Hey, there, and welcome to my third non-techie video tip podcast.
My name is Ozzy Eyre and I’m your non-techie guide to the wonderful world of video creation. Before we get started, here’s today’s tune – see what you think…
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If you listened to the first episode, you’ll know I’m currently trying on a few tunes for size and I want you to help me decide which should be the theme music for this show. I’ll be testing out another 2 or 3 in the next epsiodes and, after that, I’ll be asking which you prefer. If you have a strong favourite already though, let me know.
You can reach me by email at ozzy at elitevideoacademy dot com. Use that address, too, if you have a question or something you want me to talk about in a future episode. All emails sent to me at that address come directly to me – I don’t have anyone filtering them out – and I read them all – I’m a gentle soul, so try to keep it clean!
OK, in that last show, we talked about being uncomfortable on camera, possible reasons for feeling that way and how we can overcome that and get on with making videos.
Today, I want to develop on that a little and I’m going to do that by turning back the clock quite a few years to when I was in corporate life. I worked for many years in a specialist field in financial services – in fact, it was so specialist that, when I first started specialising in that field, there were only about a dozen folks in the whole of the UK doing the same.
BTW – I’m not telling to that to brag – although I was specialising, I wasn’t special and the reason only about a dozen of us were working on that field is that it wasn’t particularly interesting or sexy!
Anyway, word got around that I about what I did and, to my horror, I was invited to go and give a talk to a large local organisation. I had never done anything like that before and, like most folks, the thought of having root canal work was more enticing than having to get up on my hind legs and talk to a roomful of people.
Here’s what happened…
I wrote out a long presentation which, to be fair, didn’t read badly on the page – but that’s all I did. I stood up in front of this roomful of people and just read it to them. I didn’t look up from start to finish. It was a disaster!
After I’d finished and left, I thought to myself ‘at least I’ll never have to do that again’. How wrong I was.
The invitations still trickled in every few weeks and, over time, the pace increased to the point I was getting a couple of invitations a month.
After I’d done a few more of these excrucuatingly embarrrassing read-throughs, I noticed I started to relax a little. I’d occasionally look up from my script – even to make eye contact with some of the audience members – and I noticed something.
They didn’t care what I looked like. They didn’t care what i sounded like. They didn’t care about the fact that I felt uncomfortable – well, perhaps ‘didn’t care’ isn’t quite right – they were unaware that I was uncomfortable and so were unconcerned. All they were interested in was the information I was giving them.
That realisation that it wasn’t me they were interested in – it was the knowledge I had and was sharing with them was a really important moment for me. You see, it meant I wasn’t the centre of attention – my message was.
The really big breakthrough came a little later. I was invited to talk at an event where the audience would be around 150 leaders from the industry I was specialising in advising. As I stepped out in front of them, I made a snap decision. I wasn’t going to read from the script anymore (in fact, by this time, I was pretty much only using it as a prompt as I knew the script fairly well) and I set it down on a table away to the right. And for the first time ever, I engaged with the audience – I looked at them in the eye. I ad-libbed. I even cracked the odd off-the-cuff joke. And it went down a storm.
Again, I’m not saying that to brag. Remember, it wasn’t me they had come to see – it was the information I had the audience wanted.
And it’s the same with your video. Once you recognise that, things get so much easier.
So, how about a little homework? How about between this and the next episode you take a couple of minutes to grab a pen and paper and jot down 3 key messages you’d like to get out into the world. When you’ve done that, write 3 main points about each of them that you want to get across to your audience (if you’ve more than 3 main points, that’s great, write them down, but you should have a minimum of 9 points in total).
Once you’ve done that, pick one of the 3 messages – so you should have a key message and a minimum of three main points supporting that message – and shoot a video about your message, using those supporting points.
It doesn’t matter if you stumble and stutter over your words. It doesn’t matter if you get lost part way through. It doesn’t matter if it’s not perfect first time – in fact, if it is perfect first time, all I can say is you’re a freak of nature!
What matters is that you do it.
Someone much smarter than me said ‘you don’t have to be great to get started – but you do have to get started to be great’ – and that’s what we’re doing today.
Before I go, I forgot to mention in that last show – if you want to receive a daily link to a non-techie video tip that’s actually a video (which kinda makes sense) then head over to https://elitevideoacademy.com/non-techie-videos/ – I’ll put the details in the show notes – put your email address in the box on that page and I’ll do the rest.
I’ll be back again with another tip soon and, remember, we’re keeping this non-techie. In the meantime, here’s a reminder of today’s music and there’ll be a different track next time out.
Until then, I’ve been Ozzy Eyre, your non-techie guide to the wonderful world of video creation – take care and make some video!
