In this solo presentation, video strategist Sheryl (also referred to as Cheryl) draws on her 25 years of broadcasting experience—over 20,000 live hours—to advise coaches, consultants, solopreneurs, and small‑business owners on building an online presence through video. She frames the decision as a choice between two video formats: pre‑recorded, edited videos and real‑time live streaming. While acknowledging the control and polish of recorded content, she argues that editing is a major bottleneck that consumes time, money, and skill, especially for solo operators wearing many hats. Consequently, she recommends starting with live streaming, despite common fears about on‑camera nerves, appearance, background, and equipment. She emphasizes the massive audience for video (billions of viewers) and the high return on investment of live streams, urging viewers to overcome the listed objections, use the provided resource link, and watch a follow‑up video on Facebook Live Producer for technical guidance.
Chapters
If you're a control freak, you might not like what I'm about to say. If you're a coach, consultant, an entrepreneur, small business owner, someone who is an offline authority but you need to build your online presence to grow your business, you are faced with the choice of how you want to market yourself. Now, I happen to be a video strategist, so I look at marketing through the lens of video, and that is where my professional experience stems from. I spent 25 years as a broadcaster and have done over 20,000 hours of live broadcasting over the course of my career, which may be aging me, but I'm okay with it. So you're tasked with figuring out how you're gonna market yourself. Let's say you determine that, you know what, Sheryl, I've been watching your videos and I know I should be doing video. I just don't know what kind of video I should make. Well, you're really faced with two choices. You can either create recorded videos or sometimes people call them pre-recorded videos, which are packaged, which are edited. And there's lots of things that we could talk about as in terms of how we would create a recorded video. We could talk about branding and video elements and, and on all of the, all of the components that come with that. And then over here is another option. And this option is live streaming. Live streaming is real-time broadcasting in the moment, right? Real-time live. Those are the two options that you are faced with. Now, when people ask me whether I'm being interviewed on a podcast or a summit or a live stream or something like that, and people say, well, Cheryl, where should I start? Let's say I'm new to this. I want to build my online presence, but I don't know. Should I be doing live streaming or should I be doing recorded? My ultimate answer is that you really want to have both at some point. Ideally, in a perfect world, you get to a point where you have both of these types of videos in your arsenal of video assets that you're building in your business. But when you're first starting out, you likely have to make a choice because you only have 24 hours in a day. Most of the people that are working with me or who are part of my audience are solopreneurs wearing all the hats in the business, and we want to be and need to be as efficient as possible in the creation of the videos because the videos, They don't fall from the sky. So how can we do that? My belief is that where you should start is over here with live streaming. And that might come as a surprise to you because most people expect me to say start with recorded video because we have more control. And that's true. You can re-record those segments as much as you want. You can, you can, you know, keep going until you quote unquote perfect it. But on this side of the equation is editing. And editing is the bottleneck of, in my opinion and experience, the bottleneck comes from the editing process. Can you outsource it? Of course. But still, nonetheless, even if you outsource it, it becomes a bottleneck because it's a process that, that needs to happen either by you or someone else. And it does take time and it's a skill set. If you wanna learn how to edit, you have to learn to gain that skill set in order to become proficient. I'm a self-taught editor, and I, because I had a lot of experience on camera before I became a video strategist and a video expert, but I had to learn how to edit myself. It took me many years to become proficient at it. So it's a skill set that can be learned. I'm living proof of it, but know that it does take time. That is why I recommend that if you're starting out and you need to build your online presence and we need to get you online and in building your brand, start with live streaming. And I know that that comes with its own set of challenges. The questions become, what do I talk about? What if I'm nervous? I hate the way I look. I don't like the way I sound. I don't know what to wear. I don't like my background, and on and on. And I don't have the right equipment. And the truth is that while those are considerations, those are things that can be tackled and should be tackled because the ROI The return on investment of doing live streaming is so great that it's absolutely worth looking at those issues and resolving them so that you can open up a whole world of opportunity for yourself to grow your business. We have billions, with a B, billions of people who are consuming video, and the question becomes, are they consuming yours? Are they consuming your videos, your life? If you'd like to know more about how I could support you to get on live streaming and to really build your audience let me, you know, look in the comments. There's a link there for you and a resource that will help you to start, to start moving in the direction, getting things going by live streaming and getting your message out to more. Thank you so much for watching. Be sure to check out this other video in my lineup, which will talk about the Facebook Live Producer feature on Facebook.
