What Two Trips and 4 Video Testimonials Did to Me

Two trips to Sugar Loaf, New York.

Four video customer testimonials collected for Sundanced Wood.

And one sit-down with Keith's mentor, Clay Boone, a man who has spent sixty years running a gouge through wood.

That combination changed something for my marketing agency. Not the strategy. The strategy has been working for years. It changed something deeper. It brought me back to the core of why I do marketing work in the first place: to use mixed media to connect with people online in a way that actually benefits them.

Here's the part I keep coming back to.

I didn't get paid extra to drive to Sugar Loaf. Nobody required the founder to be the one holding the camera at those storefronts. I just had this gut feeling that Sugar Loaf held some kind of key to my next steps as a marketing and consulting agency.

I was right. But not in the way I expected.

The key wasn't a new tactic. The key was a memory.

Standing face to face with Keith's customers, shaking hands, getting hugs, sitting at kitchen tables, I got reconnected to the exact moment this entire system was born.

The moment I collected my first video testimonial.

The First Video Testimonial: Starting From 0

Let me take you back.

I was a managing member of a construction company that had been doing one style of construction for 30-plus years. We were launching a brand new service. And unlike everyone else in the industry who rolled that service off to subcontractors, we were building our own crews and doing it all in-house.

I don't know if you've ever launched a product or service with zero visibility. No one who could say you'd ever done it. No website documentation. No Facebook or Instagram proof. Nothing for a potential customer to point to except your word.

My starting point was zero. The entire pitch was: you must believe that we're really good at this.

It took about 90 days of pushing to get our first sale.

And because of how hard that first sale was, it became personal to me. I'm the marketer. I had to build the web pages. So while our crew completed that first project, I was on site every single day. Taking photos of every step. Every component. Every facet of what we were doing and how we did it.

Three days on site. Every day.

And when the project wrapped, I asked the homeowner a question that changed the trajectory of my entire career.

Would he let me record a video testimonial in front of his home?

He said yes. Not because of a script. Because of the relationship we'd built while I stood in his yard for three days documenting the work.

My questions back then were nowhere near as sharp as they are now, five-plus years later. But I remember watching that footage and being blown away.

You couldn't hire me to write better copy. There was no false scarcity. The customer was hitting every objection our potential customers were asking, on video, without prompting.

I became obsessed. The next half dozen projects, I did the same thing. Documented everything, asked for the video at the end. Those testimonials became such gold that I shut down every ad campaign we were running except retargeting, powered entirely by customers talking about why we were better than the competition.

Roughly 180 days from launching at zero, I had learned the single most important lesson of my marketing career.

There is no greater marketing tool than video testimonials. Nothing greater that I have ever learned.

Where the Name Came From: Nathaniel's Happy Check Meeting

The name didn't come from a branding session.

My mentor Nathaniel was an owner in a business years back where the team had a ritual at the end of every project. They called it their happy check meeting. The moment you sit with the customer, at completion, when they're the most excited about you.

I took that ritual and turned it into a system.

At project completion, when your customer is at their happiest, you ask them to get on video and you ask them 3 questions. Why did you choose us over the competition? What was your experience like working with us? And the slam dunk, the question that lets you throw away every piece of marketing copy you've ever written about yourself:

What would you say to someone who is on the fence about hiring us?

Your customer will answer your potential customers' objections on video with little to no prompt. One question. That's the system.

That's The Happy Check. Born on a job site, named after a mentor's ritual, refined for over five years.

2019: The Purpose Chasers, and the Thread I Almost Forgot

Back in 2019, before any of this had a name, The Purpose Chasers was born.

Interviews. Conversations with people who had gone all in on their calling. Mixed media, used to connect with people online in a way that gave them something real.

And here's what most people don't know about my agency. It was from the clients that came into my Purpose Chasing world that my marketing and consulting clients came from. The interviews weren't marketing for the business. The interviews were the business. People felt genuinely seen in those conversations, and the ones building something real wanted that same lens turned on their customers.

Somewhere in the years of scaling, funnels, retainers, and deliverables, that thread got quieter. Not gone. Quieter.

Sugar Loaf turned the volume back up.

The Wood Carving I'm Doing in Marketing

Sixty years in, I asked Clay Boone what keeps him chasing his purpose. He told me about the gouge. The shavings curling. The flutter he still gets on every stroke, because each one reveals a piece of what was already finished in his head.

Decades ago, people told Clay to buy a CNC router. Modernize. Automate. Scale. He saw himself in a lab coat feeding a program and said no. No, you don't understand.

Sitting across from him, I realized he was describing my work back to me.

The video testimonial is my carving. The interview at the storefront is my gouge in the wood. Every question reveals a piece of a story that was already finished inside the customer, waiting for someone to ask. And every voice in my industry telling me to automate the outreach, template the questions, let AI write the copy? That's my CNC router.

No. No, you don't understand.

The reason those four Sundanced Wood testimonials hit the way they did is the same reason Clay's signs stopped a kid in a stroller. A human being was fully present for the making of them. I stood at those storefronts. I shook those hands. I got those hugs. Elizabeth and Kristina and Keith's other customers didn't perform for a form or a link in an email. They talked to a person who drove there to listen.

That can't be fed into a program. And that's exactly why it works.

What Sugar Loaf Gave Back to Me

I went to Sugar Loaf to collect testimonials for a client.

I left with my own why, handed back to me by a village full of people who never lost theirs.

Keith spent thirty years carrying a memory before it became his craft. Clay spent sixty years refusing every shortcut. And I got reminded that the agency I'm building isn't a content machine or a funnel factory. It's a craft. Face to face. Relationships first. One captured story at a time, each one revealing what was already true about the business it came from.

That first homeowner in front of his house. Elizabeth outside Eureka Books. Kristina at Ava's Hope Chest. Different years, different industries, same flutter.

I know now why my gut sent me to Sugar Loaf. Not for the next tactic.

For the reminder that I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be, doing exactly the work I was built to do. And that the next chapter of this agency gets built the same way the first testimonial did: showing up in person, staying present for the whole project, and asking the question at the moment it matters most.

Go Collect Yours

You've already done the hard part. You've made customers so happy with your results that their stories are sitting there, finished, waiting for someone to reveal them.

Watch the full story of how The Happy Check came to be in the video above. Then look at your last five customers and ask yourself which one is at their happy check moment right now.

If this style of marketing sounds like the craft you want built into your business, let's get a consultation booked at thehappycheck.com. I'd love to hear about all the organic customer wins we can extract from your company.

I'll be the one holding the camera. That part is non-negotiable.

Until next time.