EPISODE 24 - FINAL
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Jeff Brandeis: [00:00:00] For those of you who don't have your cameras on, please turn them on because really at the end of our webinar today, I'm gonna have a couple of lucky winners. I'm gonna actually spin the wheel. And for those of you who have your cameras on, you'll be eligible to win. And so I'm encouraging my audience right off the bat to A, turn the cameras on so I can see them.
Jeff Brandeis: And B, I'm throwing a little carry out there that, hey, they say to the end, there's a prize that they could win. And, or, or multiple prizes, or I'll have a free giveaways for everyone that has their cameras on.
Chris Hughes: Welcome to How to Build a Profitable Nutrition Business. If you love nutrition and you love helping people and you want to be in the game long enough to keep doing that. podcast for you. Let's get into it.
Chris Hughes: When COVID 19 hit a few years ago, Zoom share price skyrocketed. And that's because all of a sudden we were delivering [00:01:00] webinars and video content on end to people, because this is the way we could grow our business or at least have our business function. But for most people, no one really taught them how to deliver an engaging, effective webinar.
Chris Hughes: And that's why I'm really excited about today's guest, Jeff Brandeis. Jeff has a background in finance, but has worked in the corporate space for a number of years. Over this time, Jeff has mastered the art of delivering engaging presentations, which ultimately webinar these days. If you're interested in learning how to create truly engaging webinars that both have impact for your clients and help grow your business, then this is the podcast for you.
Chris Hughes: Let's get into it. Welcome back to another episode of How to Build a Profitable Nutrition Business. Today I'm really excited to have a gentleman by the name of Jeff Brandeis from Engaging Webinars. And as the title explains, this is all about creating engaging webinars. Now, post COVID, this is a particularly relevant topic, particularly for those in the nutrition and fitness industry.
Chris Hughes: Because webinars [00:02:00] are a really popular medium to, to get content out there to our audience. And so, I might hand over straight to Jeff, because you've got a pretty interesting journey, Jeff. You're, now, I hope this isn't too offensive, but as an accountant, we don't typically think of accountants as being engaging, but you're completely the opposite, aren't you?
Chris Hughes: You really look at some of your content online, and you live up to what the title explains. Uh, thank you,
Jeff Brandeis: Chris. Yeah, I went through a transformation of personalities in life. Yeah, I grew up in accounting and worked in the, in the accounting field for about five years. And then I got offered this position in a software company and it was to do presentations and they were selling to accountants.
Jeff Brandeis: So it was in my niche. It was like still coming out of my, I don't know, my little narrow fold because just like you mentioned, accountants are quiet individuals that kind of keep to themselves. And I told my wife that I was going to go look for, go for an [00:03:00] interview where I had to go actually speak to people and do presentations in front of people.
Jeff Brandeis: And she just looked at me and go, you're actually going to talk to people? And there was like a, when I took the job, it was like a whole new revelation came to me and I had the most fun in my career. Really those first two years as I broke out of my shell and my true personality came out and, uh, I'm still married to the same woman, but it was still just a.
Jeff Brandeis: A great journey for me as far as finding out really more about myself and really what I was capable of doing.
Chris Hughes: Yeah. What a fascinating journey. So with the webinars or just presenting in general, have you done training on it yourself or was it just something you've just refined and measured based on performance and your, your engagement stats and things like that?
Jeff Brandeis: Oh, Chris, I came, I come from the corporate background. I worked in corporate for about 25 years or so, and yes, I was trained in how to do better, better, uh, presentations, how to do better demos, how to [00:04:00] create more engaging, uh, PowerPoint slides and how to do things and how to present yourself. But really what I've done is I've taken a lot of that training and I built our own webinar mastery course, but we've added another component to this.
Jeff Brandeis: Which is really how to get the audience truly engaged in a virtual environment. And I really hate to say this, but I'm just going to say it. If you get on any webinar today, 99 percent of them, they're all the same. Take away the person, take away the product, take away the call to action. They all start the same way.
Jeff Brandeis: Hi, I'm Jeff. Welcome to my webinar. Can everyone hear me? Raise your hand. Great. And I'll share my slide. Can everyone see my slide? Raise your hand. Great. And then every once in a while they'll put something and ask a question and go, where are you from, put it into chat. But once they go into slide [00:05:00] presentation, they're now what I call here in the States, they become a Hollywood square.
Jeff Brandeis: Okay. And they just become just like everybody else in the audience. People see their slides and that's not what engagement at all about. It's not really how you get people to be involved in your webinar.
Chris Hughes: Jeff, you just basically, it was like I was listening to myself as you, like I had to do a webinar recently and it's like you, you've watched it.
Chris Hughes: Were you on my webinar?
Jeff Brandeis: Yeah, I was.
Chris Hughes: Oh, wow. So run me through it. Like what are the key things? Because in, in, so I'm a dietician, I do enjoy doing webinars because I feel like it's a medium where I can help more people at once. It's not that sort of one on one and I do the engagement part of it. But my wife gets at me because it's almost like I'm presenting to dieticians all the time.
Chris Hughes: It is in my head, like I'm very evidence based. I need to provide the evidence. And she says, people don't care about the [00:06:00] evidence. And I'm like, I do, it's got to be evidence based, but it's Boring on a webinar or can be boring, you know, so I'm delivering it to people that don't have so much of a technical background and I'm, I'm that Jeff by PowerPoint almost.
Chris Hughes: So please Jeff, give me some advice. What are the key areas if someone's creating an engagement, engaging webinar, what should I be doing?
Jeff Brandeis: There's four keys as I like to have them as I call them the four keys to webinar mastery. Okay. The first key, uh, is set the stage for success. What I mean by that is when you start your webinar, start with a compelling book, a powerful question, maybe a surprising statistics, a story that captures attention that aligns with the audience.
Jeff Brandeis: And so this begins to set the tone for the whole webinar, just right up front, but you're captivating in them from the beginning. And it's not just diving right into your PowerPoint. If I can, the second key is to create dynamic content. All right. So, [00:07:00] try to do it like a demo, storytelling, some visuals, try to get some audience interaction here.
Jeff Brandeis: So, keep them engaged by breaking that, I'll call it monotony, put some curiosity questions out there and get them to think about their own environment. And then the 3rd key is I like to put this is get that audience involved. And people will say, how do you get an audience involved? There are creative things you could do.
Jeff Brandeis: You could create a poll. You could bring a poll up on screen. You can create a survey. You can have some gamification or some quizzes. And that begins to create some real time engagement with the audience. And we have some really great tools that we have at Engaging Webinars that helps promote this. And it makes it a lot easier than utilizing some of the Zoom functionality, which can be a little tricky at times.
Jeff Brandeis: But the fourth thing we got
Chris Hughes: Oh, sorry, mate. I do see that. Like, I see in Zoom there's so many apps, and I just think, oh, it's beyond me. And I have seen, I was checking out your [00:08:00] website, and I see the gamification, and that got me really curious, because it can feel like you're talking to a brick wall at times.
Chris Hughes: There's people that won't show their face on there, so it's just a blank screen. You've got, you can see some people will have it on. But it can feel like you're talking to no one at times. And so I love that idea of gamification just before you get on to the other key point. Can you just like delve into what sort of, what sort of things do you do there?
Jeff Brandeis: So, in my openings, for example, and one of the key things that we use. Is what we call a stream deck or yes. Yep. That's come up. Yep. Stream deck and you can buy this on Amazon or some other places. I'm sure locally and I'll get into what that does. But in the beginning. Hey, look, I see so many people faces.
Jeff Brandeis: It's great to meet you. So visually, so I can get to know you by name and by face. For those of you don't have your cameras on, please turn them on because webinar today, I'm going to have a couple of couple of lucky winners. I'm going to actually spin the wheel. [00:09:00] And for those of you who have your cameras on, you'll be eligible to win.
Jeff Brandeis: And so I'm encouraging my audience right off the bat to A, turn the cameras on so I can see them and B, I'm throwing a little carry out there that hey, they say to the end, there's a prize that they could win. And or or multiple prizes, or I'll have a free giveaways for everyone that has the cameras on.
Jeff Brandeis: And then I see some new cameras coming on. I see. Hey, thank you so much for putting your camera on Jane, Jim, John, and that's the other thing calling people's names out people like to be you're building that relationship. You're speaking to them. You're It's like, they are the only ones in the room and that's really what's going to begin to build that trust that you obviously want to have when you're doing a webinar or just to meet the people.
Chris Hughes: Yeah, I like that. I like that. So sorry. And then you had a fourth key that we, I cut you off. My apologies, but that's [00:10:00]
Jeff Brandeis: okay. So in the beginning, one of the also questions I try to ask is what brings you here today? And I want to learn more about nutrition. I want to learn about a new fitness routine. And you're saying, Hey, we're here to learn more about engaging webinars.
Jeff Brandeis: And at the end of the webinar, the fourth key is you want to transform them into their new world by buying your product or implementing your process. What is their world now going to look like? It's going to be better. They're going to have better engagement during the webinars. They're going to have smoother presentations.
Jeff Brandeis: They're going to feel healthier, they're going to feel better, they're going to have a better night's sleep. So you're trying to put them into that transformational stage when they actually purchase what you're selling, assuming you're selling it when you're forming. And that makes that transition, if you would, into the last bit of your presentation, which is the next, whatever your call to action is.
Jeff Brandeis: Okay, and that's a missing piece I see in [00:11:00] many webinars too. People, and hey, thanks so much for joining. I appreciate you being here today. Thank you so much. This you got to have, Hey, look, here's my calendar link on the screen. Get a QR code. You can get those for free. People have their phones. They can scan your QR code, uh, book an appointment with me, or if you have something online and you're ready to purchase, here's a link to buy now.
Jeff Brandeis: Well, that QR code is a buy now need a call to action. Subscribe to my, my podcast, subscribe to my free guide, something to get the people to really at the end of the day. It's a two way street, giving them information, but you want something back from them, right? Yeah, so you want their email at least, but you want to get information as well.
Chris Hughes: Well, the idea behind my podcast, Jeff, is like health professionals, nutrition professionals, but health professionals in general. I'm not really good at sales and business. Like we get into the industry to help people. And so [00:12:00] we come from this background where it's almost, it just feels like we're doing the wrong thing by asking for money.
Chris Hughes: And so this is really useful because it's, and I would do this when I do a webinar, I would just give everything away for free. I just help as much as I could. And it's like, well, what's the sales process here? And I've learned over the years that you can only help someone more, the more engaged they are, the more they engage with your services.
Chris Hughes: And the reality is that they pay attention. If you're giving everything away for free, they probably don't value what you're giving. So that, that's really useful advice just in terms of having that, that, what's the word? Like you've got that sort of sales process and that goal in mind to keep helping them.
Jeff Brandeis: Yeah, it's just trying to get, bring them along in a very natural sequence. Without being pushy, without being overbearing, uh, and if you take them, as I like to phrase it as well, they're in pain today. They came to you, webinar, for a solution. What you want to do is get them [00:13:00] to realize. Their pain that they're incurring and then you want to bring them with that transformational aspect that you've done during your webinar and then transform them is, hey, you follow our process.
Jeff Brandeis: You follow what you're going to learn. You'll feel better. You'll sleep better. You'll do better webinars. You'll be much smoother presenter, whatever it is at the end of the day. You want to get them from where they are today to where you want them to be by using whatever you're selling them or you're talking about.
Chris Hughes: Yeah, right. So that moving away from pain towards pleasure. Yes. With, so with. Let's say like, again, for myself as a nutrition professional, does the sales webinars, okay, like where you're kind of giving a little bit of information, but what about the people that have purchased and they're part of your program?
Chris Hughes: Does the strategy change much? Obviously, there's not a call to action because they've already, or not a purchasing call to action because they've already purchased and they're in your program. [00:14:00] But in terms of the engagement. Is it much the same in keeping them engaged once they're paid and they're part of your program and you're delivering those webinars as part of the paid program?
Jeff Brandeis: So there, I think there's 2 aspects here and you bring up a great point, Chris. So you have a webinar, hopefully for your new prospects, and then some of your existing ones will. Obviously joined in as well, but sometimes as I like to phrase it is trying to have an upsell. Okay. And this could be a two part process.
Jeff Brandeis: Hey, for those of you who are current clients, I know you're feeling great. And Hey, Chris, you're a current user and you've seen great results. And if you know what they're going to be on, maybe it's a great opportunity for you to call them out and ask them, Hey, do you mind saying being a testimonial for me?
Jeff Brandeis: On my webinar, and that's the best sales person you're going to have besides yourself. Obviously, there's someone that's using your product. And 1 of the things I think we all struggle with is [00:15:00] having a 1 product 1 price. Thing, so to speak, whatever it is, it's, it's one skew number or whatever you want to call it, but if we can kind of think about how we our product lines and what we can actually add on to make that what I like to call the size of wallet.
Jeff Brandeis: Larger for your client and maybe they come in with a lower introductory offer and then you have a medium level and a higher level and that way they can upgrade and they can still, and you can obviously get more revenue. Your client gets more benefits and especially in the nutrition world. There's so much.
Jeff Brandeis: I think you can package as a solid kit, the medium kit and the higher level kit and, uh, provide an incentive for them to continue to buy up.
Chris Hughes: Yeah, I like that. And I've, I've had a guest on before who's a dietitian, Rebecca Jones. She's really big on the packaging and those high value offers. And so having that spectrum, if you like, of offers.
Chris Hughes: Yeah, that's great. I like [00:16:00] that, Jeff. And then what about like, in terms of you just delivering a program for people that let's say they're in your higher offer or whatever it may be, like, is the engagement still the same? Like you're really looking to engage them, start with a story. Like it's all part of that transformation process.
Jeff Brandeis: Yeah, to me, the webinar, the template that we provide is the same. Engagement is key. Building that trust is key. The, an engaged audience, I guarantee you will convert at a higher rate than a non engaged one. Okay. It is so easy to pick up this thing these days. Okay, turn that camera off that we have on right now, but to turn it off and just do email.
Jeff Brandeis: So, if you're not getting your audience involved with your chat with chat functionality, bringing chat on screen, doing a poll, having some fun, having some [00:17:00] gamification. Doing things that involve the audience, they will check out on that expression that they will pick up their phone. They will do email and they'll do something different.
Chris Hughes: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's got to be great content as well. What about Jeff? What about like just from a. A personal point and being energetic. What if you, do you have any tips for, cause yeah, sometimes I'm delivering a webinar in the middle of the day. I've got four kids. I've been up early. I'm doing things and I can be a bit flat.
Chris Hughes: I'll have a mouthful of coffee. What tips have you got to try and energize yourself and really be engaging on the screen? I
Jeff Brandeis: know for example, we're, we're both standing up.
Chris Hughes: Yes.
Jeff Brandeis: Okay. So standing up when you're doing the presentation will naturally get you a little bit more energized than sitting down.
Jeff Brandeis: Yeah. Okay. So I recommend you stand up and freeze your hands. Just like me. I talk a lot with my hands and my motions, but I, it. To [00:18:00] me, this gets my energy level up if you're sitting, you tend to slash, you tend to maybe even put your hand on your chin and then you're going to start to muffle your voice sometimes before a webinar, I'll run outside, just do a little quick walk, just get my heartbeat going up a little fast to get some energy going.
Jeff Brandeis: Yes, the coffee helps. I'm a coffee drinker for sure. It's just getting that energy level up so that if you're put that energy through your webinar, the people will feel it. They will pop expression, suck it in as well because they feel you, they see your energy. And that will get them excited about you and your product as well.
Jeff Brandeis: But if you're just standing there and you're talking monotone and you're just talking about doing a, hey, this nutritional stuff is really going to help you. Okay. That's not going to resonate with them. All right. Do that voice inflections and be able to smile and you get the people to. Like you and trust [00:19:00] you because they see you energize.
Jeff Brandeis: You believe in your product. You believe in what you're providing to them. They will feel it. They will sense it. So, um, get up, stretch yourself, pick your camera up as well. That's another thing I would recommend that. So you're a great eye level. Okay. I'm about halfway. I'm probably a little lower than I need.
Jeff Brandeis: Alone myself. But so many times I see people's, no offense, you don't wanna be looking at and talking to people where they see you and they, you are looking up at them. And no offense, they're looking at your nose. You wanna be square on. You want your eyes to be even from a halfway to three quarters of the way up on your screen, okay?
Jeff Brandeis: And you don't wanna be down here where you're like a little person. And there's so much space out there. So that's the other thing that I would really suggest from a presentation perspective.
Chris Hughes: Really occupy the space that's on that camera rather than let them be distracted by your background. [00:20:00] Exactly.
Chris Hughes: Now Jeff, what about for people, obviously it helps to be passionate about your topic, but what about for people who, they might be new to it. So we've potentially got a lot of new graduate dietitians that listen to this podcast, and they may not be that confident at speaking. Have you got any advice for anyone?
Chris Hughes: Because for me, just to tell you my story, like we, we had our dietitian business, I was the dietitian, my wife was the business brains behind it, basically everything else but the dietitian. And she was very Very adamant that we had to do webinars, you had to be online and you had to be on social media, which was right, of course, but I didn't want to put my face out there.
Chris Hughes: It was just like, just that thing of, I like my own privacy, but it was almost like she had a gun to my head. You're doing this, you're getting on there and over time I got better at it. I got more confident now. I don't really care whether I'm on camera or not. You get over that. But what advice have you got in terms of delivering a webinar for people that are just starting out?
Jeff Brandeis: You kind of put, answer it yourself. You kind of get over it. [00:21:00] I have a watch
Chris Hughes: that's got a gun to your head. Is that it?
Jeff Brandeis: You know, Chris, it's almost like riding a bicycle in so many different ways. You'll ride a little bit, you might fall down, you'll get back up again. The best thing I can tell you is build a great slide deck.
Jeff Brandeis: Use that as your crutch, as your training wheels. Don't put too much on the slides practice before you do your 1st webinar, get some feedback. That's what I do as a coach with people. When we do webinar coaching, it's transforming yourself and getting the confidence of changing the screens, going to PowerPoint, coming back, going to your iPad.
Jeff Brandeis: There's so much that you could be going on. And it's not just about your voice and your, what you're saying, it's about all the ancillary things that you want pulled into your, because you said it earlier, you don't want to have death by PowerPoint either, where you just PowerPoint, PowerPoint, PowerPoint, PowerPoint.
Jeff Brandeis: But we all [00:22:00] start somewhere. We all crawled before we walked, we all fell down before we walk, we ride a bike, we fall down. You will live through your first webinar, you will survive through your first webinar. I really suggest the I and I still do it today. I record my webinars. I go back and listen to 'em.
Jeff Brandeis: I watch 'em. And honestly, it's no different than any professional athlete, professional any profession. It's always about self-improvement. I'm looking for someone to help guide you to, to getting that improved process. Yeah. Yeah.
Chris Hughes: I love that. I have heard that before when like talking about presenting on stage to people that record yourself listening to yourself, and I'm somewhere, someone that spends a lot of time preparing if I'm preparing a presentation at a conference or even a webinar, whatever it is, my wife will have a go at me about how long I'm taking to get ready.
Chris Hughes: For me, who wasn't a natural public speaker, I got confidence out of knowing my content inside out. And [00:23:00] just knowing, I'd rehearse questions that people might ask me and have an answer to everything that could possibly happen. And so I love that idea of recording back. I could never do it because I was so sick of everything I'd read that I'd record it and just a couple of times I'd do it, but it's such great advice, isn't it?
Chris Hughes: You pick up whether you're actually engaging or putting people to sleep or whatever it is. So that that's really good advice.
Jeff Brandeis: I'll tell you this. I'm sorry. No, you go. So early in my career, I tell this story once in a while. I was young. First, one of my first live presentations in front of a group. I went, I had to drive to where I had to go.
Jeff Brandeis: It snowed that night before. So I wore my snow boots and I got dressed up. That was the time. When we wore ties and jackets, we were professional, got dressed in the morning and I was looking for my dress shoes and there you go. Oh, so I wanted to wear my boots to my presentation because I had nothing else to wear.
Jeff Brandeis: And on a break, [00:24:00] and so I stayed behind the podium and on the break, it just happened to be walking by some folks and, um, they didn't see me and they were talking about, boy, that guy had to move away from that podium, boy, is he as dry as dry paint, then there's nothing coming out of him. So I got some honest non solicited.
Jeff Brandeis: Feedback as we came back in the afternoon and yeah, my, I think my energy level probably dropped a little bit because I got kicked in the gut, but I walked away from that presentation going, Jeff, that will never happen again. I will never. Be my, where I, someone would say I would let the paint dry. That's what it was like listening to that guy.
Jeff Brandeis: Okay. I swore after that I would do more engagement. I would do, and no matter if I was wearing snow boots or if I was wearing flip flops, then now I was not going to be in a spot in a live [00:25:00] place on stage ever again. Yeah. I got feedback, but you take it and you move along.
Chris Hughes: There's nothing like the pain of a, of a public embarrassment to make you, to make you motivated.
Chris Hughes: It can be inspiring. I've been to multiple presentations and watch speakers and webinars over the years and the people that are good at it are just masters and you walk away inspired from it. So it is really an awesome skill to have, particularly if you're trying to build a business or deliver, you know, sort of.
Chris Hughes: Have impact on your client's lives. Yeah. What you're delivering is amazing, Jeff. So I'll wrap it up here because I'm conscious of keeping you for too long. How can our listeners get in contact with you or learn more because there's obviously a lot to learn and like, this is your business. This is what you do.
Chris Hughes: So if you could just give us some details of how people could follow you or how they might take the next step.
Jeff Brandeis: Sure. Thanks so much for asking Chris. You're welcome to actually go to my [00:26:00] website, which is engagingwebinars. com. And you scroll down a little bit, there's actually a free guide that we put out there for everyone, for all of our listeners to download is a guide to webinar mastery.
Jeff Brandeis: So all you got to do is put your name and email in and a nice little 7, 8 page guide will help you into your webinar mastery. And that's on there if you'd like to book an appointment, it's free consultation. Let's just talk, let's see how I can help you improve your webinars and, or your presentations or your PowerPoints or anything dealing with doing a presentation.
Chris Hughes: I love that. Yeah. And we'll, we'll put those details in the show notes too, Jeff.
Jeff Brandeis: Or LinkedIn would be the other aspect of life, obviously you can put Jeff Brandeis on LinkedIn. Yeah. There's the, welcome to connect over there as well. And actually, if you go to LinkedIn, I'm actually doing a a webinar next week on Thursday.
Jeff Brandeis: It's I know it might be a little time zone challenging, but I'd be happy to provide anyone the [00:27:00] recording of it. If you would like to see it as well, I'll actually demonstrate some of the things that we actually.
Chris Hughes: Yeah, that'd be amazing. That'd be amazing. So that'll be, that'll be great. We'll put your LinkedIn details in the show notes and that'll be perfect for people to check out.
Jeff Brandeis: That'd be awesome. Thanks, Chris.
Chris Hughes: All right. Thanks for your time, Jeff.
Jeff Brandeis: Likewise. Appreciate it.
Chris Hughes: Do you find this podcast valuable? There may be other nutrition professionals out there will also. If you like, share and subscribe, it's going to help other nutrition professionals make an impact on the world, just like you.
Chris Hughes: Thanks.
