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DIY Studio Setup Secret
What if creating professional-looking videos didn't require becoming a filmmaker? That's the question Dan Bennett answered when he transformed his high-end production experience into Hot Sauce Video, a company dedicated to helping entrepreneurs and professionals look great on camera without the technical overwhelm.
Dan's journey began in Flint, Michigan, where he found himself caught between the corporate clients who could afford his services and the local entrepreneurs who couldn't. The solution emerged in the form of a mobile cart, equipped with a camera, a microphone, and lighting, that he wheeled around his office building like "an IV cart." This simple innovation enabled him to capture high-quality video anywhere, sparking interest from others who sought similar capabilities.
When the pandemic hit in 2020, Dan pivoted to remote studio consultations, guiding clients through setting up professional home studios via Zoom. "I was terrified," he admits, "because I didn't quite know if it was possible." Not only was it possible, but it also became the foundation of his business model, enabling professionals to maintain their image quality even when working from home.
The Hot Sauce brand philosophy perfectly captures Dan's approach: "We're not trying to change you, we're just trying to enhance what you're already doing." Like adding Frank's hot sauce to an omelet, the goal isn't transformation but enhancement, making what's already good even better through simple, effective tools and techniques.
Beyond equipment recommendations (simple Sony cameras, USB microphones, and basic lighting), Dan offers psychological insights for camera confidence. His "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" technique encourages creators to watch their videos without sound, listen without watching, then view the whole thing with loving self-critique. This structured approach helps identify specific improvements without harsh judgment.
The most refreshing aspect of Dan's methodology is his practical perspective on camera comfort. Rather than promising you'll eventually love being on camera, he focuses on reducing resistance: "It's about getting to a point where it doesn't hurt enough to keep you from hitting record." This honesty, combined with his emphasis on giving yourself grace, creates space for creators to grow at their own pace.
Ready to add some hot sauce to your video content? Check out Dan's resources at danhaslinks.com and discover how simple adjustments can transform your on-camera presence without requiring you to become something you're not.
Hello and welcome to Autofocus. My name is Brooke, I'm your host and I am joining today with Dan, dan Bennett. Dan, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and a little bit about your background? It's super, super cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah for sure. Pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me. I'm totally looking forward to this. In the middle of a busy day, this is like recess for me, so it should be fun.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I used to do a little bit of film and television, but a lot of corporate work and a lot of government contracting big jobs, checks always cleared. I got some cool stories and met some cool people, but it was never very fulfilling. And I'm originally from Flint, michigan. Not a lot of opportunity in a very poor city and I would have to go outside of my city, oftentimes outside of my state, to find work. So I was traveling all over the country doing these projects for large companies and stuff and I'd come back home and no one could afford me. I made it kind of hard to sleep at night, so I was in a dedicated office building downtown Flint looking through the glass at my fellow entrepreneurs who couldn't afford our day rates. I'm like, how do I help people right here in my own backyard? And it wasn't a quick answer. I thought about it all the time and I struggled with it quite a bit.
Speaker 2:In 2017, I was moving from behind the camera to in front of it for my own company, because I was starting to kind of catch the content bug and wanting to make more videos for my own company. And in the process of doing that I realized very quickly that my filmmaking knowledge made that transition pretty easy. So then my brain started thinking like, okay, could I take the fluff and the jargon and the theory out of filmmaking and just leave the bones the system of what makes a video good and teach that to creators and entrepreneurs and professionals so they don't get overwhelmed or feel like they have to become a videographer or a filmmaker. They could just look at it like a system they could implement, just like bookkeeping, sales and marketing. So I started to put that into practice through building out a sentry stand that had wheels on the bottom. So I had a camera, a little shotgun mic just out of frame, a little LED panel on the side, and I'd walk around my building all seven floors like an IV cart just wheeling this thing around and I could hit, go anywhere I wanted to. So I had all kinds of backgrounds in my video. People saw me doing this like what is that? What's going on? Why are you walking around with this thing? You know, and I'd often invite them to jump on camera with me real quick, cause I could just film anywhere I wanted, anytime. That started to get people thinking like, oh, I wouldn't mind having something in my office, or if I could do something similar. Everything came together at that point. I'm like I bet you could.
Speaker 2:So the thought of wanting to help people film themselves, and then this kind of mobile cart, if you will, that made that possible right in front of people's eyes landed me my first couple of clients and it worked so fast forward to 2020, we all know what happens then.
Speaker 2:Like many, many people, we lost a lot, had to shut down our company and a big business conference we were doing and all this stuff.
Speaker 2:And then, as I kind of emerged out of the other side in August 2020 of the shutdown, I started to get requests from people that were like, hey, you help people build studios. I'm still doing what I was doing before, but as a consultant I can't go in my client's building anymore, so they want me to do it via zoom, but I look terrible, can you help? And so my brain's like, okay, well, we've done a lot of studio builds. Can we do it remotely, without going into a facility or someone's house, I don't know and then we did it and it worked. So our first couple of clients came through in September 2020. And for the first time in my life, I felt like I was ahead of the curve when it came to something. And so ever since then, we've really hyper-focused on helping people who film themselves do it at a really high quality and trying to help make that production process as simple as possible for people who aren't filmmakers.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. Yeah, that's really cool. So when you were telling people virtually how to set up their studios, were you literally like move that picture a little to the left, a little to the right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I was terrified at the same time because I didn't quite know if it was possible. Every studio I had done up until that time I was there and I would still talk them through what I was doing and why and show them how to use it when we were done. But I was there and I made as many simple video tutorials as I could to get them through, setting up the basics, but not trying to make it perfect. And the goal was always if you can just get the DSLR connected to the you know capture card and plugged into your computer and I can look through it, the rest I'll help you with and that was always the main goal. And then it was. It was. You know, I I often joke. I've been on many like rides through people's rooms as they move the camera and I'm just watching whatever they're pointing the best, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2:And then once we get settled and all that kind of stuff, that's where the filmmaking knowledge comes in, and I'm like, yeah, move that over here. Let's adjust the lighting, let's adjust the camera settings. You don't have to remember any of this, it'll be set and forget it, we're done. And so session two of our studio process was always that fine tuning and tweaking which is oftentimes kind of fun, and I got to bring my personality and calming nature into it too. So if people were kind of rattled, they could kind of settle down with me and it's like we'll spend the time, we'll get there, it's okay. So, yeah, the first couple were a little bit bumpy, but they actually went way better than I expected.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, cause, like, yeah, you like you want to see, you want to be in the room, and you can tell, like, like, oh, you don't want to use this corner because of you know it's too crowded or you know, and so you can't, you can't really see that. But how do you? How do you do the backgrounds Cause I love your background right now and tell us where the chili peppers come from?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So obviously, like any system, you get better and better over time. So nowadays part of the homework oftentimes before we even get to session one is to do a video tour of your space very slowly with a smartphone, real simple, and tell me everything you love, everything you hate, what can move and what has to stay right where it's at, and slowly pan around the room, even a couple times if you want, and then give me rough measurements and so we do a top-down schematic, very lightweight, just to put this here, put this here, clamp this under your desk here and here, and as long as you can get that part done, we can tweak all the rest on the call. So nowadays I say, if you can put Ikea furniture together, you can totally do this. Every once in a while that backfires and people are like I hate Ikea furniture. But if you can follow some simple directions, watch a couple of tutorial videos, you're all set.
Speaker 2:The Chili Peppers comes from the business name Hot Sauce Video and kind of where that came from was for a long time we were called Video for Entrepreneurs because I just wanted a simple name where people understood what we did and didn't have to question it all the time. But we kind of outgrew that name because we were helping a lot of creators and professionals and not everyone identifies as an entrepreneur and during that time we released a product called Hot Sauce Editing. And we called it that because when we help people build their studios, they'd be really excited to see themselves look and sound good now, and oftentimes there was a momentum that came with like wow, I've never seen myself look and sound this good, like I don't hate it, like this is kind of cool, you know. And we wanted to hold that momentum. So what I would do is say, cool, now record yourself, even if we don't put it out to the public. Hit record, introduce yourself, talk about your business, I don't care, do anything, and we'll just throw a little hot sauce on it. We'll just edit it a little bit and give it back so you can see what's possible now that you look and sound good. At that time we didn't even have an editing product. I wasn't upselling them. I was just trying to keep that momentum alive as long as possible, cause I knew what was coming, which was a whole bunch of hard work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so when we uh put out the hot sauce editing product, which is a subscription-based post-production product. It started to get out in front of us and the brand took on a life of its own and it got away from my face and I didn't have to be the face of it or the personal brand of it. People were trusting the process and the team not just Dan as a good editor, all these different things. And as that grew and grew it really started making me think of I wonder if we could just kind of spread this pun intended across the whole business, just put hot sauce across the whole thing.
Speaker 2:And so in the background for about a year and a half, without even telling my team, I was cooking, I was just making like a logo and a little website type thing and putting stuff together to see if I really wanted to give it the full go. And then I showed the team some samples and they're like why are we not doing this already? So we went full, I hired out some people, got stuff done quick and this past June we launched as hot sauce video and it's been fun because it's opened up creativity and all that kind of stuff. And of course I can have a little fun with the background too, with the chili peppers and the hot honey and basically anything that's spicy or zesty or hot. We're throwing all those puns in our that was really fun, so it's so.
Speaker 1:The hot sauce started with editing, but you had already been doing like other stuff, like studios and everything, so Yep, yep.
Speaker 2:So like, yeah, we just and it's our whole approach to business in general when it comes to the creative part of it is, we're never trying to like turn someone into something or force them to read our script or something like that. We're really trying to take how awesome people already are and just put a little hot sauce on it, and my thoughts always go to. I had a childhood friend who would always put Frank's on his omelets and we'd always go to the diners in Flint, michigan. He put Frank's on his omelets.
Speaker 1:I have never heard of that.
Speaker 2:Yeah it's, it might be a Midwest type of thing, but he's like oh, it just makes it a little bit better. And so that always comes into my mind, that we're not trying to change you, we're just trying to enhance what you're already doing.
Speaker 1:Enhance what you're doing by making you look good, by adding all of the, the, the, the lights, the mic, the camera, a better camera than like a webcam.
Speaker 2:So yeah, you keep doing you, we'll just enhance it, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so what is your preferred gear? What do you recommend when it comes to gear?
Speaker 2:Um, simple, uh and, and I really mean that. So I'm not necessarily brand loyal, although I use the same brands all the time. Generally we're working with like a low to mid-level Sony DSLR. I don't care if it's Canon, I don't care if it's something else, sony's just really good with the autofocus. So we've just kind of been in that world for a long time, on the low end of professional introduction.
Speaker 2:When we're helping someone with the studio, we're at the ZV-E10 Mark II with a non-proprietary Tamron zoom lens, because it's always really important to have a zoom lens in a home office studio because you don't want to move the camera for your framing. You want to be able to zoom in and out so that camera can stay where it belongs. But again, back to simple, not brand loyal. But I love any dynamic mic that's USB. So no interface, no messing around, just plug it in and go. Because, again, we're not working with people who are super familiar with this kind of equipment.
Speaker 2:Oftentimes they're just entrepreneurs or professionals who want to make really high quality content. I use a Samsung Q9U. I've been using them for years. But Rode's got some good stuff Anything that's dynamic and just plug and play. Usb I love. Lately we've been using a lot of Elgato products. They've really stepped up their game over the last five years of understanding that streaming goes beyond just gaming. So we're going to calls, we're creating content, so the Elgato teleprompter called prompter. I like to recommend quite a bit as well.
Speaker 1:I'm using it right now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love them. I love them. The arm that I'm using is really low profile. It flexes horizontally instead of vertically, so it keeps it out of your shot. That's an Elgato product. And then you know, lights are always just kind of whatever's on sale, as long as it's dimmable and color changeable LED panels that are really soft. I don't care who makes them, so we kind of just look at what's on sale that week. But, yeah, just keep it simple and basic and try not to overwhelm our clients. You know, just let them know. Most of the stuff is just plug it in, set it once with me and then you don't got to touch it again except on and off after that.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, that's, that's easy. Yeah, just can you turn it on. Can you turn it off and it's, it's gonna be great yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, eliminating friction is a daily goal of mine.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's awesome. So, um, okay, Now that you have the gear if you, but like it doesn't matter what kind of gear you have, because, especially if you are just really uncomfortable on the camera, like I just think of, like the Ricky Bobby, where they're like I don't know what to do with my hands. So what do you do with people that are like I don't know what to do with my hands?
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is generally where I make my wince face and I'm like, oh, the only part I can't do for you, even if you gave me a million dollars, is get the reps in for you. So this is where we go baseline and boring, and there's no way to escape it. And it's just like now. If you want abs, you know you get into a calorie deficit and you do some setups. I mean, I hate it too, but this is. You know what it takes to be great on camera, and I generally point most of our tools, whether free or paid, as someone's a client, towards getting to these places over time, as well as being very, very vulnerable and open myself about the fact that I've been doing this forever.
Speaker 2:I got all the gear you need. I've made thousands of videos, I've been in front of millions of people over my career and I still have mornings. I wake up and I'm like, nah, I'm not feeling this, this is not what I want to do today. And then I eat my own dog food, I go through my own processes, I do the breathing exercise or I ground myself or I try to remember someone's on the other side of this video that might be helped by me having this idea today and that's important and it gets a little heady when it comes to that stuff, but it's all very true because at the end of the day, once you're all set up, it's all about mindset at that point in time.
Speaker 2:So I try and help them through the same journey that I'm often on myself, and then a lot of the tools I create, like I said, are around those. So a really fun one that I could share with you really quick is the see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil tool that we have. So if you imagine the monkeys and your little emojis covering their eyes and ears and mouth, I have people film themselves. Just do it, you know, selfie style, with a smartphone, no tripod, just hold it and talk. Doesn't matter what you talk about. Talk about something you already know, like the weather or your favorite kind of food.
Speaker 1:Like what you had that day. Yeah, what do you think?
Speaker 2:Just, keep it real simple, real simple, and then just watch that back without sound. So you're just seeing how you move, seeing what it looks like. Would you watch this? Does it keep interest? And then turn the camera away from you and listen without watching. So hear no evil. How's your pacing? Do you use a lot of filler words? Are you you feel rushed or you feel way too slow? And then the final is speak no evil. So you watch the whole thing, together with this new kind of concept of critiquing yourself, but doing it lovingly, and then try and make the next video you make a little bit better, based on the feedback you've given yourself by running this process. So it's not foolproof. You don't do it once and you're fixed, but that's one of those little tools that, if you remember, you can kind of run it, look at something you've created, watch it without sound, listen without visuals, and then do the whole thing and be kind to yourself when you do, and you generally can get a few percent better pretty quick every time you make a video.
Speaker 1:So that's a really good advice, especially to be kind to yourself, like judge yourself not as harshly. I mean, I know I like I've definitely, like I'm definitely a behind the camera person and so you know you always have to like push yourself to be out there and you have to push yourself to just not judge yourself. Like you know, you you look at and I've had to edit myself too, like when you're like during, like like I did an interview and then I had to go back and edit it, which in like, and then you realize, like how many weird facial expressions you make and you should never watch yourselves talk in slow motion ever, but yeah, so I know that's a really nice thing.
Speaker 1:So, like you do, you just kind of have to get over it. And because no one else is judging you the way you're judging you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and there's a promise I make to people. It's one of the few promises we can make. Unfortunately, the timeline of the promise I can never tell anyone and that's that you will reach a point if you care about this, if you're really trying to make a go of it. I don't know when, but you will reach a point where the metal and electronics and glass and plastic of a camera does become the potential person that might see this and that does click for people all the time.
Speaker 2:The timeline's always different for everyone, but you can reach that comfortability and if you get lucky, like me sometimes down the road, you watch your videos back. It's not even you anymore, like when I edit my own stuff or I'm looking at my own stuff, I don't even see me anymore. I see a guy talking about stuff and is this digestible or not? And it's kind of cool because I'm not worried as much as I was 10 years ago, because I've just done this so many times that you can kind of tune out. You know the, the gremlins and and really focus on what matters, which is pacing and storytelling and is it cohesive and the things that actually make a video good yeah, that's the things you should be worried about because, yeah, like that's what, that's what people want to see.
Speaker 1:Like nobody wants to see you like trying to be super, super perfect and not make a certain facial expression. So you know, because I mean it's it literally is like a frame per second or something like not even like there's like what 30 frames per second. You made that frame. It's like one frame out of 30 seconds has a weird facial expression yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And you know, if someone's paying that close attention what you're making, you might have a fan.
Speaker 1:So hey, yeah, well, the only one that's paying that close attention to me is my mother yeah I had to turn the lights down this time because the last time I was in here she said I looked washed out. So I've worked on the lighting.
Speaker 2:Mother like you're so pale, dear you're so pale.
Speaker 1:I'm like I got it from you like the irish, so yeah, but still um, you know, just like. So basically being comfortable on camera doesn't come naturally like have you ever seen anybody where it was just super natural.
Speaker 2:No, I've tricked people into being natural because they didn't know any better. But no, unless they were already trained, had PR training or acted or even had like improv or stage in high school, those people can kind of turn on and off that mechanism a little bit and that helps. But average folks, no, I've never seen anyone just crush it again, unless we trick them or if it was interview style and after some time I got them to kind of forget the cameras running and we're just talking and then we get really good natural conversational clips out of that. Uh now, and if someone ever did, I'd give them some award because it's weird. What we do is weird and it can. It can feel normal.
Speaker 2:When you're watching someone you don't know on screen tell a great story. It's just content at that point. But when it's you, it's just weird. So I embrace the weirdness and just try and tell the best story I can. A running joke I have with many other entrepreneurs that I talk to is like I've led thousands of horses to water and then I just stopped a sentence because you can't make people drink, and in this case making the horse drink is getting the reps in. That's the only natural cause of just getting comfortable, and it's never about like you know, I now love video and I'm on camera doing no. It's about getting to a point to where it doesn't hurt enough to keep you from hitting record. That's that level we're trying to reach.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and I guess it can make you consistent, like you want it, like you want to be consistent, because you aren't, you know, you don't, you don't hate it, you know.
Speaker 2:So no-transcript running, start and jump over and hope anymore. So putting the effort to get that gap between I got a great idea, let me hit record to be as painless as possible is really what we're after. It's not about perfection, or one day you're going to love hitting record, cause again I have mornings where I'm like, no, this ain't it.
Speaker 1:I'm just not loving this today. Yeah, so is that one of those things? So it's it's. It's it's kind of like, like you know, as you're getting them closer, and if it's something that they really want to do and they really enjoy, like they're going to make time for it, and so that's that's another thing. And so it's like you know, if you're it's almost like if, if, if, if you're a content creator and you have taken a break and you haven't and you aren't creating content, like ask yourself why, like, why haven't you done it? Like, if you enjoy doing it and now you don't like, what is that? Like what is stopping you?
Speaker 2:And then, like, address that area even if it's it could be just editing or like you don't want to, you're like just distributing it takes forever, you know. I feel like that's where, like most podcasts hit a wall when they get to like they're like editing is hard, so true. And once you answer, why ask why again? And then maybe go to that whole five wise thing and go as deep as you can, because oftentimes you'll discover things that have nothing to do with technology or nothing to do with, like your poor, your performance. It could do with mindset, it could do with fear, it could do with um. Again, I don't like hard things just as much as the next human. I do hard things all the time, but I don't say yay when I do so. Maybe identifying the the most friction and eliminating that somehow, or at least sanding it down so it's not quite so rough, is the real goal. It's never about get to. You know, for me to be quick, it's get to be a little more comfortably like. That's what we're after, yeah yeah, yeah and it's.
Speaker 1:And I just wonder do people get discouraged? You know, um, like, if they've, they've, like I've done like 30 episodes and like I get like five views on my post, um, you know, I feel like that's another hurdle. That is is a is a whole other hurdle that you can't help people with. It's just the consistency. It just keeps going.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we have a blessing and a curse when it comes to like visualization of our products. So the blessing is there's a before and after element to home office studio and there's a before and after element to editing. But in the middle we have a strategy product and it's the most life-changing product we have. It's the least sold and the hardest to market because there's not a direct ROI attached to it outside of case studies showing what's possible. I can't say to someone you'll 5X your business if you just put the strategy in place for 18 months. I can't say it.
Speaker 2:I don't know what's going to happen. I know it'll be better than where you're at right now, but you then have to put money versus better and see if those match up for you. And it's tough because I want to make guarantees. I know people can do things I've watched it for 16 years but there is that element and that's where being honest and truthful is like all I've got. I can show you what we've done over the last eight years. I can show you what our clients have done.
Speaker 2:I can't take credit for all of that, but some of it. We put them on the right trajectory or helped with consulting or whatever. But I always have to be honest and be like. But I always have to be honest and be like. The only thing I can tell you is video done well over time compounds and if you utilize something really strong, like you two, to do that compounding over time, you'll see results. I just can't tell you what they are, how long it's going to take, and I wish I could, because man, would I sell way more of our strategy product if I could promise those results?
Speaker 1:yeah, I feel like every genre is different too. Like if you're trying to cut in, if you're trying to get into, like true crime, that's there, that market's saturated, you know. But if you're trying to get into something that not a lot of people are doing, the trajectory is easier. Like you, you'll probably get a lower audience as less people interested in it. But the people that are interested are like starving for content, right, you know so.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and there's just something's hot and we've had plenty of people we've worked with or even just consulted but not handled their content, where they get a lot of views and comments and subscriber growth, and they're like this is working. And then I'm like how's the P&L?
Speaker 2:And they're like eh, and then I've had people that only have 500 subscribers after two years and I'm like, how's the P&L? And they're like dude, we're getting at least like two leads a month and one's turned into a client. This is crazy, cause we only get X amount of views per month. You know that is real and it's that it's part of the unpredictability Plus. Like you said, style what are? And are you possibly accidentally hitting on something that's trendy or hot or, like you said, an unsaturated market? So there's so many variables that I just have to keep it real and be like.
Speaker 2:I can promise you our version of viral. If you're willing to listen to my definition of viral, I'll promise you our version, which usually gets people a little bit intrigued, like, okay, what's your version? I'm like okay, right now you have a standard kind of analytic connected to your videos and after we work together, whether I'm helping you look and sound good on camera by upgrading your equipment or I'm editing your stuff to be outperformed either by the algorithm or humans, sharing it with other humans because they enjoyed it or they wanted to share something helpful with someone else, or whatever. So if you normally get 40 views on average, I guarantee we can outperform that. So viral means either the algorithm or the humans doing the work for you, instead of you. I can promise that's going to happen.
Speaker 2:Is it 10 more views for video? Is it a hundred, a thousand? I don't know that, but I guarantee that we can make you go viral, because in our world, viral means the algorithm or the human is doing the job for you and you don't have to be there for it. And, of course, then reality sits and they're like well, that doesn't really tell me much. I'm like well, it's what we can guarantee, though. You know, yeah, um, but again, you said consistency. If you do that over time, bam, there you go, and it's like the stock market.
Speaker 1:It will compound, yeah, yeah they get used to it and also like I feel like the algorithm was going to like support you. They're like oh, this person does a lot of stuff consistently and so like let's just putting it out there, you know. Like not everyone is the demon hunter. You know movie out there like that's not that viral is very few and far between like I don't think.
Speaker 1:You know, you're not, like, not, you're not a justin bieber who's going to get discovered on youtube at like 15. So, like that, those are rare. Those are rare cases.
Speaker 2:Yeah, uh, luck which I don't know if I believe in, but give it whatever term you want exists like it is part of the equation. I'm sorry. Growth in business is not 100 math like the better you are at it it's a higher percentage, but it's never 100 because I guarantee you, when they were creating you know the k-pop thing, they weren't like this is gonna smash all records on netflix. You don't create that way. You do your best, man. I hope people relate to the story, but yeah, it's one in a hundred million, you know. So, unfortunately, that's the landscape of the internet, though, and people see other people doing well and they're like edit my stuff and I want to go viral, and it's like wow.
Speaker 1:Right and you're like that's, that's to them, that's what viral means, and you're like, no, no, no, has been really great. Okay, I have a couple more questions. So what camera advice works best for you? I know everybody's different, we all learn differently, but what has worked best for you? Get you comfortable on camera?
Speaker 2:I guess that was really a broad question.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, I like it, and that's kind of where my brain went, anyway, because we really only talk about three things. We talk about storytelling, strategy and then camera presence. So it's something that we're constantly creating content about I'm thinking about, I'm trying to help people with. So kind of what I think about a lot is that we, as humans, tend to get fixated on things too easily, and if we just take a moment to think about it a little longer than normal, sometimes we can break that fixation Again. It doesn't mean that we eliminate it or, you know, win instead of losing, it's just part of the process. So I think about things like you know, like how someone thinks about fear.
Speaker 2:A lot of people look at something like fear and they're like it needs to be vanquished or banished or overcome or conquered. And I look at fear more like something that I'm like well, you're here, so sit down, let me deal you in a hand of poker we're going to play. Hopefully I'm doing good enough this week to win. Ah, beat you All right, you know, see you next week. Or sometimes I lose and I'm like, wow, I don't feel great about losing that hand, but we're going to make it through today, it's still okay. I didn't bet the whole pot whatever, and I I'm a metaphor and analogy guy, so I'm always thinking about the things we have to come up against in reality as these kinds of like stories or scenarios that maybe, if you just think about it a little bit differently, you might be able to find a way past. And all of this again will keep leading back to consistency, because if you find a way past, that means you can do it again, and so I think a lot about that when it comes to camera presence. And then I think about I've been asked many times on podcasts and doing workshops in large communities and stuff like if a million people were listening to you right now, dan, what's the one thing you would tell them? I've been asked that question in some form many times and the answer has always been the same since like 2018.
Speaker 2:And it's give yourself grace At the end of all of this. Give yourself grace. It doesn't mean that you can't shoot a clip, watch it back and be like oh, this is terrible, it doesn't. You can say that you can feel that it's okay. Then you give yourself grace and you're like but my smile looks pretty good on camera, so I'll remember to smile, cause at least that's one good attribute. You know, and you kind of go from there. The other thing is to start thinking about things that aren't technical. So one of the things I love turning people on to is stand-up comedy. Love it or hate it. The art form itself, in my opinion, is the purest form of storytelling. You're vulnerable, You're in front of other humans that could turn on you in an instant. Generally, you're vulnerable.
Speaker 2:You're in front of other humans that could turn on you in an instant. Generally, you're self-deprecating. You're opening loops, you're closing them 20 minutes later. The six people who got that you just threw back to that 20 minute ago joke. You're like, ah, you guys are my. You saw it. You think it's funny. Yeah, you make a genuine human connection. You sneeze and a booger comes out and you wipe it and you're like, well, that just happened on my special I'm filming right now and you move on, so you're relatable. And they're like, wow, you handled that well and it was embarrassing, but it was also funny.
Speaker 2:All of those things happen when you give yourself some space to you know, give yourself grace, like, do the thing, but don't try and make the thing the final piece. You're not making one video. You can make thousands, like I have, and I've got some that I love and and I got some. I'm like huh, you know I mailed that in, but in the making you get better, become more comfortable and of course, then you get those hits sometimes that really resonate with people at the right time. And I guess the final thing is we got a really cool free tool called the psychology of camera confidence and it really talks about scientific studies done on things that aren't filmmaking. So I talk about, like professional sports and olympians and all these different things and how visualization comes into play. Or if you've ever seen an f1 driver sit in a chair with his eyes closed and take all the turns. He's doing the track that they're about to drive in a week and he's got it memorized and in head he's driving that track right now. And then he does a better job when he's on the track, breathing, grounding, touching your desk and your floor, and like I'm here, I'm safe, it's okay, I can hit record more than once. Maybe I can even edit this thing, get rid of the bad parts, like it's gonna be okay.
Speaker 2:And I love sharing those sorts of tools too to just get people's mind off the technical and more onto the human experience, cause that's what we're trying to capture anyway. And kind of the final component of of that whole thing is understanding that the human condition exists. We all behave relatively similarly to each other. We have fight and flight and freeze and all the things, and so if you identify that and you just kind of come to terms with it, you then can start making decisions in the future that make the whole thing a little bit easier. So it's again. It starts getting into the like mindset part and the heady part a little bit. But that's what I think about the most with camera confidence. Unless again you're a newscaster or a theater major or a professional actor. Then you know how to turn on that other human. But in most of our cases we're just trying to make it through.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, and yeah, no, not. All of us, like Beyonce, have a Sasha fierce. You know she has her persona that she turns into, which is on stage, you know, and you're like I don't, yeah, most of us don't, don't have that.
Speaker 2:But what about? Okay, you were talking about the tool. What is that tool? Where can people find it? Yeah, we got a short link. It's a sauce dot tool, slash psychology. Happy to give you the link, share it with anyone.
Speaker 2:And it's just a little email mini course. You just get five emails over like a week and each one deals with a different type of tool that you can implement when it comes to the psychology. And if you just have kind of in your mind that I can apply these things to creating great video too, it's a really fun exercise. It's not a take a test, get graded. It's oh, I didn't know this information. And inside of every one of the emails I do have some outside references as well to articles and stuff that back up that this stuff's actually been studied and all that. And it's not just Dan saying you know, do this or do that.
Speaker 2:One of the fun ones is blowing on your thumb. I don't know if you've ever heard this, but it's a super interesting thing and I'm not into weird. Yeah, like you, mostly block the airflow and blow around it and it calms the central nervous system. It's, it's so weird. And, again, I'm not into, like you know, voodoo and healing rocks or whatever. But like my mom was a nurse growing up and I believe in science and medicine, you know. So I was like really, and then I read through some of the studies I'm like wow, it's crazy how it actually works.
Speaker 2:But I've had times where I'm kind of nervous, heartbeats up a little bit. Maybe I'm on someone you know doing a workshop in a really big group. I know it's going to be a lot of people there and out. You know I get a little bit of those butterflies and stuff. I'll just blow on my thumb which again is just blocking about 80% of the air that comes out. So your cheeks puff out and your air goes slower than if you just blew normal and you can kind of feel that worst case scenario. Maybe you could, you know, go hide in the corner, blow on your thumb a little bit on your thumb yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, excuse me, what are you doing?
Speaker 2:Like, like okay hold on, but yeah, there's there's fun stuff like that too that has nothing to do with filmmaking, that people can sometimes grab on to. Yeah, we one of the most utilized spaces in our community is called the video sandbox and it was built just to fly your ideas and then also put your rough drafts for loving, critique and feedback from other people doing it, plus video professionals like myself, and that's really empowered a lot of people because they know we're not going to be like this is garbage. What are you thinking? You're dumb, this will never work. We're thinking not a bad idea. Maybe if we eliminated this and centered up the framing, it might be a little easier to watch. Do another crack at it. Okay, cool, this, this. And it's not about, like, trying to direct their videos. It's about giving them that loving, critique and feedback.
Speaker 2:And we used to run a cohort a month long, intensive, and at the end, every single cohort we ran the number one piece of positive feedback was getting loving, critique and feedback from each other not me, the pro, all the other people in the group. That was always the number one thing people loved. And you would think to yourself I don't want to go be judged by my peers, that sounds horrible, but the thing people love the most after spending four weeks with them was getting that critique and feedback from other people who are on the same journey, cause they knew that they weren't just grilling them to grill them. They were like, oh you know, what I found last week when I filmed is this that might help you and that, like camaraderie, was incredible.
Speaker 1:So we have more in common than we do different Right Like back to the human condition.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I know, like you know, we we spoke about your technology forward and I love talking about gear and stuff and we've went mindset a couple of different times, but it's always been from the launching point of technology. So it's like we have to interface with this technology. How do we do a better job of that? So if I, you know, and I look at, it's like we have to interface with this technology. How do we do a better job of that.
Speaker 2:So if I, you know and I look at it selfishly like I spent this much on this camera, lens and teleprompter, I want my videos to be good, I'm going to go do this extra work so I can actually, you know, use these tools better.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, yeah, that's cool, all right, well, thank you so much for being here. Okay, I always end on the last question what advice would you give to someone just starting out?
Speaker 2:Well, I already used to give yourself grace, so we'll count that as on the pegboard already. Look at your own personality, other hobbies you've had, other things you've done in your life, the things that you've loved as a kid or as an adult or whatever, and try to incorporate those somehow into video and try to have fun with it. So if something you did was woodworking, you don't have to show your woodworking on camera, but maybe you could keep one of your favorite pieces close by Cause I love that piece. Every time I look at it I think about how much fun I had learning this craft and whatever. Maybe you can stimulate yourself a little bit to be like maybe this is the next thing I could kind of fall in love with, Anything you can identify with that brought fun into your life. I really try and bring into video Because at the end of the day, if you remove the hard parts of it and you just think about fun idea and result, you can get excited.
Speaker 2:Like I just finished filming and I'm editing right now for a YouTube video coming out called the seven deadly sins that kill YouTube channels, and I took all of the literal seven deadly sins and related them directly to things channels do that are detrimental so much fun. I love the movie seven Fincher, Like I. There's so much about it that I had so much fun. I love the movie seven Fincher, Like I. There's so much about it that I had so much fun. I created all these medallions with like iconography and the word you know, gluttony and lust and all the stuff on them and the coins spin up and you see it for a second before it drops. I had so much fun making that video that that kind of eliminated the grind part of making that video. So the more fun you got, the less it kind of hurts. It's almost like the medicine and the cheese, if you will, Like you want to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like again, you want to put in the work you want to do, because it's all the details that you put in that makes it fun. Yep, that's really cool. Well, thank you for being here. Where can people find you on socials?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I try to make it easy and this came from having a podcast and then wanting to be on a lot of podcasts. I bought the URL years ago, danhaslinkscom.
Speaker 1:There you go.
Speaker 2:If you can remember, dan, and the fact that I have some links danhaslinkscom danhaslinkscom, there you go. And it's just a bunch of buttons on a page that send you everywhere we're at.
Speaker 1:Perfect. I love it. Thank you so much for being here and I hope we can do this.