013. How Story-Driven Content Supports a Creative Business w/ Debi Beard

Story Greenlight with Jeff Bartsch

When is a can of paint more than just a can of paint? Debi Beard of Debi's Design Diary started her YouYube channel to promote and demonstrate her own line of artisan paint. Not only has the channel grown, but so has an army of hundreds of individual retailers and online influencers who use and sell Debi’s paint line to their own audiences.

But the paint itself is only part of the equation – Debi is building an international community of creatives through human connection and online content powered by storytelling. We dig into her content creation strategies, including an incredibly powerful format for using storytelling in tutorial and demonstration videos. Get ready to take notes on how you can put Debi’s ideas to use for yourself.

Check out Debi’s channel at Debi’s Design Diary, https://www.youtube.com/c/DebisDesignDiary

Learn about DIY Paint at https://diypaint.co/

LEAVE A VOICE MESSAGE: Got comments, reactions, or just wanna say hi? Leave a voice message for us and we may use it in an upcoming episode: https://www.speakpipe.com/StoryGreenlight

RESOURCES

Debi’s top video: “How to Paint Upholstery, keep it soft, and velvety! No cracking or hard texture!” https://youtu.be/kwEz633cwQQ

Playlist including many of Debi’s story-driven videos: My favorite uploads, https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVwr-Pr6V4ivgiYRUXA-t4Y-83sYy_K2I

SHOW NOTES

3:39 Jeff explains the uniqueness of what Debi has built

4:13 How Debi got started in retail business and struggled to survive

5:30 Debi’s obstacles to starting on YouTube: extremely introverted, broke, and not tech savvy

8:43 How Debi’s YouTube channel sold more paint in a few days from one video than a whole week in her physical store!

11:27 How Debi moved from selling other people’s paint to creating her own line of DIY Paint, and how retailers began approaching HER!

14:26 Debi’s top-performing video on repainting a velvet sofa: “How to Paint Upholstery, keep it soft, and velvety! No cracking or hard texture!” https://youtu.be/kwEz633cwQQ

15:40 Debi discusses wholesale versus retail distributors for DIY Paint and how she gets to support influencers and small businesses

18:08 New levels of obstacles

18:21 How Debi’s business dealt with the Covid pandemic and quadrupled in size! How Debi built community by doing daily livestreams

25:16 How Debi uses personal storytelling in her tutorial videos

27:40 How the Master Story Framework of desire, obstacle, and transformation fits into tutorials

28:20 How Debi tells the story of the furniture itself and mistakes along the way

29:40 More detail of adding story into tutorial videos – how Debi intercuts parallel sections of story and demonstration footage using music as support

32:08 How Debi’s audience responds to story-driven content

36:29 How Debi uses the story of the featured piece to drive the video instead of intercutting another storyline. Helpful for getting more content out quickly.

37:58 What’s next for DIY Paint and Debi’s Design Diary

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