by Stephen Newton (MC2003)

You Tube is the second most widely used search medium on the Internet after Google.  Placing short videos on You Tube allows you to be visible to potential coaching clients.  It also allows those clients to “get to know you” in advance of an initial meeting.  Many coaches feel that making videos for You Tube is simply “too difficult”.  This article outlines how to make such videos relatively easily.

Three factors largely determine the success of your You Tube video:

• Content
• Sound quality and
• Lighting

The content can of course be pre-prepared.  In terms of length it should be between three and five minutes.  Anything longer than that will tend to lose the attention of viewers who will tend to come to You Tube for short, sharp, relevant bites of information.  The content will need to be of immediate relevance to your chosen audience and it should allow you to make an interesting, memorable and perhaps controversial comment or offer an insight.  The aim is to provide information and at the same time give potential clients a sense of what it will feel like to be in a session with you.  A friend of mine describes this as “seriousness of purpose but levity of approach”.

Whilst you will need to have a clear idea of what you want to say, it is in my view a mistake to script it too heavily.  A conversational delivery style tends to be more authentic and allows you to be seen to “be yourself”.

Sound quality is improved hugely by using an external microphone with your video camera rather than the in-built mic.  This means that the camera will need to offer a microphone socket.  Look for a “lavaliere” or “tie-clip” microphone.  One that is wired – i.e. has a wire connecting it to the camera – is simpler to set up and will be cheaper to buy.  A perfectly satisfactory wired lavaliere mic can be bought on Amazon or from Maplin for around £20 or less.  However, the sound quality produced by mics from well-known firms such as Sennheiser will be better although the cost will be well in excess of £100.

There is no need for a complex, professional camera to capture video in this type of situation.  A Kodak PlayTouch costing around £90 on Amazon will do a perfectly adequate job.  It has an external mic socket and is able to capture video in HD format.  It also allows editing on camera and instant uploading to You Tube via an in-built USB connector that plugs straight into your computer.

You will need to mount the camera on a tripod in order to ensure wobble-free video.  Any basic camera tripod will work.

Effective lighting is reasonably easy to achieve.  If you sit with a window to one side of you, it will tend to throw the other side of your face into shadow.  It will be better to sit facing a window or beneath a Velux-type roof light.  Avoid direct sunlight as this casts shadows and tends to cause you to squint into the strong light.

If you want to use electric light, you can get good results with a pair of ordinary Anglepoise-type lamps, one positioned to each side of your table and pointing towards you at about a 45 degree angle.  Tape a sheet of paper in front of each lamp so that the light shines through it, acting as a diffuser.

Use “daylight” bulbs in the lamps.  This means that the colour of the light is akin to daylight rather than the “warm white” of an ordinary incandescent bulb.  Avoid ordinary fluorescent bulbs; they cast a green tint on your face.  However daylight fluorescent bulbs are fine.   If possible place a further light above you (known as a “hair light” in the film industry) which will create natural shadows on your face and avoid a two-dimensional look.

Rather than simply sitting in front of a blank wall, you can stretch a black sheet behind you.  Position two lamps on the floor or on a low table behind you, shining upwards onto the cloth in such a way that the beams form an “X”.  In one, use a red “reflector” type bulb and in the other a blue one.  This creates an interesting background that looks highly professional.  It avoids the need for complex editing techniques such as “green screen”.

This type of “studio” takes less than ten minutes to set up and allows you to produce very good results.  Rehearse your content once or twice so that you minimise the likelihood of fumbling but can remain conversational.  Set the camera going, sit down at the table and talk through the content in a conversational manner.  Stop the camera and edit out the sections at the start and finish that you don’t want, using the in-built software.  Connect the camera to your computer and upload the video to You Tube.

Since 2001, Stephen has worked as a coach and consultant focusing on the implementation of corporate strategy (or its adaptation so that it can be implemented).  His work often entails leadership and operational management development.  Stephen also has expertise in business development and marketing and has written two books on the subject.  Find out more at www.dloassociates.com.  

by Stephen Newton (MC 2003)

Following the Bootcamp on Tuesday it occurred to me that many in the MC community would like to know about some of the free or low cost software available to run their business.  During the Bootcamp, I made the point that whatever Office-type software you choose should be compatible with MS Office (because that is the default choice for most organisations that are likely to be clients…).  However, that does not necessarily mean that you need to use Microsoft stuff.

In order to obtain software free of charge or for low cost, you have two choices:

• Web Apps (where the software and in many cases your data live on a web server hosted by the supplier).  An example would be Google Docs.
• Open Source software, which is developed by a community of developers working pro-bono.  An example would have been Open Office (which essentially does what MS office does but free of charge).  However the backbone of Open Office has been taken over by Oracle and the development group has moved on to create Office Libre; essentially the same thing but truly open source.

There is also a lot of “freemium” software available where a basic version is supplied free of charge but in order to get additional features you must pay a fee.  An example is AVG anti-virus protection.

I have not used most of the following myself but they all come well-recommended.  In many cases you will need a modicum of technical knowledge to make the software work effectively.

 I am not a fan of Cloud-based systems because it is not clear to me either that the security is robust or what recourse you have if the provider were to lose your data.  I suspect you would spend a long time being transferred between call centre staff in a far-away land trying to resolve the issue.

If you are looking for low-cost hardware, and are happy to use stuff that is new but not necessarily a current model, take a look at IJT Direct.  There are a great source of low-cost inkjet and laser printer cartridges and have now branched out into laptops, desktops, screens, flash drives, SD cards etc.

Stephen Newton – (MC2003)

Those who heard me speak at the MC Bootcamp in March may recall that I mentioned the need to back up data from computers.  The following is a real-life example of why this is necessary, how to do it easily and how rapidly one can be working again following a computer failure.

Over the last eleven years I have experienced four major computer failures: one motherboard failure and three hard disk failures.  I am told that this is not out of the ordinary, nor is it less likely to occur with a Mac than with a PC, given current technology.

Many (probably most) computer failures are due to a problem with the hard disk.  That is not surprising given that a standard hard disk is mechanical, with data held on magnetic disks that spin at speeds up to 7,200 RPM.  (In the future, solid-state hard drives with no moving parts may obviate many of these problems but even so that will not invalidate the point I seek to make here).

My most recent computer failure occurred last Thursday.  My laptop suddenly stopped responding.  I switched it off and then back on again (a “hard re-boot” for the cognoscenti) and obtained only a black screen with the error message “cannot find operating system”.

As I have a backup laptop, I was able to keep working until the following day, when I could take the main machine to the local PC shop where the technician confirmed that the hard drive was dead.  He installed a new drive and reinstalled Windows 7.  I now had what amounted to a new laptop fresh from the factory.

I back up all my data regularly to an external hard disk and also have an online backup that runs automatically each time the machine is connected to the Internet and picks up any new or changed files.  The backup to the external drive is made using Acronis True Image software (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing), which is not expensive – only around £30.00 at Amazon.

I use the option to take a complete image of the hard disk.  That takes more space on the backup drive and more time initially but pays huge dividends.  In this case, I was able to load the Acronis software onto the new drive, connect the external backup drive and go through the Recovery routine in less than 90 minutes.  That produced a replica of my laptop as it had been at the date of the most recent backup; even the desktop icons were in the same location on the screen.  There was no need for me to reinstall any programs: just back to work immediately.

I did not of course have the files I had created since the most recent backup.  However, I was able later to log in to my online automatic backup (Carbonite), locate those files and recover them to the machine.  That is a somewhat laborious process and not one I would like to use to recover a complete hard drive but it works well enough for small amounts of data.  Carbonite holds data on servers located in the USA and that may be an issue for some people.  A UK-based alternative is SquirrelSave:  http://www.squirrelsave.co.uk.

There are other solutions out there and indeed Windows 7 offers its own version free of charge: http://windowssecrets.com/top-story/build-a-complete-windows-7-safety-net/

Other alternatives which may be more elegant and robust include the use of a NAS (Network Attached Storage) device.  If this is set up with two or more drives, it can be configured in RAID format to create mirror images between the disks.  This means that if one of the drives in the NAS fails, the other will still hold the data and continue to work solo until the failed drive is replaced.

You can also set up your own server, either at your office or hosted elsewhere.  That server could be virtual or dedicated.  You could use the Cloud.  These types of solution will probably be needed for a business involving more than one or two people.  However, they are somewhat more complex to set up and manage.

Being a simple soul with a very simple business model (and a good Yorkshireman to boot), I like to keep things uncomplicated and cost-effective.  I am also unconvinced as yet about the security aspects of Cloud computing.  However, the article by Kate Craig-Wood (CEO of web hosting company Memset) makes a case for its use by SMEs:

http://www.katescomment.com/sme-cloud-advantage/

The key point is that your computer will fail sooner or later – regardless whether it is a PC or a Mac.  Failure to have a full backup of all your data amounts (almost) to criminal negligence, when it can be achieved painlessly and at low cost.

Quite separately, I favour encrypting the hard drive on my computers to protect data in the event that one is stolen or lost – but that is another story.