Teronie Donaldson is a steam fitter by trade and a reading habits coach. Teronie creates content on how to develop better reading habits, why reading is important and which books you should start with:
“During the COVID 19 pandemic we were all locked down, and so my industry was pretty much shut down. After about two weeks of sitting around, trying to figure out what to do with myself, I figured it was a good time to quit watching Netflix and gorge off TV. I had all these books that I've collected over the years, and so I started reading and I just had the best time. I went through a pattern of reading a book a week, and I would get excited about the material I was consuming and sharing what I learned with my wife, kids, friends and family."
"When I realized how passionate I was about this, I started thinking about making this a business. I started to train people, with the aspects of how to read one book a week and developing the love of reading, even just by simply reading one page a day. I started to create videos and share them on the web, since than my business grew significantly".
Tell Us About Your Video Creation Journey:
“I mainly do videos on TikTok where I cover strategies on reading, how to read a book a week, book reviews, suggestions, lessons of the day and anything that has to do with reading and popular reads. Putting all the information out there and doing it by filming myself, it actually helped me become a better communicator virtually.”
“When I first started, I remember I used to do videos straight off the cuff. I would than look at my videos and notice a lot of arm movement and pauses, because I just didn’t know how to talk and act In front of the camera. I tended to get nervous, even though I knew what I’m supposed to say. But then when I have the camera in front of me, and I have 20 things to say, I would try to derive instead of just talking naturally”
“Then I started using BIGVU, and the process became much easier. I create my own scripts; I write everything, and I'll just upload it to the app. And then the teleprompter is very useful, because now I can literally look at my phone’s camera and feel comfortable with the words I'm saying. The funny thing is, how it progressed from when I first started using BIGVU’s teleprompter,I used to read verbatim. Now as I'm doing videos, I may start the intro with what I wrote for teleprompting, but as i go on I don't have to even look at the wording! I just talk. So That helped me a lot and it made me feel more comfortable talking to the camera."
Do You Have Any Goals You Track?
"Views is main thing i keep track of, although views can really be a double edged sword. Sure, I want views because attention is currency. But at the same time, I do videos because I love it. I love producing them and I constantly want to get better. Eventually the currency will come. When I did my first video, my very first, I got maybe, let's say 200 views, right? And then over time my views started increasing to 1000 and 2000. Then I did one video where I got 93,000 views and i just wouldn't stop refreshing to see how my views are doing. I kept refreshing, checking out the stats, until i realized that's not conducive to what I'm trying to do. If i'm doing content just to get more views, It's not gonna work because then it's going be inauthentic to the people I'm trying to help. So you know, I'm not going to dance in front of the book or do something silly just to get attention on TikTok. My goal in the end, is to help anyone develop that love of reading, more than getting views or being popular on social media."
What Do You Like About BIGVU?
"You know, I get requests here and than, from people who want to interview me or do something like what we are doing right now, but I usually don't do it. with you guys, with BIGVU it's different. I said, you know, this might be interesting, because I like what you guys do, because it's such a personal feel, such a personal touch. The workshops you are doing and the way you are really trying to help someone like me do better videos for whatever reason. I think what you guys are doing is is incredible."
