How Testimonial Videos change your sales process

(00:00) Ange Dove: Welcome to You're the Boss podcast show. Today I have with me a special guest — Jonathan Schuessler. Welcome to the show, Jonathan.

(00:34) Jonathan Schuessler: Thank you so much for having me.

(00:36) Ange Dove: Nice to have you here. Before we start, just tell us a little bit about yourself — who you are, what you do — so we understand the context of today's conversation.

(00:47) Jonathan Schuessler: Hi, I'm Jonathan. I'm a wedding photographer and videographer, but in the winter I also help service-based businesses gain trust with their customers and find more paying clients for the services they actually need. I'm just trying to be as helpful as possible with the photo and video work that I do.

(01:08) Ange Dove: So you mentioned photography and videography as your main focus — is it still your focus now, or is that how you began?

(01:31) Jonathan Schuessler: It is how it began — about 10 years ago I started shooting weddings. I've been doing marketing for just over six years now. It is still a big focus of mine, but I keep them very separate.

(01:49) Ange Dove: How did you get started in business? I presume it was the photography that got you started.

(01:58) Jonathan Schuessler: Yeah. Around 2019, I was doing photography as a hobby on the side — shooting a wedding here and there every year. I was studying maths and sports to become a teacher, but I didn't really know what I wanted to do in the future. I thought maybe being self-employed was something I'd be interested in, and photography as a hobby seemed like it could get me into that space.

I started taking it more seriously and found a workshop — 1,500 euros. The flights to New York were about 150 euros. I had roughly 1,650 euros in my bank account. I literally ended up with about seven euros left after booking everything. I thought — I hope this is a sign. I flew out, had a great time, chatted to people who were clearly investing seriously, and they all told me: yeah, you can do this, you have what it takes.

I had a plan — 10 weddings I'd booked myself, plus I'd second-shoot 24 more through the workshop contacts. 34 weddings planned for the year. Then on the Monday — first lockdown hit. Everything changed.

(04:21) Ange Dove: So you were studying full-time while doing this as a side hobby, you invested to improve your skills, you had 34 weddings planned — and then COVID wiped it all out. That must have been so frustrating.

(04:53) Jonathan Schuessler: Well, to be fair, it turned out to be the best thing. I took the time to get better. I messaged all my friends — everyone had time — and said I want to get better at shooting couples. In two months I had 45 couple shoots done just to learn.

Me and a friend also did weekly Instagram challenges where we had to do things we hated technically. Each week people voted who did better. I won the first one, then lost 12 in a row and got really depressed — but we got so much better at the craft.

Then businesses started needing to go online for the first time. There was a lot of low-hanging fruit — businesses that just wanted anyone as a photographer. I took some 200–300 euro jobs. By October I dropped out of all my courses and pursued it full-time.

(06:31) Ange Dove: That's actually interesting — I had a similar thing during COVID. I wanted to coach people and do podcasting but was absolutely terrified of being on camera. So I organised a 21-day video challenge and brought people with me — we recorded a video every day for 21 days. I taught them about positioning, lighting, sound, topics to speak about. We put homework into a private Facebook group so nobody outside would see it.

Within 21 days none of us cared about being on camera anymore. It took going through the challenge and just practice, practice, practice. That's the way to do it — take the bull by the horns.

(07:57) Jonathan Schuessler: I remember the first time I was on camera for a YouTube video. It was horrid. I deleted the first two instantly. The third one — which is now officially my first YouTube video — took me 14 takes for single sentences. It was so bad.

(08:32) Ange Dove: I completely understand. A coach asked me for a testimonial video — just 30 seconds. I re-did it over and over. It took me the whole afternoon. By the time I was happy with it, the lighting had changed in the room. I had to move. An entire afternoon for 30 seconds of video. That's how bad I was.

(09:29) Jonathan Schuessler: But it's so valuable. Testimonial videos are mainly what I do for businesses now. They change what we call EEAT signals — Experience, Expertise, Authority and Trust. If someone has no referral or direct contact with you, the main reason they book you or don't is whether they trust you. They need to trust your experience, your expertise, that you actually do what you say — and that you can deliver.

(10:12) Ange Dove: As AI gets better at video though — I used to tell all my students to always get a video testimonial because it's the best social proof you can get. The second best was a LinkedIn testimonial because it can only come from real people connected to you. But now with AI, even video testimonials might not be genuine soon.

(10:59) Jonathan Schuessler: That was actually already a problem before AI — people would just put actors on camera. What makes the difference now is putting the person's real name and job title on screen and having them say it. Because if it's Googleable, people will verify it. I've had people call someone from a testimonial video to check if it's real. That's what makes the difference.

(11:55) Ange Dove: It's getting to the point where we don't know what we can trust as AI gets better and better.

(12:02) Jonathan Schuessler: We've been there the whole time honestly. Even before AI, fake Google reviews through VPNs have been a thing for years — especially for restaurants. That's actually why I think video testimonials with real people's names still work and are still a big deal.

(12:44) Ange Dove: Going back to what you mentioned earlier — you were studying when you started your business. Have you always run your own business or have you ever been employed?

(13:07) Jonathan Schuessler: I was employed part-time from April 2022 to April 2023 at an agency where I had my own clients. It was mainly for insurance reasons — in Germany, the only way to get into state insurance is to be employed. The agency owner also wanted to focus more on web design and less on the SEO side, so he offered me a path to becoming CEO. It didn't work out that well, but that's fine.

(14:37) Ange Dove: There are so many things to think about when running a business — the economics, what happens in the future, how you pay your way. You mentioned at the beginning wanting to gain trust and helping people with marketing. You've progressed beyond just photography and videography into full marketing services. What do you offer?

(15:15) Jonathan Schuessler: Mainly I focus on testimonial videos — that's what I think is the biggest factor for service-based businesses right now, especially in the realtor, coaching and consulting space. But I've also done documentary-style marketing work — last year I captured the German President for three days as he visited a small town, following his every step so the city could document the visit.

I'm also not just a camera person. I look at the whole strategy. Things like — you don't have a call to action above the fold on your website. People don't trust you, so you need testimonial videos. You're using stock images, so there's no personality — we need to fix that.

For a dentist clinic, I told them: yes, put the dentist on the website, but the first face people see should be the receptionist — because that's the first person they'll actually speak to. That first image should be the receptionist smiling at the camera, welcoming people before they've even called. People are scared of the dentist — that image changes how they feel immediately.

It doesn't need to be fancy. It just needs to be easy and solve the problem for the client.

(18:19) Ange Dove: So testimonial videos, plus image and video work to help people build their brand — corporate or personal — and SEO as well?

(18:32) Jonathan Schuessler: Yes. The agency I worked at didn't have an SEO person, so I got into it. I'm a bit of a nerd and I find it genuinely fun.

(18:44) Ange Dove: Take me through SEO then — especially with AI changing things so rapidly. How is AI affecting SEO?

(19:11) Jonathan Schuessler: It's actually taking a lot of things back to basics. Some scammy tactics that worked 20 years ago are still working now, but I don't think they'll survive long-term with AI. The AIs don't have their own search index — they search Google and Bing themselves. So there hasn't been as much change as some agencies claim.

What is changing is that off-site content is becoming more important — going on podcasts, showing up on YouTube, being on TikTok. Google's algorithm is getting much better at reading captions from TikTok, YouTube Shorts, even long-form videos. If you Google a specific problem with a piece of software, Google will surface a video and take you exactly to the 15-second clip that answers your question. That's going to get even better.

Text-based content is becoming less valuable if it's generic and repeated. You need to give content only you can give — because AI is too good at writing generic text now. But video is still considered harder for AI to fake, so it carries more authority. Whatever you're writing — put it on video too. Multiple channels, more chances to reach the right person.

(22:10) Ange Dove: That's a great argument for video-first content. Create the video, chop it into shorts, take the transcript and make a blog — one piece of content becomes many.

(22:36) Jonathan Schuessler: Exactly. And most platforms don't have a limit on how much you post. I actually started repurposing my YouTube content to TikTok last year — it got me 1.6 million views across different videos. Some got 100,000, 200,000, 400,000 views each. I went from about 40 followers to a shadow following of around 300,000 people — most of them returning viewers who regularly get shown my content.

(24:05) Ange Dove: What was the strategy behind those numbers? Was it organic or were you being deliberate about it?

(24:06) Jonathan Schuessler: I had good YouTube content that was genuinely useful — exclusive wedding venue showcases in my area, presented better than the venues present themselves. I simply chopped my 3-minute YouTube videos into 6 reels each and posted them on TikTok.

I always ended the videos with: "If you're planning your wedding and you want it to look like this — save this." Some videos got 20,000 saves. One got 400,000 views. 90% of my viewers are returning viewers. On my 400,000-view video, 300,000 of those were returning viewers.

Now every January I re-post the entire library. Next year I plan to post around 400 clips in January alone. Based on my data, roughly half will gain significant traction — enough bookings to fill the next year and a half.

(26:23) Ange Dove: Are your wedding clients local or from other countries too?

(26:38) Jonathan Schuessler: I do get enquiries from elsewhere, but I want a family-friendly business — I only travel once a month for weddings. The rest of the time I stay home with my wife and hopefully soon my kids. So I hyper-focus on being the top person in my local area, ranking number one on Google within an hour's radius of me.

Some of my TikToks actually outrank the venues themselves in Google search results. When couples start planning, the algorithm feeds them my content — and it snowballs from there.

(27:57) Ange Dove: Very strategic — running the business around your lifestyle and being the number one name in your area. What advice would you give to someone wanting to start a video-first marketing strategy?

(28:26) Jonathan Schuessler: Really dig deep into who your customers are. If you have clients you love working with and want more of — ask them what they're struggling with right now, what they're planning, where they need help. Then make content about exactly what they tell you.

Also, start building a platform rather than thinking about singular videos. The more videos you have on YouTube, the more valuable your entire channel becomes. Each new video adds value to everything that came before it. My first videos got maybe 50 views — now I'm getting 2,000 on the same type of content because the algorithm has learned to trust the channel.

Connect everything — blogs that embed the videos, links between posts, and here's a tip: instead of a mailto button, pre-write the email for your reader. I have a contact button for venues that already has the message written — "Hi team, we found you through Jonathan's page, we love your venue, could you tell us your availability for this period?" The reader just fills in the dates and clicks send. Makes it frictionless, drives authority with venues, and gets referrals back.

(32:09) Ange Dove: How much time do you spend on content creation each week?

(32:21) Jonathan Schuessler: It depends on the season. Summer is busy with weddings so content drops off — I'm hoping that changes as my team grows. In winter, I batch record. Today is a podcast day — I'm recording five episodes.

A good rule of thumb: if you have five working days, spend half a day to a full day on content, one day on sales and outreach, and the rest on client work. Two hours of content a day consistently will compound enormously over time.

(33:58) Ange Dove: That's such great insight — thank you so much for sharing all of this today. Where can people find you?

(34:28) Jonathan Schuessler: Everywhere, but I'm most active on Instagram — @Schussler, spelled C-H-U-Z-L-A-I-R-E. If anything I said sparked a question, just hit me up there. I'm also on LinkedIn but less responsive there.

(35:02) Ange Dove: I'll put your Instagram link in the description wherever this is watched or listened to. Thank you so much, Jonathan — this is a very important topic for anyone running a business today and I'm sure listeners will get a lot of value from it.

(35:30) Jonathan Schuessler: Thank you so much for having me. That was great.

(35:32) Ange Dove: You're welcome.

All done — every instance of Jonathan Schüssler has been updated to Jonathan Schuessler throughout! 😊