The instant trigger for on-camera presence

A big part of being authentic is knowing the Role you play in life.

 Role? What the heck does that mean? I mean, c’mon Steve. Here you’ve been yammering away about authenticity and now you’re talking about pretending to be someone else? Why the sudden turnaround?

 Here’s the thing. It’s not a turnaround. The truth is you’re already playing a role. In fact, likely more than half a dozen a day.

Maybe this brief story will make it clearer.

 Katie reaches over, smacks the alarm clock next to her bed and groans. It reads 6AM. She rolls over and a few seconds later her 2 kids, Amanda and Sarah, 3 and 6, bolt into her bedroom screaming “Pancakes, mommy!”

 Katie suddenly realizes it’s Saturday morning. She drags herself out of bed and slowly makes her way to the kitchen. 20 minutes later her kids are happily munching away on cow-shaped pancakes and watching cartoons.

 “Sarah, make sure you clean up after your sister.” Sarah barely acknowledges mom.

 The doorbell rings and Katie opens it to her next door neighbor, 16-year old Susanna, earbuds already installed and a big smile on her babysitter face. Katie gives her last minute instructions and bounds upstairs, leaving her with the kids.

 Another 20 minutes and Katie is in the garage in full bicycle drag. Bike shorts, sneakers, helmet and backpack. She pushes out of the driveway to meet up with her tribe of Saturday morning cyclists.

Standing in front of her 20 members at the foot of Cheyenne Mountain, she delivers a rousing speech, the women all cheer and they begin the long slow arduous grind up the mountain slope, cars carefully giving them a wide berth.

 At a rest stop on the way, Katie wipes her glistening brow as a handsome park ranger walks by. He stops suddenly, struck by her presence and natural beauty.

 Katie notices and her energy suddenly shifts from leader of the pack to something a bit more nervous, or at least less self-assured. She also notices herself smiling a lot more as she relaxes and enjoys the moment.

 After a few minutes of banter, Katie senses her group getting antsy and she quickly dons her “women who run with the wolves” face and in a moment, she and the group are off again in their quest to conquer the mountain.

 Will Katie lead her battalion to victory? Will her kids ever go outside and play? Will she and the park ranger go on a date?

Who knows? All we know for sure is that during the day, even in the highly structured activities Katie chose, she played no less than 3 separate roles: Mom, Leader and Flirt.

All of them were equally authentic, all were appropriate to the situation and none of them would have been right in any other circumstance.

“Mom” might not have inspired the park ranger to take a second look. “Leader” wouldn’t have impressed her kids, and “Flirt” would have completely freaked out her women’s cycling group.

So here’s the big question. Who are you when you show up on camera?

We’ve identified 16 Roles that work best on screen. One of them is going to give your presence a massive boost in branding power and authenticity. And one of the side benefits of the right Role is that once you identify it, that Presence can be turned on with the snap of your fingers.

It might help you to see how this works in action. I’m sure you’ve seen one or two of my videos, so you probably have a sense of what my presence is all about.

But what happens if you try on a different Role? Does it work as well? How does it change your energy and your power?

Well, here’s an example of how to settle into one of the most popular Roles in our community:

http://www.brainyvideo.com/popular

Go take a look now. It’s only a minute and a half, so you don’t need to bookmark it for later. 🙂

Because of what’s mentioned in the last 10 seconds of this video, I think there are going to be some questions, so I’ll try to anticipate them in a follow-up. But feel free to ask any questions below in the meantime.