At one point in my career the president and owner of the company I worked for stopped in my office and told me he wanted me to produce a training video. My immediate response was, “No”! Instead of asking why, he just got mad at me and stormed out. About a year passed and he stopped in my office and repeated his request. I again said no. This time he asked why. I told him that it would cost him about $1000.00 a video minute to produce, and we didn’t have the foggiest notion what to put into it. Our biggest competitor had a video out for more than a year and it was an expensive piece of nothing. I suggested that I write him an installation and service manual which the industry truly needed. He agreed.
So, in my business travels, in the evenings I would write the information to put into an installation and service manual. Having compiled all this information, I turned it over to a graphic designer who put it all into a 6″x8″x1/2″ GBX bound package. We printed a thousand copies and distributed them out at trade shows and service schools. It became the standard of the industry.
The president stopped into my office to congratulate me. I told him, holding up a copy of my manual, “You want to do a video? Well, here’s your treatment”. He immediately agreed.
Using the manual as our script and guideline, we produced a video which also became a standard of the industry. He wasn’t mad at me anymore. production stories to follow.
