Full Transcript for The Command the Camera Method™ — How On-Camera Authority Actually Gets Built

this is more like physiological, not necessarily a skills gap. Yeah, initially for sure. So the skills matter, but you move toward the skills. If someone's nervous system is in, you know, let's call it a alarm mode, there's no amount of tips on, here's what you do with your hands, or here's how you use your voice. It's really going to land with them. You have to address what is that sort of threat response first, which means the real question that you need to be asking yourself when you're struggling on camera is, how do I reduce the threat, and then everything else flows from there? Hmm, so that kind of leads us into your method. You know, let's like walk the people through it. You have a specific hierarchy for how many, you know, how on camera authority gets built. Yeah, so there are four phases, if you will. And they really have to happen in order. If you skip one of the levels, or you don't pay enough attention to it, things begin to stall. So if you follow the order of these four phases, your authority is something that is bound to show up. So the four levels are one that we just touched on, which is that psychological safety, exposure, and repetition is the second skill and delivery mechanics. So that's the skill gap that you referenced, and then your visible authority is what comes next. Okay, so let's take them one at a time. I mean, let's start with level one. You know, that psychological safety, what does that actually look like in practice? Yeah, so if somebody doesn't feel safe, they can't improve. Like, that's the end of the game. So safety means, for many people, for most people, there's least a component of removing the pressure to be perfect, which, you know, it sounds very simple. We all know authenticity wins, perfection doesn't, but when you're trained to be precise, and to have, you know, one typo in a document renders it invalid, it's very hard to remove the pressure. So what this means in this particular case, and in this particular challenge, is normalizing the awkwardness. And it means simplifying the entire process. So, you know, let's not worry about gear, let's not worry about scripts. Those two things will come eventually. Let's not worry about lighting. Your ring light is not going to make you confident. You know, I hear that all the time. I, you know, I need better lighting, or I need a better microphone, or I need to write a better script. And what somebody is actually doing when they do that, is their sort of outsourcing the sense of safety to like these other very tangible things, right? Equipment. I can just control the environment that I'm going to feel okay. But all of that stuff that they're really working on, that safety stuff, is inside. And like I mentioned before, there's not a ring light that's going to make you feel okay and make you calm down. So what do you tell someone who is in that headspace though, you know, they genuinely believe they need to get that set up like perfect in order to be effective?

Yeah, so it's really, it's a language shift is what it comes down to. And, you know, for example, before somebody says record, I might have them say something like this, out loud. This is a repetition. This is a rep, that's all this is, right? And then if you can take that mindset into what you're recording, that sentence changes the stakes because you're no longer sort of, you know, I'm going to put in air quotes here, producing, it's not a performance, you're doing a rep just like if you were going to the gym. Now, there's another thing that I do, and this is where so many people get stuck, is they do like 47 takes. I'm not lying, I think the max I've ever heard is 117, but that's way too many. I tell people to limit themselves to two takes max. Maybe if you had an egregious error or you had a real fumble, maybe take it to three, but usually two is a really good stopping point. There's a couple of reasons why, because if you're doing take after take after take after take, you get more critical and more critical and more critical, and it sort of feeds that perfection cycle. If you do, you know, one take and it's not great, you do another, it's still not right, fine, and then you do take seven and you're starting to spiral, you know, take 15 and it's now two hours of work that really should have been like 30 seconds. So two takes forces you to accept that imperfection, and once you accept that, that's where that safety actually starts to build. So this kind of maps to the early weeks of your program, you know, like weeks one and two, correct? Yeah, exactly. Emotionally, what happens in those first two weeks is some relief, like clients come to me and they're bracing for something that's going to be absolutely grueling, and what you realize in those two weeks is, I was really making the story around this a lot bigger than it actually is, it was over complicating things. You know, the gear doesn't matter as much I thought, or the script doesn't need to be memorized, or I don't need to be absolutely perfect. And that realization drops the stakes significantly. So the job in those two weeks is repetition without judgment and that is all you're doing. So that brings us to level two, you know, that exposure and repetition. This seems like where the real work happens, right? Yeah, this is where the comfort level gets deeper and gets built up. So there's something I need to make clear about mechanism. The comfort level comes from the exposure. So doing the thing over and over again, if you record once every, you know, three weeks or whatever it is, your nervous system treats each session like it's rare and it feels very high stakes. And if you have gear and lighting and everything else set up around you and like the artificial environment of a studio, it feels even more high stakes. When you record frequently, when you do short imperfect clips, your body starts treating it as routine and the routine feels safe. So how much repetition are we talking about? Yeah, well, I wanted the things, so I have a background in TV news and I was really bad when I first started. I mean, not just really bad. But I was awful and it was scared and I had to do it every single day and that's how I got good at it, you know, good enough to have some Emmys and some other awards. How I got good is I forced myself to do it every single day. Now, if you wanna get really good, do it every day for a minute, right? However, that's a bit of a stretch for most people. I tell clients that the minimum they should go for is three short videos a week. You don't have to post all three. The posting comes later. The point right now is just the rep. So get in front of the lens, say something, whatever it is, it doesn't have to be about work and then stop and then, you know, do it again tomorrow or you know, the day after whatever it is. There's a mindset, and I hate talking about mindset but it is appropriate, I know it sounds a little bit woo-oo especially for the lawyer audience, but there's a piece that trips people up when it comes to that and it's that many of them feel like they need to be more confident or feel more confident before they post. And that's actually the opposite of the way that it works. You need to post in order to feel confident. Confident is a byproduct of that exposure. So it's downstream, it's not upstream. Emotionally, you know, what's happening for your clients around, you know, weeks three and four because I can imagine, you know, the initial relief where it's all probably. It does, weeks three and four are what I don't call my program this but internally it's what I call the frustration phase. This is where you get hyper-aware and you start noticing every single thing. So you notice your voice and you notice your hands and you notice your pacing and you notice, you know that your shoulders are up around your ears and they oftentimes interpret that awareness as regression. It's not regression, they're just becoming hyper-aware and they begin to see even more flaws and they think, oh my gosh, I'm actually getting worse. You're not getting worse. It's just that your awareness of your presentation skills or whatever you want to call them is growing before your skill set is catching up. It's very important to notice those two differences. It's, you know, do you play golf? Have you ever played golf? I play golf a couple of times. Okay. Okay. It's like learning a golf swing. So there's a phase where you're conscious of every single micro movement and it feels absolutely awful, right? That's adaptation that's happening. That's not failure, that's how you get better. So what do you tell this? What do you say to somebody when they're in that phase and they probably want to quit? Yeah, that happens a lot. Don't delete the takes that you don't like. That's, you know, watch them once, watch them clinically, not emotionally. It's very hard to do, but watch them, you know, from a distance, if you will. And I tell

them to ask themselves one question and that is what is one mechanical adjustment that I can make. I don't want you saying I need to fix my hands and I need to fix this and I need to fix that and try and do all the things at once. It's like running 65 marathons. You won't make any progress in any of them. So pick one. That way keeps the focus on that sort of incremental improvement and it prevents what can happen, which is what I talked about before, which is that spiral of self-criticism. So that kind of transitions us into level three of the actual mechanics you were talking about, you know, eye line posture at vocal tone. When does that stuff start to matter to people? Yeah, so they start to matter once repetition and safety are in place. If you try to teach someone mechanics before their body feels stable, right? That instruction doesn't land. They're too focused on all the other stuff. They can't absorb it because, right? We're going back to the nervous system. Now it's too activated, it's too reactive. Once you've built some basic comfort through repetition, then you can begin to refine. And I'll give you a couple of specific things. So one of the things you mentioned is eye line, it's huge. And I tell clients, as they're practicing to look at the lens as if there's one person there that you genuinely respect. Somebody you like, somebody you make you feel smart and funny and handsome or pretty or whatever it is, right? That person is standing right behind the camera. It's one person and that helps to bring, regulate to one person rather than thousands or tens of thousands or even millions, right? You bring panics when it starts to think along those lines of everybody is watching. So that simple reframe, and I will tell you this, it is easier said than done, but that simple reframe to one trusted person changes the way your eyes engage with the camera. You soften a little bit, you become more conversational. The next thing is vocal calibration. So usually what happens, it can go both ways. Either people slow down because they're trying to get every single word out correctly and they lose connection with what they're saying but they're pacing slows down. That happens, I don't know, 20% of the time. The other 80% of the time is people are nervous and they start to speed up. So drop your pace by about a good rough average is 10%. So most people speak at a rate of about two or so words per second. So record a 30 second video and see how many naturally when the stakes are low and see how many words per minute you at a words per second, you actually speak. And that's a good guideline. The other thing that you wanna think about is adding intentional pauses after key statements. It can't be super long because right, you're doing a 30 second video. You can't have a four or five second pause but what happens is most people really push or rush through their strongest points because a little bit of silence, right? In the news speak, it's dead air and you never want dead air, it feels uncomfortable but that pause is where your message really lands for your viewer. The other thing to mention is posture. So before heading report and gosh if you're watching this now, I don't have good posture, I'm feeling a little too relaxed but before you hit record, you wanna roll your shoulders back and down, lift your chest a little bit and take one full inhale and exhale. The exhale should be longer than the inhale because that is what signals safety to your nervous system. So maybe breathe in for four and breathe out for eight. That is a physiological reset. As I mentioned, the mechanics only work when your body feels stable. So that one breath helps set the foundation for that stability. So that is, that is super specific but I really like that. I like that you get into specific speakers I think that's gonna help people. I mean, how many times have we heard like really big advice? Like just be yourself or relax, right? That's what you see most of the time and it's totally useless. You can't, I don't know how to relax. I don't even know where to begin. And it's not with the relaxation because your nervous system, when you tell it to relax, then it gets stressed out that it's not relaxing, right? It responds to very concrete sort of physical inputs that you're giving it. Makes sense to me. So that kind of brings us to level four. You know, that visible authority you were talking about. You know, this is the destination. So, you know, how does it show up? Yeah, and there's a couple of things that people need to understand about authority on camera. You do not perform it emerges. Yes, there's always an element of, you know, you're in front of an audience and there are some things you need to do in order to make sure that your message lands, you know, understand the constraints of whatever medium you are speaking through. But what happens is that natural delivery, the understanding of the challenges the camera puts in front of you emerges when, again, I know I'm talking a lot about nervous system here, but it emerges when your nervous system is calm. That's when your delivery becomes natural. That's when your repetition has been consistent. And when you bring all of those things together, you know, the person on camera reads as authoritative, like automatically, you don't have to do anything to get there. So the mindset shift here is that you want to stop trying to look authoritative and focus, again, on feeling regulated because regulation looks like authority. I mean, that's what it is. The viewer is not going to be able to articulate or say, and they may not even understand why it is that they trust you. You know, they just do. And it's because everything is settled. And when everything is settled, you settle their nervous system as well. So that's really the payoff of the whole method, you know, instead of the physiological adaptation that produces a psychological result in the viewer. That's exactly it,

yep, in a nutshell. So that kind of brings us to segment three. You know, I want to go back to that emotional timeline, you know, for a second, because there's a phase that you haven't talked about yet that I think is the most important one. You know, that's that week's five and six. What happens there, Ms. Carey? That is the vulnerability spike. So that's sort of the maker break point of the entire program. And that's when you're public posting increase. So you've built the safety, you've done the reps, you've started refining the mechanics, and now you actually have to put something out to the world. And this is like the vulnerability hangover moment is what I call it. And it's where you pose something authentic and then immediately, and sometimes within a couple of minutes, I have certainly felt it myself. You are flooded with regret, sometimes shame, and you're like, why did I say that? Or that sounded weird, or people are going to judge this. And the, you know, usually the impulse, and sometimes the action is to delete it. You completely want to disappear. It is a visceral sense of overexposure. And that's exactly what it feels like. And this kind of happens to high performing professionals, you know, people who, you know, are you in courtrooms? Oh, yeah, absolutely, especially them, because they're used to operating in very controlled environments, where, you know, you prepare extensively, you control exactly what it is that you're going to say. And you know what, you know what the rules are. You know, a courtroom has rules of evidence, you know. And you've done it for years. If you're posting a video, let's say, to LinkedIn, right? There's no, yeah, it's supposed to be 30 or 60 seconds or whatever. There's not even any rules around the time frame. And so, you know, you've got that, and then you've got this sort of like added element of anybody can comment, anybody can screenshot. You know, your peers can see it for attorneys in particular. You know, I mean, it's a challenge for all of us, but for that group, especially, understandably so, peer judgment is really terrifying, or it can be. More so than even client rejection. So the idea of being mocked by other attorneys, you know, being called cringe within the network of people that know you, that sort of keeps attorneys up and night. So, what's the move when someone is in that hangover? Yeah. Well, there's three things that are part of the vulnerability hangover recover. And it's not, you know, greasy food and coffee and time. Well, maybe time a little bit, but, you know, first, you know, I predicted before it happens. I tell them in advance, after you post your first real video, you're going to want to delete it. You're going to feel exposed. That feeling is on its way, right? So be prepared for it. It's also completely and totally normal. And then when it arrives, they know it's coming. They know it's normal, and it doesn't have the same power that it would, you know, before realizing this. The second is don't delete. That is the rule. You've got to feel the discomfort. You got to sit with it. So deleting the video is not an option. Third is post again within about 72 hours. So I talked about this at the beginning of the show. Consistency is really what neutralizes that vulnerability element, right? The first post is terrifying. The second post is uncomfortable. The third post is, you know, yikes, by the fourth post, maybe it's, you know, maybe it's just too safe. So someone's very like, what actually happens when someone does push through this hangover and push through these circumstances? Yeah, this is sort of the thing that shocks them every single time. It's that nothing catastrophic happens. I mean, I know it sounds silly when you put it into words that way, but truly nobody mocks them. Nobody files a bar complaint. The comment section doesn't explode. And that realization, you know, I did the scary thing and the world didn't end. That is where all the change happens. That's like sort of the crucible of it. And then the fear spikes that they had before go away or they drop, maybe they don't completely go away, but they drop dramatically, like immediately. It's not gradual. It's on the nose. I can guarantee that will happen. So I kind of wanted to talk, you know, about one more concept before we wrap this idea of, you know, hero to host, what is that? Yeah, so most professionals in this applies to executives and founders. It's not just attorneys, but they approach the camera in what I like to call hero mode. So they're thinking, oh, they're thinking a number of things. They're thinking things like I need to prove that I'm smart. I need to show that I know more than everybody. I need to be impressive, right? And we all feel that to some degree when we're putting material out there. But that energy, if you don't know how to handle it, it reads as stiffness, sort of awkwardness. It's robotic. And when you have that, it creates distance between you and the viewer. Because you're performing intelligence rather than actually communicating it, right? You're demonstrating this stuff, but in a way that's, you know, performative. Host mode is a little bit different. Host mode is a lot different. Host energy sounds like, you know, let me clarify this for you or let me walk you through this or let me simplify this thing over here that's kind of complicated. And when you shift from hero into host mode, all the other stuff that we talked about, like the mechanic stuff, it begins to happen naturally. So your shoulders drop or your voice slows down or your message gets a little more sharp because you're not necessarily, well, you're not necessarily. You are no longer trying to impress people, you're trying to guide them. So how does someone make that shift in a practical sense? Yeah, so before you hit record, you want to ask yourself one question in particular. There may be some others, but this question is, you know, number one, is, am I

trying to impress or am I trying to guide? I mean, the answer is clear. We all know what we're trying to do or what really our goal is, and that is to guide. The reason that that is the winning answer, the reason that one is what you need to be doing is because modern audiences, and this is increased dramatically in the past, probably six years or so, especially the audiences that most attorneys, a lot of them anyway, are trying to reach, are wildly skeptical of things that sound too perfect and things that sound too polished. They trust clarity, yes, but they also trust someone that they feel is talking to them or with them rather than at them. So that connects to something that I call the paradox of polish, right? It's another sort of element of this training, which is, over production actually increases distance. So very slight imperfections. I'm not talking about egregious errors or huge flops or dropping F-bombs, but slight imperfections do work. So I call them personality showcases. If you reframe them that way, it allows the audience sort of behind the scenes look at who you are and how you handle things. So let's say you stumble once on a video, you keep it. If your sentence structure is not pristine, you keep it. Your presence, the way that you are and who you are on camera is so much more important than the performance element, right? That's what all of this really comes down to. It's you over the performance. So this kind of has to be a hard sell though for that, you know, if the perfectionist attorney. Is the hardest sell in the entire program, but it is 100% the most important one because without understanding that, the rest falls apart. And it takes practice to get there. You have to do the thing. You have to go through those four phases. You have to get comfortable with small flubs and imperfections. And I will say this, it was hard for me. In a news environment, you don't have time to redo things. You don't redo things. You're live on the air, mistakes are all the time, but you can't go back and re-edit them. So I got really, really comfortable with having those mistakes. And I will tell you, when I started my business, I felt very differently when I was on camera for social media. I also fell into the trap of everything needs to be perfect. So you can move from that. You have to move from that. It just takes some practice and some guidance to get there. So if someone's listening to this and they've been avoiding the camera, maybe for months, maybe for years, what's the one question you want them to walk away asking themselves? How do I increase safe repetition, right? That's all you need to be asking. You want to stop asking, what is my content strategy or how do I look more confident? Start with safe repetition. Two takes, three short recordings, no pressure to post. It is just the reps. And once you got that, the rest of it takes care of itself. It's good stuff, Ms. Gary. Super useful stuff, super informative. So where can the people at home find you? Yeah, thank you. Easiest way is probably to connect with me on LinkedIn as of this recording. My website is going through a bit of a revamp. So you can find me on LinkedIn. You can book a command, the clarity call. There is a link to do so right in my headline. Amazing. Thank you so much, Ms. Gary. Yeah, thank you for having me. All right, thank you all for listening as well. If you found this episode helpful, please like, subscribe, and leave a review. And I can't wait to see you next time. Thanks for watching. Be sure to hit that like and subscribe button and leave us a review in the comments.