Getting in front of a camera is scary AF, and I'm saying that as someone who remembers the first time I talked on Instagram Stories, legitimately terrified that my college friends and family would see me and think I was some kind of stuck-up know-it-all...
Today I'm joined by the incredible Olivia Bossert, a fashion photographer turned personal brand photographer, content coach, artist, and founder of the It Girl movement (which, just so you know, is way less about that mean girl energy and way more about reclaiming the phrase as something empowering, loving, and kind).
She's worked with literal Vogue models, and now she's helping online service providers like us show up visibly and confidently in our content without the full production or existential crisis.
Every guest has to prove they belong here, and Olivia did not disappoint.
If you're an online service provider in 2026, showing up on camera isn't really optional. I know. I don't love saying it either. The good news is we get to do our marketing for free: we're just paying in time and effort instead.
Olivia put it perfectly: even she, as a photographer who spent her entire career behind the lens, had to learn how to flip it on herself.
The alternative — going fully faceless — is always on the table, but it's becoming a harder sell. Especially with AI-generated imagery getting scarily realistic, showing your actual face is one of the most powerful differentiators you have.
Olivia spent 15 years photographing some of the most beautiful people in the world, and every single one of them walked into the studio and apologised for something: a spot, bloating, a bruise... Every single one.
So if you've ever shown up to a shoot or your Stories feeling like you're just human, and all of us experience that.
What Olivia says, and what I find genuinely comforting, is that 99% of the time, nobody else sees the thing you're fixated on. When she sends galleries to clients, the photos she picks as her favorites are often the exact ones the client can't stand because they're too busy zooming in on the one thing that only they notice.
Her advice when you hate your whole gallery is to ask someone you trust to pick their three favourites and just trust them. They're not going to choose the horrible one. Let yourself feel seen through someone else's eyes, even when you can't see it yourself.
We spend so much time consuming beautifully lit, perfectly edited, highly produced content that when we try to make our own, we feel like we're failing. Like we're just... crap at this.
Olivia (along with Ira Glass) calls this The Taste Gap, and it's not a personal flaw. The people whose content you're comparing yourself to have been doing this longer, have bigger teams, and have more experience. You're not starting at the same place they are now. You're starting where they started.
The only way through it is to do it. Over and over. Post the imperfect thing. Film the thing with the slightly messy hair. Because the gap between your taste and your output does close: through reps, not through waiting until you feel ready.
When I first heard the phrase "It Girl", I'll be honest... my first instinct was not good. Paparazzi, Paris Hilton, self-obsession. Not exactly my brand.
Olivia had the exact same reaction to her own concept. She spent a month and a half knowing the term was right but being completely unable to say it out loud. So she did what any self-respecting creative does: she sat down with her journal and rewrote the definition for herself.
Her version of an It Girl is someone who is purely themselves: kind, empathetic, ambitious, showing up as their truest self in every capacity, not performing a version of themselves they think they're supposed to be. That's the It Girl.
It's a concept that maps really well onto what I believe about personal branding: the performance we think we have to put on online is actually the thing that makes us feel fake and unaligned. When you drop it and just show up as yourself, people connect with you.
We all know the phrase "people buy from people they know, like, and trust". We've heard it a million times. But it's worth saying again because it's still true, and it's not going anywhere.
The tricky part is that the path from "I posted a Story" to "I made a sale" feels impossibly long. There are so many steps in between that it's hard to draw a straight line.
But here's the thing: visibility compounds. The more you show up, the more people know you. The more they know you, the more they like you. The more they like you, the more they trust you. And trust is what converts.
Olivia also made a point I really loved: showing your face isn't vanity. We've been told for years that caring about how we look is shallow. But being visible (and looking good while doing it) is just a different piece of the same story as having a great product. It all matters.
Olivia breaks content creation into two modes: the Carpe Diem method (filming stuff on the go, seizing the moment when the light is good and you're already dressed) and intentional batching (planning specific shots in advance so you're not staring at your tripod going "now what!?").
Most of her content is Carpe Diem. She gets ready every day — not for vanity's sake, but because it puts her brain in work mode — and that means she's always ready to film something if the moment arises.
For batching days, the move is to spend 30 minutes before you pick up your phone making a little shot list. What do you want to capture? What story are you telling? Go in with a plan and you won't waste half the day standing in your living room feeling like an idiot.
And then, crucially, save everything. Even the clips you don't love. Even the one where your hair is up and you're mid-website-design and it's a bit wrinkly. Three months from now, that B-roll might be exactly what you need.
You don't have to reinvent your content every single week.
Repeating angles, reusing clips, wearing the same outfits — none of that is lazy. It's recognisable. In branding, we repeat things until people associate them with us. Content works the same way.
Find two or three spots in your home with good light and a background you can tidy in five minutes. Those are your content corners. You don't need to film in every room. You don't need a new setup every time. You just need consistency and good light! And the window you're already sitting next to is probably fine.
We need to talk about the coffee cup shot.
There's a reason everyone does it: it's easy and relatable. But it's also everywhere... And if the whole point of a personal brand is to be YOU, then borrowing the same visual shorthand as everyone else kind of defeats the purpose.
Olivia shared a few of her favourite alternatives (and you'll find loathes more in her freebie!) including... The Voyeuristic Shot: place your tripod outside a doorway or window so the frame itself is in the shot, making the viewer feel like they're catching a glimpse of something private. It's a real cinematography technique, and it works beautifully for personal brand content. You can also try placing flowers or something close to the lens so you're slightly blurred in the background — simple, but it adds depth instantly.
And then there's the Red Theory (which we've talked about before too): Olivia started noticing that whenever she wore red in her content, it performed significantly better. She tested it — same hooks, different clips, with and without red — and red won every time. There's colour psychology behind it: red is eye-catching, it stops the scroll, it draws attention in a way that more muted tones don't... It doesn't have to be red specifically, but a bold pop of colour that's yours can do a lot of the visual heavy lifting.
And the visual is the foundation! You can have the best hook in the world, the most brilliant caption... but if the visual doesn't stop someone mid-scroll, none of the rest of it matters. Olivia's whole mission is making sure people understand that, and making it as easy as possible to act on.
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✦ It Girl B-Roll Course: 7 easy Reels you can film in 30 minutes that actually look good (freebie)
✦ Listen to this past episode: “017. Rebranding The Word ‘Performance,’ with Sarah Kleist”
✦ Follow her on Instagram
✦ Check out her Website
✦ Subscribe to The It Girl Journal
✦ Say hey on Instagram
✦ Get my Uncaged emails
Personal Brand Photographer & Content Coach
Over the last 5 years as a Brand & Marketing Designer, I’ve helped freaks like us design their unconventional brands so they can step onto the main stage & own their weird. Because if you wanted to be, look or sound like everyone else, you wouldn’t be where you are today. Now it’s your turn.
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