by
Caz Taylor

If a business like yours cannot afford to alienate big portions of your consumer/client base due to politics, allow a few insights which you may find helpful. This, from a video producer who doubles as a journalist.

As a member of the media, complete with a number of press credentials, I was privileged to cover events that happened in Washington DC during the first week of January 2021. Here is my business “take away.”

Unless making your stand on one political side or the other is more important than (or defined by) your consumer/client base… it is best not to indulge in that conversation, whenever possible.

In my coverage, I witnessed levels of rhetoric on both sides which could take your “Covid-challenged” business and decimate it all the more.

In fact, it may be advisable to revisit your business statement and premise. If customer service is a cornerstone, stick to that as if your company’s life depends upon it. It just may.  Typically, your clientele are not patronizing you for your political stand, but for your product or service. Or people. In fact, your bigger draw may be in that you are a “politics free zone.”

My BizVid Communications partner and I treat every client and prospect with the highest respect and integrity, regardless. We try not to get sucked into fruitless debates. In the end, cool heads and hearts will prevail and foster your greatest success.

To this end, I conducted a little experiment during my DC media coverage. Understanding that my press badges could illicit comments, even vitriol from either political side, I engaged with people from both political points of view with my press passes showing. Then, I engaged with the same kinds of people without my press clearances on display. I was the same friendly person I always am, but as soon as I allowed myself to be defined by my press badges, the receptivity was split, depending on the polarized side with which I interacted.

As a customer/consumer dependent business, the message should be quite clear. Do what your company or organization was built to do. Don’t alienate, serve. Do not proselytize or seek to change someone’s mind, promote the kind of experience or environment for which someone will desire to come back.

In this current business climate, both you and your employees should be keeping and growing your business, and not making a political stand. Here is to your great success in the midst of challenging times. If that success could use proven video approaches, you know where to look.

Welcome to another BizVid Communications Premiere Pro video tutorial.  Today I’m going to show you how to create bullet points inside the Essential Graphics panel. 

Before I learned this technique, I found that the creation of bullet points for me was stressful and tedious. As you will see, making a bullet point is very simple… so let’s get started. 

Let’s imagine that a hypothetical client has asked me to add some bullet points to their video. We’re editing with Adobe Premiere Pro, so we start by locating the Essential Graphics panel. 

First, ensure that “num lock” is turned on.  (The “num lock” key is the top left key of the numerical keypad.)

Next, hold down the “Alt” key and press “7” on the numerical keypad. 

Then, type any desired text for your bullet point and press “enter” to finish.

To make another bullet point, simply repeat the Alt+7 keystoke.

That’s all there is to it.

In other words Alt+7 = Bullet Point

So simple and stress-free.  I hope that you’ve learned from this tutorial.

Until next time, thanks for watching and happy editing.    

By BizVid co-owner, Caz Taylor

Writing to you, as a business person, I suspect you have more question marks than exclamation marks in your plans for maintaining and growing your company in these “COVID-ified” times. In many ways, you may feel that the deck has been unfairly stacked against you and fellow small businesses. Perhaps it has been.

Please allow this brief blog entry to serve as an encouragement. An inspiration. A motivation for you and your organization’s enhanced success moving forward.

Sometimes, the best communications tool is to use examples and stories of others learning to survive and even thrive in antagonistic environments, as we are in. May I draw your attention to a beloved friend of my partner, Bill Gruber, and mine? This person and his “roaring twenties/mafia themed” restaurants, Notorious Burgers, are located in Carlsbad, California. His name is Brian Gruber.

You have likely observed that Brian’s last name is the same as my associate’s last name. Partner Bill is Brian’s father. This relationship puts us in a position to observe, provide video support and otherwise encourage, when possible and appropriate. This relationship gives us firsthand knowledge of the ebbs and flows in a promising business model and the threat of seeing a great idea snuffed out by a debilitating pandemic and less than compassionate regulations.

Bear with me as I present the story and provide a closing “moral to the story” to end this blog. If the “business closing” plague crippled commerce, the seemingly unfair local and state regulations nearly terminally strained the comeback of many businesses like yours and Brian’s.

Brian is one of the most creative and resilient business owners I have seen. As are you. To people like him and you, devastating challenges should really be taken as exhilarating opportunities to give you benefits and approaches which will separate you from the competition and enhance your success, rather than hamper it.

I will give you two examples born by Mr. Gruber and his restaurants. Government mandates to restrict inside dining afforded Brian the opportunity to expand his primary location by enhancing his tables and service to include an outside experience. This was presented to customers not as an inconvenience, rather a benefit of taking their dining experience “to the street,” almost literally.

His second location was within a “restaurant row” kind of a setting named the “Windmill Food Hall.” While the whole restauranteur clientele braced for the impact of COVID restrictions, and many closed down, Brian made lemonade out of lemons, so to speak. Instead of being “grilled” by restraints of COVID and government bureaucracy, Brian’s strategy turned to “barbeque.”

Discovering there were no longer any restaurants in the area offering barbeque, Mr. Gruber altered his menu to command the attention of hungry and cooped up diners. He revisited his menu and marketing approach when he realized he could tastefully corner the “barbeque” market. This decision and his flexibly creative strategy is being met with resounding success.