Got milk? The filmmaker who replaced a dairy farmer's iPhone

Teeg Stouffer called me out by name on a virtual networking call in July.

"How about Antonio?" he said.

Everyone gets 60 seconds to do their elevator pitch. Then the host goes around the room and asks you to call out which participants you’d like to follow up with afterwards.

The event is run by the Pragmatic Business Network, founded by a pair of serial entrepreneurs, Robert Roth and Jan Watermann.

Teeg opened his 60 seconds with, "I'm in the weird name club, so I think whenever you have an uncommon name, you answer to anything close." Then he said, "I'm a documentary filmmaker," and signed off with, "I'm Teeg Stouffer at Fascination Film Studio."

Three people called my name that day, but Teeg was the only one I ended up speaking with.

Even though we didn’t actually speak during the networking call, I had the sense we’d have hit it off. We were two storytellers in the same breakout room and neither of us knew it.

I used to be a Creative Producer at Nas Daily, making short-form videos for a wide variety of brands. He makes long-form documentary films for families and companies. 

I sent him a connection request shortly after the event and he wrote back within minutes. "I think there could potentially be ways for us to collaborate!" Then he dropped his calendar link that said Teeg at Fascination Films. I have to admit I was looking forward to the call.

A week later we hopped on Zoom.

"Where are you calling from?" I asked.

"Center of the known universe," he said. "Cedar Rapids, Iowa."

His voice and demeanor matched his LinkedIn banner image.

I liked him immediately. I mean what's not to like about a guy who's willing to sport a handlebar mustache?

I asked him what his core business was.

"I make documentaries, and I have a documentary-for-hire studio," he said.

Before the studio, Teeg spent decades in the corporate world. His last company grew to $80 million. "I just don't want to do that again," he told me. "I just got really bruised up through that."

So I started doing what I do on every discovery call. I asked how he gets his clients.

"Networking is part of it," he said. "It's all organic." He'd tried paid ads and pulled the plug, because "the customer acquisition cost was so high" and he kept taking calls that went nowhere.

Then I brought up LinkedIn and hit him with some rapid-fire questions:

"I do it the old-fashioned way on purpose," he said. "I use LinkedIn to build relationships and those relationships lead to work."

Then he explained how he does his outreach. He sends prospects a pre-recorded video of himself walking through his house and talking to them.

One guy told him, "Dude, if you wanted to pitch me, why don't you send me a sizzle reel?"

"Because this isn't a pitch!," Teeg responded.

I asked if he records a new video for each person.

"Everybody is pre-recorded, and I make it really clear that it's pre-recorded," he said.

Then I told him what I did. I said, “I help founder-led businesses with real authority turn the content they're already sitting on into pipeline.”

My client Richard Moore runs a B2B sales community called Art of Sell. He's a 3-time LinkedIn Top Voice with over 123k followers, and LinkedIn was his primary channel. So I’ve been distributing his vault of content to YouTube and as many other platforms as possible.

Teeg totally related to Richard’s situation and admitted he had the exact same problem. "With me, it's sort of like the cobbler's children have no shoes," he said.

He told me about a client of his who is a farm creator with more than 2.6 million followers across TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.

Every week Teeg and his team produce a documentary-style YouTube episode for the guy. Then they clip 20+ pieces of content for his other channels.

"I don't have the capacity to do that for my own content.”

He said he might even hire me someday, just to "pick my stuff apart," but not yet. "There's so many things in my stuff right now that I already cringe over so much."

Then he said something that made me lean in. "I have a really good network of people who help me film and edit. I don't have a really good network of people who are helping distribute content."

Well, I know just the guy, I thought. But we ran out of time and agreed to keep in touch.

After the call I sent Teeg a DM about Marta Puerto.

Marta is a product marketer from Spain who got laid off three years ago. Despite her embarrassment, she openly shared her story. After countless job applications with no success, she decided she needed a better way to stand out. So she used her marketing knowledge to market herself and filmed an incredible 2-minute video called "Meet Marta: The Movie."

Her LinkedIn video post blew up with more than 147k reactions and 7,200 comments. She wrote the script, scouted the locations and did the acting herself. But she hired a professional videographer and editor and credited them in the post.

This is the exact type of work Teeg and his studio do, and that's why I sent him the video. Athletes don't send scouts a resume. They send a highlight reel. Professionals fresh out of a job need the exact same thing and Teeg is the guy who can make one for them.

A month later Teeg wrote back. He apologized for the slow reply and said he'd been nose to the grindstone with client work. He loved Marta's video and said he was seeing the power of a reel in his own work too.

I wrote a LinkedIn post about my call with Teeg.

Remember the farm creator? His name is Dan Venteicher, better known as the Iowa Dairy Farmer.

For 5 years Dan filmed everything himself on his phone and built an audience of 2.6 million followers. Then the workload caught up with him, like it does for many business owners. Teeg's family had been following Dan's story for a while. When Dan said he needed help, Teeg stepped right in.

On May 17th their new show premiered. Dan held up his phone in the opening shot. "For the last 5 years, everything I've done has been on my phone and it's looked like this. But now it's going to look like this."

Teeg and his team drop a new episode every Sunday. Dan's YouTube channel is now up to over 41k subscribers. And one of the top videos Teeg’s studio produced has over 39k views.

Teeg knows how to run a distribution engine. He's just running it for Dan and not for himself.

I first went through Teeg's channels in July. I ran the whole thing again this week to see what had changed.

Teeg's business is on 6 social media platforms: 

At face value that type of reach is understandable. In Teeg’s latest YouTube video he describes the four different audiences he's trying to reach: 

Four audiences across 6 platforms is a lot for a small team that's already busy making films for its clients.

Teeg even admitted it on a podcast back in March. When the host asked about his biggest challenge, he said, "I'm once again being a mile wide and an inch deep."

He put a lot of TLC and high production into his latest video, all 8 and a half minutes of it. He walks you through who he works with, pulls up a few of his 5-star Google reviews, his clients talk on camera and he even puts his prices out there. It's basically a documentary-style video sales letter, and a very well-produced one at that.

But here’s the hard part. The video only has 28 views on YouTube, 2 likes on Facebook, and 7 reactions on his Company page. And he didn't post it to his personal LinkedIn, by far his most active channel.

Today’s algorithms reward accounts that post consistently, and his channels aren't doing that. The content exists, he just isn’t posting it.

His best client work is the weekly show he produces for the Iowa Dairy Farmer, Dan. The video only shows one quick mention at the tail end, and Dan isn’t mentioned by name.

Teeg has already built incredible authority as a documentary filmmaker. He just needs more of the right people to see it.

I want to be clear. I'm not suggesting Teeg needs to build another $80 million company. He told me himself he doesn't want that. But based on the output across his channels, he does signal he wants to serve more people.

If we were to work together, I'd pick one audience and go all in on LinkedIn. Companies and speakers pay the most and they're already there. Families will keep coming through referrals.

I'd still cross-post his videos to the other channels, since video travels well. But I'd be super specific about where the real effort goes. One of his recent Facebook posts from the National Cattle Congress had more than 25 photos and got 5 likes and 4 shares. Picking and editing 25 photos is a lot of time for 5 likes.

I'd post that sales video on his personal LinkedIn profile tomorrow, with a post around it that tells people exactly what he offers and who it's for. Then I would have him include it in his Featured section, which right now shows 5 posts but not Dan’s show or this video. Even without a funnel, his audience needs to know what they can hire him to do.

Then I'd do for Teeg what he already does for Dan every week and clip his films into short videos with captions written in his own voice.

He told me one shoot day gives him "easily 30 good chunks." That’s enough content for two months of posts.

Teeg closes his sales video with the line he uses everywhere. "There's a fascinating story behind every door. Let's tell yours."

One of his best stories is happening on a dairy farm in Iowa every Sunday. He's just telling it on somebody else's channel.

Share your best client work on your own profile. The testimonials and the proof are what draw in more clients. Your LinkedIn profile is basically a landing page and a billboard.

Make your best work front and center and let it speak for you when you're not there.

- Antonio

P.S. In my next issue I'm going deep on a VC-backed founder whose startup works on cattle breeding and solves some of the very problems the Iowa Dairy Farmer faces on a daily basis.