Confidence On Camera

✨ Hello, I’m Fran, Your NLP & Business Coach. I’m exploring a wide range of business ideas and money-making paths, with practical takeaways you can apply.

In this episode, I'm interviewing Nicola Mansfield.

Nicola is a mum of two who founded Film Your Face to help small business owners show up confidently and professionally on video without overthinking. 

Her calm, practical, and confidence-first approach is designed for people who know video matters but feel stuck, unsure, or self-conscious on camera. She also runs Film Your Family, helping parents capture their family stories.

You can connect to Nicola in the following ways⬇️
https://www.facebook.com/filmyourfaceuk/
https://www.instagram.com/filmyourface/
https://filmyourface.home.blog/

Find me @ https://melancholymentor.com

As a coach, I listen without judgment, understanding that others views may differ from my own.

#nlpcoach #nlpcoaching #creativity #inspiration #transformation #videoediting

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

Fran 0:15

Let's ignite our creative potential together. Hello and welcome to Melancholy Coaching Podcast, the show that highlights different business owners and ideas. I'm Fran, your NLP and business coach, and I'm intrigued to introduce a motivational guest. Mum of two, Nicola, founded Film Your Face to help small business owners show up confidently and professionally on video without overthinking. Calm, practical, and confidence first. Her work is designed for people who know that video matters, but they feel stuck, unsure, or self-conscious on camera. Alongside this, she also runs Film Your Family, which supports parents to capture their family stories. So Nicola, welcome to the show. Hi. Hello, thank you for having me. You're very welcome. And I've got a couple of questions for you, and we'll have a chat around that if that's okay with you. So the first one that I'm curious to know is what inspired you to create Film Your Face?

Nicola 1:26

Okay, so I'll try not to get too deep in the backstory. But so I was a film teacher. So I taught in college for about 20 years, near enough. So sort of the 16 plus, so college university students, really practical filmmaking. We did a lot of documentary and it's all this, you know, we show up as ourselves and we tell our stories. When I had my eldest daughter, so that was 2019, and then in 2020, while I was on maternity leave, the world changed. So we think a lot, don't we, about we change as people when we have a child. It wasn't me that changed, it was the world I went back to after maternity leave. Whilst I was off, I obviously all the baby groups stopped. So I did an online course of the photography. Of course, you know, teaching film. I'm I'm a reasonable photographer. I knew I knew what it was, but I wanted the community side of it. And I did learn heaps actually. And so I started thinking, well, this doesn't exist for video. So nobody's teaching parents how to get really great videos of their kids. So maybe I could do that, maybe you know, if I go back to work part-time, perhaps with the little one, and then I can do the two things. And so I started setting that up. And then when I was pregnant with my second child, I filmed it all, had it all ready to go, and then my goodness, she was a velcro baby. So for me to do anything practical was really difficult. So what I started doing was the business learning side while she was small and joining lots of groups and talking to business people, and I really quickly realized that families, we love getting nice videos of our kids, but it's not we don't get it. Oh well. Business owners, we need it. We need to be showing up on camera all the time. And a lot of people hesitate and they think, oh, it's because I'm not confident, but actually, sometimes it's you don't know why it doesn't look the way you want it to look or why it doesn't sound the way you want it to sound. And that's not because you're not practiced or you don't know what your business is. Most people can talk about their businesses for hours, you know. It's it's more how do you get that video looking right, sounding right, and how will that fill you with confidence? So I started my family business in a September, and within two weeks went, right, face. Here you go, business owners. Come and do a free view of me. Let's do it. So uh it was quite a quick, it took me about four years to get film your family started, and then two weeks to get film your family started.

Fran 3:55

Because they're they're kind of complimentary services, but actually quite different, aren't they?

Nicola 4:01

And I'm teaching the same skills except film your family. I say do this because it's you know, preserving your family memories on all your screens, and then film your face, I say do this because it's all for social media. But you know, the fundamentals of filmmaking haven't changed in a hundred years, you know. So it's if you can learn how to light something properly, if you can ensure that your sound, people can hear you, and there's not distractions and things like that, it's just these tiny little things. But why would anybody know that? Because unless you've been to film school, yeah, but even talking.

Fran 4:38

Even then, because obviously I'm I do this podcast and I don't mind being on camera, I don't have qualms about that at all. However, anybody watching this as the video version, which goes out on YouTube, I wear a headset because they're noise cancelling. I live on a main road, I've tried every form of microphone and it just doesn't work for me. So I've had to adapt, and this this is why I go with this style. So potentially sometimes it could it also be that yes, you know, it's about the sound, but what what sound? How do they want to sound? What can they use? And then that could potentially be a tech issue, maybe. Do you go into that as well?

Nicola 5:17

Yeah, so on my on my kind of flagship course, so I have a foundations course called Lyft. We that's all the stuff we look about, and it's very much what can you control versus what can't you control? So I don't know if you can hear, I just had a couple of tractors pass me and I can hear it, and it's distracting me, but I've actually moved my entire desk setup around so that my microphone is now facing the wall, not the window. Yeah, and also the window, I'm slightly better lit on this side because I'm facing the window there rather than it being behind me and making the wall behind me really bright. There's little tweaks like that, isn't it? Tiny tweaks because sometimes the easiest thing to do is move ourselves, and then it makes it so actually a really fun little thing I get people do when we do a live course is I get to get your phone, put your front-facing camera on, and I want you to spin around, do a 360 spin, and when the light is nice, that's where you record. Now even in a room with no windows, you'd be amazed the difference where the light is coming from.

Stories Reels And Camera Confidence

Fran 6:20

Some of this potential to the next bit that I'm curious about. Someone's asking. So thinking about the work that you do. What would you recommend to someone who knows that video is important? So they know it matters, but they feel self-conscious on camera.

Nicola 6:38

So do you know actually? I think one of those isn't perhaps a really technical skill, it's a building up skill. So some of us, we work really well. You drop us in a deep end, and yeah, we're good. Other people, that completely puts you off. You have one bad experience doing something crazy like going live, yeah, and it you think I'm never doing video again. And I always say, like going live, it's like the equivalent of going on the motorway. Okay, your first driving lesson, do something small. So I my big suggestion is often if you're if you're talking about say meta, so like Facebook and Instagram, do a story. It's a video story, it's up there for 24 hours, and then it's gone. And a lot of this thing, oh, it's only there for 24 hours. Why should I put all the effort into it? But actually, I mean, realistically, any post you put out on social media, how long is it there for? Really?

Fran 7:31

But so but some of that is. But then even with that, what you've just said, it does depend slightly, depending on what platform you're using. So Instagram, for example, you can build highlights from your stories. So therefore, it is still evergreen content that you're creating, and also the the any stories that you create, your videos that you're creating, go into the archive and you can pull it back up, can't you?

Nicola 8:17

So absolutely, yeah. So you never lose that. It's it's all there. And you could go, you know, six months in. Oh, actually, I want to put together, yeah, a highlight reel of say I, you know, say I make mugs, so we go with all my mugs. I get the stories of all my mugs, wonderful. There you go, and you put them all together then. So you know you don't lose it completely. So that is a really useful way. And I do think that's what tends to work, I find, with a lot of people, if they are nervous about it, it's not as scary as doing a reel. It's not as scary as doing a life.

Fran 8:47

I'm gonna throw something at you now. I feel like I feel like it's the right, it's the right time and place to do it. Just out of interest, myself, for example, I'm a very messy and perfect action person. I will just do. Yeah. So I put myself out there on YouTube, I put myself out there on stage because I'm also a ballesse performer, I just do it. Okay. So if somebody's like me, because there's gonna be other people like me. Yeah, what would you advise to without judgment? What would you advise to just polish up that messy and perfect action a bit? Okay.

Nicola 9:25

Oh, that's a really good one. And I think there's lots of different ways to be messy. Yeah.

Fran 9:31

Because again, if that's if that's part of your brand, you're happy viable.

Nicola 9:35

Yeah, you're happy doing camera. Yeah, I think there are a few different things that you could do. So one would be learning those fundamentals of filmmaking, because if you if you have the light, nice, if you have the sound good, but it's just really what you're saying. So for me, I know I can talk, you know, I've been teaching this for a very long time. And if in a situation like this you say, tell me about something, I will happily talk about it for a very long time. But if I'm doing a real and I know a real maximum of three minutes on some accounts, it's your 90 seconds, for me, and I probably could do something concisely, what I'll do is I'll write it down first and then I'll put it into a teleprompter. There's a free one on the edits app, which I really rate, it's really good, and I'll I'll read it through. And it will take me a few goes, don't get me wrong, but it takes me less time than it would to talk for 20 minutes and then try and edit myself down afterwards, which is very difficult. Yeah, that's now I like that because I think that's a really good one. If you're messy in your which I am, you know, the way I express myself, that's a good way. So script yourself first, but use a teleprompter.

Fran 10:46

I do, um, because I'm completely transparent about all the stuff that I do. So for the podcast, I do use a teleprompter and I reference it on occasion because even though I know what I want to say and and you know, I know what I want to convey, quite often it I get distracted and the words go because that can happen, can't it? Even when we know our message and we know what it is that we want to do, yeah, but you can go blank, can't you?

Nicola 11:12

And yeah, yeah, well, you yeah, yeah, you either go one of two ways, you go blank, you lose your train of thought, or maybe chatter too much. Yeah, and then I'm supposed to be talking about you know a tip, and now I'm talking about how I taught, you know, and it's it it all connects, but on a live like this, that's that's great so long as you do get through all questions. But for a real or a story where they're very short and perhaps so it's useful to know as well, stories are going to your warm audience, so there are people already in your world that follow you or see your stories. But a reel is generally a discovery tool, so it's being pushed out further. So for me, it's normally about 80 to 90 percent people that don't know me see my reels. So what I mean is something we just don't think about. So we think, oh, you know, I'm putting out this and my followers will see it, but actually, it might be people that have never seen you before. So being concise in that can be quite important if you're trying to, as a business owner, you're trying to bring somebody in your world ultimately to sell to them, aren't you? You know, let's not beat about the bush. That's our end goal, is that we are trying to do that. No.

Fran 12:21

Yeah, we want to we want to nurture them and we want to warn them up and yeah, we want to offer our services.

Nicola 12:27

Yeah, so I think that's why video is a fantastic way to do that, because what you're selling effectively is yourself. You're saying, come and get to know me, elements about me, whether that's personal, and you know, it's fine to share some elements of your life, it doesn't need to be all of it, whether that's how how I work, what I do within my work. And somebody might see that and think, Oh, that was funny. I liked that, I'll follow along. And then the hope is they'll stay with you, and then when they're ready to buy, if they are the right client for you, that they already like and trust you because they've seen those videos. It would be different perhaps for somebody selling like a product, but for us where we're selling ourselves, if somebody comes to us as a cold audience, purchases, and then has us talk to them and goes, I don't like her. Everybody's lost in that situation, haven't we? Because they give us about our views, they don't recommend us. But if they've seen videos of us and they see that I wave my hands around and they think I like that, not oh my god, I can't concentrate, I'd rather they made that decision before investing their time and their money in me.

Fran 13:35

Because what I'm hear what I'm hearing from what you're saying is the person doing the video, there's it's the intention of what that video is for and the platform on which it's going to be used or where it's going to be repurposed.

Nicola 13:48

Yeah.

Fran 13:49

And then for the consumer of the video, they're either going to be our ideal audience or not. Or not. And that and that's okay because that potentially could be down to what our intention is and where we're using the video. That could need an adjustment, couldn't it? Yeah, absolutely.

B-Roll That Tells Your Story

Nicola 14:11

Yeah, well done. I think you've summarized that really nicely. I was listening to what you said. Good. There we go. I I get there in the end.

Fran 14:18

Right. My next curiosity is what's what's next for you?

Nicola 14:23

So at the moment I'm working on B-roll. So interesting. People know what I mean by B-roll. And this is a really interesting one, actually, because a lot of the words we're using on social media and they had a meaning in the film world, and that meaning has kind of changed now, which is okay. So, B-roll, what I'm talking about is any type of video that isn't this. This isn't me talking to camera. Yeah. And it's a lot easier to do because doing videos where we talk to camera, this is why I've got a whole course on it, is challenging. You've got to think about all these different things, and they've all got to work at the same time. Whereas B-roll is a bit more relaxed. So rather than me going, hi, I'm Nicola, and I run film your face, you know, it might be I've got a camera kind of here capturing this, and it's like, oh, I was on a podcast today talking about this. Right. And it's the same message, but it's much easier to receive visually, with just perhaps a little caption, giving it some meaning, giving it some context, and ideally some kind of call to action. So oh now you can click on this link and go to the podcast and you can watch it. So there's movement in that. So B-roll, I think, is actually really powerful and really underused. And a really nice way to think about it is if you take a photograph, yeah, could you do that as a video? Because then it's discovery. So you post that photograph and it goes to your followers. But if you post that same photograph as a video, it's a discovery tool and it goes out.

Fran 15:56

That's quite a lot to um unpack with that as well, isn't it? Um it's interesting as well that you've referenced the terminology that's used because not everybody's in the world of understanding what currently the term B-roll is used for.

Nicola 16:11

Yeah. And I I've been talking about doing this for a few months, and I've either had people go, Oh, yes, I need that, please do that, or they've gone, what's it? Yeah. I'm kind of afraid to ask at this point because everybody talks about it and everybody means something slightly different. And we do mean something slightly different because none of us are using the term correctly. And I've got a whole blog on it if you are interested in what B-roll meant in filmmaking, in documentary filmmaking. But it's, you know, kind of. That's interesting.

Fran 16:43

Yeah, that's interesting in itself, because even some of the apps that are tools in which you can edit or chop down long form video into short form, they've got b-roll options.

Nicola 16:54

Yeah.

Fran 16:54

So I'm now wondering in what, you know, what sense they mean it and what context that's meant.

Nicola 17:00

If you can imagine a documentary, so say this isn't a podcast, this is a documentary that we're making about us. You've got us having our interview, but to watch me with my white background, as wiggly and interesting as I am, would be very boring on its own. So B role is something you put over top. So if I'm talking about the live I did earlier, maybe we would cut to a shot of me doing my live with my computer and shot. And that is the B role. So the A role is me talking, that's the message, that's the important information that we hear orally or we read. And then the B role is the visual story, it's the explanation. And storytelling.

Fran 17:43

So again, this is within context, isn't it? It has to be within that sort of specific context. What you were originally saying about B-roll in in the way that you're kind of teaching people how to use it. I feel like that's gonna be a really lovely no like and trust thing. Yes. You know, the the B-roll is it's it's more nurturing, isn't it? I think.

Nicola 18:04

Yeah, yeah. And it's also getting people thinking about it simply, because we do tend to overthink video in a way that we don't overthink photos, and we think things like, okay, so me, you know, I've said I'm a mum of two kids, that's important, but I don't need to show my children to show I'm a mother. And so it's how can we show these visual stories? How can we tell these stories without being really direct, really, in your face for them? We can do things subtly, and audiences are clever. So there's ways, ways we can do that, ways we can tell a story without having to cross boundaries, which is where people are getting worried because they think, oh, I've got to share my home life, things which are separate to my business, but you don't because that would be like an an overexposure of ourselves, wouldn't it?

Viral Views Versus Right Audience

Fran 18:54

Our personal life. Yeah, yeah. No, I understand. I understand. There's a lot of things, isn't there, that come into potentially things being scary, and uh and our brain loves to hold evidence of things, so it's gonna remind you of all those scary things as well. Um you know, unless unless you you know you've got somebody like you that can just very gently explain it, and you know, I'll give you a slight example of this and then I'm gonna start wrapping this up. Ages ago, it was not long after TikTok first started. I put on a video on there and I was just throwing videos on there. I don't use it with any particular intent, in all honesty, it's mainly to consume other people's creations. I put a video up that when I woke up to it, it had loads and loads of likes, it had gone viral, it had all sorts of comments on it, and I looked and I kid you not, safely without breaking it, I threw my phone. Yeah, I threw it down onto my rug because in that split second of instant, I was too overwhelmed to comprehend what had happened, and I didn't know what to do. So we all think like I would love all the comments, we'd love, but actually, I've had an a reality experience of that, and it frightened me. I didn't like it and I didn't enjoy it, and it made me very conscious of not wanting that to happen again. Yeah. So, what did I want to happen? You know, so what did I want to happen? So it's kind of led through a big thought process of what was I actually putting videos out for and what kind of audience did I want to get from it? It it ended up with a rather number of unkind comments as well, which you know is fine. We potentially we're all gonna deal with that with being online in one way or another. But that particular time, the combination of it being viral, of it having loads of comments, of it going everywhere, it had gone kind of to other countries, and it was too overwhelming. Yeah. So somebody who's interested in video and interested in creating video for either their family or for their for their business, you can come in with that, and it also helps with the overwhelm, doesn't it? Because you can explain things within the intention that they want to use it and within the context that it's gonna be for to help with that overwhelm.

Nicola 21:21

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. If I've if I've got time to give you a silly example, yeah, go on. Go on. So I just gave you one. I've got a video I did not that long ago, maybe about a month ago, where I've got a hot cake pan and I've got oven gloves, and I'm trying to trying to get it out, and then I throw away the oven gloves and I use my fingers and it's too hot, so I get the oven gloves back. And it's had about half a million views on TikTok and on my personal Instagram and Facebook, about a hundred thousand on each of those. And part of my brain goes, Oh, I want to share this on all my channels because it's doing so well, and it's getting me loads of followers. I'm still getting followers every day on my personal profile from Facebook. Which we like. We get the dopamine thing. We think, oh, people are coming to me. But do you know what? If they're not small business owners who want to do video, how are they helping me? If they think I'm a comedian, you know, that's like you're growing, growing the wrong audience. I'm growing the wrong audience with those. So I I haven't posted it on my Film Your Face channel. It's it's actually gone on another channel I've got about baking. So we're I'm setting up the socials for a cake shed I've opened with my neighbour and having a really fun time doing product-based videos, just uh because everything I've done's been more service-based so far. So that's great, but it's not going to help anyone come to our road and buy cake. It could help us in the future if we sell recipes. But right now, that video doing so well. It's great if the school mum sees it, tells me she's seen it, and then I say, Oh, brilliant, come and buy a cake from me. That can work.

Fran 22:53

So it's not like it was useless doing it, but it's we think, oh, I want all the views, but actually, yeah, and I've I've did it again recently, not with uh go viral, but I put out a video that was literally just out of context of what I usually do because I'd gone to a a gig with my daughter and I filmed part of it because it was lovely, not us. I filmed the artist, put it out on Instagram, and it went bigger than anything else I normally do. And I'm like, okay, that's that's lovely, but it's not going to do anything else for me, is it? No, no. So again, it's intentionally.

Nicola 23:30

Don't do it because if you're sharing a part of your life that you feel comfortable with, that's still okay. But yeah, I think the end goal we tend to think should always be about, oh, how many followers am I getting, how many views am I getting? But really, exactly what you said earlier, what we want to do is for people who are in our world, we want them to like us, trust us, you know, that we're real. Real AI spam bots, you know.

Fran 23:53

This particular one kind of acts almost like a bit of an anchor for me. So it was a lovely time with my daughter. It's reminded me of a time when I felt good and people are enjoying it. So I've kind of left it on there because I'm using it like um a feel-good. Yeah. Like a feel-good anchor. It's not doing any harm.

Nicola 24:12

No, I think something we hear quite a lot, don't we, as small business owners, is oh, we've got to be content creators, but a content creator is a different job. A content creator wants views and wants follows, and then they want brands to sponsor them to show their products. That's not not what most of us are doing. Maybe it'd be a nice side hustle, but it's not our why we set up our business. The main focus. Yeah. Yeah, I understand. Right. Getting back for that client. It's not who we are, it's who we're talking to.

Where To Find Nicola And Wrap

Fran 24:42

Thank you. I feel like we could go down and just carry on down this rabbit hole. But thank you, Nicola, for sharing your practical wisdom. Your approach as well, because it's interesting, you know, it's something that we don't necessarily think about, that it can be done in a way that suits you and suits your family and what you want to share. So, you know, you can take the fear out of it. And I feel like you're very passionate about it as well.

Nicola 25:09

I am, yes, absolutely.

Fran 25:11

Which is lovely. You're helping business owners and families bring their stories to life, aren't you? So, you know, that's a lovely thing to get passionate about. Um, those of you interested in learning more about Nikola and her work, you're on Facebook as film your face. Yeah. Instagram is film your face as well. Okay. So, and if you're interested in more content like this, this is where I plug myself. Be sure to visit www.melancolimentor.com, follow us for the latest updates, and the latest podcast goes on there as well. And until next time, stay curious, keep igniting your creative potential, and go and find Nicola at filmyourface. And and not me for viral videos. Thank you so much.

Nicola 25:56

Thank you.

Fran 25:59

Thank you for listening. I'd love for you to subscribe and visit www.melancolymentor.com for the latest updates. Till next time, stay curious and keep exciting for creative potential.