I was thinking this morning about the sales profession and how in some ways it’s changed but how in other ways it hasn’t. I know more than a little bit about selling because what I’ve been doing most of my life is a kind of selling itself.

Since I’ve been in many Hollywood movies and countless scores of TV programs, I’ve played more different kinds of characters than I can even begin to remember. And in each instance I had to do a good job of convincing first my director and secondly my audience that I really was that character and I really was doing what the script said I was doing.

The fact that I’m still an actor, acting coach, life coach, success coach, public speaker, author, and internet marketer is evidence that I must have been doing something right. But I often used to wonder what real benefit, if any, my craft had for the average person.

As I followed this line of thought I occasionally had the chance to ask people I met what they actually got out of watching good acting. I asked them if they considered it nothing more than entertainment or did they derive some other, perhaps deeper and more useful, benefit from it.

Somewhat to my surprise, I found that lots of people not only enjoyed the entertainment aspect of good acting (not just mine…but anybody’s) but they also frequently learned something from it.

I discovered that acting, for many people, is a form of vicarious visualization. Just as it’s valuable to be able to form mental images of yourself doing something you’re trying to learn to do, I also found that people learned from watching others do something they wanted to learn to do.

And I also observed that the people who were already very successful in life seemed to be the first to understand the real characterizations of my roles. It seemed like they had the emotional perception to appreciate the drama that I often portrayed. And many of these people were salespeople.

As I began to explore this subject more, I discovered that salespeople and I had a lot in common. Salespeople have to be able to turn, mentally, ‘on a dime’. Salespeople never know, totally, who’s going to answer the phone or what’s on the other side of that door.

Every day salespeople go out into their territory and look for people with whom they can make an emotional connection. They know that no sale will happen unless they can get somebody to ‘like’ them (sounds like Facebook, doesn’t it?) and exchange some money for the product they’re selling.

Salespeople know that every presentation is just like a play. There’s an opening, a warm-up, an introduction of the characters, a plot development, a problem presented, a solution found, a price paid for the solution and (in the old days anyway) a happy ending.

And acting is the same way. We get out there on the stage and tell our story, actually becoming the characters we portray, and hope that we were convincing and that our audience ‘got it’.

The more I thought about this similarity between acting and selling (and actually…life in general) I realized that salespeople and people in business could learn a lot from actors (and actors can learn a lot from sales people too!). And I began to share some of my ideas and lessons-learned from acting with non-Hollywood friends of mine.

And something wonderful happened!

I found that very often I got very positive feedback about what I had shared with these few people about how to express themselves, how to have greater confidence, how to overcome camera shyness, how to feel comfortable speaking and mingling in public, how to be more perceptive to others…..I found that these things helped my friends be more successful.

Then a few years ago I began to get interested in the internet. At that time video was just beginning to become more prevalent. Since then of course video and knowing how to use video on YouTube have become an indispensable tool of a successful internet presence.

I was actually introduced to YouTube by my sons, James and Tyler McFadden, AKA: “The McFadden Brothers”. They actually got into video and YouTube before I did. In fact they were one of the very first YouTube Partners and since getting into video and YouTube they’ve produced videos that have gotten over 1,000,000 views.

Probably part of the reason they picked up on YouTube so fast was because they grew up in a Hollywood family. Point is, we all saw that YouTube gave us a chance to create characters and brands and fans and influence people just like Hollywood and TV had (and still does) for earlier generations. YouTube has become ‘the people’s Hollywood’.

The biggest difference between YouTube and Hollywood however is that anybody can get ‘into’ Youtube whereas anybody can’t get into Hollywood.

As I continued this direction of talking to main-street business people and executives, I saw more and more that being able to take Hollywood skills and apply them to YouTube and video marketing could benefit them greatly. And as I began to actually coach some of my friends how to do that my suspicions were validated.

That’s how I got the idea for a course that me and James and Tyler recently released called NicheCeleb. In NicheCeleb, I’ve taken everything I’ve learned in over 45 years of acting and, working with my sons for their expertise on YouTube, came up with a course that actually teaches people how to become celebrities on YouTube.

We call it NicheCeleb because everybody has different roles that they play in life. Everybody has their own jobs, responsibilities and goals. Some people are business owners, some people are salespeople, some people are managers, some people are white-collar professionals, some people are athletes, etc.

But what they have in common is that they all face the same challenges socially and when selling themselves to their market. And I know that being able to overcome camera anxiety and express themselves better on camera will help their ultimate objective.

YouTube has created a tremendous opportunity for those who learn how to use it correctly. A lot of people still think of it as a place for videos of ‘stupid pet tricks’ but it can be much, much more than that.

YouTube is more and more becoming the search engine of choice for people seeking knowledge. YouTube satisfies the desire to ‘get it now’ and ‘get it quick’ because a picture (or, I should say….a ‘video’) really is worth a thousand words when time is of the essence. Ask yourself, if you wanted to learn how to do “Kizomba”, the new dance that’s getting to the United States right now, would you learn more from this Wikipedia page or this YouTube video?

The answer is obvious……video sells a lot better than mere text. And if you can learn to master the art of making YouTube videos that sell, your success as an affiliate marketer is virtually guaranteed.

I’ve prepared a free report for you that will give you some helpful information about mastering YouTube video marketing. You can get it here.