Originally published at ilovecomputering.com.
When trying to build trust, establish credibility and position yourself as someone who understands your clients’ problems in your field, have you ever considered seeking advice from an expert blacksmith?
I know it sounds bizarre, but this short video made by a construction blacksmith (Essential Craftsman on YouTube) has taught me more about trust and credibility than many articles, lectures and paid courses I’ve seen on the topic!
Applying the strategies from this video will allow us to:
- Charge more as a freelancer or consultant
- Show that you are a trustworthy professional in front of an employer/interviewer
- Get more clients who knows that you can do your job well.
Here, take a look:
Do you see what I see?
Even though he talks only about fixing a garage door in the video and nothing explicitly about “how you can build trust and credibility today!”, he demonstrated the following in under 5 minutes:
- He is trustworthy
- He is smart
- He is good at what he does
- He cares about his job and
- He cares about his customers
Don’t take my word for it! Redditor siberian502, who has worked in construction most of his/her adult life, called him a “genius pro”.
So does he do it? How did Mr. Essential Craftsman convince his audience that he is a trustworthy and “genius pro”?
Let’s analyze the video from the beginning.
The Intro
Right at the beginning of the video, Mr. EC starts with “This morning, I’m going to fix this garage door jam…”
No unnecessary self introduction or annoying logo intro with loud dubstep in the background — he just jumps straight into giving the viewers some context for the video. Following right after, he describes the problem: “the return wall is clipped.”
What’s more is that he doesn’t just tell the viewers about the problem, he points his camera right at it (it is a video after all) to show what the problem looks like and its scale.
Way too often we see videos where a guy just stands in front of the camera while talking about a problem for a minute or two without showing the audience any context or visuals to allow the viewers to better understand what he’s dealing with.
While describing the problems, Mr. EC uses quite a few jargons, such as “…knocked the trimmer off of the plate.”
Maybe I’m just ignorant, but I’ve never heard of those terms in such context before. The fact that he uses those terms so effortlessly, as if he’s talking about preparing breakfast, subconsciously suggests to me that he knows what he’s talking about. And he’s an expert.
BUT!
Mr. EC is smart! He doesn’t try to bombard us with jargons in a douche-y way in hopes to sell himself as an expert to us. Mr. EC knows better: just in case we don’t know what a trimmer or plate is, HE POINTS IT OUT FOR US with those bright right fat arrows.
This sort of visual cues don’t just help us laymen, but they also help illustrate his points and clarify his explanation so people can understand the problem better.
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His Face!
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OK, we are now about 20 seconds into the video.
Notice how Mr. EC doesn’t show his face until well over the 20 seconds mark. Those first 20 seconds are used to give context, show what the problem looks like, and others things that could affect the problem and some further problem analysis (e.g. “it’s not a [load] bearing wall”).
When he does show his face though, it is done for a purpose, and it’s NOT “this is my channel, you should see what I look like”. It is to show his thought process for fixing the problem. He shows his height in comparison to the header of the garage door to explain the need of a Jack and how difficult it must be for for someone working alone without a Jack.
Now, I don’t know if Mr. EC is a salesman or had been one before, but the way he structures the video is AMAZING.
Right after talking about how you might use a hydraulic Jack and a 4x4 as how it is usually done, this is what he says, and I’ve highlighted the different parts of the text so we can have a better idea of what’s going on (please read this part on my blog where I have full control over the CSS):
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If you’ve ever read anything about sales or copywriting, you would recognize this pattern: it is a speech pattern (or pitch structure) where you start with the benefits people can get from listening to you before you show them the actual thing. This way, your audience can stay until you reveal your method/product/service and can understand what they can get out of paying attention to you.
There’s an important lesson here:
If your audience doesn’t know the result your product/service can give them early on, there is a high chance that you will lose their interest.
The Tutorial
Moving on to the next part of the video at around 01:06 mark, this is where the tutorial actually begins.
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The fact that the actual tutorial doesn’t start until after one full minute might scare some people with the typical objection of “viewers will get bored and leave the video long before hitting the one minute mark!”
Sure, if your dubstep logo intro is 40 seconds long and provides no benefits to the viewers other than promoting your brand, then yes, people will skip or close your video completely.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I watched every second of at least the first minute of the video and was surprised to find that I wasn’t bored (talk about short attention span)!
Anyway, let’s look at the meat of the video — the tutorial.
It is important to note that he did not follow the typical tutorial format,
“first you do X, then you do Y, in the end you get Z!”
Rather, Mr. EC walks us through his process of solving this problem. Perhaps it’s better to call it a walkthrough or process demo that calling it a tutorial.
This way, he’s not positioning himself as an higher authoritative figure who gives us instructions to do things. Instead, he allows us to tap into his entire process of fixing the problem and gain useful insights into the tools and methods he uses.
There’s something beautiful about this: this process/technique is called process analysis, and the effect of it is two folds.
- In this type of videos, process analysis is useful as a teaching tool for how to do something. It shows the audience the exact steps to take in order to get the desired outcome;
- It makes the person’s workflow and process transparent which in turn increases his credibility and trustworthiness, while at the same time demonstrates his expertise.
Showing his workflow and process doesn’t mean he won’t explain what he’s doing. After all, what good does it do if the viewers don’t know what he’s doing exactly and why he is doing it.
That’s exactly what Mr. EC did. Every time he’s about to do something, such as cutting some 2x4s into specific dimensions, he tells us WHY and HOW he will do it (01:34).
At around 01:41 mark is where he does the actual cutting. I’ve got to admit, I skipped through these parts because it’s just wood cutting.
Amazingly, Mr. EC seems to have considered that, too! You’ll notice that whenever he does some cutting or hammering in some nails, he speeds it up because we already know what he’s trying to do and there’s nothing really special about those trivial cutting and hammering.
The Actual Trick
*SPOILER ALERT*
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The moment we’ve been waiting for! Mr. EC finally shows us the trick. At 02:55 he shows us the finished tool and how to set it up.
And at 03:07, he shows the tool working to support the weight of the garage door.
WAIT! What’s that I’m hearing???
Lighthearted background music to celebrate our victory!!
We’ve stayed with Mr. EC for so long (three very long minutes), watching him work his way up to this glorious moment, so Mr. EC rewards us (and himself) with the music of victory. Nice touch, man :D
Oh, it works the other way, too!
What’s cool is that not only did Mr. EC not use loud and annoying background music, he didn’t use ANY background music until this moment of grand reveal. That allows his voice narration to always be crystal clear.
From this alone, we can conclude that all the choices Mr. EC made in the making of this video are intentional, purposeful and appropriate and always in support of getting his message across.
Finishing Up
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Since Mr. EC made this video about the cool trick of using a 2x4 as a Jack to support a tremendous amount of weight when working alone, he sped up the process of actually fixing the problem. After all, the main reason he talked about the problem was to give us context in which this trick can be applied.
At 04:28, he demonstrates another trick using similar principles again.
Annnnd, all fixed up!
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Again, you can see how Mr. EC shows his logo when and only when it’s appropriate in a non-intrusive way.
Um… is that it?
Nope. The video still has almost two minutes left.
What you’ll notice is that there’s no annoying YouTube title cards (maybe because I blocked it with uBlock), no begging to like, share and subscribe.
Yeah, there is a huge subscribe button, but it doesn’t disrupt us from listening to the nice background music while watching him put away all his tools and sweep the floor.
I also noticed at around 05:06, there’s some cables organized in loops.
I thought I’ve seen that somewhere, so I took some time and found this video:
Turns out, it’s a cable management technique where the whole thing gets untwined and uncoiled whenever you need it.
Recap
Whew, that’s quite a lot for a short 5-minute video.
So, what have we learned? In a short tutorial video, Mr. EC managed to achieve the following:
- He established himself as an expert through the invisible cues: the organized cables, the tricks, etc;
- His expert status strengthened/supported by the fact he’s sharing his knowledge and skills;
- He cares about what he does and his customers.
You might be wondering how I arrived at point 3.
To me, if I don’t care about what I have to do (e.g., reading textbooks when I was in school), I would not spend any time on improving my workflow. You would absolutely NOT see me looking for techniques on how to best absorb the contents of the book because I would just force myself to read it in order to pass some quiz — I got better things to do (like programming and… Reddit).
The fact that he sweeps the floor after fixing the garage door just shows me that he doesn’t just do the work, get paid and get out. He actually helps clean up!
Sure, you may argue that this is his house and not his customer’s, but that doesn’t really matter because viewers of this video will subconsciously think of him as a caring, professional, smart and trustworthy man.
Wouldn’t you want to hire him if you have similar problems and he happens to live in your neighborhood?
Now, I’m not interested in garage doors, nor do I have a garage door problem at hand to fix; I was just browsing Reddit when I saw this video. However, I learned more in this video about building trust and establishing credibility than many of the hour-long lectures, 20-lesson courses, and 30-page reports on this topic.
Next time you are looking to get more clients, close more deals, charge higher prices, and being interviewed for your dream job, remember what Mr. Essential Craftsman has taught us today in this video :)