In this motivational how‑to video, Evan Carmichael answers a viewer’s question about overcoming camera anxiety. He explains that comfort comes from massive practice—he’s recorded roughly 1,000 videos and now can shoot 10‑15 in one session. He describes the painful gap between what viewers know is good and what they can initially produce, noting that self‑criticism often leads to quitting, but persistence narrows that gap. Carmichael shares three practical boosters: drinking high‑caffeine/sugar drinks for energy, visualizing a real person (the question‑asker Kevin) instead of the camera lens, and remembering that recordings aren’t live—mistakes can be edited or re‑shot. He encourages newcomers to start despite early “crappy” videos, to keep improving, and to share their first uploads for feedback. The video ends with a call to like, comment, and subscribe.
Chapters
How to get comfortable in front of the camera. I got a great question from one of my new loyal YouTube viewers who's watching all my stuff, Kevin, who wrote in to say that he wants to start doing his own thing in front of the camera and he's nervous and he doesn't know how I do it. And he speaks to people all day, but he can't imagine doing it in front of the camera where he's got nobody to talk to and it's just him and the camera. How do you get started? How do you get comfortable in front of the camera? So I've got a few tips for you, Kevin, that will hopefully help you launch your YouTube career. The first one is practice. It takes a lot of practice. When I first started, I sucked on camera. I sucked, and I had done TV gigs before, I had done a lot of presentations before, but there's something about being one-on-one in the camera that, I don't know, I just sucked. It was terrible. It took me, it took me the whole day to do one video, and it was a crappy video, but it just, it took me that long. Now I sit down and I can do 10 to 15 videos in one sitting because of the practice, but I've done like 1,000 videos. Literally 1,000 videos is how many I've done that I've recorded and posted. So it's crazy. It's just a lot of work, and you get more comfortable with it just like everything else. You learn something, And you're trying to pick it up, it takes you a long time to get going, and then you get better and better and better and better. And I find when you're creating something new, you may have really good taste, right? You may be able to watch a video and say, "I love that video, you know, Evan's video, that's great," or "I love that Les Brown video," or "ET video," or whatever it is. And then you look at what you make and you realize that it's crap, you know, it's just, it's not good enough. And there's this huge gap between what you know is good and what you can create, and that's frustrating. And that's where a lot of people will quit. But by pushing through and by making more and more and getting better, you start to get better where, where you know what's good and you're slowly getting towards that. And your tastes are generally much higher than everybody else's. My first videos, I look at them with horror. I want to take them down. I look at them like, oh my God, what? That was, that was so bad. And Anyway, I'm my own worst critic, right? You're gonna be your own worst critic. People still watch those videos, they have thousands of views, they still leave comments and say, "What a great video, thank you so much!" And I'm thinking, "Are you kidding me? That was such a bad video!" You know, the content may have been great, but my delivery and the— it's just, it was brutal in my view. And now I'm at the point where I start to enjoy watching my videos. I'm almost— I've almost closed that gap between what I think is good and what I'm delivering. So I'm getting close. It just takes a ton of work and practice and you get more comfortable with it. When I very first started doing it, I had to be alone in the room. I couldn't have anybody with me. I had to do it by myself. If there was somebody else, I'd be worried that they would be judging me, watching me. When I did them with my DSLR camera, it wasn't autofocus, so I had to have my sister or a staff member focus on me and then I would— and then press record and have them leave the room so I could be by myself doing it because I get flustered and nervous with them. And I slowly got better. Now it doesn't matter. People could be in the room, as long as they're not making noise, I don't care. But, uh, it just comes with a lot of practice. So you'll get there, but just start and know that even though your first videos suck, and even though you try to make them as good as possible, they will still suck. That's okay. They will get better with time and with practice. Don't get down on yourself and quit. The second thing that really helped me was caffeine and sugar. I found that when I first started doing the videos, they were pretty boring, and I'd look at them and think, wow, am I about to fall asleep? What's happening in this video? And so I started going out and getting like the venti frappuccino, super sugar, caramel, caffeine to the max, and I would, I would drink it just before filming and in between my videos, and it would give me more energy. So I might come off as a bit of a spaz on the camera. I stopped having to do that because I felt, you know what, I don't need it anymore. I'm comfortable enough getting my energy level high to be able to speak to you guys. I'm excited about what I'm doing. But it took me a while to get there. Same thing for my radio show and same thing if I was doing some speaking. Before, I might down this huge drink or something just to give me some more energy. So do that. That's okay. It gives you your energy. It's not super bad for you, and it'll improve the quality of your product to a point. And then the third thing I found that really helped is I try to look in the camera and not just see my reflection of my face there, but I try to look at the person who I'm talking to. I try to think of somebody who I'm talking to and visualize that they are in front of me. So with a YouTube comment like this, it's pretty easy. So when you sent in your comment, there's a little picture of you, and I say, "Oh, that's Kevin." So I'm talking to Kevin. He looks pretty chill. He's got a big smile on, and so I'm I'm thinking of you while I'm talking to the camera. If I'm just trying to make a point in general about something that I believe in that's important for entrepreneurs to learn about, I'll try to think of somebody who I have in mind who I may have told that same story to and their reaction. I try to visualize them in front of me so I'm not talking to the camera, I'm trying to talk to a person and I felt that really helped. And then I guess my last tip is just remember that it doesn't have to be be perfect. You know, if you make a mistake, this isn't live. You can cut it, you can do it again, you can try it again and try it again and try it again. So if you make a mistake, it's not the end of the world. But what's important is that you get started and you practice and you get better and you're passionate about it and you continue on. You do that, you'll eventually be successful. And let me know if you launch your channel, you launch your first video, send it to me. I'd be happy to check it out, give you some feedback. I'm excited to see it. And don't worry if you think it's crap. Because you're on your path, and that's an important journey that you've started. Believe. For those of you watching, you like the video, please give it a thumbs up below. Let me know what you think. Leave a comment, ask a question. I'll give you a response. And if you want to see more videos like this, subscribe to the channel by clicking on my face. Thank you so much, and I'll see you soon.
