197 16 Tips To Help Accountants Look Their Best on Video

Listen, it's dumb and it shouldn't be the case, but these days we spend so much time on video, people will form opinions of us based on how we present in video. Appearance matters. The like, the level of effort it looks like you've gone through, it matters. And as we're doing more and more meetings virtually, to me it's as simple as, let's put our best foot forward. You know, let's not look like, I don't know, unprofessional. Like, video meetings have become such the norm that we see some of these now and. Or like, you'll hop on a call with an attorney and they're just like, so be draggled and are barely in frame and you're like, really? So, like. I think video presentation is very much like part of being professional and coming across the right way these days. So I'm going to give you 16 tips, some really practical stuff that shouldn't be too hard but ought to make a. A big difference in how you approach video and even maybe help you understand what you're seeing a little better when you do see something that you like, understanding why that looks good so that you can effortlessly dazzle people over video. Come on in, let's do it. Let's get to dazzling. You look so good. Okay. You could certainly go down like, the big camera equipment path. And there's a lot of people doing that these days. I don't think it's necessary for most people. The one thing that you get with a. A proper camera, that's the biggest difference you see, it's not like, in most cases, it's not the quality of the sensor or anything like that. What actually looks novel most of the time is that the field of view is very different from a webcam. Webcams by design have this massively wide field of view because they're meant to work 3 inches from your face. And when you see something that looks novel like, or fancy, oftentimes it's because it's actually the opposite. It has a very narrow field of view. So oftentimes in videos, I'll have a camera with a lens that has a very narrow field of view and the camera's a good 15ft away and I'm in frame and it looks fancy or cinematic because that field of view is narrow. Honestly, I. For, like, for meeting with folks and stuff like that, I really don't think it matters. But know that, like, that's actually the difference we're usually seeing when there's something that looks fancy or cinematic. The first thing that you'll often do when you run out and buy a new camera and set everything up is, is, well, first everybody goes, holy Jesus is a lot of work. And it actually causes them to make fewer videos. So it has like, the opposite of the desired effect. But then if you're like me, you are very disappointed with what you see. Like, I bought a dslr and it really wasn't that much better. And it wasn't until I learned a lot of these other things that we're going to talk about that I actually had something that I could be proud of. So, 16 tips. And then we're going to dig into, like, the counter arguments, like that kind of the naysayer, like, the folks who don't think this is worthwhile, just to kind of acknowledge that tip number one, think about where your eyeline is showing up in the frame. So your frame is the rectangle, everything the video can see. Where in that frame is your eyeballs? Where be your eyeballs? For a lot of people, they're like halfway down, if not lower. Many people, for whatever reason these days, have, like, the top half of the frame is just like the sky above their head. And it might be because you're putting a webcam on top of your monitor, but webcams will also tip down. So, like, there's no reason why half of the frame above you needs to be just the wall. So your eyeballs ought to be generally about 2/3 of the way up the frame, maybe between 2/3 and 3/4 of the way up the frame. The same way of like a portrait of a person. Unless you're trying to show off a landscape behind them or something like that, the person's head's going to be 2/3 of the way up the frame. So get that eyeline in the right spot in the frame sort of thing. You just got to set up once and then don't have to think about it anymore. Number two, your height relative to the camera height. So the biggest thing is probably that the easiest thing to do for most setups is have a webcam on top of the monitor. But then that means that the webcam is looking down at you. And there's some very real psychological things that come along with this. When people look at you on video, then it's like they're looking down at you. And to see two clips of the same person side by side, it makes a really big difference in the perception of what that person looks like. So the question is like, okay, well, I have it on top of My monitor. Like, how do I do that, then? Like, I don't want to create this really complicated thing or have to do a bunch of setup every time I'm on video. And I get that. So how do we get the webcam slightly below your eye level? Think of it at, like, chin level so that your webcam's looking just a bit up at you. Like, it should be just below your eyeline. If you're using a monitor arm, as we ran through last week, the benefits of that and clearing up desk space for activities, it's as easy as moving the monitor down. So I have a height at which my monitor usually hangs out when I'm working. If I have a webcam on top of the monitor, I'm going to hop on a meeting. I just push the monitor down. And while I'm on that meeting, the monitor is a little bit lower, but it's still completely usable. And I can get the webcam to the right height. Then. Then when I'm done, I just push the monitor back up and it's back to where it was. So monitor arm totally solves for this. Another move is standing. And this can actually be helpful for a number of reasons. Just to keep you more alert during the meeting. And I think it makes you look a little more engaged when you're standing, because we're generally moving around and kind of on our toes a little more. So if you. A standing desk, just set that desk. Set that desk to whatever height's going to make sense for the camera as you are standing on that meeting. If you don't have a monitor arm, don't do the standing thing. The other workaround is you can get these little kind of freestanding tripods, and they have a screw at the top that will thread into the underside of a webcam. Most webcams have, like, the threaded hole in the underside of them so that you can put them on a. A little stand, and you could put that stand up and, like, peekaboo it between a couple monitors, if there's not already a gap between those monitors. You can just move that monitor a bit when you're hopping on a call. But the easiest thing, really is a monitor arm, because then it's just a matter of moving the whole monitor up and down anytime you're hopping on a call. And just like that, like, you are in the frame where you want to be with that camera looking up at you just a bit. And I know it seems silly and trivial. There's a lot of aspects of video stuff that were we would have said were especially silly and trivial before COVID but the reality is is how we take most of our meetings now and if this is 90% of how people see you, it impacts like their perception of you whether you like it or not. If you're watching on the video podcast like this, you will always notice this in the framing as I'm about 2/3 of the way up the frame and you're always looking just a bit up at me and it makes a really really big difference. In fact, if you've got a webcam sitting on top of your monitor right now, like spin up a zoom or something like that, just hold it a bit below your eyeline and a bit above your eyeline, take a screenshot of each or just look at what that looks like. It makes a big difference. This episode is sponsored in part by Relay did you know that Relay saves advisors three to five hours of work per client per month? Because collaboration between clients and advisors on Relay Easy and secure, every client you buy to Relay gets added to your firm's partner portal. You may have seen we recently did a demo day on Relay on the main channel. Relay does a bunch of cool stuff. What gets me most excited is access, not having to hack together like using your client's access or your team using your access. So every client gets added to your partner portal. This means a portal where firm staff can safely access and switch between client accounts from a single login, their own login role based permission levels, direct bank feeds to QBO and Xerox, and statement syncs with Hubdoc and Dext. Ultra detailed transaction data that speeds up reconciliation, built in receipt management accounts payable automation Plus Relay's new partner program introduces meaningful cash rewards for advisors, more partner perks and an advisor directory to help clients find you the clients that are already banking with Relay. Head over to relayfi.com adjacentstats to learn more and book a demo or check out the link in the show Notes Disclaimer Voice Relay is a financial technology company, not an FDIC insured bank. Banking services and FDIC insurance are provided through Thread Bank Member fdic. The Relay VISA debit card is issued by Thread bank pursuant to a license from Visa USA Incorporated and may be used everywhere Visa debit cards are accepted. This episode is sponsored in part by Cloud Cloud Accountant Staffing Y' all know I'm a big advocate of hiring offshore. One of the biggest changes I made in my firm, we transitioned a Legacy firm from 100% onshore local hiring to to 100% distributed US and then 100% distributed globally. Hiring and honestly is the best thing we did. It virtually alleviated all of our hiring pains, completely changed how we thought about staffing projects and the type of work that we wanted to bring on. Because you know what, the folks we hired offshore, really freaking good. A lot of misconceptions around the type of people that you hire offshore because your enterprises will oftentimes use offshore folks for like menial work. Absolutely not the case. There are tens of thousands of people working for big four accounting firms, you know, offshore outside the U.S. you can get folks that can do anything from tax to junior level stuff to super senior level stuff. But try to do that yourself. Figure it all out yourself. That's going to be hard. It's going to be scary. Really good place to start. Cloud accountant staffing. They will hold your hand through that process. Their story is super simple. At accounting firm in the US hired a bunch of people in the Philippines, fell in love with them, but didn't fall in love with the fees they were having to pay to the staffing companies that were managing these employees. So they built their own solution and now they're starting to pull other accountants in. I'd encourage you. A big tipping point for me was when I was like, I'm going to stop being opinionated on this and just try to learn. And so I talked with other practitioners, I talked to some of the vendors that would like help you get into offshoring. That really opened things up for me. So if you've been on the fence, I'd encourage you to at least learn about it and start heading down that path. Consider cloud accountant staffing tip number three. You're not going to like this, but hear me out. Learn to edit. There goes Jason again with these over the top hot takes. How much time do you think I have? Hear me out. You think editing will take you more time? If you learn to make basic edits, it will actually take you less time. Loom is still the best option to do this. The beauty of Loom is you can record a video with the click of a button. It will host that video for you. So you could. That's. It'll give you a link that you can use to share that video. But then after you record the video, it shows you a little timeline of everything you recorded and you can just select and remove stuff. Like you just click, drag, select, hit remove, boom. You just made an edit to your video. You removed the mistake. What everybody does when they're starting out with video is they're like, okay, this is what I'm going to say. I'm ready. And you may even have a script and you're ready to go and you're like, hey, Jim, it's great to see you. And then you immediately make a mistake or you get halfway through and you keep screwing up the same thing. And so then you go back and you start over and before you know it, you've taken like 20 stabs at this video and you're all sweaty and you're frustrated. Don't do this. Start shooting the video and don't end until you've said everything that you need to say. In general, don't worry about mistakes that much. But if you totally bungle something, go back to the beginning of that statement and start it again. Then when you get to the end, end with tool like Loom, you just clip out the mistake. What you're looking to do is by the end of the recording, have a good take of everything you need to say. And then at the end, you just remove anything that was a mistake or you didn't mean to say. Now don't overthink this. Folks aren't going to be that concerned with you making mistakes when you're recording. But I, especially when you're starting out, I am 100% convinced that if you compare the time that a lot of people spend trying to get it just right perfectly in a single take versus the amount of time it takes to record it one time, make a couple mistakes, and then clip those two mistakes out in like 60 seconds, it's absolutely faster. So we're not talking about editing, like I'm going to learn Adobe Premiere or anything. Like this stuff is built into many of the tools that we use is one of the reasons why Loom still really good for this stuff as it just makes those quick edits at the end really, really easy. Number four, if you got a light, don't position it directly in front of you. Cool. Lighting looks cool because there's fall off across a person's face. One side is going to be darker than the other. If the light is directly in front of you, like if you're facing straight towards a window. If we have a ring light or something like that and it's directly in front of you, your whole face will be flat. What makes video look cool is dimensionality in the lighting. Try moving that light 45 degrees to the side, you're going to have a cooler look. Number five, we talked about this a bit last week. Avoid having extreme darks and Extreme brights within a shot. So your webcam has a little baby sensor, which means it can't take in much light and has to like adjust the brightness to do the best that it can with what it can see. And if you have something super dark in the sun in a shot, you're asking it to somehow be able to both expose for the brightest thing in our solar system and your black sweatpants and it's gonna lose that battle. So avoid anything that's super bright. It means don't sit in front of an open window. Don't light your face really brightly in a dark room. The more even the lighting throughout the room can be, the better it's gonna look on your webcam, which doesn't have a big, what they call dynamic range of being able to see dark and bright. Like think of it as there's like a window within the, within the entire spectrum of really bright stuff to really dark stuff. There's a narrow window that your webcam will be able to properly expose. If it's too bright, it'll look blown out and white. If it's too dark, it'll just look black. So the more you can limit that window of like how bright and dark everything in the room is, like the better that shot will look. You can make a killer looking webcam shot. This is probably the biggest thing that makes a shot look amateurish. If the whole thing is lit in a way that it can display well, like it can look totally fine. Where these end up looking really bad is when you've got stuff that's like blown out because you're asking too much of that little baby webcam sensor. Number six, talk about this last week as well. Try turning off your overhead lights, especially if you've got a window or if you've got a light that you use for videos. Overhead lights just make you look bad. They make your eyes look really dark. If you don't want to have to get up and down all the time, using a WI FI light switch can make this easier for you. So you could actually turn that off and on without having to get that big accountant Heiney out of the chair. Number seven, don't set up in front of a perpendicular wall. Talked about that last week. Generally that's not going to look great if the wall behind you is totally flat. It's better if your background has like layers of depth to it. That's number nine. If you're able to layer in depth in the background, that's great. Like, you know, if you've Got a wall, a plant halfway between you and the wall. Like that creates kind of more depth of back there. We skip number eight. Number eight was as much depth behind you as possible. If you have your back to a wall, it's never going to be a super interesting, interesting shot. Sometimes you don't have an option, and that's fine. But if possible, if you have a way to orient yourself to where the back wall can be farther away, that's going to look more interesting. Number 10, an accent light in the background. Could be a lamp, could be a little light strip that's behind, you know, a bookcase or something and like cast a little bit of light on the wall behind it. Just something that is like, adds a bit of texture to what they see in the background. That can be cool. Number 11. Anything but beige. Literally any color is going to look better than beige. If you get too extreme here, you're going to be asking a lot of your camera sensor again. So, for example, I've got a black backdrop that I usually have up. If I use a webcam with this, it's going to make my face be super white and blown out because it's trying to expose for the really dark backdrop. So if you go extreme here with like white walls or black walls, you're going to be asking a lot of the webcam. It may make you look money, but something that is more a mid tone, it can be grayscale still. Just the beige is like, especially if you're a white, white boy like me, it's not gonna do you any favors. 12, fill that background space. Big stuff is easier than small stuff. Photos and pictures and stuff like that are actually kind of hard because they're small things that are like flat against the wall, not offering any depth. This is why fake plants are great, is they can be big and take up a lot of space, but they also have depth. They're not like plastered against the wall. Some people will use, you know, murals or something to fill up space. Just be careful that they're not too busy. And the one downside of a mural is it is flat. It's not adding any interesting, like, depth to the shot. Number 13, avoid having doors in the background. This is actually kind of an interesting psychological thing I've seen in a couple different places. Doors can make the other person feel like you're going to be. They're going to be interrupted or you're going to leave or something like having that door in the shot. There's like a weird kind of psychological thing where there's this, like, impending distraction. Not the end of the world if you don't really have any other options, but something to think about. Number 14, don't put a mic between you and the person unless you are recording a pod. I see a lot of people now with microphones that they will use for like, zoom meetings, gang. That mic can be, like, off to the side pointing at you. And you can. You'll still sound perfectly fine, probably much better than the person on the other side. Don't get that thing, like, right up in your grill. Like, that's just. It's just creating a barrier between you and the person on the other side. There's very few contexts, like having a physical mic. Like, your sound is going to probably sound way better. There's very few contexts in which, like, the quality gets so important that you really have to have it right up in your face. Number 15, if you really want to geek on this. Something that more people are doing now is they're actually using a teleprompter to be able to look into the camera while being on a meeting. So the problem you have is that other person will always be on your monitor. Like, you'll always be looking at your monitor to see them, but your camera is always going to be somewhere else. So you're never looking directly into camera. You can solve this with a teleprompter. The way teleprompters work, basically there's a. There's an angled glass between you and the camera. Below that angled glass is a screen. And so you see the reflection of that screen in the angled glass while the camera can see through the glass from the other side. So what you're going to be looking at is the reflection of whoever you're talking with while the camera can see you through the glass. So you're actually looking at them while looking straight into the camera. Elgato actually came out with a really novel solution for this. It's like this little baby teleprompter. Because normally teleprompters are kind of big and a pain. Elgato came with his little bitty thing that you can actually have on your desk. What's that called? They call it prompter. So Elgato, prompter. We can put a link in the show notes. It's got a little built in, like, small monitor, but you can literally just like put a webcam or a small regular camera behind it. And it basically presents like a monitor. Like when you're looking at it, it will look a display, but your camera is looking through it so that you could be looking into that person's eyes as they're talking to you. That's a little more fringe. People definitely aren't going to like expect that, but it is nice when you can do it. Also, if you're presenting video on scripts, this is a really easy way to start exploring using teleprompters to make that easier. All my main channel videos, for example, are done off of scripts where I'm looking through a teleprompter and the words are there. Gives you a wildly different level of of confidence and speeds up the production process a lot because you don't have to memorize anything. You're not stammering around. But some people are now using that stuff for meetings as well. Today's episode gang, it's sponsored in part by the fine folks at Live Flow. Did you know Live Flow has over 100 spreadsheet templates that anyone can just go out and swipe? These templates they've built out in Google sheets for all sorts of things. I'm looking at it right now. We got a, we got a four week rolling cash flow forecast, a 13 week cash flow forecast, board reporting template, break even analysis template, budget, the actuals, consolidated AP dashboard, business KPI dashboard. All this stuff you can just go swipe on the Live Flow website. Literally just copy the template and if you want, you just make use of those. But here's the problem. Those spreadsheets, they're not just going to magically update with the information from the accounting software, right? You're going to have to go, you got to go look over there. You got to get the thing, you got to bring it over there next month, you got to do the same thing. Something changes, you got to do it again. So if you want, yeah, go swipe those spreadsheets and spend the rest of your days keying in figures manually. Or swipe the spreadsheet. Get started with Live Flow, which will automatically sync from QuickBooks Online that data into those templates. Works with the templates they'll give you. It works with, frankly, any old spreadsheet you use. If you already got one that you love, you can make it smart by connecting it to QuickBooks. They've rolled out a bunch of stuff in the last year from budgeting. You can sync budgets in from qbo. Big thing they did a couple months back was launch consolidations. So you can roll up groupings in like a visual way, whether those different companies have the same chart of accounts or not. So if you are Ready to make some big brain auto updating spreadsheets or even if you just want to swipe some templates, get a taste of what it's all about. Check out Live Flow in the link in the show Notes this episode is brought to you in part by TeamUp, helping you recruit top Filipino accountants without any ongoing monthly fees. The difference between Teamup and all the other offshoring options is that Team up helps you hire staff directly. No middleman. You work directly with your new hire in the Philippines. Hire the person, not the company. Guys, gals, gang. Here's just a few reasons to hire directly. You have access to higher level talent. Makes sense. You have complete control over team culture and training. They keep 100% of what you pay them and it's a lot more affordable for you. So you can retain your team for the long term. Team up can source accountants with experience working at US or Australian firms familiar with tools like Zero, QBO and DeX. Also recruit specialist roles, team leaders, tax specialists, administrative assistants. Thought experiment what if you had an executive assistant for the first time this tax season just just throwing it out there. What would they do? Start at that email video I did on the main channel recently. Get help with that stanky ol inbox. I digress. Team up recruits these talented folks for a flat one time fee of 4,000 US American dollars. That's it. 4K one time. Somebody at Robert Half just did a spit take. Robert Half reference. We ever going to get Robert Half to sponsor this pod? Not anymore. And they can connect you with an affordable employer of record if you need help with payroll and compliance once you hire that person. Big fan of hiring in the Philippines. You know I did a bunch of that. Check out the link in the description to learn more about team up. Last one, number 16. Stop, stop. Stop worrying about what you look like on video. You could spend weeks on the 15 things we just talked about, but if it keeps you from making videos, it totally defeats the point. I've heard from so many people who are like oh I went out and I bought this hardware and all that hardware and all these different things and it's so much work and it's so hard and I haven't able to figure it out yet and I may need a new computer for it and all these things where it's like the best way to get good at videos, like being on video more. There is like meeting video versus like recording videos, you know, that sort of thing. But what you don't want to end up with is to have overthought this so much as to like not make videos or make fewer videos as a result. So ultimately people want to hear from you. They want to see you. Your clients want to hear from you more. Don't be afraid to get that mug on camera. It makes a really big difference. Wildly different than an email. People feel a connection to you when they can see your face. If you want to nerd on this stuff further, a good follow online. His name is Kevin Shen. Sh e n He's got, he's basically an Internet think boy now that just like helps people with their video setups. He's got a couple courses online. The cheapest one starts at 500 bucks. And then he does like he, like I said, buys you on how to set up your whole video setup virtually. But that starts at like eight grand it looked like. Now, a lot of self limiting beliefs here. Why is this worthwhile? Why is this worth my time? We've actually got a special guest that we're going to talk with about this. You've heard from her before. She's one of the seven internal voices that we've talked about that we all have. This is Carly, the comparison lady. She's going to get in the way here because as soon as you start trying to make improvements or you're like, okay, I'm finally going to do this. You're going to start looking around at everybody else and comparing yourself and all the ways that you don't measure up. So we're going to debate Carly here to push through the internal dialogue that like all of us have. That is to say, well, I'm never going to do it as good as Jason or as this other person. Thus that's a reason why I shouldn't do it. So let's start this out by getting Carly's take on what we've just gone through. I have a feeling she will have some things to say about trying to get accountants to look better on video.

Size dramatically.

Size dramatically.

Oh, Jason, Jason, Jason. You and your little podcast trying to help accountants look better on video sure are adorable, really. But let's be real here, sweetie. No matter how many tips and tricks you throw at them, they're never going to be as good as the real pros out there. I mean, have you seen some of the YouTubers and TikTokers these days? They've got it all. Perfect lighting, flawless editing and backgrounds that look like they're straight out of a magazine. Your little accountants don't stand a chance. But sure, let's go through your list Please. They'll be too busy trying to figure out which way is up. Relative camera height. They'll probably end up with the camera pointing up their nose and editing. Ha. They'll spend more time trying to figure out the software than actually making the video. And don't even get me started on lighting and backgrounds. They'll either blind themselves with the light or end up looking like they're in a dungeon. Plus fake plants. Really? That's the best you could come up with?

Yes.

But you know what, Jason? It doesn't even matter. Because at the end of the day, no one wants to watch a bunch of boring accountants ramble on about numbers and taxes. They'll put everyone to sleep faster than a warm glass of milk.

That hurts.

So why bother? As I always say, if you can't be the best, don't bother trying the rest.

What?

Stick to your spreadsheets, accountants. Leave the video making to the pros. Flips hair and walks away.

Flips hair and walks away. Okay, accountants. I have a number of notes that was more convincing than I thought it would be. And I'm not actually very good at arguments, so I might be outmatched here. Nobody wants to watch a bunch of boring accountants ramble on about their numbers and taxes. That's a great argument. There's a lot of people that actually think that. I think the opposite is true. I think your clients want to hear more from you. Specifically they want to see your face more. In most cases it just like it creates that human connection, especially as everything's getting cheapened and AI will give you answers and all these things like we gotta lean into like that relationship building of showing up on video. If you haven't heard this before and you're like, what the heck's happening today? We're actually using Claude, who recently launched a killer new language model that in my opinion is better than GPT4. The best model from OpenAI. The new model, you gotta pay 20 bucks a month to get it at the website. Claude AI. And so I'm having. I'm having the language model basically roleplay with a prompt running through, like defining the avatar of Carly, the comparison lady. And then we use another tool called 11 Labs to give a voice to what it responds with. I have a rebuttal. Here's the thing. Carly is these days, being a professional is about showing up well on video and being able to be presentable, even just for meetings. That stuff matters. And these self limiting beliefs around. I'm just an accountant. These things are holding us back from Being able to do new things and lean into new media. Tiktokers weren't tiktokers until they started being tiktokers. And everybody's got to start somewhere. Not that we're gonna try to make a bunch of accountants tiktokers, but who are you to say that accountants can't be cool on video?

Rolls eyes.

Rolls eyes.

Oh, please. Spare me the motivational speech. Jason.

Jason.

You think a few fancy lights and a tripod are going to turn these number crunchers into video?

I sure do.

Get real. They'll always be accountants no matter how many hashtags they use. Boring. But hey, if you want them to embarrass themselves online, be my guest. Just don't come crying to me when they're the laughing stock of the Internet. Remember, if you can't dazzle with your personality, don't bother with the technicality. Smirks and sips tea.

Oh, we got a tea sipper. That's not what this is about. This isn't about being amazing online. It's about being like presentable. And the fact that this is part of professional services these days. Like the fact that you just have to show up online and be presentable. I'm gonna give her one more chance. She hasn't won me over there. I guess I have more belief in accountants than you do. Wasn't that long ago that I was just an accountant and I'd never done any video. And now I think my videos are pretty. Okay, I'm not convinced. Give me your best closing argument on why accountants shouldn't be bothering with this.

Takes a deep breath and puts on a dramatic face. Alright, accountants, listen up. Don't let Jason fool you. You're meant for the back office. No, not the spotlight. Trying to be a video star is like putting lipstick on a pig. It's still a pig. No one wants to watch. You vote on about tax codes and the risks. One mistake and your career is over. Stick to your spreadsheets and calculators. Leave the video making to people with actual personalities. Trust me, it's for your own good. Remember, if you can't be a star, don't bother reaching for the sky. Drop Smike and walks off stage.

Drop Smike. There you have it. If you can't be a star, you go reach for the sky, you accountants. Mic drop.