Matt Ragland and Cam Houser answer three questions from new video creators. Perfectionism is the biggest obstacle, so publish your first ten videos fast instead of waiting. On-camera presence builds trust better than voice-over alone, and CapCut works fine for editing if you stop overthinking it.
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In today's creator advice, Tim has a question about struggling as a new creator. Sindhu has a question about using voiceovers in her videos, and Nefertari wants to stop overthinking the video editing process. I have been there. My friend Cam Houser recently joined us in the Hey Creator community to help us answer these questions in front of a live studio audience. If you want to get your questions featured on an upcoming show, sometimes I ask on social media, but the best place is in the Hey Creator community. You also get weekly coaching calls to help you with your business. So if you're interested, click the link in the description below to learn more. A couple of things. So let's, let's put this on. Tim was asking, what do you find to be the most common thing that new video creators struggle with? And I feel like you've touched on this, but maybe we can put it in a nice in a nice package.
What is the most common thing that people struggle with? It's usually some variant of perfectionism. And it is going on Amazon, looking at cameras, and taking 3 months to do that. When again, your phone is great. So it's usually recording something and hitting publish and understanding that the perfect is the enemy of the good. A lot of our thoughts and strategies and how we think about video, they just don't count if you haven't published 10 videos. Your view of the world from 0 videos in the world to 10 will be drastically different. You know, there's a lot of things in life like that where we imagine how it will go, but once we do it, we learn that actually that terrain is quite different. So just get your first 10 videos out there and they don't need to be great. They don't need to be amazing. You look fine and even better, no one's watching. So just, just get them out there. That's the mistake people make is they don't actually hit publish.
Sindhu's asking, face versus voiceover, is there a real difference in confidence level from a customer's perspective, whether or not you're showing your face or maybe just doing a voiceover for a video?
Yes, Sindhu, that is a great question. Listen, y'all, for us to fully take advantage of video, we gotta use the face. The face is a technology, as it were. There is technology going on in here, which is your eyes. Your mouth, your skin, all these things that is conveying different things. If you're calm, if your voice has some authority, like all this is coming across. If we just do voiceover, we can't build that connection. I also, again, I like to sell very expensive things. I'd rather sell a $50,000 thing than a $50 thing, which, you know, maybe isn't everybody's taste. But if I'm going to sell someone something that costs $50,000, they need to feel okay with the person they're working with., and they're not going to get that from a voiceover. A voiceover is, it's kind of, it's taking away this ability to see facial expressions and build trust. If that's your thing, that's fine. Maybe get started with voiceover, but you're, again, people want to see your face. And I've had, my DMs are filled with people saying, Cam, I'm too ugly to be on camera. Usually I'll go back and forth with them and I'll explain to them why that's not true. And I will show them the countless examples of people who aren't conventionally handsome or beautiful on the internet. And it's At the end of the day, I don't know, I think ridiculously good-looking people aren't even that identifiable. They seem like some other alien species. Like, I wanna see, a lot of us just wanna connect with more people. So I would say, show us your face, even every once in a while. You can do what so many creators do. They do voiceover videos, and the last 30 seconds is, hey gang, hope you enjoyed the video. You know, the next one's gonna be great, be well.
Just something like that, right? Nefertari was asking, what kind of editing tips do you have Is there anything like just editing in general? Is there a particular editing software you like to use? And this is my addition to the question is like, can you tell us a little bit about editing software selections? And then just like the process of, I would say, like not overthinking and not getting into like the edit so much that you spend 5 to 10 to maybe 20 minutes recording something and then it takes 2 to 3 to 4 hours to edit. That can be the reality for some people. Like, I think I heard Marques saying that an edit for his team— and this is like a team— would take like 15 to 20 hours for a video. And so like just understanding that that doesn't have to be and probably shouldn't be anywhere near your reality of like what, what the edit should be like.
So to speak to editing real quick, first off, don't compare yourself to Marques. That's just setting yourself up for failure and feeling bad. Compare yourself. Compare yourself to Marques in his first couple of years, right? And that's just a much better lens to look at because Marques is incredibly handsome, charismatic, and he's got a huge team and he does these crazy edits. So editing software, I would recommend CapCut if you're just getting started. CapCut is free. The only thing worth mentioning is it's made by the folks who make TikTok. And if you're wary of downloading Chinese software, I'd be cognizant of that. It's gotten to the point now where one, it exists for PC, which iMovie used to be the best program to start with, but iMovie doesn't have great subtitling. CapCut has phenomenally good subtitling, and 80% of people watching your videos are watching with the sound off, so subtitling is important. Now again, a lot of platforms do this automatically, but Twitter still doesn't, so I recommend CapCut just because it's so simple, so easy to use. I have more fun, and what I use is Final Cut, uh, just because I like the interface with Final Cut. Adobe Premiere is a lot of firepower, but it's like a Ferrari and not everybody needs a Ferrari. Sometimes you want to drive on roads that aren't really built for a Ferrari. So I like Final Cut, but if you're just getting started, I'd recommend CapCut just because it's free, works on all platforms. Great, easy to use and great subtitling.
Yeah, it's also good if you're doing more short-form videos. When I'm doing short-form videos that aren't related to what Tim and I do together here on Hey Creator, I'm just editing on my phone on CapCut like it's It's really, it's really good, easy to use. That's a, that's a great answer.
