The Number 1 Question That Will Determine Your Success in Life

The number one question you have to answer if you really want to be successful in life is this. How are you going to respond when people give you nasty criticism? Because if you're a creator in the modern world, you're going to get cheap shots. Someone just wrote to me yesterday saying, tj, you look like a serial killer. No one should watch this channel. How did I respond? I just laughed and made another video. Hi folks, I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for joining us. That was a quick short form video that I'll be putting up. My team will be editing that later this week. And those are the sorts of things we talk about here. How to be more successful in life by communicating more effectively. I'm going to hit stop on my record there. How can you be more successful in life by communicating more effectively and more confidently. That's really what this channel is all about. Am I perfect every single time? No. Does everyone love me as a speaker? No. That's okay. There's not a single wildly successful person in the world. There's not a single great speaker in the world who doesn't have detractors, who doesn't have people who think, wow, you're really awful. Who doesn't face criticism. Do this for me right now or after you're finished watching us today, go to my pocket squares creeping up. Go to Amazon and type in your absolute favorite author of all time. Someone you think is just so wonderful. It could be someone from the classics. It could be someone in the last hundred years, a Hemingway. It could be J.K. rowling, whoever it is. I want you to go to Amazon and look at your favorite author. Someone you think is just so beyond comprehension, a great writer. Then I want you to look at their reviews. Look at the one star reviews. You're going to hear people attack them, trash them, vilify them beyond belief. And yet those people still continue. They still wrote, they still created. To me, that is such a crucial part of being. It may be the single biggest piece of being successful in the modern world is your ability to persevere, even when people throw nasty comments. My good friend Luke Westwood is with us. Luke, good to see you today. Would love to have you join us. Right on screen. I've just posted the Streamyard link. You can come on chat with us, give us an update on what's going on in your part of the world and what sort of communication challenges you're helping clients and colleagues with these days. So we'd love to have you come on if you have time, but I wanted to share something with you because it was the first thing I saw today and here it is. This was a comment that came in from a video I posted yesterday or Saturday I believe. And this is from a gentle I assume it's a gentleman at 33rd Gemini. He writes the pen isn't the issue. This was in reaction to a short form video I did on why all things being equal, if you're giving a speech, better off not holding a pen. A relatively small, you know, one of those 1% issues but a tiny issue here. Here's what he writes. The pen isn't the issue. The issue is the person holding it like a serial killer making a low view count video trying to bait people with low intelligence to watch comment and subscribe to a false doctrine due to their abundant ignorance. I'm not sure if that's more condemning of me or you. He ends with saying dislike don't recommend this channel. So how do you respond to something like that? It's human nature to get upset and get angry and write nasty comments and debate. By the way Luke, Cecilia says I can't come on screen now but I'm straight starting to help spokespeople with their camera confidence and helping them feel calm, confident and relaxed. Luke also a great communications coach and trainer and helps people around the globe as well part of the greater community of people helping build communication skills in the world. So Luke, please come back anytime and let's do a spotlight on any new program you have, any new book program online course, would love to share your expertise with our community right here. So when I saw this comment I said to myself I can react one of two ways. I can cry boo hoo hoo, somebody doesn't like me, somebody's mean to me or I could laugh. And I can tell you over time my response has been the best possible way to react to this is just to laugh. Now I did something. Oh I did two things. I went and clicked on the person's channel because on YouTube you can do things anonymously but it does say give a name. You click on that and it posts your channel. What happened here is in fact what has happened. I think pretty much anytime I've had a negative nasty comment in social media, specifically on YouTube which is the the person lobbing the bombs at me has zero followers, zero posted videos, zero time to they've ever put in their put their face out their voice out to the world. So to me that is totally consistent with the troll. They are scared, they are insecure, they are nervous about their own Insecurities, Therefore, their way of reacting to the world is lashing out and attacking people, typically where there's no basis in reality. Now, plenty of people criticize me, and it's legitimate. I do recommend that you read criticism. Somebody wrote the other day or just yesterday saying, tj, one of your images didn't demonstrate what you were talking about. And you know what? It was a completely fair criticism. And I responded saying, hey, fair criticism. I need to do better. My team and my editors and I need to do better. So I do think you need to listen, read, view all criticism. This challenge for most people is how do you react and what, unfortunately, so many people do.

People.

People who are smart, people who are educated, people who are insightful. Their reaction is, oh, everybody on social media is so nasty. Only a fool would put out their content to the world and subject themselves to this abuse. You'd have to be a masochist. I understand that perception, but I don't think it's actually valid. Part of what's going on is there's a negativity bias. If 20 people write nice comments or neutral comments and one person says something mildly critical, we tend to remember only the mild criticism. If a hundred people say nice things and one person says something nasty, that's what we tend to remember. Indeed, I'm guilty of that right now because I shared with you that one negative comment. I didn't share with you the hundreds and, in fact, the thousands of nice comments that have come in in the last few months. So even I'm guilty of that. But I do want to challenge you to go beyond that. Don't let the naysayers bring you down, because we do live in a new world. There certainly was a time when I was growing up, 60s, 70s. You're an author. You write a book. Maybe there is a reviewer and a major newspaper who writes something scathing about you, and nobody enjoyed that. It may be someone could write a letter to the editor of a magazine or newspaper criticizing you with their name attached, but by and large, it was devoid of vitriol and obscenity and nastiness. Now, courtesy of the anonymity of social media, especially platforms where you don't have to identify yourself by name. People can be genuinely, genuinely nasty, and it can hurt. And people are going to attack you. Your physical looks, your voice, your eyeballs, your hair. Attack everything again. What I want to stress to you is if you want to be successful, and I don't mean you have to be a YouTube star with 10 billion views, I don't have that. But if you want to have an impact on the world, meaning your ideas connect with people and help a lot of people. A part of the deal in the modern 2020s and beyond is a certain percentage of people are going to throw back criticism your way and a subset of that criticism is going to be mean, nasty, cheap shots. I believe if you want to have strong mental health and you want to have an impact on people, you have to get a bit of a tough skin. And if you don't want to think of it as a tough skin, think of it as easy to laugh when you see something like that, just laugh. Now, I just shared with you a letter. Someone wrote a comment on my own YouTube channel saying I look like a serial killer. Well, maybe. I mean, after all, you know, let's be honest, most serial killers, at least in the United States, are white men. So I am a white man. So, yeah, I guess you could say I look like a serial killer. Ted Bundy was a lot younger than I was when he committed his crime. A lot better looking. But hey, if you want to say I look like a serial killer, it's okay. More important, I want you to realize if you've got a good idea, you've got a great poem, you've got a great novel, you've got great how to information to help people use artificial intelligence on their website. I want to urge you, speak out, share your views, let people know what's going on. Okay, let me bring in my colleague and our chief operating officer here at TJ Walker Success Channel and media training worldwide. Hi Ben. Hope you're doing well. Is everything coming across okay with our audio, our video, our auto focus? It's always good to get a sort of a real time second opinion of what's going on with video production.

Yes, as of now, everything looks great.

Great. All right, well, thanks so much. I'm going to hop right into creating more short form content and as always, people have questions, comments they want to appear they can do. So thanks, Ben, we'll talk to you. We'll catch up with you later. So today is sort of open for. I'm going to be taking your questions. You can post questions right here on YouTube. You can post questions on Streamyard. If you're watching this on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitch, Instagram, X, I can see your comments right here. And if you even want to join me on screen, you can do that as well. All you have to do is sign into Streamyard. I posted the link at the top of the comments section. So I'm going to be doing what I frequently do here, which is kind of a show within a show. I'm here talking to you live, but I'm also taking you sort of behind the curtains of my workshop, showing you what's really going on, showing you how content creators make content and our thought process, our failures, our mistakes. When I make a mistake, you see it. When most YouTube creators make a mistake recording a video, you never see it. You're only seeing the finished product where everything is smooth, everything is easy. Everyone does everything perfectly in one take. Well, I'm here showing you warts and all. Now. I try to do most of my videos in one take. I would say on good days I'm doing 95%. But some of you may have noticed last week, end of hour three, I sometimes stumbled two or three times making a video. You know what, that's okay. You just hit delete, you do it again. And I find that's much easier, much more time efficient than trying to edit out 189ums or US or blunders. Easiest to just hit delete and keep going. So I have a whole new list of questions. By the way, I take questions from you live. Those always take precedence. If you want to type in your questions about any aspect of communication skills, sometimes people email them to me. My email address is located in the about you section of this channel. You can see that pretty much on every platform. And also I take questions from people who appear live and just show up on screen on streamyard. I also take questions using the power of artificial intelligence using Chat GPT. I put in various prompts and it throws out questions that it thinks based on sentiment, heard and seen around the Internet. What people are really thinking of when it relates to communication skills. So I have a whole fresh batch of questions here that I've not read yet. I'm going to be sharing these with you in live time. By the way, thanks to the person who just gave a thumbs up. Thanks a lot. If you're getting any value out of this show, this program, this channel, please hit a thumbs up. Please subscribe. Sign up for notifications. Share the Videos if you don't have time to spend three hours with me today, that's okay. I do understand. Please take a look at our short form videos. Every single day we post not one but two short form videos, typically less than 30 seconds. A quick tip on communication skills, presentation skills, small talk, public speaking. We also do one long form video every day which is typically around. We shoot for eight minutes. Sometimes it's a little less, sometimes it's a little more. All of these topics come from you. Either something that's come from a live training where I've worked with someone face to face, or an online student. You could be one of my 2 million online students who've sent me a question. All of that goes in here. We try to process it, package it, put it back out in a way that's useful to you and a lot of other people all over the world. Okay, let's take a look at some of these questions. Ever wonder why some people seem to effortlessly command attention while speaking while others struggle? Okay, I've. I haven't really heard that question before and I'm reading that now for the first time. I just had these spit out to me from chat GPT based on current sentiment around the world. So I'm going to do a short form video where I attempt to answer that and try to do it in less than 30 seconds because that's what I found you like. If I do a short form video, that's 35, 40, 55, 58 questions, typically nobody watches it. The short form videos I do 23 seconds or less that start start with a strong hook, often go 1, 2, 3, 4, sometimes 5, 7, even 10,000 views. I am trying to help more people so I have to be aware of what people want. I'm not going to just say anything it takes to get views. I have to look at what's important that I think people need to know to be a better communicator. And what's a format people are willing to look at it and listen to it and factor those two together. So I'm going to switch to camera two for this. I am going to remove certain distractions so we have sort of a cleaner look when we start and I'm going to hit record of my master which stores the data in 4K. Ever wonder why some people effortlessly command attention when they speak while the rest of us struggle? It's easy. It's about more at bats. The more you speak, the easier it gets. So someone who is a chef who cooks every single day for hours is a lot more comfortable in the kitchen than someone coming in for the first time saying, oh, how do I crack an egg? How do I make an omelet? Okay, so that was my attempt to answer that question in short form. Now some of these questions I'll come back and I'll do a long form video. I necessarily had to be very short, concise, truncate this because it's not just hearing the question, it's not just answering the question. I have to ask myself out of the 5, 10, 20, 50, 100 things I could say about it, it's really the most important thing for people to get. If I only have time for one substantive tip and that's the, you know, there's pluses and minuses to every form of communication. A short form video, you reach a lot more people. It's just a lot easier to get eyeballs. The downside is you can't go into depth the way you can. For example, some of my online courses on communication skills are 30 hours long. So it's a trade off. Maybe I only have a handful of people go into a 30 hour course today. They're going to get a lot out of it. But maybe 2, 3, 4, 10,000 people watch a short form video. So you have to reach people in different ways in the modern world. Let's go to the next question. Are you aware of the subtle ways your body language can either enhance or detract from your message? That's an interesting question. Sometimes I'll read questions and I'll think, okay, I could sort of talk that out, have a discussion about it for 10 minutes. Which in many ways is easier than delivering a pithy 22 second how to on that that I'm going to put that in one of those categories. Have you ever felt like your voice doesn't quite convey the authority or warmth you intend? Okay, that's similar to one I've done recently, but it is a little bit different. So part of my challenge is how can I stress recurring themes that are really important, but do it in a way where there's enough difference, where it doesn't just bore people and it doesn't make people say, well, TJ saying the same old thing. So that is one of the challenges that I think any content creator faces. And luminaries like Gary Vaynerchuk says, hey, I'm criticized all the time for saying the same thing over and over again. And you're right, I say the same thing because it's really important and people aren't doing it. I do kind of feel the same thing. Now, I might not have the huge audience, the 170 million impressions a month in social media that Gary Vaynerchuk does, but I do have hundreds of thousands of people who watch my content over the course of a month. And I don't want to repeat myself too often. I always want to give people a sense of, wow, that was a Unique twist. I hadn't quite heard it or seen it that way before. So that's part of my challenge. So let me take a stab at this one. Have you ever felt like your voice, your voice doesn't quite convey the authority or warmth you intended? Okay, so again, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do the camera two shot because the data shows that that typically is what people respond to the best on my channel. Have you ever felt like your voice doesn't convey the warmth, the sincerity you really were hoping for? Well, it might not. What, what stresses you up is thinking, oh, I'm speaking to someone in an uncomfortable situation. A speech presentation, a one on one talk, a job interview. You're keyed up on what you're going to say. The key is you need to practice and listen to yourself. Just use your cell phone to get to the point where you love the sound of your own voice. Okay, so that one, I have to confess, I'm not incredibly happy with. It is good advice. It does take me back to one of my pillars. One of my keystones is you need to practice speaking, recording yourself, listening to yourself. And these days, of course, it's very easy to do with your cell phone. The problem, of course, is more most people don't like doing that. So when I stress to people to do that, I run the risk of sometimes people thinking, yeah, yeah, tj, I've heard you say that before. I'm sure it's good advice. But I don't want to do it because I hate the sound of my own voice. So I'm not going to listen to you. So that's a part of my challenge. So, couple of comments have just come in. Luke says, I still remember when TJ provided me with a video testimonial. It was a small gesture from tj, but had a huge impact when I'm talking to clients, you know, let's talk about that. And Luke, I appreciate that I had forgotten that it was a small gesture on my part. Anyone can do it, and yet most people don't. Quite often people will ask you letter of endorsement or a reference letter, and certainly you can do that. But we live in a world where video is more powerful. Anyone can write anything, stick your name to it. No one even knows it's real. And yes, there is the ability through artificial intelligence and deep fakes to create a video where Steve Jobs endorses you or Ben Franklin endorses you or someone well known in your industry, and it's fake. But I don't think I Certainly haven't seen a rash of those. And I don't know if many people have the chutzpah to do that. I do think that it is very powerful to do a video endorsement of someone and they do appreciate it because again, most people don't do it and you can do it in one click. But that may be the topic of a short form video I should do in just a moment. Luke says it takes a pride of place on my LinkedIn profile. Okay, great. That's fantastic to know. Luke, you know that you've given me a good idea. I appreciate it. That's why we're here for this interaction. But first, let's go to VL. Now he says, in my job I have to say no to people's requests from time to time. The authority of that no requires fully believing it and staring into their soul when you say it. Okay, well, BL, you've intrigued me. If you have the time and you're in a quiet place, I'd love you to click on the streamyard link and come right in and share the screen with me and talk to us about that. Because a lot of people have to do exactly what you're doing. Whether you're a loan manager at a bank where you have to say no to entrepreneurs who want money and have no collateral, there's all kinds of jobs where we have to say no to people. And in fact, anyone who reaches any sort of notoriety or acclaim is going to be pitched by people all the time saying, hey, do this for me, back this, endorse this, invest in this. So a lot of no's are generally required. Certainly if you're an angel investor or a venture capitalist. The ones I know say you got to say no more than 99% of the time because. Because you get thousands of pitches coming in. And if you can make maybe four investments in a year and or maybe at most 10 investments, nine of them are horrible, but one does well, then you can still have a profitable year. But that involves a thousand. No. So, BL, if you want to share either right on camera with us or type in, I would love to know, but. But you've given me an idea for a topic as well. Okay, so let me do a short form video right now on these two topics that have just been brought up from our community. And thanks Luke, and thanks V. What's a great way to really show your appreciation to someone in the modern world? It's not just a letter of reference, an endorsement, a testimonial. It's making A video where you look at the camera and you tell that person and the world why you think they're great. It costs nothing, but it has such a huge impact. Okay. So I'm hoping that that came across well. And again, I wouldn't have thought of that to do as a topic. Will that one generate millions of views and go viral? I doubt it. But you know what? If it even motivates one person to do a nice video testimonial for a friend, a colleague, a professional associate, then, you know, I've done something to spread a little good and positivity in the world. You know what did that cost me? 20 seconds of my life. So the cost was low. The potential upside was great. Which is also how I think you should think about the opportunity to do a video testimonial, a video endorsement, a video reference for friends, colleagues, associates. And VL says, that was great to see. I'm guessing you meant the one I just did. So I appreciate that. Let's see if I can tackle the issue you just brought up, VL and let me see if I can do it in a way that is helpful and not just trite. Because part of my challenge when I'm coming up with topics and content for short form video and long form video is I don't want someone to say, well, no, duh, that's so obvious. You wasted my time. And every once in a while that does happen. Happened to me just last week where I did a video really stressing the need that if you're doing a lot of speaking, you're doing an online show or webinar, keep a glass or bottle of water around, and someone did in fact write, oh, you know, wow, such brilliant insights. If you're thirsty, drink water. There's always that possibility. The challenge for me as a communicator is how do you keep it fresh? How do you either deliver a completely new idea that people have never heard of before to help them, or how do you package an old idea with a new packaging, new wineskin to make it seem fresh, to make them look at it with a fresh set of eyes, to perhaps take action? That is the challenge. So let me, yeah, let me see if I can do that right now with you. So again, you're saying in my job, I have to say no to people's requests from time to time. The authority of that no requires fully believing it and staring into their soul when you say it. Okay, so let's, let's see if I can do something dealing with this particular issue. There are times when your communication with someone else means you have to say no and you have to say it with authority. Don't avoid it. Don't be mealy mouth. Don't put him off another day. You gain respect and authority by looking him in the eye and saying no. Okay, so I don't know if I gave enough there to really be helpful. I'd love your opinion on that because that's when I feel like I have to think about a little more and give you. I always like to give some extra trick that someone might not have thought of before. I don't know if I did it for that one, but would love your opinion. Luke says so many people forget to drink before an interview on camera and their throat dries up under the lights with the nerves. You're absolutely right. Let me do a short form video on that. You rehearsed, you practiced, you're all ready for this big interview. It starts, you're five seconds in, all of a sudden your throat goes dry and that's the image people see of you diving for water. Don't do that. Drink plenty of water before the interview starts, before the big speech starts. Okay, so Luke, I don't know if that caught the essence of it or not. Going deeper into that, I do think it's important if you're, if you're doing an hour long webinar, for example, or stand up comedy for an hour, you want to feel perfectly free every so often to take a sip and have water nearby. I didn't feel like I could go to that second point and that third point and be true to the fundamental nature of a YouTube short and a TikTok short, which is basically one tip, one idea. So that's why I stopped it right there. Cryptic cow says hello. TJ Cryptic, nice to hear from you. Or crow. Cryptic crow. Not cryptic crow. I took the R out of there. So thanks so much for stopping by. If you have any questions related to communication skills, whether it's one on one interpersonal communication, talking to small groups, large groups, giving presentations, speeches, talks, briefings, or just talking to one friend about bad news, post your question here. I'm happy to talk about it. And perhaps we can get feedback and other insights from Luke, Vlad and others who've joined us today. So thanks so much for being a part of that. Luke says that was great, Luke. I'm not sure which one you mean, but thanks. It's always nice to be told you're great. B.L. says. I mean if you are not certain in yourself, and confident that your no is not up for negotiation. People will try to argue, but if you deliver the no strong enough, that certainty is communicated. Okay, so let's get into the nuances there. There are many people in life who are conflict avoiders. They want to avoid conflict. So instead of saying no, they'll say, you know, I'm not sure. Check back with me. They want to push off that inevitable moment of reckoning where they know that, you know, they're not getting what they're asking for. So this can be a problem. Men, women, young, old, it's a problem at any point. And in the short term, if you avoid saying no to someone, then they're not going to be angry with you at that moment. But in the long run, you can actually create more anger, more anxiety by leading people along, letting people think, oh, I still have a chance. I still might get that refund. I still might get that loan. I still might get that investment. You're much better off with a clear, forceful no. Let's talk about that a little more. Luke liked what I just said about the drinking water. One was great. So thanks. Thanks, Luke. And again, I do that with a realization. It's a slight twist, little bit different than the one I did a week or so ago. I might still get a comment from somebody saying, well, no kidding, T.J. when you're thirsty, drink water. No duh. I'm willing to live with that possible criticism. If you tell yourself, I'm not going to do anything unless I figured out a way of avoiding all criticism, you'll never speak, you'll never make a video, and you'll never accomplish anything. Okay, Cryptic says, that is a good point. Well, thanks, cryptic. Do. Do very much appreciate that. So let me, let me think for a minute how I can create a higher value short form video on this ability to say, Let me, let me take a stab at this. One of the most powerful things you can ever say is no. If you say, maybe if you string people along, if you make them think, well, maybe TJ Will invest in my company, give me a job, do this for me, do this favor, and you're not going to do it. All you're doing is creating ill will. You will create more authority and respect by looking people in the eye sometimes and saying no. Okay, that's a slightly different nuance from what I said earlier. Whether it's enough to really be meaningful to people, I don't know. Would I want to run those two videos in the same 24 hour periods? No. It might seem Redundant, but I think there's a little bit of difference there. And again, what I'm trying to do with this channel is to do more detail, more nuance, be the one place in the entire world that answers more questions about communication, personal communication, professional communication, than any place in the world. Is there going to be overlap from time to time? Yeah, there's no way around that. But I'm trying to go deep and I'm not afraid to go really, really narrow, narrow niches as it relates to communication skills, because I'm not trying to be every aspect of personal development or every aspect of how to be successful in life or how to be rich in life. Certainly I talk on those things. And the name of the channel, TJ Walker. Success is about being successful, but it's how to be successful in a specific way through more effective communication and by being more confident when you communicate. It's not about how to be more successful by trading crypto more profitably, which is. Don't even get me started on that topic. Not a big fan of that particular investment strategy. Luke says, as a media coach, how do you handle when clients want you to tell them what day word for word in the interview answers? I think I remember you saying that we should never do that in training sessions. Now, are you. Are you saying word for word the interview answers? Are the interview questions, Luke? Because I do know that a lot of executives all over the world badger their PR people and, and their communications people and the people who've got them booked on talk shows and interviews with publications. They say, get me the questions in advance. And major media organizations like the New York Times, the reporters are prohibited from giving questions in advance. It's actually in their contract. It's an ethics violation. They can be fired from their job. So if you are asking a reporter to give you the questions in advance, you're essentially asking the reporter, hey, you don't know me, but I want you to do something so unethical that it could cost you your job, your livelihood. You could lose your house. Now, how do you like me? Well, that's a pretty tall order. And I don't know how any sane person could go into a conversation with a question like that. Luke says, when clients want you to tell them what to say in an interview answer. So look, what I try to do, my approach, and I think you've taken some of my media training courses, what I believe is you look at an interview, you try to figure out what's the topic of the interview. A reporter calls, they don't typically say, I just want to talk to so and so. It's I want to talk to so and so about their third quarter earnings or their new invention or their latest book or anal. In your case, my case, it may be the Prime Minister in the such and such country just gave a press release or just gave a press conference and they stormed out of the press conference when they got angry. I want your reaction to that. You'd be told a topic. What I then think is important to do is to brainstorm on messages that you want to communicate in that interview. Think of every possible message you could say and then ask yourself, is it important to me? Does it help me? Is it interesting to the reporter? Is it interesting to the audience of that media outlet? Ideally, you come up with messages that are in the middle of that Venn diagram where it's important to you, interesting to the reporter, interesting, useful to the audience of that media outlet. Now you brainstorm and all the messages that are in that sweet spot of the Venn diagram, you may have 40, 50, 100, I don't care. And you get to narrow it down to three. And now I need you to turn each one of these messages into a single sentence. One subject, one verb, one object. Something you can say in 10 seconds or less. Something that's about 10 words or less if it has a comma, a therefore, or a but. It's no longer one message, it's two messages. So I urge people to really narrow things down to three messages to then come up with interesting sound bites. For each one of these messages, there's 10 different elements that turn any message into a sound bite or could almost any quotes you see in any newspaper, radio, tv, at the beginning of a podcast, when they pull sound bites out, they come from one of 10 speech patterns. That's what you need to prepare. I want to focus on that because that's something you can keep in your mind. The whole problem, Luke, with wanting to know how to answer every specific question that comes up in an interview, is there an infinite number of questions? You can't read the mind of a reporter and know every single question. I also think it's frankly a waste of time. Questions are what the reporter controls. I can't control the reporter. I want you to focus on what you can control or your client can control what comes out of their own mouth. If you focus on that, that's all you need to do. That's what gives you the power. Most people go into an interview they haven't truly thought of what is Most important to them. And they're completely reactive in the media interview. So if I go into an interview and the reporter has all the power and I plan nothing and they just say, well, T.J. what's the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to you? And I'm like, well, I was on stage and I fell off and I toppled down and everybody laughed, if that's what I say. And they quote me on that, I can't complain because I said it. It's sort of interesting because it's action oriented, it's emotional, it's absolute. It evokes images from pop culture of a clown falling down. So it's eminently quotable. But is that really the message I want to stress if someone's doing a profile? No. So the problem is not that I didn't have an answer plan for that question. The problem is was that I didn't have specific messages prepared in advance. Now if you're interested in this, I know Luke, you've gone through the course. I do have a master communicator course on media training. So if you go to my website, mediatrainingworldwide.com and there's a link to it in the about section of this YouTube channel or any social media platform you're on, you can see this complete media training course. And it's details how to create sound bites and it goes into vast detail on how to answer questions strategically. So that course is available. It's also available on the Udemy platform. If you have got more time than budget these days, you can get the course absolutely for free if you want to become a part of my ambassador program. And the details of that are in the about section right here on the YouTube channel. So you can check that out. We really do have someone something for everyone. Every sort of budget. Everyone either has some version of time, some amount of money to invest, from zero to infinite. So we try to be accommodating. Okay, so Luke says thanks for that. I was thinking along the lines, but sometimes it still comes up. I also provide clients with an ebook of 100 sound bites I've taken from watching the news and they love it. That sounds like a great idea if you want to share that book. What you could do, only if you want to. You could put it in the private chat and then I can post a link to it right here so people can see it. If you feel like doing that or if it, you know, if it's for sale, I'm more than happy to you for you to come on camera whether it's today or another day and promote it and talk about it and we'll put up the link. So this channel is a little bit different from the typical YouTube channel or Facebook group where people are like, no promotion, no self promotion. I actually want to empower people to be able to promote themselves more effectively, primarily by speaking about their creations, whether it's a product, whether it's a service, a campaign, an idea. I want to make you more comfortable promoting yourself. So I extend that invitation to you, Luke, if you want to at any point talk about that book, either to sell or to give away as a freebie. BL says I can now stand in front of a lot of people and talk to them because I now realize all of us are idiots. But I'm still anxious and intimidated to video live or live stream. As I. Why? I'm not quite sure the last part. Oh, as I don't know who is watching. You can't see the audience. It's true, VL but here's the thing about live video is many respects, it's actually much easier. Now, I have talked about this from time to time, but really experienced politicians in virtually any country these days, if they are involved in a scandal and they're trying to avoid the media and they finally decide that they want to talk to, the media will often give as a prerequisite a condition for the interview. They'll only do it if it's live. Why do they do that? Isn't live supposed to be scarier? Now, live is actually easier for the person being interviewed because you know if you say it, it will be seen by some people. You cannot have every part of your own positive message edited out. If it is an edited interview, you have less control. Now, I would argue if you're properly media trained, you've rehearsed and you've packaged your message points and sound bites, you still have tremendous ability to control what gets quoted in the final story. But if it's lie, you have even more control. So, VL I would highly recommend that you do it all. Also, remember you're doing something live. You kind of know the people who are there who have been invited. And this in some cases I can see. Well, Luke is here, BL is here, and several other colleagues have joined us. If it's recorded on demand, you put it out there. People may see it for years, which I think of as a good thing when you have good messages. But if you say something silly or stupid, that can be seen too. I did an interview once with a guy I was friendly with an associate with. And it was just an unmitigated disaster. I thought this interview couldn't go any worse. He took phone calls during the interview. He started talking to someone else who walked in the room. It pretty much violated every single thing you could think of. And I thought, well, how can I turn lemons into lemonade? I looked at the video and I said, you know what? Let's just make something out of this. So I uploaded it and changed the title to worst interview ever done. And it still gets used. I think it said certainly more than 15,000 views. But did it. Does it necessarily put me in the best light, too? I haven't looked at it in a long time. You can check it out. It is, I think, on this channel, but it may be someplace else on a different channel as well. But if you just search my name plus worst interview ever. You'll see this interview, and you'll see me. I mean, I look a little younger because it's about 15 years ago. But, you know, he starts laughing, I start laughing. The whole thing just sort of spiraled out of control. And people still see that again and again and again on a regular basis. So the reason I say that VL is it's an illusion of safety to think, well, it's not live. I have more control. No, if someone else is recording it or you're being interviewed by a TV outlet, the fact that it's not live doesn't give you more control, gives you less control. They could say, hey, hey, before we start, tell me, what's the most embarrassing thing that ever happened? If you say something, you might not even realize you're being recorded. Of course, assume you are. They could use that as the only thing. So live actually gives you more power. But the ultimate power is practicing in advance, deciding your messages in advance, practicing delivering your messages, practicing the sound bites you have and putting it out there. That's ultimately what gives you the most control, which therefore should give you the most confident. Rose says, hello. Luke says, I need to find that video. Rose says, I saw it. Okay, so I can't find it for you now because I'm here with you live. But maybe I will during a commercial break. But it's at least it was amusing to be there at the time. Other people might look at it and say, oh, my God. God, that's. That's horrible. Why would he show that? I do believe. Not that you want to put out anything at any time, no matter how awful it makes you look. But I do think we Live in a modern world where it's so hard to get attention that there's not any one power to make you from one video or break you. It's about the cumulative effect. I'm old enough to remember there was a time back in the 80s, early 90s, you go on a major TV show like the Oprah Winfrey show where 10, 15 million people are watching it. One appearance, five, 10 minutes, makes a whole career, makes a whole business. Your book can become a bestseller, your business can explode in a positive way. Those days are gone. The power of the media today is by hitting people in a lot of different forms with tremendous regularity across a lot of different platforms. That's the power. So I personally am not worried about any one video clip that is less than perfect. Does that mean you should never care about quality? No, that's not what I'm saying. Rose, if you want to join us on camera today, more than happy to hear your opinions. If you have any questions about any aspect of communication skills, please post them here and I'd be happy to answer them. And we may even turn it into a short form or long form video that is put out in social media later, edited, refined to try to reach an even larger audience. Luke says is a media trainer that can help you relate to you. When you see an interview that doesn't go according to plan shows you're human like the rest of them. That is, I guess, part of my thought of why I would put out a video like that. Now I was there not conducting a media training, but I was interviewing him. I think it was a different venture I had at the time, like the pitching channel where it was all related to communication skills. But I was, he was an investor so I was interviewing him about what he likes to hear when in, when entrepreneurs, when startup founders are pitching him for investment money. I believe that was the context for it. But Luke says absolutely right. It can help you relate. Don't be afraid to show something where you're less than perfect. And I think there's no better example of this than Gary Vaynerchuk. He is someone I mention from time to time, not because I think he has the one answer for everyone. He has one way that works for him. But when you see Gary Vaynerchuk, he's wildly successful. Every book he writes sort of instantly goes to the New York Times bestseller list. And he does have another one coming out next month which I believe I have already pre ordered. But he's not afraid to show up on camera rumpled the five day, stubble, baseball cap sort of scrunched over his head. Curse words are coming out of his mouth. He's not afraid to make a mistake or backtrack. He puts a lot out there and it connects with people, it resonates with people. And he has a huge, huge, huge fan base of people who will buy any book, show up at his seminars. If there is some conference where he's speaking, they will go in part just to see him. Which does remind me there's something called an Aspire Conference coming to Miami in just a couple of weeks. Weeks which is not far away from me. And Gary Vaynerchuk is one of the speakers. He is a draw to them because he's in social media every day, sometimes making mistakes, sometimes showing himself less than perfect. But it helps build a brand and a following. Rage King 3 says hi. So Rage, happy you're with us today and more than happy to share the screen with you if you want to push the button. If you look up earlier in the comments for streamyard, you'll see the link I've posted to join us on streamyard. If you want to come on camera and ask a question, share an insight, be a part of the conversation, or for that matter, share a little rage. Not against that either, as long as we can do it in a polite way. BL says in the olden days a career could be made in a five minute interview. Those days might be over, but today you can end a career with one 15 second clip. So VL I I've given a lot of thought to what you say because there's a tremendous amount of coverage these days about so called cancel culture. And I'm not suggesting that people can't see their careers go up in flames with saying something odd. But I also think in some ways we live in an era where there's more career protection than ever because it's easier for people to have their own independent careers and not be dependent on one TV network, one radio network, you can say something that offends someone. But if you have your own YouTube channel, your own Facebook channel, your own TikTok channel, and, and you're on all these platforms and your own newsletter list and you know, someone like Mr. Beast, I don't think he's worried about offending one advertiser because he has so much independent power. He's got Amazon giving him $100 million deals. So yes, you'll occasionally see Most recently a major Ivy League university president in the United States testified in front of Congress some of her Sound bites did not go over well and she was in fact fired not that long after. On the other hand, and I don't want to get political here, there is a major political figure in a major democracy, let's just say that, who has gone bankrupt, who has committed numerous frauds, numerous allegations of, credible allegations of felonies, more than 20 allegations of sexual assault in any other period until a few years ago, all of those things would have destroyed a career. Nowadays, because of his ability to communicate across all social media, he's doing better than ever. You can look at someone like Kanye. Again, I don't want to get political here, folks. We're really looking at this through a communications lens. But, but someone like a Kanye west, historically, if you start praising a, I don't even want to say the name, you start praising a World War II fascist leader who was responsible for 6 to 12 million deaths, mentioning that person in a positive light was a career ender. These days, the person I'm talking about, Kanye west, still is able to sell products, still able to get albums out, still able to make millions and millions of dollars. So you could argue that it's actually never been harder to cancel, to be canceled in the modern world. If you have independent power bases, independent media bases, yes. If you work for one single institution, if you're the president of an Ivy League institution, you can get canceled because of one sound bite. So there is some nuance there that I think often gets lost. A number of comments have come in and thanks so much for joining. If you're just joining us, hi, I'm T.J. walker. This is the T.J. walker Success Channel. This is a channel all about helping you become more successful by improving your communication skills and by boosting your confidence in your communication skills. That's what we're about. I come to you live, typically most days, Monday through Friday, 9am to noon. I take your questions. We have guests sometimes in the future we're going to be having a guest, I hope almost daily for long form interviews. I do demonstrations sometimes you'll see me make sections of courses here. I respond to your questions and sometimes I will then answer answer those questions in a way designed to be creating content for my editing team to make long form and short form videos for the future. So that's what we're about right here. Rage King says I'm trying to do a startup for four years. Well, Rage King, come on and tell us about it. One thing I can tell you with absolute certainty is the most successful startup founders are very aggressive about taking every opportunity they can to pitch their idea to the world. Because they never know where the next investor might come from, the next strategic partner, the next joint venture partner, the next acquirer, the next great hire for their company. So they're always evangelizing. So I want to give you an opportunity right now to pitch me and to pitch this community. Tell us about your startup. Why are you excited about it? One of the challenges for any startup founder is you got to convince people, not just investors, everyone else, as to why out of every single idea in the world of businesses, the billions of potential ideas, why is this one not just a good idea, but the absolute best idea in the entire world for you to be working on and for other people to focus attention on? That's a part of your challenge, and you're saying it's hard. Any advice on maintaining focus and being successful? So, Rage King, one of the things that Seth Godin has talked about is the dip. He wrote a book called the Dip. He's a marketing guru and an expert on publishing and a lot of other things, and writes a fantastic blog. But he writes about the dip. You know, any great entrepreneur often goes through a dip and the advice of just, you know, stay on, onward, onward, courage, never give. He says it's actually horrible advice. Sometimes you go into a dip, new data has come in, new information, and you realize this is no longer the single best opportunity for me in the entire world to work on right now. And you do give up and. And you go to something else or you pivot to something else. So I don't know enough about your business to know if that's the situation. I can tell you if you're in a startup for four years and you haven't launched a product, you haven't refined it, you're not gathering data from customers, you're not showing revenue growth. If you're stuck in the first stage of, I'm just trying to raise the first $10,000 so I can make a prototype that, to me, says there's a real problem. We do live in a modern world where most investors expect you to have not only a working prototype, but they want to see real customers. They want to see some revenue before they hop on. Everyone is looking for a way of mitigating risk, and I hate the word mitigate, but in that case, it is something people really use quite often. They want to reduce risk, they want to lessen risk. So that would be one challenge I have for you, is if an investor says, seems like a good idea, what have you done in the four years? You need to show all these benchmarks that you have accomplished, showing consistent progress. So, again, if you, if you want to come on and talk about that, I'm very happy to talk to you because I do work with a lot of entrepreneurs, startups, and I've been involved with a lot of them myself. Some successful, none that have gone IPO level, and plenty, and I mean plenty that have been wildly unsuccessful. So I think I can give you a fair perspective on any of that. If you're having trouble maintaining focus, oftentimes what that really means is you pick something you're not that interested in or you're, you're. You've picked a niche where you're consistently getting signals from the marketplace that you're not meeting a real need. Believe me, I've been there and I have friends right there now where they are consistently flogging away at a startup. And I asked them, I said, I'll change the name to Protect. I'll say, jim, have you ever talked to a real customer in the real world who said to you, I have this specific problem. I need a solution, and it fit exactly what your product is about? And his answer is no. His answer is, well, you know, Henry Ford didn't listen to people. They said they wanted a faster horse. He gave them something that, well, yes and no. People, you know, 120, 130 years ago did want to get from point A to point B. They thought the only way was a horse. But if you'd said, what if I could get you from one town to another town 20 miles away, and you didn't have to take a horse and you didn't have to feed the horse, and you didn't have to clean up after the horse, and you have to get oats for the horse and you'd have to put horseshoes on the horse, would you be interested? I'm pretty sure a lot of people 120 years ago would have said, sure, sign me up. And that, unfortunately, is the problem so many entrepreneurs have is they have an interesting idea that might be interesting or helpful to someone, but it's not a have to have. It's not solving an immediate problem in a way that has great clarity, but rage. If you want to come on and pitch, whether it's today or another day, I'll give you the forum right here. Now, we're not an official investment portal, so if anyone is watching from the American securities and Exchange Commission or any other regulatory bottle body, I do want to stress we are not here giving investment advice or officially soliciting investments. But if you're an entrepreneur and you're trying to hone and refine your pitch to prospective investors for the future, I'm more than happy to share the stage with you right now and to share my audience. Okay, other A few other comments have come in and in a moment we are going to take a break. Oh I see Rage did respond. Luke says. I think Boeing has also been an interesting case study for media interviews with their recent headlines. And Luke, I of course have seen a lot of news about Boeing, but I will confess I've not looked in depth and done an analysis of their quotes, their sound bites from their executives, or any on camera interviews. So I'd be fascinated by your perspective on that and what you see. I I do make a differentiation between headlines and quotes because headlines editors can decide, media organizations can decide, the executive can't decide that quite often you can influence it, but you can't decide it. What we do have control over and what media trainers like you, Luke, and like me can really help people with is figuring out in advance what quotes are going to get into the story. Because we plan them and prepare them and they come out of our mouths and our clients mouths during the interview. That is something that can in fact be controlled. But Luke, I'd be fascinated by your perspective on Boeing and what you think they've done well, but also where you think they need to improve. Oh by the way, I see Rage is joining us from Twitch. I will confess of all the platforms we're on, that's the one I know the least about and have spent the least amount of time. So very happy that you are joining us from Twitch. Always happy to have a new platform. So Rach says I'm in Australia, fantastic country. I once had the pleasure of training the Miss Australia who became Miss USA many many years ago in our country. Rach says I'm in Australia and our country thinks he mentions the name of a particular American politician that I don't want to mention because I don't want this channel to become a political channel channel. But he mentions that in Australia a lot of people think that a particular American politician is an idiot and we think he is ruining America's image again without getting political. I don't want to start Flame Wars Rage. I'm with you on that one. I'm absolutely with you on that one. But we're going to have to shelve that for another day because there's simply no way an American can talk about that without being overrun with screams, obscenities, death threats, et cetera. So I'm going to table that conversation about particular American politicians. Rage says, my startup, we make it easier to reduce costs when selling a property. Okay, so that is a very intriguing topic to a lot of people here in the United States. Recent litigation has completely changed the commission structure for real estate brokers in the United States. So people are always looking for ways of reducing costs, especially in countries where the average homeownership price is beyond the reach of most people in that country, which is certainly the case in the United States. Rach says, we have spent $200,000 on a software as a service product. I have five on my team and launch twice. We aim to take the city of Melbourne, then take Australia. We allow home sellers to connect directly to different agent databases, similar to the MLS system in America, but modernized. I'd like to pitch, but I can't for the moment now. Okay, so Rage, let's assume that I am an investor, and I'm assuming you're perhaps looking for another round of funding. I mean, $200,000 for a software as a service product with five staff in four years is a very small amount of money. So I have to assume you do need more money. So let me put on my hat as a potential investor, and I'm not an investor in things like this, but I do think I can give you the mindset of an investor. Anytime you're giving a speech, a presentation, you always have to think about what is the mindset of my audience. If you're being interviewed for a job, you got to put yourself in the shoes of what is this person interviewing me really looking for? What do they need to be here to hire me? If you're pitching a product, then you've got to really think about to an investor. You got to think about what are they looking for when they invest.

So.

One of the things an investor wants to know is, you've been at this for four years. Where are you getting now? Why hasn't this taken off? What is the stumbling block? Is there a legal problem? Is there there a regulatory problem? Is there simply a problem of marketing? If it is marketing, have you recruited a chief marketing officer? What is the main way of reaching people? These are all questions that I think an investor needs to hear. And there is a point for a startup where people want to know, if you've been around for a while, why haven't you progressed faster? Now people always hear about overnight startups. Then you know the person is 17 and by their 18th birthday they became a billionaire and went public. That's not how most businesses work. Most businesses, it's 10 years. Even the most wildly successful businesses, it's 10 years from the time of a concept until an acquisition or going public. So it's a long slobber. Four years is not that long in the scheme of things, but it is a long time if you haven't come up with specific accomplishments along the way. Now you put together a team of five. That sounds impressive. What's the next big goal you have? What's the next big metric you have to hold yourself accountable and say, we did that. That was a big accomplishment, that's taken us to the next level. So that is what I think the audience of investors want to hear. And they want to know, what are you gonna do with the money? If you've already spent $200,000 on Google Ads and you have 10 customers, you can't very well say, I want, Now I want $2 million for Google Ads, because then, well, that's only gonna generate, you know, a few dozen customers. So that's not going to work. So you need to really be able to give people a, a clear cut concept. Anyway, I'm happy to have you do this and pitch right here. Oh, Rach says yes. This was all bootstrapped by me. No investors yet. Okay. So on the one hand, investors love it when they see you've got skin in the game. You've got, you believe in this so much because $200,000 is a significant amount of money for all, almost anyone. So that, that does show you're seriously committed, but it also raises questions. Wow, you've been at this four years, you're putting your own money in. Is this just a hobby? Why haven't, if it's such a great idea and it helps everyone save money with real estate costs and there's millions and millions of sales of homes in Australia every year. What's kept you from going out and raising $5 million and really scaling this thing out? Do you have doubts? Are you afraid to ask for money? Is this just a hobby for you? These are all questions going on in the mind of a potential investor. Now, I may have jumped the gun. Maybe you're not seeking investment. Maybe what you're seeking is strategic partnerships with consumer groups that are trying to help people save money on their home. So I don't mean to be presumptuous. It may be that you've now developed your product to the point where you can Go out and get major strategic partnerships to take this thing into vast profitability. I don't know. So let's look. More comments have come in. Creative mind says, hi, T.J. how are you? Creative. It's great to see you. Thanks so much for joining us. It's Monday. We're taking comments from all over the world on anything related to communication, personal communication, professional communication. So any questions you have, any comments, any topics you'd like to put out there to discuss, we are here for you. VL says, man, if I had any spare cash, I'd be backing the truck up to load up on Boeing stock. Okay, so a little disclaimer. We, we are not giving any financial advice on this program and we don't give stock tips here. So you may hear something from time to time. Please talk to a financial advisor. I'm not giving any financial advice in the past. I do have my Series 7 and Series 63 licenses in the United States to be a certain type of financial advisor. I do not maintain those licenses. And I'm not here giving you any, any financial advice. So just want to make a little disclosure right there. Rage says I might look at investors when we get traction with customers. Next launch will be our third one and it will be a proper launch. Thanks for your advice. Well, Rachel, we wish you the best and again, come share it with us. Come talk to us about it. I do find that the most successful entrepreneurs really do see themselves as evangelists and they just take every single opportunity that they can to speak out, get people talking about it. It may be that the vast majority of our audience doesn't live in Melbourne. In fact, I know that to be true, but you never know. I mean, I do personally have a good friend right here in Delray Beach, Florida, who is from Australia, is very much into real estate investing and is an investor and goes back to Australia all the time. I don't have enough to talk to him about this now. And you just, you never know when you plant seeds where they could go. So that's my only point, is at some point come back and talk to us and talk to everyone about what you're doing. We're going to take a quick commercial break here right now. I'm going to show you some ads. Not that I want you to buy all these products, but these are ads that I've made that are a part of the Amazon Influencer program. And I'm doing these in part because I want you to think about how you can become an influencer too. Whether it's for Amazon, whether it's for Walmart. Target an influencer for yourself, for your own products, for your own services. We do live in a time when attention is valuable. It's been said we are in an attention economy and you can all of us these days that we have a video camera that is a cell phone. We do in fact have the ability to capture attention and share attention. So these are ads I've done. Most of these are in one take. Very little editing. And you can see Hydropeak thermos seems like a part of the. You can see in fact what they are now. I forgot if I hit the right button to share the audio, so, so I hope that I did. We're going to have this on for just a couple of minutes. I'll take a quick break and we will be. You know what, let me stop and make sure that I, I did in fact share it the correct way with audio. Okay. Yeah. It appears as though every day Hydropeak thermos seems like a part of the family. I use it every day. It tastes great. I love it because it 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. 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, 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. The Stanley stapler is powerful. I mean, don't point it at anyone when you use this. Whatever you're stapling is going to stick. Just make sure you don't get it stick to the table by accident. It's a powerful, powerful stapler. My family, we use it around our home. I use it in my office. It is effective. This Canon camcorder is still useful. I love being able to use this in a training. I can flip the viewfinder around. I love being able to attach it so easily. Light battery. It really is a very flexible camera that still has a lot of utility in the modern world. This Amazon Basics tripod is a very effective little tool. Now it comes up to about this high when it's fully extended. But it's light, it's simple, it's flexible. What I like about it is when it's fully compressed, it fits right into my computer bag so I don't have to have some big equipment, fancy equipment bag taking it. I put my video cameras and this and my laptop in one bag. I put it over my shoulder on the plane and it allows me to go anywhere in the world with tripod ready. This Sony condenser microphone is the one I've used for years and years for all of my YouTube videos. It gives clear, powerful audio. It is professional in every sense. Sony, of course, well known, well deserved reputation for electronic excellence. If you're looking to up your game, try the Sony condenser microphone today. Of course you want to look your best. I want to look my best. But you want to sound your best too. That's why I always put in a microphone into my my iPhone 15. This microphone works perfectly. It boosts my sound. I don't have to get right next to my cell phone. I can be further away and the audio still sounds great. You're going to want to use this microphone if you want to create professional looking and sounding videos. Have you ever looked inside your computer? Chances are it is filled with dust. Dirt. How you do, do you get it clean? I use the compucleaner too. This is a very, very powerful, powerful airflow. It gets rid of the dust, it gets rid of the dirt. It does not damage your computer. So if you want to really give your computer a nice spring cleaning, this is the tool for you. It's highly effective. I've had mine years. It continues. Apologies, I muted myself during the commercial break, so not a good idea to do. Hi, I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me. We are live. This is the time for you. If you have questions, questions about any aspect of personal communication, professional communication, communication in the workplace and civic life or with friends and family, this is the time to ask questions, share your insights, be a part of a community of like minded people who are trying to become more successful in life by building communication skills and building confidence in communication. Finishing our conversation with Rage. Oh, we have already covered that. Oh, Rach says I would love to pitch one day. How would I do that? Is there a site I'm on Twitch. It doesn't allow me to do that. So Rage what we've posted in the comments, if you're able to see the comments. Each day we have a different URL. We use the stream yard URL. Excuse me, the stream yard application that allows us to connect. I just posted it right there. It changes every single day. The easiest way to connect with us is to go to my YouTube channel. Typically in the Community tab, each day we post a new link to streamyard and that is the link you would use to connect with us that particular day. And I believe if you go to stream, if you go to YouTube right now and hit the Community tab, you will see in fact, this link plus it is in the comments section. I know it's on YouTube, but it should be visible on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter and the other social media platforms. I thought you could see it on Twitter, on Twitch, but perhaps you can't. So apologies if that is the case. Okay, I want to continue answering questions from ChatGPT that relate to communication skills. This next one is do you find it challenging to maintain eye contact with during conversations? Okay, let's do a short form on that. I'm going to switch to camera too. I'm going to hit record. Oh, I got to take off this comment here. We're going to hit hide. Okay, I'm going to hit record. Do you find it difficult to maintain eye contact when having conversations? Well, take some pressure off yourself. You don't have to stare right at someone the whole time. But when you're making an important point, look at them. It's okay to glance away occasionally when they're saying something important, look them in the eye. It's not a staring contest. But you do want connection. Okay. Simple short form video that I hope, I mean that will be edited by my team and turned into a short form video content. Now, coming up later on today, as we've been doing a lot recently, is I'll be going live on Amazon. That's right. You heard that, right? You're used to people talking about live on Facebook, live on YouTube, live on Twitter. Well, for some people and it's not that hard, you can go live on Amazon and actually sell products. So we'll be doing a segment where I will be talking about books I happen to like already recommend to people that I bought with my own money that I've read that I often talk about with people. And I will be talking about it on Amazon Live. And there will be links right there where you can buy it right there if you want to. I'm doing it not so much to try to make a fortune selling books, although I have nothing against making a fortune from things like that. I'm doing it in part to demonstrate to you one person's journey through becoming an influencer. Traditionally, anything I've done online, it has been to sell my own courses. My Own products, my services, my workshops, my keynote speeches, things like that. So I'm relatively new to this game of being an influencer. I'm not Kim Kardashian, I'm not Martha Stewart. But the interesting thing today is you don't have to be someone that famous. Anybody with a cell phone camera can be an influencer of sorts. If you can do a video giving people a sense of a product you like and why it might be a value to anyone else, there can be ways of monetizing that. Now, very quickly, I have to stress, this is not some get rich quick program. I've been in it a little over three months and it's a rare day that I don't make some money, but it's a rare day that I make more than enough money for a nice Starbucks treat. Let me, let me leave it at that. Amazon doesn't like people, their influencers telling people all the insider secrets and all the nitty gritty details. But I think I'm safe letting you know that you can make money. What I'm interested in, frankly, is signals from the marketplace, new opportunities for commerce and new opportunities for people like you and yes, me to connect with more people, to speak in front of more people, and to do it in a way where multiple parties can benefit, the platform can benefit, the customer who gets something they wanted and liked that benefits and the speaker, this case, me, and ideally, at some point you can benefit from getting an affiliate commission. It's not quite the same as getting hired by a major convention to just show up on stage, give a speech and get a hundred thousand dollar fee. Not going to kid you. It's not that simple and it's not that lucrative. But it's a way in, kind of a democratized way of getting into the influencer game. Whereas traditionally, you know, you look at someone like Kim Kardashian, Paris Hilton, for that matter, Martha Stewart, they had a huge leg up on most people. Not to take anything away from them, but Martha Stewart's husband was prominent in the publishing industry, helped her get her first book deal through connections. Kim Kardashian's father, already extremely famous from the O.J. trial, Paris Hilton, a part of the Hilton Hotel. Again, I don't mean to detract them or praise them. What I do want you to see is that the world has changed with respect to becoming an influencer. There's simply more opportunities now and entry points for you and for me. So that's what we'll be talking about in the final hour today. Probably in about an hour, 11:30am Eastern Time today, I'll be going live on Amazon, demonstrating products, making ads for Amazon product pages and showing you exactly how I do it. And I hope to motivate you to try to do something similar to demystify this process. Continuing to take your questions today about any aspect of communication skills, personal communication, presentation skills. We're also taking questions courtesy of artificial intelligence, ChatGPT. This next question have you ever noticed how your nerves affect your ability to communicate effectively? That is an interesting, slightly different nuance of a question about nervousness. When I asked Chat GPT to give me questions, I specifically said, can you give me questions that are not obvious, that go a little deeper, a little unusual? I had to think about how I would answer that. With a lot of these questions, it's very easy for me to talk for five minutes about it. In some cases, it's a much greater challenge to figure out how to talk about it in 22 seconds or less, which is what I'm trying to do with respect to YouTube Shorts, TikTok Shorts and others. Because when you go beyond that, at least in length, for me, the viewership goes way, way down. I see we have a number of new people have joined us in the last few minutes. If you are watching this, thank you so much for stopping by. I'm TJ Walker. If you have a question related to communication skills, please post it right here. If you don't have a question, at least just say hi and let us know where you are today. It's always fun to see that we have some people in this case today, Australia, quite often India, other parts of Southeast Asia, Africa, South America, Europe and the United States. So it's, it's always exciting. Haven't had anyone from Antarctica lately, although I have had students in my online courses on special scientific expeditions in Antarctica taking courses there. Speaking of science, of course, today is, is the big lunar eclipse day. Quick reminder, I'm not a scientist or a medical doctor. Don't look at it directly. You could cause serious damage to your eyes. I'm here in South Florida where the expectation is we would see 50% of the eclipse. So it's not the greatest place, but we are expected, I believe, to have a lot of sunshine and clarity today. So thanks so much for joining us. I see we have a number of people coming on live. Please let me know where you're from. Luke. Oh, Luke is in the United Kingdom and he's also saying he likes hearing where people are from. And, and Luke weren't you in Australia the last time we spoke, Ahmed says, I would like to join your online courses. Could you tell me how? Well, Ahmed, you're on Facebook. The easiest way is going to be a hop over to YouTube. You'll see the about section. You'll see links to my media training worldwide page which has all my courses, a couple of hundred courses. You can also find them on the Udemy platform. For that matter, if you just go to Google and type in TJ Walker public speaking course or communication skills course, that will take you right to it as well. So, Amit, where are you specifically trying to improve, Ahmed, what aspect of communication? Let me know and I'm happy to give you a more specific suggestion. Flora is joining us from Virginia, the great state of Virginia. I at one point about 30 years ago, lived in Falls Church, Virginia. Have a lot of positive memories from there. Luke says, I've never been to Australia. Hopefully it will one day. So forgive my, my bad memory there, Luke, but very happy that you're joining us from the United Kingdom. And it is interesting to me various stereotypes people have about different parts of the world that relates to communication. Because when I'm traditionally, when I was in India or places like India or Africa, people say, oh yeah, you Americans, you're naturally gifted at communication. I can't do as well because nobody in my country does well. I've heard that for years. People in America say, oh, we Americans, we're all public, bad public speakers. It's the British who are naturally articulate and they're all grow great. And people I do know in England and Great Britain and London typically think most people there are bad. My conclusion is most people everywhere are bad, boring speakers because people are not trained. There's no one culture where it's just ingrained that everyone's going to be a great speaker in any culture. There's some good speakers and they're mostly boring, uninteresting, unmemorable speakers. You can be a great speaker in any culture whatsoever. You could be a bad speaker in any culture whatsoever. So just a quick aside aside, Ahmed says, thanks a lot. I really want to improve my public speaking. So Ahmed, I've got several choices for you. People come to me all the time and they want to be a better speaker. And I'll just put all my cards on the table since you asked. I've got a solution for you. Everybody has two things to invest. You have your time and you have your money. Some people have a lot of time, no money. I've got a solution for you some people have a lot of money, no time, and I'm totally happy regardless of what way you want to go. So for example, if you said TJ, I've got no money right now, but I have time to become a better speaker, I would say join my ambassador program. And there's information about that. If you go to my YouTube page and go to the about us section, you'll see a page on how to become an ambassador for this program, in which case you could get access to that public speaking online course, a 30 hour course for free. In terms of money, you would invest some of your time in helping me out and being a part of community and leaving comments on views, helping to generate engagement and traffic. So that is once, that's one extreme where you pay nothing but you invest time. The other extreme is, and this happens with CEOs and presidents of countries I work with where their time is highly valuable. So they can't invest a lot of time, but they can invest money. You can hire me for a day, I'll fly to you, you fly to me, and that's typically going to be $10,000 or more. So that's the other extreme. And then I've got something in between every single level. We've got online coaching programs, we have group public workshops I do with my colleague Jess Toddfeld. We have online live seminars once a month webinar. We have more extensive online courses. We have group zoom trainings. We also have one on one zoom training. So there's something really for every budget, every time frame. So if you want to know more about that, please go to the media training worldwide website, mediatrainworldwide.com we'll be unveiling something new possibly as soon as tomorrow. As far as a new free masterclass, I'm very excited about about that is totally free to everyone without any time commitment on your part. And that'll be coming, if not tomorrow, it will be coming this week and that'll be appearing on the newly revamped tjwalker.com website. So thanks so much Ahmed for asking about that and we do have a solution for you because I love the fact that you're here today and so many others have and I certainly hope that I've given you tips, tricks to try here. But simply watching me or anyone online deliver videos is not going to make you a great speaker. In the same way watching videos of Michael Phelps swim not going to make you a better swimmer. At some point you got to get in the pool, swim, ideally get coaching, and that is what's going to help? Ahmed says thanks and I say thank you very much for stopping by. Okay, we're going to take more questions this time. Again, I always defer to you first. If you type in questions or if you show up on camera, all you have to do is hit the streamyard link. But we also take questions courtesy of Chat GPT and artificial intelligence. And the question I just read, I didn't answer yet. Have you ever noticed how your nerves affect your ability to communicate? I know what I'd say if I had five minutes on that. I'm not yet certain what I would say in less than 30 seconds to give maximum help to people. So I'm going to circle that and come back. Are you curious about the secrets behind charismatic speakers and their ability to captivate an audience? That is an intriguing question. I haven't heard it addressed quite that way. Again, I'm sharing these questions with you in real time. I. I've not seen these questions. I spit these out courtesy of Chat GPT. So I'm sharing these with you. This is Not a finished Mr. B style video designed to get billions of views. This is a. This is a workshop. I'm bringing you right into my studio, my workshop, letting you know how a communications consultant, how a content creator thinks, how we do first drafts of things, how we do rough drafts, how we make mistakes, how we process content and mold it in a way that it gets out. Now, we put out long form, three hour live shows here. I have 200 plus online courses that have some editing to them. Those are videos on demand and we do short form videos here every day. Typically two videos a day, less than 30 seconds and then long form videos. It could be from two minutes to an hour, but typically six, seven, eight, nine minutes long. So I put out a lot of content here. Do I have the absolute largest audience in the entire world? No. But it is growing and we're building a community here. Hundreds of thousands of you at some point come across our content every single month. And what I am trying to do, and I'm very sincere about this, is to be the best place in the entire world for people to come and get questions answered about how to be a better communicator and to be more responsive than anyone else. Luke adds a comment. I noticed that AI founders have an interesting position in media interviews at the moment. They all seem to follow a similar narrative about the risk of artificial intelligence. I've been wondering if AI startups could be an opportunity for media training clients and their founders. Okay. Well Luke, let me share with you my perspective. I have found that for a media training business, whether you're training someone to prepare for media interviews or speeches, most of the time startups are not great prospects, at least for me in the United States and I do work with clients all over the world and have trained in 45 nations. The trouble with startups is typically they're starving for money and if they just raised a big round of money, they're using it exclusively for hiring teams and for advertising and promotion. And even a well funded startup is a tiny, tiny business compared to a mid sized bank or a mid sized energy company. Just proportionally they're so much bigger. It's typically when organizations get bigger, they have an HR department, they have a training department, they have a head of training, they have a head of pr, they have a communications department and they have time and budgets for training. Most startups, even if they are well funded and certainly artificial intelligence startups, most of them, well the successful ones almost by definition are very well funded, but their money is going for processing power and storage and huge, huge computer databases. They're not typically spending their money on media training. Their executives should they, you know, we all have self interest, I would say of course they should. Do they? That's another thing. So Luke, if you can get money out of artificial intelligence startups for media training and public speaking training, bless you and good luck to you. I do wish you luck and I mean that sincerely. For me, I don't find them looking for it and that raises the biggest question that I do get regularly, not only about media training, but from anyone who has their own business. What is the best way of getting business? In the 2000 and twenties because there was a time when whoever was most ferocious cold calling all day long would get the most business. And then it was whoever was best at spending a lot of money doing slick direct mail campaigns would get business. I don't think either of those techniques work in the modern era. What works most effectively in the media training business, the presentation training business, I would argue any training business is not the outward bound marketing and the constant badgering people. And let me send 10,000 LinkedIn connections to people. Today, the number one way of connecting with client prospects and winning over prospects is to put great ideas out in social media. Now maybe in your. For you it's text post, maybe it's books, maybe it's long form audio podcasts with industry leaders. I do think a part of it for a lot of people should be video creating insights, information Tips, tricks, tools that don't demonstrate to people in your industry you can solve their problems. All they have to do is watch you and say, wow, that makes sense. I learned a lot there. This person knows stuff. Hey, I want to go deeper. Maybe I should call them. I think that is the number one way of getting business in the modern era. It's frankly, in some ways a lot easier than cold calling. Very few people have the intestinal fortitude to just call, call, call, call, and these days leave 10,000 voicemails a day because no one answers their phone. I know I don't. So I think it's a more effective way of using your time and resource and reaching more people in any given day. And believe me, I'm no viral sensation on YouTube or any of these platforms, but in any given day, thousands of my own prospects watch me give insights and deliver tips, tricks, tools on how to communicate more effectively. I am never going to need more than a teeny, teeny, tiny, less than 1% of them to reach out to me to buy a product or a service or hire me for a training or keynote speech to be as successful as I ever want to be or need to be. So I do think that is the more effective way rather than targeting specific industries. Are some people good at targeting industries and going to the trade associations and going to the cocktail parties and passing out? Yes, some people are still good at that. All I can tell you is it hasn't worked for me. Doesn't mean it couldn't work for you. So Luke, I wish you the best in going after AI funding. I would say of all, of all different sorts of startups, they're the ones who have the most money now. And any kind of consultant, any, whether you're a training consultant or HR consultant or a benefits consultant, you're always going to be better off targeting niches where they have plenty of money. That's why I see sometimes people targeting a new business. They're going after students. Well, most students don't have money for much of anything unless it's cheap beer or cheap pizza. And that's pretty much true around the world. Are there exceptions? Of course. But you're much better off targeting specific industries where they have clear cut need and they have a clear cut budget. What we don't know, Luke, in artificial intelligence industry, startup industry, is do they have the desire to spend money on that? Because what I look for in any prospect is not just do they have a need. Well, yeah, AI founders are in the media, everywhere they're asked to give speeches everywhere. They're on all the major broadcasts. So there's a need there. They have money, but do they feel like they have the need? Do they feel like they want to budget their time? I mean, someone like Elon Musk I don't think feels like he has a need for media training. I think he feels like he's a genius at it already, at capturing an attention and getting his message across. And a case can be made that he is extraordinarily successful at that. So that's a part of the challenge I think every person running their own business has to face of what is the best way for me to use my time, my energy, my resources, trying to talk to high quality prospects. Thanks so much for the commentary, Luke. I do appreciate it. So we're going to try to find another topic that I can do a short form video on before we switch over and do our segment on Amazon Influencer program later on in today's show. So I'm thinking about this last one I read out to you, but I did not create yet. Are you curious about the secrets behind the charismatic speakers and their ability to captivate audience? Let me, let me take a stab at that. Sometimes I'm going to do these and I don't know what I'm going to say when I start, but I just, I hear it. I kind of want to see what it is too. Sometimes I might do that. That was trite. That was garbage. Let's not use it. Other times I think, I think someone will find that useful. So I'm going to do a camera two. I'm going to hit record 4K. Ever wonder about the real secret behind charismatic speakers and why they're so effective? It's really this. They only talk about stuff they're really excited about. They focus on what's exciting to them that they think is going to be exciting to you. And then they share. They don't memorize, they don't go through bullet points. They share their excitement. Okay, I think there's a nugget there. That's one I may want to look at before pushing out or deciding to have the editing team see if they can refine. But I there are a million things you could say about charismatic speakers and what makes them special. I do think focusing on that emotional component is all great. Charismatic speakers focus on substance and emotion. It's never just substance, never just bullet points. They fuse it together. Whether that really came through in that 22nd, I'm not quite sure. And Luke says that's Helpful. I hadn't thought of it like that. Referring to our conversation about artificial intelligence and founders needing media training. But, Luke, feel free to share with me. Where are you finding. And I'm going to adjust my pad. I stand on. I stand on these thick rubber pads that people have in their homes when they're doing dishes and are in kitchens. And it just absorbs some of the shock, makes it easier on my feet. Standing. You could argue I could be sitting for this, but the reason I'm standing, especially when I'm using camera one, which we haven't done a lot of today, I do this so I can, in fact, demonstrate what people do when they're speaking and the things that make people nervous, like what do I do with my hands or how do I keep from pacing back and forth. I want to be able to demonstrate that. So that's why we have these different camera angles. But that's also why I'm standing, because I wanted to make this more applicable to you in every aspect of how you communicate. And what I have found from clients over the world, around the world, is people say, well, tj, I'm comfortable if I'm sitting down talking to three or four people. But the second I have to stand up and everyone can see me, well, that's when I tense up. That's when I get nervous. That's when I don't know what to do with my hands. So that's why we have these different camera angles. And I've taken the time and, you know, not a small expense building this studio. This is not a green screen behind me. You can see now I'm going to sound like I'm further away. This is not the giant studio. But you can see because of how small I am, that this, there is some depth here.

So.

So this is not the old plastic background I used to have of bricks. It's not just a TV screen behind me. We've taken the time to try to build a set. Is it the biggest, fanciest set in the world? No, but it is something that I use as my workshop here in creating content for you to help give you more tips, tricks, tools to be an effective communicator. And, you know, here's camera two that I use. And then here's camera three, which I've been at a lot today because this is the only one where I can see my computer screen and see your comments. If you have any questions about communication skills, you can feel free to post them right here. I'd be happy to take a Look at them, share them, try to answer them. Maybe someone else in our community can answer them as well. If you want to share the screen with me, we do open the floor to anyone who wants to be a part of it doesn't have to be TJ all the time. All you have to do is click the streamyard link and I will see you right on my screen. I hit an add button and we'll share the screen and you'll see me and see yourself. And people can hear you as well. So that is an option that you have at all times. Make sure I hit. You'll see me occasionally doing this, leaning what. What I'm doing. And Luke, you may be interested in this. I'm using a mixer so that out of these three cameras, I can see which one is on. So with one button, I can hit camera two. Camera one, back to camera three. I can also record certain elements on the highest possible video quality of 4K, which stands for 4,000 something or others per something or other. Otherwise, the Streamyard I'm using now is recording things in high definition, which is pretty good. But when we edit the videos for our long form and short form, we're using the highest quality because all things being equal, people all over the world are used to watching things in high quality. And if you're watching Netflix movies, you're seeing them quite often in 4k. So that's why we're doing it. Does it really make a difference? Could you make the case that, gosh, tj, we don't really need to see your wrinkles or spots on your face in 4K? You know, a reasonable case could be made for that, but that's what we're doing in the attempt to be as high quality as possible. Let's go to the next question. Do you ever wonder if your gestures and facial expressions align with what you're saying? Now, that is one where I've talked about it a lot lately. This question is phrased a little bit differently. I'm trying. I have to think for a minute to think. Is there a fresh way I can talk about that? Let me think about that. That does present an opportunity. Let's see. Let's see what I can do. So can. The question is, do you ever wonder if your gestures and facial expressions align with what you're saying? Do you ever wonder if your facial expressions and gestures align with what you're saying? Time out. That doesn't make any sense. Do you ever wonder if your facial expressions and your hand motions align with what you're saying, see the difference now the reason people get things out of alignment is they're trying to memorize what to say instead. You got to practice in advance and then just talk to people. Facial expressions. The movement will come back. Okay. I'm not really happy with that. I don't think it was tight enough. I, I mean, I think there was good information there. I'm not sure I was able to really do what I needed to do to make that effective as a YouTube TikTok short form media. We'll see. I may ask the editors to trim the end to see if we can clean it up. But I am going to note that I did, I did that. So I'm just, I'm going through a checklist saying that I've done it. Okay. Are you aware of the power dynamics that play in your interactions with others and how they impact your communication style? This, this is an interesting tweak on a question that does come up a lot in a lot of cultures. Because what I find is in many cultures people are so deferential to authority. When they are speaking to someone in authority, they come across so meek and they don't give eye contact and they're talking down, they're looking down. They're so afraid of making a mistake, they're reading. And meanwhile the person in authority is like, could someone just tell me what they're actually talking about and not bore me to death? So are you aware I'm trying to think about. So this is what I mean, it's a little different about this channel here is I'm showing you in real time the work production flow of someone who creates content in social media as it relates to communication skills. Because I want you to see it's not about just staying up late at night typing 3000 word scripts and editing and refining. There's nothing wrong with that approach. If you're making a movie, you're going to have to do that. This is a little bit different. This is not a movie. I'm trying to create short form, 30 seconds or less, long form, typically 8 minute videos giving you information and insights about how to communicate effectively. And I'm always trying to look for new topics and new ways of addressing old topics to resonate with you and to help you. So let's look at this again. Are you aware of the power dynamics at play in your interaction with others and how they impact your communication style? I'm going to do something on this, but it's. I'm going to rewrite that question. And try to make it more interesting to people. I get it. You want to be polite, deferential to the big boss, the authority figure. But is that ruining your communication? Too many people who are great talking to their own peers all of a sudden cower. They avert their eyes when talking to the boss and they start reading because they want to get everything just right. Well, guess what? You bored the boss. And that is the most difficult, disrespectful thing you can do. So a lot of time be totally candid with you. A lot of times I'll do a short form video and I, I'll. I'll think, I hope this doesn't sound arrogant. I'll think. I nailed it. That was great. That was full of insights. People are going to love that. That's going to get huge viewership. That last one I did, I have mixed feelings about. I don't know if I really got to the nub of what is most helpful to be or if I got to it in a way that's going to resonate with people. So I'm just not quite sure we're going to have to look at that one before we really put it out. Have you ever wished you could exude more confidence in social situations? Okay. Confidence is a topic that we discuss a great deal here on this channel. It's typically how to be more confident when you're giving a speech, a presentation, a media interview. But this question, courtesy of chat, GPT and artificial intelligence, is about social situations. And it's not one I do talk about as much. But as I try to grow this channel, expand what we do a little more broadly for all aspects of communication, including personal communication. It is a challenge to me. I've got to figure out how to be more effective at this. So let's take a stab at this. Luke, Ahmed, Flora, Rage Creative, Any of you with us? I would love for you to tell me. Don't tell me what you think I want to hear. I'm not looking for praise. I'm looking for honest feedback. Tell me if you think this short form video as I'm about to do works or not. If you have suggestions on how to improve it, you could just do a thumbs down as well. I don't know if the icon is. There's one for that, but you could do a thumbs up, obviously, but you could say not a and then thumbs up and I would get the. The lesson there too. I don't want just unmitigated praise. Frankly, it doesn't help me where you could help me A lot is helping me weed out ones that don't do well. Because in any given month I have a lot of videos go viral and get 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, sometimes 10,000 views. But I have even more that don't do well, that have 500 or fewer video views. So you would frankly help me if you could tell me which ones you don't like and why. So let me take a stab at this one right now. This topic again. Have you ever wished you could exude more confidence in social situations? So how can you exude more confidence in social situations walking into a party or event? Well, for starters, stand up straight, walk in with confidence. Have a little smile on your face. Don't quickly look to the ground. Look for someone you know, look for the bar to hold something. Be in no hurry at all. Look around, smile. Okay, so there's some good advice there. I do believe everything I just said. I'm not sure I met the threshold of I'm. Am I really delivering something new to people they haven't heard before or am I packaging it in a way that makes the idea come new? I'm not sure. I would give myself very mixed marks on that one. Again, I'd love to hear from you if you have an opinion, because I do. See, we have not millions of people watching, but we do have double digits of people watching. So I would very much appreciate your feedback. Please don't hold back because you're afraid of my feelings. I'd much rather hear one criticism from you now than go to the time in trouble of having a team edit that video. We put it out and it's a poorly performing video, so please feel free to share that. I'm going to adjust my microphone since I'm spending so much time on camera three today to have it pointed right at my mouth. If you hear a difference there, let me know. Obviously, if I get this close, I think you can hear a difference, but it's right out of camera range, so it's only. It's this far away from me. So I am interested in knowing if you heard any difference with that slight adjustment. Okay, so I did that one. Are you mindful of how your tone of voice can influence the perception of your message? An interesting question. I'm not quite sure. Again, those of you joining me now for the first time, I'm T.J. walker, communications expert. What I'm looking for questions where not only I can answer it and give insightful tips, but give people the most important thing in 30 seconds or less so that's a higher bar. Remco has joined us. Remco says, I believe it's hard to give this tip without doing it Overacted. You performed it well, but maybe a bit too much. Okay, Remco, I, I felt a little contrived now I obviously I'm, I'm not acting in a sense that someone gave me a script and I'm trying to be Hamlet or something like that. But yes, I did ham it up a little bit, there's no doubt about it. So that is a challenge. Remco. And Remco, your name is Remco Presentert. So I don't know if that means you're also involved in the presentation community, helping people improve their presentation skills, build presentation slides. Tell us a little more about what you do. I am intrigued and I very much appreciate your analysis there. Again, that's an example of thoughtful criticism that I listen to, I respect and I'm probably going to act upon. I think that's probably a video we won't want to do. So everyone's always afraid of criticism because we tend to remember the criticism. Those of you just joining us now, the beginning of the show I opened up with. Someone wrote on one of my YouTube videos over the weekend that I looked like a serial killer and that anyone who watches me is a stupid fool and that everyone needs to tell people not to follow this channel. That's criticism of a completely different nature. I put that into the category of criticism you just have to laugh at. But Remco's criticism is profoundly relevant, fair and believable. Incredible. And the tendency too often is to only remember the serial killer comments and forget about the that fact. Fact that people like Remco are actually being very helpful. Remco says, haha, yes, a presentation trainer from Holland. Well, good to hear from people in Holland, great part of the world. I've loved being over there and conducting trainings for the United Nations. In fact, Remco says I also teach young children in primary school. Ah, Remco, if you have time, I would absolutely love for you to hit the link. It's in the beginning of the comments to Streamyard. Come on and share the screen with me because I would love to know how you teach primary school kids if you teach them all on communication skills. Now you may be a reading teacher. I don't mean to presume, but one of my big frustrations in life is the fact that schools for the most part around the world do such a horrible job of teaching kids to communicate by speaking all the emphasis is on writing. And of course people need to know how to write. Not suggesting we don't teach kids how to write. What I do think is there needs to be a balance because most kids, when they grow up, unless they're professional journalists, are not going to make their living by how well they write. And yet so many of them, their living will be determined, their income will be determined on how well they speak. And yet most kids are either not taught how to communicate by speaking or are taught poorly. I know my own daughter, who's now 11 years old, at least had show and tell in pre K and kindergarten and this excited me. Obviously, the night before show and tell, I would get her and would get my cell phone or the iPad and we would rehearse on video. It was a great tradition. Helped her get more comfort, comfortable speaking, built her confidence because she was like, I was a very shy kid. I didn't like speaking. So I really like that. Pre K kindergarten, all of a sudden she got into first grade, now she's in fifth grade. And you know what the teachers say now? And I say, are you going to do show and tell this year? Oh, no. Some people could be uncomfortable. We don't want to make the kids or the parents uncomfortable. Guess what? The real world, there's going to be opportunities of being uncomfortable when your boss asks you to give a presentation, when your startup co founders ask you to present to investors or to go on Shark Tank, you're going to be uncomfortable. You're going to be even more uncomfortable if you never learned how to speak in real life or in the academic world growing up.

So. So.

I would love it, ideally, Remco, if you tell me you're helping people, helping kids speak more effectively by having them speak ideally every single day in class, but at least once a week where they know they're going to be video recorded and watch themselves and critique. Remco says that he or she or they will be appearing on camera with a moment. So thanks so much if you can do that. Luke says in the UK we have never had speaking skills taught in schools. I wish we could have had someone like TJ come to our school and teach speaking skills. Now, Luke, interestingly, about. Oh, now it's probably 15, 17 years ago, I was brought into something called, I believe it was Success Success Academy. It was a private online school, privately owned for public school systems in the United States. So it was a way for kids to sort of opt out of their local private school, do all of their learning online. And the CEO Happened to be someone I knew, I had trained personally, liked me, saw the importance of this. So she did build public speaking skills into the curriculum, and I created courses for that. As far as I know, it went extremely well. That founder, unfortunately, has passed away and the company has since been bought out by bigger players. I believe it was Pearson. I don't know if they're still using that course or not, but that's been sort of my main and really my only connection with public schools other than occasionally being asked to speak to a class for an hour. So it is a huge gap, which, frankly is opportunity for you and me, Luke, which is why I'm able to make a nice living as a presentation skills coach and as a media trainer, because it's not taught. If I were to try to do the very same thing, teaching people how to write effectively be a much harder career, because people are already taught every single day for years and years and years how to write effectively. So it's kind of this little void in people's education where it's extremely important and yet not taught at all. Even at most of the most expensive private schools in the world, even at the best Ivy League universities, even MBA schools don't really teach it. You might get a critique every now and then, but that's not how you learn the skill of how to communicate effectively when speaking. So again, Remco, I'm hoping you can see the link also if you're. If you just scroll up on the chats, you'll see the Streamyard link. Oh, there's Remco right here. Let's just say hello. Okay.

Hi, tj.

Hi, Remka. How are you today?

Doing fine, doing fine. End of the workday here in Holland.

Great. What's. What city are you in?

The Hague.

Okay. Yeah, Fantastic place, I guess. I was there maybe six years ago doing training with the United nations and had a lovely time there. Wonderful place.

Nice.

Do you train students how to speak or do you teach something else?

No, no, how to speak. And I give presentation skill classes and also drama class. And I do it with very young kids, the age between 8, 12 and of course also adults. But the way I do it with these youngsters is indeed try to add because I. Oh, yeah, I only come in once a month or once a year just for a workshop or one day of teaching. So I try to. To add some public speaking skills to their skill set, but also talk with the. The schools to try and add public speaking. How do you say it? Things to their normal classes. So that's the most important. I think they have to practice more and more and more.

That's fantastic. How do you. Maybe you're better at this than I am. How do you. You get people over this hump? There's two main humps. I see. Number one, I think it's a complete, utter waste of time to try to teach people public speaking in the modern world without recording them. And every teacher has a cell phone. They don't even have to budget anything extra with. How do you get people comfortable with the idea there's privacy issues with kids. I understand. How do you get over that technical hump of getting them to what, watch it? And then how do you deal with this? This opposition that I face, at least when I talk to teachers is, oh, you know, little Timmy might not be comfortable. We don't want to take him. We don't want to make little Timmy uncomfortable. Well, you know, little Timmy might not be comfortable taking a biology test, but he still has to take a biology test. So how do you deal with those two issues?

Well, it starts with the uncomfortable feeling. I just, you know, ask Timmy, don't do it through the teacher. Because Timmy, of course, when you have a nice conversation with him about why it's so important for him to learn those things and the way he can use it later on during college or work situations, most of the kids. Well, in my case, I've never had a kid who didn't want to come up and do something. I just really.

Right.

Yeah, yeah. It would just continue talking with them and, and giving them the advantages, showing them the advantages. But so most kids will come up and do their. Even if it's just a 30 second presentation, that doesn't matter. It's the fact that they feel. They start to feel comfortable. And the thing that's. And that's something that's true. The, the privacy at schools is. Yeah, that's. That's a very hard thing because with my adult trainings, I also always use cameras and I'll show them the people I train how they look so they. Yeah, they can have a feeling of what they are, how they look when they're performing or when they're presenting. But with children, it's a bit more difficult because of the privacy. And you have to have the parents to sign a form that you're allowed to do that. So what I do is I give the, the children, well, this piece. Presentations. They have to do a bit. And then I do one myself. And that's something I film. And I try to, of Course, always do some things bad so they can find out, okay, what could be better or what went well. So that's the thing I do, I feel myself.

That's great. And I think it's fantastic your school system makes your services available to people. That's wonderful. How many, I mean, do you have an hour with them? Do you have a whole day with them? Are you there with 40 kids for 8 hours? Are you there for 2 hours with 2 kids? Tell me the dynamics of how you.

Work with them at it all, what you mentioned. Now at the moment, this week I'll, I'm there with for eight hours a day with 30 kids doing a presentation and also working on a, well, this primary school musical they're in. But I also do one hour workshops where I really do it quick and give them one on one feedback on what they can improve and what went well, by the way. Because that's something very important with all kids and old people, by the way. Just letting them know what went well just because of the confidence.

And from my perspective, kids are really no different from adults. People say, well, how do you work with kids? And I say, well, I record them. I only talk about the good things they did. I reaffirm the strengths, I get them to tell me what they like. We do it again and try to do more of it. We don't talk about the negatives until several times. Which by the way, is exactly how I work with 70 year old CEOs. There's really no difference. People think that it's very different. But that is the problem I find with parents. What if a parent is trying to coach a child? The human baseline tendency is oh, I want to help my child. So they record the child and the first thing out of their mouth is stand up straight, you need better posture. Oh my God, you said don't say. And the kid is so freaked out they don't want to practice anymore and the parent thinks they're being helpful and actually they're being wildly destructive to the kid's confidence. And have you faced that at all?

Completely. And I always, when we're working on in Holland, every year a kid has to give one specific presentation about a subject or a country or a book. And I always say when I'm talking about that and I made this like this workbook in which they can work their way through a lot of steps in order to have a nice presentation in the end. One of the points is when you're, when you're practicing in front of your parents, tell them to only say the things that went well, let them film it and you're the one who can decide which points you want to improve. So that's something that I always say. And then again, and that's funny because of course being trying to be a good dad in this as well. I have two daughters and now they're 12 and 15 so they just go ahead and do their thing. But I remember when they were in primary school I also had to felt the kind of like the urge to say no, no, you have to do that better. But. And I was like, no, no, no, that's exactly what I don't want the page parents to do. So that's a different role. And I immediately found out, okay, that's something I also tend to do. But that's, yeah, that's I think the role of a parent, but so that's why I always say very strictly when you perform for your parents, you have to ask them only to tell you the good things.

We have another communications consultant joining us today, Mansoor as well as I believe Mansoor is based in Afghanistan. Afghanistan. Mansour, if you have a question for Remco, feel free to unmute yourself or if you want to go to the next topic, feel free to Mansource. So always happy to have you stop by. Appreciate your time. Remco, is there a particular magic moment you find with your students? For me, whether it's a student or a 70 year old CEO, the magic is always we video recorded them, we've critiqued, we've cataloged strengths, we've do it again, we do more strengths, we then maybe for the first time, we talk about a weakness, we do it again, try to reduce one weakness at a time, build strengths. Typically if I have a day to work with them, even if it's a group of say half a dozen, which I realize is smaller than most classrooms, but if we've got a whole day and a half dozen people, I can get each person on camera 10 times, ideally a dozen times. The magic moment is when they can point to a video of themselves and say, wow, if I can be half as good as that kid, I'll be the star of the next student assembly. And they're not talking about someone from a sitcom or a movie or me or anyone else, they're pointing to a video of themselves. They have a video where they really like, love every aspect of how they look, sound, move the substance, the style. And in my experience that really takes typically at least 10 times on camera, which can be done in a day when you do short little clips. My frustration has been the rare times I actually do encounter students, whether in elementary school or college, who get presentation skills training. They tell me they got on camera once in a semester or three times in an entire semester. In my experience, that can actually make people worse because all they're focused on is what they didn't like. So I'm wondering how you deal with this issue of just getting people on camera and up to the point where they're over the threshold, they're no longer fixating on stuff they don't like, and they now actually see themselves speaking in a way they're comfortable with.

Yeah, well, with. With the kids and filming them, that's a bit difficult. Of course, I haven't got that many examples and where I was able to do that, but with the. Well, the professionals, to the adults, I. What I do is indeed do it over and over again. And sometimes you have like half a day with. Well, quite recently I was with some people in politics who I trained, and we had. We had like four hours with three people. So that was. I was able to film them more and more. And that's when you see the progress. But what I do with the kids in. To try and somewhat make them feel more confident is to ask them when they did their presentation and go and ask them the. Let's say the subject is, I don't know, soccer. I'll try and ask them more and more what they really feel about and why they're happy when they have this happy feeling about the subject. And that's the moment, and that's my magical moment. I think that's the moment that you see it in their eyes. You see the twinkling in their eyes, the true happiness and the true reason why they wanted to talk about that. And that moment is always something people have to feel in order to have their confidence grow. I think there's got to be a.

Strong emotional connection with what someone's talking about when they're sharing it with people. Otherwise it can just come across as flat, boring, bland, uninteresting. Whether you're 6 years old or 60 years old. Exactly.

Yeah.

Well, Remco, we wish you continued luck. We should come over to the United States and convince school systems to use presentation skills trainers. Because to me, it's just so mystifying that, you know, you ask, you ask so many parents, you know, what would you like your son or daughter or child to do when they grow up? And it's quite off. Well, you know, be a CEO or Be a leader of the community or be, be a mayor or have their own company. Well, what do all those jobs require? The ability to speak confidently every day to a lot of different audiences. And yet that's not what people are taught in school at all. And it's. To me, it's, it's an absolute crying shame. It was just.

And how is that in, in America with. Because here in Holland we see it gets more and more attention in high school or college. How's that in America?

From what I hear all the time, I'm not working full time in any high school or college or part time for that matter. It's just ignored. It's as if it didn't exist. It's just something. Yeah, a kid may have a book report and stand up and they kind of like, you know, read through it or they'll use PowerPoint slides now or a magic screen. But for the most part, they're not given any feedback. They're not being recorded. They can't improve. And the analogy I always give, which is imagine trying to learn how to write English or Dutch or Flemish or anything, and all you could do is dictate your essay, but you could never see it on paper or a screen. So you have no idea if you're putting commas in the right way, you're using capital letters, spelling the right way. You're simply dictating in it and goes off to the teacher. And then they told you how you did, but they didn't give you anything. You could see on paper screen. How good a writer would you be if you'd never, if you never got feedback you could see. And the answer, of course is you've never learned how to write that way. Well, that's essentially where most people in the world, certainly most students in America are, is they're never given tangible feedback on what they're doing well as a communicator and where they need to improve because it's not video recorded. And people have this sense, you know, when I was a kid, video cameras were expensive and difficult and heavy. Nobody has that excuse anymore. Everyone is surrounded by video cameras all day long, even in elementary schools. My daughter's the only one, I think, who doesn't have a cell phone in her class, which we can talk about that in another time for a lot, for many reasons.

Yeah, well, you know, with. Because I also worked at, in high schools. And what I see there is that like, you know, the face they're in, the kids in high school is like very well, hormone based you know, they're, they're way too much thinking about, okay, what do other people think of me? So it's very difficult to reach them in at that age. So that's why I started to give workshops when they were younger and do it on a. Yeah, elementary schools.

Yeah. So I can certainly understand schools saying, okay, we don't want a teacher doing TikTok videos all day long of the students and posting that and then thousands of kids around the world commenting, saying, you're fat, ugly. I understand that. And they're definitely real issues, I think with adolescents having perceptions of, you know, their body and other things warped from social media and feeling like, well, I have to be perfectly thin and beautiful or everybody will hate me. So there's a whole science about that. Jonathan Haidt, well known psychologist in America, has a brand new book out. I think it's called the Anxiety Generation, which I'm about to read, which, which talks about, you know, the, if you can track the. When the smartphone came out and adolescents started using them, depression rates skyrocketed, suicide skyrocketed. So there are very real issues there. I get it. But to me that's completely unrelated to whether a teacher who already is given the task of getting a student to write an assignment, they're giving comments on this form of communication back. There shouldn't be any prohibition on the teacher recording that student giving them feedback, not posting it anywhere, not showing it to anyone else, not holding it up to mockery on YouTube, but just giving it for the student. To me that's almost criminal. That that's not done in schools around the world today because it would not lead to bullying if no one else can see it. But people need to see themselves, how they are in fact coming across. Hey Remke, I really much, really very much appreciate you stopping by today. Please come back and tell us more about what you're up to. And certainly if you have any books, classes, things you want to promote. We're all about encouraging people to promote more effectively, which is why we're going to go to our next segment here. We're going to be going live on Amazon. So anyone who wants to see it from a different format, you can go to Amazon.com shop tjwalkersuccess and you'll see me on Amazon. This is the same system that is used by really famous people like, like Martha Stewart and Paris Hilton and other influencers who've been at it for dozens or decades and decades. I'll be there and I will be specifically talking about Some books that I recommend to people, some of them related to communications and personal development. Although I will be recommending some, some fiction today too, which I don't typically do. So I'll be doing that in just a moment. So Remka, feel free to stay in. I have to take you off camera. We're going to go to commercial break for just a few seconds and then we'll be going live on Amazon in just, just a moment or two. Oh, Mansoor, I see you're there and I apologize. I thought you'd hopped off. Mansour, did you want to add anything today or did you just stop by to. To watch and listen?

Good morning pg. Good morning Remy Kuh. Hope everyone is good and fine. Honestly speaking, I learned lots of things about the family which Mr. Remote is talking about because you know, our culture is different from other countries. We are a Muslim country with lots of, you know, situations we suffer lots of, you know, war in Afghanistan. But we can manage, you know, our family based on our cultures. But the most important thing is that how you can manage your family so based on the environments, how you can manage your family from this communications, honestly speaking, I learned lots of thing how we can manage, you know, our family, how we can, you know, make good presentations, how we can, you know, this is, you know, all something new for me. Thank you so much from Mr. Yemeko. It was a very good presentation and.

Well Mansood, thanks so much for stopping by. Always good to hear from you and our best wishes to everyone in Afghanistan and Remco. Thank you. I'm going to take you off screen but you're more than welcome to stay and listen in here and if we have time, we'll come back with more questions after we do the an Amazon Live segment. We'll be, we'll be back in just a moment live after a few commercial messages which again are really demonstrations on how to do Amazon influencer videos.

Thank you.

You do a great job. This Logitech wireless mouse is extraordinarily reliable and durable. I've had it for about 10 years. It still works well. I've even broken the back off. No fault of the mouse. That's just me being clumsy. And it still works great. In this high tech world we live in, why would anyone want an old fashioned notepad? Because there's something about actually taking a pen or a pencil, writing it down on paper. It makes it more meaningful, more memorable. I love these notepads. They're simple, easy to carry and they require no batteries. The SanDisk 2 terabyte hard drive is flexible. It's very light, as you can see, and it stores a mountain of information. These straps are why I can play pickleball in the hot Florida sun and not worry about my glasses falling off. Hi, I'm TJ with the TJ Walker Success Channel, and I love exercise and I love being active. But it's tough if you wear glasses and you're in the hot Florida sun. That's why I always use these straps because they just fits right on each side of your glass. It slips on. Then I can tighten this so that it's right up against the back of my head. So if I'm shaking things, I'm on the pickleball court, I'm running around, My glasses are not bouncing around. I don't have to worry about them falling off because this has happened to me before. I've been playing pickleball. Ball comes at me, I jump out of the way. My glasses have fallen down and been badly scratched. I don't have to worry about that anymore. I don't have to worry about running and almost diving and the glasses just flying off. With these straps, I feel secure that my glasses are right where I want them to be and I can focus on what I'm really after, which is the exercise, the sport, and having a good time. This 3M transport cape really does the job. I can put it on my skin, even sensitive areas around here, and it stays stuck as long as I want it, but I can peel it off. It doesn't tear my skin the way other medical tapes have done in the past. So it's just the right amount of stickiness. I use it every single day, regardless of how often you need to use medical tape. This is a very high quality product. This Talani Kids backpack is versatile. It works well taking any book. Okay, we are now back live. My colleague Ben, who is our chief operating officer, executive producer of our show here, is with us as well. And Ben, we're going to do in just a moment is go live on Amazon. Is everything ready?

Yes, everything is ready. I just need a product to be able to put it.

I need to get my remote control ready for when we do the segment on where I'm actually making the videos. So let me make sure I've got that going. Yeah, I saw a blue flash, which means that's great. All right, so you'll give me the countdown again. For those of you joining us, this is. Now we're getting a bit meta here. Now we're doing a show within A show within a show. We do a live show right here on YouTube every day, 9am to noon most weekdays where we're broadcasting through Streamyard on about eight different platforms. YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, X Twitch, Instagram and all sorts of others. A special segment which we're going to do right now that is also on Amazon Live. You may want to switch over there because I'll be referencing things in the carousel. You will not see it here, but when I hold up the book. Oh, Ben, I forgot to give you.

Yes, I was about asking for the, for the photos.

So let me just do this right now. We're going to be reviewing Willpower and I realize I'm asking you to do a lot here by Roy Beaumeister. If you can get these ready and I'll give you a minute, we won't just hop in. Willpower by Roy Beaumeister. And for those of you watching for the first time, these are all books that I bought with my own money. I've read, I've heavily marked the pages and underlined and find useful. So that's the first book we'll be talking about. One is Elastic Habits by Stephen Guise. G U I S E We reviewed another one of his books. He's written three books on habits that are. He's written half a dozen books, but three specifically on habits that I find very useful. And Ben, let me know if I'm going too quickly. Here's the outlier of the group. It's John Hodgman's Vacation Land, which is. There's stories. Some of them are fictionalized, some of them are just sort of almost like memoirs. But he's a humorist and many of you may remember him from the Daily show and being on the old ads as the nerdy PC guy for the Apple ads. So this is Vacation Land. It's not the typical sort of how to non fiction. You associate me with this.

Sorry, I didn't get the last product.

Vacation Land.

The Elastic Habits.

Oh, Elastic Habits. Stephen guys. Elastic Habits. Stephen guys. For those of you just joining us, what Ben is doing is he is tagging these products so that when I'm on Amazon live and I'm talking about the book and showing it and giving, trying to demonstrate my presentation skills, he will push a button and Amazon will bring this up below the image of me so that anyone who wants to buy the book with one click will be right on the product page and can buy the book. Amazon obviously very skilled in the arts of making the sale and extracting money out of people. And I buy stuff from them almost every day. They want to reduce friction. So it's not saying, hey, finish watching this video, click here, go to a whole nother website, scroll through this, go into a shopping cart, type your name and your credit card. No, it's one click and boom, you bought it. That's the beauty of this. Amazon Live. And so in that sense, it's kind of like home shopping network, qvc and really trying to facilitate E commerce. Okay, so this next book was essentialism by Greg McCowan. And this, I mean, what we typically do here on this show is I actually do the work right in front of you so you can see it. What we have done in the past to save a little time is I have sent to Ben the names of the products I'm doing. But you know what? It occurs to me I might as well show you what we're doing so you can see the workflow. Because it's not that time consuming, it's not that that difficult, but there are a number of steps involved. Okay. Oh, now, did I give you this? Vacation Land, John Hodgman.

No, I've not gotten that.

Okay, Vacation Land. One word. It's the name of the book. I don't know what you call this because it's not fiction in the sense of a novel. It's more just amusing stories. But it's not the typical nonfiction. There's no great moral. I mean, there's no great how to information. There. You got that one?

Yes, I got it.

Okay. And then the Art of Impossible by Steven Kotler. K O T L E R. Steven Kotler, definitely a fantastic author, one of my famous authors, and he has really taken this concept of flow and done amazing things with it. And absolutely no doubt about it, he's written 12 books in 40 languages and has a fantastic science podcast as well. So these are the books. I'm going to try to do it in the order I gave it to you. More or less time, make it easy. Okay, so we'll do this. We. We're probably not going to have time to take questions at the end of the show. I do want to thank Luke and Remco and so many of you stopping by today. It's been a lot of fun. A fantastic way to start the week. Okay, Ben, we're keeping you on with the audio, but then you'll just do a countdown and let me know when we're on.

Okay? 3, 2, 1.

Hi, I'm TJ Walker, and this is the TJ Walker Success Channel right here. On Amazon Live. It's great to be a part of Amazon Live. We've got a number of fantastic books to talk about today. Review show you I'm going to share with you books that I've actually read, I've actually bought with my own money. And I typically have page after page, starred, underlined. These are books I've told my friends about that I thought would be of value to them. Sometimes I've given them to people and I want to share them with you. If you see anything useful to you, all you have to do is click in the carousel below and you can go right to the product page. Read more information, more reviews about these products, in this case books Today. And you can go ahead and purchase the book if you like. First book I would like to spotlight is called Willpower by Roy Baumeister. He is considered one of the true internationally renowned experts on willpower. There's so much about the concept of willpower that gets talked about in popular culture and it turns out there's simply no scientific evidence supporting it. So he really talks about so many assumptions we have that are out of date. When I look at this book, I see so many pages that I've turned down. Now this is because it's a book I bought, it's not a library book. I see page after page I've turned down and underlined because I thought that is an insight that is incredibly helpful to me. Useful to me. Something action oriented. If you're like me, I'm sure you've thought, well, if only I had willpower, I'd lose that final 10 pounds. If I just have to find this elusive willpower and then everything will be all right. It's not that simple. So if you're trying to get a much deeper understanding of human nature, things like willpower, self discipline, habits, I highly recommend his work. He's a hugely respected academic authority, but he's one of the rare academics who can really write in a way that resonates with the masses. This is a New York Times best selling book rediscovering the greatest human strength, willpower. So check out this book. I know it was meaningful to me and quite helpful. Okay, the next book I'd like to spotlight is Elastic Habits. Now this one is completely different. Background Stephen Guys is sort of a guy who just did this on his own. No particular academic credentials. He's just someone who has spent a tremendous amount of time thinking about habits, blogging about habits, reflecting on habits, and he's put together three books just on habits. And I've read all of them. I've recommended some of the others to you. But he comes up with what I like about him is he's imminently practical. He gives you just so many tips after tips. Again, I look, I judge a book by how many times do I have pages folded down? And you can see numerous of numerous. How many times did I underline something? Here's just a random sample. The first pillar elastic habits are to be done every day. This is hard and unyielding key. This is a hard and unyielding key to success with this system. However, when you do them each day, it's flexible, but they must be done in most systems every day. Sounds intimidating, but it's not so intimidating once you complete the mini level in less than a minute. And he famously, in one of his other books did this notion of just start with one pushup. And I have to tell you, I tried that. I had not done push ups in a while. But in part because of this book and others of his, I started the habit and now it's been five, five years. I do 20 pushups every single day because it's something I can do less than a minute. Maybe it's right at a minute, but it's a simple habit. And I was able to expand from 1 to 5, 10, 15 to 20 because it started off simple but became elastic. So if you're looking to build better habits, I, I do recommend all of Stephen Guy's books. It's not the typical academic book, but he writes with such a simplicity that really creates great clarity. And Ben is, by the way, Ben, if we also, we need to monitor the chat. If anyone is watching on Amazon, I need you to alert me right away because I'm not looking at my phone right now. So Ben, I'm assuming you'll alert me if we, if we have any chat comments coming in, any questions about the books, I'll do the best I can. Again, I should stress I'm not the author of these books. I'm not an official representative of the publishing house, and I'm not an official representative of Amazon. I am simply an Amazon influencer, which means I get affiliate commissions when people buy products after having a watched a video of me talking about it. It's really that simple. The next book is called essentialism by Greg McCowan. And this was a New York Times bestseller. Not recommending it just because it was a New York Times bestseller, but because I do think in this modern world of, well, I could be on Facebook and YouTube and do live channels and blog and I should self publish a book. It's so easy to see spin your wheels and end up accomplishing absolutely nothing. And what this author does so well is give you meaningful ways of eliminating clutter, narrowing things down to what is absolutely most essential for you. And he talks specifically about decision fatigue. We live in a world where if you got to decide on 189 different short form videos you're going to do on 50 platforms by tomorrow. Just thinking about it causes decision fatigue. He talks about that in great detail. Again, I judge a book by how many times have I folded a page down and underlined or circled something? Numerous ones. Here he describes this is one of his ways of looking at things Non Essentialist Someone who says I have to do this. I have to go jogging today for two hours even though I hate jogging, forgets the right to choose. An essentialist says I choose to do this and exercises the power of choice. So tons and tons of nuggets here that I personally found helpful, giving greater clarity to what is most important, what's most essential in organizing a life in the modern world. So highly recommend that this next book is a little bit different from what I typically talk about on the TJ Walker Success Channel where we do try to really focus on helping people become more successful. This is not a book that's going to instantly make you funnier or more successful. It's just something for fun. It's called Vacation Land and it's by a guy I really like. He's a great author. He is a frequent columnist in the New York Times. Most people know him because he starred in a series of commercials for Apple Computer many, many years ago where he personified the nerdy geeky PC user. He was the PC in these series of ads. He was also a comic figure on the Daily show, which is seen worldwide and is on the Comedy Central channel in the United States. A show that was nice enough to feature me a couple of times. I did not get to meet John Hodgman, but this is all about the silly funny things that happened to him on vacations with his wife. So it's not a how to book, but just a lot of a lot of good fun. Now this is one of the rare books I will show you where I don't underline and fold down pages. It's really something just to enjoy, have some laughs. And we all need time to decompress, relax and enjoy a laugh or two. So this is one I did enjoy. Now it's not quite a novel, but it's not what you think of as the typical nonfiction book. The final book I would like to recommend to you today and the rest of the Amazon community while we're here on Amazon Live is the Art of Impossible by Steven Kotler. This is a fabulously prolific author. He's written more than a dozen books, has a best selling or wildly popular podcast. He has really taken the ball and run with this concept of flow as first really talked about by the famous Austrian, excuse me, the famous Hungarian psychologist, who has a wildly difficult to pronounce name. And I won't attempt to butcher it now, but Steven Kotler and his crews at his institute have really gone very deep in this idea of helping people in peak performance by focusing on things they really enjoy, where they're in a state of flow or time just passes. And I have to tell you, he's one of the motivations, one of the inspirations for me even doing what I'm doing right now here on Amazon Live and on doing things for YouTube and other social media. Because when I'm here broadcasting live, whether it's a half an hour on Amazon or three hours a day on YouTube and social media, I'm having so much fun. I actually feel like I am in the flow. So this is why I, I like this. Now I do see some comments on Amazon coming in. Luke writes thanks for the recommendation on Willpower. He finds that topic fascinating. So, Luke, if you haven't read the book on Willpower, Roy Beaumeister's book, I do recommend it. It should be an essential part of anyone's library who has a library on personal development and willpower certainly being a keystone element to that. Final words on the Steven Cutler book, I do think that you'll enjoy it again. I can just look at any page I've turned down and come to a particular part and find something that I hadn't really thought of before. And it just delivers it in a slightly different way with insight and. And let me just randomly pull up a page. Books are the most radically condensed form of knowledge on the planet. Every hour you spend with Rise is actually about three years of my life. So he's talking about why he personally finds it's so important to read books. And I think it's just a great way of thinking about reading. Just seeing that sentence helped reaffirm my own belief of the importance of reading every single day. Because if you watch someone's video for a minute, maybe they spend a minute creating it. You read someone's book Especially a book that is published by a major publisher is a New York Times bestseller. It's typically three years of someone's life. So it is a tremendous amount of condensed knowledge, which I think helps make people become better performers. When you're reading the most distilled essence of what is knowledge on a particular area, it's going to improve your own performance. Which is why this sounds a bit contradictory since I'm someone who for a living goes online making videos here on Amazon, YouTube and other social media platforms. It's why my preferred way of learning is through books, because it is the absolute most condensed version of knowledge. So those are the five products. Now, those of you joining me on Amazon Live, thank you so much for doing so. What I'm going to do now is sort of a slight repositioning and packaging. What I'm going to do is talk about these books again in a really short form way of doing it because I'm going to make videos for Amazon, not the live part where we are now, but for Amazon Inspire and the Amazon product page. So what I'm going to do now is I've set up my cell phone right here. I'm going to make short form videos where I talk about each one of these products. And I hope you don't mind my friends watching on Amazon Live because you'll get sort of a two for one special. I'm going to go back and reverse my way through these products again and friends joining us on our other channels will see me doing this and then we'll sign off to our friends from Amazon Live. But for everybody, everyone else staying with me on YouTube and other platforms, I'm going to actually talk more about how you can make videos like this for Amazon. Okay, so I'm going to be out of frame just slightly. You're going to see me talk to another camera. The Art of the possible. Oh, that's not that. I've got it. It was the mart of the impossible. So I'm going to hit delete on that and you see me in real time how I actually make videos here. And those of you joining me on Amazon Live again, any of the books I'm talking about, it's in the carousel right now. The Art of the Impossible by Steven Kotler. Kotler really knows his stuff more than anyone else in the modern world. He's taken the concept of flow and shown how it can be useful to peak performers like you and me. So what I'm trying to do, there are relatively short form videos, 15 seconds or less, which I hope is useful to you watching on Amazon live and maybe a reminder to check out another book. But it's also something that's the easiest format to then share other places on Amazon. So that's why I'm doing that. Do you ever feel like you're scattered in a million different directions and you're paralyzed by decision fatigue? Well, this book, essentialism by Greg McCowan will help give you greater focus. I'm trying to just get one nugget. Give people a little taste of something to give them an opportunity to click the page for the book to read more. I don't want you to buy the book just because I say it's a good book. I wouldn't mind you giving the book extra consideration, going to the book page, checking it out, reading other reviews, looking at the star reviews, reading the bad. Read it all. And if you think it's helpful to you, go ahead and buy the book. This book is the reason I do push ups every single day. I started with one, now I do 20 a day. It can help you build better habits in your own life to on a daily basis. Very simple. If you think John Hodgman is a funny man on tv, guess what? He's even funnier in print. I found myself laughing time and again reading Vacation Land. It's got the Hodgman wit coming through every single page. And then finally, willpower. We all. I made a little mistake there. I'm gonna hit delete on that one and I'm gonna go back to why. We all want more. More willpower. It is the cornerstone of better habits, a better life. Yet what is willpower? How do you really get it? Roy Beaumeister is a true legendary innovator when it comes to research on willpower. I urge you. Check out this book. That one was a little longer than I would have liked to be brutally honest. But we're going to go with it. I don't expect huge sales from my reviews Amazon reviews of books. I do it in part because I feel like it's helping people. I like these books. I like to help the authors. I like to build better relations with the authors in the publishing house. So thanks so much to all of our friends on Amazon Live. We're going to sign off now from Amazon Live. Hope to see you probably tomorrow on a regular basis here. Thanks a lot. Enjoy all your shopping. Okay Ben, can you let me know verbally that we have signed off from Amazon and I can't hear you and I'm not getting any indication can't hear you, Ben, your mic is off. So, Ben, I'm going to need you to unmute your mic or send me a text because I don't know if we're in fact off. Okay, so now I'll add you. Ben, I need some feedback.

Okay. Sorry, I was off for a minute.

So have we concluded our Amazon Live?

Okay, I'm going to hand it now.

Okay. All right, Amazon, folks. You weren't supposed to see that. Apologies, but thanks so much for spending time with us. Okay, so note to myself and Ben, we got to figure out a way. Either you got to teach me how to do this or we got to figure out a way of handing this off. So we have a little bit of smoother transition off of Amazon because we do want to respect Amazon's time. What Amazon does is they put this channel up or the video we do on demand. So this video lives on and on and on until at some point, if they delete my account or Amazon goes away, which I don't think is happening anytime soon. So that's one of the nice things about doing live is like a YouTube video or any other video, it can instantly be turned into a video on demand. So if someone goes to my Amazon influencer home page, my store on Amazon, they will see whatever my most recent recent live stream was pretty prominently featured. They can also push a button for live streams and then see every live stream I've ever done. Okay, so, Ben, we're a little bit over time now. I'm going to just quickly do what I always do, which is show people step by step exactly how I go from the concept, which we've already done, the scripting, which I've already done, the shooting the video, which I've already done, to now uploading it directly into Amazon. I'm turning off my microphone to conserve and Ben, so let me let you go. I know you've got other things to do. Thank you so much for all your work. And I'm not going to be taking questions now unless it's 100% related to the Amazon Influencer program. Program. Again, the reason I'm doing this is for so many years, I've had clients all over the world saying, tj, I love to speak. I love to make money. How can I speak more in front of people and make more money? It seems pretty hard to just get some big major convention to hire me to go to a big city and speak in front of 10,000 people and have them pay me a bunch of money. I've knocked on Doors for years, it hasn't happened. So I get it. That's kind of the beauty of this influencer program now is you don't have to deal with all these gatekeepers Once you're in Amazon, at least you can speak on any topic as long as it relates to a product that for sale in Amazon. And you speak, you post. And if someone watches it and then buys the product, you make some money. Not get rich quick. Not promising get rich quick might not even be get rich slow. But it is a way to speak. Get in front of people, make some money, build relationships, build positioning, get signals from the marketplace. That's what we're trying to do here. So first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to go to my cell phone, I'm going to type in Amazon, I'm going to go to my own page, I'm going to hit create content post photo library. I'm going to now upload the video that I just shot and I'm going to just go through step by step. Those of you who've seen this before, you kind of know the drill. What I'm attempting to do here is see simplify this process for you because there's so many web pages and blogs and people talking about Amazon Influencer and it either seems so simple that no reason not to do it or it seems so wildly complex you don't know where to start. I'm trying to really walk you through step by step so you can see what this is about, so you can do it yourself. So it's uploaded the video. I'm now going to your orders. Willpower by Roy pulls up the product. Ah, says no result. Occasionally I bought a book at Barnes and Noble or something and it's not in here. So I'm going to get a browse history. Willpower by Roy. And there is the book. Now the reason I didn't say his full name is because his name is not a common word in the English language and it would have butchered it and then it wouldn't have found it. So I knew if I just said by Roy it would find it done. Learn the real secrets behind Willpower, exclamation point. And I hit submit post. So that one has now been submitted to Amazon. Typically when within five hours it is approved, it goes live and then they may or may not put it on the product page. They may or may not put it on Amazon inspired. They may or may not put it on other product pages. No guarantees, you don't really know. But What I have found, if you consistently create a lot of Amazon influencer video product reviews, you'll get a lot of views and you will get some sales. You don't necessarily know which ones go where. Create content. Photo. Photo Library Post or I hit submit. Done. It's now uploading that book, by the way. While it's doing that, I'm seeing a. A video of what I did yesterday, which, since you're nice enough to be with us today, I want to do it. I'll do it after this one so I don't mess up the flow, but it'll give you a little sense of how I spend my weekends. Okay, so that one was vague. Let's see which one was. Yeah, Vacation Land. Okay, so. Vacation land by john. There's the book. Done. John Hodgman is hilarious. Exclamation point. Okay. Reason I stopped talking there is it misspelled his name because it's, you know, it's a. It's a name. It's not something that is a standard word in the English language. I didn't want to save on the title and misspelling that would make me look unprofessional. Plus, Amazon might not like it, but I didn't want to say that because I was in a dictation mode. I use dictation because I can dictate much faster and with fewer errors than I can type, especially on a phone. So I'm going to the next product. Oh, before I do that, it's just, just as a little aside and forgive me the indulgence, but I have been trying to give good value to you for three hours and 10 minutes. So I'll just show you what I was up to this weekend. Here I am, my head buried as a mermaid. My daughter did that. And we were at the beach yesterday doing snorkeling. It was a fantastic weekend. Here I am again as a. As a mermaid. And at one point, okay, there I am, completely buried in the sand. But fortunately, no one walked on me. So it was a fantastic weekend here in South Florida. Okay, back to the Amazon page. Post video photo library. Next book is Elastic Habits. I hit done. It's uploading the video. And let's see, we've. We've had a few more. Let's see. Comments coming in. Luke says, love seeing behind the scenes like this. Well, Luke, thanks so much. I do appreciate it, very much appreciate you spending so much time with me today. If you wouldn't mind, please leave some comments on my other On Demand videos. It would be extremely Helpful and like it and subscribe it. Share if you can. Thank you. So Elastic habits. There's the book Done title Improve your own daily habits instantly. Exclamation point Done. Submit. That one is done. Go to Storefront. Create content. Post video Post library. Go to the next book. Essentialism. I'm hitting Done. I'm waiting for this one to upload and I really do want to thank so many of you for staying with me today. It's really nice. Do come back tomorrow. Also later today I'll be posting another short form video. Another long or while we did this, a long form video was posted. Please try to look at the videos. Best thing of all, leave comments. It stimulates conversation, sends signals to the YouTube and other social media algorithms. Hey, people are watching this and commenting. It helps spread the word. So please do that and subscribe to whatever platform you're on right now. That's very helpful. Okay. Browse Essentialism by Greg not doing last names because I knew Greg would show up. McCowan is one of those that can be spelled many ways. Hitting add product. Done. This book will help you focus on what is most important. Done. Submit. Remco says very nice. Those short videos you try to focus on 10 to 20 seconds. Actually Remco, no, I'm trying to do 15 seconds or less. One of the ones I did today was over that. Normally I would redo it, but we're just out of time. What I have found, and I can't prove that those are the ones that make all the money. What I have found when I look at the data is almost all of my views are coming from videos that are 15 seconds or less. Because I used to do three videos on each product and some were 15 seconds or less. And then I would do horizontals 30 seconds to a minute and then a longer one, as much as I had to say, could be two, three minutes long. What I found is the longer videos just weren't getting any views. So that's why I'm doing it. Other Amazon influencers could tell you, oh no, they, they get all their sales and make a lot of money from long form videos. That works for them. So. So I'm not telling you as a blanket rule, this is the one way of doing it. I'm just telling you that's how I've been doing it. Go to store. Okay, so we finished that one and now we are at the last one. Art of Impossible Library Art of Impossible. It's uploading the video, Remco says and you choose not to show the product in the first second. So apologies Remco, because we're doing things a little differently. You didn't see it? I was playing to another. I had this as a camera over here. So I was actually showing the product the entire time for the video ad that people will see when they're on the Amazon page. It just was not, it was not visible to you for this angle again, we're trying. We're basically doing a show within a show within a show. So sometimes some of the details get a little bit off. The Art of Impossible by Stephen Add product. Done. Add title. Dictate. Make flow a part of your daily success. Exclamation point. Done. Submit. So that concludes our little segment today on Amazon Influencer. So what do we do? We went live on Amazon where anyone who goes on Amazon is not. They found it on the homepage. You have to get to a certain level of being an Amazon influencer before they make it easily accessible on Amazon.com, the homepage. But anyone who had a link to my page or follows me on Amazon would get a notification and they could in fact see it. So we did a live about 25 minutes or so on Amazon Live. That video is now available on demand. So if you want to go and see what it actually looks like, you can go to my about section on YouTube. You'll see a link to my Amazon storefront. It's all. It's a long URL, but it's simply Amazon.com shop TJ WalkerSuccess if you want to see it that way. And then we made five separate videos for products. Each one of them ideally will be seen on the product page. If people watch it, then buy the product, I get credit and get a tiny little commission. That's how it works. Remco says I also see your profile page on Amazon and your video thumbnails are cropped to one to one format and you don't always see the product. That's why I am okay, the way it's formatted I guess would crop it out. But typically if it's. If I'm speaking and maybe maybe they are editing a different way and I don't know. So maybe it shows up differently on different pages and different platforms. So I may have to experiment doing in different ways. Part of what I'm doing Remco is I'm trying to do these things as quickly as possible because there are people who are successful at this and they may storyboard it out and think about it and have pre production they may spend two days on a video and they may do three different versions and lots of edits and it could be very profitable for them. I don't know. I'm doing things one take, very, very simple. Because I'm still in a testing phase. I'm looking for signals in the marketplace because if I do an ad in 15 seconds and I take 10 seconds to up upload it and then I'm done. If I never make a penny out of it, I've lost 25 seconds. I'm willing to invest 25 seconds. And even if I don't make a money from Amazon, I've given content to you. And YouTube gives me tiny little slivers of revenue from ad revenue. So there's different ways of making value. If I start spending 5, 6 hours on a video and it doesn't make any money, or even if it makes, you know, 50 bucks, I consider that a huge risk and an unacceptable risk and a huge loss. So that's why I'm not doing it that way. Hey, we have gone over today. Thanks so much for spending time. It's been a really fun day. I'll be with you again live tomorrow, 9am Eastern Time in the United States until noon. Meanwhile, please watch our regular call posted videos, short form and long form. Thanks so much. See you tomorrow.