At some point, all our businesses became media companies.

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"Good evening, and welcome to television."

The first voice and face on television in Australia was from Bruce Gyngell on Channel 9 on 16 September 1956. It was just in time for the Melbourne Olympic Games and the first televised Olympiad.

Bruce was representative of his time.

Erudite, handsome, eloquent - and a white male.

?

This was the 1950s after all, and the word "diversity" wasn't around much back then.

By this time, the gatekeeping of access to masses of people was well underway through radio and newspapers. And of course, each previous medium tried to stop the introduction of the next medium.

Newspaper owners lobbied against the introduction of radio claiming the technology as "unholy" and "of the devil." Which is what the Church said of the printing press back in the time of Guttenberg when the Bible was brought into the hands of people outside the Church.?

And of course, radio lobbied hard against television - until television retailers began using radio to sell television sets. Money talks!

But media has always been gate-kept by old men in suits in office buildings. And more recently old women in suits too.

If you wanted access to the masses, you had to pay for advertising, or produce a TV show that the executives had an interest in airing.

Until Valentines Day 2005.

Broadcast Yourself.

A scrappy little startup called YouTube came out of nowhere.

And on 14th February, 2005, the first video - 18-seconds of a guy describing his trip to the zoo that day - was uploaded. And the era of personal broadcasting arrived.

You could now create your own TV station by making your own content from a webcam, camcorder or these new mobile phone cameras that everyone seemed to be getting lately.

Whatever you wanted to talk about, show off, show how to do or comment upon was up for the taking.

You no longer needed the permission of a board of programming executives or a tonne of money to create your own content.

"Good evening. Welcome to Content Creation."

The vast majority of us can do it. But won't.

On Facebook, around 43% of people ever post anything. It's around the same for Instagram. But once we hit TikTok it plummets to 5%. And it's even lower for LinkedIn at less than 1%.

Each day we carry around a television studio in our pockets and do nothing with it but distract ourselves with games and consuming other people's content.

It's a lost opportunity. And one that is completely understandable.

"I don't know what I'm doing."

"What do I talk about?"

"I don't know how it works."

"What if I make a fool of myself?"

If we don't know how to do it, we can learn to do it. But we're workers, parents, business owners and students.?

Who has the time to learn this stuff - and then spend time doing it?

That's the test I gave myself this week.

Learn to create some video content that wasn't just a recording of a webinar that I was already doing.

Actually write, record, edit and upload a video.

It turned out ok. So I did it again the next day. While in my hotel room in Bali, of all places. For five days. That's five videos now.

I think it turned out pretty well.

I just had to force myself to learn how to do it.

Using the tools that are there.

Admittedly, I have a great microphone because I use it every day for Zoom calls and webinars. But you could just use the webcam and microphone on your laptop computer.

And I used the free video editor, Capcut, which allowed me to stitch everything together. Oh - and a free browser plugin called SCRE.IO that let me record my face and voice on my computer.

No fancy software. No subscriptions.

All the video footage I took from either Capcut's stock footage library - which was free - or YouTube.

I did this because I've been watching everyone else having a go at this and figured that I surely could do something half-decent with a lifetime of computer skills behind me and a pretty good laptop computer and internet connection - even in Bali.

So it can be done.

Like anything else in life, making your own content is a skill that you can learn.

It doesn't have to be video. It could be photography, writing newsletters or ebooks, articles or blogs. If you prefer, it could even be a podcast.

I know that I do pretty well out of this newsletter, my blogs and social media posts already - so taking the jump to video couldn't be that hard could it?

Well, you're probably busy.

And learning probably isn't something you love.

Especially spending more time in front of a screen.

But there is a $1 trillion bucket of cash that the world is dipping into as a result of the content they are creating online.

And effort is rewarded. If not this week, at some point.

I know it feels weird that now our businesses seem to have to become media businesses to get to the next level.

But it really is just another skill to add to the ones you already have.

That's all for this weekend. Just one short read about how content creation has changed and how you can get started with just a few tools you probably already have - or can get.

If you're not getting value out of these tips, please consider unsubscribing.

I won't mind and there are no hard feelings.

And if you are enjoying this newsletter, the best compliment you could pay me would be to share it with one person who you think would benefit from it.

See you again next week.

Cheers,

Dante

P.S. Here's a few ways I can lend a hand if you need some help.

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