Disclaimer: I know I have a bunch of English spelling and grammar mistakes in my posts. English is not my first language ;(. But I want to push out the content for you. Can you help me out? If you detect a mistake I would appreciate if you’ll let me know. I’ll immediately update the text and mention your name with a big “Thank You”. That can be a great promoting for your own website. I’ll include it. Hands down  

We are super excited. We were hired by the amazing summer camp Camp Morasha to produce 13, yes THIRTEEN commercials over the summer for them. Jeremy Joszef the camp director approached me three months ago with the idea to do a real commercial onslaught for making this camp even more popular and successful.

Camp Morasha Grows & Grows
Bare in mind, they have been growing from 2011-2013 from around 500 kids to over 750 kids this year. And that’s even more puzzling because every many other people I talk to from different camps tells me that they have been dropping numbers from year to year for their camp. So, what does Jeremy and his staff do differently?

The Math Of Marketing
Lets back up for a moment. Most businesses and organizations think they just throw in a few thousand dollars, produce some cheap videos and hire a social media intern. Then that intern sets up a FB page, a Twitter account and sends some emails around. Then they think that this alone gets them to grow leaps and bounds. Unfortunately the reality is very different. That kind of unplanned strategy and lack of focus in marketing doesn’t pay off. It does two things:

1. This approach usually creates bad films/ads for your brand name and it starts “de-branding” your business/organization. People feel repelled coming or buying from you because they perceive how you present yourself is what they will get when they buy from you. Bad advertising = bad product.

2. You still spend a couple of thousand dollars and you still have no return on your investment what so ever. So, you might as well flush that money down the toilet and have some fun with it.

No Second Chance
Whatever you spread out in the internet or on TV will directly reflect who you are as a brand. You usually have no second chance of correcting a badly produced image film or a half baked ad campaign.

A Few Hundred $$ For Millions
A few of our potential clients want to raise millions of dollars but don’t want to spend more then just a few bucks. There is just no way of raising a couple million $$ with investing a few hundred dollars. If that would be the truth then we all would just do that and hang out on the beach.
According to Business Week a rule of thumb is that you should spend between 5-15% of your revenue on marketing.

Shmuel, How Much?
How much should you spend, right? It really is defined by how much you want to generate or grow. So, if a client wants to fundraise millions of dollars they should have a budget of at least a hundred thousand dollars.
Again. Don’t just market with any budget. Set the goals and then calculate a comfortable budget that stays within a realistic ratio (5-15%) that you have available to invest. Then everything will go well.

Camp Morasha’s Secret
It’s no secret. Jeremy from Camp Morash understands that and therefore he is investing heavily into marketing his camp. And the growth is the result of it. He calculates how much each camper pays for the summer, how much he wants to grow next year and therefore how much he should spend on his advertising. Since he increased his campers base to around 80-90 new kids a good ad campaign can be paid by getting just 10 more kids annually. Thats a great ratio and lets face it, 10 more kids to pay for your ad campaign is not a miracle. The miracle is that almost 10x sign up each year by a small investment.

If we’re connected on Facebook, you know I’ve had a whirlwind month. I came back from Germany, arrived in Newark, had a client meeting that afternoon on Long Island, then drove three hours home. Next day, I had two filming days in Brooklyn and Lakewood, then met my wife in Newark to fly to Houston for the weekend, and when we came back I didn’t come home but went straight to Brooklyn for another five days shooting.

Whew.  (That’s a lot of laundry, my wife wants you to know.)

My wife and I at Newark airport.

Anyway, before we get too far out, I wanted to share with you our experience in Houston. We went, of course, to go to the awards ceremony for Worldfest-Houston International Film Festival, and to go to the U.S. (and world) premiere of our film, The A.R.K. Report.

But first we had Shabbos in Houston! What a great community!  The Lazaroffs have been there for 40 years building it up, and it just goes to show you what dedication and hard work will do.  We stayed by our friends the Trusches, who import a Chinese spirit called byejoe to the U.S. Bye Joe, it rules. It’s smoother than vodka, which of course is the normal staple at farbrengen, and I foresee that byejoe will be the new staple for yeshiva bochrim and baalei bayit alike who want to have a good lechaim without the ugly aftertaste.  I’m pretty sure we had about ten shots each.  I was a bit hungover on the plane ride coming back, but it was so worth it.

So anyway, we won the gold Remi award, and I’ll hopefully get a copy of this framed poster to prove it:

With Harry Moskoff, executive producer, and Jim Long, associate producer.

So yeah, if you follow us on Facebook, you’ll know about this conversation:

This wasn’t the first time we’ve seen The A.R.K. Report on the big screen; we had a private screening at the classic Roxy theater in Northampton, PA months ago. But since we hadn’t watched it since then, and since we haven’t been immersed in the dark editing cave, seeing it this time with some distance (and in Blu-Ray) was a wholly different experience.

Anyway, Houston was great, and we’re hoping for more wins at more festivals.  We will mos def keep you posted. Now it’s back to work.  :)

Anyway.  I agree with Picasso. “The day I finish a painting is the day I’m finished!” That’s the way I feel about my films; they’re never really done.  I always see more tweaks that could be made but our executive producer Harry Moskoff, thank Gd, was like, “Deadline!”  My clients really keep me in line.

Even if the film is good, come on, it’s the first. Has a first-time pilot ever carried passengers on his first flight? How much more so I’m surprised it got even mentioned in a festival where there were more than 4500 entries from around the globe.

One thing I can tell you though, it feels amazing to get this thing. Because you don’t know what will come out of it (and you don’t know what went into it!) In the end it was really a concerted effort of so many people. Thanks to Harry Moskoff that you believed that we could do this and that it could win. Now that we won, I have to say, Harry, I never believed we would. I fooled you when I said: No problem, we make it work!  But my father in law always says: Fake it till you make it. It worked at least this time. Thank you Saba Shalom

Seriously my believing that the worst will happen somehow protects me from getting my hopes up and having them dashed.  Like years ago, on a much smaller scale, when my wife told me I’d win the Nefesh B’Nefesh contest, I didn’t believe her for a second, but I made the video anyway and won.

So to continue my acceptance speech, I want to thank our amazingly dedicated team that went with me through this crazy production. And lastly there are two more people that I thank from the bottom of my heart. It’s Hashem and my wife. Thank you that you support me in every turn of this life and I don’t stop learning what it means to become a better soul every day.

May G-d bless everyone who had a part in this and it will further your career and blessings.

Check out the official A.R.K. Report website here.

Buy your tickets to the screening of the film in Houston on Sunday, April 21st here.

S.

Last time, I admitted my biggest failure and you might have read it. If not, here is that post. Today, I want to do maybe my craziest post. What is it about? It’s about giving your hard earned money away in order to increase sales and business. If this sounds familiar skip this post altogether. If you think I’m nuts please read on.

Tzeddaka=Charity, THE Jewish Trade
Its a big thing. Charity is maybe the number one mitzvah in Judaism. Even an evil person can rectify himself by giving charity. And charity doesn’t necessarily mean to give away a LOT of money. It’s more important to do it often than to do a bunch all at once. Do it many, many times. Its basically about the habit of giving.

Now what has this to do with business? Charity creates a vessel here on earth that needs to be filled. If you give away money for a good cause, for a person in need, you empty that money vessel.  Since it has positive attributes attached to it, Gd wants to refill this vessel once again.

The More You Give, The More Money You’ll Receive
“Ok, I get this, so whats the point of this?” you might ask? I stand straight here and proclaim that the more you give away your money to charity the more business you will attract. And I have tested it on the ground, in the trenches. Seriously.

I run my own video and online advertising business and as in every business we have ups and downs. You know what I’m talking about. But the downs can be sometimes scary, right?  There are times when you think to yourself, “Is this now over with the business, nobody wants my product or service?” One thing I learned about business dropping down is that I probably haven’t given charity in a while. So, here is how it goes.

My Wife: “Give a Donation With No Money in The Bank.”
I tell my wife: “A lot of contracts are in the air but nothing has come through for weeks. The check that one client owes me still since 2 months hasn’t been paid yet. ”

She would then reply: “Have you given tzeddaka?”

I say: “No. From what money? I haven’t made any money in a while. The deals are still not closed.”

She replies: “Send a $X check to XXX organization/individual.”

I think to myself that she is crazy and I don’t have the money sitting in my account. But like every good husband I just listen to her, write a check and send it out in the mail. But I’m very worried when they deposit the check it will bounce. You would worry too, right?

Do You Believe in Miracles?
And then the miracle happens. First, the client who owes me money, the check just arrives the very same day that I sent out the charity check. Then I would close one deal after another.

So, you think I just generalize and try to make a story out of it? But you know what, it happens over and over again.

Have You Ever Had No Income For Three Months and 5 People to Feed?
Last year, for example we did not have much business for at least two months. I was pursuing other ideas at the same time. But hell was this scary. Because we burned through more cash then I was making. Then when it was too scary to handle on my own I said to Margelit: “I have not closed a new deal in months.” And as you can imagine she replied with the same old line: “Have you given tzeddaka? ”
“But from what account?” I ask.
“Just give it,” she says.

Ok, good husband duty and I write a check for the sake of Shalom Bayis. And you know what happened next? Two days later we were closing our biggest deal ever. It was almost half of our income for the year. That was plain crazy.

Doubt
My doubter friends have some very important answer to this: “Yeah, well this is an accident. That can happen.”
My answer to this is: “It happens so many times that I can’t even count.”

Come On. Give It a Try.
Try it out. Give before you receive. Or better yet, when you are close to making a deal you want. What we do is that we write a check of 10% of the amount that the deal was worth, since you’re supposed to give 10% of what you earn to charity. That’s scary too. Because what happens if the deal doesn’t work out?

I tell you what happens. You force Gd to make the deal because He doesn’t want you to come to him and say: “Hey, I followed your law and gave away YOUR money. So, please be so kind and send it down.”

What are your tzeddaka stories? What did you experience when you gave donations first?
Am super curious to know.

S

After I searched the web and had a brief discussion with my good friend Asher Crispe (check out his fascinating blog www.interinclusion.com) we came up with the idea of showing a day in the life of an OHEL staff member. They sometimes have to get up at 1 in the morning to pick up a foster child. They are the ones who take care of the elderly and the disabled.

We wanted to make this video have high impact by making it as emotional and as personal as possible. That’s why we chose to produce the film from the POV perspective.

When I wrote the storyboard it first seemed so easy to get all these scenes. They are short and to the point. But after further research and planning I was quickly aware that this was much more challenging to film than I had anticipated. There were lots of challenges along the way. Like, what kind of camera would we use to get the POV effect? First I thought the brand new GoPro Hero 3 camera that just was released would be the go-to camera. It has the amazing feature that you can preview the image wirelessly through your iPhone. I ordered it, and after I played around with it, the big disappointment hit me hard. When you stream the image to your iPhone through a wireless network there is a delay of at least 5 seconds between the image and what the iPhone would display. That meant we wouldn’t be able to preview our image in real time because of this delay. Believe me, 5 seconds is a long time to monitor a moving image.

So, I came back to my beloved Canon 5D Mark iii. I was first worried that, even though it’s not the biggest camera, it was still too clunky. But after a few tests it turned out to be the right camera. I shot most of it with the Canon 16-35mm 2.8 lens.

After I decided which camera gear I wanted to use, the next challenge was to find and organize the many people that we needed for the different scenes. I wanted each scene to have a different look and feel from the next.  That meant that we needed a lot of different actors and staff members.  This would help us convey the message that OHEL is a tremendous effort of many individuals working together to improve the lives of others.

Luckily my production coordinator Tara was up to the challenge and organized all our actors and locations beautifully. We planned everything down to the minute with an amazing program for the iPad called “Shotlister”. (Shotlister came in handy when organizing our 16-person crew during long days shooting for The A.R.K. Report.)  Check Shotlister out here. You put in every scene, apply the amount of time each scene takes, and Shotlister does its magic in calculating how long your day will be, how many scenes you can cram into a day.  Then, on location, you check off each scene that you finish, and it calculates in real-time if you are on time or overtime. Really super helpful.

Finally, in post production I edited it all in Final Cut Pro X. Once the footage was captured it was easy to put together because we had storyboarded everything beforehand. You can have a look here at my SCRIPTSTORYBOARD.

I think overall this is one of my top five projects. Because it is visually and from a storytelling perspective really engaging, but it’s also a very emotional concept. I want to thank everyone who worked so hard on it to make it possible. Derek Saker from OHEL, Tara Banninger for putting the production together, Brian McCann, my great PA trooper and Asher Crispe for always having a great tip for me.

What do you think about making such a film from a POV perspective? Was it effective?

S.

When I heard about the Google Glass project over a year ago I thought it was one of those phony news items whose purpose was just to draw attention. It didn’t seem to me a viable idea to have a computer or your smartphone integrated into “glasses”. What would we really benefit from? Seriously.

Now, Google announced and introduced its first iteration of the Google Glass project on the web. I was really impressed with this piece of gear. They made a little video in order to showcase what Google Glass has the potential to do. Have a look:

So, what does this all mean for someone who is in the video business like myself? How can Google Glass add to my own production workflow? Its funny because we just finished – a few weeks before the Google Glass announcement-a video that actually uses that very same visual technique. Its a promo ad for an organization that services disabled, handicapped and old people to give them back a live of independency despite their disabilities.

I think if I would have had Google Glass I would have produced the entire film on this device. We shot our ad on the Canon 5D Mark iii and you know that’s already a small and lightweight camera. But there were quite some situations where it was very cumbersome to shoot from a POV perspective and get the actor beneath the camera and make it look POV-like (POV means point-of-view, as in I make it look like it’s shot from the perspective of one of the actors).  Google Glass would have been a big time and budget saver.

But more then that. A director, cinematographer or producer could use this gadget in order to record behind-the-scenes and making-of films. Its one thing to have a separate cameraman on set doing that, and it’s another thing entirely we actually see what Steven Spielberg or Leonardo DiCaprio’s personal making-of looks like from their POV. My sense is that it will be the right logical step in merging our lives and technology.

S.

David K.

A:

Hey David.

I want to expound on that even more. Should a client ask for a freebee video production at all or is there a scenario where it actually harms the client to ask for a free video ad.

IF YOU ARE A VIDEO PRODUCER, SCROLL DOWN AND SKIP TO THE PRODUCER PART. 

Why You Should NEVER Ask for a Free Video
Here we go. Let me address the later first.
I know that money often is scarce for small businesses. I run one myself. Often this has the consequence that we ask for free services. I think there are parts where receiving a free service or “trial” product is a good and valuable thing. I think this situation changes totally when it comes to advertising and branding.

Your Ad, Your Face
Posting an add is basically putting your company’s or your own face out there. So, making ads that you pay nothing will lead to ads that have the karma of “free”. I think subliminally clients will pick up on that. If you don’t care much about your face to the public this holds a huge risk of diminishing your own self value that can be quickly perceived by your clients and customers. I would not wonder if this comes back and they are asking for “free” stuff in return. And who wants to do business on the basis of “free”, right?

On a second note. There is just no way of producing something of quality, intelligence and most importantly that basically presents your quality product in the right way that it helps to increases sales and puts your company in the best light possible.

Producing ads, any kind of ads takes  a lot of effort and wisdom, how to coney an idea, package it into a short, simple media package and let it work for you. Everybody that says differently has other motives. Everybody can produce a little dinky video especially with todays affordable gear. But an ad that ‘sells’ is very tough to produce.

Don’t Debrand and Bankrupt Yourself
Now the biggest reason why you should not invest in “free” for your ad products is because there is a concept of “debranding”. Debranding is a situation where your brand does not ad positive recognition of your brand but rather creating negative or unwanted emotions about your brand. Under all circumstances you want to prevent such a situation. Not only are you not selling your product. You cause that other people think, speak and act negatively upon your ad message.

But I don’t Have Much Money, What Now?
If you are on a budget and don’t have enough money to produce proper ads and videos the best scenario for you is to do it yourself. Seriously. Use social media and produce the video ads yourself. Yes, yourself.
“But Shmuel, the videos I produce look worse then from a bad video producer.” you might ask. Not really. What happens if you do it yourself and you are not hiding it to your audience they will connect with your message on a close personal level. Because YOU represent your brand. You are passionate and this will convey in the ad. You give your clients insights into your product or service and why you do all of that. But when you bring in any video dude who does it for free it will not look and feel good enough to do the same. His interests in most cases is to get the job done as fast as possible and move on to more profitable clients.

The other thing is if you don’t have the money to produce a cool, branding and selling video rather spend your little money (I’m talking about $5000 or less) and invest it in Facebook or Google ads. Its much more efficient and done the right way you get more for your bug.

FOR THE VIDEO PRODUCERS:

I have done a bunch of stuff for free or a reduced fee.

I think to reduce your fee is a different animal and has a different psychology attached to it.
I will rather address the ‘freebee’ situation that comes up so often.

What is In it For Me
So, when you give away your services for free I think you need to ask yourself what is in it for me?
And that is not selfish, its fair to ask this yourself.

If you got an offer to be part of a project that really boosts your own portfolio and therefore boosts the value in the eyes
of your customers or even future customers go ahead and do that. Thats fair and common to do and I have
no reservations for this kind of scenario.

I Will Have a Budget Next Time. Bull…
The other situation that I really stay away because I have experienced it myself is that someone random or
even who likes your work comes forward and asks for a ‘freebee’.
Often this comes with the promise attached: Oh, if I have a budget next time I will certainly hire you for that. You are so talented.

You know what? This is in most cases a lie. And I’m not accusing that person for lying at that moment, I think
in most cases they mean it. But what they forget is as follows:

Clients Do Lie. And they Don’t Know
Lets say you do something for free and in general its not your best “stück” (yes, thats the correct spelling) because there is usually no resources to get the right light or the right camera you want. Now, this ‘client’ is very happy for what he got, right? Hey, he didn’t
pay a dime and therefore he is very happy that you helped him.

But when the day comes and he holds $5000 in his hand. What do you think he is gonna do with it?
What would you do?

What Can I Do with 5 Grand?
Here is the psychology of this. He will think: Hm, David did a good job last time and it didn’t cost me a dime.
Now I have $5000 in my hand. When I hire someone else that charges $5000, he probably must be better
then David because he did it for free and I want something even better.

In essence, once you have established your own value, in this case “free”, from a clients perspective
he wants now “better” since he has more money in his hand then last time.
And when we have more money we usually want more. And why should he pay you now $5000 when you worked for free the last time?
And don’t fool yourself about this here: But Shmuel, we agreed on that when I would work for free I would get the job
when a budget is allocated.

Nope. A client has always the freedom to spend their money as they wish. They will find all kinds of reasons for that. Yes,
for ‘free’ it was a good job but now I need more/better/higher end. Whatever the excuse will be. And its not even coming
from an evil place. This is just how we all work.

Bottom line. Whatever value you put yourself in the first place this is what the client expects from you. I have never had ANYBODY come back to me that I worked for free and now I am in an ordinary client
relationship with them with proper payment or payment at all.

Again, if you can make a feature film for ‘free’ I would do this because it would strengthen my reputation and
my perceived value.

What has been your experience working for free?

S.

How can you grow so fast?
We hear from so many directions that enrollment in Jewish camps is decreasing.  Each summer, about 18 percent of the beds at Jewish sleepaway camps in the greater New York area remain unfilled.  But not at Morasha.  Here are the numbers:

• 2009: 514 campers
• In 2010: 521 campers (a 7-camper increase)
• In 2011, after Shmuel made his first video for them: 541 campers
• In 2012, after continuing to recruit using Shmuel’s video: 660 campers
• In 2013, after Shmuel’s second video for Morasha: 690 campers projected

What is so important about early registration numbers?
Not only is the number of enrolled campers increasing at Morasha, but the early registration is too.  Early registration is super-important because it insures that the camp will exist come summer, and that the employees will get paid!  Early registration is particularly a good indicator of strong marketing because it means that families have no other camp competing in their minds for their enrollment.

Right now, for 2013, Morasha has over 600 registered.  Just to compare this with the past few years on November 1st of the year before camp:

What do they do differently?
Jeremy Joszef, Director of Camp Morasha, has five key ingredients that he uses in his marketing:

1. During the summer camp he posts every single week a self made video of the camp highlights
2. He engages parents, camp kids, potential parents and kids online via facebook, twitter and instagram
3. He built a specifeley dedicated app to engage iPhone users about the latest schedules, upcoming events, highlight videos, picture sharing etc.
4. He invests in professionally produced campaign videos (like the ones we did for him)
5. He is super passionate about the camp, moves marketing material quickly and comes up with out of the box ideas and campaigning

When I asked him what his success to his camp is, he wrote me the following 5 elements that work for him:

1. Mission Driven: As discussed in the film we created together, we believe that camp is not ONLY about giving our campers the most fun time of their lives, but also an opportunity to instill Jewish values in each and every camper. We believe that every activity, program, event, or trip is an opportunity to inculcate life-long lessons and values. Having a program that is mission-driven is a world of a difference.
2. Passionate Staff: We always say that a camp is only as good as its staff. Choosing the ideal staff has become a top priority of ours, hiring highly motivated staff members who come to us with spirit, a commitment to children, and love for Torah and mitzvot. The passion of our staff is contagious to all the campers around them.
3. Creative & Sophisticated Program: We believe that summer camp is way too important to waste any second! Every moment of every day is jam-packed with cutting-edge programming, activities, and special events. We spend every waking hour crafting a schedule and calendar that is both enjoyable yet challenging for each and every child.
4. Sharing the Magic: We truly believe that the camping experience is not only for the child, but also for those watching from home. We’ve invested lots of time (and money!) to share those amazing “Morasha moments” with all those parents, grandparents, alumni, and friends spending the summer at home. Whether it’s through videos and photos on our website, or through our mobile app. we do everything we can to “share the Morasha magic.”
5. Living 10 for 2: Camp Morasha does not end when those camp gates close. We like to say that “at Camp Morasha, summer never ends!” We do so much to stay in constant contact with our campers. We have a constant presence on social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram) and look forward to hosting over 400 campers this Sunday at our 8th Annual Winter Reunion! Creating this sense of “family” and positive buzz is certainly a key ingredient to our success.

Furthermore, this has earned Jeremy the key element of becoming probably the youngest director of any camp I know of. He got elected in 2011 and took the chair of camp director. I was so thrilled when I heard this because he seriously deserves it.

So, his marketing efforts have yielded phenomenal results.  But you can’t market something successfully if the product isn’t quality.  The winning combination of Jeremy’s marketing and the quality of Camp Morasha has made its numbers increase steadily and significantly over the last few years, and we are so proud to be a part of that success.

S.

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Crazy Schedule 
Over a year and a half ago now, Bini, director of marketing from Bnei Akiva called me up and asked for a video promo for their  Mach Hach Ba’Aretz Israel program. At the time I was buried in work. I didn’t have a single slot available for the next three months but I wanted to do the job. “I am very busy,” I said to Bini, “but I’m sure we can squeeze this in.” I wasn’t really sure, honestly, because the many deadlines were staggering. After many phone calls and re-arranging my schedule I called her back and said: Of course we can do this. I just want to reiterate that I need to outsource the project to a different video production company but I would oversee it. She agreed and we went ahead with the project.

A Bad Hire is Worse than No Hire
Since I was busy with other post production commitments, I hired people in Israel to shoot, and I outsourced the pre and post-production to another well known Jewish video production company in NY. They had to edit the promotional video. Once they got the footage from Israel they started editing. They delivered the video to me a few weeks later so I could show it to our client. I wasn’t crazy about the results but I thought it was good enough and would make the client happy. Bnei Akiva sent us their feedback, and we had the other production company make the final adjustments before delivering the end result to Bnei Akiva.

The Big Disappointment and a Letter of Shame
A year passes and I receive an email from the director of World Bnei Akiva.

He writes (I paraphrase):

Dear Shmuel,
I hope all is well.
I’ve been wanting for a while to send you an email expressing my disappointment in the MH video you have produced for us.
The minute we received your first version knew we are in trouble.  Then the fixed version compared to the original was okay… but nothing like what we expect when we hire you.
I find this upsetting since we spend charity funds for this to encourage kids to go to Israel.  The result was a disaster. And less kids going to Israel.
Perhaps a meeting is appropriate.

My Ego Went Down the Toilet
Wow, what a bummer. I delivered something that upset a client? No way. I guess there’s a first time for everything.  I started reacting in a defensive way in my head, and rationalizing all kinds of things why he was wrong and his perspective was distorted. But after thinking it over for a few days, I came to the conclusion that the only one who was distorted was me. I didn’t do what I have set myself up for: TO DELIVER EXCELLENCE ON EVERY PROJECT. How disappointing.

What Now?
I first thought about refunding the money. But I had already paid the other video production company and shooters in Israel. I could not afford that. I filed the refund idea away as my last step if every other solution I could come up with were to fail.

Meeting in the Lions Cave
I called up the director of Bnei Akiva and arranged a meeting with him. In the  meeting I let him pour out all his disappointments. I didn’t say a word. I was there to listen. Once he was done, I apologized and suggested the following: How about I travel to Israel, shoot for 4 days the Mach Hach trip myself and produce a brand new video from scratch…at no cost. We agreed on a date for the summer and I traveled to Israel and produced the video myself.

Shmuel – Hoffman – Video? Write in the comments. 

So here are the two videos.  One was filmed and edited by an outsourced team, and the other was filmed and edited by me.  Which do you think is the real Shmuel Hoffman video?  Write your guess in the comments below this post.

Video 1

Video 2

I’ll reveal the correct answer in a future post…

Lessons I Learned
I’m glad I was tested this way because I think how you react to these kind of issues make or break your business. Here are  five points I take with me forever:

1. If a client complains, never defend yourself. The customer is ALWAYS right. Yes. Even if he is not right or he messed up things. It’s YOU who controls the situation and outcome.
2. Be sorry and apologize.  WITHOUT SAYING “BUT.”  The no-but rule is crucial. Say you are sorry and shut up. Don’t explain what went wrong. It doesn’t matter.  Clients look for results, not excuses.
3. Be generous. You are on a mission with your clients. So, help them out  where you can.
4. Correct the error or return the money. That’s a hard one. Because we small business owners usually don’t have much wiggle room to refund thousands of $$$, right? Neverthless,what this unhappy client could cost you is thousands more. And not only that. They will go to their friends and peers and Un-rave about you. So, you potentially lose hundreds of thousands of $$$ over time. Not worth it.
5. If you have to outsource hire the right company/person. My mistake and I’m sure I’m not alone in this is that we hire when emergency arises on the horizon. And that’s way to late for a good hire. You plan for failure. Dave Ramsey talks about this issue in his amazing book “Entreleadership“. Always be on the lookout for good people, whether you have a project or not.  Then you’ll be ready to deliver when the project comes up.

The Outcome

Thankfully I was able to restore my client’s faith in me.  They’ve asked me to do another project – woohoo!  It’s worth it to go the extra mile.

S.

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