Why I spent years hiding behind the camera

I spent a long, long time producing video for other people, but not creating for myself. I told myself I was too busy, or uninterested. But the truth is, I didn’t find myself valuable enough. I believed in my competence. But not in my value.

Don’t get me wrong. I thought I knew everything. I thought I could do anything. This made me an absolute pleasure to be around. But while I valued my labor and my knowledge. I didn’t value myself. Deep down, I just didn’t believe I had anything worth sharing.

That started to change only when my daughter’s personality began to break into blossom.

Abby is nine years old. I love all the folds and wrinkles of her personality. As she grew, I started to see reflections of myself in some of her traits. Her punny and absurdist humor, her collaborative nature, how nuance comes naturally to her. But also…

Her clumsiness. Her forgetfulness, and this face she makes when she’s worried about something, where she draws the corners of her mouth down, showing her bottom teeth. I see myself in that expression. And my mom. And my grandfather.

I cherish these things about Abby. I value them. And valuing them in her was the first step in valuing them in me.

Most creators try to find an audience they can give value to. I would encourage you to look at it differently… You are the value, or some part of you is. I think you have to find the people that you are valuable to. 

Watching Abby grow has helped me start to see value in my personality, and, more importantly, to really believe it.

Personality is your authentic self, your lived experience, your sense of humor, your values, your perspective and, yes, the way you look. Parts of your personality are valuable to some subset of people.

Those people are your audience. The ones who are picking up what you are putting down. They might have varied interests or demographics. They might get value out of very different parts of your personality. It might be a small audience or a big audience, but they are there because of you.

Your job as a creator, your only job to start, is to share your personality. You’ve got to be honest, authentic, and you have to get it out there so other people can figure out if they find you valuable.

If so, welcome to the club. If not… thank you, next.

It sounds easy but, if you’ve tried it you know it’s not. It’s a commitment. By that I mean you have to commit.  Every day, every time you create, you have to get out of your own way… to stop the over-thinking, and the imposterizing, and the self-editing. You have to commit to finding and owning your own voice. Even when it doesn’t feel popular, or optimized.

And here’s where formats can help. Scroll any of your feeds for a while and you’ll start to see them. Repeated phrases, structures, hooks, and calls to action. I call them formats, because that’s what they’re called in television.

On the socials, they’re called frameworks, blueprints, systems… but they are basically posting formats.

Like the Jenny Hoyos shorts method I shared last week… Formats can help you optimize and package your personality for the platform where you’re audience hunting.

But never, ever choose a format over your personality. That’s your value.

Formats convert, but they don’t connect.

Personality connects. 

No matter the format, in video, audio text or images,

1. Personality wins. 

2. Personality stops the scroll. 

3. Personality gets the audience and reputation.

There are a hundred newsletter formats that would tell me to make this simpler. Use bullets and takeaways. Make it actionable.  And I am as guilty as anyone of falling for the allure of the format, all laid out nicely for me.

But I’m more abstract. Like Abby, I see nuance and layers everywhere. So that’s what I’m giving you here.

I truly hope you find it valuable. 

But if you don’t, better for both of us to know now. I want subscribers that I can really help. 

Whether or not that’s you, I’m grateful that you gave me this chance. That’s the most we can ask of each other out here on the interwebs.

Check this out

Apple just released a new Final Cut Camera app for iPhone. It seems like it has great control and usability, but what I’m excited about is the multi-cam feature. If you’ve got an iPad running Final Cut Pro, you can use this app to connect up to four devices to it for local multi-cam shoots.

Is TikTok Shop peak social selling?

The experience is so seamless - it’s fully gamified for the buyers and the sellers. And so many products grab my interest. It feels like I’m window-shopping in a video version of my Amazon recommendations. It helps that they are sledgehammering us with it, but that’s TikTok.

Feed me

I’ve been spending a lot of time on my LInkedIn feed and I am amazed at how well personality performs in the sea of frameworks. When vertical video rolls out, the personalities are going to absolutely crush… or the river will be so polluted with samesame frameworks that the whole enterprise will fail. I really, really want to do my part to make it the former.

I posted some of my thoughts from this newsletter on LinkedIn today. If you ❤️ anything here, I’d really appreciate you sharing my post or commenting here.

Now do this with me

Another challenge this week - focused on my personality. I filmed a podcast with my partner Jeff last week about why content pipelines can be a powerful tool for law firms. This week I’m trying to peel two high-quality, impactful shorts out of that podcast in a way that captures my personality. I’m trying a couple different ways:

1. I asked Jeff to select two clips that I could turn into shorts. I’m going to edit one and Roman is going to edit the other.

2. I’m going to upload the transcript to Chat GPT and fallow this prompt to try and generate some new shorts out of the ideas in the podcast

Try this your own way - make something short out of something long. 

As always, I’m trying to build a systemized approach to this kind of work. That’s the real benefit of formats - they make the structural stuff simpler so you can stay focused on your spark. Your personal value.

Stuff I’m Reading

This article made me think in a different way about how algorithms drive our behavior… sort of like furniture as we move through the internet.

Every type of creator has their formats. Some are less obvious than others.

Conversation in online communities happens in the comments. That brands are upping their game suprises me not. But it’s still creepy. I think that’s the biggest benny that brands get from AI… now there’s something creepier than they are on the internet.

Until next time… be spontaneous.

Best, AE