How To Batch 50 TikToks In A Weekend With Helena Bowen

TRANSCRIPT AUTOMATICALLY GENERATED [00:00:00] Diane: Hey, Hey, today's guest Helena Bowen is a speaking coach and speech writer who helps entrepreneurs explode their impacts. And she's back on the show because she won't stop telling me to get on Tik TOK. And I figure if I'm resisting it, I can't be alone. Hey, Helen know, welcome back to the show. [00:00:13] Helena: hello, Diane. I am so excited. And I'm so excited that you are finally letting me talk about Tik TOK, because all I want to talk about is tech talk and all I've been talking to you about is tic talk. And I think if you're listening to this, maybe you have some of the same tendencies and resistances as Diane does. So you're going to love this. [00:00:31] Diane: you were on episode four, you were one of my very first guests. But I still wanna start with a bit about your business journey so that if anyone hasn't gone that far back yet, they still get to meet you. [00:00:43] Helena: great. Yeah. So I intended to work in Hollywood. I went to film school, graduated from film school, moved out to Los Angeles. My plan was to. As a director of photography, cinematographer, and Hollywood maybe eventually become a director or producer or something like that. And so I got out here to LA, started working on sets as a camera assistant. And that's the person who does all the very technical stuff with the cameras to you set up the camera, you measure the focus, you change the lens, you make sure it's working, you clean it, all of those things. It's also the person who does the little clapperboard in front of the lens. And I loved being on set, but I very quickly discovered that I hated working in the camera department. And the reason why is because I expected it to be a very creative job. Like I love taking photos. I love kind of the art side of photography, but it was an extremely technical job, especially because most film cameras, these days aren't film, it's digital cameras, which are basically really, really, really incredible computers. And so it was almost more. Computer science job than anything, which is something I have literally no interest in. So after, you know, a month or two doing that in Hollywood, I was like little like this, but all of my friends were also doing it. So I really felt like I had to stick with it. Like, I didn't feel like it was an option to not like it. So I continued doing that for, I dunno, maybe a year. And then kind of miraculously actually injured my back ended up having to do physical therapy for eight weeks. I know it's a weird thing to say miraculously injured my back, but I think in hindsight it was a really good thing, even though at the time it sucked. But during that time, when I had to do physical therapy, I basically couldn't do any sort of real physical labor and working on set and the camera department was very physical. You're constantly lifting things, moving things. And so in that time it really forced me to. Reflect on my situation and start to recognize that I really wasn't enjoying that job. So in that time I ended up switching over to the production department. So I started working in as an assistant director in Hollywood, and I loved it. The assistant director is basically the person who oversees everyone on set. So, you know, every, everything everyone's doing you're talking to the wardrobe department, the makeup department, the camera department, art department, everyone, and kind of coordinating everything. And I thought it was a really, really fun job, but I actually hated the lifestyle of that as well. And something people don't know, I don't think until you work in Hollywood, is that the average working hours of someone on set is a minimum of 12 and realistically more like 14, 16 hours. A lot of the time, five days a week, sometimes six days a week, you just have this totally unpredictable unsustainable lifestyle. And I started looking to the people who are much older than me, the people who were, you know, I, in the time I was in my early twenties, people who were like 50 and seeing how really, really burned out they were. But also the fact that a lot of them didn't have kids or families, or if they did have kids or families, they didn't get to see them almost ever. And so I started thinking, Hmm, I don't know, even though I love this job, I don't know if this is going to work out. So in that time, one of the things that I was really passionate about and just kind of loved is like a little side thing was watching Ted talks. This was after the time that Ted made the decision to post all of their talks online for free, which when they did, that was pretty revolutionary. Of course. Now it's commonplace to see content for free all the time online. And so I'd been watching all these tests. And thinking, hi, you know, maybe I should get involved with this. And my original intent was to maybe do a TEDx event in LA or something just as a little side activity to what I was already doing in Hollywood, especially because there's a ton of crossover in those skills, right. You're writing a speech in Hollywood and you're writing a script for a Ted talk, right. You're producing a movie, you're producing essentially a theater production for Ted talks. And so that was my intent was to just dabble in it as a hobby. So I went to Vancouver to get the training from Ted on how to become a TEDx organizer and then started volunteering. I volunteered job quickly spiraled into something massive while I was working at HBO. And then eventually I left HBO to start my own business. So now I'm a speaker, coach and speech writer, and I help not just Ted and TEDx speakers, although that's probably the majority of my business at this point, but I help really any professional entrepreneur executive prepare for really important speaking engagements. [00:05:32] Diane: wow. I always like it when somebody has like a really unusual backstory, so tech talk, you have been let's face it banging on to me about tech talk full probably since your last episode a year ago. And what finally got my attention was you telling me that you had batch. 50 tech talks in a day and a weekend, something like that. That became more interesting because Tik TOK seems so time consuming. I love watching tech talks. I find them highly entertaining. I have my favorite people, but I'm always like this mistake. You so long to put this together with all the like little editing and all the little finicky bits. So please explain how you did 50 tech talks in a day. [00:06:15] Helena: Okay, well, first of all, thank you for letting me talk to you about this formally, because I'm just so thrilled to just dive into it. Okay. So here's the thing that's interesting about tech talk. Is amazing. And I really hope they don't change it. I hope they don't go the Instagram route of messing everything up because the tech shop app itself is awesome and makes it really, really, really easy to create and edit videos. And that's something that I found really interesting when I was first a Tik TOK user and wanted to get into making content, but I didn't really know where to start. I talked to some of my friends who were already doing well on Tech-Talk and I expected them to tell me that they were like setting up their camera recording a bunch of takes editing. It kind of like people will do for YouTube. IETV and almost all of them said, oh no, we just use the app. And so most creators that I've spoken to are using the app to make their videos and the. Is designed to make tick talks, which sounds really obvious. Right. But it's designed to do the thing and it does it really, really well. So it's actually very easy to do it quickly and it's easier than ever now that they've added some functions like captioning right back in the early days, a year ago, when I was making tech talks, I had to caption everything by hand. And that was really the most time consuming thing. Of course you don't have to caption tech talks, but I think it's a good idea just from an accessibility point. But now they have auto captioning, so it makes it super easy. Really. You could record an infinite number of tick talks in a day, if you wanted to. That weekend that I made the 50 tech talks in a weekend, it was actually in a day. And I think it was over the course of, I don't know, six hours or so, and it was easy and also really fun. And I think that's part of the reason why I keep going back to tech talk is because I find it fun. I know we had this kind of come to Jesus talk over new year. And by that, I mean, I was like boxing you in a panic. And the problem that I've always had with social media is that I don't find a lot of social media fun. Like I personally, if I didn't have a business, I would absolutely not be on Facebook or Instagram. Probably not be on LinkedIn either. I don't find either of them, any of them remotely fun at all. Like I just don't want to be on them. Whereas Tech-Talk, I love being on it. I love creating content. I find it really fun and really easy. And so just thinking about the sustainability of my business, it doesn't feel like a chore to me to make tick talks. Whereas it feels like a chore to me to write an Instagram post. [00:08:52] Diane: okay, so let's talk details. I like a system, walk me through how you recorded 50 tech talks in six hours. What exactly are these tech talks? And. How are you creating them? [00:09:05] Helena: Great question. Cause that actually covers a lot of misconceptions that I hear and from people, because I think the media has done a horrible job of representing what tick-tock actually is. I think because of a lot of ageism in the media take talk is so much more than dancing and lip-syncing of course, tic talk at its start in the world of dancing and lip sinking. And when you first download the app and you first look at it, that's the first thing they're going to give you is dancing. And lip-syncing because that's what the app is known for. However, at this point on Tik TOK, anything you could imagine on any social media platform. Is on tech talk. You're going to find every truly bizarre niche imaginable. And so when I'm doing it for my business, most of the time, I'm just doing, talking head type stuff, talking at you. Like I am talking right now. In the early days of me trying out tick talk, I kind of dabbled on and off. I would say for a year before, I really got serious about using it for my business and really started to figure out what works and what works for me. And I tried doing things like the kind of cheesy, you know, like bobble and point to different words on the screen. I tried doing lip sinking stuff to funny bits did not try dancing and I never will. That's the line in the sand for me. You will not see me dance on camera period. But what I found is that my audience doesn't really want those things. And that's great because then I don't have to put a lot of effort into them. When you think about spending a ton of time on Tech-Talk creating one single piece of content, it probably would be thing where you're dancing and you have to learn a certain set of choreography and you have to maybe do a bunch of different takes of it, or it might be where your lip sinking and you have to get it perfectly timed up with something. But for talking head stuff, if you're doing a 15 second or one minute video, it takes 15 seconds or one minute, right? Maybe a little bit more if you want to put a tiny bit of planning in, but it really doesn't take that long. And so I always am a huge advocate of batching things. And so what I will do on Tik TOK is I will batch a session, right? So I'll maybe be collecting ideas, throwing them into a spreadsheet over time, and then. Sit down and batch a crazy number of tick talks in one day. And then I have content for however long I want. [00:11:27] Diane: I think what's interesting is that you think that 15 seconds takes 15 seconds. For me, it would take me much longer to cut down what I say into 15 seconds then probably any other part of the. [00:11:41] Helena: Okay, fine. So you do four takes that's what a minute. [00:11:44] Diane: fair. [00:11:45] Helena: Yeah. [00:11:46] Diane: So what took you six hours then? [00:11:47] Helena: I good point good point. Yeah, I guess it did take a little bit longer than 15 seconds. Although most of the. You know, maybe I want to change my outfit. Maybe I want to change the camera position. One thing that I love about Tik TOK is that they have an amazing array of filters, kind of like Snapchat and they make it really easy to do kind of this green screen function. So I'll use that a ton that takes slightly more time, but on the whole it's really quick and really easy to make content. And the interesting thing about tech talking, one of the things that I love about it is actually it has this very kind of casual, low production value style. It's interesting, like on Instagram you are intentionally trying to be perfect and I've noticed on Tik TOK, people are almost intentionally being imperfect. So for example, one part of tech talks style is they really have this kind of jump Cutty look where you'll say half a sentence and then it cuts. And you'll say another half sentence. It cuts in it. They'll say another half of a sentence and. It's odd. Like my husband pointed out to me, he's like, why do people do that? And I was like, I guess everyone does that on Tik TOK. And I've adopted that style as well, but the reason, but it makes it so easy to record because you just have to say half a sentence and then you have a second to think, and then you say another half of a sentence, and then you have a second to think, and then you say another half of a sentence. It makes it just so fast and easy and you don't have to have something perfectly dialed in or perfectly memorized in order to get it right. [00:13:11] Diane: And 15 seconds versus, so it's recently gone to like a minute, but everything that I have read and absorbed about tech talk is that the average tick-tock is watched for about seven seconds. So would you advocate getting better at the shorter 15 second ones first or going full on into a minute with a strong hook in the first. [00:13:32] Helena: Well, as someone whose entire life revolves around really short form content like 10 minute, eight minute, 12 minute Ted talks, I would say shorter is almost always better. And it's interesting because tick-tock has recently rolled out to some creators, not all creators, but some creators have now gotten three minute videos and I have watched it be a disaster. Because most people I think, fell in love with the app for its short form newness and the three-minute videos in my opinion is just too long. So I would focus on starting with 15 seconds or a minute, depending on what your account allows you and then maybe consider going longer than that. But part of the beauty of the app and the reason why I think it's so successful is it forces you to be so sick. And so people can really quickly decide for themselves. Do I want to keep watching her, do I not? Do I want to click into her profile and see way more of her stuff? And I think in general, starting on the short side, giving people like a little bit of an appetizer of what you're like, that will give them the choice then of do I want to see more? Do I want to see a longer video, for example? [00:14:39] Diane: right. I just wanted to go through all the practicalities first because I feel like. People's initial stumbling block of like, this is just going to take me forever to learn my shuffle footwork, to be able [00:14:49] Helena: Sure. [00:14:50] Diane: dance to some random song. And then how does that connect back to my business? [00:14:53] Helena: If you want to get started on tech talk, I'm not going to lie. It is going to take a second to learn it. There is a little bit of a learning curve, but once you learn it, it's incredibly fast and incredibly easy. So just stick with it through the learning curve. I had to go through it with you as well. But really what I would suggest for the first week, if you're thinking about using tech talk and even perhaps never used, it would be to download the app, create your account for your business, and then just start enjoying it. Enjoy it as a consumer first, maybe use it for a week, swipe through things, see what you like, see what you don't. Again, the first thing you're going to encounter is a bunch of dancing, teenage. But the incredible thing about tech talks algorithm and the reason why I just cannot say enough good things about it is it very quickly learns you and your preferences. And so in swiping, it's going to give you more and more and more of what you want. And so you're going to start to see what works, why you like it, why you don't and so on and so forth. So I would do that first and then learn how to use the editing function. And again, make a bunch of practice videos it's really easy to do. You're going to start to quickly learn how to use it. Maybe you watch a YouTube tutorial or two if you need to. But there is a little bit of a learning curve before you get to that point where it's just super easy and fast. But again, I think that learning curve would take half a day, maybe at the most. [00:16:13] Diane: So I think most. people start off thinking, okay, a tick-tock embarrassing. Cause you're going to feel like you're like dead dogs against some teenagers wedding. Then think that feels like a lot of work. And then think who's really going to buy anything off me on tech talk anyway. So I feel like we've covered the first two now. I'm kind of like All we using tech talk as a discoverability mechanism and sending people back to Instagram or our Facebook so that they can see all like quote unquote, real content to buy from us. Or are people actually buying from TechTalk [00:16:45] Helena: All of the above. I think Tech-Talk is by far the best platform for discoverability. And that's because again, the way the algorithm works is it's learning your preferences and serving you those things. Of course, there, there is such a thing as followers on tech talk, you can follow people, but followers as a concept is much less important on Tik TOK than it is, for example, on Instagram. And I think the beauty of Tik TOK, and I'm sure there'll be another app in three years. And I'll be back on your podcast talking about this, but the beauty of tick-tock right now is that it is, as everyone's been saying, we like the wild west, right? It's the early days of Instagram, for example, and for anyone who may be joined Instagram, quote unquote too late, like myself Tik TOK is an amazing opportunity because it's not a pay to play platform and it doesn't rely quite so much on followers. So you can get a ton of eyeballs on your content right away. So for example, I posted a video a while back about my business mentor, male Creasman and that video or that tech talk was viewed 120,000 times. It had 1100 shares. It had more than 400 comments, which is, I can't even describe how much better that is than any content I've ever posted on Instagram. But the really interesting thing is when you look at the analytics of that post, and when you look at the analytics of a lot of my posts, only 1% of the people who viewed that video were following me. Whereas on the flip side, on Instagram, if I look at my analytics, almost everyone who sees my stuff is following me. There's almost no discoverability anymore on Instagram, whereas on ticktack, it's the exact opposite. You'll constantly get an influx of new people, which is really, really helpful for your business. Of course, to your point, who cares if you're getting eyeballs on your stuff, if you're not selling anything while people are definitely selling a lot of things. In fact, one of my most popular tech talks was it. This myth. And I got hundreds of creators posting in my comments saying they're wrong. You know, I am selling tons and tons of things on Tik TOK. When I first started dabbling on tech talk in 2020, I was just kind of playing around with it. And then I really got serious about it in the beginning of January, 2021. And within a month, I'd already sold, you know, five figures worth of services to people who had found me on tech talk, who had not found me on any other platform. Never heard of me. They only heard about me on TechTalk and they then paid for a $5,000 program. So not only is it converting, but it can also convert on pretty high tickets. [00:19:27] Diane: I like all the sound of this. I like the discoverability side of things. I like the talking head. My preference for content is talking obviously, cause that's why I have a podcast. I like the people are going to buy based off of what I share. My question then comes to, so you are a speaking coach and a speech writer. You constantly have ideas about what to talk about for the less speaker universe people out there who are now thinking, okay, I can film a talking head tech talk, what do they film it about? [00:19:57] Helena: Well, it could be anything. It certainly, I would imagine you can talk about. And so you can talk about yourself. You can talk about your process. A lot of what I shared, just kind of fun facts, right? There's certainly a lot of people who do hardcore education on tic-tac. But for me, I've found the things that perform the best are kind of fun facts about my day fun facts, about my business, fun facts, about my clients. Interesting things I've learned from my clients. That's a lot of what performs really, really well. So it could be anything, but I would definitely test it out and then look at your analytics and see what's performing really, really well. I've learned over time that people don't want this. They do want this for me. I'm sure it's a little bit different for every single person. But the good thing about Tik TOK is it moves really fast. So it's really easy to learn what's working and what doesn't, especially because you can get a ton of eyeballs on your content. Whereas on Instagram, for example, again, because I joined so late, I had a really hard time telling what was working and what wasn't, because. I wasn't getting a lot of traction on anything. I was getting slightly more traction in one place, slightly less, but I couldn't make clear decisions. Whereas on tick talk, there's a huge difference between having a post that has 500,000 views versus a post that has 300 views. And you can always repost that post that has 300 views and try it again and see if it works. But I think it's just worth playing around with and seeing what works best for your. [00:21:26] Diane: so even if people were going to batch their whole first set, I mean, it's not challenged people to do 50 tech talks in six hours , but if somebody wanted to batch like say they were going to do 10 tech talk. Would you suggest that within those 10 tech talks, they try like a couple of different things like one video is straight talking head. One's got a little bit of something. One's got a filter, one's got whatever so that they can stock together. Some data about what's working right away. [00:21:54] Helena: Oh, yeah. I think that's a great idea. If you're going to start out batching your own content, maybe you just want to start with 10 posts. Great. That's a perfect place to be. My suggestion is to really start out super simple. Don't worry about doing anything too fancy. Again, don't worry about lip sinking or dancing or pointing. I find the pointing thing to just be the most inauthentic thing in the world. I hate it personally. So I would just talk to the camera, like it's your best friend, your husband, your wife. And share something interesting. Right? Like I always find that the best content is that kind of thing. Like my husband walks in the door and I'm like, oh my God, you won't believe what happened. You won't believe what happened today. That's the kind of thing that does usually really well on TechTalk. And so it could be about your business. Oh my God. You won't believe what happened with this client today or, oh my God, you won't believe what this client told me today. Oh my God, you won't believe, you know, this really interesting thing that I learned about XYZ today, those are the kinds of things that are a easy to record, but B tend to do really well because tick-tock has this very casual, personal flavor to it. So if you can stay in that casual, personal vein, I think it does a really well, it's been really interesting to me to watch a lot of the big creators from Instagram. People who use. No their name. I'm not going to say their name, but people who are really, really successful and famous on Instagram, trying to transition over to tic-tac. And for a lot of them, it's been an absolute train wreck. Like it's been really interesting to watch how many people are really successful on Instagram, have teeny tiny followings and almost no traction on tech talk. And I think the reason why is they've carried over some of that fakeness of Instagram onto ticktack and it comes across as super inauthentic. It just does not work. So always start with the super casual, super authentic on Tik. Talk. A lot of my highest performing posts I noticed early on I'm wearing no makeup and maybe in like a $4 H and M t-shirt, you know, maybe I'm in bed. Maybe I'm just in my living room. Everything about it is so casual. So start with that in mind. Don't try to do the perfect, perfect Instagram posts that you're used to doing. [00:24:14] Diane: so it's more like a FaceTime with a friend than it is like a TV interview, [00:24:22] Helena: Exactly. Yep. Way more casual, FaceTime with your best friend, then I need to prepare for this engagement. [00:24:29] Diane: Got it. Is there anything else that you want to tell us about Tech-Talk that you think is fascinating? Because I know you think tech sock is fascinating, and I imagine that there are entire elements of tech talk that I know nothing about. So I couldn't even ask the question. [00:24:45] Helena: So one thing I really love about Tik TOK is that your posts have a longer life span than on Instagram or Facebook. So obviously we know for YouTube or Pinterest. You can create a post and people will see it days or weeks or months or a years later because YouTube and Pinterest are really powerful search algorithms in their own. Right. Right. But with something like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, you're really only getting value out of that post for the first few hours, which is part of what I hated about creating content for Instagram is it's like great. I could post a million times a day if I wanted to, but you're constantly having to make so much new content. Whereas what I really love about Tik TOK is of course, it's not a. You know, it's not a search engine like YouTube or Pinterest, but a lot of your posts will have a long lifespan. So for example, I made a post in January about one of my TEDx plans and it got a ton of traction in January. And I was super excited in fact, that that post drove 1500 people to my email list, which is a number I have never seen from any single Instagram post, right. 1500 people on my email list. That was huge. That was the biggest spike in my email list I've ever seen. But what's really interesting about that video still is getting views day in and day out. So you'll have a section of your content. Of course it dies immediately, but then you're also going to have a lot of videos that just keep doing well over and over and over and over again. Kind of indefinitely. And I've noticed this with a lot of other creators as well. A lot of times I'll see a really cool video of theirs and I'll click into their profile and I can't find it. And then I realized that the reason I can't find it is because it's like six months back in the timeline. And so that's just another reason to use Tik TOK is because of course not all of your content will be living on forever, but you at least know that some amount of your videos are going to be getting a lot of traction later, which just means less work more bang for your. Actually. I have a friend who she's someone I discovered on Tik TOK and we became DM friends on Tik TOK. And then I actually helped her get a TEDx talk. So she then gave a TEDx talk from Tik TOK, which was very cool. My first Tik TOK, curated TEDx speaker Robin she's on Tik TOK is on teach, but it's funny because she has dyed her hair multiple times in the course of her Tik TOK career. And I will occasionally see it serving up videos from different hairstyles and I'll be like, huh. Interesting. Okay. That was a few months ago. You know, now I'm seeing her with blue hair now I'm seeing her with brown hair. She hasn't changed her hair, but she would take talks, just serving the old. [00:27:43] Diane: so let's say that you've commenced people, right? So it's good for discoverability. People do buy it's good for longevity of your content. It's relatively easy to batch some content and release it. People can talk about pretty much anything and see what works, why shouldn't people use tech talk or what would you not do on the platform? [00:28:05] Helena: I think the biggest thing is posting content on the platform. That's not designed for the platform. You'll see some people try to use reuse content from like an IgE TV or a YouTube video. I've seen it work sometimes, but for the most part tick-tock is pretty specific about the type of content. And I think users are pretty. Savvy about that. So I've noticed that people will just swipe right through something that doesn't look like it was made for tech talk. So I would not recommend starting off by repurposing a bunch of things from another platform. I would just start creating native content to the platform. That being said when I was first getting started, one of the things that I used as kind of inspiration for what to create on TechTalk is I looked back through what worked for me on TV. And then I use those ideas to create new tick talks. [00:28:59] Diane: got it. So use your other platforms as inspiration, but Tik. TOK is not a repurposing site is basically the justice. [00:29:06] Helena: Yeah. If anything, what I would recommend is you create native content on Tik TOK, and then you just download that and put that on IgE stories. Or you can put it on rails, but it takes a few steps. But if anything, I would repurpose Tik talk to other platforms rather than. Other platforms to take talk. [00:29:23] Diane: So I feel like we've covered a lot. In this conversation. And normally our conversations are like, do Tik TOK note. Do you tick tock? No. Do tick tock another. But you're winning me over with the business case. So can we pull together all of the bits and pieces that we've talked about? All the different angles of talk. And can you summarize why as a business person I should be on tick-tock [00:29:45] Helena: yes, I would love to. So one is discoverability. You're going to get a ton of new eyeballs on your content. I have never seen you before. And that's going to be the case every single time you post something, new people, new people, new people. Number two, is that it actually is. In my opinion, if you're a service provider or a course creator, it is the most direct possible sample of your work of anything that you would put out online. Right? The experience of watching me talk on Tik TOK is the closest anyone could get to working with me. Right? And I think that's why video has such a high conversion rate. I'll constantly get people jumping onto sales calls with me. I've never met them before in my life. And they'll be like, oh my God, we love everything about you. I've watched every single video that you've ever posted. And that has never happened to me with text-based posts. So whether you like it or not, I know most people don't like speaking and most people don't like speaking on camera. Speaking on camera is a reality of business and that is only going to get more true with time, right. Especially. So many of us have adapted to being on zoom. So getting your feet wet on tech talk now is a really, really great way to practice speaking both for when you're speaking on stage, but also speaking on camera. And then the other thing is just that it is just this wonderful culture and really, really, really supportive. One of the things that's really interesting that I've noticed on Tik TOK is you get really thoughtful, really insightful comments, which just propel me to make more and more and more content and just serve my audience better and better. I found that the quality of content of comments on Tik TOK as a business owner are so much higher than any other platform it's, it's really, truly useful. And the tech talk community is just so wonderful and supporting on the. [00:31:36] Diane: So if people are convinced that, Tik TOK is the. way forward, but they're nervous about speaking, they know they want to speak more for their business, because as you say, you need to have some kind of video platform, some kind of audio platform where people can experience you, how can they get some help from you? [00:31:54] Helena: So first thing I would do is download the Tech-Talk app and follow me on Tik TOK. That's a great place to see. You can also find all kinds of free resources in my Lincoln bio, but if you're just looking to get started, one thing I would try out is my quiz. I have an amazing quiz that really helps you figure out what your speaking style is. I think a lot of the reason people hate public speaking is because they're trying to be someone they're not. So first identifying what speaking style works for you. And then getting into public speaking is the way to go, . [00:32:26] Diane: awesome. Now, as you know, on my show, I like to end with the same two questions for everybody. And I'm going to ask you them again, because I'm curious to see whether yours have changed over the course of a year, because it's quite a year, right. So. What is the number one lifestyle boundary you have for your business? [00:32:45] Helena: I think I know what I said last year, but I'm going to say something different intentionally, so something I'm obsessed with and it's going to be the next episode I'm on. I'm pitching you right now. Just so you know, this is the pitch for the next podcast we're going to do together. Something I've become really obsessed with is the end of email. I hate email so much, you know, that I hate checking DMS and I've recently been, become really obsessed with the idea of not checking email. Often. And so I added a line in my signature saying I only check email once a day, often at night, if you need a fast response, text me. And that's something that I immediately got all kinds of amazing feedback on which I didn't expect. I thought a lot, some clients would be annoyed by it. And my plan is to increase that from one day to two days to three days and see if I can get away with only checking my email twice a week. And that's because I've realized for myself as someone whose job is largely creative, right? Most of my job is reading scripts, writing scripts, editing scripts, email DMS, all of that is extremely interruptive. And so my hope is that I will be able to kind of work email out of my work. [00:34:04] Diane: Okay, so now you, as the business owner, how are you communicating with your people? If email is the devil, what are you thinking about putting in place to replace it on the other side so that you are not creating the problem as well as not experiencing the problem? What are you doing with your email list? Are you emailing them less? [00:34:22] Helena: Great question. I'm playing around with sending fewer emails. I know most email marketing gurus will tell you to send more, but I just thought a lot about it. And on the consumer side, like as someone who receives email newsletters, I don't want to hear from most people twice a week, right. It really feels overwhelming. And most of those get deleted. I used to send two emails a week to my list and I had a fun time doing it and I've thought a lot about it. And now I've cut down to really two times a month or even once a month. And my hope is that rather than kind of always being top of mind for everyone all the time, I'm kind of letting people live their lives and periodically checking in just like I would a good business acquaintance or friend, and just trust that someone who needs me will remember me and find me, you know, like I'm not for example, hounding perspective clients, or even clients that I work with all the time. I'm not hounding them twice a week. Right. I might check in once a month, once a quarter and be like, Hey, we worked on this project a while back. Do you have anything else that you want to work on? So that's just something I've been thinking a lot about is what do I want as a consumer and how can we create a better working environment for each other by not only having our own boundaries, but then protecting each other's time as well. [00:35:51] Diane: That's a very good pitch for another episode. [00:35:53] Helena: Thank you. [00:35:54] Diane: almost like you. you're a professional. [00:35:56] Helena: Yeah, I'm very happy to just roll right into it. If you want now, [00:36:02] Diane: you know me, you can come back in a year with data and then we'll talk. [00:36:05] Helena: Okay, perfect. I'm actually, I'm so hyped to do that. I've already been thinking to myself, I need to start tracking stuff around this experiment specifically for Diane. [00:36:14] Diane: if there's no data, I'm not listening. Okay. Finally, worst piece of cookie cutter advice you've had as an entrepreneur. [00:36:21] Helena: I think the worst piece of cookie cutter advice is that you should do something because everyone does it or because you quote unquote should do it. So for example, we talked about earlier, my kind of come to Jesus crisis moment around Instagram, where I just had this feeling of like, oh my gosh, I hate Instagram so much. What do I do? Like, how do I keep living on Instagram when I hate it? And your advice was kind of like, don't do it then, you know, try to minimize the amount of effort and attention that you put into Instagram. If you hate it so much. And that I think is the right way to go. You shouldn't be doing anything in your business that you truly, truly. We all have to do the kind of drudgery. Right. But, but any sort of significant thing, if you really hate it just don't do it. No matter what the gurus say about, oh, you can't have a business if you're not on Instagram. Well, that's not true. [00:37:14] Diane: Yeah, I think there's stuff that you can hate that has to happen like taxes and there's stuff that you can hate that has alternatives. And you just pick an alternative [00:37:23] Helena: For sure. Like when the clubhouse hype kind of peeked everyone was like, you have to get on clubhouse. Clubhouse is perfect for you Helena, because you were the public speaking person and public speaking is clubhouse and clubhouses public speaking. And I tried it and I despised it. Like, I can't even describe to you how much I hated the experience of being on a clubhouse. And so I just decided, Nope, not going to do it, not going to be on it. I'm not even going to try because I hate it. I don't want to hate my business. So case closed Anyway, don't do anything in your business that you hate. That's what I'm going to [00:37:56] Diane: Except TechTalk you must do. TechTalk. [00:37:59] Helena: except for Tik TOK, which is mandatory. Sorry. [00:38:01] Diane: This has been so fun. So how do people find you on tech talk? If people are going to download the app for the first time, how do they actually find you? Like, let's go basics. [00:38:10] Helena: So my username everywhere pretty much is at Helena speaking, which Diane we'll link in the show notes. You can find my website, Helena bowen.com. [00:38:20] Diane: This has been way more persuasive than I expected. Thank you so much. [00:38:26] Helena: Thank you for having me. Can't wait for episodes. Number three was Helena.