EP 333 - YouTube for Coaches: How to Plan and Record Your First Video (Part 2 of 5)
If you want to grow your coaching business on YouTube, knowing how to plan and record your first video is where it all begins. In Part 2 of this 5-part YouTube for Coaches Series, Debbie Shadid and YouTube Strategist Nicole Janton break down exactly how to plan and record your first YouTube video as a coach.
So many coaches get stuck before they ever hit record. This video will show you how to plan your first YouTube video, what to say, how to say it, and how to set up your recording space so you can finally get your first YouTube video done.
In this episode, we'll walk through:
How to choose your first video topic (hint: you already know it)
The simple 3-part hook formula that keeps people watching past the first 60 seconds
Why scripting your YouTube video word-for-word hurts more than it helps
What recording equipment coaches actually need to get started in 2026
How long your coaching videos should be and how often to post for the best results
Why batch recording saves time and makes showing up on YouTube so much easier
How to turn your YouTube videos into a podcast and reach even more people
Your people are already searching for what you know - the only thing missing is your video.
When you commit to showing up consistently on YouTube as a coach, your confidence grows, your audience finds you, and your coaching business starts to grow in a more predictable, sustainable way.
Ready to build your coaching business the right way? Book a free Business Blueprint Call: https://www.debbieshadid.com/schedule
Debbie's Favorite Recording Setup:
Logitech Full HD Webcam: https://amzn.to/4m2rRye
Blue Yeti Podcast Microphone: https://amzn.to/4cfd4gc
Office Lighting (no ring in glasses!): https://amzn.to/4rZ9hrZ
Phone Tripod Stand (adjustable to 62"): https://amzn.to/40Y7WqB
Descript for Video Editing: https://descript.cello.so/6xw4YgGx34a
Listen to the Podcast:
Life Coach Business Building School Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/life-coach-business-building-school-with-debbie-shadid/id1502118085
If this episode was helpful, share it with a coach who's been talking about starting their YouTube channel. Subscribe and hit the bell so you don't miss the rest of the series - we're just getting started!
Disclaimer: Some links above may be affiliate links. I only recommend products I personally use and love.
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Transcript
Today we're gonna talk about how to plan and record your first video. Now let me just say, Nicole is gonna talk through some strategic ways of how to do this, but I wanna talk to you about keeping it simple. So your channel's already set up. You know you need to record a video. Don't put too much pressure on yourself. This is where so many coaches are gonna spin out and not be able to get it done. I want you to know that you already know your content. If you have picked a niche that you know, and I know we talked about that, if you have not watched the first video of this series go back and watch that after you're done with this, because we talk about niche, you wanna get clear on your niche. If it's the right niche, you already know what you're talking about, so I just wanna encourage you to teach the things that you already know. The only difference is, is that you're going to be recording it. I wanna keep it simple, and Nicole will share some ways to record, but I'm gonna tell you, you can just record on Zoom. You can record on the platform that you already know. Yes, there's some ways to make your recordings better. Again, we'll cover that in some of the other episodes coming up. First start by picking a topic that you just know, one that you're comfortable with, one that you can create a simple outline for. You don't have to have a script and that you can just talk through. So what would be that thing that every client is interested in knowing? That thing that you could talk about on repeat? That's the topic that I want you to pick. That's the video. I do recommend that you sort of outline it and you think through it so that you're familiar with how you wanna talk about it. But here's the good news. There are so many ways to edit what you're doing that I almost just encourage you to start and to just keep restarting all while the video is still going right. Don't try to be too clever. Just pick a topic that you know and just start talking and be helpful, and then just be clear, You do wanna start out your video. With some kind of hook. Now you can say hello and welcome if you want to, but the hook is really just the way of letting somebody know that you're in the right spot. I said, if you're a coach who wants to grow on YouTube now, I've identified you as a coach and somebody who wants to grow on YouTube, And you don't know how to do. Stay tuned for our series. That's basically letting somebody know what the video is going to be about. And then again, I would work through some bullet points. You can do a full script if you want to, and some people are really great about that. But here's what I think. When I have too much of a script, I actually get messed up when I just know what I'm gonna talk about and I just start talking. It just seems to go so much better. You'll find the way that works for you. Do what works. And also I would recommend that you practice. That's another thing a lot of people don't talk about, but I practice. I would record my video more than once until I got it right so that I was comfortable with it, especially in the beginning. Nicole, what recommendations do you have about how to get started on YouTube with your first video? I think you hit the nail on the head there with let's choose a topic that you are already excited to speak about. Probably the topic that you know, you're bringing up at family dinner that Yeah. really wants to hear about. Well, everybody on YouTube, your right people are gonna wanna hear, right. So. Bring that topic, bring it to YouTube. I do find that when people overly script or write out your entire word for word what you're going to say, we can hear that, right. Nobody actually speaks the same way that they read. So I would encourage you get some bullet points if you need some. You know, sentences to drive the point home, then that's fine. But having a rough outline just to guide you through is going to be best. And you can think about it kind of like an essay, how you learned back in school, right? So you're gonna have an introduction, you're gonna have your body pieces, and then you're gonna have a conclusion, a way that it comes full circle together. And in the beginning, Debbie mentioned a hook. So this is a really important piece just to make sure that people are actually going to listen. You gotta remember. The first minute or two of the video are gonna be the most viewed, and also the piece that determines if people are gonna keep watching. So if you're going on about like, hi guys. Oh my gosh, I'm so happy to be on again. The birds are chirping. It's spring. Like some of your people might love that. Some people who don't know, you might just click on to the next video. So I do recommend having that hook, and I like to think about it in terms of three pieces with gathering attention. So what is gonna capture their attention to keep them? Wanting to listen, authority. How can I give them a little something to make them wanna trust me in this? Right? So are you interested in losing weight? I've helped over 500 women to lose, you know, 50 plus pounds, right? It doesn't have to be that exact, but showing people why they should trust you around that topic. And then give people a little bit of an agenda like, what can I expect from this video? Why should I? Stick around and listen to this long form content and then I think you're gonna be all set. So if you could at least script out those initial three pieces and let yourself flow in between, I think you're gonna find it a lot better than full scripting. Okay, we have to talk about AI because I know what everybody is thinking and they've been watching videos. Chances are about YouTube and how to do it, and you've heard about AI and I just wanna encourage you to not worry about AI right now. Instead of having AI write the script for you or come up with the idea of the topic, just rely on your own knowledge. You really will be able to deliver it better. It's just like writing that script that makes it difficult. If you let AI, whatever platform, you know, whether it's chat, GPT or Claude, whoever it is, script a video for you, then now they're using their words and you're not using your words, so you will have a much harder time, I believe while you're getting started, if you let AI help you, I just want you to trust your own instinct. You know what people need to hear. And I would definitely just focus on that. I agree. Focus on what you're interested. Bring it naturally, authentically as you, we don't wanna hear what AI says. We can search it and find it ourselves in a moment, right? We wanna hear your lived experience and your opinion. Absolutely. Let's talk about recording now. I'm recording on my computer. You can use your computer. I do happen to have an external camera, but you can use your computer. You can also use your phone. Totally fine. One thing I would think about is noise. It does. Create a more enjoyable experience for the person listening. If you have a quiet room, and audio does matter too. So while you can start out with just whatever you have, including your iPhone or earbuds or whatever you have, eventually you might wanna move to a better microphone. There is a quality of sound that makes it a better listening experience, but please hear me on this. Do not wait to get started on YouTube until you can afford a camera, until you can get the right microphone. All of those things don't really matter when you're getting started and you might find yourself, wasting time looking for the right equipment when you could actually be recording videos and putting yourself out there. I think the most important, most critical piece is to have good lighting. Now, while I do use a light and we will link all these items in the description, it is so simple to just sit in front of a window. Sit in front of a window so that people can see your face. I think a quick tip is that you wanna have the light in front of you and not behind you? So you want to have a well-lit face because I believe that light on your face creates trust instead of you looking like you're sitting in a dark room. Yeah, I agree that lighting piece is key and for the audio, you know, you don't have to go get a fancy mic like Debbie said, one thing is. If you're recording in a room that has a lot of hard surfaces, like hardwood floor, throw some blankets on the ground, like it doesn't have to be crazy, just keep it out of view and that can help absorb some things so you can get creative, but I think it's most important that you're showing up. Your people are going to expect that the quality is going to improve over time. But like I said, like my first video, I recorded it on my iPhone, and this was years ago, so it wasn't that great quality. I would definitely go ahead and film kind of a batch. Now you might be saying like a batch. I can't even get my first one filmed, but try to shoot for filming two or three videos at one time. It is actually much easier to do that, and yes, you can change your clothes to, look different on every video, but also you don't have to worry about that either. Get set up, get ready, and just get recording. That's the deal. I wanna talk about mindset for just a moment though, because I do think you need to do some mindset work so you can show up as your best self. The first thing I wanna say is do the mindset work in reminding yourself that you know what you're talking about in reminding yourself that you have value, And that what you have to. Say, the world needs to know what you have to say. I can promise you, no matter what your topic is, no matter what your niche is, there are people out there who are waiting to learn from you. So that's number one. The second thing is don't expect your first video to be a home run. Just give yourself some grace. It's like everything else in our life, We don't expect to lose 30 pounds in a month. We expect to try to get through our diet on the first day, That's the same way with recording these videos. Just start where you are and then you'll get better as you go. Done is definitely better than perfect. Yes, done is better than perfect. We love that. We wanna see your face right, get yourself out there in the world. It does not have to be perfect. So Nicole, let me ask you about length of videos. I always have a tendency to go pretty long, but I do wanna say, we can look at our statistics and see how long people actually do watch. What is a good amount of time to have your first video? Or maybe all your videos. so length is a little bit of a tricky piece because there's data that shows differing things, right? So we have videos that are 10, 15, 20 minutes that do great. There's also data that shows, actually videos that are. Over one hour are doing even better, but it's like, what is the data saying about that? Because people use YouTube for a variety of different reasons, right? People might go on and just have like the fireplace, YouTube video on for hours, and so now it's saying to the algorithm, well actually these videos that are over an hour are performing much better. So I would say in the coaching space, I have done quite a lot of AB testing and I haven't really found that much of an impact in terms of length on reach. We actually see long videos do really well. We see short videos do really well. So I would just say get on, talk about the topic for as long as feels comfortable to you so you don't have to keep babbling on to get to an hour. but you know, go for as long as feels good and then just keep an eye on your analytics to see what is performing as you get more and more out there. Now, a big thing is that YouTube shorts actually perform the best across all videos. They're really pushing them out in the search feed. So if you notice when you search on YouTube, there'll be like maybe two long form videos, and then four to six shorts, and then another two long form videos and so forth. So whenever you're making your video, just make sure that you're also making shorts. From that video to post them. We're gonna talk about how to do that in another video, but I did wanna mention that for length. So maybe aim for, you know, 15 to 20 minutes for your first one. But overall, I wouldn't worry too much about the length. Just get on, share your stuff authentically, however long that takes. let me ask you about an introduction video. Do you think that that is necessary for somebody to do just a video about them that they have, you know, living on their channel that gives a little background about who they are and what they coach on? I think an introduction video is a great piece to have. so essentially the introduction video is gonna live at the top of your feed. Whenever somebody comes there, they'll see all your individual videos, but this one will automatically play. And so it's a nice chance to have people get to know you. especially if you're a coach, it's a really great chance to share your story, right? You didn't just become a coach one day 'cause you woke up and were like, huh, coaching would be fun. You probably have some deep story as to why that. Came about in your life, what allowed you to do that? What sort of certifications? Who are you really here to help? So I would throw those into the first video and just keep it nice and short and sweet. You can go into the whole long story in a different video, but that introduction video should be, I would say about three minutes long. Is there any day that we should be publishing on that's better than another or consistency in how many videos we publish at a time? Yeah, I mean, consistency is als always gonna be key. It shows the algorithm that you care about creating, so it's. Going to want to push your videos out more. It also allows your audience to begin to trust you 'cause they have that expectation that your video is gonna come out. however, as you're first getting started, I would say just do it at a cadence that feels doable for you, and then you can scale up from there. Maybe it's, you know, once a month videos and then you go to every other week and then work your way up to weekly. This is exactly what we did, and now we post two times a week on Debbie's channel. So, of freedom there. I would say for timing, it's a little bit tough when you're a new channel because you don't have any analytics to say. Most of my viewers are online on, Wednesday between three and 4:00 PM So over time you can start to see that in your analytics and look at the best time to publish. But to start, I would just say. Is there a time that you're on YouTube? Or if you don't watch YouTube, is there a time that you go on social media, particularly if you are your ideal client, which I know for the most part, many of us are as coaches. I would probably post at that time and then just stay consistent for a bit or maybe test out a few different times to see if it impacts your analytics. And then over time YouTube's gonna gather data about your audience and help you decide what the best timing is. what about using this as a podcast as well? Could you talk about that a little bit? Yeah, so if you're recording your YouTube videos, you may as well post them to a podcast because typically they're gonna be great audio as well. now some podcast platforms, mainly Spotify, do also have video podcasts. So let's say you wanted to get started with that. You would just need to find a hosting platform to host your podcast on. Spotify for Creators is a great free one that I recommend. it pushes it directly to Spotify. There's. You sort of like RSS feed setup things. Perhaps we can do a separate video on podcast setup, Debbie. but you know, essentially all you're gonna do is take the exact same footage that you've already had, upload the audio, and now it's getting spread out to a bunch of different platforms. something to note is that YouTube does have a podcast section as well, so you can post your podcasts there or have the RSS feed pull in. I do find that it tends to perform better when you post the video separately as a YouTube video and then post on the podcast as its own thing. but of course, do whatever feels easiest for you. But that's a great point that if you are recording these videos, you might as well get the audio out on podcast too, just to reach even more people. I wanna encourage you to just get started. Then we can think about adding it as a podcast. We can think about cutting it in too shorts. We can think about all of the repurposing that we've heard so much about, but what I find is oftentimes clients that are starting on a YouTube channel, sometimes they wanna make it so complicated that it's difficult to get going. So I'm always like, look guys, let's just start video number one. Pick your favorite topic and let's just talk about it. Let's not worry too much about getting to the other places, but long term, the thing is, anything that you have recorded, you can go back and repurpose that at any time. It doesn't have to be today, but at any time, you can repurpose it. Exactly, you're essentially creating a library of your ip, which is so exciting. so we'll talk a lot more about how to repurpose it in episode four of this series. So just make sure that you've subscribed and hit that bell notification to make sure that you receive all those videos. That is it for today. We've talked about how to make your plan and how to record your first video. I wanna encourage you to just make an outline. You don't have to do a script and just record, Just get it out there into the world at some point. Yes, you can utilize it. And repurpose it into anything you want. Just allow this to be easy and just know that it is going to reach the right people. Know that people want to hear what you have to say because I know, I know for sure that you can make a difference in the world. We're gonna talk in the next couple of videos about how to edit. We'll share with you what tools we recommend. Then we'll be covering how to promote your videos and any other details you need to know. So don't forget to subscribe. Hit the bell to be notified and we'll see you soon.
