#1 Change, Innovation, & Creating With Others

Find Your Voice, Change Your Life Podcast
Podcast Host: Dr. Doreen Downing
Free Guide to Fearless Speaking: Doreen7steps.com

Episode #1 Noah Mittman
“Change, Innovation, & Creating with Others”

Dr. Doreen Downing: 00:00
Hi, I’m Doreen Downing of Essential Speaking: Find Your Voice and Change Your Life. And today, I get to interview Noah Mittman. He’s an online course creator, but he’s also a filmmaker. Let me tell you a little bit about him.
Noah is the founder and CEO of Snowman Films. He’s a full-time filmmaker, a course creator and video coach with 15 years of experience, a family man and an entrepreneur. Noah empowers course creating solopreneurs by equipping them with fully integrated, monetizable, comprehensive courses. Oh, and you could look to him for ideas.

Noah Mittman:
I’m an idea guy, for sure.

Dr. Doreen Downing:
You are! You and I have already had some conversations. I’m really excited today to share with the community, anything you can offer to us. Maybe we’ll start with how do we get ideas. But first, before we do that, I’d like to hear a little bit more about how you even got into this business.

Noah Mittman: 1:07
Yeah, that is a roller coaster of a story. Thank you so much for that introduction. That was awesome. I’ve been a filmmaker and video content maker, creator for a very long time since high school and was running a close to six-figure video production business for 2018-2019. I started the company in 2012 and really kind of grew it over the years. I knew that I had the entrepreneur bug and needed to follow that and do my own thing.
Then end of 2019, I was ready to rock it in 2020. I had really figured out some in person event stuff and really had had the business going and then COVID hit and basically all in person video production came to a halt for many months. So I had to rethink what my entire business was. I’d been a fan and a student of online courses for years and had been wanting to get into the space for years as well and just had not really had the time or the space or the opportunity or the break in work, from video to create and study online courses and really get out into that space.
So, I created my first course. It’s called Film Your Online Course at Home, which teaches, again, ropes in the filmmaking side of things to help people create an online course from their house with just their phone and some basic equipment. You don’t need to spend a lot. In fact, if you have a phone, you really don’t need to spend any money to get your online course up and out.
Then where the coaching came in was, I’ve been coaching on video and video marketing for a few years and realized that I was probably at about a 7 with online course creation knowledge. I say I’m not at a 10 because I’m not a millionaire yet. I can help 0-6 on knowledge levels get to where they want to go. I literally just got off of a coaching call before this podcast and she was just glowing with how much I had helped and how much she was learning and actually moving forward and not feeling like she was spinning her wheels or banging her head against the wall anymore.
It was just so cool to hear that I’m able to really help people that have a message that have knowledge to bring to the world and the only thing that’s stopping them is one of the four phases that I’ve really realized that go into course creation.
Phase 1: Market research. So, understanding what you want to teach about, who your target market is, who your ideal customer is.
Phase 2: Content. That is the actual creation of your course, the filming, the editing, the writing, all the other stuff that goes into making it.
Phase 3: Technology. Getting your funnels up, getting your systems in place, getting your email list talking to your funnel, and all the different stuff that is techie and very overwhelming, which I understand.
Phase 4: Promotion. And that’s getting your message out there because once you hit publish, you’re not automatically going to be selling. That’s not how it works. You need to work just as hard on promoting your stuff on getting out and spreading the word to new eyes and ears.
Knowing that anybody that’s struggling with any of those four phases maybe not getting their course out because of you know not knowing what the next steps are. The coaching opportunity and the knowledge that I can really help these people change the world potentially with what they’re putting out and really stepping into this new renaissance of online courses and add in online education, which is where I really think things are going with our world. It was super cool. It’s super fulfilling for me. And I’m having a blast with it.

Dr. Doreen Downing: 5:31
Yes. Well, I loved asking you about your journey because what happened. It seems like you’re one of those people who said, all right, you know, this is reality, I have to step into a new reality. But I also hear that you were able to tap into something that you had no idea that you were really going to develop, which is course creation. I get also your energy and your enthusiasm about it and your love of it. And it’s just feels infectious.

Noah Mittman: 6:05
I’m having fun. I think what was cool about it was I started with the filmmaking passion and I still have the filmmaking passion. The filmmaking passion is now dialed into creating content and creating value content and being creative with my video promotion basically. The content marketing that I’m putting out is essentially just giving value and making cool stuff and trying to draw people in.
So that was always there. That’s been there since I was 16 years old. The coaching side of things, I enjoy a lot and I have a passion for. And seeing the people that are making progress that had an idea to start with and then after the coaching have an actual course that they have made and are like getting out into the into the marketplace and like doing stuff, that transformation is so cool to watch. I have a blast with it and it’s super fulfilling, which I was, you know, hoping would happen, and it did happen through the process. But it’s really cool to see it come to fruition.

Dr. Doreen Downing: 7:12
Yes. And what you’ve done is there are a lot of people who emphasize marketing and marketing only but had no idea about course creation or even getting at ideas and then oh, my gosh, of all things, the whole technical side, which feels—but you, you feel like tech is fun for you.

Noah Mittman: 7:37
It is! I understand it. The reason I understand it is because I have taken the time and the hours of pulling my own hair out to figure out this stuff and the processes and that specific button you need to hit to actually make the thing work. If you don’t know where it is, you’re just gonna go insane because there’s not a lot of support or help out there for some of this really specific tech stuff, especially with funnels and with online course platforms like my favorite is Thinkific.
There’s small things in there that you don’t know what you don’t know. So having somebody who knows what it is and says these are the essentials that you need to make this thing happen and communicate and work. I was just talking to my student, it’s setting up the systems first so that when you drive the traffic, when you’re doing the promotion, you’re driving people to your systems, they will work for you and you can actually be successful with what you’re doing. Instead of if the systems are not set up with the tech and you’re driving people to whatever it is, and it’s not set up fully, you’re going to be losing customers and potential clients because you don’t have your tech on lock.

Dr. Doreen Downing: 8:55
Yes. And I feel that what you offer is each aspect of course creation to and then the tech and then the promotion. I can’t just imagine anybody not being able to get exactly what they need from start to finish and then to success. You’re coaching them, maybe because obviously, they probably made a course and then they’re promoting it. But how do you then evaluate—

Noah Mittman: 9:32
Well, that’s where the marketing comes in. I built a six-figure business off of video marketing specifically so I understand the marketing side of things very well. But realizing that there’s so much more that goes into that before you get to the marketing. There are certain marketing pieces you set up right in the beginning, basically of how your profiles are optimized or how you look and the call to actions you’re giving to people to kind of build up essentially like a market research.
The first thing that you need to understand is obviously firstly, what you want to teach with your with your online course. That’s kind of important. But secondly, and I think that a step that a lot of people miss in the beginning because I miss it in the very, very beginning is, who is this for and do they even want it?
Market research is first of all, identify your target market, identify your ideal customer, and then go ask them, go to where they are hanging out and ask questions. Ask the right questions to see if your idea even has legs. Because if it doesn’t, that’s fine, but at least you knew before you put hours and days and months of work into creating something that nobody was interested in.
So asking the right questions at the very beginning to get that basically, like proof of concept on hey, are you interested in this? If you get yeses back, then you at least know some people are interested, which probably means more people will be interested. So that’s like a really critical first step.

Dr. Doreen Downing: 11:18
Yes, it’s identifying the problem before you even say, hey, I have the solution because you may have a solution to a problem, but if it’s really not a big enough problem that people have and, yes, I want to solve this problem, then you’re not really serving the people who you should be serving. It’s like I have this idea and I love my idea. Does anybody else? Well, no.

Noah Mittman: 11:49
Right. Which sucks. We’ve all been through that. And this is where the idea generation comes in. This is where I think we live in this incredible age of social media on many different platforms where you can literally through groups or hashtags, the right search, find communities of people that we can help potentially and then just start conversations with them. That’s an amazing, amazing thing.
So the power to connect and the power to get answers when you’re posting authentically and just saying like literally, hey, this is what I’m working on. Like, is this of interest to anybody? Would this help anybody?
I’ll just tell you my story. My big lightbulb moment was I originally created a few courses and ideas through the One Funnel Away Challenge from ClickFunnels, which is great. I love the challenge. It’s awesome. It’s a ton of work. But I was going after the video marketing kind of niche. And I was kind of doing some research and listening to some podcasts and I happened upon Amy Porterfield’s podcast and she was saying she was starting this boot camp for course creators.
The next day, it was free. So I joined it. And one of the first ones was like hey, who are you going to help and what are you going to help them with? And a couple of days in, I posted a question in there. Just like I wonder I kind of had this idea. I was like, oh my god, there’s 17,000 potential course creators in here. That’s insane. But do they need help with creating the courses? Do they need help with making their videos look better with all that stuff?
Again, this is the basis of my first day of Filming Online Courses At Home. I said, hey, course creators, anybody interested in making your videos look, sound, and feel more professional? 500 yes comments. Ah, there’s a market. Okay. So you have to identify a market by asking the right question.
Once you do that, you’re in business. And what’s cool about that with going back to the marketing piece of the promotion, once you know who your ideal market is and who your client is and what you’re helping them with, you can address directly them in all of your promotional stuff. So every video you’re going to see come out from me is, “Hey, course creators.” I know exactly who I’m talking to you.
Because not only are active course creators in that, but people who want to create a course or aspiring to will feel connected to I want to be a course creator, hey, course creators, that’s me, okay, I’m doing this boom, they’re go getters. It really kind of emphasizes and calls out exactly who your who your audience is. And that’s exactly how you build promotion and you build success is by talking directly to who your customers are.

Dr. Doreen Downing: 14:54
Yeah, and when you say course creators, it’s not only those who are saying yeah, I want to do a course, you’re speaking to people who probably have already developed courses but don’t know how to market them. And then those who have already developed courses, maybe are getting some success, but could get more. You’ve done the whole range.

Noah Mittman: 15:18
As you can see, I’ve done lots and lots of homework on this.

Dr. Doreen Downing: 15:22
I see that. I see that, Noah. I’m really glad you get to share and speak about it so expertly today. It feels like whoever is watching this, I want to make sure that they can find you. Is there anything else you feel like you need to share about this? Is there an offer? What’s next if somebody is watching this?

Noah Mittman: 15:47
Yeah 100% of how to get in touch. I’m on all the socials. So Snowman Films is my company. You can find me @snowmanfilms on Instagram. If you just connect with me Noah Mittman on Facebook. I’m there. I have a group. The way to connect with me on Facebook is go to my profile, all signs lead to my group, which is Stop Waiting and Start Creating Your Course. That is a private group. You can get in and get on my email list, anything like that.
I do all my podcasts. My podcast is called Create Your Course. All the branding is in line across the board. From there, I go live on my podcast in that group. I post content to the group. I’m pushing LinkedIn really hard. Noah Mittman on LinkedIn. Connect with me there. TikTok – I’m trying to get bigger on. TikTok is just a wild west of a place. I love it.
Just reach out at any of the socials, Snowman Films and Noah Mittman. You can find me. Thank you for reminding me with the offer. So I have a free download. It is 4 Simple Steps That You Can Go From Nervous to Natural on Camera.
For anybody that is a little bit nervous on camera or hasn’t created videos yet because of those nerves, I give 4 really easy steps to get past those nerves and kind of not just one time, but like figure out tools and techniques to fully get past it. This is closer to kind of what your whole market is. Getting past that stage fright. Because you have the stage you have the speaking and then you have just me and a camera. And there’s some very simple things you can do to help with that. You can find that at filmyouronlinecourse.com/nervoustonatural.
And that’s a totally free download that’ll get you into my email list, get you into my world. There is lots more value coming after that, that you can sign up for after getting that first one.

Dr. Doreen Downing: Yes. And I’m sure people will find you on Facebook or just Noah Mittman.

Noah Mittman: 18:26
I’m all over it. Yeah, exactly. I try to be everywhere. That’s another thing that I say for the coaching. I’ll just share story here.
I went through some Facebook drama recently where I was commenting too much. I was kind of copying comments, trying to kind of breaking Facebook’s rules, I guess. I actually got suspended from Facebook for 24 days because of that.
The lesson that I take that—I’m back on now, which is great—and I understand the rules a little bit more. I’m not going to have to do that again. But be on more than one social channel. Focus your presence maybe on one, but don’t be non-existent on the others because there’s a concept that I’ve really learned about that is there is traffic that you own and there’s traffic that you do not own.
Traffic that you own is your email list or your texts list. Anybody that’s coming to your blog or your website, any of that stuff, that’s people directly coming to you that you don’t have to go through a middleman. Social media is traffic that you do not own. Meaning that they can shut you down anytime they want for any reason and they don’t explain it sometimes.
What came out of that drama was I heard a lot of stories of other people who have had the same thing happen or ad accounts shut down or just random stuff never explained. And they were just kind of left high and dry. So having at least some presence on multiple social media platforms will kind of safeguard you from your entire following all the work you’ve put in suddenly just going out going away.

Dr. Doreen Downing: 20:09
Good tip. Yes. Thank you. Well, I feel like you could just keep rolling out the tips if we stayed online here with you.

Noah Mittman: 20:18
Here’s the thing. Do you do you have any questions about kind of what you’re up to or what your audience wants to know about?

Dr. Doreen Downing: 20:27
Well, I think that my audience consists mostly of people who are afraid of speaking. I don’t think that they are even as far as getting in front of a camera. So but a lot of them by the time they finished my programs, they are. They need places they can practice. I guess maybe a question I would ask you relative to the people I work with, because I do baby steps.

Noah Mittman: Yeah, baby steps are the way to go.

Dr. Doreen Downing: And so what would be, let’s say they’ve found their voice, because that’s my program, Find Your Voice Change Your Life, what would be in terms of, because I know you’ve got the four steps that you’ve just introduced this to, but what would be an easy first step around video?

Noah Mittman: 21:15
Yeah. In terms of your performance on video or in terms of just video in general?

Dr. Doreen Downing: 21:21
Performance because I’m talking more about the fear inside. They finally feel more confident. Fear is dissolved. They have an inner presence muscle. Finally, they feel connected to their real voice. And then they’re in front of, not people, like you say, but a little green light or red dot here or something.

Noah Mittman: 21:40
I’ll give you a not only a thing that helps. Once they’re past that fear and even feel more comfortable, but it is an insane time saver. Literally, this tip can cut your filming time by half if not more consistently. And that is to use a teleprompter when you’re filming, especially with the social media content which is what we’re all trying to make. That’s how you get your stuff out the easiest and cheapest way to the most people.
It’s all about micro content. So you need to not waste people’s time when you are making your content. Having a teleprompter, there’s apps for it. iPhone uses iOS – you can do Teleprompter for Video. And for Android, it’s called Nano Teleprompter. Teleprompter for Video is free. Nano Teleprompter is like $4.
You essentially load your scripts that you’ve written. What I do is I write out scripts for different micro content ideas. Micro content is like a minute or less because that’ll work for LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, YouTube Mini, Instagram, and Tiktok. 59 seconds or less, it’ll work for all platforms. So I write them out. I know that they’re around the minute mark and then I blow them into my teleprompter and I read it out.
Where the time saving comes in on this is you don’t have to memorize. You don’t have to constantly look down at your phone, get the next sentence, look down at your phone, get the next sentence. It is a massive time saver. And you don’t have to worry about getting lost in the ideas that you’re talking about. You can read, like for me, I go word for word. Some people can do bullet points, the general idea of things, whatever works for you. You don’t get lost. You’re more confident because you have a roadmap of what you’re gonna say. You’re saving time. It has completely changed my content creator experience and I know that it’s a massive lightbulb for a lot of people I’ve talked to.

Dr. Doreen Downing: 23:57
Yes, for me, the time would be how I would be saving time is not redoing it 10 times.

Noah Mittman: 24:02
That is 100%. I used to do, well, let me just get each sentence twice for safety so I have options. Because I’m an editor, I always like options. But now, I know that at least if I get through it and I’m happy generally—if it’s 80% good, you can move on. If you didn’t stumble across the word, if you know generally got it out, and you’re happy with it, don’t second guess yourself. Just move on to the next thing.
Another big, big tip for this, because you’re reading, if you mess something up, you don’t need to start that paragraph over. You can just start the sentence over. If you know you got the last sentence in the bag and then you just mess up a word on that current sentence. Back yourself up just one sentence start from there and then you’re saving yourself time, you’re saving yourself memory space on your computer, on your phone, whatever it is and a bunch of headaches of just wasting time.
So I totally agree. Just retake only what you need to retake and not a whole bunch more and do it less times and you think than then you want to because it’ll again save you time.

Dr. Doreen Downing: 25:13
Great tips. Like I said, I could keep opening up more and more but thank you so much. This feels like you are giving a huge amount of yourself, your brain, your heart, and what you love. It just feels like it pours out to us. You’re magnetic and I think just by your presence you’re drawing us closer to you.

Noah Mittman: I really appreciate it. Thank you for the kind words. That means a lot.

Dr. Doreen Downing: Yes. Okay, Noah. Thank you.

Noah Mittman: Thank you.