Unleashing Your On-Camera Superstar: DIY Video for Professionals Lunch and Learn (Episode 172)

 Good day, legends. Welcome to the DIY Video for Professionals Podcast, where we unravel the secrets behind crafting videos that screen professional without the hassle. Production. We take you beyond the lens from the latest in DIY video, optimising your tech setup, and even to candid chats with clients sharing personal stories that transcend the realm of video. This is your all access pass to mastering the video game and living a life filled with action and decisions. Get ready to transform not just your videos, but your approach to life 1 episode at a time. Welcome to DIY Video for Professionals. Out of 0 to 10, where do you believe you rank presenting on camera? Throw it in the chat now. Let me see it it fly. Where do you rank? So 10 being the best, 1 being the shittest. This is this is great. I love it. Thank you thank you thank you. This is fantastic. Lots. I'm very surprised. 5 plus at the moment, which is a good 4 plus. Chris Hughes, 4. Thank you. And a 10 from Peter. I might you are ripping it, bro. Sitting in your hammock. 10. I don't need this. I'm a 10. Why am I here? Right. So let's let's just, um, fire off a couple of slides here, which I think would be useful. If you're you're here, you're you're present. And if you're here and you're present and you're you're, uh, wanting to to improve your presenting in front of camera, perhaps you can associate with this guy here. Why do people shy away from producing videos? And it's my belief after years and years of supporting my clients through their ability to present better on camera that it's because there are so many freaking things to deal with when it comes to producing videos, when it comes to even presenting yourself on a Zoom call. Right? The tasks are endless. And with those tasks come overwhelm. Now at this point, we're not even talking about presenting on camera. We're talking about all the obstacles of, like, lighting and sound and camera and all that shit getting in the way of you doing what you need to do. Presenting, getting your message out, connecting with your audience. Right? But that is something to acknowledge here. And if we actually drill down just into presenting yourself, there are as many well, I wouldn't say as many, but there are also lots of things that stop you from getting a repeatable process that makes this easier and easier as you progress. Tony Robbins had a saying is, uh, repetition is the mother of skill. I believe in that, and I also believe that if you deploy a coach or someone to streamline this process for you and show you and guide you through this, you will accelerate that significantly. And just so you know, I've been training people for 15, 20 years how to get over the hurdle of coming off sounding real on camera. And I know that with a couple of insights today as to how what the method is behind that, I know that it will enhance your ability to present on camera as well. But the 5 major pillars of performance, if you had a coach to be able to guide you through, would be instrumental in helping you through that. So 90 90 minutes and you're done and you understand the fundamentals of how to present. But just acknowledge that presenting on camera is not just you hacking at it, sitting in your car, you know, looking at yourself, pressing, you know, record, recording your 1 minute video, and then getting to the end and go, oh, no. That was shit, and going again. Because I've heard so many stories of people doing that and spending 8 hours in their car and never being satisfied. And then this kind of, like, repetitious cycle where it could be years before they go and get to the level that they really wanted to to be in, you know, when sitting in that car. Right? And so it's it's worth acknowledging that video, like any other business process, presenting is exactly the same. It's a process. It's a process. It's a process. Acknowledging that you have the ability to improve, but you've got to treat it with a very technical, mechanical mindset when you go to try and look at these these improvements. Right? You've gotta just break it down and take 1 piece at a time and improve it. So for instance, when I've got people in the studio here, 1 of the biggest things that suffer when they're trying to read from a teleprompter for the first time is smiling because their number 1 goal is to not fuck up the words, to make sure that Chris hears those words clearly. And so they are just very mechanical, and they're very muted in their body language and in their tone, and it's just about getting the words off the page. Right? There's nothing about coming showing up looking like they're excited. There's nothing about connection in there at that point. It's purely just trying to get the words. So what's the first thing that suffers when people read from the teleprompter? It's smiling. And the way that your brain interprets you force smiling is completely different to how it looks. Your brain lies to you, the camera doesn't. Now my kids have hacked at this, so I'm missing some letters, but that's what it's meant to say. And it's a mantra that we use continuously because video provides the evidence that you are who you are, not what your brain is trying to decipher as you go. And so the concept of watching yourself and playing it back and seeing how you can improve is great, but you've got to understand how you break up those 5 pillars of performance so you can ascertain what are the weaknesses and how can you improve it. And just take each bit at a time rather than sitting there with the overwhelm of going, oh, that sucked, and not knowing how you can scale up. Now let's have a look at 5 things that you might be stifled by. Okay? First, we've got stage fright strikes, hard sweaty palms, shakiness. Oh my god. I'm under all these bloody camera sound lights. You know, I said it before, this is not about me building you an authentic you. This is about me building a realer you, somebody that 1 of your colleagues would see at a barbecue and acknowledge that the barbecue you and the on camera you are very, very similar. Right? People are striving for authentic. I want to be more authentic. Well, by virtue of you being under the camera, lights, in your car, recording yourself, you know, people standing around on set watching you as you do your lines, that is you being authentic and vulnerable. And if you are shaking sweaty palms and you don't feel like you're in the you know, you feel awkward, that's your authentic you. Okay? It's just not interesting yet. So we've got 1, stage fright strikes hard. 2, verbal fumbles. I'm sure I'm going to have plenty of those throughout this session. 3, being a robot, which is to do with your message and scripting and being too over articulated in the way that you're choosing your words. For tech tantrums. I mean, I'm sure we've all had a crack at tech tantrums. Right? So from iPhones to big ring lights and green screens, we've all had a crack at some point not getting that right. 1 of the 1 of the big ones for us is, um, light changing outside. So we're shooting with the windows open and, uh, you know, mid take and then cloud comes and all of a sudden it looks different and you don't know how to control it. Well, it's a big 1. And then fifth, we've got navigating the word maze. So this idea that you can get into this pattern of really trying to choose the best wording and not acknowledging that your audience actually doesn't give a shit. You know, the the over articulation or the scripted word where you can spend well, in our in our case, you can spend an hour to get a a 30 second video professionally written. Just acknowledge that the retention on a video like that, nobody could recall 90 words or 30 seconds of your video to a tee. The answering to the emotive, the decision, the idea, the feeling, the action over articulated script where you're very robotic and not very engaging and not very connected, you're not very memorable. You've got a less chance of them actually going through to the action, to the desired outcome that you're looking for. But if you show up with the general gist of what you've got to say and fire away, you might just increase the probability of people connecting to understanding that there is a real you behind the camera or in front of the camera, and that that real you is someone that they'd like to do business with. So where do you place on this? Jotted in the in the chat. What's stopping you right now from being a on camera superstar? Put it in the chat. Let's have a quick look. What's stopping you from being an on camera superstar? I'm sure people will have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Very good. Number 2. Thanks. You gotta ask yourself, are you satisfied with the way that you're presenting yourself and your personal brand to your market? And for 4 years now, people have been really struggling to clarify the way they look and sound on camera when it comes to doing video calls and recording their own personalized videos. And there is a solution. The DIY video program helps you personalize sales video and emails, record professional marketing videos, look and sound amazing in every video meeting without the tech hustles, and you also get professional video editing and practical training so that you can present like a pro. You don't have to do anything in that initial setup because the studio is installed for you, you get your coaching and the training so that you can then go on and be a video professional and wipe out poor quality videos forever. Why don't you go to ridgefilms.com. Au slash diy and check it out for yourself? I've had people come into the studio here, and they've come in with my wife, uh, doesn't know that my biggest fear is presenting on camera. And, uh, I I think I should tell you this. I've got I'm dyslexic. I've I've got dyslexia. Or 1 of the other ones when I was on set 1 day, a woman came up and she stopped me on set and she said, I am so petrified. And this is just I've been thinking about this all night and just realizing that this is what's coming. You know? Like, they're preparing me. Like, I haven't had, like, 20 years of dealing with people like this. They're preparing me for this. And when I get them on camera, what's really interesting that none of this shit is true. None of it. It's never as bad as they make out. The dyslexic thing is easy to quickly overcome. The person that has suffered with presenting themselves in front of their wife and their peers is not that bad. And what's happened is I've been able to stop them very quickly with patent interrupts to acknowledge that we need to be on the upside of what we're trying to do here. Right? Not going, oh, well, I fucked up when I was in year 12, and I didn't I could never string my words together. I've been harboring on that for 20 years, never improving. No. This is your chance to overcome all of that, and it's about retraining the brain and acknowledging that the way that people hear you needs to be far easier than the way that you're trying to do it because the way that you try and do it is often very, very mechanical. Um, embracing these imperfections, I think, is really something that you need to be able to gauge. So for instance, if you've got a corporate message you want to get out, do you keep that fumble in, acknowledging that if that fumble is to 1 person or is it to the entire market, we've got to be able to measure, I guess, where the fumbles can actually add value. The vulnerability can actually add add value in you presenting yourself in that way. I've I've left plenty of those in, and it's been great in the long term, um, because people go, oh, I like the little fumble. Like, it showed showed that you're human. You know? Like, they're they're relaying this and giving me their feedback on this, and it's super super exciting to to, um, include those in from time to time. Turning fumbles into endearing moments, so acknowledging that your fumble actually is part of, uh, you know, you can kind of say, oh, sorry about that. Or or you can just kind of move on and, um, and have a bit of a giggle at the same time is really important. The robot mode, I just wanna acknowledge in 0.3 there is understanding the danger of sounding like a tech savvy Android. You know, don't write like you're at a barbecue. Write like it's conversational. Remember that their their thing at the end is do they think, feel, or do something as a result of watching you? It's not about the overarticulation and being robotic and trying to be accurate. It's the gist of it. It's the vibe of the thing that they're really trying to get after they go through that, um, watching that video, watching you. So use a language like you're at a barbecue, and yet balancing that professionalism and authenticity thing, the the realism and the professionalism, the vulnerability and the professionalism and just acknowledging that you can play around depending on your business, depending on who you're talking to and the volume of people that you, uh, try to reach. The tech tantrums are interesting. The navigating the there there is a way just like presenting to to break it down and to make it really simple, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. These are your 5 points, and acknowledging that, um, you can just take each point at a time to constantly improve on those. The fixes, the the technical glitches, You are your boss around your performance. You're not the gadgets. It's there as a tool. It's a delivery mechanism. Right? And that's why, you know, with desktop studios, the number 1 thing that we wipe out for people is that having to set up lights, camera, sound, teleprompter, all that sort of stuff is done for you so you can just focus on what's really important. Keeping the show, uh, rolling smoothly no matter what the technical hiccups. Uh, navigating the word maze is the final point and I'll move on. Crafting compelling scripts that resonate, and the art of script writing is not it's it's it's it's a full on thing, right? I meet very few people that surprised me when it comes to to writing scripts. They usually write way too much. They, uh, when they write way too much, they labor on on on a whole bunch of information that stalls the video, acknowledging that your agenda when delivering content in video should be 1 2, it should be beating through. Right? Top of chains. Top of chains. Top of chains. Top of chains. And get them to the end and get the fuck out of there. Right? Like, they're busy. Get on with their day. If you stall on 1 thing and go too deep, too soon, too early with the wrong type of audience, you'll lose them. Right? And if you confuse, you lose. Their brain is going to conserve calories with things that aren't relevant to them, so it shuts down. If you hack attention and keep moving them through, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, you have a greater probability of holding them to the action that you're needing. Hey. Why don't you pop in your email address? Contact me today. All of the cliched call to actions. But ultimately, you're there to drive them to the next the next action. Now I wanna show you a little bit of before and after of, just a bit of fun before and after of a client of ours, um, who this is from, like, 5 to 10 years ago, but this is his after shot. Um, I just want to acknowledge that this guy is completely aware of the way he's performing because he's had on camera training, And this concept of you present great when you're unconscious. That's kind of funny, but we do that every single day. We present unconsciously. We use tone. We use body language. We change it up constantly. We're just not acknowledging how to be able to do that when it comes to presenting ourselves on camera. Let's have a quick look at his after shot. Most people get their knowledge from ads, and generally this doesn't work because they've been sold a product, not a personalized strategy. So he's got a lot going on there. Right? It's a pretty important message he's trying to get through. So he's not overly smiley, but he is driving that message pretty hard. Let's have a look at the before. This is his first take during on camera training. His first take. Most people get their knowledge from ads. Generally, this doesn't work because they've been sold a product and not a strategy. So your brain is constantly lying to you. It's playing tricks on you. It's telling you that you're doing something in 1 way, but when you have the evidence, the playback, the you see it all there, you realize, holy shit. It's either better, significantly better than you thought, or it's far worse than you thought. But I guarantee that most people that come in are not as bad as what they consider, and it's a very quick fix to be able to bring them back to life. Now, um, I also want to to break down the performance pillars that I believe you can take away today which I think are really, uh, important in trying to ascertain exactly how you can improve in the long term. Now I mentioned smile, and I think your ability to practice this on your iPhone right now, or not after the session, is really, really important. Just acknowledging that you actually have to squeeze those muscles and contort those muscles and try and speak while you're smart at the same time. Right? This is great for particularly intro videos. They're great for things that you might have it on your website, for instance. Okay. Now the example that I showed you, Peter Quinn before, uh, he's he's that's the middle, that's the body of his video. Right? He is trying to drive a message home. He's being very empathetic about his approach. But ultimately smiling at the start and the finish of any interaction. Think about this. Right? You've got a video. You're smiling. Hey. Welcome. You're like the concierge to the hotel. Imagine rocking up to the hotel, you and your partner. You're there for a horny weekend away. You rock up, the doorman opens the door, and he goes, Hello, Mr. And Mrs. Schwager. Right? And you think, Holy shit, what's happening here? Is this the right hotel? Versus the usual way that we're all accustomed to is, uh, mister and missus Schwager, we're happily awaiting your arrival. There's a concierge. Go and meet. No. There's a completely distinctly different interaction there. And the way that you interact with your clients in those live meetings, in videos, it's all the same. They're making emotional decisions based on the first and the last interaction with you. So make it memorable. G'day. I'm Chris. Get to you through your body and leave with a anyway, contact with us today. Right? You get the idea. Nice big smile. Work it, baby. Work it. Speed is really important. Inflection and tone is really important. Energy, oh my god, right? Lifting all that up and, of course, conducting yourself with body language. Body language is at the last here because I believe that with speed, inflection, and tone, and energy, those types of things then create a reflex in the body, and the reflex comes out in the way of body language. Right? This movement, eyebrows lifting, all of this happens as a result of focusing your brain on speed, tone, and your energy. Let's those that are musically inclined, so so so play an instrument, raise your hand right now. Let's have a look. Okay. Very, very good. So we've got about 2 that are musically oh, there we go, David. Thank you. You gotta ask yourself, are you satisfied with the way that you're presenting yourself and your personal brand to your market? And for 4 years now, people have been really struggling to clarify the way they look and sound on camera when it comes to doing video calls and recording their own personalized videos. And there is a solution. The DIY video program helps you personalize sales video and emails, record professional marketing videos, look and sound amazing in every video meeting without the tech hassles, and you also get professional video editing and practical training so that you can present like a pro. You don't have to do anything in that initial setup because the studio is installed for you. You get your coaching and the training so that you can then go on and be a video professional and wipe out poor quality videos forever. Why don't you go to rich films dot com dot a u slash d I y and check it out for yourself? Uh, now the people that come into the studio and perform for the first time and read their prompter for the first time typically sit around the middle of the keyboard acknowledging that on a keyboard there's low notes and there's high notes. Low, low, low, uh, high, high, high. These are equally as important, but most people just read at this middle line all the time, and they never get out of it. Right? When you're presenting, you've got to acknowledge that you're using the entire range of the keyboard, low and high. Now you use those unconsciously when you're at a bar. Yo. Hi. Hi, mate. Right? But you don't use them when you read from a teleprompter or when you're presenting yourself on your iPhone. But they are significant hacks whereby you can continually play around at grabbing people's attention and keeping them hooked in till the end. Now, if we look at this in practical terms as a sentence, okay, so the sentence acknowledging that we most likely have a comma and a full stop in a sentence, inflection and tone. We want to curve up on a comma and downward on a full stop. Up on a comma and downward on a full stop. Did you hear it? Yes or no? Raise your hand. Raise your hand. Did you hear it? Did you hear it? Okay. Let me put you through a little test now. I'm gonna run a bit of a bit of, uh, my own copy here just very quickly. Uh, here's the script Without inflection, tone, energy, etcetera, speed. I've been in a world of video production for many years, directing films, making mistakes, and having fun, and now I'm on a mission to make DIY video your secret weapon. Right. Not overly interesting. Now let's ramp it up. We've got the speed. We've got the tone. We've got the smiling, and we've got the energy. Let's have a listen to the new version. I've been in a world of video production for many years, directing films, making mistakes, and having fun, and now I'm on a mission to make DIY your secret weapon. Right. So there's nothing when I'm going through that smiling, the little bit of nuance of body language that I'm moving around and using that, and, of course, energy are the 4 big ones that we're we're playing with. So who heard the higher tones? Higher tones. Who heard them? Raising your hands. Very, very good. Thank you. Thank you. Right. So, um, now we've got that out of the way, we're gonna, uh, kick over to to Hugo in just a minute. But before we wrap up, there are a couple of things I just want you to to make sure that you, uh, take away from today, and that is continuously smile. Okay? You cannot force that enough. Just continually smile. Keep exercising those muscles. When you're reading or you're presenting, that is the thing that will ache if you're doing it right. If it aches, you're right. If you've got sweaty palms, you're doing it right. Because this is you need to feel into this new environment that you're in. The lights, all this shit going on, don't expect you can just plonk yourself in front. Great. I'm gonna be a superstar immediately. It takes time and it takes some practice. So reading fast as I did was a lot faster on the second take. Looking at the lens is important particularly when you're on a iPhone. Phone. Sometimes looking yourself is very, very easy, but you gotta really try and clock that the top of that lens, particularly when you've got the I phone very close to you. Uh, you know, looking down versus looking at the lens is really important. Okay. Uh, using a simple language. Just keep it simple, acknowledging nobody gives a shit as much as you do about what you're saying. Right? So acknowledge that and just make it super clear and crystallized and easy and loose for them to to grab hold of. And then show some bloody excitement, will you? Alright. So that is my 5 hot points. If you want to jump in on a DIY video workshop, I've got 1 going on Thursday, which is a in person 90 minute workshop in Sydney. You can quickly scan this code on screen, and that'll get you to the workshop I've got the next 6 months booked out across Sydney. If you wanna jump in on that or you know of someone that would benefit from a bit of an intro to the world of DIY video, then go ahead and scan that code now. You'll get to the, um, the video coaching page. You'll see all the different dates and locations there as well and go ahead and book in. Now Hugo been patiently waiting for me over there. Do do we do we have any questions from people you might wanna add? No. We just have someone who thinks you're sexy, seems to have a suspiciously similar surname as yours. I think she's and she's pink, pinker than usual. So, yeah, I've got a question because when when you're on video, you wanna bring your best self. And too often, that means, like, I've gotta have perfect diction and no umms or ahs. That seems like going in the wrong direction from what you're saying. It needs to be just about yourself but kind of dial it up more. I don't I don't know of anyone that doesn't wanna wipe out the umms and ahs. Do you know what I mean? And particularly when they're very conscious about it, like they've done Toastmasters or something like that, and they're really like, oh my god. I'm wasting so much time with what's called filler words. Um, uh, they're filler they're filler words, and I'll just put 1 in there just so you know. Uh, put 1 in there just so you can hear it. Uh, but they are filler words. Right? And it's it's about, again, being conscious about trying to remove those over time. I don't think that they play a significant role in people going, oh, god. He doesn't, you know, doesn't stop with his arms and ahs. I think periodically putting those ins in is fine, it's just the overuse. So for instance, if I'm upward inflecting for the entire bloody video, for instance, using Chris's technique, upward inflect dot a comma, and I use that repetitiously, it's gonna sound I'm gonna sound like a 13 year old bloody school girl. If I go down all the time, it's gonna sound weird as well, right, in that mid to low range of the keyboard. So it's the same. Any overuse of anything, like if I'm overusing my hands, at some point it'll trigger to you as being quite abnormal and sort of in, uh, sort of not not quite right, and it'll distract your brain. So it'll be the hack. You see what I'm saying? So long pauses where there shouldn't be long pauses, for instance. People will be like, well, that's kind of strange. It's just don't there's there's this dramatic effect of a long pause, and it's just the presenter trying to recall, trying to get the next line, and trying to understand what they're saying next. But for the for the recipient, the viewer, they're hearing this, that's a it's a it's a hack. What's happened is there? Have they been muted? That's a hack. That's a disruptor. And so all of a sudden, the tension's now on the pause and not on the comms, not on the communication. So in moderation is the key. I've heard a tip that it's good to pretend you're reading a bedtime story to a 2 year old to give your voice that energy. Does that sound about right to you? When you say 2 year old, I I immediately that's sometimes how I see the people that present in front of the teleprompter for the first time. Maybe not 2, but, like, 8 or 9 because that's how simple they are in their their wording. They're just trying to be really accurate. And it's very similar to my I've got a 9 year old, but she actually reads a lot better than some of the people that I get into into the on camera training. Um, but it's a quick, like, it's a quick fix, right? But like it's it's it's not it's not a problem. Like, everybody is gonna come with different circumstances and different phobias and different things in their mind that we need to we need to work through. Um, but I think the choice of language, yes. I often think if you have kids, how do you talk to them to communicate to them? Because kids tell you straight away when they ain't no shit. They'll tell you straight away, I don't get it, I don't understand, what do you mean? And that's really it's a beautiful, uh, realization to acknowledge that the language that you're using needs to be far simpler, needs to be far clearer to get through, in my case, a 6 year old's brain, and using analogies and stories and ways to communicate it differently than you ordinarily would to your colleagues or an adult, for instance. So I do think at times you can put that into practice. I think it's very, very relevant and something that you should embrace and say, okay. How can I make this wordy technical robotic script far more conversational and engaging? Thank you so much again for for for your time today. I will be running these on the success of today monthly as well. And so, um, appreciate if you'd like to, um, be part of those subsequent sessions, then then let me know. Jot your email in to the to the meeting chat now or whatever. Uh, get in touch with us, and we'll we'll make sure that you're on the list for for next time.