Facing My Greatest Fear: Navigating Live TV and Video

Live tv, live video, a live stream. If you're like most people, that is the most terrifying thing of all. You may be thinking, well, I can make a YouTube video, or I can make a pre recorded video for my team or marketing from my website. But live, oh no, that's not for me. That's too hard. I'd be scared. Well, timeout. I'm going to suggest to you that maybe you've got it backwards. You've got it all wrong. Once you understand the fundamentals of appearing on camera, coming across relaxed, confident, and once you understand the basics of being interviewed, if you're going in front of a TV journalist, for example, or a tough podcaster, you'll realize that going live is the easiest way of doing things. It's the best way of doing it. In fact, a lot of politicians, if they're under siege, if they're being attacked, they're part of a scandal and major journalists want to interview them, they'll put as a requirement that I'll only do the interview if it's live. Why do they do that? Because they know that if it's live, part of their message has to get out. They will be able to get their message across. If it's an edited interview, meaning it's not live, then they can be edited in such a way that only the bad parts get out, only the negative, only defensive ideas get out, and the positive messages they want didn't get into the final story. So if you're ever given an opportunity by reporters or TV journalists or video journalists or podcasters to go live, I'm begging you, take it. I understand. Get that adrenaline and your stomach is maybe having all these butterflies going. You'll get over it. The way to get over it is rehearsing in advance on video. What's making you so nervous is this idea that I don't really know how I'm coming across. Well, if you haven't rehearsed on video, you really don't know how you're coming across. So it's completely rational to be nervous about it. But the solution is not to practice in front of the real journalist or the real audience. The solution is to practice in advance where nobody can see it. Practice at home, practice at your office, practice on your cell phone, practice on your webcam, look at it again and again until you're confident you look your best and sound your best. But tj, what if I freeze? You might freeze for a second or two. That's okay. Just pause. People do that in real life, in real conversations. All the time. Give yourself a second to think and then react. Here's what I love about doing live tv, live, streaming live on social media, is that it's just more enjoyable, it's more fun because you're not having to do the same take over and over again. You're actually talking to people. And most of all, what I love about going live, you eliminate the vast majority of competition. Most people are afraid to do live interviews. Most people are afraid to broadcast live on social media. Oh, I might make a mistake. So when you go live, you're no longer competing with most of the world. You're competing with a small subsection. It's easier to win when your competitors take themselves out of the running. The other beauty of live is it allows you to connect with people. When you're live, you can take questions right away, people can join you on screen, people can type in questions, text questions, and you can respond to them right away. So don't make the mistake of saying, oh, that's so much harder. It's actually easier doing live. The other advantage of doing live is after you've done it, you're going to get a sense of confidence. You're going to, wow, I just did live tv. I just did a live stream, I just did Facebook Live or YouTube Live or TikTok Live. And I had people talk to me, engaging in me. It went well. It's going to make you more confident the next time you have an opportunity to do any kind of media appearance, whether it's being a guest on a podcast, whether it's someone talking to you over the phone for an edited newspaper story, you're going to have more confidence because you know you can perform live. What is live anyway? It's just talking. You know, if you got an itch or something, scratch your face, no one cares. What's important is that you seem comfortable, relaxed, confident, that you have interesting ideas and that you convey those ideas in interesting, memorable ways, ideally with stories, examples. Don't let it tense you up. Now, I've had clients say, tj, I'm so nervous, I'm going to take a beta blocker, a drug to minimize nerve. They took the beta blocker, went on live tv, and what do you know? They weren't scared, they weren't nervous. Sounds like a good idea, right? Well, here's the problem. They felt better inside, but on camera, they looked like this and they sounded like this and they froze like this. No, I beg you, don't take beta blockers before doing a live TV show or A live stream. It's going to mess up how you come across. It's not just that you want to be comfortable, confident and relaxed. You want to look and sound comfortable, confident and relaxed for your audience. You need both of those things because ultimately, if you know you're coming across as comfortable, confident and relaxed to your audience, it's going to be hard to be nervous, it's going to be hard to be uncomfortable, because so much of what makes us uncomfortable is this fear. Oh, I look scared. This is scary. Let me run away. You don't want that sensation going on in your brain. That's why it is important to do this. Going in with confidence and not messing yourself up with some kind of drug or beta blocker. The other thing I see people try to do, hey, I'll cheat. I'll get a teleprompter. And that way, if I forget what to say, I will be the teleprompter on this live broadcast, just like the president of my country. Timeout. Look, I've got a teleprompter over here. I use them from time to time. I have courses on how to use a teleprompter effectively. But for most people, most of the time, if you're doing something live, I do not recommend using a teleprompter because chances are it's going to make you appear to be frozen stiff monotone. Because without a lot of practice, this is how most people sound and look when they are looking at a teleprompter. It's actually hard to do without sufficient practice. The other thing is, if it's live, all of a sudden, the screen goes blank. Now you're terrorized on live TV or a live stream or live social media feed. You don't want that. Far better to work from a simple paper outline because if you're live, energy could go out a cell phone. If you're using a cell phone, teleprompter could automatically go into a new download or an update and it doesn't work. You could lose power. A simple sheet of paper with an outline of notes will never ask you for electricity. And that way you can glance down with confidence, knowing I've got a roadmap of what I want to talk about in this live broadcast. I'm urging you, even if no one invites you, even if 60 Minutes or the BBC is not inviting you on to do a live primetime interview tonight, do something in the next 24 hours where you're live, you can do live on almost any social media platform. If nobody Shows up or watches. What have you lost? Absolutely nothing. Say something interesting and valuable to people, and then you can save that video and post it on the same platform for an on demand video. The other thing I love about live, it saves time. If you know people are going to see this and it has to be more or less the finished product, just give it your best, and when it's done, it's done. And you don't have to edit, slice and dice for the next six weeks. You've got a finished idea from you to other people that they can experience live and later. So please say yes to your next opportunity to speak live in front of a video camera. Okay, so that is our first sort of opening segment. Hi, I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me. We are live today. I just wanted to start with giving people value. Also, I'm starting with something that when we're labeling this for the on demand version, if people don't care about a live show or they want to be on for three hours, they can see something that interests them and they can watch for a few minutes, get some value. And maybe they don't watch 90% of it, but they watch 2, 3, 4. In that case, I hope about eight minutes long. So that's why we started that way. I see we have several of you joining us live. Mechtes is with us. Tamara is with us. Mechte says, I'm a physiotherapist and natural. I'm not quite sure what that means, and says, hi, teacher Walker. Well, thanks so much, Mechtas. If you'd like to join us on camera, we're happy to have you. All you have to do is hit. Hit the streamyard link and you can join us. And Tamara is with us. Tamara's being a little camera shy, which is absolutely okay. That's absolutely fine, Tamara. But, Tamara, do you want to speak? You don't have to put your camera on, but did you want to ask a question or can you share with us just with your voice, what you're working on?

Yes, I'm working on being an independent media specialist. Somehow or another, I built a brand on accident when I was privately coaching clients. So now I need to take ownership of what I've done because there's a compounding effect that I can benefit from and I can tell my story and heal a lot of people.

Great. And what aspect of coaching do you do?

Strategy. I help with risk mitigation, and we weigh out the potential of rewards through incentive programs, affiliate programs, ways to put Money back in people's pocket quickly.

Okay, and are you working in any one particular sector? Finance or you know, major retailers like Walmart or What sorts of companies do you work with?

Well, yeah, I came from a retail background, so I believe I shop brilliant. So that's one of my business names because I like to be a savvy shopper. I like to make sure that there is a holistic effect to when I spend my money. And I also like to be kind of an investigative reporter when it comes to like the ingredients that are in my products. So I, I guess I provide influence on what I love my favorite products to be.

And who is your ideal client? How do they engage you? Do they hire you for a year, for a day? Is it a consulting service? Do you have a product you sell? How do they engage you?

Yeah, well, I mean I've come across a lot of different clients that were high profile and I realized that they wanted everything for free because I did everything very quickly. So I started to realize that I was going to create an opportunity where I could find traction with existing content already. So I do like a 30 day, 60 day, 90 day incrementation to see if I want to work with them long term but for a consistent basis. I really like working with them if they're in alignment with me and they have the right energy and there's a great relationship capital to build from. It's more long term, you know, 36 months.

And do individuals hire you or is it the marketing department that hires you? Is it the CEO who actually is the one who says we're going to hire her, Send this person a check or wire X amount of money to her account.

Yeah. So somehow or another I got into database with like highly, highly recommended referrals. So all of my referrals come from war market interaction and I think it has something to do with the network that I grew up in. I used to do Chinese dance since I was 12. I do makeup for pageants. I help people, you know, look good in front of the camera. So I've always been behind the scenes and I've just been kind of an advisor, but never anybody to like say, hey, look at me. You know, put me in the spotlight. I've always been behind the scenes helping my clients stay in the spotlight.

But when you're, when you're coaching them, are you typically face to face in the same room? Are you talking to them on Zoom or the phone? Is it all email based? When you're actually coaching someone, how are you helping?

Oh, yeah. Through Zoom, it's important to see their facial expressions.

Mm. Okay. So I guess my point is when you're talking to them on Zoom, it's important for you to see their facial expressions, but it's also important for them to see your facial expressions too. It goes. It goes both ways. And I guess my point is anytime you're in a Zoom meeting and you've said something interesting and useful to one client and you see them go, ah, hadn't thought of that. That's interesting, that's useful. I should try that. Anything you said there, you could be saying to a million people in your industry around the world who could be getting that insight by watching you on a video on LinkedIn, for example. LinkedIn may be a great opportunity or a great place for you to reach the people you care about the most. And I don't. I'm not saying automatically it has to be LinkedIn, but talking about risk mitigation and highly, highly specific business things that major corporations have, LinkedIn may be a great platform for you. So I guess, I mean, you're not afraid and it's fine that you don't have your camera on with us today, but are you, Are you okay being on camera when you're talking to a client one on one on Zoom?

Yes, I am.

And I guess what's happening, I mean, you're completely normal, by the way, because most people say, well, I'm talking to one person and that's no big deal, but, oh, my gosh, recording myself for other people to see, that's completely different. It actually isn't. It is actually the very same thing. If you come across well to one person, you come across well to 10, 100, 500, a thousand, 50,000, a million. It really is the same thing. And it's just a matter of, do you want to help more people and do you want more people reaching out to you? I mean, I got to tell you, for many years, I basically only helped really rich people because they were the only ones who could hire me for a day. And then the Internet, social media, online platforms like Udemy, where, you know, people are not having to spend $10,000 a day. It's. It's a different price point. I'm able to help a lot more people because of going on camera and promoting myself, and I'm able to help a lot. Most of the people I help never pay me a penny because they are watching free content on, on YouTube and other places. But a certain percentage of those will buy some inexpensive course. Let's say 1% of those buy something and then 1% of that 1% may hire me for a day or a keynote or something that's much more expensive. So I mean, that's the real reason, I think, to try to share your message with more people. You could do it just through books. I don't see many people doing that these days if they're not already famous through something. The most effective way is with your voice and where people can see you. Combined video and audio.

Yes, I agree. Do you know that 1.8 million students from Udemy has downloaded your course?

Actually, that's an old, that's an old stat. I mean, I put that on the top of mine. I mean I'm the one who put that. And I just haven't updated it. We are only about, I think 60,000 away from hitting the 2 million mark just on Udemy.

Oh wow.

And I'm on about a hundred different platforms, so it's. It's probably about two and a half million.

Okay.

Worldwide again, which, which would not have happened to me if I didn't put myself on camera. And I didn't. I. Right now I've got a twenty thousand dollar studio and that's a seven thousand dollar camera with its lens. And I've got this. And I've got this different, you know, different camera angles and an expensive mic. You don't need any of that. When I started, I think I was recording right into my computer when I did my first course in 1998.

Oh wow. I graduated high school.

Yeah. Well, I've been at this. I did my first training and 1984. So I've been at this a long time.

You look so young. I was four.

Well, thank you. Thanks a lot. Keeps me young, talking to all of you every day and doing this because I get an adrenaline rush going on camera and speaking live every day and, and also doing it standing. It's how it forces me to be active rather than sitting like a, a passive couch potato or sitting in a chair all day long. So I get a lot out of that. My, my point to you is simply start now.

Use your.

Your cell phone camera is so much better than probably 50% of the video quality I have in my first 50 courses on Udemy, most of which are still all making me money every day because I was using a $20 webcam. Far inferior in terms of quality. What you can create just on your cell phone.

Definitely.

So, Tamara, I'm feeling frustrated because I feel like I've not helped you yet because I Want to motivate you to start making some videos and sharing your expertise with the world. Am I guaranteeing get rich quick? No. You can do what a lot of people do, which is five videos and say, well, you know, none of them had 10 billion. I didn't get 20 new clients. This is a waste of time, a gimmick and never do it again. That's what most people do who make online video. It's a long term plan, it's a long term game you have to play and it is about consistency. But I can tell you I have a video that I made, it says I think eight years ago, I think I actually made the video about 12 years ago on media training and it gets me 50 views a day. To this day it's got 120 some thousand views. I get prospects from it on a regular basis. One video of me sharing my expertise and, and guess what? 0 Editing a simple webcam and I somehow messed up putting the mic in that day. The audio has a hiss in it and yet it still pays me dividends every single day a dozen years later. Am I guaranteeing that's going to happen to you, your first video or second or even first time? No. But if you do it over time, it can in fact happen.

Thank you so much. You've actually helped me build my confidence. I feel better at least talking now.

I. Here's the thing about that holds a lot of people back. And I have talked about this before, but let's talk about it again. We live in a culture where, where people are, I'll say supposedly I do think it happens where people are intimidated and you hear about young women getting psychologically scarred because they're scrolling Instagram all day long. And everyone is an insanely beautiful, stunning model. Men and women. And it creates low self esteem. And I hear from my clients all over the world that hey, I can't go on tv, I have a face for radio, I can't go on YouTube, I've got a face for radio. And people feel like you, you have to be some vision of, of ideal physical perfection to do well. And I have a standard comeback which is, you know who's the most highly paid woman in Hollywood in the last 20 years? It's not some beautiful, gorgeous, tall, shapely woman. It's Judge Judy who is about 4 foot 11, very wrinkled and like 85 years old. She's the highest paid woman in Hollywood for decades. Who's been the highest paid person on television? Oprah Winfrey, who now she's thin. Thanks to some new drugs. But she has been, let me be sensitive here. I don't want to offend anyone. She has been the size of not what the standard image of beauty is. And beauty magazines say your standard size should be. Who's one of the top performing men on television for the last 25 years? Dr. Phil. Well, I have a fantastic head of hair compared to Dr. Phil. He's got beady little eyes, a weird little mustache, and he's been making tens of millions of dollars a year on TV every day. So the idea that you have to be somehow stunningly good looking to make it on Betty is just not true. And believe me, I'm subject to bullying. Now it's by my 11 year old at home. She's like, oh, daddy, you only have one strand of hair. I have other family members saying, oh, you have beady eyes. Guess what? Nobody cares. My students get some value from me to help them in their life. So they don't care that my hair is less than great or I'm getting a double chin or my eyes are. Nobody cares. So if you can give value to people, that's the real thing. And it comes down to, can you help people in their business or in some aspect of what they're doing, or can you entertain people? Now, I'm not an entertainer and it sounds like you're sort of in the same niche I am of helping people do something, learning something that can improve some aspect of their life or business. Sounds like to that extent, we're saying, well, thank you for turning on your camera. I hope it didn't seem like I was bullying you or pressuring you into doing that. Great. So that's the first step. You can do it. You know, we're not getting horrible negative comments saying, oh my gosh, you turned your camera. No one's saying that. But I will say, I want to be fair. If you're making video regularly and putting out a lot of content, yeah, One out of a thousand comments will be somebody making a snide comment. And you know, every few months someone will say, yeah, there was one my daughter especially appreciate. The other day somebody wrote, hey, tj, ever hear of lotion implying I'm so old and wrinkled? And I wrote back to that person saying, hey, you're right, my skin is dry. This is what 61 looks like, sorry. And then the person actually wrote back, it's, oh my God, I had no idea you were that old. You look great for that age. So it ended up being a positive experience. So don't Let a few detractors hold you back. Now, someone did leave a comment. Are you ready for this? We just have a comment in the chat and it's about you and it's about your appearance. Are you ready for this? Tomorrow, someone and I, they, they've. I don't see their name because they've not signed into to Streamyard, but someone just wrote, you're beautiful tomorrow inside and out. Now, I didn't plan that. I didn't write it. It's someone from Facebook. But in my experience, most people are very positive. Now, as human beings, we remember the negativity quite often. So if 99 people say positive things and one person says, you know, hey, tj, you're. I hate your teeth, it's human nature to remember that one comment. But most people are positive. Although the anonymity on some social media platforms does occasionally bring out negativity. But for your niche, talking about risk management, that's not going to attract haters the way if you're talking about politics would. If you talk about politics, that's a whole different game of negativity. But promise me one, we have to go. But tomorrow, promise me one thing. You'll make some video in the next 24 hours where you talk about your expertise and sharing very similar insights of what you would do with any one client. And post it somewhere and post it in our Facebook group as well. I'd love to see it.

All right, thank you.

All right, thanks, Tamara. Thanks for joining us. It's very much appreciated. Okay, so, Ben, we're a little bit behind schedule. Part of our agenda today is Ben and I, we're going to get feedback from you and have sort of a work session. We're trying to figure out how to get better at doing YouTube shorts, TikTok shorts. So we're going to review some of the most recent videos that have been made and try to figure out which ones do we keep, which ones do we delete, which ones do we send back to the editor for refinement? So this is my colleague, Ben has worked with me for many, many years and is oversees production and editing and all aspects of our enterprise here. Ben, can you go ahead and share the most recent short form videos that have not been seen any place I have not seen these. These are not been posted anyplace else. We're trying to figure out how to make these come alive or how to make these better and get rid of different ones. Oh, you've posted it in the chat. I now see it. Okay, file one. So let's go to file one for now. I didn't hit share, did I? Let me hit share. Present. Share, screen. Share audio. Share entire screen. Share audio. And I guess I'll go to screen. I'm going to get a screen three. I'm going to hit share, and I'm going to bring. I've got to bring this over here. And we're in a slightly convoluted studio setup with my desk. So I've had to step off screen for just a minute to slide this over to the correct area. Okay, now I believe we have it. I'm going to take us off camera. Ben, if you can stay on, we'll have a conversation. For anyone who wants to add their own commentary, what you like, don't like, I would love to hear from you because this is still more of an art form than a science. You know, people at Mr. Beast level can get to the point where they really, really know exactly what's going to work and what doesn't work. We're obviously not there yet, so we're still experimenting, looking for signals in the marketplace. You can see these are just raw file names. We're going to play them. What are the risks of not adequately rehearsing for your next presentation? Well, let me ask you, what's the risk of sending a cover letter or a resume to a prospective employer? And you didn't spell check or edit it. That's right. You can have typos, misspellings, and you can look like a fool and make a horrible impression. No, it's exactly the same when it comes to rehearsing your presentation. If you haven't rehearsed your presentation on video and actually looked at it to say, that's exactly how I want to come across, I'm making sense. If you haven't done that, then you're no different than someone who sends you a cover letter and a resume filled with typos and spelling errors. Okay, so I have mixed feelings about that one. It is a very important point. And let me just go back to the screen a minute, we can have a conversation. A very important point. There it is. One I make, I've made before. The length of that is 40 seconds long. And from that camera angle, it doesn't appear to be one that I intended to be a short. But it does start with a tough question or a strong question. I do answer it. I do give someone action. So I'm going to lean in favor of just saying, let's go ahead and. Let's go ahead and push that one out, schedule that for release. Even though I think that might be one of the videos we get that we do that gets less than a thousand views, which in our case we consider that sort of not a success. And we're looking for, you know, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,000 views is what for our channel at this stage we consider to be viral. So, but, so let's put a thumbs up for that one, but let's track how it does because I don't really think it's going to do well because it is a little longer. The 40, traditionally the 40 second videos, short forms I've done have not done well. Let's go to the next one. Tj, how do I make sure I'm not overly rehearsed for my next speech or presentation? Well, what does that mean? Yes, it's possible to rehearse in a bad way. Meaning you try to memorize a script and now it sounds can. Well, the problem there isn't that you only over rehearse. The problem is you're doing the wrong thing. Someone can't practice too much golf if they're going to join a golf tournament. Okay. So that's kind of the. I actually like that at many levels because it is definitely one I planned. Okay. And by the way, if you're joining us now, wondering what I'm talking about, if you see me behind a curtain, that means I planned it. I specifically shot it there because I was intending to use it as a social media short form video. So that's what I mean. So I was planning on that. I was trying to make it short and brief. It wasn't edited down from a big speech there and the editor did something that we talk about occasionally. We don't do that much, which is cutting me off mid word because that, that arouses curiosity, supposedly and increases the odds that sometimes people will watch more of something. So let's definitely run that one. Ben. Okay, T.T.J. you say rehearse, but isn't there a danger of over rehearsing when you. Well, depends on what you're rehearsing. If you're trying to memorize word for word, a speech, yeah, you will look can phony. The problem is not that you over rehearse. The problem is you rehearse the wrong thing the wrong way. Meryl Streep doesn't over rehearse for a movie role. She does it a lot to get good. When you're rehearsing, don't try to memorize word for word. Try to make your ideas come Alive until you can look at a video of yourself and say, wow, that person's interesting. That's fantastic. If you do that, you will have rehearsed properly, not over rehearsed. Okay, so I have some mixed feelings about that. It's definitely one I planned. It's, I think there's a lot of really good content there and it's done in a way that's a little. And I like the visuals. MERYL streep, my cons. What I'm wondering is it's too long because traditionally I have not done well with 43 second short form videos and this one's 43 seconds. So I'm wondering if we need the last 15 seconds or so. Let's watch it again. Ben I'm going to stop it where I think we could get away with it, but I'm not entirely sure. And by the way, the Facebook user complimenting Tamara was Miriam. Miriam, so good to hear from you. Thanks for joining us. And Tamara says thank you. Well, thank you, Tamara, for stopping by. We very much appreciate your comments. Let's go, let's, let's look at this one one more time. T.J. you say rehearse, but isn't there a danger of over rehearsing? Well, depends on what you're rehearsing. If you're trying to memorize word for word a speech, yeah, you will look canned, phony. The problem is not that you over rehearse. The problem is you rehearse the wrong thing the wrong way. Meryl Streep doesn't over rehearse for a movie role. She does it a lot to get good when you're rehearsing. Now we could stop right there at 26 seconds. I think the point still comes through. I think that was the point I was talking and that would be, you know, that should take an editor two seconds to just lop off the video at 27. Let me see if that's where in fact I intended. Don't try to memorize word for word. Try to make your ideas come alive until you can look at a video of yourself and say, wow, that person's interesting. That's fantastic. So that's another place, you know, I think we're better off at the 26 second mark. Mark. Okay, let's do that. Because look, I like to talk and I like talking for three hours, but this isn't about me. And you know, we're not going to get, you know, the couple million views we've had on this channel is not good for people watching live for three hours. It is from shorter form videos. So I've got to be respectful of that and what the marketplace is if you do that. So let's try, let's try editing that one at the 26 mark, if you can make a note of that one. Okay, the next one. Stop lying to yourself. If you say, oh, I don't want to be overly rehearsed, I want to be fresh and candid when I give my presentation. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. All you're doing is being late. Did that just say I want to be candy? Oh, I don't want to be overly rehearsed. I want to be fresh and candid when I give my present. So the word I'm saying is candid. But the editor put the word I don't want to be candy, which makes absolutely no sense. And believe me, I'm certainly not suggesting I'm eye candy to anyone. So I don't want to be seen like I'm suggesting anything like that. So this one definitely has to go back. Presentation. All you're doing is being lazy. What you're really saying is you don't want to take the time to rehearse because your time, an hour of your time, is worth so much more than the collective 50 hours of the 50 people you're going to be speaking to. Stop being lazy. There's always, always time to rehearse. And no, you don't have to worry about being over rehearsed if you rehearse the right way. Speak one idea at a time, give examples and stories and be interesting. I, I think we just have to scrap this one because it is a point that I make in trainings, in speeches. But I think when, when people hear someone right out of the gate saying, you're lazy, it's too off putting. I think it puts people off and it doesn't work. And I just, I mean, I'm hitting these themes a lot about rehearsal. I think I do it better in other places. Plus it's got typos and can I. I need our whole team to be looking at things. Every part of it. Say, does this make sense? Why would TJ say I don't want to be candy? Nobody's accusing me of being candy, so we need a higher level of scrutiny. It's also just too long, I think. Let's go to the next one. How do I avoid distractions with my hands when making a speech so they don't look unprofessional? Well, for starters, don't do this, but chances are you're not doing this. So many people worry about, oh, my hands will float around like Will Ferrell. The biggest thing you can do that will look distracting when you're giving a presentation is to hold your hands down or hold a pen to try to freeze your hands to look professional. Wait, did that. I just want to make sure we didn't have a typo there. Hands down, hold a pen, not a pan. So we definitely. So that's at 25 seconds in U11. And so the. I mean, the visual is correct. The. The editor could hear. Could see that I was talking about pens and put in b roll of somebody holding a pen, but they spelled it pan. So that is the kind of thing that kind of detracts from professionalism. Now, there's a school of. There's some YouTubers who say, oh, I intentionally put a mistake, because then people like to correct you, and it creates engagement. I don't know if I really buy that or if it's just an excuse to be lazy. The other issue is I'm holding myself out as an expert on communication. Now, I'm not a writing instructor, but I do think that people hold me to higher standards, and if I hold. If I have typos and spelling errors, it detracts from my credibility. Hold a pen to try to freeze your hands to look professional. Stop doing that. You want to move naturally. That's what's going to make you look comfortable, confident, and relaxed. So stop trying to freeze yourself or doing things like this. That just looks weird. Okay, this one I would like to chop off the last four seconds. I think the better ending, that's what's going to make you look comfortable, confident and relaxed. So relaxed. We want to cut it, and we want the last word to be relaxed. I mean, 37 seconds is still a little longer than I'd really like because our most successful videos have you, as you know, Ben, have been like 12 to 19 seconds. We've had some longer. But the highest cluster of really successful YouTube shorts have focused on one tip. You know, basically, one strong question and one tip, and you're out in 20 seconds. I've got to get better at that, but I think this will be even better if we lose that last four seconds. Okay, got it. What are the consequences of not being aware of your body language or facial expressions when you're giving a presentation? Well, it's this. Chances are if you're not aware of it, your face is. Okay, so this. This is a little problematic because I'm intentionally making myself look really bad. But the editor went to B roll and covered it up. I'm actually wanting people to see how bad I look. I don't think the point comes out only showing me for a second. So this. This one, we should actually have me. It should be on my face looking that. Because it's. You hear this monotone guy, but there's no explanation for it. I think if you see me looking so bad and then I come on, it makes more. Let's look at it again from the beginning. What are the consequences of not being aware of. Because that guy looks really, really comfortable. His smile looks great. So this B roll is not really matching what I'm saying of your body language or facial expressions when you're giving a presentation. This guy looks good. His facial expressions look good. I'm trying to demonstrate bad facial expressions. So this video just doesn't make any sense. Well, it's this. Chances are, if you're not aware of it, see that. That one would have much more dramatic impact, actually showing how. How bland and boring and flat my face was. The first nine seconds, your face is blank. People worry about looking weird or crazy. That's not the danger most people have. Oh, now, did I get fuzzy there? I think I actually went out of focus. Did you see that there? Yeah. I mean, that's not the editor's fault. That is the. That just happens with this camera sometimes. Maybe I did a little too much movement. I don't know. I mean, that may be something where we want to cover that up with B roll. Biggest danger is you're so caught up with what you're going to say and not making mistake, your face goes blank. I think that's probably the place to stop. Let's keep watching. That's a 27. You look bored and boring, which means everyone else is going to tune out and check their cell phone. That's why you need to rehearse on video, so you know that you listen, look comfortable, confident and relaxed. Okay, let's do that. Let's end this video at 27 seconds. Okay. And let's get rid of the B roll the first 10 seconds and show my face. Because I'm truly trying to demonstrate what not to do. Your face goes blank. You look. What, did I say 27 or did I mean 37? Bored and boring. Which means everyone else is going to tune out and check their cell phone. That's why you need to rehearse on video, so you know that you look. I'm not sure where the best place is to end. Now. Let me Go back again. Crazy. That's not the danger most people have. The biggest danger is you're so caught up with what you're going to say and not making mistake, your face goes blank. You look bored and boring, which means every. Yeah, let's just end with your face goes blank. Because the number of videos we've had that have gone viral over 30 seconds, that's not a long list, man. Let's be, let's be candid with ourselves. I mean, I wish people would hang on to every single word I said all the time, but it really does seem like it goes way down after 30 seconds. And we don't have to have the other stuff. I mean, the other stuff is things I'm covering frequently. All right, Ben, we got to shift gears now because we've got to. We're going to do our Amazon Live segment. So. And for some. Let me just check one minute and see, did my air conditioner break? It's all of a sudden gotten very hot here. And forgive me, we are, we are live here today. And I guess I just got used to the cooler temperatures. It was cool at night and this morning it was in the 60s. It's 73 degrees. Exactly what the air conditioning has said. It's supposed to be in here. So it's just me getting hot for some reason. So let's just go ahead and get ready. I'm going to prepare my products for the Amazon Live and we're going to review 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 books. Oh, and I have another one I didn't even tell you about. Dan, if you could try to get this one ready. It's called it Fundamentals by Imran Afzal, who was nice enough to dedicate and recognize me and actually put my picture. I've never seen someone put a picture of someone in the dedication page. But very much appreciate my colleague and friend and someone I've worked with for, for many years and also my former next door neighbor, Imran Afzal. So we'll be talking about this book as well. And I'm going to do a special Amazon influencer video for this one as well. So, Ben, if you can get this one right, we'll do this one last. We're going to do the tiny. I think I gave you the sequence. So we're going to do this in sequence. But before we do it, several of you have seen me do this before. You can see as I get close to the camera, you can now see perspiration. And I don't want to tell People, hey, watch me buy my courses, hire me how to look comfortable, cool, calm and collected at all times. And I'm sweating on camera. To me, it just seems contradictory. So every so often I have to try to cool myself down, put on makeup. I'm also taking one of the earpieces out. I really only need one. And I am going to sort of blot myself down. What I don't want to do and can be a danger sometime if you have one layer of makeup on and you start rubbing, what can happen is you can get blotchy, you can get streaks. You know, when I see I, I don't want to have tissue on my face and I see something as stuck there. So I'm going to reapply in just a moment some mosaic powder. Not to make myself look tan or to look younger or more handsome or anything like that, but to reduce shine. I just don't want to shine and I don't want to appear sweaty. So I'm just going to put. And I see now I do in fact have a little tissue there, which I don't want that can be distracting. So it's a mosaic powder. Any mosaic powder will do. At one point, I actually did sell my own makeup line for men. I don't get involved with that anymore. But you just. Any mosaic powder that doesn't make your skin darker than it normally is or lighter will work. And I see one of our, our friends today is in New England saying it's snowing in New England today. Well, that, that must be nice. I was just out in Colorado a week and a half ago, so I enjoyed a lot of snow out there. But now it is summertime in Florida and was only almost 90 degrees yesterday. So I'm just going to put a little more powder on. And now I think you see, you don't see the shine. It's not that it magically transforms my face into something wildly beautiful, but it does just make a little bit of a difference. Now the other thing I'm going to do is I'm going to post, I'm going to go ahead and go on to my Amazon Influencer page and I'm going to put my tripod up and my cell phone up. I'm going to go to my Amazon Influencer page so that I can see in real time. I'll also be able to see if anyone on Amazon is posting questions or comments, which they can do. And of course, the beauty of being on Amazon live is people with one click can buy the product. You're Talking about typically YouTube, so many social media outlets, there's a several step process. You have to send someone to a link, they read a big sales pitch, then they go maybe to a shopping cart. Then they maybe have to fill out a long form with their credit card. And the beauty of Amazon for someone who's already signed in, has an account. Amazon's got your credit card number. One click, you like it. So someone could watch me or anyone on Amazon Live and then see the product we're talking about, click, buy it and it's really one click. It's very, very fast and seamless. Okay, so I'm on, I'm on my Amazon influencer page right now. I can see the one we did the other day and I think once we go live, I'll see that as well. So I'll be holding up books like this, talking about the books and giving people an opportunity to see how a live feed works on Amazon without a guest. As I did the other day. I interviewed Jess Todfeld about his book Media Secrets. Now I'll be doing sort of quicker reviews, sort of QVC style, home shopping network style for books. Okay, so Ben, can you give me a countdown and let me know when we are in fact on. We're, we're using Streamyard today and we can connect, we can add streams and take them off in real time. So Ben is going to. Ben, I want to make sure I can hear you. So you are. Yeah, so I can hear you. So can you give me a countdown and let me know? Okay. 3, 2, 1. We are live. Hi, I'm TJ Walker, thanks for joining me today. We are live here on Amazon. It's great to be a part of the Amazon community and we specifically are going to talk about a number of excellent personal development books that have helped me personally my clients around the globe. Hi, I'm TJ Walker with the TJ Walker Success Channel and I teach people personal development skills, communication skills and what I like to do is recommend to you from time to time books and other tools and tricks that have been very helpful to me and, and helpful to others as well. So we're going to take a look at these right now. I'm going to give you some insights. I am just going to my, my cell phone now so I can see if any of you have any comments. So I want to make sure I'm monitoring that and I'm going to my, to my live stream on the Amazon app. So the first book I really want to spotlight is called tiny habits by BJ Fogg. He is a world renowned expert, PhD at Stanford. So this is the guy that all the young 19, 20 year olds who go to Stanford to become the next Mark Zuckerberg, they go to this guy's class and then he teaches them how to build habits with users of apps, of websites. Extraordinarily effective. I see that. One of our colleagues in New England says it's an amazing book. Now, I'm fascinated by habits and I have a Habits app and a lot of courses on habits. BJ Fog is the real deal. He's an actual researcher. A lot of us are practitioners. We're building insights based on experience, working with people. He's doing actual laboratory research. But he also gives people very practical tips and advice. Now he stresses the need for app developers especially to create constant rewards for people to get them coming back. And you can debate whether or not that's always a good impact on society, but he also teaches you very specific practical tools for building better habits in your own life. And that's what I took away. I know a book is good when I look at all of the pages and I don't do this with library books, but when I'm reading a book, I turn down the page and I underline. So I have massive amounts of underlines and stars insights here. And he's nice enough to really share from his personal life. He talks specifically about how he makes his colorful fruits and vegetables the most colorful thing on his counters in his kitchen. He makes those the dominant things in his refrigerator. It's not that he never eats junk food, but he makes it so hard to see. He makes it work. And he stresses you've got to make your laziness work for you. So if you're at all interested in habits and building good habits, I do recommend that you make tiny habits, the small changes that change a part of your library. The next book I want to direct your attention to is called Daily Rituals How Artists Work. This book is fascinating because the authority really looked at so many fantastic people throughout history. I want to share with you just some of the people. Francis Bacon, Simone de Beauvoir, Thomas Wolf, Frederico Fellini. So it's not just other business people or other personal development experts. It's the productivity of some of those wildly influential people in the world. Karl Marx, he's not promoting Marxism, folks, but Sigmund Freud, Richard Strauss, Andre Matisse. If you are all interested in how some of the people who've had the biggest impact on humanity actually conducted themselves, what habits did they have on a daily basis. This book I think you'll find fascinating. I mean some things, like, some things are really quite contrary to what you would think. And some of the people who society says are the most productive people in the world, you'll find out that they had tremendous nap time, leisure time, two hour lunches built into their schedule. So it's a myth that we think of productivity. We think of Edison who, you know, worked all night long and work, work, work, work, work. Well, he took a lot of naps too and I believe he's in here as well. But you know, you look at the the Theory of Evolution author and had tremendous naps, long, long walks every day, a very leisurely pace for his productivity. So I would very much recommend Daily Rituals because it's interesting. History lessons, lessons in some of the people you've perhaps heard of your whole life who've had such an impact on art, culture, society and science. So it's a great part of your library. This next book is A World Without Email by Cal Newport. Cal Newport is what I think of still a young man. I Guess he's over 40 now. He's a a computer science professor at Georgetown University. But he has this entire second career of writing wildly popular, influential books on productivity and focus and how to deal with life in the modern world. I've read every one of his books and every one of them has great nuggets. But a world without email? Does it mean I'll hide my face so we don't mess up the auto focus? It doesn't mean you can never have any email again, but it gets you to really rethink how we are conducting our daily lives. It's just so easy. And I've been guilty of this. You get into the habit of just checking email every three minutes and it breaks up your productivity, your ability to think so much that it's segmenting and fragmenting our productivity. It's fragmenting our brains. One of the things I love about what I do here on Amazon Live, but also with my live show on social media every day from 9 to noon, is I can't really check email. I like the fact that I'm focused on you trying to help people talk about things that will actually help them. Quick note to Ben, are you doing a check? Because I'm on our Amazon page and and I only see yesterday's live feed. So have you confirmed that we are in fact everything is going smooth on Amazon. Okay. And maybe I'm just looking at it the wrong way or maybe I needed to do a refresh. Why don't I start with that and see if that. In fact. Okay, that's what happened. I didn't do a refresh. So again, I would check out not just book, the book, A World Without Email. I would check out every single thing Cal Newport has ever written. If you care about productivity and becoming more effective in your life, your work life, your professional life. And I just want to say we are, we are showing underneath in the carousel. If you want to buy these books, you can go ahead and get it. So I do see this book in the carousel below. You can go ahead and click on it right now. And this may be obvious because it does say I'm an Amazon associate, I'm an Amazon affiliate. So if you do buy the book, a teeny tiny percentage does come back to me. So for full disclosure, just so you know that, but I also want you to realize these are all books I bought with my own money. These were not sent to me courtesy for a review. These are books I bought with my own money. Ah, there is one at the end that was sent to me by a friend, so I'll mention that one later. But these are books I bought. I read them all. I already recommend them to friends, family, others in real life. And now it's a great opportunity to share with you on Amazon and across social media what I like about these books and I Hope to motivate YouTube to learn more from them as well. Tamara's asking Ben to drop a link to my Amazon influencer live feedback to the audience and that you can just go to my Amazon if you're not watching on Amazon already. You can do that. The link is in my description on my YouTube page, the About Us section. And it is simply Amazon.comshoptjwalkersuccess. that's a bit long to remember. So it is on the about section on my YouTube description. Okay, next book. Again, one of my favorite authors, Jonathan Hayden, he is a psychologist at the NYU School of Business, the Stern School of Business. You see him everywhere. I saw him promoting his latest book on Bill Maher over the weekend. He is one of these guys who really straddles perfectly the highest levels of academia and yet also the highest levels of popularity culture because he goes on shows like Politically Incorrect which those of you watching in other countries. It's a very well known, respected TV show here in the United States with a huge influential audience. But the insights here about how human beings are happy, what they do to make themselves happy, what they do to make Themselves miserable and not a surprise to most of you. I'm sure simply having more money doesn't make you happier. It's what you do with the money. And ultimately it's about your relationships with human beings. I'm not making him sound as insightful as he is because you've heard those things before, but there's so many books written by psychologists these days. This guy Jonathan really stands out as a class of, which is one reason why his books sell millions and millions and millions of copies. He's a wildly successful author. I would say in his case, extraordinarily well deserved. There are some psychologists who are successful and they don't do anything for me. This guy resonates. I think you'll enjoy him. Please check it out. Now we're going to go to the other end of the spectrum. This is a little bit of controversy involved. And Mansoor, I see you're with us. Thanks so much. We're doing our segment now for Amazon Live. I'll come to you, but I want to focus on these books first. If you have a question about any of the books I'm talking about, then feel free to post the question. I can bring you on on camera as well and you can be a part of this. This is a book called the Self Talk Solution by Shad Helmstetter. There's a bit of controversy here because, well, let's just say his PhD is not from Stanford the way BJ Fogg is associated with Stanford. So his academic credentials, I'll let you research that. What I like is his approach. He has been wildly influential in my own theories of personal development, my own online courses for personal development, habit formation. The app that I've made ultimize, so much of it came from this book, the Self Talk Solution. Now this one I believe is from back in the 80s and he was able to get on the Oprah Winfrey show got him a lot of audiences, sales and influence. It all comes down to he thinks that if you want to, for example, lose weight, you're hearing messages all day long from advertisers saying, eat this donut, drink this Coke. You need to hear a voice telling you eat healthy, eat healthy. Snacks only drink water all day long. You need to hear it in an audio format. Now he's selling his own audio cassettes. And it was literally cassettes back in the 80s, different download programs. What I've taken from this is you can do it yourself. You can record messages on your own cell phone to program your own brain. This is in Fact, very influential in the development of my own app, Ultimize. Ultimize 2. If you're on any app store where I allow you to program your own brain. So for example, every single day I listen to a 10 minute audio recording. It's a little different each day, but their messages are things like, hey, tj, have a big glass of water nearby and sip on water all day long. Hey, tj, you don't drink beverages with sugar in it. So one of the reasons you see me drinking water all day long is this book. As I have audio messages reminding me every day that I like to drink water and I drink water. I also give myself messages every day. Drink green tea. Only drink one coffee. Don't drink coffee with cream and sugar. That's why I have green tea right here. It's in part because of this book. Some of it could be dated, but the basic concept I do think is somewhat revolutionary. It's Shad Helmstetter, the Self Talk Solution. He has a number of books out, but this is one of the more foundational ones. Okay, next book I want you to take a look at how to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell. Resisting the Attention Economy. Now, you could say this is a bit contradictory. Tj, tj, aren't you being a hypocrite? I mean, tj, you're on social media, you're on Amazon, you're on Twitter, you're on Facebook, you're live streaming, you're creating shorts. You're a part of the problem. Yes, I do understand that, but I'm also trying to be a part of the solution. What Jenny talks about is essentially how to unplug from time to time. If you want maximum creativity, if you want a purposeful life, if you want a happy life, you cannot just be sucked in every second of the day. And if it's not happening to you, it does happen to close family members of yours. I know it happens to mine. We live in a world where so many people have such incentives to grab our eyeballs, to then sell them to advertisers or to sell a product to that. Human beings are getting pressure unlike any, any time in the history of the world. You know, if it's 1850 and you're out in the heartland, maybe you had one by, you know, one book to read. There were no movies. You didn't have records yet. You had a lot of time to think, reflect. No one had to go to mindfulness courses in 1850 because every day was mindful, because you had nothing to do after you planted the corn or, or went on a hunting trip and got enough food for the winter, you had time. These days, it's entirely possible to be bombarding your brain with a cell phone, a computer, an iPad all at once. And your TV's on and you're bombarded with entertainment, information, insights. Any one of those may be perfectly fine, but it corrodes the overall quality of your life. So Jenny got a fair amount of attention with this book. I think it was maybe her first book, but worth the read as we are increasingly all a part of this attention economy. Now I'm going to give you some confessions. Now, you've heard of this book, obviously, the wildly, wildly successful and influential book the Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. The book came out in, I believe, 2007 and instantly skyrocketed to the top of the New York Times Wall Street Journal bestseller list, where it stayed for years and years and years and years. Tim Ferriss is a wildly successful investor. If he'd never invested anything the rest of his life and never worked another day in his life, the millions he got from this book would take care of any kind of luxurious lifestyle. I'm not asking you to buy this book because Tim Sparrows sold a lot and made a lot of money. I do think that he really was ahead of his time. He really was farsighted. So I'm going to confess to you, when I first read this book, I thought it was career pornography because he lost me early on where he says something to the effect of step one, create an Internet business that kicks off 80,000 in cash a year where you only have to work a couple of hours a week. Step two, travel and go all over. Don't worry about a corporate job. Step three, do fun things like do international tango contest. And I'm like, oh, wait, a timeout. Step one. You lost me at step one. Because at that point in 2007, I had tried numerous, numerous online businesses. In fact, I think I had already at that point been selling the TJ Walker makeup line to massive, unsuccessful. And I didn't even know anyone who'd been able to figure out a way of making. I knew a lot of people who tried things, started websites. I didn't even know anybody who had any success selling anything online. And here he's saying essentially it's easy. And so he kind of lost me on that, to be brutally honest. And I missed a number of points. I went back many years later, oh, about four years later, and reread the book. And when I read it that time, I thought, well, that's obvious, I do that. Well, that's obvious. I do that. Well, that's obvious. I do that. Everything he predicted and said he was already doing had almost become conventional wisdom. And I was doing it. A lot of people I know were doing it too. The other confusing thing about this, when I first read this book, I thought it was clever in that he was positioning it not for the people who think of themselves as really ambitious and aspirational wanting to be wildly successful entrepreneurs, but people who simply wanted to opt out of the rat race, didn't want to chase the car and the big mortgage and the big house and the status symbol, and just wanted to live life now and could go live off on a beach or work four hours a week, do things and then spend the rest of their time on the beach or doing a hobby or dancing. I thought he was really appealing to people who are not the hard driving entrepreneurs wanting the success and riches. And he certainly does have a lot of message that resonates. But what in fact turned out is he got a tremendous, tremendous cult following among people who were wildly success, wildly ambitious, who did want to be wildly successful, who did want to be rich and famous. And they saw his tactics for starting businesses of just doing things smarter, doing things leaner, using workers from other countries, using, using offshore workers, which again, at the time in 2007 was not really that widely practical. Now I almost don't know anyone who does it. I work with a lot of colleagues from other countries because it's so easy to connect with things like zoom and things like what we're doing now. So the interesting thing now is, and he does provide updates from time to time, but again, look at the subtitle. Escape 9 to 5, live anywhere and join the New Rich. So his philosophy was you don't have to just work 9 to 5 at a big job, at a big industry to pay your bills and your mortgage and then work till you're 65 and then retire because you might not make it to 65, you might not have your help. He really stressed this idea of living anywhere before anyone else was really talking about it in a major, major way. And now I look at that, I'm like, well, gosh, I've done all three of those things. I'm not working a 9 to 5 job. I do live anywhere. I moved from the New York City area where cost of living was astronomically high and astronomically high taxes, to Florida where cost of living is much lower, taxes are lower I'm not saying that's the only thing that should matter to people, but it occurs to me I've actually put most of his principles into action in a way that have benefited me, but I just didn't realize it. So he is a classic example of new ideas often go from being considered absurd and extreme and unpractical to mainstream to conventional wisdom. Everybody knows that there's a path of ideas and I've definitely seen that happen with his book. So if you do want to get a sense of kind of the history of what's happened in the workforce and so many people, you know this whole concept of digital nomad. Not saying he's the first one who coined the phrase, but he definitely made the idea something come alive to millions and millions of people who'd never thought about it before. And he was doing it before anyone else. Do I love everything about Tim Ferriss and do I like every kind of supplement he endorses? We'll leave that for another time. But if you want to get a sense of how things have changed and what made the change for so many workers around the globe in the last 15, 17 years, you need to read the four hour work week. Okay, so that concludes all the sort of books that have been a significant part of my library that relate to habits and productivity. I do want to put a spotlight on another book. This is something a little out of my expertise. This is it Fundamentals by Imran Afzel. Imran is someone I know personally. I've been a mentor to him, We've been friends. But that's not why I'm recommending the book. I'm recommending the book to people who want a career in information technology because this guy has the rare blend of technical expertise and communication skills. He's got a million plus students on Udemy. I was very happy to be able to invite him into that community and he's been extraordinarily successful. Successful. He's successful in part because he really cares about helping young people, people of any ages, get into their career in information technology. He happens to be an expert on Linux, Linux system and everything Linux related. But what he's really an expert on is helping people, helping them get to that first step in their career, their first real job, but also also advancing throughout their career in the information technology world. Compelling personal story. Came to the United States from Pakistan and I believe he was already like 19, 20 years old, but went to college, business school in the United States, educated himself and hope he doesn't mind me saying this but came over to my studio one day and I gave him a little training on how to talk on camera. He took to it like that was a natural and has gotten better and better and better with now dozens and dozens and dozens of online courses on how people can enter careers, have worthwhile careers and information technology. So I, I think if you're at all interested in Linux, if you're at all interested in information technology as a career, you should check out this book in part just to learn more about Imran Afzal, be a part of his world. Sign up for everything he has to offer. You can see the book is in our carousel below or it should be. Ben, do we have this one in the carousel or are we limited? Yes, we do. Great. So we have this available. I would check this out. This just came out in the last week. So it's going to have up to date information about information technology and careers and jobs. We want to say thank you so much to our friends on Amazon. It's great to be a part of the Amazon community, the Amazon Live community. Fantastic. We're going to sign off Amazon right now and then we're going to have a quick summary for our friends joining us on all the other live streams. So Ben, if you can confirm to me that we've now signed off from Amazon Live. Okay, great. So I see for myself it ended, so I know that it happened. So we're still learning the ropes of Amazon Live. It is a different platform, interestingly, using the Streamyard platform, we can simulcast to Amazon Live, Facebook business page, Facebook group, LinkedIn, Twitch, Twitter X and in Instagram and maybe one or two others that I forgot. So we're pushing out on all those platforms because I want to be platform agnostic. And to be brutally candid with you, I have been de platformed before for things that too complicated to bore you with. But many years ago, about eight, 10 years ago, I had a YouTube channel that was just overnight gone. There's no appeal process, there's no due process. It's just YouTube's thing. They can take it away anytime they want. So that's one reason why I'm very committed to not being committed to any one platform. Because it hurts too much to put years and years and years of effort into someone else's landscape and then they take it with you. If you rent a house, are you going to completely rebuild the house? Are you going to spend years and years and years building new walkways and gardens and roofs for a house you rent? Probably not. So I do feel that way. I mean, I love YouTube. It's the best way to reach larger audiences. They've done more than any other platform to really help creator. Help creators make money. But they can very capriciously, arbitrarily take away your channel. And that's not something I want to face again. All right, so now what I'm going to do is we do this. Typically at the end of each day, I try to do five product reviews. Well, we did that in a way by giving the reviews of all of the books for the Amazon Live. I'm now going to create an entirely new, separate Amazon influencer video on demand that could be eligible to go on the page. So what I'm going to do now is I'm getting my microphone ready. I am getting my receiver ready. I'm going to go ahead and place it in my cell phone. So when I'm making Amazon influencer videos, I just do everything right on my cell phone. The video quality is quite good on an iPhone and a lot of other phones. So I'm putting the receiver in. I'm now turning the mic on looking for. Looking for the green light. I see the green light, so that means it should be working. I'm going to put it in a tripod here to typically have it at a different angle. I may try a slightly different angle today. I'm going to hit the camera app video. Oops, I'm blocking camera three. We don't want to do that. Hitting reverse the. The. You know what I'm going to do? I'm just going to turn this light. It's a lit. Now this one is a little too dominant. I am going to put these accent lights back on. There's a timer on my accent light and those typically go off after two hours. So I'm gonna. I don't normally do this angle, but I wanted this one to also look just especially good. So I'm putting the. The mic as high up on my tie as possible without being distracting because I do want high quality audio. Now I'm going to be talking to my cell phone, not to you for a minute. I am going to. On this one, I'm going to do several versions of this. Again, this is someone I really do know who I think has the best interest of readers, viewers, others, helping them with their career. So I'm going to do a little extra. So for right now, I'm going to turn on my remote control. I saw a blue flash, but I want to. And I'm certainly hoping that I have a Lot of. Okay. I think it's working now. Okay. If you're looking for a career in information technology, you owe it to yourself to get IT Fundamentals from Imran Afzel. He is a world renowned expert on information technology and he's great at helping people just like you get your first job. Okay, that one was 15 1/2 seconds. What I have found is typically I have much better traction getting videos that are 15 seconds or shorter. So I actually went a half a second over. But I was going to do several in this format anyway, so I'm going to do another one. Imran Afzel is the man. IT Fundamentals is the book that will tell you everything you need to know if you want to start off and have a great career in information technology. This guy is a true teacher with an international following. I again was a little bit rushed there. I did get that in 15 seconds. I'm going to do a couple of longer form horizontal ones. So I'm now going to shift my camera for horizontal. I'm going to need to adjust the camera and I've not done the horizontals lately so that's a little bit. Okay. I think we're in good shape there. And I always have to remember to look. At the right when it's horizontal. Got to remember which one is the camera. So the camera, okay. So I've got to look right because I don't want my eyes looking the wrong way when I'm looking to you. On YouTube and social media there's one big camera in front of me so that makes it easy. But when you're staring at your cell phone in a horizontal way, it can be a little bit out of place sometimes. IT Fundamentals by Imran Afsal. Imran is an internationally respected instructor on information technology. He has the patience to really walk you through step by step. This is a comprehensive book. I mean it is thick, it covers absolutely everything. Imran has intimate knowledge on every aspect of information technology because he's worked in the field for decades and he's also been the instructor, the online instructor for more than a million students worldwide. You really need to be a part of Imran's world. He cares about every single student and every single reader. Okay, so let me do, let me do one more. If you're looking to start your career in information technology, this is the book for you. IT Fundamentals. Even if you're mid career trying to advance, this book is up to date. It's just been published. Imran Afsal is a world recognized instructor on every aspect of information technology. And he's specifically a true Linux expert. He's not like a lot of authors in that he's actually practicing in the field every day. He works full time in information technology technology. He's also a world class best selling instructor. He has more than a million students for his courses on information technology and Linux. So if you really are looking for someone who can bring the best of both worlds, the academic approach, the hands on, real world, practical approach to boost your knowledge, this book is the perfect place for you to start. Okay. All right, so now I'm going to post those videos and what I should have done, and I often do forget, is to check the audio. Before I do that, I'm going to turn my mic off. I don't know if I turned that off sometimes I don't know if I holding it too long or too short. It's flashing now. I'll have to worry about the microphone later. Okay, so now I'm going to go to Amazon and I'm on my page. I hit create content, I hit post video photo library and I hit the most recent video. That's the one I just did. Now this one's 54 seconds. So this is going to take maybe a minute or so. And we did. We had a couple of people hop in and Tamara is with us still, I'm happy to have you. Listen, Tamara, if you have any questions or you wanted to add on to anything we talked about earlier, feel free to post a question or I can add you to the screen if you wanted to come back in. But if you just want to listen to what we're doing, that's fine too. And Tamara, you might. I'm just putting this out as a hint. If there are other books in your industry about risk mitigation, you might want to do ads for them for Amazon or anyplace else. There's so many different ways these days. You can be a part of an affiliate program, be an influencer of sorts, where you can also burnish your own reputation and help people. So the books that I recommended are ones that I quite often have already recommended to my students in personal development courses. So I want to be seen as even more of an authority on personal development. So talking about these personal development books that have helped so many people and helped me, it's all a piece of the brand and a piece of the puzzle. Regardless of whether I make 50 cents on those sales or $5,000. I'm not predicting I make $5,000 from them, but it is interesting some of these books. Like you know, a little 15 second video I did for Atomic Habits. I don't even see that video on the Facebook page and yet I see dozens and dozens and dozens of sales coming in from that video. Okay, so the video has been uploaded. I'm going to go to browse history it Fundamentals by Imran. I'm going to hit search. There's the book, I add the product, I hit done. This will give you a thorough grounding in it fundamentals exclamation point. It had put in a typo there and that's why I took the time I dictate my headlines and my descriptions because I can dictate faster than I can type. Now it's uploading this video. This is a 54 second video, so it's taking a little longer. I see my colleague Ben has stepped away. Ben, if you are hearing me, it's not urgent, but I need your help in figuring out how do I change the settings on my iPhone Because I noticed with my when I use my wife's iPhone 14 when making a number of Amazon videos, Amazon influencer videos they uploaded right away. When I went to the 15 it took much, much longer. I'm assuming it's because there's better cameras and they're therefore creating video files that were much longer are and bigger. And that's why it's taking longer to upload because I just don't know why else that it would take so much longer to upload a video from a newer phone. Typically the newer phone things are faster and the processors are faster. Everything's a little better and faster. So I'm just deducing perhaps incorrectly that it's because the quality of the video is better. Therefore it's requiring more storage. And for what I'm doing with these, at these videos I don't think we need the absolute highest quality. So the ones we did on the iPhone 14 were perfectly fine. So that's why I want to figure out a way of doing that now. So something is happening now that has not happened before. It seems to be stuck. It's just saying uploading video, three minutes remaining. But the little bar shows like it's only 10% done. It hasn't moved. So I'm not really quite sure what's going on there. I'm going to go back and do it reverse order. I'm going to, you know, I'll just discard that. I'm going to start again. And just so you could see what I'm doing, even though I Can't show you the Amazon page. That's against their terms of service. I'm going to go ahead and do the shorter. The two shorter ones. That way we know they are in. So I am recording that. I'm not recording it. I've already recorded it. I have selected it. It's uploading the video. It's processing the video. Once it's up, it will then allow me the opportunity to label it, tag it and submit. Fundamentals by Imran. I was hasty. I. I hit delete or I hit search before it. The letters have populated for my dictation. IT Fundamentals by Imran. And that shifted to the title. That's not what I wanted for the title. I've got to go back to browse history. It Fundamentals by Imran. Now it's there. I selected it. Now I'm going to do the title. Everything you need to know about it. Fundamentals in one place, exclamation point. Fundamentals. Fundamentals. The problem with my first title is it was too long. It was too many characters. So that's why I had to redo it. So that one is submitted. I'm now going back to the storefront. I hit Create content. I hit Post Photo Library. I go to the next one. You know, it's telling me both of these are 16 seconds. I hope I didn't mess that up because it typically does do better when they are 15 seconds or less. But we'll. We'll see. We'll track again. I'm not, you know, I wish my friend the best. I am recommending it primarily on the strength of I know people love his course. He has an astronomical like 4.67 average review on his Udemy courses, which frankly is higher than mine and I know is very hard to get. You just don't get that unless you do a great job. And I do know he does so much to help his students get jobs and that's not a part of the deal. You sign up for an inexpensive course, but he's going above and beyond the call of duty. It Fundamentals by Imran. Everything you ever wanted to know about information technology, About information tech. So the first version I did was a few characters too long. The second version put in an extra comma that I didn't want. So that's why I had to go back and do it over. So now I'm going and creating another one. Would you go to the third one? Now we're getting to the longer ones. I'm hoping we don't have the Same problem we did earlier where it kind of stalled out and said it would be done in three minutes. And Ben, I realize we've been working a long time, it's late in your time zone, so if you need to sign off, I understand completely. I think we had a good session today. Although we do still need to review more of the YouTube shorts to figure out really which ones are going to be most effective. So this time it is uploading the 44 second video. So it predictably is taking more time than a 15 second video. Is it a little tedious? Yes. But is it so much easier than the old way of trying to call come cold call companies trying to take a meeting with their brand development people or their marketing department going back and forth meetings, proposals to represent them for six months, maybe getting nothing. This way I can just make a decision, make an ad, post it, submit it and it's done now. Doesn't mean I'm going to make a lot of money. Might not make any money, but I can tell you I do make some money every single day from Amazon. It's not some king's ransom, that's for sure. But it is money seven days a week. Whether I've done any work on it that day or even that week. Adding the product, tagging it, titling it, your IT career will thank you after reading this book. Exclamation point done. Still uploading. Now it's letting me submit. So that one was not that much shorter than the first video that gave us so much trouble. So I'm going to go to the storefront, submit or upload the very first video which we did before that gave us problems. I'm hoping that it is not problematic this time. So it's uploading it, it's processing. Once we do this we built we will be pretty much done for the day. We try to finish at noon eastern time each day. Thursdays are a little bit different. We have a live show for 45 minutes or so. Then we go and have our private session with UDEMY students. Then we come back to the multicast multi broadcast on all the other platforms from 1045 until today 1230. So a bit of an overtime day but I'm having fun. I'm hoping you're having fun whether you're watching this with us live or on demand. So it's still processing and uploading that. If you haven't done so yet, please like this video, please share it, please sign up for notifications and please tell other people about it. And also I would love it if you could leave comments in the community tab as well as on this video too. It's very, very helpful as we grow and build out this channel. And do keep in mind, I do post two short videos, one long video, every single day, seven days a week. So please make sure you're subscribing to that and getting those videos and and leaving comments. That's very, very helpful. And I just saw that went out of focus. We learned a new trick yesterday where if I turn off the camera and turn it on, it solves the focus problem. So try to learn something new every single day by broadcasting live. Add product done. Title. This author has a true passion for information technology. Exclamation point. It's continuing to upload it. What it does is when you're uploading it, when it's partially uploaded, it then says, okay, you're almost done there. We'll let you go to the next step which is tagging the product so it knows which one you're trying to promote and it tries to connect your ad, your video with that particular product's page and then it allows you to title it. And then the final step is you submit it for approval and typically five hours later it goes live. I will say I've had some that were not approved, but 98% of them are approved. It's usually once I erroneously uploaded the wrong video, it was just a random 4 second video of me on a chairlift. So it made sense that Amazon is screening things and not letting stuff like that. Beyond that, they don't like anything reviewing a product that relates to health. They don't want health claims out there, which I understand why and it makes sense. So we are concluded with that session of uploading videos. I'm hoping you're learning a little about Amazon Influencer. I don't work for Amazon Influencer. I'm not a paid, paid contractor. I have no official partnership with them in any way. It is, it's not an official joint venture relationship, I should say. It's. It's an affiliate program they have where they let in people to a degree where there's scrutiny slightly more than being a regular affiliate and they split commission. So it's an interesting program. I've been in this now for 3 months and sharing my journey with you. I'm hoping that it inspires you to somehow use your expertise, your ability to speak, your ability to push a button record to help more people, help yourself and make money. That's really what we're trying to do. Thanks so much I'll see you tomorrow. Live 9am but please, I'm hoping to see you in your comments on the channel throughout the day.