048 Stop Letting Templates Ruin Your Videos
Templates are just a starting point, not a rulebook—so stop letting them box you in and start using them in a way that actually works for you.
*Please note that this podcast was previously called THE "Video Confidence Coachcast" and the "Do Video Podcast" previous to 2025. THANK-YOU FOR YOUR UNDERSTANDING AS I TRANSITION THE BRAND TO BE MORE CONSISTANT FOR YOUR LISTENING AND WATCHING PLEASURE.Quick Quiz Time 🥳
What is the primary purpose of a template in content creation?
A) A rigid set of rules to follow exactly
B) A shortcut to avoid putting in creative effort
C) A flexible guide to help structure ideas
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Answer: C) A flexible guide to help structure ideas - templates are a great foundation but you need to break them in order to use them effectively within your brand.
048 Stop Letting Templates Ruin Your Videos
Rigidly sticking to templates can stifle creativity, but bending (or even breaking) them to suit your unique needs can make all the difference. In this episode, we explore how to make marketing and content templates work for you rather than against you, ensuring they support rather than restrict your personal brand growth.
Marketing templates, guides, and rules exist to provide structure, but they are not one-size-fits-all solutions. Instead of feeling trapped by them, business owners should view them as flexible starting points that can be adjusted to suit their unique goals and audience.
By breaking down templates and adapting them to personal needs, business owners can create content that feels more authentic and effective. Following marketing rules without critical thought can stifle creativity and lead to generic, uninspiring content that doesn’t truly represent your brand.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed by content creation or stuck trying to follow rigid formulas, it’s time to rethink your approach. Work with Zoë Wood, the Video Confidence Coach, to learn how to build a marketing strategy that actually works for you. Reach out at VCC.Training for coaching and mentoring.
What Was Discussed This Episode + Timecodes:
00:00 – Templates are meant to be broken, not blindly followed.
02:00 – A real-life story of a past client who adapted a template to fit her needs.
05:00 – Why templates are just a foundation, not a final answer.
08:00 – The "531 Rule" for social media and why it’s a guideline, not a law.
12:00 – Why you shouldn’t take every marketing “rule” as gospel truth.
14:00 – How to find and adapt the right tools for your personal brand.
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Unknown Speaker 0:00
Templates are just guides that are meant to be broken.
Unknown Speaker 0:06
If you're tired of the old cookie cutter marketing advice and want to take your personal brand to the next level with bold, actionable strategies that truly reflect you, you're in the right place. Let's untangle your marketing mayhem with zo the video confidence coach on the unborn your brand podcast, unboring, your brand was recorded on what a run land,
Unknown Speaker 0:30
welcoming you today's podcast where we're going to discuss, again, a story that is prompted from my conversations this week, and we're going to go into a little bit more in depth, into the mindset and maybe something that might be useful for you when you're looking for templates or guides or rules online, and when you hear from marketers or people in spheres of interest that you're currently engaging with, and they give you either a template or a set of rules to follow, everything is all made up. We can always bend and break these rules and templates to our own needs, as always as when I record these podcast episodes, it's usually once a week during my video confidence, connect live stream again. Those who are watching live video, feel free to comment below
Unknown Speaker 1:21
all my podcast episodes usually get prompted by a story that I've had, that I have talked to either a client of mine, a prospective lead, or at a networking event. And this particular week, I was at a networking event, a virtual one based out in Brissie, and I met someone. So we have a group of us in a Zoom Room. There was about 15 of us, and we got put into these breakout rooms, which are individual screens with one or two other people, or maybe three other people in the room. And I was paired with one of my past clients, which I we did some work together back in 2020, which is almost gone to be five years ago now,
Unknown Speaker 2:04
and
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what we just and we essentially got into this topic of set checking in how they were going and how their life has changed since I last chatted with them, and it looked like that they had made a Very large pivot in their life that they had
Unknown Speaker 2:23
stopped working with the company that I was working with them in, and they went, had some babies, and now they're coming back into the industry, but working specifically with startups and the work they were doing. And she wanted to thank me wholeheartedly for the template that I gave her, and I said,
Unknown Speaker 2:41
I love you, but which one? Because when I work with leads and work with clients, both mainly with my coaching and consulting clients, I have a lot of tools, a lot of IP that I use to help break down these larger concepts, especially when you're taking on a new project and you just need to find a place to start. And this tool that I like to use a lot, which you can definitely see on my website and on my YouTube channel, is my customer avatar template. And she said to me, she thanked me so hard, so wholeheartedly for giving her the template and also giving her the tutorial on how to break it down and how to use this to her advantage. And but she and she wanted to reiterate, and she said, but I had to adapt it to my own needs, and I'm so sorry for, you know, tweaking it and breaking the template, because I just needed to make this work for what I needed to and I had to stop her there and say, Don't apologize. A tool is meant to be used, even if it breaks. And
Unknown Speaker 3:41
a line that we eventually came out of our five minutes together, because, of course, this was a our networking event, and we were going between rooms, rooms. The the tidbit that we came out of it both together was rules are meant to help guide us, but they are there to be bent. There are there to be bended and maybe even broken. And that is a mentality that I wanted to bring in today's podcast episode discussing about when you are not sure where to start on a project, or you know you need to achieve some sort of either way of thinking, way of doing a project or an activity or an action. And there are people, now, of course, these could be marketing gurus or people outline or just people who have gone through the work of doing something that you're about to do yourself to hopefully make things easier. There's a reason why tutorials exist. There's a reason why step by step guides exist. They have existed for a very long time. But I want to stress to you that especially when coming across these out in the wild, or maybe they're even advertised to you, either on social media or in your email list, or however that adapting these templates for you to use, because at the end of the day, these tools are tools. They are meant to be used to help you gain the knowledge to help.
Unknown Speaker 5:00
You
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achieve what you want to achieve in the way that you need to achieve it. These are supposed to be used by you, and they are supposed to provide a foundation there's you, that is why they are usually quite generalized, and usually templates and tools are usually quite
Unknown Speaker 5:17
first or low stake type introductions into the knowledge that you're trying to acquire, because they're supposed to be designed for everyone to use, or at least the people who are interested in the subject that you're trying to engage with are using, and they are trying to provide a foundation for you to then go off and find more details about that particular subject or that particular focus, or whatever you're doing, and that's what I don't think a lot of people quite understand, especially when it comes to coming across templates, or you're hearing these, for example, 531 rule, or these various different ways of constricting information to be able to make it easier for you to
Unknown Speaker 5:59
Again, consume format in your brain and then spew out again, either teaching, for example, like in a podcast or a live stream, or maybe even teaching your team if you're working with a team, or maybe teaching your higher ups something that is important about how you do something or why you do something. So I want you to think about when you come across these tools, it is okay to break them. It is okay to bend and break them. Of course, doing your best to kind of keep the original off to a side, so if something breaks completely, you can always go back to the original and go, okay. You were here. You worked. Maybe I might follow you a bit better next time it is important to evaluate and adapt them to suit your unique needs and situations, blindly following formulas or templates or rules
Unknown Speaker 6:48
without any critical evaluation of your specific circumstances can stifle your own creativity and adaptability, because, again, these things are supposed to help you, these tools and these guides are supposed to help you achieve whatever you're wanting to achieve with them. So use them as the starting point that they're intended to be. Now, of course, for a lot of
Unknown Speaker 7:12
people who are working in industries who provide these tools are usually trying to keep them as their starting point. So then you can go and maybe hire them for more money, of course, than just free or maybe just your email address to help achieve what you want to achieve. And if that is not in the cards for you right now, maybe because you don't have the time, the money or the energy to be able to afford that using these tools as the starting point that they're intended to be is also okay being able to use them to personalize and personalize your experience on growing your personal brand, I know I said personalize a fair few times in that section there. Use them as the starting point that they're intended to be, but don't be afraid to break them either
Unknown Speaker 7:58
sticking to a formula or a template wholeheartedly
Unknown Speaker 8:03
isn't going to be beneficial to you. And of course, I have said this multiple times over today's podcast, but the rules at the end of the day are meant to guide us. So a one that example that I can come with over this past month is I'm working with someone on their marketing and they have a lot of different faculties. They have five to 10 different things that they do in their business. And as you can imagine, that overwhelms them, but also overwhelms me when I'm trying, I'm trying to do my best to support them and trying to give them some sort of direction. So the way that we brought this all back down, and of course, this is what we do every time, is we bring it back to the customer, we bring it back to the client, we bring it back to who are you doing this for? Why do they care? And then we start with that.
Unknown Speaker 8:50
And I discussed with them, when it came specifically to their social media, they do get a lot of traction and a lot of leads generated specifically from their Facebook page, but also the Instagram page as well, and they've slowly acclimatized to both, even though social media wasn't really their forte and continues not really to be something that they enjoy doing. And I have discussed with them how, hey, once we get to a stage where we know what we're doing, we know what we're focusing on, from there, we can start getting other people to do this work for us, if that is what you want to do, and again, you have now the tools and the knowledge to be able to clearly help, clearly help someone who is going to help you with social media. So I digress. But when I talk to them about some rules, so say, for example, the 531, rule for pieces of content. They were quite surprised. It's like, oh, you're, you know, giving me these rules and I have to stick to them. No, these aren't necessarily
Unknown Speaker 9:50
something that you have to stick to. It's just a foundation. So the 531, rule, off the top of my head, it is a way of breaking down posts that for.
Unknown Speaker 10:00
Every five posts you do, three should be educational and bringing new people into the sphere of what you do and how you do it. One should be, one should be a very pinpointing, selling post, specifically talking about the current project or campaign that you have going on, like explicitly saying, talking about your current campaign, and then the other one left can be fairly free in regards to what you want to do with that particular post. Now I'm not saying that this particular rule has to be followed. So what I'm saying for every five posts that you have, three should be educational, one should be selling. And then, of course, the other one can be whatever you want it to be, and that gives you enough rules and that flexibility to be able to create those five pieces of content over a week, over two weeks, whatever your schedule is like, because this enables you to again, start a foundation. Start, a start, a start. Start, a starting point. Break down this wall of overwhelming information, specifically about social media, but marketing in general, into really easy, breakdownable tools that you can think about yourself, put it into a system and a process that you can, in turn, give to someone else, if you have that ability, or just remind yourself whenever you have to do social media, like, for example, for a couple of my clients that I usually don't get people on board to do social media anymore.
Unknown Speaker 11:28
I just help my legacy clients out from time to time, and we do social media once a month, again, following these basic foundation rule sets that we've used and we've thought about over time to the point where it's all second nature. At this point, we guide the ship in a particular direction, but we know that we have to do three posts a week. The posts have to be client focused, and one of them has to be specifically aimed at our corporate clients. Boom, done. Cool. We've broken down this really big overwhelm of what do we put on our social media? Of, yeah, every single month we know exactly what we're going to put on our social media.
Unknown Speaker 12:08
And breaking down this even more
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is, don't take what anyone says as the gospel truth. Now, I am not religious myself, but what I mean by the gospel truth is that
Unknown Speaker 12:21
what someone say. For example, someone who may have a larger audience than you, may be more influenced than you, or is just further along in their journey than you,
Unknown Speaker 12:32
what they say isn't always going to apply to your situation, because the way that they grew online, for example, 10 years ago is not the current situation that we're living in now. And how you would grow now is very different to how you would grow 10 or 15 years ago.
Unknown Speaker 12:51
And using a template as your foundation is useful because it gives it gives you that knowledge, that foundational knowledge for then for you to bring in other tutorials, bring in other knowledge, maybe even talk to people who are
Unknown Speaker 13:07
more knowledgeable about the subject that you're wanting to particularly grab onto. And maybe you can spend that energy and time to talk to someone for that hour to be able to again, you've have the knowledge and that foundational knowledge from these templates, these rules, these guides, these tools, to then be able to be better informed once you go to, say, a networking event, or you go to a seminar, or maybe you take an online course, whatever it may be, use these to your advantage as the foundational knowledge that they are. These aren't the be all and end all. These aren't a thing that is going to bend and break your business. It is okay to take parts from one tool and take parts from another tool if it is going to help you and help you grow, and if not, then that's okay let it go. You're not hurting anyone by not using the tool, and especially with a lot of
Unknown Speaker 14:02
lead magnet or people that I work with, they've got your email address, and maybe they might be the right fit in the future. And if not, that's okay, you can just unsubscribe the transaction has occurred.
Unknown Speaker 14:15
And as I mentioned before, not everything will work for every situation. So it's okay to bend and break to make it fit you.
Unknown Speaker 14:24
So hopefully, for today's podcast, you've gotten a little bit of an idea of my mentality when it comes to guides and templates. I have a very large list of templates and guides that I'm currently working on uploading to my website to have it be available for people to be able to break down these large concepts when it comes to marketing, and be able to break down these thoughts about, where do I begin? Where do I start? How do I even begin to grow a personal brand? Zo, well, you don't think about yourself.
Unknown Speaker 14:55
Thank you so much for listening today's podcast I will finish up today.
Unknown Speaker 15:00
A and if you are interested in joining me for any mentoring or any coaching regarding growing your personal brand, you can always hit me up at Vcc dot training. Have a bit of a week. I'll see you next week.
Unknown Speaker 15:12
Thank you for listening or watching on boring your brand. You can find detailed show notes with tools offers and episode transcriptions. Just click the first link in the description or go to Vcc dot training slash podcast, get involved and ask me anything about personal branding video strategy, or just a friendly Small Business chat via my email. G'day at Vcc dot training, that is G, D, A, y at V cc, dot training, the video confidence coach would like to acknowledge and pay my respects to the wadawurrung people of the Kulin nation, the traditional custodians of the land on which I record my podcast. I pay my respects to their elders. Past and present. I stand with the traditional custodians of these lands and working towards a more equal future. Always was, always will be, Aboriginal land. Look forward to me chatting at you next week, superstars.
The above livestream episode description and transcript were generated together human knowledge + ai.
Who is your host?
Feeling stuck trying to build a personal brand that actually turns heads? Women and non-binary super-stars deserve more than just a cookie-cutter approach to their worries. Zoë Wood the Video Confidence Coach untangles your marketing mayhem, helping you own the camera, craft killer video strategies, and connect with your audience like never before. You’ll leave with the tools to show up, stand out, and smash your goals.
Find out more about how to grow your personal brand with the power of video right here on vcc.training
Smashing Your Marketing Mayhem With Killer Video Strategies 🧡
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