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Verbatim text
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Welcome to episode number 129 of the agency trailblazer podcast. This is your host, Lee. And on today’s show, we have Phil Van Dusen. Phil will be sharing his story of launching his creative agency and also growing an audience of over 100,000 subscribers on YouTube. A fascinating story, and he has some brilliant insight in how the creative industry is changing. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride. This podcast is brought to you by the agency trailblazer community. Is agency life stressing you out? Then it is our mission to help you build an agency that you love.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
We’ve created a community which includes the agency reset roadmap that will allow you to get your agency back on the right track. We also have lots of noble straight to the point, easy to consume workshops. We have a thriving community of other agency owners. And we all wrap up every month with a mastermind call with myself and sometimes a special guest where we unpack your questions. For more details, check out agency trailblazer.com. You are joining a conversation with me, mister Lee Jackson, and my good friend with the most perfectly sculpted mustache. Mister, sorry, mister Philip Van Dusen. How are you today?
Philip Van Dusen:
I’m very well, Lee. Thank you so much for having me.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
That really made me chuckle only because I’ve got a picture of you on your website, which is philipvandusen.com, and your mustache is literally eye level with me right now.
Philip Van Dusen:
And it is perfectly sculpted. You’re right.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
It is. How long does that take you in the morning? Not long. Not long
Philip Van Dusen:
at all. Just a little bit of mustache wax, and I’m good to go.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Really? Any particular brand you recommend for the mustache aficionados out there? I couldn’t even say that.
Philip Van Dusen:
No. I’d have to I don’t even know the name of the brand. Sorry. That’s very of me not to know the brand name of the product that I that establishes my personal brand, but I’ll get back to you on that.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
No worries. You are very recognizable, though, with your personal brand, I must say. I was at the Youpreneur Summit, and you were called upon stage by mister Chris Ducker himself. And lo and behold, I saw you from a distance, and I instantly remembered you, not by name first, but by the very fact that you had a YouTube channel. I was like, I I know that guy. I think I subscribed to him. And lo and behold, I did.
Philip Van Dusen:
And there I am. There I was.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Oh, your mustache wax is doing you a massive service, my friend.
Philip Van Dusen:
And now I can’t get rid of it. My wife doesn’t particularly like it. So now it’s established as a as a brand element, and I I’m stuck with it.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Oh, I thought you meant you were not gonna get rid of it because you’re just rebelling against your wife. The inner rebel. Guys, if you don’t know who mister Philip Van Duzen is, then he is a brand strategist and YouTuber. I was really sure I was gonna screw up the word strategist. It’s a bit of a tongue twister.
Philip Van Dusen:
Well done.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
You can find Phil’s channel in the show notes, or you can just type in Philip Van Dusen, that’s v a n d u s e n, for an amazing channel, which has recently hit over 100,000 subscribers. That is phenomenal, mate. So congratulations from myself and everyone in the community as well. It’s amazing what you’ve done over the last it’s been a couple of years, is it, YouTube?
Philip Van Dusen:
Yeah. 2 years. Very happy.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
It’s been a it’s a relatively short journey for the Internet, that is, to a 100 k. That’s amazing.
Philip Van Dusen:
Yeah. And so I got a little bump by a website I’ll give a shout out to. It’s a site called design taxi.com, and they picked up a trend video that I did for graphic design trends for 2018, and they featured on the front page of their website, which gets a tremendous amount of traffic. And it drove insane traffic to that particular video and really boosted my subscribership very quickly. So I was very happy and grateful for them to do that. But it has been a couple years, like putting out a video every week. So I put in the, sweat equity. So I I feel deserving.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Sweat equity. Well, congratulations. Do you mind just sharing with everybody what your channel is about? What sort of content people can expect to provide? And then also let us know why on earth you even decided to launch it in the 1st place.
Philip Van Dusen:
Sure. My channel is mostly for, creative professionals. So it could be designers, but anyone in media, essentially, and entrepreneurs or business people who have startups or small to medium sized businesses. And what I do is I share and try to educate and inspire people around topics of design, brand strategy, marketing, personal branding, and creative, professional career development. So I kind of share on a wide range of topics that I’m most familiar with. And it’s really great. I have a great audience. They’re very engaging.
Philip Van Dusen:
And so it’s been it’s been a lot of fun. And as I said, I’ve been putting out a video about once a week, give myself that that deadline to hit. And it’s, it’s been great. I’ve kind of worked up a fairly large catalog of videos and it’s been super fun experience. And, you know, I’ll mention for all the agency folks out there that it’s also proven to be an incredible new business driver for me. And it’s now the exposure from my YouTube channel is probably driving 65% of my new business leads at this point, which is, you know, pretty amazing. So I’m a poster child for the positive aspects of content development.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
A poster child. And was that the purpose of you launching the YouTube channel in the first place? Or was was it a hobby at first? What what was the reasoning for the YouTube channel?
Philip Van Dusen:
I wanted to I’ve had a, you know, a long successful career in in branding and design and I wanted to share a lot of what I’ve learned and I know with other people. So there was a teaching aspect, altruistic aspect to it. I also wanted to kind of, you know, capture everything I knew or things that I knew that other people might benefit from. And with the thought that I would eventually repurpose that content in into a book or into some sort of a video or email course, I I didn’t actually go about it with the with the idea of it becoming such, you know, a new business driver, but that wasn’t, you know, that wasn’t completely out of my mind when I did it.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah. I think that’s similar with the podcast that, you know, with the WP Innovator podcast as it started off, and then it’s eventually morphed into agency trailblazer. There was no there was the thought that it could take off, but there was the expectation that it probably never would, which then took me by surprise when this podcast got as big as it did. And I think for you as well with
Philip Van Dusen:
Congratulations to you for that.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
You. Yeah. But with your YouTube channel as well, just such phenomenal growth. So guys, again, in the show notes, I really recommend that you take a look at Philip’s channel. I’ve been subscribed. I feel like it’s for a year, but it could be a lie. I don’t know. But I’ve at least been watching your videos, especially your trend videos.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I really like those where you’re sharing what your thoughts are on the up and coming trends or discussing existing trends as well. So a lot of a lot of stuff in there with regards to kind of design and and all that thought leadership as well, which is awesome. But what I’d love to do, mate, is jump into a time machine with you. You work for this.
Philip Van Dusen:
Yeah. Sure.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
You’ve heard of Doctor Who. Right? We’ve got the TARDIS. We can Yes. Jump in that. And I’d love to go right back in time to discover how 5 year old Philip Van Dusen got into design.
Philip Van Dusen:
5 year old Philip Van Dusen was really more into GI Joes.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Okay. Alright. I I can go with that. Well, let’s fast forward a little bit. Maybe I have a
Philip Van Dusen:
We’ll have to move forward. I actually started off as a fine artist. I was very much into drawing and painting when I was young, and I ended up going to fine art school and got my master’s degree in painting. And started off with the idea of being a fine art teacher, which I did for a period of time, but found that that was a very hard career to make a living in. And during the early nineties, I’m totally dating myself now, but I went and I was teaching in the south of France at, the Lacoste School of Art in south of France and came back and had done a lot of monotypes there, which is a type of printmaking. And I moved back to New York City and started a t shirt company and put all of my artwork on t shirts and started selling them at street fairs and walking the streets of Manhattan, selling them to boutiques. And so I kind of fell into the apparel industry through fine art and very quickly decided that it would be better to work for another company than my own. I developed an ability to sell, but a great appreciation for people who could sell really well.
Philip Van Dusen:
And so I went to work for one of my competitors, a small $5,000,000 t shirt company in Dumbo, Brooklyn. And it was an amazing experience. And I quickly became an art director and then a creative director managing, other designers. And I found out that managing other designers was a lot like being a teacher except you could actually make a living doing it. And you got to see your work, you know, out in the world, literally, for in my case, walking down the street on people’s chest, which was really fun. And then I was headhunted away to a company called Old Navy, which is part of Gap Inc. And right when Old Navy was starting up and
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Again, aging yourself slightly? Yeah. Sorry.
Philip Van Dusen:
And Old Navy actually well, and it turned out to be their most successful retail company in history. It hit a $1,000,000,000 in sales in under 5 years. And so it was a real rocket ship to be a part of. And I quickly progressed from being a senior designer there to being creative director. And then eventually up to vice president overseeing a number of different divisions. And that’s where I really cut my teeth kind of moving into, you know, business and upper level management and branding and that part of design. So I came in, you know, long story short, I came to design totally through the back door. And but it’s been I like to talk about my career being more like a I there’s this great quote by the ex CEO of Gap, a guy named Paul Pressler, who said to me once when I was talking to him, he said, Phil, a great career is more like a web than it is a ladder.
Philip Van Dusen:
And I think that’s an amazing quote because my career has been very much like a web. There’s been a lot of side jogs and interconnecting points that seem very unlinear, but are all make the career stronger and make your experience, you know, more full. And that’s the kind of that’s the kind of career that I encourage, you know, path career paths I encourage people to take.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
That’s such a cool story. And then how did you transition into what you’re doing now? Because you you’re talking about you’ve you’ve worked for a series of people, and you’ve had a kind of a web of growth of career. At what point did you finally decide to kind of strike out on your own? And what was your original vision for the business?
Philip Van Dusen:
Yeah. And after all, maybe I moved over into the agency side. So then I was working for a couple different global design agencies, working for really big companies like, you know, P&G and GE and Honda and Merck and Kraft Foods National Geographic. And then I was I went back to the client side and became the head of design for global snacks for PepsiCo and was overseeing Lay’s potato chips and Doritos and Cheetos and all those snacks that I absolutely live for. And that was an amazing experience as well. And after about a year of that, you know, I’ll be honest, I really I burned out. It was a very high pressure job. And I, I kind of had to step back and and had to think about whether I was really enjoying what I was doing anymore.
Philip Van Dusen:
So I decided to take some time off and think about that. And after about a year, I decided to start my own thing. So I started my own agency, Verhau Brand Design, verh a a l, which is a Dutch word. My heritage is Dutch. My family goes way back. We came to the states in 16/23 or something like that. And so Verhaal means story in Dutch, and story is so important in branding and design. I thought it was an appropriate name to name my agency.
Philip Van Dusen:
So I started off on my own and I have a I call it an agency. Essentially, it is a partnership consultancy. So I bring in high level strategic partners to work whatever the project is that I happen to have if there’s aspects of it that are outside of my, you know, personal strengths. So if I need an excellent copywriter or if I need an excellent, you know, web developer, I will bring people in from my network to work projects as needed. So it’s essentially it’s a flexible design agency model. That’s so cool. So it’s essentially, it’s a flexible design agency model.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
That’s so cool. And was that your vision right from the get go?
Philip Van Dusen:
Yes, it was. And it was a very planful thing. I mean, I’ve talked a lot about this in my videos and actually I think to you too, but I see the design industry and the agency paradigm changing dramatically over the last 5 to 8 years. Huge global agencies are really hurting. And they are losing large projects and large brand projects to much smaller agencies and consultancies very much like mine because of the speed factor, because of the price factor, because of the flexibility factor. And so, you know, when I was at when I was at these large agencies before I went to Pepsi, I was noticing that these large companies like P&G that I was working with were giving big, meaty projects to much smaller agencies and sometimes individual consultants. And then when I went to Pepsi, I actually started doing that myself. I was giving big brand projects to, you know, a small little startup firm and 6 of 6 people in Vermont, you know, and those guys were bending over backwards for me and hitting it out of the park and doing it for about half the cost and, you know, a quarter of the time, then a global agency would do it for me.
Philip Van Dusen:
So I just have experienced that kind of shift in the industry in a number of different ways. And I just thought, hey, when I went off on my own, I I figured I’d be on the right side of history for once and go with the way the market was moving.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Why do you think that is as well? Do you think potentially for these bigger agencies, they’ve grown over time and grown at a time where the Internet and online was, I don’t know, still very young and new. Therefore, there wasn’t the sort of technology or the breadth of skill that there is out there now.
Philip Van Dusen:
Yeah. I I definitely think that that’s part of it. I think that the number of brand communication channels has just grown so exponentially that it’s hard for any one agency to be perfect at all of them. Agree. I also think because of that, the necessity for brands to react incredibly quickly to the marketplace has also become more important. And big agencies are not known for moving very quickly. I mean, if you give them a brand project, it’s going to be a couple of weeks before you get a proposal. And it may be, you know, if it’s a packaging project or a brand identity project, it could be, you know, a 3 to 6 month engagement.
Philip Van Dusen:
And companies just don’t have time to wait for that. You know, they need to move. They, you know, we are moving at a 24 hour, you know, branding news cycle these days with social media. And, you have to be able to react and move a lot more quickly. And I also think that the because the channels have become so decentralized, that the money, the money that’s being spent on all those channels, because there’s so many has been reduced. So not only is the speed factor really important, but also the budgets have gotten tighter and large agencies aren’t known for being cheap. And so I think that there’s a, you know, there’s a movement to looking for flexible, you know, cost efficient, but still incredibly smart and buttoned up work. And, you know, I’m not the only person who’s doing this.
Philip Van Dusen:
There’s a whole lot of very senior people out there who’ve moved away from large agencies or large companies and are realizing that this is the way the agency, you know, landscape is changing and are taking advantage of that.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Absolutely. I think as well, there is a perceived or at least there was a perceived outlook that if you worked with a big company, you were going to be looked after. However, that has shifted because a smaller agency, a small team who you are still paying, you know, a good significant amount of money to are absolutely gonna look after you because you’re you’re one of their main clients. They’re gonna give you the time. You’re not just another number. Because it’s really sad to see bigger agencies, and I’m not gonna name any names whatsoever, but I have seen big agencies in London charge multiple 100 of pounds well, sorry, multiple 100 of 1,000 of pounds. And I know that they’ve outsourced things to other countries for only a few $100 for the same amount of work and maybe even had WordPress themes, etcetera. And the reason why they’re doing that is they’re under absolutely tonnes of pressure.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
They’re they’re too big of an agency. They don’t have the time and the resource to give to that project, so they’re just doing shortcuts and charging whatever they can to keep their agency going. And it’s really, really sad to see. I’m not saying all bigger agencies are doing that, but it’s something that I’ve noticed a couple of those bigger agencies. I mean, it just feels wrong.
Philip Van Dusen:
Well, and you’re and you’re very right. And the and the thing, you know, the thing that is the reality of this is that there’s not some 50 foot wall that separates the agency world from the corporate world. I mean, all of the people in marketing cross populate, you know, across the those, you know, those industries. And so it’s not like it’s a secret to people at the big global corporations that that is happening with their big agency partners. And so they’re saying, why are we paying this exorbitant amount of money and spending all this time with an agency that’s then going to outsource it? Why don’t we just do that ourselves? They’re not stupid. So any other point I wanted to make, and I’m gonna totally bastardize these percentages and numbers, but you know, the the employment landscape is also changing. I mean, supposedly 20 years ago or so, only, you know, 18, 20 percent of workers were independent contractors or freelancers. And now, you know, it’s probably more to 40%, 45%.
Philip Van Dusen:
And they’re saying that, you know, by 2025, more than 50% of workers in the United States. Anyway, I don’t know about the UK are going to be freelancers or independent contractors. So the necessity of kind of owning your own destiny in the employment world is getting more and more critical. You cannot really, you know, you certainly can’t, you know, bank on an agency keeping you around for a long time because they flex up and down all the time. And corporations, you know, are not loyal these days either. So you kinda have to hedge your bets and and build your own insurance policy for your professional career.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I mean, I’ve heard, phrases like gig economy now as well. So the the gig economy. So, yeah, again, freelancers, people taking their destiny into their own hands, and working. I’ve I’ve actually encouraged quite a few people over the last few years who have left their jobs as well to become freelancers and given them, you know, copies of the contracts that I’ve written up or told them the software that I’ve used, and really just helped hold their hands through that transition, the very scary transition, I think, of leaving a full time job and then going out there and doing it alone because they all want to create lifestyles you know, that suit their families. And several of them have been really successful at that, I think as well. You know, working the 9 to 5, it doesn’t necessarily pay very well and is very stressful. And when you get home, you kinda just wanna go to bed. Being a freelancer is equally as stressful, I must add.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
And you probably work many more hours until you find a way of, you know, of getting that happy medium. And I think that’s the next question I’d like to hit you with. I imagine when you first launched your new business, you were probably working an awful lot of hours. Number 1, is that even true? And number 2, how did you if so, how did you get control of your time or even have you? Are you still freaking out and working all hours?
Philip Van Dusen:
So, yes. When I started, I definitely was working crazy hours. I I would say I’m still working crazy hours. But there’s there’s a big difference. And the differences is that I’m building something that I own. And when you’re building your own personal brand or your own personal enterprise, whatever that is, you know, the equity, the sweat equity you’re putting into it is something that is transportable, meaning no one can take that away from you, your, your relationships you’re building with, you know, colleagues is are your own, they’re not going to evaporate when someone gets laid off somewhere. Your relationships with your clients are your own. You know, your development of your own, you know, content equity and and brand presence is your own.
Philip Van Dusen:
So I’m working just as hard as I was at these larger companies and agencies, but I am building something that’s my own and that no one can, you know, an HR department can flip a switch and decide to take away. And that’s one of the things that I talk a lot about on on my YouTube channel is how can people own more of their own destiny and drive their own future. And because I, you know, I spent the majority of my career working under the umbrella of large global agencies and large corporations. And it was wonderful. You know, they I was compensated very well. I learned a whole lot of stuff. I got to travel the world. I got a lot to work with incredible clients.
Philip Van Dusen:
But when I decided to go off on my own, I suddenly realized, wow, I have, you know, I have a great LinkedIn profile, but I haven’t built any other kind of digital real estate out there that is establishing my own brand for myself. I’ve I’ve spent my entire career branding other things, and I haven’t branded myself. And so the last 2 or 3 years have been a real eye opener for me in terms of the importance of simultaneously building your own brand presence. And I’m trying to on you know, I’m trying to share what I’ve done with other people on my channel and also, you know, teach them how they can do it themselves and the importance of really kind of lifting their heads up out of the grind and paying attention to what’s happening in the in the marketplace.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Now when you launched your business, you are obviously the the consultant, the go to person. Mhmm. And you’ve worked with agencies that are brands, so there is a team of people behind the brand as it was. You’ve got Coca Cola or you’ve got the agencies. You’ve got the t shirt company. But they are a team of people behind a brand. The brand is recognizable as in I’m talking about now your logo, the color schemes, the messaging, and all of that sort of stuff. You’ve shifted to being you as a person.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Mhmm. How did you start to develop your personal brand? Was it just simply applying what you already had learned over the years, or did you have to was it almost like starting from scratch because you have become very recognizable along with I mean, your brand is you, and the color scheme that you’ve chosen to go alongside it are both are represented in my mind whenever I think of you. So how did you make that transition?
Philip Van Dusen:
And the mustache.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
That’s why I started with the mustache.
Philip Van Dusen:
Yeah, I mean, I, I named my agency obviously so it’s not because I wanted people to be sure to understand that it’s not just me, I’m not just an individual consultant, I am a agency that is headed by me, but I have a broad network of very senior and talented people that I’ve, you know, kind of gathered throughout my career as go to resources to work any kind of scale project. So I could work a project for B&G that needed 10 people and I could put together a team before you know, you could bat an eye, or I can work, you know, a entrepreneurial personal brand, you know, startup just as easily. And so I, you know, I to answer your question, yes, I did kind of have to start from scratch. I mean, I started blogging. So I started writing articles, started posting on LinkedIn. I started, you know, kind of really flushed out my website and started to, you know, offer lead magnets to capture emails, build an email list. And then I started publishing a newsletter. So I put out a newsletter called Brand Muse.
Philip Van Dusen:
I put that out every 2 weeks. And people can go to my website, philippvandusen.com/muse to subscribe if they’d like. And so in developing content that way, a little later, I started my YouTube channel and then I would cross, you know, pollinate and cross promote all of those kind of content areas. And all the while establishing, as you said, that that that brand, presence, the brand the visual brand design of of my, my agency and my personal brand around a color scheme, around a logo, around an icon, around a particular layout style, all that sort of stuff that goes into to branding. So I did. I really had to kind of start from scratch. But I mean, the great thing was is I had 20 years of experience in building brands for people that so then when it came time to do it for myself, I knew how to do it. But there were a whole there were a whole range of things that I didn’t know the first thing about.
Philip Van Dusen:
I mean, I didn’t know the first thing about lead magnets or email list building or newsletters. And, you know, and I, I was, I was also for the first time working by myself, rather than managing a team of 65 designers or something at a corporation. So I was suddenly in my home office, all by myself, you know, and it was it was a real shock to the system. And at that point, you know, I, joined an a mastermind community run by a guy named Chris Ducker, and it’s, called youpreneur.com. I’m sure you’ve talked about this before. Yeah. He’s and he’s a great guy and good friend. And by joining that community, I was suddenly kind of thrust into, you know, a kind of an incredibly fast learning curve of learning all of the things that I didn’t know.
Philip Van Dusen:
And I was exposed to a lot of people who were doing what I needed to do and, was able to learn from them. And by the same token, I was able to share a lot of the ideas and experience I had with branding with them. So it was kind of give and take. But that really, really accelerated my own brand development and knowing what I needed to do.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
That’s so cool. With regards to Youpreneur as well, I found as well that I’ve learned a lot of stuff that I didn’t know I didn’t know, if that makes sense.
Philip Van Dusen:
Yeah. Absolutely. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And I’m still learning stuff. I mean, and that’s the incredible thing is that there is with a massive proliferation of everything from platforms to, you know, SAS services to to, you know, social channels, Everything is growing and and morphing at the speed of light that you it has to be and I harp on this all the time on my YouTube channel is it’s all about constant learning. You have to be open to constantly learning because everything’s changing.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Goes full circle as well, doesn’t it, back to these bigger agencies that are struggling as well? Because it’s very difficult for them to be always on the curve, always on the learning edge. And even if they’re looking at enough to have employees that are on that learning edge, very often, it’s very difficult to be heard in that environment. I remember working for Mhmm. An IT company. I had loads of great ideas. I was always researching. I was always looking at the latest and greatest software. I was always playing around with that at at home in my own time and would often present these ideas to the company, but management would push back.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
They wouldn’t necessarily see the the value. They wouldn’t necessarily understand it. They would just think I was just getting overexcited and pretty much ignore me. And then a year later, they would finally start to have the conversation that, oh, I’d already been having, you know, a year earlier and getting frustrated with them because, you know, people wouldn’t go Yeah. You know, they wouldn’t go for it. I think as well, going again, then going on to being able to own your own thing, That’s so exciting, isn’t it? The both both of us and and most of the people listening to the show who do run their own business are able to have an idea, learn something, have an idea from that, and then start to implement it as quickly as possible to see if it’s going to work rather than having to go through the long process of getting it through senior management and all of that stuff. This is what you own. You can go for it.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
You can grow as fast or as slow as you need to. It’s it’s scary, but it’s also extremely fun and and very fast paced.
Philip Van Dusen:
Yeah. And I think when you were talking, I was thinking about something too that about large agencies. And that’s that for a period of time, I think that there was this belief that large agencies had this black box that had this magic in it, that no one knew how it worked, but they could charge you $1,000,000 for it. And they would, you know, sprinkle the pixie dust on your brand, and then everything would work perfectly. And they had all sorts of, you know trademarked processes with incredible names and everyone just thought they were magicians. Well, you know over 20 years people grow up in those agencies, they move on, they start their own thing and it becomes very clear that there aren’t brand building isn’t a, you know, some sort of magic trick. There are specific processes that you go through in order to do it. And everyone kind of left and started their own thing and kind of used the same processes.
Philip Van Dusen:
So that I think that the kind of man behind the curtain mysteriousness of what big agencies do have as kind of that curtain has parted over the last 10, 15 years. And people are realizing that they don’t, you know, they can get smart thinking, good work, you know, great strategy from, you know, smaller agencies and consultancies that where they don’t have to pay them $500,000, you know, to do something. And so that’s all to for all of your listeners, that’s I think part of the marketing message we need to adopt, which is that, you know, we are going to give, you know, great design, great thinking, great strategy, great product on the level of what what global agencies are doing, but we can do it less expensively, more flexibly, and, you know, in less time because that’s the where that’s where the market is going.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Now you mentioned right back at the beginning about there being so many businesses out there, so many agencies. And one of the ways to help your agency or your business stand out from the crowd in your particular niche is to create content like you’re doing and even potentially put someone out there as well as the face of your business. So for both you and me, we have put ourselves both front and center. We’ve created a brand around ourselves. We’re providing valuable content, and that is therefore helping us stand out in our particular niches, and it’s also driving business. So what advice would you give Mhmm. To any agencies listening on how to get started in either creating a YouTube presence? Well, in yeah. Let’s let’s say YouTube.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I mean, I can talk about podcasting till the cows come home. So let’s let’s talk about that maybe establishing some sort of brand presence on YouTube. What kind of getting started tips would you give to agencies listening in who are thinking, how can we start to elevate ourselves? How can we start to stand out?
Philip Van Dusen:
You know, I think that it doesn’t well, you were talking about, you know, one particular person becoming kind of the face of the brand. And I don’t know that that’s necessarily required. And in fact, I think that that actually might be a way to stand out is if you don’t do that. If you give more FaceTime to your team or the people who work in your agency and let them participate and share in developing your content and putting it out there. Number 1, you’re gonna increase the bandwidth that you have in terms of people who are working on developing content for you. You have, you know, you’re gonna link relinquish a little bit of control or you’re gonna have to pay a little more attention in terms of what’s being said and what’s being put out there. But I think that that’s one way to kind of let people get to know your agency or get to know what you’re doing or what your processes are, the clients you’re working for, the type of work that you’re doing, what you’re bringing to the table, because it’s really all about letting people get to know you. And that’s one of the points of, you know, my channel that I wanted to share, which is one of the amazing things about YouTube.
Philip Van Dusen:
And I’m sure it happens with your podcast too, Lee, is that, you know, as people listen to you and they realize how much it is, you know, how you, you know, how you think, how you communicate. And by the time people come to me as a new business lead from seeing my YouTube videos, they already feel like they know me. They’ve watched 4 or 5 of my videos. They know how I think. They know that I’ve got a great portfolio and worked for great companies. And they have heard me talk. They’ve seen my face. They already feel like they know me.
Philip Van Dusen:
So the amazing thing is, is that has shaped, you know, when you usually get a new business lead, you get them on the phone and you have to have a half hour or hour conversation where you prove your mettle. You know, you share your history, your experience, you get let them get to know you a little bit. That is almost entirely unnecessary at that point once you’ve put yourself out there on YouTube because you’re giving people a chance to meet you and get to know you before they even ever come in contact with you, which is one of the most amazing learnings that I’ve had from my channel is that when people come to me, they already feel like they know me, which is fantastic because there’s this level of trust that’s already there that I’ve established by just putting out content in a very honest and transparent and authentic way that people are valuing, trusting. And so when they’re landing on my doorstep, there’s already this level of affinity to my brand that I haven’t had to work for other than putting out my content. So I and there’s no reason why other any other agency or freelancer or individual consultant can’t do the same thing.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Let’s jump back then quickly before we close to that time machine and go to the birth of your channel. I think you’ve totally sold us on the idea of of creating, the benefits of it. But can you just share with us in that time machine kind of what were your experiences first getting started? Because I think that’s definitely a blocker for most people. They’ll think, oh, I don’t know how to get started on YouTube, or I don’t have the technical equipment, or anything like that. Can you just kind of give us a quick insight into how you got past that and how you got started?
Philip Van Dusen:
Well, the the one headline I put out there when I that I share on my channel, but also in general, is that you have to dare to be bad because you are going to you’re gonna suck. At the first, you know, at the beginning, you will no matter how well you quaff your hair or set up your lighting or, you know, adjust your microphone or plan your content when you start off the first few videos that you do just like I’m sure with podcasting, when you get 20 videos into it, you’re gonna look back on your first one and go, oh my God, I can’t believe I posted that. And that it’s still up. And so you have to you just have to you just and this is my other mantra. This is one of my biggest mantras, which is start. You just have to start. You have to jump in and start because until you start, you can’t get better. And with any kind of new media, any kind of new content development, writing a blog post, doing a podcast, you just have to start doing it because then you will see what’s wrong, what you could do better, and you will fix it, and you’ll do the next one a little better and the next one a little better.
Philip Van Dusen:
And before you know it, you start building a body of work that has gotten stronger and stronger. But you cannot, it’s just like, you know, I’ll equate it to when I was a painter. When you’re sitting in front of a big blank canvas, you can conceptualize any kind of painting you want, and it can be fantastic. But until you actually break the surface of the white canvas with a stroke or or a mark. It’s all theoretical. And when you start painting, you have to go, oh, that line was great. I’ll work on that or that one sucks. I’ll cover that up.
Philip Van Dusen:
And it becomes a process of adjustment and improvement. And that’s very much like, I think, what any kind of content development is about. It’s about starting. It’s about doing the best job you can at the beginning and then building, growing, improving as you go along.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Amy Schmittauer will often say that practice is doing it and putting it out there as it is because you learn from it. So actually daring to put out That’s right. Your bad content and learning from it because it’s still got value. The content still has value. Yeah. But it helps you understand what isn’t working. You can experiment. You can get better, and you can get better.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
And, again, if people listen to the WP Innovator podcast as it was and listen over the years, we’ve improved. My first episodes were very much scripted questions that I kept repeating, and I was a robot. And now, they’re just free flowing conversations where we get loads of value by hearing people’s stories. And maybe there’s a few little things I might jump on. Like, I might use the time machine just to help us get through a conversation. That’s something that kind of has evolved over the last few episodes. But in the grand scheme of things, things have improved. We’ve enjoyed having these good, relaxed conversations.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Our videos on YouTube are starting to get better. Not as though I’ve done any for the last couple of months. I apologize. Consistency is also something else that people should should adhere to. I mean, very consistent with the podcast, but absolutely abysmal with our, YouTube channel. But, yeah, daring to be bad. Daring to put that content out there. And the guy from LinkedIn, I think as well, has said something along the lines of if you’re not embarrassed by version 1, then you waited too long.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Right. And I think I absolutely butchered that saying, by the way, like, and totally ruined it.
Philip Van Dusen:
And I will plug something else for your viewers or your listeners because I I just interviewed Lee on the very first inaugural Brandmuse interview, video interview that I’ll be posting on my YouTube channel. So if you wanna see Lee and see him get interviewed by me, that’ll get posted in the next few weeks.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
That’s so cool. And I’ll make sure that when that’s live, there will be a link in the show notes for that. Guys, remember, you can connect with mister Philip Van Dusen on philippvanduzen.com. You can also check out his YouTube channel. I’ll make sure I put a link in there. Let’s get those subscribership numbers up even further so we can expedite the Yes. Beautiful frame that YouTube send because you’re now over a 100 k subscribers. That’s phenomenal.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I think I’m on 200 and something.
Philip Van Dusen:
Thank you. So I’ve
Lee Matthew Jackson:
got a little ways to catch you up, but I’m gonna make it my mission to get as close as I can in a year. In a year. Do you think that’s doable?
Philip Van Dusen:
And you will. On a week. Consistency. On a week. On a weekly. Whenever. Yeah. YouTube rewards consistency in its algorithm, so remember that.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Well, I did find that as well because I I did the VADER. You know, SSS is I don’t have any mini s’s. There were SSS Vader. That was it with Amy Schmidtau, and I did a vlog every single day for 30 days, which was a slog, but I really enjoyed it and learned a lot in that. That’s actually a very useful exercise if, you know, to learn how to be bad at something, put it out there anyway, and then improve. So you can see a marked improvement from beginning to end of those 30 days. But equally, I saw a a really big intake in subscribership by being consistent and putting that out there.
Philip Van Dusen:
Yeah. See? But then
Lee Matthew Jackson:
there is always life. So when life happens and you’ve got to make some tough decisions, life
Philip Van Dusen:
and clients. And clients. Right? We have a we have an agency to run.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I get you. So, you’re here to hit first. It’s okay to sometimes not be consistent and kind of mess up when life and clients hit you.
Philip Van Dusen:
Cool. Well, this has been great, Lee. Thank you so much for having me. This has been so much fun.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Thanks, buddy. Take care. And that wraps up today’s show. Remember, you can find Phil’s channel over on the show notes. That’s either via your podcast player or on the website agency trailblazer.com/podcast. What a brilliant episode. Don’t forget, if you’ve got any thoughts or anything you wanna share on today’s episode, you can do that over in the WP Innovator community over on wpinnovator.com/group. That is our free Facebook group still aptly named after the old podcast name of WP Innovator.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
It just seems a shame to change the name. So head on over there, wpinnovator.com/group. We will either see you in the community or we will see you next week.
