I had a blast last night during the webinar and enjoyed these tweets from listeners afterwards:

“Loved it! I have a page full of notes from the #GetAhead webinar :)”

“Listened to a great webinar by @AnnaRunyan (@classycareer) tonight! #Inspired #GetAhead”

I was totally motivated and inspired just preparing for the webinar and consolidating all of the information. I interviewed some awesome ladies in 2012! One of the things I went over last night in the webinar was what I learned from getting over my fear of video and introducing myself to other people.

Before 2012, I had never even posted one Youtube video, so doing these Skype interviews was way outside my comfort zone!
Here are 3 things I learned about getting over my fears in 2012:

1) Women Want To Help Other Women

I learned in my 2012 challenge that almost everyone I emailed for an interview, emailed me back! Everyone I spoke to was super excited to help and wanted to give back as much as possible. Women want to help other women, so if you are scared to reach out and connect with someone don’t be!

You will be surprised at what they may be able to help you with! They also referred me to other women and most of the time I didn’t even have to email many of the women because one after the other they referred me to someone else to speak to! Which was awesome! It’s always good when you have a referral from someone that they know because they are more excited to speak with you.

2) Don’t Be Afraid To Ask

You never know what is out there unless you ask.  What was awesome about my challenge is I could connect with women anywhere in the world. I live in San Diego and I interviewed one woman in San Diego, but everyone else was outside of San Diego. It was awesome how Skype can really connect you and make you feel like you are having coffee together in person. My connections with all of these people are so much stronger because I did these Skype conversations rather than just talking to them over the phone or on email or social media.

I then later in the year had a get unstuck webinar and when I emailed the women that I interviewed, everyone helped me promote it! So they all had my back because I made a strong connection with them over Skype and I could count on them. So these are the relationships I truly hope that you build in 2013. Whether it’s your friends, family or professional relationships, you want people who have your back and you can trust to support you no matter what!

3) Practice Makes Perfect

My first interview was not great. I was nervous. My lighting was terrible. The sound on the interview was awful and I had to spend a few days fixing it so there wasn’t an echo every time we talked. But, I did it and got over my fears. I practiced more and at the end of my last interview in 2012 I was totally comfortable on camera! I also got really used to introducing other people and I didn’t stress anymore. So by the end of 2012, my interviews just flowed better and I think everyone was so much more relaxed because of it.

My mom is not going to be happy about me including this but I have to share this story because it is really funny. I love my mom and she has watched every single one of my interviews in 2012 so shout out to my mom who may be my biggest fan, even though she is definitely not my target market!

So the funny story about my mom is that she told me in a very nice motherly way that the camera really does make me look fatter and I didn’t look like myself on camera. So that was after my first interview and my husband nicely also mentioned this as well. He helped me move the camera a little higher so I didn’t have a double chin in all the videos after the first one. So thanks to my technical team for helping me improve my videos each time! I learned that I can’t be perfect.

If I tried to be perfect the videos would never get out there for you to watch and learn from. So part of getting over my fears was realizing they were good enough, and they got better every time. The photo above is my very first interview and I was SO nervous! I wanted to share it with you today because I got over my fears and did it.  And from then on it was so much easier!

I also have to thank my assistant Lor who wrote out all the transcripts for me because I didn’t have the time. So thanks to Lor we can have all this information in text format as well!  I have heard that many Classy Career Girl readers read my blog from work so they can’t actually watch the videos and are really appreciative that I always include the transcript in the posts. (Don’t worry ladies, I won’t tell your boss!)

What have you learned by stepping out of your comfort zone?