How to make content when you are camera shy

The lens is the problem, not you. Three formats remove it entirely. First, hands-and-work: film what you are making, fixing, packing or measuring, and narrate afterwards as a voice note recorded while walking around your room — people speak naturally when they are not being watched. Second, the off-camera interview: a friend or staff member holds the phone and asks you the questions, you look at them instead of the lens, and the questions get edited out. Third, text-on-screen with b-roll and music, no voice at all, which is enough for a product or a shop.

If you do want to face the camera, make it easier mechanically. Film alone with the door shut. Use the rear camera with the screen turned away so you cannot watch yourself. Put a small sticker just above the lens to give your eyes somewhere to land. Say the first sentence three times and keep the third — the first take is nerves, the second is stiff, the third is usually you. And allow yourself to stop and restart mid-sentence; whoever edits will cut it out, and nobody has ever noticed a cut in a 30-second video.

Lower the stakes on purpose. You are not making a broadcast; you are answering one customer's question. Imagine the specific person who asked it last week and speak to them. Short videos also help — a 20-second answer is far less frightening than a five-minute piece, and it is what performs better anyway.

Then just accumulate reps. Every person we have filmed with, from a dentist in F-8 to a furniture dealer on Murree Road, was stiff for the first month and unrecognisably relaxed by the third. Record the awkward ones anyway and do not publish them if you do not want to — the practice still counts. The people who never get comfortable are the ones waiting to feel ready before they start.