Make Strategic Videos

When I was starting out as an actor, I often had to take on odd jobs in order to pay my way. Some of those jobs were much odder than others.

At one point, I worked for a while at a place called North Thames Gas. I was hired as a lowly dishwasher in an industrial-style restaurant. Five days a week, we served lunch to hundreds of ravenous workers.

Before I took over from my predecessor, he told me that each morning I had to peel a vast number of potatoes. At lunchtime, piles of aluminium dishes, along with dirty plates and cutlery, were dumped in the sink. Most of the dishes contained charred food remnants.

My predecessor valiantly scrubbed the carbonised surface of the first dish. Meanwhile, the rest of the dishes, plates and cutlery piled up beside him, congealing into a nightmarish mess. It took much sweat and labour, along with quite a few curse words, for him to finish the job.

That chap departed the same day, leaving me to it. On my first day, I copied him. Frankly, it was a nightmare. I managed to peel all the potatoes but when the dreaded aluminium dishes piled up, the daunting prospect of cleaning them lay ahead of me.

For a while, I considered walking away from the job.

However, after a while, I stopped washing and started thinking. Instead of washing the first dish, what if I filled all the dishes with hot water and left them to soak for half an hour?

When the chef spotted me filling dishes with hot water, he barked: “What do you think you’re doing?”

“I have an idea to make the washing up easier.”

The chef scowled. “Do it the same way the last guy did it, okay?”

I think he resented me because while the dishes were soaking, I was at the back of the building smoking a cigarette (in those days I was a smoker).

After twenty minutes, I returned to the kitchen and cleaned all the dishes quickly and effortlessly. The kitchen staff gathered around to watch me at work. So impressed were they with my “revolutionary method,” they named it after me!

From that day on, each new dishwasher was instructed to adopt "Howard's method".

Why am I telling you this story?

When we get involved in a new activity, we tend to copy others. This seems like the easiest and the quickest option.

However, if we stop, step back and get strategic, we can go slowly in order to go fast. In today’s world, full of sound and fury, it's rare for such a strategy to be acknowledged.

When you’re making a video, don’t copy, or metaphorically speaking you’ll be in danger of ending up with a pile of dirty dishes.

Unusable videos. Cliche videos. Videos that take hours to make and longer to edit. Videos you can’t be proud of - even after much sweat and labour and curse words.

Think strategically about what your video is really about. What do you want to say and how do you want to say it?

These and other questions are critical to success. If we answer them before we begin, there's a chance our videos will stand out. We will have gone slow in order to go fast. As a result, we might even get a “revolutionary method” named after us!

When you’re ready to get strategic around your videos go to bookwithhoward.com and let's find a time to chat.