How to Speak Confidently On Camera: A Guide for Content Creators

1. Trailer: Video is Insanely Important: Video in the 21st century has become ubiquitous. It is one of the main ways to absorb information and make decisions in the world today. It's hard for me to imagine my life without video. Most of the things that I do now as in the skills that I have, I have acquired online through video. I've built an entire career around video. It's an integral part of my entire life. In a really weird way, I have created a life around my ability to speak and present myself on camera in front of one of these guys. In all honesty, it has been a windy journey. Hello, again, my name is Nathan. I don't care who you are. If you're watching this, you're human. Argentinians will make this sound when they're looking for a particular word that they can't find. It definitely was not easy at first and there isn't much of an instruction manual on how to go about doing this. That's why I'm making this. I want to share what I've learned, how I've gone about developing the ability to express myself authentically online through video in this way. This is really me. After creating hundreds of videos over the last five-and-a-half years and posting dozens of hours of my own material online, I can say that I can speak on this subject with confidence. In this class, we're going to cover a whole variety of different things. A deep dive into my mindset on the subject like what are the things that I'm thinking about? Insights that I pulled from my own journey, how I go about preparing before I actually speak in front of camera, tips and tricks to make the whole thing appear seamless. A few ideas of mine on connecting ideas and telling a narrative. Plus I'm going to share along the way a variety of exercises that you can use to practice and develop this skill. Because that's what this is. This is a skill. It doesn't really matter if you feel uncomfortable speaking in front of camera right now, we all start out that way. Or at the very least, the vast, vast majority of us. This is without a doubt, something that you can develop for yourself and I would be honored to be a guide throughout this process and to share what I know. I get asked all the time about how I go about planning and creating the videos that I share online. Here's the breakdown and explanation. Let's dive into things. 2. Why This is A Skill That Matters: Why this is a skill that matters. Let's first set up a little bit of groundwork here, a little bit of context as to why this is such an important skill to develop in the 21st century. You consume video on a day-to-day basis, as in every day. I feel like I can safely make that assumption. Just look at what you're doing right now. You're using the Internet, you're consuming video right now to learn a new skill. That's how I am communicating with you in this very moment. Over time, video has come to play a bigger and bigger role in our lives, in how we make decisions, in how we get informed, in a whole variety of different ways. As I mentioned before, I have acquired new skills and use the Internet tremendously throughout my life. I've to expand my horizons to learn new things. I think it's safe to assume that you have probably done the same like I said before, you're doing it right now and it's become something that feels natural and normal. Mastering this skill, developing this ability really means developing a way to reach people around the world. That alone presents an enormous amount of potential benefits, potential advantages. I can't really imagine my life without having developed this ability. It's cool to be able to spread an idea of mine to different corners of the globe. This is also something of a ripple effect on other parts of my life. Things like my ability to organize and present my thoughts and ideas just in a general sense, in my own head, in my own life, with people in my life, as well as online. This is not at all like speaking in front of a live audience. Yeah. I feel like my body never got the memo. At age 12, it was just like, you're tall enough. But as we spend more and more time in digital spaces, this is the option we have at our disposal. To present an idea in front of lots of people and as such. As we spend more time in these digital spaces, this is becoming more and more valuable. As a general rule, people are drawn to those that can confidently articulate and share their ideas. They're definitely more likely to listen to you if your presentation is clean and well-delivered. I think it's a strong human desire to want to be heard. Fortunately, there's something you can do about that by developing this ability, by making an effort to practice, organizing your thoughts, and delivering them in a concise and clear way. Like I said before, I've been doing this for a long time and I've been doing a lot of it. A little bit later on in this class, I'm going to go into the journey that I've been on and the takeaways that I feel like I have been able to get over the years. Insights that I'd like to share with you so that you don't have to make the same mistakes as me. Like I said, it's been unclear navigating all of this. I definitely wish I had a lot of this information when I was starting out. You may find that my story has a little bit of a helpful reminder if you will and that I was not born with this ability, I've really struggled with it for a very, very long time, and I think that's normal. I like to think of it in terms of a muscle rather than talent or no talent because I feel like that's a little bit of an unhealthy mindset to have. The point I'm trying to make here is that this is a skill that has many potential benefits. Like for example, it can help you make money or more effectively share your ideas with people around the world. Ultimately it is a skill that you can develop. There's something you can do about it. I think all of that is good news. Having said that, I want to dive into a little bit more the nitty-gritty as to what people are really looking for. 3. What People Really Care About: I want to tell you a little story. A few years ago, I had this idea in my head that when you make a video online, when you record yourself, you have to pack it with as much energy from beginning to end as you possibly can so that you don't lose people's attention, really just go all out at 60 miles an hour. I don't know exactly how I arrived at this conclusion. If it was because of the videos that I watched as a kid, or maybe the videos that I had seen online in the early days of social media, I'm not sure. This idea that I had in my head really damaged how I presented myself online in ways that I'm going to break down in the next few moments. The first point that I'd like to make here is that you should really, really think about who you're trying to reach. The goal, in my case, was and still is to reach other people that share a curiosity and an interest in life and the things that I like to talk about. That often translates into adults because I like to talk about abstract things. I like to talk about philosophy. I like to talk about existentialism. I like to talk about purpose and meaning. I think, in general, it's more for an adult audience. I'm an adult. I sometimes like to refer to myself as a kid, but the truth is I'm an adult, and so I think it makes a lot of sense to be really clear on who I'm focusing on, and in this case, it's other adults. People in my own demographic, really. It doesn't really matter what else I had seen elsewhere on the internet. What matters is who it was for. In many cases, in most cases, it wasn't necessarily for the same demographic. Things that I watched growing up as a kid are not going to be the things that interest me as an adult, and they're not going to necessarily be the things that interest the people that I want to reach with my own material. I don't want to assume too much about whoever your potential audience may look like. It's going to depend on a whole variety of different things, a whole variety of different factors. But oftentimes, I have found that the demographic that one is trying to reach is really one's own demographic. People that are like-minded, people that share similar interests, people that are oftentimes in your age bracket or have had similar life circumstances. Not always. There's a whole bunch of exceptions to these rules. But what I've found is that in thinking about that, in reminding myself these things, it has shifted a little bit how I talk and how I present myself on camera in a way that's a lot more mature and sophisticated. This is a point I'm going to come back to in a little bit. There's almost a level of increased implicit respect that's taking place here. Because if I'm talking to somebody else that I consider an intelligent adult, somebody that I'd like to have a beer with, for example, or a coffee, I'm not going to talk to them as I would an eight-year-old, or somebody who I'm desperately trying not to lose their attention online. Energy. I'm going to build off of the example that I gave a little bit earlier. In the beginning, when I started making videos five years ago, energetically, what I was doing, consciously or subconsciously, was forcing out my message, forcing out that energy. As a viewer, you can sense that. You can feel it. What I was doing was moving my focus away from my core and from my breath and up into my chest, my neck, my hand, just like doing this, instead of speaking naturally and confidently in a way that feels like it fills the room. In a way where I don't feel like I'm forcing anything out. I feel calm. I feel relaxed. I would speak a little bit more like this. It's Nathan, and I'm here to talk to you about a very important issue, the issue of fake smiles. Look, I think hugs are great, but you know what, they're not for everyone. I think an unwanted hug is like a surprise that you don't want. I may very well be nitpicking a little bit and really just criticizing how I used to speak years ago because I find that oftentimes we're especially critical of our former selves, but regardless, I find that that is a lot less commanding, a lot less intentional, in terms of presence, and delivery, and message. Happy new year. Yeah, that didn't really work. Peanut, say hello. The worst part of all of this is that I was doing this to myself. It doesn't have to be this way. There's a better way to present yourself on camera, and it's by keeping one thing in mind, it's a very specific thing, something that I think about all the time, authenticity. What does this word mean exactly? I find that this is a word that's thrown around all the time in this day and age, and as a result, has lost a little bit of that original depth and meaning. But we're going to do a little bit of digging to rediscover it. Authenticity in front of a camera is, in my definition, not putting up an act. It's limiting how much you alter how you speak. Like right now. This is how I speak in normal conversation with people at dinner or over a beer or whatever. Why is this important? Increasingly, people are seeking out things that feel real. Actually, that has always been the case. We're always looking for things that feel authentic and real. It's just that we are bombarded in this day and age with things that don't feel real, that don't feel authentic, that feel sort and low-quality. That has made it almost seem like the real authentic things are in low supply and has increased their value. Simply put, you can feel when somebody is being themselves, and that is a really attractive quality. Believe it or not, it is a lot more attractive than coming with that sped-up forced energy, even if it feels more exciting and bombastic. That doesn't matter. The reason why so many of us struggle with this though, is that we don't trust that more relaxed, understated energy. It feels like maybe we won't be heard with all the other things happening on the internet. But the truth is, you will be, as long as you come with the right energy, you come as you are, you come authentically. Now, I'm not saying to speak as neutrally as possible, to be as flat as possible, to essentially overcompensate in the other direction. I'm going to break this up into three parts. Basically, what I do on a daily basis, what I do on a weekly basis, and what I do on a monthly basis. Beyond that, I feel like is just too long-term. It's good to have emotion and to express yourself freely and excitedly, but it just has to be natural. It has to just not be forced. How do you go about incorporating that in how you present yourself on camera? I think this really boils down to comfort, and a large part of comfort comes from environment. Setting up the right conditions for yourselves so that things flow naturally. In the next lesson, I'm going to break down the things that I think about and the things that I do to feel as comfortable as possible in front of a camera. 4. Ideas to Help You Loosen Up: The pillars of speaking comfortably. They really make a difference and you will come to see this, I think, upon experimenting with these things. Without further ado, let's dive into it. Be interested. This may seem like a really simple point but it's unbelievably important. It's fundamental, truly, this is key to everything. It's hard to overstate the importance of this point. There are certain universal languages that we all speak, and I'm using language in a little bit of an abstract way. Two of those universal languages are passion and excitement. These are languages that come through, regardless of what you're speaking about, specifically. This can come through all kinds of different things. The socks that your grandma sewed you or whatever stock options are. It doesn't really matter at all, honestly, as long as you feel it. These are languages that are felt. This is body language, really. This is like nonverbal communication, it's energetic. These are languages that you and I can speak without saying anything at all. There are certain subjects that I can talk about for days without running out of things to say. I've always found that those things, those subjects, those topics, whenever I talk about then an on-camera, it translates better. So my first piece of advice is to talk about the things that you're interested in that can be challenging if you have to talk about something that you're not necessarily passionate about. We can't always talk about the things that we're passionate about so what do you do in that scenario? What I suggest is to really work your angle. How can you approach whatever it is that you're going to talk about from an angle or a perspective that makes it feel more interesting and exciting? This is why you'll find me talking about life in terms of it being a series of experiments so often. It's because I feel like this is a psychological trick that I play on myself to be interested in things that I made ordinarily, consider boring or not very interesting. Again, that interest, that curiosity, that excitement translates when I talk about it on camera. Caffeine also helps a little bit I'm not going to lie. Be knowledgeable. I'm going to go a little bit more in-depth in a future lesson on how I script and organize my thoughts beforehand, as in, before recording and actually shooting a video. But as a general rule, it is always easier to talk about something that you're knowledgeable about. So my next piece of advice here is to get informed, to learn whatever it is that you're talking about. To prepare, a little preparation goes a long way. I see this as a direct relationship. The more you prepare, the easier it gets to speak about something. You're just going to sound more intelligent and come across as more confident when speaking. For starters, focus on talking about things that you are knowledgeable about and, if that is not an option, I would say hedge aggressively, be very upfront about your limited knowledge and understanding about that subject. If you can position yourself in the right way, again, working your angle, you can make it easier for your audience, wherever it is you're communicating your ideas to, to be on this journey with you. If you're there to learn if you're there to explore something. The way to remedy this potential problem is to be intentional about what it is you choose to talk about in a video. Do your research planned ahead. This doesn't necessarily have to kill all spontaneity. Spontaneity is fantastic when you're speaking on camera and presenting yourself. It's like a supplement. It's something that you can lean on when you have to rip, when you have to be spontaneous. Knowledge, just background knowledge, general knowledge as a whole is amazing. It's like a great thing to tap into. The people that make things look effortless are often the ones that prepare the most aggressively and for the longest amount of time behind the scenes. All of the things that I'm sharing with you right now and the way that I am sharing them is the culmination of a bunch of hours of preparation beforehand, laying down my thoughts on paper, organizing them, reviewing them, just putting a lot of pre-production time in so that, come time to do this right now and record this, I'm good to go. I can focus on presenting as confidently and as naturally as possible. Looping back around to this point on knowledgeability, something that's very interesting to keep in mind, to think about is constants. Constants are things that are always true and one constant that I find myself regularly going back to is that it will always be easier to talk about your own life. to talk about what you're feeling and what you're experiencing. You always have direct access to these things right there in your brain, there in your body, considering you are the protagonist, the main character of your own life, and that never changes. Since the day you are born, you have been at the center of this play, that is your life. How is that helpful? Well, whenever I find myself caught talking about something that, maybe, I am not necessarily super knowledgeable about, but I have no workaround there's no way around it, I have to say something, I will resort, if in need, to what I'm feeling, what I am experiencing in a particular moment, what I have running through my head, the sensations in my body, emotionally, wherever it is that I am, sharing these things. Pulling from them as talking points, if you will. Here's an example, if I don't know what to say right now, I could share about how it feels to look back on this journey that I have been on over the last 5.5 years. Developing these skills and how good it feels to be where I'm at now, after everything that I've been through, and to be just sharing all this insight right now, there you go. That's a talking point. That's something that I can develop and explore. If I don't necessarily know how to talk about something technical, or if I feel like I can't speak with authority on a particular subject. If you have a large amount of experience or knowledge in a particular field, one constant will be that you have that database to tap into, for example, knowledge on coffee, if you worked as a barista for six years, or knowledge on music, if you've been playing piano since you were eight years old, whatever it may be. Thinking about these things that you can resort to when in need, they can help you in developing analogies. They can help you in making examples. Pull from these things. If you feel like you're not good at any particular skill, you could talk about how you're not good at any particular skill. That you've struggled to stick with something or that you've struggled to develop something beyond a certain level. I think that is also very relatable to a lot of people. Ultimately, because you're speaking authentically from a human experience that you had as a human being, and it's really that simple. If you think about what we're doing here, this is just humans connecting with other humans. So the more human that you can make it, the better. If you're concerned about sounding self-absorbed or uninteresting by talking about yourself and your own life, I'll just say that there's ways to present your life and to present your experiences in a way that is interesting to others. I find it very helpful to remind myself that people are pretty much always looking for one of a very few select things; to learn, as in, to develop a new skill or to expand their knowledge on something, to be entertained, or to live vicariously. Unfortunately, there is no way of getting around this. You have got to put in the time and slowly you will get better, that's as simple as that. So developing some read that you can consistently maintain, be it creating some video once a week, or twice a month, or even once a month, something that you can stick to, that's going to help you get better, and really, there's just no shortcut in that sense. I definitely used to feel nervous and not really know what to say when I would sit in front of a camera. It was truly just going through the process, and going over, and over again, through the process of presenting myself, of sharing my ideas, until I got to the point where I felt like, okay, I can feel proud of this final result. But it took a long time to get there. We're talking months, if not years, really. Now that I have developed the systems that I have in place to get the results that I know I can feel good about, I don't stress as much about the whole thing. I don't even really think about it as much anymore, or at all really. I'm just focused on presenting my message now. That has been a massive psychological shift really. I know I've already said this before, but it's helpful to remember that almost nobody is born with this skill, with this natural ability to just be a superstar in front of a camera and to perfectly connect ideas spontaneously and in an interesting way at all times. Nobody's like that. I certainly was not one of those people. Once again, and I'm really sounding redundant here, but this is a muscle in my opinion. This is a skill that you can build and develop, and you just have to go to the gym and do it over, and over again. For an exercise here, while we're on the topic of practice, I thought I would give a little prompt, something that you can do to develop this skill for yourself. For the next week, I challenge you to sit down every day in front of your camera, and if you don't have a camera, in front of your phone, or webcam, and just speak about something that you're interested in, that you care about for a minimum of 10 minutes. You must hit record. It must actually be recorded. You must actually see the blinking red light. You do not actually have to edit these, and you definitely do not actually have to post them and share them online. I just want you to get used to sitting in front of a camera and talking. Just get that muscle going, and feel free to talk about how much you love your pets, or why you love investing, or how much your feet hurt today, it doesn't matter at all. I don't care. Just do it and make sure you're talking for a minimum of 10 minutes every day. Speak as if you're talking to your most intelligent friends. This is a really simple idea that had a massive impact on how I communicate in front of the camera and on the Internet. This is alluding to a point that I was making a little bit earlier about demographics, about thinking about who you want to connect with online. As an adult with certain curiosities and interests about life and the workings of the universe, I want to attract other people that are like that and share those interests. When I speak in a way that doesn't feel dumb down, that doesn't feel surface level, that really I'm going in and sharing things without filtering, I find that I have more effectively attracted other people that have these shared interests. I think it's really made made lot of my material, a lot more engaging, a lot more interesting, and it's really just a little psychological trick. It's just something to think about in the back of your mind as you sit down to talk. I think for a long time, the reason I didn't do this was because I was afraid of being misunderstood, that people wouldn't get what I'm saying, and it's important to be clear, of course. But, as soon as you find yourself dumbing down how you present an idea, or the idea itself, that's incredibly damaging to the final result, to the idea, the message that you're sharing with the world. Like I said before, I like to imagine that I'm talking to my most intelligent friends. We're sitting around a table having beers, and I'm talking about something that I'm interested in, that I care about. Let's imagine that those friends maybe aren't familiar with what you're talking about. So I'm taking extra steps to be clear, to make sure that I'm not skipping important details, so that the whole thing makes sense. But I'm also not talking as if I'm speaking to an eight year old, or to a pet of mine. This simple little idea, once again, really led to a shift, a huge switch in how I carry myself on camera. This, for me, is probably one of the main reasons why I cringe when I re-watch really old videos of mine. Because I feel like I can see through myself, I can see what I'm trying to do, and it's not a good look. Pick the time and place carefully. As I mentioned before, environment is really important in your energy, and how you present yourself, and how you feel naturally and authentically on camera. So setting up the right conditions for yourself can lead to a better final result. After doing this for a long time, I've noticed certain patterns, for myself, that won't necessarily apply to you, but I'm going to share them with you regardless because they illustrate a bigger point. For starters, there are certain times in a day that are just not that good for me for shooting. First thing in the morning, I'm not quite fully awake yet, so my brain is not fully working and I'm speaking at about 0.5 speed, and I also have a pudgy face, so it's not good. It's not the ideal time. Too Too at night and I'm tired and therefore a lot less coherent with my ideas, and so that's also not good. Also right after lunch, I have a, oftentimes, pretty serious energetic slump. So I have learned to work my schedule a little bit around these periods that I know don't work for me. Environment is also wildly important, I have found, in terms of the actual final result. So being in a quiet place, if possible, and sometimes that's not fully possible, but a quiet place, usually alone. I like to be by myself when I speak in front of a camera. Right now nobody else is here, which helps a lot, it makes me feel more comfortable honestly. I think if somebody was watching you do this right now, it would be trickier. It would not come out as natural. Also, I just find it distracting and stressful to worry about noises that are potentially happening around me. It can break my focus away from the message that I'm trying to convey. Show your personality. People want to see your personality. Really. I know that may be hard to believe, but it's true. They are not interested in somebody who speaks perfectly, or has everything in order. There's a lot of content creators out there online that come across as robots, because I think they're afraid to show their flaws, or maybe the areas where they aren't necessarily perfectly polished. I think those are the things that are the most interesting to me. Those are the things that I'm actively looking for in other people actually. That's what makes us human. As human beings trying to connect with other human beings, the more human we can make our message, and the presentation of those ideas, the better. So what this basically means is that, if you feel uncomfortable sharing your imperfections, your flaws, your shortcomings, that is oftentimes the place to start. Getting more comfortable with speaking freely and not necessarily getting caught up on every little thing being perfect, even down to every little word that you say, being perfectly enunciated, without any mistakes. It's okay to trip up a little bit from time to time. I did it right there, I feel like. This, once again, may seem like a simple point, but what it ultimately does is it translates in a more confident presentation, more in your skin, more just like chilling. I think people really like that. If you look back on old material of mine from, even honestly not that long ago, a couple of years ago, a year and a half ago even, I was not yet at that point. This has been a real journey for me, and getting loose like that takes a long time. It takes a willingness to share things that you aren't necessarily fully proud of, or nervous about sharing, the little imperfections. Here's an exercise. Practice speaking intentionally in front of a camera, where if you say something incorrectly, you correct yourself and you keep going. A major roadblock for, see, I just did it right there. A major roadblock for a lot of people is when you're speaking in front of a camera, having to get every word and every syllable perfectly right, or if it isn't, you have to start all the way over, and it doesn't have to be that way. Later on, I'm going to talk about the power of editing and how that can help massively in smoothing out some of the rough edges so that the final presentation is seamless. 5. My Own Journey: I thought I would take a few moments now to share a little bit more about the path that I had been on and how I ended up at this point, and why I feel qualified to talk about this. If this doesn't interest, you feel free to skip to the next lesson in this class. I will not take it personally at all. But that being said, if you found that you are struggling with this yourself, with developing this skill of speaking comfortably in front of camera, you may find this illuminating. I started making videos like in this way. "Hi YouTube." Sitting down and talking in front of the camera. Way back in the summer of 2015, which feels like a million years ago, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I feel like you could really tell. "What am I doing here, making this video today. I'm throwing myself into YouTube for a couple of reasons. I do not know anything about using a camera." I actually a couple of years ago went back and privated most of those initial early day videos just because I was so embarrassed and they felt so forced. "Hi guys, today I turn 19." Off-brand, like they didn't really represent who I was and what I'm about. But since I have gone back in and unprivated some of them so that pieces of the journey can be publicly visible and available for people that are interested in going back and doing their research. I know that I like looking back on old material from content creators that I like just to see the journey, to see their improvement, to see how they've evolved. Even if it's, "Low quality" and isn't like their best work, it doesn't matter. It shows an evolution, it shows character development. Anyway, back to 2015, I didn't know how to use a camera. I didn't know how to tell stories. I didn't know how to engagingly talk in front of cameras. I really was just throwing myself into the deep end, learning on the fly. "Now, my acting career is quite funny because I've only ever been cast as an extra, which is to say I've never had a speaking line. I wanted to share that with you because it cracks me up. Yeah, I think you might enjoy." I'm very stubborn by nature. I kept feeling this pull to create things and share them on the Internet. It felt like too big of an opportunity not to take advantage of simply because this new thing that more and more we're taking for granted in all of our lives. This thing didn't exist for the vast majority of humans that came before us. It only came around very, very recently, in the blink of an eye honestly in terms of the evolutionary perspective of humanity. It's like this incredible powerful tool that we have. I could not see my life panning out without utilizing it in some very clear, very distinct way. Well, I had no idea how to give a complete audio visual experience, if you will. I, once again, I'm really stubborn and I really stuck with things for a long time even though it didn't feel like I was going anywhere with it. I began making a video a week, which is something that I stuck with for an entire year and a half of that. Actually about a year in, I launched two other channels, one in French [inaudible] and one in Spanish [inaudible]. I begun running three different channels, all of which had original content that I was creating. Over the course of that year and a half of content creation, I made a lot of videos, at least 100, because with the three different channels, I started trying to post two different videos a week. I uped the tempo and was going for the quantity over quality approach. It was a lot to do alongside finishing school and working as a freelancer, trying to get my career going, trying to make money. As I referred to earlier on in this class, I had this idea in my head that I had to come on with really high energy and just force it out even more sadly, I suppose. I just felt like I was acting all the time. I was putting different actors hats on and psyching myself up beforehand. This is very draining. Didn't feel good, it didn't feel authentic, it didn't feel real, it didn't feel like me. [inaudible]. I was trying to be some TV show host or something. Now looking back, of course, I can say that this was having the exact opposite impact of what I really wanted, which was to have a real impact, to have an authentic real connection with people. This is part of the process and this part of the journey and so I don't regret it. I'm glad that everything that has happened has led me to where I'm at now. I wouldn't change a thing. But I can say that looking back on a lot of these videos, it's a little bit difficult to watch him and not cringe and not be critical of my former self. I do not feel this way about more recent material of mine, even going back to two years ago, because energetically there was a shift. While I have continued to try and find the right balance and figure out the right like recipe, if you will, for presenting myself in a way that feels real and authentic and that I can be proud of, and I missed the mark even to this day, that energetic shift that came later on has made it so that even when I miss the mark, I feel like the intention's real, I'm coming with the right ideas and the right energy. I'm there to share it as raw and real way as I can. The thing is though it's important not to be overly critical of your former self. Looking back on your development as an artist or as a person in whatever skill it is that you're developing. This is part of the process. I was trying different things out to figure out what works for me and what works period. I wasn't fully comfortable in my own skin, but that's normal. I had to go through this stage to get to where I'm at now. To complete this timeline at the year and a half mark, I entered a nearly two-year phase of more trial and error, but this time including large breaks. I stopped posting so regularly like on a weekly basis and took time to reflect on what I like and don't like what content I'm attracted to. I learned a lot about myself in that time, I worked as a freelancer in the film industry. I developed new contacts and I developed a better understanding of storytelling and the technical side of filmmaking, and a whole bunch of different things that would later come to really serve me and what I do now. If I remember correctly, during that phase of 2017 up until the end of 2018, I posted only a few videos with very, very long pauses in between each of those videos of reflection and research and development in other areas of my life. That was all also part of the process. I'm really grateful for that as well. I was trying things out and that's the important thing. It's important to try things out. In that period of time I did a couple of like short films. I did a couple of vlogs, [inaudible] I was experimenting with transitions and with different music and trying to find what worked for me. I didn't have my voice yet. I think once you have your voice, once you find that, once you start to zero in on that. By voice, I mean artistically like that inner voice is coming out and wants to express something. Once you have that, it becomes easier to speak in front of camera because it's in service of the bigger mission that you're shooting for. Now, everybody preaches about the importance of consistency. I think there's some truth to that. I think it's powerful to go at something on a weekly basis. Week in week out or as consistently as you possibly can if that means every other week or every month. I do think some level of my development came from that. But I think that these periods of reflection, these breaks, were equally as important. I think if I stuck with things as consistently as I did in the beginning, where I continue to post every week without giving myself breaks, without giving myself the space and the time to experiment with new things, to learn new things. I am not sure I would have ended up where I am now. I needed those periods of analysis, of expansion. It's hard to reflect on things when you're in it, when you're in the production mode. The second lesson here is that it's massively important to give yourself space and time to reflect from time to time, especially when it feels necessary. Listen to that, listen to that gut feeling. Continuing on this timeline, I had a year and a half of very consistent posting, nearly two-year period of posting every once in a while as I was experimenting with more advanced, involved productions and reflecting on things and growing as a filmmaker in general. In the summer of 2018, I started to get really excited about sharing a lot again on social media. I could not stop thinking about how much I wanted to share my travels, share my reflections on humanity, to create things that felt special to me and to reach people. Like I just had this strange inexplicable belief that I can make it happen if I stuck with it, these ideas really simmered in my mind for three or four months and come October 2018, nearly three and a half years into my journey in content creation and filming myself and sharing myself online, I began posting regularly again. "I've been thinking a lot about this phenomenon of feeling behind in life." The consistency was back, I was back to posting week in week out. At first twice a week and then probably down to once a week. That went all through 2019 and things started to take off. Finally, in April of 2019, nearly four years into this whole journey. Now that I was back with a much clearer idea of my why and what I wanted to focus on and a better understanding of filmmaking in general. Honestly just a little bit more maturity as a person, I could see why all of the fake excitement on all the things that I was trying to do initially didn't work. They're just not worth it. They're not where I needed to be placing my focus and energy. At first when I pick things back up in late 2018, I think I over corrected in the other direction by being a little bit dry, a little bit emotionless, and a little bit, yeah dry. "Behavior and habits. I don't mean the stuff that we all think of immediately as overtly destructive, like smoking or drinking." I think over time I was able to loosen up and find something that felt even better. It was like a natural excitement and energy that I could tap into. Again over these last, now it's been over two years, really, almost two and a half years. I have continued to lay experiment and honing in on my voice and honing on what works for me. I think that's going to forever be the case. I think that evolution will continue forever as it should, as we evolve as people. What I had to do really was remove the initial like forced humor, forced jokes, forced energy. Be a little bit dry, for the natural jokes, the natural humor, the natural energy to come out over time as I loosened up, as I put it into time, as I practiced, as I got more comfortable, as I got more confident, all of it. This is the process." Okay, it is freezing, it's so windy over here. The wind is so strong." I hope that this story, this journey that I've been on, illustrates that you can go from feeling uncomfortable and basically unsure of how to go about speaking in front of camera all the way to feeling comfortable in front of camera. Effectively using this as a way to connect with other people around the world. Potentially even as a way to make money and develop a career, depends on what your personal interests are. But I think the exciting thing about all of this is that I didn't start with any natural talent for this, but it is only through trying things out for yourself, going through periods of consistently making things, and then periods of reflection and space and time to find league hit, that perfect recipe that works for you. 6. How to Connect Ideas: How to connect ideas. This is part 1 in the magic that happens behind the scenes. This is the stuff that nobody sees but makes all the difference. I wanted to just share a few ideas really quick on things that I feel are absolutely essential in my own process of creating video and getting myself up to the place that I need to be to effectively and naturally talking in front of the camera. If you're like me, you should definitely take the time to write out your thoughts. This is huge. I'm not going to prescribe this to everybody, you may operate differently. But if you are anything like me, a million different things that you want to say all at once. It's so powerful to sit down and write and to put these things on paper. There are two questions that I am constantly asking myself. How can I deliver this idea more clearly? How can I deliver this idea more concisely? These are just constant questions that I feel like you can always ask yourself to always improve whatever it is that you're trying to present as a general rule for the communication of ideas in life. The next piece of advice that I have here is to get feedback from people that you respect. I still do this to this day. It doesn't matter how many people watch my videos. I don't care. I think you can always get better and it's always helpful to have extra eyeballs and extra external inputs. My final point here is to lean into your personal style. Some people are a lot more scientific, a lot more data-driven and precise in that sense and there are other people like myself that are a little bit more abstract. They feel a little bit more comfortable in exploring intangible ideas and things like emotions and whatnot. I think you should test out for yourself what works for you and really lean into it. Just because you like somebody else's material somewhere else on the Internet, does not necessarily mean you have to do exactly the same thing. In fact, trying too hard to emulate somebody else is going to really hamstring you. Play to your strengths, do what works for you naturally. There's nothing better than that. 7. Scripting: As you can see, I've gotten a little haircut. Please excuse that. In this lesson, I want to dive into scripting and give you a behind the scenes look at my process and things I think about, how I go about it, essentially. There's so much that I can say about scripting, but we're going to keep it all within the context of how it can serve you in better speaking in front of a camera. What I'm doing here is actually screen recording, so I could show you the script that I created for this class. Ironically, we're going to go through this. I'll jump to it right now briefly and we'll come back to it in a second. In lesson 7, I did not do a whole lot of scripting. I didn't write out what I'm saying right now, and that's partially because I've been doing this for years and I know my own process, and it gets very easy for me to talk about this. Therefore, I feel confident. I only had to write out a few thoughts to be able to navigate this and whatnot. I have this visual aid, this script itself that I can refer to as a guide to explain my process. We're going to use this class, like I said, as an example. This is unedited, so it's a little bit rough. I guess I'm just going to run right through it, and that way you can see and can compare this script with what you've seen so far in this class and what you are going to see in the rest of this class. I'm doing this first of all in Google Docs, but honestly any word processing software will do the job. Notion is actually increasingly something that I'm using. Google Docs works great. I like that it's online. I've written stuff on pages, I've written stuff on Microsoft Word, it doesn't matter. Right is a little bit separate, it doesn't relate to helping you speak on camera, but at the top I include oftentimes alternate different titles for videos and whatnot. Here, I have broken this up in different lessons. This is specific to this class, but I do find it helpful to have a brief outline on the topics and subjects and whatnot that I want to cover. Something that I'll do right at the very beginning is dump a bunch of ideas in bullet points. Again, the point here is not to be organized, not to be pretty, it's just to get it all out. There's this dumping process that comes in the beginning, and then I'll go back through and organize and put the different categories, my ideas, and connect them and decide what's worth it, what isn't worth it, but I'm just getting it all out. This came a little bit later. I figured out parts, part 1, part 2, and the lesson numbers once I dumped everything out and got a chance to organize things out. Now it looks fairly clean honestly, but it wasn't necessarily this way when I started. I definitely make an effort to make the script as clean and clear to follow in its final form, so when I'm sitting down and recording, it's easy to follow along with things. The point of what I'm saying here is that in the beginning it's important to just get the ideas out, to brainstorm, to be messy, to not worry about it, and then the presentation can come a little bit later. Diving a little bit into the actual scripting itself. The way I have gone about this, and I'm not claiming this to be the answer for everybody, but this is what works for me when preparing to speak in front of a camera is to write in my speaking voice, write as if I'm talking. It's a different kind of writing than some other context or applications. This isn't necessarily like business writing, this isn't writing an essay, it's me trying to sound essentially as unedited in my speaking voice as possible. I am including things like, well, that's why I'm making this, that's how I talk. That's not necessarily how I would write an essay, it's quite informal, but I'm just listening to the voice in my head and putting it out on the document. I spent a lot of time writing this out. This document here is 15 pages long, and it's not uncommon that a video of mine might be six or seven pages for 10-15 minute video. I spent days working on this and writing it all out because I think it's really important. This is an opportunity for me to almost do a rehearsal, if you will, without actually doing a rehearsal. Rehearsing what I have to say in my message sometimes deflates me. It makes me a little bit less excited when I hear myself say something multiple times in a row. This is a little bit different because I'm getting all the words out on paper, getting the chance to run through it and make sure that all my ideas connect nicely and that there's a natural flow and I'm crafting this. Going through this process helps me feel organized with my ideas come time to present it. There are sometimes days or even weeks that I'll spend on scripts until I feel like this is a complete script. When I'm writing about something that needs to be very precise or very clear, if I'm speaking about an abstract concept, I make sure it's almost word for word. I can riff when it comes time to deliver the message, I can spontaneously add ideas as I'm recording. But I know at the very least, I have all of my bases covered with the script. If I have to rely on it because I'm not feeling like I have spontaneous, fresh ideas to offer when the moment to speak arrives, I have that. I can resort to it and I can refer to it, and it helps feel relaxed when I'm recording. Now this doesn't entirely apply to everything. Like I said, it applies to very important sections. For example, the trailer of this class was very important. An equivalent for a video would be the intro. For me, intros are very, very important or something abstract. But right now I'm not following a script at all just because I'm talking about something I know a lot about considering I've spent so much time doing it and it's just my own method. So it's easy to talk about it. Sometimes I'll bold sections that I think are really important or that I need to emphasize. I'll put some instructions sometimes in italics that I feel are important to include like show examples right here. I'm actually saying that. But this is a really just basic method of scripting. There have been times where I've color-coded things too. For example, voice-over might be green, just to help have a visual of the flow of things. But I think overall, it is possible to over prepare. I think it's important for me to really transparently show this to you, not to present it as the solution. This is going to really depend on the kind of person that you are and how much preparation you feel you need. But I have found that the relationship between the amount of time that I spend scripting and preparing what I want to say beforehand and the quality of what I end up saying is proportional. There's a direct relationship there. Right now, for example, I feel like I've started to go through the script, I've shared a fair amount of details, if you will, in how I go about it. This would be a moment that I would refer to some notes that I've taken to see if I've missed any areas. I wrote out a few thoughts that I don't necessarily feel like I have to include because I've more or less covered them, but it is helpful as a frame of reference. I mentioned that it's massively important for me in my process. It's an opportunity for me to dump ideas on paper, organize them, and come as prepared as possible come time to record. I really can't overemphasize that by the way. One thing that is helpful to think about, and I'm referencing the script right now as I say this, by the way, I read this and it sparked some ideas that I can contribute right now, is that we live in an attention economy. So it's helpful to be as structured and precise as possible when you can be so as to more quickly deliver the value that you have to offer. There's no rush. But if you take some time to prepare your ideas and present them in a way that is as effective as it can be, you're giving your message the best chance that it can have to actually have an impact, to change somebody's life or to be heard very simply. I guess, as one final thought on this subject, it's helpful to write in this very informal speaking voice tone because it makes the transition between me reading the script and me just talking in front of the camera with a new idea that just popped in my head quite seamless. One concern I think a lot of people have is sounding like you're reading a script. That is absolutely a concern that is valid. I think I've fallen for that trap myself actually, sounding like I'm reading from a script. I think that is just something that goes away when you show up and put in the time and practice and get used to doing this and build this muscle. It becomes easier to take a message that you wrote out and to present it in a way that's natural and thoughtful and present once you've done it a bunch of times. That shouldn't be something that prevents you from taking the necessary steps and the necessary time to be as prepared as you can be. 8. The Power of Editing: In this lesson, I wanted to give a little bit of a behind-the-scenes look in editing. I'm very committed to this not being a technical class. This isn't a class on how to edit, there's a lot of that already available out there. That might be something that I could do in the future, but I want to just show the power of editing, and how influential it is, how big of a part it is in my storytelling, and how important it is to be cognizant of this because it can provide a sense of relief and awareness throughout this whole process when you're sitting down to film in front of a camera. One of the beautiful things that I would tell people when I was DPing and directing in the film industry before I was doing YouTube and all the things that I do now on the Internet, was that this isn't live theater or anything even resembling that. That's the magic of cameras and of filmmaking. You have as many opportunities as you want, and you can pick the best ones in post-production, you can add music, you can do so many things to completely change the experience and to craft it in the way that you would like. I don't think this is dishonest. I think all of these elements can help you reinforce the message of the story that you're trying to tell. If you combine that with showing up authentically and speaking as honestly as you can be when you sit down and talk, you can have a really wonderful final result. I am screen recording right now to show you a little bit of behind the scenes of a project file of mine, a video that I'm working on right now for YouTube. This is not meant to be technical, so I'm going to hide as much of the unnecessary onscreen information here, just so we can focus on the concept here, just to show you how editing can craft the story and make an impact here, and be a source of relief. That's the important thing that I want to reinforce here, that nothing is permanent necessarily when you're filming. There are so many decisions that can be made afterwards to shape things in the way that you want. Just right here, up here, you'll see there's B-roll, so this is footage that I'm showing onscreen, and down here is the voice-over that I have written, and rewritten, and recorded multiple times actually. I'll lay it down, I'll listen to it, and assess if I like it, if it's reflecting what I want to reflect, if I'm telling the story that I want to tell, and if I don't like it, I'll make changes. But what you'll notice here, down here, I'm going to select them right now, all of these files right here are voice-over. As you'll see, they're all cut up, and I've placed them, and I can move them around. Everything is flexible. This isn't necessarily the best example because it's voice-over, but here, for example, I've recorded some thoughts on a train. I don't even know if I'm going to use this, there's a potential that I won't. There's really no pressure there. They're cuts made, and if ever I want to hide a cut, it's really a simple matter of taking a piece of footage and essentially covering it. There's a shot of the ocean and you can't tell that I made a cut right here, but you can still hear what I'm saying and then I'll move back to me talking. It's a simple concept that I think is not hard to understand, but that is truly the beauty of editing. You can hide cuts and rework things in a way that you might want to do things. There's so much freedom, so much flexibility here. The music will utterly change the feeling behind many of your words as well. A lot of my editing is based around music decisions as well, and that's another really important thing to keep in mind. This right now is called Happiness_v5, for Version 5. I've only done one minute of this video so far, and it's not even complete, there's black sections still. Many, many, many versions are to come before I feel like this will be complete, and I just go into it knowing that. I gather as many materials and resources as I possibly can, so that I can craft something that I find beautiful, that I can feel proud about. But I have no clear idea, necessarily of all of the details, until I'm in there chopping things up, working things, reworking things, many many times. I just thought I would sit down and just show this, that there's a lot of small decisions being made to help the flow of things so that there isn't jarring cuts or what have you. So much goes into dressing up the audiovisual experience. Should you so desire, none of this has to be done. I've done very, very simple videos where there is no B-roll. It's the footage that you show onscreen when you don't see me talking. This is A-roll, me talking right now, and B-roll would be a shot of the ocean, for example, or literally anything else. I've had videos that are just A-roll, just me talking, no B-roll whatsoever, no music, that have gone viral as well. It's not required, but it is an option that's always there. There's really wonderful, free editing software available out there. iMovie for Mac users, I know that DaVinci Resolve is an incredibly powerful editing software, so it's possible to do this for free. There are, once again, loads of tutorials available out there to learn. That's how I learned, it was all through the Internet. Making the commitment to not be overly technical here, but I think it is helpful to show this, especially for somebody like yourself, potentially, that is entering this world and is maybe feeling a little bit overwhelmed with trying to get everything right. I'm not worrying about that anymore, and that's something I worried about a lot in the beginning. I'm not worried about getting things right. I know that if I give myself enough of the right pieces, I can tell a good story at the end. This combined with scripting and preparation beforehand, showing up as honestly and as authentically as I possibly can, is a recipe right there that you can use to express yourself in a way that feels authentic to you, that can have a good chance of impacting the world and what more can you ask for? 9. A Behind the Scenes Look: What I have gone ahead and done is recorded a little bit of behind the scenes to show my setup here, how I go about this and actually the recording process of lesson 2 of this class. As you will see, I take moments to read and reference my script which is right here on my laptop next to me. You'll see that in a moment. I re-read certain sections. I stumble over my words, all kinds of things and I hope that this is illuminating for you in what actually happens. Not everything has to be perfect. Once again, this is part of the magic of editing, of putting everything together and creating a final presentation. A part of the reason why all of this flow so naturally for me now is simply a belief in the process, editing that I know I can do, scripting and the preparation that I've done beforehand so that I can come and be ready to do this. Having said all that, let's dive in. I don't have the flip out screen with this camera. This is the X-T3. I did this on purpose because I wanted to show my entire setup without touching it whatsoever with my X-T4. It's a Fuji camera. This isn't supposed to be a technical overview. I just wanted to show a little behind the scenes on my setup here. Let's just dive into it. I'm going to start with really random basic details that are actually important to me, things that I think about, things that I've touched on already so far in this class. Things like for example, it is evening right now. I pick this time to shoot a lot of times because I'm not yet too tired from throughout the day. I feel still a good level of energy. It is nighttime outside, so the lighting isn't changing on me. As you can see, I have artificial lighting setup so it's consistent and it stays and I'm not worrying about having to change settings on my camera, which is really nice and important. It's also quieter at this time. I think throughout the day there's oftentimes a lot of construction work. It's really relaxed right now, a lot less traffic so I find that this is a really good time to shoot and I find that I have a good chunk of time in between meetings and the work that I'm doing throughout the day and then evening activities. That's a little bit of background. This is not at all meant to be a technical breakdown on lighting and whatnot. I have a really basic setup here. What I have are a couple of LEDs bouncing the light off from both sides. These are Falcon eyes SO-28TD. You can get these off the Amazon. I really like them. They're really soft light. I have my camera set up right here. I shouldn't touch this too much, it's going to make a lot of noise, but I have a live on that I'm using to record audio right now and then as a backup, I have this guy. This is deity microphone. In terms of technical setup here, I have the X-T4 with the 16 millimeter F1.4, a Fuji Camera APS-C size sensor that is basically a 24 millimeter equivalent on full-frame. I really like this focal length for shooting myself. Right here next to me, I have my laptop that I'm referencing as I'm sitting. You don't see it, it's out of frame but I'll refer to it when I'm recording. I put a light that you can see in frame that makes things look nice but that's basically it. That's my behind the scenes. What I thought I'd do is set this camera up while I record lesson 2. I've already done the intro section just so you can see behind the scenes look on what goes into the actual recording process so you can see for yourself because I know that that can be a little bit of a mystery for a lot of people and I get questions about it all the time. Let's dive in. As you can see, I have my live cable dangling here. It doesn't really matter too much because I don't see it in frame so don't worry about it. I usually have it just in my pocket by the way for those of you curious, and I have all gear listed on my website. But this is the Tascam DR-10L and this is usually the audio that I'm using when recording. Again, I don't mean for this class to me too technical but I do imagine all of the technical questions many of you guys might have. Anyway, I usually place it right next to me like this so I have two sources of audio. I'm just going to dive into things actually at this point. Usually what I do is I'll review things a little bit beforehand to re-read a little bit what I've written, get my head in the right head space, then when I'm ready, I hit record and dive in and go about things in chunks. One important note, if you're going to batch record a bunch of different videos or for example, right now I'm according the different lessons for this class, sometimes it's nice to start by mentioning the lesson number or name and even slate it, which I probably should do that. That'll make it even easier so that you can see immediately what the lesson is about as you're starting. I'm just going to say it, that makes it easier when I'm in post, figuring out what is what and matching up this external audio with the footage. Why this is a skill that matters? Let's first set up a little bit of groundwork here, a little bit of context as to why this is such an important skill to develop in the 21st century. You consume video on a day-to-day basis as in every day. I feel like I can safely make that assumption. Just look at what you're doing right now. You're using the Internet, you're consuming video right now to learn a new skill, that's how I am communicating with you in this very moment. It's cool to be able to spread an idea of mine to different corners of the globe. Right there as I'm thinking of it, based off of what I've written I'm riffing a little bit and just throwing in extra ideas I didn't necessarily write down. But as you can see, I'm going back and forth where I'm recording an idea. I haven't had to repeat too much so far. Sometimes I'll repeat two or three times but for the most part, I'm sharing a sentence or two or few ideas that string together naturally and then going back to where I was at and making sure I'm staying on track. I like to do it this way because I like to be as clear and precise with my ideas and my thoughts as possible especially when I'm trying to convey something that might be foreign to somebody, an abstract concept or a very specific skill like we're doing right now. I like to be just super precise, really exact in my language so I don't feel bad about re-recording certain sentences or certain ideas multiple times. In fact, a variety of times if necessary until I get it right so that in post production it's clear and it makes sense and it's concise. This is also something that has had something of a ripple effect on other parts of my life. Things like, my ability to organize and present my thoughts and ideas just in a general sense in my own head, in my own life, with people in my life, as well as online. This is not at all like speaking in front of a live audience but as we're spending more and more time in digital spaces, this is sort of the equivalent in that sense and it's becoming more and more useful. I don't really like how I presented that so I think I might run through that one more time. This is also a skill that has had a ripple effect into other areas of my life, believe it or not. Things like developing the ability to clearly organize and present my ideas even to myself to make sense of what's going on in my head, in my own life, with other people in my life, my inner circle, as well as online. This is obviously very different from speaking in front of a live audience but as we spend more and more time in digital spaces, this is the option we have at our disposal to present an idea in front of lots of people and as such, as we spend more time in these digital spaces, this is becoming more and more valuable. I like how that went, that second round through. I'm probably going to use that in post. I broke it up a little bit more too but I felt like running through it again, it was more concise and more to the point. The point I'm trying to make here is that this is a skill that has many potential benefits like for example, it can help you make money or more effectively share your ideas with people around the world. Ultimately, it is a skill that you can develop. There's something you can do about it. I think all of that is good news. Having said that, I want to dive into a little bit more the nitty-gritty as to what people are really looking for. That's about that for lesson 2. I feel good about what I've recorded. It might have seemed a little bit piece meal, but I know after having scripted this and prepared it and recorded it just now, I have the elements that I need to create the basic structure and maybe with a little bit of B roll, a little bit of editing, a little bit of music, it's going to flow nicely and look really good. Considering you're watching this right now, you probably already watched lesson 2 so you tell me, how did that come out? Let's move on to the next lesson. 10. How to Deal With Criticism: I definitely felt that this was an important lesson to include in this class. Whenever it comes to posting, and sharing things online, people are going to criticize. This is part of the Internet, especially when people can be anonymous, they can sometimes be ruthless. I don't mean to say this to scare you, because it's probably not something to worry about too much when you're starting out, and I'll explain why, but it's something to keep in mind. First of all, I'm going to share a few things that I like to think about that helped me stay centered, and not let some random comment that I receive on the Internet throw me off my game. First of all, this is just how the world works. There's no point fighting against it, and also you cannot please everybody. You can't please everybody digitally or in the real world. That is just a fact of life, and there's no point in trying to please everybody on the Internet. I think sometimes it's literally impossible. This is because some people are insecure, and instead of turning inwards, and working on themselves, they would rather obsess, and critique other people, by leaving nasty comments. I get that this can be hurtful and that it can really sting, and really stick with you. I have definitely had to deal with that myself. But the sooner you get to a point where you realize this is just somebody's opinion and doesn't have to actually affect who I am, and what I do, the more quickly you can move on with your life. Fortunately, this is much less likely to happen when you're starting out, because I have found that the smaller a community, oftentimes, the more supportive, the more plugged in, people can really be in helping you get going. They believe in you, they see your potential. I don't remember getting very many hate comments at all in the very beginning, and that definitely picked up once I started having videos go viral, because as algorithms pick up your material, and start showing it to more, and more people, people further, and further out of your core center of support, it's more likely to be shown to people that don't care about you. Sometimes that comes with some criticism, and that's life. When things are small, people are really, really supportive, and that's amazing. But as things expand, as you hit more eyeballs, it's more likely to receive criticism. What can you do about it? Just remember that talk is cheap, anyone can say anything, and it doesn't cost them anything. You don't necessarily have to pay them any attention. People like to pay a lot of attention to very unimportant things. I received comments on the shape of my nose, the way I speak, my hair, my eyes, anything you could imagine really, it's just how we work, really. We're visual creatures, and when we're looking at somebody on our screen, sometimes certain details catch our attention, but just because somebody leaves a comment about it, doesn't mean you should pay them any heed. All of these examples that I shared about my physical appearance have nothing to do with the ideas that I'm sharing or the adventures that I'm sharing online. Of course, they have a right to leave those comments. right mean, freedom of speech, they can say whatever they want. It's not my job to try and control people. I make an effort to not get hung up on things, and a big piece of that to be honest, and this is a big piece of advice I give to anybody else who's more on the sensitive side, is to really reduce the amount of comments that you consume, the amount of feedback that you're receiving from random strangers on the Internet. It can be nice to a certain extent, but if you find yourself reading too many comments, too many private messages of or about you or at you, it can get overwhelming, and I found that reducing that has helped me keep my sanity, and to stay focused on what's important for me. I can't choose what other people choose to focus on, but I can choose what I can focus on, and again, expect people to say things, talk is cheap. 11. Final Thoughts: I just want to take a moment right now to say, thank you for taking this class. I really appreciate the time and attention that you've given me. I hope that you have found this helpful and enlightening. This is pretty much everything that I know on the topic of speaking on camera. At this point, my best piece of advice that I think I could offer has to go on and do it for yourself, to put in the time and to practice, and try things out to figure out what that perfect recipe is for you. Everybody is going to do it a little bit different, and that's great. That's part of the magic of all of this. If you're interested, I have several other classes available online. I have a page on my website that shares information on all of them, for those of you that are curious. I also have a page on my website on my gear, the gear that I use to fill myself, as I know there are a lot of technical questions that come with all of this. I didn't go too far into the technical side of things this time around. Since I'm plugging my stuff right now, here at the end of this class, I have two channels on YouTube. One is my name, Nathaniel Drew, and the other is, No Backup Plan, a little bit more stripped down, second channel, if you will, where I'm more spontaneous and experiment even more with format and whatnot. I also have a newsletter, which in its current form is modeled around the idea of, memento vivere, which means remember to live. I use that newsletter to share little bits of Internet inspiration, and quotes, and pieces of food for thought on a usually by monthly basis. I'm really proud of it, and it's honestly one of my favorite ways to connect with people. Please feel free to share your own projects in the project gallery. I'd love to see you guys speak in front of a camera, and to throw yourself into this, and also feel free to ask questions in the discussion section. I will do my very best to answer any inquiries that you may have. With all that being said, I wish you the best of luck on your own content creation. Speaking in front of camera journey that you are embarking on, or continuing on if you've already started. I'll see you soon.