Hint of Hustle with Heather Sager
You probably don't need someone to tell you to work harder, you’re good at that. Really good.
But somewhere along the way, success started feeling like it was costing you something. Your relationships. Your health. That version of yourself you LIKE. You started wondering if there's a way to win in business without putting everything else on the back burner.
I'm Heather Sager, former corporate executive turned high performance coach specializing in communication. I've spent 23+ years on stages and inside thousands of businesses learning that the entrepreneurs who are truly crushing it are the ones who got really honest about redefining their success and built accordingly.
Each week we get into exactly that, business, marketing, personal growth… the 5 star reviews paint the picture: it’s like grabbing a drink with that ridiculously wise biz friend who has you laughing one minute, scribbling notes the next, and always leaves you fired up to take action.
Welcome to Hint of Hustle where ambitious leaders win at work and thrive in life. Let’s dive in!
Hint of Hustle with Heather Sager
38. Show Up with Confidence on Camera - Conquering Fear & Creating Engaging Video Content
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When my client Ally asked me to teach in her virtual summit recently I jumped at the chance. We’d been working together on her video skills and she wanted me to help her audience get more comfortable on camera and show up for their businesses online.
Today I’m sharing the audio of this virtual session with you for two reasons:
1. I’m sure you have similar questions around leveraging the power of video in your business, specifically how to show up more confidently and eloquently. The idea of putting your face on camera can feel a little overwhelming. In this session, I help demystify that for business owners who want to do video work.
2. I want you to hear what a live, engaging and effective presentation sounds like. Even if the topic doesn't resonate with you, pay attention because this is VERY meta. You get to hear a virtual speaking coach… speak virtually!
Pay attention to my engagement techniques, the nuggets of credibility and the overall flow and my energy. This is your shot to experience one of my live sessions firsthand (and for free).
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Welcome to a bonus episode of Finding your It Factor. I am Heather Sager and Oh my goodness, you are in for a treat! Hopefully, you see it as a treat for today. A big question that I get a lot from my students and clients is, 'Heather, I would love to see you speak live on a stage, and so this week that's what we're doing. It's not a physical stage. You know, stages are closed down in this world we're in right now, but I think virtual stages are here to stay, Friend. I want you to be embracing these virtual stages, whether that's a Facebook live, that's a workshop, or like me, a presentation in a virtual summit, these are incredible ways for you to start building your authority and your email list.
My client, Allie Lozano , she is an incredible immigration lawyer. She is a business coach. She is all the things. I had the pleasure of working with Allie for the last few months on her video content in her business. She invited me to join her in her Law Survival Summit here last month. It was in April. She'd asked me on a whim. It was a Sunday afternoon. I didn't even have to think about it. It was a heck yes, whatever I can do to support my clients, especially in times like this. I just jumped right after it. Allie asked me to come in to her summit and teach her audience around how to approach being comfortable on camera and also just how to approach video work in general in your business. I wanted to share this recording with you today for two reasons. Number one, I am sure you have so many questions similar like those who were at the summit around how to confidently use camera in your business, in your marketing. Again, it depends on what you're doing, prerecorded videos, or lives, or Instagram, all the things. It's just the idea of putting your face on camera can feel a little overwhelming. I helped demystify that today for business owners who want to do video work. That's number one. Number two, I want you to hear what a live, engaging and effective presentations sounds like. Even if the topic doesn't resonate with you, I want you to pay attention. Guys, I do a lot of like meta teaching to you in my private Facebook community, in my programs, and here on the podcast where I go first and then I show you exactly what I'm doing and why. I want you to pay attention to this. You'll notice some techniques that I use. You'll notice some statements that I use that may or may not be familiar, but I want you to experience a live engaging delivery firsthand. I think you're going to like it.
Speaker 1Couple of things to know in this audio, I'm talking to lawyers who have practices. If I use the word 'practice' as in your practice, I want you to replace that word in your mind with 'business.' Whether you have a practice or a business, you most likely have a business. That's tip number one.
Number two, I mentioned a freebie that I offered for this specific group. I would love to offer that for you as well. The freebie is the 5 Fear Busting Hacks around how to get confident on camera paired with my cheat sheet checklist. If you want a list of all of my recommended tech tools like the cameraI use, the software I use, the lights I use, all those things. I'm giving it to you too, Friend. You're a loyal It Factor listener so I'm not holding back. If you want to grab that in the episode I say send me a direct message on Instagram if you want, you can do that, but also here is where to grab both of those freebies for yourself. It's heathersager.com/getstartedonvideo. Okay, go snag it. I hope you enjoy this live virtual summit workshop. I hope you take a lot of notes not only on video but also on presentation style. If you do love it, would you please hit that subscribe button. Please leave a review, your open, honest feedback. Hopefully, it's 5-stars. And of course, share this with any other entrepreneur that you think would help them share their message on a bigger stage. I appreciate you so much. I hope you enjoy this and I'll see you on the other side.
Speaker 3Have you ever wondered how some people just seem to have a way with words, they have this spark that lights you up when you're near them? They have the F factor and well, most people think that something that only a few are born with, I believe that you can find it so it can become your super power to grow your business. It's about you bringing your brand to life by becoming a magnetic communicator in person and on camera, showing up with confidence, authenticity, and inspiration. So are you ready to become magnetic? I thought so. I'm Heather Sager and I'd like to welcome you to binding your effect .
Speaker 2[inaudible]
Speaker 4I am so excited to introduce our next speaker. I'm going to pull up her bio for you here. The next speaker is Heather Sager. She is a speaker and online business coach. She helps entrepreneurs structure their ideas, clarify their message, and hone their speaking skills so they can deliver magnetic live presentations, videos, and workshops that grow their authority. She's spoken on stages around the world, teaching six and seven figure business owners how to grow their businesses using effective communication.
Before starting her company, she was an executive at a top management firm in healthcare . She lives in Portland, Oregon. We are West Coast ladies here, with her husband and their two young sons and she says they test her communication chops daily. Heather also is my personal speaking coach. We've been working together for a little bit now and you know what she does is she uses these really great analogies. She'll be like, 'Allie, you've got the cake, but now you need to frost it.' She said things like this and it makes so much sense to me. Without further ado, I am going to turn this over to Heather. Welcome. Thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 1Thanks, Allie . Thanks so much. I'm so excited to be here. Can you guys hear me okay? Cool. Okay . I do have two little kids here at home, so I have them down at nap time right now. I'm like praying that this works out. I pr omise t o bring some interesting analogies here today. Although, I've also been known to come up with some off the wall ones that might be mildly inappropriate.
I just caught the last 30 minutes of Bianca's talk and man, the fire that is happening like did not disappoint. I can tell that you guys got a ton from that session. One of the things that I did promised to Allie that today I would come in with a game plan around how to support you when it comes to video in your business. In order to do that, I have a ton of ideas and a ton of different topics and tips that I can share with you today. I think the best way for us to make use of our time is for me to get a little bit of a gauge around where each of you are today, which in a virtual classroom like this. I'm going to need you to work with me here for just the first four minutes. Look alive. Hopefully, you just stood up, had a little bit of a bio break, maybe got some water, maybe something stronger if you needed it. I'm going to fire a couple of questions your way and I want you guys to jump in the chat and give me some feedback so that way I can curate what I'm about to teach you based around where you're at and what you need.
Speaker 1First question, I'm curious for those of you or just thinking about video right now in your business, I want you to rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 around how important using video, your face on video, is right now in your marketing. 10 being -- this is absolutely critical in my marketing today, and 1 - is you don't think it's important at all, like you have no interest in it. It's not important on your radar. Rank where you are today. On a scale of 1to 10 how important is video in your marketing strategy as you look in the next 12 months?
Okay, so right out of the gate, of course the 10s are screaming out loud. This is totally important to you. Okay. Some right in the middle of the road, I'm seeing more towards the upper echelon. Okay, perfect. Going down there. Number one, important . For the most part ,we're feeling it is really important. Okay, follow up question. I'm going to do one of these. Stop in the chat here for a second. I'm going to put a little asterisks to put a nail in there. Now I want to ask you the follow up question. You know it's important, but now I want to understand where you guys fall on your confidence level of actually hitting record and you going live on video. Same scale, 10 - is you have absolutely no problem showing your face on video today. 1 - is you would rather take a poop live on YouTube, than have to show your face on video. Maybe that was a little much for this time of day. Okay, let's see. All over the map there, I see a lot of 7s and 8s. Mostly, I see you guys on the polar ends of the spectrum. I don't see a ton of middle ground there. Either you're super comfortable with it or it's the 'Oh to the hell No.' Okay. Awesome. I'm curious. I have two more questions. For those of you who are already doing video, No, actually let me go the other way first. For those of you who were on the bottom end of it, that were more in like the 0s to 4 category that are not doing it, not confident, I'm curious to know what's the thing that's stopping you? Is it fear of video? Is it tech, like you don't know the tech stuff, or is it you don't know what to say? Like you're not sure on the content. Which of those three or if it's something different, pop that in there.
Speaker 1Okay. 'Creative content.' 'Don't know how.' I'm assuming that 'Don't know how' is the tech. Okay. Content. 'I've done live TV with a script but the other maybe off the cuff , more intimidating. 'Fear of making a mistake.' Maybe saying poop on YouTube. Maybe that comes out and alive. Who knows? I know it's terrifying, right? 'I don't do it because I feel like I don't have time.' Okay.
I want you guys to watch these. I know these are moving fast, but looking here, I'm imagining you're going to see that other people are probably feeling similarly to you. Usually, it's those three things that I mentioned before. It's the tech can be intimidating and we don't have time to figure it out. It's the fear of being on camera and actually seeing your face back is really intimidating, or the I just don't know what to talk about, or how would I even boil that down to a video that somebody needs to watch.
Speaker 1I'm curious, for those of you who are already doing video, here's my last question for right now. What do you feel is making you stuck right now? What challenge are you having that you would like me to dive into today so that I can help you push through the, you're already doing it, but you want to make it better. Pop those in the chat, if you're already doing it but you have an area that you want to get a little bit better.
I love this. I need a lip wax. That is a legitimate reason to be fearful of video right now people. Okay. Love video, not confident with the live aspect. Okay, I love the specificity in there. Okay, awesome! All right . You guys are giving me a lot to work with. I'm going to cover a lot of these things. We're going to go in a couple different areas. We're going to first tackle that fear based today because even for those of you who might feel super confident, you might have certain aspects that you get a little nervous in when it comes to speaking, maybe it's the live versus the recorded, or maybe you're a little more nervous if you had to go live on a stage. I'm not sure, but the fear might apply to you in some of those areas. We're going to talk about that We're going to talk about effective content planning. What to actually say on videos and then how to even think about what you would talk about on video. We'll dive into the content piece and then we're definitely gonna talk about some tech stuff. The actual logistics of the filming pieces so that you have what you need to at least hit record and get started.
Speaker 1What we'll do is during each of those areas I'll pause and if you have questions I'll take a moment and say, 'Hey, what questions do you have in this area?' The chat moves pretty quickly on here, so if you ask a question and I miss it, don't hesitate to re-pop it in the chat if we get to the Q&A. Sound good? Okay.
Let's talk about the idea of the fear piece 'cause I know this is a big thing for a lot of people, especially for this particular audience. This might be a little bit of a difficult thing for you because you talk to people professionally every single day, like your whole career is based around giving advice, talking with people, consulting with people. You probably don't have a fear of speaking in general. It's crafted in who you are and what you do.
Speaker 1For some reason hitting the record button and having like this blink lens thing staring at you or if you're on your phone, you see your own face. There's something about that makes us all go a little faddy-duddy. It's just a weird thin. Typically, because, well , couple of things.
You probably already know and have heard before that the fear of public speaking is one of the top fears in the entire world more than death. Jerry Seinfeld has a pretty funny joke a bit that he does that when it comes to a funeral, more people would rather be delivering , , or be in the casket at a funeral than delivering the eulogy at a funeral because they're so terrified of public speaking. I think that the world of online speaking of being on cameras, it's brought up this fear that not a lot of people have thought about in the past, because typically with public speaking we get to do this thing that I refer to as the ostrich effect where when we're speaking live to an audience, we have the luxury of mildly blacking out a bit and not really knowing what's happening. We can see the feedback of the audience and what's happening. But once it's over, it's over.We don't really remember what happened. We might get pieces of it, but it's kind of like this blackout. When it comes to video, it feels so permanent. It's permanent both in the moment 'cause we can see like, if I were to look down right now, I could see myself, which is a very weird thing. If I look up at you, I could always go back and watch this later and then we'll totally analyze the, 'Oh my gosh, did I actually say that comment on here,? or 'why is my left eyebrow is so fricking active but my right one doesnot move? You have the ability to analyze in yourself that we never really get to do in normal life unless we just stood in the mirror all day. The fear of the camera is a completely normal thing. I'll give you a couple of tips around how to navigate through that fear. But just know it's very, very common. The reason why we get so uncomfortable with and shy away from it is because we're not used to it. I want you to think for a moment of something in your business or in your life that you did for the first time and sucked at it, but decided that it was something that you wanted to do so you p ush through and continue to do it. Let me give you an example.
Speaker 1I love running. When I first started running, I hated it, like absolutely hated it. I decided one day that I wanted to run a marathon, so I thought I would start training. I'd run like a mile and got myself up to 5K. I was super sore for the first couple of weeks and it was torture. It was terrible, but I wanted the end result of it. I pushed through that soreness.
Probably, many of you have a similar example. I'm going to give you the converse of that. One time in my life, I decided to follow one of my friends to a CrossFit class. I did CrossFit at like 4:30 in the morning with all the crazies there at the CrossFit gym. I couldn't walk for like four days. It was terrible. It was so embarrassing. Number one, I barely survived the workout. Number two, I couldn't walk. I never touched a CrossFit gym ever again. When it comes to video, most people have one or two of those experiences. One, it's like the CrossFit scenario where you try it one time and you fail so hard and it's so uncomfortable and you hate what you look like or what you sounded like and it just totally flopped. You never touch it again because it's not a priority. Or if you were like the other version of me who decided that she wanted to become a runner, you push through the soreness, and you figured it out, and you keep going. The first thing that you have to decide is that you have to make a decision of whether or not video is as important to you and your business as something that you've done in the past that's been uncomfortable but you pushed through.
Speaker 1You have to make the decision to say, I'm the kind of person who does video in their business. You have to make that decision because until you say, I'm the kind of person who does video, you're not going to do video. You're just going to dabble with it and you're not going to push past the sore and discomfort that will come. That's not going to not be there. That's one of the things.
Number one, you have to make a decision. Just note , you're probably not going to make that decision today, but you do need to make a decision whether or not you actually do want to do video. Are you taking it seriously? Are you going to do it? Once you decide, then you know that it's going to be a little uncomfortable for a while, but at least you know that discomfort is only going to be for a phase. That's the first thing I would be thinking about. The second thing to think about when it comes to fear of the camera is, this is the trick that I use with all of my clients when it comes to fear of speaking. When you're focused on yourself and feeling like your lip needs a wax or your crazy eyebrow, I always use that example because seriously, my left eyebrow is so much more expressive than my right one and I just don't get it. If you get so caught up in the nerves of around how other people are going to feel, or how you look,or whether or not you're going to sound like you know what you're talking about, when you're focused on yourself, you lose perspective around the whole reason why you're doing video. I want you to bear with me. It's going to be a little awkward for those of you on video, but let's go for it. I want you to close your eyes for a second. I want you to think of your favorite client that you work with. Your absolute favorite person, t hat a nytime you have the chance to work with them, you light up 'cause you get the chance to talk to them again and you get to help them. You think about what he lp y ou brought them this far. I want you to imagine for a moment the way that you've helped that client. Let's say that you were so caught up in your own head and thinking about saying the right things, or whether or not you were dressed the right way for that client meeting, or worrying about what they were going to think about you.
Speaker 1What if you showed up to all those consulting sessions that you had with them, so worried about yourself, that you weren't able to actually help them, hear them, and get them the end results that you've helped them with.
Of course you wouldn't do that in your normal profession and what you do because you're used to just jumping into and solving the problems and doing what you need to do. What happens is on camera, for some reason though, even theoretically, we know there's someone on the other end that we're helping. We apply this filter that happens with that camera where we no longer can picture people as people, or we picture millions of people that we're potentially talking to. It feels like we're talking to no one, which means the only thing we have left is to focus on ourselves. Here's a tip that I would give all of you, regardless of your fear of the camera. Get really, really clear around who you're talking to and talk to that one person on the camera. When you talk to one person and you think about what they're challenged with right now. How might they be feeling right now in the craziness that's going on in our world? Where they might be challenged? What might they be excited about? How might they be responding to some of the words that you're about to tell them? If you think about them, and their feelings, and their emotions, and their needs, and their wants, if you start focusing about them, you'll notice that you can't simultaneously focus on yourself. Those two things can't coexist when you're thinking about nerves. The trick that I typically give speakers, or I'll give you when it comes to camera is, right before you go live, I want you to visualize that favorite client or someone that you want to talk to. If you picture them and picture their feelings, you'll notice that yours will subside a bit, even if it's just temporarily. It'll help you get over the hump to hit record and then go live. For those of you who more comfortable with speaking, you'll actually find that you'll have a better message and your message will connect with more people if you just talk to one person. That would be a couple of my tips around speaking. I have a ton of more of that, but because some of you on here are not terrified of speaking, I don't want to go too far down there, but I do have a resource for those of you who are scared of the camera if you want to tackle that a bit. I'll share with you a little bit later. If you just connect with me on Instagram, I'll send you a link to that document. It's my five strategies for breaking through your fear on camera. If you want to go down that road, I'd be more than happy to. I'm over on Instagram, I'm @theheathersager. We can connect over there and I'll help you with the fear stuff a little bit more there. I'm going to pop through the chats here for a second. How do I go on Facebook live? Okay, I want to address the lives. I was educated that I have to make it marketing. Okay, I'm glad you brought that one up here. Who is that? Oh, Geneva. Okay. Let's talk about that a bit. Let's move over and talk about content around how to make your content better. I am curious, if a couple of you w ill pop in the chat. What are you thinking about using video for in your business? What comes to mind for you? What a re you w anna use it for? I'm imagining marketing. I'm imagining are you trying to drive leads to your website? Are you trying to drive leads to your practice? Are you looking to establish yourself as authority? I want you to think for a second. What are you trying to do with these videos? This might be a really good question. If you don't have something coming to your mind, generally, this would be a good thing for you to decide. When it comes to speaking, and I think video, it's a virtual version of speaking. You want to be really clear around what your goals or outcomes are. I usually talk about when it comes to speaking, there's a couple of different ways that you can approach it. You can say, my strategy for speaking is driving leads. My strategy for speaking is to establish myself as a credible authority. You can say my strategy for speaking or video is just to get more comfortable doing it right now so that I can get myself to a level to drive leads or authority. Just get really clear around what you're trying to do. It's typically the authority piece where you're trying to position yourself as an expert or authority in your specific niche, or it's the driving leads. No, those things can go coexist together, but it's really important that you get really clear which one is your primary when it comes to your marketing strategy in your business. Okay, so I see a lot of authority. I see a lot of leads, which the great part about this is this is really dovetails with a lot of what Bianca talked about in our last session. Okay. Establishing trust and connection with potential clients. Okay, good. Accessibility to education, information for prospective clients. Okay, good. All right.
Speaker 1A lot of this really falls under the umbrella of content marketing. This balance between we don't want to just educate. We want to educate and lead people towards solutions that we can provide. Ultimately, you're in a business. You're not just providing all this free education with the hope that people come back around with you. You want to actually connect the dots.
Let's talk about a couple of things that might help with this. If you find yourself struggling to come up with the, what do I talk about on camera? Does anybody have that as a struggle, as what the heck am I even going to talk about? I don't know what topics to choose. Here's a really quick tip around what you can do to come up with that. This is not a sexy name, but this is what I call it. I call it like my brain dump bucketizing activity. It's very sexy. Brain dump bucketizing activities. Okay? Essentially, what I want you to do is grab nifty difty PostIt notes or a whiteboard , just not a piece of tech. You need to have something physical to write things out, so PostIt notes, or a white board, or note cards, or whatever you want to do. I want you to sit down and ask yourself the question, 'what can I teach people? I don't want you to get overly finicky about this. Don't try to overcomplicate. Like what topics come to mind. I want you to give yourself maybe 20 minutes on a timer and come get every idea out of your brain and put it on a PostIt note. It doesn't matter if that idea is a really big idea. It doesn't matter if an idea is this tiny little example in your business. I don't care what the ideas are, but what's important is you have to get every idea out of your head. Give yourself a timer and force yourself to fill out that time so keep coming up with ideas. You're going to have a ton of PostIt notes or really messy whiteboard in front of you. That's phase one. Step one, get all your ideas out of your head. The reason why we want to do this is you want to plan content in advance because you never want to find yourself in the position where you know you need to get a video out, but you have no idea what to talk about. You won't come up with something great in that moment.
Speaker 1You want to get ahead of things and have what's referred to as a content plan. I think this is really important to video because you want to feel prepared. I think preparedness is the best way to fight fear or procrastination when it comes to doing content work, especially on video. So step one, get all your ideas out of your head. Do the ultimate brain dump.
Step two is what I refer to as the bucketizing method, which means bucket your ideas. Group all of your content ideas into similar buckets or categories. Let's say for me for example, I teach speaking to entrepreneurs to help them position themselves as an authority and grow their email list so they can ultimately grow their sales. For me, if I come up with content, I'm most likely going to have a bucket that talks about body language and non-verbal delivery skills. I'll have a ton of stuff in there like vocal tone, and pitch, and pause, and cadence, and hand gestures, and eye expressions, and eye contact, and all those kinds of things. I would put those into the bucket of body language. I might have another bucket where I specifically focus on video and another bucket that's specific to live stages. You have to determine what the buckets are. The recommendation that I would give you is don't try to come up with the buckets or the categories first. Let your brain go to all those ideas and details and then put them into buckets. If you confine yourself to buckets first, you might miss out on some really good ideas. In the brain dump activity, step one, was get all the ideas out. Step two, is to organize them into groups and start coming up with categories or buckets. Step three is I would label your buckets. Come up with labels and say, as you look at all the things maybe now you've determined you have five or six buckets of ideas of content. You could refer to them as pillars of content in your business. I refer to them as core content in my business. They're key areas that you think, 'Hmm, anytime I'm going to talk about content or teach in my business, marketing teach, it's probably going to be under one of these categories. These are my areas of expertise.' I want you to label them because when you label them, it makes it a thing. It makes it easier for you to have a higher level map to think about, 'huh, I need to come up with a piece of content. I know the things that I teach fall under these five pillars. Now, I can brainstorm a little bit more to come up with some more ideas.' Number three, label it. That's how you come up with a giant matrix, or a giant white board, or a giant table of ideas. From there you get to decide, okay, now how does this actually lay out? I'll teach you in a second how to convert it, based off that comment earlier, how to convert it from just teaching to selling. Right now I want you to focus on how do I actually just get the ideas out. Let's say you're in this position, you do this activity tomorrow. You do this activity where you get all these ideas out on the table, literally. Let's say you come up with 45 different topic ideas under five different buckets. What I want you to do is now put these in a Google doc, or in a word doc, or in a spreadsheet. Pick your organizational system.
Speaker 1I want you to get them all in there. Choose 10 that you a re like, these are topics that I could do something with. Pick 10 and then those are the first 10 you're going to start with making a video. Just get it narrowed down.
The issue that happens when it comes to video is we procrastinate. We pushed it off because the excuses, we don't know how to do it or we don't know what to talk about. I'm going to teach you both of those today. Remove those excuses. Allow yourself to have the topic that you're going to cover so at least you have some competence of knowing list what I'm going to talk about. That is one of those things when it comes to the confidence on video. Many of us, get distracted on the tech piece, or what are we look like? We feel like we don't maybe look so great on video, or the lighting is not great, or why are we doing weird t hings with our h ands? We get distracted by the delivery of it. If we prioritize the content first, get more comfortable with delivering your content. You can always elevate your delivery skills later. What I would focus on, especially for those of you who are not creating content consistently in your business. Let me give you a little gift here for a moment. Don't try to be perfect. Don't try to come out with strategic videos that get you results right out of the gate. I know you want to drive leads. I know you want to position yourself as authority, but here's the thing. None of those things are gonna happen if you're not showing up consistently. I would encourage you, 90% of you watching today, I want to really encourage you to switch your goal right now for the next 90 days. I want you to abandon the longterm strategy of authority and building your list or getting leads. Those are important in that strategy I want you to work for, but I want you for a hot minute to screw strategy. I want you to focus on discipline and building the habit because with where you're at right now in doing video, when you first get started, there's not going to be a lot of people watching. And this is a really beautiful window because what can happen is you can start getting comfortable on video, start sucking it up a little bit while your audience is small and just get in the habit. Get in the habit of showing up and doing video. Once you have the habit, then you can amplify it with a strategy, meaning then you can make it more persuasive. You can get better with your calls to action. You can get more strategic around using it in advertising and so forth, If you're not doing this already, don't worry about it right now. You just need to get in the habit of actually showing up on video. Does that make sense? Okay. If that is making sense and you're like, 'Oh my gosh, that's a relief.' Run with that and don't let your mind go in a different direction here in a week or two. Once you try a video thinking, now how can I make it more strategic. Screw strategy if the habits not there yet, focus on the habit first. Okay. Let's see here. I want to get to a couple of these things here . I'm struggling to narrow the focus so I can be clear on a very specific thing. Okay. Vanessa, let me go down this road here for just a second with you so that I can help you take your thoughts down into an actionable video. When it comes to video, there's a couple of different types, right?
Speaker 1You can do like this, a guest session in somebody else's program. You could do Facebook Lives to your audience. You can do InstagramTV, IGTV. You can do videos on that, which is a little bit more the long form. I think you can go up to an hour on IGTV though, I don't know anybody who would watch that long on IGTV. Typically, those are like 3-7 minutes is a sweet spot there.
The other beautiful one that we all should be trying and using to get comfortable is Instagram stories. That is a great way to start getting comfortable because they're 15 second increments. I think a good Instagram story is between 60 and 90 seconds in total because it's enough where you can deliver a piece of content, but it's not so much where someone's going to be like, 'Oh my God, I see all the tiny dots up at the top of the Instagram window. I ain't got time for this.' Give yourself like that window of 60 to 90 seconds. Going back to the question around how do you narrow your focus down? Every video should have a pretty specific focus. You shouldn't try to tackle this giant thing. Like I wouldn't do a video around digital marketing. That is such a big topic. You're not really going to cover a lot of ground there that's original and unique for someone to hold their attention. I want you to imagine, you know how I had the bucket activity, right? Come up with all the ideas and then organize them into buckets. I want you to think about your content like, did you ever have when you were a kid at your grandma's house, those little like stacking, they're like called like the Russian stacking dolls? It was like mama doll, and then you like clamped her over the next doll, and then over the next doll, and the next doll, and the next doll, and there's like eight dolls that stacked.
Speaker 1Maybe that was just me, but you get the idea, right? You nested the doll inside the next doll . I want you to think about your content in that same way I used the term buckets. Let's go with that for a second. What I think about is your content, you want to nest everything inside of it.
I think about content, like there's the big picture of, I'm going to go weird. Allie said I do analogy. Let me go with it for a second. I want you to think about your content lives in this giant ocean of content. Let's go down the road of marketing cause that's an easy one. There's an ocean that is called marketing. If you just try to talk about marketing, you're just gonna get lost at sea. I want you to think about how can you scoop out a section of the marketing ocean and put it into a barrel. Maybe the barrel is digital marketing versus the giant sea or ocean with marketing. Barrel, digital marketing, but even still that barrel is pretty big. If you want to connect with people, you need to make it even smaller or clarify that information even tighter. What I like to think about is, 'okay, how do we break down a barrel?'. I want you to scoop out of it three buckets. Maybe your topics is digital marketing, but now you're going to scoop out. Here's three buckets I'm going to hit on in this video related to digital marketing. Boom, boom, boom. I'm gonna talk about social media. I'm going to talk about list building strategies, and I'm going to talk about SEO. I don't know, I just came up with those. Now, I can do a video around that. When it comes to digital marketing, there are three things that you have to make sure that you have a strategy for. Number one - this, number two - this, number three - that. Then I could say a couple more things, maybe go a little bit deeper, but that in itself could be a video. If I were taking the approach of going even tighter, I can do a video specifically around one of those. I could take my ocean, narrowed down to the barrel of digital marketing, and then down to the bucket of social media within digital marketing. Now I can go, 'Hmm, when it comes to social media of that bucket, let me scoop out three cups. Okay, my three cups, maybe my social media cups are paid social media, organic social media, and I don't know something else. Maybe it's Facebook - Organic, Facebook - Paid, and Instagram. I've now scooped it. Now I can do a video and say, 'Okay guys, under the umbrella of digital marketing, today we're going to talk about why social marketing is a strategy you need to be using in 2020. I'm going to teach you three things. We're going to go into paid strategy and Facebook. We're going to go into organic and Facebook, and something else whatever those three things are. You can make a video with that. Bucket. Scoop three cups. Boom. Okay? Now, I can go even deeper in a video. I could go, 'Hey guys, we're here to talk about page strategies on Facebook. And the three specific things that I want to focus on today are , paid videos, paid...' I don't know. I don't do this for a living and I'm not a Facebook expert, but you see where I'm going, right? You see how I'm Russian stacking dolling it down where I could do a video around digital marketing and that video would be great. I could also do a laser pointed video around page strategies using Facebook. It's all under that same bucket or barrel from that table brainstorm session that I did. Here's the thing, both videos could be equally successful. The cup video doesn't have to be any, it's not going to get you more attraction than the barrel video. It doesn't really matter. The idea is that you section your videos out with a clear focus. 'Today I'm going to talk about these three things,' or 'Hey, here's the one thing that I'm going to teach you today.' Get really clear what the thing is that you're bringing to your audience. It's not just this long winded ramble-y thought. Help them be clear around exactly what you're trying to say. Here's how I would do that. Every video you should start with what's called a hook. What's the big thing that's going to pull them in, so they want to actually listen to you. This should be the main idea. Allie does a really great job with this on her million dollar minute videos that she posts every single morning. There's always a question like, 'Hey, are you struggling to get your team on board for this 'X, Y, and Z' task? Listen up.' Great example. I mean, it was mostly an example, but there was a, you had to fill in your own blank there on what the video was about. But that's a great example of being really clear that you know exactly what it's going to be the video is about. I think hooks with a question is a really great strategy because you want people to say like, 'Yes,' and then they're going to watch. Is there a question you can ask your audience to lead into the topic? Or it could be like, you could say something along the lines of , it was still be a question, 'When it comes to your digital marketing? Are you struggling converting your content into actual qualified leads? There's one thing that I think that you're missing that you don't want to miss.' That wasn't the best way to say it, but you follow what I'm saying, right? If you're going to teach them, let's say you're going to teach him the secret to doing something, ask them a question so that they're gonna want the answer. You have to have a hook. The hook is going to boil it down of what is the subject line, if you will. What's the topic of your video? I think this is the mistake that happens. What we do is we hit record and when we hit record, it's the first time we're really saying the topic out loud. We're figuring out what our main ideas as we go, which you sometimes have to do that if that's the time you have. What's more important is when you go live on a video, or when you start an Instagram story or something else, you should already know what your main idea is. I wouldn't use video to think out loud. You need to think out loud before you hit record. If that's an area that you struggle with, this is one of my number one downloaded podcast episodes is how do you articulate your thoughts so other people can understand you. What I want you to think about is don't think your thoughts to yourself and then expect that they're going to make sense to other people. You need to think them out loud. All you have to do is just say, 'Hey, I have a thought. I kind of want to talk about this topic. Okay, what do I think about that?' Then talk that talk out loud to yourself. I know it sounds kind of crazy to talk out loud to yourself, but do it. The more that you talk out loud to yourself and then scratch down some notes and be like, 'Oh that sounded good.' Now, hit record and do it on a video camera. If you hate it, just do it again, and do it again, and do it again until it makes sense and just run with it. Don't expect that your thoughts are gonna come out as great as they sound in your head because in your head they seem like words, but your head doesn't really think in words. We think in imagery and words combined and things think so clearly. When we try to get them out, that's where we stumble cause it's not as beautiful and clear. You need to practice that a bit more.
Speaker 1Going back in, when it comes to the hook piece, think about your formula. You start with a hook. Then I would go into some kind of intro. Going back to one of Allie's examples, like, 'Hey, do you struggle getting your team on board when it comes to training them on this 'X, Y, and Z' software? Listen up today. I'm going to teach you the number one way for how to,' I don't know, whatever the topic is. I'm Allie Lozano and this is Million Dollar Minute. Every single time, that's what she says.
If you have a longer video, let's say you have a Facebook live, do your hook, and then you would say, 'Hey, I'm Heather Sager. I teach entrepreneurs how to show up magnetically on stages to grow their email list and their authority, blah, blah, blah. Today what we're going to do is we're going to cover 'X, Y, and Z.'. Don't start with your introduction. Start with your audience. What's in it for them? Because remember on video, I want you to think about your habits when you're scrolling through Instagram or Facebook. Are you going to stop for a video where someone saying, 'Hi, I'm Heather Sager, what's up?' No, you're going to , you're only focusing on things that actually resonate with you. If the video is going, 'Hey, are you scared shitless when it comes to video?' You're going to be like, 'Dude, that's me.' I'm going to say, 'It's totally normal. So many people for some reason get scared when that camera hits live. I'm Heather Sager. I'm an expert speaker on stages for people around the world that I'm going to teach you how to bring that competence from the stage to a camera. Here we go.' If you think about what you want to focus is on your audience first, so hook them with something that's important to them. Then introduce yourself to bring in some credibility. Then go into teaching your content. Okay, so hook, intro, intro short, especially if it's shorter video, and then go into teaching your content. The last piece of the formula when it comes to a video is having a call to action.You can have them comment on the video below. If you just want engagement, you can drive them to your website. You can drive them to a blog post. You could drive them to a booking link. Think about what you actually want them to do, like what's the literal next step that you want them to take after completing the video? This right here, you want to be really mindful of. The logical action for every single video, can't be book a call with me. You have to think about your user habits when you're online. If you see a video for the first time for a person and they're like, 'book an appointment with me,' are you going to do that? No. But with someone that you've engaged with their content a bit and after you've been engaging and they given you some free stuff and you've maybe develop some kind of rapport, you'll be far more likely to book a call, right? Just like in normal marketing, you want to create the awareness, create a relationship, engage people a bit before you ask them for the first date. You want to think about that with your video. All that means take some pressure off yourself. Your call to action for videos can just be like, 'Hey, I'm curious of the things we talked about today. What's the number one tip you're most excited to use tomorrow in your practice?' Or you ask for validation, 'Hey, what was the one thing that you took away from today that can help you?' Or, 'Hey, what's the biggest roadblock you have in this area here? I'd love to shoot another video to help with that.' Or 'Tag a friend who you think might find value in this video.' Something like that. It doesn't have to be this big sweeping gesture of a next step. It could just be you want to get them to comment, like, or share. That's the important thing. If you want other people to see your videos. Hook, little intro, but remember the intro just needs to be that credibility boost so they develop brand recognition with you. Then you'll deliver the content. Lastly, you'll have that call to action.
Speaker 1If you're doing a Facebook live, let's say, where it's a little bit of a longer form video. I'm curious, does anybody here do Facebook lives on the regular right now out or would like to at their page? Okay, great.
Facebook lives, these can be done in 5 minutes. I've seen people do them for an hour. I have a weekly show that I do every Wednesday at one o'clock and I'm usually on there for about a half hour answering people's questions on whatever topic of the week. When it comes to a Facebook live, this thing I'm teaching you the hook, intro content, and then CTA, it gets stretched out a little bit more like an accordion.On a Facebook live, right out of the gate, I'm going to hook with what the live is about today because remember the majority of people who watch a Facebook live is on a replay. They're not going to have any tolerance for you be like, 'Hey, I'm just going to wait for some people to join.' They're not going to stick around on a replay for that.
Speaker 1What you can do is you can instantly jump to the hook. 'Hey, so today we're going to be talking about 'X, Y, and Z.' Maybe ask a question and then you can go into the, 'Hey, as we're waiting for a couple of people to come on live, jump into the comments here and tell me where you're from,' and 'Hey, if you're watching the replay, please tell me that too. I'd love to see where you're calling from or just hit replay in the comments.'
Tell them what you want them to type. That is the most important thing. People sit and they go, 'Oh, why is no one engaging with my content?' Go back to how you engage with content online. Do you just freely comment on videos? Are you just waiting to tell people what you think about their videos or answer their very thought provoking questions online? No, we're there for the cat photos and the memes. You need to make it easy for people to engage. Don't ask people overly complex or really deep questions cause they won't answer. Make it easy but specifically tell them what you want them to write and you'll actually get more responses. Did you guys notice at the top of this video? I was very specific with you around the, 'Hey, scale of 1 to 10, tell me when it comes to your importance on video, where do you fall?' I told you what to type. It gave you, 'Oh that's easy. I can engage.' I then asked you,' at scale of 1 to 10 how important is as blah blah blah, or how confident do you feel with video in your business?'
Speaker 1By the way, you can steal those two questions for your next Facebook live. How important is this topic to you? How confident are you that you can do this thing right now today? What that does is that it builds awareness and desire. People are telling you that they want what you're about to talk about. Boom, engagement's going to go up and they're going to stick around.
Number two is you contrast that with the, 'Huh, they just scored themselves self identifying that they are not doing this well right now.' Now they're going to want to stick around because you're going to teach them how to elevate from that three they just typed in up to, let's say a five or a six. You see how that tension of asking that direct question of having somebody take ownership of putting where their feeling on it instantly gets them engaged. Steal it, use it.
Speaker 1You notice how when I was talking to those of you who were worried about the fear of the camera, I gave you three specific objections. Fear of camera, you weren't sure how to handle the tech, or how to navigate your content.
I gave you three things and said which one are you? Or if it's something different, pop it in. Steal that. Give people choices. 'Hey, for the most part when it comes to this topic, people are struggling in this area, this area or this area,' or you say, 'What? I find working with my clients.' It's a credibility statement that you add in that you work with clients privately. 'What I find when working with my private clients is there's three main areas that they're struggling with. It's either here, here, or here. I'm curious which one of those resonates most with you, 'A, B, or C,' or give them a word to use.
Speaker 1Make it really easy for them to type. The more you get them typing, not only the more engaged are they in your content, but also the more likely is that your video is going to show up in the Facebook ad algorithm for your audience. Is that makes sense?
Make your questions , being really intentional with when you ask questions. You might want to write those down on a PostIt note for yourself and put it on your computer screen to remember 'cause asking questions might not be a normal part of going live. The more you do that, the more you'll find that you get people engaging with you. Not only is that more fun, but also it's going to drive higher traffic on your videos moving forward. Okay. There's a tip there. I'm actually really excited to hear the results that h appen when you guys start going live next week.
Speaker 1Let's talk about some tech stuff. Side note, why don't you drop into the comments if you have specific questions around content or crafting your content in your videos. Drop them in here below. Let's check it out and talk about some tech stuff since we don't have a ton of time left.
I'm curious what tech questions you guys have. Let me hit you with a couple of the common ones that come up when I'm talking with clients and with groups. Camera, lighting, background, and software. Those are the four questions I get a lot. If you have specific ones, drop them in and I'll hit through these. Number one, let's talk camera. All of you, I would imagine, have a camera built into computer if you're using a laptop right now. Let me give you a tip. That camera quality is probably pretty crappy and it's not doing anything for your lighting, or anything else. Helene, for you, when you had said make me look better on video. My biggest tip would be get a web cam . I use a Logitech, external webcam. I think I've got it for like $90 bucks on Amazon. If you want the link to the tech equipment that I use that simple. It's what I got out of the gate. I use very basic tech equipment. I am scrappy, not fancy, but it works super well. Drop me a direct message on Instagram and I'll send you my tech sheet. The Logitech webcam , it's what I'm using right now. The beautiful part of this Logitech webcam is there's like a little check box that I mark that it applies, this is going to sound weird, but almost like a softening makeup filter that I just feel better on. I show up more confident if I feel like I look good on video. That's not the same thing for everyone. I want you to figure out what makes you feel good on video. For me, a little lipstick, a little eyeliner. I don't have to have my hair done . I have no problem wearing a messy bun on camera. Having myself look and feel put together, that just helps me show up more confident. I think a good camera is a piece of that, especially if you're going to repurpose video. Let's say you do a Facebook live, you can download that Facebook live. Download it. You can publish it on YouTube. You can publish it to your website. I saw some chats about Fiverr and Upwork. You can pay someone on Fiverr to take that video down and make it into clips. You can put that on a n IGTV o r Instagram stories. One Facebook live, you can repurpose on multiple platforms. If you're going to do that, I would recommend having a better quality camera than just your laptop camera. You don't have to have a lot of money for it. That's number one. With the camera, I would recommend having an external microphone. Right now, I'm using my blue Yeti mic. I also have this on the tech sheet with a link for you if you'd like it. The blue Yeti is external. It's a USB. It just plugs right into my computer. I use this for all my videos, my zoom calls, recording my podcast, any of those things. I use this microphone super easy. It's portable. I take it with me when I travel. Good camera, good microphone. That'll get you set up. Well, when it comes to lighting, let me tell you what I'm working with right now. Right here in front of me, I'm on the West Coast so it's almost three o'clock in the afternoon. This window right here, big bright light happening. This is all I use for my lighting source for the first two years of my business. That's it. Three days ago I set up a ring light, which is now right here. I now have an additional light source coming at me right here. But up until three days ago, I was only using the lighting on my window. That meant I could only do my videos during daylight. You can figure out what works for you but the most important thing have lighting on your camera.
Speaker 1I would imagine, when you think about your brand, when you think about how you want others to see you, it's most likely you have a really clear image in your mind around how you want to be perceived by your potential clients.
For me, I want to showcase to people that I'm authentic, I'm down to earth, I'm real, I have no problem making fun of myself for having weird off the cuff jokes, but I'm also very high-end. I have a very high-end training. My private client work is very exclusive. I want to have a high-end brand but not a stuffy one. It has to be approachable. I always think about my brand is like Nordstrom's with a good dose of Target. For me, I, I'm more on the Nordstrom's end, but I definitely shop at target for my everyday stuff.
Speaker 1When I think about that, what that means is I want to make sure I have great lighting. I want to make sure that I have a great camera. I have good sound quality because those are important of how I want others to perceive me and my brand.
These things all come together when you think about how you want others to see you, that allows you to make strategic decisions around what you invest in when it comes to your video. Having a good camera, having a good microphone, and having a good light, they don't have to be expensive things. I think in total between the three items, I paid maybe $300 bucks. The light kit was a hundred bucks. Like I said, I only got that a couple days ago. Between the camera and the Yeti mic, you can get by probably a hundred bucks inclusive of both. You don't have to get high yet. Okay. That's where I would start.
Speaker 1When it comes to background, this is important because your background, again, i t's going to give the people an impression of your brand and the quality of the work that you do.You want to be strategic a nd thinking about how you do this.
You most likely don't want to do this in a bedroom where you have a messy unmade bed with things piled up behind you. You want to think about how can I have a plain background? How can I run resemble an office or a more approachable environment? It depends on what your brand looks like for me. You guys know behind me, these are fake foam brick, foam tiles that I got off from Etsy. I wanted a really light, white, and bright set. This was important to me, so I took the ugly wall that was back there, bought these grids off of Etsy. There is so scrappy guys like they're not even put together correctly, but I don't even care. I put some photos over the top of them. All of the art and the lamps and the bookshelf, I stole these from other rooms in my house. I didn't want to spend money on my office. I made a deal with my husband. I'm just going to steal furniture and art from other rooms. The house, we bought the tiles, I put Ikea furniture behind me and boom, I have a video set. I've been using the same set now for over a year. You don't have to spend a lot of money. But here's what I would think about. Does the wall and does what behind you, is it distracting? If it's distracting, is it in alignment with your brand? If it's not, go somewhere more plain, a blank wall behind you. If you can add a plant , add a lamp, do something. Remember what's behind you speaks to the quality of brand impression that you're giving to your customers. The same thing with what you're wearing, how you show up. All of these are representations of your brand. Every touch point you have with a prospect or your audience either adds to your brand value or it erodes your brand value. First, you have to determine what is your brand and how do all these things stack up and work with that. A'll of them come together. There's no right or wrong answer because only you can define what your brand looks like, but these are considerations that you want to pull in that all come together to tell you, Hey, this is the experience I'm creating for my ultimate audience.' Okay, so we talked about camera, microphone, lighting, background. Let's go jump to some of your questions here. What about using your iPhone? Totally and completely fine, Amanda. iPhone is great. I invested about four months ago in the new iPhone 10 no, iPhone 11. By the way, camera quality on flipping is awesome. It's a business expense for me because I do videos on this thing all the time. I use this for all my IGTV videos, all my Instagram, all of those kinds of things. They also take a ton of my Instagram photos on my iPhone. The quality on these things is great. If you have an older phone, might not be as great, but here's the thing. Getting it out there with a lower quality thing is better than not doing it at all. Your phone is great. I would recommend getting a tripod. You can get them on Amazon for like $9. Just a small tripod so you can set it up. There's two different kinds of cameras on your phone. Your front facing camera is not as great as your back facing camera. If at all possible, could you have it set up this direction? Meaning the good camera faces you. Two reasons. One, you won't be distracted looking at your own face. We all have noticed this right on Instagram stories when someone's doing a story doing this and they're like talking to themselves, but you're like, 'Hello, I'm over here.' You know what I'm talking about, right? You know the difference on that is you actually have to look into the camera lens when you're talking on camera. That's the most important thing guys. Camera lens is how you talk to your audience. If you look at your face, it's very obvious that you're not talking to your audience. If you struggle with that, you can do two things. Put a little star or a PostIt note on, know where your camera is on your phone, or turn the damn thing around so you can just look at the lens. That is so important. The lense is like eye contact. You build trust through eye contact just like you do with your clients and customers. Do the same thing with a camera. You're talking to a person, talk to them. You don't have to be creepy and stare in their soul. Don't go overkill. If I was doing that at you for 60 minutes straight, that would be super intense. Let your eyes wander around, just like a normal conversation. A good amount of eye contact is about 70% of the time. If you're going to do it on your phone, if you're struggling, I would recommend get a tripod, turn it around and it's easier for you to talk that way and not get distracted by your own face.
Speaker 1Okay. Where should I point the camera? Okay.This is a good question. Two questions back to back. What's the angle? This is a big, big rule of thumb. I would say 95% of the time, this is the rule.
Your camera should always be at eye height or slightly higher. This is true for video and it's true for photos. Nobody wants that like up the nose, double chin shot. That's not a good thing. My webcam right now is right at my eye level, but slightly higher. That angle is what's g onna look good. When it comes to where the other 5% is. For me, sometimes I do just quick Instagram stories on my phone. I set my phone down here. Let me give you guys an example. If I'm going to stand up for a second, my phone might be on my desk like this. It might be slightly lower than my eyes. I kind of see the ceiling. It's not the best angle, but I look at it and be like, does this look okay? I don't have a tripod right now. Mine broke last week, so sometimes I just have to rest it against my laptop. It works just fine. If you're doing videos, what I would recommend 95% of the time, camera high or slightly higher is going to have the best angle. It's the most flattering and also it's just going to create the better crop around you. Okay. Let's see here. Did you do come down here? I use an iPhone and the camera quality is amazing. Yes. Perfect. Okay. Camera iPhone or whatever nice camera. My husband doesn't use iPhone. He's got another, I don't know , like a Google phone, or a Microsoft phone, or something. His camera is amazing. Same thing. The secret is the lighting. Always try to get by a window if you can. That's really, really important.
Speaker 1Can we talk about where the camera should go? Thank you for the shadow . My background. Okay.
For attorneys , do we need to have a background, or a diplomas and license ? It is totally up to you. Remember that people make decisions based on emotion, not on logic. Here I'm going to go off a slight little tangent here in his last question. People want to know that you're qualified in knowing what you do. This is going to come out pretty quickly. What they want to be able to know, are you a person that they can trust in a person they want to talk with? Your credentials are already going to be on your website. You're going to already be validated that you know what you're doing. You don't have to have them on the wall behind you.
Speaker 1If you do, it's totally fine. You have to think about is how I'm speaking with my audience in plain spoken language that they can understand. Don't jargonize it. Don't try to use big fancy words. Don't try to come at them like a fancy whatever. Just talk to them like normal people.
Have great eye contact help you be well put together. Be professional. Professional - does it mean stuffy? For me, when I do more corporate style presentations, I slightly adjust my background behind me. I actually get rid of this blue collage thing. I get rid of the flowers. I have more of a black and white print. I just tone it down so it's a little less entrepreneurial. I'm your girl coach at home and a little bit more. I'm worth $50,000 for the contract you just bought me for .
Speaker 1Think about how they want you to see you. There's not a right or wrong to have your diplomas or credentials behind you, but just think about what's the overall package. I would focus more on having your words and your tone. Be really relatable. That's what they're going to go for. The credentials and stuff are , that's just kind of a check the box. They want to make sure it's there. Okay .
Allie, I want to respect time here. I know we started a little bit late. You let me know. Do you want me to do a couple more questions? Go ahead and take a few more questions. People seem to really want to know about wardrobe. Oh yeah. Okay. Let's see here.Let's do wardrobe. There was a question around do I do lives later at night?
Speaker 1Oh, where did the question just go? Uh , Right after my kids are asleep, like nine 30. Okay, so let me ask about one real quick and then let's talk about wardrobe.
Here's what I would say on the Facebook lives, do time that works for you. This is going to be some, it's kind of hard cause you're like, 'Oh I want to do what was good for the people for when they can show up.' If you've never done lives before, people aren't going to show up. Maybe they will. Maybe that's just my experience. When you first get started your Facebook page, you might have a ton of people following you, but the reality is not a lot of people are seeing it. You have to train your audience that you do Facebook lives and here's what they're for. You have to be consistent in order to convince people to show up live.
Speaker 1You want to email people, let them know in advance. You can even schedule Facebook lives in advance if you're using a streaming service. I use StreamYard. Another one is BeLive. If you use a Mac Ecamm. I c an give you some links to all of those if you want them.
Streaming services are great 'cause you can preschedule on Facebook saying, 'Hey, Heather's going live on Wednesday at 1. Do you want to get a reminder?' That's a great way to encourage more people to show up live. When it comes to timing, I would say if the difference between you going live and you not going live as you scheduling it on an evening at 09:30, do it in the evening at 09:30. Who knows if people will show up live. You can tell them in advance, but just show up.
Speaker 1What you might think about is instead of going there just to interact with people, go with something to talk about. Have some questions where if someone shows up live , engage with them for sure. I would focus on Facebook lives being there for the replay. As you start growing and more people show up, then you can figure out does that time work great. Could you adjust it? Whatever that looks like, but just start getting the habit of doing live so you get used to the camera and just focus on getting people watching the replay. That's what I would focus on.
I think 09:30 is not too late. I think other people are also moms. They have kids going to bed, but I would make sure that you tell people in advance so they're not doing whatever their evening routine is if they have one.
Speaker 1Okay. Wardrobe. Let's tackle that one real quick. Should I wear prints, solid colors? Okay. I would think about, this dovetails really great with what Bianca was talking about earlier, knowing what your brand is.
Going back to, do you have a clear vision for your brand? Do you know what the colors are? Do you know what the feel is? Do you know what the vibe is? If you don't, if you're still working on this, here's a quick activity I would give yourself. When someone engages with you or your practice, what are the five words you want using them using to describe you and your practice? What are the five words? I want to get really clear. How do you want people to describe you? Then what you can do is use that as a measurement against yourself when you're making strategic decisions, branding decisions, marketing decisions, content decisions in your business. You can go, does this fit in alignment with how I want others to see me? That's the question, but you have to know what are you aligning with. You have to get clear around how you want others to see you. When it comes to background, like I said, the quality, the when you do it, the wardrobe, the hair and makeup, if that's what you want to do, you have to be in integrity with your brand vision. What do I mean for that? For me,I feel better when I'm a little bit more put together. I know other people who do what I do and they are equally successful. Probably some more, probably some less who show up in a messy bun and their pajamas on Instagram. That's not me. I do show up without makeup on my Instagram stories, but I don't show up without makeup on like published videos that I would be doing that would go on YouTube. My personal choice. I think when it comes to prints v ersus solids, I think larger prints or solids are more flattering and less distracting on video. Smaller prints have a tendency to feel very busy. Also, be a little cautious with fine stripes because there's something about the pixels on a screen that sometimes make stripes look a little psychedelic. Just be cautious of that. I tried to do simplicity and I try to keep my styling and my brand colors. That might be a little weird. But considering my profession and what I do, it makes sense. For example, this color I'm wearing here. I have a lot of moauves and purples because that fits in alignment with my brand. I have purples. I have like this splash of like mustardy yellow. It is my brand. I tend to dress more in jewel tones. I'm wearing a T-shirt right now. Guys, I'm wearing yoga pants. I mean you're lucky you're getting me in pants today. I'm more of like a waist up situation. I have a T-shirt on. I'm wearing my running pants and as I did before I walked in here is I went and did my makeup. I felt normal, but I just threw on this jacket that I usually have here in my office that if I need to look professional. This is a jacket, but it's like one of those droopy ones. It feels casual, but a little bit of a jacket makes me feel more polished. Then I keep a necklace here in my office. If I need to throw myself together last minute, I have it here. I have a thing of lipstick here, an eyelash curler, a jacket and a necklace in my office that if I have to hit record any time, I can .
Speaker 1For you, think about how do you want your potential clients to see you. You want to be professional. You want to be slightly elevated but not stuffy and formal. If that means you should rock a jacket, I would keep more of a an unstructured jacket, maybe a little bit more casual if you're doing like Instagram stories or Facebook lives.
Don't show up very forma. You don't want to be like very formal and stiff on your videos because people aren't going to want to engage with you. Wear something that makes you look like someone they would want to do business with and grab a beer at the bar with after court,, or work or whatever. You want to be approachable so you don't want your outfits to be super stuffy. I would say s olids d o great. Texture is great. I think layering jewelry is awesome. Don't make it super distracting. Big earrings or jewelry on your w rist. If you're on a table, can you imagine how distracting that is? If you're wearing big rings or bracelets and you have a table in front of you, you don't want to do that. What I would recommend is when you get your camera or your iPhone, set it up and frame it out like this. For me, it took some time to figure out how much do I want to show if I were to come forward, maybe bring it down just a little bit. What I like to do is have the crop where it's right above, right above my boobs, the right about there so it gives a little bit more, it's not so tight on my face, but it gives people this idea where I'm not coming at them in their face, but you can see my hands when I speak, which means all I have to worry about is chest up. That's all you have to worry about for your wardrobe. Make it comfortable. I would make it in alignment with your brand colors if you have it, but you don't have to overly match. You just don't want to have a ton of videos on your site. That all look kind of crazy all over the map. It'll become a portfolio of you with your videos on your Facebook page and potentially YouTube. Okay. That's a lot of things there. Let me scroll down here real quick.
Speaker 4Amazing. Can you tell a little bit about how people can work with you? I do private coaching with Heather, but I know you have other programs.
Speaker 1Yeah, I do. I've worked with entrepreneurs, both online entrepreneurs and those who have physical location practices. My background is actually those who had physical location practices in the medical space, so my niche is helping people within person speaking, but in this world that we're in, speaking on a virtual stage is just as important as speaking on an actual stage.
There's quite a few different ways. I have a lot of free resources online. I do a ton of content marketing. I think the best way for you to continue this conversation today and get some more free tools, come over and follow me on Instagram. If my style jive with you and you'd like my really weird corny jokes, let's come hang out on Instagram. That's the best way to just gauge my content a bit. I have a podcast, it's called Finding Your It Factor. It's a marketing podcast for entrepreneurs where I teach you how to become more magnetic with your voice and how to show up with more confidence , whatever platform you have. I think those two places, you'll be able to get a lot of really great free content. I do have a couple paid programs where I teach you how to develop your signature talk if you want to use virtual and live speaking as a strategy to establish your authority in your business. I offer that a couple of times a year, but between those live sessions, I only take a handful of private clients and I do a lot of free content to help entrepreneurs. Any of those, Instagram or come hang out with me on the podcast, you'll get a lot of good stuff there.
Speaker 4Awesome. I know there's so many questions more for Heather and it's just like, Bianca , we're going to run out of time. There's just not enough time. I really want to honor you Heather, because she's got two little kids. She agreed to do this at the verry last minute for us.
We threw this together because I wanted to bring resources. When I was promoting this, that these are the best business minds out there. I mean, this is truly my inner circle and so it is such an honor to be able to bring Heather to you and have her wisdom. Thank you for your time.
Speaker 1You're welcome. You're welcome. Just to make sure, I know I mentioned it a couple of times throughout, but if you guys do reach out on Instagram. Number one, just reach out and let me know. This chat is moving so quickly.
If there was something that resonated today that you're like, 'Oh my God, I love this, or you have a follow up question,' shoot it to me on Instagram. I'm more than happy to do a voice memo back to you to give you an answer on whatever your question is. If you want that fear hack sheet around how to bust through that fear or that tech sheet, just let me know and I'll send you a link over to either one of those.
Speaker 4Awesome. Thank you. [inaudible] . Thank you
Speaker 2[inaudible]
Speaker 3Guys, thanks so much for listening to Finding Your It Factor. And hey, if you have a talk coming up, you have to check out my free resource. It's called Nail Your Next Talk. 10 must ask questions before taking the stage so you can show up as an authority and turn that talk into future business. These are the questions that I use myself to prepare for my life talks, and they're going to help you ask the right questions of the person who booked you for the event. So the meeting planner or the client, and it's going to help you serve your audience to the best way possible. It's going to help you anticipate potential tech or 80 snags. Turn the Q&A time into a strategic place for content and make this speaking opportunity, a lead generator for your business. So go get it. What are you waiting for? It's over at heathersager.com/10Questions
Speaker 2[inaudible] .
