How to Not Look Like a Webcam Zombie with motivational sales and marketing speaker Ryan Dohrn

Hey, hey friends, Ryan Dohrn here, your sales and marketing coach. And today we're going to talk about how not to look like a webcam zombie, how to market better, how to sell better, and look your best when you're working online. Well, what I've done is I've set up my webcam for success, and I'm going to give you the little steps here. So this is my friend Leanne Cassavoy. Well, we were not friends. We are now because I use her as an example all the time, and she is a self-proclaimed webcam zombie, or so she was. back in the day. Now, this is pretty common. I see a lot of you— if we could see your— if I could see your camera today, I'd see that you might be in your bathrobe, your hair may or may not be done depending on the circumstance, you shut off all the lights in your room because you don't want people to see all the junk that's in the background. And what I really notice here— Leanne, by the way, works for PC World magazine— is I'm looking right up her nose. And I don't know about you, but that's not very attractive. Leanne is a great author and writer and a tech person. And this is not how you want to be perceived. So what do you do? Well, what most people do is they just immediately go to the sunniest room in their house. Well, the problem with that is the more light that you have behind you, the darker your figure is going to become. Now granted, this is a huge improvement compared to this because at least she's got her camera at eye level, which we're going to talk about in a second, raising up your web, your laptop or your camera. to be eye level, but that light behind her is really bright and really distracting. And for all the ladies on the call, because guys, we don't care as much about our hair, right? For all the ladies in the background, when you're backlit like this, it's going to show every imperfection in your haircut. Now, maybe you're like me, it's time for a haircut, for a post-COVID haircut, right? So just be thinking about that. You really don't want a lot of bright light behind you. It just, it doesn't, it doesn't give you the best impression. Also, it makes you look really, really flat, so there's really no dynamic to the way that your face will potentially look. So here's the side note: it actually makes your face look wider, so it makes you look like you have more weight on your face, if you will. So that's another reason not to have a lot of light behind you. Now, this is a pretty typical sales setup or a podcasting setup or a webcam setup, so let's take a look at what it looks like. Now, you probably don't want the cat necessarily in the background, but why is there a little mat right here for the cat? Why is there a mat right here? Well, if the cat can't stay out of your office, you got to give it a place to live, right? Now, people say all the time, Ryan, do people care about if I have my kid in the shot or if I've got my cat roaming through the background? And I know that you might think that nobody cares, but quite honestly, after this many weeks of working from home, you really should kind of have that figured out. Okay, let's walk through these components. All right, first, here is the webcam. So if you've got a dual camera setup, let's just say as an example that your laptop sits right here on your desk and then you're connected to your monitor over here. Just as an example, your webcam is going to be separate and needs to be on your monitor here. What you don't want to be doing is looking at this monitor here and your webcam being someplace over here on the left. It's just peculiar. And it's awkward. All right, the next thing, uh, that, that camera there is at eye level, and I'm going to show you how to handle that in a second. What I have is a little device right here that holds my laptop, and that device goes up and that device goes down, and I'll show you that in a second. All right, now this is a really nice webcam webcasting microphone, and that is called a Blue— I think it's a Blue Snowball, and they're $40. You can buy them on Amazon. They've got a little built-in little filter here To make sure that you don't pop your Ps like that. And it's right near this person, right near their mouth. Now, the webcam itself up here, a lot of times they'll have a little microphone built in, and that's what you're using. Okay, the problem with that is that when you're using that microphone, you know, quite honestly, it sounds really echoey in your office. The other thing you might consider is if you're in a room with nothing on the walls, put things on the walls. Make sure that you've got carpet. In a hardwood floor room, it sounds like you're in an echo chamber. Sounds like you're in your bathroom, and you definitely don't want that to, to happen. Now, what I've got here is a light just like you see here. Now, this is called a softbox light, or as I like to refer to it, my Barbara Walters light. Does anybody remember when Barbara Walters was on TV all the time? She always looked like real nice, and it got rid of all the wrinkles. There's a filter on the camera. Well, I'm not going to explain that filter to you, but this softbox light, what it does is it takes a harsh light and it actually softens it. And you can buy those, a single one, on Amazon for $29. So altogether, the setup— you might have $100 in the setup, but in my opinion, it's definitely worth it as you're trying to look really professional. The other thing is, and you don't need a thing like this that goes up and down— this big old fancy mic is more like a prop than anything else. I mean, it works, you can hear me well, but more than anything, it's kind of a prop. So just think about that. So the Blue microphone, in my opinion, is one of the best on the market that you can get out there. Okay, now when we talk about the camera, it's super important if you're not going to be a web zombie to recognize that your camera is down here. And when your camera is kind of low, it's kind of looking up your nose. So a lot of times when you've got your laptop, which a lot of you are working from home on your laptop, your laptop is sitting on the table or whatever, and then the camera is below And so what happens is, you know, you're looking up your nose and that's just really unattractive. So in this particular setup, let's watch what happens. Do you see here on the screen? Focus on the screen. So we're seeing the roof or the ceiling, uh, rather of their office, and then they're kind of looking up the nose. And so it's just really unattractive. Now the microphone is in the right spot, so it's out of the camera's view. So, you know, you don't see the microphone and it is close enough to her to pick that up, which is great. By the way, when you buy these microphones, you're going to need to get the cord also that plugs into a standard USB. And again, I can't reemphasize it enough, the microphones that are built into these webcams are not good microphones. It'll sound real echoey in your room. Sounds like you're kind of in your, in your shower or in your bathroom. All right, so let's take that camera. Oh man, I don't even want to look at that. This is what it looks like when people don't take care of their webcam. Yowch, that's scary, my friend. All right, this is what you really want it to look like. So you want the camera, whether it's on your laptop or whatever, you want the camera to be exactly eye level with you. And when the camera is eye level with you, then it makes you look right. So my camera is right here. It's exactly— if I could draw a line from my camera right to my eyes, it's eye level. Then she's got the microphone that's here. That's great. Look at her picture. See, now we're even. We're not looking up her nose and we're not seeing the ceiling. Now in her case, you can see she's got a gray background. And that's exactly what I have. Now, you don't have to do that. Leanne is going to show us a picture here in a second where she's just in her office and there's books behind her. You know, that's fine. So the paper behind me was $29. It is 10-foot wide, and I don't know how tall it is. It's on a roll. And then I bought a little carrier and a little stand that'll hold it, and I can roll that up and down. Now, this is covering a window in my office, which some people would say, oh my gosh, you're covering your window. And I am because I'm easily distracted and I need the background more than I need sunlight. I can go out for sunlight. Now there is something here to point out though. There are 2 things. And the first is, see this lamp that she has here? When she goes to turn that on, which it's not on now, when she goes to turn it on, that's going to be really harsh lighting. It's going to make her face look really dark and it's going to make her eyes look really inset. So that's why you really want to get one of those softbox lights for it. So get your camera up, even if your camera needs to be on a box or something, that would be fine as well. I'll show you the tool I use in a second. Okay, now this is an example. So Leanne is really trying to not be a webcam zombie, which is great, but you'll notice there's like toys in the background. She's in her kitchen, there's a lot of bright light, and I think she's still in her bathrobe in this particular case. You just see all the mess that's going on behind, behind her. Now, is anybody going to necessarily care? I think in the first couple weeks of COVID-19 Nobody really cared. And now if we're going to be selling with video in a very, very good, robust, in a superstar kind of way, we can potentially do better than that. So really watch your backgrounds. Maybe buy one like this. You don't have to do that, but if you're going to take your salesmanship to a whole new level, friends, you're going to have to step up your game a little bit. And don't let anybody try to convince you, oh, it's not that big of a deal. It actually is a big deal. Now if you're an older sales dog like me, The more you know about technology, the better you do at this, the more you're going to sell. Because what you do is you're basically proving to all the young whippersnappers at your office that you know how to do it right, and it'll cause them to up their game as well. All right, so here's a background that's better. So Leanne's in her office, she's got books in the background, that's great. The lighting is not too bad, looks a little blue, but this is a much, much better background and such an improvement. Look at how professional that she looks. Now you notice the background behind her is a little bit darker. Looks like she has a little light on it, so that's excellent. And Leanne's looking real good now. So, um, you know, when you think about your setup, I know it seems like a lot, like, oh gosh, that is so much to do. Friends, if you get good at it, you're going to do 6, 8, 10, 15 calls like this a week, and you just want to make it really, really easy on yourself. All right, here's the 3 things that I use. So you've got the Blue Snowball microphone, $49. Uh, Sellens Photography sells this softbox light for $20 on Amazon. And then you've got this, uh, Beyota laptop holder for $57. Um, you don't need one that's quite that fancy, but if you want one, there's cheaper ones that are out there. Or I've got a Varidesk that just goes up and down, so I like that. It's a tabletop one. It's kind of expensive, but it's really cool. And then you've got your laptop holder. Use a box if you need to. Use a box. To get it above the way. Now somebody's got a question. The question is about my keyboard. So I, you know, I've got a wireless keyboard. Good question. A wireless keyboard. And so I type on the wireless keyboard. My laptop is on the stand in front of me so I can raise it up and down. My mouse is down here as well. And those are the tools that I have. Now I know we spent a lot of time on this, but friends, I think it's important. You don't want to be a webcam zombie, okay? Look at the difference in Leanne's picture. Between, you know, you seeing here her in dark and you seeing her in the light of things. She just looks so much more professional. Now I'm looking at this and thinking that I think on the left— I don't know if she has a lot of makeup on on the right, I'm not really a professional in makeup— but I think she's got a little bit of makeup on and the left she doesn't. It's really up to you. I don't think people are judging you by your makeup per se. I think they're judging you by how does this overall presentation look. You got to think of it, friends, as presentation. And if you do it right, you will come across professional and you won't be a webcam sales zombie. And I think that's very, very important. Best of luck out there. If you need help, reach out to me, ryan@ryandohrn.com. And remember, if sales and marketing were easy, everybody'd be doing it, and they're not. So we're either crazy, which is possible, or we found a career that'll feed our families for a lifetime. Hey, go over to LinkedIn. Let's make sure we get connected on LinkedIn and all the social channels. Happy to help you putting up content each and every week. If I can be of help, more online over at ryandohrn.com.