Building a post-pandemic business: Minimum Viable Video goes to Ecuador

TL;DR: We spent a week bringing an in-person version of Minimum Viable Video to Ecuadorian entrepreneurs, helping them use video to grow their presence on the internet and access global markets.

Big thanks to US Embassy Quito Ecuador , Cámara de Comercio de Quito , Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador for having the vision to provide their community the skills that matter for the future of work.

Below are highlights from one session where we helped entrepreneurs of Ecuador build scalable, pandemic-proof businesses.?

First, we took a learning-by-doing approach to drive home the idea that no one wants to be marketed to but everyone loves stories. From there, we unpacked an entrepreneur-optimized story format called the simple founder story:

After a few rounds of giving and getting feedback, I spoke on the power of having this story at the ready when you encounter someone at a gathering, event, or even in line at a restaurant.

It’s huge! Stories resonate in ways that a description of your business does not.

But stories don’t scale unless they are captured on camera. A video of your story on Linkedin, Twitter, or Youtube has the potential to reach exponentially more people than you could meet at the biggest networking event. And in the noisy information environment of 2022, getting people to know about your work is quite the challenge. And if they don’t know about your work, how can they hire you or buy your product?

Next, we gave quick insights on how to not feel weird on camera. Then we gave a crash course on audio, lighting, and framing for a specific, low-effort production style we call the walk-and-talk. Which included tips like this to repurpose a headset as lavalier microphone:

Next up was the most challenging—but also the most transformative—activity in the session.?

We led participants to the park across the street where they could put the learning into practice. It gave me so much joy to see hundreds of entrepreneurs putting this framework into practice with zero hesitation.

When we brought everyone back, we covered distribution and how to feature this story on your Linkedin profile.

It makes my heart sing knowing these entrepreneurs captured their stories in a scalable, opportunity-creating format. It was a joy to see them taking action to create an asset that drives awareness of their business, now and in the future.

This program was a success not because of the ideas, insights, or soft, intangible “learnings” that an entrepreneur can apply at some later date. What made these sessions magical was that the entrepreneurs left with an artifact: a digital asset that will help them thrive in a challenging, post-pandemic business climate.

If you want to know the strategy we used to get 900 people to register for this program, join my newsletter of actionable tips for video-minded entrepreneurs: https://actionworks.co/newsletter