A lot of people say, "I can't make a video, it's not for me, it's all about talent
and good looks."
You know, if I thought this had anything at all to do with
talent or looks,
I'd be another line of work.
But you know something?
It turns out there is no correlation between talent
and success.
When it comes to learning a new skill, you can do it
even if you don't think you have any talent at all.
And you can do it better than most.
And how do I know this?
Jerry Rice,
Mozart,
Tiger Woods and Jim Carrey--all people who you might say
prove the theory of talent. I tell you that these guys
actually disprove the theory of talent.
So in this video
you're about to learn something that will blow the doors
off of any doubt that you've ever had
in your business and in your life.
See you in ten seconds.
I'm sure you've heard the phrase
"You've either got it, or you don't."
But science says, if you don't got it
you can get it
through practice.
But not just any kind of practice.
In his book
Talent Is Overrated, Geoff Colvin says that what really separates world-class
performers from everyone else is something that no one was looking at--
deliberate practice.
Now what does that mean?
Well, it means a lot of things, but boiled down to its essence, it's simply that
with the right kind of teacher and the right kind of exercises,
anyone can learn a new skill and learn it really well.
Tiger Woods did.
He was just a few months old when his golf-obsessed dad
put a golf club in his hands, made him sleep with it
to get the grip just right.
Tiger breathed golf with his dad from the time he was a baby.
And when he finally hit the Pro tour,
he had been practicing deliberately
for eighteen years.
And he completely
dominated the game of golf.
Jerry Rice
is considered one of the greatest, if not the greatest football player who ever lived.
He lasted in a position
until he was over forty--
a position that no one plays for more than ten years at a time.
His secret wasn't talent. He trained by himself in the off-season
so hard
that his teammates,
who sometimes got curious about what he was up to,
would come and try to train with him. But they would soon get nauseous
from doing just a few of the uphill wind-sprints that Jerry would do
all day long.
And all of these exercises that Jerry did--
hardly any of them had anything to do with football.
Even Mozart, who many point to as the epitome of talent, had a background that
was not what you would expect.
Turns out he had a father
who wrote the book on training composers.
He trained his son hard from the time he was not much more than a baby.
By the time Mozart became famous, he had been composing for eighteen years.
And guess what?
His first compositions really weren't that great.
No one performs them anymore. They were simply part of his
training.
Talent?
I think not.
Or take Jim Carrey,
he of the rubber-face school of acting.
Did you know that Carrey used to spend hours in front of the mirror, just
making faces?
Not practicing lines, not studying great scripts, not even watching movies.
Just making faces.
Now this demonstrates
two principles of deliberate practice:
it must be done alone
and it must
take the process apart
and focus on only one aspect of it.
For example,
Tiger Woods used to put a ball in the sand trap
then step on it,
and then practice hitting that barylie.
Or as I like to call it,
my tee shot.
Benjamin Franklin, whom many consider to be a bit of an okay writer,
used to read great essays
then take each sentence apart
and put them back together again in his own words, sometimes even making poems
out of them.
Working on his own,
working on one part of the process.
So it's just no use saying you can't put yourself on camera.
It's simply not true.
All it takes
is the right kind of practice:
working on your own
with the right exercises.
So, here are two
simple exercises
to help you on your way.
Number one:
practice "happy."
Look, I know the sign of a serious person is the inability to smile
unless you're being
tickled, or listening to a limerick
about the lady from Kent.
But on camera, that's a non-starter. Especially for the kinds of videos
you want to make.
When you're all super serious, it just kind of drains your energy.
So literally take a page from Jim Carrey's book and practice smiling.
You'll find it curiously exhausting.
And that's a good thing.
It means you're stretching yourself,
and you're actually learning something.
Number two:
practice
projecting.
People have the mistaken notion that simply by micing up
that they'll be heard.
No, they won't.
Not unless their energy reaches the hearts and minds of their audience.
And that won't happen
unless you practice projecting your personality beyond the camera lens.
You do this
by imagining your viewer,
whose sitting just behind the camera,
is a little hard of hearing. So you adjust your voice
so she can hear you.
So, "Smile and talk loud,
is that all you're recommending, Steve? That seems so basic!"
Yeah, maybe you're right.
Maybe I better rethink this
and get back to you when I have something more profound.
Maybe not.
Try these two techniques and watch your video success go through the roof.
Post your next one below,
and lets see you get this thing going.
Or,
if you'd rather gather all the exercises you need to make you a video genius,
and not practice in public,
we have options for you there, too.
In fact, you can learn more about
everything it takes to do video marketing
right at my website, and the new articles and videos on my blog.
Hey, look. If that no-talent Wolfgang Mozart could write a few
snappy songs,
surely you can make
a two-minute video that's worth watching.
All it takes is a little
mindful practice.
See? The gods of talent might be angry,
but they missed again.
That's all for me for now.
I'm Steve Washer
with BrainyVideo.com