Video Challenge

You’re Fired!

Imagine for a second that you have a full-time employee working on your business. (Maybe you already have one.) I don't mean a pay-per-job kind of employee, I mean a salaried employee you pay every single month.

• You pay for this person's health insurance.
• You pay for sick and vacation days.
• You pay into their retirement account.

Their job is to build you a web presence and create new products and sites, write sales copy, buy advertising, and so on.

Despite all this, your employee frequently visits forums, checks e-mail, chats in instant messengers, and generally puts out products at a snail's pace... let's say 1 or 2 products per year when he could be producing one per month, easily.

Now that you've got that pictured in your head, tell me... are you that employee?

Do You Deserve To Be Fired From Your
Self-Employed Internet Marketing Job?

I am still following the daily video challenge and I hope you are too.

I recorded five videos instead of just one on Monday, to make up for my trip away from home at Disneyland... that was some nice downtime and recharged my batteries, by the way.

When I record a daily video:

1. I make sure Camtasia is running, and that I have my headset on so I can talk about what I'm doing.
2. I open up Notepad and write "Appointment with myself: Finish chapter 5 by 6:30 PM" (I set that to whatever the time is half an hour from now and whatever chapter I'm working on.)
3. I set my alarm clock for 10 minutes -- use a kitchen timer or Cool Timer.
4. I haul ass for ten minutes and stop immediately when it runs out, then explain what I'll be doing for the next ten minutes.

The above formula works wonders to keep me motivated.

Sometimes I'll start out and not feel like working, but within a couple of minutes I'll be in the exact mood I need to be in.

I recently discovered another hidden bonus about recording yourself at work: You have indisputable proof that you are working!

If you are one of those people trying to convince a spouse or family member that you are doing more than just clicking around on the Internet all day, give them access to the daily videos you are recording.

(Show them how to fast-forward to skip the boring parts.)

You can respond by saying, "Look, today I wrote 50 pages."
Or, "Today I wrote four sales letters."

If you didn't meet your goals, you can explain in the video, exactly why you didn't write that many pages or why you didn't make as much money as you wanted to that week.

Heck, it could also remind you what you were working on yesterday.

• Are you using a similar formula?
• Are you using video to document your work?
• Do you have some OTHER tip to keep yourself motivated so that you don't disappoint the people in your life?
• Should you really be fired from your self-employed job (or at least put on probation) and what will you do to make up for it?

Please comment below and let me know... I would really appreciate it.

Do You Watch Your Own Videos?

I'm five days into the Robert Plank Daily Video Challenge and using Camtasia I've recorded 6 how-to videos I'm going to use in an upcoming paid product, one video documenting a task and one video going over my progress for the day.

My formula is: try to record a video for a paid product, if I don't have time for that, keep the video rolling while I do something to improve my business... and don't stop the camera until I'm done. (This REALLY keeps me on task.) If that fails, open up Notepad and go over what I did that day. I plan for 5 minutes and that usually ends up taking 20 minutes.

Then, watch that video you just recorded from start to finish.

This is what professional actors and public speakers do to train themselves to actually look presentable.

You'd be surprised at how many people DON'T do this. Just look at how many chipmunk-infested Camtasia vids are floating around out there.

There Are People Out There Who Are Supposedly "Experts" at Video
Who Are Hard to Watch.

When you talk with your hands, it's distracting and you look like an idiot! There is absolutely NO REASON for you to use 2-3 different nervous hand gestures with every sentence.

When you talk for 2 minutes before you start to say anything new, you've lost my interest. Do you have a lame video with flashy graphics than says nothing but, "Welcome to my web site?" Get rid of it! If someone missed the first 2 minutes of your video, would it still make sense? Then start at that 2 minute point next time.

That's part of the reason why I said don't freely share the videos for this challenge. You see dumbasses on forums who record videos of themselves edited together with stock footage, and the video says NOTHING of value. They just post it all around in a pathetic attempt to bring in traffic.

When you do something in a video that could have been explained in text, you're stupid. That's why I use Camtasia so much, so I have something to show people other than my ugly mug.

Think about newscasters. They speak for a short time and then cut to a clip of what they were talking about. If you had the TV on mute the whole time, you could still figure out what was going on. At the very least, you would know to UNMUTE that segment.

Your videos are never going to be perfect so don't worry about that part.

Here is my mindset when I'm recording a video: "If I was doing this live at a seminar, would it still be acceptable?"

It's ok to record the video in just one take. It's ok to pause or screw up a sentence every now and then. But is your video so bad that it's cringeworthy?

The only way you're going to rise above that is by WATCHING those cringeworthy videos and then doing better next time.

I'm not saying I'm the best person in the world at recording videos, but I can tell you that watching my own videos has cured:

• A tendency to talk too fast. People told me they had to watch my videos multiple times to understand everything. Now my 10 minute videos are more like 30 to 45 minutes.
• Minor speech impediments. When I first started to record videos, I sounded out-of-breath. I mumbled, I slurred my words and sometimes stuttered. Now, I project my voice and always keep in mind to give people a chance to let what I just said sink in... all without thinking about it!
• Nervousness. Have you ever had one of those classes in school where the teacher always called on you and put you on the spot? At first it was really nerve-wracking, but by the end of that class you had a handle on it. The pauses I make in my videos are logical pauses, not nervous pauses. I also keep my hand off the mouse as much as possible so I'm not talking with my hands (in a Camtasia video sense).

Do you watch your own videos? If not, it shows.

Please, comment below and tell me if you watch your own videos.

If not... watch one of your own videos right now and tell me what you need to improve.