from selling products and building community. And yeah, it can help build my brand too, but I'm kind of glad I didn't go that route. But as far as the community. Yeah, first of all, I needed something recurring that was dependable and really, like a lot of things, it was a recommendation from a reader, something like, hey, you should create a community. And I don't know about that.

Jon Loomer [00:13:57]:
And it started as like I was running these weekly free webinars where you had to opt in and get access to them. And then after a certain number, I said, okay, if you still want to continue to get these, you need to be a member. And that was the beginning of that membership. So it started very raw and that's all it was. I'm about to hit my 500th weekly webinar, if that gives you any idea how long it's been. And it's kind of morphed over time. But the main thing is it's a community of people to help one another. It's also a way for me to make a little bit deeper connections with people than I do otherwise to help them.

Jon Loomer [00:14:36]:
But yeah, that's really the cornerstone of my business, especially today, is the core stuff gets really frustrating when the stuff I created in 2012 became obsolete almost immediately after I created it.

Jim Banks [00:14:49]:
I look back at some of the presentation. I've done lots of speaking over the years, and I look at some of the presentations and I look at some of the things that I was talking back in 2006 and seven, and I'm thinking to myself, a lot of the information in there is probably still relevant if you read between the lines. But I think so much of it is now. Again, people get hung up on features rather than the kind of the underlying marketing principles that kind of govern know when all said, and Facebook is just a platform. Right. It amazes me how many people think that if you're working for an enterprise business, that all of a sudden it's a completely different set of rules than if you're a small business. And I think the reality of it is you're only as good as the people pressing the buttons and coming up with the ideas for ad creation and angles and things like that. Right.

Jim Banks [00:15:38]:
And a lot of these enterprise businesses, if they don't have the right people, there'll be no competition to smaller businesses. So I think a lot of people get sucked into a big business and will always outperform a smaller business, and that isn't always the case. Right. So in terms of your community, what would you say the kind of typical person that would be a good fit for the community is? I'm not trying to promote the community per se, but I'm just curious as to how you attract the right people so that you get people that go, this is absolutely the right kind of place for me. The group that's here is the right people for me to be interacting with. Yeah.

Jon Loomer [00:16:12]:
The way I look at it is whether you work for an agency or you run ads for others or even for an employee, it generally needs to be in the neighborhood of you're spending a few thousand dollars per month, at least, for it to be worthwhile. But your goal is to stay on top of everything that's happening right now. Right. So the community is a great place for that. So not only am I sharing things that are happening, other advertisers are sharing what's happening. If you're running into a problem, you share it and you ask for feedback and you get that. We have strategy sessions at least once per week where we kind of come together and share what we're working on and problems we're facing and help one another, the weekly webinars, and also access to the training. But really the main thing is you want to stay on top of everything that's happening now.

Jon Loomer [00:17:07]:
And that's the true value of this.

Jim Banks [00:17:10]:
It's interesting, I take part in a lot of SAP groups for digital agency owners and things like that. And it's really interesting how certain people have got particular issues. It might be issues with vendors or issues with personnel or something like that, and they'll ask a question. And as a community, as a group of agency owners, it's really interesting to see how people are, even though we're all in effectively direct competition with each other, how prepared people are to help each other. Because again, I look at this industry as we're only as good as the collective knowledge we have. There's lots of people that explain they've had a really bad experience and they've had a bad experience because the industry has allowed people to infiltrate the industry. I want to make sure that people have got the right tools and knowledge to do the job. So if they are going to set up an agency, that they're not going to rip people off, they're not going to do bad work, and they're going to help the industry to grow in it, because that's ultimately what we're trying to write.

Jim Banks [00:18:05]:
At some point in time, Jim Banks won't be around anymore and Jon Lewis won't be around anymore. The next generation of people will be there. And I want to make sure that as an industry, it continues to thrive.

Jon Loomer [00:18:15]:
Absolutely. And I think the challenge that advertisers face, meta advertisers face is support's not great from meta, ad reps and meta generally. So they need something else. And that's one of the things with the community. And I think one of the first things I do is I create a video just for that person to welcome them in. And one thing I stress is, like, if you want to get the most of this, you need to make connections in the community. It's the people who show up and expect everything to be given to them. Like, answer all my questions, why isn't this in the training? Why can't I find a training for this particular thing, solve my problems, but they're not connecting with others.

Jon Loomer [00:19:00]:
That's a pretty factor in getting the most out of.

Jim Banks [00:19:03]:
Absolutely. So obviously, because you're primarily working on your own, in your own location, but you have a sort of smaller team that kind of support you. We were talking again beforehand about how we have remote teams. So it's difficult when you're trying to stay motivated and focused, right. You're sitting in an office on your own. How do you stay motivated? What's your routine look like to stay motivated?

Jon Loomer [00:19:28]:
Yeah. And I feel like you have to have a routine for me. I'm a person of habit. So first of all, each day is dedicated to something specific, right? So for 2023, at least Mondays, that's when I do all of my calls. So no matter whether it's a team call, whether someone's booking a one on one, whatever, I know that's the day that happens. Tuesday is the day we have strategy sessions and I'm publishing a blog post. Wednesday I'm doing webinars. Thursday I'm publishing another blog post.

Jon Loomer [00:20:02]:
And then Friday is kind of a free day where I also do like podcast interviews and things like that. That's the first thing. I think it's super important that whether you call it goal setting or just an expectation, this is part of kind of the way I'm wired, right? Like I'm publishing a video every single day this year in 2023. If I didn't have that goal, it'd be really easy to lose motivation and just stop doing it. Or if I was obsessed with what are the metrics? Oh, the numbers are down right now. It'd be tough to keep going. But my only focus is I'm going to publish a video today. And kind of same thing with blog posts.

Jon Loomer [00:20:47]:
I just reached 100 blog posts for this year, even though this year hasn't been great comparatively to years past with blog traffic. But that's part of my routine. I know what I'm doing. And when it also comes back to what I do with running, I guess I am a runner now, I can't deny it, but I have a goal every year of how many miles I'm going to run. I'm going to run 1200 miles this year. And the only reason I'm going to do that is because I track it and I have the goal and that's what keeps me motivated.

Jim Banks [00:21:20]:
Yeah, it's interesting. I know we talked a little bit about your insurance thing. I post stuff not because I'm trying to brag about me, because it's not about me. I lost a ton of weight when we went into lockdown. We had the pandemic. And the reason for that was that I was working from home. I'd been working from home for twelve years, but instead of the rest of the family going out, they were all there every day. And I was like getting stir crazy kind of being in the house.

Jim Banks [00:21:42]:
So I just thought, I'm going to go out walking every day. So I started walking when we went into lockdown, and I've almost done it every day since then. And sometimes purposeful, sometimes it's quicker, sometimes it's slow. But I make sure that I get out, get some fresh air, clear my head a bit and do something. So in much the same way that you plan your days for Monday, for your meetings and stuff, I mean, I've made sure that pretty much like the mornings are mine, right? The mornings are when I can focus on making sure I take care of my physical needs, my kind of mental awareness, by clearing my head, usually by sort of twelve 01:00 I'm finished and I can then focus on work for the rest of the day. And that could involve calls and everything else. I've tried to do the same thing. I've tried to block out time in my diary.

Jim Banks [00:22:30]:
And one of the most important pieces of blocking out has been for me personally and also for any family related stuff, and then the work fitting around that, right? Because as much as I know that a lot of people go, oh, I'm just too busy, I've got all this work to do. The work will keep, you really need to focus on your physical and mental well being and family, and then everything else will slot into place as a result of that.

Jon Loomer [00:22:56]:
Yeah, I do the same like my mornings up through 09:00 every day. So we have an espresso machine and I make a coffee for my wife and I make a coffee for myself that takes longer than your typical coffee. That's going to be 20 to 30 minutes just to do that. And then I sit down and I read a book. That's kind of part of my routine that I check off, too. I'm not naturally a book reader, but that's something I try to work into my morning routine, then I do a meditation, and that's all part of my morning routine that I really don't change, especially during the week. But you're right, you can absolutely go stir crazy. And I think the biggest adjustment for me and why I have to stay on top of some of the things with my own mental health is once I stopped coaching as a baseball coach, I've lost reason to leave the house, so I could stay in the house all day for days, if not weeks at a time, especially when it's cold and that becomes a bit much after a while.

Jon Loomer [00:23:59]:
So really is entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, work from home, people.

Jim Banks [00:24:07]:
That's one of the reasons why I attend awards events. I speak at conferences, but I also attend at conferences, even though I'm not speaking at the conference, because that's my opportunity to touch base with people in the industry, push flesh, have a drink, have some food, catch up with people like in person, because I think it can be very soul destroying to be in isolation all the time, just looking at a computer screen. And unfortunately, in our industry, I've lost some really good friends who took their own lives because they couldn't cope. Mental pressure of working in the industry all day, every day because they had no contact with people, which is horrible. Again, if you're listening to the podcast or watching the podcast, reach out to people. I mean, again, I think for me, it's really important that you kind of look out for each other, because again, we're only as strong as the collective. We need to make sure that we're all good. Otherwise, none of us are good.

Jon Loomer [00:25:00]:
Glad you mentioned that. I'm also an introvert, so once the baseball stuff ended, my personal connections took a huge hit, too. So I have my family around, which is great, but even that is shrinking because two of my sons are out of the house now and my youngest is in high school and isn't around us quite as often as maybe he used to be. So it's like, yeah, you have to be intentional about taking care of yourself. And part of it is you have to have emotional connection. However you find it, you need it, and that's a reminder. And for introverts, it's probably doubly hard.

Jim Banks [00:25:40]:
No, you're absolutely right. And again, I've met a lot of people in the industry who are introverted, and attending conferences has always been a great way of expanding your network of connections. I think a lot of people go with the intention of, I've got to get, like a positive ROI, I've got to get certain number of clients I've got to justify, and that would be the only reason they would be allowed to go to conferences. But I think a lot more people are aware of the feel good factor of attending a conference. And again, I always try and encourage people who employ people to actually allow their team to go and learn and network with other people in their peer group, because it's so important to have those connections. Otherwise they've only got the people that they may work in the office. And here in the UK, we have recently met, were building a purpose built office, and they paid 150,000,000 pounds, I think, to get out of the contract with the landlord. We don't need that office anymore.

Jim Banks [00:26:39]:
So they're not going to have a big office with tons of people. They're going to have lots more people working from home. So again, I think it's really important that they try and do what they can to encourage people to have the ability to be able to kind of meet somewhere.

Jon Loomer [00:26:51]:
Yeah, I think Covid was a big part of this, too. Right? The last event I attended was just as Covid was going through. So it was early March of 2020, and I spoke at an event. That was the last time I've been to an event at a conference, and I'm actually going, finally returning social media marketing world in February. I'll be speaking. So that's the first four. San Diego. I haven't been to a conference.

Jon Loomer [00:27:21]:
Yes, in San Diego. Yep, it is. But yeah, I mean, I think the impact of all that goes a lot deeper than I think we often acknowledge in terms of our emotional connections and how that really disrupted things. It was more than just the sicknesses and wearing a mask and some minor inconveniences. We lost a lot of connection.

Jim Banks [00:27:46]:
100%. You're absolutely spot on. So, Jon, tell me a little bit about TikTok. What made you decide to go all in on doing vertical videos on TikTok?

Jon Loomer [00:27:55]:
Very relevant to what we're talking about. So I think once that period of time hit in Covid, I started losing a lot of my motivation. Motivation to sell because of the nature of things, hearing from people, losing their businesses, losing their jobs, whatever it be. And I don't want to sell to you in that case. I really don't. So I want to give you things honestly. And also, I've been doing it for, like, ten years. So I started getting kind of burnt out, bored, depressed, maybe.

Jon Loomer [00:28:32]:
And not to mention all the baseball stuff that was going on, too. Once we started getting. I mean, in Covid, it was extremely stressful as a baseball coach, first of all. But as we started getting out of it, I feel like every year was more stressful than the last, just managing parents and everything else. So we had all that going on. Losing my motivation. The business was starting to suffer. It was kind of a decline that maybe would have happened without Covid, but absolutely accelerated as a result of it.

Jon Loomer [00:29:06]:
And so once I reached the end of my final summer as a coach, it's kind of the perfect timing, because whatever I was doing at that point wasn't working well enough for my business, and my business was in trouble. So what is it that I wasn't doing? Because I was relying on all the same processes and formats and everything forever, right? Because, again, I didn't start a business thinking, I'm going to start a business that's going to be around for 20 years. I just wanted to start a business that's around for a year, and then we'll see what happens from there, and then it's still there, and it's still there, and then it served a purpose. Like, as you said in the intro, I wanted a business that allowed me the flexibility to spend more time with my kids and my family and coach their teams and all that kind of, and they did it. In the meantime, I wasn't evolving. I was kind of doing the same things that worked for a while, and I reached such heights with my business that I could even not keep growing. I could lose a little bit than I previously would, and I'd be fine. Then everything accelerated in a negative way, and Luke and my team have been pushing me for months to do short form video.

Jon Loomer [00:30:23]:
And I was just so uncomfortable with the whole concept. First of all, just opening the TikTok app and everything that happens in that.

Jim Banks [00:30:32]:
App, and never I open TikTok after I've done TikTok for about five or 10 minutes. I need to go and have a shower. I feel dirty. It's like, not us, exactly. I'm not the demographic.

Jon Loomer [00:30:43]:
A big part of that is, like, just follow the right people. Don't use the for you. But the other thing was, like, the perception, right, of TikTok. And at the time, for me, and I'm sure it is for a lot of people, it was just a lot of dancing and doing silly stuff and trending sounds and trending things, and I'm like, and young people, where do I fit in all this? It doesn't make any sense. So even when I would kind of experiment with short form video, it wasn't going all in on short form video. It was doing it in a way that made me feel comfortable. Right. I would actually do a widescreen recording screen, share of something, and then I'd crop it to fit within that.

Jon Loomer [00:31:29]:
It was terrible, but that was the extent of my attempts and early going. But it came to a point where it's like, I'm either going to figure this out and turn my business around with the help of short form video, or I'm going to have to find a job, something. This isn't working. So it came to a point. It was September 30, so I kind of started poking around with it the prior few days. It was September 30 where I'm like, I'm all in, and the biggest obstacle that any of us have and that I had, first of all, showing my face, being showing all the flaws that you have and whatever, that's a big fear. But once I embraced that I was going to create bad videos, the weight lifted, right? It was a realization that I'm never going to open the app, record a video, and have it be good, and know how to create a good video without creating a whole bunch of bad ones first. So on September 30, I created a video that started with, this is going to suck, and that's okay.

Jon Loomer [00:32:41]:
And that, to me, was the start of it all.

Jim Banks [00:32:44]:
I watched that video.

Jon Loomer [00:32:47]:
Yeah. And it sucked.

Jim Banks [00:32:48]:
Doesn't matter, okay. Nobody died, right?

Jon Loomer [00:32:51]:
Yeah, it doesn't matter. And it was painful, right? So I had fully committed to it. The month of October of 2022, I recorded 70 videos. But not only was it 70 videos, it was 70 painfully created videos where it took 2 hours on average, for each video. So really, the bulk of my day was dedicated to video at this point. And they weren't good videos necessarily. I mean, they were getting better as we went, but that was the key, too. It's like, you have to create and create.

Jon Loomer [00:33:29]:
You can't just like, oh, create a video this week and a video next week and they'll get better. Volume is really important. Repetition is better.

Jim Banks [00:33:37]:
One thing for sure.

Jon Loomer [00:33:38]:
Yeah. And then finding what you like, what you don't like, what works for you, finding your process, all that stuff. So anyway, this was a big turning point. Even though the videos necessarily weren't great, I started hearing from people immediately, especially once I branched off from just TikTok. What I ended up doing and has worked really well for me. I don't record in the app. I record from my phone. I edit externally.

Jon Loomer [00:34:09]:
I then upload to five different places, and in some cases, these are places that I wouldn't have been active anyway if I didn't upload that video. So who cares if it's the same video in multiple places? And honestly, it changed everything. Like the number of people who would then book a one on one with me, or sign up for power Hitters club, or invite me onto their podcast and tell me, I feel like I know you. It's from watching your videos. Or people who said, where did you go? Where have you been all these years? Because they followed me way back in the day, and then all of a sudden, things weren't going the way they used to and they didn't see my blog, even though I was still blogging and whatnot. But you didn't go anywhere, but you.

Jim Banks [00:34:57]:
Didn'T set out with the specific. I'm going to generate x number of new clients for this. And the original idea was, I'm just going to post video every day.

Jon Loomer [00:35:09]:
That is the other issue with video generally, that you have to let go of is attribution tracking. How many sales, how much revenue did this lead to? These days I do have a CTA at the very end of videos that I will say, like, hey, I want to learn more about this. Go to my website or sign up for my newsletter or whatever. But for the first, probably two to 3200 videos, no CTA whatsoever. And that was intentional, because I only wanted it to be purely help with the hope of building trust, building my brand, building an audience, all those things. And if things happen, if I end up getting business as a result of it, great. But I had to let go of the measurement side of it. I wasn't going to be able to measure it.

Jon Loomer [00:35:57]:
And that's one of the things. Like, as someone who has had a blog that was really successful for all these years, that was always easy. I know how successful my blog is. I know what people do on my website. I know when things traffic to certain pieces of content leads to sales. Not so easy with the videos unless you throw a bunch of ctas in them, which can also be annoying. So, yeah, that's one of the things I just had to let go of in the early going focus. Not even look at metrics.

Jon Loomer [00:36:26]:
We don't ignore metrics, but that couldn't be a measurement for success and motivation. Because you will be demotivated.

Jim Banks [00:36:34]:
Yeah, because I talked to a lot of people who publish videos on YouTube and they become so obsessed with the hooks and the first 3 seconds of five set. And again, I always say it doesn't really matter. I don't kind of juke people into watching the first 15 seconds if the first 15 seconds is great and the other 7 minutes is crap, because that's not going to be good for me, it's not going to be good for them. I think the most important thing is if you're adding value, then people will come back and consume more of your content. Right. So the more content you have, the more I like to think of it as like lottery tickets. The more content you've got, the more points of entry that there are for people to find you. Because there might be a specific problem that particular video or that particular TikTok can solve.

Jim Banks [00:37:18]:
Right. And then from there, there's a conversation that happens. What's really interesting, I was playing around with descript and I wanted to chunk some stuff up, and I had, I think, like a seven or eight minute video that I created. And I basically created seven compositions that I posted onto TikTok. I've had so many people say, jim, I saw your TikTok videos, and I'm like, really? You see all these people with millions of views, and I've got a couple of hundred, maybe 300, a thousand. Again, it doesn't matter to me whether I've got a million. It's like if I've impacted 20 people or five people, that's the thing that's most important for me is that I've impacted some people.

Jon Loomer [00:37:56]:
That is so important and really to your sanity and to your motivation that you can't obsess with virality, which is fleeting. And those metrics. Yes, to a point, those first three to 5 seconds are important. Right. But what I'm not going to be is someone who has this super aggressive hook with every video. Because what it's going to do is you're going to get totally burned out by it. Like I get burned out by it if I follow you. And every single video has the same sense of urgency and life or death feeling in that first 5 seconds.

Jon Loomer [00:38:35]:
And then especially if you don't deliver on it, I'm going to unfollow you. I turn out it's annoying. It's good for attracting new ways to.

Jim Banks [00:38:41]:
Do this, but comment this and dm me and you got to be following me in order to get the stuff. And it's like, no, just give me the stuff. If it's valuable, I'll reach out to you because I feel that you added value.

Jon Loomer [00:38:52]:
Right, right.

Jim Banks [00:38:53]:
If you're gaming me into kind of giving you information or following you, then that's not really going to float my boat, really.

Jon Loomer [00:39:01]:
Right. I feel like there's a balance in there. Right. So what I don't like also as a consumer is if you hit record and it takes you three to 5 seconds to actually start saying anything, I've flipped through. So it's also, as a creator, as someone who is kind of slow in my words, who takes a while to get to the point. Naturally. As you can see, it has been a challenge and a good one to force me to be more concise, to force me to get to the point. And I do script it out too, so I'm more careful about it.

Jon Loomer [00:39:36]:
Like, don't be repetitive, find the most powerful way to say things, say things in fewer words. Like all these things where I can get it done within a minute, but I treat those 1st 3 seconds ish the same way I do my blog post titles. Right. And what's funny is I recorded a video recently that started with create boring content with the whole point of this being don't create a whole bunch of super ridiculous hooks and whatnot. And then the accusations were create boring content was one of those ridiculous hooks. But I'm actually delivering on what I said in that hook. Right. It's like, there's nothing outlandish about create boring content.

Jon Loomer [00:40:22]:
Basically my 1st 3 seconds or so is this is exactly what you're about to get in this 1 minute and I'll deliver on it just like I do my blog post titles where they're so super boring, but they explain what exactly you're going to get in the article. There's nothing outlandish about it. I think people get.

Jim Banks [00:40:41]:
As I mentioned, I had you on as a guest on my podcast because I'd been reading your blog for like forever. But I think it was really the kind of top videos that really made me realize just how smart and clever you are about the content that you talk about. And yeah, so again, for me, I've been delighted to have you on as a guest. Just to wrap things up, too much more of it. If people wanted to reach out to you, what's the best way for people to get hold of you?

Jon Loomer [00:41:07]:
Kind of like what we're saying, I'm everywhere now. So how you find me, I mean, you can first of all just email me. Me@johnloomer.com goes into my Zendesk inbox. So me@johnloomer.com is a good place, but otherwise, anywhere pretty much on social, I'm at Jon Loomer, with the exception of Facebook, where it's at digital. But, um, so Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, and then of course, johnloomer.com really kind of consolidates it all there. So I even have a custom post type now for my short form videos where I expand on them and talk about them a little bit. So there's blogs and all kinds of content there. Lots of me.

Jim Banks [00:41:52]:
One of the most eagerly anticipated newsletters I get is the one that comes from you, right? Because you post content all the time. So I read through it again, even though you're talking about stuff that I probably already know about. I just like to have. Sometimes it's nice to see people with a different perception on the same thing that I'm looking at, to see if I have the same perception or whether I have a different perception. And interestingly enough, I know we talked about it again, you've started to post more regularly on threads. I'm really enjoying threads because it's like Twitter without the toxicity, right? So I hope it continues that way. We've just opened up to the european people being able to get accurate, sorry, to threads again. I'm hoping that it continues to kind of evolve and do well.

Jon Loomer [00:42:36]:
I love threads, and what's funny is I think those who are in it are 100% bought in and they get it. Yeah, this is awesome community and they see the potential and all that. But it's so funny, like the people who haven't been exposed to it yet just don't get it and they assume it's failing. I think they listen to the wrong people about that.

Jim Banks [00:42:59]:
To me, like Twitter, nothing like, you.

Jon Loomer [00:43:02]:
Know, it's nothing like Twitter. What I compare it to is the early days of, at least the way I use it is the early days of Facebook, where I am just completely random kind of stream of consciousness, just sharing some nonsense, right? Which in some cases oversharing, probably less structured, less planned. And part of it is there are very few metrics you can't schedule posts just might be good in terms of the spontaneity. And the result is like, sometimes I'll have like five thoughts go out within 30 minutes, and then I'll go a day or so without posting anything. But that's just kind of the nature of things. But yeah, the weird place I'm in right now as a threads user is trying to balance what I love about it right now and kind of that spontaneity and writing about anything with. I'm also trying to run a business and to build a brand. Like now they've got the topics which are like hashtags and should I be writing just about meta ad stuff, right? Or should I be leaning into that more than I am right now and being a little bit more, I guess, intentional about it? But I do enjoy the spontaneity.

Jon Loomer [00:44:19]:
I feel like there's probably going to come a time where, especially when we can schedule posts, it's going to be hard. I will probably change the way my behavior there. But I really love these early days of the platform. It reminds me of why I loved other platforms.

Jim Banks [00:44:36]:
Same here years ago. So, Jon, thank you so much for being a guest. As Jon obviously whipped through all of his social stuff really quickly, all of the information for Jon will be in the show. Notes, whichever platform that you consume your podcasts on, whether that's Apple podcasts, I think we've got video recorded. So it'll be on YouTube podcasts, which is, I think, replacing Google podcasts, Spotify, it'll be everywhere. So, yeah, so obviously, Jon, it's been fantastic to have you as a guest. I'm delighted that we've had the opportunity to do this. I hope at some point in time, once we've got the podcast up and running and being a little bit more active, we can kind of revisit this and have something even more polished than this, right? Because for me, podcast another passion project.

Jim Banks [00:45:20]:
I'm hoping that we'll continue it to evolve. And I've been delighted to have you as a guest on the show.