Overcome a fear of showing up on video

Transcript

If you follow me on social media, and if you don’t you should, you’ll notice that I confidently show up on video regularly in my business and do live streams. But I can assure you it wasn’t always this way, in fact, I spent many months, deleting videos, crying after I recorded and watching horrible videos of myself shaking, stumbling over words and generally making a fool of myself, before I got to this stage. So what changed? Today, I want to share exactly how I navigated through my fear of video and how you can do the same in your business.

You’re listening to the Clare Wood podcast, where we talk all things business, finance, marketing, and mindset for entrepreneurs, sharing practical tips, and actionable advice to help you take your business to the next level. Introducing your host: me! I’m Clare Wood, I’m a numbers geek, a travel lover, and a reality tv addict, and I’m here to empower you to create an extraordinary business and an amazing life, because I believe you don’t have to choose between the two. Now let’s dive right in to today’s episode.

Why video is important for your business

First of all we should dive into, why do you need to do video and why is it important for your business? The reason is people connect with people. There is something about watching someone speaking that really enables you to learn a bit more about them, and you’ll either connect with them or you won’t. Video is definitely one of the most powerful marketing tools that you can use as a small business owner. It literally fast-tracks your journey with your consumers and leads to paying clients faster than you imagine.

Hopefully this convinces you that video is an important strategy to be using. If you look at other people and think “Gosh, they are so amazing, I’ll never be like that.” I can totally relate, that’s how I used to feel when other entrepreneurs showed up on video. I remember one of my first mentors in business, Pru Chapman, regularly did livestreams and spoke with elegance and confidence. I thought I will never get there. I said that to her and she said, “You can’t compare to me, I’ve been doing it for so many years now”. So forget about what everyone else is doing, and focus on yourself. Some people are born confident speakers, but I definitely wasn’t, so video was a long journey for me, with lots of false starts and tears along the way. Never compare, you don’t know someone else’s journey, you don’t know them, and everyone grows at different lengths, it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that you are committed to grow, put in the uncomfortable work because you can see how powerful it can be to show up for your business.

Today I’m going to share the strategy I used, literally step by step to gain my confidence in showing up in video, so you can implement it and see changes in yourself, in your confidence and how you show up on video.

I’d like to make a disclaimer here. This is not a foolproof method, but it did work for me and I hope it inspires some of you to be able to show up on video. This is my framework.

The benefits of recording without showing your face

The first thing I did was record videos without showing my face. I don’t know why this worked, but it enabled me to get comfortable behind the camera, so people hearing my voice couldn’t see me. I would do a tour of a room, or talk to a document I created, but I wasn’t actually showing my face, hiding behind the camera. But I knew my voice was being heard. I did this process for quite a while.

The benefits of recording without recording your voice

The next thing I did was record video of me in it, with my face in it, but without actually talking. For example, a Boomerang video on Instagram. I did this for a while until I got confident showing my face to camera.

Starting off with interviews and recorded conversations

The next stage was, and this might not feel comfortable for everyone, but I started to do interviews and conversation via video. For some reason it is some much easier for things to flow when you are in conversation with someone else. A couple of business buddies of mine, I invited them to come talk with me recorded, I definitely wasn’t going live and I’d ask them questions, and they would ask me questions, and that allowed the conversation to flow easy without it being forced, with the camera. This was a process over a period of time, that I finally got to a stage where I wasn’t nervous recording interviews.

If you are listening to this and thinking who would I record a video with? I can guarantee there are people that you could pull in from a parallel business that would be a massive interest to your audience. Invest some time thinking about potential collaboration partners within this space. Who runs a similar business with similar audience? Can you get them on to add value to your audience? This was a major turning point in terms of my confidence, because when someone asks you questions it flows much easier. Usually I would say “Could we do an interview for my audience, and then one for your audience?” At this stage of the journey I was still pre-recording these, because I was still building my confidence.

Recording quick clips on Instagram Stories

After I nailed that process the next thing I did was started to record really quick clips of me talking to the camera. So if you are familiar with Instagram, you can record Instagram Stories, so after I got comfortable talking in front of the camera, I recorded a few quick little videos commenting on things, sharing quick tips, but wrapping it up in a matter of seconds. This process was about building confidence recording while showing my face on camera. You might remember that this is really challenging when you first start, but I have spoken about it on the podcast before, if you want to change the outcomes you are achieving, you need to get uncomfortable. Get comfortable with being uncomfortable. I’d watch and delete over and over until I was comfortable with these clips. I was in this stage for weeks, if not months, before I moved on to the next stage.

How to record longer and live videos with confidence

I then extended out to loner videos, from 60 seconds to a couple of minutes. Again, this didn’t happen overnight, but the more I got comfortable with doing video over and over, the easier it started to get. I now regularly film IGTV videos and I don’t get nervous, which seems so surreal to me, thinking about where I was at a couple of years ago.

The last step was doing live videos. The thought of doing live videos was terrifying, but the more confident I got in front of the camera, the more I realised the great opportunity to reach more people in my audience and help more people.

This is my tip for you is to stop focusing on you and how you feel and start to think about how you are helping and serving your potential clients and community by showing up.

After you get comfortable moving through different phases, you’ll get to a place where you are comfortable doing live video. This is a great way for more people to find your content, because you pop up immediately in their feed when you are live. This was one of the most challenging this to get past form a mindset perspective. I’m so glad now that I have gotten to a place where I am confident to do livestreams, because I know it is so valuable to my community, and ultimately we are there to serve our clients, our community and our customers.

To sum up today, video is a really powerful marketing tool for advertising your business. Don’t compare yourself to anyone else, improve on where you were and move on from there. If you are wanting to improve how you show up on video, think about the things that scare you the most, from least scary to most scary, then work through it on a tiered bases, something that doesn’t seem so scary, get confident doing that. Work through what your biggest challenges are by showing up on video until you get to a place where you can confidently show up and don’t have nerves about appearing on video.

Thanks you for listening, I hope you got some valuable tips.

Thank you so much for joining me today, if you enjoyed this episode, please make sure you subscribe to receive future episodes, and I’d be so grateful for a review on apple podcast! If you’d like a copy of the show notes or any of the links mentioned today, please jump over to clarewood.com.au/podcast and remember that Clare is spelled CLARE, have a wonderful week and look forward to chatting to you again soon!