We’re all BetterOn (video).
I’m a people person.
Why? In one word, potential. The future ‘you’ is inside you. The future me is inside me. I can see it and I can feel it.
When I left YouTube a few years back, one question I asked was ‘How do I combine dual passions for the future of video and the future of people?’ After spending more than 2 years in front of a camera lens creating the greatest web series you’ve never heard of, RyCareyously, the answer became distantly clear - take the future of video and prepare people for it. To me, that simply meant training people to be comfortable and confident as themselves on camera. All it took was practice. A skill is a strength, and if you put in time to build that muscle, the results will be visible. In this case, the growth occurred in front of the camera to prove it. I started testing a curriculum of exercises for people of all verticals and levels across the business world.
An immediate observation was that while I’d learned to become ‘on’ when the camera rolled, most clients shut down and turned off. A common occurrence, but why? What was it about that lens? More importantly, what was this blocker preventing in people? What lay beyond the tension and jitters of having to be ‘on’? For me, unlocking this power in people is synonymous with unlocking the future of video. If more of us are comfortable and effective, it won’t change everything, but it will move the digital video needle in a more personal and personable direction.
Around this exploratory phase, I met Jeff Rozic, the strategist of YouTube’s Brand Lab. We’d just missed each other working in the same office, but our philosophies on video aligned. We both saw great promise in ‘people first’ video strategies and agreed to stay in touch, providing reports on what we both saw. He observed how risk averse companies evolved within the safety of validated tested video strategies while I, outside company walls, filmed myself everyday as a creator and tested the waters of camera coaching for various companies and personalities. The reports I gave on camera coaching were similar — training sessions were vulnerable, challenging, and rewarding. Witnessing clients go through a micro transformation, from quiet and cold to big and direct, it felt like the future was happening one .MOV file at a time.
With a belief in the shared power of people and video, today we’re starting BetterOn, a camera training service aimed at making people and employees of all industries and levels more effective communicators for the YouTube age. Our roster of trainers and custom curriculum can be adapted to any team or vertical who wants to or is already taking video seriously. Packages can be held in person or online. We’re currently based in Durham, Boulder, and New York, with new homesteads coming soon.
If you’ve been needing to get better on camera, needing to think of a different way to approach video, or just want to discuss what a ‘people first’ video strategy is, you’re dealing experts in the space who love to converse about it. Reach out and say hello: ryan@betteron.video
