I want to start this by telling you what happens when I scroll my Substack feed. I see brilliance. I see thought leaders having real conversations, saying things worth hearing, going live, recording interviews, sitting down face to face with their people. The words are gold. The ideas are alive …and I also feel low-key horrified as I scroll.
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.
Bob understood something I had actually learned years earlier, but he taught it to me in a whole new way every day, through the impeccability of his example:
You never get a second chance to make a first impression.
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, Julie Ciardi-50 Not Finished📕, 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.
Tommy, this post is powerful, light-hearted and profound. Up until recently, I have never liked to have my picture taken or to be on camera. Your comments convinced me of the importance of Glam and I loved your definition - it's one I can embrace.
Pure genius you are! And this article. I’m not crying. 😭