Importance of Virtual Appearance in Your Everyday Business With Shelley Golden

It is without a doubt that we consequently spend most of our time in the virtual world. Especially at the start of the pandemic, the reality for us all has been spending hours with our personal gadgets. Video calls have become our new channel in order to stay connected. We shop with just one tap and follow other people across the globe through the use of social media platforms. Whether you use it for school, work, business, or entertainment, it's undeniable that the virtual world has been our refuge amidst all the uncertainties. With that comes the aesthetics and appearance that all of us should maintain online. Even business owners have no excuse for this one. It's important to step up our branding by showcasing creativity and uniqueness so that we become noticeable. Today's guest is an expert on that matter. Shelly Golden from Shelly Golden Style Zoom Makeovers, will walk you through her tips and tricks on how to look your best. Shelly helps you attain better results in both your professional and social life so be sure to catch her in today’s talk. --- Listen to the podcast here: Importance of Virtual Appearance in Your Everyday Business With Shelley Golden Welcome to Action's Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. One of the ways that I envision a lot of you out there listening are going to get to the level you want to be at, achieve the life that you really want, is identifying a need that wasn't previously there or few people were really thinking about, identifying something new, forging a really, truly new, unique path. Identifying new needs and taking action on it is a fantastic way to really live a life that you really want to live, something that my guest today, Shelley Golden, of Shelly Golden Style Zoom Makeovers has done fairly recently. --- Shelly, welcome to the program. Thank you. Super glad to be here. Definitely. Let's start out with Zoom Makeovers. What does this entail because even though a lot of us have spent a little over two years, spending more time on Zoom than we ever imagined ourselves doing? I'm sure a lot of people are not familiar with the idea of what a Zoom makeover A Zoom makeover is literally tweaking, transforming everything that you see in your Zoom box – a five-step process to really go through camera angle, sound, lighting. Lighting is the most important factor. What color clothing works best on you in your space? Your real background -- is it a virtual background? Are you in your garage? Are you in your kitchen? Says so much about you. For those who wear makeup, this is crazy, what I call Zoom's specific makeup techniques. It's the way you put it on, which is not the same way you would put it on if you're going on the street. People are looking at you on a two-dimensional platform, but you're trying to create a three-dimensional look and work everything that you see in the box. It's almost like creating a new painting. Where does your eye go first, which of course you want to go right here to the other person's eyes, and eliminate distractions. Increase engagement, trust, and credibility, and eliminate distractions. Obviously, a Zoom makeover takes on a different form than a standard makeover, where you're making over primarily what's on your body. Now, we can talk about the concept of an emotional makeover and all these other types of internal makeover. When people think of makeovers, they usually think of what they're wearing on the face, makeup, clothing, everything like that. A Zoom makeover is the overall purpose, how you present yourselves to people -- the same or is there a different purpose because of what people do on Zoom versus what people do, say when you're out in public, at a restaurant, or somewhere else, and you're going through the regular makeover process. Look at what story you're telling yourself and then look for places where you could reframe the story.Share on X "Hey, if I'm not good enough with this, I'm okay with it. I'm learning to be better." Anything that's going to stop us from moving forward is limiting. It's a limiting belief or disempowering story, a negative assessment, all those things. Is there anything about certain times of day or certain specific situations? Do you have a lot of clients that realize that every time I'm around this type of person, or every time I'm in this kind of an office, it tends to be associated with my mid-afternoon energy crash or something like that, where people need to be more mindful of that negative story seeping into their minds? If you're conscious that it's going to happen at 3:00 P.M., at 3:00 PM, somebody is going to walk into your office, and you're going to be so upset by them. There's some things you could possibly do before 3:00 P.M. Get up and walk around. Instead of having them in your office, take them for a walk outside or change the environment a little, change what you're talking about. Start in a different way and center yourself, deep breathing, before that 3:00 P.M. You can really handle it. It's different because it's how people see you in a box. It's the Hollywood Squares.Share on X That's all they see. Do they see you as engaged or not engaged? All I'm doing is moving one foot forward, one foot back. Can they see you, or can they not see you? I turned my lights on. I turned my lights off. It's not even so much as your hair, your makeup -- yes, that's it. Can they see you? Can they engage with you? I'm also working with attorneys who are doing depositions. It's not the attorneys. It's their witnesses, their deponents. Do they come off looking trustworthy? Do they come up looking credible? People that are deposing witnesses, they're not used to being on camera. Where are they in their house? Are they in their kitchen? Are they in their bedroom? Tweak everything so that a witness can look credible to a jury. I'm a costume historian. I used to create costume at a fashion design school in Chicago, as a matter of fact, since we were talking about Chicago before we came on the show. I also lectured on it around the world, because I lived in Europe, in the Middle East, for 15 years. As I say to the attorneys, do you want me to create the girl-next-door look? I'll create the girl-next-door look. I can create whatever look I want that people will engage with, and appear credible -- a transformation for your Zoom space. One thing I'm wondering is that, as you work with people, imagining people's professions, people's work being one of the primary things people are doing on Zoom, does what someone wants to do in a Zoom makeover or in how they're presenting themselves on Zoom vary from profession to profession what you would advocate for people to do? Sometimes, I'm actually working with people who are yoga instructors -- very different need than an attorney. For example: a yoga instructor, they need their space to look zem. They need to be able to be heard. There needs to be good. How is the music coming through? What's their lighting? An attorney, not that I'm only concentrating on attorneys, somebody who's in sales, sales teams -- they need to not only feel confident that they look good in the Zoom box/ When they go to a sales call, they need to know that they look good. In a sales call in Zoom, they need to feel confident. They need to be engaged. They need to look credible and trustworthy. Different people have different needsShare on X How often are the needs multiple needs for the same person? What I'm envisioning is the idea that when you're on a sales call, you need to present yourself like this, but then when you're working with your team, or when you're coordinating with other parents in the neighborhood, but some other particular situation, you want to tweak things up a little bit. Maybe you have another room setup where it's more that appearance. I organize the person's room. Sometimes, we are actually rearranging the furniture. Wow. I actually had a couple of calls that I got in with a couple men as it happened. One gentleman was in the insurance business, and he wanted to start doing podcasts. "Let's do something new. Let's do podcasts." His room was, what you saw, like an old man's insurance office. Yeah. I always have people send me a video of their space. What does your room look like? When I saw his room, I said, "You really need to get an extra desk in this office." I drew a little room plan on the back of a piece of white paper. I've sent it to him, "Okay, move your furniture over the weekend. It looks like in this setup, and then we'll continue next week." I had another gentleman, actually, just a couple of weeks ago. We're looking through the bathroom door. "Okay, this is just networking." We had an hour and a half at point. I'm giving him directions to move things in real time. "Move this over here," he had to move boxes and books, and move furniture and bookshelves. He did it, and he looked so much more professional. People weren't distracted by people walking through the hallway, the bathroom door behind him. Not only that his lighting was better, he was able to see the room and also really conscious that having people move furniture don't get on a call with me thinking that they're going to have to rearrange the furniture in their room. What I'm doing is I'm not just making it better for Zoom. I'm also making it better for them ergonomically in the space that they're in. It sounds like what you're saying is there's a component of it that's how you're being perceived by other people on the call. There's also a component of it that regards how your setup enables you to continue to do your work effectively, enables you to continue to effectively speak, have the right sound. ...