Elixir’s latest initiative, ElixirTV has now been launched and will provide weekly three minute snippets of information and innovation for business owners, advisers, and staff.
We’ve had loads of interest for this new initiative, so I thought I’d share the reasons why we have launched it, and a few tech points on how we did it – in case advisers would like to do something similar for their clients.
Why?
Two reasons really… the first is the same reason we started our blog – we are in the business of coaching advice practices because we really believe in the value of great financial advice, and we think more people should access it. One way to help make that happen is to help advisers run better businesses. We work with many advisers around Australia, and yet we know there are many more (here and offshore) who can’t access our complete coaching services for a variety of reasons. ElixirTV is our way of sharing some of our thoughts and observations to provide some ‘remote’ support and inspiration, and is our free mini-version of our subscriber offerings that will follow later this year.
The second reason is far more commercial. Our business is very similar to financial advisers in that we provide an intangible service – people can’t touch and feel what we do like they could if we sold widgets. We have very close intimate relationships with our clients and our entire service is based on the premise that we will help our clients get more of what they want.
As an adviser, you do it with people’s personal and sometimes business finances – we do it with your business. We’re very clear on our target market – there are plenty of business coaches out there and yet we only work with financial advisers and accountants – because we know where they go, what they read, and most importantly, we understand the nuances involved in delivering financial advice better than most other coaches out there.
For years I have been extremely dedicated at building the brand of Elixir and now that we have 5 coaches on the team, they are also adding to our voice and footprint. We’re very active in our chosen market space – not a month goes by where we don’t have at least one of us standing on a stage talking to a room of advisers, and we are also active contributors to industry magazines and education providers.
We have our own subscriber base of people who have registered to receive our articles monthly and in the last year we have commenced our social media presence and our blog. We have great brand awareness in our market – most advisers have heard of us, and indeed we have discovered that most advisers also instinctively know that having a business coach (especially an Elixir coach) would help them get more of what they want from their business.
And yet … some are held back from engaging a coach because of fear – fear that they will be instructed to implement a one-size-fits-all business model; that they wouldn’t trust advice from someone who doesn’t really understand their business; that they can’t afford a coach.
ElixirTV is our way of putting a human face on our coaches, to share some of our knowledge and encourage advisers to make contact when they’re ready to explore whether we may be able to assist them.
So for some, Elixir TV will be a nice way to get a weekly piece of inspiration – and we hope some will say ‘this is great, they know what they are talking about. Imagine what I could achieve if I had one of these coaches working with me in my business?’
If any of this sounds familiar to you as an adviser, you might consider doing a similar thing for your prospective clients, and share tips and ideas with your existing clients that will be helpful between your meetings with them.
Video communication is here to stay. People increasingly turn to YouTube to search for information rather than simply Google to read written text. It is also a great way to allow people to ‘get to know you’ in a non-threatening environment, and to start building trust even before they see you in the flesh. And you don’t need to be Steven Spielberg to make it happen! All you really need is some great ideas, some simple equipment, and an ability to communicate – a skill that most great advisers already possess!
For those of you who are interested in the technical aspects of how we construct an episode of ElixirTV, each coach uses a Kodak Playtouch camera, which you can get for well under $200, as well as a tripod and a lapel microphone. Most of our coaches do the filming themselves, and then the video is edited down to the essential elements using software called videopad (under $100), which is then sent to a video editor. There are many options for finding an editor, and we used an online service called Elance. The editor tidies up the transitions between shots and tops and tails each episode with our intro and outro, for well under $100.
All the graphics we use are done by a graphic designer who is responsible for the look and feel of our whole corporate image. These graphics are then put together with the video to produce the final version of each episode. The background video of our intro (the graph) was sourced from www.shutterstock.com, and we purchased the music track from www.premiumbeat.com. We’ve also used www.royaltyfreemusic.com in the past. This means you pay once for the track, then can use it multiple times without having to pay ongoing royalties.
We’d love to hear what you think of Elixir TV, and let us know if you have any topics you’d like us to cover, either by posting a comment or sending us an email to [email protected].
If you haven’t checked it out yet, you can find the first episode on our ElixirTV page, and to be notified when a new episode is uploaded, click here.