How to Talk to a Camera (Even if You've Never Done it Before!)

I've been creating video content for over 6 years and have built a 6-figure coaching business doing it. I used to commute an hour for construction work each way, 6 days a week, to make the same amount of money I make now talking to a camera. Learning this skill has changed my life forever and my clients' and students' lives too. So today I'm going to give you my best tips for presenting on camera like a pro so that you can grow your own online business faster, even if you've never done this before. Now, my first tip is probably the most important tip, and that is don't talk to the camera. Stop talking to the camera. Instead, talk to the person on the other side. Of the camera. You are speaking to an audience of one, and that one person is your dream client. A huge mistake that people make when they're speaking to a camera is they say, hey everybody, how's it going everyone? But the person on the other side of the camera typically is just one single person who's looking into a video or they're scrolling on Instagram or TikTok and they're trying to watch a video. But it's usually just one person. You're not speaking to all of the eyeballs who maybe watch your videos, whether that's hundreds, thousands or millions of people. You are speaking to the one person that you truly want to impact. And the beautiful thing about content creation is that when you speak to that one person, you can have millions of people watching that same video, but it's always going to be the one person. And you want to attract the right person into your life, especially if you want to make money from your camera talking efforts. I talk with coaches, consultants, and experts every single day, and they see the value in video content because it really connects you with your audience, etc. Everything's moving to video content, TikTok, everything is promoting more video content. So they want to master this skill, but they are stuck in their tracks with actually doing it. And if you're in that same boat where every time you sit down to talk to a camera, you just kind of freeze or you don't know what to say or what you're gonna talk about, or you're fearful of saying the wrong thing or presenting it in some way, the biggest challenge for you is that you are focusing on yourself more than the person that you want to help. And it's awkward. This is not like a natural thing to do. You are sitting there looking at a camera this piece of technology, this eyeball just staring back at you. But the biggest mindset shift is realizing that I am not talking to the camera, I am talking to the other person on the other side of the camera. Here's a simple thing that you can do to better help you in talking to the person on the other side of the camera rather than the camera itself. You can literally put up a picture or a sticky note with the name of someone that you know who needs your help. It could be a friend, a colleague, your second cousin, or maybe a client that you have or a past client that you've worked with before, and you want to speak to that person because that's the person that you can think of that will help you in speaking to them rather than the camera. It's incredibly simple, but it does help you build the habit of speaking to the person on the other side of the camera rather than the camera itself. So who do you know that you can speak to when you are presenting on camera that is not the camera? You're making a video for that person. Who would that be? And if you're not really sure on who that person is, for you or the things that they're struggling with, and I want to invite you to my next Get Paid Clients Challenge. This is a live 5-day coaching experience. It is not an online course. It is not a prerecorded webinar. I am literally sitting there in the room with you, coaching you on how to turn your expertise into a legitimate income stream that is consistent. I'm going to show you how to attract and enroll high-paying clients without a big audience, creating complicated funnels, or doing those weird, creepy sales tactics. It's 1 to 2 hours a day. It's fully online. It is a paid event. Event so that you actually show up and take it seriously. But honestly, people are landing clients shortly after the last event. You can too. I will be there to coach you, to give you feedback, and to inspire you to take action. And it is just going to be in a simple Zoom room. So if you want to get direct coaching on your ideas, your offers, and your strategies, then I highly recommend that you come to the next Get Paid Clients Challenge. To learn more, visit ProfitYourKnowledge.com/challenge. Now, my second tip for talking to the camera with confidence is to increase your energy. Now, the big caveat here: more energy does not mean talking faster or talking super loud. If that is the type of personality that you are, then go for it because that's just how you talk. But instead, I want you to think about tonality and pacing. So for example, if I talk like this with the same exact tone and pacing for the whole entire time, then it becomes a very boring message and it's hard to retain your attention. That's not what we want to do. Instead, we want to use our tonality to go up and down and our pacing to speak a little bit faster, but then also have some pauses and make it a bit more dynamic in the way that we're doing this. Because when you use tonality like I am right now, your message becomes a lot more engaging and you feel a lot more professional on camera. So on top of tonality and pacing, you also really want to focus on pronunciating your words. I used to be a choir kid, believe it or not. I'm in a punk band and I play drums and I also sing. And one of the biggest things that they taught us in choir is to fully pronounce your words so that the lyrics can be heard when you guys are singing, you know, all together. When you finish a word with T as the last letter, like bunt, then you'd say bunt. And just really focusing on pronunciating your words, it helps you, one, feel a lot more articulate, and two, it increases your authority because your message is being more understood. Now, another key way to increase your energy without yelling or talking super fast is to also just increase your passion in what you are saying. I imagine that you are very passionate about your topic, whether it's personal finance, fitness, business leadership, project management, like whatever it is, just have more passion in that. And when you can get past you focusing too much on yourself and instead focusing on the person that you really want to serve, it's a lot easier to have more passion. Because you're just trying to serve this person. So when you are presenting on camera, increase your energy by 20%. This right now is me talking about 80%, I would say, and I'm still having a good tonality and pacing. But this is kind of how I would talk in just like a normal conversation, just hanging out, chatting with a friend. When you're on camera, it's like the equivalent of the camera adds 10 pounds. Well, the camera decreases 10 to 20% of your energy. So when you present on camera, you do want to just have a bit more energy. But again, it just means raising your voice just like a little bit and just having a bit more passion and energy in the words that you're saying. But that doesn't mean talking super fast and mulling over your words just to like get as many words as you can in per second. So think about this like a calm conversation with a friend, just slightly elevated. Now, my next tip goes completely against what I just told you, and that is to slow down. Embracing the pause when you speak is one of the most underrated speaking skills. But what happens, especially when you're new, is that you want to just keep on talking to fill in the space. But when you embrace the pause, when you land a key point or you want people to stay engaged and get them thinking, that makes you a truly dynamic speaker. Barack Obama is one of the greatest public speakers of our time, and his 2004 DNC speech when he was just running for office was way faster paced than his later speeches in his career. Take a listen.

If there is a child on the South Side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me even if it's not my child.

So Barack is speaking at a much faster pace. He has longer sentences strung together. It's high emotional energy, but he has less space between his ideas. Now, when you compare that to one of Barack's later speeches like this one—

Generations of citizens who believe that America is a constant work in progress, who believe that loving this country requires more than singing its praises or avoiding uncomfortable truths. It requires the occasional disruption.

You can see that he's speaking at a slower pace. He has intentional pauses after key phrases, shorter, clear sentence chunks, and he has more weight behind each word. So when you're speaking, make sure that you give your words some breathing room without losing the energy. My next tip is to engage your body. People will believe your body before they ever believe your words. Studies show that only 7% of meaning came from words, 38% from tone, and 55% from facial expressions and body language when interpreting emotions. While your words do have weight and they are very important, your body language should be doing a lot of the heavy lifting. Everything from your eye contact, your facial gestures, your posture, your tone of voice, all these things play a crucial role in you better communicating your message. So while words are important, we do want to use our entire body to communicate a message because that's all information that people are gathering. And it's incredibly important when you're speaking on camera because people are seeing all of this happen real time. And one of the easiest ways that you can use your body is to use your hands when you deliver points. So if you're listing a couple of things, you can use your hands to list those things. If you are counting with numbers, then put the numbers up on your hands. If you're saying "Here are 10 tips to do this," or "Tip number 4 is this," then show it on your hands. Ali Abdaal is a master of using his body to communicate his messages. Take a look.

You're letting fear of judgment and fear of failure and fear of self-doubt— you're letting these things hold you back from doing the things that you really want to do.

Now, if you're Italian, this should be no problem for you, but if it does not feel natural for you to use your hands, then just start practicing using your hands and communicating with more of your body than you just sitting in front of the camera and talking with your mouth. And my next tip is one that's going to make your life a lot more enjoyable, and that's simply to have fun. When you are having fun, it shows up in your work and it's received on the other side. When I was in high school, me and my first girlfriend broke up and I had a show with my band that night and I was very upset because of the whole situation. She broke up with me. I'm not going to lie, but it was my first love and my heart was crushed and I was not happy. But we had a show with the band, so I went out to the show and with all this stuff on my mind, I said, you know what? Like, I just want to go have fun with the band and just enjoy myself. So we got up on stage. I just let go of everything and I just focused on playing and having fun during the show. And that show, I had the most amount of people ever come up to me afterwards and praise me on my playing, say, dude, you look like you're just having such a good time up there. And it's because I was. But the feedback was so big and that has honestly stuck with me for content creation, for speaking on stages, for still playing music. I always tell my guys in the band, I'm like, hey guys, rule number 1 is have fun. Rule number 2 is to sound good, because if you're having a lot of fun and you mess up, nobody's even going to notice. Fun is contagious. So the more fun that you're having, the more fun people are going to have watching and listening to you present. One of the simplest things that you can do to have fun is to, yes, have more passion in what you're saying, increase your energy, but honestly, just smile more. It is scientifically proven that people are attracted to others who smile. And they are pushed away from people who frown or scowl. There was a study by Orbit that found that 69% of people preferred a smiling face not wearing any makeup whatsoever to a non-smiling makeup-wearing face. People think that the makeup made them feel more beautiful, but really it was just the smile. So smile more when you are creating content. You don't need to make it unnatural by any means, but it's a really simple way for you just to have more fun when you are on camera. And another huge thing that's helped me really enjoy content creation is by creating an environment where content creation is enjoyable for me. Years ago, I used to have this black backdrop behind me and it was such a pain to get it set up and I'd have to set up my camera. I'd have to like manually put up my lights every single time. It was a nightmare just to get set up to create content where by the time I actually started creating the content, I lost the joy in it. I was like, oh, it's now a chore. I have to do this. But now with my current setup, I have very polished audio and video and my lights are set up. I have control over the lighting in the room. I literally click about 3 to 4 buttons and then I am good with this picture and sound quality to just hit record and dive into it. So adjust your desk, your camera setup, your layout so that you feel comfortable and confident in delivering your message. My client Jason is a prime example. He's been crushing it with his YouTube channel. He just passed his first 1,000 subscribers with just 17 videos and has already made over $20,000 from his YouTube channel alone. And when Jason started, he was not comfortable on camera. He was brand new. New to content creation. He knew nothing about creating YouTube videos and didn't even want to be a YouTuber, but I convinced him otherwise, and it's paid off very well for him. And if you look at his older videos, his background wasn't as good, his setup wasn't as comfortable compared to his newer videos where he's in a completely different position. His shot, quite frankly, looks a lot cleaner, and his environment alone has helped him feel more comfortable and confident when delivering his message. So what can you do to adjust your surrounding or where you're creating content so that you feel comfortable and you're able to deliver your message and have more fun. One big thing that Jason did was he got a standing desk because he felt that him delivering his message while standing was a lot better for him. Now, I imagine that you want to create content to make money online with coaching, consulting, courses, digital products, public speaking, anything like that. Yes, presenting on camera is a massive skill that's going to help you make a ton more money when you get this stuff down. But on top of that, you also need a good platform to deliver and sell your products and services on the internet. So watch this video next and I will show you my 5 best online course platforms for selling your knowledge online. Hey, if this was helpful, please like it, share it, leave a comment down below if you have any questions or whatever a big takeaway was for you. It really helps in growing this channel and it's a massive thank you from me over to you. As always, take what you learned here, get out there, make something happen, and I'll see you in the next one.