Today on the podcast our guest is Frank from Frank Does it. Frank Does It is primarily a media company, Frank doesn’t focus on making commissions anymore. He recalls that the origins started all the way back in High School woodshop. Then Frank and his wife went nine years in their marriage without having an actual bed with a headboard and footboard vs. just a mattress and metal frame.
Frank’s wife really wanted a nice bed frame, so Frank looked into the cost and then thought, “I can make that.” Frank went and bought a miter-saw and some impact drivers and he fell back in love with woodworking.
Then Frank put some photos of the bed on Craigslist and got a ton of engagement. People wanted to commission him and he did that for a while, but he has a full-time job as a journeyman lineman with a wife and four kids so he is too busy for much commission work.
“I work scheduled 40 hours a week, but with power outages and anything like that, you know, I end up working a crazy amount. I have my wife and four kids, and I live busy.
I work 4/10’s at my normal job, so I spend pretty much a full day, one day a week on that three-day weekend that I get in the shop. What everybody sees is what I do on that one day, and then I trickle it out throughout the week.”
- Frank
The Work/Life Balance
Frank enjoys the DIY process of learning how to do things, which has translated to the way he creates his videos and content. His full-time job is very rewarding and he feels that the time he would need to spend on commissions makes him uninterested in doing so because he would need to pump out a huge number of products to make it worthwhile.
In terms of his online content creation, Frank explains that he started out on YouTube. Since he was already on the website to learn anything that interested him, it was an easy leap to start there. His first video about changing the shocks on a 1989 Toyota pickup got around 30,000 views and sparked the engagement that he used to build and develop his channel.
Frank notes that he spent some time on Tiktok when it first came out and he became pretty large on that platform. He fell in love with the short-form content because as much as he enjoys making YouTube videos, he is only able to put out one or two per year because of the time it takes to edit the videos to the level he deems perfect.
When asked by Steve how his focus on content creation has impacted his business, Frank acknowledges that his business is not a moneymaker but he is not bothered by that because he is simply not in it for the money. He ultimately considers himself a hobbyist still, and makes sure his content looks exactly the way he wants it to.
Focusing on the Future
Frank notes that he would enjoy being able to supplement his income to the point where he can focus more on Frank Does It, but he adds that he will never want to stop being a lineman. Nevertheless, he would like to grow larger on YouTube and continue putting out the micro-content through Tiktok and Instagram reels.
“I do have goals, you know, I would like to get bigger on YouTube and actually put more YouTube content out. I have like seven projects worth of horizontal video that I have in the queue to be able to edit for YouTube.
So I have some content, I just need to find the time because these reels and Tiktok this micro-content, which is really what I love doing. It still just eats so much time. People don’t realize the amount of time that goes into a 15-second video to make it entertaining enough to possibly go viral.”
- Frank
Steve’s Advice Corner
In terms of marketing advice, Frank explains that he is mostly interested in a way to set up brand deals that don’t come off poorly. Steve begins by advising Frank to look into hiring someone through a platform like UpWork or Fiverr to handle editing the horizontal videos for YouTube. This would free up an enormous amount of Frank’s time while still allowing him the creative freedom to work on his micro-content for Tiktok and other platforms.
Steve adds that if Frank is able to also hire someone who could help him with engagement optimization, it will save him even more time while providing a better engagement rate to get people to bring people over from one platform to another. Steve notes that money shouldn’t be the motivator, but audience building is.
He explains that Frank could run a contest or a giveaway on his Instagram to help get his follower count over the 10,000 mark and leverage his audience on Tiktok and YouTube to help get it there as well. Steve notes that Frank has excellent engagement, and he can create a media kit based on that engagement to reach out to brands and showcase the audience that he has curated.
“Really it comes down to the social proof and then selling yourself and letting brands know that you exist and that you’re around for that. Right now your call to action on Instagram is your YouTube, right? You can change your call to action and says, “DM me, DM me to work together.” Period. You have to put yourself out there like that. So people know that you exist. It’s almost like you’re inviting them.”
- Steve Larosiliere
Instagram: @therealfrankdoesit
YouTube: Frank Does It