Two years ago I helped a Mom and Pop shop create a little campaign. We spent one day filming and one week in post-production. The owners were excited; we were excited. A year later, I asked them how the video was performing. Their answer was unexpected: They hadn't used it at all.

They didn't even have a marketing team in place to utilize the assets we created. They had spent thousands of dollars on a beautiful video with no strategy or initiative behind it. It was a pure distraction.

For founders running lean teams, resource allocation is the most valuable skill. Starting a video project without a clear strategic reason is the fastest way to burn out your small team and drain your capital.

This is why we now run a business through the Video Ready Checklist before we ever press record. This checklist is designed to help you say "NO" to vanity projects and focus only on what moves the needle.

If you check more than three boxes below, you need to PAUSE, work on the business first, and come back later.

1. Is it measurable? If you have no clear marketing platform, no funnel, and no tracking setup, your video won’t produce data—it will just produce content. You can't fix what you can't measure.
2. Is it based on vanity? What you think looks good for your brand might not be what the audience actually wants or needs. If the goal is "enhancing visuals" rather than "fixing a customer problem," veto it.
3. Is it running your team thin? For a smaller teams, a complex content pipeline can lead to immediate burnout. The most effective system is the one your team will actually use—not the one that has them rolling their eyes.
4. Are there other things you could be optimizing for right now? Video is a multiplier. If your current customer service or sales scripting is broken, fixing that is a higher-leverage activity than making a video about it. Fix the core first.
5. Do you know where this video is going? A video without a clear home (a funnel, a specific landing page, a VSL spot) is a video that gets zero traction. You need to know the destination before you start making it.
6. Is this video against your core values? Don't associate with something that contradicts your established brand identity. Great marketing can be terrible branding if it feels inauthentic. American Eagle was a great example of that.
7. Do you know who this video is for? If you're unclear on the audience, the message will be weak. Get ruthlessly clear on the customer persona before you write the first word of the script.
8. Do you know when to use this video in the customer journey? Is it for awareness, lead nurturing, sales conversion, or customer onboarding? A welcome video used at the end of the sales process is useless. Timing is everything.
9. Do you really want to do this? If you're forcing it, you will lose consistency and momentum. In a lean operation, consistency is the foundation upon which success is built. Don't start what you won't finish.
10. Do you know why you're using it? If you're making an investment in video without understanding the underlying strategic purpose (e.g., "We need to fix our lead-gen problem by replacing cold calls with VSLs"), you are gambling.

If you failed the test, you just saved yourself hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars.

If you passed the test, great.

Now that you've cut out the bad projects, you can focus on the low-hanging fruit—the content that will immediately deliver ROI.

That's what we'll talk about on Wednesday.

Also that mom and pop shop did end up starting to use their videos this year and we're glad they figured it out.

See you Wednesday,
David.

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