Sales and Video Marketing experts Vas Besim and Sohan Gokarn have guided thousands of business owners and entrepreneurs worldwide to publish hundreds of videos online. In today’s interview, I interview them about creating videos to use in your business marketing.

Watch the video of my interview with Sohan and Vas or read the transcript below!

Links

VideoIt Membership Vas Besim’s Facebook Sohan Gokarn’s Facebook Free Videos Checklist Deadline Funnel

Transcript

Jack Born: Hey everyone. This is Jack Born. I’m the founder of Deadline Funnel, and I’m here with another expert to share some wisdom about how to grow your business. So I’m here with Sohan. Sohan, thanks so much for being here.

Sohan Gokarn: Anytime, Jack. Thanks for having me, bud.

Jack Born: So why don’t we start with a little bit of your backstory and, and also who you, who you help and how.

Sohan Gokarn: Yeah, look, backstory is born in Mumbai, raised in Kuwait, you know, was there for the first 45 days of the war when Iraq invaded Kuwait just before the Gulf War. Evacuated that and witnessed one of the most powerful life lessons I could ever get, which is trust, certainty, and commitment. And that was really cool. I mean, there so many other lessons. These differently were a step up, and they show up for me, Jack, because getting out of that situation, going back to India and evacuating as a kid with just 20 kilos of clothes and no toys, none of that, none of our other belongings, just those clothes, and then to start all over and see my parents do that all over again, to – It was, it was amazing to watch because it, it, I could see a man who went from a nine to five job to transition into the entrepreneurial world because there was no choice. He was literally forced into it. And then growing up, I, I think that’s where I learned the idea of how, how to be able to service people, be able to help people and be able to grow a business, not just work in a nine to five, ’cause that’s not what I was cut out for. So I tried that, didn’t work. I liked it a little bit, but it wasn’t, it wasn’t for too long. I, you know, went into the call center world, mastered the out of communication, learn culture skills, language skills around the world, and then transitioned from there into training people and individuals and companies on how to be more productive with their sales and their marketing and customer service. And then moved from there to start my own training company, my own coaching company, which then evolved to culminating to traveling around the world, moved to New Zealand for 10 years, then moved to Australia, to Sydney for a few. And then now in Melbourne and you know, I’m, I’m, I’m in this whole process. I had, I had a marriage that I was in for 10 years that broke down, separated from that. Divorced from that, and then went through hell on a personal level, one narcissistic relationship after another to eventually find my queen that I’m, you know, spiritually married to. And we, we’re partners in justice, as I like to say in the business, ’cause she’s a co-founder of Epic Wealth Academy. And it’s just been a beautiful journey to now be able to help and serve, you know, we’re on a mission to impact a billion families by 2029, Jack, to create this idea of freedom, financial freedom within the family.

Jack Born: That’s, that’s, that’s quite a, quite a story. So, you know, jumping jumping ahead to now, so you’ve got this, you’ve got this academy, but there’s a, you, you teach people about video. So, so it sounds like you’ve taken what you’ve learned in the communication space and now you’re showing people a method to use this with video. So why video? 

Sohan Gokarn: AYeah. Well, because you know, one, video is the future and the future is in the now. We’re obviously seeing it now more than ever before, right? Like, what with lockdown, one thing is become prominent is the reach the global reach of going virtual. Come on in, babs.

Vas Besim: Hey, Jack.

Sohan Gokarn: This is my gorgeous queen

Vas Besim: Awesome to meet you.

Sohan Gokarn: For your listeners, you know that that was, that has been a big one for the fact that video is the future and it’s now more obvious than ever, but more importantly, it’s a way to communicate intimately and build relationships. And we both are about getting people to understand, “how do you take relationships first before revenue? How do you bring people first before profits?” So the only way you can do that is by creating conscious communication, and video is a really cool way to do that.

Vas Besim: Exactly. And as the queen of competence on camera, I help 10x business owners and entrepreneurs to create videos that sell. Drop out of the head, drop into the heart because that’s where we’re actually able to communicate with that real feel and heart rather than just head knowledge. We don’t want just information. We want transformation, and that’s why we’re different.

Sohan Gokarn: That’s what you get through video. You’ll see that a lot. Text is great. Text is fantastic on a page, but,

Vas Besim: Exactly

Sohan Gokarn: and an image says speaks a thousand words, but a video touches, it touches a million hearts. We know that. We see that every day. We see that with businesses, and it’s not hard to do that if you understand the skills. So –

Jack Born: A lot of, it’s not uncommon for entrepreneurs, especially if they’re in, say, the internet space where, you know, you’re, you’re behind the screen to, to, to have some reluctance to get in front of the camera. How do you guys, how do you guys teach your, your, your students to get past that concern and that fear so they can get in front of the camera?

Vas Besim: Well, step one: use props. Woo! They actually help. They help you get into the sort of the vibe, not take yourself so seriously. We remove the script. No script, no teleprompters. We do not want you connecting with your audience where you’re actually reading. So that’s in your head. And as Tony Robbins says, “in your head, you’re dead.” Connect to the heart because that’s where the real power is. So, you know, giving them some fun ideas and some fun ways that they can step out of their, you know, conservative role and step back into their hearts because that’s where they really going to be able to fulfill and convey that message different to their competitors.

Sohan Gokarn: ‘Cause there’s a lot of that happening, right? You see conditioned entrepreneurs, you see conditioned business owners, especially business owners, entrepreneurs still tend to operate with that whole big vision and the purpose of creating a, you know, a dent in the universe. With business owners typically are more interested in making the cash, the profit, and they’re chasing that. So their, the brain is wired naturally for us to be conditioned by society to go, “well, use your intellect.” And that’s cool, but a lot of people tend to lead with intellect as opposed to leading with their emotions, which is ultimately where people buy. People buy from logic and emotions. But even the logical buyer ends up making an emotional decision and then uses logic right after. So, that has to be, that has to be retrained reprogrammed And so sometimes on the, on the top end of the scale where it’s extreme fear, it’s extreme. Like there are people we know we’ve, we’ve had clients and members, they’ve actually stuck sticky notes on their screens to not see their own face ’cause they can’t stand seeing themselves. They tend to make funny faces to try and break out of that funk, but they don’t seem to. So how does, how does someone move from that sort of a zone where it’s so extreme? Well, in that case, sometimes we have to do an intervention with them, and we have to really end their insecurities that they have, which could be from childhood traumas or whatever. And that requires a different level of deeper work with them. But generally speaking, there’s some really cool things like what Vas already shared

Vas Besim: Props

Sohan Gokarn: that can be done, and people can see a result in like five minutes.

Vas Besim: Exactly. And when they come to a high vibe place, it’s very different because energetically, it’s not that conservative headspace that their used to. Here we are with props getting amazing millionaire, million dollar results, and they’re actually saying as 10x business owners, “wow, it’s possible.”

Sohan Gokarn: True

Jack Born: Are most of your clients using video as a way to get attention, to bring them into, into the, into the world to sell something else? Or are the majority of your clients using video as the, sort of the, the way to monetize their business itself? Like putting the video on YouTube and generating Adsense or is it, or is it really a way to reach out to form that relationship and bring them into, to eventually turn them into a client for something else?

Sohan Gokarn: Yeah, it’s actually both, but, but more we see 95% of our clients and members tend to do that for, for them to be able to funnel people in, bring people in through the door, use their videos as marketing, to create that dialogue, start the conversation, start turning someone from a, you know, a suspect or a prospect and then from a prospect to be able to turn them into a customer or client. So –

Jack Born: So a lot of, a lot of our clients are course creators, coaches and some consultants. That doesn’t describe everyone, but just in that, in that particular avatar, like what would you, what are you typically advising people to do in terms of if they’ve never done video before, what are they, are they saying? So we talked about the energy and getting out of their head, but they have to have something, a message that they want to put out there. What do you, what do you see as some of the mistakes that people make versus what you teach them to do?

Vas Besim: Well, the, what we see a hell of a lot of is people jumping on and just rambling. There is no momentary storytelling with actually telling a story with a strategy to be able to convert. You’re killing objections through that story as well. So it feels very conversational, and that’s the real big point of difference. Then once they join VideoIt, we help them with their specific headlines, which gives them a strategy to use for the structure of their video. It works [like] a charm.

Sohan Gokarn: Because here’s the, here’s the big problem. Most of them say, “I don’t know what story to tell, Jack? Like, you told me to tell a story, Jack, but I don’t know what story – where do I start? Like, what story do I bring to the table?”

Jack Born: That’s where I was going to go next. What stories do you recommend?

Sohan Gokarn: Exactly. ‘Cause the part, a lot of them, a lot of them are afraid to be vulnerable, and it’s understandable. We were in that place once upon a time, right? And so this there’s this constant need for us to be perfect. And as course creators, as teachers, as trainers, for someone who’s been training people for 40 plus years combined now, one thing’s for sure: the best results we’ve seen is when we’ve been vulnerable with our participants

Vas Besim: Definitely

Sohan Gokarn: and attendees and trainees, depending on what kind of event it is. And the mistake we’ve made is whenever we have held back from having to share a story, we have found a disconnect. We found a distance, and the goal for any marketer should always be to find a way to reduce the gap between themselves and the target that they’re after, right? And story definitely helps to do that. So what kind of stories do you tell? Well, it depends. It’s all contextual. One of the things that we say is, people talk about “content is king, content is king”. Content is not king. I believe “content is queen. Context is king.” If you’re contextual, if you’re relevant, you’ll be found. If you’re relevant, you’ll be visible. If you’re relevant, you’ll connect. So look at your life story and look at different aspects, different events that have taken place in your life. There are moments.

Vas Besim: Epiphanies.

Sohan Gokarn: Yeah. There are like these “aha!”, light bulb moments where people go, “oh, wow!” Realization. These moments are the moments that you can actually pluck and you can use in stories. And again, there itself, you know, quick tip for anyone who’s listening with courses and, and, and content creators: think about moments where you can actually just speak about that one moment just before it took place, before the “aha’ happened. The “aha”, and then what was the outcome after that? What did you do after that? Like, instead of going to the long drawl, you know, 24 hours before that what happened or two years before that. People go into these random, long stories and then they lose their audience. But if you stuck to that moment and you went right before you took people in the room with you just before that “aha”, like you said, the epiphany, and then you speak about what was happening then to then speak about where the “aha” takes place. And then what happened after that – that’s more powerful because it’s short. It’s succinct, and it’s punchy.

Vas Besim: It’s almost a summary of that moment, rather than, you know, the whole detailed story, which doesn’t get to a point or a, you know, a peak.

Sohan Gokarn: Because Jack, you can bring the time that you use for a 10 minute story, which you can ramble on for the rest of, you know, talk about your entire life. Or you can use those 10 minutes to really get detailed in that moment and bring someone with you in that moment and go use the 10 minutes if that’s what you got, but you can get as detailed as you, as you wanted to in that moment, as opposed to trying to cover so much detail in so much about your life. That’s where people get in the trap, and they don’t get it. But once they start doing this in videos, they’ll learn, 

Vas Besim: It’s a game changer.

Sohan Gokarn: and you don’t need a script, Sohan? Like really? Vas? You don’t need a script for that because it’s your story. It’s your signature on it.

Vas Besim: Yeah

Jack Born: Well let’s, let’s dive one layer deeper on choosing the stories because I could see someone coming to the conclusion of, “okay, I know now how to get out of my head and be more present. I know that I need to share stories,” but then they might choose a story that has no relevance to the audience. Can you talk about how do you, what are the criteria and the filters that you teach your students for? What makes, like, choose this story, but don’t choose this story.

Sohan Gokarn: Yeah. Wow. That’s a, that’s a game changer. So, mistake number one, picking a story that has no context to the audience. For example, having to think about, “oh, my, my, my marriage broke down and I, and I went into this relationship with this woman who was toxic.” And I’m here trying to teach you about how to connect with a cold audience and solve their problems. There’s no relevance. So what I got to do is I got to, if I’ve got no other story, then I got to find a lesson in that moment there, in that whatever happened in that situation to tie it back and share the teaching. So there’s a simple strategy around this, right? It’s a simple framework. Number one, when you’re sharing a story, think about a struggle. Number two, think about a strength. Number three, think about a belief that you might have. And number four, think about your victory. So in your life, there are moments and events where you’ve had all of these four tenets that are taking place: strengths, struggles, victories, and beliefs. All you got to do is you got to bring these four together and do like a, sometimes you can brainstorm it. You can just put some sticky notes out and start making a list of all your strengths, all your beliefs, all your struggles, all your wins. And then you can literally pick from each episode of your life and see how that, what, what’s the relevance to the point you’re trying to teach, the strategy and the tactic you’re trying to teach. And then go ahead and narrate that and take people in the room with you for that moment. It’s not rocket science once you know those four components. But with practice it just becomes permanent, and you get good at it.

Jack Born: Let me ask you on that. So that, that the framework is that, at first I thought you were referring to a framework where you’re looking for stories that have each of those components, but then I thought, no, it sounds like you’re, you’re, you’re identifying different categories that could, could bring out stories to tell which, which one of those is more accurate?

Sohan Gokarn: Yeah, good. So typically you’ll have a lot of episodes in your life. You have a lot of moments in your life. You have the moment where you took action. There was a moment where you were afraid and you took action. There was a moment where you were scared and you crumbled. There was a moment in your life where you, you felt nervous about something and you took action. There’s a moment where you felt like you were not committed enough, and then you renewed your commitment and you did something about it and you, you got creative. Let’s say you have all these moments. Every moment has these four categories in them. Each moment has a strength that you had that got stronger. Every moment has a struggle that you went through that you overcame into a victory. Every moment has a belief that you had during the struggle in that moment and after that you formed a new belief. So these four categories apply to every single moment of our life. And therefore you can take any story now and bring relevance to your context. For example, I could talk about the story of this beautiful coffee cup or chai cup, as I like to say. And I could find a feature in this of this cup that has relevance to the point I’m trying to make with regards to the four tenants. And if I find that relevance from the feature and find that to connect with the teaching that I’m giving, now, it becomes relevant for me to talk about the story of the cup. So at first, someone might feel like, where are they going with this cup? Because I asked them the question about how to, how to, how to clean teeth as it, because I’m a dentist or how to, how to get people to come in for the cleaning of their teeth. And he’s talking about a cup. Well, hang on. What is he on about? But if I took that feature of that cup and I relate, and I relate it back to the four tenants that I gave, now the person in front of me, regardless of their profession, turns around and goes, “wow, there’s universal strategy there.” And now I got to, as a course creator or a content creator, I got to make sure that I provide the tactics to back up that strategy that I shared from the story. 

Jack Born: That’s great. It does. So a question that I have now is what techniques do you give to your students in the very beginning of telling that story where the person wants to stick around for the payoff and they don’t wander and ramble and get off on a track and someone just leaves the video.

Vas Besim: Well, we talk very much about emotion, very much about stopping the scroll. So using some sort of prop where people are like, “oh, wow, I’m really curious. What, what are they doing?” You know, stopping that scroll is, you know, number one, because yeah, if we don’t have that hook, people are not going to stop and, you know, stay with the rest of the video. Using emotions. Having the ability to fully embody your message, not just being a talking head. It’s very important to be emotive, you know, very important to have that high energy and also be able to speak a little bit faster, because if you speak really slow, you’re going to lose your audience. Really important to be able to be upbeat, obviously, depending on what you’re speaking of, but being able to have that tonality to make it interesting. Use your props. Use your hand. Make sure you are looking eye level at your clients. It’s soul to soul. It’s heart to heart we connect, and that’s a big point of difference.

Sohan Gokarn: And you know what I’m going to, I’m going to turn around and say this as well. Like a lot of ’em, we get a lot of people that say, and actually most of them initially, they’re, they’re so logical about things and they’re dry about it. And they go, they find this very fluffy, right? Because it doesn’t, because you don’t hear that. I mean, first of all, there’s no video school around, probably. There aren’t great mentors in the world when it comes to video marketing that I’ve seen, very few on the planet. And then to top it all, people think, “well, hang on a second, let’s get straight to the point. People wanted to get, do business. They just need to get rid of the point.” I get it. But it’s different when you don’t have a relationship with them. You know, how are you going to get someone to stick around or watch your five minute video if you’re, if you’re boring as a bat. I mean, imagine being in a relationship with a partner of yours who is boring as a bat, low energy, talks slow, doesn’t make eye contact with you. Always wants to be perfect. Never wanting to show herself or himself and his flaws or her flaws and is constantly going “no, no, no, wait, wait. I got to come out presented to you.” Like at some point there’s going to be a disconnect, right? So that’s exactly the same thing that happens in video because it’s the intimacy that you’re creating through video and video is a medium where you can actually get a viewer to feel like they already know you before they actually get to know you in person. So if you’re going to do that, you might as well do it right. So this strategy around what you, what Vas just shared is really important. You know, movement is so mission critical in a video because that brings energy to the table. Even when you’re sitting, there’s so many things you can do, and I’m not talking, we’re not talking about clever editing. You can do a lot of cool things with clever editing, but you know what? Solopreneurs and influencers and freelancers and some of these guys, aspiring influencers, I meant, and these guys don’t have the bandwidth. They don’t have the cashflow to go ahead and create that either. So how are they going to generate that excitement in the video and keep, keep it contextual, but keep it relevant and also keep it exciting? Well, get the, get the payoff in the beginning. Speak about the payoff of your video right up at the beginning. Use that hook, that prop to connect with the payoff. So it it’s, it sticks if nothing else. Like, you know, there’s this guy who does his wallet thing and he opens it, and he, when he opens his wallet, it opens with a flame. That’s his hook.

Vas Besim: That’s awesome.

Sohan Gokarn: Now, is that going to stop a scroll? Absolutely. But after that, he’s going to have to maintain that. Now that’s going to mean he can’t be boring just because he had a great start. It’s like a race. You got to have a great start and a greater finish. And that requires us to create the journey and storytelling. There’s angles. Storytelling is one way of doing it. Sometimes when you’re dealing with a cold audience, you don’t always have to give a story, but there’s a way you can still convey a teaching in a particular angle. Do you come from a pain point, or do you come from an angle of pleasure? Do you come from the problem solving perspective, or do you come from a solution giving perspective? You know, do you talk about the situation they’re in, which is hell, or do you speak about, “oh my god, that paradise, that dream island that they want to be on”, metaphorically speaking, right? So there’s so many different angles. If you know what you’re doing and you know who you’re speaking with, you can create a really great engaging video. One of the reasons why people love our videos and we don’t go by vanity metrics – Forget about the likes. Forget about the views. Forget about the shares. That’s where the drama is, and that’s what people get caught in. We’re interested in the conversion. How many people get impacted? How many people say, “shut up and take my money, Jack? Let’s go!” Like, that is what matters. You keep the bottom line and the top line increase. So if you can do that through video, and here’s a kicker: unlearn the language you speak.

Vas Besim: This is a huge one.

Sohan Gokarn: If, if, if the, if your listeners don’t take anything, whether they doing a marketing video or they’re doing their creative content in their courses, if they don’t take anything from this interview, this one thing can shift everything in their business. They can see a massive trajectory shift. What, what do we mean by “unlearn your language”? Well, the problem is a lot of people speak jargon. That’s one big one. Okay? But let’s say everyone knows that, the cliches. Okay, don’t use jargon. Don’t use technical terms, Jack. Okay. But then there’s the next bit, which is just our language. Example: the mistake people make is, oh, they’re selling their water product. You know, “you, uh, you got a drink this, and when you drink this, Jack, you will hydrate your body. I hydrate my body every single day, and every cell, when it gets hydrated, I feel, I feel the energy.” See, how many people don’t understand the word ‘hydrate’ in the non-native English speaking part of the world? What is another word for hydrate? Oh, let me use quench. Well, how many people really know the word ‘quench’ compared to let me use the word ‘drink’. Now “drink”, everyone knows that word, 

Vas Besim: Universal.

Sohan Gokarn: even people that don’t speak English. Right? So if I’m going to say, you know, quench, I’d rather skip that word. I’d rather let go of hydrate. And we’d rather say, “hey, drink this because every time I drink this, every cell in my body is drinking this liquid. And this is exactly my secret to my youth and my fountain of youth and energy.” Like, that just gets people attracted. Now you’re, you’re tapping into a wider market, and you’re hitting home to a wider audience, creating deeper impact and wider influence.

Vas Besim: Exactly. Keeping the languaging simple is universal, so you’re speaking to a lot more people rather than just the limited people that may be within your field.

Jack Born: So I, I, I really wish that we had more time to go into this because you guys really have my head spinning about all the possibilities, and it’s clear that you guys know your stuff. So, where can people find out more about what you guys offer and maybe get some, some resources?

Sohan Gokarn: Yeah, for sure. Well, we’re available on Facebook, so they can find us if they look us up: Vas

Vas Besim: VasBes.

Sohan Gokarn: V-A-S-B-E-S, you’ll find her on Facebook and Instagram. You can find me on Facebook as well and Instagram. It’s Sohan Gokarn, S-O-H-A-N-G-O-K-A-R-N. It’s a tongue twister, but I’m sure you’ll have in the show notes. We’ve got, you know, one of the things that people go, well, how do we, how do we just get started with something? And so, because of that, we never had something like that, so we, we found, we looked around everywhere in the world. There is nothing that is available to create that. So we finally created a checklist showing people a very shockingly simple, really, really simple three step or three way process that they can start creating videos that sell on social media. So if they go to checklist.videoit.club. So that’s checklist.videoit.club. They can go ahead and download it and get that gift straight away.

Jack Born: Yeah, that’s great. Well, we’ll include that in the, in the notes. Listen, it was, it was really great chatting with you guys. And I love the, I love the part where you guys were talking about stories and your framework. I love story framework, so that really, really resonated with me. So, yeah, great to, great to get your, your thoughts on this. And yeah, we’ll put the notes, the links in the notes below. So thank you very much for your time.

Vas Besim: Thanks, Jack.

Sohan Gokarn: Thank you, Jack. Thanks for having us.

Vas Besim: We appreciate you.

Sohan Gokarn: It was a pleasure.