Q&A Session with TJ Walker: Essential Communication Skills

T.J. walker. This is the T.J. walker Success Channel. This is the one place on the Internet when you where you can ask any question you have on communication skills and get a live response from someone who helps people do this for a full time living. That's what the channel is about. This is live. We are about to go live, nine to noon every day right here, Monday through Friday. We're still in sort of a soft launch, beta launch. We're working out the kink scale, getting the lights straight, the different camera angles. You see me from here and here. We're working all this out. I appreciate you bearing with me as we do this, trying to have some fun in the process. So let's go right to questions. I am going to take your questions live. As you present them. You can post them if you're watching this on YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitch, Facebook, any place like that, I should be able to see it right here funneled through streamyard. And I see a couple of you have joined already. So thanks so much for joining me. You can post your questions. I've also posted a link to today's Stream Yard. So if you want to appear on camera with me, all you have to do is go to my community tab on my YouTube page, click the Streamyard link and I will see you right here on my screen and I can add you and we can have a real conversation. You can ask your question live to me, but you can also just post them right here. I wanted to address a question that came in from Warren 1032. This is in response to a recent video I did on how to stop mumbling. And Warren says, what are the exact steps to be followed to overcome frustrating. To overcome mumbling. It's frustrating me so badly throughout my life. Please help. So Warren, I am very sympathetic to that. Mumbling is a huge problem for a lot of people and it impedes communication. If people can't quite understand you, then not a lot of communication is taking place. So let's step back a minute and really ask what is mumbling? What causes mumbling? Typically, it's when people speak low energy, too softly, sometimes too quickly, their mouth is numb. You hear that? It's hard to even understand that. What I said was typically mumbling is when someone speaks too softly, too monotone, too low energy, and their face is not expressive. This happens all the time with people who are uncomfortable, insecure, doubting themselves. So how specifically can you overcome this? What I recommend is first of all, become aware of it. Ask people, what did I just say? If they can't tell you what you said. There's a problem with comprehension. Most people do not want to tell you you're a mumbler. Maybe you're father or mother don't mind, but most people won't tell you, so you don't know. The easiest way to find out is to record yourself on video. Now, those of you who are regulars here know I frequently recommend you record yourself. Giving practice speeches, videos, practice job interviews, to really watch yourself. But I also know that most people hate to doing this. Guess what? I don't care. Now, I don't mean to sound rude or condescending, but there are just some things in life you got to do if you want results. And if you really do want to improve your mumbling, there's certain things you have to do. And Thelma says hi Thelma, thanks so much for joining us. If you have a question that relates to communication skills or personal development, all you have to do is post them. And I see Abhoya has written too. I'll get to your comments in just a moment, but I do want to give a few more tips on the mumbling. Here's the analogy. I've used it before, but I think it's relevant. Back when I had a big house and a big garage, it would get full of clutter. If my wife said, tj, go out and clean the garage. I could say, well, you know, I can't really do that. Was that honest? No. The reality is I just didn't want to clean the garage. The reality is anyone in the world who has, you know, working limbs can in fact clean a garage. But most people never clean their garage. Well, why is that? It's because it's not fun. It's unpleasant. But there is a process to cleaning a garage. You pick up every item, you take it outside, you hold it up and you say, have I used this in the last year? Chances are the answer is no. So you then figure out a way of donating it to someone, giving it to someone, selling it on Facebook, Marketplace or Craigslist. Or you throw it away. And after you've done that, you take the remaining stuff and you put it in certain set places in your garage. And anyone can make a clean garage, but most people don't. It's not because of skill. It's just we don't want to do something unpleasant. And I was guilty of that for years. I did end up getting a very clean garage, though. But I wasn't being honest with myself or my wife if I said, well, I Can't. I'm not really good at cleaning garages. I'm not really good at that. I can't do it had nothing to do with a skill. I would suggest it's exactly the same thing when it comes to picking up your cell phone, hitting record and recording yourself speak and then listening to it. Anyone who has fingers that work and vocal cords that have not been damaged can in fact do it. Not everyone can be a world class orator and a spellbinder in front of 10,000 people. I get that. But anyone who has a cell phone and has a finger and has a vocal cords in a tongue can hit press, record and record yourself speaking. That is how you will diagnose if you're a mumbler or not. If you record yourself speaking and then you watch it and you can't understand what you said, you've got a problem. So to summarize the most important points from that video I was referencing that I posted about a month ago, part of the problem is just you need to speak louder. When people get a little uncomfortable in front of a classroom, front of board of directors, front of the bosses, we tend to tighten up, tighten our vocal cords and our volume goes way down. That also makes us sound more monotone because we're kind of down here, we don't really want anyone to hear it. So we become monotone, low energy and our face gets vibrant. That's mumbling. So if you want to solve the problem, I recommend you speak a little louder than normal. I don't mean yell and be annoying, but a little louder than normal. A little more energy than normal. More variation in your tone and be expressive with your face. Smile more laugh more frown if you have to. You just want variation. And if you think that you're not naturally expressive, you don't know yourself. I'm sorry. I dare say if your friends video recorded you while you're watching your favorite sport team lose, you're going to be very expressive with your face and your voice and your energy. You're not mumbling them. I've never seen anyone say, oh no, we lost the game because of that lost touchdown and that bad referee call. Nobody mumbles then when they're upset or really happy about a sports victory. So that's where I want you to try. If you have a concern about mumbling video record yourself. Then do it louder, more energy and try to really use your full faith. Overdo it. You can always bring it back down, but if you're nervous or uncomfortable, the energy level stays down. It's very hard to bring it back up in the moment. That's why it's key to practice in advance. Apaya, thanks so much for joining us. Says hi tj. Love your work. What's the best way to speak in info dense words? Say something like mental inbox or recency bias. Also, what's the best way to speak and come across as a leader? I'm not quite sure I understand. I would invite you. I see you're on YouTube already, so if you go to my Community tab, there's a link to Streamyard. If you click that, you can come right on and we can have an actual conversation and perhaps we could flesh this out together even more. But let me do the best I can. What's the best way to speak in info dash dense words? Something like mental inbox or recency bias? I would say whatever words you use, take the time to step back and then give an examples. All of you have heard of switch cameras? Yeah. All of you have heard of recency bias? This is just a fancy way of saying as human beings we tend to remember stuff more if we just saw it. So if you saw three people around the world last week got bitten by sharks and you didn't see the fact that 50,000 people unfortunately died in car wrecks in the last year somewhere, that recency bias of having seen the three stories of the shark bike is going to make you think that's a bigger risk than automobile wrecks. Now maybe I missed some nuance there, and that's not a perfect example of recency bias because people do die in car crashes every day. But the news stories, you don't see them. You may have just seen a car crash story. The last one might have been three months ago, because they typically don't get a lot of news coverage because they're not unusual. So that's my biggest piece of advice, which is take the time anytime you're using jargon, a phrase, your word, information, dense phrase, to give an example, and that will make it more understandable to people. Your goal, as always, is when you speak, can someone understand you and remember it so they can take that information, that insight, and use it and somehow I'm not standing in the right place and somehow either incorporate that into their own knowledge base or use it or take some action you want. So. So please keep that in mind. And again, I would say to any of you, if you want to join me live, feel free to do so. You can also post your questions I'm going to do if you can Bear with me and indulge me. I'm going to redo that one or do a short version of that so that I will have some editorial video that can be turned into a short form video for YouTube, TikTok, et cetera. So I'm hitting record, going to camera two. So what's the best way to use phrases like recency, bias or other dense words that you have to use in a presentation? Keep this in mind. It's okay to use complicated phrases. If you then step back and take the time to give a specific example that makes someone visualize it. If they can visualize your concept, you can use any new word, jargon or phrase you want. So I'm hoping that that is something that could be usable to someone if they had a similar question. They go onto my YouTube channel or social, social media platform and if they stumble across it, it's kind of a summary of what they might need to know. Let's go to the next part of that question. What's the best way to speak and come across as a leader? There are a couple of things and this, this is important. So let me go ahead and hit record on this too. So what's the best way to speak if you want to be perceived as a leader? Several things you have to keep in mind. For starters, confidence. Now, you might not be 100% confident on what you're going to say, but everything about your tone, your voice, your motions, the speed of how you talk should exude confidence. That is key. People do not associate leadership with someone who's. I think it may be kind of sorta, excuse me, I'm uncomfortable today. That does not scream out leadership. Human beings are programmed to crave confident leaders. So when you speak, even if it's not a brilliant speech, even if it's not the most fascinating speech, if you exude confidence, rightly or wrongly, you will be perceived as more of a leader. The next thing you've got to do to be perceived as a leader is you have to talk about the future. Leadership is about leading people from here to here. And here's where we are now and here is the future. So whether you want to be a leader in politics and technology, in the sciences, you have to talk about the future. Most people, when they speak, whether they are in the private sector, the public sector, they're talking about, here's what we just did in the last week or the last month or the last year, and that's why we want to keep doing more of the same, or why you should give us a little more money. Most people just give summaries of where we've been. They're talking about the world as it is, their organization as it is, the structure as it is, the budget as is minor changes. Leadership means you're trying to step back for a minute and then really look toward the future and give people guidance and actually provide leadership of how to get there. Here's what we need to do, here's what we have to do to get there. That is what is going to make you not only be perceived as a leader, but it will actually make you, you a leader. That is what is crucial. And finally, you have to be willing to say things people don't want to hear. You have to be willing to talk about challenges that have to be confronted, sacrifices that have to be made, perhaps people that will no longer be needed. Maybe you have to fire people. Maybe you have to go to war occasionally if you're a statesperson. So part of leadership is about making tough choices and then selling people on those ideas. It can't just be, hey, folks, everything is great today. Everything is fine and wonderful. I'm glad everyone is happy, have a nice day. You can give a speech like that and come across as comfortable, confident, relaxed, authoritative even, but you won't be perceived as a leader. I would ask you to really question yourself. Do you want to be a leader? Most people in the world don't really want to be leaders because they don't want to stand out from the crowd. They don't want to make enemies. It's very difficult to provide true leadership without making some enemies, without ruffling some feathers. Because by definition, you're trying to choose change. You're trying to change the status quo of what's happening right now and make it better. That's true in a sports team, that's true in the business world, it's true in civic leadership. So you've got to ask yourself, are you committed to making some fundamental change in some organization or in a group of individuals? And are you willing to speak forcefully? If you do that and do that regularly, you will be perceived as a leader. Not just as someone who speaks like a leader, but who actually is a leader? Okay. I note to my editor. I think that it's maybe not quite long enough to be an 8 minute YouTube long, but there's something there I do think people would find useful. So I hope that came across. Can you give me some feedback whether that was helpful? Does that. Did that just sound like fluff? Abhoya, if you're still with us. I'd love to hear from you. And again, anyone else just joining us live, I'm TJ Walker. This channel is devoted to helping people become better communicators to have more skill at communication and more confident at communications, whether they want to be a leader as Abio does, or if they just want to be more, more successful for their next job interview. That's what this is all about. Abboy says thanks to provide more context, I've been listening to venture capitalist Naval Ravikant and he's an excellent speaker. I notice he uses info, dense words and simple language to explain complex ideas. I have not seen Neville Ravikant speak, but I've read one or more of his books. He is an interesting, provocative thinker and I know I have some right over here on my, on my shelf right here. So I think you put your finger on it. He uses dense words occasionally, but then uses simple words to flesh it out and make it understandable. As long as you're willing to explain things and take people on a journey, people don't mind learning new words. They don't mind an exploration or a journey if you take them from one place to another. But you can't just leave them in the dark. And that's why giving specific examples, using simple words is the way to go. And you said that was awesome. Very useful. Thanks a lot. I do appreciate it. We are experimenting here, being totally frank with you. It is an experiment. There are thousands and thousands and tens of thousands, if not more channels on YouTube and other social media platforms that talk about public speaking, communication skills, personal communication, media training. I'm trying to do something a little different. What I'm trying to do with this channel is provide sort of a live daily workshop where I don't just come across completely polished, giving you the 30 second polished video or the eight minute polished video with a perfect number of edits and video and graphics and music. Instead, I'm showing you how it's done in real time. I'll make videos here, share with you what I've done. Sometimes mess up, do a second draft and just a short while I will be making Amazon influencer videos. They're essentially ads where Amazon has let some people sort of into their system. You make ads reviewing various products. They then post it on the product page on Amazon. If people watch it, then you get a commission. So it's kind of a, I liken it to sort of a the minor league. And this is not meant in any way to be condescending, but it's sort of the minor leagues. It's sort of the entry point or the junior varsity into the whole influencer world. Because as some of you may have tried before to be an influencer and make money through advertising affiliate dollars, there's a very steep barrier to entry. Most people never get an audience that is big enough to monetize. And at some point, someone may have come to you and said, hey, join my multi level marketing and why you have some other product and all you do is got to post stuff on your Facebook page and you're going to make a whole bunch of passive income. And for every thousand people who do that, I mean, my guess is 997 don't make any money. They do it four or five times and say, well, this is kind of a waste of time and it's embarrassing and they stop. That's what's different about the Amazon influencer program. Not saying it's easy money or quick money, but it does give you an audience. Because Amazon, if everything works out just right, will take the videos you created where you talk about a product you like, and they will put it in front of an audience of people who came to Amazon ready to buy. Because that's why you go to Amazon. That's what's different. So we'll be talking about that a little past the top of the hour. And again, I won't be talking about it. That was a misstatement. I'll actually be demonstrating it and showing it. I'll be making real ads right here in front of you. My wife will be here. We'll be taking pictures for the ads, we'll be doing the videos. And these will not be done with a fancy Sony camera and other tools and tricks. It'll be done just with a cell phone, something that I'm assuming you have as well. Okay, let's look at another comment that's come in. Those leadership skills are great. I'm also a comedian, and getting rid of ums and uhs has been a challenge in spontaneous speech. Any tips on the best way to get rid of filler words? So, first of all, my hat off to you for being a comedian. In my view, being a comedian is the hardest type of public speaking you can do. Because in every business speech and every civic speech, your audience generally has low expectations. When you go to give a business speech, a presentation, people are sitting there thinking, as long as this person doesn't bore me to death, I'm going to love them. And if you can get one or two chuckles in a 10 minute speech in the business world, in the civic world, the political world, people are going to love you. They're going to say you're the funniest speaker they've seen all week or all month. Stand up comedy is different because stand up comedy, people come to you and they sort of have the attitude of, you better make me laugh every 10 seconds, sucker, or I'm going to be angry and ask for my money back or start heckling you. That's pressure. So in my view, stand up comedy is the hardest type of public speaking. I've done a lot of different speaking in my life and I have taken a public speaking class and I have to tell you, that is the one feel I feel like I never got to even a minimal level of competency. So for starters, I want to congratulate you for doing comedy regardless of whether you've ever made money on it. So that's great. You mentioned the problem of saying uhs and ums and ers, the verbal tics. I could do what most public speakers do and public speaking experts do and just give you general abstract advice and say, well, it's simple, just pause. Well, no kidding, that's not, it's true. It's not particularly helpful. I've been using a technique for 25 years and it wasn't something I originated. I think I read it in a book by Lillian Wilder, one of the founding fathers of the whole public speaking media training movement. And it's a book that's now maybe 50 years old. So what I do is I've created stickers for my clients where I have the word and a bright red no and the word with the Internet. You know what? Rather than tell you about it, I think I have some right over here. So again, this is not great riveting TV that's going to make Mr. Beast scared because I'm walking off camera and I realize my audio is not as good this way, but I'm just going to show you what I would actually give you if you were one of my paying clients for the day. I have created these as stickers and let me just pull this out and I'm going to have to put it on my chair for a minute to show it to you. But it's a, it is a sticker that you cut out and you put it on. I'm pretty sure I have it right here, unless I've somehow lost it. But it is wildly effective and it really does help people eliminate their verbal ticks. And I certainly hope I've not lost these. And you know, I have an older version. Let me pull an older version up. There we go. I have, in fact, found it. Okay, this is going to blow you away when you see. Let me switch to another camera that's closer. Okay, so I have a little sticker, and I hope you can see it. It's got the word. And I realize the auto that's asking a lot for my auto focus has the word, has the word. Sometimes I have it with like. And it has the international red no sign on it. So just like, you see signs that say, no left hand turn, no parking, no dumping. Here's what I do with these. I peel it off. I'll peel off just one of these. It's a little sticker that I've created, but you can make it yourself. And I put it on the top of a watch. I put it on the front of your phone. Not the back of your phone, the front of your phone. What I'm trying to do is put this image of the don't say. Don't say something that I see many times a day. Because here's what happens. After a day or so. You'll still say on, but the image pops up and you have this sort of the Homer Simpson moment where you are aware that you use the verbal tic. You still say it after two or three more days of looking at this on your phone, on your watch, you're about to say the image will come up in your brain, but it still comes out. It's still slipped out, but another two or three days go by. Now you've been doing it for a week. And what happens is the image of the don't say or. Or whatever word you use excessively pops up and you catch it. Now you pause. And when you pause, you sound more confident. You don't fill your words with clutter. When you say our. It's kind of like sending someone a letter, a cover letter. And you put an extra comma after every word people can still understand. Just looks a little messy and cluttered. So this really does work. I apologize, I can't send these to you. I just don't have the staff and wherewithal to do that. Matthew says good morning. Good morning, Matthew. Hope you're doing well. But here's what I'd recommend. Just type on a piece of paper whatever word it is you say. Print it out, cut it out, get a red Magic marker, put a red circle around it and a slash mark, and then a piece of clear tape and just tape it to Your watch, your cell phone, your. You can put it right on the laptop screen and that will get. Doesn't work overnight, doesn't work in two days, but in a week it works. I've done this with billionaires around the globe, with heads of state and a lot of clients and people just like you. It really does work because just the general advice of, oh, pause. It doesn't help you actually pause. And that's what I'm trying to help you do. So that's a perfect example of why and how I try to go a little deeper on this channel to really help you create meaningful change. The other thing I hope you're doing, since you're a stand up comedian and most stand up comedians do this, you see it all the time. Because I'm a big fan of stand up comedy. In fact, I'm going to see Ronnie Chang. The guy, the, I guess he's an Asian slash Australian now American comedian is wildly funny. He's been in a ton of movies and his own specials. I'm going to go see him Thursday night and I just saw Seinfeld last month. So I love stand up comedy. You see a lot of comedians and clubs do this. First thing they do, they walk up, they hit the audio record and they're recording their whole act. Part of it, it's mostly to listen to what the jokes got, laughs and the pausing and the timing of it. But it's also to see if they did have extra ums and us and things pop up that were not effective, how they can eliminate it. So I certainly hope that you are recording and frankly, I would video record, get a friend or colleague or family member to video record. Also, keep in mind that there are a number of comedians who use the US and ums intentionally as part of their act. And it enhances the comedy, enhances the comedic effect if it is on purpose. Because sometimes if you tell a joke the right way and the ums, you're showing your audience, oh, I really messed up, I'm feeling embarrassed, I'm uncomfortable. That can actually be an enhancer. So it's not correct to say. You should never, ever, ever say or. It needs to be purposeful and great. Stand up comedians are measuring every pause to the millisecond. Every syllable out of their mouth has to count for something. And that's why it was a lot of fun, frankly, to see a master of the craft like Jerry Seinfeld. There's no extra, there's no fluff. He's really given tremendous weight to every single joke and prides himself in sometimes tinkering with, crafting, writing and rewriting a joke for years before he'll ever share it with his audience. So I wish you luck with your your comedy. By the way, one of you is nice enough to hit thumbs up. Thank you so much. I see a handful of you are watching. If you're getting any value out of this, can you do me a favor? Not asking for any money, can you just hit the thumbs up on this video to send a few signals to the algorithm gods on the various social media platforms that you're getting some value from this? I would also very much appreciate any comments you have and what I'd really like more than anything More questions. Because I can't read your mind. Now I can cheat a little, which is what I've done. Getting questions from ChatGPT about common communication skills questions and I will be going through more of those. But I frankly enjoy it a lot more when real people like you are giving me your questions, your concerns, your thoughts about communication. Whether it's talking one on one to a family member or sitting down for a job interview and you're uncomfortable, or giving a business presentation to 50 people or doing your first live TV interview on the BBC or CNN and all of a sudden you're a little nervous. I love questions like that. Abba Hoy says, I video record all of my sets so I can publish to YouTube and social media. I don't do well at all. I don't do well all the time, especially when trying new jokes. So I agree recording helps. Well, if you don't do well all the time with every new joke, guess what? Welcome to the club. Every great comedian will tell you they don't. In fact, the thing I hear from really first class comedians all the time is so much of their skill is just the ability to suffer pain and humiliation, especially the first two years of their career. A lot of great comedians will say they got virtually no laughs their first couple of years or they would stand up, speak for 10 minutes, get two laughs. They didn't just quit and go home and say this is hard, I don't like it. What they do is if they got one laugh at 8 minutes and one laugh at 9 minutes and 20 seconds, they would remember those jokes, change the order, start with those two jokes, throw away the other 50 jokes that didn't work, and then try 50 new jokes. And it's constant, essentially AB testing what marketers do to try to convince you to buy different colored boots or suede shirt. Comedians do that constantly by testing. I have spent a lot of time in the Comedy Cellar in New York City, the what I consider to be the premier comedy club in America. And quite often really famous comedians will just pop in to do stuff. And many times they don't get a lot of laughs. What they're doing is they're testing new material because they're going on a major talk show like the Tonight show the next night. So they're practicing material. And certainly when you see a comedian like Chris Rock or any famous comedian doing a one hour comedy special, they have maybe performed bits and pieces of that act every night for a year, testing material, then they only keep the good stuff that gets the laugh. So it sounds like you're doing a lot of that already, Aba hoy. And by the way, I'm happy to give you some extra attention and views. So if you could post a link to your YouTube channel, I'm happy to take a look at that and encourage other people to do so. And that's not in any way considered a violation of self promotion because a lot of what we're doing here is trying to make people more comfortable promoting themselves by speaking. So please post a link to your channel and if you want, I would be happy to share the screen and analyze a piece of your comedy and share what I like about your comedy. So I toss that out to any of you if, because it doesn't have to be all video of me talking all the time, we can put the spotlight on others as well. Anita says, TJ I'm an introvert and struggle with articulating my thoughts and communicating effectively. Can you please let me know how to be better at this? Well, Anita, you're not alone. So many people consider themselves introverts. It's. I think a majority of the world, frankly, considers themselves introverts. So don't feel bad about it. It's not a sickness or an illness or anything you need to change. But there are times when you simply do want to communicate important ideas to you with other people. Steve Jobs, by most accounts, was an introvert. He was not one of these walking around, slapping everyone's back, life of the party kind of guy. And yet when he wanted to communicate and put on a good presentation, a speech, a sales talk, he was world class at it because he realized it's a job, it's a skill like anything else. And if you practice it, refine it, rehearse it, you can be good at it. So a couple of things, and I don't know if you're a student or a business executive or a CEO for that matter. If you want to share, you don't have to. Regardless, chances are there are going to be situations in life where you know in advance I'll have an opportunity to speak. Whether it's a Monday morning staff meeting, whether it's a sociology class in college, there are going to be times when you know there's a call from whoever's leading the meeting. Anyone have questions? Anyone have comments? You're going to have opportunities. What I would recommend is just doing a little preparation before these and think of one interesting thing to say. I don't want you to write out everything in advance and memorize it. That puts so much pressure on you. It's really hard to do. And then if you forget one word it's going to and then you're embarrassed and you don't want to do it again for six months. So I'm not suggesting you memorize things. I am suggesting you try to think in your mind what's one interesting idea that might be of value to anyone listening? And then just share it. Don't think of it as a big speech. Don't think of it as I have to have a great opening and a great just share. Just talk like you're talking to one friend you're already comfortable with. Do that, do it more frequently and after a while you can start looking for opportunities to speak and it builds on itself. You get a positive momentum. I may do a and I hope that was helpful. I'm going to perhaps do a short version of that and record it, but I want to go to a few more comments Matthew says Do you have any tips on staying consistent or scheduling content? On scheduling content creation, I work full time and try to do as much in the evenings. On my online side hustle since 2017 I need to do better scheduling. I do recommend that if you want your content to have an impact, you come up with some schedule. Because just doing it when I move it doesn't work. And you know there's a very famous saying from a lot of well known artists where they say, you know, amateurs wait for motivation. Professionals show up every day at 9am and sit down in front of the typewriter or sit down in front of the easel and start painting. You have to give yourself a schedule. Now I'm well aware that you may have other responsibilities full time job, but come up with something reasonable and achievable. I think once a week is a good thing to start with. If you're not Already in the habit of creating content, and maybe it's not edited. And excuse me, quick learning moment. I just had my watch go off and make noise. I don't even know how I did that because I always try to have everything on silent. But if you're giving a speech, you're giving a talk. I think I put it on silent. Now, you do not want distractions from phones, watches, things like that bothering your audience. I don't want it bothering you. I feel like I've been rude to you. Now, I also don't want it bothering me and messing up my train of thought. So that's why I do highly recommend put your phone on silent. I frankly never have my ringer on my phone. I only have it vibrate my watch, and that way I'm not hearing buzzes and dings and weird sounds all day long. Okay, but that's a perfect example of why you don't want noises, because it can disrupt your train of thought, which is what, in fact, just happened to me. Okay. I had to check to see what I was talking about right there. So how do you schedule content? Give yourself a set time when you say, no matter what, even if it's not perfect, even if it's not great, I'm going to hit publish. And you can do it. What I have found for most people is if you say, I'm going to do it once a week, it's actually easier than doing it once a month. Once a month is so far apart, it's easy to not think about it and say, oh, I got a couple of weeks. Oh, I got a whole week. Oh, I got five days. It lends itself to a lot of procrastination. So I'm not a big fan of if you're making videos to do it once a month. Now, if every video you make is a masterpiece of, you know, elaborate storytelling and editing, it's Mr. Beast quality, and you're getting billions of views. Okay, maybe that can work for you. But even Mr. Beast used to do essentially daily videos. As he honed his craft, got better at speaking on camera, got more comfortable with the medium. So I would recommend you do something at least once a week. Now, it could be 60 seconds once a week. For a lot of people, believe it or not, once a day is actually easier than once a week. Because. Because if it's once a day, it becomes a part of your DNA. It just becomes a part of who you are, and you get more comfortable and confident because it's really hard to get nervous about Anything you do every day, you brush your teeth every day. Nobody gets nervous brushing their teeth, right? So think about how to do that more effectively by making it more regular and just realize it's not going to be perfect. This video I'm sharing with you right now, so if you see it on demand, isn't perfect, but it's out there and I'm getting some views and I'm connecting with some of you and I'm helping some of you and I'm extending my brand and reaching out to people across half a dozen social media platforms. So it's not that I want you just to throw out garbage and to throw out stuff that you're really embarrassed by, but a lot of top YouTubers will say, just get your first hundred videos out there. Mr. Beast famously talks about that. Ali Abdul talks about that. Get your first hundred videos out and you know, if six months later you're not embarrassed by your first content, your first hundred videos, you waited too long, you're doing something wrong, wrong. So just get it out there and then stick to something. I have started, I started a newsletter for my media training business. Oh, at this point, probably 23 years ago, and with very rare exceptions, or I can say pretty consistently, I've put it out 48 weeks a year for 23 years. And that does distinguish me because way back then, and even since then, I've signed up for newsletters of competitors. And typically I get one time, sometimes two times, and then they never send another newsletter. And that's one of the things my own clients have told me that they like the consistency. Hey, tj, you haven't talked to us, we haven't talked to you in six years, but saw your newsletter, reminded me I need to give you a call because we need a training. You stay in front of people. So that is the secret to a lot of success in the content creation world. Whether you're talking about YouTube or Facebook or Twitter or old school blogging, is in order to be successful, you need to have schedule and stick to it and be regular. Yes, there are exceptions. There are some artists who don't do anything. They create some masterpiece. Some musicians are like this. You don't hear from them for three years, they create a masterpiece. They already have a huge fan base, they put it out, make tens of millions of dollars. People love it. And then you don't hear from them again for another two years. It can happen. Most people who do that fade into obscurity. You never hear from them again. They run out of money. And now they're working at McDonald's, so I don't recommend that path. The other thing about having a regular content creation schedule is it changes your brain, it changes your mind. When you're out in the world, when you're consuming content, when you're talking to people, you're going to see something, ah, that would be a good video. Ah, that would be a good blog post or wow, that would be a great topic for my podcast. So come up with a schedule. Now. You could say I want to do a podcast. It's a 10 episode season and I just want to do 10 great episodes. And I'm going to drop it every other week for 20 weeks and then we'll take off six and a half months and do it again. Nothing wrong with that. But if you're not already famous or you're not doing something that is, is just automatically going to be viral, it's very hard to build much of an community or audience around that. So much of community building from people who are wildly successful as online creators comes from the fact that they're so regular, they're so there and that's, they're accessible. And that's. And part of why I'm here with you today, because I'm not trying to create Mr. Beast style videos that are so action packed and here's 500,000 and here's a Lamborghini being. Or not to say like I'm criticizing him, he's a talented creator. It's just not what this channel is about. It's not my mission, it's not my particular challenge that I'm trying to fulfill. I'm trying to give people useful advice to help make them more successful in life. That's the mission of this channel and that's why I've really upped my game in terms of being more accessible to you. So for many years I just sort of was lazy about YouTube and threw up an old training video once a week and called it a day. Then last September, I said, let me get more serious about this and I started posting one short. But if it was one short form video per day, one longer form video per week, did that for about six weeks and said, you know what? I'm liking what I see. I like the trend lines, let's go deeper. And then I upped it to two short videos a day, one long per day, seven days a week. And then I added going live once a week for an hour, hour and a half. And then at the end of last year, I said, you know what, let's let's get really serious about this content creation game. Let's really try to be the dominant place in the world where people can get helpful information, advice and modeling techniques for how they can become a better communicator. And I heard people like Gary Vaynerchuk say, really, the future is live streaming. There's no better way to build community, no better way for someone to feel like they're really connecting with you than through life. And I thought, why not do it? So I spent a lot of December and November trying to figure out how do I make a set, what cameras do I get, what tech expert do I get to advise me on that? Is this the absolute best microphone? I sure hope it sounds good. So it took a lot of time and not an insignificant amount of money to build this studio. I say that not because I want to slow you down. There are a lot of YouTube creators and online video creators who are wildly successful, much more successful than I am. They do everything on a cell phone. So it's not about the money. But I just believe that for what I wanted to do, I wanted to be able to really demonstrate for you. And so much of what makes people uncomfortable with speaking is the fact that people can see all of you. So I wanted something where I could gesture, move, not be constrained, show movement this way and this way. And I didn't want to be sitting at a desk any longer. So that's why I took the time to build a set. And I also wanted to sort of demonstrate things that seem more like a speaking environment where I'm on stage, even though I'm just looking at a plant right now, I'm not really looking at a thousand people in the audience. So a little bit of artifice there, which I'm being transparent with you. So that's what I want you to think about when it comes to a specific scheduling. And that leads to the next question. Any tips on how to avoid rambling when speaking? I may have been guilty of it right there, because as I was speaking at the end, I was thinking, oh, wait a minute, where did this actually start? But here's what I didn't do, other than right now, as I go behind the curtains with you to show you I didn't stop, apologize. Oh, where am I going? Senior moment. I didn't act embarrassed, I didn't act flustered. I simply tried to finish a coherent thought with some finality and stop. That's what I recommend. If you feel like you're rambling, don't apologize. Just finish One thought, stop, smile, let the other person speak or let the audience reflect on what you said before you go to the next thing. Okay, I feel like I may have missed. Seems like someone had mentioned something about how to use notes. Anita says, thanks, that was helpful. Glad you got some value from that. And I want to make sure I didn't miss anyone else's comments. I could have sworn there was a question somewhere here about notes. Oh, Matthew, the other thing I want to point out about content is it's really important that you focus on something you have a passion for and you're excited about. Gary Vaynerchuk, the well known social media maven, talks famously about, you know, people think he had it easy and was just sort of instantly famous with his wine show. Well, he was working like 14 hours a day in his father's wine shop, then didn't start till like 8 o' clock at night making his wine show. He did a 15 minute show about wine in the early days of YouTube and online video about 2005, 2006, but he was doing that after already working 14 hours a day. He did that 15 minutes, a little editing, put it up and then he would work till 2 in the morning promoting that show. So if you're really, really motivated, and we can't all be as motivated as Gary Vaynerchuk, I do understand that. But if you're motivated, it'll almost hurt not to get that content out. That's really what I would stress. Okay, I covered that, but I just feel like someone was asking me somewhere and if you're still with me, please feel free to repost the question. And I did see Matt says, he says he asked about Nate Bargazi. I forgot if that is how you pronounce his name, but I have seen a number of his specials either on Netflix or AOL or prime and I do like his comedy. I've seen him but I've not seen him in person. And, and Abio, it would be great if you could come on, just if nothing else to help me pronounce your name because I'm struggling with your name and I feel like I'm rudely butchering your, butchering your name every time. And he's saying you're also saying Ronnie is hilarious. He is good. I do like that. And I wanted to see if anyone else, if I had missed a comment because I could have sworn someone asked me about the best. Oh, I know what it is. The question was right here from Chat GPT. That's the question. I was Missing, by the way. Stay tuned. In a few minutes, I'm going to be doing sort of a continuing workshop, a series we've been doing here on how to make Amazon Influencer videos to make money. Because for years I've had so many people say, tj, I want to be a motivational speaker. Where do I start? And it's really hard to just, you know, take out an ad and say, I'm the next Anthony Robbins. Hire me for $100,000 to speak to your 10,000 people. Doesn't really work that way. What is interesting about Amazon Influencer program is it is a way to speak, to get in front of people and to potentially make some money without having to put a sales cap on and have to deal with gatekeepers hiring you to speak or gatekeepers deciding whether you can represent a brand that is genuinely new and what I think is exciting and why I'm investing time, even though it's not a huge windfall short term in this Amazon Influencer program. Okay, I dealt with the rambling issue, perhaps in a rambling way. And he says your name is pronounced Abe. Abe. Okay, great. Abe. It's great to meet you. And I've had a few clients before with the United nations named Abe, so it's good to meet another one. Oh, Abhay, you gave a pronunciation. Abhay. Great. Obhy, thank you so much for spending time with us. And again, if you have a YouTube channel, post the link and I'm happy to send more traffic your way and to promote you as well. Okay. I do want to spend a little time using new technology because I do believe anyone who wants to be relevant and doesn't want to be kicked to the dustbin of history has to stay up on it. Certainly. You see every single day, people in so called old media, old newspapers, they wake up and they're sort of shocked and surprised. Wow, I don't have a job today. Our newspaper went out of business. They didn't tell me. You've got to stay up on the trends, folks. And that's why I like to use artificial intelligence in as many meaningful ways as possible. I do use it to write my newsletter from time to time. Parts of it, not making stuff, pulling from other people, but uses artificial intelligence. Pulling content from my own YouTube videos and training videos. So it's my voice, but it saves me a lot of time. I use artificial intelligence to create titles for videos and what I was doing earlier and I'm about to do right now is use artificial intelligence to comb the web to find out what many people are thinking, the concerns they have about communication skills. So I have about 60 questions generated from Chat GPT and I'm just going to continue occasionally sharing them and answering them. I've not vetted these. I haven't read them in advance. I just want to give you sort of my spontaneous take with reason and background and history on how to answer these questions. By the way, sometimes people are afraid to do a webinar without guests because like, oh my gosh, what do I do if I don't have a guest or a co host? Because what if I run out of breath or I need a glass of water or drink? Just do what I did. Take two seconds, drink a little water. Guess what? Nobody will care. I saw Jerry Seinfeld doing that on stage a few weeks ago. He's still a billionaire. No one got upset and said, oh, how dare he stop the middle of his comedy set to walk over and take a sip of water. Didn't bother anyone. And I want you to feel free to do it anytime you're speaking online or giving a speech in real life. So, Abhay, thanks again for joining us live. Hope you can come back regularly. Let's dive in with the next question. How can I effectively use notes or cues during a speech to manage my fear of forgetting what to say? Okay, important question. Let me go into a little more detail on this. How can you effectively use notes as cues to help you remember what you're going to say during a speech and so you don't forget and get nervous and uncomfortable? Well, the most effective way to use notes is to have them on a single sheet of paper. Large text, large font. You don't want to have to be putting on reading glasses and bending over while giving a speech. And nothing is worse than having a speech. And all of a sudden it's on a lot of sheets and you're fumbling around this fiddling and then, you know, you drop it. It's all out of order. The key is keep it to one page. Use sentence fragments, 1, 2, 3, 4 words to help you remember what to say next. Very important. You don't want to have full sentences and paragraphs written on your script because the second you do that, you're going to completely destroy your eye contact with the audience. You're going to bore them. People can't stand it when they're being read to. It reminds them of kindergarten and the kindergarten teacher reading to them and they don't want to go back to kindergarten. You don't like it when people Read to you, right? So don't read to them when you're giving a speech or a presentation and they're right there in front. But it's perfectly fine to glance at notes. What you want is a roadmap. What you want is two or three or four words that you can glance down and say, ah, now I know what I'm going to say. And now you can look at the audience, you can look out at people, you can interact. You can actually see that they're paying attention. That's happened to you before, right, Sally? You can reference people in the audience. You're comfortable. You're not worried about getting lost because you have the roadmap. Now, when you're on the highway, you're using gps, using Waze. You're not staring at it every single second. You're looking for the big turns. But the other day, I had to go north to West Palm beach to go boating. Once I got on I95, I knew, okay, that's where I'm going to be for the next 12 miles, 12 minutes. I didn't really have to look at it. I could focus on the road, the conversation in the car. Only when I knew I was close to the next turn did I glance to make sure, okay, it's exit 71. It's exactly the same thing. When you are using notes in a speech, you want it as guidance. And here's the secret, the magic part. If you have it on a single sheet of paper and you use large font, you don't ever have to touch it. You don't have to pick it up. You can just glance down. Now, the really sophisticated way of doing it is to glance in conjunction with movement, as if you were just looking down to think for a minute. Or maybe you place the glass of water down, or you pick up a glass of water and you're glancing at your notes. If you do that, you will create the illusion with your audience that you're just talking to them, that you know this, you're just sharing your own insights, that you're like a friend just giving them your thoughts on something. And it's not some big fancy speech that's all memorized and bullet pointed out. So that's the most effective way to use a script, so that you don't forget what you're going to say. Because I'll admit, I have a horrible memory. I forget what I'm going to say all the time. But when I'm giving a presentation, I'm never nervous because I've got a Simple outline right in front of me that no one else can see. Okay, so that is, in a nutshell, what I think is the best way to. And I'm going to hit stop on that. That's the. The best way to use notes. So again, that question came from Chat GPT. So thank you, Chat GPT and the, I guess the Microsoft funders and all the other people who funded that because it is a great tool. Do I think I should only use Chat GPZ and never listen to you again? No. I do want feedback from real human beings. And frankly, what's more enjoyable to me is when several of you or a lot of you do come on live with me. And sometimes we have 2, 4, 6, 8, sometimes 10 people are sharing the screen and it becomes more of a community and a real conversation. So there's a role for that as well. By the way, I am going to start interviewing more people and there's going to be two main categories of guests I have. One will be other communication experts. People who have written books, have prominent blogs, have prominent YouTube channels about communication. Because I'm not the only expert in town, I want to bring you a variety of insights and expertise from around the globe. So if you are an author or an expert on any aspect of communication, I'd love to have you on this show. And it would be in a podcast form, but also in a video form that would be distributed across social media. So that's one form of guest I plan on having. The second form of guest is going to be people who are just really successful in some endeavor, whether they are successful in business or whether they've created the most successful nonprofit in the world to bring clean water to people in. It could be from any field. And what we're going to do is really dive deep and do an analysis of how they told their story, getting started. What did they say to people that made lights go off and their eyes get big? How did they refine their message along their trajectory of growth in their career to really work work to really make it successful? Because if you talk to any really successful entrepreneur, I have found, whether business world or a social entrepreneur, they're very good at painting a vision for other people of where they're going and what they want to do and why other people should be excited about it. So they might not think of themselves as professional speakers or communications experts, but they have evolved to the point they either stumbled across it or they refined it, or they got training at some point. But it often is the biggest difference between people who are wildly successful and those who are only semi successful. Warren Buffett famously gives credit to a course he took on public speaking when he was 20 some years a very young man early in his career, because he said before that he was nervous, he was uncomfortable, he wasn't comfortable speaking out loud. And these days, of course, and really the last 50 years, he has to spend so much of his time speaking, speaking to the media, speaking to investors, speaking to boards of directors, speaking to possible acquisition candidates. So it's speaking, speaking, speaking. If he had never conquered his fear of public speaking, it wouldn't have happened. Now, I don't have Warren Buffett booked yet, but if any of you are friends of his, see what you can do and see if we can get him as one of our guests, would obviously be a great guest. Quick program note. In just a few minutes, we are going to be doing Amazon Influencer videos. And I do them a couple of different ways. One way is I just do it all myself. I take pictures, I use a little tripod over here and I show you how you don't have to have any friend, family member or staff helping you. You can do it yourself and you can do it relatively quickly. Now the other thing I've done here is to do it with my wife, where she is the photographer and the videographer. And that does speed it up. So if she does come, I'll be doing that in just a few minutes as well. Matthew says just for your knowledge, if you do Amazon live in the future, the platform is a good way for you to get authors to come on your show and you can link their books in the carousel as you're interviewing. So, Matthew, I'm glad you brought that up. Let's step back for a minute and clarify for people, Amazon has a lot of different things they do. Obviously one of the biggest, most successful companies in the history of the world, they have something called Amazon Live, which I'd never heard of until about seven weeks ago. But if you go to Amazon.com up in the middle, very top, it'll say live streaming. You click that and you'll see people actually live just like a home shopping network. And they have everyone from Martha Stewart to Paris Harris Hilton to all kinds of people, including me in a few weeks when I do my first one. So, Matthew, you brought up something that I think about. This sounds embarrassing to say, but I this is the kind of thing at 9:30 or 10:00 clock at night, before I go to sleep, I think about, you know what? I bet I could get big name authors. If I say, hey, we're going to do this live streaming on Amazon and be selling your book. Book. Because right now it's not like I have 10 million subscribers to my YouTube channel. So the biggest authors in the world, when they have a brand new book, they often have so many interview requests they just have to say no. And I don't blame them. They just have to say no to 99% of the requests because they could fill up their entire day doing interviews with shows with either major networks, the BBC, cnn, NBC, Today Show. They can go on really, really massive podcasts like Tim Ferriss. So they have to be selective rationally. So they've got to really look at the audience size. So, Matthew, you bring up something that I've thought about a great deal, which is I could perhaps get authors who are much more prominent than might come on a show of mine now with my current size audience by saying, hey, this is going to be on live on Amazon and people will be able to access it from the homepage. It isn't quite, it's not quite that simple, but people would be able to access it on Amazon and we can sell your book and you can actually see sales going. I do think that that would be much more attractive to an author. As an author myself, as someone who's published six books and has done a lot of interviews, I can't imagine myself saying no to that at this stage. Now if all of a sudden I get, you know, 50 talk show hosts in a week saying, hey, come on to my Amazon Live, okay, I might then go back to really scrutinizing and saying, well, how many followers does this person have? There's going to be another level of scrutiny. But right now, Matthew, I'm glad you brought it up because it is new. It's kind of a hot new thing. I have not yet done my first Amazon Live because I have focused on, I want to get my first thousand Amazon influencer ads up and product reviews. I think if we proceed today as I hope, I will have about 300. So I'm not moving quite as quickly as I wanted, but I'm moving a lot faster than most people. Let's not kid ourselves. If you are thinking about doing the Amazon influencer program, I'd recommend you give it a try. You really have nothing to lose. You don't have to spend any money. And if you have a cell phone with a video camera, which I assume most of you do, that's it. You have all the production studio you need. So that's really what it's about. So Matthew, I'm curious, have you what authors have you seen on Amazon Live and then who was interviewing them? I am curious about that because I love, I love books. I try to read a couple of books a week. To me, even though I'm in the video business and do video courses, my primary preferred mode of learning is reading. And really in just the last couple of months I've switched from paper books to reading on my Amazon Kindle Paperwhite, which I've done an ad for because I do like it so much. But I love books and I plan on doing a number of reviews of books knowing that I'm probably not going to make that much money. From all I've heard from people doing Amazon Influencer, they don't make a lot of money from doing books. But perhaps it's an exception if you do have a well known author and you're doing a live interview and it is the week. I can tell you I don't think this is violating any Amazon Print principles. I can tell you I have sold more books than any other product on Amazon Influencer, but the margins are much smaller and when you add it up it does. It's not that much money and it was all from one book that was coming out live that week. I just happened to hit not happen. I planned it that way. I did promotions for a book of an author I like and admire and I did it the week his book came out and it did generate a number of sales. So I feel good about that. I've also done some Amazon Influencer videos for other books I just happen to really like. Some of them are even on the shelf behind me and they didn't get any views, so you never really know. But I like talking to authors. I'm certainly planning on talking to authors I know like and respect anyway for my podcast. So why not kill two birds with one stone and do a live stream here with you, but also have a second live stream going on on Amazon. So that's, that's what I'm planning on doing. But that's more second quarter 2024, which is not that far away now. We're almost halfway through with first. Well, tomorrow will be halfway through the first quarter of 2024 and tomorrow being Valentine's Day, which reminds me of a little shopping I need to do later today so I don't get in the doghouse. So what I'm going to do right now is shift gears and not talk about how to make an Amazon Influencer video but actually do it and there'll be a little fumbling around. The first thing I like to do is I like to improve the audio quality. So I have bought a special microphone that works with cell phones. Now I've got one of these for my wife's phone who has an iPhone 14 and one of those for. For me I have an iPhone 15 Pro Max. And let me be careful here because it's not that I always get the best stuff and give her my hand me downs. We each typically keep a phone for two years and it's kind of staggered so half the time she has a better phone than I did. She had an iPhone 14 while I had a 13. So that's the way it works. So I take this attachment and I put it into the bottom. I don't even know what you technically call it, but this hole in the phone and I'm sorry, I think I. I missed one of Matthew's comments. I didn't want to slight you. It says it. Matthew says it really depends on the niche when it comes to books and Amazon Live. I feel you would do great though since you are an author yourself but you can sell your own books and carousel products you use on the daily I have not done lives and so Matthew, share with us if you don't mind, if you are in the Amazon Influencer program, share your storefront because we're not supposed to share any individual video to a link from other places, but as far as I know you can share your storefront anywhere because Amazon does want people coming into your storefront. So if you don't mind, unless you really don't want to, feel free to share your Amazon Influencer store because I do like following people I know kind of seeing how do they do their ads and how frequently and are they doing lives, that sort of thing. So continuing with the setup, I have posted the receiver here. Now I'm getting the microphone and the first thing I've got to do is turn the microphone on. So I'm turning the microphone on and I see a green light that lets me know it's on. And you don't have to use a microphone but it does create better quality audio. And like in any other video, the better quality audio you have, the more people like it, the better it is to resonate. Now I'm going to go over because I have spent not a lot of time but I have spent some time looking for products and this is a two sided tape that I use so I use a lot of two sided tape things in the background. So what I do with all of these products and Matthew, I would love your opinion if there's a better, a better system you have. But what I do is I take a vertical picture of a product, a horizontal picture of a product, then a short vertical of a product, a video of a product than a horizontal of a product video of a product, and then a slightly longer one. So I do five separate ones for each product. That's what I typically do. Figuring I cover all my bases now I've just started to look at data and I am starting to see trends. So I might not do it that way in the future. It is a very much a work in progress and my wife Joanne has just shown up. So I am going to sort of speed up the process for you and not try to do it all myself. So we're going to do this. Why. So Joanne, should we do this with my phone since I do have the mic and that way I don't tie up your phone? We're going to do that and so I'm going to hand the phone off to her and we're just going to start this process. We'll go to camera. Actually, you don't. Well, I'll, I'll go to camera three then. Okay, so you're not blocking the camera. So this is, this is the tape. And offhand I don't know if this is 3M tape or not, but I am going to, I'm going to just talk about it as double sided tape. So the first thing we're going to do is take a picture of it. Oh, Anita says she's super excited for the guest series. Anita. I am too. It's going to be great. And again, if you have suggestions of anyone you'd like me to have on, please send them to me or post it right here. So this is the two sided tape. Maybe I should do it like that. So we typically do one vertical picture, which is what my wife's doing now. And then did you do a horizontal picture? And just to improve the workflow, what we try to do is delete anything we don't think we are going to use because it's too hard. If all of a sudden you have a hundred different things to go through and remember which was the better picture, which video did we screw up? So I just try to delete it right away. So did we delete that one? Are we starting over? Okay, so we just took the vertical, now we're taking the horizontal. So now we're Going to take a do a short vertical video. And as a reminder to me and both of us, we're going to check the audio afterwards to make sure the mic didn't run out of its battery and that sort of thing, you know, because the last thing you want to do and this has happened to me is you got all excited, you produced 100 videos and then you realize, oh, the mic wasn't on that day and it's all wasted opportunity. Okay, how's this? It's a great invention. It's not just tape, it's two sided tape. You peel it off, it's sticky here and then you peel off this side. I love this stuff. I use it to put up pictures, ornaments around the house, fix things, curtains. This is absolutely essential for me in my home and office. Okay, now we're going to listen to it just as a quick air check to make sure it actually was on. Okay, Are you hearing it? Okay, so it's quick check. So that was the short form. That was the short form. Vertical. Now my wife is holding it horizontal. We'll do a longer 1. 3, 2, 1. It might not be as important an invention as nuclear energy, but two sided tape, it's hard to imagine not having this anymore. It's sticky on one side, but then you peel off the other side and it sticks both sides. So it's great for putting up pictures if they're not too heavy. Posters, other things around the house, other things around the office. There are just so many times in life when you need something sticky on both sides, and I've tried before where you kind of peel it around and make a circle with one sided tape. It never works. Well, this is clean, simple and efficient. How long was that one, Joanne? So what I, what I'm aiming for there with the first horizontal is to try to be just a little over 30 seconds because 40 seconds. So that's about what I want. Now I'm going to do another video that is longer, that's just more expansive, that just kind of says anything. I want that again. My goal is to try to entice someone to actually click to buy the product because that's when I make money. 3, 2, 1. This two sided tape is a modern miracle. I mean, for so many decades I was fumbling around with regular old tape and trying to make a little loop and it would fall off. It was clumsy, it was awkward. This, I've got a sticky side here, but then I peel off the other side and it's sticky. It works really well. I use it with ornaments around the house, pictures, posters to fix things. It's so much neater and more efficient than tacks or nails sometimes or old style tape. One sided tape. If you're looking for something that's going to make life easier for you and more efficient when it comes to having things stick on your wall or other places around your home or your office, I highly recommend this two sided tape. Okay, so I'll fault myself right there. I should have taken a moment to actually make sure I have the night the correct name brand. What's different about this with Amazon is they're putting this on the page of the brand so people can already see the brand. So when you're doing an Amazon influencer video, there's much less pressure on you. You don't have to follow the whole script and follow, follow all the marketing points the way you would if you were an ad agency. I'm not an ad agency. I'm not an actor hired to follow a whole script. I'm just somebody sharing ideas about why I like a product and why I thought it was good and why you might want. So it's a much lower bar, it's a much lower threshold and to me that's what makes it much easier. So we've now done one product. We've done, we did all three videos. Correct. We took two pictures. So we have essentially five separate little ads that can all be used and in theory can all be making money. And I want to stress I'm not pitching this as some get rich quick thing. It's not get rich quick thing. It takes time and energy and dedication and a long term mentality. Matthew writes really suggest Chris Stone as a guest to discuss Amazon Live. He has a company called Cast Ahead. He does Amazon lives quite often. It's called Dealcaster. So Matthew, thank you so much for the suggestion. I'm going to look into him. Chris Stone. That sounds like he'd be a great guest. Something someone we could all learn from, myself included. Let's go to the next product. This is a sunscreen which I really do use every day. I do want to stress part of what makes this easy for me and I think most Amazon influencers is you're using products you actually like and use and you've already talked about. Now we did it for the a different sunscreen because we did it for one that was I think a 40 and it was for full body. This one is just face and it's Ulta Skin care Face Sunscreen. And you know what I since I'M not talking to anyone. I'm going to take my dealcasters Live is the correct name of the show Matthew points out. Great. By the way, if you have any questions about what I'm doing, feel free to ask them again. I'm trying to demystify this process of how to become an Amazon influencer, how to become an influencer in general. Because there are a lot of other programs like this. Walmart has it. Tick tock. All the major platforms have some version of this. I do think as we're in an era when traditional media is imploding, traditional journalists are losing their jobs, advertisers are looking for different avenues. It could be you. Okay, first thing we're going to do is take the horizontal picture. Now we're going to take the. The vertical picture is what we did to take. Now Joanne is taking the horizontal picture. And now we're going to do the short form video. The short form, typically 15 seconds or less vertical video. This face screen is. I messed that up. So we're gonna do that over face sunscreen. So again, no one's perfect. I'm not perfect. I make mistakes. I want to empower you to realize you can make mistakes and still do really well and still do fine and still be successful. This face sunscreen is powerful. It does a great job. Look at me, I'm 180 years old. No, just kidding. I'm not that old. But I really do like and trust this sunscreen. I put it on every day. How long was that one? See, now Abe was with us, who is a comedian. I tried to be a little bit funny there. Humor is not my forte. I certainly enjoy humor. I love standup comedy, but I don't try to consciously be funny in most of my video content. I tried there. Will it work? I don't know. But there's a lot of leeway here because it's not like a brand new. Paid me $50,000 and said, do it this way. And we have high expectations. There really are no expectations for this. Okay, now we're going to do a longer one. Horizontal. What's that? That one was 15 seconds. So I did it exactly the time I was wanting to do. This one. I'll try to do a little bit longer. This Elta sunscreen really works well for me. I put on my face every single day. I live in Florida where there's a hot, beating sun coming down every single day, so I want protection. And I have other sunscreens I put all over my body, but this one is specifically designed for the face. I'm not a doctor or an engineer or a technologist or a scientist, so I can't tell you why it's perfect for the face. The face. All I can tell you is I put it on my face, and that's how I start every day. So one of the things Amazon and I've been dinged a couple of times. They do not want you giving any information that could be construed as health or medical advice. So I didn't say, get this and you'll reduce your chances of skin cancer, because that would then veer into medical advice. Okay, now we're going to do. We've done two for this, and now we're doing the longer one. This face. Sunscreen is something I trust with my own face. I put it on every single day. Hi, I'm TJ with the TJ Walker Success Channel. And so much of what I encourage people to do is to be active, get out there, exercise. I try to play pickleball outside every day, but I live in Florida, South Florida, where the sun is hot. That's why I'm very careful to put this sunscreen on my face every single day. The beginning of the day. It's just a part of my daily routine, so you may want to check it out. Okay, so that we've now finished the second product. I typically try to do four or five in a batch, figuring if I can do that. Certainly if I do five, it's five ads for each product. So 25. So if I do 25 in a day, then at the end of the month, not working weekends, it's another 500. You add up two months, it's 1,000. That's my goal. And right now, I believe I have counting these today, it'll be right around 300. So I've really just started this process, this whole process. Let's see if I can find another item to sell. Yeah, this is a step ladder that I have, but you got to be careful because I'm seeing Costco on it. Amazon does not want to see me promoting Costco. What I don't know, and I should check is, is, you know, this is probably one where it's just better off not doing it because I don't see any other branding on it. There's plenty of products that Costco sells that Amazon also sells, but this is a good learning moment. I don't see anything here that says any other brand name, so I'm just not going to talk about that because I don't Want to go to the trouble of promoting a product where there is a zero chance of getting it into the Amazon influencer account. So here are bookshelves, or book ends, I should say. Okay. And I do like these. I did. I've used them for, well, certainly the last three years. Actually longer, because it just keeps your books so much better organized. Okay, so let's go ahead and show these. We're taking the picture. The vertical picture was just taken. Now the horizontal picture. And now this is, again, one of these products where I'm not doing this because I think, wow, I'm going to get rich as a bookend salesman. No, I'm doing it because I'm trying to hone my skills, hone my craft as someone who can sell products and make a professional presentation talking about specific products. I don't think anyone really needs to watch a video about whether to get a bookend. But we're only investing a couple of minutes, so what's the harm? Tired of having your books fall over or tumble to the floor? These bookends are simple, light. They don't distract from your decorations, and they keep your books standing upright. So that was the short one we're going for. That was the vertical. Now we're going to do the horizontal. Okay. I like books, but I don't like them falling down and cluttering up the house and the office. That's why I love these bookends. They don't call attention to themselves. They do one thing. They keep my books nice, neat together and not falling down. I use them on my shelves. They work well at home and the office. If you want to have a neater book collection, you can't go wrong with these bookends. Okay. And from what you're seeing because of the lens we have, it's very fuzzy seeing these books. But we don't have a lens on the cell phone. So you were able to show the book, the books over there. And by the way, that is how these books are standing up. Some of them, we have them right on top of a bookend. So that's how they're able to stand up. Because what I don't want is to be in the middle of the show talking to you, and books topple over. It's distracting. And I've had that happen before. Okay, now we want to do the last one, a longer one. And you know what? Let me mix it up for the folks nice enough to join us. We'll just give you another. That's a weird angle. So we're going to go back to angle to camera three. Are you looking for a way to keep your books neat and tidy and not have them fall off the shelf or fall on the floor? Then you need a bookend. What I like about these bookends is they're light, they're simple, you get a lot of them. It's a great bargain. They don't dominate the visual aspect of your bookshelf or your library. I use these in my home, I use these in my office. It keeps everything neat, clean, well organized. I have them right here built into my set. I can have my books up here and I don't have to worry about them falling down in the middle of the TJ Walker success show. If you want to keep your book straight, neat, you can't go wrong with these bookends. So again, what I'm trying to do here is do a little media synergy. Kill two birds with one stone. Amazon doesn't want you being blatantly promotional. But as far as I can tell, if you kind of weave in a little snippet about who you are and what you're about and why you like the product, that's perfectly fine. I've not been dinged for that yet, so I'm assuming that that is still perfectly fine. So that's why I do that, because if I don't get a sale, but more people hear about who I am, maybe I gain a few viewers a little more credibility, then I benefit as well. Okay, that's. Is that three products we've done so far. Now, this next one is a little bit complicated. I'm slightly hesitant to do it, but I am going to do it. It is a soda stream. It helps you create seltzer water from tap water. And I have to say, I love the products so much, I bought a couple of them, so. But it is a little bigger. And I probably should have planned by pulling out a table to do it, but I'm not going to do that right now. But what it does occur to me is that I should fill out the bottle so I could do an actual product demonstration. So I have to just step away for a moment. I'm taking filtered water and I'm pouring it into the bottle that comes with this device that allows you to turn your regular water into sparkling water. Okay, so I. I'll show it to you in a minute. I'm putting it in. It's a very simple system. What I'm going to do, though, is try to make the water while I'm actually Holding it, which I haven't done, and warning it might end up spraying all over me. But it's just sparkling water, so it's not going to hurt anything. Oh, and I need to close the curtain again so we don't change our entire lighting. Okay, so now we're going to do the vertical picture. And now we're going to do the horizontal picture. Now we're going to make a short form video that can be used for the Amazon Inspire. Oh, do we. Did one of the pictures not turn out? Did I blink? Oh, I'm sorry. This is the video now. Yes. Okay, sorry. Three, two, one. Do you love seltzer water, but you get tired of having to go to the store and lug it back and forth and spend all the money? You're going to love this SodaStream. It will give your water that wonderful sparkle and you can make as much as you want. Okay. And I didn't spray water all over myself. That was an accomplishment. Okay, now we gotta do a longer one and my hands are actually getting a little tired, so we gotta do these. I love seltzer water and sparkling water, but I hate having to go to the store to get it. I don't like more and more bottles for landfill. That's why I love my SodaStream. I can take regular water and I can make it sparkling. It tastes great. I love it because it feels fills me up during the day. I'm less likely to snack, but it just tastes good. It's more interesting than plain tap water. And you can make it anytime you want. Okay, now we're gonna do the longer one. And just so you know, I have two brands of the two different versions. They both do essentially the same thing. They're both perfectly good. I just have to make sure I'm using the same SodaStream. Okay. I absolutely love sparkling water, but I don't like having to go to the store and lugging it back and forth and all the empty bottles around the house. That's why I love my SodaStreams. I can make any tap water I have and turn it into sparkling water water. It becomes a party, essentially. I keep one at home. I keep one in my office. I like to drink it all day long because it is water and yet it's so much. And I like just doing that squish. That's a nice sound. It's fun to make. My daughter loves doing this and it's just a great thing to have around home or the office. Okay. Oh, that was heavy holding it like that. And by the Way I see a number of you are still with us. I very much appreciate you spending time. I realize this is not the single most riveting video you've ever seen, but what I am hoping is that by seeing how someone actually creates stuff, video content, ads, courses, workshops, it motivates you to want to do it as well. Because you can see, I'm hoping what you take away. This TJ guy, he's nothing that special. He makes mistakes. He's not perfect looking. Nothing perfect here. He's doing it. Why can't I? I'm really hoping that's the message you take away. Now, one of the things I've not done a great job of, that the Amazon influencer experts say, is when you're doing an ad, don't simply do one product, do the components of the product. So in this case, there are the canisters, the CO2 cylinders, and this is a brand I use. I don't really know how to differentiate one from the other, but I've used this. I've had no problems with it. Again, I don't want to get into healthcare claims, but I genuinely do think it's so much healthier than drinking Coke and set up up all that sugar. So I'm going to talk about this product now, this soda sense CO2 cylinder. Okay, so picture. I love sparkling water. That's why I use this soda sense CO2 cylinder rather than going to the store constantly getting more and more bottles. I use this to put bubbles into my water. It makes drinking water a joy. Okay, that's the short form, vertical. This is leaking on my hand a little bit, but that's not the cylinder's fault. I get bored drinking plain water, tap water. I love sparkling water. And yet I don't like having to drive to the store, constantly, stock up on all those bottles, and then having empties around the house. That's why I love using this soda sense CO2 cylinder. It works perfectly with my machine that creates tap water and turns it into sparkling water. If you like sparkling water. This CO2 cylinder has done a great job for me. And now a longer one. I like sparkling water and I like making it at home and I like making it at the office. It's so great not to have to run to the store constantly buying bottles and bottles of sparkling water and having all those bottles empties around the house. That's why I use the Soda Sense CO2 cylinder. It allows me to create fantastic sparkling water from tap water. It's almost like magic and it works well, with my sparkling water machine and it seems to last a long time. If you're looking for replacement CO2 cylinder, this one has worked well for me. So again, this is one. I don't really know how the typical consumer will differentiate or make rational choices between CO2 cylinders versus that being a commodity. So I'm not doing that because I think, wow, this is the sure fire way to make big money. I'm doing it because I want to try to learn this process of how can you consistently promote products you know and use and that you've recommended to other people? And I have legitimately recommended this to other people. Now, the third product which is sold separately is the bubbly drops. This is what you put into a tiny, tiny little drop and it gives it flavor. So this came with the same machine, the SodaStream machine. Where I am slightly hesitant is I, I want to make sure I'm not recommending anything sugar based because I feel like we're a world of sugar addicts and it contributes to obesity and diabetes and everything else. This says it is unsweetened natural flavor essence. It does not say that it contains any sugar. I am a little bit. It says profenol glycol, water, natural flavors. So I don't know if there's really something. So I'm going to make it just a call right now to myself that when in doubt, I don't want to be recommending anything that could cause anybody harm. And I don't want to recommend anything. I mean, I do use it. I have to assume it's a thousand times healthier than drinking a Coke or something like that. But since I'm not 100% certain, I'm going to just not mention that because I'd rather err on the side of the being totally safe. Okay, let's pick another product. Clorox. Clorox Disinfecting. What is this? Our fifth product. Six. We've already done five. Oh, you know what? The goal for today was five. So why don't we stop. We'll leave the wipes for later. So let's do that. Okay. So now, in the interest of protecting my wife's time, I'm going to say thank you very much, Joanne. I'm going to take my phone back and I'm now going to show you step by step, how do you go from the video to actually putting it on your Amazon storefront, tagging it? It's not wildly complex, but there are some steps involved. So I'm going to share that with you. I'M actually going to get comfortable, which means I'm going to sit down while I do this. The desk I have is a seated. Excuse me. It's a mechanical standing desk that does adjust. So I'm going to lower the desk and then show you step by step exactly what I'm doing. If you haven't seen this before, if you've seen this before, you're probably thinking, oh, okay, tj, I get it. I don't really have to see that again. And I understand we can say goodbye from here. But if you haven't seen it and you're all interested in being an Amazon influencer, I think it's always helpful to kind of see how does somebody actually do something true soup to nuts every step of the way. Because quite often it's the little details that make people think, how do I even start this? Do I want to do this? So I'm going to show you as much as I can because Amazon does not want me showing you the insides of my storefront. That's a part of their sort of deal. So the first thing I'm going to do is go to Amazon and I'm going to sign in to my store. Everybody who's accepted in the program has their own storefront with just. Just as Amazon.com shop the name of the store. Mine is TJ Walker. Success. I'm going to hit content. I'm going to hit create content. I'm going to hit post video. I'm going to hit video library. So this now has. This is not the Amazon store. These are all the videos and all the pictures that I just used or just created with my wife. So I'm going to click one. I'm going to hit done. It's now uploading the video 1. And I forgot about this until now, but one of the things that I still haven't figured out and Matthew, maybe you know, but when I am uploading a video from my iPhone 15, it seems to take four times longer than the identical video that was on my wife's iPhone 14. And I don't know why that would be. Typically, newer products are faster unless they have somehow changed the quality of the video to make it a much larger file. And that's why it's taking longer. So this is taking a few seconds here. And you know, while that's happening, since I am talking a lot, I'm going to go back to my sparkling water and which by the way, you've probably seen me drinking from. This is sparkling water that I drink all day. Long. And so I really do use these products. So it's now asking me to tag the product. So I'm going to go to your orders since I know I bought it. And I'm going to type in typically I dictate it, but I forgot sodastream CO2 tanks that didn't work. I'm just going to type in SodaStream. And it's machine. I know I bought this from Amazon. Oh, it's one word. That's what it is. So sometimes if you dictate something, it's not going to show up because it's going to turn it into something commonly. So now I see the product, I tagged the product and it's called a Soda Sense threaded connector. Hmm. Actually, this might not be the product. That might be a connector that I got. So let me type in Soda Sense again. And typically I like to dictate it, but again, when it's a brand name that isn't directly words found in the English language, it converts it to something else. And now since I'm trying to do two things at once and talk to you, I've misspelled it because I put in one extra letter. So is this a little tedious? Yeah, it's not quite as exciting as being a Hollywood superstar, being in a, you know, a New York City fashion shoot with celebrity directors. But this is a part of what advertising is. There's a lot of tedious aspect. So I do see cylinder. Okay. All right. I do think I got the. It's really hard to tell if I got that right. I am going to tag it. I think it's right. I love my sparkling water using this. So I'm going to do a title. I hit submit post and there we are. By the way, if you are hearing anything funny with my audio, I'm a little bit further away from my microphone, which is. Is at a set spot. I've now lowered this, so you should detect a slightly lessening of the quality of the audio. I apologize for that. But if I change it, then there's a chance I mess up the audio for tomorrow. So that's why I'm keeping it this way. Okay, I hit Create content video post photo library. I hit the next one. I hit done. It is loading it up. I take a sip of water from the very product we're talking about. And at some point for Amazon influencers, and I'm not there yet, you run out of products from your own home. So what a lot of people do is they use friends and relatives products. Again, I think you should, you should only use things that either you've experienced or someone you really trust, close family member has used it and said, you know, this really is a good product. I like this a lot, it's working and you have some comfort level. I'm not saying every single product is one you have to use every day for 10 years before you recommend it, but I do think having, you know, having something where you can draw upon real experience and testimony better. Now at some point I'm probably going to be do more products that my wife has purchased and do it based on what she's telling me she really likes. In fact, I did the first one of those just the other day with my daughter for a backpack she really likes. So my daughter really liked the backpack and my wife really likes the fact that it's durable. We've had it for two years, which typically we've never had one for more than one school year. So that's why I did that product. Okay, so it's uploaded, I'm going to your order, I'm doing SodaStream. And. I'm tagging the product, hitting done. Create great tasting sparkling water anytime you like. So I did a quick edit there because the dictation put an extra comma in that didn't really make sense. So I took that out. One of the things I'm going to do so I give myself more opportunity for tomorrow is I'm going to try to go ahead and turn off my microphone to save the battery in case I don't get around to charging it. So I'm going to put those over here and go to storefront, hit create content video. But I like to do these all at once because I find if you put it away and say I'll get to it later, you'll forget where you were. You forget if you did it or not. You might upload some videos twice, you might delete videos. I just find it's better to either do it in real time after you've done one product or like what we did here today where I did one whole sequence, did that and then did all the uploading and labeling. So again, it's, it's a little bit tedious, I won't kid you. But everything is relative. You have to ask yourself, compared to what? For so many other programs, you'd have to do all sorts of research. You'd have to set up a special account, an affiliate link. You might have to have coding. Amazon to their credit really does make this very, very easy because again, all I'm Doing is typing in the word in my orders and it pops up. Then all I have to do is just one tap. It tags the product. Done. Takes me to a page where I title it. CO2 refill works efficiently every time. Now let me just say that's not a very good title. The reason I don't spend a lot of time on the titles is the most valuable aspect of this content is it's already on the page where someone is reading all sorts of information from the manufacturer, reviews from users, others. So my thought is people are either going to watch a video review or not from an influencer. If they're already kind of clicking around, they'll just click it. Could I possibly increase my yield 10% or 15% with better titles? It's possible. Right now. Right now I'm in an exploratory phase where I'm trying to simply get as many products up there so I can start detecting signals of really what's working and what isn't. Create content video photo library. Now I'm going to the images. Done. Your order. Soda stream tag product done. Caption. Much easier to buy more CO2 once a month than to buy more soda at the store every day. So that one conceivably could run into problems by making it seem like I'm disparaging soda that you buy at the store, which frankly I don't mind disparaging that. But Amazon doesn't want you to do that, so we'll see. That could be denied access to the storefront. We'll find out. They're pretty. At least with me so far. I find they have. They've not been heavy handed as far as rejecting certain things. There have only been I think maybe three out of 300 ads. So you know, 1% they don't like. I can live with that. So this is the last one for this product. So to stream, click tag done. Right. Caption. Make more seltzer water every day from home or office. Now you can make the case that that wasn't specific to that product. It makes it more sound more like promoting the machine, which I will be doing in a minute. But that's what came to me and I sort of want to get this up and out. Okay. All right. So I very much appreciate you spending time with me today. And remember I'm going to be here pretty much every day. Unless I'm traveling or doing a live training for a client. I'm going to try to come to you every single day. If you could do me a favor like this video. If you haven't subscribed yet, please subscribe to the channel. Please share the video, leave comments, and even more important, leave questions. Because questions from you, I believe will really make this channel work and take off and be helpful to you and other people exactly like you. So thanks so much. Please watch the other videos. I do post three videos a day, edited videos. They're a little more action packed than what we've done here today, but not as in depth. So there's pros and cons to every format and structure of video. Thanks so much. See you online.