Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from Jon Cook, host of Keynote Clarity. 

There’s a good chance you’re listening to Keynote Clarity because you have an Alexa device, like an Echo, an Echo Dot, or an Echo Show. You may even be wondering, “How do I create and launch my own flash briefing?” Over the past six months, our team at Keynote Content has created a turnkey flash briefing production system. There are three key phases in our Flash Briefing development: Phase 1 is where we focus on your overall flash briefing strategy: what’s the name of your new flash briefing,...

I started recording videos using a teleprompter about six years ago. At first, it was tough. There’s a learning curve to using a teleprompter, and for me, it took a few videos before I was comfortable enough to truly be myself without looking like I was just reading a script. Can a teleprompter actually help you make better videos? The answer is it depends. I know, that’s a cop-out answer, but it’s the truth. There are many factors to creating a great video, and a teleprompter is only one of...

When I went to launch my first online course five years ago, I focused so much on the design of the sales page. What button color should I pick? Is that the ‘perfect’ image for this section? What color should the headline be? I thought I hit save on the draft of the page, but by chance, I accidentally published my sales page. It stayed up for an entire weekend, and I didn’t know my mistake until I saw a sale come through. It occurred to me that people were willing to overlook half-baked...

Picture yourself waking up this morning. What motivated you to get out of bed? Was it inspiration or obligation? Your audience needs to know why you do what you do. If you’re like many speakers, coaches, and consultants, you constantly face the question of “Is this all worth it? Why do I keep doing this?” Think about your audience, the people you get to serve. Think about how their lives and businesses, marriages, families, mindsets, finances, schedules, whatever area you impact, think about...

If you want to get to know your target market better, you need to make multiple connections every day. This may be reaching out to someone you know or want to get to know on LinkedIn. See who your second-level connections may be and send a message introducing yourself and asking how they met your mutual friend. You can also send a well-written message to a new colleague. Take a few minutes and look through their website. If something jumps out to you, make mention of that to your colleague....

xWe're wrapping up our episode interview series with Sam Horn of Intrigue Agency. Thank you again, Sam, for your generous insight and time. Jon Cook: Sam, if somebody wants to connect with you, what's the best place for them to go and continue a conversation with you and your team? Sam Horn: Thank you so much. They are welcome to go to my website, which is intrigueagency.com.  Jon Cook: Fantastic. Thank you so much, Sam Horn. To people who are listening to this, be inspired. You already have...

We're continuing our episode interview series featuring Sam Horn of Intrigue Agency… Jon Cook: We also have what I call the unwilling, captive audiences that were in the elevator. Sam, what's your take, your approach to getting rid of elevator pitches and replacing it with something more meaningful? Sam Horn: Thank you. I have a post on LinkedIn that's gone viral, has hundreds of thousands of views, and the title of it is “Why Never To Give Another Elevator Speech And What To Do Instead”. I...

We're continuing our episode interview series featuring Sam Horn of Intrigue Agency… Jon Cook: There's almost this lie, this trap that we fall into as authors is saying, "writing my book, I need to find the secluded space." And then we almost like work on our craft, our art in the dark. And then when it's ready, which is relative, then we bring it out for the world to see. But it's been created in an echo chamber. There's been nobody else speaking into your manuscript, your message, the thing...

We're continuing our episode interview series featuring Sam Horn of Intrigue Agency… Jon Cook: So, how do I find my crowd? How do I find the people that I really want to serve? Sam Horn: I'm so glad you're asking that, Jon. People can't jump on our bandwagon if it's parked in the garage, right? So how can we get our bandwagon out of the garage? Well, once again, I will give a real life success story because I think there is nothing more powerful or persuasive than a real life success story....

We're continuing our episode interview series featuring Sam Horn of Intrigue Agency… Sam Horn: So would you like another way that we can actually engage people ethically so that they are paying attention from start to finish? Jon Cook: Absolutely! Sam Horn: Okay. Use a dog on a tanker story, and you're thinking, "A what?" Well, several years ago, there was an article in The Washington Post about an oil tanker that caught fire 800 miles off the coast of Hawaii. Now a cruise ship happened to be...

We're continuing our episode interview series featuring Sam Horn of Intrigue Agency… Sam Horn: When we finish telling our where story or our signature origin story, we don't stop, because that's not enough. People go, "Well, good for you. What's that got to do with me?" right? So after every true, real-life example, we hook and hinge back to the audience with three you questions: "Have you ever had a goal and worked toward and didn't work out the way you wanted? Did you ever try something and...

I recently had the chance to sit down with Sam Horn, the founder and CEO of the Intrigue Agency. She is the former Executive Director of the world-renowned Maui Writers Conference and Pitch Coach for Springboard Enterprises, which has helped entrepreneurs receive $8.8 billion in funding. She has helped hundreds of clients create quality books and high-stakes presentations for TED-MED, TEDx, SXSW, Wisdom 2.0, Google and Facebook. We had a chance to sit down for about 30 minutes and I was...

We're wrapping up our episode series with John Lee Dumas of EO Fire. Thank you again, JLD, for your generous insight and time. Jon Cook: We want to say thank you so much to John Lee Dumas, Entrepreneurs on Fire podcast. The link will be there in the show notes, all the information. What's one product or experience or opportunity that we can share to help promote you and your message further? John Lee Dumas: Well, to me, all the magic happens outside of your comfort zone. So what is going to...

We're continuing our episodes series featuring questions I got a chance to ask John Lee Dumas of EO Fire… Jon Cook: What's something that you are passionate about, a cause, a movement that you're passionate about that isn't directly tied to Fire Nation, but you're able to leverage your platform to say, "We can make this difference -- this impact -- in the world?" John Lee Dumas: Well, to me, honestly, it'd be more vague than that in a way because I consider it the ripple effect. And that's...

We're continuing our episodes series featuring questions I got a chance to ask John Lee Dumas of EO Fire… Jon Cook: I think for a lot of people that they wonder, “What if I pick the wrong niche?” Or “What if I niche too far and I'm almost too niched to actually connect with my crowd?” How do you walk somebody through right sizing their niche? John Lee Dumas: Like if you use the wrong niche, then learn from it. Say, okay, good stuff. I've identified a couple of things that I did wrong going...

We're continuing our episodes series featuring questions I got a chance to ask John Lee Dumas of EO Fire… Jon Cook: When I think about Fire Nation, it's evolved so much. I've been a part of the Fire Nation for the past three years now and continue to see how different parts of your audience, and your message, has evolved over the last three years. What's something that's surprised you about Fire Nation just in the past year? John Lee Dumas: I'd say what's surprised me most about Fire Nation...

We're continuing our episodes series featuring questions I got a chance to ask John Lee Dumas of EO Fire… Jon Cook: When we think about how our message continues to evolve, think about these smart home devices: Google Home, and Echo, Echo Dot, Echo Show, and even the technology of Alexa. How are you leveraging that technology and those smart devices to continue to share your message beyond podcasts? John Lee Dumas: I think this is the world of voice right now. The reason why voice is winning...

I recently had the chance to sit down with John Lee Dumas. He is the founder and host of EO Fire, an award-winning podcast where he interviews today's most inspiring entrepreneurs, seven days a week. With over 1,400 different episodes and seven figures a year in revenue. JLD has shown the world the power of podcasting. Prepare to ignite!  We had a chance to sit down for about 20, 30 minutes and talk through some of the top questions I wanted to ask him as one of the most influential...

Over the past few days, I’ve shared with you the process of increasing your content production without sacrificing your time or sanity. It starts with creating one feature-length piece of content, like a Facebook Live video that’s eight- to 10-minutes long. From there you extract the audio from the Facebook video and transcribe the audio using Rev.com.  You can then segment the video and audio into smaller pieces of content that can be posted as social media posts, edited into an article on...

Once you have your feature-length video, you can post your video to YouTube with the transcription, great hashtags and keywords, and a compelling call to action. That’s just the starting point. Now that you have your transcription, you or one of your team members, even a VA, can break that content apart into smaller pieces of content, like quotes, blog articles, a weekly email publication, or Instagram posts. You can schedule your content to publish at different times throughout the day. You...

Yesterday I gave you some pretty technical instructions on how to download the audio from your Facebook video. How’d you do? In case you got stuck, you can re-listen to yesterday’s episode or read our show transcript to see exactly how to download the audio file of your Facebook video. Once you have that file, you can go to Rev.com and ask them to transcribe that audio file for you with 99% accuracy. We use Rev.com with our clients at Keynote Content and we love their services. It costs about...

Yesterday I shared the first step in increasing your content production: creating a feature-length piece of content. That could be a feature-length article or an eight- to 10-minute video. If you’re short on time or not really a writer, you may want to start by creating a Facebook Live or pre-recording a video. Let’s say you start with creating a video. You can take that video and download it as an audio file. If you’re doing a Facebook Live video, you can download just the audio by going...