Today, I'm not going to give you the 73 reasons you needed to go live because I’m betting you already know that it is an incredible way to reach your audience (you can learn more about that on episode #34).
You already know you should be showing up consistently, but the idea of hitting LIVE gives you more than jitters. Let’s uncover 4 truths for how to show up more confidently on live streams so that you can push through the fear and focus on the message.
EPISODE SHOW NOTES👇
➡️ https://heathersager.com/episode51/
🔗 Grab the latest FREE resources: https://heathersager.com/start
🔗 Browse all episode shownotes: https://heathersager.com/blog
👋 CONNECT WITH HEATHER:
Work with Heather: https://www.heathersager.com/
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If you’re loving this episode, please take a moment to rate & review the show. This helps me get this message to more people so they too can ditch the hustle 24/7 life.
Today, I'm not going to give you the 73 reasons you needed to go live because I’m betting you already know that it is an incredible way to reach your audience (you can learn more about that on episode #34).
You already know you should be showing up consistently, but the idea of hitting LIVE gives you more than jitters. Let’s uncover 4 truths for how to show up more confidently on live streams so that you can push through the fear and focus on the message.
EPISODE SHOW NOTES👇
➡️ https://heathersager.com/episode51/
🔗 Grab the latest FREE resources: https://heathersager.com/start
🔗 Browse all episode shownotes: https://heathersager.com/blog
👋 CONNECT WITH HEATHER:
Work with Heather: https://www.heathersager.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theheathersager/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/HeatherSager
If you’re loving this episode, please take a moment to rate & review the show. This helps me get this message to more people so they too can ditch the hustle 24/7 life.
The more you get on camera, the more you say your message out loud, it gets better. Clarity will come with action. The more that you put yourself out there, the better your videos will get. The more that you say your message while you're taking a shower or driving the car or making dinner, the more you say things out loud, it gets better. It's just how it works.
:It's like the more crunches you do, the smaller your mom belly gets. That's what I'm working on right now. Two babies later, two and a half years later and I'm still trying to get that thing down, but I got to do the crunches in order for me to make that fit back into my pre-baby pants. Very specific example. You probably didn't want to hear, but there it is. I want you to be thinking about like this skill, get it on camera, speaking. There's no shortcut guys. There's no shortcut. The shortcut is doing the work, doing the exercises, saying things out loud, doing the word vomit exercises. Say words out loud and don't try to make them sound pretty. Well hell, It's called the word vomit exercise. It's not going to be pretty. I want you to know, get very, very comfortable with this truth, accept this truth. You're going to do video and you're going to suck. Oh my God, you're going to suck it up and I want you to be like, yes, I'm just sucking it up so hard and it's going to be terrible and next time it will be 1% better, which 1% better of suck is still suck. That's just fine, every time it's 1% better. The challenge that we have is we have this vision of our best self in our heads, but you're not going to be great. You're not going to be great when you first get started, so just accept progress, progress over perfection. You hear that phrase all the time, but I want you to embrace it. Stop setting yourself up to feel terrible before you even get started. The expectation in your head is that you're going to be this, you're either building it up that you're gonna fall on your face, or you're building up that you want to be perfect or you wouldn't admit the fact that you really want to be perfect, but you're saying you're going to suck so you're just trying to do a defense mechanism to talk yourself out of it and so that way, when you do suck, you won't feel as bad, but really in your head, you still want to be wonderful and it's just loop, right? It's just crazy loop and narrative that we put in our own heads and just go. My goal is to get it out. I don't care about quality. I just care about showing up. Show up, and show up again, and show up again, and show up again and trust and believe in yourself. The more you say your message, the better it will get.
Speaker 2:Have 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 It factor. And while most people think it's something that only a few are born with, I believe that you can find it so it can become your superpower 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 Finding Your It Factor.
Speaker 1:Hey friend, welcome back to another episode, so good to see this week. How the heck have you been? Oh my goodness. I can't believe we're rounding out summertime. My little guy, my little guy is not so little anymore and he's headed to kindergarten this fall. Although, I mean, it's weird to say it, right? Headed to kindergarten means he's headed to a desk somewhere within our house and we're going to try to figure out how to keep a five-year-old focused on zoom. Well, I learned how to run a business and distance learn-with a kindergartner.
:Although I recently realized that everything we need to know about life, we learned in kindergarten, so guys I'm about to re-learn everything I need to know about life, because I'm going back to kindergarten. In all seriousness, all of you parents out there. I just want to give a big shout out. I am thinking about you. I am in it with you and holy hell 2020! It is not going to bring us down. Man, this has been a year of resilience and innovation and humanity and so many of the things, but I just want to take a moment today. However you're doing, I want you to know I'm thinking about you. You're doing a damn good job. Give a little pep talk, cheer yourself on. We've got this. We have got this and today's episode topic, we have got this because here's the thing I know it's hard to go live. It's hard to go live on social. If you have a business, you know social media is one of the things we gotta do and I've been talking a lot on the show around the different ways that you can be, quote-unquote, speaking online.
Speaker 1:Remember a stage is simply a platform to share your message and you have so many different kinds of stages to choose from. You get to pick the stages that you show up. The most important thing is doing it consistently. Quite frankly, I don't care where you show up. I just care that you're doing it consistently.
:You have to figure out whether or not your showing up visually online is on Facebook, if it's on Instagram, if it's on YouTube, if it's on LinkedIn, wherever it is you're showing up. We know we need to be on social, but what's most important is that we are consistent with showing up. Today, we're specifically talking about how to show up with confidence on live streams because you and I both know that live streams is a very popular trend right now for a variety of reasons we're going to get into today. Going live, it can be really scary. It sure can and if you are feeling like, Oh my God, you're scared of the camera still. That's okay. If you are freaked out about the idea of a live, because you don't want to sound like a blubbering idiot, I feel you. I'm getting used to being a blubbering idiot. I want you to be thinking about why you need to be showing up online. You already know the reasons I'm not going to give you the 73 reasons you needed to go live. You know you should be doing it. If you listen to the show, you already have the pull. You already know you should be showing up, so we're not going to have that talk today. We're going to help you work through it. I'm going to give you four truths that I want you to try on precise today and really ask yourself, are you owning these? Could this be the thing that unlocks something in you so you start showing up consistently? We're going to get into it, four truths for how to show up more confidently on live streams, whether you're going live on Facebook, on Instagram, on LinkedIn. You pick the platform. When you think about, let me just give you my stance in my business. When I'm going live, my consistency is on Facebook. I do Facebook Lives every week, but I'm g oing t o tell you this. I give myself some grace. I am not a, I'm gonna admit it. I am not a faithful Facebook liver, folks. I am a mostly faithful Facebook liver, but that didn't even make any sense. You know what I'm saying? I don't, I try to go live every week at one and my students are gonna laugh as they listen to this because I just went off on them a couple of weeks ago. That when you say try, it means you don't do what I just said I try and I don't do. Know this. I made the commitment to myself and my business that I would show up, rain, shine, hell or high water, whatever phrase you want to use. I would show up religiously every single week on my podcast. That is a non-negotiable and I have showed up every single week. This is episode number 51 I think if I have my notes correctly. I don't know. I put the numbers on it later, but we are here. We are here. We are approaching the 20,000 downloads, which feels like a big freaking deal. We're about to celebrate our one year anniversary. Guys, I'm pretty proud of the fact that we have not missed a week on the show in the last year. That's pretty freaking incredible.
Speaker 1:Now Facebook lives on the other hand, I have a goal to go live every Wednesday at one o'clock Pacific on my Facebook page and I would say I hit it about 90% of the time. I'm good with that. I'm good with that because here's the thing, I don't have a huge audience on Facebook. I don't have a huge audience on Instagram. A lot would say I do not have a huge audience on this podcast. I don't really freaking care about all those things. I just care about showing up for you.
:Facebook lives for me, I know they have the potential to reach a bigger audience. I know that Facebook lives are engaging when you get people live, but the power is in the replay, my friend, because click and live on Facebook means that you all of a sudden now have a video on your Facebook page that you can download and re-purpose and do for other things.
Speaker 1:For me, when I go live on Facebook, we download those. My team takes it. We make little bite-sized videos and those become packaged up little videos that we do on IGTV, or on our Instagram stories, or on YouTube. We repackage it.
:Facebook lives is my chosen platform for me to be doing video content right now. I'm not doing YouTube content videos. It's just not something that I am doing yet. I'm a big fan, pick a platform, grow to a level of consistency where you have it. You start adopting strategies to be more effective, then add another channel. I'm still working on mastering the podcast and the Facebook channel and the Instagram channel, so I don't need to be adding all these other. I want to give you permission. You don't need it from me, but just in case you do. You do not have to do all of the platforms. Pick the one that works for you. It should be one that gets you a little excited. It shouldn't make you want to run under a couch and die. If you feel like that, you are not going to be successful. You have to pick a platform that's going to light you up a bit. Whether that's LinkedIn live Facebook, live Instagram live, you got to pick one, but today's is all about the live. Let's dive into the four truths that I think is going to help you start getting more comfortable with showing up. Truth Number one: You are the differentiation that sets your brand apart. Let me just hit on that one more time. Let's say that again. You're the differentiation that sets your brand apart. You have to make showing up constant. A constant, not a variable in your business. People want to hear from you. They want to see you. You were the difference maker in your brand and products. You have to accept the fact that when you post pretty pictures and captions and other things that look really on brand, but you don't show a face, people are not truly connected. You have to be connected with your audience, particularly, if you're building a relationship business, a personal brand style business. Truth number one that you have to accept long before you go on camera, that you are the difference maker because if you don't adopt this truth, you're going to give yourself an out and not show up. You're going to deflect it and say, Oh, but there's other ways I can do it. I can send an email this week, which you should anyway. I can just post this week. I'll just do a text thing this week. I'll just I'll do it eventually, eventually, eventually, eventually. Well, that eventually leads to you blending in with everybody else online, or you staying stagnant and other people pulling out ahead in front of you because those clients and customers that you want to work with, they want to connect with someone. If you're not putting yourself out there to connect, they will connect with someone else. This is a hard truth to accept. If you are not putting yourself out there, your programs, the fact that you have programs that you're working with people, if you're not talking about your digital course, if you're not talking about your group program, if you're not talking about certain things, people don't know that you have them, like you don't offer them. They want to work with someone on this challenge so whether it's on marketing, or business coaching, or personal development or whatever it is that you do, a life coach. If you aren't actually putting your face out there and showing people who you are and how you work with people, they will find someone else. You are the differentiating factor that sets your brand apart. Start setting your brand apart because here's the thing. Truth Number two: Mastering the camera has become a foundation of building relationships online. It is no longer optional. It is a requirement because if you are not, you are now behind. I don't mean to tell you that, friend. I don't mean to make you feel bad. If you're not doing it, this is not a, Whoa, my God and I'm like behind. Now, I have to give up. All right, I'm going to talk to you straight. Put on your big girl, panties, your big boy panties. If you're going to go commando, whatever it is you got to do. Use an analogy that fits you, my friend, but you got to like, you gotta pull it together. We're in 2020, the year of the craziness factor, just accept it, the crazy factor comes with. Online video is where it's at. You have a business that is online. You are choosing to sit at this poker table, friend. You got to play your hand. There's no folding. I don't know why I'm going with a poker analogy, but we're with it. We're going with it. You gotta play. You're at the table, you have to play. This is no longer an optional kind of thing. You need to make the decision. This is what you do. You are the kind of business owner who shows up and does video. End of negotiation. We're done. That's it. Discussion is over. This is no longer a hemming and hawing, I'm gonna learn how to do it. I'm gonna show up. I'm gonna figure it out. I gotta get a new set. Oh my God, I need a camera. I need a microphone.
Speaker 1:We can figure out all of those tech things. You and I. I'm sorry, I'm yelling at you, but my friend, I want you to win. I want you to win. I want you to win. I want you to show up. I want you to start getting the people on your email list and selling the crap out of your stuff.
:I want you to serve people. I want you to make an impact, but we have to get out of this narrative of, I don't know how to do it so I don't. Decide. Are you the person who's going to play in 2020 with your content marketing or are you going to hide? I know that is so direct and for those of you who are like, man, she's angry today. W e're probably not a good fit. You and I, but you'd like to get kicked me ass a little bit, sometimes, you know, I'd do it with love and then I'll toast you with t he margarita.
Speaker 1:That's why we're here. We're here for it. I'm going to challenge you a bit. We have to get over the conversation of whether or not you're going to go live and start doing it. Now, if you don't want to do lives and you want to do different kinds of video, that's cool. These things that we're talking about today still apply to it.
:I want you to understand camera, video, putting your face out there is no longer an option. It is a requirement if you want to play in the personal brand, building a brand online, relationship building based. Remember people buy from those who are confident in their programs, confident in their products, confident in their message, confident in themselves. Show up, show them. Video is not going anywhere. If anything, it's becoming faster. I'm already overwhelmed thinking about this new stuff happening with Tik-tok and Instagram reels. And I'm like, Oh my God, I don't know how to do that. I don't want to do that. If I'm being totally honest with you, I don't want to, I'm exhausted. We're already doing so much. Please don't make me do more. You don't have to do more, but note that the bar is moving forward and I don't mean to freak you out or make you feel bad for this. I just want you to make sure that you're keeping up with the minimum, which is you got to at least be on video. You don't have to be fancy. You don't have to be tacky. You don't have to do all those things. I'm not fancy, guys. I'm the scrappiest scrap there ever was. Actually, when this episode comes out, I will post that same week on IGTV.
Speaker 1:I have a, I did a tour of my very scrappy, quote-unquote, set. I'm calling it a very like, I'm in recording set because it's ridiculous. My scrappy set my situation. I'm going to share it with you because it's not fancy. I haven't spent a lot of money. I have no plans to get a fancy camera, or a fancy studio, or a fancy light or any of those things, because this is working just fine.
:I want to give you permission. Don't use the tech, whatever else, as an excuse. By the way, if you are having struggles with that, I will link to my tech guide in the show notes. I have a full download of all the equipment I have that I recommend different, price points, the lighting, the camera. I use a web cam. I don't even have a fancy standalone camera. I don't need those things.
Speaker 1:I list all that. It'll be down the show notes for you. If you want to grab my tech list and just put that to bed once and for all and move on, that's there for you, but just know mastering the camera and getting comfortable on camera and being able to articulate yourself on a camera and not look like a dead fish. Oop, I just threw that in there.
:Mastering that skill, guys, this is what's necessary today. If you're not the point where you're happy with how you look on camera and how you feel on camera, know that that will get better. That will get better and here's just takes me perfectly to truth number three. The more you get on camera, the more you say your message out loud, it gets better. Clarity will come with action. The more that you put yourself out there, the better your videos will get.
Speaker 1:The more that you say, your message while you're taking a shower or driving the car or making dinner, the more you say things out loud, it gets better. It's just how it works.
:It's like the more crunches you do, the smaller your mom belly gets. That's what I'm working on right now. Two babies later, two and a half years later and I'm still trying to get that thing down, but I got to do the crunches in order for me to make that fit back into my pre-baby pants. Very specific example. You probably didn't want to hear, but there it is. I want you to be thinking about like this skill, getting it on camera, speaking, There's no shortcut, guys. There's no shortcut. The shortcut is doing the work. Doing the exercises, saying things out loud, doing the word vomit exercises. If you don't know what the heck the word vomit exercise is, it literally is what it sounds like. Say words out loud and don't try to make them sound pretty. Oh, hell it's called the word vomit exercise. It's not going to be pretty. The point is you want to do it in private, right? While you're driving in the car by yourself, while you're in the shower, in your office, when nobody else is home or in your room, like do the word vomit exercise and I guide you through it back in the how to articulate your thoughts. I'll link that down here in the show notes. I want you to know, get very, very comfortable with this truth. Accept this truth. You're going to do video and you're going to suck. Oh my God, you're going to suck it up and I want you to be like, yes, I'm just sucking it up so hard and it's going to be terrible. Next time it will be 1% better, which 1% better of suck is still suck and that's just fine. Oh my gosh! Guys, my first series of videos, they're so bad. Oh my gosh, they're so bad. They're so terrible. I also developed a level of Tourette's, I didn't realize that I had where I would start streaming four letter words out and I couldn't control it. Oh, they're so bad. Sometimes I still go on a video and I'm like, it's terrible. Guys, just get comfortable i n making progress. Every time, it's 1% better. The challenge that we have is we have this vision of our best self in our heads. Our best self is like beyond say on video with the most masterful level of confidence and poise and articulation and we are not there. We're not there. We're not there. One day, you will be the Beyonce of the camera, but she works a lot. Remember there was that, Tyler McCall shared that quote, somewhere like last year when the Beyonce video series thing came out on Netflix around how she rehearsed a crazy amount of hours for like a one hour episode. Truth be told, I never watched the Beyonce Netflix series. I'm not really a huge fan of Beyonce. Oh my God, please don't hate me. I'm just, I'm not like, I don't know. She's great. I like her. I just not a huge fan of the music. I probably just lost somebody there. And I'm so sorry, but I'm sure there's things about me that I like that you know, a little side tangent there. You're welcome. You're not going to be great. You're not going to be great when you first get started, so just accept progress, progress over perfection. You hear that phrase all the time, but I want you to embrace it. Stop setting yourself up to feel terrible before you even get started. The expectation in your head is that you're going to be this, you're either building it up that you're going to fall on your face, or you're building up that you want to be perfect or you wouldn't admit the fact that you really want to be perfect, but you're saying you're going to sucks. You're just trying to do a defense mechanism to talk yourself out of it and so that way, when you do suck, you won't feel as bad, but really in your head, you still want it to be wonderful and it's just loop, right? It's just crazy loop and narrative that we put in our own heads and just go, my goal is to get it out. I don't care about quality. I just care about showing up. Show up and show up again and show up again and show up again and trust and believe in yourself. The more you say your message, the better it will get. I am a testament to this. Every single one of these podcast episodes, guys, I cringe. I feel like, Oh my God, I feel so bad that y'all have to listen to this. I am a blubbering mess. I just went off on Beyonce. I say all these things. I'm mortified, and then I just go. I just have to put it out because here's the thing. This is who I am. This is what I have to offer. I just have to be confident that whatever comes out of my mouth, that's what it is and it's going to work or it's not. We're going to keep moving you and I, or you're going to choose another person to listen to. Here's the thing. Get confident putting it out there. You will get better. You will get more articulate. You will grow over time. Things will make progress, but they will not if you do not have the courage to put it out into the world. It won't. It won't happen. You can't get better if you're unwilling to start in the first place, so rip off the band-aid and just start and trust 1% better, 1%, 1%, 1%, that's what you're focused on. With that, let me also tell you this. Let me just give you this gift right now, so you can take the pressure off yourself. What's going to happen, Imagine like a line graph. You know line graphs, right, back when we were in Calculus. The line graphs, there were just, whatever math class we learned about line graphs. God, please forgive me. I'll get line graphs, right? Okay. You're looking at this idea. You start at the bottom of it and you're like, well, I'm going to get better. Plot the map, right? The first Facebook live, on a scale of 1 to 10, it's a-2. The second Facebook live, it's a-1. The third Facebook live. oh my gosh. I got 2. It's like a 2. I don't know, whatever scores you give yourself, right? You get to the point where you're like, Oh, it's a four. Ooh, it's a five. Oh, it's a four and then you flop. You're like, Oh, that was a 1. Don't make that mean that you were terrible and go into hiding in a fortress for 17 months and then you have to spin yourself into a cycle to try to build the confidence, just to rebirth yourself into the world. Okay. That might be a little dramatic, but I may have done that before to myself. When I got embarrassed about a failed launch, very, very early in my business. Guys, if you're like me, you have a little bit of a case of the worst case scenario-itis. I talked about that recently in my newsletter. We just go drama with our narratives. Know that about yourself and just know that that slop going back to the plotted line graph, you're going to have those flops. You're going to be like, Ooh, I'm catching wind. Oop, it's getting better. Oop, it's getting better. Oh my God, I just fell on my face. Pull yourself back up. Oops, it's going to go back up to a 5. Ooh, it's gonna go 7. Oop, It's going to go to a 4. Oop, got a 5, out of 5, out of 6, out of 6, out of 7, out of seven. Nope, but 9 or a 2. What I want you to think about is the trend over time. If you obsess over every single, quote-unquote, performance that you do online, you are going to be driving yourself mad crazy. I mean bat crazy friend. What I want you to think about is yes, every moment matters, every presentation matters. I'm a big believer of that, but I want you to give yourself credit to the trends over time. What are the trends? Are you getting more confidence as you go? Are you getting your point faster as you go? Are you looking more expressive on camera? Are your eyes looking more at the lens? Look at the trends. Look at the overall progress. Don't micro analyze every single one because that's going to anchor you down and hold you back, but if you look at the trends over the time of the overall progress, if you think about a map, a map where you plot on the lines, they create a, what does that call? It's like a cluster of all the little dots if you mapped them out on the graph and then it's aligned to go through and show the trend line. I think it's actually literally just called the trend line. That's what I want you to focus on. Look at your trend line. That is the goal. Don't allow one bad apple, one bad live one bad flop, one inability to get a word or sentence out on an Instagram story. Don't make that mean you suck. Don't do that to yourself. Look at the trend line. Start building that trend line, but in order for you to grow that trend line, you need to plot those points. It means you got to show up and here's the thing. If you really want to make meaningful progress, if you show up once every three weeks, it's not a lot of plots on that graph. You don't really have a trend line. You have a sporadic cluster of a situation. You have to really be honest with yourself and say, if I'm going to start doing it, how often can I do it? A challenge I might throw out at you, if you really want to jump into it is how could you cluster doing a bunch of lives in a short amount of time?
Speaker 1:I talk about this back in Episode#34, Five Ways to Structure Live Video shows when I had our g uest, Melanie Diane Howe. You can go back and listen to that episode for a bit more. She talks about different formats for Facebook live, what you actually can talk about on your show.
:She talked about how she did a 30 day challenge, where she went live every single day and the advantage of this is when you do a bunch of video in a short amount of time, you can get better. You start exercising that muscle, you bring that familiarity, that likelihood that you start an upward trend on that trend line. It goes a lot higher when there's less time in between those actions. I want you to think about that. It's not just about showing up, but it's the frequency at which you show up and the proximity of those events. You follow that? It's how often and how close together those lives are, those videos are. That's how you're going to start impacting that trend line for the positive. Know it gets better. This truth is really, really important. I'm very passionate about, as you can tell, the more that you say your message outline, the more that you show up, the better it gets. Bringing it home to truth number four. I want you to understand your relationship with a camera. Truth number four is when you record, you have an out. When you go live, you get it done. Now, what do I mean by this? Some, I want you to understand, there's kind of two camps of people, maybe somewhere in the middle, but let's just simplify it. Two camps. One camp, you have people who are like, Oh, I would so much rather go live because I don't have to think about it. I just go, I hit record. I can just say what all the things then it's done and I don't have to obsess over it. On the other hand, the idea of going live and having an ounce of the world might give you a full on fricking anxiety attack. You liked the idea of doing recorded content that can be cut and edited out, polished up, put all the pretty graphics in and then post that out. I'm not going to sit here and tell you that one is better than the other. I'm sure there are other experts that are going to tell you live is so much better. Oh my gosh, the rates and views of a live is so much better than this. In fact, I think we talked about that in the episode of Melanie, but there's going to be other people who say, Oh, they're prerecorded. You can get much the point faster. You can edit things down. You can package up a really, really jam packed message in a short amount of time and that's, what's really good on YouTube or on whatever else or IGTV. There are pros and cons on both. Friend, I'm going to tell you this right now. Here's my advice for you. I'm not going to tell you one's better than the other because that's not the conversation we should be having. I want to know which one feels lighter to you. I want you to choose that one because if the idea of going live makes you have hives and you freak out and you want to vom-vom, that might not be the answer for you. If you're also unwilling to do video and like have it edited and recorded, that's a hold back. Be honest with yourself and just say, I'm making both an excuse. You need to pick one. If the idea of doing prerecorded every time that you push record, you make mistakes and you're like, dang, I have to start over 73 times. If you find yourself having to start over 73 times, gave yourself the gift of the anxiety attack of the live and just do the live. I say that in a joking kind of way, but do do the live because what happens is when we're on record, this is for me. This is my personal stance. When I have a recording there, I'm like, Oh, I know I have an out. I know I have the safety net that I can't do it again, but that's why I did so well. I do so well on live stages. When I get in front of an audience, it doesn't matter if I mess up. I know that it's what it is, what comes out of my mouth to that audience, it works. I turn it on and it makes it work. For some reason, when I put a camera on, I don't know, like my voice changed. I would get all fuddy-duddy and weird and I would run out of things. I don't know. It would just, ah, it's harder. Sometimes like this i n the podcast, I have days I'm like, why can't I get something out? My poor editor, I'm like Max, I had to cut here again or cut here again. I don't really do cuts on the show like this episode, the only cut we had was when I looked up that podcast episode to be like, I literally said this, Hey Max, hold on here for a second. I'm gonna look up that show, cut the dead air. That was it. I don't really do a lot of cuts here. Granted, maybe sometimes you wish I wanted to do a little bit more cuts, but this is where we at. It's just for me, I have to treat it more like a live because I know I perform better under that pressure. That's me. That's my personality. I know a lot of my clients and students have that same approach too. If that resonates with you, the live would be a good fit for you. Now, if that freaks you out, I don't know why I made that voice, but I mean, maybe it's, it's what it is. If that's where you are, I want you to get real quiet for a second. Say real honest, if it really is about the live, but you are fully committed to showing up in a video because of the other things we talked about, you know you need to, it is the standard. It is the minimum. You need to be showing up on video and you believe that your message, you know, you're going to get better. The videos are going to get better over time. You're committed to showing up, but you really want to ensure you can have your message edited, cut, professionalize, elevated, whatever it is that you feel you need. All valid, all warranted as long as you don't then get caught up in the excuse, it's not perfect yet, or I need to have the right equipment, or I need to find an editor. Watch the excuses that come up because what I found was the procrastination would set in what I would have pre-recorded, but I also have many clients, many students who are like the pre-recorded just works better for me. I have loud kids at home. I mean, any kid at home, it's kind of loud. You never know what's going to happen, maybe a spotting internet connection, whatever that else,- the prerecorded might work better with your lifestyle and that's okay too. For everything we talked about today, you actually can use live or prerecorded, but what I want you to do is there's so many people online, I probably do this too sometimes like we are so adamant about you have to do this way, this is the best way to do it. The best way is the best way for you. I want you to start listening to your gut more because gosh, it's gotten me this far. It hasn't steered you wrong. You're on the path. You're on because you have listened to your intuition and your gut. Let me give you a little quick story. Back when I was in my like 19, 20. I think I shared on the show before. I ran in the Miss America organization when I was 18, 19 years old, all the way up until 24. I stumbled in the organization'cause I was looking for a way to pay for college. My family, we didn't have a lot of money growing up and all the money that we had in high school went towards my mom's medical bills, fighting cancer.
Speaker 1:I needed to find some ways to pay for college and also there's alignment I could have the whole story there, but I decided to run for the Miss America organization. It gave me the way to pay for college. I got to sing, which I'm a singer. I love to sing. After high school, there wasn't a lot of chances to sing, so I got to perform.
:I also got to talk about community service. A big part of the Miss America organization is you have a platform that you talk about and I got to talk about my mom, her cancer, our non-profit that we started in her honor, all those things. I'm not gonna get into that story today. One of the things, you're going to laugh. Pageant girl. Yes, guys, I ran in pageants and I'm not embarrassed to say it. It's a big part of why I'm so confident and articulate today. I did all the skill drill trainings and everything. Sometimes I run you through them. Ha ha. I do pageant trade on you and you didn't even know it. Anyways, back to the story. One of the pageant directors back when I was 19, she and I went shopping to go find my evening gown, evening gown for the evening gown competition. Yes, there she is, miss America, whatever, walking on stage. We had to go find dresses. I remember she gave me this tip. We were at a store looking at dresses and I remember looking at things on the rack and going like, yep, Nope. Yep, Nope. Yep, Nope. Yep, Nope. I remember she came up behind me very quietly. She said, Heather, let me give you a little secret here. You try on every single one like you're open to it, maybe not every dress. I don't remember exactly what she said, but it was this idea of like, try it on. You might be surprised. I remember trying on dresses that day, that on the rack I'd be like hideous, like ugly town, like no freaking way, but I was open to it. She told me just be open to it. What I did was I, so I tried them all on and I remember when I tried on this dress, it was this like on the hanger, it was like horrendous, vomit colored dress. I'm like no freaking way. Then I put it on and realized it was more of like a rose gold and it was beautiful. It was an absolutely beautiful dress. It was the V-dress by far, I ended up wearing it to compete at Miss Oregon. I ended up winning first runner up to Miss Oregon and I don't remember what year, 2006. I don't remember, whatever. I wore that dress on the stage. I felt like a frickin queen. It was incredible. But had I judged it from watching it on the rack? I would've never, I would've never ever, ever tried it on. What does my pageant dress have to do with you and your business? I want you to understand that at the end of the day, you have to try on the different ideas that come up about your business. You have to try on the different strategies that you're hearing about what I'm talking about today, live streams, recorded streams, different platforms, those things. You have to try it on precise and what I mean by that is you have to really sit with the idea and think about it, maybe even test it one or two times. You have to try it on precise and then say, does this fit for me? Does this fit within my personality, my strengths, my views, my goals, my vision for what I'm doing, my values? Does this fit or does this feel off? I think sometimes we trust the advice and opinion of strangers more than our own. I think we would be a lot better suited if we started trying stuff on to see how it fit us. I want to give you again permission, ot that you need permission, but give you a swift kick in the butt to say, as we're talking about these things today, as I'm encouraging you to accept the camera, except that y ou're the personal brand, except that your message is going to get better, I want you to really let that sit with yourself and see how it feels, what comes up for you, where are the blocks and how you might ask yourself some questions to navigate through those because you're smart. You've gotten this far as Marie would say, you can figure it out, but do you have the courage and the tenacity to do so? Is this that important for you? I hope that the truths we've covered today, to review them one more time. You're the differentiation that sets you apart in your brand. Mastering the camera has become the foundation for building relationships online. The more you say your message out loud and the more you show up on camera, the better it gets. Focus on the trend lines. And number four, when you record, you have an out but when you go live, you get it done. Know what works for you. As you think about each of these, the most important thing is for you to take action. Get out of that point of indecision. Make the decision that you're the kind of person, you're the kind of business who shows up on camera, pick the platform and just start. Hey and when you do, I want to hear about it. I want you to be brave and post on Instagram or send me a direct message and say, Oh my gosh, I did it. Tag me. Let me celebrate with you because that's a really big freaking deal. One of my favorite moments is inside my program. When people share the very first time they go live, it is exhilarating. It's terrified. It's usually coupled with all these things around, Oh my God, I was so terrible, but I did it. I want that for you. And Hey, if you're already going live, I know you're going to find value in what we talked about today, but what a gift it is to start thinking about how you show up in a different way. When you release the need to be someone that you don't need to be and just show up truly as you are to serve. I'm excited for you too. Please reach out and tell me how this resonates with you today. I can't wait to hear how these truths impact you showing up and of course, friend, I love to hear from you, so reach out on Instagram@theheathersager and as always help us get more eyes and ears on this show. Be sure to rate, review and subscribe the show, so you can hear about in the next episode when it goes live. Until then friend, I'll see you next week. Same time, same place.
Speaker 1:Guys, 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