TJ Walker covers public speaking, video content creation, and monetization strategies. He discusses practicing on video before therapy, interviews Dr. Anita about metaphysics and video strategy, and shows how to create Amazon Influencer product videos for shirts and ties.
Chapters
What do you do if you think you need professional help to get you to the point where you can give speeches, presentations, talks? Perhaps you feel scared, nervous, and you think there's something wrong with me. Well, first of all, there's nothing wrong with seeking therapy help from a professional psychologist, therapist, psychiatrist for any sort of issue you're dealing with. But I do want to caution you that that might not be the easiest way. I mean, if you're like me, if you have a choice between a hard way of solving a problem in an easy way, and the easy way doesn't cause problems, why not at least start with the easy problem? If you feel like you have a lot of fear, nervousness with public speaking, you're not alone. And there are reputable psychologists who can help you deal with these fears. But let's go a little deeper. To start with, let's look at the underlying problem. The underlying problem is might be you're not going to give an interesting speech or presentation or talk. So why don't we solve that problem first? If you had never ever once taken a course on how to write English and all of a sudden you have to go to a job interview and you know they're going to test you on how well you write a paragraph or a press release or a letter, you'd be really nervous, right? You'd be fearful of that job interview testing you on how to write when you've never had a single day of English writing instruction, right? Well, would you want to go to a therapist to help you with your fears of writing, or would you want to quickly take a writing course so you learn how to write? I think you would want to take a course on how to write. So if you have fear about public speaking presenting, the first thing you should do is really make sure you have skills to be an interesting speaker. Now, you might not have a month or a year to go to college and take a college class or a lot of money to bring in a private trainer like me, that's okay. But right now the easiest way for anyone to go from an awful speaker to a pretty good one is to just practice on video until you like what you see. If you practice a speech, a presentation, a talk, a briefing, and you record it and you think you look like a scared zombie who's monotone and boring, guess what? That's real. That's a problem you have to solve. That's not a problem a psychologist can solve for you. They might make you feel better about that. But if you're still really awful it's not going to be a great experience for your audience. So the first thing you need to do is to make yourself actually interesting and come across comfortable, confident and relaxed. You can do that by practicing your presentation on video again and again and again until you like what you see. I'm urging you do that first. Speak in front of a few audiences. See what kind of reception you get. If you still feel really nervous. Okay, try a psychologist if you feel like you're just paralyzed by fear. There's nothing wrong with seeing a therapist. Psychologist, psychiatrist to help you with that issue. But let's first see if we can actually solve the problem at the fundamental level, which is learning the skills you need to accomplish the task. Hi, I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me. We are live. This is our time for you to come to me with questions, comments, we talk about anything you want that's related to communication skills. We're broadcasting live on a couple of Facebook channels, my YouTube, YouTube channel, LinkedIn, Twitch, and a couple of other places. So if you're joining us, thanks so much. If you have a question about any aspect of communication skills, please you can type it in the comment section. You can also join us through streamyard and that way you can appear right on camera with me. So I would love to hear from you directly or indirectly, however you want to interact with us. So appreciate you joining me. This week has been a little bit different. Typically, I've tried to come live most of the time 9am to noon Monday through Friday. This week has been sort of an infrastructure building week where I'm trying to get caught up on so many different technical issues and website issues and creating videos that have some evergreen quality to them that we'll be using in the show. So that's why we've been off this week. But rest assured, I've been here working hard on your behalf, trying to make this show better, trying to improve some of the technical issues. Dr. Anita is saying hello. Hello on the Facebook page. Dr. Anita, glad you're here with us. If you feel like it, let us know what your biggest challenge is with speaking, what you're trying to improve, who you're trying to speak to these days, and how you're trying to become more successful in life by improving your communication skills or by communicating more. We just finished our live session with our online students a few moments ago and one of the students was nice enough to say, tj, thank you so much for the course. You're a great teacher. And of course, like anyone, I like Hearing that. But I also try to probe and say, what specifically helped you? What changed you? Not nothing about me, but what is better in your life now? And she said, you took me from not speaking to speaking. I wasn't speaking because I was insecure about my own abilities. Now I'm speaking a lot of places, online courses, live events. And that did warm my heart. If I can just do one thing in life, it help more people around the globe go from holding themselves back to actually speaking more, sharing their expertise, sharing insights they have. If they're entertaining and I'm not, if they're entertaining, sharing their entertainment with the world by speaking, then I will feel like I have served some purpose in this lifetime. So thank you so much if you are getting any value out of that. Now. We did have people write in questions. I want to share one. Several questions came in over the last week. We always invite people to interact in a variety of ways. You can write your questions in. You can type them in the community forum. You can come on live on streamyard. So here's a question. I'm just seeing it for the first time now. This is from David Bossert, and he writes, tj, could you speak about how you got into motivational speaking and your first experience? Okay, so David wants to know, how did I get into motivational speaking? Well, I remember it very vividly. I was a couple of hours old and I screamed, ah. Because I wanted milk or I wanted food. I wanted something. Every baby is a great motivational speaker because they use their voice to motivate mom or someone to give them a food or drink or milk. So as human beings, I'm being a little bit facetious. I know that isn't exactly what you had in mind, but I do want all of us to realize we are all motivational speakers at some level. If you say to somebody, hey, can you hold that door for a minute? You're walking with big boxes. You're trying to motivate that person through your voice to get them to do something. Now, I am not typically the type of motivational speaker who is up on the stage and saying, give me an eye and dream for everything you've ever want. I'm not that kind of a motivational speaker, typically, but I do try to motivate people. My biggest niche is in motivating people to communicate more effectively and more confidently and therefore to do it more frequently. Because if you know you're good at something and you're confident at it, it almost hurts not to do it on a regular basis. So that's something I kind of fell into because I had a passion for politics and working in political campaigns. So I was 20 years old, 21 years old, I guess. It was an unpaid intern for a candidate running for the United States Congress. And I was a part of his team that did the debate preparation. So I was coaching him on how to speak in front of the camera. So that was, in a sense, my first motivational speaking experience. It wasn't no me again. It wasn't me up on a big stage, you know, grand gestures, striding around. It wasn't that kind of motivational speaking. It was me talking, sitting down in a room with three, four other people. And that is frankly, the opportunity that so many people have these days is you can use your voice, your ideas, looking at people. Quite often, if it's one person, you're looking them in the eye, two people, you're having a conversation, but you're doing it with a purpose. And that's so much of what I'm trying to help people with here, is how to communicate more effectively in any setting. Not just the stage of 10,000 people, but one on one, two people standing up in front of six people, a board of directors meeting, sitting down at a table with 10 people, any size group. There's always an opportunity for no communication, bad communication, good communication, and good communication that results in positive actions. That's what I'm trying to help you do. We've had a few more comments come in. Dr. Anita says taking your course helped me hone in on my craft and take the time to critique my work. Tell us what your, what your craft is again, if you don't mind sharing. And if you want to join us on Live and Talk, Barb has posted the link there in Stream yard. If you, you can see it, just relatable. Says big fan. Well, thank you. It's. It's nice to have big fans. Which does remind me one of you was so nice and generous on YouTube the other day to give me my first super chat. And I don't want to seem like I'm, you know, begging like a telethon, but they gave a super chat and I think they gave me €10 or something to that effect. So thank you so much for the fans who do the super chat and the. There's another word. There's a second category of that on YouTube where they let fans give support to YouTube creators. Now, that's clearly not the main way that I am funding this channel. I have a couple million online students that's a significant revenue source. And then corporations, CEOs, political leaders, other executives around the world hire me for day long in person workshops, sometimes through zoom, sometimes public workshops. So that's kind of the main revenue model for me. But of course, you know, there are books and I think I made $1.83 from Facebook advertising last week. And there's advertising revenue from YouTube. There are a lot of different ways of making money in the world these days by speaking. And one of those ways I'll be not just talking about, I'll be demonstrating later on either this hour or next, where I don't talk about the Amazon Influencer program. I'll actually make videos, show you step by step for how I shoot the video, record it, upload it, edit it, process it, label it, tag it, and submit it to Amazon for approval so that it can go on product sites and make money. So I'll be demonstrating all of those things and doing it very, very quickly. And I think one of the first things I'll do is I'll do an ad for this new tie I have. It is a Calvin Klein tie. I'm getting up at the Times because I realize the first tie I bought in 15 years, and I realized now the ties I had were way too wide. So. Trying to catch up with the Times. Let's Say hello to Dr. Anita. How are you today? And if you could turn your microphone on.
There we go. Hi, how are you?
Fantastic. How are you today?
I'm doing wonderful. Thank you so much. And thank you for inviting me. Wasn't exactly prepared, but okay, that's fine.
Well, it's actually better than fine because you weren't prepared and you just said, all right, let me put myself out there. That's how you gain more confidence speaking. That's how you get better at speaking. So many people have this attitude, well, unless I have six hours or six days or six months to prepare, I couldn't possibly speak here. You are just coming on to speak, so thank you. And that's. That's really living what I'm talking about doing here. Take every opportunity you can to speak, be a part of the community, help other people, but also promote yourself. Tell us about your artwork, the beautiful artwork behind you, and tell us what you're up to these days.
Thank you. Thank you. Yes. In the back, that's a tapestry, and it's actually a cloth that I just tacked on my wall for my background. Yeah, yeah. And then to the. I guess to my left near the plant, is a screen that I had before. So I just put the two together just so that I can have like a permanent background when I do video and participate in a speaking engagements and things like that.
Yeah, well, it's very colorful. I like it. My only suggestion is the light between the screen and the tapestry. The light right in the middle of the screen is a little brighter than I want.
Okay, I can move it to the other side.
Well, it's the brightest. Can you move yourself so your head is right in the center of the screen? Let's just see what that looks like. Because right now your head the other way.
Okay.
Yeah, a little bit more, A little bit more. Okay. So my only concern is the brightest thing on the screen is that light that's on that side of you. I would. Now I do have some lights here. I have these accent lights and it looks like.
Yeah, those are nice.
Looks like that one went off. But I'm still. But I have the major lights are focused on my face because I want people to see me. That would be my only suggestion of how to improve your set is maybe, maybe dim that light behind you a little and have a little more on your face. Or maybe just dimming, that would be enough.
Okay, well, I do have a ring light to the right of me. I can bring it closer. Like I said, I just came on because you gave me the wonderful invitation. So yes, I can move, I can play with it. But yeah, I can move that light on the other side and see how that does. Thank you.
Okay, so tell us what, tell us what you're working on these days and where are you speaking out the most.
Mostly I'm speaking virtually. I do have a couple of in person engagements where I'll be doing my spoken word, which I'm really happy about that. And. And I thought you were gonna ask me something. Yes. So I'm doing that. And most of you, most of the speaking platform speaking is virtual because it's a lot of global. I do a lot of global speaking and things like that because, you know, since COVID I've been doing that. So, you know, praise God. I get a lot. You know, I get people that will inbox me and invite me to be on their platform. Platform. So I'm very, very so blessed about that. And then essentially I'm working on my website with product. I started a movement called spread the word, tap into you movement. So I'm going to have T shirts and wristbands and things like that. And mainly how I get the word out TJ is by video. I I prefer video as opposed to writing things down. Yeah, I resonate more with that. So I do a lot of video. There's a lot of like I have over 200 videos on my YouTube channel, different things like that. So mainly yeah, working with, working with the video aspect of it when in delivering messages and, and, and things like that. Yeah.
And for our, for our people joining us today or seeing this on demand, unfamiliar with you. Tell us your topic and your niche again.
Okay, well my, I'm a metaphysician, so, so what I do is what, what I do is I, I help people, both men and women, really 45 and over, that wish to deepen their spiritual journey and enhance their self awareness. So that's, that's what I do. And I do that by consulting, by classes because I love to teach. So I have classes and consultations and programs, you know, to, to help in, in that, in that journey or on that journey. Yeah. And, and I've been doing that, doing that for a while and, and what, what I do as far as I incorporate energy principles in my work because I've been practicing with Energy Prince or, or in, in bringing in and incorporating and co creating with energy principles since the 80s. So basically the things that I've learned on my journey up to this point so far, that's what I incorporate when I'm journeying with others and wishing to deepen their spiritual journey or you know, enhance their self.
Okay. Well, Dr. Anita, really appreciate you spending time with us. Well, why don't you post a, a link to your YouTube channel in our comments section. I think we can do that. And you know, sometimes YouTube changes its policies in the comments section, but see if you can post it. We're always happy to cross promote, cross pollinate, help people get larger audiences. You just gave me, you just brought up a topic that a lot of people ask me about and I want to do. I want to, I hope, give you a little extra added value. But I want to try to make a short term and a long assume a short form and long form video on it. So for those of you who may be the first time here joining me, these are live sessions, but these are also workshops. I sort of take you metaphorically and literally behind the curtains, behind the scenes of what I do as a content creator. And I will make a short form video here live in front of you with the idea that my editing team will edit it and make it more of a polished short form video and then I'll do a long form video too because some People only want to watch TikTok and YouTube shorts 30 seconds or less. Some people want more substance of the traditional 8, 10, 12 minute video. And then some of you elite people, like Dr. Anita will come spend three hours with me here sometime. So I appreciate that. So if you don't mind, doctor, I'm going to take you off camera and I want to address an issue you brought up because it's, it's such a crucial, crucial issue.
Okay, thank you so much.
I'm going to hit whoop. And I just realized. Stay with us a moment. I forgot to do one bit of preparation. I forgot to put my sand disk in my drive that I use to record my videos at the highest quality. We're recording this right now on 1080p. And I say that like I really know what it means. I don't really know what that means, but there are times because I have three cameras, three feeds in through this mixer, you've seen them. And I can record certain bits of this in super high 4k quality. I mean, that's what you see the movies on, on Netflix and things like that. So I'm about to record it in the 4k version. So my editing team has higher quality to work with. Okay, so I'm gonna do a. I'm gonna do a long form one first. You can stay with us because I do want your reaction when I'm done. But I'm going to be, I'm going to be doing this specifically with the idea that it would be content that would, could be helpful to people for when they are thinking about an issue that you dealt with. And I'll set it up in just a moment. So I've hit record. So you've got a great idea, you want to help people. You have a message you want to share with the world. Should you start by writing a book or making a video? Now, at first blush, it seems easier to write a book you've been typing your whole life, right? Well, it's not just about what's easy for you. It's about what's easy to get in front of people. That's why I like video. It's just easier in the modern world to get video in front of people for a couple of reasons. Human beings like watching video more than they like reading. Now, yes, I understand some of you like reading, but it's easier to attract people to watch video. Ask yourself this, how many novels do you read per year versus how many movies a year do you watch on Netflix? Chances are you watch more movies or Sitcoms or entertainment in video format, then you are reading novels doesn't mean you're a bad person. It's just the way a lot of human beings are wired. Now the other reason I love for experts, for gurus, for thought leaders to share their content with video is let me tell you a little secret. It's easier if you're lazy like I am. It's so much easier to compete in a video format. Let me tell you a story. A few years ago I was thinking, you know what, I know a lot about storytelling. Let me write a book on storytelling. So I went to Amazon and I typed in storytelling and there were 10,000 books on storytelling. And a lot of them were really good. And everything on the top page, first page had four and a half star ratings, thousands of reviews and okay, that means there's a marketplace for this. Okay, but it's going to be a lot of work. What do I do if I really want to share that expertise? I then went to the Amazon of online courses, a platform called Udemy, which then five years ago and now is the most popular platform for online video based courses. I typed in storytelling and you know what? 10,000 courses did not pop up. Instead only three courses popped up. So I asked myself, where would I rather compete? Would I like to compete against 10,000 people? Maybe write a great book for a year, rewrite it, find a publisher, self publish, hire editors and graphic arts people? Do I want to do all that and maybe, just maybe crack the second page of Amazon and get better than 9989 books and maybe make $5, maybe make nothing when I've added up all my expenses? Do I want to do that, compete against these 10,000 booksellers or do I want to compete against three online course creators on the topic of storytelling on this Udemy platform and make the course in a day or two and get it up by the end of the week and start making money by the end of the week? I said, what would I rather do? I'm going to take the easy way out. I made the video, I talked my expertise. You know, I didn't even do any editing. I hit record. I shared my expertise, didn't script it out. I just worked from a simple outline and I hit stop and I uploaded those videos and I hit publish, did a little promotion and the course went to number one within a month. And it continues to sell and sell and sell these days. And I'm pretty sure it's been more profitable than 99.9% of all the books ever published on storytelling. Now, are my ideas that much better than all these books on storytelling? I think I have good ideas, but truthfully, I don't think I have that many better ideas than what's in all of those books. What I had going for me was I decided to compete in a different arena where there was less competition. Only three people at the time made courses in a video format on storytelling. 10,000 people had written books. That's why I like video. It's because so many people who are knowledgeable, smart, educated, talented opt out. They say, oh, I don't have a face for video. I don't like my voice. It's technically, it's too hard. They come up with all these excuses and that just means more opportunity for me. It means more opportunity for you. That's why I'm urging you. If you have a particular type of expertise, you help people. It's how to information. Whether it's teaching them how to cook the perfect roast, whether it's teaching them how to tie knots, whether it's teaching them how to pass a CPA exam, whatever it is, I urge you, be lazy. Don't compete in the arena that already has the most competition, which typically is the realm of books. Now, I'm not saying don't write books. Look, I write books. I've written several books here. I don't want to sound like you shouldn't write any books. I do want you to think primarily about how you can reach people now, easily, faster than a book. Less competition, where, number one, you can help more people by reaching them. Number two, if you're trying to make money, whether for yourself or charity or your family, it's easier to do that. Now, I'm not guaranteeing you're going to get rich making a video about your area of expertise, but it's a lot easier than writing a book. So hit the record button today to share your expertise with the world. Okay, so that is Dr. Anita, that was inspired by that one comment you made. Let me put. Let me rebuild my set here. And I don't know if you can relate to any of that. I'm going to put you back on, but just wondering if you had any. Go Back to camera 3 if you had any thoughts on that. And do you give me some honest feedback, do you think down to a typical eight minute, I don't know how long I was. I should have checked. If my staff turns that into an eight minute video and posted on YouTube, do you think anyone will get value out of that?
Absolutely. Because as you were talking, I mean, I never thought about, you know, the book, you know, in lieu of video or implementing. But like you said, that's incredible. 10,000 books on Amazon and three videos on. On Udemy. I mean that's, that's amazing. And, and when you said that, it just encourages me more to, okay, I really want to hone more and more and more on this craft of producing video content because it's open and I just never thought about that. Absolutely. That added value. I mean, because I'm sitting up here as you're talking and I'm saying, oh, wow, you know, aha. Kind of thing. So thank you for that. I really appreciate it.
You're welcome. I mean, I'm sure if you just type in your main topic, whether it's metaphysics or whatever you think of, you go to Amazon. I mean, there's 10,000 books on almost any topic. It's really hard to cut through. Now there's a lot more competition on Udemy and really every platform these days, but it's still so much less competition than on Amazon for books. So that's what. Because I, you know, I mean, I have friends and professional associates all the time. I teach you. I'm gonna write a book. I'm gonna write a book. I'm like, please don't write a book. And because I see so many people do it, they spend so much time, energy, money, effort, and they don't sell any. And it could be a great book because they don't have a following, they don't have a tribe yet and they don't have a huge platform. And you're far better off, you know, doing a YouTube channel like you're doing, doing an online course buy building a community. And I mean, you know, people look at someone like James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, and say, well, here's just a guy. He just wrote a book and it sold 30 million copies. And he's got dynastic wealth at this point. Must be easy. Let's do that. And everyone forgets the fact that, okay, before he wrote his first book, he wrote like a two to five thousand word blog post every ten days for four years. And he built an email list of about a million people. Then he wrote a book because he had an email list of people who. It wasn't an email list he bought. It wasn't something he got through. Give gimmicky, giveaway, clickbait things. It was an email list he built because people loved reading his, his content about habits. So when he said I've got a new book out about habits. Like. Well, I've, you know, I've been reading this guy every week for two years. I like him. I think I'll buy his book. That is how you sell a book in 2024.
That's pretty smart. Yeah, very smart. Let me ask you, tj, regarding the video, because what I'm thinking, you're giving me ideas here. One of the. I'm thinking of my book. Well, you can't see it, but it's that you back there talks about the chakras. Anyway, putting that book or converting it to video.
Definitely.
Yeah. And then I have been thinking about, well, for now, maybe four or five years, I would write some and then stop and then write because I'm a poet more than a writer. Writer. And what would you think about creating a video, a memoir video, as opposed to writing the book?
You could.
I mean, the big problem with memoirs is if you're not really famous, nobody cares.
Right? Okay.
Now you could write up, you could write a memoir where in your mind it's a memoir, but the title and the focus of the book is specifically how people who are like you can learn or experience a journey to. To achieve fulfillment or something like that. If people see how it benefits them, it's okay. I just wouldn't call it a memoir until you're really famous because otherwise memoirs typically sell five copies that the author buys themselves to give to family members. Right. You're not really, really famous.
Right?
That'd be my thought. Hey Dr. Nia, thanks so much for joining us. Please stop by anytime and feel free to post a link to your channel. Very much appreciate it, thank you. And feel free to. Feel free to stay in if you want. I've got to answer a few more questions that people were nice enough to post in the. In our forum. Let's see. Dave. Oh, David posted another one. I appreciate that. And we talked about the motivational speaking one. So there was another question that came in that was in fact very fascinating that I wanted to answer in more detail that related to how you ask questions. Okay, this one comes from Joaquim Rosing. He says the question is more about moderation rather than presentation that you may have encountered. I find that in a larger virtual meeting, say 40 participants with an audience from different regions, people seem reticent to interact, ask questions, voice their opinion, etc. On a one to one, everyone is candid and support, supportive but silent. In the big round, I've tried different methods. The one you mentioned asking Myself questions first to spark their comments, but also surveys, temperature checks and so on, but nothing seems to work. I gather the big group may be an issue, but also the language barrier. Not everyone is fluent in English. So in short, what are your best proven tips to get people talking and interacting in big virtual meetings? So these are fascinating questions, Joaquim. I'm going to try to answer that in detail. But first I realized I made a slight blunder because Dr. Anita had put that idea in my head. I did sort of a long form version. I want to do a short form version of that. So, so that the topic she brought up, I can try to reach people online. So I'm going to do a short form. I'm going to get a camera too, try to clean up my set. Here, take these off. Okay, let me start from this angle. For once. You've got great ideas, expertise you want to share with the world. What's the best format? Well, you could write a book. The problem is on your topic, there probably already 10,000 books on that subject on Amazon. Why not start with a video? Make a video for social media. Make a video based online course. There's so much less competition because most people are afraid to speak. Okay, so I'm hoping, I'm hoping that's the same topic. But I did that. I think in less than 30 seconds my team can turn that into a short form video. So now let's get back to Joaquim's question about an online meeting of more than 40 people. Because that is increasingly something everyone has to face these days. And I know exactly the issue. So let me, let me try to record that in a long format way. By the way, if you have questions that relate to speaking, speaking, you can post them right here, post them in the comments section. You can also join me live and we can talk as we did with Dr. Anita. But you can post them and I'll answer them a little bit later. I'm going to be making Amazon influencer videos. Not just talking about it. You hear people talk about it all the time. I'm gonna actually bring you here into my workshop and show you exactly what I'm doing. And I'm gonna do things like I'm gonna make an Amazon influencer for this Calvin Klein tie which I just bought last night at the Boca Mall. First tie I bought in 15 years. And unless you tell me you really hate it, I think it's a perfectly nice tie. The main thing is it's the current width you're supposed to have because the ties I've been wearing, I now realize are maybe half an inch, three quarters of an inch too wide to be modern fashion style. So I'll be talking about that. But first things first, let's talk specifically about Joaquim's question about how do you get people motivated to speak if it's a large group. Group. So let me go ahead and record that. I'm going to hit record. We got a camera. One. Try to get myself framed. And someone has just popped in. See if I missed. Oh, you know what? Let me give precedence to Dave because Dave was nice enough to ask questions. I'll come back to Joaquin's question in just a moment. Dave, how are you today?
Good, T.J. how are you?
Fantastic. Good to see you. I don't know if you were here earlier, but I did answer your question about, you know, the first motivational speech.
I. I wasn't. I. I've kind of screwed up the east coast, west coast time zone business, so I'm just jumping on now.
Oh, no problem. What I was saying is my first motivational speech was when I was about five minutes old and I was crying, asking for milk. Because all human beings are motivational speakers because everybody wants something. You want someone to hold the door. If you're juggling heavy boxes. You want food when you're hungry. All of us are motivational speakers. I mean, there's the particular type of speaker speech where people think, you know, Anthony Robbins is up on the stage in front of 10,000 people. But that's only one sort of motivational speech. And really something outside of just asking for food or something from a friend or teacher. I was 21, and I did my first media training with a politician, trying to motivate him to speak more effectively on camera, preparing for TV debates. But it wasn't me in front of a large group. It was me sitting down with three or four other people. So that was kind of my first taste of trying to motivate someone to change behavior. Tell us what you've been up to and what's new in your world.
Well, I. I guess my question should have been. I guess I was too broad in my question because I. I really was curious what your first experience was when you were in front of a large audience that first time where you had maybe a hundred people in a room.
I remember it. I won't say vividly. I do remember it happening. I was an extraordinarily shy, shy, quiet kid, much quieter than the other kids in class. I was in the sixth grade 12 years old. And my teacher pulled me aside one day and said, hey, Timmy, because my name is Timothy John. I went by Tim. She says, look, you've got straight A's, but your handwriting is horrible. I'm going to give you a C in handwriting. But I'm in charge of the graduation ceremony because you're graduating from elementary school next month and I need some student to give the introduction speech, the welcoming speech to parents, teachers and students. If you do that, I'll give you an A in handwriting. Well, I don't want to get up and speak in front of anyone. That seems scary, but I like A's rather than C's. Okay? So I wrote out the speech and I stood up and my head was down and I said, welcome fellow parents, teachers, students of Bruns Avenue Elementary School. Not the greatest speech. I don't think I gave any eye contact. And I'm sure I was getting a little bit of adrenaline. I mean, this is now half a century ago, so this would have been 1975, so literally half a century ago. And I was feeling an adrenaline rush. It wasn't great, but you know what, I got through it. Nobody said that was awful. And I'm sure my parents said, oh, good job, little Timmy. And I learned at a very early age if you just stand up and speak, people give you things, good things happen. So it was a great initial experience, even though I didn't really do anything that wonderful. And then the very next year I started getting interested in student government politics at junior. We had junior high school back then, not middle school when I, I won my homeroom representative and got on the student council. And then the next year I became the student body president. So I routinely at age 14, was speaking in front of 1200 people because I had to speak in front of the the whole school at school assemblies regularly, and speaking on the student address system, the audio, the morning announcements, sometimes on video. So that's when I really started speaking a lot at age 14, I guess.
So basically you were conditioned very early to be speaking in front of groups of people.
Well, earlier than a lot of people. But again, I was very much on the shyer end of the spectrum of things. I was one of the quietest kids in class. I was the worst kid selling the magazine subscriptions to raise money for the class. I was the worst kid in Cub Scouts selling the peanut brittle and the bird houses. And so I was shy, I was too shy to go knock on neighbors doors saying please buy my magazine subscription or my peanut brittle. So I would. I had. So in my view, I had no like, natural abilities at speaking or communicating. It's just something I kind of fell into and then look for opportunities to hone it and refine it. Because people do come to me sometimes and say, well, T.J. you're so natural. You can just speak for three hours flawlessly and smoothly. I could never in a million years do that. Or you just do your courses and do half hour lecture without notes and it's fluid. I could never do that. I'm like, you could easily do it if you just do it every single day. It's a skill. The more you do it, the easier it gets. So what I have going for me, I do believe anyone in the world who has average intelligence and no neurological problems, anyone with average intelligence who has a working brain and tongue can do this. Getting to the point where you can think and talk in real time in a coherent way, either in front of people or in front of a camera. But it takes time. I've been doing this for half a century. Doesn't take a half a century to do it. Anyone these days could do it in a month that they just make one video a day. But if you don't get enough reps in, then every time you're sort of starting from scratch, you get to this point where, oh, I want to say this, but I'm thinking about this and oh, I'm a little bit nervous even though I don't realize it. So what am I going to say five seconds from now? Oh, I missed that. And you trip yourself up. That's what happens to people because they just haven't done it enough. Therefore they're not comfortable enough. Therefore that discomfort makes the brain and their recall ability shut down.
Great, thank you. I appreciate that.
Oh, you're welcome. I hope that was, I hope that was helpful. Now my family will certainly not say I'm guilty of false modesty. I don't want to seem like I am, you know, too boastful or too modest. I really do think that this is a skill anyone can hone. Anyone can learn how to write. Now, not everyone can learn how to be a Pulitzer Prize winning novelist or a best selling novelist, but anyone can learn how to write competently and write in a way that they can communicate ideas in business and personal life. Anyone can learn how to speak effectively in person or on video. They might not get to the point where they have 10 billion followers on YouTube. I'm not at that point yet, but they certainly can communicate effectively and reach Some people, they care about that I am committed to. What's the biggest thing you're working on now, and is there any area where we can help you?
I'm actually going out to do a speaking gig in Palm Springs this weekend. It's going to be in front of a small group of people, about 60 or 70. And so I'm looking forward to it. It's a presentation on one of my books, so it's material I know and I could speak confidently about.
Great. Well, we wish you the best of luck. And it, it is interesting to me everyone has a different perspective of what a small group is. Some people heard you say that and thought, My God, 60 or 70 people? I would be petrified. I've never spoken to an audience that large. I once had a client tell me he was nervous speaking in front of large audiences, but he was very comfortable speaking in front of small audiences. I said, yeah, everyone's like that. He says, yeah, T.J. i'm very comfortable speaking in front of 100,000 people. I get nervous speaking in front of 100,000. I'm very comfortable speaking in front of 5,000. Like that's not normal. But it's all relative. So, yeah, 60 or 70 seems easy if you've spoken to 500 or a thousand. What I really recommend people do is just think of every speech they do as a series of one on one conversations with one person at a time in the audience. Now, if you're speaking to a thousand people, you might not be able to do direct eye contact with each one, but you can look. You know, if you're up on a stage and there's a thousand people, if you just look 30ft out and keep your eyes focused on one spot every, you know, there'll be 20 people in that area. All feel like you spoke directly to them. So you can still create and experience as if it were an intimate one on one conversation. And these days with microphones and speakers, your voice shouldn't really change that much. To me, the big difference with a larger audience is I do think it's important and helpful to pause more. It takes actual time for your sound to get through a gigantic conference hall, convention hall. You need a little more pausing for the punctuation to take place. And I do think more movement is helpful. If I'm, you know, if I'm speaking to a larger audience, I do want to use the stage more. I do want to move around more. If I'm sitting down at a conference table with three colleagues, I can just sit down and talk to them. So there's some nuances that are different, but the bigger problem for most people is they're really good talking one on one or to two people or five people. Now they're speaking to 70 people. They're nervous. So all the things they did that worked for them really well, one on one and just two and three people, they take that stuff, they tear it up, throw it away, and they now try to do something completely different to the 70 people. And they make themselves flat, boring, and bland. And typically, it's because they're now reading the speech rather than having a conversation. And because of that, all the interesting stuff is gone, and they're now boring everyone to death because they're reading and they. They're flat, they're monotone. Their energy's gone. They probably lost eye contact. I know you wouldn't do that, but I'm sure you've seen other people do that.
I have seen people do that, and I don't use notes when I'm speaking. Typically with my book presentations, I'll have a series of PowerPoint images with no text on them. And the images really sort of prompt me and move me along in what I'm trying to say and accomplish with the time I have to speak to the audience.
Okay, that's nice. I would. I. And I love the fact that you're not reading because that's the. That's the hardest thing to do. Well, and it's the easiest way to make anyone into a horrible speaker. What I do recommend, in fact, I have one right here, is here's a script I used for an hour speech the other day. It's got big, bold lettering. Nothing's more than like, three or four words. And because it's a single sheet of paper, I never touch it. Because it's a single sheet of paper, no one sees me turning notes because it's big, bold font. I don't have to, like, stop, put on glasses and bend down. And what I do, if I'm in front of a large group, I'll have three identical sheets placed around the room. So one will be on a table next next to my glass of water. So when I'm putting the glass down, I now see what message point four was, and I can talk about it, but no one saw me do that. All they saw was me putting down a bottle of water. So I do think there's nothing wrong with using notes, but the more you appear to simply be talking to people, the better off you are, and the more interesting it will be, the easier it will be to engage the audience. Let me ask you, Dave, where are. Where do you start to feel uncomfortable? What's the largest group you've ever spoken in front of?
I think the largest group I've ever spoken in front of was probably 1500 to 2000. I certainly feel nervous, but I don't project that nervousness. And it's only happened a handful of times over, say, the last 15 or 20 years where I've spoken in front of a group like that.
And did you change anything about your preparation or your delivery method?
Well, it's. It's funny you mention it with a crowd like that. I was on a stage, and so I did use the stage. I wasn't pacing, but as I spoke about a point, I was looking out one side, and then I would move and look to the center, and then I'd look over to the other side. So I. I was really doing a conscious effort to engage the people in the auditorium as much as I could.
You know, if you don't mind, I would love to do a. Record a video on that very subject. So can you hold on for a moment? Because I want to. I want to nail this down. I'm going to go to camera one. So what's the difference between pacing back and forth on stage and looking nervous versus purposeful movement? If you're up on stage, perhaps in front of a large audience, if you just stand in one spot, it's kind of boring. You're going to look stiff, uncomfortable, unprofessional. If you're standing behind the lectern, you're going to kind of look like an amateur and scared. Like you want to hide behind the lectern because you're afraid people are going to, what, throw rotten fruit at you? Oh, you know what? Oh, I was. I meant to make myself full screen, But I realized for the editing purposes, it doesn't matter. They're pulling from different ones. So. Note to editor. Don't use this part. I'm going to go back to the previous sentence. So if you're behind a lectern, it makes it seem like you're scared of the audience. Like you have to duck. Like they're going to throw rotten vegetables at you. You don't want that. So what do you really do? We've all seen those speakers where they're going like this, and their movement is so consistent. They look nervous. They look like some sitcom character who is at the hospital. And the wife is about to deliver the baby. And the nervous husband is so nervous pacing back and forth, and yet it's a speech at a major conference. You don't to be pacing back and forth. Your movement can't be too consistent. If you're moving back and forth, you look like a big grandfather clock, or you look like you're trying to hypnotize the audience. I beg you, don't do that. What you want with your movement is inconsistency. Occasionally you want to stay in one spot, especially after you've made an important point and you want it to set in. But you also want to lean forward. Sometimes you want to take a step back. You want to be reflective and move. You want your movement to be inconsistent. Sometimes you walk this direction, sometimes that direction, sometimes a little faster, sometimes slower, sometimes no movement at all. If you do that, you'll look natural, because that's how people move in real life. They move with a lot of variety. There's a change in angle, speed, pitch, tempo. If you do that, your audience will feel connected with you. Now, part of the beauty of moving if you're speaking in front of a larger crowd is even walking a couple of feet over here. For forcing everyone in the audience to move their head slightly, you're forcing them to move their eyes. Well, guess what? It's a lot harder to fall asleep if you're having to move your face and head and your eyes. If you're just in one spot, even if you're saying interesting things, it's so much easier to fall asleep if you're in the audience. By moving around, you can connect with more people in the room. You go to stage left and get closer and look at some people in the eye. It's true the people over here won't notice it as much, but the people here will really feel connected. But then you can go over here and connect with these people, too. Don't forget the people up in the bleachers or in the balcony. Look around at different people. Step in, step out. Now, you don't have to get down on one knee the way Zig Ziglar used to reenacting his proposal to his wife. You don't have to be that overly dramatic, but you want some good natural movement. If you do that, you'll come across as comfortable, confident and relaxed. No one's going to come up to you afterwards and say, I really like the movement you had on the speech. No, they're not going to notice it intellectually, but emotionally, they're going to feel like, wow, that speaker was supremely comfortable, confident, relaxed, and Authoritative. I like that speaker and that's what you want. Okay, so I'm going to hit stop on the record. So, Dave, thank you for motivating me to think like that. If you don't mind, I just want to do a 30 second version of, of that. Go for it before I forget. So I'm going to switch cameras, I'm going to clear the bottle out of the way. Okay, so you've heard you shouldn't pace back and forth on the stage. Okay, that's good. But just standing in one spot is going to make you look stiff, scared and nervous. Don't do that. What you want is natural movement, meaning inconsistent. Sometimes step forward, sometimes back, sometimes a few steps over here. And occasionally to make a point set in, just stop. Okay, so that's kind of the 32nd version of that one. So I appreciate you letting me. You know, I'm trying to do several things at once with our live sessions. I want to connect with people like you, learn from you. Ideally, I help you as well, but I'm also sort of taking people behind the scenes, showing them, how does a YouTube content creator make content? And my method is different from some. I'm not, I'm obviously not writing out the whole thing and scripting it and putting in a teleprompter and doing it. I'm doing things that I've given a lot of thought to, typically have real world experience with that typically advise people on.
On.
But I'm hearing a topic or a question and then trying to provide interesting insights to people in a short form, in a long format way. So that's what I'm doing. If any, if any of you saw that, you have any opinions, like, I would love to know if you think, well, tj, that long one was too rambly and it just looked weird. I don't think it's going to resonate. Let me know on the other hand, if you think that would be useful. And it's something that when it gets on my YouTube channel, you would actually want to share it with people. Let me know about that too. I would, I would very much appreciate that.
You know, tj, one of the things I would say is that watching the Udemy course that you and Jess have put together, I, I thought all of those videos were really comfortable as far as being able to follow along and not be distracted by anything. It was, was. It felt natural. The only thing I, I will say about it, some videos had a higher volume on them than others. That was, that was the only thing that popped out to me. But I've really enjoyed the Udemy course immensely and I'm almost done with it. I mean, it is a as thorough as it gets and I'm glad I, you know, I took the, the class because there's other things out there that were charging way more that, you know, didn't have a lot of good comments associated with them. But. But.
Well, I very much appreciate the feedback and I apologize for the audio ups and downs. I mean, that course is now. I mean, I think parts of it are a decade old. So some of the time my microphone was maybe a $30 microphone. This one I'm talking to you with now and I'm not quite as close as I should be. This is like a thousand dollar microphone. I say that not to brag, but to let people realize you don't have to wait till you have a thousand dollar microphone. I'm making money from that course from 10 years ago. With a $30 microphone, you can always improve.
Don't wait.
I mean, for many of my most successful courses that have been the most profitable, it was me on a $30 webcam, on a laptop in a closet in front of a little TV screen with an image of TV screens on it. So I've upgraded a lot now in the last month I've spent a small fortune on a real set and fancy cameras and microphones. But I didn't start that way and I made plenty of money with really cheap stuff. So don't wait. What kind of mic do you use? And I say that like I really know a lot about mics. I really don't.
I. I have a shore microphone.
Sure.
Yeah.
And they're nice. That's what I was using until just the last month when I switched over to the.
Yeah, it's not. Yeah, it's not a. It's not a very expensive mic, but it's not cheap either.
Yeah, like the $250re range. I think so much. My. Yeah. Sound great. Sound great.
Yeah. I, I use this for a weekly podcast that I do. So I've gotten a lot of compliments on how I sound compared to, you know, other things.
Well, let's give a plug for the podcast and also put in the comments where people can find it because sure, th. This channel and this show is a little bit different from a lot. We want people to be promotional. We're trying to give people the tools to help them be more effective when they're with their promotions and to not be shy about it. If you've got ideas that are going to help other people. Whether it's free or you charge, let people know about it. What's the name of the podcast and can you post it in the comments section?
Sure, I'll put a link in the comment section. It's called the Skull Rock podcast and it's primarily animation, Disney pop culture. And it's a weekly program I usually have a guest on that's, you know, somebody from the industry who was a film director or an animator or a music composer or something like that. And, and we also discuss current news within the industry as well as what we're watching, what kind of content we're consuming. My, myself and my co host.
And for people who don't know, Dave was a longtime successful executive in the, in the Disney world, the animation world, and now shares his expertise about that creative world and the Hollywood world in form of books, podcast and keynote speeches. What Dave, I'm curious, what is your advice to young people who say I'm creative, I'm a great artist. I know 15 years ago a good friend of mine had a son in that situation and they spent a lot of money putting him into, I think it's the EA Art School in San Francisco. It's one of these art schools. It's not a regular college, very, very expensive, couple hundred thousand dollars in debt. But it all worked out. He got a job at Pixar, got a six figure, I think he's worked there for now seven years or so. It's just career's going well. The student debt if not paid off is at least manageable. But that was 15 years ago starting that. Do you think that's, I mean in another 15, 20 years, do you think the Disney's and the Pixars are going to be as dominant? Or are we going to see more and more people like Mr. Beast and animators like Mr. Beast where they just create themselves from nothing, use social media, build their own audience and become their own mini studios, which is essentially what Mr. Beast is produced become. What is your advice to a young ambitious artist essentially?
Well, the thing I've been telling folks is you got to keep up on what's going on in the industry and what new tools are coming along. Right now everybody's talking about AI and so AI is a huge area that's going to have a big impact on the creative world. In fact, I, I have to tell you, tj, on Monday, this coming Monday, I'm actually doing a zoom meeting with an executive at a company that's rolling out an AI tool for Creatives. So, and I call it a tool because a lot of people are fearful, fearful that AI is going to replace them and it will replace some jobs. But it's also just another tool for people to use and it's going to require, require people who have the smarts, the, the, the training and the artistic talent to be able to manipulate those tools. Because those software tools are only as good as the input, as only as good as the operator, if you will, who's using them. So I would say, you know, for people like Mr. Beast, there's going to be a lot more folks like that because the price point to, to get into doing the high quality animation is becoming less expensive compared to where it was. And people are going to be able to create films in their garage with a handful of people. You know, there was, I just saw a program, it was a news magazine over the last weekend where there was a, a musician and I forget his name, I hadn't heard of him before, but he lives in London and he's created an album that's just attracting fans. Professional musicians are fans of this guy because he created the album all by himself, playing all the instruments, mixing everything and using the digital tools to do it. And so this, it's really, I think, a wide open world out there where people anywhere on the globe are going to be able to not only create content, but access an audience.
I mean, I'm mostly optimistic. I certainly see it as a tool that already helps me with a lot of things. But I do wonder, I think of so many best selling movies and popular movies, let's just say romantic comedies. To me it doesn't seem like it's going to be that hard in the next five years for any executive or anyone in their garage to just say, give me a romantic comedy script and then turn it into a movie and synthesize all of the elements of the best selling, you know, best producing romantic comedies in the last 20 years because they're kind of all the same and just change the name and change it around and make digitally beautiful people who, I don't have to pay those actors and put that out there. I mean, then, then you really are going to be in a situation where you don't need any actors, directors, producers or writers because it's not just creating text, but now there's these artificial intelligence per Dolly and others that can produce music and video and images and things that look like people. How much is Hollywood worrying about that? And specifically when I think of comic book movies and Marvel characters and look I went through a Batman stage when I thought I was Batman in 1966. I'm not knocking cartoon characters, comic book characters. I personally just can't see any more movies with comic book characters. To me they're just, they're all the same. And it's the same fight and action scene and car chase and you know, it just doesn't seem like it would be that hard to have an AI program just do everything, soup to nuts and ship it out to the theaters.
Well, you know, with a lot of those superhero movies, there's an awful lot of animation of the characters. A lot of people don't realize that, but. But there's a tremendous amount and that that could potentially be created by AI software at some.
But it doesn't correct me if I'm wrong. It doesn't have to be animation. It could be things that look like.
Yeah, live action. Absolutely. And you know, the ChatGPT company put out a, an example of what they're doing with Ryan writing text as a video prompt and creating a piece of video that was super realistic. I don't know if you saw it, but it made Tyler Perry hit the pause button on an 800 million dollar expansion of his Atlanta studio because he realized that this is going to have a major impact. In a recent article a few weeks ago, Jeffrey Katzenberg, who founded Dream DreamWorks Animation with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen, he's predicting 90% of animation jobs will be replaced by AI software. I think, I personally think that that's a little bit high. Maybe 30 years from now it might hit that. But I think people who are working in the industry should have a fallback plan and should have an emergency fund.
Because this, and forgive me, Dave, I see up month Mansoor was hoping to get in. I think we lost him. So Mansoor, sorry about that. He says kindly send me the link. Mansoor, I'm not sure which link you're referencing other than maybe Dave's podcast. Adam has joined us too and would like to come on screen. So Adam, whenever you're ready, just click into the streamyard link. We're more than happy to have you, Dave. While I got you here, I've got to pick your brain. So my daughter is about to turn 1111 Sunday. Has a real passion for art and she is applying to a highly selective art school here in South Florida, Palm Beach County. We're hoping that she hears from them or she'll hear from them.
Ringling School of Art.
Well, well, we're on the other side. We're On Palm Beach County. It's a, it's a school called the Box School of the Arts. Okay. Considered one of the best in the country. And you, you apply through audition. So you know, whether she gets into that or not, there's, there's good art at the current school she attends. So she loves art, seems to be really good at it, enjoys it and for a 10 year old has the ability to focus and you know, work on a project for five hours at a time which most 10 year olds don't. So certainly encouraging her to follow her passions. When I see the future, to me the future, I will toss out a name you might not have heard of before. There's a young woman named Mariah Elizabeth who is an artist and she does crafts on YouTube. She has 10 million followers on YouTube. She posts a long form video, typically 15 to 22 minutes long every Friday at 4:00 by 4:01 it's been seen thousands of times. She has millions of views for most of her videos. So and, and she's what I can tell, making an absolute fortune because she has ad revenue. She sells all of her little squishy dolls. She has great creative books to help people become artists that we bought, she has T shirts that we bought, she has characters, she has whole product line advertising, line revenue, line sponsorship. And she's been doing this I guess for 15 years. She's only I think 28 years old but to me that's the future. She's essentially a mini Disney student, does it all from her home, controls the means of production, multiple, multiple revenue streams, has a firm, firm relationship with a fan base where they will do what she wants, they will watch what she wants, they will buy what she wants. I mean as far as I can tell, I mean she has tremendous career protection and security, you know, for a lot of reasons. If you have, if you control the fan relationship, you can control everything. But presumably unless she's frittered away all of her money, she's got so much money now, she'll never have to worry about getting a regular job. She has the ability to just figure out where do I want to invest my time, what project next, which is something most people never get in their life and those who do typically don't get it till much, much later in life. And she's, and she achieved that early 20s. So I'm just wondering, do you think I'm off at all? Because I'm saying my daughter, hey, she's your role model. Let's be like that, not get a Big job at a big Hollywood company. Company.
I absolutely agree with you. I think if she's passionate about what she's doing, if she's developed her own style and she's willing to put herself out there and show her work online and use that person as a role model, I say go for it. Because the idea of, and trust me, I work more than 32 years for a major entertainment company and I will tell you right now, it is not the model for the future. Because I believe that, you know, people who are creating their own content should own their own content, own their copyrights and make the revenue, you know, cut out the middleman if you will, and go directly to your audience. The key thing you said about her is she spent 15 years building up that audience base. And that's what a lot of people need to realize. And I hope you'll, you'll speak to this is it takes time to build that audience and you have to do it through consistency.
Yeah, it's, I find it time and time again you read some story, whether it's in the New York times about a 17 year old overnight success on, on Instagram or YouTube. Well, they're making $10 million a year, their overnight success. They're 17. If you, if you go down to paragraph 17, there's usually a paragraph that says, yeah, they started when they were 11 and the first two years they spent three hours a day trying 10 different formats. And after that time they only had five viewers. And it wasn't until their 109th try in a completely different vein, did it start getting traction. And that's the part that, you know, people don't want to hear. They forget because everyone wants something quick. People, people. See, I have 2 million Udemy students. Ah, teacher. I want to do that. You know, looks like great, quick, easy money. Right? Well, I started online training in 1998. 8. I lost hundreds of thousands of dollars for 15 years. Only then did it take off and is, you know, more than repaid itself and become highly profitable. But I mean the issue I face is just generational. I mean, I spent the first 20 years of my career battling traditional gatekeepers and technology roadblocks. I mean, I was making video at a time when people just didn't have the bandwidth to watch video and to download. It was a huge undertaking. And I was doing an audio video. They didn't call it blogging. I was just making audio video daily commentaries in the late 90s and posting comment. I didn't call it blogging. But you know, no one could really watch it. It was, it was too difficult. Technically, people don't have those issues anymore. And I spent, you know, just countless years of my life banging on doors to TV stations and radio stations saying, please take my TV show, please take my radio show. You don't have to do that anymore. So I, I'm sometimes envious of being. And I, and I hope to be doing this in the next 40 years. So I'm excited about what life and my career, too. But I'm definitely envious of people who are just starting out their career right now because it's like the only thing holding you back is just deciding what you want to focus on and working. You don't have to deal with all these gatekeeper issues and technology issues.
There's a very low barrier to entry today than it was 20 or 25 years ago.
Definitely.
And like I said earlier, people have the, the tools and half the time they're free tools available online to even just get started. And you can upgrade to a paid, you know, premium software or something at a later date, but there's, there's enough there that you can really just get going from, from day one.
Absolutely. And that, that's the hard part. It's. I mean, I'm somewhat sympathetic to some people. It's like, where do I even start? Start? There's so many things I can do. You know, when nothing cost any money to do and you can get access to any kind of source material you want, it can be easy just to sort of spin around not knowing where to. Where to. Do I write a novel? Do I make a Mr. Beast type of video? Do I show tutorials on how to swim? There's so many things. And the hard part quite often these days is just deciding what do I focus on and what do I want to focus on for a sustained period of time? Because you're absolutely right, Barriers of entry are gone, but the barriers for success are still very, very high. Because, you know, mentioning Mr. Beast, he's talked publicly like, after five years, he had essentially no audience yet almost no one watching him. After posting regularly for five years, he really, it really took him a long time to find an audience. Now some people take off faster than others, but they're the exception.
But, but he needed, he needed those five years. He needed those five years to, to figure it out, to, to get to where he is now. And, and that's, you know, unfortunately, tj, you know this as well as I, we, we have a lot of people that. It's instant coffee generation I call it, you know, people want to. Well, if I set up my YouTube account, I should be able to have videos that go viral tomorrow. But it really does take a while and you got to experiment and you've got to throw a lot of things against the wall to see what's sticking to build that audience.
Yeah, speaking of which, I mean, that's what I do every day. Let me just pick your brain a minute and anyone else, because. Because I'm still trying to figure out this whole YouTube thing. You know, I've got a lot more views and videos than most people just because most people don't do anything. So I don't deserve any credit for that. But I'll show. Whoops. I didn't mean to show you that. That was just for the day. But I. I've got. There's my YouTube channel and the short. Here's a short. Here's a new one that went up, I think, this morning. I would like to get feedback from people now. I hope I hit the right button. So the audio. Are you seeing my YouTube page, Dave?
Yes, I am.
Okay, so I'm going to hit this one that went up, I believe, this morning.
I'm not hearing the audio.
Okay, so I did it hasty and I did not share the right way. So let me try one more time. Share, screen, audio, entire screen. That's the second audio share button. I did not do correctly. Okay, now we should hear it. All right, so this will start in the middle, and it will then we'll then loop it back because it's very short. This one person and this one person, because they are trying to help the audience. When you're fixated on helping your audience, you don't have time for anxiety or worry or nervousness. And if you're really trying to help them and you've prepared as you should, then the material will come more naturally to you. The best speakers in the world exude the sense that there's nothing in the world they care about more than helping this one person and this one person and this one person because they are trying to help the audience. When you're fixated on helping your audience, you don't have time for anxiety or worry or nervousness. And if you're really trying to help them and you've prepared as you should, then the material will come more naturally to you. Okay, So I don't know, frankly, if that was one. I was. That was a segment that I was intending to have turned into a short, but it has some production values. I don't know if that was used. Pulling from the. The full 4K, by the way, Karima has just stopped in. Yes, we are live, Karima, so feel free to join us. We'd very much be happy to have you. And Adam, you mentioned you wanted to join us, so feel free to come in as well. And so that video, I don't know if my team, and ultimately I'm responsible use the 4K footage or if that was the lower quality. We're trying to add a little music. You saw a little graphic there, but still very underperforming. I mean, 100 views or so is very substandard compared to some of. You know, I have one competitor in particular. Almost every short he does 50,000, 80,000, 100,000. And I wish I could say, well, you know, I get a pass because I just started this last month, but I've been making videos on YouTube since 2005, so I can't use that. Excuse me. So I'm always looking for any feedback from people who can give me advice on how can I grow my own YouTube channel faster, how can I make the shorts even more valuable, how can I create the long videos more valuable? One area I am attempting to differentiate myself is doing simply more live stuff like this where I can help people even more and be more of a available access point for people who want real questions in real time because they don't see my competitors doing that. And it's something I enjoy and I know that I can do. But it's much harder to build a mass audience with something live than it is with slickly produced short form and long form video. So, Dave, just wondering if you had any feedback.
You know, I. All I can say is I've enjoyed watching your videos on the Udemy and I've certainly enjoyed this engagement here. Last week and this week. My, my only thought was, you know, you should put a course together on doing YouTube videos. I'm sure you'd get a ton of people to, you know, engage on those.
Well, believe it or not, I have a course on YouTube, okay. But it is probably seven years old and it frankly does not have all current best practices. And its focus was primarily trying to help people be comfortable enough to show their own face and their own voice because that's. That is the first, that is the first hurdle for people is just being comfortable enough to record yourself. Now, I just posted the link for anyone who wants to join live and Adam, I don't know if you were looking for that or Karima who wanted to join us but we are live happy to have you on and very happy that Dave, one of our students and a renowned speaker and expert and author in his own right, has spent a few minutes with us. So thanks so much for doing that. I've got to get back to to we got a couple of orders of business. I've got to answer questions that were posted and sent to me. I've got to do that. And then I'm going to actually not talk about Amazon Influencer and making videos. I'm actually going to make some Amazon Influencer videos for things like this tie I just bought last night and now realize all my old ties are too wide and I shouldn't have been wearing them. So I'll be doing that later on this hour too. So Dave, I thank you for stopping by. You're more than welcome to stay in. I'm going to go full screen now.
Good seeing you.
Thanks so much for joining us. And then please do me a favor. Post the link to your show if you can, your your podcast and the name of it in the comments section. And then this video once we stop will be a video on demand on the you on our YouTube channel. Post it there. And even in my would love it if you could do it in my community. We'd love to see what other people in the community are doing and cross pollinate that way. So please don't be shy about sharing the name of your podcast and your YouTube channel and links. And I do realize YouTube has recently changed its policies. I think in the comments you can't as easily post a link. But I do think you can still still can in the community. So please give that a try and perhaps in the live chat as well. Okay, I've got to Karima wants to come on and Adam and Mansour feel free to join us live. But first I've got to do justice to Joaquim's question. So let me I'm gonna go camera one and we're going to hit record for this and I'm going to make a note of the time. It's it's 1:29. I'd like to do at least eight minutes on this segment. We've all been there. You talk to a colleague 101. They're interesting. They're giving great examples that the entire group really needs to know they could benefit from. But now you're talking on Zoom or some online platform and you've got more than 40 people on all at the same time. Nobody wants to say anything. They're sort of Hanging you out to dry. You're trying to be a good moderator, you're trying to be inclusive. You want to bring people in. You've asking questions, crickets, you do a poll, nothing. You call on people by name and you get one word answer. These are the same people that over the phone or a one on one chat, FaceTime, they got great examples, great case studies, they've got fantastic information that your colleagues need to hear, but they just clam up when there are 40 people all listening or watching at the same time, or all on the screen on Zoom or Microsoft Team teams. What do you do to make these online meetings more interesting? Especially if you feel like you've tried everything and nothing really works. First of all, let's back and realize what's causing this. As human beings, we are biologically programmed to fear speaking in front of crowds. Evolutionary biologists believe this is a defense mechanism. It's for our own safety. Because tens of thousands of years ago, if you're on the savannah and you pop your head up and people can see you from everywhere, saber tooth tigers, other predators, if you're visible, they can run, get you, attack you, kill you and eat you. So not being seen is a great defense mechanism. Kept our ancestors alive. So it's a good thing that as human beings, we are programmed that way. But unfortunately, in the modern world, in the modern business world, this doesn't help us at all. Because nobody is going to see you on Zoom, ask a question and then come attack you and eat you and kill you. No, they're not going to. Instead, it's missed opportunity. You have an opportunity to share an idea, show your expertise, demonstrate your leadership. And nobody sees it because you keep it all bottled up inside. So that's why people are quiet. They're feeling the tension, they're feeling nervous. Now, they might not be aware of it, they might not admit that they're actually afraid to speak in front of 40 peers, but they are. So how do you deal with it? Here's my recommendation. If you've tried, try to engage people, you've asked questions, you've done a poll, you reference them, you call someone by name, and you're just not getting much. Go to the next level before your meeting starts, Go to certain colleagues and say, okay, Samantha, you told me that great case study about that client you helped last week in the meeting. About 10 minutes in, I'm going to be talking about this thing theme. I'm going to call on you. I need you to tell me everything that you told me over the phone last week, I need you to share it with the group. So I'm giving you a day's notice. Please be prepared. I'm really counting on you. Can you do that? Typically, what is she going to say? She's going to have to say yes. At least now she can prepare, she can do some notes, she can practice if she wants to to. But now when you call on her, you can say, you know, Jane's been working on this problem. She has a fantastic success story that she shared with me the other day and I want her to share with all of you right now because I think we can relate to it. That builds her up, takes some of the pressure off, but also keeps pressure on because people realize, well, she can't just give a one word or one sentence answer now. So you can do that. You can essentially seed the field. You can let people know in advance you're going to be calling them. It does take a little more work on your part, but it also means less work for your next meeting. Because if you're trying to get conversation going and you've got an hour long meeting, if you have to do all the talking because everyone's afraid to say anything, that's a lot of work for you. It's tough for you and it's boring for other people. By doing some preparation in advance. May take a phone call, may take a little zoom call, may have to FaceTime one of your colleagues a few more emails, but let them know you need to hear from them. Meetings that are just monologues are not interesting, they're typically not productive and it's a great way to have people tune out. So you want to encourage people, you want to engage people. You can also send out emails, either a mass email or individual email to people before the meeting, asking them what questions they have. And then during the meeting you can say, jim, you sent us a question earlier this week. Can you tell us what it is Now? They can't very well say no to that. They know they asked you a question. That can be a more direct way. Because here's what happens. If you just call on people and all of a sudden they're thinking, oh my gosh, 40 of my peers are looking at me. They're going to feel nervous. They might not be aware of being nervous, but they're going to feel nervous. Their brain shuts down, their ability to have recall is diminished. So if someone emails you a question in advance, write back to them, say, that's a fantastic question. That's a question that Everyone else in our group meeting on Thursday afternoon can relate to. So be prepared. I'm going to say what questions are there? And I'm going to say, Jim, you had a question. You said earlier, share with the group that question. If they know in advance, you're going to be asking them to say the question. They know that you know there's a question there and you both have seen. Gives them time to prepare, and they don't really have any wiggle room. There's not an easy out. And this way it's easier for them, it's easier for you. So your meetings can go from sort of an awkward situation where everyone is looking at you and you feel like, I'm out here, I'm dying, folks, to an actual constructive group conversation where everyone is engaged, because that's what you want. Okay? What I say. 129. That was. You know what? I did not nail that. That one, I was hoping to do about seven minutes. Excuse me. Eight minutes. I think I. I did it at seven minutes. So that one is not exactly what I wanted, but still long form content. I see Karima has joined us. Karima will come to you in just. We'll come to you in just a minute. Before I forget, I've got to do a short film form version of that because that was a specific question from Joaquim. So let me do a short form recording. I gotta hit record. What do you do if your colleagues are normally very talkative, but now you got a group meeting in front of 40 people and everyone clams up and it's just you talking. It's boring and it's awkward. Right. The thing to do is talk to people before the meeting starts. Hear an example, a case study, a client success story from them and say, everyone in our group needs to hear from that. You know what? I messed that up. Let me pick up from that moment and then say to them, everyone on our team needs to hear your story about that success story. I'll be calling on you in our meeting Thursday. Be prepared to share it. Now you've given them notice, they've got time to prepare. And instead of you delivering a monologue, it can now be an interesting conversational meeting. Okay? All right. So again, I do make mistakes. Part of the reason why I'm doing this in front of you is I want you to see me make mistakes. I don't beat myself up and say, cut. We gotta start all over again. I'll just back up to the previous sentence. That was complete. Redo it. Knowing My team can edit that little bit out when they put the video together, and people watching it on demand won't know and won't care. But I hope what you see is that nobody's perfect all the time. I'm certainly not. You don't have to be perfect to make videos and share your expertise. What you do have to do is be willing to hit record. And if you want to do the slicker, polished ones, either edit it yourself or hire someone inexpensively to edit it. Okay. Our student and top contributor, Karima has joined us. How are you today? Whoop. Your microphone is off. Oh, I can't hear you. Your microphone is off. I've hit.
Sorry. Sorry. It's on now. Yeah.
Yes.
I'm not set up properly, tj. But he made me laugh.
What's that?
You made me laugh when you were making your mistakes there. Because I was walking around my bedroom before I came on doing the exact same thing. But I'm not set up properly. I know my. There'll be feedback problems with. With. With me. So I'm going to not talk. Okay.
Okay. Well, thanks so much for stopping by. Always a pleasure to see you.
I. I'll still be here and I'll. I'll type.
Okay, well, I'll just take you off, but if you have any questions or if you want to just toss out your voice a question, but feel free to do that. Or if you want to share any other insights you have and cream. I very much appreciate you watching videos on my YouTube channel and giving feedback and asking questions. It is very important. I would love to know your thoughts on what you think I should do more of. What I've noticed with my videos on YouTube is there's certain themes that the audiences really like more than others. If I talk about body language as it relates to communication, those videos do a lot better. If I talk about how to improve your voice, those videos do a lot better. And if I specifically reference mistakes to avoid, those videos do a lot better. So those are the trends I'm seeing what I am, what I frankly, and I'll just share with you and everyone else been a little bummed out about is I spent a tremendous amount of time boosting my production quality. I've gone from an old. I don't even know what the quality camera is, but an old, big, clunky video camera that was probably 9 years old and $100 mic to $10,000 pluses worth of fancy new 4K cameras and $1,000 mic. And rather than a green screen building A fancy set. So I've dramatically increased the production values and my reward so far has been that my viewership of my newer videos has, has actually gone down about 70% now. I'm hoping it's just temporary and we're going through a transition because before I put the new ones up, we were kind of using bottom of the barrel videos of an old batch. I'm just wondering if you have any theories as to what I can be doing better.
I think a simple. Keep it as simple. I, I was against a lot of those changes because I told you I like to play in background where I focused in on you and everybody else disagreed. You know, let me think about it and when I'm watching more, I will have it in in mind and I will give you some properly thought out feedback later.
Is that okay? Sure.
I mean, I don't want to just spout off.
Yeah. I mean, a part of why I have this angle now, which you may have noticed from my short videos is we're trying to simulate that it looks like I'm on a stage speaking in front of a real audience. So this is. And I'm not looking at the camera when I'm doing this. And the reason for that is all of the best performing videos of mine in the last six months have all been from one one speech I gave 17 years ago at an American Medical association conference where I was up on a stage just delivering simple public speaking tips. Well, I'll just share, I'll just share with you. I'm going to share my screen and I won't share the audio this time. I'll just. So you know what I'm talking about. So if I go to my YouTube page and I hit shorts and I hit popular, it's not the first four, but this one, you see the fifth one that says don't stand like this. Yes. You can see I have darker hair and I have more hair. That's because it's 17 years old. So it's that one. But it's also four of the next five most popular ones. So it's me on a stage, it's wearing a suit and tie and it's really just giving simple public speaking tips. But. And it's this one too. So. So what's interesting is, see we've got basically half a dozen or six of the top 11 performing short form videos of the last six months. For me, all come with this format where I'm on stage, I'm not looking at a camera, I'm wearing a suit. Suit and tie. And I'm not just looking right at the camera and I'm not casually dressed. So that's why you now see me today. Like this. It's because all of our best performing videos, with very few exceptions, were of me in a suit and tie. So the perception was, yeah, it was.
You in a blue tie with, with a white shirt.
No, it was not a white shirt. I did never worn a white shirt.
I, I understand you don't wear them, but I'm telling you what the viewer sees. You see the blue tie. You see what looks like a white shirt and a dark jacket. Go back there. Count how many times you had a blue tie.
Well, it was all from one speech. So I was wearing exactly the same thing in every single one. But, but I mean, I have. I mean, I, I can get another blue tie, but. You really think the difference of 400 views and 7, 000 views is just a blue tie?
Well, I think it's.
Well, I mean, I did. I. I wish we'd had this conversation last night because I bought new ties for the first time. I may have a blue tie at home. I can bring. I'll give it a try. We'll see.
I'm. I'm just. If my audio is very bad, you can tell me and I'll go and find.
No, the audio's fine. The audio is perfectly fine.
Okay, well, the thing is that for. From a scientific reason, the blue, blue. Between blue and red. Okay. They're both scientifically they have effects on the brain, but from color therapy.
Just bought these last night.
The one on the, the one in your left hand.
You like this one more? Okay.
It's probably better for the. When you're using the. The whitish background behind you and the maroon one will go when you're in front of the curtains.
Okay, that would be nice. Well, I'll give it a try. I'll give it a try. Hey, Karima, I've got to switch gears now because I did promise people I would be doing a demonstration of making Amazon influencer videos. So I'm going to do some of that right now. But feel free to, to stay in and please leave comment. I mean, leaving the comments. I appreciate you leaving comments here, but also leave comments on the videos on my channel, the On Demand, and also leave them in the. The Community tab. By the way, something I didn't talk about today and I really should have. Let me share again because it may be that, that some of our colleagues who are here with us today might even be interested in Because I'm looking to hire someone I've got. Let's just go to my community tab a minute. I have posted right here. I'm looking for a YouTube channel, podcast producer.
Yeah, I saw that earlier.
So if you know of anyone or if you watch this and you think the kind of stuff that we do here is fun and interesting and you know how to edit audio and video, this might be a good part time job for you. So please take a look at that because I've asked people to, you know, leave a comment here and that there are any comments. So the job position is still wide open. So let me know about that. All right, Karima, thanks so much. I've got to shift gears. I'm going to make some, some Amazon influencer videos now for things like my new tie. So I'm going to do that right now to kind of demonstrate to people how this process is done. Okay. And thanks again for stopping by, Karima. So if you're new to this show today, if you're watching it on demand, I teach people how to be more successful in life by improving their communication skills and confidence. One of the things people like to do is to find more ways of speaking to more people and more ways of making money from speaking and not dealing with the gatekeepers of the convention planner who decides who the speaker is and not dealing with the gatekeepers of. I can't get any money because this advertiser won't return my call. So that's why I have been interested in, thanks to our colleague Barb Tomlin, this Amazon influencer program because it's a way not anyone, but almost anyone who has some kind of a social media following of only a thousand followers can become an Amazon influencer. So I'm going to demonstrate exactly what I'm doing. I'm going to pull up my phone here. I'm going to put a receiver in so I can get slightly better audio quality. I'm going to turn a microphone on. You don't have to use a microphone because the built in microphone on iPhones and Samsungs are pretty good these days. This just makes it a little better. So I'm going to turn it on. Oh, that's interesting. I didn't see it go. I'm looking for a green light and I'm not seeing a green light come on. So I don't have to use a mic. But fortunately I have a second mic. So let me go back behind off camera for just a moment. I thought, I thought, oh, there it is. Okay, this, this Mic is fully juiced because I now see a green light if you're interested in this microphone. If you go to my Amazon influencer store, you can see me make a video where I talk about it. So I'm going to put this high up, by the way, if you want to know where my Amazon influencer store is, and you might, you don't have to buy anything just to sort of see what it looks like. Like, let me just share with you my YouTube page, where you can then find this at any time. So I'm going to hit share. I'm going to share my page. And then if you just go to my home page on YouTube, which is. It says Media Train. That's the old name. It's TJ Walker Success at the very top. These days, it's the about section for anyone. So you see the first sentence and you can click it there or you can click for the bottom link. So here link. So at the bottom link for me is my Amazon store. So you can click right there and it will take you to the store if you wanted to see a store. A number of people in this community and in my YouTube, my Udemy student community are Amazon influencers. So you do not have to be some famous author, internationally renowned expert influencer. You don't have to be Paris Hilton or Martha Stewart. Although their videos appear on the program, it is very open to a lot of people. Oh, was I sharing that? I thought I hit share, but now I. Did you see that, Karima?
No.
Okay, I did something wrong. Let me try again. Share screen. I hit entire screen. I think I forgot to hit the last button. Okay, this is what I wanted to show you. So this is just my home page on YouTube. And at the very top of every YouTube person's page has like a sentence about them. And if you just click that little arrow or you hit the hit more links, it takes you to their bio. And the bottom is my Amazon store. And so you can just click on it. So, and I'm not trying to influence you to buy everything on my store. I just want you to see. You know, they give anyone a store and then you can see all the products. Oh, hang on a minute.
You're in the back. I. I have other things blocking my view.
I don't know what happened there. Now I am sharing. I can see it may be something that happens one time. Okay, so I'm going to stop sharing now. All right, So I have set. Now sometimes my wife is nice enough to come by and she does the camera Stuff, but you don't have to. This can be relatively simple. So I'm just going to use a simple tripod. I'm going to switch to camera one. I do a simple tripod. Can I do. I do these things in a. In a fairly specific manner that I think works for me. It doesn't mean it's the best way. It's just the way I'm doing them. So you can see I'm setting up a tripod. I. I make the videos now exclusively in vertical format. You know, the vertical rather than the horizontal. Because I have found almost all of my views on Amazon are from the vertical views. So I'm trying to get more and more efficient at how I do it. So I used to make five pieces of content for every product. I did one vertical, two. Two horizontals and two pictures. One vertical and one horizontal. I now open only do it in one format, one short form vertical. So I'm pulling up the camera function, hitting video, switching the format so it's pointing at me and I can see it. I'm putting it into this tripod and I want to make sure it doesn't fall over because that has happened before when doing this. And the iPhone is now structured in the sensitive way where if it thinks you've fallen down, it will contact the local emergency medical team, the911 here in the United States. And I do not want to waste anyone's time, but that did happen recently. So I'm setting this up now so that it sees camp, that sees this curtain because I find it less distracting.
Yeah, the new tie will go nice with it sideways like that.
So I'm gonna. You know what? I've been doing that background. Maybe I'll just do this with the lighting because it is a little harder to frame it that way. And this way you can kind of see what I'm doing feeling as well. Okay, so my first ad is going to be for this Calvin Klein time.
Yep.
And so, Kareem, I'm going to hit mute just so we keep the audio. Actually, it's a different audio, so I don't even need to hit mute. Yours can't get in. So again, I'm just going to talk about it briefly. Hit record and stop. So for me, the only editing I do is delete if it's no good. What I am noticing is some of these accent lights are just a little more prominent than I want. Okay, I think this is good. Forgot to turn my remote on. And it has not synced yet. If you're In a business setting that requires a tie, Calvin Klein does the job. Simple, elegant. I wear it on TV every day. Okay, so that's one product I try to. I try to do. Oh, now I'm getting an echo. I'm going to have to mute you, Karima, because the audio is coming through. Okay. And I think the shirt I have on is a Calvin Klein as well. I'm going to do several for shirts. I. Oh, now, I won't do this in the video, but I'll just tell you. I only wear solid light blue shirts for anything, anytime I'm on television or video, because it doesn't distract. Stripes can jump around, patterns can jump around, get fuzzy, pixelate. This looks almost white. In fact, Karima, you thought I had a white shirt on from that video 17 years ago, but I know for a fact it wasn't a white shirt because of that very reason. I never wear white if I think there's a video camera around. Because white becomes. So it can be bright. It can be the brightest thing on screen. I want my face to be the brightest thing on screen so people can listen to what I'm saying. So this may look blue to you now, but in some forms of lighting, it will look almost white, but it won't look too bright. If you're looking for simple elegance, nothing beats this Calvin Klein light blue business shirt shirt. It doesn't distract. It looks great in person. It looks great on camera. Okay, that's that shirt. Okay, here's a brand new shirt. I just bought it last night. I wore it today to the office. This is, I believe, my first time ever wearing it. Untuck it, which is famous for having a little less fabric below, so you're not supposed to tuck it in. So that's why I got it. And I love linen. I live in South Florida where it's hot. Other than when I'm on camera, I only wear linen shirts. This. Untuck it. Linen shirt looks great, it feels great, and it doesn't wrinkle as much as others. Okay, that one. I. I was holding the. The shirt with the same hand as my remote, so I almost was not able to turn it off, which meant. Would have. Meant we would have had to delete that. But I think it was only an extra, extra second. So I'm not gonna sweat it again. I. I'm still very much in sort of a testing mode with my Amazon influencer videos, looking for signals, looking for trends. Some people will do a video and they'll spend, you know, three days working on and editing a video. To me, the risk is too high if it doesn't make any money. If I'm doing 20 videos in an hour, which you've seen me do, or at least 10 an hour, or 15 in an hour, if any one or two or even five don't make any money, what have I really lost? Just a couple of minutes. So let's see what other products.
Okay.
This is the club room tie. This club room tie is simple. It's elegant. It looks great on camera and in real life. If you want to up your professional image, give the clubroom tie a try. So some. Let me just chat with you about this a minute. A lot of the products that I have done, I really feel passionate. Passionate about, because I feel like it's been a huge enhancement to my life. You know, things like earplugs I sleep with to get a better night's sleep. This I'm obviously not as passionate about, but it certainly seems like a fine product. It seems well made, this one. I just got it at Macy's last night at the Boca Raton Mall. But I'm sewing it up, letting people see it. If that helps them make a purchase, fine. If not, I mean, people know what they're getting with a tie, I wouldn't want to recommend, you know, a $4,000 video camera unless I've really used it. I don't want to steer someone the wrong way, but at some level, a tie is a tie, and I'm not expecting to make a lot of money from it. I don't know how many people are thinking maybe I should buy a tie, but I don't know if I'll really make a decision until I watch a video on it. So I'm not anticipating a lot of sales coming from these products. Part of what I'm trying to do is simply build my promotional muscles by doing more videos on more products. Here's a Perry Ellis. Now, traditionally, this maroon has been my favorite color tie. You know, I'll talk about that. This Perry Ellis maroon tie is simple. It's elegant. I can't wait to wear this is my favorite color for a tie. It's not so red and bright and glary. It doesn't distract. It's simple elegance. Now, when I'm making these videos, I'm trying to make them 15 seconds or less. That's what, for whatever reason, is what's getting all of the views on Amazon, on the Amazon Influencer program, on their product pages. So that is why I am doing that. Okay, here's an, here's a Tommy Hil figure again. And let me stress, some people say, oh, let me just buy a whole bunch of products, products, make a video and take it back to me. That's kind of sleazy and kind of cheesy and it's just, it's frankly not how I would spend my time. So I would only, only showing you things I bought. And I've either used it a lot or planning on using it. And this is something, I obviously haven't used it. It's still in the wrapper, but it is, it's, it's the type of cotton fabric. I don't even know what you call this fabric, but it's a, it's a slightly heavier woven fabric that I like. It gives a little texture and form when I'm wearing a suit and tie. So that's why I'm comfortable recommending it. And this one claims to be wrinkle free and stretch fabric. This Tommy Hilfiger dress shirt is simple, it's elegant. It has the sort of fabric that gives me a little texture that I like and it's wrinkle free. If you want something to go well with your suit, give it a try. Now I don't even know if I should have said if it goes to your suit. A lot of people wear dress shirts without a suit suit. So if I were an ad agency or a marketing firm, I would, I would rewrite that. But again, what I'm trying to do with this influencer program is simply create content with a thousand products so I can look at categories of things that seem to work. Look at patterns. Also, frankly, attract a little more attention with audience with brands around the world. Because I am finding, even though I don't, I'm not selling millions of dollars of product, I am now getting pitched every day by companies wanting me to do videos for them. Now there are a lot of scammers in the world and nonsense. I, I don't respond to most of them, but it is, there is something about simply being out there, being a spokesperson, speaking on products. It starts to position you in a different way. Now Karima says don't compromise your ethics. If the new set is. I absolutely don't want to do that. If the new set is meant to be a success, it will be. As long as you're trying, it's not your fault if things don't go well. So here's my own ethical standards for product endorsements. Whether it's an affiliate thing or someone coming to me, I Don't endorse any product that has sugar because I do think sugar is one of the most dangerous drugs that kills millions of people around the world and creates to obesity and diabetes and other problems. So I would never, I mean, you won't see me with a Coca Cola bottle product placement, for example. I do not. I mean this is where I differ from like Ali Abdul, somebody I have a lot of respect for, for Tim Ferriss, somebody I have respect for. I will not endorse any kind of supplements because all the research I've ever seen on supplements by independent sources say they're complete nonsense. They don't really have vitamins supplements, they don't really help people. And Ali Abdel, again, I like him. I've endorsed his most recent book. He endorses one of those like meal in a can things which, you know, is it better than eating Cheetos and whiskey? Sure. But it's from all the research I've seen, it's so much less healthy for you than eating real unprocessed food. So there's certain things like that I'm not going to endorse. But when it comes to a shirt that I. Okay, I know I'm going to wear this shirt. I bought the right size. It fits, fits to me. There's not a lot of controversy there. I, I don't think anyone, no one's going to be harmed or have their life injured by buying a particular shirt. Now I certainly realize there are other people who say I should be factoring in every single ethical consideration. The tag says Made in Indonesia. Should I go to Indonesia and inspect the factory conditions and find out how much they're paid? You could make the case that that would be the absolute best possible thing to do, but I can't. I'm not going to do everything. It's just not how I see my role in the overall larger scheme of things. So. And I respect anyone who wants to take a differing view on that. We have time for one more and then I'm going to show you sort of the tedious process of what you've got to do. Okay. So I meant to have camera one on so you could see a little more of it. So you see, I'm just right here in front of the camera. I'm holding it up, I've got the remote in my hand. And by the way, it's so happy to see we still have like a dozen people with us. And I do appreciate you spending time because this is tedious. Frankly, I'm hoping that you decide whether it's with the Amazon Influencer program. And I'm not a spokesperson person for Amazon. Walmart has it. Tick tock, YouTube, all these platforms and stores have ways where you can make money by promoting products you like, use and already recommend to people. So I'm hoping that at least some of you see that and say, oh, doesn't seem that hard. But TJ's doing. I can do it, because I can tell you we're not supposed to say how much money or give it exactly, exact amounts. I can tell you it makes a little bit of money every day. And I mean a little, sometimes a little more. But it does make money every day. And I have not been able to do this in a week because of other stuff we're doing. A little bit of money has come in every day, Saturdays, Sundays, and earlier this week when I wasn't making anything. So I wouldn't go so far as to call it passive income. I am having to do work now, but it can generate money for times when you're doing other things. So that's how you want to define passive income. Sure. It also, I think the reason I'm doing is it opens doors to other opportunities and partnerships with brands and helps position you in different ways so people see you in a different light. Okay, this is another Tommy Hilfiger, a slightly different fabric, still cotton. And our cotton blend. This is the. The regular fit. And I've dropped my remote control. Sorry about that. Okay. Whoops. My. Oh, there we go. This Tommy Hilfiger dress, blue shirt. Simple, elegant, timeless, goes with anything, never clashes, never gets out of place, never calls too much attention to itself. That is indeed why I like solid blue dress shirts. And so it's typically been the only thing I've worn for about the last 20 years because the other thing. Confession. I'm colorblind. So the last thing I need is complex colors and designs where I've got to figure out how to mix and match things. So that's. That's why I have a lot of. That's why you typically see me in a solid. It's not just because the video camera can pixelate. This has lines on it, but they're subtle enough. They typically don't dance around and jump around much. Cream. It says real colorblind. I'm red green deficient. So I'm not someone who just sees shades of gray. But I have red green deficiency. Doesn't mean I don't see red or green. I see it differently from how people with normal vision do. So when someone says, oh, wow, those colors look good together, or that clashes, I don't really know what they mean. Nothing clashes for me. So if you see me clashing one day, something I'm wearing now, you know. So I'm going to put this away and now what I'm going to do is show you. I'll take the receiver out. I'm going to take the microphone off. Something I forgot to do, which I typically do is after I've recorded one video, I will test it to make sure the audio was in fact working. Because nothing is more frustrating than doing a whole string of videos and realizing you didn't have any audio and you got to do it all over, which I hate, having to do extra work. But let's just see. Simple, elegant, timeless, goes with anything. So we're in good shape there. So now what I'm going to do is actually show you step by step how I go from this concept stage to I've got an advertisement on the world's largest store website, Amazon, where customers can see it if they click it. I make money. So there's several steps involved. So the first one is I just have to go to my own Amazon storefront. So I go to the page, I hit create content. It's a little button. And I go to post video. I go to photo library and I just tap the. The last video I did. So I'm going to hit done. It is uploading the video. And I believe that one is the. That was the tiny hill figure men's dress shirt. So it's going to take a few seconds to upload it. Once it does that, I'll walk you through the steps. None of it is particularly difficult. Amazon, to their credit, makes it easier than almost any other affiliate program. I think now most of the time when I'm doing this, it's for products I literally bought on Amazon. So I just go to your orders. My orders. And it's right there this time. I know I bought it at Macy's last night at the Boca Raton Mall. So I'm going to just search all of Amazon now. So I'm going to dictate Tommy Hilfiger blue dress shirt for men. Sometimes I'll get it right. Okay, so it popped right up. Tommy Hilfiger regular fit. This is a regular fit. Oh, wow. I should have bought it on Amazon. A lot less expensive there. Let's see. Well, this one. This one may be it. Okay, so I'm going to hit tag product. I'm going to hit Done. Title? Simple elegance with this blue dress shirt. I'm going to hit done and I'm going to hit submit. That's it. Can you be a thousand times more complicated? Sure. Can you storyboard the video, have all sorts of edits, special effects, graphics, music? You could can use chat GPT to come up with all sorts of fancy wording that can grab the headline attention better. You could. I'm doing these as quickly as possible possible. Okay. Karima says there's a woman who's part of our student community is an expert of colors. Her name is Catherine. Talk to Barb to get a few tips from Catherine. I do know Catherine. Catherine Baxter Walsh who is an expert on image consulting. I've hired professional image consultants before. My wife is was in the fashion industry and a designer at one point. So she gives me guidance. But you're right, I could ask for more advice. Hey. Our friend Mansoor has joined us so let me say hello to him a minute. And Mansoor, you were nice enough to stop by earlier and I was not quick enough getting to you. Tell us what you're up to these days and how we can help you. We're just going through sort of the final minutes of our show today and I am demonstrating actually making Amazon influencer videos. The whole soup to nuts. Creating them, uploading them, posting them. But tell us what you're. What you're up to right now.
Good morning tg how are you doing?
Fantastic. How about you?
Yeah, thank you so much. We are very good and we are feeling very nice. Great.
And any questions you have today or anything you want to share us about what you're working on right now.
Sure. Three or four days before I have a good communication with you regarding how we can solve angry customers. Definitely the step what you have explained complaint in your presentations. It was a very useful communications. The same I have made a presentation plus briefing to my team that TG Walker is a very professional. So in terms of communication skills, if anyone wants to know the communication skills and the communication rules and regulations so you may join the Digi Walkers. This is the good stable.
Well, great. I appreciate. I'm glad it was helpful. Number one and two, I appreciate you mentioning me and send best wishes to all your colleagues. You're in the telecommunications industry based in Afghanistan, correct?
Thank you so much. Myself I will try to half your permissions to have a different class for our team member about the communication skills, if it is possible.
Sure. Well, we'd be happy to help them in any way. I do have lots of different communication skills courses, video on demand. You can find out all the information about that on my media training worldwide website and you can see links to that from my YouTube channel. I also often do trainings just through zoom with corporations around the world. And we can do everything from a 45 minute keynote to a three hour workshop. So let me know if I can ever help you and your colleagues that we don't have to, we don't have to do all the travel and all the expense. We can do everything in a live format that's private just for your people. Because I do trainings that way as well as keynote speaking. So please let me know if there's any way I can help you and your colleagues.
Exactly this way. Because myself I'm working in a multinational company because our company is very famous all around the world. I will talk with my LD team, the HR human resource team and training and development departments to have communications with you through email to have your time for our employees once a time.
Okay, great. And if you ever need to reach me, my contact information is on the about you section of the YouTube page. But it's also, you can also reach me through any social media platform because I'm on pretty much all of them as TJ Walker Success Channel.
Exactly, exactly. Because we have more than thousand employees working, you know, in our companies because there are much professionals, innovator. That's before I have introduced myself that I'm working in a telecommunication company. You know, telecommunication companies mostly providing, you know, telephone.
Yeah.
Internet services to people almost. We have more than 8 million subscribers. Definitely your support is required, you know, for the betterment of our employees.
And you're in the communications business. I mean there, there's an old expression, the cobbler's children wear no shoes. Quite often people who are in an industry don't actually use their own product or service. I do see that all the time with companies in the communications business, like public relations firms are often the worst about communicating. I don't mean to prejudge your company, but it is interesting to me that companies that specialize in communication often do the worst job of communicating with their customers. And video based companies are often the last ones to ever have anyone communicating on video, which is a constant source of annoyance to me. I have people pitch me all the time on, you know, we got an app and a website, teach people how to do public speaking. And every explanation, every answer, every about us section is all text. I'm like, you're teaching people how to speak? Why don't you have video speaking rather than text information. But I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir. Hey, man. Sir, anything else we can do for you quickly because we're wrapping up here. This is now. We're going into almost four hours live today, including our session with Udemy students. And I've got to finish uploading these Amazon influencer videos and showing people exactly what I'm doing.
Okay, thank you so much. Was a nice communication with you further and if there is any time on daily basis, I promise a daily basis, I will join in this nice presentations. I will share my own experience, my own communications, what we learn from the customers.
Great. Thanks so much. And please, please watch the short form and long form on demand videos on my YouTube channel. Leave comments and share. We're really trying to build up that audience. The more audience we have there, the more we'll get alerts to come to our lives and we can just continue to grow and help more people.
For sure. For sure. Definitely. Definitely. Why not?
Monster. Thanks. Thank you so much for joining us. Very much. Appreciate it and feel free to stay with us. Okay. Continuing with the Amazon influencer process. So we've uploaded one. I. I just want another hit post. I hit photo library. I'm going to go to the second video. This is also a Tommy Hilfiger shirt. I'm going to hit Done. It's uploading or it's processing the video right now. It's uploading the video. Once it's done, it will give me an opportunity to tag it and label it. So that's doing it right now. It looks like we did seven today. I thought we had done six. I often try to do at least a minimum of five. So browse history. Tommy Hilfiger blue men's dress shirt. And see was this one the slim. This is a. Let's see. This was the second one. This one we're doing is the. I got some regulars and some slim fit. They are slightly different, different shirts and they all seem to be highly rated. I occasionally think a product is great that might have less than a four and a half star review. But I generally try to promote things that I not only I like but I can see resonates with a lot of people because I don't want, I don't want to recommend something and then people are profoundly disappointed and think that I led them in the wrong direction. Okay. Crisp comma, clean men's blue shirt. Perfect for business. I had done. Oh, I put an apostrophe and udemy for Excuse me, Amazon for whatever reason, does not like any apostrophe in its titles for products. So I'm going to keep these over here. Go to storefront, create content, post photo library, Go to the next one. And this is the tie hit. Done. And this one. Now, what I didn't do, and occasionally the issue has happened. I do a product and it's not for sale on Amazon, in which case I just do nothing. I can't upload it. It's. It doesn't do me any good. Now, in theory, I could go to that brand or that manufacturer and say, I got this. At some point I might. But I have no rational reason for thinking any of the products I've done so far would especially resonate. Now, there are products I have in mind that I'm planning on doing that for in the future. One of them is the Oura ring. This tracks my sleep, gives me so much health data. It's the first thing I check on my phone every morning. They don't sell on Amazon, so at some point I am going to do an ad for that because it's a product I really believe in. But in general, I try to focus on things that are only available on, that are already available on Amazon. Perry Ellis portfolio men's necktie. Okay. You know, I don't know if the color. Let's try that again. Maroon colored. Perry Ellis portfolio men's necktie. Okay, there it is. Oh, no, that's a different. That's a different brand. So they might just not have it listed that way. So I will. I will list it just without the color. Specific Perry Ellis portfolio men's necktie. Okay. And I believe that is the right one. Okay. So I'm tagging it, I'm hitting. Done. Perry Ellis makes a classy necktie. Okay. In that case, it made a misspelling. I use a dictation because I can dictate so much faster than typing on a little phone with finger. So I don't like to write on a phone. You might be better at that. But if you dictate, you've got to be aware that mistakes can happen. It's spelled Perry P E, R R I E. That's what the dictation ended up doing. So, okay, create content. But I changed it. That's why I wasn't talking. Because if I told you about it while the dictation was on, it would create another strand of words. Photo, photo. Library. Next item. See what this is. I live in South Florida where it's hot. Oh, this is the linen shirt. Okay, so this is the untuck it linen shirt. And I am a huge, huge fan of linen shirts. I basically only wear linen shirts anymore now that I'm in Florida. I used to wear pullover shirts, but starting to do this show every day, changing with makeup on. I didn't want to have to take something over my head and smudge makeup off. So that's one of the reasons why I only wear linen shirts. And it's hot here in Florida. Untuck it men's short sleeve linen shirt. And there it is. Wow. Only gives it four stars. That's a little surprising. Let me see. Okay, this one's four and a half. Oh, no, that's a different brand. Here's the N. Tucket. Okay, Well, let me see if that's. Yeah, sometimes it pulls up things that are similar, but this is an untuck it shirt. It's hard for me to tell if that's a linen one. My untuck it linen shirt looks and feels great. Done. Submit Go to Storefront Create Content Post Video Moto Library Cream. Is that you noticed the ring and wondered about it? That's what. That's what it is. Because I don't aesthetically, I don't like having two rings on my hand and next to each other. But this is the wedding ring my wife gave me. I don't want to take it off, nor do I want to have to take it off. And I just couldn't figure out any other finger to put the aura ring on that made sense. Putting on my right hand. It was catching on things because I'm right handed. I. I don't want a pinky ring. So I, I really couldn't figure out any other finger to put it on. And they are together. But I do, I do concede it looks a little bit odd having two. Two rings together like that. Okay, see, where are we? So now we're doing the next. The next one. And I believe this was another shirt we're doing here. And Karima says the ring looks good. Well, thanks a lot, Kareem. I do appreciate that. By the way, soon as I finish this, we're pretty much going to close out for the day. So if you have any other questions, last minute comments, housekeeping matters, please let me know. If you haven't liked this video yet, please do. If you haven't left a comment yet just to say where you're from, it doesn't have to be any great profound question or comment, but just let me know where you are today because it's Nice. We've had people from Afghanistan, from Ireland, from India today, from the United States, all over. So I do appreciate you joining us. Okay. Oh, I forgot to see which product this is. Okay, so this is the. If you're looking for simple elegance, nothing beats this Calvin Klein. That's the Calvin Klein. Okay. All right, so now we're going to do the Calvin Klein. We're going to tag the product. So let me look at the shirt is refined cotton wrinkle free. So I'm going to tag the product. Calvin Klein refined cotton men's blue dress shirt. Maybe more. And there it is. Okay. This is the slim fit tag. Iron herringbone. All right, so I don't know if it's a new product. It only had three reviews. I'm a little bit skeptical sometimes when something has that few of use. But again, it's a well known brand. It's a shirt. It seems to me, it seems like it's a pretty safe bet. Refined cotton is wrinkle free and comfortable. Submit post Go to Storefront Create content Video photo library and now I believe we're going to the seventh product, which I think is the this tie I'm wearing. Let's test. If you're in a business setting that requires a tie, Calvin Klein does the job. Okay, so it's the Calvin Klein line. Cream. Is this purple or maroon? What would you. What would you call this? Sometimes, you know, sometimes people can debate even if they're not colorblind, but cream? Any sense whether I should call that purple or maroon? It's the Calvin Klein plum. Okay. Calvin Klein men's tie plum color. I think that's it. Okay. No, that one's not it. That has a. A ribbed look to it. X luxury tie accessory. Let me see if there's any other identifier on here. No, I was dictating all of that. Calvin Klein men's neckties. You know, these just look a little bit different, but with a lot of these products, it shows one. But then when you're on the product page, it links to 89 other colors. So that may be what it is. So I'm gonna take it. This one seems closest to it, so I'm going to hit that tag it title it Calvin Klein makes the perfect elegant necktie. Done Post. Go to storefront. And I think that's everything that we did today. I believe we did six products.
Great.
Well, I appreciate those of you spending time with me today, especially those of you who've been with us for so long. So, Karima, Says I would leave out color. I did that in the search. When you're posting it, I mean, it's. People can see the color I'm talking about. And my understanding is. My understanding is that Amazon will post your video on something if it seems close enough or related enough to the product that it would be helpful to the customer. So sometimes it might be a little bit different, but if they feel it's helpful, they can post it. Someone can watch it. If they don't feel like it's the same product, they don't have to buy it. So it's just more information out there. Hey, I want to thank everyone for joining me today. I'm TJ Walker. If you could do me a favor, just check and see because I know I'm bad about this. Make sure you're actually subscribed to my YouTube channel. Some of you have joined us on Facebook today from LinkedIn, from Twitter, and please follow me in those places too. But where you could help the most is YouTube because. Because YouTube does make it easier for creators to monetize their work, to share their work, and to get longtime audiences. I have a video I did a decade ago that shows up in search engines for media training, and I get more than a thousand views every single month, typically views every single day. The other platforms are just not doing that. And the kind of content I create is evergreen. It's designed to help you throughout your career do it. Occasionally things change. As far as I have to give a recommendation on a new earpiece, that wasn't an issue 20 years ago, sure. But so much of it is evergreen content that relates to communicating by talking to another human being. So that's why I do like it. If I make content. Maybe it doesn't get Mr. Beast numbers today or tomorrow, but if it can show up in the search engine and a handful of people watch it every day for years, I've helped a lot more people and it ends up helping me too. So that's why I am trying to get people to subscribe to YouTube and it's TJ Walker success channel on YouTube. Pretty easy to find me if you just type in TJ Walker. Typically the number one or number two channel. You'll see there is a country music star named TJ Walker. I don't sing, but you'll find me pretty quickly. Also, if you can sign up for notifications, if you can like this video, that would be helpful. Number one. And also if you could leave comments, sign up for notifications, subscribe and share the video. All those things really help. Thanks so much. I don't know yet if I'm going to be going live tomorrow, which still is still kind of infrastructure week. Wasn't planning on going live today, but I have so much fun it's hard to stop. But next week we'll be back to our regular schedule, which is pretty much 9am to noon Eastern Time Monday through Friday. The whole week after that I'll be gone off on vacation. It's my daughter's spring break and fortunate enough to be going out to Vale and doing some skiing with family and friends. But next week will be a regular week. I don't know if we'll be live yet tomorrow. We'll have to see how the workflow is. Thanks so much. See you on demand later today, because there's new videos posted every day. Thanks.
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