Summary

The episode covers an interview with Paul Norford (Norf), an edutainer content creator, YouTuber, and LinkedIn strategist. He shares his career journey from aspiring helicopter pilot to radio presenter, then engineer, and finally content creator.

The discussion explores his experiences in hospital radio, engineering at a famous Finnish mobile phone manufacturer, and his transition into marketing and content creation.

North details his YouTube journey, discussing the challenges and successes of content creation, including a particularly successful video about his 6×6 workspace that gained significant traction.

He also provides valuable insights about personal branding, LinkedIn strategy, and advice for content creators starting their journey.

 

Transcripts

Neale 00:09

Paul Norford, Mr North to your friends, brand advocate, edutainer, enabler, YouTuber, LinkedIn strategist, speaker, mentor, all round nice guy.

 

Norf 00:21

Yeah, yeah, I’ll give you all those.

 

Neale 00:27

Could you tell us your background, how you sort of got to where you are?

 

Norf 00:31

Great question. There were actually three things I wanted to be when I was growing up. One of which was a helicopter pilot, because I was inspired by the TV shows, Airwolf and Blue Thunder, right? For rain TV shows. But have asthma and my glasses. So that was that one out the window. Then I thought, okay, right, what’s next? What do I like? And actually talking to your producer, Mark, we both had a love of rodeo. And so I thought, do you know what? I used to listen to music like there was no tomorrow. Would I rather put the TV on? Would I rather put the radio on? And it was always the radio. And of course, I then just got immersed into how people would deliver songs. I got annoyed at the presenters because there was a piece of music that would play and I’d want them to shut up, but they wouldn’t until the vocals came in. So that was a nightmare. And I thought, do you know what? You can do that, Joe. One thing that I could do, yeah, yeah. So I tried to get into that. And I spent a long time kind of crafting and creating my own voice. And you might think that’s a strange thing to say, but when you’re using your voice, it really is your calling card. So I spent a long time at volunteer radio stations, learning how to present and speak. And I did a little bit of amateur dramatics and all that kind of came through in what I wanted to do as a radio presenter. So I tried to get into radio and it’s a really high bar to get into. So needless to say, didn’t get in, but still had those skills.

 

Unknown speaker 01:54

We’ll come to that.

 

Neale 01:55

Did you do any hospital radio?

 

Norf 01:56

I did hospital radio In fact, I cut my teeth. Guy’s Hospital, which was a local hospital to where I used to live in London. It’s still there, which is great. They then merged with St. Thomas’ Hospital. We managed to broadcast across two hospitals, which was brilliant.And then some of the volunteers also worked for BBC Moseside. So Saturday Night’s, I think it was the James show on Saturday Night, and also did some special event radio. So there was a special event called the Greenbelt Festival.

 

Norf 02:37

So they used to have a radio station. And I was one of the presenters on there. I think I had breakfast show or a late night show or something like that. So it’s, well, yeah, I was always quite tired after evening. I mean, I couldn’t work out why, but that’s the reason why. So I couldn’t get into radio. So I thought, right, okay, what’s the next thing that I can do? And the next thing was, well, really, I know that everything will break at some point. Somebody will need somebody somewhere to fix something. So I thought, you know what, I’ll become an engineer. And went to Canterbury University, studied, got my Bachelor of Engineering degree, which was a bit of fun. So I ended up becoming an engineer and went to work for a fairly well-known Finnish mobile phone manufacturer and kind of moved around. And from engineering, I thought I didn’t want to be kind of stuck in a dark room kind of building stuff. Although I could do it, it wasn’t really my sweet spot. One of the things I really wanted to do was interact with people. So my boss at the time, Guy called Steve, suggested that I move into technical support. And that was great because I kept my engineering perspective. But then also interacted with people, got to travel the world, got to see where they wanted to put our products. So we obviously had a specific remit where our products should have stayed. But they said, actually, we want to put your product somewhere else. And it was just really, really interesting. So I ended up in engineering and then kind of moved around, managed to get into marketing because I used my skills of presenting and communicating to tell stories.

 

Neale 04:08

And marketing is all about communication, storytelling.

 

Norf 04:12

Correct. Absolutely. And the way I told stories was, of course, using my personality, having come from the radio days, the old school radio days, using my personality to tell these stories and really bringing the words to life. So I found that the more I did this, the more people wanted me to do it. So I kind of moved into that route and kind of almost fell into marketing, but a little bit of education as well. So got into training and teaching people how to use stuff. So it might be new technology, it might be new devices, it might be new software, whatever it was. But I would often tell stories of how you could apply what we’re trying to build, where you could plug it in.

 

Norf 04:54

And that would spark different ideas, which is it’s really, really interesting.

 

Neale 04:58

I can tell you a creative person from your videos and the content that you put out, so that must have been great for you.

 

Norf 05:03

Which was perfect, exactly. So all of these skills are kind of liken it to tools in the toolbox. All of these things you learn and you choose to bring them out whenever you need them, but they say if you don’t use it, you lose it. So you’ve got to make sure that you’re using these things all the time. To cut a very long story short, effectively moved into engineering, then went into marketing and product management, then a little bit of project management, but didn’t really enjoy that, so moved into product management.

 

Norf 05:31

Went through the ranks of that, became a senior product manager and then left, joined another company, didn’t like it. And then started up my own thing, which was effectively being a content creator for hire, a technical content creator for hire.

 

Norf 05:46

So again, use the skills of my voice in voiceovers, having come from the radio industry. use my skills of kind of voice over creating video content, technical video content, teaching people how to use a particular piece of software.

 

Norf 06:03

And then it kind of spiraled and accelerated from there. So lots of people said to me, North, you’ve got a great face for radio, which I’m still trying to find the good in. But but effectively, what they were saying was, you’ve got a great voice, great personality, you should become a YouTuber.

 

Norf 06:22

And, you know, during, our dark years

 

Neale 06:25

COVID?

 

Norf 06:27

Yeah, exactly. I spalled up a YouTube channel. And I’ve had so much fun doing it. It’s been a it’s been a very slow burn in that I’ve had a full time job, as well as trying to focus on the YouTube channel, force more people to marry kids, half a Labrador, all that stuff.

 

Norf 06:42

But the fact that I’ve kind of I’ve tried to put myself out there, and people enjoy what I put together, it’s, it’s, it’s a whole load of fun, very engaging.

 

Neale 06:54

I mean, you’re very expressive, your videos are very easy to watch. They could go your personality over them, you know, you the little cues to camera, the nods, the humor in there. It’s, you know, it’s been a really easy watch. And I want you to tell you enjoy them.

 

Norf 07:36

It sounds great. I’ve picked the right music, and it tanks. And then there’s one particular video that I put together. And if I look back at it now, and I think I really wish I’d put a little bit more effort and energy and just taking a bit more time with it to make it perfect, right not not to improve it in any other way, but to make it perfect from my perspective.

 

Norf 07:59

That one took off, absolutely took off. And I think there’s many more people that will give you their perspective of YouTube and they say, look at the analytics, look at the data, look at the trends, do some proper searching in terms of criteria.

 

Norf 08:19

Open the box. But I just, I find that I look at good content that’s out there. And I think to myself, can I do something similar in the space that I have? And the video I’m talking about is the touch spot video that I created back in 2021.

 

Norf 08:37

And I sit in a six by six box. I got to the point of saying, right, we’re in COVID, I’ve got to rip everything out of here and put it all back together, because I’m going to be spending a lot of time in this room.

 

Norf 08:48

So my daughter, one of my daughters helped me, we took everything out, she repainted it, we put everything back in. and now it’s my playful name for my office, but it’s my YouTube studio, it’s my voiceover studio, it’s everything creative that I do, it’s North Central in a six by six box.

 

Norf 09:07

So I put this video together, I shot it, edited it, put it up and it, you know, there were kind of 10 views one day, there were an extra 10 views the next day, then it got to 100 views, then it got to 150 and I 1200 views.

 

Norf 09:26

I don’t know. It just went absolutely ballistic and of course I’m now trying to think how can I recreate that and I don’t quite know what ingredients I’d put in, well I know what ingredients I put in, but there was an element of kind of, it was on trend, the keywords that I used were good and even how I shot it, it was a relatively good video there, but that’s the videos to do well.

 

Norf 09:54

So I’m learning a lot, I’m learning a lot about how do I create really good hooks, I’m learning a lot about how do I create stories that people want to listen to, how do I create stories that have a little bit, that have a lot of human in it, but give some really cool instructions and above all how do I put content together that adds value to what people do.

 

Neale 10:17

Yeah, fantastic. It’s funny isn’t it, you were talking about you put a video out and it’s not when it comes to music, so we write and record and you listen back over the years and you just go I just love to go back and change, just that, yeah it’s just the vocal a little bit louder or down, but it’s no one to let go as well isn’t it and yeah and actually happy with it.

 

Norf 10:37

Exactly. And also if you’re building content on your channel you don’t want to be taking videos up and down and that kind of stuff. Correct. So you’ve got a really strong personal brand to enjoy the top.

 

Neale 10:48

It’s a double headed question really, why is personal brand important? And if someone wanted to start a personal brand or was thinking about, you know, set themselves off as a content creator, how would they go about it?

 

Norf 11:02

Wow, that’s a great question. I think there’s a dichotomy between personal brand and I would say professional brand. And the reason I believe there’s a dichotomy, everyone talks about personal brand, but actually what is personal brand?

 

Norf 11:18

Your professional brand is you wearing whatever logo that you have today. It may be that that logo changes, it may be that you decide to do your own thing. So you as a person, your personality should come through in your professionality.

 

Norf 11:35

So when you say personal brand, I would say probably not personal brand, I would suggest more a professional brand. So when it comes to that, there are a number of things that I would look for. I think first and foremost, you need to be unapologetically yourself.

 

Norf 11:53

because everybody else is taken, right? And I think that there needs to be a deep seated confidence that you will get from other people who know you, respect you, love you and trust you, who will help you build that into your personality.

 

Norf 12:11

And then I think as you take that to work, as you take that to whatever you do to make a living, professionally, some of those elements have to come through. You’ve got to be good at your job, right?

 

Norf 12:21

Or else you’re going to go first and foremost. But what people are looking for is how do you bring yourself to work? How do you then interact with everybody else that you work with in order to bring value to what we’re doing as an organization, right?

 

Norf 12:38

And I’ve said it, you’ll hear me say on LinkedIn and YouTube and my other channels, people buy from people. But I believe people buy more from those that add value to what they do. Of course.

 

Neale 12:48

I think you’re quite brave in a way because, oh, you put yourself out there because you put yourself out there, you know, you put yourself out there because you’ve been ridiculed, respected. You like it too, you aren’t. And probably both North.

 

Norf 13:01

Yeah, well, they’ll call me a little Colin B, but yeah, either way.

 

Neale 13:05

I think you do it well. You mentioned LinkedIn. There’s a lot of people obviously out of work at the minute. What can someone do, a prospective person on LinkedIn, to make themselves stand out more in the job hunting, you know, what should they be posting?

 

Norf 13:22

What should they be doing with the profile? Great question. I’m going to come back to the skills piece around the toolbox, right? So you have that analogy of a toolbox. You’ve got different tools of a toolbox.

 

Norf 13:34

Everybody has a particular set of skills. And it’s a case of, for me, and I can only speak from my perspective, I had a collection of these skills. So being a radio presenter or training to be a radio presenter, I never actually got there professionally, I never got paid for it.

 

Norf 13:53

I have those skills in the training. I did the training, exactly. So I’ve got the t-shirt, yada, I’ve got my microphone. So I have those skills. I’ve taught myself how to use a video camera. I’ve taught myself how to use ND filters, to use HDMI, you know, all of those kind of technical skills.

 

Norf 14:13

I’ve then taught myself how to tell a story. I’ve read lots of different books, interesting books. So when it comes to those skills, you collect all of those skills together and then you kind of mix it with, what am I interested in?

 

Norf 14:29

What am I passionate about? What can I give to the world? What can I give to the next generation coming through?

 

Neale 14:36

Because if you’re passionate about it, that’ll come through, that’ll show. And if you’re not, it’s quite false, isn’t it?

 

Norf 14:41

Correct. You’re having true. Correct. And people see that and people are perceptive to the things that you’re passionate about and not. So you learn all of these things. And there may be kind of three or four different avenues that you could take those skills, take your passions that will channel you into into a particular industry.

 

Norf 14:58

So it may be that you choose to get into marketing for a tech firm. It may be that you choose to get into marketing for a hospital. Goodness knows what opportunities there are. But look at your skill set.

 

Norf 15:11

Look at your passions. Look at where you can plug them in. Also use your network. You’re connected to so many people, right? And I know some people will say, well, I don’t like asking. Do you know what?

 

Norf 15:23

The old adage, you don’t ask. You don’t get it. You don’t get it, right? So you have to put yourself out there. If you are a brave thing, yes, I am. Brave thing, you might be down in your luck. It might be that you’ve made a few incorrect decisions that have turned out to be really costly, but you can always restart, right?

 

Norf 15:40

There’s a catalog of people that started different companies at particular ages, right? I’ve started my own company at 51 now, or rebooted my company at 51. But I’ve learned a lot of these things and I’ve had to put myself out there.

 

Norf 15:56

There’s a story that I tell that I think you’re kind of alluding to, which was a story that I read in Chris Doe’s book, A Pocket Full of Doe. And it’s a guy called Professor Errol Gerson. In 1971, he graduated from a particular university in North America.

 

Norf 16:14

And I won’t spoil the YouTube video, but basically he sent out lots of resumes, couldn’t get a bite from anybody. Then looked at a pile of resumes and they realized that they were all the same. So he said, well, hang on a minute.

 

Norf 16:27

How do I get to stand out? So what he did was he had some paper made at a particular size that was an eighth of an inch taller than every other piece of paper in the States. So together it stand. Yes, put all of these papers together. Here’s a piece of paper stood out by an eighth of an inch, but across that eighth of an inch, he colored it or got it colored. bright red colour and then he sent, I think he only got five of these resumes or five of these bits of paper put together.

 

Norf 16:58

So sent them out and then a few days later got a phone call from someone that was very irate who had got these 60 resumes and of course his stuck out by an eighth of an inch. So of course this guy called Professor Gersten really annoyed and said, look, you’ve really, really upset me. What do you think you’re doing? To which Professor Gersten said, I know that I’ve really upset you. Was it because you were handed a pile of resumes and one snuck out by an eighth of an inch? Yes, that is the reason. And then of course, Errol then goes off to New York and ends up having three interviews. But standout is really what we need to do. In a sea of people who kind of look the same, sound the same, you’re a different person. You have a particular perspective, you have a particular set of skills, there’s nobody else that walks this planet with your perspective, so be unapologetically you. And I think also don’t get dissuaded when it doesn’t always work out, I mean, it’s fit at the end of the day, isn’t it, it’s like, you can be yourself, and then you can go somewhere, it’s not work, I said I had to kiss a lot of frogs before I got here.

 

Neale 18:07

But don’t be dissuaded by that, I think, I think it’s okay to fail and not to be right somewhere and to move forward. I think you’re absolutely right, lots of people have made lots of money about failing.

 

Norf 18:17

But for me, when it comes to failing, if you look at the word fail, for me, I believe it stands for first attempt at learning, that’s good, right? So you have done, you have to reframe a lot of these things and framing and perspective I think is critical.

 

Norf 18:33

But again, for me, there have been people that I’ve had throughout my life, littered through it, not littered, that’s the wrong term. But people throughout my life, exactly, like a piece of rubbish. But people throughout my life that have said, no, just go right a bit, go left a bit, and then you’ll get there.

 

Norf 18:51

There are other people that have tried to put a lid on what I’m doing, oh, no, you shouldn’t do that, that’s not the way forward. But you’ve got to figure out how you read those things, you then got to figure out how you apply them.

 

Neale 19:05

If someone says to you, no, that’s terrible, what perspective are they looking at it from? Is it from, that’s a really good thing, I’d like to put my name on that? Or are they saying genuinely, that’s terrible?

 

Norf 19:19

If it is, they should be offering some level of coaching or support to say, well, why is it terrible? And how can I improve it? So all of these elements together really are, I suppose, teaching individuals how to be the best versions of themselves.

 

Norf 19:36

But also you need an external perspective of someone saying, and someone that you know and trust of someone saying, actually. that’s really good, go for it, keep going. Or maybe that’s not as good as it can be.

 

Neale 19:49

Maybe you should look at doing X, Y, and Z. You speak very passionately about helping people and your advice and a lot of your content is based around people having the tools to sort of be the best version of themselves.

 

Neale 20:02

Where does that passion come from?

 

Norf 20:05

That’s a really good question. I think that they can see it when we talk and they can see it online, but yeah, I’m just curious where that comes from. It’s, I think it’s a mixture of partly my upbringing.

 

Norf 20:16

So my mum did a lot of investment into me and mum’s brilliant. I absolutely love my mother. I think also my grandfather put a lot into me as well. One of the things that he did say before he passed on, and I’ll always remember it, if you can work for somebody else, you can work for yourself.

 

Norf 20:36

The elements of that are the output of work, but… Digging below the surface, a lot of it was put in a very positive fashion. So I am forever the optimist. My kids will often get wound up by me saying, oh, it’s all right, there is another way that we can do this.

 

Norf 20:55

Oh, dad, let me just moan for a minute. I am forever the optimist. And I think that’s built into my DNA. And it’s something that I have to put in every day, because the world doesn’t look great these days.

 

Norf 21:08

But actually, positivity is a strength. It’s a real strength. And if you can impart some of it and you feed it, it will grow, right? And it’s a bit like a flame, right? If you have a candle, you have another candle that’s out, you know, the two candles together, you share a flame.

 

Neale 21:25

But it doesn’t detract from the original flame. It actually, it doubles the output, it enhances. So for me, I see that positivity as very much a flame and I’m passionate about the next generation. I’m passionate about how do we impart what we know to the next generation and how do we get them to look at things slightly differently to improve what we do?

 

Norf 21:49

And I think everything that I put out has those elements and that flavour throughout everything that I do. So when you were saying about positivity and someone saying, oh, just let me just let me smoke for a while or whatever, I’m like you, I’m a fixer, there’s a problem, especially with people that I love, I want to make things better, you know, I just want everyone to be happy.

 

Neale 22:12

So Jenny, my significantly better half, that’s a hard word to say, I have a phrase now, I always ask her a question where if she’s upset about something, it’ll be like, do you need solutions or do you just need to vent?

 

Norf 22:26

Because there’s nothing worse than when someone’s trying to vent, you go, it’s okay, well, we’ll do this or we’ll do that, or, you know, it’s an approach I’m taking. You say that some of my kids have said exactly the same thing, and now it’s a phrase that I’ve learned.

 

Norf 22:39

And so if they’re venting, I will ask. Do you need me to fix it or are you just venting? Yeah. And if they’re venting, I’ll just let them go. Let them run out of steam. Yeah. Because the flame will put itself out eventually.

 

Neale 22:53

Something like that. Okay. Going back to content creation. You’ve created lots. You know, as I’ve already said, how great I think your videos are. If you’re for, you know, this is going to go on LinkedIn, if you want to give some advice to someone who’s going to start content creation, could be in an company.

 

Neale 23:12

Well, how would you come up with that plan? How did you come up with your plan? What are the steps?

 

Norf 23:17

Great question. So I love the number three. I’m a big fan of the number three. Okay, so if someone is looking to create content, firstly, I would say, what is it that you’re looking to create?

 

Norf 23:31

What story are you trying to tell? So start with your story. Then I would say, don’t wait to get the latest technology. everybody now has a smartphone in their pocket and that smartphone is a powerhouse of capturing video, capturing audio, capturing still images.

 

Norf 23:56

Learn how to capture really good storytelling video, learn how to put yourself in somebody else’s shoes, so if they’re watching that content, understand what that needs to look like from a pictorial perspective, from a storytelling perspective and also from a technical perspective.

 

Norf 24:20

Learn how to edit video, there’s lots of different editors you can get on your phone or on a laptop, it doesn’t matter what laptop you have, the barrier to entry to creating these stories is now as low as it can be right now.

 

Norf 24:33

And then thirdly I would say is start. Good, great. Don’t just get on with it. Just get on with it. Don’t feel that you’re ready to start, start messy, suck at something new and if you’ve never created content, give it a go.

 

Norf 24:48

Yeah, but what if I fail? Remember what I said fail was, right? So you’ve got an excuse that this is your first attempt at learning and then try it again because you’ll always learn something every time you come to Korea.

 

Norf 25:00

So start with a story, learn how to tell a story, just using your smartphone and then start messy is what I would say. Where do you see the use of YouTube, LinkedIn for business and personal use going over the next sort of couple of years?

 

Neale 25:18

LinkedIn has changed quite a lot. It’s moving now away from being a platform full of CVs and resumes. It’s now moving into a much more personal connection with individuals. I think people are a lot more relaxed about putting family stuff in there and recreational.

 

Neale 25:37

It’s quite funny now how they do try and tie in and go,on holiday. This is what I learned about. B2B sales. Yeah. You can see straight. I think, I think there does need to be a divide between business and personal, professional and personal.

 

Neale 25:52

Again, that’s just my perspective. Others will have a slightly different view, but I find with LinkedIn, it’s now much, it’s gone much beyond the corporate CVs, the corporate language, which drives me insane.

 

Norf 26:06

And if there’s value to be had, that value was typically articulated by a person, not by a company. So if I see, if I see kind of corporate dump out there, it grinds my gears. So now I’m finding now LinkedIn is becoming a much more people-centric, professional platform.

 

Norf 26:31

and people are telling great stories which is great and people are learning and getting value from those stories and they’re getting value out of the connections. So I think that’s that’s only going to improve and change and I think with now the use of AI, LinkedIn is going to serve you much more kind of valuable content to what you or what they think you want.

 

Norf 26:51

YouTube is a great marketing platform. It’s probably the biggest marketing platform that we’ll ever see and massive search engine and I think the more people put content out there that’s accurate I think the more they will gain not just followers but they’ll gain those personal connections.

 

Norf 27:13

So a couple of friends of mine actually met on YouTube through a couple of videos. There’s a guy that I coach at the moment he’s based in Poland. He met me through a YouTube video so actually it’s much more than just a platform just to consume content.

 

Norf 27:29

It’s now becoming a platform where people are creating real connections and building value for where people are going in the future. If you’re starting out in a business do you think it’s probably more important to have a personal profile than a corporate profile or the two which would be more effective?

 

Neale 27:50

I’d say that you need a professional profile and when I say professional I’m not saying completely up to you what you wear that needs to be appropriate for your personality. It needs to be appropriate for what you’re trying to separate your work here.

 

Norf 28:09

But also remember who’s going to be looking at it. You’ve got different generations that will look at someone’s professional profile and they’ll have a particular bias. They’ll have a cognitive bias.

 

Norf 28:24

So I would say that no matter what age you are put out something that is professional that would be seen by different generations, from your gran all the way down to whatever. And if you’re looking through those lenses and that’s deemed appropriate, put that out.

 

Norf 28:44

You can always refine it afterwards, right? Start refined, start refined. But I would say make sure that you put your professional profile out there. And then also, there are things that you’ve achieved through your life that you need to shout about because no one’s going to be there shouting for you.

 

Neale 28:59

No, podcast host, yeah.

 

Norf 29:01

Correct, there you go. One example. But from that, I would say put your professional profile out first, add in a bit of your personality. That’s all over my LinkedIn, because that’s me, that’s your nobody out there who is like I am.

 

Norf 29:18

So lean into that. And I think also to that, I would say try stuff, try different stuff. And this is a perfect example of trying different stuff. And there aren’t. I don’t believe there are many companies like Ignis that are putting podcasts like this together to show, firstly, who they are, why they do what they do, and why people should buy from Ignis and why now.

 

Neale 29:47

And this is absolutely superb. It really is. Because a typical project for us is, you know, it could be anywhere between, we don’t do any sort of week-long jobs that we’ve got customers who had for years and years and who, when they come to decide who they want to work with, because they’ll go to our competitors.

 

Neale 30:03

Do you want to spend six months with those guys? Or do you want to spend six months with these guys? And what do you think your clients or your customers see that the difference is between your competitors and you?

 

Norf 30:15

Yeah, it’s got to be the personality. It’s the actual people that are there. It’s the people. Precisely. And the relationships and the trust and all the intangibles that putting something together like this has exposed your customers and your clients too.

 

Norf 30:33

So sometimes there is a delicate balance of making sure that the tangibles are correct. But I think for me, a lot of it does come down to the value of those intangibles. And I think more and more companies, more and more people are starting to lean into the intangibles as part of the value that’s being added to other people.

 

Neale 30:52

Mr. North, that was very enjoyable. Thank you for joining us. Thank you very much for the offer.

 

Norf 30:57

Great to be here. Brilliant. Thanks.