It Took Me Two Years to Get in Front of My Own Camera
I have spent 28 years on the other side of a camera.
Behind it. Operating it. Lighting the people in front of it. For the BBC, for Netflix, for ITV. I have filmed some of the most recognised faces in British television and lit some of the biggest stages in the country.
And it still took me two years to press record on myself.
The voice in my head was the same one I hear from almost every business owner I work with. Who are you to do this? Nobody wants to hear from you. You look wrong. You sound wrong. You will embarrass yourself.
What changed was not confidence. It was the realisation that by staying off camera, I was not protecting myself. I was withholding something useful from people who needed it.
That is the reframe. It is not about you. It is about the person watching.
The Internet Has Changed. This Is Good News for You.
For most of the last decade, the internet rewarded attention. Viral reach. Subscriber counts. Views. If you wanted to win online, the playbook was: post more, reach more people, capture more eyeballs.
That model is breaking down.
Platforms are saturated. Algorithm reach is unpredictable. Ad revenue per view has fallen sharply. And — critically — trust in content creators has collapsed alongside it.
What is emerging in its place is something that works very differently. Researchers and content strategists are calling it the credibility economy. In this model, expertise and genuine proof matter more than popularity. A small, high-trust audience significantly outperforms a large, passive one. The creators building sustainable businesses right now are not the ones with the biggest followings. They are the ones with the deepest credibility in a specific area.
For subject-matter experts — consultants, coaches, advisers, specialists of all kinds — this shift is genuinely good news.
AI can produce information. It can summarise, explain, and list. What it cannot replicate is lived experience. Judgment. Pattern recognition built over years of practice. The mistakes you have made and the shortcuts you have found as a result. In the credibility economy, that is the asset. That is what people pay for.
You are not too boring for video. In the current environment, clarity and usefulness are more valuable than entertainment. ‘Boring is the new viral’ is not a consolation prize. It is a genuine strategic advantage for people who know what they are talking about.
The Seven Hours Problem
Here is the number that changes how most business owners think about video.
Google’s research on modern buying behaviour — the 7-11-4 study — found that today’s buyers need to spend around seven hours engaging with your content, across eleven touchpoints, on four separate platforms, before they are ready to make a decision.
Seven hours.
Think about what that means. A single LinkedIn post gives a prospect 30 seconds with you on a good day. A webinar gives them an hour, once. A website with no content behind it gives them almost nothing.
Video is the most efficient way to build those seven hours. A YouTube channel of fifteen well-structured videos gives a prospect the ability to spend an afternoon with you — watching, pausing, going back, deciding whether they trust you — without you having to be present. A consistent LinkedIn presence means that when a prospect comes back to your page six months after first seeing your name, you are still there.
This is what I mean when I say video is not a marketing nice-to-have. It is a strategic pillar. It is the mechanism by which a sole trader or small firm can build the kind of trust that used to require years of in-person networking, and it does it while you sleep.
What Getting It Wrong Looks Like
I want to be direct about what this is not.
It is not a button you can press to generate clients immediately. I say that plainly because there are people in this industry who imply otherwise, and they are doing you a disservice. If that button existed, I would have one.
It is not a daily posting schedule that runs you into the ground after eight weeks and produces nothing because you burned out before the compounding effect had time to kick in.
It is not waiting until your setup is perfect, your script is flawless, and your lighting matches a Netflix production. That wait never ends.
And it is not a strategy of talking about yourself, your methodology, your credentials, and your journey. Nobody watches those videos. Viewers are asking one question from the first three seconds: is this specifically for me, right now? If the answer is not obvious, they leave.
What Getting It Right Looks Like
Steve Carroll came through my Entrepreneurs Video Masterclass at a point where he had been making videos since lockdown but felt they were not working. In his words, he could tell there was a difference between the videos he enjoyed watching and the ones he was making — but he did not know what the difference was.
| “One of my biggest client contracts actually came from some of the worst videos I ever made — it wasn’t about polish, it was about authenticity. They said they chose me because I came across as approachable and genuine, not like a big, corporate, templated trainer. The worst videos I made landed me the best contract I’ve ever had. That says it all.”
— Steve Carroll, October Project Solutions |
What Steve’s story illustrates is not that quality does not matter. It is that authenticity and specificity matter more. The video that landed his biggest contract was not polished. It was real. It showed who he actually was. And for the client watching, that was the deciding factor.
That is the approach that works:
- Know exactly who you are talking to. Not ‘small business owners.’ Not ‘professionals.’ One specific person with one specific problem.
- Commit to a realistic schedule. One video per week is enough. Two is good. Daily is usually unsustainable. Whatever you commit to, commit to it for months, not weeks.
- Answer the questions your clients already ask you. Your best video ideas are in your inbox and your client calls, not in a content calendar template.
- Show up as a human being, not a brand. The credibility economy rewards people, not corporate voices.
- Be patient. Six to twelve months of consistent publishing before you see meaningful enquiry flow. That timeline is not a flaw. It is how trust works.
The Honest Summary
Video is the best tool available to a service business owner for building trust at scale with people who have never met you.
It is not rocket science. But it does require you to genuinely understand your audience, commit the time, and stick at it long enough for the compound effect to arrive.
The more seriously you take it, and the more consistently you show up, the more it will eventually change your business. That is not a promise with a timeline attached. It is an honest description of how this works.
Stop waiting for perfect. Start with useful.
