Preamble: Why I Manually Transcribe Video and Audio Presentations (Especially Interviews) – By Tayo K. Solagbade

The thumbnail image below links to a verbatim PDF text transcript of a 23 minute long video interview conducted by Andy Brine (of Become Authentic on Video) with Efe Ohwofasa (Nigerian born, UK based business coach)

This is not the first time I’ll be doing a verbatim audio to text transcription of this kind. In the past, I’ve created similar resources from interviews and presentations with other experts and professionals.

Two examples are Burt Dubin (who I represent as Sole Agent on the African continent, for his speaker mentoring products and services), and Patrick Meninga (the gentleman who achieved fame as a blogger by building a $2,000 a month adsense website while working full time, and then selling it for $200,000).

“But why do I do it?” many people are likely to wonder?

Is it to get publicity, or to get those I feature to notice me and give me jobs? What is my real motive?

1. My main reason is that I want to help people discover proven techniques and strategies they can use to IMPROVE themselves in whatever area of endeavour they are engaged.

That’s why I call myself a Self-Development/Performance Enhancement Specialist & Multipreneur.

I have a passion that has endured for over 20 years (right from my days as a student in the University, through my time as a high flying employee in Guinness Nigeria), to help serious minded and results focused individuals develop and implement practical strategies to do what they do better.

Due to my versatility, and quick learning ability, I have over the years proven myself to be a valuable addition to the arsenal of any group or organisation.

So many people find me to be a useful resource because my active search for practical information about what works enables me add value to them. Anywhere I go, whatever I see or read, my natural instinct is always to find ways to share it with others to help them improve their performance.

I’m the kind of person who cannot help HELPING others. I am naturally driven to be a catalyst. No matter who I interact with, I create the impression of increase. People generally find that they are better off when they leave, than they were when they met me.

Most of my clients often get much more measurable value from interacting with me, than they pay for.

I work this way not because I want to be Pope, or because I’m a priest, but because I LOVE to see people make the best use of their God-given abilities to achieve their fullest potential – NO MATTER what challenges they have to confront and overcome in life.

And that is why I pick on videos and presentations of authentic achievers, whose messages convince me they are who they say they are.

Due to the challenges of poor connectivity in my part of the world, I realise many who desire to benefit from the wonderful video and audio presentations available online may not get ready access to them – except via text transcripts like those I create.

This is why I create my verbatim transcripts and offer them free.

2. Another reason I make these transcripts is to contribute to the work done by those who create these FREE presentations.

Their willingness to share their knowledge and insights at no charge to the target audience, as a way of gaining name recognition and credibility deserves to be encouraged.

Doing so gives people who seek help, an opportunity to make more intelligent hiring or buying decisions. Their competitors or rivals, who do not offer such presentations naturally get challenged. They must show what they are made of in a similar way, if they wish to be taken seriously by the target audience.

Ultimately, a healthy atmosphere is created for “buyers” of their products and services to make safer and more rewarding purchases. By creating these verbatim transcripts I believe I contribute my own quota to the above, and I like that.

Of course, it goes without saying that all the parties involved also get to know me. And that will certainly help ME as well. But even if it did not, I would still do it.

3. A third reason is to demonstrate to the featured (and other) experts, an EXAMPLE of practical ways they can re-package and re-present the same material to achieve wider reach and impact.

In providing Web Marketing/Performance Enhancement services to clients, this is a habit I encourage them to develop. That is, to explore as many intelligent and cost-effective ways as possible, to present themselves to the target audience.

4. Lastly, I do it to distil useful learning summaries &/or develop Actions Plans for target audiences to adopt.

I am not unaware of the availability of software used for transcriptions. However, you see I also LOVE to learn – and to help others learn better. That’s why I extract or “distilled” lessons from each interview.

Forcing myself to do the manual transcriptions enables me listen REPEATEDLY to the material, until I internalise most of it. Then over a few days I let it “cook” within me, and soon enough, the “lessons” to be had from it become apparent.

I then write and publish it as a blog post – linking to the verbatim transcript. That’s what I have done with other transcriptions. And that’s what I will do with THIS one.

I have found that this method dramatically boosts comprehension rates of people. Not everyone can readily extract a useful summary of learnings, and develop action points by watching a video, or listening to an audio recording.

Final Words

It is my hope that you will find this PDF transcript useful, in reaping more wisdom from the powerful message shared by Efe.

If it helps you, I urge you to please SHARE it with others you know can benefit as well. I thank you in advance!