A TikTok Confidence Boost with TikTok Teacher Helen Polise

NOTE: This podcast was transcribed by an AI tool. Please forgive any typos or errors. SPEAKERS Helen Polise, Erin Ollila Erin Ollila 00:00 Today I am here with Helen polisi. And we are going to talk all things TikTok. Now Helen is the owner of mothership productions. She’s a TV commercial director of video content creator and the social media guru at the mothership on Tiktok and Instagram. But what you may not know about her, is that her very first job she was actually sent to Amsterdam, to teach a group of eight year olds how to twirl batons, we’re gonna pause, tell me everything there is to know about this. Where did the buttons come from? Helen Polise 00:43 I completely forgot that. I put that in the notes. Oh, my goodness. Alright. So when I first started, my first job out of college was an advertising agency. And I was a secretary, because that’s what we did back then. And I was invited to be the secretary for the creative director, once the account manager realized that I had some different skills. So I was outside his office, you know, I’m doing my secretary thing. And he’s, he’s in a meeting and I could hear him talking about that he had to find a baton teacher in Amsterdam, because they were talking about a shoot for getting shape girl and it was these ribbons that you had to twirl. And I heard this because I was sitting outside eavesdropping on the meeting. And after the meeting, I said, Oh, I could teach how to twirl batons, you know? And he went, what? And I said, Yeah, I’ll bring a baton tomorrow. So I was a baton twirler in high school. I never taught anyone how to twirl a baton. But I was like, I’m going to Amsterdam. My gosh. So he said, You’re gonna go to Amsterdam, he sent me there for a week, and I was there seven days, all I had to do was an hour a day work with some 10 year olds that didn’t speak English, as well, the tons. Erin Ollila 01:41 That’s awesome. And I love that you know what it kind of says about you like, Yes, I think when we’re all younger, we are a little bit more brave or willing to like put ourselves in situations. Sure. But I still think it takes a like a person who has that like Moxie, who’s going to put themselves in the situations, right? Because we want, we all want to do brave things. And we all want to have experiences. But it shows a lot kind of like even the evolution of your career and what you’re doing now that like way back in your earliest profession, or job, you put yourself out there, you took a risk, and you went out and you you showed up for yourself. So I love that. Helen Polise 02:24 It does say that that’s an interesting thing. Because if I think about it now, I think of myself that I was shy and quiet. And I realized when I speak to some of my high school friends, they’re like, You were always the one with the crazy ideas, you know, and I’m like, Erin Ollila 02:37 Well, I’ve learned a lot about like introversion and extraversion in the past few years. Because I think that how we’re taught growing up, it’s like extroverts are wild and loud and crazy. And introverts are like meek and quiet. And I think it’s furthest from the truth, right? I would always be the person that would probably be seen as an extrovert, because I’m like, I’m happy to jump on a stage and kind of like, put myself out there. But I also like, withdraw a lot after. So. So I find it’s very interesting that like, you know, back in the day, like you, you didn’t think that you were wild and bold. But yet, you were still willing to risk. And I mean, look at look at you now you’re on tick tock, right. Like, I know that sounds silly to jump from this to that. But here’s why. So many of the people that I talked to you as a website copywriter, a lot of the times when we’re talking about like launching their site, and what comes next, we’ll talk about like, are you going to do ads? Are you going to sell show up on social email? And when we talk social specifically, and we talk about tick tock, there is a ton of fear that goes into tick tock, whether they recognize it and admit it or not, and I’ll throw myself in this boat as well. It’s the like, and I know this is false. I’m not saying that this is the right thing, but it’s a lot of people are like, I can’t dance on camera, like I don’t do this. I don’t do that, like I get for me, some of the excuses I’ve shared are like, I look like a hot mess 90% of the time because I’m a stay at home mom with kids, right? And that’s the truth. Let’s be honest here. But what’s funny about that, where I can kind of like point the finger back at myself or my own clients is I watch other tiktoks of stay at home moms who look like hot messes, and I do not judge them in the slightest. Great. So tell me a little bit about why tick tock specifically and what what you’re doing with your business on tick tock having Helen Polise 04:33 that whole background in production my whole career when the pandemic hit in 2020. I found myself without an outlet to be creative because I was directing and I’m you know, I’m constantly I’m actually I do some writing of scripting and whatnot. So I have a lot of creativity. So when that happened, my daughter suggested oh, you should go on tick tock and I was like, Oh, really? And then I said all right. I was never one to be in front of the camera. I used to my casting guy would say you’d be perfect for this and the minute I would get in front of the camera to Casper. I would be like I can’t I can’t into it. So I was not this person. And I’m going to tell you that anybody could be this person because of what I’m about to tell you. So I would get in front of the camera, I’m doing some baking things, but I’m terrified, I’m not going to talk, I’m just going to dance. I’m just going to bake and smile. And I’m going to show my recipe and I have some production tricks. So they’re going to like my moves, because I’m gonna turn the eggs into into cracked eggs, because I knew how to do all the production tricks. And so and but I used to think I will never be able to talk, I tried to do a talking video, I’m like, I have nothing to add, I have no value. I’m not funny. I don’t look good on camera, I can’t talk I have to be have a distraction happening. So that was my MO, only two and a half years ago when you think about it. And now look at look at what happens. So and I will tell you the secret, which is sharing something that you know so well, that you’re not uncomfortable doing it. So the minute somebody came into my comments and said, Oh my gosh, how did you do that? Because I had flipped the screen. I did this little inverted filter thing. And I’m like, Oh, how did you do that? Pancakes. I love to mention her name because she’s a good friend to this day. She prompted me and I said Pammy I’m gonna make you a tutorial. And do you know that I went viral as the TIC tock teacher, because I was pointing and showing how her only and I said, for everybody who asked and I said haha, only one person asked, and I made this video. And it went viral. And then people were saying, Oh, are tic tac teachers here? And I was like, that’s perfect. So I decided to brand myself as the TIC tock teacher. And then every couple of videos, I’d make a tutorial. And that was when I first started to speak on my baby. I was terrified, isn’t it? Erin Ollila 06:30 I love that. No, that is such a great story. And honestly, I think that is probably the most authentic story to how things change in marketing, especially around this realm of personal branding, right? I just watched She Hulk on Disney with my husband recently. And we had a conversation around the fact that when I forget her name, but when she became She Hulk she didn’t name herself and she didn’t associate with that name that she had it was the public who was like, Oh, it’s a She Hulk because she was a female version of her cousin, Bruce Banner Hulk. And I thought to myself, well, how, how often does that happen in this, especially this online marketing world, like not necessarily outside small business, but what we all exist on in the Internet right now. It happens a lot. And one thing that it doesn’t get talked about, like we talk all about personal branding, like how to create this brand for ourselves, like how to have a voice and a tone and show up like authentically online. But very often the things that we do, like you mentioned, when you feel confident in in doing something that you know, well, that can create your brand, because other people recognize you as that. Yeah, Helen Polise 07:40 I have 35,000 to 70,000 followers as a baking person in the kitchen. And then like all of a sudden now the TIC tock teacher with 700,000. It’s just the weirdest thing, how it just evolved. And at one point, my daughter said, Oh, you’re eventually going to have like a cooking show. That’s the joke of it, I have no interest in that. It was just something I was doing as a hobby during the pandemic. So I love that it was able to evolve into something that to me has much more legs for my future. Because I’m always learning something new in production. I’m always learning something new on tick tock. When I see people do these cool transitions. I’m like, Oh, I know, how did I know that was done? I’m going to show everybody how to do that. And I like to break down things that look very complicated. And show you really it’s not that complicated. It’s just understanding how to think about it. And that’s what I love to do the most. So because I’m doing what I love, it comes to me very naturally. And I want to talk Can we talk about scripting a little? Because that’s a please. Yeah, I mean, come on. Let’s talk about anyway. Yeah, a lot of people don’t, you know, think they’ll think, how did these videos get made, because, for me, I just, I’m teaching so it’s very natural, I don’t really have to script it. But I know that a lot of people get very hung up. And they don’t have this, maybe the editing skills. So I recently actually did a tic toc where I showed how to use a teleprompter and an app, which is if people really want to be on their words, and they have that skill set. You can actually because I tried it on a video and I was like, You know what, I’ve been talking so authentically for so long that I can actually read a teleprompter and sound like I’m just talking like I normally am. So once you get comfortable in your own self and your own, the way you’re gonna communicate and how you gonna present yourself, you can do it, scripted or not. And you still will sound like your authentic self if you’re if you’re really try. So and the other thing I want to add is that when I talk to my phone, I imagine a little imaginary friend, literally, I’m talking to my imaginary friend and that is why I think my videos are loved more than other tutorials because I’m like, come with me. Let me show you how I did this. I’m like, come with me taking my phone. And I really think of it as like a one person and to this day with no matter how many views I get. I still record it with that same mindset. Erin Ollila 09:46 That’s, that’s I think very valuable, right? Because you know, I think it’s hard to conceptualize if you’re in marketing there. It’s so easy to understand these marketing jargon and terms and things we throw out but like when we talk about like per client per saunas and things like that. And we talked about your one ideal lead, I think it’s very hard to conceptualize that as a small business owner without a lot of marketing or creative background. But what you just said is a great example. Like, you could go as far as putting a sticker on your phone, right? Like I said, Here’s the reason I say this, my kids just got little like tiny tube, while they’re like, they call them, their YouTube video recorders. They’re not on YouTube. And they so they flipped open their camera, and just so they can see whose camera is who they put a sticker on it. But what my daughter said, Oh, I’m just gonna pretend I’m talking to my sticker. I was like, like Elsa from Frozen or something. So if you want to take it to the extreme listeners, right, based on everything that Helen just said, like, you could literally put a sticker, attach a picture of your best friend, like right on the top of where that camera is, and just talk to them. Like, that’s what we mean, in the whole marketing realm, when it comes to like speaking to one person storytelling to one person, literally filming a video into one person. And if you if you’re still pushing back against that one person persona thing, because I don’t necessarily love the idea of one person. I’ve mentioned this many times on the podcast. So when we think of the people we’re talking to, maybe it’s a picture of your three best friends. And when you do that, you recognize you know, Holly is this time type of person, Amy is that type of person, right? And like they, they’re still your group that care about these videos, right? But I love that you, you use that as an example. Because I think people can conceptualize that, like, I take the phone and I’m talking to someone. And that’s that’s what I think we mean, when it comes to like creating content for like a group of people. I Helen Polise 11:42 love that insight. I’ve never thought about it that way. But one person, three people, it’s still a small group, it’s still not a massive audience. You’re not on stage, the people who are like, Hi, everybody, and they’re on stage that I suddenly I don’t know why that turns me off a little bit. Because I feel like I’m here by myself. I’m not everybody, what are you? Erin Ollila 11:59 And I think the reason that is right is because like short video has, especially pandemic time, short video has really made us feel like we’re there with the Creator, like as the consumers are there. So then when they are announcing like that they’re showing up for everyone, it takes that personalization out, or like it takes that immediate connection. It’s a tricky thing. It’s like that’s a tricky line to to walk. But I but I think that maybe it’s an important one for tech talk. And I am not a tech talk expert. But hearing what you’re saying like do you think that because it is short videos, and because you’re really trying to like nurture your audience, keeping it to like the tiny group, or the one person you’re speaking to is going to be what moves you towards more success, Helen Polise 12:45 I think that it kind of depends on what you’re doing on your on your page. Because the difference between me going live or doing a workshop, I already noticed in my my videos, when I you know, if I download a live or I download a workshop, my tone is very different. Because now I am talking to a group. And I know that I see them. They’re all there. They’re making comments. So there’s a different tone. And it’s very, very clear from my feed when you go to my Instagram or my Tik Tok, when it’s a clip from a workshop versus my sharing you teaching you like one on one. And so I think the tone depends on what you’re trying to achieve with your audience what you’re trying to nurture with your audience. And if you want people to feel like they’re in a community, the small group thinking is a good idea. Because it’s like, you know what, we all have this problem, right? Bah, bah, bah. So then you could be talking to a small group, and I like that strategy a lot. And I’m going to be thinking about that strategy down down the road. So I love I love that you said that. But I think it really is a difference. If you’re getting the feedback in the moment, then you obviously have a group, you’re obviously not talking to one person. So your tone does tend to change and you become a little bit more of a presenter, or I become like the teacher in front of the classroom versus the tutor. Erin Ollila 13:51 Yeah, I guess a question that I have for you that a lot of people I think maybe worry about before deciding to jump in on Tik Tok is the idea of content ideation or even like content planning. Do you do any type of strategic planning when it comes to like determining what you’ll create on Tik Tok? Or is it literally like, I’m gonna just show up and talk about this today, Helen Polise 14:14 it’s a little easier for me because what I’m teaching is, is next oftentimes trends, so I look for the trends so that I can say, oh, everyone’s gonna want to do this one because you know, they’re on top of the on top of the pole in the forest. So then it gives me an idea for content. But I’m my daughter works with me now. And we have the platform Hello socialized.com, where we’re putting all of our content and tutorials so that it’s all searchable by keyword because this is one of the biggest problems I find. When someone comes into my comments and says, I can’t find this tutorial. Can you help me I also have to scroll down my page to find this tutorial, if I but all of them are on my website. So if you go to the website, you put in the keyword for what you’re looking for multi character Tic Toc, the tutorial comes right up. So it’s helpful for me too, because then I can find Oh, when did I do that one and how long ago was it? So Julian I sit together. And we do plan ahead. Now we actually have all right, we need we know we need x many tutorials for the socialized platform, we’re going to do a workshop a month, we do a trend, we actually release a newsletter every Monday, where we share the three hot trends and the three, three original content ideas. So you don’t always have to be doing trends we spur on your creativity. And so we’re doing all these things. So obviously, we need to plan now. So we have we’re using Asana, we’re using air table, we’re planning our tasks, we’re planning our layout. And so I do, she’ll suggest some tutorials like, why don’t you teach more about the audio because people don’t know how to. So I plan my content now a little bit more than I used to. And oftentimes, though, I’ll have a moment I see something, I’m like, Oh, I’m on the fly. I’m gonna do it right now. So it’s a combination for me. But I have an easier time of it. Because I’m being driven by what I’m seeing, and what the need is, in the platform itself. Erin Ollila 15:49 I love content ideation. I mean, my brain is very strategic in the idea of like planning or even like backward reviewing of content. So when I talked to other people that we’ve done in this entire series about social media, some of the things that, like I’ve said is, if you don’t want to follow a content calendar, I don’t think you have to, but what’s the problem with sitting down and just writing ideas, like think of them as a content pool, but stick to Yeah, because like, if you look, say, you know, people make these lofty goals that may work may not work of like, I’m going to show up every day for 30 days, or I’m going to do twice a week for six months, whatever that is, if you are on a Friday, and you have only showed up once and you’re like, damn, I need to go in tip top. Well, instead of having that negative mindset, just like look at the content ideas you’ve created and say, All right, I haven’t talked about XYZ in a long time. Let’s do that today. So I think that if you’re a person who loves ideation, and loves editorial calendar planning, I mean, you could go all in on it and just kind of work your way through it. And if you’re not like, just having like a kind of a bank, or a pool of ideas is something that can like spark some inspiration in the future. Helen Polise 17:00 Really depends on how you work. You don’t have to follow a formula. You have to follow what the formula that works for you. Yeah, it is nice to have a bullet point list to pull from because you might just forget, you know, I think, Oh, I’m gonna remember this tomorrow, and then you don’t. And I Erin Ollila 17:13 think it goes back to everything when it comes to Yes, we have experts here on the show, giving a ton of advice. But when you do the work yourself, you have to do what works for you. What works for Helen and might not work for you. That’s the tricky part of learning in this online business world. Like there’s so much information like shoved down our throats and we we I can see myself even feel like there has to be one right way to do things. You figure out what your strengths are and you work from that. I think that even comes with tick tock like how you even physically show up on tick tock, you know, what are your strengths, maybe your strength is dancing, like I think I’ve kind of teased the dancing thing a little bit too much. Maybe there are some awesome dancers here that want to go on Tik Tok, and just like lip sync and dance and cool, like, I don’t want to pick on you there. I’m not but like cool, like, do that. If that’s what works for you then like, do it if you if you’re going to show up like excited. In those videos, you’ll be confident if you’re doing something that you feel good about if you’re doing something that you’re comfortable with. That’s the key things. Helen Polise 18:20 And the thing is once you are confident and comfortable in one arena, you have you will be bold and you’ll do other things because the other day I will laugh about this dancing thing now, because I always been my contents always been a little mixed up. I dance with strangers. I dance with people identify, perhaps, but I did a tic tac the other day and I said and I put the title on, I haven’t posted it because I just said well, it was kind of dark in the room. I might have to reshoot it. But I said on it when the Tick Tock teacher’s dream is to start a dance trend. And I was like, Maybe I need to push the envelope. Erin Ollila 18:48 Yeah. Oh, that’s great, right. But looking at that, it’s like what you’re saying is like you’ve been doing this, like you’ve you’ve seen the growth, like the viral growth. So you have experienced in so many different levels. And what are you doing? You’re still testing, right? You’re still trying? Helen Polise 19:04 I did yesterday, I tell me I did an interview with an 82 year old creator on Zoom. I love that I taught her how to use you zoom, and it was torchy Swinson, she has 600 plus 1000 followers on Tiktok. And she’s fabulous. And I have befriended her as many half. And I asked if she wanted to do an interview. So I said, I think it might as I go into 2023, a new thing I’m going to explore is what I do for my day job, which is a lot of interviewing for TV commercials. So I might dabble in with some interviews now in my content just because I feel like I don’t want to get stale. And the last time I said this, by the way, is when I got cancer. I don’t know if we want to even talk about that. But sure, right before right before I was diagnosed with lymphoma a month before that. I said, I feel like my content is getting stuck stuff still, what am I going to do new? And then I said well, now I’m gonna be sharing. Erin Ollila 19:49 Now I have a whole new level of things I can talk about, like maybe I shouldn’t have said that. Helen Polise 19:55 I can joke about it now because you know cancer free. We’re good. Yeah. Erin Ollila 19:59 One um I’m thrilled to hear that you’re cancer free, too. I kind of like how you’ve circumvented this. Like, let’s not let it happen to me. Let me just put it out there. Like, if you’re worried about getting stale, you’re like, nope, not going down that road again. I’m gonna interview I’m gonna, I’ll Here’s an idea. I’m going all in on. Earlier I mentioned, I want to talk about keywords for a second, because I’m very obsessed with SEO. I love Seo. And it’s tricky for me to talk about social media and off site SEO, because if we’re looking at historical off site, SEO, we’re thinking of things like YouTube, even podcast backlinks from different websites from distribution channels. And recently, in the past year or two people have been talking about SEO on social media. Now, it is true, but it’s hard to talk about it for someone who doesn’t understand SEO and how it works. Because I think the future of SEO and social media is like you’re saying things like keywords like where search tick tock tick tock didn’t it just surpass is like one of the highest searched channels, you know, which is wild, but like, it is a huge search opportunity. So SEO is going to be built into platform updates and how things change. Now when that I think we have to look at SEO slightly differently from how we do it on websites. But as a creator, if you’re a business owner thinking about joining tick tock, think about the titles of your process. Think about an honestly I am not on tick tock so please tell me if I’m saying this wrong. But you’re just using YouTube as an example. There are keywords you can put in, there is a description, all of those exist in tick tock, I’m assuming there’s some other place to put them maybe you can help me there. Helen Polise 21:47 And I’ll tell you what I’ve discovered about this from my own experience. And I’m not an SEO savvy person, I’ve only just really dabbled started dabbling in it recently with with the website, I noticed that when I put in a title and a description on my caption, and then I have text on screen, and also auto captions is capturing everything I’m saying. So the content from my voice has been captured at the text on screen that I add, as well as the lower caption, which I’m dabbling in longer lower captions. I know people have to people aren’t reading them. But I’m thinking maybe it’ll help with my search. So what I’m finding then when I go to my video after the fact, I can see up in the search bar, the words that it has added to it. And sometimes like, how did it get that of all of what I said, So the interesting thing is, I don’t know that it’s as dependable as we can say it is because I’ll look at a video I go, Oh, interesting. I was teaching a cap cut tutorial, and it put up something else up there. So I don’t know why I was very clear on when I was teaching. And so I don’t think it’s perfected yet. But there’s no Yeah, and the opposite happens. If I go and I search, I’m going to Maui soon. So I’m like searching Maui, you know, and I search and I’m like, I’m not seeing everything. I’m seeing a handful of videos. So I still feel like there’s it’s a lot, there’s a long way for it to go for it to be as to me as functional as YouTube, because I feel like YouTube, you can get a little bit more close to what you’re looking for. Erin Ollila 23:06 Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, totally. Helen Polise 23:07 I’m not you know, I’m not an expert on that. That’s not my area. Erin Ollila 23:11 You’re totally, you’re totally right. And just using some SEO information that I have, not specifically about tick tock, but I remember in the past few months, I mean time as a concept doesn’t even exist for me anymore. But sometime recently, Instagram talked about the idea of SEO, literal SEO on their platform. And what they talked about is something that you mentioned it was, I don’t even like I guess it’s the captioning while the video is being played, that they are using that as a algorithm checker, let’s say. So, you know, you say I’m not sure how that came up. And honestly, it’s because it’s, it’s kind of crappy right now like, No, it’s not well done. These search engines have I mean, that certainly these social media networks have no clue how to really do this, but they’re doing it right. So that’s what I mean, it’s really coming down the line in the future, like even just showing up on stories and using the caption function and filming your tech talks, putting it out there and like the title, the description, what you’re saying when the captions are rolling through, that’s going to be searchable. And the second part two, that is you mentioned you’re going to Maui. Well, here’s what happens. You start searching for Maui on Tik Tok and what is going to be in your feed for a long time now? I know now, like I will tell you I signed on Tik Tok last night to check because I don’t go on very regularly. It is pretty new to me. And I do you know what my tick tock was. It was all housecleaning like 100% housecleaning and my feet and I was like, wow, I swear I only watched like 10 on housecleaning. Right. But my point is, it’s because my last search was about like I think it was a household product that I bought and I wanted to see how people were using it. Right so then Tik Tok looks at Aaron as the consumer and they were like, This girl needs some help. Let us only show her this As in the algorithm, and that is where SEO is actually happening right now. So it will get smarter over time. But I really liked the idea of keeping that in mind, whether you are doing an editorial calendar or you’re just coming up with the ideas. lert talking about trends, like new things that are happening, keeping that in mind, because it will benefit you in the future, like going viral doesn’t have to happen on that. The second you press publish, it could be a while later, right. Yeah, sounds good. I’ll get off my high horse Helen Polise 25:35 here. Well, the key there is if you do go viral, you want to have a page that people might go, oh, let me see the rest of your videos, you need to have something going on there that they want to stay for. Because viral isn’t necessarily going to equal to followers anyway. So yeah, wish for with a viral video. One of my viral videos had me with 10,000 children. And I was like, What is going on? Erin Ollila 25:54 Question about that. I love that point that you said. And I’m not really sure how you’re approaching it personally, when you say you want a page that’s kind of set up for a potential something viral in the future? Do you mean your tick tock account? Or do you mean like, I know, you had said you and your daughter have the Hello socialized.com. So which which is more beneficial? And how would you recommend people kind of approach that when they’re placing on Helen Polise 26:17 my gosh, so ultimately, of course, I want people to get to my website, because that’s, that’s my ultimate goal. But the first step is getting them to follow you in on the platform that you’re in so that they you build that loyalty. So your your Tiktok page, as we call it, is where you want to make sure you’re showcasing enough videos that that speak to the audience you’re trying to reach. So as a small business, maybe show behind the scenes of your business, you can show some tips from you know, don’t be not always about selling your product, what’s your product, what your product is, do everything but that, think about things that are going to be helpful to your customer that then your product can relate in, or what you how you pack your products to ship. And that might be an interesting thing to someone. So if you have content that’s related to that on your page, then when you have a viral video and someone goes to the page, they’ll be like, Oh, this is an interesting, you’re gonna follow it, and they know what it’s about. And so it’s not like a mystery. So that’s the point is really having a clear message there. And then eventually, the more they watch your videos, they become loyal, then they will go to your website and purchase your products. Erin Ollila 27:15 Yeah, no, that’s awesome. I think that’s great. Yeah, because I mean, like, we all know that the platforms want us to stay on platform. So we can’t just say like, oh, please visit our website. That doesn’t work. Helen Polise 27:26 No, and those videos won’t get pushed out. So yeah. So it’s a little bit of a it’s a little tricky situation there. I’m trying to just kind of at the end of the videos, and one of the days one of the videos will go viral and and that’ll be it. So hopefully, Erin Ollila 27:37 perfect. So final tic toc specific question. For people who have jumped on Tik Tok given it a go and they really haven’t seen any traction. Do you have any advice for them on kind of how to kickstart their slow account or maybe they had traction, they let it slide and they want to kind of like step back into the role of being a tick tock creator, Helen Polise 27:54 okay. My main piece of advice there is relentless, be consistent, be relentless. Like, you can’t be a person that that gets discouraged easily, because you will not make it you have to be and not care if this doesn’t get views. Tomorrow’s another day, if that doesn’t get us tomorrow, and that you got to go, go go. I always say like the most maybe it’s the sale game. But the most relentless and consistent person will eventually find success. But it’s like, you could say, oh, I’ve been doing this for six months. Yep, do it for seven. I’ve been doing this for years. Yep, do it for a year and another month. You just have to go. You can’t be a person. And I have that in me. I mean, I said when I started in 2020, I had zero followers just like everyone else. And I sent out a post to tick tock every day. And it just went on and on. And so for four months, I think my first viral video was in July, and I started in March. So I just was every day and that was just a minor viral video. And then it was again tank all of us tanks. Erin Ollila 28:45 I don’t know if the answer that you just gave is going to be the same answer for this, but I’ll ask the question. Anyway. If you could give any like teeny tiny homework assignment to the listeners who want to use Tik Tok, what would it be? Helen Polise 28:57 I would say that the first challenge should be as a beginner is to try and make a music video because it’s a music based app. It started as a music based app. There’s tons of great music out there. And you can pick a really good viral run right now it happens to be flowers by Miley Cyrus, and you can make a music video. So my challenge to you audience listeners would be take that song, if depending on if it’s still trending when this is released. My advice to you would be take that song and try and shoot some shots and just string them together two seconds clips of each shot that you do, whether it’s in your neighborhood, whether it’s of your family, whether it’s of your work, do some little shots and make two second clips, and then slap the music on it and see what happens. And you could pick any type of music for this. So pick something that’s trending to give it a little more of an edge. And then I think that is the most fun because you’ll be amazed that it will hit the beats even if you don’t plan ahead of time. Erin Ollila 29:48 Yeah, I always think that’s wild how that happens. You know, like, let’s see, like, you just put in like the clips, like pictures even at this this free and it’s like wow, yeah, this is fancy. It’s amazing. Helen Polise 29:58 Right is I always find it like the magic of TiC tock and it was a platform. So why not try something musical? Erin Ollila 30:05 You know why that works? So well. It’s this is unrelated but I think people can understand this. It’s like you want you know, you watch these like romantic comedies or any of these movies where there’s like that music in the background. My husband always says, like, that’s not real life. Like we do not have soundtracks. But the thing is, we grew up and we still we can now but we grew up and we like, we still see TV movies, all of our like media content, showing us pivotal moments right in the storyline. And they’re all music attached, because we’re motivated by the emotion of music. So I we joke about dancing, we joke about like lip syncing or singing on like, tick tock and all these things. But really, it’s the music, the music is the emotion, right? It’s kind of like you can create those pivotal moments. Helen Polise 30:58 By the way out of nothing, because I literally remember going when I was going to NYU and riding the subway, I would have my Walkman. Remember that? Oh, I do. Y’all know, I do know I do. And then I would be looking around and being like, this is a music video right here. And so I have always been of the mindset that life is a music video, and you can make anything into a music video. And I challenge myself at that all the time. One day, I had no content, I was like, Oh, I have nothing to post. And I was going for a run at the end of the day. I literally filmed little clips on my run. And I put into second clips together of like, art a piece of art. I saw something I saw on the bushes. I just and I made a music video and I’m like that is making something out of nothing. Yeah, no, Erin Ollila 31:36 it is it is. But it is it’s a kind of a really like beautiful way to look at true life. Right? Like we don’t I think maybe it’s a good advice for the business owners, right? Like, don’t look at this as a performance. If that if it’s comfortable for you to think you’re on a stage cool, like do look at it like that. But if you’re just an average human who wants to use this as a tool for your business, don’t look at it like a performance, just show up authentically in whatever way that works for you. If it’s clips of your of running every day, if it’s like sitting down in the morning with your coffee with like one quick tip of advice for whatever your field is, whatever the heck it is. It goes back to what you said the secret for gaining confidence is doing something like that you know well or you’re passionate about. So one more quick question on Tik Tok. What are your predictions for what Tik Tok will be like in 2023? Helen Polise 32:27 Okay, I was thinking that we’d be more into longer format storytelling almost like episodic, where people will have like, you’ll be following back along with a creator to see more episodes of what’s happening. And I think one Creator that started to do this was Dylan Mulvaney with her 361st birthday want to being a woman. So that’s an example. And maybe it’s not the best example. But people are hooked into that story. And then we’re gonna follow along for that story. So I think potentially more gearing towards more episodic, longer format stories where the story keeps evolving every day, I think that might be where the app is headed. I mean, this is like, you know, just my thoughts on how I get interested in a creator. And then I want to go back and see more because that’s, that’s the key to growth because it’s not always going to show you show up on your for you page. So if you love a creator enough, you’re gonna go to that page every day and get the updated story. Erin Ollila 33:19 100% and, you know, it reminds me how you said you circumventing this like life system of saying like, alright, well, right now we’re doing interviews, because I can’t take another thing like cancer. But think about your interviews like that, for example. Like they could be episodic, right, because the the tough part about interviews on a short video format, like Tic Toc is no one wants to sit there for 40 minutes and listen to a video. But if you interviewed someone, maybe the interview behind the scenes was like a 15 minute interview, you could break that up into two minute clips. Right? And Helen Polise 33:50 this woman I can’t I’m laughing so hard. I just did the edits last night. Oh, Erin Ollila 33:54 yeah. And they can be episodic, right. So like, in a way, like your plan for your future, I think is a great indication of where Tiktok might be going or what might be a new. I don’t want to use the word trend because it’s not a trend but like a new step in in the right direction for creators. Helen Polise 34:12 I think so too. Erin Ollila 34:14 All right, absolute final question. Thank you so much for your time. Good luck. Here’s the tricky one. If you could meet anyone, who would it be and why? Helen Polise 34:23 Alright, so I’m gonna I know this is gonna sound crazy, and maybe I look a little bit like her in the younger years. But I would love to meet Goldie Hawn and have a conversation with her. And here’s the reason why. I once saw her I was so young. I was at some work event that they sent me to, you know, as one of these things. I was like a junior somebody, and she spoke at this event and I thought, oh my god, beautiful, talented, funny and smart. And she blew my mind with the intelligence factor. And I thought I would love to just have dinner with her and just, I just hear what she has to say. And I I ran into her once in the city and I couldn’t even walk up to her because I was like, no, no I’m gonna do it. I go to when I see someone famous in the city, I give them their privacy. But yeah, see her and it was very small theater and I was just like it made my made my night that I actually saw like my hero, you know from. And I’ve read her book and anyway, just just a really smart, intelligent, talented lady. Erin Ollila 35:17 I love that I really appreciate that. And I appreciate you give them give her her privacy as well. But it’s this tricky line of wanting to like get to know someone you admire, but also recognizing that they’re human, right? Yes. And when we talk about viral tic TOCs. I mean, there could be someone right now who is like hearing this conversation. And they’re like, Oh, but I want to meet you, Helen. Right. Helen Polise 35:40 Because it’s happened to me in the city three times. Yes. Erin Ollila 35:42 Yeah. But I think it’s really interesting to have that kind of come full cycle. So the Yeah Can being recognized for your work. Yeah. All right. So Helen, thank you. I have all of the ways that people can connect with you. They will be in the podcast description. They will be in the podcast show notes. But is there anything else that you want any of our listeners to know or do after they hear this episode? Helen Polise 36:08 I would love them to visit Hello, socialized.com and create an account. It’s free and they can see all my tutorials. They can watch the workshops, which I have so much fun doing the workshops, because they’re interactive. I have monthly workshops. You can sign up for the creative forecast where you can get the trend report every Monday trend alerts and original content ideas and just be part of the community because I just want to make a home where people feel safe in learning. They’re not scared to put themselves out there. Erin Ollila 36:35 Perfect. All right, you heard it right from her mouth. So head over there and do that. Thank you, Helen for being here. I appreciate your time so much. You’re awesome.