Getting Over Your Stage Fright

Hey everybody, Drew McLellan here from Agency Management Institute, this week coming to you from Denver, Colorado. You know I've been producing these videos now for, I don't know, a couple of years and actually now I do two videos a week. I do what I think of as my baseball shirt videos, so the weekly tip. And then I also do what we call the question of the week videos. So if you're on our newsletter list, every Sunday night, I answer a question that an agency owner asked me that week. So I'm in front of the camera a lot but I have to tell you when I first thought about doing video, I did not want to do it. I was uncomfortable being on camera. I was not sure that what I had to say was going to be all of that earth-shattering and the enormity of the potential audience was sort of off-putting. I was worried about producing something that could be viewed by so many, could be consumed by so many. But I knew the channel was important. And I knew that when I just thought with my head and not my own worry, I knew that the content we could produce on these videos would be helpful. So I had to get over my stage fright, if you will. And the way I did that was, I decided that I had to sort of talk myself off the ledge in that I was producing this video for everyone in the world. And I decided to record the video with a specific agency owner in mind. A specific owner who had always been encouraging to me, who had always found the work that I did valuable and who was very gracious in their praise and gratitude about how I had been helpful. And so I thought, "Well, what if I just shot the video as though I were talking to that one person." And as long as I knew I had a receptive audience of what that one person who would receive what I had to offer and know that I was trying to be helpful, then I could stand in front of the camera and I could deliver the message. So every video I've shot, every video I've shot, although it is for all of you, in my head, I am talking to this one specific person because they make me feel comfortable and they encourage me to do what I love to do which is teach. So if you think that you should have a podcast or a video channel or produce some sort of content that feels daunting to you, that you're not really sure if you have whatever it takes to do that on a regular basis, and if the size of the audience puts a lot of pressure on you, that it's got to be amazing every time, maybe my trick of picking one person from your community that sort of represents everyone in your community, that is sort of the best of your community or your audience base or however you want to think about it, and you just talk to that one person or you just in the podcast, talk to that one person, whatever the channel is, maybe that gives you the courage and the comfort to push past your own sort of self-limiting beliefs and allows you to teach and share in a different way, in a valuable way for everyone in your community. So, I'm hoping you'll at least consider giving that a try. I look forward to seeing what you produce and I know that for me, it made the difference of me being able to hit the record button or not so I hope it does the same for you. All right? I'll be back next week. See you then.