Mustering Up Confidence On Camera (Practical tips you'll use forever)

I'm doling out physiology-based tips that’ll make you immediately feel more grounded, confident, and magnetic on camera! Social Media all but "requires" business owners to show up on camera, these days. If you wanna grow your brand, you gotta muster up some courage (and deal with the judgement-avoidant mindset that's keeping you scared).

TAP THE LINK to grab a FREE PDF download that goes along with this episode (including diagrams of setups I'm describing AND a camera quality settings checklist)

➡️ https://parkdale-republic.lpages.co/confidence/

This isn’t about looking perfect. It’s about getting comfortable enough to show up online, so the perfect clients who are already looking for someone like you can find you and say, “Yup. That’s my person.” (cough ~thanks to para-social relationships~ cough)

I’m also getting real about what’s actually behind your camera nerves (spoiler: it’s got nothing to do with how you look--> it’s fear of judgment). 

Learn my sneaky posture trick from choir class, why the “icky” feeling isn’t always what you think it is, and how to shift the entire energy of your videos with one small mindset flip.

We’ll talk about:

• The real reason you cringe watching yourself back
• How to anchor your body to look more confident instantly
• Why getting comfortable on camera is now a business-critical skill

✨Tap here to watch a FREE masterclass on “How To Get Clients From Instagram (without wasting hours glued to your phone)"

https://parkdale-republic.lpages.co/evergreen-webinar-registration/

Tap here to get your free Posts That Sell Template (This caption got us 10 sales calls in 3 hours)

https://parkdale-republic.lpages.co/10-sales-calls-new

🎉 Tap here to work with Jenna inside Magic Marketing Machine (or MMM+)!

https://www.magicmarketingmachine.com

Music by Jordan Wood

Hosted by Jenna Harding (Warriner), Creator of Magic Marketing Machine

Transcript

A few days ago I was playing with chat GPT and teaching it how to sound more like me. Often inside my business we'll use AI to smooth out an email or write threads based on recent podcast episodes. I was playing with it and I was. Teaching it how to sound more like me.

And a few months ago I tried this and it didn't sound more like me. It was, it was not doing a good job. It was cheeky in a very, I wanna say. Basic way, like what you think a blonde, millennial, social media teacher influencer would sound like. So it wasn't bang on and I tried to teach it and it didn't go so well.

Now it is rapidly getting better at what it does, and I'm also getting better at using it right, but not nearly at the speed that it is improving. It's improved a lot since a couple of months. So a few days ago I sat down with it again. And taught it how to speak like me, and it did a really good job. It started replicating me very quickly and it was replicating isms of mine.

And this thought hit me that if somebody was good enough at Chacha PT and Chacha PT kept getting better, they could put all of my content into A GPT and just make a Jenna bot. It's gonna be freaky, right? And then my next immediate thought was. I need to teach people how to be on camera  because yeah, sure.

They're also gonna make ais. That can be your face, but at least if you are comfortable on camera and you can use on camera skills, and you can make reels, and you can make videos, at least that's less copyable right now.  Plus, it's a highly transferrable skill because your confidence on camera also translate to your confidence in a group setting to your confidence, speaking on a stage to your confidence in an interview, all of these places.

So I'm going to give you some seriously actionable tips to help you. Manifest that confidence and then when you are more charismatic on camera because of your confidence, people will be pulled into the content more. They'll be addicted to it. Someone recently posted on threads, they like responded to me and they were like, I think I speak for all of us.

When I say I just wish I could have the confidence you have on camera. Jenna and I could show up so effortlessly.  You know what, then fine, fine. Fellow from Threads. Here, let me teach you how to do it. We're not gonna conquer the world here today in just a couple of minutes, but I can definitely give you some pointers to get you well on your way. 

And then if you wanna work more deeply on it, then come join me in Magic Marketing Machine where you can submit your content every week. Have me and the coaches look at it and prove it. Help you with your messaging, help you with your marketing, help you get more clients and grow faster on social media. 

First tip, this is the easiest one about being in your body. I remember so clearly when I was a little kid in so many choirs. At one point I was in five choirs, and one of the rules in choir that your conductor is gonna yell at you to do is to sit on the. Edge of your chair. We were always taught since I was like seven, to scooch up to the very edge of your chair and basically balance right on the edge of it, feet on the floor.

And this brings your energy forward. And then as I started learning about acting and learning about theater, this rule stands it. If you're watching a play and somebody is sunken back into their seat, it's because it's a very specific choice and they're trying to relay like exhaustion or something. But if you're just watching people have a conversation on stage, they're at the edge of their seat, so their energy stays forward so their breath stays supported.

And this is the first tip I wanna give you about being on camera. If you sit to create a video. Often you're gonna feel more comfortable than standing. 'cause when you stand, you're out floating in space, right? You have nothing to anchor yourself to. More on that in a second. But if you can sit, make sure to sit on the edge of your chair forward.

Breathe. It's gonna bring some energy now to the anchoring thing. One of the reasons that when you stand on camera, you're, you're suddenly hyper aware of your hands is because you're out floating in space. If you can anchor yourself to something, put your hand on the back of a chair or lean against a wall, or even just have a table in front of you that maybe the camera can't even see, this is gonna help you feel.

More secure and less vulnerable. This is why people speak behind podiums at the front of a stage. They don't need that podium there. They could be walking across the stage, getting attention with their body and movement across the stage, but they're standing behind the podium sometimes 'cause they have a script there.

But more often than not, it's because it's feels safer for them to be behind a podium.  This is the same reason why when you go to a bar, everybody leans on the bar and you can have this whole empty floor in the bar. But people don't wanna just like stand out in empty space and chitchat. They wanna lean on the bar so they can anchor themselves to it.

Think about your body in these ways when you're on camera. Use these super simple tools to help you. Look more confident on screen and feel more confident and feel more safe, which leads to that confidence.  If you follow me on Instagram at Jenna's page, you know that I don't wear makeup all that much. I wear it for fancy events, but I live in the woods.

My hair only exists in a top knot, and I don't really wear a lot of makeup or fancy clothes all that often. And so when I put makeup on, specifically red lipstick, I feel like a literal clown, like a.  Goofy circus clown jumping around on stage in a tent. I feel so silly and I think I look so stupid. Now, do I actually look stupid in red lipstick? 

What do you think? Probably not, right? Probably. It looks objectively good. It is a timeless look that women have been wearing for hundreds of years, so  probably not, but why do I think I look stupid in it? Because I'm not used to it. I'm not used to it. I look in the mirror and I'm like, whoa.  You good? Same thing when you hear your voice on an answering machine.

When you hear your voice on an answering machine, you go,  Ew, I can't believe my voice Sounds like that. It is not that your voice is objectively bad sounding, it's just that you are not used to it. Do I have like this incredible level of self-confidence and think that I look stunning and look at my own videos and go, oh wow, she's beautiful.

I love that. Face. No man, I'm just really used to how I look. I'm really used to how I sound because of my experience and because I have made so much content. For a minute there, my goal was to do three tiktoks a day, and I did that for many, many months, so I. And that was when I was well into my social media career.

And also I grew up on stage and all of that, right? So you take an acting class and you have to watch the video back like I'm used to how my face looks, and I swear to you, I know you might not believe me, but I swear to you that is a huge part of this. If you are not used to being on camera or if you even have a voice in your head of your.

Mom or your auntie ridiculing you for looking at pictures of yourself or calling you conceded, or said that you spent too long in the mirror as a teenager or whatever like that. You're gonna have all those voices in your head, but this is your permission to practice looking in the mirror,  to practice looking at yourself on camera to get used to it. 

Because you watching a video of yourself and then tearing it apart and thinking that it's so bad, and judging that little dimple you have or those crow's feet or whatever is directly stopping you from helping more people and growing your business. I'm so sorry, but that work on yourself is going to serve your business. 

Something that's come up for me quite a lot lately is, I mean, I'm always teaching my clients how to sell more and encouraging you to sell more, but I had a handful of people come to me in a short window saying, Jenna, I signed up to work with someone else. They were way more expensive and I'm not getting anything out of it, or like what they want out of it.

They're not getting the social media growth, they're not getting the community, they're not getting the marketing savvy, and I hate, I hate to hear that.  The thing that it made me realize is it is my duty to sell, right? Like if I would've got to this person sooner and I would've told them about magic marketing machine sooner than they could have got in and they could have discovered a program where we freaking over deliver like crazy and help each other and people leave with these amazing results and business growth and follower growth, right?

So it definitely made me realize I need to practice what I preach. I need to sell more. I need to tell people about my offers. You need to get loud. You need to show up on camera. People are gonna be more comfortable signing up to work with you because they've seen you talk on camera like it is this wild experience, this parasocial relationship where they feel like they know you because they've seen you on Instagram reels. 

It's worth it to do this mental work and to have a tool belt full of all of these different ways to feel more comfortable on camera. Let me give you another one. My sister the other day sent me a video. I'm gonna play the audio for you right now, but this is, this is, this is her blooper reel.  A couple of weeks ago, we thought that the sledding season was over.

Why do I keep looking at my face? Stop looking. Hands up. If you've had that experience where you look back at the video and you've just been staring at your face the whole time, or maybe when you're actually recording the video, you find yourself staring at your face and judging your face. So there's a couple really simple solutions for this one where your eye line should be when you are recording a video is looking right.

At the camera on your phone, whether it's the front facing camera or back facing camera, it doesn't matter. Just make sure that you're making eye contact with the camera, looking at it instead of your face, because then on the other side of the camera, your viewer feels more like you are making eye contact with them.

All right? So that's what we're gonna do. Plus you're not gonna be judging yourself if it helps. Just take a sticky note and put it over the phone so you can't even see your face. Just block it out so that you can't see it, so that you can focus on the lens.  Another thing you could do is put a picture of your spouse or your dog, or somebody who listens to you without judgment.

Put a picture of them there and then truly pretend to be talking to them. If you wanna really go full tilt, put a picture of an ideal client because when you create content, you should feel as though.  You are speaking to that person. As soon as you're hitting record, you're speaking to a lead, you're speaking to an ideal client, you're speaking to someone who really needs to hear what you have to say today, and when you focus on them instead of how you look, you focus on what they need to hear instead of what is the most strategic thing for you to say in that moment.

It also. It shifts the energy and will become a lot easier for you to communicate with the camera because you're not thinking about yourself. You're thinking about them out there and what they need to hear. Because at the end of the day, this post is about them and for them.  I actually had a TikTok memory come up the other day.

I've been singing this for years. I said something to that effect in 2022. It's like these rules do not change. A lot of this marketing psychology, a lot of these content tips, they don't change as much as trending. Audios change and the app features change and whatever. The marketing that I teach at the heart of it, most of it isn't changing.

Try to identify what it is you're actually afraid of. Next time you're feeling uncomfortable on camera.  One thing I think we're actually afraid of is that the post doesn't do well, and then people will judge you for the post not doing well. Like a friend will come to your account and see that you only got a hundred views on that reel, but.

Realistically, that's not happening. Realistically, if a post doesn't do well, nobody saw it, honey. Nobody saw it. Very few people who are coming to your page are coming to hate. Watch your page and be like, ah, they posted this and it didn't perform, and they posted this and it didn't perform. Very few people even know enough about Instagram to clock that, and if they come to your main profile, they can't even see the view count.

They can only see your beautiful face.  Try and get at what the heart of your fear is with the heart of your discomfort and your lack of confidence is because then we can start to address it piece by piece. And if the real underlying fear is that the post won't do well, let's, let's kibosh that right now the only way you get better and.

Your posts are set up to perform better is by you posting, right? If you wait until it's perfect, or you wait until you have that idea that you think is actually gonna work this time.  You're really not serving yourself on your business success or your social media success. We gotta get ourselves out there.

One more quick, practical tip for the road. I ask this on TikTok and somebody help me out, a photographer. So if you want to show a full body shot of yourself on video. Put your phone at hip height and then back away from it if you put your phone at eye level height and then back away from it. The angle's very strange.

And when I started doing this, I was like, oh, that's way better. So where I keep my phone is pretty much in line with my eyes if I'm standing or sitting talking to camera. If you want a full body shop, maybe you're showing off an outfit, maybe you need more context, you're doing something with your hands and you need to be able to see more, then keep that phone at hip height and I think you're gonna like the results. 

If you are ready, you want to get clients from your content. You want to manage your Instagram in 15 minutes a day. You want to know what to post to bring in perfect freaking leads who are happy to pay your highest rate, and you have a service. Based business then you are perfect for Magic Marketing machine.

And there's a free training below this episode called How to Get Clients from Instagram Without Wasting Hours Glued to your phone. It's gonna tell you the exact strategies my clients use inside the program and give you an opportunity to join to come work with me. We can hang out, you'll get our full proven strategy for how to get clients from Instagram.

Everything you could possibly need to make better content faster, and we have a huge focus on sales and converting clients and doing that in a way that feels good and authentic and not pushy and slimy sales in a way that feels good. Thank you so much for being here. I'll see you in the next episode.