MBA2056 How To Present Like a Pro on Live Video

Let me tell you about Intuit QuickBooks. When I was starting out my business, I remember sitting at my desk late at night not working on my business but cleaning up numbers, tracking and reconciling payments and wondering how this became my life. But once I automated the admin side of things of my finances, those nights had disappeared and I felt a whole lot better. Outdo it with intuit QuickBooks QuickBooks is the trusted end to end solution that businesses rely on for getting paid, managing finances, paying employees, finding new customers, and more. QuickBooks provides a team of AI agents and trusted experts, so doing it yourself no longer means doing it alone. Their payment agent gets you paid faster, their customer agent finds leads, follows up and secures more sales, and the accounting agent automates and categorizes transactions. Get your critical business jobs done with QuickBooks on the Intuit platform. Ready to Save on New Tech? It's time for Dell Tech Day's annual sales event celebrating our customers with fantastic deals and benefits. Product perks include Dell Rewards, free shipping, premium Support and more. PCs like the Dell 14 with Intel Core Ultra processors will help you do more faster and with a premium suite of monitors and accessories, you can upgrade your whole setup with amazing savings. Visit Dell.com deals. Hey oh. Welcome to the Hundred Dollar RBA show, the business podcast helping you focus on what you can control every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started with my co founder back in 2014. And in today's lesson you will learn how to present like a pro on live video. When you are live. Whether you're running a webinar, a live course, doing an interview, you're a part of a summit. Whatever it is, it's a totally different ball game. I do a lot of live video and it's for good reason. It's one of the most effective and impactful mediums of communication in business. Whether you're doing a live one on one sales call or you're presenting to thousands of people, if you don't know how to do it properly like a professional, you can fall on your face and it can be quite embarrassing. The thing with live is that there's no safety net if you screw up. If you mess up, there's no edit in post, right? But don't worry, I got your back. I've been doing live video and live teaching for over a decade and I'M going to share with you my five tips and exercises you can do right now to be a pro when it comes to live video so you're confident you're effective so people actually like you on live video and you'll have fun doing it and not be a nervous wreck. When I was preparing for this lesson, I was so excited because this is kind of my jam and I can't wait to share what works let's Get Into it let's get down to Business At Strayer University we help students like you go from Is it possible? To anything is possible by offering access to up to 10 no cost gen Ed courses so you can reach your goals affordably and fast. Visit Strayer Edu to learn more. No cost Gen EDS provided by Strayer University Affiliate Sophia Eligibility rules apply. Connect with us for details. Strayer University is certified to operate in Virginia by Chef and has many campuses including at 2121 15th Street north in Arlington, Virginia. All right, let's get into it. How do you present like a pro on live video? Let's start with my first exercise or tip and that has to do with your gear. Setting up your gear properly is really going to take care of a lot of things for you and it kind of lends itself to all the things we're going to talk about later on in today's episode. You get this right, it's going to make your life a lot easier. So you don't need expensive gear. You don't need a home studio. That's state of the art. This is what you need. But how you set it up is actually really important. You need a solid webcam. A great looking webcam is going to give you the confidence that you look good, you're clear, you're in frame, everything is solid. I recommend the Logitech Brio. It's a 4K webcam with a very, very good lens with good aperture. That's the webcam. What about mic? I actually think audio is very, very important and can make or break your presentation. So having a solid mic is really important. I've used several different kinds of mics. When it comes to live video, the best bang for your buck is the audio. Technica ATR2100 that's the second piece of gear. The yes. You can geek out on something more expensive, but trust me, this thing is great and solid and all you need. The third piece of gear you're going to need is a pair of headphones. I recommend wired headphones into your laptop so there is no chance of your wireless headphones, dying of battery or disconnecting in any way. If you're having a conversation with somebody or you have other audio inputs, you're going to want to make sure you had headphones, wire them in. Fourth piece of equipment is a boom arm. Now, a boom arm is basically a arm that will hold your mic, and it kind of just clips to the side of your desk with like a vise. And the boom arm kind of extends. So that way you can have the mic be right in front of your mouth without you using any kind of stand. A lot of people use, like, kind of a mic stand that sits on the mic. But the mic stand on your desktop is way too low. You want the mic right in front of your mouth, 6 inches maximum in terms of distance. So you have that clear, crisp, bassy audio that sounds great. That alone will make you sound like an authority. And the boom arm allows you to be hands free. Now, a boom arm on Amazon is like $10 or something. At $10 or $15, it's very easy to assemble. And you just clip on your mic, the ATR 2100, right onto the boom arm and you're good to go. So that's the gear. Now, when it comes to the webcam, the position and how you use it is really important. You want to make sure your webcam is at eye level, okay? That your. Your camera, if you just keep your head straight, is at the same level as your eye. You're looking straight forward. You should be looking straight at. The camera should be centered right in front of you. I use an external monitor, and that monitor sits on top of a shelf that's on my desk. So it's about 6 inches higher than my desktop. And then I have my monitor. And then on top of the monitor is my camera, and that makes it right in my eyeline. We're going to talk more about the camera and the eyeline a little bit later. But the positioning of your camera should be eyeline, so you're not looking down, you're not looking up. Your head is not tilting up or down in any way. There's the gear and the setup. And that's the first of five tips I got for you today, so you can implement them right away. The second one is very simple. Stand, okay? You should be standing while you're presenting live. You're going to give so much more energy. You're going to get more air to your lungs when you're speaking. You ever out of breath when you're kind of speaking live? And you're kind of stumbling and maybe even rambling. This is going to help because standing gives you more oxygen when you're on your feet, you think faster. That's just the fact. And you tend to be more animated and a bit more energetic when you're on your feet. Plus, when you speak on stage, what do you do? You stand. Right? The energy that when you stand should be translated to a live video as well, because it is a public speech. It's just online. So I recommend using a standing desk. If you don't have one, you can get them pretty inexpensively now. But even if you don't buy one, you can just prop up your laptop, your computer, your monitor with some books or some boxes for. For your presentation so that again, the camera's eye level and you can stand and use that boom arm again to adjust to make sure the mic is front of your mouth. I stand every time I do a live presentation, whether it's a meeting, whether it's a webinar, whether it's a conference, whether it's an interview, and it makes a ton of difference, trust me. Stand. When you do live video, number three, we talked about the camera and your eyeline, and number three is all about always look into the camera. Now, this is going to take some practice, it's going to take some reps, and it might even take a few weeks or months for you to get it right. But that's okay. Start doing it now. And what that is is always bring your eye straight back into the camera. In fact, I would encourage you to try to look deep into the lens of that webcam. What this does is that this creates the effect that, that a viewer of your live video feels like you're making eye contact, you're looking straight at them. This creates an intimate connection. I get told a lot. It's probably the number one thing that people say about me is that when you are presenting, I feel like you're talking straight to me. And that has a lot to do with my eye contact into the lens. This is something I learned from my co founder and partner, Nicole, who is a New York Film Academy graduate, that you always need to bring your eyes back into the lens. Even if you look away for a second. Go. Go back to the lens. Even if you look down for a second at your slides or whatever it is, go back to the lens. 90% of the time, your eyes should be in the lens delivering your content. Don't look down. Don't look to the side. A lot of people look to Their screen. And that's a no, no. There's a difference between the screen and the camera. And you might be saying, omar, how do I do this? How do I make sure I keep looking at the lens? Practice. Keep practicing it. I used to put a post it note right on my monitor that says, look at the lens, reminding me, go back to the lens, go back to the lens. Until I just was always looking at the lens. And the exception was when I would look down or look somewhere else. Now you might be saying, omar, I love this tip. This sounds amazing. This probably is going to take my game to a pro level. It will. But how do I do this if I need to look at my slides and look at my content to deliver my live presentation? And that brings me to number four, know your stuff. I'm gonna give you a harsh reality. If you have to look at your slides to deliver your content and read your slides, you don't know your content good enough. You need to know your stuff. You need to be able to deliver your actual presentation, webinar meeting, whatever it is, with no slides, with your slides hidden. In fact, when I got on stage, I have my slides on my phone and I put it in my back pocket. I don't look at the slides. I just kind of deliver the speech, knowing what's on the slide. And I deliver the content and actually say, next slide, knowing that I'm done with that content. Next slide is going to be this content that I know already. I already see it in my head. And I'm going to deliver the content that pertains to that slide. That's how well you should know your content. That means you might need to rehearse. It's going to take some reps. It's going to take a bit of rehearsal beforehand before it's go time and you're live. And you might say, omar, isn't this too much? It's not too much. The best speakers in the world do this. I know because I know a lot of those speakers and I've asked them and they all tell me the same thing. Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. They know their stuff very well. They know the order it's going in. They know what's on the next slide. They don't need to look back at their slides or look down on their screen if they're doing it online. They know what the next slide is. They know what's on the slide. And trust me, when you are at that level of knowing your stuff, your delivery and your confidence is through the roof. You are an absolute pro and people will eat it up. They love it. And when you're that confident with your content, people really buy into what you're saying. They can't help but believe in it too.

You're juggling a lot, but you can still squeeze in a financial plan with the Northwestern Mutual financial advisor as your partner. It's not only possible, it's personalized. So if you're tying the knot, closing on a house, or welcoming a little one, you'll be ready for whatever life tosses your way. It's the right time to feel less stressed and more certain. That's a better way to money. Let's get started@nm.com the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

All right, number five, fifth tip. And this one's a biggie. And you might overlook it. And it's have fun. You got to have fun. You got to enjoy it. One of the things that a lot of people ask is like, how do I have fun? I'm stressing out inside. I want to make sure I deliver and make sure I do right. I'm nervous. How do I have fun or look like I'm having fun? Well, you can't just look like you're having fun. You actually have to have fun. One of the things that's going to help you have fun is again, the preparation is being ready, is being confident. Because you are so prepared, you're going to have that flexibility to have fun. Now a simple way to ease into having fun is smiling Smile. A lot of people don't smile when they're on live video because they're thinking about a million things. Remind yourself to put a smile on your face. Why? Smiling is contagious. When you are smiling, other people will feel like they want to smile and they will feel good and they'll have good feelings associated with you. Why is it important in the first place to have fun? Well, remember when you were in grade school or in high school, who was your favorite teacher? Okay, Think about that teacher. What was cool about their class? Why did you like them so much? Probably because they were fun. They were cool, they made things interesting, they cracked a few jokes, they were self deprecating, they didn't take themselves too seriously. You should do the same on live video. Have fun, make a few jokes, enjoy yourself. Give some shout outs to people, share a little bit about yourself. And if you stumble, if you make a mistake, that's okay. Have fun with it, roll with it, give it a laugh, give it a chuckle. And Move on. Having fun is important because when people are watching you live, they're trying to find reasons why they should continue to listen. And they won't be so critical and judgmental. If they're having fun, if they're enjoying their time, if they're like, hey, this person's all right, they're going to cut you some slack and they're going to like you even more. Well, there you have it, guys. Let me recap. Number one is the right gear. We talked about the gear, the webcam, the mic, the boom arm, the wired earphones. Number two, stand up. Make sure you're standing when you're giving your presentation. Number three, look into the camera lens. Always go back to the camera. Number four, know your material, know your stuff. And number five, have fun and smile. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If it was helpful, let me know in a rating or review on your favorite podcast app. If you're on Spotify, just hit follow and then you'll be able to rate us. If you're on Apple Podcasts, for example, you can rate and review at any time and let us know what you think of the show. We love hearing from you and it's one of the best ways to support the show. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. I have over 22 years of of live teaching experience, whether in the classroom as a high school university teacher, whether it's through live video, as a online course creator, whether it's through meetings or through sales calls or webinars. The over 500 webinars I've done. This takes some practice, and I still learn. I'm still improving, I'm still tweaking and trying to up my game. But I have found that the first few weeks of me implementing these things, I saw the greatest improvement. I saw really fast improvement. And there's a reason why the bar is low. Most people don't make any effort or do any of the things I'm talking about. And by you doing them, you really differentiate. You really become miles ahead of the competition and stand out. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. Free ride Friday. I'll see you. I'll see you then. Take care.

You're juggling a lot, but you can still squeeze in a financial plan with the Northwestern Mutual Financial Advisor as your part. It's not only possible, it's personalized. So if you're tying the knot, closing on a house, or welcoming a little one, you'll be ready for whatever life tosses your way, it's the right time to feel less stressed and more certain. That's a better way to money. Let's get started@nm.com the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company Milwaukee, Wisconsin.