#179: How Best to Do Live Video and Why You Must!

I’m talking with Heather Sager about how best to do live video and why you must!

This is advice for doing Facebook Lives, Instagram Lives, and any other place you could show your face on video.

If you want to stand out from other bloggers, I can’t think of a better way. Live video helps you build deeper relationships with your audience. It’s a the best way to fast-track the know, like, and trust factor we’re all trying to build.

But it does feel awkward. So if you feel like it’s difficult to show up on camera, you’re not alone.

Heather shares all her tips and tricks for helping people get over there fear and help them show up!

In this episode, we discuss:

The best ways to communicate with your audience
Understand our fear of showing up live on video
Strategies for overcoming our trepidation
The basic technology you need for video
Differences between showing up live on Facebook vs. Instagram
How to practice showing up
Why people are more forgiving of live video

Heather has so many great takeaways. If you even considered going live and putting your face out there, hopefully this episode will give you the courage to do it!

How Best to Do Live Video and Why You Must | The Blogger Genius Podcast

Table of Contents

Show Notes:

Some of these links may be affiliate.

Intro 0:04
Welcome to the Blogger Genius Podcast brought to you by MiloTree. Here’s your host, Jillian Leslie.

Jillian Leslie 0:11
Hello, my friends. Welcome back to the Blogger Genius Podcast. I am your host, Jillian Leslie. I am a serial entrepreneur with my husband, David. I’m a business coach. And as I like to call myself a business translator.

I break down what is working in online business. So, you can take these tips and use them yourself. Before I get started, I want to read my newest review on iTunes. I always get excited when I get a new review.

Review of The Blogger Genius Podcast on iTunes

This is from Teresa, and she wrote, “Jillian offers a wealth of relevant information. She raises the bar by consistently bringing expert guests in each aspect of online business. Listening to the blogger genius has proven to be time well spent in my busy schedule.”

Well, thank you so much Teresa for that interview. And if you are getting stuff out of this podcast, if it’s helping you grow your business, the way to spread the love, please head to iTunes or Apple podcasts. Please give it five stars.

If you write a review, I might read it in one of my upcoming episodes, and I would be so appreciative. I really do get excited every time I see a new review.

How to Show Up Live to Grow Your Business

For today’s episode, I’m interviewing Heather Sager. And what’s interesting about Heather is she teaches people how to show up and speak live, whether that be conferences, in videos on Facebook.

And we talk about how to do it yourself because I believe in today’s crowded market, one of the ways that you can separate yourself is if you’re the person who puts your face out there, but it’s not easy. It tends to be uncomfortable. We talk about this.

And I don’t know if you knew this, but I have a Facebook group called the “Become a Blogger Genius” Facebook group, I would love you to come on over and join. I go live in there every Monday where I do a recap of my most recent episode.

And when I first started, it was so hard. I felt so weird. And now I look forward to it. So, if you want to come and see me go live, join my Facebook group and come on over on Mondays. If you can get good at this, it will really grow your business.

So, without further delay, here is my interview with Heather Sager. Heather, welcome to the show.

Heather Sager 2:43
Hey, Jillian, I’m thrilled to be here. Thanks so much for having me.

Absolutely. I found you because you teach people how to show up and speak, how to show up on stage, how to show up on video. And I took your course on how to do it because I’m really leaning in this year to showing up live.

Jillian Leslie 3:05
And I have to say I really liked it. And then I reached out to you and said, would you come on the podcast to help others really put their face out there put themselves out there. So, thank you for doing this.

Heather Sager 3:18
Of course. I love that the workshop that you taught is called “Lights, Camera, Rockstar.” It was a little call from my audience who had that thing of like, how do I take that first step of speaking? How do I get comfortable getting on camera?

What should I be looking at? It was just an idea at the time. And it turned out to be a really dynamic program that people are loving.

Absolutely. And for this year, I recorded a podcast which I will link to in the show notes, where I shared my big tips for building a business in 2021. And one of them is showing up.

Jillian Leslie 3:52
Showing up putting your face out there. Getting people to see that you’re a real person that you’re not hiding behind your blog, but that you’re you, warts and all and that people can connect with you.

So, that’s really why I was like I got to get you on my show. Because if I’m teaching this I need to bring an expert on.

Heather Sager 4:11
I’m thrilled to be here to talk about it. Let’s get everybody ready to start showing up on video today.

Yeah. So, first of all, let’s just briefly, will you share your background and how you started teaching people this and getting people to show up.

It’s so funny because when I think about it, I would have never thought that I would be teaching people public speaking let alone video. I was super, super shy kid growing up. But just like any of us have, we fall into what we do. When we look back.

There’s a perfect sequence of events that goes oh, this is exactly what I should be doing. And so, for me, my start at public speaking was in the non-profit sector where my family and I formed a non-profit organization in honor of my mom who lost her life from cancer when I was a teen.

And we started a non-profit that was all around educating people in this specific realm of cancer treatment, which was holistic treatment at the time. Nobody was talking about it and there was no information available.

We’ were like, people need to talk about it. So, we started this non-profit because there wasn’t a voice or there wasn’t any light shone in that realm. And if we would have had more education, we don’t know how the outcomes would have been different.

So, I started my world of public speaking out of sheer necessity and sheer drive to help other people. And what that stemmed in was a career where I worked in an organization for 10 years.

Where I ended up working with medical practitioners and business owners. Tell you high end sales, how to lead their teams, how to communicate in a way that creates a really great culture, and really good outcomes.

And I did that for so long, that I realized that the thing that I loved most, and the thing that I was the best at wasn’t the running the teams or all the business corporate things.

The thing that I love doing was when I got to go on stage, and actually talk to people and get them excited about the thing I was teaching. What I was teaching, it didn’t really matter.

It was just the ability to see somebody’s eyes light up when they’re like, that’s how you do that. That’s how this could happen in my world. So, I fell in love with it. And I left the corporate world and decided to start my own business.

Quite frankly, I had no idea what I was doing. I wasn’t a full-time speaker. So, I felt like oh, what can I teach people but I’m a I’m a student of understanding how things work.

And I figured if I can teach other people, the strategies behind the speaking, I can help them be more successful using it in their business. So, I left the corporate job.

Helping People With Public Speaking

And now what I do is I specifically help coaches, course creators, bloggers, service providers use their voice on video or any kind of virtual stage. To bring more awareness for what they do. To connect with people and to drive sales in their business.

I love that. Okay, so let’s talk about connection. The thing that I think is so powerful about video, is that it is a way to connect that you can’t necessarily do through the written word in a blog, or even in photos.

Jillian Leslie 7:07
Like, I’m looking at you right now. And I feel like we’re friends. And I feel like I get you and I know you. And like we’re kind of having like virtual tea together. So, let’s talk about people who don’t have a lot of experience in this.

How do I get there? How do I feel that? What is it that makes me feel that connection to you? And how do I create that when I am, let’s say going live or doing video and making YouTubes and that kind of thing? What are your thoughts about that?

Heather Sager 7:43
Well, let’s talk about the study of communication. I think if we understand fundamentally how communication works, it’ll make perfect sense why video is so scientifically proven to be a connection builder.

So, when it comes to communication, there was a study done in a university in Southern California in the ’70s.

How to Best Communicate with Your Audience

That talked about when it comes to communicating things that have some kind of emotional message, which anything marketing related, or things we talk in our business is all emotional.

When it comes down to it, communication has three parts. Part number one is the words we communicate. Part number two is how we say those words. So, our pace, our inflection, our pause, our volume, those kinds of things.

And then number three is our body language. So, everything that we’re saying when we’re actually saying nothing at all. So, my eyebrows, the furrowing, when I get really concentrated with my facial expressions, the gestures, I make my hands.

Whether or not I open with my body, or I’m crossed arms and closed. We communicate to people all the time. So, thinking about this as bloggers when we are focused on our words only, we’re leaving the other parts of communication to interpretation by the reader.

So, depends on how they’re perceiving our words, they apply the rest of the puzzle. When we have the ability to communicate with our voice and then also with video, we get to bring all the facets of communication to the party.

And here’s the interesting thing. Those three facets they are not equal weights. When it comes to it. Think about it those three pieces are like a pie. You’re looking at a pie chart.

55% of what we communicate is the non-verbal’s, the body language. 38% of what we communicate is how we say the words, leaving only 7% the words. So if, as a blogger, as a writer, you have a really important message on your heart.

And part of what you communicate is emotion and you can only do so much with the words. But at the end of the day, you’re leaving the interpretation to the reader, which is beautiful, but also sometimes we want to bring our heart with the words.

Video is a Great Way to Grow Your Audience

So, I think video is a unique way for you to bring your voice, bring your personality. Bring your perspective into the world, in an environment where people get to see more of you and get to know your personality. And that’s where true connection is created.

What if I feel uncomfortable, doing video because I feel like somehow my personality is not going to show because I’m worried that you’re going to judge my hair or you’re going to, I don’t know, and I don’t know what to say.

Jillian Leslie 10:10
And this is a really big hill to climb. What do you say to people?

Heather Sager 10:16
It is. I think if I were to meet someone who’s never done video and they weren’t asking that question, they weren’t uncomfortable. I would think that they were a little crazy town. Video is not a natural thing.

Jillian Leslie 10:28
Amen. Amen. Amen.

Heather Sager 10:30
Yeah, introvert extrovert. It doesn’t matter. We all have a natural ability. It’s built into us as humans that when we’re in front of another person, we know kind of the standard norms around communication.

We can pick up on people’s eye contact, we know how to nod along we know how to communicate for the most part. But when you take away the immediate feedback of that other person.

And instead insert this little black box, Logitech thing that staring at me right now, we’re like, “Wait, what do we do?” Because the normal social construct of communication is gone. And instead, we’re staring at a piece of plastic.

So, it’s no wonder that we feel uncomfortable. Of course it does. I just read for the second time, Charles, “The Power of Habit.” Charles Duhigg.

Jillian Leslie 11:21
I don’t know how to pronounce his last name.

Heather Sager 11:22
Okay. So good. But think about this. He talks in the book about habit, you have a cue or a trigger. And then there’s some kind of like habit, and then there’s the outcome. And I think about when it comes to communication, we’re used to certain things happening.

If we say something, we’re used to seeing a reaction in someone’s face. If we smile, we’re used to seeing like, oh, somebody else will smile back. And I’ll give you a weird example of this.

I’m a West coaster. When I traveled to New York, and I walk through New York and I smile at people I’m like, what’s wrong with these people? Because my natural cue smile at people, I expect someone to smile back and they don’t know.

Cultural normative. That’s not normal in New York City, evidently. So, thinking about that, when we’re taken out of context around what we tend to expect in communication. Things get weird.

And we start wondering, am I doing something wrong? Do they like me? Do they know me? I have a hearing loss. And I struggle being able to hear people, I’ve got severe hearing loss, and I wear hearing aids.

So, when I’m in different situations, and I can’t fully understand what people are saying, I immediately put up a wall and get disconnected. And I rely on the nonverbal cues to fill in the gaps.

But my whole life has been trying to figure out like, there’s always been something missing, that I can’t ease into the normal conversation, because I can’t actually hear. So, similar to you. I love Zoom, because in my ears, I can hear you right now. It’s wonderful.

And I don’t have to second guess. And I think the camera is creating that same discomfort for us. So, I think just normalize, he didn’t say, it’s not a normal thing to talk to a plastic box. It’s okay.

It doesn’t mean that we’re not going to do it, it just means we’re going to expect a level of discomfort that we have to push through.

I love that advice. And it’s funny. Whenever I talk to people who do Facebook Lives all the time, they say to me, it’s still weird. Yes, you get better at it. Yes, it is a muscle. Yes, it becomes kind of like, okay.

We Are All Nervous to Go Live on Video

Jillian Leslie 13:25
But this one woman said every time I’m about to press my phone and go live, I get that moment of like, “Ah, do I really want to do it?” But she’s good at pushing herself to just do it.

So, I do think there is a little bit of, even when you’re a pro at this, you do have to push yourself off the cliff and just do it.

Heather Sager 13:49
I agree. I still get nervous every time I do public speaking. So, I always say, public speaking regardless of the format. Speaking on stage, a stage is just a platform to share your message.

So, whether it’s on Instagram stories, or on a Facebook Live, or it’s at a conference with 10,000 people, or a live stream, I don’t care what the stage is virtual stage in real life stage, it’s all public speaking. And there’s a level of discomfort that happens.

The first time you do it, even the 10th time you do it. The anxiety is high; your nerves are high. The sweat is in all the places. That’s normal. I still get nervous every time I speak.

It’s like a resiliency muscle. You build the muscle for going anyway to doing it anyway pushing the button showing up. You build that resilience where you know to expect the nerves you actually embrace them because it means that obviously nerves are good.

Because it means that you are honoring your audience. The fact that you have a complete honor to be able to share your message with an audience so you should treat it seriously. And nerves mean that you are and so I always say nerves are good.

I do think nerves are good because remember anxiety and excitement are the same brain pathways. It’s a little bit like the story we tell ourselves around that. So, if I can take my nervousness and go, I’m excited I say this to my daughter who’s 13.

Think About Serving Your Audience

Jillian Leslie 15:05
It’s amazing the mental shift. Also, what I would say is when I think about speaking at conferences, for example, or doing Facebook Lives or doing my podcast. With the podcast, what I do is I trick myself and you can tell me what you think about this.

I trick myself into recognizing that my reason I’m here is to be of service. And if I can get it, because I’m a helper, and if I can put my helping hat on, then something shifts in me and it becomes less about you judging me.

And my whole purpose shifts, and I help you. And I know that for example, there are all these again, like brain things about when we can be helpers, like that brings us happiness, and it totally brings me happiness.

So, making that subtle shift and going, it doesn’t matter what I look like in my outfit, or if I stumble over my words, or who knows, but if I can connect with you and know that I can maybe make your life better. That’s the trick.

That’s the switch that I turn on, and that gets me braver.

Heather Sager 16:28
Yeah, I love that. I think that’s something that I talk about with my clients a lot, where I say right before you go on stage, two minutes before your live or the two minutes before your virtual summit or two minutes before your conference.

I don’t want you to worry about your presentation, I want you to get really quiet and ask yourself the question, who in this audience needs me to speak to them today? Like what do they need? Who’s in the audience?

Is it a stay at home mom from North Carolina who’s frustrated because of X, Y and Z happening? And this one little gem that I have to say on stage is going to remind her that her message matters, or it’s going to remind her of something.

If you can visualize that, who is in the audience that needs to hear my message, and how can I help them. I even tell them, create a fictitious person, pretend her name is Brittany, and she’s from, I don’t know, North Carolina.

And this is her scenario, just talk to her where it’s this idea of when you’re picturing who you’re going to help. If you only help that one person, you’ve done your job.

It just shifts that nervous energy you’re talking about instead of going, Oh, me, me, me, what are they going to think of me? I’m so nervous, I’m going to show up perfect.

When you envision somebody that you could potentially help you shift the perspective outward and other people and when you’re focused on them, you can’t be focused on yourself. Therefore, your nerves channel outwardly into excitement.

So, that’s like, a shift to go from I’m nervous. I’m nervous. I’m scared, you’re being focused on yourself. And that’s not why you’re there in the first place.

So, if you just start asking questions about who you’re helping, you will naturally channel that outward, it’s not even faking it. It’s going to be intentional, purposeful shift in energy, where you’re there to serve, and then it will feel more natural.

Jillian Leslie 18:04
Okay, I think that is exactly my trick. That is my trick. So, it makes perfect sense.

Heather Sager 18:09
It’s perfect. I love that you do that.

Tips for Going Live on Social Media

Jillian Leslie 18:11
Okay, let’s say I am a person who is really scared. Like, I’m hearing Jillian, I’m hearing Heather, I can connect with my audience. Maybe I could sell to them. We’re going to talk about selling through video, or showing up.

And I’m just paralyzed, how do I start? What do I do in my body? Like I’m going to do, let’s say, my first Instagram story. What do I think about? Because you were saying it’s body language it’s not just what I say. What mindset should I put on so that I can do this?

Heather Sager 18:44
So, first of all, if you are terrified of public speaking, I don’t want you to worry about your body language, or your facial expression, or tone or any of that. Those are advanced level strategies; you need to focus first on your content.

So, what I always say is confidence comes from competency. So, if you want to have a higher level of competence to click, go live, you need to build your competency. And there are two things to think about with your skills.

Come Up with A Plan on What to Talk About

Number one is what you’re talking about. Do you have a game plan of what you actually want to say? What’s the gist of your message? What’s your point?

Don’t just click “go live” and think that an epiphany or a TEDx style talk is going to come out of your mouth. Let’s not be crazy. You need to have a plan. What are you going to talk about? What’s the goal? What are the talking points?

So, that’s one level of competency is your content. The other level of competency is; do you know the actual tech that you’re about to work with? Because I find people actually feel pretty comfortable once they take a post-it note and write down a few thoughts.

Okay, I can talk about this. I talk about this stuff every day. I can do it on a camera, but where they get hung up is they don’t actually know what happens on a Facebook Live once they click the button or on Instagram stories.

What the heck happens once I push the thing. Not knowing what’s going to happen. Will people comment? Will they not? Where am I supposed to be looking? That’s what trips a lot of people up.

So, separate that out for yourself go, “How can I build my competency? Is it by understanding my content to have an idea of what I want to say? Or is it getting comfortable with the technology platform? So, I don’t feel like a total fish out of water?”

Just a little bit of water.

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Tips for Going Live on Facebook

Jillian Leslie 21:07
Can we talk about what to expect? So, let’s say if we were to look at Facebook, and we were to look at Instagram? If I were to say go live on Facebook? What do I do? Do I wait for people to show up? Do I just continue?

Do I start by saying who I am and what my value is? Do I lead with something catchy? So, oh, that’s interesting. What are your thoughts?

Heather Sager 21:33
So, I’m going to say yes, all of the above. There’s no perfect recipe for a Facebook Live. And I know people want like, but what if I say this and then that? I’ll give you a recipe that you can use.

But let me tell you. You don’t need to follow it to a tee, you have to figure out the right rhythm for you. Here’s what I would recommend, you need to start by streaming live to get comfortable with the platform.

Test Going Live on Facebook

This is my recommendation for anyone. Let’s get tackled for a moment. Create a group for yourself and invite one other person that you know and trust.

So, if you have a business colleague that you talk often about, or maybe people in a Facebook group you’re already in, and also want to practice. Create a closed private Facebook group that’s limited to number of people.

Just you and a friend or you and a couple friends and use that group as your testing ground to go live. So, that way you can actually see what happens when I push the button. What do people see? Oh, wait, where would I put a title?

Where would I see people’s comments? How would I even engage them on that? Just create a group to test it and practice. That would be my first tip. Side note, we’re talking about going live in general.

So, let me just bring up Instagram the equivalent here, I just got this brilliant tip from Tyler McCall, who teaches Instagram strategies. I just had as a guest on my podcast here recently. And he said a great tip is to create a private Instagram profile.

So, a second profile for yourself, but mark it private, and go live from that one to test out the platform. If it’s private, you have no followers, therefore, nobody can see it. So, you can go live test all the things in Instagram but nobody can see it.

So, that would be rule number one for anyone, if you want to have a safety net. If you want to get more comfortable, set yourself up in one of those two platforms to test it out. So, that’s part number one on the competency tech side.

Going back to what you asked, which was okay, on a content piece, what’s the first thing out of my mouth. You get to decide. So, there’s two schools of thought.

Which by the way, if you want to go deeper on this, I have a whole podcast episode where I talk about the different Facebook Live format. But you have to know two different ways you’re going to focus on.

Are you doing a Facebook Live that’s specific to engagement? Are you there to answer people’s questions and chat with people or are you there to deliver information? They’re not the same thing.

And I recommend anyone who has a small following who’s just getting started with Facebook Lives. Do not go live on Facebook with the expectation for people to talk with you. Because chances are no one’s going to show up and that’s okay.

Or you’re going to be like, oh, you’re freaked out what questions are going to come. Don’t even try that format right now focus on the delivery, that’s bucket number two.

Treat a Facebook Live like a Live Presentation

Or treat it like a live presentation, essentially, where you click go live and have a mini presentation prepared that’s two minutes, four minutes, I don’t really care. But you’re just getting out those nerves to deliver it.

Because the beautiful thing about Facebook Lives is sure it’s live and people can engage. But the great part is it lives on in your feed. And people who didn’t come live but are following you online.

They can see it for hours, days, weeks to come on your profile, and you can reshare it, other people can share it. But it becomes this living breathing piece of media on your profile, which you can then download.

You can embed it in a blog post. You can do so many things with it but I would focus on build it like a presentation.

It doesn’t have to be perfect, but I would focus on that versus trying to show up and just engage with people because you’re setting yourself up for a lot of anxiety and quite frankly, not great results.

So, I have a podcast, which you’re on right now. And what I will do is, my podcasts drop on Wednesdays. And then the following Monday, I do a Facebook Live in my group, where I go through what the main takeaways were. What I learned.

Jillian Leslie 25:24
So, it’ll be like, here’s what Heather shared that I thought really resonated with me. And maybe I go live for anywhere from, say, 10 to 20 minutes. I’ve got that content now, because I’ve got this podcast.

I want to synthesize it like I want to go, hey, and then if you find what I’m saying, interesting, go listen to the podcast, because you’ll get so much more out of it. Almost like the highlight reel.

And then I have a blog post. And sometimes I embed the video, when I think too of the Facebook Live into the blog post for the podcast. So, it’s like it becomes layer on top of layer.

And for me, I agree with you. A lot of times even though I go live, typically at the same time every Monday, not a lot of people will show up in that moment. But people will watch it later. And that I do think is like the secret sauce.

So, I don’t get my feelings hurt when there are two people or five people. I just assumed that I’m speaking to people later.

Heather Sager 26:33
Yes, I think that that’s a big distinction. Because I think when it comes to live, it’s called Live video, our expectation that the finish line is the Live video. And quite frankly, that’s just the starting line.

So, that’s the big shift that I would recommend for anyone listening Live video in my experience. So, I don’t love the art of pre-recorded things. I do pre-record, we can talk about that a little bit more in a moment.

But for me, if you put me in front of a live audience, I can perform, I can come up with ideas, I can be more charismatic, more engaging something about the live, once I got over the fear of the camera, live became easier.

So, I’ve always been the kind of person in front of people in real life, I just do better than if I were to quote unquote, practice. There are two kinds of people, people who like the live element.

And people who are like, “No fricking way. I want to have it scripted, I want to be able to edit it and post production.” You have to know which are you.

You Need to Practice Doing Live Video

But if you have a tendency to come alive, when you’re with people, you have the potential to be able to do the same in front of the camera. You just have to practice it a bit more.

But what the live format does is it allows you to click “go” record your video. So, you’re forced to do it on the timeline that you said you would. And then you have that wonderful little video package to be able to use for a variety of things.

Jillian Leslie 27:52
And I think that people judge Live video differently than say YouTube, where you want something, it’s animated, there’s tech showing up and it just feels a little more polished.

I like the fact that being live enables it to be rougher and that people seem more forgiving. Do you agree with that?

Heather Sager 28:14
They so do. I always laugh because me and my team spend all this time on a nicely curated perfect video with all the transitions and it doesn’t perform as well. I do like to have some of those on my feet, especially on Instagram, which is much more visual.

People Are More Forgiving About Live Video

I like having a product suite I’m going to call it loosely a product suite, which is I look at my social media like a business card. Somebody is going to look at it and size me up whether or not I actually am good at the thing I do and other people agree.

Like my social media feed is okay, I’ve heard about her, is she legit? Is someone I want to learn from? So, I have a more high-end brand. I work with I call them aspiring celebrity clients one-on-one.

My program, it’s not cheap, I don’t go after the low-end market. So, I need my position in line to be a little higher up. So, I need to have some of the higher production video in my feed to represent my brand.

But the best performing stuff is when I go live, my audience essentially wants permission for them to show up in perfect too. So, if I go live and fumble on my words a bit or go off on a little bit of a tangent.

Or show up with no makeup because I have my kids at home with me today and I just didn’t have time. Those are the things that speak to my audience and what they actually connect with. So, I can do more of that.

So, a weird way to phrase it, the bar is set much lower on Live. Leverage that. You can leap over that bar and exceed people’s expectations so much easier if you just get the courage to practice. Because here’s the thing.

When it comes to video, a video camera is going to dampen your energy. Even if you’re just listening to some audio, you’ll notice how expressive I am in my voice. I use different tones, different variation, my speed.

I’m a little faster talker because it keeps people on edge. I use pauses a little bit more, I have a little bit of pop. And on video, so Jillian can see me right now I use my hands a lot, I have crazy facial expression.

Amp Up Your Energy When You Do Live Video

I have to amp up my energy when I speak on camera, because it has to excite other people. So, when you start using cameras, you’re going to have to practice.

Because if you show up and are just talking so calmly, and smoothly and softly, you’re going to hold someone’s attention for three seconds, and then they’re gone. So, you have to practice. What does dynamics, what does energy look like?

Not that you have to mimic me and be like crazy town with your hands. But you have to figure out your level of energy for yourself to figure out Hmm, what is a way for me to show up charismatically compelling to hold someone’s attention?

Because video also has to have an entertainment factor beyond just the educational factor.

Jillian Leslie 30:54
I think it’s a little bit like stage makeup.

Heather Sager 30:58
Oh, totally.

Jillian Leslie 30:59
Like, if you see what people look like, when they’re on stage, they look normal. But then when you see them afterwards, they’re like totally made up.

Heather Sager 31:08
Eyebrows and the lip-liner, you’re like, oh.

Jillian Leslie 31:11
Yes. So, that is such a great piece of advice that you need to present in a potentially slightly larger way. Would you agree with that, than you might normally?

Heather Sager 31:25
Imagine it’s like a dial. Imagine you have a dial in front of you. And that dial is you and your true authentic personality.

We have our like super mellow, very casual personality that only our family sees on Sunday mornings when we’re at home with no bra and leftover hair and haven’t brushed your teeth yet. That’s still us. But it’s like a very real raw, honest version of us.

And then if we crank the dial on the formality side, we have like our best version of us wearing a push up bra going to a gala for a fundraiser for a charity event. Still us but it’s just we’re choosing to highlight and accentuate different things.

So, when it comes to your communication style, it’s the same thing. It’s a dial in front of you, but you have to determine what is authentically you. Like how would you describe yourself? What level energy is authentic to you not to some other personalities online?

And then you have to determine what does the dial require when you show up in live video versus if you were to do for example, let’s say you’re also a coach and you do sales calls.

What level of the dial needs to be presented in a coaching call versus a sales call versus a video where you’re pumping people up? It requires still you but a different level of energy, you have to know when to flex your dial.

So, would you say for video, maybe if your normal place is a four, maybe for video, you go up to a six or seven. For a sales call maybe you pull it back to like a five or six. Is that kind of your range? Is that what you’re thinking?

I have never really put numbers on it. It’s even a little bit more dynamic on that. So, for me, I would never show up on video, let’s say level eight or nine for the entire video.

It’s like knowing that you need to have some variation. Variation is going to create excitement and interest with an audience. So, for example, if I’m talking at the speed of lightning for an entire presentation, I’m going to wear people out.

Jillian Leslie 33:20
Yes.

Heather Sager 33:21
But you notice what I just did with my voice. On the second half of that sentence, I half cut my speed. So, if I talk blah, blah, blah, and everything in the sentence, I’m going to wear people out.

My pace changed. And there’s a reason for that, because I’m keeping people on the edge of their seats. And I’m creating an emphasis on certain things. So, when it comes to the dial, use it as a guide.

But what I want you thinking about is what’s a level up version for yourself with a little bit more energy that’s authentic to you. It does not need to be a rah rah cheerleader, Rachel Hollis style on camera, if that’s not authentic to you.

You have to figure out what your version is. And then within that, you’re going to want to have a little variation and how you deliver. That’s, more of like an expert strategy once you get comfortable on camera.

But I know some of you listening aren’t going to be comfortable on camera. So, you’re like what’s next for me? What’s next for you is how do you keep things interesting by creating variation in your video.

Facebook Live vs. Instagram Live

So, we talked about Facebook Live, tell me what you think the nuances are between Facebook Live and Instagram Live?

So, I think blanket statements. They’re different audiences. They’re different audiences, people surf through them differently. So, for example, my retention rate on a Facebook Live is much higher than my retention rate on an IG Live.

People on it are hopping around a lot faster. So, I have to be really mindful on IG. This is me personally, I’m not an Instagram or Facebook expert, but my experience on it is IG, if I do lives over there, I tend to use more of those to be interactive.

So, either bring somebody on with me in a conversation or am answering questions from my audience. I make them like that because people tend to fly in and out of IG a little bit more than you.

Our expectations of Facebook, we’ve been there a little longer, we know how it works. And quite frankly, going through the feed is not as exciting for us it actually creates a lot of rage for some people.

So, people go to Facebook, especially in my space, the online entrepreneur space, people are going there for the groups. So, they’re used to going there for content in my experience.

I find in my groups, I stream live in my groups, but also my page, people have a little longer tolerance for video. I find that that watch time is there.

So, I do my educational videos on Facebook, and my engagement videos on Instagram. I normally do not double stream.

I think that is really interesting. I would agree with you. I think that that is really true. Now, are you using IGTV? Are you recording? Which would you put up on IGTV your Facebook Lives or your Instagram Lives?

So, all repurpose as soon as I get off an IG Live you have the option as soon as you’re done going live. Would you like to publish it to IGTV? I always leverage that. So, yep, I do that. But then I also do a secondary thing where I download the video.

And I did the same thing on Facebook, I download the video and I put them in a folder and my team will go in with the intention of grabbing clips. So, we try to pull different size clips for Instagram. That’s my main platform, I’m on Instagram.

How to Reshare Your Live Video

So, what we’ll do is we’ll pull videos that are between 1 1/2 minute and four minutes. We try to keep around two to three minutes. But we’ll pull a clip of the Facebook Live or a clip of the IG Live. And we will make it a really topic focused.

You know those little shareables you see online that have the big bold question or topic at the top. And then it has like the fancy graphics and subtitles. Those are easy to make my team makes those.

And then we republish those a week, two, three you can do them whenever on your feed whenever it makes sense.

Even one video that I’ve already reposted to IGTV I will repost sub-sections of that that had high quality content really focused content on my IGTV for weeks or months later.

Oh, that is such a smart idea. I might take that idea. Again, it is all about working smarter, not harder and repurposing stuff. But I think that is I don’t know, really brilliant. So, thank you for that tip.

Jillian Leslie 37:26
So, let’s talk about sales. And your thoughts on selling by showing up with your face. And what are tips that you would recommend people think about when they’re trying to sell by showing up?

Heather Sager 37:45
This is such a loaded question. Because there’s so many schools of thoughts in this and so many different ways to sell online. So, I’ll give you kind of my synopsis on sales, people do business with people, they don’t necessarily do business with brands.

And in this unique space that we’re in, we’re our personal brands, our businesses. So, for those of you who are the face of your business, there’s this interesting line where you’re like, “How do I show up and sell without me personally feeling like a schmuck or having people think that I am a schmucky person?”

How to Sell Using Live Video

So, I always recommend people first and foremost, explore their own relationship and reaction to sales, because you bring your baggage to your platform.

So, if you’re uncomfortable with selling or being sold to you’re going to bring that baggage with you, regardless of somebody else’s perfect script. So first, you got to gut check and say, “Am I turned off by selling and why?”

So, you can explore that a bit more, because you have to be able to show up fully present. So, I run with a school of thought where I don’t outwardly sell by pushing my products and programs.

I sell by demonstrating what I do, and make it very clear what I have to offer. And also make it very clear that what I have to offer is not the right fit for everyone. Those are central strategies that I lead within my messaging.

And I’ll even say things like, I don’t know that this is the right fit for you. If somebody directly asked me a question around, is your program going to work for me X, Y, and Z?

I do not subscribe to the like; this is a product that works for everyone who has a pulse. I don’t believe that.

Jillian Leslie 39:20
Not only that, but if you buy it, you’re going to make a million dollars.

Heather Sager 39:23
Oh, yeah. So, on that front, I like to share what I call micro wins. I like to, yes, have the big success stories of my client who converted 70% of the room and then up sold and made all this money. Wonderful, right. That’s great on a webinar.

But what’s more successful in a webinar is sharing the micro conversions. Like the person who didn’t pee their pants on their first talk, and had somebody come to the stage and tell them, whoa, like your story. That’s me, I have that exact same experience.

And if you could do it, I could too. A very generic way to put it but like those little moments that happen those are identifiable. The audience can see themselves in that.

So, when it comes to sales, your job isn’t to talk about your product and all the technical pieces underneath it, you need to paint the picture around what’s possible for people.

So, share the stories of your clients, your students, and whoever it is that you serve, share stories, and that actually makes selling a lot easier.

And I believe the transformation. It’s like, what does your life look like now and what would your life look like if you purchase this product? Now, could just be like a pair of shoes, maybe rain boots, and guess what? You will be dry in the rain.

Jillian Leslie 40:38
It’s not like everything has to be life shattering. But what is the benefit and also how will you feel? I feel really good if I had dry feet, that would be good. So, it’s like painting that picture of who are you?

And I see you and I can see a world where one of your problems is solved. Wouldn’t that be great?

Heather Sager 41:05
Yeah, I think that storytelling piece of the vision themselves of where they are now and then where they want to go. I think that’s huge.

And I think specifically with your question on video, people want to get to know you the whole overtly said, like, know and trust factor. It accelerates when you show your face on video.

If people see that you are a real person, and you actually are passionate and excited about your product and your customers. People can sense out authenticity, and they can sense it out very clearly on video.

People bring I think, a level of skepticism and copy because copy is easy to like, finesse and make perfect. And people know there’s this thing called conversion copy that’s meant to like get at the psychology of people and make them feel a certain way.

It’s the name of the game. But you can’t fake the essence of your delivery skills. You can’t fake somebody. You can sense on video pretty quickly of are they legit or are they not? Have their products actually worked? Have they not?

There’s just a different message that comes with video, you still should use on ethical sales psychology, when you are selling on video. I’m a big advocate of that I teach that inside my program, “Speak Up to Level Up.”

But it doesn’t matter if you have the right script or the rights to psychology. If you can’t actually deliver in a way that’s authentic, that shows your ethics and integrity. People will be like, “There’s something off here. I don’t know what it is, I can’t put my finger on it.”

But there’s a little bit of a mess. So, therefore they will not proceed and buy anything from you. So, you have to bring that authenticity out of the gate.

What Tech You Need for Live Video

Jillian Leslie 42:37
Is it okay for me to start doing video with just my phone?

Heather Sager 42:45
Oh, yeah.

Jillian Leslie 42:45
And are there other pieces of equipment that I need to buy? How much do I need to invest in this just to get started?

Heather Sager 42:54
So, you don’t have to invest anything. A friend of mine Krystal Proffitt. She has the Proffitt Podcast. She’s got an incredible platform; she teaches people how to use podcasting. She still does all of her videos for YouTube from her iPhone.

And I always laugh, I’m like you’re a podcaster. She’s got this nice microphone. But when she started, it was all from her phone. So, you have to ask the question, here’s what I would ask.

We have to think about what is the brand experience you want people to have? How do you want them describing you and your business after they’ve had an interaction with you?

When you answer that question, for me, when I explain those questions, I want people to be like, “Oh, man, she’s real. Oh, she’s kind of fancy. But super real.”

That was the balance that I want people to feel like, “Oh, she has a higher-end brand. But she’s approachable. She’s real. She gets me.” I always say, if I were to pick two brands that represent me, I’d like Nordstrom with a heavy dose of Target. Those two things together are my brands.

So, that was my intention when I built my business of going, how does it feel like Nordstrom but have the shopping experience where I’m like, grab my girlfriends, grab my coffee, go explore Target for a while.

So, I had to ask myself those questions when I was building my content, but also when I was deciding whether or not to buy certain pieces of technology. So, I made the decision early on that I knew I wanted to do podcasting.

So, I searched and said what kind of mic should I get for podcasting? A couple people recommended Blue Yeti, and they were more expensive ones but I’m like, yeah, I’ll do Blue Yeti mic.

So, here I am 2 1/2 years later, using the same Blue Yeti mic for this interview. I’ll eventually upgrade but you know what for right now, it works great. Same thing with my webcam. I’m staring in right now.

It’s a Logitech webcam. It was like $100, it works. Does it work perfectly all the time? Nope. Do I want a better camera? Yep. But is it functional and it has gotten me where I’ve gotten. Great.

So, those two things were what I started with was $100 webcam and $100 mic. At the time I didn’t have a nice iPhone. I had an older one. But now I have an iPhone 11 and oh my gosh the video quality on it, is awesome.

If I had a Mac where it was easier for my video to jump from my phone to my PC, I would probably shoot most my video on my iPhone. I won’t get into nuances around it, I get very frustrated trying to get videos off my phone because I am totally not a tech person.

So, I don’t use my phone for video. But if I was a Mac user, I totally would. But it all comes back to just choose the technology, the quality of the technology is not going to make you more successful.

The quality of your presence and the quality of your content. That’s what connects to people. So, focus first and foremost on quality of presence and quality of content, then try to get fancy later.

Jillian Leslie 45:34
I love that piece of advice you are so preaching to the choir.

For the audience, please don’t let the technology get in your way. It’s okay to show up with your phone.
Heather Sager

People think well, what I need to do is I need to invest in all the stuff before I can get started. And I say get started. And I love that you’re the Pro. And you’re saying get started.

And the truth is because I say this to myself too. Like, “Okay, is it good enough?” It’s probably good enough. And I too, my mic is probably about $100. If I invested in a mic, that’s $500 how much better is my podcast going to be?

Like, so marginally. Whereas like if I could get guests like you and have good conversations that is what matters. There are times even where the recording is not great. And I think, ha the recording is not great, but the content is great.

And nobody has ever emailed me to say Jillian, that recording was not so terrific. And yet so many people have emailed me to say that content really spoke to me.

Heather Sager 46:54
I’ve never shared this publicly before. But let me give you a real example of technology breaking to give you guys permission to be scrappy, and do it anyways, I had a podcast interview I did probably about a year ago. And it was with a big guest.

She’s got like 150,000 followers online. And I was like, Oh, she’s also a friend of mine. And we do it through Zoom, and I went to hit record. And my computer was out of space, I could not save the record.

And I was like, “Ah,” And she’s like, “It’s cool.” I’ll do it to the cloud, or the recording got saved somewhere else. But what happened is the recording had my audio sounded terrible. But her audio sounded wonderful.

And it was so bad. It was like popping, crackling, it was not usable. And I didn’t want to ask this guest to re-record it. So, I ended up printing the transcript, re-recording just my audio, listen to this, playing her version of the interview in one year.

And then pausing it to be able to respond but try to sound spontaneous in the moment and like, oh my gosh, it was so scrappy. It was so terrible. I was so embarrassed by this thing. I almost didn’t want to hit live. And it is now the number one episode of my show.

Number one episode, it’s about how to be more confident on camera from, “Stage Fright to High Level Confidence” with Natalie Workman. And I cringe every time I think about oh my gosh, somebody’s listening to that episode. It’s my business card.

Here’s the thing we’ve all listened to shows before that have a little technology glitch. We don’t really care about that shortly. Maybe like, Oh, that’s a little weird. But we don’t linger on it when there’s value that we’re like, “Oh, it’s so good.”

And especially when we like the person, so don’t worry about it. But even still in my business. I’m like, oh my gosh, that was embarrassing, or this broke. Do it anyways.

Put your focus on the content and the experience for your listeners or your viewers or your readers. Put that as the first thing. And then let the tech stuff get fancy later.

There’s always room for getting more fancy. But you have to get up in the game before you can critique the game or get better at the game.

I think that is such great advice. Well, Heather, this has been so enlightening. How can people reach out to you learn more about what you do and the services you provide?

Jillian Leslie 49:13
Because I feel like you’ve really opened my eyes. You’ve validated a bunch of stuff, and you’ve given me a lot to think about.

Heather Sager 49:20
I’m so glad, Jillian and thanks again for the opportunity to be here. I think for anyone listening today, you probably are in a couple different spots around how maybe you want to apply some of these things.

So, let’s do this. If you head over to heathersager.com/free, there’ll be a couple links for you there that you can figure out where to go next. So, one of them I mentioned in my podcast today, you can listen to my podcast there.

You can go deeper on some of the live things we talked about. You can listen to that hilarious episode that I can’t believe I just told you about. It’s all there.

But there’s also there, access to my free Facebook group, which is the ‘Influential Speaking for Online Entrepreneurs.” So, if you want to kind of a testing ground to talk about speaking, you can come join us in there.

And then for those of you who are interested in leveling-up, you have a little bit of a scared fear of what we’re talking about today. And you’re interested in what Jillian talked about around that workshop I did for getting live on video.

If you want access to that, just come over to Instagram and send me a direct message and just type like Heather, I heard you on Jillian’s podcast, just send me a message there. And I’ll send you a direct link to snag that workshop.

It’s not published anywhere online right now. Nobody else could buy it. But I will send you a link to it if you’d like to do it. So, on Instagram, I’m @theheathersager.

I love that. Well, Heather, I have to say, this has been so terrific. Like really, you’ve given me so many things that I’m going to go take into my own business. Thank you, so much for coming on the show.

You’re welcome. It’s a pleasure. And I’m excited to hear how this helps so many people get brave and hit record or go live. There’s going to be lots of good messages coming out from this.

My biggest takeaway from this episode is that going live or speaking in public is weird. And something about embracing that makes it a little more comfortable. If you want to see me live join my Facebook group, the Become a Blogger Genius Facebook group.

Jillian Leslie 51:14
I go live every Monday and I would love you to join. I’d love you to see what I’m doing. Also, make sure to grab your cheat sheet so that you know how to grow a successful blog. And you can get that at milotree.com/secrets.

Seriously, use this to guide you and I will see you here again next week.

Other Blogger Genius Podcast episodes to listen to:

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Let it pop up in front of your visitors and ask them to follow you on Instagram Pinterest, YouTube, Facebook, join your list, check out the exit intent but really get your community growing. And we’d love to help you with MiloTree. And I will see you here again next week.

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