How To Feel Good Livestreaming For Client Attraction
Do you shy away from doing live videos for your marketing, because you absolutely hate looking back on your videos? Perhaps you hate the way your voice sounds? The way you look? Your inner critic picks on every imperfection, a hair strand sticking out, the face looking too swollen, the eyes look too tired, your accent is too annoying…
It is important to understand that everyone feels that way, to an extent. Even the pros.
Why We Hate How We Look & Sound On Video
At the start, seeing and hearing yourself is a fresh experience for you. And like with anything new, unusual or unfamiliar, our brain’s first reaction is to reject it. You experience really negative emotions; you want it to stop, it almost physically hurts you… This is natural, your comfort zone is being pushed. But it does not mean that you truly look or sound so dreadful.
Every person in your world is exposed to your looks and the sound of your voice. So if that reaction was actually reflecting a general fact, don’t you think people around you would stick fingers in their ears when you try to speak, or would always avoid looking at you — so they do not have to hurt their eyes? I mean, this is an exaggeration, but this is exactly how badly you are exaggerating the issue with your looks and voice in your own mind.
Understanding why you feel like this is the first and the most important step to creating a transformation. It is not actually the look or the sound. What makes you freak out is just being unfamiliar with watching yourself and hearing yourself from a third person’s perspective! So start getting to know yourself, getting familiar, and extending your comfort zone to include being OK with yourself.
The only way we can get comfortable with anything is by repetition. Do more videos and watch back every one of them — without criticizing. Instead exercise conscious self-acceptance and self-love. Every time a critical thought surfaces, just acknowledge it -your brain is getting uncomfortable. Then gently set it aside and let it pass through you.
Focus on falling in love with who you are and how everyone in the world sees you. And loves you! This is how your mother sees you. This is how your children see you. And they love you unconditionally. Now it is the time for you to practice that unconditional love. At the same time you are improving your chances to attract amazing clients into your business since video is the fastest way to connect and convert. It happens at the real simple but magical level — as they experience your beautiful human energy.
Finding Your Style
When you are a little more comfortable with the idea of doing video, the next step is choosing how to show up. Here is where so many people get stuck. They are not sure what way they “should” be showing up to attract their ideal clients, often resulting in doing nothing at all. I truly believe that we should always show up at our best! Make the effort. But you also need to make sure you are not putting yourself in an uncomfortable environment, just because you may think it looks more “professional”.
Do their looks matter to us? Or is it what they “feel like” to follow; what they say; how we connect to their stories, opinions, and experiences?
There has to be a balance between how our audience expects us to show up.
For example, if you target corporate clients the way you dress and look will be different from if you are targeting moms who work from home. Try to find the way YOU feel at your most comfortable and confident — the effort you would make to FEEL great about yourself!
It will also energize you as well as help you feel more “protected” because you are not trying to achieve a look that is “polished” if you are normally much more casual, or a look that is too “laid back” and “natural” if you like putting makeup on to let your dog out. You must stay true to who you are!
It may also determine who you target. Consider this — if you feel uncomfortable about the way you are presenting yourself, but this is how other experts in this niche are expected to present themselves — maybe this audience is not really aligned with who you are? This was the thought that helped me stop pushing myself to target corporate clients. That environment always makes me feel uncomfortable. It is simply “incorrect” for who I am, and going against this fact only makes me resent what I do, no matter what the fees are. It just does not feel right for me.
Talking about finding your own style for video, personally, I love looking well. Makeup, hair, nice cute clothes, statement earrings. But I am in no way one of those super polished women, who spend hours and thousands on how they look. For my livestreams, I need to look chic, but not too rigid, not too “perfect” because it is just not who I am. Neither I am someone who would livestream from their bedroom or having a coffee in their PJ’s.
Because if I had a visitor in my home, I would go and change before having a coffee with them, and they are not welcome to my bedroom either. Stay true to who you are when you are feeling good about yourself and you just found the way you should be showing up.
Live Video Is Not A TV Program
Stay away from trying to “present” on your live videos. This is not a teleseminar OR a TV channel. Since we were little kids, we are used to seeing super polished and professional-looking presenters on the telly. They usually educate, inform or entertain. Most of them have had professional media training behind them too. There is a team of makeup and hair stylists on each program, making them look stunning and ready to touch them up between the takes.
This creates a kind of pressure to think this is the way we too should be on our live videos. It is a subconscious assumption. It is based on what we are so used to seeing. But it is also a limiting belief.
The younger generation does not suffer from this issue. They grew up watching vloggers on YouTube and if it comes to TV, a lot of reality shows, like Kardashians and Big Brother. We call it “user to user” content -created by ordinary (not professional) people for other ordinary people (viewers and followers). This kind of content has a different purpose.
From their camera to the screen on your personal device, live video is a much more “one-to-one”, intimate experience, focused on creating a connection. Not impressing, not meeting expectations. You set your own tone and then those who love your “vibe” will stay and those who don’t are free to go.
Just look at some bigger influencers that you follow on Social Media, they may have really great photos, even some that look like selfies (there are so many apps for our phones that can achieve an almost professional feel) but look at the live videos they do on their phones. Do they always look like they do in photos? A lot of them are shockingly different from their photo/branding content. Especially when we follow someone who is no longer in their twenties or thirties.
Do their looks matter to us? Or is it what they “feel like” to follow; what they say; how we connect to their stories, opinions, experiences?
What I’ve noticed, in my own experiences that the bigger influencers that I follow on social media are often very casual looking on their live videos. But I never really think to myself that they look dreadful and stop watching. Their looks are the last thing that matters to me, it is their unique personal energy that I am attracted so much more.
Looking perfect is really irrelevant in how we connect to each other even based on visuals. It is about imperfections, quirks, accents, non-verbal communication elements, and most of all their personality that does the trick! They show up and share, without holding back, their call to action doesn’t stop, they don’t look awkward. They do not get hooked up on how they look, even when they do not think they look 100%.
They Just Get It DONE!
And so should you! Because the more you get fixated on how you hate the way you look or sound, the more you deny those who need you to help them transform their lives or businesses with your help or your products from seeing you, getting to know, like and trust you, and the biggest of all — from WORKING with you!
So when it comes to live video, those demons are truly just ‘in your head’, and with small steps every day, you can overcome your inner self-critic and start focusing on serving the world with your superpowers and creating a difference in the lives of many around you. While completely elevating the quality of your own. Is that a good enough reason to persevere?
To me, it is what has been helping me move through all insecurities and resistances and created what several years ago, I would dismiss as an unrealistic dream.
Why Live Video Is Better Than Prerecorded When You Are Just Starting Out
And here is what I will leave you with. If you want to be feeling“good” on video, START with live video. It is much scarier, but it teaches you to go with your natural flow and to be kinder to small mistakes and imperfections that can happen. At the end of the day, we do not get all flustered when we forgot what we wanted to say talking with a friend or a family member. Life goes on, we are focusing more on making the point or telling the story. If you try recording the video, your inner critic will interfere as hard as it can. When you are live, you just have to go on…
This is where live video becomes a priceless tool for finding that ease. You soon start realising that there is nothing different between talking at your camera, or with a great client or a friend — provided you are talking about what you believe in, are passionate about or truly KNOW that it is something that can help others shift their businesses and their lives.
