Faceless videos are in! How to Create an Irresistible Faceless Video - Alex Carmeli

Website: www.unscriptedmoment.com/videoskillslab

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alexcarmeli/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/videohangout

00:00 There are some days where quite frankly, I do not feel like getting on video i just want to hang out in my pajamas or maybe I'm super sweaty after doing like a hard workout and I don't want to have to go through right then and there and shower and like look presentable. Or maybe it's just like an off day and I have like a zit that's popped up and I feel like self-conscious about it or maybe I'm just like a little emotionally drained and I don't feel like getting on video, whatever that is, you know, for me on that particular day, you might be watching this video because you feel the same where there's times where just having your your, your face kind of spotlighted really just makes you a little bit anxious and nervous and it might be, you know, why you're not getting on camera or it might be why you're not getting on camera as often.  

00:50 And traditionally video content we see online where we are teaching and then maybe, you know, have some sort of call to a call to action where we are then, you know, sharing an offer or selling kind of looks like this where I am looking directly at the camera you can see my face, some part of my like outer body as well you can see my hand, shoulders, all of that stuff and again, like sometimes the insecurities that you might have, whether it's like a physical or emotional, they might be like a little bit more magnified.  

01:22 And I came up with this interesting solution for some of my clients who just were not getting on video as often as they should be and that's where faceless videos are going to come in so today I'm going to help you figure out some strategies you can use to get on video even when you do not feel your best sO First off, if you don't know me, my name is Alex Carmelli i'm a video strategist and for the last 4 plus almost five years, I have been helping entrepreneurs to get on video with ease and confidence i'm doing this here full time i'm, I'm living in Austin, texas in the US and I'm living here with my two dogs, my husband and our little baby girl who's nine months old.  

02:06 And I'm super excited to be here teaching you so the title this is faceless live videos, but I just want to clear up you really can use this stuff for pre recorded videos as well the reason I love live video is because it kind of has that forcing function element where if you schedule a live, you tell your audience, you know, you, you put it on the calendar, you have to go and do that video right.  

02:30 And the other piece of it is live is 1 and done. We don't go back and edit it it's just this one authentic tape and you don't waste all that time editing. I also love it because it's this real time back and forth between you and you and the audience you can pull up comments and questions and you know, say hello to people and all that good stuff. So I personally think live is one of the best and easiest ways to get these videos done quickly and powerfully for all you know, for all those reasons I just stated, but these absolutely can be pre reported as well so let me get really specific first about what I mean by faceless video, and I'm going to talk about why these videos typically get a bad rap and are not recommended.  

03:14 So when I say a faceless video, I mean you're literally might be off camera completely like this right now with my face I just removed from the screen and I've just got some sort of image up there or I'm like super teeny tiny on the side in some way, like maybe like this or maybe not quite like this but let me go back to the other way, something like this. But it's where I'm like not quite as spotlighted, not quite as like magnified and maybe just a little bit more, a little bit more hidden, right so I think typically faceless videos tend to get bad rap for a couple of reasons and I'm giving real examples of videos that I have audited from some of my students that were just, you know, no offense at, all to, to you know, these people who created them because well done on them for like, you know, creating anything and putting it out there at all.  

04:09 But they just, they, they really didn't quite hit the mark. So the first one is where you have a piece of video content where you've got a lot of like random B roll. And it might not necessarily even be you ideally like it is you or your your life for your students. But one video in particular I'm thinking of it's just random B roll of like entrepreneurs, kind of like working or typing at a computer and it looks very like stock in the G And then it's some sort of software that's reading off a script so it's not the person, It's not the actual person's voice with their like inflections and personality that you can hear.  

04:52 And it's just random B roll so it's really like feels very like kind of corporate and awkward and not something that will like really emotionally and emotionally connect with your audience, right. So I think that's a big like if someone sees that come across their their news feed, they're going to skip right past something like that. I'm sure there are people who maybe are very, very skilled that that can make it work but I've seen this done very rarely. The second is instead of treating a faceless video like a piece of video content, they treat it like a podcast episode where there's like no visual stimuli and instead they kind of just put a cover photo so it would be something like this if I just went off the screen completely, just had this kind of cover photo up or, you know, title photo and just kind of taught the video, which is sort of boring like like the point of a video is for it to be like, like using some type of visual stimuli to teach and to make your, your, your point more impactful, right? If if you're trying to just shoot things like this, that like just have a podcast, you know what I mean? So let's let's go back.  

06:06 I think these are oops these are the main reasons why these videos kind of get a bad rap so I want to go through right now and I want to share with you some examples of what these faceless videos could look like now I just want to go on record and say as well, do I think you showing your face just like this and speaking directly to your audience and feeling really confident and proud of everything you have to say is just the best thing. Yes like yes, yes, yes, yes, yes but if it's just you're at a point where you're like, OK, I just need something to get me through the next couple of videos or I just need some help to get started again.  

06:45 I think a couple things one, something's always better than nothing. And what I found for some of my students is when they start to do these pieces of video content, the consistency of doing them, the practice of them brings clarity because they start getting clear on their messaging, on the process they want to use for for their videos. And then all of that brings confidence. And so they now have this, this, this skill set in their wheelhouse that allows them to produce these types of videos, but also show their face without all of this extra stuff at all and kind of use both of these.  

07:20 So that's all I want to say go on record with that and now we can go through and dive into some examples. So, and I'll come back to this in in a little bit because for to, to get these videos out there, you're probably going to need to use some sort of third party app to do some of the stuff I'm going to talk about but we'll, we'll circle back so let's talk about these three options for faceless videos so the first option is using a graphic so I'm going to give examples of videos that I've done recently. So the first video is where I basically talked about how I closed 90 % of sales calls with this video framework and all I've done is essentially went into Canva.  

08:06 Guys, you can see I'm not very good with Canva like this is not a great graphic like it's OK, but the point is it gets my point across and it is good enough and it's also if you're scrolling like on Facebook or Instagram, you don't see a lot of pieces of video content with like little graphics like this that are popping up usually it's just the person's face so in some ways it's kind of an advantage, right because it's something that's a little different, right and because it's something that's like really prepared and, you know, looks like it's like it could teach you something if you're interested in the, in the content I cover and you're probably going to stop or maybe you're even more likely to stop scrolling and watch.  

08:47 So, yeah, like I said, I put together this really quick graphic and all I'm doing is, you know, have my face really tiny in the corner like this. And I am just teaching off of this graphic and what's amazing about it, you can see my little pink cursor on the screen it's really important for me to be, you know, moving this cursor and like demonstrating and pointing to to where things are so we're kind of just directing the attention of the person so we're not just looking at this this one thing, but that's that's the first example.  

09:20 Next example conversations I have daily that boost my videos and make me money. Similar graphic not not exactly, but maybe this one is maybe the graphics in I forgot to switch to the graphics that's my bad, but that's OK. So again, this is this is a really similar example of, you know, I, I basically created another graphic and I, yeah, taught the same video. Let's do let's do one that's slightly different. Ok, This one is called 3 phases to a successful video challenge funnel so this is where I walked my audience through basically what goes into planning like a, a live video challenge.  

10:05 And you can see here on the screen, I basically like literally took some different colored markers and drew out the process right. Again, it's kind of ugly it's it's even uglier than this like this looks pretty good compared to compared to this but it didn't matter like people still watch that video this video still got a ton of comments it was still super useful and like it was still like engaging for people so don't feel like just because you don't have like Canva or anything fancy that you can't you can't do something like this. Ok, so that's that First option is using some sort of graphics, either creating a little graphic in Canva or literally drawing something out.  

10:46 One thing that I didn't include on here that's a little bit fancier is you can also like connect to like an iPad or like a tablet and there are definitely applications you can use to basically connect and like be drawing things out, you know, during your live or during your your video and teaching that way like kind of white board style too. Ok, Next up is Google Docs slash sheets so this this doesn't have to be Google specifically, but really, I love Google i think, you know, all their stuff's great, but Docs and Sheets are an amazing thing that you can share so that you can be kind of teeny tiny in the corner, but we're not on the screen at all, but teaching something amazing so this this screenshot right here is from a behind the scenes video that I did during a video Diaries a little course so essentially I had this signature challenge, my live video challenge.  

11:50 I've run out like 15 times and it's like sort of one of the things that I'm known for. And basically I decided, I ran this in February 2025 i decided in the month of January I was going to give people a behind the scenes look at what went into planning this video challenge so every single day I would get on video after I finished working on the challenge and I would share everything I did i would share, you know, the numbers of sign ups, I would share upgrade info i would share behind the scenes of designing the sales pages and how I'm evolving the event and all that good stuff.  

12:30 And because I was working at like 6, AMI was literally still in my pajamas. Tear up like I go live record videos like very. What's the word very casually, But even even then I was like, again, this is too much even for me. So I decided to just completely take my face off and basically just share my screen with like the planning documents that I was using to keep track of planning this event that's so that's that's one example. Another example is where I shared my video script formula, little templates and this is a video, 29 minute long video moves to you as you can see it a little bit more where basically I had people watch me write my next video script in real time.  

13:24 And yeah, so just went in with the topic, pulled this little template up and basically just started working on it and and narrating it. So again, the focus is on the document. And yeah, there's me in the corner kind of speaking and chatting and sharing my expertise on this but the main focus is on the document itself so, you know, if I'm not looking my best or feel my best or whatever, like, you know, the spotlight isn't on me to the same extent. Another example, do this exercise to generate awesome video ideas and here I'm just again, it's sharing an Excel spreadsheet and in real time going through and filling this sheet out and showing people how I will do this so I think what's part of what's make this engaging is because, you know, there's some sort of activity that's happening as well so like I said earlier, sometimes it's boring when we just have that static slide and there's no visual variety and like just shoot a podcast and what's the point but when you have that video, like you being able to do things in real time and people experiencing that is it can be a really powerful thing.  

14:31 Ok, a little pro tip on this before we move to the last piece is you can give these sheets away as freebies. So, for example, let's go to this one as an example i will let's say I, you know, someone watched this video on this one simple monthly exercise to generate video ideas. In this video, I think I said something like, by the way, if you want me to just send you this, this Excel sheet so you can use it for yourself, comment spreadsheet in the in the comments of this video and I will send you Adm with it.  

15:03 And what ended up happening, and I do this with so many of my videos people will comment asking for that spreadsheet. I don't just post it in the comments i will then message them and, and have a conversation, ask them about their goals and their challenges and I'll give them that spreadsheet and I'll send them any other videos that I think are helpful and so many times as conversations end up leading to about sales because people have just built even more trust with me. And then when I do put out offers, they're even more likely to go buy or they're more likely to watch that next video because they feel even more connected because we've had that conversation.  

15:37 And because we're having those conversations, the algorithm's like all these two people are connected let's keep showing them each other's content, right so they're seeing my videos again and again, which is again, a really powerful thing so that's just a little tip. And people love this last idea is really kind of traditional, which is these slides, which is sort of like exactly what I'm doing in this summit presentation today where I am using slides and sharing a particular topic.  

16:10 I want to give Pat as an example because she actually spoke at my Summit Go Live con last month. And there was a summit all about how to use live video to grow your business. And she taught all about how to use collaborations, in particular, power up your video views. And I love this presentation she did such a good job with it, but she taught the presentation like this. It was just her voice. She put together this super, super, like, snazzy, snazzy, such a strange adjective.  

16:46 It's just pretty cool, like slide deck. And yeah, she did a really good job and it was just narrating these slides, but she had like really bright colors like you could see from this slide the bright colors, you could see the like like how neat it is and how kind of like punchy it is. So that's why I absolutely loved it and the content was good so lots of people watched it. Ok, let me back up because there's one more thing we need to cover.  

17:13 Ok, so like I said to y'all, if you want to be able to do things like this, you got to make sure that typically you have some sort of third party app so you could use something like zoom to screen share and do this. I use screen Yard, which you know, allows me to kind of do all this cool stuff where I can move myself, make myself bigger or smaller i can, you know, take the presentation off i can take myself out, you know, Stream Yard also lets you stream to like multiple different platforms all at one time there's a lot of cool branding stuff bringing guests on.  

17:51 I'm an affiliate, so if you guys do want like a free trial to use it or more info on it, you can DM me like you know, stream yard info, I'm happy to send it to you. But there's other there's other options to like ecam for Mac users or restream, but you're probably going to need maybe something like this and I know that stream yard has a free a free option if you're already using zoom, like that's another really great low cost option.  

18:19 So you'd have to just figure figure that that piece out, but it's it's really not too bad. Ok, awesome. I hope you've got so much out of this presentation today. If you do have any questions, feel free to, you know, shoot me a message, shoot me an email, and I'm happy to answer them but I hope you feel empowered to get on video, to show your beautiful face on video, to like take that first step, regardless of whether you're like fully spotlighted or not.  

18:51 Because truly it is just like you putting in the work and being consistent that is going to matter the most in the long run. Ok, before I let you go, if you have not yet watched my live video Crash Course, you haven't seen it. I would highly highly recommend going through this training it's around an hour and a half i recorded this live actually last month so it's very very up to date and essentially in in this under 2 hour training i am teaching you everything, absolutely everything you need to know about how to like get started using live video to, you know, sell your offers and grow your audience and all the good stuff and to be honest with you, a lot of the stuff I teach in there can pretty much be applied to pre recording videos we go through tack and scripting and titles and mapping out your path to cash and a lot of it is very, very similar so even if you're like, oh, I don't know about live, a lot of it's, you know, applies to like long form pre recorded the video content as well, and we did a a a fun question and answer session at the end with some really, really good questions too.  

20:01 So it's definitely worth listening through those as well. Ok, that is it for me thank you so much and I hope you guys enjoy the rest of the summit talk soon.