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The second you’re the host, you’re the somebody else.

Here’s what I think is actually going on with most of you. You have an offer, or at least the bones of one. You know what you would teach. The thing standing between you and a paid workshop is not the content, and it’s not the courage. It’s the host button.

Because every one of those hosting moments where you’re unsure, your room feels it. They can’t tell you why. They just feel a little less sure of you.

You are going to screw it up

By my estimation, I’ve run somewhere around 3,000 Zoom sessions. Not casual meetings. Client rooms where people had paid a lot of money, or were about to.

For the last four years of Bob Proctor’s life, I was his creative director. When COVID hit in 2020, everything at Bob’s company went virtual overnight. Before that, I knew about as much about Zoom as anybody, which is to say not much. Somebody had to figure it out fast, so I went down the rabbit hole and got obsessed. Every setting, every menu, every way it could go wrong. Within a few weeks I was running pretty much all of Bob’s big rooms.

So let me tell you about two of my screwups.

The Science of Getting Rich, Los Angeles, spring 2020. A three and a half day seminar that was supposed to happen in a ballroom and suddenly had to happen on the internet. Nobody in the company had ever run a virtual, multi-day live workshop like this before. I was handling a lot of it myself. And somewhere in those three and a half days, I delivered an entire transition between two major segments completely muted. The pre-recorded segment ended, and then. Nothing. Me, talking to no one.

Before that, Toronto. A five-day consultant training. Bob got one of his on-the-fly ideas, as he often did: a live webinar during the event, so a hundred consultants could invite their prospects and Bob would sell for them. Who doesn’t want Bob Proctor selling for them? Thousands of prospects registered. Right before we went live, we realized the stream would only hold a hundred. The IT guy was in another part of the country and had never asked how many were coming. I was the one on site, so the buck stopped with me.

And the thing about me under that kind of pressure is I get the “church giggles”. So I’m standing in a little green room, giggling, and Bob did not like that. “This is not a laughing matter!” He was a cool, calm, collected man, but he was not without the potential to react. 🤣

That was not the worst tech screwup of my career. Not even close. And I’m still standing here.

Here’s why I tell you those. Once you screw something up, you almost never do it again. One time you forget to hit record on your big workshop. You’ll never forget again. One time you forget to mute people on entry, and your recording gets ten minutes of somebody’s dog. Never again.

The mistakes are how this gets into your body. My mind knows a good deal about Zoom, but most of what I do in a room, my body does. I wouldn’t undo a single one of those mistakes, because every one of them sharpened the sword.

That’s the real reason to get relaxed on the hosting side. A relaxed host is a nimble host. A relaxed host can think and feel and move fast enough to fix it while it’s happening, and the room barely notices.

What November 6 is

Not learning every setting on Zoom. There are roughly seven thousand pages of those. The goal is knowing which buttons and levers to pull so you can feel the tech holding you, so you can hold the room. Relaxed enough that when your room opens, you’re thinking about your people and not the buttons.

I have been contemplating teaching the full, unabridged version of this since 2022. On September 8, I taught the essentials, about 10% of it, as a guest class in Julie Ciardi’s community, and the chat lit up. “Worth the whole workshop today.” “Pure gold.” “A relaxed host is a nimble host. Mic drop.”

So this is the year it finally happens.

Run the Room: The Zoom Hosting Tech Intensive. Friday, November 6, 1pm to 5pm Eastern, a half-day live on Zoom, with a full replay. (If you had October 23 on your calendar, it moved. November 6.)

Start to finish, every setting you need, from the app to the website. Registration pages. Polls. The end-of-meeting survey and tip jar. Co-hosts and breakouts. Screen sharing with music that comes through their speakers instead of your mic. The clean opening graphic and the countdown opening. The whole recording and replay workflow, end to end. I’ll be clicking on screen the entire time.

Everything about it, including how to get your seat, is here:

Run the Room →

If you’re already in The Green Room, your seat is saved. It’s on your calendar. Nothing to do but show up. And come to the clinic this Friday, where I’ll tell you more.

You are the somebody else now.

And you’re going to screw it up, and you’re going to be fine.

📸 Tommy

That’s usually how it goes with the good ones. The words show up first, and you spend the next year figuring out why you picked them. I’ve had enough people ask me what Designed, Aligned & Primed actually means that I figured it was time to write it down.

But I don’t want this to be a vocabulary lesson. Every one of these words is a question, and I’d rather you leave knowing where you stand than knowing what I meant.

So here’s the map.

Designed

This one hits on three levels.

The first is the inner work. Who you were designed to be. That’s where Human Design comes in for me. I love the classic personal development principles, I spent years inside them, and I’ve watched too many devoted students use one-size-fits-all success advice against themselves. Human Design is the personalization layer that was always missing. You weren’t designed like everybody else, so why would the same instructions work?

The second is design in the literal sense. Light, lens, room, frame. There’s a lot of it in what I do. Everything you see on a screen was designed by someone.

And the third is the part most people never think about: everything on your screen was designed by someone too. Your lighting, your camera angle, the wall behind you, the way your voice arrives. All of it. The only question is whether it was designed with intention or just happened by default.

That’s the first question.

Look at the version of you that shows up on camera. Was that designed, or did it just happen?

Most people have never asked it. They set up a laptop on a kitchen table in 2020, and five years later it’s still the kitchen table, and they wonder why the room doesn’t feel like they do.

Aligned

Congruence. That’s the whole word.

From a Human Design perspective, it’s your inner authority and your outer authority saying the same thing. It’s being aligned with the work you’re here to do, and with the path you chose and that God, the universe, source, whatever you call it, has been leading you toward.

When you’re aligned, people can feel it before you say a word. And when you’re not, they feel that too. They can’t always name it. It shows up as micro-doubts. A little hesitation they don’t understand. Micro-doubts compound.

Here’s what I’ve come to believe after years of doing this work: most people do not have a content problem. They have a presence problem. The message is good. The wisdom is real. It just doesn’t make it through the screen intact. Something on the outside is contradicting what’s true on the inside.

That’s the second question.

Does what people see and hear match what’s actually true about you? And if not, where’s the gap?

Be honest. You already know the answer. You’ve felt it every time you watched your own replay and thought, that’s not really me.

Primed

Ready for prime time.

It’s also a nerd joke. The GlamCam system is built on prime lenses, the cinematic, soft-background, shallow-focus glass that makes a screen feel like film instead of a video call. I don’t know that most of you care about that, but it’s a big part of my work and it’s part of why I landed on the word.

But mostly it’s this.

For as long as I can remember, going back to my years with Bob Proctor and every room I’ve been in since, I’ve heard women in particular say some version of the same thing. I worry I’m past my prime. It’s going to be harder to get there now. Maybe I missed my window.

It’s so not true.

Look at Bob himself. He didn’t hit his stride until his 72nd year, when The Secret came out. Seventy-two. Louise Hay published her first book at 50. The one everybody knows, You Can Heal Your Life, came out when she was 57, the same year she founded Hay House. She made her first film at 81. And the people in my world, the ones actually doing the thing, are almost all in their fifties and beyond and just getting started.

Human Design would tell you the same thing. The midlife cycles aren’t a wind-down. That’s where purpose and meaning actually begin.

The world has a habit of calling these women past their prime. I’m here to say no.

This is your prime time.

That’s the third question, and it’s the one I care about most.

Are you ready for prime time? Or have you quietly agreed with the world that your prime is behind you?

Where you stand

So that’s the map. Designed, Aligned, Primed. Three words, three questions.

Was it designed or did it happen by default?
Does the outside match the inside?
Are you ready, or did you agree with a story that was never true?

You don’t need to answer all three today. But I’d bet one of them landed harder than the others, and that’s the one worth sitting with.

If it was the second one, the gap between who you are and what makes it through the screen, that’s exactly what my free 8-part series is about. It’s called Be Seen as the Authority You Actually Are, and it walks through the 5 On-Camera Trust Levers one at a time. Start there.

And if you’re new here, subscribe for free and everything lands in your inbox. That’s the whole ask.

The real you is already there. My job is just helping the screen tell the truth about it.

I told you I wouldn’t do this

Shortly after I started my Substack I wrote a piece called “What Camera Should I Get?” (And Why That’s the Wrong Question). If you’ve been here a while you’ve probably read it. If you haven’t, go read it first; this post is the sequel, and it only makes sense if you know what I said back then.

The short version: people ask me the same thing every week. What camera do you have? What mic should I buy? Which teleprompter? And I wrote, lovingly, that the model number was never going to be the thing that helped. That the image you’re admiring is “a composite of a hundred, sometimes two hundred little choices stacked on top of each other.” That the camera is one lever out of five and not even the first one I’d reach for.

And then I said this:

“Now, I could still give you a gear list. Julie wouldn’t mind a bit. But I’m not going to, and I want to be straight with you about why.”

So let me be straight with you about why I changed my mind.

Not one word of that article was wrong. The gear is not the answer. It’s still not the answer. But somewhere between writing that piece and building The Green Room, I realized that refusing to name the gear was starting to look like the thing I said it wasn’t: gatekeeping. And the people inside this room aren’t strangers reaching for a model number anymore. You’ve watched the series. You know what the five levers are. You know the light goes first. You’ve earned the list, and you’ve earned the truth that comes attached to it.

So here it is. The exact gear. The rigs I install in my paid builds, with one honest line from me on every item, and a big red flag on everything that shouldn’t be done alone.

There’s one other reason. I said the “right camera” is a moving target and that handing you Julie’s list would be handing you last year’s answer. That’s true if the list is a screenshot. It’s not true if the list is alive. These are, and I’ll say more about that in a minute.

Before you buy a single thing

Here’s the half of a gear guide nobody writes, and it’s free, because it costs nothing.

Most people do not have a gear problem. They have a placement problem. About half the audits I run, the biggest improvement is something the person already owns, in the wrong place. The other half, they don’t own anything yet: laptop webcam, no light, no mic, nothing. Most of the fixes below are taught in the 8-part training series, so they come with the Part to go watch.

Just say no to ring lights. (Part 2.) I know they’re everywhere and you probably have one. They got popular in 2020 because they were cheap and everybody was suddenly on Zoom, and they get used wrong almost every time. A ring throws a flat, unflattering light on most faces, and if you wear glasses, forget it: two little donut reflections in your lenses, and that’s all your audience can look at. Ring lights are for makeup artists and fashion photographers circa 1998. Put it away. (If it’s the only light you own today, I’d rather you have a light on your face than not. But it’s not what we’re building toward.) There isn’t a ring light anywhere on my lighting list, even though Amazon calls half of them that. Everything I recommend is a full-screen panel that happens to be round. No ring. Never a ring.

Your light lives behind and above the camera. (Part 2.) Not beside it, where there happens to be room on the desk. Off to the side is a side light: half your face lit, half in shadow. Center it with your camera, just behind your laptop screen, slightly above your eyeline, closer than feels normal. Same light, moved eighteen inches, different person.

Turn off the overhead, and the desk lamp too. (Part 2.) The lamp you reach for when the light looks bad is small, off to the side, and the wrong color, all at once. Ceiling lights are usually too bright and fighting the window. When you’re on camera, turn them off. If you can’t, swap the bulbs to match the light you can’t control.

If I can’t see your mic, it’s not close enough. (Part 3.) More than half the people I audit have their mic set up wrong or still in the box. The ones who have it out usually have it three feet away on the far side of the desk, picking up the room instead of you. If your Yeti or your external mic isn’t visible in your shot, it’s probably too far away. A mic in frame isn’t a flaw. It’s the sign of somebody who knows what they’re doing.

Your Yeti is probably on the wrong pattern. (Part 3.) If you already own an external mic, the two things I fix most are the pickup pattern (there’s one right one for a desk, and it’s usually not the one it shipped on) and the gain, which is almost always too high or too low. Two knobs. Five minutes. Part 3 shows you both.

Use the camera you already own. It's in your pocket. (Part 4.) If your phone is a couple of years old or newer and has more than one lens on the back, it's almost certainly a better camera than the one in your laptop. You don't have to buy anything to find out. Prop it up at eye level, turn on Continuity Camera if you're on iPhone (or Camo if you're not), and take a screenshot of your webcam, then a screenshot of your phone. If the phone wins, you just upgraded your camera for free. Part 4 shows you how; the mounts that make it workable are on the list below.

Clean your lens. Your webcam has your fingerprints on it. Screen cleaner or eyeglass cleaner, not a dry sleeve, which just moves the grease around. This is an instant free upgrade and I am not exaggerating.

The rectangle is the room now. (Part 5.) Most backgrounds were designed by someone standing in the room, for someone standing in the room. The camera doesn’t see the room. It sees a rectangle. So turn your camera on, go full screen, and decorate for that. The plant that looks great in the corner might not be in the shot at all. It feels a little odd standing in the room when you get it right. That’s how you know.

Check your Zoom settings. (Part 6.) Zoom is quietly making decisions about your sound and your picture that you never agreed to. Part 6 walks through the handful of settings that matter, and most people have never opened them.

Bless and release. If you’ve gone down the DIY rabbit hole and you’ve got a pile of gear that isn’t on any list below, and you’re trying to justify buying more to make it work: stop. Sell it, gift it, pay it forward. Your trial and error got you here, and here is where it ends. Release it. Then start clean.

What’s in the guides

Twelve lists, on Amazon. Every item has a note from me on why it’s there.

The rigs

• GlamCam Mini™ Standard Blueprint. The exact rig I install in the Glam Squad and the Mini Private Install.

• GlamCam Max™ Standard Blueprint. The blueprint every GlamCam Studio build starts from.

One piece at a time

• Lighting For Your Face. Five lights, cheapest to best. Not one of them is a ring light.

• Microphone & Audio. The mics I recommend, the two headphones I use to hear you, and one adapter.

• Use Your Phone Camera as Your Webcam. The cheapest real camera upgrade there is.

• Teleprompter. The only one worth anything, and everything it needs to work.

Background & Set Design

• Accent Lighting. Twenty-four ways to put light behind you.

• Plants & Pots. Big to small, and why every pot should be shiny.

• Shelf, Desk & Tabletop Decor. The one object on the shelf that says something about you.

• Wall Decor. For when your empty wall is the entire problem.

• Wall Tapestries. The cheapest way to change an entire background, including printing your own.

• Accent Furniture. The tables that give a set its bones.

The lists, the links, and the notes are below, for members of The Green Room.

Why Join The Green Room?

The Green Room is the paid side of this publication, and it’s where the how lives. Inside: the full eight-part video series with nothing cut, the On-Camera Presence Setup Clinic every 4 weeks where you come on camera and I tell you the one thing to change, the Tape Vault of lessons and replays, access to book a private On-Camera Presence Audit, and now these Gear Guides, live and growing. It works out to about sixty cents a day for a whole year in the room.

Learn More & Join The Green Room

Read more

The full replay is above. Here’s what got fixed, and then, in writing, the four things I announced at the end, because two of them have dates on them.

What happened in the room.

Shari came up first asking about her background, and I told her the truth: it’s beautiful, don’t touch it, maybe one little glow behind the elephants. Then I sent her off to put her iPhone back on the clip, because if you’re on an iPhone and a Mac you don’t need any app at all, you just need Continuity Camera. She came back, we pushed her back from the lens, and there’s a Nikon in her closet she’s been traveling with for years. That one’s getting solved in the Squad.

Esther, from the Netherlands, had a strip light I could see reflected in her glasses. Full round light, up and a little out of her eyeline, and my rule stands: if you can’t sit in front of it for four hours, it’s too bright. Then we flipped one Zoom setting, background noise suppression from Auto to Low, and her mic went from a 7 to a 10 in real time. You can hear it on the replay.

Susan took last month’s notes and got out of the cave. Her new background is clean, intentional, warm, exactly what she wanted, and the only thing I could find was one empty wall that wants a little sconce. (I showed everyone the one we found at HomeGoods for Gwendolyn’s GlamCam in Denver.) Her face was reading red, and that’s not her, that’s the Dell webcam. She’s applied for the Squad. Good.

And then this, about half an hour after we hung up. Susan posted in the paid subscriber chat:

“Thank you for another incredible clinic today. I used chat to help me find the right style and size sconces. Ordered them and they will be here tomorrow!”

With a ChatGPT mockup of her wall, the sconces placed, measurements and all. From “maybe one thing on that wall” to ordered and arriving in under an hour. Sarah Grace, that’s the exact move I described for your closet doors. It works.

Susan, screenshot when they’re up. The whole room wants to see it.

Linda dialed in from the lake house in the Upper Peninsula, and gave everybody the lesson of the day: her wall is lavender. Her webcam made it green. If you have a purple wall behind you, a webcam will turn you green trying to fix it. A real camera negotiates that color honestly. Also, tighter lens, no puppy kennel in the shot. I’ll see her for her audit next week, on her birthday.

Mariska, also from the Netherlands, at half past eight at night, got her real camera set up as her webcam since we last talked, and it was hunting for focus. Turns out pressing the shutter button kicks the autofocus in. Then we turned off Zoom’s portrait lighting, because her camera blurs the background on its own now, and tipped her mic up. She was miking her sternum. Aim it at your mouth. Instantly better.

Bridget’s mic sounded like it was down the street, and it was a Yeti. She was talking into the back of it. Flip it, aim the blue logo at your mouth, thumb on your lips, pinky touches the mic. She’d just been told on someone’s podcast that her audio was off. She will never face that mic the wrong way again, and neither will you now.

Sarah Grace thought her guest-room closet doors were a problem. They’re not. They’re wood, they flatter her coloring, and they could be decorated with command strips, or, if she wants to go big, custom painted. Screenshot yourself in the frame, describe the mural to ChatGPT, get a mockup, post it, and an artist will emerge. Her audit’s in November.

Jen had the round light I recommend and glasses glare. Her laptop was floating; it needed to sit on the light’s own foot with the light smashed up against the lid. Lighting fixed. Then the real culprit showed up: her webcam was exposing for the window behind her and making her gray. A pillowcase over the glass, or, better, her $1,200 Samsung as the camera through Camo. I asked her to screenshot the result and drop it in the chat before the next clinic. Jen, I’m holding you to it.

Gina updated Zoom and suddenly looked far away. Her iPhone had switched to the wide lens. Switch off the phone camera in Zoom, switch back, done. Then I caught her holding her Yeti like a singer’s mic. They pick up from the front, not the tip. Once it was set down and aimed, I told her the truth: she sounds like she’s hosting her own radio show. And she was, for about three minutes. We’re doing a Green Room happy hour and Gina’s doing a set. Erica’s note in the chat: “what a difference from when we met back in June.”

Kirstin’s hair was pixelating, which is a sharpness setting buried in her Canon’s Picture Profile, not her hair. And she was reading orange. Her light was set to 3200K. We moved it to 5600. The chat lit up, and you’ll see why. Sunlight is blue, not yellow, relative to everything in your house. That’s the whole lesson, and it’s one dial.

Dr. Jennifer had ten minutes before a patient and asked which Yeti would bring out the deeper part of her voice. Any of them, if it’s close. The Shure MV7 if she wants to go all the way. But here’s what I actually told her: that thing she hates about her voice came from a bad mic on a podcast fifteen years ago. That wasn’t her voice. That was microphone trauma. She’s got a podcast in two weeks, so she’s booking a quick fit call.

And Jamie, in a “dark, dark room,” which turned out to be one of the coolest rooms I have ever seen. Dark green walls, a light beam on the wall, a window in front of her. The only things wrong: shmutz on the lens (Windex, not your thumb), a $40 mic that needs to be a Yeti, and a webcam that has no idea what to do with those walls. Jamie, you’re a 3/5 with that background. Let’s get you on a GlamCam.

From the survey afterward, two lines I’m keeping:

“I look and feel incredible when I set the right settings up. NO MORE leaving that to Zoom!” — Melissa

“I thought my office was too dark, but turns out... it’s not!” — Jamie

Replay chapters:

• 0:00 — Welcome, and hello to Substack

• 0:02 — The Backstage page

• 0:03 — October: next clinic and Run the Room

• 0:06 — Meet Karen, The Green Room Concierge

• 0:08 — Shari (the background, and Continuity Camera)

• 0:13 — Esther (strip light, MV7, noise suppression 7 to 10)

• 0:18 — Susan (out of the cave)

• 0:23 — Linda (the purple wall that reads green)

• 0:30 — Mariska (autofocus, portrait lighting off, the sternum mic)

• 0:36 — Bridget (the backwards Yeti)

• 0:43 — Sarah Grace (closet doors and the mural idea)

• 0:50 — Jen (glasses glare, laptop on the light’s foot)

• 0:52 — Gina (the wide-lens switch)

• 0:55 — Kirstin (sharpness and the 3200K problem)

• 1:00 — Dr. Jennifer (which Yeti, and microphone trauma)

• 1:05 — Shari and Gina, round two (the singer’s-mic mistake)

• 1:12 — Jamie (the coolest room, the greasy lens)

• 1:20 — Jen, round two (the window exposure problem)

• 1:23 — Kirstin, round two (watch the color change)

• 1:29 — Announcements: 10% member discount, the Glam Squad, the Mini Private Install, GlamCam Studio

• 1:37 — Squad pricing, and the close

What I announced, in writing

1. The Backstage page is live.

Everything you have access to in the Green Room, on one page: the series, the replays, the clinic calendar, the chat, the audit booking, the Squad application, your member discount code. Bookmark it: tommycollier.com/backstage. Karen said it on the call and she’s right: most of the questions that come through the chat are already answered there.

2. October has two dates.

Friday, October 16, 1:00pm Eastern. Clinic #3. Four weeks from this one, same as always. It’s on the Green Room calendar which you can find on the Backstage page.

Friday, October 23, starting 1:00pm Eastern. Run the Room: The Zoom Hosting Tech Intensive. This is the marathon. Everything I know about hosting a Zoom the way I host one, so you can run workshops people pay for: the settings, the registration, the waiting room, polls, breakouts, the share with music underneath, the whole recording and replay workflow. I’ve blocked five hours. There will be breaks, there will be a full replay, and afterward I’ll turn the transcript into a checklist and handbook you can keep. It’s included for every Green Room member. To the public it’s $397. If you host anything on Zoom, your membership just paid for itself with this one day.

3. Green Room members now get 10% off everything I offer.

The Glam Squad, the GlamCam Mini Private Install, GlamCam Studio. Same code for everyone, off the top, always. It’s on the Backstage page. Being in this room is now the cheapest seat for all of it.

4. The Glam Squad is real, and it’s monthly now.

The founding squad is wrapping up in a couple of weeks and it went well enough that I’m not treating it as an experiment anymore. Here’s what it is, if you missed the first announcement: the GlamCam Mini blueprint (the rig Tracy, Julie’s beach house, Erica, and Charlotte are all on, about 95% of the Max for about half the price), installed together in a small group over four Saturdays. Same gear, same settings, me walking you through every one.

The next squad starts October 10th. Beta had three people; this one tries four. The price is $888, which with your member discount lands just under $800, about $49 more than the founding squad paid, and I’m leaving it there through the end of the year. Gear runs right around $1,000 if you need everything, about $800 if you already have a light and a mic.

You have to apply, because I match squads by setup, time zone, and schedule. The application is on the Backstage page. And apply even if you’re not ready yet: the earlier you’re in the queue, the earlier I reach out about the next one. I’m starting to offer spots from the existing applications now. Before-and-afters from the founding squad are coming soon.

And two more paths, for anyone who wants it faster or fully custom:

The GlamCam Mini Private Install is new and official. Exactly what I did with Tracie and at Julie’s beach house: the Mini blueprint, installed with me one-on-one, built for efficiency, not tied to a squad’s schedule. About half the price of the full custom build. First come, first served, and it’s the fastest way to be on a GlamCam before the end of the year. Details on the Backstage page.

GlamCam Studio is still the top of the mountain: fully custom, fully aligned, not done until it’s a 12 out of 10 for both of us. I’m likely raising the price significantly at the start of 2027 as I lean into the squads, and I can only take a handful more before the end of the year. If Studio has been on your list, this is the window. The quick fit call on glamcamstudio.com is how you talk it through with me (budget, timing, what’s right for you). It’s not a diagnostic like the audit, and there’s no line for it.

One more thing.

I want to see your progress on your setups between clinics. Screenshot your progress shots and drop it in the chat. That’s what the chat is for, and it’s how everyone else learns from your fix.

See you October 16th.

📸 Tommy

If you’re not in The Green Room yet:

You just watched the first half-hour of what happens in the Green Room every 4 weeks for 90 minutes. Members come on camera, I tell each of them the one thing to change (often more), and everybody leaves with fixes they can apply to their own setup. That’s every four weeks. Next one is October 16.

The week after, October 23, is Run the Room, the Zoom hosting intensive. Five hours, full replay, $397 to the public. Included for members.

The Green Room is $222 for the year. The training inside it costs more than the room.

Here's the honest reason not to wait. Two lines inside the room get longer every week, and I can't shorten either one. The private audit calendar is already full for November. Join now and book your audit, and you'll be on the schedule for December. Join in a few weeks and you're looking at January. And spots in the October Glam Squad are being offered now, in the order applications came in, from a page only members can see.

The door stays open. The lines just get longer.

Join The Green Room

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In this one:

• The composite truth: why a dialed-in setup is a hundred choices working together, and why it’s so easy to get one piece right and still feel off

• Where DIY gets stuck, and the delay cost nobody calculates

• Julie’s story, finished, the one I started all the way back in Part 1, three years of putting it off, undone in one Zoom call

• The distinction that is my whole business: no DIY. DIWT. Do It With Tommy.

• Every way we can do this together, laid out plainly, from the Green Room’s guided do-it-yourself path all the way up the mountain to my custom GlamCam Studio work.

• And the two doors: the audit, and the quick fit call

If you already know you’re ready for the deeper work of GlamCam, you don’t need to wait for anything. The Quick Fit Call is open to everybody: a short decision-making call where I get a quick look at you and your room, and we talk timing, budget, and which level of GlamCam actually fits. You can find the Quick Fit Call button on my GlamCam Studio page.

Just finding this series?

Welcome. Start at the beginning and walk the whole road, and pay attention to which lever is costing you the most, because that’s the one to fix first:

And tell me in the comments:

Which part of this series changed the most for you? And what’s the one lever you’re tackling first? I read and answer every comment, and I’d love this thread to be the series’ guest book.

Why Join The Green Room?

Here’s the honest math from the video, one more time.

Green Room members get the best pricing I offer on everything, every offer you just heard about has a member code waiting inside. So if any of those paths is calling you, the smart-money move is simple: join the room first, then buy anything. The room pays for itself on your first code.

And two of the things in this video live ONLY in the Green Room: the Glam Squad, my small-group install experience that may never be offered publicly at all, and access to book a private On-Camera Presence Audit with me, the diagnostic that tells you exactly where you stand on all five levers and your honest next step, even when that next step costs nothing.

Plus everything the room already is: the full how for all five levers, the gear guides with current links, a growing vault of additional trainings, the live setup clinic every four weeks, and the member chat where you can run things by me between clinics. The do-it-yourself path, with me in your pocket.

The room is open, and it stays open. Come get ready with me inside The Green Room.

In this one:

• The pattern I see constantly: deeply aligned on the inside, while the screen tells an old story about a smaller version of you

• What people actually tell me on my calls, quietly, and the question I now ask everybody

• The hack: why upgrading the outside first can pull the inside forward faster than years of inner work alone, and Carolyn’s framed photograph, sixteen years of proof

• The payoff of something I planted all the way back in Part 1: the self-love layer of this work, where the flinch came from (hello, school picture day), and why liking what you see on screen is not vanity

• Cheryl’s timely voice note, my clients Erica and Charlotte in their own words, and Lisa’s story on camera

• And my own story: Bob Proctor, a call to lead his room, a Photoshopped virtual background, paper scripts taped around a webcam lens, and the first time I ever looked at a screen and said, there I am

If somebody you love is hiding from their own camera, send them this one. That’s the whole reason it’s free. Forward this email, restack it, text them the link. This is the piece I most want traveling out beyond my own little corner of the internet, and you’re how it gets there.

Go deeper on the voices in this video:

CAROLYN ARTICLE — the full story of the photograph and the sticky note:

ERICA LIVE REPLAY — the conversation where “worthy of being in that room” comes from:

CHARLOTTE + LISA LIVE REPLAY — the alchemy of visibility conversation, where Lisa says the little-girl line in her own voice:

And tell me in the comments:

What’s coming up in the next month or two where you want to be visible, where you want to show up fully on camera, and you’ve maybe been putting it off all year? A launch, a podcast, a masterclass, your first video? Name it below. Naming it is the first step, and I read and answer every comment.

Why Join The Green Room?

If this video stirred something, here’s the honest next step. You just heard what happens when the screen starts telling the truth: Cheryl getting kept for the full hour, Erica feeling worthy of the room, Lisa proud every time she’s on screen. Every one of those started with a setup, built right.

The Green Room is where that happens. It’s my paid tier here on Substack, named for the room just off the stage where the light gets checked and the mic gets clipped on and somebody tells you your collar is flipped, so you walk out looking like you meant it.

Inside:

• The full how for all five On-Camera Trust Levers, the second halves of Parts 2 through 5

• My rigorously tested gear guides and the product vault, with current links, kept current

• A live On-Camera Setup Clinic every four weeks, where you come on camera and I tell you what I see and what to fix first. Next one is this Friday Sept 18th at 1pm Eastern!

• The member chat, where you can run your setup questions by me between clinics

• Access to work with me one on one, and member-only pricing on everything I offer

Join The Green Room

Come meet that version of yourself sooner rather than later. Come get ready with me.

Bob Proctor said it all the time. “If you can see it in your mind, you can hold it in your hand.” I heard him say it in rooms. I’ve heard it in recordings and in my own head for years. I’ve said it to clients. And last month it landed in a way it never had before, standing in a small office in Toronto with a light on a stand and a camera still in the box.

Let me back up.

Cheryl Keates is a Master Certified Coach. She coaches female leaders and trained coaches, and she’s been doing it for years and years. We met through Bob’s work, and she’s been in a number of my programs since. For most of that time I’ve known her the way I know most of the people in my world: through a camera. Her face in a Zoom box, her bookshelf behind her, a window right in front of her.

What I didn’t know until August was what the other side of that screen looked like.

The part that came first

I want to be clear about something before we go further. Cheryl cared about how she showed up long before I came along.

One of the first things she did when she started her business was hire a professional graphic designer, back when that meant paying by the hour and it was not cheap. Her brand has always been clean, classic, warm and inviting. High-end boutique. Her words. One of her top character strengths is appreciation for beauty and excellence, and if you’ve spent ten minutes with her you don’t need a test to tell you that.

She put it this way:

“It’s important to me to put myself out there in a way that shows I care. I care about myself and how I’m presenting myself, but I also care about what you’re receiving on the other end.”

That is the thing I keep trying to teach. How you show up on a screen is a cue system, and the people watching are deciding whether to trust you before you've finished your first sentence. Cheryl teaches the same thing from her side of the desk: the minute we connect, our bodies are talking to each other before either of us says a word. She knew all of this in her bones. What she didn't have yet was a setup that agreed with her.

Summer 2024

Two summers ago Cheryl was in what she calls a season of contrast. Things with her team weren’t working. Some client relationships had run their course. She let a lot go.

If you come from Bob’s world you know exactly what she was living inside: the vacuum law of prosperity. You clear the space, and the space gets filled. She described it as clearing, cleaning, forgiveness, and a lot of sitting in creation, thinking about what the next version of her business would look like.

That same summer she earned her Master Certified Coach designation. And that same summer, during our very first Proctor’s Principles launch in July 2024, she put me on her vision board. Not a light. Not a camera. Me. As her Creative Director.

“When I decided I wanted Tommy as my creative director,” she told me, “I was deciding that I was stepping into my highest and best, most masterful level of creation. For myself, for my business, for my clients, for my impact.”

We’d actually been talking about her camera setup since 2023. But that was the summer it stopped being a conversation and became a decision.

Then two years went by.

That is not the vision board failing. That is how it works. She held it. She didn’t force it. And this August, when I was in Toronto to produce Proctor’s Principles Live with Brian Proctor, I knew I wasn’t leaving without a few extra days so I could go see Cheryl.

The afternoon

I walked into her office and there it all was. The bookshelf. The diplomas. The window. I’d seen the room in photos a few weeks earlier while we were designing her gear blueprint, and before that I’d been looking at it through a lens for years. Now I was standing in it, looking back the other way.

Nothing about it was loud. It was quiet and internal. Here’s this room, and here’s the other side of it. This is real. I’m in her house, doing the thing we’ve been talking about doing for years. You really can hold it in your hand if you can see it in your mind.

We spent the afternoon building her GlamCam Studio™. And here’s the part I love. Her lighting was already done. Between the window in front of her and the video light she already owned, Cheryl has had million-dollar light on her face for years. There was nothing to fix. What she didn’t have was a camera good enough to show it. So that’s what we brought: a camera where her eyes already go, and a teleprompter so she can look at her people while she coaches them. Nothing about the room changed. Nothing about Cheryl changed. The screen just finally caught up with her.

And then she picked up the camera and held it. I took the photo at the top of this piece about four seconds later.

What she saw

I asked her what it was like the first time she watched herself through it. She sent me a voice note, because Cheryl is auditory and would rather talk than type, and here is what she said.

“I felt energy. I felt my soul’s energy. I felt radiant. I felt joyful. I felt excited about the next iteration of Cheryl Keates, master transformational coach, the guide for guides.”

And then:

“I actually felt like I was looking into my soul.”

I’ve done a lot of these installs. That one I’m going to remember.

Why seeing it was never her hard part

Here is where I want to bring in something Cheryl gave me permission to share, because it explains the two years better than anything I could say on my own.

Cheryl is a Projector. In the language I use, an Advisor. Her design runs on invitation. She is built to guide, to read a room, to direct energy she doesn’t have to generate herself, and her work lands best when someone recognizes what she carries and asks for it. One of her clients said it to her in a group this week: "What's different about you is you speak to our souls." Cheryl's answer was that she isn't talking to your ego. She's talking to your soul.

Her profile is a 6/2, the Authentic Guide: someone who has been through the trial-and-error years and is now stepping into the role of the wise one, who does her best work in environments that feel simple, harmonious and true. Her Life Work theme is called The Alpha. She captivates people with the future she can see.

So seeing it was never her hard part. Cheryl can see a future in her sleep. She can also see, the minute she meets you, exactly where your work is. Her values frequency is literally named Integrity, which is the exact word she used when I asked her what she stands for, before either of us had that page open.

What her design asks of her is the waiting. Her core frequencies describe desire that unfolds in its own time, ideas her mind revisits and refines until they suddenly become clear, and influence that works when she’s chosen rather than when she pushes. Two years on a vision board, then one afternoon. That is her design doing exactly what it does.

There’s also a lot of Line 2 in her design. Line 2 is the natural. The one who’s good at the thing without trying and doesn’t always know why people are watching. That’s my read on why aesthetics have never been optional for Cheryl. It isn’t a strategy. It’s her nature, and now her setup shows it.

One more thing, for the record. Her design says she’s built to see the patterns underneath people’s fears and how those patterns keep running in the present. If you know her work, you’re already nodding.

Cheryl’s next thing

Her program guide opens with a line I could have written:

“Most people don’t have an information problem. They already know what they should do. The challenge is what runs automatically underneath.”

That’s her 6-Week Transformational Breakthrough, a private intensive for one specific pattern that insight, willpower and regular coaching haven’t shifted. The procrastination that survived all your work on procrastination. The not-enough loop. The decision that takes days every single time. She does the detective work on how the pattern is actually running, and then she goes in and collapses it. If that’s you, or someone you love, the link above is where to look.

And if GlamCam Studio™ is on your vision board, The Green Room is where I’ll meet you.

After we wrapped

I figured it out in the Uber on the way to her house. We drove past Mount Pleasant Cemetery, and then I saw her street sign. Pleasant Avenue. Oh my gosh. She lives right by Bob.

Cheryl knew she lived near the cemetery. She had no idea that’s where Bob was laid to rest.

So when the prompter was up and the camera was set, we walked over.

The last time I stood there it was winter and everything was gray. This time it was green and warm and there was a fountain going in front of him. On his stone, under his name, there’s a line from William James:

I stood there in my loud floral shirt, fresh from helping a woman he taught see herself the way her clients see her, on the afternoon a two-year-old vision board came true.

We’ve since decided that Cheryl is now the Bob Proctor student living in closest proximity to him, which means she has a responsibility to the rest of us. She’s going to walk over and say hello to him every week. She says she will, and I believe her.

If you can see it in your mind, you can hold it in your hand.

What’s on your vision board that you haven’t let anyone hand you yet?

You were right, Bob. Thanks for the view.

Leave a comment

So we talked about the other thing. The thing I’ve never quite had perfect words for.

Erica and I built her setup together this summer. One corner of a room that also holds a sewing machine, a walking pad, and a yoga mat. She’ll tell you the whole story in here, including the night she ordered the camera at 11:30 and felt no regret at all, which has never happened to her with a big purchase. And the day we put the first lens on and she had to hold back tears.

But the moment I keep replaying is when she described seeing herself next to a podcast host she’d never met, and what she felt wasn’t “I look good.” It was “I’m worthy of being in this room.”

That’s it. That’s the work.

Some of what’s in this conversation:

• The photo I took of a woman named Carolyn in 2010, and what she told me about it sixteen years later (the full article is here)

• Why I say there is no such thing as an unphotogenic person

• The hack: why an outside change can pull the inside forward faster than years of grinding on it

• What a virtual background is quietly telling your audience about you

• Gina, who posted her own before-and-after 45 minutes after our call, without spending a dollar

• The audit client who scored the highest marks I’ve ever given, and came in thinking she was a five

• How Erica’s husband went from skeptical to doing his morning meditation in her new space

• Erica’s mom: “He really captured you.” And why that landed the way it did

Watch it above.

And then two things.

First. Part 7 of my series drops next week. It’s the self-love episode, the one I’ve been building toward since Part 1, and it’s completely free. Erica said most of it before I ever hit record. Consider this the trailer.

Second. Somewhere in the middle of this conversation Erica started talking about The Green Room, my paid tier here on Substack, and I didn’t ask her to. She said the microphone episode is still her favorite because she listened to it in the car on the way to IKEA and now she can’t unhear a bad mic. “It’s explaining why things are.”

That’s what the room is for. The free videos teach you what and why. The Green Room is the how, and the people who are actually doing it together.

Our next On-Camera Live Clinic is Friday, September 18. It’s the second one, and the first one was exactly as fun as I hoped. You come on, I start fixing your setup live in front of the group, and everyone learns from everyone else’s fixes. It’s the closest thing to sitting in the chair with me without booking the chair.

If you want to be in that room next Friday, this is the week to join.

The Green Room is $222 a year. Members also get Run the Room, my Zoom Hosting Tech Intensive on October 23, included. That one is $397 on its own, so the room pays for itself before we even get to the clinics.

Join The Green Room

See you inside. And if you’re already in, you know where the clinic link lives.

With love, Tommy

P.S. If this is your first time meeting , subscribe to her. She’s a gem. Her next workshop, Perfectly Designed, is Thursday, September 24 inside her paid tier, and she’s mapping the parts of Human Design that shape how we talk to ourselves. ericavoell.com/connect

My publication, Designed, Aligned & Primed™ is now on track for over $10,000 a year in subscription revenue. They made me a little graphic and everything. I stared at it for a while.

And it was not the only thing that showed up. On September 1, the day I closed the charter window, the orange check mark appeared next to my name. That is Substack’s bestseller badge. The same day, this publication hit #3 on the Rising in Business list, worldwide, one spot under Robert Glazer and two under Steve Eisman. It has been on that Top 100 Rising list basically since I started posting.

I am not putting that here to show off. I am putting it here because I want you to see the shape of it: I did not start with an audience here. (I still have not imported a single email address) I started with a door.

On July 24, I opened The Green Room. Twelve people had already gone paid before it had a name or a single thing inside it. I had switched the paid option on and a few friends walked through a door I had not even announced yet. That was 47 days ago. Today there are 133 people in the room.

I want to tell you how that happened, because it is not the story I expected to be telling, and it is not the way I was taught to do it.

What was in the room on opening day?

Nothing.

I mean that. Not one frame of the eight-part video series was filmed. I had started mapping it out, and that was the extent of it. The Zoom hosting tech intensive was an idea but no titleSubstack emailed me yesterday morning.

On July 24, I opened The Green Room. Twelve people had already gone paid before it had a name or a single thing inside it. I had switched the paid option on and a few friends walked through a door I had not even announced yet. That was 47 days ago. Today there are 133 people in the room.

I want to tell you how that happened, because it is not the story I expected to be telling, and it is not the way I was taught to do it.

What was in the room on opening day?

Nothing.

I mean that. Not one frame of the eight-part video series was filmed. I had started mapping it out, and that was the extent of it. The Zoom hosting tech intensive was an idea with no title, no date and no plan . There was no sales page. There was a rough-and-ready info page that I called “the door” because that is what it was. There were no gear guides. No vault. No content.

What was in the room was this:

A vision. An invitation. One date on the calendar for the first Live On-Camera Presence Setup Clinic. And the On-Camera Presence Audit, which I moved inside because it had already sold out my entire August calendar on its own and I figured anything people want that badly belongs in the paid room.

That was it. A date, a price, and a promise.

The day before I opened it, one of my clients said “sign me up” before I finished describing it, and I had nowhere to send her. I was selling a room with no door. So that night I built the door, wrote a Note, and opened it anyway the next morning.

The month I spent in the void

If you asked me what I would do differently, I would not say “wait until it was finished.” I would say the opposite.

The only thing I would do differently is the better part of a month I spent chewing on it before July 24.

I knew I needed a paid space. I had my free audit calls on one side and my full custom GlamCam Studio™ offer on the other, and nothing in between for the people right in the middle of the becoming. I could feel the gap. And I spent about a month overthinking it.

I was waiting for the perfect name. I was trying to invent something new, some format nobody had seen. I kept thinking a paid tier had to be a different kind of thing than what I already do.

Then the name dropped in. The Green Room. The place where you get ready before you go on. And the second I had it, the whole thing was obvious. I didn’t need to invent anything. I decided to just start doing what I already do with clients, but inside a room, with multiple humans present instead of just 1:1. That is all a paid tier is.

Once I saw that, I was ready to fly. And I flew. The month of overthinking got me exactly nothing. The 47 days of building in public got me 133 people.

Why people came into an empty room

Jen Rogers had never heard of me, and I had never heard of her. She runs the , she knows this platform cold, and she saw my announcement Note in her feed. When she told me later why she joined, it was basically this:

“I read that you were opening the doors to something that piqued my interest and when you said it was under construction and were inviting people to come build it with you, I was immediately in.”

That line has stuck with me for seven weeks.

She did not join for a library. There was no library. She joined to be inside something while it became something. And she was not the only one. In that first announcement I wrote “still under construction on purpose” and “pardon the dust,” and people read that as a reason to come in, not a reason to wait.

This is the part I was taught wrong. The rule I absorbed over the years was finish it first, polish it, then reveal it. Build the whole studio in the dark and open the curtain on a finished set. That is how we did television, and it makes sense on television.

It does not make sense here. Here, people want to watch the set get built. The construction is part of the value. The charter members who came in during that first window are the reason the 8-part training series exists in the shape it exists, because I was making it with them watching, and answering their questions as I went, and their questions changed what I filmed.

The screen should tell the truth. It turns out the same rule applies to a paid room. If it is under construction, say so. The right people will bring a hard hat.

Why I think it is working

I have a few theories, and I will tell you where I could be wrong.

The first one is the niche/soapbox. Almost nobody is teaching on-camera presence for coaches and experts. There is no crowd in this lane. When Substack looks for who is rising in Business, there is not much competition for the person doing this one specific thing well.

The second is where the paid members are coming from. They are not coming from cold traffic. They are coming off my On-Camera Presence Audit calls, out of the comments, out of Notes, from people who were already warm. Roughly one in four of my free subscribers has gone paid. I did not run an ad to get there. I ran audits and answered people.

The third is other people’s audiences. I am fortunate to be inside some fabulous rooms that are not mine, like my dear friend ’s IGNITE University. I show up there and I serve. I answer questions, I help out however I can, whenever I can,, I do the work in front of people. In return, they learn who I am and what I do, and when they do, they tend to hit subscribe. If your growth feels slower than you want, that is the lesson: go find a great room and do some service work in it, because the people you want in your world are already in someone else’s.

The fourth is the one that surprised me. I have not locked into a cadence. I have not posted every day. There have been stretches where I did not feel it and did nothing for a few days, and the room kept growing anyway. That is why I like this platform. It does not fall apart when you rest. I built in public, showed the room while it was still framing and drywall, and let the thing breathe when it needed to.

Where I could be wrong: rankings shift daily and I do not control the formula. But the pattern underneath all of it is the same one I started this piece with. I opened the door, told the truth about what was behind it, and kept showing up when it counted. That part I do control.

What I would say to you over coffee

You have a version of this.

There is a thing you have been circling. A paid workshop, a membership, a program, a room of your own. You know roughly what goes in it. You have been waiting on the perfect name, or the finished curriculum, or the feeling of being ready.

I spent a month on that feeling. I would like you to spend less.

The thing you already do, in a room, with people. That is the whole product.

Open. The. Door.🚪

The room is still somewhat under construction, and here is what is being built right now

I said “still under construction on purpose” in July, and it is still true in September. That is the whole point of this piece. So let me show you the biggest thing on the site right now, because you can get in the same way the charter members did: before it exists.

On Friday, October 23 at 1 p.m. Eastern, I am teaching Run the Room: The Zoom Hosting Tech Intensive.

It is the full SOP for hosting workshops and events on Zoom like a professional. Not meetings. Events. Registration flows, co-hosts, breakout rooms that do what you expect, the full professional recording and replay workflow, music and graphics and video, and what to do when it all goes sideways with a room full of people watching. Pre-session, mid-session, and post-session checklists. Run-of-show templates. Everything you need to run a workshop you charge good money for, and everything you have my full permission to skip.

I have hosted somewhere around 3,000 of these since 2020, including Bob Proctor’s programs with thousands of people live. This is that experience, organized into a 4+ hour workshop with a full replay.

The public price for this will be $397. Green Room members get a seat free.

And that brings the whole thing back around. Because the honest reason I am pointing you at October 23 is not the intensive itself. It is what the intensive lets you do.

On my on-camera audit calls, the thing holding people back from opening their own door is almost never the idea. It is the Zoom tech. They are ready to host. They have the content. They have the room in their head. They just do not trust themselves to run it. That is the exact gap this fixes.

So if this piece landed anywhere in you, if you have a room of your own you have been circling, the next honest step is to come learn how to run it.

The Green Room is $222 a year. Inside it right now: the first six parts of the Be Seen as the Authority You Actually Are video training series, with the last two coming this month, a live On-Camera Setup Clinic every four weeks with hot seats, a growing training vault, access to book a private On-Camera Presence Audit with me, and a free seat plus my director’s commentary any time I run one of my own paid workshops so that after I hand you all of my signature moves, you can come watch how I use them in front of a real live audience.

The intensive alone is worth more than the year. You are welcome to do that math yourself.

Join The Green Room

Pardon the dust. It is on purpose.

Refer a friend

The Green Room chat is now open: a private, members-only space that lives between the clinics. (One heads-up: Substack will show it as the Designed, Aligned & Primed chat, because that’s my publication’s name and they won’t let me paint the door. Don’t be confused, it’s the Green Room in there. You’ll know it when you see it.)

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What you just watched is a slice of our very first Green Room Setup Clinic. Real hot seats, real fixes, in real time: Anne’s lighting corrected with one button press. Shari’s setup going from a 5 to a 9 in under a minute. This is what happens in there now, every 4 weeks.

The full replay — every hot seat, the live camera comparison that made one member say “100 times better, I am sold,” plus an exclusive announcement that Green Room members got first — is members-only. That’s how this room works: everybody gets the what and the why. The Green Room gets the how.

And here’s the part I need you to hear today: Green Room charter membership is $88 for the year — only until the end of August. In September it goes to $222. That’s not a fake countdown timer, friend. It’s just the truth: the room is nearly built now — All 5 of my On-Camera Trust Levers taught across 6 videos (so far) in my 8-part video series, monthly Setup Clinics with my eyes on your setup, and everything that gets announced in there first — and the price is catching up to what’s inside.

$88. One decision. Get in the room. 👑

JOIN THE GREEN ROOM

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This is also your free sample of what the Green Room feels like all the time. More on that at the bottom.

One honest note before the manual: most of these settings live in Zoom. I’ve gone looking, and the other platforms mostly don’t have them yet. Riverside does offer some appearance filters in its paid Pro version, credit where due. Google Meet and Microsoft Teams currently offer squat. And Substack live, our beloved, is missing the big one entirely (more on that below, and yes, I’m watching for it daily).

THE SETTINGS MANUAL

(Menus move. When Zoom renames or relocates something, I update this page. If something looks off, tell me in the comments.)

1. Background noise suppression → LOW (the one I owed you from the audio video)

Where: Click the little arrow next to your mute button in Zoom → scroll to the bottom → Audio Settings. Under the Microphone section, make sure Noise removal (default) is selected under microphone modes. Then just below it, find Background noise suppression and switch it from Auto to Low.

Why: On Auto, Zoom processes your voice aggressively and can’t always tell noise from you. It squashes, filters, and flattens. On Low, your full frequency comes through. This one click is the difference between your $100 mic sounding like what you paid for it, or sounding like a $30 one.

The caveat: This recommendation is for external microphones only. If you’re on your laptop or webcam’s built-in mic, the computer’s own fan noise is real, and Auto may be earning its keep. Same if you’ve got genuine chaos around you, construction, traffic, a dog convention in the next room.

Either way: test it. Record yourself, listen back, and confirm before your next masterclass or sales call. You can’t know until you’ve heard it. (Or come to a clinic and I’ll tell you in about ten seconds.)

2. HD → ON

Where: Arrow next to your video button → Video Effects and Settings → Video section, under your camera selector.

Why: Zoom ships with it off to save bandwidth, 2020 logic. Your internet can almost certainly handle it now. Check the box. Enjoy your pixels. You paid for them.

3. Original ratio → ON

Where: Same row as HD.

Why: This tells Zoom to use your camera’s full picture instead of cropping into it. If you’ve ever seen black bars on your sides, this was probably off. You built your rectangle on purpose in this series. Keep all of it.

4. Mirror my video → OFF (my strong recommendation)

The fact first: this setting only changes what YOU see. Your audience always sees you correctly, either way.

My recommendation: turn it off, and build a relationship with your face the way everybody else already has one with it. Fair warning: it’ll feel weird for a week or two. You might think your face looks lopsided. It’s not, that’s just the version of you that you’re less familiar with. Every recording and video of you that goes out into the world is unmirrored. A true on-camera professional is adjusted to seeing their face the way the world sees it, and your relationship with your own recordings gets dramatically better once you are.

Bonus reason: if you design your set while mirrored, the balance will be off in every recording. Let the mirrored version of you stay in the actual mirror.

5. Touch up my appearance → ON, and move the slider

Where: Video Effects and Settings → Appearance section, first switch.

Why: Authenticity does not mean under-polished. This filter, used gently, is the digital version of what every broadcast studio has done for a hundred years. Cameras exaggerate things your face doesn’t do in person. This evens the ledger.

The gotcha I see constantly: the switch is on, but the slider is sitting at 0%, doing nothing. Turn it on AND move the slider.

Where to set it: pull yourself up full screen and play. For most people, somewhere between 5 and 30% is great. With strong lighting, you can go higher, mine sits at 60. Past 60 or 70 you’re entering airbrushed territory, unless your lighting is genuinely terrible, in which case maxing it can help. You’re aiming for you on your best skin day, polished, not fake.

And the Substack live situation: this filter is the single biggest thing missing from Substack live and the recording studio, and it’s why everyone looks a little rougher there than on Zoom. It’s not you. It’s the missing filter. There IS a way to go live to Substack through Zoom with this filter layered in, video on that coming soon, and I’m watching daily for Substack to add it natively. The moment they do, you’ll hear it here first.

6. Adjust for low light → for webcams and phone-cameras

Where: Appearance section, second switch. Leave it on Auto if you use it.

Why: It digitally brightens a dim picture and adds a little contrast pop. On a webcam or on the phone-as-webcam setup from the camera video, this is usually a good move, even with decent lighting, I found it better on than off on my iPhone. If you’ve got a real video light dialed in on a real camera, you likely don’t need it.

7. Portrait lighting → webcam only

Where: Appearance section, third switch.

Why: It highlights you while dimming your background, and adds a little digital separation, a taste of what a real camera does optically. If you’re staying on a webcam for now, this can genuinely help, especially with a busy background.

Watch your edges: the line between you and the background is the computer guessing. If it wobbles or gets weird around your hair, it’s become the distraction, turn it off.

Do NOT stack it on the phone-as-webcam setup. Your phone’s back cameras are already doing real separation with real glass. Don’t stack fake on top of real.

8. Auto-framing → OFF. Everybody. No exceptions.

Where: Appearance section, fourth switch.

Why: You spent this series building your frame: height, eye line, headroom, background composition. Auto-framing hands every one of those decisions to an algorithm that zooms and drifts every time you move. It can flat-out ruin a recording or a live, and if your frame is constantly moving, you never even know how much background you’re designing for.

If your webcam is too wide: instead of auto-framing, check whether your camera manufacturer has its own app, most mainstream brands do. Those let you crop in and LOCK a tighter frame that stays put. Still cropping into a struggling camera, but a locked-off mediocre frame beats a wandering one every day of the week.

A note for my GlamCam Studio™ clients

Your system is dialed by me, for your face and your room. Touch up my appearance is yours to enjoy. Leave adjust for low light, portrait lighting, and auto-framing OFF. Your setup does all of that for real. Don’t let the software repaint the painting.

And the backgrounds tab: a stance, not a setting

Virtual backgrounds and the full-on blur send a quiet, subconscious message: I have something to hide. Every single time I’ve had someone turn theirs off, I liked what was actually behind them better, and my trust went up on the spot, even when it was a plain wall. In a pinch, traveling, a hotel, a space that isn’t yours, fine, use the blur, life happens. As your everyday choice? Your real room, even half-finished, beats a fake anything. The screen should tell the truth, and that includes the background. And if your real room is the problem, that’s Part 5 (Lever #4). Go watch it, then come let me help you with it.

That’s all five levers, complete

Your light. Your sound. Your camera. Your set. And this polish layer that lets it all through. Everything standing between how good you actually are and how good you look on camera, and every lever is now yours.

And notice what just happened. You watched this entire video and got the complete instructions, free. That’s what the inside of the Green Room feels like, all the time. On Parts 2 through 5, if you’re not in the room, you saw the what and the why, and below those videos isn’t the full instructions, it’s the door. Inside: the full videos, the live demos, my actual gear recommendations with current links, the product vault, the monthly favorite finds, the live monthly setup clinic, and access to book a private On-Camera Presence Audit with me, one on one.

Today was the free sample. The whole room is one click away. Come join me in the Green Room, I’d love to have you in there.

Join The Green Room

How’d you go? Let me know!

Tell me in the comments: which setting surprised you the most? And if you make one change today, which one was it? I read every comment.

In this one:

• The single biggest idea in this lever: you designed your room for the person standing in it, and that’s not who it performs for anymore

• The problems I see every day: backgrounds winning the light war, plants reading as black blobs, everything at one height, and the rows of thick white binders screaming storage not set.

• The three objections I hear constantly, answered with real client receipts: the double-duty room, the rental, and “I just can’t picture it”

• Real transformations: a set built in-between a bed and a wall, tapestry worlds hung with thumbtacks, and a genuinely credible room that just needed to be seen

• And the demo: I destroy my own set on camera without moving a single object, so you can see what’s actually making it work

Why Join The Green Room?

The second half of this video is basically a private masterclass in set design plus a shopping trip. The five layers that make any background work, at any budget. The honest secret about background budget, with receipts from my own room. Deep breakdowns of four client transformations, including the one for people whose room is already good. My favorite background pieces demonstrated in my hands, 10 varieties of accent lighting, gorgeous greenery, shiny objects (the good kind), and a few things you’ve never thought of, every single one linked below the video and kept current. Plus the sanctuary layer, where I get a little woo with you.

You’ll finish it and take your very next call looking like a different person, on a camera you already paid for.

And before you ask: this works whether you’re on a Mac or a PC, iPhone or Android. If you’ve got a modern smartphone and a computer, I’ve got a path for you inside.

All of that lives in The Green Room, my paid subscriber community here on Substack. It’s named for the room just off the stage, where the light gets checked and the mic gets clipped on and somebody tells you your collar is flipped, so you walk out looking like you meant it. Every real stage has one. Online, nobody does. So I built one.

Inside:

• The full series, with all of the how, including the rest of this video

• A growing vault of guides and walkthroughs

• My actual tested and approved gear recommendations, kept current

• My monthly favorite finds: the decor and gear I’m testing and putting into real builds

• A live on-camera presence & setup clinic every 4 weeks where members come on camera and I tell them what I see, what I hear, and what to change first

• Access to book a private On-Camera Presence Audit with me, one on one

One click, and the rest of this video picks right up where it left off, and the whole product list appears with it below. Come get your background handled with me.

Join The Green Room

Read more

• The word that changes how you see every video from now on: separation, and why the software blur never quite pulls it off

• How nearly every webcam uses a wide-angle lens, and what all that extra width is quietly doing to you

• A live camera ladder, same face, same room, same light: my GlamCam, a $70 webcam, a $150 “professional” webcam, and my iPhone

• What happens when a camera looks down at you, and where yours is probably sitting right now

• The twist: my own professional camera flipped to factory settings, performing like a coin flip, and why that’s the whole reason I won’t hand you a model number

Why Join The Green Room?

The second half of this video is a complete, do-it-today training: how to turn your iPhone into your webcam. The feature that makes it almost embarrassingly easy on a Mac, the one account detail that trips everybody up, the exact mounts I use and how to position them, how to activate it in Zoom, and the settings that keep it running smoothly through a real call. Plus my honest answer to “isn’t there just a better webcam?”, and a look at the deeper end of eye contact that my GlamCam Studio™ clients would never give up.

You’ll finish it and take your very next call looking like a different person, on a camera you already paid for.

And before you ask: this works whether you’re on a Mac or a PC, iPhone or Android. If you’ve got a modern smartphone and a computer, I’ve got a path for you inside.

All of that lives in The Green Room, my paid subscriber community here on Substack. It’s named for the room just off the stage, where the light gets checked and the mic gets clipped on and somebody tells you your collar is flipped, so you walk out looking like you meant it. Every real stage has one. Online, nobody does. So I built one.

Inside:

• The full series, with all of the how, including the rest of this video

• A growing vault of guides and walkthroughs

• My actual tested and approved gear recommendations, kept current

• A live on-camera presence & setup clinic every 4 weeks where members come on camera and I tell them what I see, what I hear, and what to change first

• Access to book a private On-Camera Presence Audit with me, one on one

One click, and the rest of this video picks right up where it left off. Come get your camera handled with me.

Join The Green Room

Read more

In this one:

• Why your voice is the actual mechanism of frequency transfer, into your audience’s ears and straight to their heart.

• The micro-doubts of sound: why bad audio fatigues your listener’s brain, and why they’ll leave without ever knowing the real reason

• It’s not echo, it’s reverb, and why the right word tells you exactly what to do about it

• A live listening test: me on my usual mic, an external webcam mic, a built-in computer mic, a headset, and a great mic in the wrong spot. Same sentence every time. The differences will surprise you.

• One buried platform setting that was degrading my sound even on a professional microphone

• And the thing I keep finding on my audit calls: almost half the people I sit down with already own a great mic. It’s still in the box, or sitting on the desk unplugged. A very expensive paperweight.

Why Join The Green Room?

Watching this video from inside The Green Room, 27 additional minutes of teaching unlocks with me showing you the actual microphone I recommend. The exact mic I put in front of my GlamCam Studio clients. And then the part that matters more than the purchase: direction, the pattern knob almost nobody touches, distance, gain, and what your desk is secretly doing to your sound, each one demonstrated live so you can hear what it costs you, plus the trick that makes you self-sufficient with your own audio forever.

That all lives in The Green Room, my paid community here on Substack. It’s named for the room just off the stage, where the light gets checked and the mic gets clipped on and somebody tells you your collar is flipped, so you walk out looking like you meant it. Every real stage has one. Online, nobody does. So I built one.

Inside:

• The full series, with all of the how, including the rest of this video

• A growing vault of guides and walkthroughs

• My actual tested and approved gear recommendations, kept current

• A live on-camera presence & setup clinic every 4 weeks where members come on camera and I tell them what I see, what I hear, and what to change first

• Access to book a private On-Camera Presence Audit with me, one on one

One click, and the rest of this video unlocks. Come get your audio handled with me.

Join The Green Room

Read more

A few months ago I started offering something called an On-Camera Presence Audit. A private call where I look at your actual setup, your light, your sound, your camera, your background, and tell you the truth about what it’s saying before you ever open your mouth. I made them complimentary, and I said right on the page: complimentary for now, but not forever.

They booked out. Not slowly. My entire August calendar filled, and I found myself with a very good problem and a very real one.

Here’s the part I didn’t expect.

The calls kept running long. They were sold as thirty minutes. They kept becoming an hour, sometimes more, because I’d spot something fixable and I could not help myself. Somebody would mention a microphone still sitting in its box, and twenty minutes later we’d have it out, plugged in, gain set, positioned right, and I’d be listening to them describe their lunch so we could hear the difference together.

I was performing the surgery during the X-ray. Every single time.

And that told me something I couldn’t unhear: there was a whole group of people showing up to these calls who weren’t ready for my full studio work, and might not be for a while, but who needed way more than a free half hour. People right in the middle of the becoming. On camera more and more, hosting workshops, going live, starting podcasts, and getting exactly zero support between “read my articles for free” and “hire me to build your studio.”

That gap had a shape. I just had to build the room.

Every stage has one

In my world, the green room is the room off to the side of the stage. It’s where things get checked, the mic gets clipped on, and somebody tells you your collar is flipped before you walk out in front of people.

Every theater has one. Every studio has one. I’ve spent twenty years of my career in and around them.

Online, nobody has one. You click the link and you’re just... on. Live, recorded, broadcast, with whatever light and sound and background you happened to have, telling whatever story it happens to tell.

So I built one. It’s called The Green Room, and it’s my new paid community here on Substack.

It’s where my new eight-part video training series lives, Be Seen as the Authority You Actually Are. It’s the deepest teaching I’ve ever done on the 5 On-Camera Trust Levers. It’s where the On-Camera Presence Clinic happens every four weeks, live hot seats where you come on camera and I tell you the one thing to change/elevate before the next clinic. It’s where the audit now lives too, as a members-only benefit, because the thing that booked out my calendar needed a better home than my free time.

And it’s filling up faster than I expected. New members keep sending notes when they join, and this one from Monique stopped me:

“One introductory call with Tommy and he gave me small tweaks to make with my settings, microphone, and lighting that make such a difference in how I physically look and sound on camera.”

Small tweaks. Such a difference. That’s the whole thesis, honestly. Most people are a handful of informed adjustments away from a screen that finally tells the truth about them. They just don’t know which adjustments, and they’ve been guessing alone.

Not a membership

Here’s the thing I decided early, and it shaped everything: I didn’t want to run a membership.

Memberships are treadmills. Content calendars, retention campaigns, the constant low hum of “am I giving them enough this month.” I’ve watched people build memberships that quietly became a second job they pay themselves badly for. It’s a mistake I’ve made myself many times already too so I knew I wanted to make this different and it is.

When you join The Green Room, you’re buying something real: a training library that grows and never shrinks, a live clinic every four weeks, my gear guides sorted by budget, and access to sit down with me for a one-on-one. Nothing ever gets taken away. There’s no curriculum to fall behind on, no homework, no keeping up.

Because here’s what I know about the people this room is for: you don’t want to become an expert at cameras and lighting. You want to stop thinking about them. You want to open the Zoom room, or hit go live, or start the recording, and know, not hope, know, that what people see matches who you actually are.

That’s what gets built in a green room. That’s why it’s called that.

The honest part

The room is still under construction. I opened the doors before it was finished, on purpose, and the people walking in during the building phase are getting the builder’s deal: $88 for the year, locked in for as long as they stay, before the price goes to $222 after August.

And an update since I opened the doors: the first live On-Camera Presence Clinic was set for September 18. It’s now Friday, August 21, because nearly 50 people joined in the first week and I’m not making a room this alive wait seven weeks to gather. From there it runs every four weeks, same Friday slot, and the sooner you’re in, the sooner you’re in the hot seat lineup.

The first 100 charter members are also getting something I didn’t plan but should have: a real voice in the build. The questions coming out of this week’s audit calls and GlamCam Studio setups, how to record in HD on Zoom, best way to record audio-only podcasts, fixing the glowing streaks of light showing up on your webcam, what gear to start upgrading and when, how to hook up that mic sitting in the box or on the shelf, are literally becoming the blueprint for what gets recorded into the Vault first. This room is getting built around the people in it.

(One quick note so nobody gets confused: “charter member” is my name for everyone who joins during this building phase at $88. It’s not Substack’s “founding member” tier, so don’t hunt for a special button. The annual plan is the door.)

One more thing worth knowing before you decide to wait: members are already booking into my September audit calendar, and it’s filling faster than I expected. I run every session myself, a handful a week, so those slots go first come, first served. The $88 price waits until the end of August. The calendar doesn’t wait for anyone.

The charter window closes at the end of August. That’s not a countdown timer trick. It’s just when the construction discount stops making sense.

If you’re one of the people I built this for, on camera more than ever, hosting or about to be, tired of guessing, the door is open and the full tour is here:

Learn More & Join The Green Room

And if you’re not there yet, stay right where you are. The essays stay free, the stories stay free, and every part of the new video series opens free, the full what and the why of each lever, right up to the point where the how begins. The how is what lives in the room. The room will be here when you’re ready.

The screen should tell the truth. This is the room where we make sure yours does.

And to the nearly fifty of you already inside:

Thank you. You joined a room that was still getting built, some of you within hours of the doors opening, and that kind of trust is not lost on me. What we’re about to do together, the clinics, the hot seats, the questions that become the trainings, is exactly the work I love most, and you’re the ones shaping what this room becomes. See you August 21. Come as you are, setup and all.

Refer a friend

In this video:

• Why lighting is a cue, not just brightness, and what a bad light is quietly costing your credibility

• The question almost nobody asks: not how bright, but how big and how close

• My official position on ring lights (lovingly: just say no)

• Whether your window is an asset or a liability, and why killing it entirely puts you in a cave

• A live demo: me in no light, me in desk-lamp light, and what those are doing to your face right now

• Two real clients. Tracie, whose beautiful background lights were beating her face light and leaving her in the dark. And Karen, who was broadcasting from a cave for a year.

Why Join The Green Room?

The second half of this video is me, on camera, with the actual light you need in my hands, the one I put in front of my own clients, and then the part that matters more than the gear, where it goes, how close, how high, and why. Plus the rest of Karen’s story, which is not what you’d guess.

That all lives in The Green Room, my paid community here on Substack. It’s named for the room just off the stage, where the light gets checked and the mic gets clipped on and somebody tells you your collar is flipped, so you walk out looking like you meant it. Every real stage has one. Online, nobody does. So I built one.

Inside:

• The full series, with all of the how, including the rest of this video

• A growing vault of guides and walkthroughs

• My actual tested and approved gear recommendations, kept current

• A live on-camera presence & setup clinic every 4 weeks where members come on camera and I tell them what I see, what I hear, and what to change first

• Access to book a private On-Camera Presence Audit with me, one on one

One click, and the rest of this video unlocks. Come get your lighting handled with me.

Join The Green Room

Read more

That moment is what this whole series is about.

I’ve spent decades behind the camera, including four years as Bob Proctor’s Creative Director, and I keep watching the same thing happen to people doing genuinely brilliant work. They ask how to finally get seen for it, and everybody hands them the same tired prescription. Post more. Go live more. Batch more content. Feed the algorithm.

I want to push back on that, hard. Because if what’s on the screen isn’t communicating the caliber of your work, making more content doesn’t fix the problem. It multiplies it.

This is Part 1 of a new eight-part series called Be Seen as the Authority You Actually Are, and it’s the foundation for everything that follows. Grab a coffee for this one.

What’s in it

• The 3-Second Authority Check, and the even faster check that happens before it

• Warmth and competence, and how your setup answers both before you speak

• Why your on-camera presence is never neutral, whether you’re paying attention to it or not

• Real client before-and-afters, and my own

• What I actually mean when I say “the truth”

What’s coming

Over the next several parts I’m walking through my 5 On-Camera Trust Levers, one at a time. Lighting. Audio. Camera. Background and Set. Platform Polish. Then we go past the mechanics into the part that matters most, which is what changes in you when the screen finally catches up.

Part 2 is Lighting. Fastest, most satisfying fix of the five.

How this series works

Every part starts with the what and the why. That part is free. Always. To everybody. Ideas travel just fine on their own.

The how lives in the Green Room.

Not because I’m gatekeeping. Because handing you a how-to and then walking away is the exact thing I’m trying to save you from. That’s the YouTube rabbit hole. That’s the pile of Amazon boxes and a setup that still feels a little off and nobody who knows this stuff to ask. Even a perfect step-by-step leaves margin for error, and I’d rather be there when you use it.

The Green Room

It’s named after the room just off the stage. The one where things get prepped and checked, the mic gets clipped on, and somebody tells you your collar is flipped so you walk out looking like you meant it.

Every real stage has one. Online, nobody does. So I built one.

Inside:

• This full series, with all of the how (All 8 parts dripping out over the next week or two)

• A growing vault of guides, walkthroughs, and trainings

• My actual tested and approved gear recommendations

• A live on-camera presence & setup clinic every 4 weeks where members come on camera and I tell them what I see, what I hear, and what to change first

• Access to book your private 45-min On-Camera Presence Audit with me

Learn more & Join The Green Room

Because almost none of them look the way their work deserves. The conversation is a million dollars and the picture is a laptop webcam pointed up a nostril, lit by whatever the ceiling happened to be doing that day. Brilliant people, broadcasting from a default setup they never once stopped to think about.

I wanted to screenshot a few and show you. Then I remembered I’m new here and trying to make friends, so I’ll behave.

But here’s what I know is happening, because it’s the same thing I run into every time someone asks me “what camera should I get.” (I wrote a whole piece on why that’s the wrong question.) It’s not laziness. It’s not vanity going the other way. It’s one of two things. Either they’ve genuinely never thought about it, they were handed a $20 webcam that came built into their laptop and told to hit record and they never looked back. Or they’ve decided their thought leadership is the whole point, and what they look like on camera doesn’t matter.

I understand both. And I’m here, lovingly, to tell you the second one isn’t true.

What you look like on that screen is not separate from your message. It is a huge part of your message. It’s the first thing anyone receives from you, before a single word lands. And right now, for a lot of extraordinary people on here, that first thing is quietly saying don’t take me too seriously while their mouth says something brilliant.

That gap is what I close. And the word I put on the door for the work is: Glam.

But Doesn't "Glam" Sound Shallow?

One of my clients shared with me recently that she thought the name of my signature service, GlamCam Studio™, might come across a little surface-y. Like some people might read it as me trying to make them into something they’re not, forcing a shiny identity onto them.

I heard it. I even sat with renaming the whole thing for a while, because I’ve wondered the same thing myself. Does the name need to explain everything the work actually does?

And I landed on no. The name isn’t the point. The result is the point. My choice now is to teach you what Glam means in my hands, and let the word earn its place.

So let’s start with the actual dictionary definition of glamorous.

It means: Attractive in an exciting and special way.

That’s it. That’s the whole thing. Not fake. Not painted-on. Not sexy, not flashy, not in the Texas-y “the-higher-the-hair-the-closer-to-God” kind of way (and btw I am here for every bit of that when it’s aligned with who a woman who loves big hair actually is). Attractive in an exciting and special way. And here’s the part most people miss: you already are that. Every one of us is attractive in our own exciting and special way. The only question is whether the screen is telling that truth about you or hiding it.

Glam, to me, is redefining that word all the way back to its root. It’s not about adding a mask. It’s about revealing what’s already there and letting the outside finally line up with it.

Let me show you what I mean, because Glam looks completely different on different people.

Bob Glam

Bob Proctor would probably never have picked the word glam for himself. But friend, let me tell you, Bob Proctor was one glamorous man!

Bob wore nothing but custom-tailored suits. Off the rack wasn’t a thing for this guy. Gorgeous bespoke Antonacci suits, hand-made in Toronto, dozens of them lining his boutique of a closet, with custom shirts to match and the most beautiful collection of designer silk ties I’ve ever seen. And his shoes? Why, custom Italian leather of course.

Bob had such a thing about his wardrobe and appearance. In fact, it was a real aspect of his daily frequency. Sometimes he’d get fully dressed for an event, feel something was off, walk right back in and change the entire outfit, and then he was locked in. And his hair was immaculate every single day, working or not. He had manicures and pedicures every couple of weeks, complete with clear nail polish, because he loved how clean his hands felt and how it looked.

He was about as glammed and bejeweled as a straight, white-haired, eighty-something man was ever going to be. Beautiful cufflinks. His diamond exclamation-point pin, always perfectly placed on his lapel. Perfect clothes, perfect hair, perfect nails. And always completely himself.

He did draw the line at makeup though! 😂 A few times I went to hit him with a little anti-shine powder before we hit record, and he’d give me about fifteen seconds before,

“Okay, that’s enough, Tommy, let’s shoot it.” Fair enough, Mr. Proctor.

Now here’s why this matters.

Did anyone ever look at Bob Proctor and think, who does this guy think he is, so full of himself and his appearance? Never. Not once. Because it wasn’t vanity. It was congruence.

He would say, “people decide what they think about you the moment they see you, before they ever hear you, smell you, taste you, or touch you.”

He dressed the way he did partly for the room, but mostly for himself. He wanted to look and feel like the man he actually was. And also in his words, “to always walk in the room looking like you own the place.”

There was a time when Bob got sick of looking at himself on a crappy webcam too. So he built a million-dollar studio to look like a million bucks while he taught the world million-dollar lessons. Here’s the thing almost nobody knew though . He had all the right equipment in that room, and none of it was tuned. Not one piece dialed in. When I came into his world, I finally got to start tuning it. And by the time Bob left this planet, the equipment finally matched the man. All that million-dollar presence he already had, and the final picture told the complete truth about it.

That’s Glam. The celebration of beauty. Bob loved beautiful things, and he loved showing up as his most beautiful, most authentic, highest self. It made him feel fantastic, and his audiences felt it right through the screen.

How many of you have that same thing waiting, in your own way, and just haven’t let yourself step into it yet?

Julie Glam

Now, let’s talk about my dear friend and mentor, , and watch the word glam flip completely.

Julie is, by my expert opinion, a supermodel. Gorgeous, full stop. Whether she’s in full glam first-impression mode for day one of a masterclass with 7,000 women in the room, broadcasting from her very own GlamCam Studio setup with impeccable wardrobe and full hair and makeup, or it’s 2 weeks later and she’s in full teacher mode in her Clarity Queen ballcap, doing the work with hundreds of new students, she’s always embodying her fully glamorous self, whatever expression it’s taking that day.

But here’s the reclaim I love most about her. Julie went silver on purpose.

Back when she was a VP at IBM, approaching midlife, she felt she had to keep dyeing her hair the second it started to gray. Coloring it back, over and over, because that’s what a woman was supposed to do, right? And one day she decided, no. She was going silver. And it’s one of the best decisions she’s ever made about her appearance. It looks absolutely stunning on her.

Sit with that, because it’s the whole point. Bob’s glam was about adding, the suits, the polish, the pin. Julie’s glam was about taking away the thing society told her to hide behind. She looked at the rule and said, I earned this silver, and it’s beautiful, and I’m choosing it. I’m owning it. And she doesn’t just own it, she literally rocks it.

That’s Glam too. Sometimes reclaiming your most attractive, exciting, special self means putting something on. And sometimes it means finally taking the mask off.

Then there’s the women who thought glam wasn’t for them

These are the women I actually work with the most.

A lot of my people are not what you’d picture when you hear the word glam. They’re not paint and spray every day kinda gals. They’re more earthy. Grounded. Beautiful women who long ago made peace with their appearance and decided, rightly, that their value was never defined by their face or body, no matter how much physical beauty they perceive in themselves, or have been told that they do or don’t have by others. Some of them wear no makeup at all and are proud of it. And I say rock on, sisters!

If that’s you, I want to say this clearly, because I know exactly what can rise in your chest when a man who runs something called GlamCam Studio™ starts talking. You’re bracing to be told to “doll up”. To be handed back the very pressure you set down on purpose.

I am not asking you to doll up. I’m asking you to Glam Up in whatever glam means for you. And if you don’t know what that is, that’s my job. I’ll help you find it.

Because here’s the truth that has nothing to do with makeup. Even if you never touch a tube of anything, there is a vast difference between good lighting and bad lighting. There is a world between a cheap default webcam and a professional camera tuned specifically for your own face. There’s an enormous gap between your voice coming through a tinny laptop mic and your warm, resounding tones coming through a microphone that catches your full frequency and conveys it to your audience’s ears in the way it can land right inside their hearts. And there’s all the difference in the world between a random corner of your kitchen table and a custom set that was intentionally designed and actually built to hold you.

None of that requires you to change one thing about how you feel about your own face. It’s not about decoration. It’s about the picture finally telling The Truth.

And yes, glam is for the guys too

Before I go on, let me hold the door open. Glam is not just for the gals.

I’m a dude and I claim it. And if you’re a dude, you can too because there’s such a thing as Guy Glam, a little sweetening to pull a man’s best features forward, and every single person looks better with a touch of intention.

Right now this week, I’m in the middle of building Brian Proctor’s GlamCam Studio for his next era of on-camera presence. Much like his father, Brian may not personally reach for the word glam, and that’s fine. But trust me, by the time we’re done, he’s going to see it and feel it.

My own before and after

I’ll be honest with you about something. I was not born with a mountain of confidence about my appearance. I grew up gay and heavy and pretty sure I had nothing going for me in the looks department for the first thirty years. Three things changed that. Personal development, which taught me the truth of Who I Am. My husband Monte and learning to see myself the way he sees me. And turning my own skills on myself, finally putting myself under fantastic lighting, in front of a professionally tuned camera and microphone, with a set behind me that tells the story of who I am and what my work is about. The same tools I’d aimed at clients and colleagues for decades, now at last, pointed in my own direction.

I don’t cringe on camera anymore. When I’m sitting in front of my own GlamCam Studio setup, I know I’m looking about as good as I can look, and I finally like what I see. On a crappy webcam, I don’t feel that at all. Same face. Completely different truth being told about it.

That’s the strange magic of the camera though.

We’re deep in the digital age now, and the days of naturally beautiful images captured on film are over. Film was forgiving. It had a softness baked right into it, a natural warmth that flattered everyone without trying. Digital gives you none of that for free. Today’s cameras are little rectangles made of metal and plastic, filled with wires and circuits and glass. Little computers with eyes. And those digital eyes are cold, exacting, and painfully unforgiving. They show everything, and they’re easy to get wrong on a hundred levels. So it’s no wonder I’ve watched cameras strike fear into the hearts of brave people. CEOs, politicians, even seasoned TV personalities, shrinking at the thought of what a bad picture might say about them. I’ve never seen a tool made of nothing but tech cause that much dread.

And I’ve never seen that same tool, set up right, become such a vehicle of transformation. When someone finally trusts me to tune it for them, and they see themselves in a light they’ve never seen before, something moves that goes way past pictures. It reaches self-image. Self-worth. Self-love. The quiet permission to be seen, heard and received.

At that point, the camera stops being an image-capture device and becomes a self-image-transformation doorway.

That’s why the GlamCam name was never meant to describe the whole experience. The whole experience is beyond words. It starts at wires, circuits and glass and ends somewhere near your soul.

So this is me redefining the word.

Glam is not about painting on a version of you that doesn’t exist. It’s about revealing the truest, most accurate version of who you already are, and getting everything on the outside to line up with it. And here’s what happens that I can’t fully explain until you feel it: once the outside matches the truth of the inside, all of those pesky, lingering, false bits still on the inside, the doubt, the fear, the shame, the hesitation, the limitation, they start to change too. Sometimes slowly. Sometimes all at once.

If you’ve ever thought you don’t have much business being on camera, or the whole thing just makes you want to run, I promise you’ll change that tune the first time you see yourself set up correctly.

My body of work is my proof. My word is also proof, because I know what I’m talking about. But you don’t have to take only my word. Ask my client Lisa, who gets comments and questions about her new on-camera presence nearly every day now. Ask Judy, who started getting more views, more engagement, and more notice the moment her setup told the truth about her, and who felt better in her own skin because of it. There’s a lot more living proof coming, too, that I’m excited to share here very soon as I finish several of my latest GlamCam Studio setups, so stay tuned.

Let me leave you with this: The people already looking for you are scrolling, and their scrolling fast... Give them a reason to stop, stare, and subscribe.

If you want to know what your own screen is currently saying about you, that’s exactly what my On-Camera Presence Audit is for. For a limited time, you can get Emmy® Award-winning eyes and ears on your Live setup, with quick wins, and a clear path to being seen for the truth of who you already are. Especially if you’re broadcasting here on Substack and felt a little seen, or a little called out, by how this piece opened, this one’s for you. Not to fix you. To finally let the screen tell the truth about you.

And if you’re just here for the conversation, stick around. Redefining Glam is a whole body of work taking shape inside this publication, and we’re only getting started.