Welcome back to Lending Leadership: The Creative Brief – your source for real conversations about leading in the lending industry and beyond.

Today, we’re diving into a topic that’s become critical in the way we work, build relationships, and represent ourselves: showing up with confidence, authenticity, and intentionality on virtual calls. Over the past few years, video meetings have become the backdrop for how we sell, lead, recruit, and connect. But as Rachael Tresch points out, logging on is not the same as truly showing up.

Rachael Tresch guides you through the subtle details that quietly shape the way others experience and remember us online. From camera angles to lighting, wardrobe choices to body language, Rachael Tresch breaks down the best practices for a standout virtual presence. We share real stories and practical tips for mastering the small things that add up to big first impressions.

Here’s what we covered in this episode:

1. Why your virtual first impression matters more than ever
2. The impact of the background—real versus virtual—on trust and memorability
3. Camera placement, body language, and the art of making real connection through a screen
4. Wardrobe secrets for looking your best and building confidence virtually
5. The power of lighting, energy, and using AI note-takers to boost professionalism and connection

Key Takeaways:

1. Authenticity in Your Background Builds Trust
2. People connect more with a real, thoughtfully designed background than with a virtual one. Your space subtly tells your story, so avoid clutter and choose elements that reflect your personality. If possible, include something visually interesting—like pets or a moving object—to hold attention and increase memorability.
3. Camera Placement and Eye Contact are Game-Changers
4. We often forget that the camera is our direct line to other participants. Looking into the camera—rather than at ourselves—creates genuine connection, just as we would in-person. Camera should be at eye level with a couple of inches of space above your head—no awkward cut-offs or “up-the-nose” shots!
5. What You Wear On Calls Matters—Choose Simple and Avoid Stripes
6. Your clothing impacts your professional image. Stay away from busy patterns like stripes or plaids, which appear blurry on video, and avoid the color orange, which tests poorly with viewers. Solid, confident colors (other than orange!) make you more memorable, and always dress for the role you want to project, even on remote calls.
7. Lighting Can Make or Break Your First Impression
8. Lighting should be in front of you—not behind—so you’re clearly visible. Avoid backlit setups that make you look mysterious or untrustworthy. Natural light is best, but even basic side lights will help. Clear, well-lit visuals foster trust and enhance your effectiveness.
9. Boost Connection with Intentional Energy, Gestures, and AI Tools
10. Virtual meetings tend to sap energy, so we need to intentionally elevate our voice dynamics, body language, and engagement level. Use hand gestures, vary your vocal tone, and bring energy to the screen. Use AI note-takers to stay present, building rapport and trust without sacrificing meeting notes or action items.

This episode’s message: Virtual presence isn’t going away—so let’s show up wisely, authentically, and with intention. If you have best practices for thriving on video calls, we want to hear them! Like, subscribe, and let us know how you make your virtual meetings a success.

Thanks for joining us on Lending Leadership: The Creative Brief. Until next time, we’ll see you—clearly—in the virtual world.

Rach & Rinn

Okay, I'm going to do that intro one more time to give you two options here. Here we go. Think about how fast this happened. You know, just a few years ago, most of us were propping up our laptop on stacks of books, yelling, can you hear me? Am I on mute? Can you hear me? And learning what mute even meant for virtual calls. And now fast forward a few years later, and zoom. And teams have become household names, and. And virtual calls are everywhere. We sell, we lead, we recruit, we build real relationships through this virtual world.

But here's the thing. Just because we're good at logging on does not mean we are good at showing up. So in this episode, I want to talk to you about those small details that quietly shape how people experience you on a virtual call. It's real stuff, and it's really important. So this means your background, your audio, what you wear, where your camera sits, and the stuff that no one teaches you but everyone feels. So whether we like it or not, this is not going away. And that little rectangle on the screen has become your handshake, your first impression, and sometimes your entire brand. So today, I'm breaking down some best practices for virtual calls.

Sharing real stories that we have all lived through and giving you some simple ways to show up more clearly, more confidently, and definitely with more intentionality the next time you hit join meeting. So this is lending leadership. I'm Rach. Let's get to it. Okay, first thing I want to get into is camera and background. For the love of Pete, would you please, please get an external camera? If you don't have them on Amazon, they're super cheap. You can. You know, it really runs the gamut.

You can get something for 25 bucks to 2,500 bucks, and you certainly don't need to spend that much. But a virtual camera is really key because it makes things just sharper, more clear. Helps with lighting issues, which we'll get into in a second. But that's the first thing. Make sure you have an external camera. All right, let's talk about virtual backgrounds. I've played around with a lot of these, and you know our guys on lending leadership with the mortgage pros, they all have the virtual backgrounds with the green screens, which are great, but if you can, having a real background is something that tests better than anything people remember a real background because it's unique and different over a virtual background any day. So you can tell back here, you know, you can see a little bit about me if you're.

If you. If you're watching this, if you're listening to this, you'll have to go to the YouTube version to check, check out the background. But you know, you can tell a little bit about someone's personality when they have a real background. The next best thing, besides put together background, is the blurred backgrounds. Those are fine. What we don't want to see is just a mess behind you. You know, a lot of times people have just piles of stuff, or better yet, maybe they're doing virtual calls in the car and their background is just the car and it's looking straight up your nose. I guess this goes without saying, but I still see it all the time.

That is your first impression for most people, you know, when they, when they meet you. We're meeting people virtually now, so you want to make sure your background, you, you put some, you put some thought into it. Something that I heard recently that I thought was really interesting and maybe I need to invest in something like this, but is to have something moving in your background. So, you know, my dog's right over here. So when the dog walks in and out or animals walk in and out, that's visually appealing for people because a lot of times, and I think we've all experienced this zoom fatigue or teens fatigue, just virtual meeting fatigue. You're looking at the same static image and yes, the people are moving. But if your background has an element of movement that the studies have shown that people will remember what you're saying much, much better. So if you have a fan going in the background, if you have a, a fish tank, if you have animals coming in and out, that, that's something a little bit visually stimulating to people.

Take that into consideration. So I might need to add a fish tank or something. I don't know. I'd love to hear some ideas of what people, people have in their backgrounds, but we definitely don't want just a mess of clutter or even, you know, we, we do these a lot at HMA where we have branded backgrounds, those are fine too. But when you have that, that fake virtual background, that's Brandon again, all good. But nothing trumps the actual, you know, real life background. And I think this goes, this goes with everything that we're experiencing right now in this AI world. You know, so many things are fake and it's really hard to tell what is real and what is not.

So the more that we can show up with authenticity, that's the key, that's going to just cut right through the noise. And, and people subconsciously, when they see something fake, they lose trust in, in the person, the real person behind the message. So keep that in mind. Try to be as authentic as possible when showing up, especially for a first time meeting with somebody, whether it's a client, a realtor, you know, if you're in sales, anyone that you're meeting for the first time, you want that first impression to be very important. And I, I said this in the opening, but this is our virtual handshake, so you want to show up in the best light possible. Okay, moving on to point 2. Camera etiquette and body language. This is huge.

Everybody write this down. Actually, just listen and then go back and write it down because, oh, man, I see this all the time. And it's human nature, you know, My camera's here, right in front of me. I'm looking directly into the camera right now. Again, if you're listening to this, just the audio side, I encourage you to go over to the video side since we are talking about video and audio today. Today. But right now I'm looking directly into the camera. If I'm not looking directly into the camera, right now, I'm looking at myself.

And if I were to have somebody else on with me, many times we're looking at that person, which is fine if the other person is talking, if we want to look at that person. But when you're talking, if you're looking at yourself, just like I'm doing right now, you lose that connection with people. And it's. It would be the equivalent of having a conversation with somebody but still staring at yourself in the mirror the whole time. In, in a real conversation, we would never do that. People would be like, where are you looking? I'm over here. So make sure that you think of that camera as the person that you're talking to. And if you noticed now I'm actually speaking directly into the camera.

I'm looking at the camera, I'm looking at you. And it really does make a difference. Again, we have to be very intentional with how we make connection these days. So looking directly into the camera is huge. Also along these same lines, I want you to pay attention to camera placement. You want to make sure you have maybe like a couple inches above your head. A lot of times people are either, let's see if we can play a little bit here. Their heads are cut off.

Nobody wants that. That feels awkward. Or they're so small down at the bottom of the frame and it's just their head. So you want to make sure that you are framed appropriately in the camera. You want not too close to your head. You want just a little bit of space so that it looks natural, and you want it at eye level. Guys, please do not give us the up. The no shot.

Please do not give us the view of, you know, whether. Whether your. Your camera's in the corner on a laptop, and then we're only seeing a piece of you, but the entire room, people want to see you. If. If there's anything that you take away from this message today is that this is your virtual calling card. This is your virtual handshake. So that first impression is huge, and it's only going to continue to build your trust with whomever you're talking to. Okay? So camera placement is big.

All right? Next thing we're going to talk about is what you're wearing. What you're wearing matters. Yeah, we all remember during COVID those people, whether they were newscasters or just, you know, on a call and it's all business, and then they get up and they're wearing, like, pajama pants or, you know, underwear. So I'm not talking about that now. But colors matter. Patterns matter, especially stripes. And heavy patterns just don't do them. When you have virtual calls, they show up very blurry.

It's distracting. Apparently, people do not like the color orange. Studies have shown that any color is great. Black is fine. I wear a lot of black. Black doesn't test as well, but colors do test a little bit better. But orange, people have an aversion to orange, so try not to rock anything. Orange, burnt orange.

Just. Just stay away from it. When you're doing virtual calls or interviews, they. They test very poorly. I guess people just don't have a lot of confidence in the color orange. Sorry to say for all my orange lovers out there, but make sure stripes are huge. Years ago, I was working in pr, and my position was working with CNBC and Bloomberg and booking people on the show. And one of the main things was do not wear stripes.

And obviously that translates to today, too, because on screen, they look very blurry. So if you've ever noticed, if you're watching something, even plaids can. Can translate very blurry. And it has this kind of trippy effect on camera. So stay away from plaids, stripes, and orange. Okay, let's talk about virtual note takers. These are huge. Lately.

I use them all the time in calls, and honestly, I think it really helps. At first, I think people were a little bit nervous about having a virtual note taker, AI notetaker in a call, but it allows you to be completely connected to the person that's talking, rather. Rather than just looking down and taking notes the whole time, even if you are engaged. When I'm looking down and taking notes, all of a sudden I've taken my eyes off of the person that I'm talking with. And again, I'm losing that. That trust. That trust factor is huge. It's hard to build online.

So we have to work extra hard to make sure that people know that we're listening and that we're hearing them. So anytime you're looking down and taking notes or looking down on your phone, people really feel it. So the one I use is an AI note taker. I'll link it down below. It's, you know, 20 bucks a month. They do have some other features, but I love it because I can have the full transcript. It puts notes for me, it gives me action items. It will actually record the meeting for you as well.

But there's always things that, you know, we think we've said or we think we've heard, and maybe we've heard things that aren't quite the way that somebody meant them. So I really encourage the AI note takers because we can go back and say, hey, did that person actually say that? Or even if you're not quite sure, if you mentioned something, you can go back to the transcript, search for a keyword in the transcript, and it will pull up that exact part of the conversation. I mean, it's incredible. So I would really use that tool to your advantage. And then it makes you look like a rock star too, because you can get notes back to clients or realtors very quickly. So AI note takers for the win. Okay, last piece of advice. Probably one of the most important, although this is all very important information, is lighting.

Lighting is huge. Please do not be having a conversation with somebody. You're in a call and a window or a door is behind you as your light source. You want the light in front of you. You're not in witness protection unless you are in witness protection. No joke, they're very serious. But unless you are in witness protection, you're going to look blurred out and dark. So again, it's that trusting, that trust factor.

If people can't see you and they can't see you clearly, there's something that pops into their head that says, okay, I'm not seeing clearly. Can I trust this person? So you don't have to have an office full of ring lights. You, you could, you could. I have side lights here. You know, I've. I have a room that's very bright. But you want to make sure if you're in a. I see a lot of people that are at their kitchen table working sometimes and, and the lights behind them switch around to the other side of the table so the lights on you or even go work outside if possible.

The natural light is always the best. But again, it, it, it's this subconscious thing that happens where if people can't see you clearly, can they trust you? That pops into their head. So take that into consideration, all of these points. Maybe these are things you already know, maybe these are refreshers. But I think as we move forward and we're continuing with all of these virtual calls, these are things and best practices you're definitely going to want to remember and implement into your everyday life. If you're anything like me, you're in meeting after meeting and so you want to make sure that you show up with that intentionality. And also one last point I guess I'll mention is that energy over virtual calls, it just gets diminished. So we have to try extra hard again, especially during that first meeting, to really bring up our energy level because it's just, it's, it's not like meeting in person where you, you know, you can see somebody face to face and feel their energy and, and be over the top.

We have to work that much harder over virtual calls. So almost think of it as a performance. If you will make sure that you're using hand, hand gestures and that you're using your dynamics in your voice, your louds and your softs in your voice. Speaking at one monotone note, almost like a sing songy kind of note, is really tough for people to listen to. And that's where people get that virtual meeting fatigue. So make sure you're, you're using your louds and your softs, that you're, you're talking in a way that's engaging, using hand gestures and really trying to bring up your energy even more than you would in a regular meeting, face to face. So I hope this was helpful. Would love to hear some of your best practices and things that you do to stay, to stay positive during your virtual calls to make them a success.

And as always, please like and subscribe to lending leadership. I'm Rach and we'll catch you next time. Bye. It.