Camera Confidence in 30 Days (Even If You HATE How You Look) | Ep. 74

Camera confidence isn’t about being perfect... it’s about being human. I’ll show you how to overcome self-doubt, awkwardness, and the pressure to be flawless on video. Whether you’re shy, introverted, or just starting out, you’ll discover the simple strategies I use to help business owners look good, sound good, and feel good on camera. Ready to build real trust and grow your brand? Let’s do it!  

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Transcript

You know, I keep hearing this term tossed around these days that we're experiencing a trust recession. And in the online world, it's pretty obvious that AI is making it harder and harder to trust what you are actually seeing with your own eyes as you are scrolling social media and consuming content. But as a business owner, obviously creating content, doing business online, even doing business offline, we have to establish trust with our audience, with our clients, our students, our potential clients and students. That's a no-brainer, right?But it seems like the content platforms, the mediums that we use for content marketing are almost at risk of becoming obsolete, only because if the viewers, the consumers. Of those platforms, don't trust the content that is put in front of them. Then why would they stick around? why would they even spend their time there? Now, I'm not a fear monger. I'm not trying to suggest that social media or YouTube is gonna go away because of ai. Absolutely not. But I think it poses an interesting challenge for business owners online who are creating content because it is so easy to create fake or AI generated content. But the good news is even simple talking HeadStyle long form YouTube videos establish a trust with the viewer almost instantaneously. Because you are able to show up as human, right with your personality and your quirks and your mannerisms, even your flaws, and your mess ups, your mistakes. I don't think it's ever been more important or more critical to show up as a human online, and the best way to do that is obviously with video content, video marketing, and long form YouTube videos. but if you're not born knowing how to confidently talk to the camera, if you feel awkward and weird and shy and like you're an introvert, and every time you try to create a video where you are talking to the camera, it just comes off as like. Awkward and weird and it doesn't feel good and you don't like it, and you don't like the way you look, and you hate the way you sound. Then is it even possible to make video marketing work for you? We're gonna dive into that here in episode 74 of Video Brand Infusion. If you're new here, my name is Meredith and I'm here to help you. Infuse the best video marketing strategies into your business so that you become a binge worthy video brand. And in my other YouTube videos where I do like how to tutorials, you know, how to edit videos, how to use DS script, and that kind of thing, my go-to tagline is, I'm here to help you look good, sound good, and feel good. On camera. So we're gonna dive a little more into that realm in this episode because one thing that I want you to take away from this is you don't have to be naturally confident. On camera. You don't have to be a naturally confident public speaker or speaker at all. In order to establish know, like, and trust with your content on camera, on video. I am living proof right now, right here in front of you, that you don't have to be born with it in order to become good at it in order to grow your business with it. now, for the last 35 years, I've been telling this story to my clients and students. but ever since that day, whenever this topic would come up, I would say, oh, no, no, no. I'm not an on-camera person either. I'm not an onstage person because one time when I was 10, I went blank on stage and froze and forgot my entire piano recital piece, and it was like embarrassing. And you know, ever since then, I've been not an onstage person. but a weird thing happened recently when I started looking more into that exact memory It hit me that I had a piano recital. The very next year I memorized my music. I went up on stage. I curtsied like my piano teacher forced us to do, and I played the song and was fine. I had a piano recital the next year. I had clarinet solos. I had a OBO solo once that my band director made me do. I've been on stage. Multiple times since that one time that I forgot my music at 10 years old, and yet I still. Recall this story as a way to illustrate that you don't have to be an on camera onstage person to make YouTube videos, to grow your audience on YouTube, and to use YouTube to generate organic. Traffic and grow an organic community to support your business as a way of helping and supporting the people you wanna help online, doing the things that you are here to do. but I was having a conversation with a client one dayHe said, it doesn't matter how prepared I am when I hit record. The words just do not come out right. I make so many mistakes. I have to restart so many of my sentences, and then when I go to edit it back, it takes forever to edit. And even once it's edited, it doesn't look good. It doesn't sound good. And I feel like I'm not really excited to publish this thing online because It's so awkward and like over edited and he said, if I could just be naturally confident on camera from the get go as soon as I hit record, then I wouldn't have any of the editing problems or the feeling awkward or spending so much time editing those videos. And I would feel better about what I'm actually publishing when I go to publish on YouTube. And that's when it hit methat day I forgot my music it wasn't about me not being an onstage person. It was about the fact that I was trying to perform at this level of perfection instead of just playing because I enjoyed playing and it started to sink in that the same thing applies to me creating videos. Even when I'm talking to a camera, if I have to script it word for word and get every word out, I make so many mistakes. that's almost impossible to edit. I restart my sentences because I missed a word or I said a word wrong, or I just didn't say what was written on the page or written in the script. and ultimately what ends up coming out is something that isn't natural and so it doesn't sound confident. And The thing I'm publishing online doesn't seem natural or confident. Then I don't feel good about posting it, but it has nothing to do with being natural. It has to do with over preparing and over scripting and trying to make everything so perfect that it's almost impossible. For things to come out naturally and for things to come out confident. So let's talk about how you can get camera confident over the next 30 days so that you can. Publish your YouTube videos consistently grow your audience consistently and generate consistent revenue in your business consistently. Even if you weren't born knowing how to talk to a camera, even if you hate how you look, and you hate how you sound. And I am gonna share the secret sauce with you right up front. I have a lot of tips, I have a lot of things I wanna share with you, but the actual secret sauce, the cheat code to being confident on camera is simply to pretend. And I know that sounds so weird. Imagine that. It sounds playful. Instead of trying to be polished and professional, it's good to be playful with the camera. It's good to be playful When you're trying something new for the very first time, you're gonna come off as so much more approachable that way. But what I mean by pretending to be confident is. You literally think of somebody in your mind that, you know, that is confident on camera. Um, for me, when I first started, I, this is so silly. I thought of like newscasters and I thought, okay, they, they just sit there and talk to the camera. I thought of people that I saw on YouTube that were just standing there talking to the camera and thought, okay, they just stand there and talk to the camera. If I knew what I was doing and if I was confident, how would I do it and pretend. And that's literally how I started making my first videos. And I remember standing in my living room, nobody was home. It was just me and the camera. And I so badly wish that I had that like raw footage. I so wish that I had the footage of like the moment I hit record for the very first time. To talk to the camera because it was awkward a F, it was so awkward. And I remember even saying to the camera, this is so awkward. I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm just gonna pretend. And that's what I did. I started out pretending that I was confident and pretending that I knew what I was doing. Fake it till you make it. They say, Now, I am not suggesting that you fake your personality or that you fake, you know who you are. You wanna show up as human. You wanna show up with your own mannerisms and your own personality. But the thing is, nobody knows that you're not confident. Right. Like I think of this whenever I am at an in-person event, like a conference or something, I'm an introverted person. I'm a quiet person. I'm not someone that's just gonna walk up and say hi or introduce myself. But that's the kind of how most people are. Most people are not going to just walk up and introduce yourself. It's awkward for everybody. It really is. And so I just thought. Nobody knows that I'm an introvert. I'll walk up to somebody and introduce myself because what am I gonna do? Stand there and wait for them to do it. No, I pretend that I'm an extrovert and it works so well. It's only awkward to me because I'm the one that knows that I'm an introvert. I'm the only one that knows that I don't actually know how to talk to a camera. No one else knows that. So just pretend that you know what you're doing and it'll come out. Your brain will find a way to make it feel normal to you. So that's the secret sauce. I mean, you could stop the video here and just go off and pretend that you are confident on camera. Publish your videos and away you go. I have a couple other tips if you're interested in sticking around. So number two, if you truly do not like the way you look, maybe you have skin imperfections or you're balding and you don't like that. Like maybe you have physical appearance, things that you really don't like about yourself. First of all, I would say. Nobody cares. Nobody's gonna care. Nobody's gonna be like, well, I'm not gonna listen to that guy because he's balding. Come on. but practically speaking, lighting. Angles can do wonders for making you look good on camera and what I mean by that is making you look like you, making you look like the best on camera version of you. Now I have a bunch of videos on my channel, It's my Crush It on camera series, right? Yeah. It's how to set up a YouTube call in your house, in the corner of your living room, wherever, where you can set up your lights, your camera, your microphone, and you always have a place where you can go and hit record and you don't have to set up your stuff. So you can go watch those videos if you want help, kind of knowing what gear to buy and how to set it up and everything. But I will say that even recording videos in front of a window, not in direct sunlight, but natural sunlight actually just does wonders for your skin. It looks natural, but it also provides a lot of really great light for the cameraTo do its job to make you look good. Now, it's been said that with video content. Most people think that videos are 50% video and 50% audio, but in reality it's like 80% audio and 20% video, meaning people are willing to watch a video that looks bad, but they're not willing to watch a video. That sounds bad. Now I don't wanna make this about having good audio. But you do have to have good audio for your,videos, and I talk about that in the Crush It on Camera series. I have a whole guide that you can download and everything. There's definitely a link to that down below in the description. But what if you don't like the sound of your voice? What if it just really doesn't feel good coming back at you when you're editing? well, going back to. The fact that people don't really care how you look. You may have imperfections and physical features and things that you don't like, but like that's what makes you human. The same thing applies to your voice. you have something important to say, if you have something important to share, and you can communicate clearly, people don't care about the sound of your voice. Even if you do that doesn't mean you stop talking. That doesn't mean that you don't communicate. are people gonna leave negative comments on your videos, complaining about your voice, maybe complaining about your appearance? Probably not, but I guess it's possible. there's a lot of things that people will complain about in your comment section, and I would venture to guess that most of those things will surprise you. They're not the things that you feel. Insecure about, there are things that are, going to surprise you and you're gonna be like, what? I remember about six months after I started my channel, I got a comment that said, you talk too much. And I thought that was really weird because. It's a YouTube video. it was like a how to video. It was like back in my days of like how to use a GoPro camera or how to edit GoPro videos or whatever it was. You talk too much. And I thought, that's a really strange thing to put on a YouTube video comment section, like that's why you're here. my best comeback for you talk too much or you talk too fast The best one is there's no such thing as talking too fast, only understanding too slow. If somebody talks too fast, you have to ask yourself, are they talking too fast or am I just slow to understand what they're saying? right, so we talked about looking good, we talked about sounding good. Let's talk about feeling good and what I mean when I say I'm here to help you look good, sound good, and feel good on camera is obviously I don't want you to hit record and be like, oh my God, I hate this. This is awful. Get me out of here. I want it to feel good enough that you will actually do it, that you'll. Keep hitting record and keep publishing videos, right? I want it to feel good, but I also want you to feel good at the end of your first 30 days or the end of your first 90 days, or the end of your first year, and know that you gave it a hundred percent. But I don't think that the best way to approach YouTube is to just simply show up with random topics. I think the best way to have success and find success on YouTube is to have a plan. Now, if you start YouTube. With a binge-worthy YouTube strategy. And you look good, and you sound good, and you have decided that you are going to get over your insecurities about how you look and how you sound, and just do it anyway. And you're gonna pretend that you're confident and comfortable on camera, like if you've made it through all of those mental hurdles. And you've punched all of the doubt in the face to get to the point where you're like, okay, I'm gonna do this. My best advice for you is to set zero. Expectations in terms of how many subscribers you're gonna gain, how many comments you're gonna get, how much revenue you're gonna generate in your first 30 days, 90 days, or your first 12 months. Your objective is to simply show up consistently and when you have a binge-worthy YouTube strategy behind you, when you have, some SEO, some good keywords, you're getting the thumbs up in the, uh, SEO tools that are available, or even what's available inside of Video Brand Academy, and you know that you're excited about the topics that you've planned to create. now, if you wanna go out confidently into the YouTube is Fear and start creating your videos on your channel, growing your audience, and growing your business on your own. Thumbs up to that. Give it a try. Tell me how it goes.but if you wanna go out into the YouTube sphere with a proven strategy behind you. That's exactly what Video Brand Academy is for, because I have a whole collection of proven growth strategies for business owners on YouTube, in addition to a YouTube planner and the AI tools that I've created. and depending on when you watch this video, if you hit the link to Video Brand Academy below, there might even be a $1 trial. So you can literally come in and see if this is gonna help you or not. But either way, my wish for you is to go confidently into the YouTube is sphere. Show up as yourself. Show up as a human. It's the only antidote to this trust recession that we're experiencing right now as business owners online creating content. Just be human. It's really that simple.