Skip to main

How to Sell Millions Worth of Watches on YouTube

Authors: Jay Baer Tim Mosso
Posted Under: Social Pros Podcast
Hosted By
Jay Baer

Daniel Lemin

Convince & Convert
Jay Baer

Hannah Tooker

LaneTerralever
Jay Baer

Leanna Pham

Convince & Convert
About Social Pros Podcast:

Social Pros is one of the longest-running marketing podcasts in existence (10 YEARS and counting), and was recently recognized as the #1 Audio/Podcast Series by the Content Marketing Awards.

Our purpose? Making sure that we speak to real people doing real work in social media.

Listeners get inside stories and behind-the-scenes secrets about how teams at companies like Google, Reddit, Glossier, Zillow, Lyft, Marvel, and dozens more, staff, operate, and measure their social media programs.  With 600+ episodes, the Social Pros Podcast brings the humanity of social media to the forefront, while providing incredibly useful marketing strategies that listeners can immediately implement.

Follow Social Pros on LinkedIn.

To inquire about becoming a guest or show sponsor, please email our Executive Producer, Leanna Pham, at leanna@convinceandconvert.com.

Apple Podcast Reviews:

The Social Pros podcast has quickly become a favorite in my feed! I'm consistently impressed by the engaging conversations, insightful content, and actionable ideas. I truly learn something every time I listen!

@Arlie K

This is absolutely an awesome listen for anyone in communications or social media!!

@Will31C

This podcast has become one of my staple weekly podcasts for learning about marketing! Love the conversations that they have and it's always enjoyable and educational!

@Simonstone95

Love the podcast - informative, in depth and spot on for any business size.

@MissTriathlon

Tim Mosso, Media Director of WatchUWant.com, joins the Social Pros Podcast to discuss how he found the sweet spot of authenticity and high production value for social video content.

Tim-Mosso-InstagramRelatable Luxury

Selling non-essential goods valued at tens of thousands of dollars strictly online is a tricky balancing act. The product can’t be pitched as too much of a luxury or it risks alienating the audience by being unattainable. On the other hand, if it’s positioned too casually, it becomes overpriced and loses the high-end quality factor.
Tim has discovered the best path for navigating this challenging landscape is video. More specifically, YouTube video.
YouTube’s live and pre-recorded broadcast options give him the flexibility and metrics to adapt to his audience’s needs while knowing who is watching and what is working. For him, this gives it the competitive edge over the more popular Facebook Live.
But to make it work, you have to put a little bit of effort and investment in setting the stage for your videos. By investing in bandwidth, A/V, and team members, Tim has made his online luxury business a staple for the quality-minded e-shopper.

In This Episode

  • How brick-and-mortar success leads to standing out online
  • Why amplifying videos means leveraging other social to funnel customers to the source
  • How focusing on YouTube for video leads to a domineering presence on- and offline
  • Why taking a luxury brand to the next level means using live video to take it down a peg

 

Quotes From This Episode

“It’s a pretty broad spectrum of competition and we really do have to do something different to kind of rise above the din of that crowded space.” —@watchuwant
“We were never pushing product in the broadcasts. That’s where we were building the brand as authorities, as people who were accessible.” —@watchuwant
People who interact become very closely attached to and identify with the brand.” —@watchuwant
As expensive as the product is, people don't want to be sold an image. Click To Tweet

“I have a funnel philosophy whereby other social media that are perhaps broad but shallow in their impact funnel people to the videos which are now very deep and involving and tend to get people hooked.” —@watchuwant

A view on Facebook Live isn’t equal to the length of a view on YouTube. It’s harder to get a sense of how many real views and how much real exposure you’re getting.” —@watchuwant
“The audience is my number one source of guidance because they are the lens that determines how I look, regardless of what I think.” —@watchuwant
“Bring in someone else who can act as a second opinion, who can help to add diversity break up the writer’s block, basically just help to stir the drink if it starts to ice over.” —@watchuwant
If it isn't spontaneous and interactive, live video is just a technical brain suck and waste of time. Click To Tweet

Resources


See you next week!

Transcript

Jay: Welcome everybody to Social Pros, the podcast for real people doing real work in social media. I am, as always, Jay Baer from Convince & Convert. Joined once again, reunited … this is where I should cue the Peaches & Herb track, “reunited and it feels so good,” with my man, Adam Brown. He is hailing from the great city of Austin, Texas. He is the Executive Strategist of Salesforce Marketing Cloud. After a one week hiatus to do whatever he was doing, Adam is back on the show. My friend, welcome.
Adam: Jay it is great to be back, I missed you last week. I was somewhere over the air in between here and New York City, where I spent last week. Great to be back, great to be back in Austin. What a beautiful time of year it is here. Is it beautiful where you are? Because I know where our guest is, down in Hollywood, Florida, it’s spectacular.
Jay: You know, it’s been a little crazy last couple weeks, but this weekend is going to be top notch here in America’s heartland. So, it is about time, and I cannot, cannot complain. Speaking of time, we have-
Adam: Oh, what a segue. What a segue. How about that? That was professional, right?
Jay: We have a fantastic guest on the program here, episode 267 of the Social Pros show. Tim Mosso is the media director of WatchUWant.com, WatchUWant.com. Which is America’s preeminent seller of pre-owned luxury watches. Luxury watches, ladies and gentlemen, from $3500 American to $10,000 American and up. Would you buy one of those on the website? You better bet you would, a lot of people do. A lot of people do, and it’s because of the amazing work and content and social of our guest today. Tim, welcome to Social Pros.
Tim: And thank you so much, Jay, Adam, I really appreciate this. This is cool. I’m used to being hands-on camera, so my hands are famous, my voice is kind of monotonous. I’m going to strike a balance between the two here.
Jay: You do an awful lot of YouTube and other video watch demos which we’ll talk about. And you do have nice man hands. Are you like the Costanza of the watch business? You’re wearing oven mitts all the time, so you got to be careful of your hands?
Tim: You know, it’s funny because Danny Govberg, of Govberg Jewelers, he bought the company in January 2016. And he decreed that I would get a manicure every week, and so it has been.
Jay: Hey, you know what? As long as that’s a write off for you, I think that’s a good jig.
Tim: Hey, gets me flyer miles, can’t complain.
Jay: So tell us a little bit about that transition. So, what was the company like before he bought it and you came on board, and how have you shifted it in- well, you said January 2016, right? So you’re only talking about, what, 16 months, 17 months, something like that?
Tim: Yeah, it’s kind of interesting to compare and contrast because I’ve been with the company WatchUWant since June of 2014. Previously, I got out of the Navy as Public Affairs Officer in 2013. Spent a little bit of time rehabbing a bad knee and then I decided, you know what? I wanted to get into the watch industry in earnest. WatchUWant being pre-owned, a little bit off the beaten path, principally internet-based, was very receptive to my proposal of an aggressive, multi-front social media campaign. So when Govberg purchased the company in January of 2016 they had perhaps the classical old-school marketing plan. They owned a magazine called iW International Watch and a lot of what they did revolved around pictures in the magazine. They purchased billboards in and around their headquarters in Philadelphia and they ran ads on traditional media such as national papers, national magazines in the luxury space life style. So WatchUWant brought almost the entirety of the social media campaign that both companies now endorse. Govberg with new watches, WatchUWant with pre-owned but everything’s off of YouTube, Instagram and Facebook in terms of marketing now.
Jay: And who do you compete with in the pre-owned watch space? Is it somebody- a jeweler in your town happens to have a few watches? Are there big specialty boutiques in major cities that only have pre-owned luxury watches? Who would they buy from if not you?
Tim: I would have to say as an aggregator we look a lot at eBay because there are a lot of small players on there. So a lot of times because on eBay everyone looks big time if someone’s offering a watch at the lowest price there, we have to make the case that, against many independent smaller sellers, that we offer the best service, the best product, the recourse if you don’t like the watch. So the history really matters to us. We do find ourselves competing with everything from traditional brick and mortar who are tentatively embracing pre-owned to larger dedicated pre-owned dealers. There’s some like Watchfinder or Crown & Caliber that are like us specialists in the internet space. But our competitors really do run the gamut from traditional brick and mortar with a pre-owned case right down to the one guy who might have a particular watch that he’s putting up on eBay. So it’s a pretty broad spectrum of competition and we really do have to do something different to kind of rise above the din of that crowded space.
Jay: I think the line on eBay “everybody looks big time” may be the headline of this episode. That’s so true. And I’m sure a challenge. And so what you do different- you said you got to do something different, is dominating YouTube, among other things. But, you guys are on it. You have thousands of videos, right, thousands of watched videos. And you do a full run through not only of all the inventory that you have but other treads in the watch business. And I want you to talk a little about how you do your videos but also the part that I personally like the best because it’s exactly what I have been talking to clients about for a while, is you actually have shows, right. You almost have a television network that consists of your watch oriented videos on your own YouTube channel. It is spectacular. Can you walk us through some of the details?
Tim: Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, the first and fundamental video that I do is the Talking Hands. And that’s kind of just a name I came up with for a hands and wrists only shot where I start with the watch, I mention the name of the company, I call out the link to the actual listing so I do make a call to action that favors a direct click through to our website via YouTube cards. And then I basically just say here it is on my wrist, here’s how big my wrist is, here are all of the dimensions including the ones the manufacturers don’t give you like the lug to lug, like the thickness of the case, and then from the outside the buckle, the strap, and the case. I work my way in to the movement and I talk about what distinguishes this watch under the hood.
Because when you buy a $20,000 car you can buy Consumer Reports, Motor Trend, Road & Track, Car and Driver, you can go to edmunds.com, Kelley Blue Book. You buy a $20,000 watch, a lot of times traditionally the manufacturers give you a little placard that they hand out at their boutiques or you can go and you can see maybe five lines of information about that watch on their website. So I fill in the gap that is not just absent in the pre-owned space but is absent in the watch market generally. And I like to think of it as the watch brought to life in about six minutes.
And then there’s the second class of video that I create and this really evolved from Danny Govberg’s call for something where you could see my face. And I was at a total loss for this because I had just been starting off at WatchUWant by duct taping my phone to the back of a chair then kneeling on the chair and looming over it while holding out the watch. And so I was able to film it on my wrist by doing that. Danny got me an SLR and a light box but then he said I want to see your face. So, I created a little set in a back room at our company. Set up a little wall, a desk, and I invested in a setup that I bought pre-owned. Every piece of this thing was re-manufactured and for about $9,000 I got myself live on YouTube.
And I started producing these shows where I wanted to explicitly avoid- and that was always my brief to my team, let’s avoid turning this into QVC for rich people. Let’s educate, let’s engage with the audience, answer questions live, let’s talk about news in the industry and give our analysis the new models. Let’s have watches on the table to show that we have real inventory. We’re not using stock photos like many others in the industry when they’re showing their inventory. We use real watches on the show. But we don’t really talk about the inventory or sell it. We sell the brand in the broadcasts, the shows. The Talking Hands videos sell the watches, the broadcasts sell the company as something substantial material and because you see people’s faces, it’s also emotionally it’s appealing. It’s humane in a way that the internet-
Jay: Do you mean that you are selling your brand or your selling that particular brand of watch?
Tim: No, I mean we’re selling the watch you want- brand. We’ve been around since 2001, but I’ll be honest for the first eight or nine years of the company, WatchUWant.com was the name of an eBay seller. And we didn’t have a physical office until the end of 2008 when we decided that- everyone on eBay all of a sudden had figured out how to write a description, take good photos, and like I said, everyone on eBay looks big time. So we needed an office, we needed a storeroom, we needed a safe that wasn’t located in our founder’s house. And so we slowly became a more substantial business, ultimately adding a sales floor with multiple sales personnel, an operations department that brings in, inspects and keeps track of inventory. And then finally we built out an extensive watch making suite. It’s not just one room, it’s a suite to the point where we are a full service shop occupying two floors of a three story building in Florida right now, in Miami.
And the way to convey that this was a substantial business, not some people in their moms’ basement, was to actually have the broadcast, bring on our sales personnel like Josh, he’s a friend of mine and he’s a great guest. Eric, bring on Niko, bring on Mike Michaels our watch maker. And so we were never pushing product there, that’s where we were building the brand as authorities, as people who were accessible. You’d be amazed in this industry how few companies will actually answer the phone when you call. You have to go to a machine and then if they’re interested in what you’re offering them, they’ll call you back to buy your watch or they’ll call back to sell you a watch. So being able to do a live chat on the internet- I mean, that’s not just having a real person answer the phone, that’s an entirely new level of interaction and people who interact become very closely attached and they identify with the brand.
Jay: It has to be because you’re selling expensive, expensive watches that are pre-owned on the internet, sight unseen at least in three dimensions, the impact of these videos and you being a consistent presence on them and other people on the team has to be a massive driver of trust in the brand.
Tim: It certainly is. I mean, first just being responsive, answering my emails, always answering the phone, meeting with clients in person when they’re here. But also making the shows as interactive as possible and unpretentious, that’s another thing. As expensive as the product is, people don’t want to be sold an image. I find that that’s one of the biggest problems with traditional marketing of luxury watches. A lot of times you’re not just being sold the Breguet, the Patek Philippe, or the Audemars Piguet, you’re buying into an image that can put people off. Even to someone who has the money to partake in the hobby it can seem almost repulsive in some ways.
So in addition to building the credibility of our brand through the broadcasts we’ve also tried to convey that though the watches are expensive the hobby is for everyone. And you may start with a $1,000 pre-owned Oris BC3 and that’s the point of entry for the hobby. It’s not the kind of thing where you need to be a member of the club to get into this or you need to put on airs or embrace an image. So we don’t just make the brand relatable by showing real people and interacting, we also try to make the watch hobby as accessible as possible. And that’s something that I’ve brought with my own perspective as someone who’s on the outside looking in for a long time. There were a couple times I almost gave up on the watch hobby because I just felt like this is for people who smoke pipe tobacco and wear black rimmed glasses and only drink wine. And I wanted to kind of wanted to diffuse that notion and just kind of blow that out of the window.
Jay: I like that video, pipes not required. I think that has real potential. I’m going to turn it over to Adam here in just a second but I wanted to ask you one question about amplifications. So you obviously have many subscribers to the channel now, so when you put a new video up you’ve got that built-in audience. But the number of views that you have on your videos massively supersedes the number of youtube subscribers you have. So are those coming from SEO via YouTube, and/or are they coming from social? So how do- when you put new videos out how are you amplifying them so that people are tuning in?
Tim: Well, we’re doing it in three ways. We’re also … I mean going to acknowledge that recommended videos and also YouTube search are significant sources of traffic for us. Google search not as much, the YouTube internal search engine much more so. So we’re getting a lot of traffic from those sources. The other thing we’re doing is we embed the video on the product page on our website. So if we have a F.P. Journe Elegante 48, I do a video of it. That lives on YouTube where it casts it’s net as wide as possible. But then it’s also on WatchUWant.com. So in addition to seeing the name of the watch and the photos that we take in our studio, you also see the video that’s posted on YouTube. So we do get a significant amount of traffic from people watching the embedded videos on WatchUWant.com. And then finally amplifying the traffic to the videos is a product and byproduct of using other social media and I … I think I have a funnel philosophy whereby other social media that are perhaps broad but shallow in their impact funnel people to the videos which are now very deep and involving and tend to get people hooked. So Instagram, Twitter, Facebook all of these help to promote the videos and it’s not like we weight each one evenly. Those other social media really are vectors to the video.
Adam: And Tim, I love the funnel philosophy. I kind of call it the homeroom philosophy. That sometimes you pick one social media platform to be that main base and then all the others can kind of be secondary or tertiary and drive traffic to that. And certainly you have been phenomenally successful with YouTube. I know you just celebrated your 10 millionth view on YouTube which is nothing short of extraordinary. So my question for you is … you’re certainly going to stay with YouTube as that homeroom or funnel because it’s successful for you. If you were restarting right now in 2017 would you be doing that and would you continue to use YouTube Live video or would you think about Facebook Live or even another platform?
Tim: I think I would stick with YouTube for a couple of reasons. Right now, YouTube is a platform that’s second to none. If I could go back and do it all over again, I would say that I would have pushed harder when I joined WatchUWant to make video and YouTube video in particular the number one focus. Because for the first eight months that I was here I spent a lot of time writing blogs and text-based SEO based on posting a blog every other day. For the amount of energy and time that goes into it, just does not give the return so I would have emphasized video first. I would have stayed with YouTube because it’s scope and it’s reach is unparalleled. You look at companies that have had success building almost exclusively off YouTube. You take something like RevZilla out of Philadelphia they’re actually not to far from our Govberg mothership but they built-
Adam: Motorcycle stuff right?
Tim: Motorcycle gear, exactly. Just here it is, here’s a review. They put the video on the product page on their website, everything they do in social funnels back to YouTube. And so YouTube became a sort of video catalog for their products that first of all got people invested in the brand and portrayed them as an authority even though in reality, I mean, they’re an authority but they’re inventory in a warehouse. All of a sudden they had what seemed like a home on the internet, a physical presence at least in the minds of their viewers and they were able to leverage YouTube almost as a marketing arm.
So I would have pushed much harder to go to video sooner and also I would have stayed away from other platforms where I just don’t feel like there’s sufficient returns. Like Facebook Live, it seems like it’s the kind of thing where you’re going to be cast among all sort of detritus, filming with a phone, low quality content. A view on Facebook Live isn’t equal to the length of a view on YouTube. It’s harder to get a sense of how many real views and how much real exposure you’re getting.
And I can also tell you that in terms of markets, in term of demographics, on YouTube we don’t necessarily have that 25 to 55 core user demographic that we would love to have as our customer base. We do have that on YouTube. Facebook I should say we don’t have that 25 to 55 year old demographic base. YouTube we do have that. Also if you look the geographic distribution on Facebook, it’s very global which is not a good thing because we know as a business what our top five, top ten markets are geographically and those align very closely with who and where the users are on YouTube. Whereas with Facebook it’s going to be a lot of 12 year old kids in places like New Guinea which is great but they’re not buying our watches. So I’m glad that the next generation of watch enthusiasts is bringing up all over the world. But in terms of who they are and where they are on YouTube it’s almost one for one a perfect correlation to our actual customer traffic on the website and our customer base as we record them.
Adam: Talk a little bit about production value. I think Jay very accurately articulated the idea that you are selling a luxury product and there’s a need for that trust especially when you’re buying something pre-owned. Something that does, in some instances with some brands, has a big counterfeit challenge. So there is that trust and authenticity and genuineness that needs to come through. At the same point, you don’t want to be overly-polished or overly-produced. Talk about how you found that sweet spot of authenticity and high production value with both your live programing as well as the kind of Talking Hands videos, and has that changed over the years?
Tim: Oh it definitely has. I think when we started out this is another- this is definitely a regret from a production stand point, I would have done everything at a much higher level. If I could go back and start again I never would have had a wrist pad that’s used to cushion your palms next to a keyboard as the backdrop for my first 400 videos. I never would have started the studio broadcasts with basically a snap together wood floor as the backing. I actually put up a snap together wood floor on the wall behind me. And we were succeeding on both fronts, Talking Hands and early broadcasts, in spite of our production values. The set didn’t look up to standards, the camera initially was my stupid phone in a case. The sound we had was subpar for the broadcast.
So it’s very important to first of all do your best to look professional without being pretentious. And also, really take feedback from your audience because a lot of the improvements I made in sound and set, and even the routine of my Talking Hands, when I started I didn’t actually put the watch on my wrist. I didn’t talk about lug to lug dimensions or how thick the case was. I didn’t do a very good job of holding the watch still long enough for people to see it jangle. So the audience really told me what I was doing wrong. So being attentive to common threads, fielding emails, interacting with people in the live Chatbox during the broadcast, that’s how I realized I needed to improve my production values and it continues. And they are my number one source of guidance because they are the lens that determines how I look, regardless of what I think, it’s what they’re seeing that is the reality and that’s how I approach production values now.
Adam: Finding that balance of production values is one thing. The other challenge I know that anybody in our space as a Social Pro who is wanting to get into video live or taped in earnest is work flow. And I can imagine a lot of our listeners listening, Tim, to you right now going “gosh, thousands, three thousand, four thousand videos, doing a live show three times a week. I can barely get one video a month out.” Talk a little bit about work flow, and both from a technical standpoint as well as an operational standpoint. You have for many of these years been doing this solo. You’re now kind of growing your team at WatchUWant. Talk a little bit about how you actually approach this and get into a cadence of not only the strategy of when to put videos on line but secondly how to you actually get these out the door?
Tim: Okay, so the live shows we’ve accepted that they’re never going to be perfect, so we don’t script them and we don’t edit them. That helps. The other thing in terms of work flow, and this is maybe the Achilles heel of my approach, so much of it has actually centered on my ability to do one take Talking Hands videos with no editing, no post production, absolutely no alteration from the time I turn the camera on until the time I stop recording. So we’ve tried to get other people to do these Talking Hands videos and they would need five, six, seven, eight takes to get through six or seven minutes on a watch. So, it’s been difficult to duplicate that. I’m not going to lie. I have an ability to do the videos, the product showcases one take. And so I can do- I’ve done up to 15 in a day, six minute videos.
The real challenge I think is the creative process that keeps everything rolling. How do you keep it fun? And that’s where I bounce ideas off my new teammate Federico and he’s also from the social media space, he’s also a watch enthusiast. And I think that collaborative process helps us to build up basically the germ of an idea for each live broadcast. I would say as far as creativity goes, collaborate. Bring in someone else who can act as a second opinion, who can help to add diversity break up the writer’s block, basically just help to stir the drink if it starts to ice over.
When people are having trouble getting one video out I feel like at that point you’ve got to bring in a second set of eyes, second brain, and a second opinion because you can’t do it alone. And even when Federico was solo in New York I know he did a lot of collaborations with other men’s lifestyle and wristwatch content producers and YouTube around the New York metropolitan area. So he was definitely on board with that idea that social media even if there’s one voice or one kind of front man, needs to be a collaborative effort. And that’s how you’ll manage to increase your volume by divvying up duties but also by making the creative process collaborative. And I think that can help you beat your production goals and do more than one person. I don’t mean just one plus one equals two, I mean potentiation along the lines of one plus one equals four. That’s how that works when you build a team.
Adam: Well, certainly Tim that whole creative concept that just you mentioned is so critical. And I think one of the reasons for your success is that you are truly a storyteller. And I think that’s one of the things, in full disclosure, I’m a bit of a watch nut and have been watching Tim and Federico for years as they’ve done their respective things. But the whole category is really about storytelling and you do a great job of that, and that’s going to be something I want to talk about after the break. But one more question before I hand this over to Jay, we’re seeing so many social me professionals who are saying, “Yes I want to get into live video” whether its on on Facebook, whether it’s on YouTube, but live streaming video. And with one device, your iPhone or your mobile device, it’s so easy. But I know you’ve kind of gone to that next step where you’re actually doing camera switching, multi-camera set-ups, you’re doing lower thirds and graphics and things like that. And as you’ve mentioned before you’ve been able to do this pretty inexpensively. Any tips for those who are thinking about either doing kind of a studio set-up or a multi-camera set-up in terms of the technology or the strategy for getting that technology that you’ve been able to learn over the past six to twelve months?
Tim: Absolutely. First of all, YouTube Live is the launch pad for anything you want to do in video social media that’s live and to a high standard. Right now Facebook Live- I don’t feel too good about it other than capturing a brief maybe 60 second short from a party the company throws or a client event because the production values are low and it’s mostly the domain of people with cameras in tablets and phones. YouTube Live, now you want to open up a YouTube account, you want to have a channel, you want to contact companies like Blackmagic Design, Livestream, and also Wirecast. And those three can set up you up with an array of hardware and software solutions that will be able to produce the same onscreen effect that I’ve got. There is one important qualifier though that everyone needs to keep in mind, doing live with any kind of onscreen graphic, a chyron, a picture-in-picture, or a switcher, you need to have a high speed fiber optic or satellite internet link. Because no matter how well you understand YouTube and how high-tech and capable your hardware array, the pipeline is going to determine whether or not the people receiving that video are receiving something unwatchable or television quality. And there’s a whole spectrum of where you can be in between those two poles. I want to be TV quality and so I have- I’m lucky I have fiber optics.
Jay: Yeah, I use Wirecast myself and I’ve had that exact same issue where sometimes the video through the camera will not sync exactly right with the external microphone and it’s purely a bandwidth upstream issue. And that can be a little bit of a problem.
Tim: Yeah. And you know, you do need to- there are certain Marquee pieces of hardware, maybe after the break we can talk a little bit about what have been the bottlenecks in my hardware setup. But the big one is that you can’t even get off the block without an exceptionally high bandwidth fiber optic or cable or satellite setup.
Jay: Let me ask you a followup on that, do you feel like- well, let me ask it a different way, how long have you been doing YouTube Live versus YouTube?
Tim: Well, I just got a notice from Wirecast that I will need to renew my subscription for the next year so I’m coming up on my 10 month anniversary. So 10 months I’ve been doing live and I really had- I was my own IT department when I put this together so the challenge was to figure out how to make it work, how to make it look good enough that we wouldn’t be damaging our brand by doing it half measure. And the thing about YouTube is that you can upload from almost any device and as long as your lighting and your sound is good the video is going to be pretty satisfactory. You could absolutely use a phone to make the videos that I make with an SLR on YouTube if you have my light box which is some simple Manfrotto stands and studio lights and diffusers. And if you have a decent acoustically clean environment without background noise you can make anything I’ve ever done with the Talking Hands including my minute repeater videos.
But to do live, you really have to make sure that when you press stream you’ve done your homework to makes sure that the set looks good, the sound is excellent. Sound is so important because sound can turn a high quality production into parody very quick if it’s not set up. And then you’ve got to fight the lighting. And lighting is my biggest challenge because I can control the light box because it’s the size of an egg crate whereas a room with fluorescent lights and bad reflective angles, glossy enamel paint on the walls, I’m fighting all sorts of battles with the light to make the picture image look all right. Everything from the alternating current frequency to the weird reflections of the walls to the fact that I’ve got LED lights fighting with the fluorescents at the same time. You’ve got so much more homework to do when you go live.
And then here’s the only purpose of doing live- and you’ve got to remember this, the only purpose of doing live is spontaneity, the interaction with your cohost or guest and the interaction with the audience. If you’re not taking questions and doing something that is unique to the live format, just not necessary or impossible with recorded format, there’s no need to do live. If it isn’t spontaneous and interactive, live is just a technical brain suck and a waste of time. So that’s the end result.
Jay: Yeah, that’s exactly what I was going to ask you about is why live versus recorded, and you nailed it even without prompting, which is because you are actually taking questions from the audience, in the comments during the broadcast, you’re interacting with your cohosts. Things that you couldn’t do with the same sort of panache if it was an upload.
Tim: Exactly. There are some, I’m not going to name names, but there’s some media outlets in the watch space that very pretentiously and assiduously cultivate an image. And they want that veneer of Praetorian August authority, but you’ve got that Praetorian guard of self-conscious image and it’s incompatible with live. When I’m live, I’ve done stuff that’s incredibly goofy. Like Josh and I flubbed a high five. Josh is one of my cohosts from the sales department. We flubbed a high five that was called the most awkward high five ever and completely awesome because of it and I wrote in the comments after the broadcast “I take full credit for that, that was all me.” Those moments don’t happen when you’re editing and trying to cultivate an image.
So if you are the type to want to cultivate an image, you’re going to lose control of that when you do live because you can’t script it. And a lot of times you’re going to embarrass yourself, you’re going to make a mistake, you’re going to have to start over, you’re going to misspeak, Freudian slip, whatever. So if you’re fluid enough and I think unpretentious enough to do live in the luxury space, then you’re going to get a tremendous amount of credibility from it because it pegs the whole thing down a notch without going low class or off message. You stay luxury, it’s a privilege it’s fun, it’s special, but at the same time you make it relatable. And at the end of the day we want someone to both be able to afford the watch but also be able to make the leap of faith and find it in his heart to embrace an idea of buying a $6,000 watch. Because that’s purely an emotional purpose and I think the live format connects with that in a way that recorded, edited and staged does not.
Jay: Well and you want them to buy the watch from you as opposed to from a number of other people who may have that watch or a similar watch. And so at some level if they have an affinity for you and your cohost and the company, then that kinship hopefully drives purchase to you as opposed to other brands or other outlets.
Tim: Absolutely. On every level of marketing emotion is important but when you’re talking about, and let me be frank here, $10,000 man-jewelry, you really have to connect with that person in an emotional way because it is a 100% emotional purchase. Someone buys a Honda Civic SI, that’s partly a necessity, transportation, that’s the Civic part, and the SI, the sportiness, the sporty model, that’s the emotional part. Our product is 100% emotional. You have your phone to give you the time. Yes, it will keep better time than a Rolex. Yes, a smart watch will do more than a Breguet Minute Repeater. But the live format creates a pathos that is completely absent in any recorded format, whether it’s faces on camera or just my Talking Hands. And that’s what live gives us. It gives us the emotional appeal that goes above and beyond, overcomes the skepticism, the disbelief and the cynicism of the viewer, makes them laugh, disarms that sort of suspension of disbelief. And then we connect very immediately on an emotion level that does sell us as a brand and also the product we have to offer.
Jay: Adam and I have experimented a couple times with doing this show live and now you’re convincing me that we should go back and do it again. Maybe we should.
Tim: Definitely. I think you should because, yes, you’ll lose a little bit of control in the message, and if you got a bloviating windbag like me I might just go on and on and on, but at the same time, you guys have such a great dynamic and I think you do a great job steering the discussion so I think this show could survive about with live-
Jay: Well this isn’t a heavy edited podcast anyway, because we want it to be authentic and nor do we want to spend an enormous amount of time editing at the sentence level. And some podcasts do that and that’s fantastic, that’s their show. We just haven’t ever gotten in that. So we’ll think about it. There’s some new technology out there that might that might allow us to make that happen a little easier.
Tim: I would also say if you’re going to do live, there has to be some sort of added value factor and for me that’s always been the interaction with the audience.
Jay: Right, exactly. Live comments. Absolutely.
Tim: Taking questions, maybe throwing two or three to the guests, that would add a dimension to the show that makes live just as valuable as it is to me on camera on YouTube.
Jay: Yeah, what do you want to ask, Tim?
Tim: Exactly.
Jay: So, speaking of things that are trustworthy, things that speak to luxury, things that are $10,000 man-jewelry, those things are also Salesforce Marketing Cloud. Maybe not man-jewelry. But Salesforce Marketing Cloud, who employ Mr. Adam Brown, have some terrific new research that you need to download, ladies and gentlemen. It is called the 50 Standout Best Practices For Social Media Marketers in 2017. 50. Not 49, not 72. 50 Best Practices For Social Media Marketers in 2017, which is probably everybody listening to this show right now. Terrific ebook, really interesting. Several things I never even thought of before so well done, Adam and team. Go to candc.ly/getsocialebook. That’s C-and-C, like Convince and Convert, candc.ly/getsocialebook to download that. Adam, back to you.
Adam: Jay, thank you. And Tim Mosso, media director, watch specialist, chief horology officer of WatchUWant, it is so great to have you on the show. This has been a treat and you’ve given us some significant insights for all of your social media activities and especially video and streaming videos. Jay and I typically call this section of the show, Tim, the Origins Section where we kind of find more about you. It’s almost like a Barbara Walters special. But I’m curious, Tim, how you got to this space. You mentioned that you had spent a part of your career as a Public Information Officer in the US Navy. Talk a little bit about how you got into marketing and communications and at what point you began to realize there could be a career here and a career that intersected both your skill sets as well as your passions.
Jay: And I noticed in your background, Tim, that you, like I, am a political science major. Which makes for a very interesting current political climate in this country. But I didn’t get into the watch business or the Navy so somewhere we diverged after our poli sci studies.
Tim: Well, I think maybe you gave me a great place to start there. First day of first term of my first year at college I had a Panerai PAM40 Titanium Luminor on the desktop of my old Dell. So that was my first computer in college and day one I had a picture of a watch there, so the germ idea-
Jay: So you were a watch nerd from way back. You are OG watch nerd.
Tim: Yeah, I would say I started as a watch geek. And I became a watch nerd. And then I became a weird science level watch nerd. I took it to re-animator levels, I think at some point.
Jay: You can probably- my son is this way with sneakers. He’s a sneaker savant and can see any sneaker in the world and immediately tell you everything about it: when it was made, how it was made, how many they made. And I presume you can do the same. You just see somebody’s watch in the airport and you’re like that’s a blanky-blank-blank-blank and you know everything about it.
Tim: Yeah, and it’s funny, when you become known for it, people actually preempt you. Like when Doctor Strange came out, there’s a Jaeger-LeCoultre Master Ultra Thin Perpetual Calendar in it and it plays a role in the plot. He’s broken physically and it’s broken but he accepts that. Some people where carpet bombing my email with questions about Doctor Strange’s watch. So it’s like I don’t even get the chance to spy people’s watches at the airport anymore. My phone melts down with questions from people who watch the show. And so I don’t even get the pleasure of being voyeuristic of the world around me, the world comes to me at this point. And it’s a little bit chaotic but it’s great. It’s good to be known for something.
And I guess the origins story starting in college was that I liked watches, they were kind of a perpetual aspirational interest. And maybe this is why when I actually got into watches as a collector I knew exactly what I wanted. But I spent a long time on the outside looking in. These are expensive things and even a $1,000 watch which would be at the lowest end of what we sell here at WatchUWant, is still beyond the reach of most people. If not the absolute reach of their means, maybe they can’t make the emotional jump to spend that much on a watch.
So through my years in college. And then I got out with my degree in political science and I worked for three years as a paralegal in securitization, mortgage securitization law in New York City to see if I wanted to go into law. And I decided that, having basically been a paralegal in the industry that brought the world to its knees, this was about as soulless as I could get, wholesale loans and securities based on subprime mortgagees.
So, I kind of swung to the opposite pole and I went in the other direction, at the other extreme and I joined the Navy. I’m like, “public service, a cause that’s bigger than me, go for it.” And originally they wanted me for aviation, to actually fly planes. For various physical reasons, I mentioned I had a bad knee a little bit earlier, it just didn’t work out physically. But as a result they were, “Okay, well, you’re a great writer you submitted a couple articles during your time in the aviation training pipeline. Why don’t we see how you work with the public affairs team?” And so the four years of my naval career I was with public affairs. I guess you could say I took a very technical and esoteric topic, naval aviation training. It’s not even like the top guns stuff, it’s like the driver’s ed for the guys who will someday be the top gun guys.
So we took that and it’s all done domestically so you have to maintain good relations with the surrounding community. And so I would create a very emotional thread of narrative around what we were doing on the base with primary fixed wing and advanced rotary aviation training. And so for years I just created that emotional bond between the machine the men and the audience, which was our local community. And then I got out in 2013.
Spent a little bit of time getting my knee back in shape and decided you know what? This is as close to a reset as anyone can get in life, going from the military back to civilian life. And I thought you know, you liked watches as sort of as a hobby in the miliary but you couldn’t really have that kind of expensive self-indulging hobby at the time or be associated with that world without raising a lot of questions among folks who were coming back from war. It just didn’t fit with the military environment.
So, from the austerity of the military to the kind of superfluous luxury of the watch space I started offering my services to companies, selling pre-owned watches on 47th Street because there’s no way I was going straight to the brands or the primary dealers. They didn’t want to talk to someone with no resume in the watch space. The pre-owned guys were different. They were open to having me ghostwrite articles in their names, write product copy for the eBay pages, for their websites, write them blogs.
And after about six months I reached out to Shannon Beck, president of WatchUWant and she asked me if I would be interested in writing web copy for the current website and a new one they were developing, as well as a daily blog for their company. And there were possibilities they mentioned of also helping to build up their social media properties. Well, I said, this is the foot in the door that I had been waiting for. WatchUWant’s a big name in the pre-owned space, I’ve certainly considered buying watches from them in the past and I relocated to Florida in June of 2014.
And I guess this is the part where maybe people who are looking on the outside in at social media at industries that interest them who want to be Social Pros could probably relate. I was not a watch expert when I came out of the Navy. A year after I got out of the Navy in June of 2014 when I joined WatchUWant I was not a watch expert. And I don’t call myself an expert now, but, I mean, the Tim of June 2014 couldn’t have spent five minutes- couldn’t have held up five minutes playing watch Trivial Pursuit against the Tim of 2017. Everything I learned about watches I learned in about 20 months of teaching myself.
So if you have the passion for a subject and it’s a passion that is consuming … if you get home at one AM, you go on a forum for watches, that was me. If you have a passion like that for any subject you can be a Social Pro, because you will run faster, wake up earlier, jump higher, and want it more than other people who are competing for those opportunities. And I was that guy who was just really hungry and willing to take a chance. So I joined WatchUWant in June of 2014, I prioritized video as quickly as I could. I had to push them away from my blogs and articles and typeset, printed SEO, written SEO, video. We started slow. By December of 2014 we had 300 subscribers on YouTube, today we have 28,800, I want to say, on our primary YouTube channel, with another 2,700 on the Govberg channel that we created a year ago, and 2,800 on the new Wrist Review channel that we put up two weeks ago. So I went from college to watches with a stop in mortgages and the Navy. But the reason I’m here is because I loved watches and I was going to do anything to be in that world.
Adam: Tim, that’s such an amazing story. And I just want to reinforce one thing that you shared from that. The old adage is overnight success usually takes about 10 years. But I think what you’ve articulated and I think the takeaway I get is that you’ve been able to do all this in just a couple years, not withstanding the creative and the storytelling and the writing and the communications talents that you’ve been growing since you were a young child. But you’ve been able to accomplish this. And I think this shows any of us, with the right passion and enthusiasm, we can do just about anything. So thanks again and I know that’s probably a perfect segue, Jay, for our last two big questions.
Jay: Two big questions that we ask every guest here on Social Pros, this is episode 267, Tim, if you could give people one piece of advice, people who are looking to become a Social Pro, what would that advice be? I think certainly you’ve said do what you love, but that’s not always realistic, I don’t think for everybody in the business. Not everybody can go work in the industry that they have a huge passion for. People don’t always have a huge passion for B2B enterprise software or whatever the case may be. So what would be the-
Adam: You mean I don’t, Jay? Is that what you’re saying?
Jay: Adam does. Adam does. Not everyone else. What would be your other tip?
Tim: Honestly, I would say in addition to having a consuming passion and making that your focus, you have to be able to take risks and make sacrifices for that passion. When I came out of the Navy, I couldn’t walk around the block. And I spent the better part of six months just getting my knee back in shape where I could walk the block on 47th Street in New York City and sell my services. So I was singularly driven to make this happen no matter what. And a big part of my physical rehab was based on just the motivation to get out there and start trying to make this dream a reality.
But I also lived off savings for that first year and a half because, writing for pre-owned vendors in 47th Street, I was living in New York and I was getting paid as little as $15 for a blog article. I was able to mass produce because I would spend 15 hours a day working on these projects for almost nothing. All the while seeing my savings diminish, diminish, diminish. And to me that was a sacrifice and a risk I was willing to take. I don’t think there are any comfortable routes to a dream job and for a lot of people, career in social media, like being a Social Pro, being known in your community as an authority, being regarded, having people both inside- for me, inside the primary new watch industry and the pre-owned industry ask me questions and use my hands-on videos for training, that doesn’t happen in less I make the decision at step one of a thousand step journey to take risks. Make sacrifices do things that are maybe not pleasant, easy, or fruitful and do them for a long time without clear payoff. So, yeah, find something you love, but find something you love enough to sacrifice to achieve.
Jay: Yeah, I love that idea that there’s no easy path to your dream job. I couldn’t agree more. And there’s a lot of people who just want to sort of show up and say okay I want to be in charge of social media for this huge company. And it doesn’t typically work like that. Sometimes it does, but typically it doesn’t. You’ve got to push a little harder, so I love your story.
Last question for you Tim, is if you could do a Skype call, or in your case maybe a Google hangout or a YouTube Live call-
Adam: Something on YouTube.
Jay: -with any living person, who would it be and why? Is there some sort of watch guru that you would want to have an interaction with or somebody else?
Tim: Well, before I answer that, I just want to throw this out there: if you love social, persist with it. Because in our first six months in WatchUWant video, we gained 300 subscribers. I gained 350 subscribers on my primary channel last week. So you’ve got to stay at it too. So I just wanted to throw that in too.
Two people I would love to Skype with, and I’m throwing them out there because they’re at opposite ends of the spectrum. One is my cousin, Terrance. He is the person who I identify most closely because he’s also a writer. I’ve always identified myself first as a writer, a conveyor of ideas, a communicator, spoken or written. He doesn’t focus on the same type of stuff that I do, but because he’s a creative writer, a poet, and he defines himself as such, he and I are on a frequency like no one else. So talking with Terrance is a pleasure because I feel like that’s the closest thing I have in the world to a brother. Someone who thinks like I do, who has the passion and the drive like I do for very esoteric subjects and the ability to communicate it.
And, otherwise, I would like to have a Skype call with Buck Dharma, Donald Roeser is his real name. He’s the lead guitarist for the Blue Oyster Cult. And he was the primary song writer of all their greatest hits. Lead guitarist, wrote most of their most popular music. And he’s a person who is in an expressive and creative field. I absolutely worship the work he’s produced and I would love to hear a perspective on sustaining the passion and drive for a vocation. Not just a job, but a vocation. And doing that because he’s been touring for 50 years and for me that’s a creative person who’s sustained an all-consuming passionate lifestyle built around his vocation. And he’s done it for five decades. And I’d love to know how he’s sustains the drive and the passion and the focus.
Jay: Didn’t see that one coming. Did not predict a Blue Oyster Cult band member. But that is a fantastic example and we’re going to include that in the show notes which everybody can find at SocialPros.com. We might even drop in a little SoundCloud clip of a little Blue Oyster Cult. We’ll have to see how that works with the editorial team. Tim, thank you so much for being on the show. It was just a fantastic episode. Really terrific to speak with you. Congratulations on all the success. Adam and I are going to compare some notes off-air and figure out what watch we’re going to buy from you.
Tim: Oh, thank you so much. And by all means, I’m a fan of Jaeger-LeCoultre, I do everything I can to spread the faith. So if there’s any J-LC that I could possibly sell you on emotionally, existentially, please just reach out to me and I will make you part of the fraternity.
Jay: I appreciate it. Will do it next time I’m in Miami. I’m going to come hang out with you and do some looking at your videos and gazing at watches.
Tim: Okay, and if it’s not a J-LC that’s good too. Vive la difference.
Jay: Love it. See you next time ladies and gentlemen. This is Social Pros.

Join the Social Pros LinkedIn Community

Join a community of real social pros doing social media on LinkedIn. Receive all the inspiration and ideas straight to your feed and add your thoughts to the conversation.

Follow Social Pros on LinkedIn

Subscribe to Social Pros Podcast

b2b influencer