Just Between Coaches – Episode
Afraid of the Camera? That’s Not the Problem (Kerry Barrett)
Kerry Barrett: What I hear most often when people are first thinking about doing video, it’s superficial, I don’t have a lot of time and I don’t understand tech. Usually when we get rid of those two, then we find the real problem is that I’m not comfortable doing it. I hate watching myself. I’ve worked worried I’m going to look like an idiot.
Melinda Cohan: Public speaking, video, showing up on camera for so many coaches, this is where nerves take over. The fear of messing up, looking awkward or just plain feeling uncomfortable can hold you back from connecting with the people who need your message. But what if you could shift that fear into confidence? What if being on camera became something? Something you enjoyed? I’m Melinda Cohan and you’re listening to Just Between Coaches. I run a business called the Coaches Console and we’re proud to have helped tens of thousands of coaches create profitable and thriving businesses. This is a podcast where we answer burning questions that newer coaches would love to ask a more experienced coach.
In this episode, we’re diving into what it really takes to feel at ease on camera and how to project confidence, credibility and connection with Whether it’s for your next video, a virtual coaching session, or even a high stakes speaking engagement. Kerry Barrett is coming to the show today and she is an Emmy Award winning former news anchor who overcame her own crippling fear of public speaking to become a sought after on camera coach. Kerry, welcome so much to this show. I’m so excited to have you here today.
Kerry: Oh, I am thrilled to be here. Thank you for having me. I can’t wait to get started.
Melinda: I am looking forward to this topic because I have experienced this transformation, but would you just share a little bit of your background with our listeners?
Kerry: Sure, absolutely. And thank you for the opportunity. I have a 20 year background as an Emmy Award winning news anchor. I overcame debilitating fear of speaking to land those roles. I’ve wrapped up my career in New York City at the NBC station and started my own business teaching coaches, lawyers, business owners, executives the skills I learned about speaking on camera. So they can create compelling social media content, their own sales and marketing assets, or they can shine, you know, during high stakes virtual speaking engagements, panel discussions, etc. etc. etc.
Melinda: Yeah, and my experience is that it translates to in person, like on a stage, speaking to an audience. Like the same kinds of things we’re going to talk about. Translate over. Is that your experience as well? Is that right?
Kerry: Conceptually, there are overlaps. There are differences with speaking on video because you’re limited. You don’t have a stage, and you’re limited to this little box. But in terms of delivering, there are overlaps. A lot of what you’ll take away from here, you can apply to both scenarios in your business.
Melinda: Yeah, I’m looking forward to getting into those nuances of being in this box right here. Let’s start with the elephant in the room. Why is the fear of public speaking so powerful? What’s actually going on in our brains when we freeze up?
Kerry: Yeah, it happens to so many people, and I’ve been there, done that, as they say. So there’s a couple of things that are happening when we find ourselves freezing. Psychologically, though, it really dives back to sort of our evolution and the process of our survival back when we were living in caves. And the psychological component is along these lines. If you were to leave the safety of your cave, for example, to go hunting and you were up on the horizon searching out prey, one of the last things that you would want to do is to make big noises and make a lot of grand gestures in your excitement for finding prey, because you will have found the prey, but you will have also made yourself prey. Meaning the predators will find you, hunt you down. Then not only are you likely dead, you’ve also ticked off your fellow cave members because now predators know where they are.
When we get on a stage or when we get in front of the camera, we are likely to see the audience as the predator. So we get small. Our vocal variety shrinks, our facial expressions diminish, our projection diminishes. We are physically and energetically making ourselves smaller. That’s the psychology. And most of us view the audience as a predator. It’s a natural survival instinct. But all it takes is really one or two bad experiences to exacerbate that. If you’ve gone on stage and bombed, our brain creates additional stories designed to keep us safe. When really, what you need to do to make both of those environments work for you is jump in with both feet. And that is excruciatingly scary for most people.
Melinda: Yeah. I remember back in the early days of my business, I would go to networking events, and it was local here in-person. And so, you know, you go around the room and you have your 60 seconds to stand up and speak. And my knees would literally knock. Like, I just thought that was a funny phrase. But when it happened to me, and I’m like, oh, my gosh, I cannot stop my legs and knees from shaking. And I would have to wear long skirts or dresses so people wouldn’t know that that was going on. It’s a powerful experience that happens not just in our mind, but physically as well.
We talked about, you know, you’re a news anchor, Emmy award winning, and you had this fear which kind of seems impossible. What was that rock bottom moment and what helped you to overcome it so that you could have a different experience with it?
Kerry: Yeah, well, I was not good when I started. I was really, really bad. I was really, really scared. I did not suddenly develop the skills and then become the news anchor. I had an idea of what I needed to do and I was able to finagle it well enough, along with networking and everything else that I was able to land my first job. But it wasn’t until I was in that first job and then frankly my second and my third that I really began to hone my skills. And for me, it was the process of doing it every single day. Now, granted, I was on live TV for hours upon hours upon hours at a time. And you get very good at being on camera in those sorts of situations.
Obviously, my clients are not going to be on live TV for 12, 14 hours a day, but it does require them to do more than dabble. And that’s where most people go wrong. They dabble because they’re curious, but they don’t make any progress. It requires commitment, dedication, and doing the work. You can’t get that with dabbling. So my experience again was the fact that I had to do this every single day. I couldn’t walk into my boss and be like, not feeling it today, you know, I’m not going to be on the air.
Okay, goodbye. This obviously isn’t a good fit for you. It is about taking small steps every day. I don’t mean that you have to spend even an hour on this a day, but you do have to practice, open up your phone and start recording some video, even if you don’t have the intent in publishing. So that you have a little bit of that exposure therapy, which is what it came down to for me.
Melinda: I love that exposure therapy. Say more about that.
Kerry: If you have a phobia of spiders, or any phobia for that matter, one of the classic ways to reduce that fear is by exposing yourself to it. So in the case of speaking on camera or speaking on a stage, it is about being exposed to whatever that stimulus is. The great thing is we all have access to smartphones so we can expose ourselves to that stimulus in a very safe way. Meaning the stakes are low. We don’t necessarily have to hit publish. Now, if you’ve done this for three months and you’re still not hitting publish. Then we have something else to talk about. To get started, I always recommend the 30 day challenge, which is open up your phone, talk to your phone for 30 seconds a day about anything, doesn’t matter what it is, could be work related or otherwise.
And do that once a day for 30 days. As you move through that process, begin to pick one thing to work on. Eye contact, projection, facial expressions, or energy. And work on that until you have a feel for getting your arms around it. You will not understand it from top to bottom. You won’t be perfect, but you’ll get a general idea. When you feel like you understand one element, move to the next. When I work through this with clients, it’s anywhere from two to three months, depending on what it is that we’re working on. So recognize that in one month you’re not going to get there, especially doing it on your own. But it is that experience, exposure therapy. It is the idea of opening up your phone and recording a video and then watching it.
Melinda: I love that step. That’s one of the things we do with a lot of our students just beginning their business. Let’s get the phone, do a little selfie. Just a simple thing. Yeah. But you’re even backing it up a step. This is not live on your social media, Instagram or wherever. You’re doing a selfie video. And it just lives on your phone. You can choose what you want to do with it or not. So I love that little micro step to create that safe environment. And I also love focusing on one thing that was something that really plagued me in the beginning, was, oh my gosh, I gotta pay attention to this. And now about that and what am I doing with this? And it was too many things to remember. And that would short circuit my brain and then I would forget everything else that I had learned and then it was just back to the yucky feeling again. You argue that imperfection can actually make somebody more relatable. Can you unpack that? Cause this was very true for me as well.
Kerry: Yeah. It’s interesting you mentioned that for a couple of reasons. You mentioned at the beginning that I have some Emmy awards. I do. I have a couple of Emmy awards and some other awards as well. Not a single one of those awards was won through a perfect show. I was never perfect in any of them. I, I sort of created a phrase that I used when I was in the news industry for myself, and it was less about, I made a mistake or I did this thing wrong. And I reframe it as this is a personality showcase. This mistake is a way for me to show my humanity.
I could read a technically clean newscast, but I wasn’t connecting with the audience. I didn’t really understand that until, you know, quite some time through my career. Again, I mentioned I work with a lot of lawyers and coaches as well, but lawyers tend to have a perfectionist mindset. They bring that mindset with them to video. And the thing about video, that it won’t ever be perfect. It really won’t. Your clothes will be rumpled, you’ll have a hair out of place. You’ll hate the way your mouth moves when you’re saying the word oh. I mean, there’s a whole slew of things. It doesn’t mean you’re rambling, you’re making egregious mistakes. It’s just not going to be perfect.
And when you have some of those small elements, not to the point that they’re distracting, but when you’re able to embrace them and they don’t stop you from putting content out, that’s the key to change. And recognizing that video is also subjective. What could seem perfect to somebody else is going to seem not perfect to you. And, you know, you’re watching a video and you think that video is absolutely perfect, I guarantee you the person who created it doesn’t agree. So recognizing that it’s all very much based on sort of the eye of the beholder reduces some of the pressure that we put on ourselves.
Melinda: Yeah, that was me. I put so much pressure on. I mean, I am a recovering perfectionist now. It’s still in process, but I had the situations where I believed if I don’t get this perfect, they’re not going to believe me. They won’t trust me. They won’t see me as a credible resource that they can then take what I’m sharing and impact in their world. It had to be perfect. And it really slowed me down. There was one time on camera, I was doing a webinar presenting an invitation to our program. Everything that could have gone wrong did. And I was like, I’m so sorry. I was so embarrassed. And they’re like, Melinda, if you can survive this, I can survive it. There’s hope for me.
Kerry: Yeah.
Melinda: And when they said that, I was like, well, I can model all the mistakes that I’m making, so if that makes it easier for you to grasp, I’m for sure willing to do that. But it was that phrase that there’s hope for me, and I’m like, oh. Because I was portraying myself as perfect. My audience thought they had to be perfect. And I was like, no, no, no, no. Yeah. And it immediately shifted everything for me.
Kerry: Isn’t that remarkable how that works? It’s really demonstrating exactly what it is that you talk about. But so often, at least my experience when it comes to video is we apply the rules to everybody else, but we don’t apply them to ourselves. Meaning we’re very forgiving of other people and their mistakes and those sorts of things, but we critique ourselves with a fine tooth comb, and nobody’s paying near as much attention to those small foibles as we are.
Melinda: Yeah. When I was learning public speaking and getting on camera more and more, one of my mentors shared with me, look, Melinda, every presentation, I don’t care what it is. I don’t care if it’s about business or in life. There’s always three versions. There’s the ones you prepare for, the one you do, and the one you wish you would have done.
Kerry: Yeah.
Melinda: And he said, as soon as you embrace that, that’s what allowed me to be more forgiving of myself. And then it was like, I didn’t get it wrong. What can I learn to do differently next time? I love what you said a bit ago, that when little things come through or sometimes big things come through, it’s a personality showcase.
Kerry: Yeah.
Melinda: I love that framing. This is what makes me me. This is me. If you like it, great. If you don’t, good to know sooner rather than later. So we don’t spend a lot of time.
Kerry: 100%. It’s a reframe of what a mistake means, and it means you have an opportunity to endear yourself to your audience.
Melinda: Now, speaking of frameworks, you have something you call MVP. Your VIQ.
Kerry: Yes.
Melinda: Share that with our audience. What is that? And what’s the biggest myth about being camera ready that this method completely gets rid of?
Kerry: Okay, so VIQ stands for video IQ, and MVP stands for mindset, vocal variety, and physical performance. So sort of the three components, or the three buckets, I put skill development, core competencies, if you will, when it comes to skills, in terms of your ability to speak on camera or speak in a stage. On a stage, rather. Mindset is understanding the audience and recognizing that you are always talking to an audience of one. Vocal variety is the way that you use your voice to compel an audience. And physical performance are the components of your physical delivery. So your facial expressions, your hand gestures, your energy, your body language, etc. How you use the stage if you are on, on a live stage versus in this little box we find ourselves in.
And one of the biggest mistakes that people make when it comes to delivering on camera and frankly delivering on a stage is that they have a tendency to be a bit of a snooze fest. And what I mean by that is video and being on a stage, especially in front of a large audience, are energetically flattening for a number of reasons. We get smaller when we are on a stage or in front of a camera. But addition, video itself is energetically flattening. And what I mean by that is you are dealing with hardware, software and Internet connections, and you’ve taken a 3D person and put them into this 2D box. And so all of those elements combined have an energetically flattening effect.
If we don’t look or seem excited or passionate or interested in what it is that we’re talking about, very often our audience will not be excited or interested or energetic or passionate about listening to us either. I mean, the way that it feels to deliver energetically in front of a camera or on a stage feels wildly unnatural. It feels like you are way above and beyond and you are, you know, slimy, used car salesman kind of kind of person. You know, snake oil. And I’m sell, sell, sell, and I’m very bombastic. And all this other components of delivery, that’s what it will feel like when you’re delivering with the right amount of energy. If you watch, it will not look like that. I’ve never come across someone who is too energetic for the camera or stage. You may, in a few rare instances, have it just right.
9.999 times out of 10, you have to significantly bump up your energy. And so I give this analogy because it helps people understand a little bit what that feels like. If you are at a noisy restaurant, let’s say there’s a table of eight, you’re on one side at one end, and the person to whom you’re trying to speak is on the other side at the other end. What are some of the things that you would do in order to make your message understood above the background noise? You’d probably lean forward. When things are exciting, you change the rate at which you speak. When something is important, you might pause. You might use your hands to show these three things. 1, 2, 3.You might amplify your facial expressions.
Delivering on camera and from a stage is the same. You’re always talking to the person in the back of the room and you want to be above the noise. How you deliver that is slightly different between the two. For example, on a stage you can make bigger hand gestures. You really can’t do that as much on video, depending on how you’re framed, but you can certainly still do them. But they’re not going to infuse your delivery the same way that they will if you’re on a stage. But conceptually, that’s exactly how it works.
Melinda: What do you do with your clients to help them really experience that over the topness isn’t actually too much?
Kerry: We do it in a number of ways. When I’m walking my client through, let’s say the two month program, it’s really focused on the on camera delivery part. And when I’m walking them through that program, one of the things that we start out doing is creating small videos and then watching them together and doing feedback and critique and then asking them actually during our sessions to create a video through our virtual session, I hold on my sessions virtually and saying, you need to bump it up more, you need to bump it up more. And here’s how you do that. You do that by, you know, throwing in this hand gesture here and throwing in that there. And I want you to amplify your facial expressions, pushing them out of their comfort zone.
Between sessions, I will ask them to create videos to the point where they are too high energy for the camera. When you hit that threshold, you know how much to dial it back. You have to get comfortable feeling uncomfortable because you are again going to feel like you are over the top, bombastic. You have to get used to that feeling. That sort of ties back to the exposure therapy. You have to get to the point where when the camera comes on speaking like that naturally happens.
Melinda: Yeah. And sometimes it’s not just about more, but it’s about contrast. Because sometimes it’s about leaning in and whispering to get their attention. And then they’re really paying attention and they’re leaning in.
Kerry: Yeah, absolutely. It’s a pattern interrupt. It’s a classic technique when you’re on stage or in front of the camera and you can do it in different ways. Here’s a classic example. When you were a kid and let’s say you were in class, you were in second or third grade. Students were all being rowdy and the teacher was saying, quiet, quiet, everybody stop talking. Everybody pay attention. And his or her voice was getting louder and louder and louder and louder. And what did the kids do? They just talked louder and louder and louder and louder.
When the teacher finally got up in front of the class and just stood there. Silence. Eventually, everybody quieted down and paid attention because he or she had created a pattern interrupt. It’s not always about doing bigger and louder. It’s about using your voice, facial expressions and your body language strategically so that you can create those very natural opportunities. Again, pattern interrupts that re-engage your audience and have them take notice.
Melinda: Yeah. And let’s talk about authenticity. We don’t want people to not be themselves. How do you balance figuring out the presence.
Kerry: Yeah.
Melinda: That you bring on camera and being authentic? Because I’m thinking of the way I am on camera is different from colleagues, but we each do it well in our own way. Talk to that a little bit.
Kerry: So one of the things that I do with my clients is on our second session, I run them through a gallop strength assessments. I figure out what their top five strengths are because I too want to make sure that they’re able to be authentic on camera and capitalize on their strengths. So what are those top five strengths and how do they apply to what it is that you are doing on camera? How do they apply to the development of your on camera persona? You know, maybe you have woo or maybe you are an achiever, maybe you are a learner. How do all of those things combine to create that on camera Persona that is authentic to who you are?
One of the challenges though is that you mentioned that you have a couple of colleagues and you all have different on camera personas, but you all do it very effectively. It’s very easy to slide into a, you know, when I speak, I need to do this with my hands or I need to do this with my facial expressions or I need to do this with my voice. But if it’s not the way that you actually communicate, you are going to look like you are wearing the performance rather than actually communicating effectively. You have to be you, but always a little bit bigger, a little bit more when you are in front of the camera. But one of the easiest ways to assess who you are as a natural communicator is to set up your phone on a tripod in a hidden area when you’re having a conversation with your spouse on the couch, or your business partner or your friend or whatever it is.
And then go back and watch where you naturally speed up, where you slow down. What are the repetitive hand gestures you have a tendency to use when you are excited about something or you’re trying to underscore a particular point? You’re taking those elements that are natural to you and then building them out. That’s how you develop an authentic, compelling on camera Persona. It’s always going to feel weird in the beginning though. It’s always going to feel fake because you’re doing it more than you normally would be.
Melinda: Yeah, I think that’s the real key takeaway is it’s got to be bigger than what you’re used to and how that translates on camera. You know, you have worked with a lot of pretty high level professionals, a lot of different coaches, and I imagine you’ve heard every experience excuse about why people can’t do video. What are some of the better ones you’ve heard and how do you reframe them?
Kerry: Yeah, listen, what I hear most often when people are first thinking about doing video, it’s superficial. I don’t have a lot of time and I don’t understand tech. Usually when we get rid of those two, then we find the real problem is that I’m not comfortable doing it. I hate watching myself. I worried I’m going to look like an idiot. People are going to judge me. I don’t know what to say. But time and tech, I can cut through those things quickly.
Tech is simple. You need three things. You need a face, you need a voice and you need a phone. And I’m pretty sure you have all three of those if you’re listening You really don’t need anything else. You need good lighting, but you can get that from natural lighting. Some sort of external microphone, but it doesn’t need to be expensive. They have a gear guide that walks me people through exactly what very basic tech they need. And then once we do that, then it becomes time.
Once you have a process, once you are comfortable on camera and you can record things in one take versus 57, it becomes a much lighter lift. So time and tech are the two biggest things I hear, but they tend to be superficial and covering up. The real challenge for most people, sometimes they’re not even aware of is that I actually have this deep fear of being judged, looking foolish, not knowing what I’m doing, coming across as an amateur and just generally not liking the way that I look or sound on video.
Melinda: Yeah, it’s rooted in so many of us. When I was first getting onto video, I was like, no. Every time something wasn’t comfortable or I faltered or floundered or screwed up or whatever, I would be like, this is how I can reach the people. This is how I can help the people. This is how I can serve the people that just kept cycling through me to say, okay, if I can reach one more person, I’ll be uncomfortable on camera. That bigger why is truly what drove me to work on to get more comfortable and to get better at it over time.
Kerry: And you’re so good at it now.
Melinda: Oh, my gosh. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I was just remembering my first video when you said, you need natural light. I was like, I can take a lampshade off a lamp. I have a whole wall of windows and a bar stool with a stack of books to get my laptop high enough. That was my first video for the first campaign. Now it’s our signature program. How did anybody ever opt into that resource? Thank you to all those people out there that actually opted in. And then when I listened to that video, it sounds like this, please opt in to this free resource. It’s going to change your business. And I’m like, wow, I was a robot. What?
Kerry: You are not alone. You are in very good and abundant company, let me assure you.
Melinda: When the people are struggling with X, Y, Z, whatever it is, and they’re looking for guidance and support, when you have that guidance and support, you don’t have to get it perfect. You just have to create that connection. And so I had people, I had a lot, hundreds and hundreds of people clicking to opt into that resource after listening to that robotic crazy video. And guess what? We gave them a resource that helped them transform their business and turn things around for them. And I was like, okay, I’ll get out of my own way to help the people I’m here to help.
Kerry: That’s really what it is, right? It’s getting out of your own way. All of our own internal obstacles that we’ve decided we’re going to erect to try and keep us from looking silly. Imagine if you hadn’t done that and the fact that people opted in despite what you’re just. And I haven’t seen the video, but I’m going to take your word for it.
Melinda: I don’t let that out of the box too often, but look at what it did.
Kerry: Look at how transformative it was. And that’s the key. People are looking for your expertise. There probably some, you know, things you might have been able to do better on that first video that would have been easy fixes, but it was getting it done. It was doing the thing and taking messy, imperfect action and using it to create the next step and the next step and so on.
Melinda: And here I am, years later, thousands of webinars and videos and now it does feel natural, but it didn’t for a long time, and I just kept at it. That’s what you said at the beginning,right. Repetition, consistency, and dedication.
Kerry: Yeah.
Melinda: Really, really do matter. Is there anything I haven’t asked you about that you think is critical for our audience to hear?
Kerry: Remember that when creating video, much like speaking from the stage, you’re always talking to an audience of one. You may have thousands, even millions watching, but you are always talking to one person. If you’re trying to connect with everybody, you end up connecting with no one. Think of who that ideal person is for that video and talk to that person. Everybody in that demographic will understand what you’re saying, and you will meet them where you are. So your video, no matter how many people, always talking to an audience of one.
Melinda: I love that. So let’s summarize some of the things that we’ve talked about today because, well, we started out why it’s so powerful. And I love that you took us all the way back to caveman and that time and that this is not just a little trait that we all have. And a small little fear like this is massive and is deeply rooted. Right. We’re all overcoming that. And I love how you walked us through kind of just transforming that fear.
I love that you shared repetition and consistency and dedication is really key. And we even talked about exposure therapy and creating a safe environment where the stakes aren’t high to practice. And you gave us that awesome 30 and 30, that challenge. Just get out your phone, do a selfie video. You don’t have to publish it, but exercise that muscle. We talked about the value of imperfection, and done is better than good. And I love how you remember reminded everybody. It’s going to feel bigger than you when you’re presenting, that practice and really getting set with that.
We talked about why and how it fuels us. Anything worth doing is worth taking the time to do it. It’s not about the video. It’s a means to connect to the people we’re here to serve. Kerry, any final words for coaches ready to step in front of the camera but still feel that fear.
Kerry: Yeah. You are going to. There is no getting around feeling that fear creeping in. The confidence doesn’t come until the competence. So it’s developing the skillset. And you will not develop the skill set if you don’t actually do the thing. And I know this from experience, going back to my broadcasting background. I mean, my debut video was not a 30 and 30 on my selfie. It was on live television with all the mistakes. If I had waited until I felt ready, I would have never done it. I’ve never had that ultimately very successful 20 year career. You have to do the thing and you can’t expect the confidence to come before that comes when you’ve developed the skills. So jump in with two feet.
Melinda: I love it. Thank you for listening to this episode of Just Between Coaches and a giant thank you to Kerry for sharing her insights. You can learn more about Kerry and her work at kerrybarrett.com. That’s Kerry K E R R Y Barrett B A R R E T T dot com. In fact, she’s got a free resource Mastering on Camera Presence and you can find the link in the show notes. Kerry, thank you so much for coming to the show.
Kerry: Oh, it was my pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Melinda: I’m Melinda Cohan and you’ve been listening to Just Between Coaches. Just Between Coaches is part of the Mirasee FM Podcast Network, which also includes Neuroscience of Coaching and Making It. For more great episodes, follow us on Mirasee FM’s YouTube channel or your favorite podcast player. And if you enjoyed the show, please leave us a review and share it with your fellow coaches. Thanks and we’ll see you next time.