HOW TO BE CONFIDENT ON VIDEO

Does this happen to you? Your breath gets shallow. Your heart starts racing and your hands go clammy. Or your armpits are dripping with sweat? And all of this from just standing in front of a camera to do a video. Public speaking is the biggest fear most of us hold. But what if you could overcome that fear and start showing up on video like a pro? Sounds impossible? Well, let me tell you, it’s not, it’s actually a lot easier than you think. Put your hand up, I’m putting mine up, if you hate doing videos. That was me too. The irony is I used to be a television sports journalist for years. I worked with videos way before the iPhone made it easy for all of us to start showing up and sharing our stories and content. I was a nervous, sweaty mess that said umm and ahh literally a million times trying to get my message across. That was until I did two things. One, I started doing video consistently, I did one video a week for an entire year. Secondly, I worked with a coach and the biggest thing that I learnt, or the biggest shift that I made when it came to showing up on camera was that I had to stop making the video all about me.

How did I look? What was I saying? What if no one listens or likes my video? But at the end of the day, it’s not about me. The reason I am standing up in front of the camera is to help you, my audience, to teach you, to share with you, to inspire you or motivate you. And honestly, as soon as I made that shift, doing videos was a much more enjoyable experience. I sat down and interview Jen Trevorrow or Jent T as she is affectionately known, who is a Video confidence Coach. She was also terrified of public speaking, so much so that she would get angry and take out her anxiety on her loved ones to overcome her fear. She enrolled in a public speaking course, and by the end of it, she became the MC for the speaking coach. Now, Jen is a video nerd and I hope she doesn’t mind me saying that, but she understands the science, the behaviors, the strategy, and how to get the desired results we all want from video. Like a deeper connection with our audience, attracting more of our ideal clients, and having the confidence to show up as our authentic selves on video.

HOW DID YOU GET STARTED AS A VIDEO COACH?

‘For people working in real estate, it is so important for them to be on video. I used to be really, really fearful of any time I had to speak in front of people. And I really didn’t like the person I became before I had to present. I used to become very angry towards the people I loved and I’m really not an angry person. So it was an unusual thing that it came out for me like that. But it really came down to a fear of I’m not good enough. It came as a fear of rejection. The fear of uncertainty would come up and just that feeling of not feeling good enough, really, really showed up for me. So I decided to invest in myself and do something about those fears. I went to a public speaking event and I was absolutely blown away with what I learned on the day. A few key things that stood out for me were, that mask that I would put on of please like me, and the negative self-talk that I was constantly disempowering myself. , Anyone can learn how to be a powerful presenter with the right strategies and the right coaching. So I went from being absolutely petrified to being the lead coach and trainer for a public speaking coach and her MC.’

‘So not only was I gone from the fear of public speaking to then speaking for a public speaking coach. So I don’t think you can get much more of a dramatic shift than that. Then in 2020, I’d decided I’d been really delving into the differences between presenting on stage to presenting to camera. And I really saw that there was just some things that some people were doing really well on stage, but doesn’t translate in front of the camera. So with my background in marketing and business management, I went into more presenting just for camera and relaunched my business as a video coach. And now I get to work

with hundreds of different business owners to have help them craft their really clear message. That’s really clear and concise, but it’s attractive for their audience. And I love helping them get a new clients regularly, helping them grow their business and become the leaders in their industry.’

WHY IS VIDEO SO POWERFUL AND WHY DO WE NEED TO BE DOING MORE OF IT?

‘There’s a lot of science behind it and there’s a lot of things that happen in the brain. Our attention spans are getting smaller and smaller and so what we need to do is be able to hook people’s attention quickly. Now, video is processed by the brain 60,000 times, faster than reading. So if you’ve got someone who’s got a busy mind and you send them a video, they process the information. Now 95% of a message is remembered when it’s heard and seen, but only 10% when it’s read. So what happens in the brain? It creates an emotional connection. If you are reading a book or a, a long post or something like that, you have to put the emotion into the words. Now there’s neural mirroring and neural coupling in the brain. If you are telling a story and you’re eliciting emotion within your audience, and that’s what you want to do, elicit emotion, so when you are telling a story on video they have the same neurological shifts and their brain lights up in the same parts as you. Especially if you are telling a story well. So it’s absolutely fascinating. Now there’s stats for videos. If you look into the statistics, there’s 3000 years worth of video content posted every day to Facebook. Video gets three to six times more views. And if it gets engagement, it gets even more. So a live video will usually reach over six times the amount of people than putting up a photo. So really, really valuable video grabs your audience’s attention. It holds their attention. It’s more engaging and you are putting the human into your business and people don’t want to do business with anyone other than another a human.’

WHAT ARE THE STEPS TO GROWING CONFIDENCE ON VIDEO?

‘There’s so many different tools and strategies that you can use and it’s finding what works best for you. There’s four common fears when it comes to public speaking, it is the number one fear people have, but when it comes to video, there can be even more hesitation because first of all, they can watch it back and I’ve watched some of my videos back and, oh my goodness. But then you can also can’t control who is seeing it so you can’t filter it. If you’re standing in front of a room, you know, who’s in the room, no one else is going to see you present. So, because we can watch ourselves back, the first thing is we need to be is our own best coach. Now I remember back years and years and years ago when Facebook lives started and I started playing around with some Facebook lives, I would watch my videos back and I’d be like, I did this wrong. I did this wrong. I did well. I can’t believe you said that. And I was really negative about doing it. And then it would be a long time in between, but then I, I shifted it. I made a decision to go, I’m going to look for what I did well. And as soon as I did that, it was like this encouragement to keep going. And I encourage you, if you’ve done a few videos, keep doing them, a great way to reduce nerves is exposure therapy. Now, even NASA does exposure therapy for their astronauts. They put them in chambers that simulate what it’s going to be like in the, the aircraft and all of that sort of thing. They simulate it and they put them in for short amount of time. And then the next time they’ll put them in for a little bit longer and a little bit longer and a little bit longer. And they keep repeating it and they keep exposing themselves to it until that fear, those feelings whatever’s happening for them dissipates. And we need to do it as well. So doing one video and then leaving it six months, you are not going to have the growth in your business that you want and can get from doing video. A great thing to do. If you are starting to feel nervousness show up in your body is to recognize it. Now for most people nervousness starts with maybe they start breathing a little bit more shallow, and then they might, their heart marks

might start palpitating. Clammy hands. But if you recognize what you feel like when you start feeling excitement, you start breathing a little bit more shallowly. Your heart starts palpitating. You get sweaty hands, get a bit clammy. You have the same physiological shifts. When you start getting nervous or you start getting excited. So instead of saying, I’m nervous, I’m nervous,go, Ooh, am I starting to feel a little bit excited? Because our videos aren’t about us. Our videos are for the people that need our help. And so when you’re getting on and you are focusing on nervousness, you’re actually making it all about you. But when you can start to focus on the people who need your help, and there are people out there who need your help, there are plenty of investors who aren’t getting the return on their investment property that they should be. There are plenty of investors that are fearful about the changes in the market. There are investors that are fearful about the interest rates rising. There’s so many things that we as being property managers or not myself, but you guys being property managers, you need to add certainty to your audience. And so it’s not about us. It’s about them. It’s a great strategy to shift the way of thinking to being more positive.’

SQUARE BREATHING FOR NERVES

‘I think another thing when we are nervous is that we forget to breathe. And so 80% of our lung capacity is underneath our rib cage. Yet we tend to breathe up here and it sounds like we’re running a race and you’re sort of catching your breath. So having some really big, deep breaths before you get on camera will reduce your nerves. It sends signals to your nervous system that you are safe and that you are okay. And it also helps you speak from your stomach, which gives you a lot more of a commanding voice, but it also helps you and your cognitive way of thinking stay on track. So I love square breathing where you breathe in over four seconds, you hold for four seconds, you breathe out for four seconds. You hold for four seconds, doing a few rounds of some box breathing or square breathing will help your nervous system go down and you stay grounded.

HOW DO YOU STRUCTURE A VIDEO?

The first thing we need to remember is we have less than three seconds now to hook someone in. So we need to really grab their attention from the very start. Now, I run a free five day video confidence challenge. And on the first day we teach this technique where to start your videos. But in that first sentence saying you once increases views by 66%, saying you twice it increases views by 98%. So it could be something like, are you, or do you know an investor that is concerned about the rise in interest rates? Hi, I’m whatever your name is. And today I’m going to explain to you how it is actually going to be affecting you. So then you talk about what that problem is, and then you could always give a solution. Now, in my trainings, I think we teach over 10 different structures for your talking points. Having a great structure helps your videos flow, but it also keeps you on track. So there’s lots of different ways you can do it, but every single video needs to have a purpose. And I see so many people making this mistake, they don’t tell people what the next step is. So having a really great opening, but then having a call to action or a next step is vital to give your video a purpose. And our videos are either there to inspire or to persuade. Now, one thing you do not want to do, this is a big one to avoid, is to do a sales pitch at the end of every video. There are so many different things you can say instead of that, it could be something like if this has been valuable to you, make sure you like and share it. If you’ve got any questions, please make sure you pop them in the comments, send me a DM, if you want more information. So there’s lots of different things that you can do, but you need to tell people what the next step is.’

WHAT TECH OR VIDEO EQUIPMENT DO WE NEED?

‘To be honest you do not have to go and get a heap of fancy equipment to be able to create your own video content. When I started, I had my mobile phones. That was it. I didn’t even have a webcam back then. And I used to stack up books on the highchair when my son was little and try and get my phone to balance. And I’ve slowly gotten more and more, I think a great investment, especially for people in the real estate industry is called a Pivo Tripod. The Pivo is a phone stand that is like having a cameraman that can follow you 360 degrees around. It focuses on you, it’s got AI in it and it follows you around when you are walking so that you can be on the move and it’s following. So that’s a great investment. I think the most important things are definitely having a phone stand. So stabilizer and most of the time natural light is always going to be your best friend, but it isn’t always accessible. Now, a lot of people get ring lights. I’m not a huge fan of the ring light. I had a really big one, but it can often leave rings in your eyes and if you wear glasses, especially, you can really see that reflection. So if you’ve already got a ring light, but you’re finding that’s an issue, get just a simple white sheet piece of fabric and put that over it to diffuse it. If you’ve got a little bit more room though, highly recommend getting, some diffuser boxes, you can get them online, but make sure you’ve got a remote. With the remote, you want to make sure that you can go from a warm light to a cool light so that you can adjust it. Our lenses of the camera have a white light balancer in it.’

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT TOOLS

If I’m not continually learning? I feel like something’s wrong. So I feel for me to be able to get my clients to their fullest potential, I need to be at my fullest potential. And I’m always looking at, at the next investment to get me to the next stage. I’ve done a lot of personal development and a lot of training. I think that one of my favorite books and authors when we are looking at the marketing side of our business is Donald Miller’s, Building a Brand Story. It gives you a lot of clarity. It can help you with all of your copywriting. It can help you think of ways of communicating for camera as well. So being able to really understand who your client is and how you can build the story up about their transformation of where they are now to where you can take them. So that’s a great one to help us find our differentiators as well.’