Shownotes
- Client Engagement Strategy: Chris emphasizes the importance of understanding client needs and maintaining engagement using B-roll in the beginning of podcasts and captivating introductions for otherwise dry B2B content. Knowing what keeps your audience hooked can significantly enhance engagement.
- Content Authenticity: Authenticity is key to attracting a like-minded audience. Chris advocates that if content creators truly care about their subject, it will naturally draw an audience that resonates with the message, even if it doesn't garner massive views initially.
- Experimentation and Evolution: Larry discusses the evolution of his content strategy, highlighting the necessity of adapting content styles and experimenting with new formats to keep audiences engaged. Providing value consistently can significantly increase engagement.
- Personal Branding Through Unique Interests: Chris and Larry talk about how integrating personal interests into professional content can set your brand apart. Despite initial embarrassment, showcasing genuine, unique interests can build deeper connections with your audience.
- Content Strategy for B2B Video: Emphasizing "know, like, and trust" principles, Chris outlines the importance of using video content on platforms like LinkedIn to educate and foster trust over time. He advises businesses to start raw and gradually increase production quality, making sure content quality aligns with its production value.
Transcripts
What is happening, everybody? I'm Larry Roberts.
Sara Lohse [:And I'm Sara Lohse. And this is Branded, your comprehensive guide to creative branding.
Larry Roberts [:And on this awesome episode of the podcast. I don't know why I'm so stuck on just doing that hardcore radio voice these days. It's so silly, but I love doing it. So today we've got a guest. His name is Chris Weiher, and we're going to be talking about creating video. It's one of my favorite topics. As you know, Sara and I, we launched branded podcast, and we're very video forward. Video first.
Larry Roberts [:If you're involved in social media in any way, you know that video is where everybody's going. So Chris is joining us today to give us his insights on how to get started, how to leverage it, and even how to go ahead and hit that first time. That first time you hit that record button. He's going to help us figure it out, and so we'll go from there. Chris, welcome to the show.
Chris Weiher [:Thank you guys so much for having me. I'm really looking forward to this.
Sara Lohse [:So you talk about video in the b two B space, right?
Chris Weiher [:I do. That is. That is all of our clients really are b two b.
Sara Lohse [:Okay, can you talk a little bit more about that? Because I've always personally been confused with b two c and b to b because I feel like no matter what, you're talking to people. So how do, like, how is that differentiated and why is that different with video creation?
Chris Weiher [:Yeah, so, I mean, I think the biggest thing is, is the, is the purchasing cycle. Like, how long does it take to move a lead to become a client and b two b? It's just generally longer. So it requires, you know, if it requires eleven or whatever they say, touch points to get someone to buy a product. It might take 20 or 50 touch points to get them to buy a b two B service. So it's. It's a longer sales cycle, and I think people have to be prepared for that. But also, for most small businesses who are service based, the person themselves is kind of the product. And so using video wisely is kind of a no brainer.
Chris Weiher [:But I think a lot of people in that B two B space don't quite know all the time how to do it because, you know, we're entrepreneurs. We are want results as quickly as we possibly can. And it's kind of sometimes challenging to figure out, like, all right, how long do I play in this space to figure out what kind of traction do I get to decide if I should keep doing this? You know, for a year or for more. So I don't know if that really answered. It probably made more questions than answers, but maybe something is there. I don't know.
Larry Roberts [:It definitely got the curiosity sparked, and that's a carryover reference from our last episode that was all about curiosity. But I'm curious as to, like, structurally, are there differences when you're creating videos for B two B as compared to B two C? Are you talking about social media esque videos? Are we talking reels? TikTok shorts? Are we talking. What? Are we. Are we talking educational? Give me a better grasp on, really, the primary difference between the B two B video structure as compared to the B two C video structure.
Chris Weiher [:I generally recommend that if you are in the B two B space with video, that the primary place you want to be is LinkedIn. Because LinkedIn has, like, the best organic reach next to TikTok and is mostly people doing business with other people doing business. And it's not a ton of, you know, like, the types of products and stuff that you're gonna see on Instagram and Facebook and stuff like that. So definitely want to be on LinkedIn if you're doing B two B video. And then as far as the content goes, yes, it is. It's very different than selling B two C, where you're basically making. Maybe you'll make like a customer testimonial video or you'll making, you know, showing off the features of your product or what have you, and trying to move that person to sell, you know, right now. Whereas in b two B, it's a longer education cycle.
Chris Weiher [:You still only have a few minutes per video to actually educate the person who's watching it. So you have to kind of plan out and decide, okay, what do I need to get them to learn over what amount of time in order to, like, move that into a conversation? So generally what I recommend is that people pick between one in three areas of focus for their content and breaking that into kind of know, like and trust. So the know and the like, just by making videos, if you are yourself, you know, just being yourself and authentic and talking about what you know is going to build that know and like. And then the trust really can kind of come in in case studies and showing off how you actually provide value to your clients. And depending on the levels of complexity, I tend to say you may not need video for all three of those. Like, you might want to do video for your know and like pieces and then build trust, maybe with articles and posts that go much deeper into your service. Like if, you know, one of our clients is an industrial engineering consultant. He does a fair amount of content in video form, teaching like six sigma practices and stuff like that through videos.
Chris Weiher [:But you can also have like a much more in depth case study in a article as opposed to trying to get that across in two minutes in a video. So I generally recommend breaking it up into those three categories and then decide, deciding based upon your network and what is actually going to get engagement, how much of each one you want to do. So the know and the like is really thinking about things that, like, are important to you or interesting to you. Uh, you know, an example might be somebody who is like a realtor, but, you know, crazy sports fan. They might want to make some content just about their local sports team because that's going to be local to their area. Other people who follow that sports team are going to be interested in what you have to say and then you become the realtor who's also that, you know, sports fanatic in your, in your local town. So it really just depends on your content and how you want to break.
Sara Lohse [:All that up with being b two b. What if it's like a small business that wants to make the videos, not necessarily one person? How do you recommend they incorporate that human side and make it a seem like these videos are people, not a brand?
Chris Weiher [:Yeah, I think that that's, that's what more companies are doing and trying to figure out how to do is to try and get their team more involved in that content creation. I think you're seeing it on YouTube as well, is people in companies are testing out their employees to see, like, who's kind of good at this, like, who makes sense to have on camera. And I think a lot of times you don't really know until you've asked your employees to do it. But I think it is, I think it's a very smart move because it educates that know, like and trust kind of can become exponential. Like if you can get your people to be signed off and interested and willing to come on camera and talk about what they believe about themselves and about their lives and their values and stuff like that. And obviously the company, that's huge for building your brand because it really puts not just, you know, you're the owner's face to the company, but like, I, I know the person who I'm going to be talking about who does the invoicing or I know the person who's going to, who does the marketing. I know the person who's on the technical side, I know all these people without actually having to have a meeting with them. So that when you do have that meeting, all those people show up and it's like they already know you basically.
Chris Weiher [:They've already kind of sold themselves in a lot of ways by getting to know you through your video content.
Larry Roberts [:And it's funny, just before I left the company that I was at, before I started doing this full time, I was launching an internal, call it a podcast, and that was the whole concept behind it. Regretfully, it didn't get off the ground before I left, but we had spent probably six months laying the groundwork for doing that exact same thing. So I think that's very effective. I'm a big proponent of it. Obviously, the company that I worked at, they weren't as sold, but is an automotive industry, so they move a little bit slower than some other industries when it comes to adopting new technologies. But I love what you're saying there. I'm curious, going back to LinkedIn, I've heard rumors as of late that LinkedIn is starting to lean more heavily into vertical video. What is your take on LinkedIn using vertical video as compared to the traditional widescreen format?
Chris Weiher [:Yeah, I definitely would recommend doing the vertical portrait style that you see, like on all social media on LinkedIn, or doing the square framing that is popular on Instagram. Yeah, when you use the 16 by nine framing on LinkedIn, it just shows up as a much smaller frame. It works, but it doesn't stand out as much in the feed. So I. You know, all the videos that we do are either the portrait style or the square frames for. For LinkedIn.
Larry Roberts [:Love that because I've been struggling with it myself and I've been posting both. But I do see more engagement with the vertical videos than what I do with the. With the 16 by nine format. So that's. That's very cool there.
Chris Weiher [:Yeah.
Sara Lohse [:LinkedIn also going to have, like, when you on Instagram, you open one reel and then you just scroll endlessly. Are they going to have that with their video?
Larry Roberts [:They do have that now.
Chris Weiher [:Do they? Because I actually haven't experienced that because I never use it on my phone. I'm always on my laptop because it's like very regimented. But I knew that they were experimenting with that. So that's interesting that they're already implemented it.
Larry Roberts [:I noticed that the other day, and it's only been. Well, and it's. When this comes out, it'll be about two weeks since we were at a conference, but there was a LinkedIn panel at this conference, and they told us all kinds of cool stuff. So, of course, I'm all fired up for LinkedIn. And I was watching a video, and then it just served up another video. So I was like, oh, yeah, you can just sit there and start and scroll through videos on LinkedIn as well.
Chris Weiher [:I've also tried to kind of get too close to TikTok as well. We manage tick tock for a few of our clients, but I'm just like, I just wanna. I just wanna do. Do one thing.
Larry Roberts [:Well, I hear you. It's tough, man. And that's why, you know, I've kinda narrowed things down for me personally, uh, to Facebook and LinkedIn. Uh, you know, I have accounts everywhere else, but very rarely do I post on those accounts. Now, I waste a lot of time on TikTok. You know, wake up in the middle of the night and I'm up for 3 hours because I'm ticking, talking there instead of sleeping. But, uh, yeah, it's for myself and my content. I really focus on Facebook and LinkedIn.
Chris Weiher [:Yeah, I think it's a good. It's a great place to be.
Sara Lohse [:Tick tock is kind of like the Gen z social media. What do you recommend for businesses that have either a Gen Z target audience or businesses that are run by Gen Z? Do you recommend using it? And is there any tips or tricks for doing it?
Chris Weiher [:Well, I honestly probably am not the person to talk to about TikTok. It's just like, yeah, I'm in the. I'm in that Gen X millennial cusp. And we did experiment with it a little bit and got, you know, hundreds of views, if not thousands of views, on the same videos we got on LinkedIn. But the engagement wasn't the same. And to me, that's generally what I push people towards looking at is, like, not just your views. Like, yeah, it's great to get a thousand views or 10,000 views. That's awesome.
Chris Weiher [:It feels really good. But really, what you want to look at, I think, on LinkedIn is, what are people saying? Like, if you have an interesting, an actual interesting take on a particular process or something about your business and the way that you work, are you really getting a legitimate, interesting conversation going? And if you are, that's as important as the views, because, you know, for most small, medium sized businesses, they might want a handful of new clients every year, 310, whatever, something like that. A pretty small number of actual new sales, because maybe they want the be recurring or ongoing or what have you. So it's it's a little bit more about creating content that actually gets people in your network talking about something that they actually care about. That's also related to your business, hopefully. And if you can do that, then you can really start to build this trust with your network, which might only be, you know, a few thousand people. And if you can get that in front of a hundred even, and it's the right message, that goes a long way to then building that relationship over.
Sara Lohse [:Time with them, with LinkedIn, since that's your kind of specialty. LinkedIn is known as being the business social media, and so it's very kind of polished. We talk about video production and how the trends these days are being a little more raw with video and a lot less produced. Is that the same for LinkedIn or do you have any, is there any difference?
Chris Weiher [:It's a really interesting space. Like, I've been doing video now for like, almost going on 20 years, and the aesthetic has evolved drastically. What I generally try and advise people is that you want your content to match your production value. You don't want the production value to outshine the content, because if it looks really good and sounds really good, but like, what, what they're saying actually is not of high value. We get this kind of eked out feeling. We're like, what is wrong with this? Like, why do they spend so much time and money and effort on this if, like, the content is not that great? And if anything, you want that production value to be, you know, maybe even a little bit lower than the, than the, than the product, than the content, because then the content is really the star. Right. So it's a very delicate balance that you want to find.
Chris Weiher [:At the same time, I would say that the bigger the organization, the more that branding really does kind of come into it where, like, you want the content to look all similar to some extent, and you kind of want it to have a similar feel. Like when, you know, you're watching this company's content, like, you, you just automatically feel that this is what it, this belongs to this company. So generally what we do when we work with a new client is we start their videos off very raw and then gradually we kind of add a little bit more elements to their videos so that the production kind of grows as their audience develops, and then we start changing it up. So we say, like, okay, we're gonna give you, like, a really, really polished one this weekend. I. Now we're going to give you one that's like a little bit more basic that maybe you would see, like, on, you know, a YouTube short or somewhere else so that you keep that audience kind of engaged and interested in, like, it's changing, but it all still kind of feels authentic to that person. So I think it's a very interesting place to play. Like, there's a lot of room for creativity, but, like, ultimately, the bigger the company, the more you want to think about the brand.
Chris Weiher [:And, like, what does our brand feel like and what does it look like when we. When people see it?
Larry Roberts [:Do you leverage a lot of b roll and, like, pop ups and animations and video memes? Do you integrate those types of things into your videos as well?
Chris Weiher [:Yeah, it's. It depends on the client. So some people, we do more of that than last. Like, obviously, the podcasting clients. Like, you want to have that b roll kind of in the first couple of minutes to kind of keep people very engaged and sticking around for the whole episode. For the shorts, we don't do it as much, mostly because the b two b space can be a little dry.
Larry Roberts [:I was gonna say stale. Yeah, they just.
Chris Weiher [:Yeah, it's like, it's a little ahead.
Larry Roberts [:And here is what my video is. Thank you for attending my session.
Chris Weiher [:Right, and so you don't want. You don't want it to be that stiff, but you do want to acknowledge that, like, you know, talking about accounting practices is not exciting. Isn't really supposed to be exciting. You want to have some kind of attention getter. You want to have something that brings someone into the content, but then you might have to kind of ramble for a few minutes, talking about, like, let's say, like, what the new, you know, tax laws are going to be for 2025. Right. But the people who a, need that information in the b two b space and care about it, if there's value there, they will stick through it because you're actually really providing them something as opposed to sort of the rest of a lot of the social media space. You're not just trying to get, like, eyeballs.
Chris Weiher [:To get eyeballs. You're like, I want a very niche audience who's actually going to care about this. Like, I want realtors who are very interested in the changes to which there are a lot of changes to real estate practices as far as, like, the agents and how they're managing properties next year. That's why I want to watch this, because maybe I want to serve realtors. So, yes, you want to have enough that, like, keeps people interested. But I advise not to go, like, crazy and just trying to get eyeballs because then you kind of, you have a mismatch as far as, like, your, the audience that you actually really want to be getting.
Larry Roberts [:See, and I think that's absolutely critical, and you nailed it. There is, is, you know, your audience know who you're creating the content for. And if you understand your audience that is attracted to your brand, then you just create the content that goes right along with that. So, and I say that because in my head, well, it's just common sense. Everybody should know that. But it's because I've been doing it for so long that I take for granted that a lot of people overlook what to me, seems like a no brainer. And even at the same time, I still do stupid shit and create content that makes no sense for what I'm trying to do, you know, and I look at that, they go, what's the point of that? You know? And I don't know. It's, a few months back, I created a, an overlay short that had Alex Formosi in the background talking about ugly guys benefit a lot from having a beard.
Larry Roberts [:So I had Alex behind me and he was doing, and I'm sitting here just stroking my beard and going, ah. And it crushed on YouTube shorts. I mean, it's one of my biggest ones on shorts, but what value was that to my brand? None. I just told everybody I'm ugly. That's all I did.
Chris Weiher [:It's a tricky thing. It's an interesting thing. I generally, the advice, because I think people like, yeah, a lot of people, especially when they're representing their company, they're like, I don't know where to begin. Like, do I just try and get views? Do I talk about all about how I work? I generally tell folks, like, if you care about it, that is all that matters. Like, if you care about what you're talking about, that is all that matters. Then people who relate to you are going to want to engage with it even if they don't really know what you're talking about. They're like, I can feel that this person cares about it. And to some extent, it's like the silly, goofy stuff.
Chris Weiher [:Like, if that works for you, if it works for your personality, absolutely do it. Because, yeah, it does get views. And that can serve as that top of funnel thing, right? That, like, then brings people to your channel and they go, oh, he also talks about XYZ, so I've definitely done that as well. Like, I've turned myself into memes. And that always gets a great reaction. It's completely ridiculous. But people like, it. So there's this weird balance of, like, trying to create stuff that people will like, but it's also, like, you have to like it, you have to believe in it.
Chris Weiher [:And even if it's boring and you get ten views, but they're the right ten views and you believe in what you're talking about. I say keep doing it.
Larry Roberts [:Yeah.
Sara Lohse [:I love that. One of the things we talked about on our last episode was go through. Going through your own social media and seeing, like, would you follow yourself?
Chris Weiher [:Right. Yes. Just being brutally honest and be like, what? I. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Sara Lohse [:Are you creating content that you'd want to engage with? Is this interesting to you? Does it.
Chris Weiher [:So much stuff out there. There's so much stuff to grab you. So it's. It's. Yeah. It's an interesting time to be making stuff.
Larry Roberts [:Yeah. Although I was. I started doing this just a few weeks back. I started traditionally on my social media, I would just publish stuff and post stuff. Like, I'm speaking here, I'm speaking there. It was really just an advertising platform for what I have going. But over the last few weeks, I've started writing full blown posts and providing value in those posts and then attaching an image that relates back to it or a video that relates back to it. And, oh, my gosh, the engagement has skyrocketed.
Larry Roberts [:It's insane.
Sara Lohse [:Imagine that.
Chris Weiher [:And some of that probably, too, is just. It's different. Right? Like, that's. I think another place that people can get stuck is like, I started doing this and it worked, and now stop working. It's like, because people are, like, such short attention spans. Like, oh, I've. I've seen it. I've seen his I posts like this.
Chris Weiher [:I've seen these guys from him. So now you have to think of something else. But I think it's, again, it's like, if you come back to that thing of, like, what interests me, what am I interested in? Then you kind of have an unlimited source of content to create.
Larry Roberts [:I still don't say exactly what I'm interested in most of the time. I mean, most people that goes in Batman. Yeah. I mean, if you looked. If I move my camera, I'm in the Bat cave. This is the Batcave, and there's bat everything surrounding me. And I have every large scale Batman Lego thing that you can buy on a display table over here. And it's all.
Larry Roberts [:But very rarely will you see any kind of bat posts or Lego posts. Occasionally, when I build something, I may throw one picture up of, oh, I just built this. Haha. But I don't talk about it very often because, well, it's kind of embarrassing. I'm 52 and I play with Legos and Batman and play World of Warcraft.
Chris Weiher [:Is it, like, to me, it's like, that's what, like, that's what makes you unique. Right? And I haven't. I have a friend who is, you know, he's also my Edward Jones guy, right? And he's the same way. Like, he loves playing with legos, loves like, doing like, stuff that he's like, made his own card games. It's like, I think you and him would probably get along pretty well, right? He's like, oh, I need branding work. And you're like, oh, I need, like, financial advice. Who would you want to work with him or some other stuff, you know, financial advisor probably.
Larry Roberts [:Well, yeah, she's got the finance background, so I'd have to work with her. I'd be in trouble.
Chris Weiher [:Okay, well, never mind.
Sara Lohse [:But, well, you're welcome to send him here for branding.
Larry Roberts [:Yeah, that'd be great. But I'm curious, man, because, you know, we both built out our studios and we put a lot of work and effort into this thing, even when it comes down to lighting and cameras and microphones and everything. But do you need to do that right out of the gate before you start creating content? What do you need to get started?
Chris Weiher [:I would say for most people, all you really need is your phone. And generally, when I'm telling folks if they want to get started, my advice to them is you just need to get started. You can spend so much time agonizing over as, you know, the technology and the gear and the setup and the lighting is like, if you can see your face, if there's, like, light on my face right now and you can hear my voice and I have a phone, that is really all you need. And what I generally tell folks is pick. And I picked this up somewhere. So I blatantly stole this from someone, but it was so long ago, I don't even remember who it was. So if you find this on the Internet, let me know who it is. But basically, think of ten frequently asked questions you get about your business.
Chris Weiher [:The who, what, where, when, and why, how do you do all this stuff? And then think of ten questions that you wish you were asked about your business. And if you do those two things.
Larry Roberts [:Where do I sign the contract? That's the only question that I want asked.
Chris Weiher [:There you go.
Sara Lohse [:Where do I send the check?
Chris Weiher [:That is a funny video. That is a funny video. Right? Like, I'm going to do a frequently asked question series, and then you get to my fate. You're then. Now, this is my favorite question that I love to be asked. Where do I sign? And you just show that. And then. That's a short video.
Chris Weiher [:It's funny, you know, dude, I'm doing it.
Larry Roberts [:Okay. I'm stealing it right now. It's mine. I'm doing it. I'm doing it.
Chris Weiher [:Please tag me. I'm always happy when people tag me.
Larry Roberts [:That'd be amazing. Yeah. I love the fact you said, tag me, too, because now there's some accountability. Now I have to do it.
Chris Weiher [:I would love that. Yeah.
Sara Lohse [:We're still waiting on him. He was supposed to do a tick tock dance, like episode one. This is episode 72.
Chris Weiher [:We are still here. You could. I don't know if you need to rehearse it or not.
Larry Roberts [:No, no, I'm good right now. I'm just gonna. I'm gonna hang out. But I'd rather owe you something than cheat you out, you know? I mean, that's kind of where I come from.
Chris Weiher [:All right, that's fair. That's fair. But, yeah, I mean. Okay.
Larry Roberts [:Yeah.
Chris Weiher [:You said right there in the episode, right? Chomp chop that out. Right? And that's a short right there.
Larry Roberts [:Yeah. Yeah.
Chris Weiher [:But, like, I really do think that's a place to start. And then, you know, record three, four of them. You know, for most people, their businesses, they know them inside and out. They can talk about them all day long. Give it a shot. Go back and watch them. And if you're somewhat happy with one of them, post it and just see what happens. And for the most part, you're going to get a good reaction.
Chris Weiher [:Especially on LinkedIn, it takes, it's a little bit of a step out of people's comfort zone, and people want to support you. And once you start to put content out, as I'm sure you guys are very aware, you find out what works and what doesn't very quickly. And the nice thing about something not working out is that it just doesn't get seen by that many people. If it works, it's going to catch the algorithm and it's going to get promoted, and more and more people are going to see it. It's going to be great and it's going to be a big success. If it doesn't, the worst thing that happens is just like, nobody noticed it, really, and it just got swiped by and no one cares, really. Like they're on to the next thing I love that.
Larry Roberts [:Because if you put something out and it only gets two views and you're all embarrassed, like, oh, my God, I put it out there. I'm so embarrassed. Only two people watch. Why are you embarrassed? Only two people watched. Fine. That's such a great perspective. And I've. I've never even.
Larry Roberts [:I've never looked at it that way myself. I look at it as, oh, my God, I'm a failure. And it didn't work. Thank God it didn't work. Two people saw it. Who gives a shit? Now something that will work. Oh, my God. That's another epiphany.
Larry Roberts [:This is an awesome episode.
Chris Weiher [:And. Go ahead.
Sara Lohse [:I was gonna say it's part of, like, people have an obsession with vanity metrics and people are buying likes and buying followers, and they just want people to see like, oh, well, my last post had a hundred thousand likes. It's like, but did it have any impact, your business, on your brand, on anything?
Chris Weiher [:Right? And I think we're all in that same boat where it's like, you. You do a post and it gets a thousand views and you're like, oh, my gosh, this is so great. You do the next one, it gets 100 or ten, and you're like, oh, I lost it. I don't. I don't know what I'm. You know, you can't kind of get down about it. It's like, that's just truth, really. It's like, if nobody saw it, nobody saw it, so it really doesn't matter what it was.
Sara Lohse [:And most popular videos have always been of Kevin, so if anyone wants to borrow a three year old pit bull for their videos, it'll crush. I promise.
Chris Weiher [:I've got a cat here who's. Yeah, more popular than me as well. Everyone loves him. Post a picture of me and they're just like, just like you down here, we want Kevin.
Larry Roberts [:Yeah, my pup down here. I've got a 13, maybe 14 week old pup down here. Post a picture of me and the puppy at the vet. And they're like, oh, shit.
Sara Lohse [:Like, like puppies, babies, veterans.
Larry Roberts [:Yeah.
Sara Lohse [:Include any of those.
Chris Weiher [:And cats.
Larry Roberts [:Yeah, cats work, too. Look, I adopted a cat. A stray cat is in my backyard right now at this very second that I adopted, what, two, three months ago? And pictures of me and inky. I named her inky cause she's black. And I even bought her a little house. I put a house in the backyard and I got a. I got a plaque for the house. I call it the ink spot because it's where inky stays and people are eating it up, man.
Larry Roberts [:I'll get so many likes and engage. Oh, that's so cute. Oh, but they don't know that she's a freaking demon.
Chris Weiher [:And the branded branding on the outside of the house too, so that's double serves purposes.
Larry Roberts [:Oh, my gosh. Bingo. Right there. I put Brandon on one side and red hat on the other. And now depending on what side of the house I'm on, that's who I'm creating the content for. Well, Chris, man, this is a really fun conversation. I loved it. I love the fact that you took time out of your day to join us here.
Larry Roberts [:Tell people where they can find you and find out more about your business. Oh, and that even spawns a question. So it's cleaver creatives, right?
Chris Weiher [:Cleaver creative, yes. The story behind that is both my grandfather and my father were butchers and had a butcher shop in the town where I grew up, downers Grove, Illinois. And so when I got out of college, I started working there and that's where I made my first movie. And so then when it came to time to, to name my company, I was like, that's got some good alliteration. Kind of sounds like clever. It's like, it's a nice strong image. So, yeah, so that's, that's been the company now for almost twelve years. It's been pretty cool.
Larry Roberts [:That's amazing. I love that. And actually, when I was doing my homework before the episode, I was wondering, do you really pronounce it cleaver or is it clever?
Chris Weiher [:Right.
Larry Roberts [:I didn't know if it was a play on the word. Obviously, I wasn't spelled like clever, but, but yeah. So that, that's really, really cool. And you said something there that sparked my interest. You made your first movie. Do you make independent films or.
Chris Weiher [:That is how I got started. So, yes, I was like, I was, I'd graduated college and this was in, this is going to be dating myself. This was back in 2002.
Larry Roberts [:Okay.
Chris Weiher [:So this was like, to do digital video was quite a feat. But basically, yes, I was like enthusiastic about like doing short films and stuff like that. So I wrote a film and ended up buying a camera and buying, you know, Mac G five for like a ridiculous amount of money back then and edited it. And that's how I got into creating video content that led to jobs and working and stuff like that. But I still have, still have some of those short films out there. I'm not going to promote them here, but, you know, if you if you dm me for real project work and then maybe I can allow people to see those. Yeah, they are watchable.
Larry Roberts [:I said, a little independent film bonus.
Chris Weiher [:Exactly. Yeah, you get the bonus side track. Yeah.
Larry Roberts [:That's amazing. Back in, when I was still in corporate, me and my friends, we would make independent films as well. And there's one. I got to get a copy of it. I may have a copy somewhere on a hard drive somewhere. Where we did. We entered this. This film competition for this beer company.
Larry Roberts [:So you had to make a short film that revolved around the beer itself. And the beer had this really cool ceramic pop top that came off and it was. It was a really cool. I can't remember the name of the beer, but we did a zombie flick, and the only way to stop the zombies was to give them the beer. And. And I was a zombie, and we did. We had so much fun with it, dude. We took zombie family photos.
Larry Roberts [:We did. I mean, it just. You name it, dude. It was. It was next level. We had a lot of fun with that one. So I don't think you've even heard of that story. So there.
Sara Lohse [:Yeah, I was like the camera person for a lot of my sister's home movies, and the only one I can remember was the mating. Mating habits of grilled cheese sandwiches. And she's going to murder me for saying that out loud.
Larry Roberts [:Habits of grilled cheese sandwiches.
Sara Lohse [:Grilled sandwiches. They made, basically made a porto of grilled cheese sandwiches when they were 14. Sorry, I'm.
Chris Weiher [:I kind of want to see that film, though. I have to say.
Larry Roberts [:You and me both, Chris.
Sara Lohse [:You and me both, brother, might still be on YouTube. I have to find it.
Larry Roberts [:We'll have to see if we can.
Chris Weiher [:Dig that one on TikTok. I don't know why TikTok exists. That seems like it's made for TikTok.
Sara Lohse [:Yeah, I'll find it.
Larry Roberts [:I've got all kinds of filthy grilled cheese images in my head right now. So this is. We probably had a.
Sara Lohse [:It was live action, too. It was like a. There were real sandwiches. No, no. Sandwiches were hurt in the making of the film, but real sandwiches were involved.
Larry Roberts [:Oh, my gosh. Chris, real quick, tell people where they could find you. Let's get this thing back on track.
Chris Weiher [:Yes, you can find me on LinkedIn. You can just search my name. Chris Weiher. W e I h e r is the spelling. That's the best place to connect with me. You can check out our work on cleaver creates.com. and I'm always happy to have discussions with people, engage with people on their content, and provide any help that I can. So super cool.
Chris Weiher [:Super cool.
Larry Roberts [:Thank you so much. Appreciate it.
Chris Weiher [:Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Larry Roberts [:Hey, everybody, if you enjoyed this episode and you got some value out of it and suddenly have a hankering for a grilled cheese sandwich, do us a favor and smash that subscribe button so we can continue to bring you these amazing episodes each and every week. And with that, I'm Larry Roberts.
Sara Lohse [:I'm Sara Lohse. We'll talk to you next week.
