Many creatives are more interested in their own creative process than if what they produced actually engages the audience and produces an increase in sales.

WHY?

I cannot emphasize enough how no matter what you are doing for a business, the question has always got to be “Why are you doing such and such?”

No matter what I am producing for a business customer, I must know how this is going to help them increase their sales.

For more than 12 years I have been helping Chick-fil-A. What I have been doing for those twelve years? Founder of Chick-fil-A S. Truett Cathy said to all his employees, “If you are not selling chicken then you better be helping someone that is.”

How do you know if you are helping a business increase their sales? Ask the customer.

So, this week I went back and interviewed Mark Wegman, the co-owner of Adele’s on Canton in Roswell, GA. I wanted to know how well the video we did a couple weeks ago to sell more food. Listen to Mark here in this video.

Here are some photos Dorie Griggs, my wife, took of me setting up and interviewing Mark.

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Now if you missed the original video that I posted here is that video so you can see what we did to help Adele’s on Canton flourish during these difficult days of “Safe Distancing” we live in.

When you look for help to make your business thrive in today’s climate be sure and hire someone who can help you craft your message as well as get it out on social media for you. Call me.

For the foreseeable future many of us are going to be in virtual meetings on software like Zoom.

First get prepared before the meeting. Open Zoom (https://zoom.us/). If you are invited someone will send you a link. Just follow those instructions. Go to their website if you want to host meeting.

Once you have it on your computer open the Zoom App and you should see something like this.

Then go to the top left and under Zoom click on “preferences’

That will open this screen

We want to go to three of the icons on the left to be sure you are ready.

You can see now in the screen what everyone else will see. You can see my settings here. Those are the defaults. You can change them if you think you need to do so. The great thing is you can test all this out before anyone sees this during your meeting.

The next HUGE thing to check on the left is Audio.

You can be sure that the speaker and microphone settings are setup correctly.

I use wireless USB headphones [Sony Noise Cancelling Headphones WHCH700N] that have a microphone built into them. Great for many reasons, but I just select them from the pull down menu for speaker and microphone. Then I test my talking and adjust the microphone. I usually just play some music to test the speaker level.

I recommend sitting near a window with your face pointed to the window.

DON’T HAVE BACK TO WINDOW

I would even recommend putting some lights shining on your face as I have done here.

For $49.95 you can get this small LED light by Lume Cube to use.

“Virtual Background”

Now that you look good and sound good, you need to look into changing your background during the meeting.

Go back to the preferences and click on “Virtual Background”

You can pick anyone of those backgrounds that came with the software or you can create your own.

This is where I went and created my own background. You could just substitute your room for another one.

I wanted to try to promote my brand throughout so I created this background. I recommend using 2,880 x 1,800 for the dimensions.

My first attempt I had all the contact information at the bottom, but I quickly realized my body will block most of it. I wanted the background to work with me in front of it.

So this is what everyone was seeing while I am on zoom. The great thing on these calls is you may need to step away. Well your image you created becomes that “Billboard” during the meeting.

So this is how I looked this morning during the meeting to everyone else.

If you are on a long virtual meeting, maybe you have a few backgrounds ready to go to mix things up. I noticed when people change their backgrounds people are not just noticing, they comment.

I you need a Zoom Meeting Background created I can do that for you. You send me your logo and other graphics you have and for $20 I will create you a custom background to use.