2024-03-14 TJ Walker LIVE on YouTube

Hello and welcome. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me. This is the TJ Walker Success show here on YouTube, LinkedIn, TikTok, Twitter and a lot of other social media platforms. This is the one place on the Internet where you can ask questions for three hours a day, typically about any aspect of communication, spoken communication, talking one on one, speaking small groups, preparing for a job interview, giving a presentation to five colleagues or 50 or 500 or 5,000 or if you're on international media, 5 million people. We're all about helping you communicate more effectively and more confidently. Want to say a special hello to our friends joining us from TikTok. This is only the third time we've been live on TikTok in the last four years, so we're still trying to figure out how that works. We've got Swap joining us. Eric has joined us, Ben is with us. If you'd like to go live, the best thing would be if you could for today join us over on the YouTube channel and that way you can connect on Streamyard. We post a link to our Streamyard connection which allows you to appear right on screen with me, ask questions, be a part of a conversation. And Ben, if I forgot to do that, if you could go ahead and post our link today and for the Streamyard in our community tab, that would be great. I want to say hello to. Greco's joining us. Justin is joining us, Samara has joined us. Will so very happy that so many friends from TikTok are joining us live. If you see me looking awkwardly, it's because I am broadcasting to my cell phone here for TikTok and I'm looking at my regular broadcast camera for our community on YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media places. So thanks so much for people joining us. As always, we give priority to anyone willing to come on camera and actually speak to me. Now we're going to do a test right now. Ben, help me. I see Dave is with us. I've got someone named Ch who's asked to join us on TikTok and what I'm going to try to do. Oh, now I see the button you mentioned. Let me turn up the audio. Sorry. Okay. Yes. How are you today? Great. Yes, I'm fantastic. Thanks so much for joining us today. Where are you based today? And tell us. Oh, you know what? I forgot to put my microphone on. Let me put my microphone on. So for those of you watching on YouTube and other platforms, when I'm talking on my cell phone, whether I'm creating an Amazon influencer, video or doing a live. I add an extra receiver right into my phone. I'm going to put that in and then I put an additional microphone that that connects to it because. Right. And I've got to make sure the green light is on because even though I'm only two feet, two and a half feet away, it's not as good as when your mouth is only a couple of inches away from the microphone. Now, I hope I didn't lose you, Chai. I think that was your name. Forgive me if I botched that. So please feel free to come back and say hello if you want to, but you may have just been saying hello. I see. Alex says good morning. Bentley has joined us. Rhonda has joined us. And I see that our good friends Dave and Tick have joined us on YouTube. Let's say hello to both of you.

Hi, TJ.

Hi. Dave is back. Thanks for joining us and feel free to put your camera on if you like. Tic, tell us what you're up to if you want to put your camera on as well. I'm more than happy to have either one of you ask questions or do demonstration. Oh, so Tick, you have posted a video. Is that the one you've asked me to? I want to make sure it's the right one. Can you come on and say hello? Because it looks to me like you've posted a video for critique, but I want to make sure I'm doing the right one. And for our friends joining us live on TikTok, if you have questions, I might miss it because it's scrolling by quickly on TikTok. If you do want to join us and post your questions where I guarantee you I'll answer them, Try coming over to YouTube. You'll find me TJ Walker. Success on YouTube and that's the handle on most social media platforms as well. So TICU posted it, but it looks like it's a stream yard link. So is that correct? Because I've never seen you post something in Streamyard, but let me go ahead and share that. Happy to share anyone's presentation here. Going to share the audio and share the screen. Share the audio from that screen and I'm going to hit share. Well, let's see here. Okay, That's taking me to Streamyard, so that can't be the correct link. I think maybe you. Well, I don't really know what happened. Tic, can you just come on and talk to us a second? Because I'm happy to give you a critique but. Oh, the link I'm seeing is the one. I think what happened is you accidentally copied the link for this live show today. I think that that is what happened. So. But take, if you want to come on, let us know. Sometimes we have connection problems. And Dave, come on up. And I know I cut you off a little prematurely in our last live session. Dave, for those of you joining us for the first time is an internationally renowned public speaker, author and creativity expert. And he's an expert on how individuals can use retreats, self created retreats, to rejuvenate their creativity. You were telling us earlier about your speech from the past weekend and it went really well. So I'll ask you the same question I always ask people. How do you really know what specific feedback you mentioned? You got the feedback that someone wanted to hire you for another speech. That's really fantastic. Beyond that, what did your audience members who came up to you afterwards say to you beyond the fact that they liked your speech?

Well, aside from the fact that they liked the speech, they also pointed to various things that they thought were fascinating that I talked about and things that they learned that they didn't know about what I was speaking on.

And what specifically jumped out at them. What resonated?

Well, I think, you know, I gave a talk on one of my books, Tim Burton's the Nightmare Before Christmas Visual Companion, and a number of people were surprised about how a large team of people that make a movie work together, even though they have overlapping objectives and deadlines and things like that. So a lot about teamwork. There were other folks that came up to me and were moved by some of the people who worked on the film, who had passed away, who I gave a shout out to for their contributions, not only to the film, but also when I interviewed them for the book.

You know what occurred to me that I should do, and forgive me, Dave, I'm trying to do a lot of technical things here. I'm going to, I think, take my earpiece off. That way our friends on TikTok can hear it through the regular speaker going in my mic. I'm hoping it doesn't create a big feedback loop, but it just occurs to me that that might be a better system for our show today to work out with people. So I just need to change a setting on my audio because I do appreciate all of our good friends joining us on TikTok today. And I realize you didn't hear anything that was just stated that way, so I am going to do a quick test. Okay, I think we're good there. And Dave, can you Say something now. I just want to see if It's.

Sure. So, T.J. you asked me to put it. Put the book into the comment section, which I did, but it says this comment has failed to post to TJ Walker success. I don't know why. I'm not sure. I'm not sure if I'm on the technical side on your end, if they have it blocked or not. I don't know.

Okay, fascinating. And unfortunately, I'm not the greatest expert on Streamyard. I know that YouTube now sometimes limits your ability to put a. A URL. And if. If Barb gets a chance to come back, she knows sort of everything. Excuse me one second. Had a big sneeze, which typically does not happen to people when they're doing a live broadcast. You very rarely see an anchor do that and typically just make this a learning moment. Typically it's because it doesn't happen when you've got a little bit of adrenaline going. But I'm so relaxed and happy to be here today that that adrenaline thing is not working in my advantage as far as warding off sneezes. So I almost had a massively huge sneeze there.

So I think you're correct, tj, I just removed the URL. It was a bitly link and I posted the comment. So it just tells you what the book is and the fact that it's releasing in July, but there's no URL.

Okay. So we'll try to figure out the best way of doing that. And the other thing I would ask is post it on my community tab. If you can post it in my most recent tab. My most recent post on the TJ Walker Success Community tab on YouTube. Now, if you're watching this on Facebook or LinkedIn, try to post it there as well. What I mentioned before and I'll mention again, and to our friends on TikTok who are unfamiliar with this is we're a little bit different from most channels, most programs. We actually encourage you to be self promotional. Now, we don't want spam for cryptocurrency and all sorts of nonsense. But if it's a project you personally worked on your creative baby and you're now speaking about it, we want to empower you and make you even more confident to speak about it in different places. So if you, if you come on and talk about it as Dave has, or you want to post a video about it talking about it, then by all means post a link to how people can get it, purchase it, borrow it, download it, however it is where we want you to make money and thrive. But we also want people to come and realize you can simply come here and learn. You never have to buy anything. There's absolutely no, no obligation. So, Dave, it looks like the Bitly link did go in now, although maybe it was done in a way that it, it doesn't seem like it's a URL. Is that a possibility?

Yes. So what I did was I took the HTTPs://1, backslash, backslash off and I posted it and it went through. So if people want to try and use use that, they can go to the pre order page on Indiegogo and it will be up on Amazon at some point in the next few weeks and there will be a ebook version and possibly an audiobook. I haven't decided yet.

Okay, great, great. And let me just make a quick note to my colleague Ben, one of our executive producers, who is in on this. Ben, if you can find out what are the rules on streamyard as far as posting a URL? Let's try to figure that out. We've got a friend, Gulzar on TikTok who is joining us. Gulzar, how are you today? Let me make sure I've turned up my volume. Yes, how are you? I'm going to accept a match invite, I think is what we're supposed to do. How are you today? Fantastic. Where are you based and what's the sort of thing that you talk about and present on regularly? Are you able to hear me? Okay. Oh, you're in Pakistan. Great. We've had several people from Pakistan. Right. So, all right, so I. Hold on one moment, I'm talking to my colleague Ben. So we're still trying to learn how to host live events on Tik Tok. So I hit that button up and it's asking me to invite live creators. I invited myself. So I've done that, Ben, but I don't know the next step as far as I'm going to have to pull this off a minute. So Ben, if you can see this. Oh, I've got to get my face off. I did what you asked for. And those of you just joining me, we're trying to learn the technology of how you live stream on TikTok because we're not using the same stream yard system for that. Do you see what I am supposed to do next, Ben? And Ben, if you could turn your microphone.

I'm not seeing it yet. You're supposed to see the same symbol.

Well, I did that. Let me back up a minute. So there's A symbol there. Now, it was. Okay, I hit this symbol at the bottom right. Yes, bottom left. I hit that. This is what comes up.

Yes, you will see that same symbol on the right. Now there is an X below heat.

So once you click it, it go off invite.

No, no. Yes. That's. Does it.

That's asking me if I want to disconnect from live.

Yes, you disconnect him, but it says.

Your live will continue after you disconnect. That makes it sound like I will be kicked off of my own. No, it's.

It's not you. It should be him that will be kicked off.

All right. If I lose you. Sorry, Apologies. Okay, how would you rate the technical performance of the co host feature? Okay, so I'm not sure I'm live now. Yes, you can see me on. Okay, great.

You're live.

All right, so we've learned. Oh, it froze. I did something wrong there. Okay. All right, so we're back. All right, so it's a learning experience. So sometimes it's best to bring together a team and do all these things behind closed doors or simulations for days, weeks, months, certainly, Dave, if I had the resources of the Disney group, I would be, you know, testing this probably for six weeks out. But as a much smaller, leaner, more efficient machine, or I say more efficient, the smaller and leaner. Sometimes it's just better to hop right in, knowing the first one or two will be a little rough. Certainly the first handful of online courses I ever made were a little rough. You hop in, you get better, you experiment, and you try to figure it out as you go. That's typically been my method. It doesn't mean it's always the best method. Sometimes you can get egg on your face. But I find that when I am transparent and reveal to people, you know, what I'm trying to do and learning as I go. I'm sharing the process, which ideally will make it a little easier when you start to go down the same process as well, and ideally will make it faster and easier for you as well. And I just want to check again. A special hello to our new friends on TikTok who are joining us. This is only the second time we've done this. And we've got Beach Boy Craig has joined us. Someone named Crack who says, you're live, Daddy. Okay, thanks. I didn't know because I thought that I had accidentally disconnected and I was disconnecting our guest. So if you would like to go live, specifically, if you have a question that relates to communication skills, that's really what we're about here is helping people communicate more effectively and how to, you know, how to simply deal with the fact that sometimes things aren't going smoothly. One of you is quoting Bible verses. And certainly everyone is entitled to their own religious beliefs or not believing in religion, but that's not the purpose of this particular channel. So thank you so much for stopping by. And Ms. API writes what is happening here. So what's happening is this is an experiment. I'm T.J. walker. This is the T.J. walker Success Channel. We help people improve their public speaking skills, their communication skills, their presentation skills. And we do it by answering questions, doing demonstrations, and amplifying on a lot of the same content that we put out regularly on TikTok, but also on YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn. Typically I'm putting out two short form videos per day, one longer video per day. And during weekdays, typically we do a live show where we take your calls, your questions, your thoughts. That's really what we're about. Dave, I don't want to keep you too long, but if you don't mind coming back, I wanted to give you the final word on any topics you're working on related to communication skills and if there's any way we can help you or anything else you want to promote.

You know, I was, I've been trying to put the URL into the comments and it just won't let me do it. I've tried it a bunch of different ways and the, the little bitly slash 31 is only a port portion of, of that URL. So I guess there, there's obviously some sort of filter that's blocking it from going in. But I, I just want to say thank you. I've been learning a lot from coming on these TJ and, and I've actually been applying it out in the real world.

Okay, that's fantastic. And Dave, Ben just sent me a note saying only the host can post URLs in the comments section.

Got it.

Now I would ask you to try right on YouTube.

Okay, I'm going to do that after this.

Sure. And if not the comments section, then at least give a try in the Community tab. I would love for the Community tab to be a place that isn't just promoting me, but promoting, promoting all members of the community and what they're doing and how they're trying to communicate their creations and the good ideas they have for the world. So that would be great. And Ben, thanks for doing that research there.

And tj, I just went ahead and put it into the private chat so you and Ben can see it. And if you guys want to do anything with it, you can.

Okay, I'm going to try right now and see if I can just copy and paste it myself. So let me put that there and see if it gets in.

And it did.

And lo and behold, it's there. And so for those of you who are our friends on Tick Tock, thanks so much for stopping by. I really appreciate it. I apologize for leaving you out of the conversation a little. We are mostly streaming live on seven other platforms right now. So if you want to see what we're talking about, the easiest thing would be to go over to YouTube, type in TJ Walker Success or Facebook or really any other social media platform. They make it a little easier to multi stream on different platforms. So that's why we just posted the link to Dave's show. Now, we take questions in a lot of different ways here. You can put it in a text format, you can put it in a private chat. You can, if you, if you want anonymity, you can join us live on streamyard. And some people take the time to email questions in. I'm going to go over those in a minute. I want to make sure I haven't missed any questions that may have come in from TikTok because we've had a tremendous number of people who have come in through TikTok. Just Mel writes, should I think and search for words or should I just let the words flow without thinking? So when you're giving presentations, let me switch to full screen here. I love your question, by the way. When you are speaking and presenting and Mr. Usman is asked to come on live, I'm going to hit accept. We'll come to you in just a moment. When you are thinking, ideally you've given thought in advance, but what you don't want to do is awkwardly go like that. Excuse me, Mr. Usman, I'm going to come to you in just one moment. Let me make sure. Okay, I didn't mean to knock you off, I apologize. But the issue of should you get the words just right? Some people try to memorize things like that. That's difficult. What I recommend is use a simple outline, occasionally glance down at it, and then get comfortable talking about it. Don't try to memorize certain words or word order. That's very difficult. Instead, focus on one idea at a time. Use the simplest words that come to you and that's what's going to make you come across more comfortable, confident, relaxed and interesting. Once you start trying to memorize or looking at a script, it tends to make most people sound very artificial and contrived. So I would avoid trying to do that. It's a lot more difficult. I want to make life easy for you. Use simplest words. You can be thinking of those words, but it should be stuff you've thought about already most of the time. Okay. And noise pollution writes. What a snooze fest. Well, guess what? Your actions absolutely right. If you're looking for a channel that has Mr. Beast entertainment value, production value, this isn't the place. If you're looking for something that has a lot of scantily clad people, this is not the place for you. I'm. I'm keeping all of my clothes on, which will be a relief to a lot of you. If you're looking for something that's about humor, this isn't it. This is a channel specifically designed to help people ask questions, as your colleague just did, about public speaking, communication skills. And it's a place to help people build confidence. It's also a place where you can have videos of yourself speaking, critiqued, and it won't cost you anything. It's a place where you can try out new material, new messages. If you are pitching your business to venture capitalists on Thursday and you want to practice your pitch here, you can do it live. There's no charge. You can post a video and get some feedback from me and other people. So that is what it's about. So let's use this as a learning moment. In fact, I'm going to. I'm going to hit my record button for this. What do you do if you're giving a presentation, perhaps live right on YouTube or TikTok or some other platform, you think things are going well. You look at the comments and somebody says, hey, you are a snooze fest. What do you do? Do you think, oh, my gosh, I am horrible. This is awful. Do you panic? Do you think, gosh, they're right? Do you feel yourself with doubt? No. You've got to realize you can't appeal to everyone. No one has no universal appeal. I've seen the best speakers in the world sometimes and someone is asleep in the first row. You can't please everyone. All you can do is prepare in advance. Try to make sure you got a great message for your audience. Rehearse until you get to the point where you're coming across the best you can. Okay? So I'm going to use that as a short form video. My team will will edit that. So whoever. So noise pollution, thank you so much for actually saying that. Now, of course I would drastically prefer unmitigated praise, but I hope to demonstrate best practices here. Something happens. Be flexible. Make the most of it. Turn lemons into lemonade if you can. That's what I tried to do and not everyone's going to like it. Some people may say well that's trite or he shouldn't have recognized that person or that foeman's negativity. All fair enough, but I decided to go a different way. I want to thank you for joining me today. We've got plenty of time. I'm going to go to some questions that people wrote to me. I'll be taking other questions, some of them from students of mine, some of them from people joining us for the very first time. Others actually generated by chat GPT. Let me see if I missed any other questions that came in. And I want to thank those who, who are brand new members of our community here joining us on TikTok. It is amazing how many people are sent an alert by TikTok. What I don't know is that just because I'm sort of new to the platform of posting live content on TikTok or do they just generally get that much? Okay. And we have king is I don't know if you're attempting to join us or not, but I may have just hit something that lets you on. Okay, I saw that and thank you so much for your comments. So I realize I'm kind of close now. You're kind of seeing every pore. I'm doing that because I am having to get close to my phone because today we are streaming not just on Streamyard but also on TikTok. And the only way you can stream on TikTok at least the first few times is you have to, you have to do it on a phone. That's. That's kind of how they like it. And now ALCH has asked to join me live on TikTok. I'm going to attempt to do that. I'm going to hit that. How are you? I'm fine. Great. Thanks so much for joining us. Tell us what's on your mind and what you're doing right now.

Nothing.

And if you don't mind, since this, we've been broadcasting daily on YouTube and other social media platforms for a while. This is really the first day or so we've been doing this on TikTok. It's a different platform, different medium. Tell us how did you did this just pop up in your feed or how did you even see this channel. Platform? That's your preferred platform. Okay, great. Well, we're happy to have you here and for the future, if you ever have questions about public speaking, communication skills, giving presentations, speaking to the media, let me know. Okay, well, it's great place to practice. I'm hearing your. You sound pretty clear to me. And the best I'm in the United States. I'm in the southern part of the United States, Florida, and I was born and raised here in the United States. Hey, thanks so much for joining us. We got to go. We have to go to others but thanks so much for joining us. I hope you come back and feel free to ask questions anytime. Thanks so much. I think I'm getting the hang of how the TikTok Live works and how you can bring people in one at a time. We're going to take a quick commercial break here. We started running commercials. Something I'll be doing later today is giving you a sense of how to make Amazon influencer videos not by talking about it, but by actually making video the videos. And I do apologize in advance to our TikTok friends. I'm going to have to end our livestream with you because I only have one phone with me and I have to make the Amazon influencer videos with my phone, but that's quite a ways off. But for right now I'm going to just run a quick ad block for a couple of minutes. These are actual ads that I have on Amazon that we also post on YouTube and other places. It's part of a relatively new program, at least for me, the Amazon Influencer program, where pretty much anybody who's got a thousand followers on a major social media platform can get into the influencer business. So it's all kind of new. I'm still learning my way around it, but it is kind of fun and and is business setting that requires a tie. Calvin Klein does the job. Simple, elegant. I wear it on T every day. If you're looking for simple elegance, nothing beats this Calvin Klein light blue business shirt. It doesn't distract. It looks great in person, it looks great on camera. 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. 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. This Tommy Hil figure drop 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. You want something to go well with your suit, give it a try. Everybody likes money. Everybody needs money. But do you understand your psychological relationship to money? This book, Happy Money will help you along that path, make you happier, and ideally a little wealthier. Artificial intelligence is everywhere in the news these days. If you feel like you want a little deeper background, then I highly recommend AI Superpowers. It goes into the history of AI, The US China and elsewhere. It's a great foundation if you enjoy warm beverages. But you don't want to have to microwave water or have a traditional kettle on all day long. This is the solution. This electric kettle heats my water cool quickly and it keeps it warm. Or tea all day long. This is almost magical. I no longer have to have matches around the house or lighters with lighter fluid. This electric lighter, I don't even know how it does it, but it lights, handles, anything I need. I like to think I'm the Incredible Hulk and so strong I can open any jar, but I can't. That's why I love this. It helps me get any jar, any top off quickly and easily. Want to show mom you love her? Well, what better than a cup that says I love mom? This is a hit. On Mother's Day or any other day. I love fresh garlic in my food, but I can't stand mashing it up myself. That's why I love this garlic press. It is clean, easy to use, easy to clean up, and makes my food taste great. We're back live. Thanks so much and thank you. Those are actual ads, by the way I make them. I'm not an official employee of Amazon. Those companies didn't hire me and officially sponsor me. Those are what's called affiliate relationships, where if you bring an audience to a product and someone clicks through you and buys it, you get a small piece of the pie, you get a commission. So I'm not supposed to tell you all the ins and outs of the Amazon Influencer program because that's a violation of their operating agreement. But I can tell you it's an interesting thing. I've gotten enough positive response that I'm continuing. I typically do five new ads a day. Now, that may sound daunting, but I typically do them in about 10 minutes. I do one simple 15 second product review, talking about something I like and put it right into the system. So I will show you that later today for our friends on TikTok. I have to do it with this phone so I won't be able to show it to you. I apologize for that. But if you want to see it, you can come over and join us on YouTube. Go to YouTube, type in TJ Walker Success. You will see that. Now, Stephen says voice is not matching up. You know, I did step out of the room a minute ago. I don't know if I lost the connection with my microphone. If any of you joining me on TikTok can tell a difference, let me know. Now, one of you just wrote, snazzy suit, man. Now that, that does warm my heart because that just Yesterday somebody on TikTok criticized my pinstripe suit, said, hey buddy, pinstripe suits went out of business or went out of fashion 10 years ago. And I pointed out that the suit was in fact 20 years old. What I like about this suit, and I'll be honest with you, this is my favorite suit, is it's not too much of anything. It's not too conservative, it's not too flashy. It doesn't have pinstripes that can jump around. There's no patterns that can jump around. It's not the most common of colors and yet it's not anything that strikes people as a weird or odd color. So this is my favorite suit and believe it or not, I believe it's now 16 years old. So thanks so much for appreciating the suit. So thanks a lot. See any other comments that I missed. Do appreciate so many folks from from TikTok joining us today and I see popular has joined us. Soy Hugo, Ricardo, Olivia. So many great friends joining us today on TikTok and we appreciate all of our regular friends on, on YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram is one we're on now as well. So hello to all of our Instagram friends. If you're just joining us, this is the TJ Walker Success channel. On this channel we focus exclusively on communication skills, building communication skills and also building your confidence in your communication skills so you can ask me questions. I've been coaching people one on one small private training sessions for 30 years. So I'm not just giving you an opinion here. I'm giving you analysis based on real world experimentation, expertise and practice in the trenches. So that's what this is all about. It's also a place for you to speak out and join, be a part of the conversation. By coming in on streamyard, you can just join and speak right with me. Ganesh has just stopped by to say hello, Ganesh. And again, you don't have to say hello, but Ganesh has joined us on Streamyard. If you would like to turn your mic on and your camera on, you can talk to us. You can just sort of sit in the green room and listen as well. Ganesh, did you want to join us? Because your microphone is still muted, so if you don't want to talk, that's perfectly okay. Just let. And Ganesh has left. So sometimes people click streamyard because it's easier to hear or the connection is better. Absolutely nothing wrong with that. No problem. But if you would like to come on camera to ask a question, to do a demonstration, to get feedback on some aspect of your presentation, happy to have you do that as well. So some questions have come in in the last week. I make sure I'm not missing anything from your comments from the live stream. Some questions have come in that I do want to answer and so I just need to pull up my email and see what I want to read. The particular questions that have come in. One in particular did catch my eye that I wanted to give attention to, but I want to give credit by name to the person. Here's one I had not seen. So this is Rachelle Tseng who writes how do you find the right time to negotiate a pay raise? Fantastic question. I'd like to do probably a short form video and a long form video on that. And then again, this is from Rachelle Tang. And so those of you just joining us on TikTok, this is a live show where I'm talking to you, but I'm doing several things at once. I'm trying to be responsive to you and people who write in join us live. But I'm also making videos, producing videos, short form and long form videos that are later edited and distributed throughout social media. And this way you can sort of see it from behind the scenes. So when is how to find the right time to negotiate a pay raise? Okay, so let me hop into that. I'm going to go solo screen. I'm going to go to camera two. And those of you on TikTok don't know what I'm talking about because you see the same scene. I'm going to have to step out of the scene a minute because I'm doing slightly different camera angles for this production. So again the question is what is the best time? How to find the right time to negotiate a pay Raise. Okay, so how do you find the right time to negotiate a pay raise? What you don't want to do is catch the boss when they're running out the door. They're bigging it. Okay, so this is part of what we're doing here is I'm showing you, warts and all, when I make a mistake. So I'm going to redo that one. I didn't like what I said. I try to do most things in one take, but sometimes I say, you know what, that's not great. You just stop and do over. Getting my angles just right. So how do you find the right time to negotiate a pay raise? What you don't want to do is think, oh, I can't pay my rent next week. Let me grab my boss's attention at 5 o' clock Friday afternoon when they're in a big hurry to get out of here because it's convenient for me now. You've got to think about the timeline with your boss. You need to set up an official time for a meeting. Let your boss know, I'd like to schedule a meeting to talk to you about an important matter regarding my future. Let them know and then make sure they're not rushed. Make sure there's no emergency going on. In a calm way, lay out your recent accomplishments, what you've done to boost value to this organization and how you'd like to do more. That's when you ask for a raise. Okay, I'm hitting stop on the recording. Going back to camera three. So that's kind of a short form video that will be edited down. Not the first blunder, but that will be edited down so that it can be used. Okay, so I think I did it right. Asher, how are you today? Can you hear me, Asher? Fantastic. Where are you based and what are you doing today? Okay, I see you have a green screen behind you. Are you in the business at all of producing video and creating content? Yes. You're in front of a video curtain. What sort of videos do you have? And are you posting on TikTok, where you are today? Do you post on YouTube, where do you post? Yes. Okay, I think we may have some audio connection issues, but very happy to have you here with us today. And I'm talking to Asher on TikTok today. We're doing sort of a simulcast with our regular Streamyard folks, but also with people on TikTok, which I'm doing through a cell phone now, but we have people on Twitch, YouTube, Facebook, on Instagram, joining us on three on Streamyard and Azer is with us on TikTok. Azer, we have a little bit of connection issue here. I would love to talk to you in more detail if possible. If you can join us either on Facebook or YouTube, just search for TJ Walker success, then you can click right into our stream yard and we can talk there. But thanks so much. I really appreciate you. You stopping by. And now. Okay, let's see. I'm trying to control the screen here and I see Malik is trying to join us. Okay. I mean, hey, Malik, thanks so much for joining us. I appreciate it. We're having a couple of little technical difficulties, so I'm going to have to. I'm going to have to sign off here for a moment. And now I've a note to Ben. I've lost my ability as host to control things, so I don't know what I did there. So I'm afraid I'm gonna have to sign off from you now. But if you have any questions, please post them. I will be able to look at them and direct them. So I've invited live creators. I see several others are waiting and. But now I just don't. I don't know how to get off of it. And I see Mark has joined us. Mark has joined us as well, and Roger's with us. Roger, I'm going to come to you in just a moment. We're doing sort of a live experiment streaming on eight different platforms at once. One of them is TikTok. And I'm attempting to host things in a way that can moderate the conversations, but I haven't figured out exactly how to do it. So I apologize for those mistakes. Yeah. So I'm gonna have to. I'm gonna. Gentlemen, I'm gonna have to ask you if you wouldn't mind click out because I can't figure out how to do it and I just can't moderate four people at once with what we're doing. Yeah. So I'm just. I'm not seeing any way of xing out of the conversations and I don't want to be rude to you. I very much appreciate you being here, but I see no way of. I see no way of getting out. So I apologize if. Okay, I'm gonna have to pull up my phone here. So just so you know, this is part of the learning curve when you're streaming on new platforms. So I'm attempting to exit out again, happy all of you are here, but I just can't moderate it while I'm doing the other live streams. So I'm hitting host. I'm hitting disconnect. Oh, there we go. Disconnect. I think I did that. Okay. I think I did the right thing. But this is a perfect example of how it's very difficult to actually learn a new technology in front of people. I see this all the time when people are doing PowerPoint presentations, for example, and they're on a different computer. Well, every keyboard can be a little bit different. Yeah. The QWERTY may be the same, but the layout is a little different. Going from a Mac to a PC is different. So my recommendation is, in general, try not to learn new technology in front of people. I'm doing this today in part because there's no easy way for me to simulate all the moving pieces here in real life without doing it with you. So that's why I am doing it. Let's bring on Roger Matthews, one of our top UDEMY students and a great speaker and consultant in his own right. Roger, how are you today?

Hey, doing great. How about you? Congratulations on the amazing things you've been doing.

Oh, well, thanks a lot. Thanks. I appreciate that. And I like your backdrop. That's interesting looking. Yeah.

I don't have the ability to do an amazing thing that you've done with yours because I'm in a smaller office and don't have the depth of field to be able to make some great things in the background.

Well, I like the texture of your backdrop. My only suggestion is I need light on your face.

Yes.

You appear to just have an overhead light.

Well, I've actually got three lights on.

Me, but somehow we're not seeing your. My eyes are very deep set. I mean, I have the classic raccoon eyes. If there's any kind of light overhead, I've turned off my overhead lights. I have two main powerful lights that are basically at my eye level, which is why you can see my eyes now. But that would be my one big suggestion to you.

And your skin tone is absolutely perfect with the lighting that you have on you. It's making your face just illuminate, which is fantastic, the way you've done it.

Oh, well, thanks. Part of it is experimenting with the lighting. I do have makeup on. Again, I'm not. You know, let's just take a quick moment to talk about this briefly. Sense. What I'm really trying to do here with this channel is be transparent. So now I've just dropped my makeup. So every day, I do not have a full makeup team. I don't have, you know, three people in the corner with makeup guns. I've certainly had that kind of treatment before when I've been at CNN or MSNBC or Fox or cnbc, places like that. But I do it all my own here. So what I typically do. So I have a little foundation that I put under my eyes because I have some darker circles under my eyes. Occasionally there's a blotch or blemish. I'll do that just to even things out. I use an eyebrow pencil with. It's not a pencil, it's powder. And I actually put a little powder on my eyebrows. Otherwise my eyebrows disappear. So this frames my face a little more. And then the final thing, and sort of the easiest thing for most people to do is I get a mosaic powder that doesn't change the color of my skin. Sometimes people put on powder, it's either a lot darker than their skin because they're trying to make themselves look tan or lighter. And it looks weird. In fact, I feel a little bit of a shine now, so I'm going to. What I do is I swirl it around, I try to get the excess off, and then I'll just put it on lightly. I'm not trying to dramatically change my looks. All I'm trying to do is be less shiny so that I'm not distracting people. So sorry for the mini tutorial there. And by the way, Roger, I want to hear more from you, but I also see that Dazquan is with us if you want to join us. And FreshTech has stopped in to say hello. We'll come to you in just a moment. But, Roger, first up from you, I apologize. I think I interrupted you. Tell us what else you're up to right now.

So I haven't been speaking in a while, but one of the questions that comes up as I start to think through speeches I want to give. And you've commented this many, many times, and I've certainly made note of what you've said, and that is how to not give a boring speech. And one of the comments you always make is how to make a speech that is interesting to your audience. And I wondered if you would elaborate a little bit on that and explain just how to. How you would find an interesting topic for your audience. Because, you know, I suppose you can ask them. That would be one way. You don't always have the opportunity to do that, but we always probably want to avoid you and avoid.

Apologize for interrupting, but let me challenge your assumption a minute.

Okay.

You say we don't always have the ability to ask people in advance what would be interesting to them? Why not? Why not just call somebody up? If you're speaking to 30 colleagues in your industry Thursday and today's Tuesday, why don't you call one of them up who you think is probably going to be there or typically attends these and just say, hey, here's the sort of the general topic I'm talking about. What do you think would be most interesting to you? Could it be this? That you list three or four options? Because what they tell you may be completely different from what your gut instinct told you, it might be the same. But I find these days it's so many people are reluctant to just pick up a phone and talk to someone. People either think, well, I'll just do research on Wikipedia for 8 hours till the middle of the night. And by the way, Mr. Kahn, I see you trying to join us. I apologize, I can't do it right now. But very happy you're joining us on TikTok. People will either go way too long doing more research online, looking at text, or they think I have to do a big fancy formal zoom meeting. I have to call, I have to email someone and go back and forth scheduling and we got to set up an hour and oh, that's too much work, I won't do it. Sometimes just pick up the phone and call. You're the organizer or something, someone you think who might be in the meeting or call someone or talk to someone who you know, their mindset is similar. So if you're talking to people, new business prospects, for example, and you don't know what's going to resonate, sometimes just walk down the hall and find somebody who works in a different department from you who doesn't know everything about what you do and give them your pitch and see what's interesting. Where did you lose them? That can be a way of doing it.

Fantastic idea. The other other thought is I always try to figure out what problem I could solve for people.

Yes, that's a great frame. That's. You know what? You've given me a couple of good ideas if you don't mind staying, stay there. I'm gonna put myself full screen a moment because I want to record something and I want to, I want to do a couple short form videos that can be recorded and used for future use. And then we will get to Farish who writes, I hope this question finds you well, would like to know how to arrange an appropriate stage for recording. Okay, we will in fact talk about that. Some other private chats have come in. If you're in Streamyard. You can send me a private chat and I'll. I will keep those comments to myself, but let you know. Dazjuan, I did see your comment, so thank you so much for that. Okay, Dave, you. You frame something so nicely, I just can't let it go away. So I'm going to hit record for my sort of master. I'm going to go to the frame that I typically use for my short forms. How do you keep from giving a boring speech? Well, do this. Record your speech on video, look at it, and every 10 seconds, ask yourself, so. So what if you find your speech boring? Guess what it is. Every time you say something boring, scratch it off. Keep eliminating the boring stuff until you have nothing left but the interesting stuff. Okay, so I just. I just did that as a short form. Now that's a bit glib, but that basic technique of watching your own speech and asking yourself so after every sentence. Because a lot of times people just feel this need. Well, of course I have to say all this. And of course this is a part of our standard messaging. And of course this is a part of our brand. No, it's not. Or doesn't mean you have to say it. So part of it is really applying that scrutiny to it because you don't like it when people speak to you in a boring way. Why are you going to speak to boring. Why are you going to speak to people in a boring manner? Now, you said another point a moment ago that I really wanted to address and now I forgot what it was.

It's about problems. What problems are you addressing for people?

Let me give you a short riff on that.

Okay.

I gotta go. Are you trying to figure out how to structure an interesting speech or presentation? The beginning, middle and end. Forget all that. Instead, think of it this way. What problem can you solve for one member of this audience? Ideally, something that all the members of the audience have. If you just focus on solving their problems, the speech will take care of itself and I'll love you. Okay. Okay. I do think the way you frame that is great. And I don't know if I've ever heard it quite that way, but that is a great way of framing it. Just what way do you have to actually solve a problem? And you think of so many great speeches, they kind of do that. Because, you know, before the ipod, people did have a problem. You had to walk. I don't know, Roger, you're old enough to remember. A lot of our friends here today aren't old enough to remember. But People used to take this gigantic binder of 352 CDs around, oh, I gotta listen to some music in my car. I gotta go to this party. It was a huge pain. So when Steve Jobs gave his announcement speech about, here's this new ipod.

All.

He was really doing was saying, here's how I'm gonna solve your problem. So that is a fantastic way framing any presentation. Because if you. I can tell you one thing for certain, you solve my problem when you're talking to me, I'm gonna listen to you and I'm gonna not care whether you say or. Or your tie is crooked or something. I'm not gonna care if you've said something that helps me solve a problem. So, Roger, that is a fantastic way of structuring things. Roger, hang on with me. I do want to bring up Foreshadow's question, which is how do you arrange an appropriate stage for recording? So stage can mean a lot of things. Typically, you think of stage, you think of this giant platform, Elevated, there's 5,000 people in the room. Obviously, you don't have to do that. It depends on what you're trying to do and what your goals are. Now, apologies to my friends on TikTok. You're not going to be able to see this. Actually, you can. I'll just move it around. So I'm going to show you. Well, now I've wiggled it and loosened the bearings of my. Of myself. Okay, you're seeing that shotgun microphone now. So for those of you on YouTube, LinkedIn and Facebook, this is how I have staged what I do. So it's a corner of my office. I rearranged everything, and I'm framed this way from below the knees because I want to demonstrate speaking and moving. And when people speak, they move around. So I wanted to give myself this range, and I didn't want it to be so far away that you. You can barely see my face. I also, full disclosure, didn't want you to see my feet because I'm standing. I'm wearing Crocs, which I would never do in real life, giving a presentation or wearing a business. But I'm doing it now because typically, in a typical day, you never see that. So that's why I have this framed this way. Now, talking about a stage. Stage. I'm going to bend this over here so again, our TikTok friends can see it. I have the framing here to look like I'm on a stage. I've done that by lowering the camera. The camera is about Three and a half feet off the ground, it's shooting up, which is typically what happens when people are on a stage. I have a curtain behind me to actually look like I'm on a stage. So that's how I'm simulating this. And then I have my final image. I'm getting a request from TikTok. Oh, it's ended. I think there is an actual time limit. So I think we're now off of TikTok because I think there's a specific time limit. So that's what I do faresh for me is I have one shot like this where there is some depth because I'm trying to create sort of a bigger budget feel to things. There is a Trend among top YouTubers and I'm not a top YouTuber yet. There is a sense that the people who are most successful do not use green screen and they have a more of a built in set. So you can see this is real. You can see me go back here. This is a real wall. These are real books. These are lights that turn on. They're not just an image. So I'm doing that because I want to give sort of a bigger feel. You do not have to do this. There are a ton of wildly successful YouTubers, some of them with millions of subscribers and they're just sitting in their bedroom, front of their makeup mirror or just on their bed giving people either interesting, useful information or something entertaining. Now, I'm not an entertainer, but if you can entertain people, they will love you and they will watch you. Ideally, you're doing something with your staging, your backdrop that doesn't confuse people and make sense. I'm trying to do something that kind of looks professional, that doesn't look like I'm just a guy slumped over his desk giving tips from his bedroom or spare office at home. I'm trying to go for sort of a bigger production feel to give people a sense that they're getting something with a lot of quality depends on what you're doing. You could be a comedian, you could call yourself a closet comedian and your set is. You're cramped in a closet with a tiny little light. It just has to make sense to what you're doing. I would not recommend spending a lot of money unless you've got enough other revenue drivers for a business and it makes sense. If you're a huge, gigantic, multi billion dollar insurance company and you've decided you want to start doing a monthly town hall meeting or a podcast with your CEO, well, by all means, spend a quarter million Dollars on a studio. They don't have to. But it's really no big deal for an organization like that. If you are a student, a solo entrepreneur, you're just starting out, you don't have a lot of extra cash around. I would recommend keep things simple, keep it easy. There are a few things that are really important. You want light on your face. You can have the best looking backdrop in the world, but people can't see your face. That's a problem. Put some energy into having good audio. Now, I've got a microphone here. It would be better if I had it this close to me and you can probably hear a little different. But I do want to be able to move around, which also means I don't want a typical lav. I'm going to take this one off now since I'm now not using it this moment. I didn't want to have a wired mic because I plan on moving around and do move around to give demonstrations. So that's what's a little different about us. If you're still with us, please give us a little more information on what exactly you're trying to do. Are you doing a show on cooking, for example, or are you giving investment advice? If it's a. If you're doing a cooking show, nothing's going to be better than being in a kitchen or something that looks like a kitchen. If you're giving investment advice, something that looks like a trading floor or computers with screens behind with numbers and stock information coming in might be the thing that works for you. So feel free to post your thoughts there. Faresh, if you can give us more detail, I can perhaps give you more specific feedback. Roger, thank you so much for those suggestions, but I feel like I was rude to you and didn't let you really share because I was so excited about the things you brought up. Let me bring you back on a moment and tell us more about what you're up to and anything you've done on your hiatus. By the way, what is your backdrop up? Is it a. Is it a white wall and you have lights on it or what have you done to bring out that interesting green texture?

Well, I just created this in Canva and I think maybe I might have bought.

Oh, it's a green screen now. Now I, I didn't notice that it was a green screen until you. Until the second I said it. I saw the slightest little pixel, pixelation around your hair, which is a telltale sign. Not bad. It's not bad. And so is this your regular room Then that.

Yes, it is regular office that I have.

Okay. And are you using this? Is this something. And I should know this, but I don't use any green screen ever these days. Is this something Streamyard lets you pick your backdrop or is it something you're doing a different way?

Yes. When you first come in, you can go under settings and just pick either their backgrounds or you can bring your own. Just hit the little plus and then you bring in a image that will make it a background.

Okay, well that's good to know. And while we do these. And I let people on as I learn things too. So I didn't know that. My only caveat with the green screens is I see this on zoom a lot. Someone has some good ideas or saying something important, they move a little and all of a sudden they only it appears as though they've been three fingers have been amputated or two fingers have been amputated, they move a little bit. All of their hair on the left side of their head kind of disappears. And I personally find it very distracting. And I understand if it's an emergency you have to do a zoom call. You're on a vacation with your family, the hotel room has dirty clothes everywhere, the bed's unmade. Yeah, having a zoom backdrop, a green screen backdrop where it looks professional is probably better than a complete chaotic mess. But if it is a regular office where it's just for business, you know you're going to have meetings there on a regular basis, I would not recommend using green screen because of this pixelation factor. And it doesn't have to be, you don't have to have special accent lightings, all that stuff, but have something that just doesn't distract, that's real to me, it's safer. The other problem with the zoom green screens is every so often for a second it'll disappear. And I've seen that before. I'm sure you have too. Where someone's in this nice professional looking office, you kind of tell it's a picture and then it just disappears for a second. All of a sudden you see dirty dishes and empty liquor bottles around. And so it gives the illusion of safety. It's not 100%. So that's why I recommend something simple. I mean, for years, Roger, you remember, I had nothing but a twenty dollar piece of plastic that looked like a brick wall. Wall. It wasn't anything fancy, but it didn't jump around or dance around or pixelate because it wasn't a green screen.

Right.

The other, other advantage is I have A big microphone on a boom stand that I can pull close to me, or this microphone is actually about a foot away from my mouth. And you don't even see it. The green screen just takes it right out. So you don't. You don't see it that way. So, you know, I suppose there's trade.

Now you've aroused my curiosity. How does the greens. Is your microphone painted green?

No, it's a. It's regular microphone. I don't know if I could turn this off or not, but.

So is it. Is it actually, because I have a microphone on a stick right now, it's about 14 inches away away from me. But you don't see it because it's just outside the range of the camera. I'm curious. Is your. Is your microphone outside the range of your camera, or is there some computer program? See, it's. It's not in the camera now. It's not in the frame that's.

So, yeah, I. I took the background off, and you can see I have a yeti microphone on a boom stand right here.

Actually. No, now I see it. I didn't see it before.

Okay. Yeah. So, you know, you see, I'm standing at a standing desk, and you see the. The roof line at the top, which is kind of distracting. So that's, you know, I could blur it, which is like that, which I don't like very well. Or you can use their. Their backgrounds, which is like your brick.

Thing that now it's pixelating a lot. Now your head is dancing around, your hair is dancing around. For some reason, that green one pixelates less.

Yes.

And for those of you just joining us may think, well, this is. This is kind of tedious, boring stuff. This is what we do here. We get into the weeds of every little aspect of how you can look your best and sound your best. Anytime you're speaking, whether you're speaking to people in a zoom meeting, whether you're being interviewed remotely through Microsoft. So all of these little things add up to big things as far as your overall impression. Roger. The other thing that was much more noticeable when you took the green screen off is that now it's very apparent to me your camera is too low. If I can see your ceiling, it means your camera is too low. So I would highly recommend you elevate the camera so you want the camera at your eye level or even a couple of. Of inches above your eye level. My camera is right at my eye level now. The only thing that's different is, for me, this camera is now about eight feet away from me. So it is a little bit lower. What I found is if I did, if I had this camera at my eye level, no matter how much I aimed it down, I couldn't keep it from shooting into the, to the ceiling. And I don't want to show the ceiling. So this one is maybe 8, 10 inches below my eyes, but I'm far enough away that it's not obvious. Like, what I don't want is like seeing looking down and looking up the nose type thing. I'm not saying yours is that egregious, but in general, you'll just look more professional if the camera's at eye level. Because that's what people are used to with every news anchor they see, every person on tv. Every slick production is more like this because of just the positioning of the camera. So that would be one, one mic.

Do you use a DSLR or do you use a webcam?

Well, for many years, probably the last time you saw me, I was using just relatively simple webcams. Now I'll just show you what I have because I'm going to be making ads for these shortly. I'm going to pull. I have three different cameras. I have a Sony, a 7C, and I still don't know much about technology. I'm just going off of advice of technical advisors. I have a Sony. Oh, that's a, that's a filter. I basically have three different types of these Sony mirror mirrorless cameras. Again, it's. You have a hard time finding somebody who knows less about camera technology than I do. But all I know is they're, they're the state of the art. Everything is in 4K. Some of them cost. You know, together the three cameras, we're probably talking with the, the filters, we're talking about, you know, five figures. So now when I say five, I mean like $10,000. I don't mean $95,000, but the quality of these cameras today. I mean, if we had to go back 20 years ago, I would have had to spend a quarter million dollars. So the quality has gone way, way up while the cost has gone way down. Now you're seeing me in 1080p, which is also called high definition. But videos of mine that are posted on my YouTube channel, most of them, at least they're supposed to be. It's not one of the live rebroadcasts are done in 4K, so it's actually, actually done in a much higher quality. And a 4K is what you see if you're watching Netflix for example. It's the highest possible, I guess relatively commercial format you can use to put out there. We've had a couple comments come in. Matthew says I think The Dij Osmo Pocket 3 creator combo is the best deal for beginner creators. It includes a wireless mic. Matt, if you're at all possible to hop on the live stream, I would love to find out more about that. And we had another colleague join us in the green room who left Apologize if I didn't get to you quickly enough. If you want to come in. But Matthew, you may be at the office or out walking the dog, but if you are at all available we have posted the Streamyard connection and believe it's at I don't see it now. Oh, there it is. If you scroll to the top I will try to repost it here. The Streamyard connection. Well I can't figure out how to copy it. If you scroll up in the comments section you will see the link to hit on streamyard so we would love to have you explain this. I think you're answering the question for Faresh, which is what's the best way to arrange a stage? And part of the stage is what you're standing on or sitting on. Part of it is the backdrop, part of it is the lighting, the microphone, the cameras. And I think Matthew is talking about something that involves a whole package. I'm not familiar with it, but Matthew, if you could. If you could post more for that matter if you want to. I guess you can't put in a link easily. You can do it in a private chat if you want to do that and then I can share it with people. But I'm always happy to help people with a technical and confession. It's not my strength, it's just something that sort of gle my eyes brain glaze over at technical details about things like cameras and microphones. I I should know more. I've had to learn a lot in the last six weeks building this whole studio with a team. But I'm still not expert at it and I would like to be more of a resource be helpful to people who are on their journey of figuring out how do I create more content, how do I share my ideas with the world? Because you don't want to pretend it's 1980 and go knocking on doors just to beg to speak at the Rotary Club anymore. You can speak to the whole world if you have at least some technology. And for so many people all you really need is this thing. Just a cell phone is enough Technology to get a lot of what you need done. In fact, this technology is what I'll be doing using in just a moment to make Amazon influencer videos. You saw me, if you were here earlier today, play some of those ads. These are ads that are typically played right on a product page on Amazon. So Amazon has this program and Roger, you would be great at this, especially for your microphone and various technology. You just say what you like about a product. You post the video right on an Amazon store store with your name. And then Amazon, they don't have to, but quite often they'll post that video on the product page. And if someone watches your video and then buys the product, you get a commission. It's not a get rich quick thing. There are people who make some good money. I can tell you pretty much for the last month, I don't think there's been a day where I haven't made some money from it. But. But I'm not making, but this, I'm not making enough to pay for a really nice lunch in Delray Beach, Florida yet. But I like the trend lines. I like the way it's going. I like the indications. And it's funny sometimes it's. I think I got a sale for this tie that I did last week. I think I got one. Somebody bought this shirt because I did a very simple 15 second video talking about why I like the shirt. And in my case, I talk about why I specifically wear a light blue shirt for all television work, all video work I do because it tends not to distract. Doesn't have stripes that pixelate, doesn't have patterns that jump around. Doesn't have colors that go wild like a red. And most important, really, it's not white. But the problem with white historically has been it's so bright it becomes the brightest thing on the screen. If you're on video. I want people focused on my face, not because I think my face is so beautiful. I want people looking at my face, paying attention to what I'm saying. So I don't want the brightest thing on screen to be my shirt or my clothes or even any of the lights. These light, you can see lights behind me, but they're fairly muted, they're softer, they're not meant to be dominant. We may have lost Matthew Pate, do appreciate your thoughts on that program. But Matthew, if you're with us, if you could share more information, would love to share that with people. We're after the top of the hour. I do want to go a little bit longer today because I want to demonstrate I'm actually going to make not one, not two, not three, but five ads from concept, production, editing, post production, uploading to Amazon, labeling it, coding it, tagging it, submitting it for approval to a storefront. I'm going to try to do all of that, which is not impressive at all. Anyone can do them. And I'm going to try to do all of that for five different products and a trip, try to do it in less than 15 minutes. So that's the part that I hope you find a value and that will motivate you to try it. Because I know a lot of people who say, oh, yeah, I'm going to become an influencer or I'm going to be an Amazon influencer. I just have to find the perfect camera or wait till my hair to grow out or there's always some excuse, or I've got to wait till I have a full day clear on my calendar. Well, no, you're going to have a free 10 minutes. You could have a free 60 seconds if you want to do just one. It doesn't have to be that time consuming. Faresh says thank you for sharing all the incredible information about stage setting. I am planning to run book reviews with a focus on character and specifically female literature. Okay, so in that case, maybe something, maybe your living room would be the ideal setting, as if you were in a book club. To me, that would end. And in this case, since you're talking about books having a shelf behind you now, you may want to have a full library shelf, but you may want to have some where the books are just sitting out and you can see sort of the COVID of books that really mean a lot to you and that you like. So we wish you luck with that. Once you start producing the show, come back here and let us know. Let us see some of it and we'd like to take a look at it. Maybe we can send you some more viewers. Maybe you can get some feedback on your set and stage and tweak it, because this is not a finished product. I got. Let me go full screen. Just a minute, Roger, to make this point because the other day someone said, tj, this light here, here is too distracting. So I actually adjusted it, I adjusted it downward, so that is much less noticeable. So now when I stand here, it's not creating quite as much glare and I'm trying to just sort of accent things and show differentiation between the floor and the wall. So the reason this, I think, looks better now is because of you. It's because I got actual feedback from viewers and members of this community. So Faresh, that's a long answer to. I hope you show us your stage early on. We can probably give you feedback and that would be great. So Matthew points out it's a camera and mic combo, but like you said, a phone is great. Just suggest at least some lighting and a microphone. So yeah, lighting is important. You don't have to actually spend money on lighting. Sometimes if you just take a couple of lamps from home, take the lampshade off and put it on the other side of your cell phone or your camera and the light is at the same level, that can be enough. I do have a couple of relatively expensive lights here with diffusers and all that, but you don't have to have that. The main thing is get in the game, start producing. I didn't have any of that. In fact, many of my most profitable online courses, it's me in a closet using a webcam and I can't remember if it was light from the window or a ten dollar light. So those courses still make me money every single day. And the production quality and you know, the staging was almost zero. Almost zero. So, Matthew, thanks a lot. Matthew, if you can post for me in the private chat a link to a package, I would be interested in it because people do ask me this question all the time and I will often direct them and say we'll go to Phil Abinger's course on Udemy. He's really great at all the video production. But I would like to be more useful to people and give them very, very specific suggestions on where to go. We've got to. Roger, stay with us if you have time. But I need to answer a few more questions that have come in because we do get, we send out official invitations to our Thursday show and we ask people if they have questions and say if you email them to us, we'll answer them. So I did get another question or two emailed to me and I want to be responsive. I did, I did mention I did answer Rachel's question about the pay raise. Okay, so now here's a question that's come in from Smriti, who says I've taken a subscription of Udemy lessons. How much is it going to help me in getting a job as a trainer? Okay, so, well, let me look at this question a little more broadly. How much does taking any one course help you as a trainer? How much does getting certain certifications help help you as a trainer? And the reality is it depends on what industry you're in. If you want to train medical students on how to be good doctors, you're going to need a certificate that says you are a doctor. You're going to need an MD degree, at least in the United States. So every field is a little bit different. If you want to be a law professor and train people how to be lawyers, you need a law degree, typically from a prestigious university. And being in the law review, that's typically how most law professors are selected. Other fields are different. I'm in the field of communication skills training, which is widely unregulated and there's pros and cons to everything. I want my doctor, my lawyer regulated. I don't want someone just to say, well, I'm a doctor, I'll operate on you. Other fields are different. In the communication skills space, I have found the people who have PhDs in communication, at least the ones I know and have met, are typically awful communicators. They've spent all their time reading theory and books and very little time actually doing what I'm doing, which is speaking and training people how to speak. So it just depends. I would say to you, if you think simply passing a course is going to get you hired as a trainer, typically that's not it. I do have a course on how to be a trainer. I even have a course on how to be a media trainer. So if that's the course you're in, I urge you, really follow it carefully and do the lessons. The most important part of being a trainer, if it's your own company, is you have to learn how to sell your services. You have to. You have to learn how to market your services. You have to be a thought leader in your niche. Which is why I'm here three hours a day live and posting three, four videos a day, because this promotes my media training business, my public speaking training business. It generates inquiries and prospects daily for people who want to either hire me for private trainings, group trainings come to public workshops, keynote speeches, coming to webinars. So it's a sort of a giant marketing mechanism, a marketing arm. If you want your own training business, you got to get comfortable with that and you got to do it. And today, the number one way of doing it is creating content online in every format. Video, audio, should be doing audio podcasts, text podcast, blogs, writing books. Simply putting a diploma on your wall saying you passed TJ Walker's training course, how to be a Trainer, it's not going to get you any business. Now, let's say, for example, you're already in a company, maybe you're already in the training department. The fact that you have certain certifications or diplomas or pass certain courses may help you a lot. It may open the gate for your boss, say, okay, we have to do a presentation skills training or we have to do a mediation training next week for two new employees. You just passed a mediation course. We don't have enough budget for an outside trainer. Okay, you can do it. It may help you there. What I would recommend if you are trying to forge a career as a trainer, is become a world expert. Become the best in the world at some aspect of your niche. Go deep. Read every book on the subject. I mean, that's what I did many years ago with Public speaking and Media Transit. I tried to read every single book I could get at the library and that I could afford to buy at the time. I went to every in person workshop I could go to that I could afford. I would volunteer in political campaigns just to practice my craft, to get more experience. I would think about it. And before it was easy to make and distribute video, I wrote not once a month or once a week or even Monday through Friday. I wrote a column. We didn't even call them blog posts. 20 years ago I wrote a column about some aspect of public speaking or media training every single day, seven days a week. And I did that for several years. That's how you really are going to build a training business and build a training career. The ultimate protection is in your career, is you have expertise that people value and you can make a plausible claim that you're the best in the world at it. That's what's going to help you as a trainer. So going to help you in any field. So Faresh says. That's wonderful. Thanks. I will definitely send you a link and my video for feedback. I recently started your course on Udemy. Your stage is amazing, by the way. Well, thank you. I do appreciate that. In my experience, backdrops, especially video backdrops or green screen, white backdrop, pretty much any backdrop you do gets a lot of criticism because everyone's an expert and I do occasionally. I'm not completely finished tweaking this. I'm not sure I really want for this angle for that to be as dominant. You know, we have the. This is what we call camera one. I'm not sure I want that carpet. Excuse me, that, that curtain there. But I also need the curtain for when I'm doing camera two. And that shouldn't be like that wasn't like that all day. I Also need the curtain like this to simulate being on a stage and being on a platform and giving a speech in front of people. So I don't have all the angles figured out just yet. It's a work in progress of tweaking. But I do very much appreciate you mentioning that. Fresh also says, and I find your course on Udemy very helpful. Well, thanks so much, Fresh. I'm going to not just say thank you, although I start with thank you. I want to know what exactly has been most helpful. I do recommend asking that question anytime someone gives you positive feedback on a speech or presentation. Of course. So you know what to do more of in the future when you're trying to help people. We've got to go to a few more questions. I hope that was helpful Smritri on that, that particular issue. Okay. And a lot of people just RSVP that they're coming and don't have specific questions. That's. That's fine. And I did see at least one other question that I know came in that I did in fact want to address and I think it's in a different. It's in a different folder. I'm going to pull that up right now. I'm just in front of my Gmail now, so I don't have a ton of producers. There's not staff running around here handing me things on nicely printed note cards with my logo on. And it's just me in front of three cameras, a laptop, a couple of other computer screens. And then I've got a mixer here. So it's. Is it always perfect? Absolutely not. But we're trying to make it as helpful to you as possible. Oh, I almost forgot. I've got to make some tips, some Amazon influencer videos here in just a few moments. But I'm going to get to the last question and then we're going to switch over to the Amazon influencer videos. So I'm going to go to. I have a folder for questions from students and the community. So the question related to how can you be a super communicator? Which I thought was a somewhat provocative way of asking a question. Not in any negative way, but I just wanted to address the person by name who sent that in. Ah, here we go right here. This is from Christine Zarebska who says how to become a super speaker. And let me go ahead and try to, to do a long form video on that. Although it's getting a little. Let me do a short form. And by short form I mean 60 seconds or less. So I'm hitting record so we get the 4K version, switching the angle. How do you become a super speaker? Well, it's really the same way you become a super chess player or a super violinist. You need to put in the tongue, speak a lot. Anthony Robbins credits his rise as a speaker because he was giving three speeches a day 30 years ago, back when his competitors were doing three speeches a month. Look for every opportunity to speak and learn from every speech you give. Okay, that's one where I certainly could, could go longer, but I think that's probably about as much as I can do after having talked for three and a half hours today. On that note, let me take a little water. Faresh writes, after two minutes watching your video, I stopped it and recorded myself all day. And it helps me for the rest of the course to see what exactly makes it better and more professional. Well, Faresh, that is music to my ears because that's the hardest. I mean, that's frankly, my biggest failure is I tell people in all my courses, don't just watch me practice speaking, record yourself. Watch yourself do it again and again. Doing more of what you like, less of what you don't like. You actually did it. I'm very happy about that. Most people don't do it. Most people sort of sit back and watch me as if I were Seinfeld. I'm not Seinfeld. Not, not funny, really. And if all you do is watch videos, whether it's me or any other trainer, public speaking expert, you're not really going to get better. Okay, we're going to switch gears and go to the Amazon Influencer program. I'm just using a simple cell phone. I am going to put in the receiver. I'm going to turn on my microphone, look for the green light, because this microphone is not the one I'll be using when I'm recording the content on my cell phone. So. So I'm going to try to place this. Sometimes I place it on my jacket, but the more it's really close to your mouth, generally the better. Ties a little thick. I'm going to put it on just the first flap. Now, I threw a few things together in a bag before I left home and I'm just going to look in, in my bag. Sorry to stop off camera a minute and pull out some things. This is like a fanny pack that my wife happens to really like. She recommended that I do it. Typically, the products I endorse are ones I've used extensively. So I'm going to go to my camera oh, and I need my remote control for my camera and it appears as though it may have fallen on the floor. So the reason I use my remote control when making these is I don't do any edit. Here it is. So I'm going to make these Amazon influencer videos by hitting record and then stopping. And so that's what I find is the simplest way of doing it. So. And I see Joanna has joined us. Joanna, we're at the very tail end. I apologize. We can make you first priority if you come on tomorrow. But we're, we're finishing up sort of a three and a half hour marathon series of live sessions today. I'm now demonstrating how to make Amazon influencer videos. So I apologize if I'm not able to get to you. So here's the first product. This is an Ikendo. I don't know if you call it a fanny pack, but it's. It's a belt you can put on where you can store your wallet and information. So my goal here is to just talk about it in a positive way. In 15 seconds or less, I've got to turn on the remote control. What happens is I don't turn it off the day before, and so I have to turn it off. And then on I see the blue light, which means it works. If you're looking for a convenient, fast and reliable safe way to take your wallet, your driver's license, even your cell phone, this is the ticket. It zips up, zips back, and wraps around you. Okay. Is that the best possible ad? No. What I'm doing at this stage of my influencer career is I'm going for quantity, to look for signals in the marketplace. And I've been amazed by some products. I have a sunscreen, a zinc sunscreen that's basically flesh colored, and it sold dozens and dozens and dozens of this type of sunscreen. I never would have guessed that. So I'm looking for signals to see what works. Oh, now I'm seeing this sun visor again. My wife uses this. I don't use the sun visor because I need protection and I don't. This is going to be hard for me to tag, But I think I'll be able to. I'll be able to. Certainly able to find a. A white sunscreen. I live in South Florida where the sun is bright all the time. Nothing like a good sun visor to keep the sun out of your eyes. Okay, now I have a problem where my iPhone. Stop. Storage is full. It's been an interesting day of technology. Challenges. There have been a few. More than a few, to be fair, more than a few blunders. We've got a camera one. There have been more than a few blunders today. And if I had dozens and dozens of sponsors who prepaid hundreds of thousands of dollars per month or for this day, that would be a big, big problem. I'm not suggesting that nothing matters because you don't matter and it's only advertised. That's not my point. But my point is at some point you've got to learn these things. And if you don't have a giant TV network behind you and you don't have huge, huge infrastructure and wildly deep pockets for sometimes you're just never going to learn until you start creating yourself and doing it in a live situation so you can figure out what works, what doesn't work, what can you do better if you wait till everything is perfect? I've seen people do it. They never start. So I am sort of showing you, walking you through what I hope most of the time is the fastest way to do something. But sometimes there's a kink, there's a roadblock, there's a gate that has to be opened. And what I'm trying to do is show you how an actual person navigates it and gets through the system and tries to actually finish something. So that's what I'm. So what I'm doing right now is I'm just going through and deleting dozens and dozens of videos to free up space. Believe it or not, this is the sort of thing, the stumbling block that gets people. They say, oh, of course I'll make Amazon influencer videos, or I'll make videos for Target or Walmart. Oh, but I've got to wait till someone else eliminates the storage problem I have, and then they never get around to it. Okay, so now what I think I did is. I think I just deleted the one I already did. So I'm going to start over. I'm going to do this bag again. I want every single video to be all in a line. So when I go to build it up, it's all right there. And I do see another chat has come in. I just want to make sure there's no emergency. And some of you mentioned a. A question in the private chat, which I will keep private. I'm going to have to come back to that and finish these videos for. But I do appreciate your questions very much so. All right, so I'm going to redo this one because I think I might have actually accidentally deleted it in the process of making space. It's still telling me my iPhone storage is full typically. I don't know how that would be the case. Maybe it's not the photos. Maybe. Maybe I don't want to cast aspersions. Maybe my daughter got a hold of my phone and I see cap cut here with 2.6 gigabytes or a lot of space issues. I'm just going to delete the whole thing thing and see if that doesn't give me more space. I see Tik Tok is taking up a gigabyte. I bet that's what it is. I bet that is what it is. I don't know if documents and data I don't know if there's a way of deleting just that this is offload app. Maybe I'll do that. I don't want to delete TikTok because I'm using it. I may have to reinstall it tomorrow. Let's see if that frees up data. I'm going to go to video after going to reverse it and now I can see it. Are you looking for a safe and reliable way of storing your credit card, your cell phone, your wallet? Well, this does the trick. Nice convenient zipper. It's safe. Wraps right around you. Okay, that time I didn't get knocked off for storage. So now the second product was this sun visor. I live in south Florida where the sun is always beating down in my eyes. I nothing like a simple white visor. It's great for the pickleball court. Keeps the sun out. So I'm not going to lie. I don't use that because I wear an actual hat. But those are positive sentiments that my wife has actually told me. Now these are. These are clothespins that we use in the house all the time. They're very, very convenient and I did buy them on Amazon. When I grew up. Clothespins were made of wood, but not anymore. I love these plastic clothespins. It's great around the house and the kitchen. That's where we use them is in the kitchen for bags. Various packages that have been opened free. This just has Frito again. This is a fanny pack that my wife you I now I have used this. I've used this at a water park. So it's not the most, shall we say, macho look, but it really does work quite nicely. Maybe let me give you the different camera angle. This fanny pack is used by every member of the family. It's great for holding wallets, keys, phones. It doesn't fall off, doesn't fall out of your pocket. And here's a simple little clip. This is a magic little clip. Is it a paper clip? Is it a. I'm going to delete that. That's not exactly what I wanted to say. So every so often I'll start off as and I'll say, ah, that sounds stupid. I just hit delete. Doesn't have to be perfect. I'm obviously not scripting this all out, memorizing using a teleprompter. I'm just sort of sharing one positive idea about a particular product. Is it a paper clip? Is it a clothespin? I don't know. But it's a great little metal clip that's so, so useful around the office and the home. I love them. Okay, all right, so those were five quick ones right there. So what I'm going to do, normally I would just walk you through step by step, but we've gone way past our time today and that is something I typically show every day. I'll make a note to try to show that tomorrow, but it's a step by step process where you just go to your Amazon page, you hit upload, you tag it, you label it, you hit submit and it's done. It's not a time consuming process. So I'm not saying everyone has to be an Amazon influencer or everyone has to be a mini Kim Kardashian. But I do get questions from people all the time of how can I speak more, how can I make money speaking. Well, this is one way of doing it where you don't have to deal with all, all the traditional gatekeepers. So that's why I am excited about it and sharing my journey with you. I hope to inspire you, give you a sense of how it can be done and to make you realize, well, if this guy can do it, he's messing up, I can do it too. I'm hoping that's what you take away. All right, so there was another question that came in, but I think it was a private question. Let me just look at it a moment. Okay, so let me protect the privacy. I don't want to say who it's from, but I think it's a question that no one would be offended by me bringing it up. And it is relevant to a lot of people. The question is, are there communication skills aptitude test that you recommend students to take? Certainly there are written communication aptitude tests. I mean every grade pretty much as a reading comprehend. That is a type of communication. When it comes to spoken communication, which is my expertise. I'm not aware of any standardized test. Now as the academic world gets more immersed in technology and video cameras and recording, that may change. But I'm not aware of any broadly accepted aptitude test that scores someone's ability to communicate by speaking. Of course, there are tests on written skills, whether it's the SAT or other other standardized tests in countries around the world. To me, the ultimate test is can you speak? And when you're done, if you ask someone what did I say? Can they tell you one or two messages? You said if you do that, you have passed the aptitude test. If you haven't done that, if they say, oh, you were great, it means you didn't actually communicate. On that note, I want to say thanks to everyone for joining me. Roger, thanks so much. Oh, Joanna, did I. I apologize. I had said I was going to give you, I think the final word and I know we're, we're really out of time, but I'm just wondering, did you have a quick question or comment? Joanna? Thank you, Ms. Walker. You answered my question. I greatly appreciate it. I just started this one year UDEMY courses so I'm new to the community. This is my first time seeing you live and I'm doing the organization course, the, the self voice recording. So that's been helpful. So just thank you. Great. Well Joanna, so happy you joined us. Happy you're part of our online community learning how to be a better communicator. Please come back tomorrow and maybe post one of your videos or speak online. Turn the camera on and speak to us and we can do some feedback and learning together. We are out of time today. So Roger, Joanna, Ben, Barb, all of our colleagues who joined me online today. Dave, everyone, thanks so much everyone who joined us in the comments section as well as our hundreds and hundreds of people who joined us on TikTok today. Thanks. Thanks again so much for that final word goes to Faresh who just posted a comment. TJ was amazing to see you doing all alive. I'm looking forward to seeing more live video. It's another level live of learning. Thanks so much. You made my day. Take care. I'll see you tomorrow. Please do me a favor like this video. Leave a comment, share it and watch the other videos that I'll be posting today later today. Three videos per day. Thanks.