Transcript: Unleash Your Inner Video Star (EP90)

 

Brendan: Welcome to the Culture of Leadership. We have conversations that help you develop and become a more confident leader.

This is my conversation with Julian Mather. Julian’s seen the world through many lenses—through a telescopic sight as an army sniper; through the TV lens as a globe-trotting cameraman for ABC TV, National Geographic, and BBC; through smoke and mirrors as a professional magician. 

He’s traveled far, but his longest journeys have been from behind the camera to in front of it. From stutterer to professional speaker. From shy to shine. Now, he shows you how to overcome the fear of video in seven days and become the confident video presenter you want to be.

Video is arguably the most powerful tool for leaders to communicate and impact at scale. If you want to unleash your inner video star to become a more confident leader, watching this episode is your next step. 

This is the Culture of Leadership podcast. I’m Brendan Rogers. Enjoy my conversation with Julian.

Julian: Let's talk about what a leader is first because there are so many people who think we're just talking to CEOs. When I help people use video, I'm helping people who are building a business, inspiring a team, leading a movement, connecting a tribe, driving a vision, backing yourself, or just setting an example for somebody else. I can help people use video, who are trying to take people from confusion to clarity, fear to confidence, and then mobilize them towards a greater future. So this is the path, we can do it, follow me. 

The reason I start with that is because one of the biggest problems I've had with clients of doing this over the last decade or so is that unless you have something to say, I can almost guarantee you will not show up on video and say it. You need that purpose within you. You need to be almost like it doesn't matter what you do, you can't shut me up about this. With that drive inside, it's important that there are so many people who struggle to show up in video and say what they want to say. 

In a digital world, you can touch more hearts, you can shift more minds, you can move more feet, and there's no better way to do it than to build trust with video. Pretty much that's where we're at. We are in this digital world. 

There are four big shifts out there that have happened, there's the digital shift. We don't read, we watch. We don't meet, we Zoom. Brick and Mortar became click and order. Video is almost this new reading and writing. You can't afford to be a video illiterate leader now. 

Then we moved into this self-serve society. We're addicted to the convenience of information at our fingertips. Show me how to fill in the form. Show me how to fit the tap washer you just sold me. Don't make me wait, just show me already. 

Then there's been a shift in trust. Banks have let us down, churches have let us down, politicians have let us down, and big brands have let us down. We trust strangers now to take us to the airport in an Uber more than we trust the CEOs we work for. We trust people more than brands. 

Then the other big shift is this move towards transparency. This is a citizen- and consumer-driven demand for transparency. Don't tell me that this is a great place to work, show me. Don't tell me you support diversity, show me. There's this big change out there, but there's a problem with video and that it used to be simple. 

It used to be like we'll get someone to make it, but now there are almost three new sectors of video. There's what I call a legacy video, which is a creative video. It's the video we know if you go onto Netflix and watch something, if you want to get a video for your homepage done, if you want to get some ads done or promotions done, it's creative traditional video making.

There are two new forms of video. One is AI-generated video. This is automated and so many businesses now know that they've got a certain amount of video. They're just actually putting in video scripts. In fact, the AI writes the scripts for them and turns it into these avatars, which read the videos for them. This is for compliance. We've got to have all these videos done, tick the box, it's done. And it's just horrible stuff. It's video spam and there's more of it coming. 

Then the third area, which is the area that I work in, is what I call new video, and this is persuasive video. It's personal. It's just you turning up on camera, speaking to one person out there and trying to help them solve their problems. You're going to buy your content and the videos you make to try to persuade them and help them change their mind and go from that confusion to clarity, fear to confidence, and mobilize them to what you think is a better future for them. 

This is the big problem, Brendan. Most people hate how they look, hate how they sound, and feel technically way out of their depth when it comes to video. We need a new way to approach this. 

That's really what I've spent the last five years on, working on this thing what I call the new video professional. These are professionals who know that I've got to use video in my business now. I don't want to be here. I wish it would all go away. But it's helping and giving them systems so they've got to learn these new rules, get the new tools, and overcome their fear of video. Then they can become confident video presenters who win more trust, authority, clients, and jobs. That's the situation out there. 

Brendan: There's so much to unpack and a big situation. I want to go back to that term video illiterate leader because you used that a bit in some of the work that you do as well. I can assume that a video illiterate leader, first of all, the best example is they just don't get on video. But when you see a leader or a business owner that is actually doing video, and you look at it, what does that video illiterate leader look like when they've got to that step? 

Julian: Let's just look at some examples of leaders who are using video. There's no one more current at the moment than Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Look at him. He just turns up in his t-shirt doing a selfie video with himself for a couple of people behind him. It goes global and people are brought into that message. The power of video and how it has been used in the Ukrainian war is quite amazing. 

Jacinda Ardern in New Zealand, Prime Minister of New Zealand, releases policy updates on YouTube. She's very effectively using this persuasive video, just turning up one-on-one on video. You go back, Barack Obama had the West Wing Weekly. It was a YouTube channel where once a week they let a smartphone crew in. They just followed him around for a couple of hours and you saw behind the presidency. It was incredibly popular.

Bill and Melinda Gates, well I don’t know how they work together now that they're split up, but they've used video so effectively. Simple video to improve healthcare and their push to reduce extreme poverty. Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, always turning up on video. 

If anyone can remember this, type in SwanCare Letters into YouTube and you'll get this video that was made for a nursing home in Western Australia. It is just a beautiful use where we're talking about it's not just for leaders using video, and this is something we've got to talk about, too, is about empowering your staff in your teams to show up on video as well. 

Type in SwanCare Letters. It goes for about 2½ minutes and it is a really powerful use of video. If I have anyone in my family who needs aged care, I just want to send them to SwanCare. It's beautifully done. 

Brendan: You've mentioned some pretty big names in the global leadership sphere, let's say, but I want to just strip that back because a lot of people around if we think about this podcast and having conversations to create confident leaders, we're talking about this everyday person and about being better than they were yesterday.

If you look at it through that lens, what's the step that they need to take and therefore the impact they can have through this empowering their people. I want to jump to that. 

Julian: The first thing you got to understand is people ask why me? They're not confident in going on video because like we were just saying, we mentioned all these big names. They should be on video. You've got to stand firm in your belief that you do not need anybody's permission to turn up on video and try and help them. 

That's what we are doing as leaders. We're trying to take people from where we are to a better situation now. Understanding that gone are the days that there were gatekeepers for this. 

In the days of television you had to be the anointed one. You had to get a PR team to use their connections to get you on. Now, you just turn up on LinkedIn. You turn up on whatever platform you like. If you go in with a service mindset where I'm here to help you and you turn up honestly, openly, with a little bit of vulnerability, some humility, you will do well. 

When I say do well, this is not about building big amounts of likes. That's the wrong metric. Is there somebody out there? Is there one person? Is there five people, maybe a hundred, maybe a thousand people who listen to you and take on board your message? Does that affect their life in a positive way?

Then once you do that, you've got to then start working on okay, I've got this body of knowledge, then I've got to work out how am I going to chunk that down into content that works for online platforms. 

I always think about it like a potato. We've got a big potato of knowledge. We want to give it to someone, stick it down their throat, and they choke. We've got to turn that potato of knowledge into fries. 

Same amount of potato I will fry. We can just have them one at a time, we digest it beautifully, and we go, is there some more? We got to stand firm that you don't need anyone's permission to want to show up and help them. 

Then you've got to be clear because confused people don't buy. You've got to spend a bit of time chunking down your content and then working out how it's going to go on video. Then what you got to do is then you got to present it. Most people go but I'm not a video presenter and they look at other people and they go. I want to be like that person. It is honestly the worst thing you can do. 

What works now, what works beautifully is turning up and being yourself. You go yeah, but I'm boring. No, you're not. There are 25 flavors of ice cream out there because not everyone wants vanilla. People want a particular flavor and you will find that you resonate with certain people and there are other people who you are not going to resonate with either. 

There are people who are listening to me now and go, I cannot stand the sound of this bloke's voice. Just don't like the cut of his jib for whatever. That used to worry me turning up on video because I'm a bit of a people pleaser, like to do that, until I came to my senses. 

This started seven or eight years ago, I had a YouTube channel that did really well. I used to get 5% of haters. I used to get 95% of likes and 5% of those were haters. Those 5% used to always come right at the start. I used to be so worried 5% because I had millions of views and this equated to many thousands of people not liking me. It used to eat away at me until I came to my senses. 

I realized that if I walked into a room of people that I'd never met and 5%, so if there were 20 people in the room, one person didn't like me, but 19 did? How fantastic is that? I'm so far ahead. 

Not being hung up that you're going to go on and you're going to get criticism and this is another thing as well. People worry people are going to criticize them. I'm going to say something wrong. I'm going to fluff it up. Here's a bit of home truth for you. You're not that interesting. People aren't thinking about you. Honestly, if you go on and you mess something up, people aren't going home and talking about you. 

As soon as they've stopped listening to you, they flicker onto something else. They're doing something else or doing something really important in life like working out when the kids have to be picked up and who's going to cook dinner tonight? They're not thinking about you. 

It really comes down to if you are worried about going on video, there are three things you really want to do. You want to stand firm. You don't need permission to turn up and help people. You want to be clear because confused people don't buy. You want to stay true to yourself. You don't have to change who you are. This is such a blessing. It's such relief because being who you are takes no effort and it's one of the wonderful things.

Brendan: You used the word much earlier, authentic and being more authentic. Can videos be too polished? 

Julian: Polish videos don't work because remember we were saying before that we trust people more than brands now. We've had decades of these larger organizations giving us these messages, telling us they're going to do things for them, and not living up to it. They used to video a lot.

Those polished corporate type videos full of hollow promises, they just don't work like they used to. There's always going to be a place for that. But now, these authentic videos and authentic, a lot of people get hung up on this because I hear people discussing it online and on podcasts, and they say authenticity is you've just been exactly who you are. If you're feeling down that day, you turn up. I go, no, you don't. Authenticity is really easy. 

Authenticity is if you met me in the street, you would say, you are exactly like you are on video. You are exactly like you are on this podcast. That's all authenticity is. How I am in the real world and in this virtual world here now is I'm professional. If I'm feeling down, I don't turn up and go I'm just going to bring the Culture of Leadership podcast down, because I'm feeling a bit down today. No, that's not professional. That's not how we operate.

A great rule of thumb for people who want to know how I should turn up on video is just extrapolate what you would do in the real world and it pretty much works for online. 

Brendan: Does video lie?

Julian: That's a nice question. I like that. In one sense, yes you can because in television, we had a saying. It was about editing and it's cut within the frame. What that means is that there's a frame around the edge of the image or TV set and outside of that, nothing matters. It only matters what's in the frame. 

As I'm sitting here now and talking to you and it looks all nice, you can't see around the outside here. You can't see the walls are half painted or I haven't bothered finishing in there. You can't see the stuff and all the stuff hanging on the walls. It's outside the frame. In that sense, video can lie with what's inside the frame. 

But in another sense, you do not want to turn up on video and say anything that is not true. I had this discussion once where there's a guy called Dr. Paul Ekman. He's a world authority on micro expressions. We were doing a documentary on the science of fear and we're talking about microexpressions. 

I was saying it's really weird because when I looked through the viewfinder—my job was really a professional starer; I used to stare at people through the lens—I could always tell if something was off. I could tell if they were going to cry.

He said because you've been doing this for so long, you are picking up on microexpressions. These are these little tells. He's called the human lie detector, Dr. Paul Ekman, because he can look at people and he can watch the videos and tell if they're lying. 

This is why you don't want to lie if you make videos and come up and go, I'm just going to make something but I don't really believe it. You want that conviction behind what you're saying, because it's not who you say you are and who Google says you are. Every time you make a video, it's up there and it's up there for good, but that's not hard. 

I just have a hard and fast rule. It's very simple. We were talking about this before Brendan, about do you want to edit anything out? I said, no. I own whatever comes out of my mouth. The reason I say that is I have a simple rule and that is if it's not true, I don't say it. It is that simple. That is my filter. 

It's so easy for me to live that way because I don't have to look over my shoulder, I don't have to double guess I'm going to get caught out on something, and it's a wonderful rule for creating video content. To answer your question, does video lie? Yeah. I think I've answered it. 

Brendan: I think you have. In the work that you do—we'll maybe look at some of the stuff you've done because it's absolutely fascinating—do you come across and witness people, business leaders, people wanted to lead in their field or whatever, that are not as confident about getting into video because there is that lie factor? The real is different to what may show up or what they want to show up on video. Is that a factor of people not getting on video? 

Julian: It is a huge factor, Brendan. This has taken me quite a number of years to work out because one of the things that always used to frustrate me was that I would work with people that'd be so excited about getting on video and getting ahead and starting this. This is a new part of their business and their being, and they wouldn't make the video. That just drives me insane. I used to say what is going on? What is going on here? 

This started with the discussion I had with Matt Church. You may know Matt Church. He has this thing called the four levels of commitment. If we want to turn up and do something, the first level of commitment is money. I will pay the money for it. I paid the money for the course. I bought the book. Then you can pay, but you can do nothing with it. 

The second level of commitment is time. I've paid up and now I'm going to put the time in into it. Of course we can put a lot of time into it, but without effort that doesn't really mean anything.

The third level of commitment is effort. It goes money, time, then effort. When it comes to going on video, I worked with plenty of clients, put the money in, they put the time, and I put the effort in, and they'd hit this barrier. 

The fourth level of commitment is identity. It's our reputation. It's how people see us out there in the world and what stops us is status. I didn't understand status until I started to dive into it. If you ever want to go read a book called The Status Game by Will Storr, it really unpacks all this.

What is status? It's just this feeling of being valued. We have a longing for connection, to be loved, and to be part of a group. Once we're inside these groups, we have a need to move up within those groups. How much others see me as valuable to the success of the group, that's what status is. 

We grant people with the expertise our group needs to succeed with high status. And this is baked into us. This is evolutionary. For all social creatures on planet Earth, high status brings abundance. We get more food, we get more land, we get more romantic opportunities. The higher we rise, the more likely we are to live, to love, to have children, and pass on the games. This is baked into us. 

The opposite of status is public humiliation. That's where all the status gets stripped away from you. When we see video, we see this thing that can possibly give us public humiliation, which is almost like heaven and hell, something we completely avoid. 

The best way to think of this is snakes and ladders. Remember the game Snakes and Ladders we all played as kids and you roll the dice?

Brendan: Certainly. 

Julian: It takes you forever to get up the right ladders and then you get right up to that last line and you're going along and you're rolling in the dice and you say I don't want to land on that big snake, because if you land on that big snake, right back down to the start, and that's how we see video.

We are worried about this because we worry we're going to be exposed as frauds when we go online. We're in a position of leadership, and as leaders we are supposed to know what we're doing and we're supposed to be good communicators. We are in a sense, but we are not practicing people on video and we are worried we're not going to be seen as clever, funny, rich, or as perfect.

In Covid, we saw this right at the start when we all went on Zoom. People saw that the lives that we lived at home were quite messy and chaotic. They weren't as perfect as we portray ourselves in our business suit at work. All this causes perpetual anxiety. When people think of going on video, they think oh man, I could lose it all. They just go, I'm going to put it on the back burner. 

If you want to go on video, what you need to do is find something to replace your worry about status as a driver for you to be on video. I worked at it and I worked at this and I came up with a solution to it. 

Brendan: Share that solution, mate, because that's exactly where my head's going.

Julian: Well, okay. The easiest thing for you to do well on video is to turn up with a service mindset, thinking about I'm turning up to help people as much as I'm here. I could have worried about this podcast with you—years ago, I would have—I don't. All I'm doing now is listening to your questions and thinking, what is the best way, the best information I can put out there that can help somebody?

It's imperfect. I'm ducking and diving and weaving. I'm going off on tangents, I’m arming and arring, and none of that matters because my focus is what I'm saying, can that help somebody else?

When you go in with a service mindset, it's like a magic pill, Brendan. Fix nervous with service. This all isn't about you, your status, and looking fantastic. It's about you turning up and trying to help people. People within your organization, your customs and clients, the broader community, whoever it is, if you turn up with that mindset, your nervousness melts away and it's a brilliant cure for it.

Brendan: Give us an example of that for you, that nervous to service. I guess what I'm saying is the success story that something that really resonates with you over the time you've been working in this space and working with people to get their message out. 

Julian: Everyone says you don't understand my situation. Okay, yeah. We've all got our external situations and it's all very real what happens to us. We're never going to get past that. I'm just going back a step here. I used to get very confused about change. I've had a lot of career changes, but a lot of it I could have done a lot smarter.

I used to think that if I just apply myself and keep taking the steps over a period of time, I'll eventually go from being stuck here to being unstuck where I want to be. That worked, but it was a lot of effort. Then I realized that change is not a process. Change is a decision. When you've decided that you want to do something, it becomes so much easier. 

We all know this. Let me speak personally. If I haven't made a decision on something, you can't make me do it. I can get really stubborn about it. But if I've decided I want to do something, you can't stop me from doing it. 

When it comes to doing video, a lot of people go but you don't understand my external situations. We have to go back and take responsibility that everyone's got an external situation. It's about owning that and then deciding yes, this is something whether you want or need to do it, whatever your language is, and then you're going to see the change. 

The reason I preface with that is I have a client who, of all things, is blind since birth. That client never ever thought they could do videos, just thought it was way out of anything possible. Working with them through the processes, they are now doing keynote speaking, doing it virtually and having a ball. This is available to anybody to turn up and do. 

I've got other clients as well who've been deaf. They turn up and they speak like when we hear people who can't hear, they have an affected speaking, and they're just getting on with it. 

Brendan: It must be quite satisfying working with people with those disabilities and seeing the advancement. Let's get real personal on your side. How do you use your own story, which is quite unique—your background, sniper, magician, cameraman behind the camera now spending a lot of time in front of the camera—how do you use that and those scenarios in your own journey to inspire others to get from that nervous to service? 

Julian: I was a walking concoction of never thinking that I could do this to be in front of a video. I spent most of my life hiding. People go how did you move from being a sniper to being a cameraman? Was it you looking through a lens? Well that's a commonality. Was it that you were metaphorically shooting people? Yeah, that's a commonality. 

The reality was I was hiding. That these were tools that I was able to hide behind because I had self-esteem and self-worth issues. I was shy and I was a stutterer. I started my life, my earliest memories of five or six years old going to speech therapy lessons, learning about diphthongs and triphthongs and looking at my mouth and a mirror. I hated it. I stuttered in my youth, into my teens, into my 20s, even into my 30s.

I had all these stories as I was a cameraman. I had all these people in front of the lens who were affecting change within the world. I used to look at them and I was mystified about how they got that confidence to be in front of the lens and affect this change.

I was embarrassed because I didn't have that confidence at all. I felt excluded because one thing I did learn was that those in front of the lens are like metaphorically in the light. If you are in the light, you get more opportunity than people who are in the shadows. 

I also felt small because I knew I had this stuff inside of me and I thought I could be playing a bigger and a better game, but I just didn't know how. This went on and over the years, all these people influencing my thinking, that I eventually walked away from television at the top of my game, and I had this idea that I was going to go out and affect change within the world.

I took a program out into schools to teach philanthropy to school children. I took it out to deafening silence because it was a great idea. Everyone said it was fantastic, but I didn't understand anything about business. I learned my first lesson about business. I never open a restaurant unless you've got a starving crowd.

People thought it was fantastic, but they wanted something different. They said have you got anything to do with English, math, or science? We'll take those. 

Brendan: The vanilla flavors. 

Julian: I was stuck. I was basically left with no money, no income and I had to reinvent myself. As a cameraman, what I used to do is carry magic in my camera vest, just little magic tricks, because get this, apparently, people don’t trust the media. I know. I used to use magic as a way to build rapport with people. I can get them laughing a bit. It works wonders. I took those basic magic skills I have and I doubled down on them and I ended up becoming a professional magician for about 5 years and did about 2000 magic shows. 

That cured my stutter. I learned a lot. The biggest thing I learned about that was about audiences. It flows into videos so much that I used to be terrified of audiences. I used to think they were really hostile. People who are out there waiting to take me down. If you act like a lame deer, wolves are very good at this, they spot the lame one, they go for them. I started off very much as a lame deer until I started to go, I need to get better at this and start to study and look at the psychology of audiences. 

It turns out that people want to be directed. If an audience is here watching, whether it’s in real time or online, we all live very busy lives. If somebody turns up and within the first 5, 10 seconds or something, you hear them, and you go, you know what? I like this person and they know what they’re talking about, we give ourselves over to that person to direct us. Because it means, for the next five minutes or the next half hour, I don’t have to make decisions. We love having a break from having to make decisions all through every day. 

Audiences are actually on your side. I never understood this. It’s the same out there. You don’t have to be a fantastic performer to turn up, you just have to be compelling to the person who’s listening to you. 

People go, oh yeah, but I don’t know what to say. Yes, you do. No one knows your customer, client, or staff like you do. If you're turning up on video, all you have to do is turn up and speak like you're speaking to one person with the service mindset like you're trying to help them improve their situation. If you're speaking to the right set of ears for that, you are absolutely compelling. 

One thing I say to people is that you can go from no confidence at all to being a compelling video presenter and you can do that in seven days. It’s about speaking to the right people with the right message at the right time. If you turn up and try to be somebody else, it doesn’t work because people want a person not a persona. Again, we get back to this big mistake we make. We think on our way, I have to be like a certain way or that presenter. 

Humans have got amazingly good BS detectors. Remember we’re saying before that if you take something offline, extrapolate it to online and vice-versa to work out what works? Imagine you're turned up to somebody that you didn’t know, you're going to have a cup of coffee with them, and you're going to help them. All of a sudden, instead of just chatting to them, you sat upright in your seat, looked a certain way, and you started to speak differently. You spoke without pauses, you spoke without saying [00:38:45] without using your hands. They would just sit back and go, huh, what’s up with you? Something’s wrong here and you now have a bad taste of them out right from the get go. 

This is why anybody can be a compelling video presenter. Just by turning up, trying to help someone and being themselves. 

Brendan: I know you’ve shared a lot around, I guess those four levels of commitment but that identity trigger. What was your identity trigger or who helped you with that identity trigger to move yourself in front of the camera from some of that history that you shared with us earlier?

Julian: Navel gazing, I think, Brendan. More than any one person, if so. But one thing I learned about myself, it’s this great saying. You know that saying, “You can't be inside the jar and read the label on the outside at the same time”? How others see you, I think the world sees me differently and people see me a certain way. 

I used to sit here and go, who am I and why do I continually change careers? I learnt something about myself and it’s my love of learning is greater than my ego. What I mean by that is, I really like going back to a beginner mindset. And that waking up everyday and thinking, today is a brand new day, what am I going to learn today? This is so exciting. 

It’s almost like a bit of a drug to me. My ego, that needs for status that we talked about before, I just realized that I’ve made a decision that I would rather give my status away, which I did when I walked away from television. I had world class credentials and I just walked away from them, and went back to nobody in this world of magic. 

I had to build my way up. I built my way up in there to having a voice in the world with magic. Then I built a business and I sold that business. Then I went back down to ground zero again into this working with businesses and trying to help people use video. I’ve just realized that yeah, I just love going back and being a beginner again. 

This works so well on video. Vulnerability, turning up and saying, you know what? I don’t know everything. I’m not perfect at this. But why don’t you come along with me on the journey as I learn? You take on the role as both a teacher and student at the same time. It works wonders. Why does it work wonders? Because everyone’s turning up and trying to say I’m perfect. You just stand out. If you go, you know what? Yeah, okay, I’m good at this. But come along with me as I try to work my way through this. 

It’s all about relatability. We do business with people we know, like, and trust. If you turn up and go, you know? I’m like you. I’m imperfect like you. I’m good and I’ve worked hard to get to my leadership position, but take me out of that and I’m back there struggling as you might be struggling in certain areas of your life. Having that empathy. 

This is really important, too, because people, we think we want to turn up on video perfectly. Because we think people will see how perfect we are and they’ll want our business, service, or our product, but that’s not how it works. 

It’s a two-step process. People see you and the first thing they’re asking, are you like me? Because again, we do business with people we know, like, and trust. Once they understood that oh, okay, I can do business with this person. They seem okay, then they say, now, I want to be like you. I don’t mean that literally, they want to be like you, but they then want what you have to offer. 

Whether it’s a product, whether it’s a service, but it’s two steps. It’s not immediate. Thinking that you can turn up perfectly, perfect does not attract anymore it used to. Like those polished corporate videos we were talking about before. It’s not how people turn up, access, and use video now. They want to know, can I do business with you and then do you have the credibility to help me. Then it opens the doors and you can start with the process. 

Brendan: Julian, let’s crystalize this a bit and let me set some context. I’m a beginner—using that term you referred to—with video. I’m leading an organization, let’s say. Doesn't matter the number of people. I know that video is an effective messaging tool. Where do I start? What’s your advice to me to get me on the train?

Julian: Where do you start? Depends what you want to do. 

Brendan: I want to provide the organization with updates to get some of those words that you mentioned very early in the episode, clarity in alignment, big things around leadership, and what people are doing. I just want to create some clarity and alignment around the organization and people in the organization, what’s happening. 

Julian: What you can do is you can use your phone or you can use your webcam. You do not need to spend any money. You can go on and use an app called Loom. Now, I know with different organizations that you’ve got this certain software you can and you can’t download, but Loom seems to be pretty safe. But there’s a whole range of these personal video messaging apps. If you want to just try this out, they’ve all got free versions. You don’t have to pay anything. You got everything. You got your phone and download Loom. 

When you download it, you just open up the app and it’ll come and look like your video screen. It’ll have a button there and you basically hit the record button and it goes 3, 2, 1 and then you're recording. You just speak to the camera and deliver your message. Keep it nice and simple. Just keep it short, keep it to the point. 

At the end, you hit stop. What that does is it automatically then takes you to a page, just like your own personal portal where the videos that you record are stored. Now, in those videos you can immediately just type an email address and hit send. It will send that video to that person. 

But you could send that video to someone's chat in LinkedIn. You could send it to somebody in your team and they could disperse it to all your team members. All they do is get an email that’s got a link in it, but what it will also do is in the email, it would put a little three second version of that video where they can see it’s you, you're talking. It just repeats itself. 

Also on that page you can type in a headline to it. These videos, what you can do is you might be saying to everyone in your organization, listen, there’s this is brand new document protocol that we’ve got to follow. You need to read this one page document. In the video itself, you can put a button that they can tap the video screen with a button and you can download whatever you want from there. So you could have your document uploaded. 

Knowing this ahead of time, when you're making that video, our hands are really useful tools when we’re making videos, is you can point to where the button is going to be. You just know beforehand, I’m going to put the button afterward up in the right hand corner. You point and you say, just press the button up there and download this one page document. They download the one page document and you’ve effectively delivered this message and content to people in a personal way. 

But then, it doesn’t stop there. Because a lot of these new apps now, they have, these video apps, is that you can go into the metrics and you can look at heat maps of each individual person as they view that message. You can tell whether they’ve opened it and watch the video. You can tell whether they watched the first 10 seconds and skip to the last 10 seconds or you can tell where they’ve gone back and rewatched areas. This is incredibly useful information to have. 

Now, I’m not suggesting you use this in a punitive way. But for you to know, are my messages effective? Is the content correct? Have I got this in the right order? Incredibly useful information to have. So much of this is available now and people don’t even know that it is out there. 

Brendan: Good advice. I’ve done this. I’ve given you a call, I’ve said Julian, I’ve just watched it back. I’m hitting an identity crisis in the four levels of commitment. How do you help me?

Julian: You’ve watched the backend. 

Brendan: I’ve done everything you’ve just told me to do. I’ve watched it back because I just want to watch it back. Maybe that’s the problem. I watched it back and now I’ve slipped back into that point four in the commitment. I’m having an identity crisis. Help me, Julian. What do I do? 

Julian: That’s it. Press send.

Brendan: You fly over? You drop it and you just hit send?

Julian: That’s the barrier. We can get to making the video. We overcome this aversion to how we look, how we sound, all those things. But then to press send, what is this going to do? If I press that send, is it going to damage my status? 

We have this huge problem with perfection out there. Everything has to be perfect. But go back and those things that we talked about, realize that perfection is no longer attractive. The fact that you can turn up with a little bit of vulnerability, with a little bit of imperfection, it actually works well. 

This is almost counter intuitive. One of the best ways for you to get used to being on camera and presenting is to go live. Go on to Facebook and do a Live. When I say Facebook, it’s particularly useful on Facebook because you can start a business page on Facebook. Really easy to do. Someone will set it up for you. 

Here’s the truth. No one looks at your business page. Hardly anyone ever goes there because what Facebook does is it makes you pay to get eyeballs on the business page. But it is real, and with a couple of taps of a button, and just a smartphone or your webcam, go Live on to it. 

It is real, it’s not like just recording a video on your phone and then deleting it because you stopped halfway through. You are actually going live out to the world. But it is so low risk because the chance really of anybody seeing it is really quite small. But if you turn up with a service mindset to help people, it’s really hard to go wrong. 

People do not give you grief for turning up and trying to help them. It is so rare that that actually happens. If it does, there’s a saying, “Eat the fish, spit out the bones.” If you do get someone who criticizes you, just take it on the chin. It’s not the first or the last time it’s going to happen to you. But I’m going to tell you, I’ve been doing this online for 10 years now, have heaps of criticism, never affected me once in any real way. Apart from just having a bruised ego. 

Brendan: I like to use a term in certain leadership circles, but let’s just use the term feedback more than criticism. Tell us about a time where you’ve received some feedback or a criticism that’s been helpful. 

Julian: It’s one of the things that I actually love about LinkedIn. I’m on LinkedIn a lot and I put videos out there. I actually made a video explaining. This one says, one of the reasons I actually make videos and other content is to get that feedback. 

I go back to the world of magic again. The best lines that I came up with in my show with the lines that audiences gave me. They would just let you literally do something. It’s the hundredth time I’ve done this and somebody yells out something from the audience. It’s actually really witty, really funny, or really insightful. I would literally stop the show. I always had a notebook and a pen sitting on the top of my case. I’ll write it down. Say, I’m writing this down now that is so good. 

That is one of the things that by putting content out there is actively inviting people to give you feedback, and going, you know? I’m not an expert in this. How is this going so far? How can I make this better for you? You put it out there and you'll just get silence. Then somebody will ride in and they’ll just give you this absolute gem that you had never ever contemplated because we’ve all got blindspots. We can’t see them. But if you take it as positive criticism, it works really effectively. 

Brendan: Just going back slightly to just getting over that hump, that identity crisis. Would you ever suggest to anyone as a possible solution that even just using LinkedIn messaging or Facebook messaging, whatever to send video messages to their mate, partner, or whatever just to start to get over that potential hurdle in the mind? Would that be a useful thing to do?

Julian: Incredibly useful. If you're listening to this now, and you're going, I don’t know, but I think it sounds good and I should. This is what you want to do. In fact, push stop after I’ve said this, listen to the rest of the podcast later. 

Get out your smartphone and you can download that Loom app if you want. Or if you're on your phone, if you go to LinkedIn into the messaging, tap the messaging, it actually brings up a video message system that you can use. Just hit record and say thank you to somebody. 

Someone you work with, someone in your team, and just say, hey Dave, it’s Julian here. You know what? I was thinking that you’ve done some great work over the last year. I just realized I’ve never stopped and said thank you. That’s what you do. It’s terrific. You're such a valuable member of this team. It was on my mind, I just wanted to say it. Dave, you have a great day. Okay, see you, mate. Bye. Hit stop and send that. 

Don’t make one. Do 5–10 of them. Because if you make one it might go to someone, they might never see it. But make 5–10 [00:55:38] back and go, oh, man, that’s so good. Thanks so much for that. You get two people who send you videos back. And they’ll go, oh, that is fantastic. I was thinking about you, this is great. Thanks, you are thinking of me. 

With a number of people that suggested that they do, one person who has come back consistently made a video with [00:56:18] crying. They go, you have no idea what that meant to me. I was just having a lousy day today and you have just made my day. Thank you so much. 

This is the simple power of video messaging. We can turn up as ourselves with a service mindset. We’ve got the technology in our hand and it can be as easy as that. The long-term value of doing maybe five of those a week for the next year, the long-term value to your business, to your leadership is hard to overstate. 

Brendan: Absolutely. Let’s test the power of this. I’ve got my phone out, I’m just hitting video now, got the iPhone. Hey Julian, it’s Brendan, mate. We’re actually on the podcast still. I really appreciate your insight and everything. Great to talk to you. We’re going to keep going but I’m going to stop this video now. Mate, just done. I’ll send it once we finish here. But it’s that easy. 

Julian: Yeah, that’s it.

Brendan: I’ll better not watch it again, I may not send it. 

Julian: Yeah. A book that I write is called Press the Red Button and all the workshops I do I call Press the Red Button because literally, that’s how easy video is now. If I’m speaking on stage, I might have a couple of hundred people in the audience. 

If you were talking about introducing video into their workflow, into their business, a big timer comes up behind me. It just starts at 60 seconds and goes tick, tick, tick, start and I go right, everyone make a video. They’re just staring at me. I’m like, all right, we’ve got 55 seconds, make a video. 50 seconds. One by one they’ll start to get their phone out, they’ll look at each other and they’re fumbling with their phones and they’re holding them up, they’re moving them around. 

Ten seconds and then timer up. I go, now stand who has not made a video. No one ever stands. I was like, all right. You already know how to make a video. I didn’t tell you how to make it, you knew how to make it and yet when you want to introduce videos into your business, you're going, well we’ve got to have a steering committee for this. We’ve got to buy all this equipment and yet every member of your organization has Hollywood in their handbag. It’s there. All you’ve got to do to make these effective video business messages is press the red button. 

Brendan: But you’ve also got a really cool acronym using SMART video. Can you give a bit of a summary of that?

Julian: SMART. It’s just a thing I remind myself from making videos to put up on LinkedIn or send to somebody. SMART is keep them simple, keep them meaningful and made to measure. Think about the audience that you're sending to. Make them personal, mention their name in them. Make them authentic. Again, a reminder for me just to be who I am. Make them relevant. 

Do not make a video or send the video to anybody that is not relevant. The downside of video is that we have to invest time to watch it. If you read a post or a message, you can just scan it. You can scan it within two or three seconds, going I’m not interested in video. We have to invest time. If it’s not relevant, it actually works against you because you're taking up that person’s valuable time. T is for tight. Keep it nice and short. 

Theodore Roosevelt, former US President a hundred years ago, had the best saying. Everybody should have this tattooed on their finger. So when they press the red button it reminds them. He used to say, I forgot what the saying is. 

Brendan: It’ll come back.

Julian: It’ll come back. Completely gone in my head.

Brendan: Don’t we love it when that happens? I’ll give you some time to think about it. I’m sure it’ll come back when you're not thinking about it. 

Julian: I got it, I’m sorry. 

Brendan: You got it? But I’m ready to ask a question. 

Julian: I got it. I got to say it now, I remembered. “Be brief, be sincere, be seated.” Say what you got to say, say it with sincerity, then get off the stage. All right, done it. 

Brendan: It was worth the wait. Powerful and succinct. Love it. All right, I’m going to ask my question. Julian’s top three tips as to why leaders—business leaders, business owners, people who need to lead their field—need to seriously be doing video content. 

Julian: You need to be doing it because video is now. The future is here. There’s no thinking that this is going to be next year, next couple of years. You're going to be doing it. Because we haven’t even talked about the Gen Zs out there who are coming up and are going to fill up our workforces, and they are video-native. Don’t send the PDF to them. You have to send a 30-second video for them if you want them to take the information and do anything. 

Reason number two is that your own personal satisfaction you're going to get out of this. Because most people think, now, I can’t do it. When you realize that you can do it. Here’s the thing, it takes most people about 10 videos to get good at video. It is way faster than what people think. 

People still think this old idea of video, like it’ll have to be creative and make these videos like I see on YouTube. No, you don’t. You just got to turn up and try to help somebody. When you start doing this, you'll realize, oh man, this is another skill that I’ve got and your communication improves. Every time you do this, because you have to think about making it a bit more concise, your communication improves. 

Third reason, cost cutting. But absolute specific third reason, I’ll come back to that one. 

Brendan: For me a third reason could be leading to what you mentioned first. I didn’t really think about that scenario about the different generations. Is video one of those things that transfers generations?

Julian: Yeah. That’s where they are and that’s where the younger generation is. But not even just the younger generation, all of us are there now. You don’t need stats to work out whether we’re all using video. Just open your eyes and look around. 

We are all glued to devices and there’s something about devices, too, that you need to understand why it’s important to get on them is that we’re all addicted to these smartphones. Do you like using text on a smartphone? Maybe you're really good at typing with your thumbs but most people aren’t. Video is the convenient way to communicate on these smart devices that we’re all more addicted to. 

I was just watching before, just saw a video in Seoul, Korea of they now have traffic lights in the footpath, at the curbside, they’ve got them on the post, but actually on the ground at people’s feet. It’s like a big band and it flashes red. When it’s green—to walk—it flashes green, because everyone is on their phones with their heads looking down. 

We are a community, right at the moment, I don’t know for how long, that’s addicted to these devices. Getting on it and knowing that this whole generation of people coming up want their messaging differently. 

We’ll talk about TikTok for one moment. People will go, TikTok is just for dance videos. No, it’s not. The largest growing demographic on TikTok at the moment is 35–55 year olds. There’s a real business use case here. 

Go into TikTok and study how, because you’ve got 15 seconds or 60 seconds to get a message across. It is very instructive to see how people are getting messages across in short videos. It’s influenced the way that I do things as well. It’s not negative, it’s a real positive. If we can mine the techniques that they’re using and just understand that this is the way of the future. 

I’m not purely video. Video is just part of a mixed messaging set of tools that we have. There will always be written content. There will always be audio content. There will always be graphic content. Video is just part of it now. But if you're not in the game, you're going to get left behind. You're just going to end up being invisible. 

Brendan: I think that’s a great, absolutely fantastic point to appeal. That’s where my question was going, to appeal to the broader masses, irrespective of age, then different people will resonate with different things. Some will still want to read where you can get a transcript from video if you want to and you can put something out there. 

Video, obviously, is what we’re focused on. It just moves through and people can make a choice, it makes things so adaptable to the various styles and people want to consume information because you can leverage from video, can’t you?

Julian: Yeah, so much. Leaders don’t sit on the sidelines like digital spectators. How are your videos working for you now? You, to the audience. If you're not making videos, you're doing nothing for you. Understand that your competition is out there making videos, and people are now consuming videos more than any other content. It’s the fastest rising content. Advertising is now using video more than ever. It’s the way that we’re going. You've got to be in it to win it. 

You can’t win this new game playing by old rules. These ideas that you have that video is something that we’re going to outsource, video doesn’t affect me. I’m not part of the video game. Yes, you are. It’s just briefly worth mentioning this video production paradox. 

About 5% of the videos that your organization will make in the next 5–10 years will be [01:08:08], creative videos, homepage, advertising, all that. Now, you might be able to make those videos, but generally you can’t and you need to outsource those. 

But 95% of the videos you're going to be making are these simple video messages we’re talking about. For virtual presentations, social media, recruiting, thought leadership, testimonials, online courses, customer education, training updates, apologies, thank yous, onboarding, pitching your ideas. Ninety-five percent within your organization are going to be made by that. 

This is the paradox. You might be able to make those perfect videos, polished ones, but video production companies can’t make authentic videos. They can’t make them. They say I will make them look a little bit authentic, but you can’t be a little bit authentic. You're either authentic or not. 

If you try to be a little bit authentic and put that home spin on it, and we know this if we see bank ads or insurance ads. You know where they go? It’s like a mom holding a baby, we were there with you when you took your first breath, a little kid with a skinned knee, We were there on your first day of school. They’re making it out like they’re part of their family. People are like, no, you're not. It leaves a bad taste in people’s mouths. 

You might be able to make perfect and polished videos but they can’t make these authentic videos. If they can’t, who has to? [pause for effect] You. You have to make them and the people within your organization. Getting onboard now and working out how we’re going to do this and how we’re going to implement frictionless systems. 

What you did before, Brendan, was holding your phone up, pushing the button is a frictionless system. Like oh, I made a video, I’m done. I’m getting back to work. If it’s not frictionless, you will not make those videos. This is something that’s coming and it’s not going away. You just need to start thinking about this, if nothing else. 

Brendan: Absolutely, mate. Julian, what’s the one thing that’s helped you become a more confident leader?

Julian: It’s certainly what I was talking about before. Just getting myself out of the equation, not thinking this is all about me. I went through that, trying to think about how people saw me, try to affect change and be useful. I had my image and my status in there, and really when I pulled myself out of the equation.

I’m human. That still affects me. But I consciously got any time to turn up. I think about how I can help the person, the audience that I’m speaking to at the moment? That one thing has helped me become a much more effective leader. 

Leadership is earned, isn’t it? Leadership is very democratic. People vote for their leaders. I noticed that when I started to turn up with that mindset of helping people, people started to vote for me more. That’s the one thing. 

Brendan: I love it. Reinforcing that thing you mentioned earlier, that nervous to service. 

Julian, I have really enjoyed this conversation. I love what you're talking about. I love the video side of things, everything you're talking about, so powerful. I love even more the fact that it’s always great to have a fellow Queenslander on The Culture of Leadership podcast. 

Mate, thank you for doing this as proud as a Queenslander. Although you’ve got a bit of a dodgy background. It’s almost like that New South Wales Blue Collar, isn’t it?

Julian: Yeah. I hadn’t thought of that before. But, yeah. 

Brendan: Now I’m just thinking, look at the podcast artwork for The Culture of Leadership and it’s got that New South Wales Blue as well. Let’s just put that aside. We’ll let it back it out now. Mate, thanks for being a fantastic guest on The Culture of Leadership podcast. 

Julian: Thanks for asking me.

Brendan: Whether it’s driving a vision, leading a team, building a business, inspiring a team, leading a movement, connecting a tribe, or connecting an example, to be effective, video has to be part of your communication arsenal. As a leader, if you aren’t yet comfortable with creating video content, you’ll be left behind. You won’t be remembered, and your message will fade away quickly.

In today’s world, it’s impossible to have the level of impact a leader should have without video. Pick up your phone, push the red button, and make a video for a friend or a love one, and send it.

Start your journey today.

These are my three key takeaways from the conversation with Julian.

My first key takeaway, leaders make SMART videos. SMART is an acronym for Simple, Meaningful, Authentic, Relevant, and Tight. Keep it tight, i.e., short. In other words, make the message simple. In short, it’s meaningful.

Show up on camera, how you are off-camera. Ensure the message you’re sharing is relevant and say what you need to say in as few words as possible. Like smart goals, leaders make SMART videos.

My second key takeaway, leaders fix nervous with service. They don’t focus on themselves. They focus on how they can serve others. This helps them get over their identity crisis, and actually create video content. Focus on the best information you can share to serve others. This will help you move from nervous to service.

The third key takeaway, leaders use video to increase their impact. If you want to have a greater impact, you have no choice. You have to use video to leverage your time, your message, and the amount of people you reach. Every modern day leader uses video to build trust, and ultimately increase their impact.

In summary, my three key takeaways were: leaders make SMART videos, leaders fix nervous with service, and leaders use video to increase their impact.

What action will you take to unleash your inner video star and become a more confident leader?

Let me know at thecultureofleadership.com, on YouTube, or via our socials.

Thanks for joining me, and remember: the best outcome is on the other side of a genuine conversation.