Today you announce that you're here, you have something to say, and you're ready to be seen and heard in the best way possible!
(Video Coming Soon)
You have been thinking about doing something, putting something off, wrestling with some version of “I should really do this,” and now you are finally stepping into it publicly. That feeling is bigger than content, which is why someone can recognize it even when the thing they have been postponing looks completely different from yours.
Your script gives them enough of you to understand that a real person is beginning something while leaving plenty of room for the rest of the story to unfold. They do not need your entire life today. They need enough to care what happens when you come back.
There are ideas later in this sequence that will carry much more weight after someone has had time to know you. If you tried to cram all of them into Video 1, you would be asking a stranger to care about conclusions they have no context for yet.
So The Declaration begins somewhere smaller and more human. It gives the audience a person they can recognize, a reason this person is finally showing up, and an unanswered question about where the story goes from here. The order is already doing work.
“I hate watching myself on video.”
In a normal conversation, your attention is on the person in front of you and whatever you are trying to say. The second you watch yourself on a screen, your attention can jump to your voice, your face, your pauses, your hands, your hair, and whatever bizarre expression apparently happens while you are remembering a sentence.
That can make a perfectly usable video feel much worse to you than it feels to someone who is simply listening. So when the urge to delete it appears, notice the urge before automatically obeying it.
You do not need to love watching yourself today. You need enough room to finish the first video.
Writing an introduction is easy. Knowing what belongs in the first 90 seconds of a seven-video story is a different problem, because six more videos still need room to develop the relationship.
SeenInSeven already knows where Video 1 sits in the sequence, so it can use what you shared during the interview without trying to cram everything it learned about you into the opening. It is choosing the kind of beginning the later videos can actually build from.
Open SeenInSeven, pull up Video 1: The Declaration, and read the whole thing aloud once before you start making it bigger.
Open SeenInSevenYour $7 Challenge Pass gives you SeenInSeven and the complete seven-video sequence built around your own stories, experiences, ideas, beliefs, and voice.
Open Video 1: The Declaration and read the script aloud once before you record. If a word genuinely sounds nothing like you, change the word. What I would avoid is taking a script that feels surprisingly simple and assuming that simplicity means it needs your résumé, your whole backstory, or three more lessons added to it.
There is a reason it leaves room for tomorrow. Once it sounds natural in your mouth, record the video and post it wherever you want to be visible.
The group may already be farther into the challenge, although your sequence begins when you make Video 1. You do not need to squeeze several videos into one afternoon so the calendar looks right, and you do not need to wait for another month so you can have a cleaner beginning.
Make The Declaration, then move into Video 2 whenever you are ready. The order matters more than the date.
If the script sounds wrong once you say it aloud, send me the line. If you recorded the video six times and cannot make yourself post any of them, tell me what keeps stopping you. If the problem is where to put the phone, how to frame yourself, what platform to use, or why some button is not working, that counts too.
I would rather help you solve the problem now than have you quietly carry it into the rest of the challenge. If you have your Challenge Pass, this is also a good time to put your 15 to 30 minute Midweek Momentum Meeting on the calendar so we have time set aside for whatever turns out to be the actual sticking point.
Today you gave someone a reason to notice that your story had started. Tomorrow they get to know the person inside that story, although we are still not turning the camera on so you can recite your résumé.
There is a much better way to help a stranger feel like they actually know you, and Video 2 is built around that difference.