Ep# 152: The biggest difference in small businesses is the business owner with Dr. Stefan Zavalin

Hey there!

Welcome to another episode. Today, I had the pleasure of chatting with Stefan, who is not only a professional unicorn but also a video marketer extraordinaire. We dove into his fascinating journey from physical therapy to the world of video marketing, and let me tell you, it's a story you don't want to miss!

Stefan emphasized the value of being true to yourself and embracing your individuality. He believes that authenticity is key in everything we do, especially when it comes to video marketing. He shared some incredible insights about overcoming challenges, like how he prepared for a TEDx talk as a blind individual. Talk about inspiring!

One of the things that stood out to me was Stefan's emphasis on differentiation in small businesses. He stressed the importance of finding your unique selling point and using it to stand out from the crowd. And you know what? He's right! In a world full of competition, being different is what will make you memorable.

But it wasn't all business talk. Stefan also touched on the power of personal connection. He believes that building genuine relationships with your audience is crucial, and I couldn't agree more. After all, people connect with people, not just products or services. So, let your humanity shine through in your business approach!

If you're looking for some inspiration and practical tips to level up your video marketing game, this episode is a must-listen. Stefan's passion and expertise are contagious, and I guarantee you'll walk away feeling motivated to embrace your unique traits and bring your authentic self to the forefront of your business.

So grab your favorite beverage, sit back, and enjoy this enlightening conversation with Stefan on the Hello C.S. Dorsey podcast!

Where to find Stefan:

Website: https://www.stefanzavalin.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100092042015304

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stefan.zavalin/

Transcript

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Welcome back to another episode of the Hello Sears Dorsey podcast. I have Stephan on the show today. How are you doing today? I am fantastic. And I'm not just saying that because I'm on the show. I'm actually doing fantastic. It's a great day. That's awesome to hear. I'm so happy to hear that. So tell everyone who you are and what you do. I am the professional unicorn and I wear that moniker very, very happily and proudly and the reason that I call myself the professional unicorn is largely because I think what makes businesses and everybody unique is the human beings. And it's, there's something different and unique and special about each and every human being. I, I, however, hold a very strong idea of the fact that not everybody is special, but everybody has the potential to be, and I think that's a very important distinction, because we've all been in those groups or somewhere where everybody, somebody goes, everybody here is amazing and fantastic and great, and you're looking at two people and you're going, they aren't, they only listen to themselves, they never actually want to collaborate, they're awful people. Unfortunately, that's the reality, I believe the potential that they could be better. What that looks like in my actual work in terms of what I, what I do is I help people convey their selves of who they, the human side of them on video and being able to capture that. So I'm not necessarily speaking coach. I actually capture it with them. I just, I'm just let them be human with me in the moment and then capture it and show it to everybody else and they go, yes, I connected this human and they're amazing. And so it turns out to be this amazing sort of video marketing that I do. So let's talk about the inspiration behind you starting your business. What was that like for you? So I've been doing videos since I was well in middle school. I just always loved doing video, but I never went to school for video. So it was never something that I like to do. That I was trained to do, but I like to do for every single class project or anything. I got my doctorate in physical therapy and even in grad school, getting my doctorate, anytime they said class project, I went, so video, you said, you said I could do a video, right? And there's some hilarious times where it was groups and we would all sit down and I would say, we're doing a video. So, and it's very interesting that even though I went into the clinic and I did all these things. I didn't consider how much I love doing video and making videos, but also being creative. So there's definitely this other piece of, I call myself a creative communicator\ in this part of saying, just because somebody else says a thing this way, doesn't mean you have to say it this way whatsoever. Actually, I argue you shouldn't say it that way. You should say it your own specific way. And so it's been this journey of bringing all of these things sort of together and saying. We really cherish when somebody is themselves and we go, wow, they're like me there and I can connect to them because of that. How do we communicate that to other people? And so that's been my, my journey is, is allowing others to communicate that to everybody else. Yeah. When I was working my 9 years, it wasn't until recently, like the last 2, 3 years that I was there that when I was doing the loan videos myself I kind of like, sort of introduced like, hey, we should definitely record this SOP, or we should definitely record this training and I'm like, how come they don't have any loom or anything where we could just actually just. Record. So I had to like figure it out and work around it and use zoom. And before I left, people were asking me, Hey, Candace, how do you record your SOPs? Oh, I can do a training for that. So it's so funny. I actually really love doing video. I really do. I don't do enough. And there is something special about video now in, in zoom world for entrepreneurs, especially and service based. Tripoli quadruple. So you kind of you already are on video for many people that might be networking or or doing going to webinars or anything like that. I will say my favorite part is talking to clients or potential clients. And when they go, we're on a zoom call, and they will say, Yeah, I don't feel comfortable on camera. And I go, you're on camera right now, so I, I don't know what you're talking about. Like you're, you're literally there on camera. And many people on Zoom calls and networking events are just saying, yeah, I don't feel comfortable on camera. That's not the actual excuse. The excuse is that you're probably afraid of what are people going to say when they see the content that I put out. I'm going to get judged by how I look and all these. And it's, it, those are the things you're afraid of not being on camera because you're already doing it. Can you remember a time in your business or starting out where you had a hello moment? Yeah. Story time. So, I, I went to school for, for physical therapy. And during that time, I actually got a parasite in my eye, which rendered me blind, long story short, over, over various... Surgeries and all that kind of stuff. I still finished my doctorate. I still went into the clinic. But documentation was incredibly hard. So, inevitably, I, after several years, I said, That's it. I'm done. I'm going to start my own business. And I said, Well, I have this degree. I need to use my degree. And so I started a business all about reducing how much we're sitting. I wrote a book called Sit Less. I did a TEDx talk called Move More, Sit Less. You're noticing a pattern. And I did a show called Scared Sit Less. And that is... Funny. I don't care who says otherwise, but it was the show. That was honestly the hello moment. I call it a show because it was a virtual event. It was live every single time I had a green screen, I had music, I had jokes. There was interactive pieces where the audience also got to choose their own adventure of where the show went. So it was different every single time that I did it. Cause I did it live yet. It was still very much educational about the reduction of sitting and how much it's impacting us, what we need to do mindset shifts around it. And at the end of all of it, I don't think I had a single person message me or talk to me later and say, You've really changed my mind around how much I'm sitting at work. But pretty much every single person said, The hell was that show? How did you do that? That was, where did you learn to do all these things? Why aren't you doing that? This is incredible. What is all of this? And I went, Oh, hello, why am I, why am I doing this thing just because I have a degree as opposed to this thing that people are just being dazzled and, and, and see as this amazing thing that I've put together. And so that's where I kind of shifted to this idea of, okay, well, what can I make? How can I use video creatively with other people? And initially to be fair I started out as thinking I'm going to create some content posts for people. I picked a couple dozen entrepreneurs, some I knew, some I found on social media. As soon as I gave them the ideas, those that implemented them because life, they just didn't, they didn't do it. Don't we all kind of see that in ourselves. Five to 10 times more engagement, more views, everything. And I went, Oh my goodness, I'm a genius. I'm going to be a social media marketer. And a week later I said, you're not a genius. And my Lord, I do not want to be a social media marketer. And so it, it brought me to the point of what do I actually want to do? And what is the whole point of why, why the hello moment of the catalyst of scared sit lists. And it was that piece of, I want to be creative with the video things that I have with, with the people and use what we have and, and make it really just human and fun. While while educational, so yeah, that was the roundabout huge hello moment with a lot of tiny hello moments all throughout it as well. I want to point out a couple of things how you at first initially you got your doctorate. You set out to do, you know, the sitting. And then it turns to something else and I want people to understand and realize that you don't have to have it all figured out. You don't have to stick with 1 thing and that's the thing that I struggle with because, you know, a lot of people say you need to. Honing on your purpose, you need to hone in on that. Well, what if my purpose is just doing a whole bunch of stuff? Like, no, trying different things, being creative, you know, using that creative genius that I have. And I want to just, you know, mention that because I know that's where a lot of people get stuck at. Yeah speaking of getting stuck, I want to pull back a little bit too, because I glossed over this whole idea of being blind. This is obviously a big obstacle for a lot of people, and, and a lot of times we have obstacles in our lives or in our businesses, and we go, Ugh, I can't do it. And with something like blindness immediately, the metaphor I like to use is people think that there's a thousand things you could do in your life and oh no, I went, I went blind. Now there are only 200 things I could do in my life. That's not true. We think it's that drastic. Maybe now there's 950 things that you could now do. It is, it is such a, and, and that's blindness. That's a big limitation. And, and people sometimes really undercut themselves on even smaller obstacles that aren't really that big. We kind of make a mountain out of a molehill. And I'll show you the, the great example that I, I just sits with me all the time is when I did my TEDx talk. For those that don't know, TEDx talks are scripted which means you have to write a script, submit a script, stick to the script. We wrote 27 scripts. That was a nightmare, especially as somebody who's blind. I was, like, really close to the computer screen just, like, typing them out, making all those edits, but we did it. You have to have the whole thing memorized. And there's no way that I'm going to be reading the piece of paper a week before rehearsal. So I memorized mine way ahead of time. And I was already practicing various gestures, other things that you're going to be doing on stage. We got to rehearsals a week before the event and there were At least half of the speakers that still had their papers and whenever they forgot their, their part in the talk, they would have to look down because I know I couldn't do that because my vision limited me from having access to that. My talk was so much better because I had to over prepare. And so it was the silver lining to an obstacle that for many people, they would just say, I can't even do a TEDx talk. It actually made me do a better one. So let's talk about the biggest difference between small business is the business owner. Can you talk more about that? 100 percent because I see this all the time. You talk to small business owners say like they build websites and you go, so what makes you different? Oh, I build the best websites. With all the love in the world, you don't. I just, just let's be honest. Like, most likely, an agency that charges 100, 000 for a website probably builds better websites than you as a small business owner who maybe has a team of three, or whatever else it might be. That doesn't mean you don't build good websites. Right. And that also doesn't mean that you're not different. There are other things about you and about the way you build websites and what you see and how you experience it that are going to make you different of why people should choose you. And that's one, I also love using coaches as the same example. We tend to pick our coaches, not just because of their expertise, but largely because of the human being they are, because we connect to them. And that's why we can have so many coaches. Granted, many of them are broke, but so many successful coaches as well that are out there. It just seems that everybody calls themselves a coach nowadays. So this brings to view. So what is the difference? And for me, the difference is the human being. And that's where you hear a lot of times people say authenticity, be authentic, and that's what you want to be. And then people will connect to you. Tiny soapbox. I like to differentiate between authenticity and humanity. And I use Taylor Swift for this example, because my wife loves Taylor Swift. So this is authenticity. You get a ticket to a Taylor Swift concert. I don't know what you had to, you had to rob a bank to buy it because they're so expensive nowadays. You go to the concert, you're standing there, or sitting, you're waiting, Taylor comes out on stage and goes, I've had a hard day. My boyfriend said something mean to me. My throat kind of hurts. I really don't feel like performing today. Thank you. Good night. Leaves. That was authentic. That was 100 percent authentic. Taylor did not feel like doing it. You're not happy. As the receiver from a business side of things, you are not happy as the consumer of that. Flip side humanity. Taylor comes out on stage, says, I've had a rough day. My boyfriend said something mean to me. My throat kind of hurts. I don't really want to do this, but I'm going to push through for you because you deserve the best performance I could possibly give. That may not be the best Taylor Swift show ever, but it's probably going to be one of the best ones you've ever gone to. Because for that moment, you connected to the human side of Taylor. You can add it to the human side of whoever that business owner is. And so when it comes to, if you're not a performer, if you are a website designer, then it comes to the point of saying, you know, I just love designing websites for dogs. Like I'm a big dog lover. Great. Then that's, that is the part. It doesn't mean you can't design other websites, but that's your connection piece. Right. That's how you showcase it and then bring people in. And sometimes people can say, okay, that's your niche. That's your, whatever that might be. But the piece is that it's your personality, that it's not a front that you have to put on for brand sake, your brand becomes you. And then when people really enjoy and connect with you as a human being, they're not going to choose another small business for that service, because that other business is not you. Awesome. So any last minute advice you have for our listeners out there? I get a lot of questions about video and being, being yourself, quote unquote, on video. And that's very tough for people. I think the advice of be yourself is not. It's good, but it's not complete because it's not a switch that you flip to just be yourself. That, that's, that's not how it works because yourself is under layers and layers of social conditioning childhood trauma, like all this other stuff. And so you slowly uncover what yourself is like, right? For me, it took a parasite in my eye and then years of working in the clinic and other things until I slowly just started pulling back what I really am. I still don't think I'm fully to that point. So my biggest thing there is, just because if you try a video and you go, that doesn't look like me, it doesn't mean it's bad. It means, okay, great, you've maybe uncovered the first layer, go to the next layer, go to the next layer. But at no point should you go, oh, that person is doing videos like that, that's how I'm gonna do that. You can do a version of that. Do your version of that, but don't ever point at other people and say, that's who I am. Because then you're not going to be able to stand out and truly be yourself. Yes. So where can everyone find you? I'm on all the socials with Stephan Zavalin. You will see a great purple background. There's going to be purple like everywhere all the time. And then StephanZavalin. com. You'll get to see a bunch of unicorns. Yes. And then there's an ebook if you're going. I, I want... Content ideas. There's a free little ebook of 101 creative content ideas on there as well. We'll definitely link those up in the show notes. Well, Stephens, thank you so much for being on the show today. I really enjoyed myself. Thank you so much. Thank you. This was a blast.