 Hello and welcome to the live streamer backstage podcast. I'm Alec Johnson and this is a weekly show where I interview fellow live streamers to understand how they are using live streaming as a tool in their business and to discover the gear and tech that they're using to produce great live shows. My guest today is James Hicks, an engineering technologist, creative entrepreneur, thought leader, content creator and advocate. I asked him on the show because I think there is a fascinating conversation to be had around the explosion of live streaming in recent years, largely driven by the technology in terms of the software, the hardware, the platforms that make it also accessible to the masses. This of course, coupled with the recent global pandemic that some of you may have been aware of. And this is all obviously forced businesses to move sometimes their entire operations online. And this is no doubt also driven at these technological advances. So I can think of no better person to have this conversation with than James, given his vast experience of working with and serving individuals and organizations, providing technology insights and consulting services through Hicks new media. James is extremely well connected and certainly has his finger on the pulse of what is going on in the tech space. I'm really looking forward to this conversation. So without further ado, let's welcome Mr. James Hicks. Hey, James, thank you for being here. How are you doing today? Mr. Mr. Hold on Mr. Alec Johnson, let's talk about intro. Who was man, I'm gonna record that myself and use that as a kind of a sizzle reel from me. Man, appreciate you for having me on your on your show live streamer backstage. This is an honor. Oh, thank you so much for for being here. Like I say, I can think of no better person to have this conversation with. We both like to to geek out about these things. I know. Yes, we do. Yes, we do. So yeah, I do want to get into the sort of the tech side of things and the platforms and the the gear and so on. But but first of all, perhaps you can tell us a little bit more about sort of your origin story really, you know, how did you get into the world of live streaming and what's brought you to this place? Wow. Okay, so I'm glad you boiled it down to live streaming as opposed to just technology. We could be here for hours talking about that. But I tell the story of if there was any blessing of the pandemic, for me, it was the fact that it allowed me to really pause and really to lock in to as my mantra for the year focus. It allowed me to focus on what mattered to the community I was looking to serve. I was doing a lot of blogging. I was in I was in the work. I've been in the WordPress for decades. So I know that platform quite but well, I love to write. That was serving me well. And I was serving my community. Well, I started dabbling in podcasting audio podcasting quite a while ago as well. Didn't see the attraction as fast as I wanted to to be honest with you because it was such a splintered field at a particular time when I when I got in. But again, the blessing of COVID allowing me to stop and pause and think and really focus and lock in video allowed me to tell the stories and have others tell their stories and have that extra energy piece. As you see, I talk with my hands. I'm very, very dramatic and very emotional things of that. And you can't see that show if it's just text, you can't see that you can hear the intonations and the voice of things of that nature from an audio side. But man, when you throw video on when you press record and when you turn lights on, and you put a microphone in front of someone, then you get the that full three dimensional aspect of a conversation and you can really pivot and dialogue off body language. Right, you can see if I'm really engaged in particular statements that we're talking about. So I really fell in love with that from the very beginning of always been pretty decent at allowing folks to tell their story. So coming on my shows and allowing them to talk about what matters to them. Always. I always love to hear people say they don't have anything interesting to talk about. Give me 15 minutes with you on on on a show, right? And I'm sure we'll find something interesting that you have to talk about. So so again, just really being able to lock in, do video, find the value and find the intention that folks are looking to share and have those conversations. That's really where I got into the video side a couple of years ago, again, when we were locked down, just because I saw that there was a need within my community to have more of those in depth types of conversation. So and you made a point there about the the podcast. And I've always felt that I mean, I'm a big listener of podcasts. But I know that from the creator side, you don't necessarily have that sort of connection. One of the things that I love just to sort of echo your point about live streaming is the fact that you're getting instant feedback on a live stream, you know, more so even the videos, you get comments and things like that on videos that trickle in over time. But when you're having a live stream, and you can actually just have that sort of that real in depth conversation with with people, it's a different level, really. Proudly love and you can you can't you can't you can't fake the the reactions, right? I mean, you can't put up a veil and say this is not the true you or the true me. You're looking into my eyes right now and you can tell that I'm completely 100% locked in and sincere about this conversation that we're having. And if I was just doing recording at audio podcast, I couldn't I could be laying in my bed or something. Yeah, yeah, only giving you 10% instead of this 100%. I'm trying to give you 100% today, Mr. Johnson, I'm trying to give it to you. I appreciate that. Perhaps you could just I know we've just sort focused on just the live streaming perhaps you could just give us a bit more about your your sort of general tech background as well though without. Yeah, I know this could be a whole another conversation. But yeah, no, it's all good. Started really mainly in enterprise technology, my professional career in the telecom industry. So GTE data systems have been started there really as my first job out of college. Initially, my focus was on management information systems programming. I was not a fan of COBOL. I was not a fan of MBS JCL. So I got out of that and then really started going into system administration system engineering and system architecture, right from designing systems and designing solutions. So I went I spent 20 years at HP. I spent 10 years at Apple and about five and a half years as far at Dell technology. So always within that Silicon Valley area with those larger organizations because those are really the ones I feel that have their their finger on the pulse of what's going on and it kind of resonates out to all the other ancillary organizations as well. So hardware providers, software providers, solutions, things of that nature. So I've kind of stayed within that realm being the HPs, the Apple's and the Dell's so I can have a pulse on what's going on at the macro level. So not just kind of a niche organization, but being able to do hardware, software, networking, data protection, things of that nature. So yeah, it's been a long journey how that's 20, 30 goodness gracious, 35 plus years. Yeah, something like that. Yeah, I've been in the enterprise technology field. Well, that's why you're the ideal person to be having this conversation with. Because I always do feel like whenever something comes up, it seems like you you either met somebody before or connected with somebody, you know, when different names are thrown out there that's got all the experience. The Rolodex is long and wide, for sure. Yeah, the Rolodex. And I probably dated myself using the term Rolodex, right? Youngsters don't know what in the world that is. A phone book, no. I just want to take a moment to talk about Ecamm Live. This is the live production Mac software that we're using to live stream and record this podcast. In my opinion, it is the best live streaming and recording software on the market to date. So what exactly does it do? Well, essentially, it allows you to control the content that you're including in your video, be it a live stream or a recorded video. And you do this by building out different scenes that contain the content that you want to show. This content may be a feed from your camera or indeed multiple cameras, or you may be sharing a screen, which is what I do a lot of in my tutorial style videos that I make for my Take One Tech YouTube channel. You can share the screen from a second computer or maybe even a gaming console if you are a live streaming gamer. And just as we are doing in this podcast, you can also bring in guests using e-cam lives built in interview mode where guests can join from a browser and you can then incorporate their video and audio into your production. Finally, you can add all kinds of additional graphical and animated overlay elements and even movies to really add a level of branded professionalism that would be hard to achieve in any other way. The real magic happens though, when you hit that record or go live button, because then you are able to seamlessly switch back and forth between all of the scenes that you've created. And indeed, this is how all of the videos have been created for my Take One Tech YouTube channel. And the reason it's called Take One Tech, by the way, is because all of the videos are made in One Tech with no edits. I just hit record, make the video, and as soon as I hit the end recording button, the file is there and ready to be uploaded straight to YouTube. What I love about e-cam is not just the ease of use that it has when compared to other live streaming software, but also the greater flexibility it gives in terms of layouts and designs that you can create for your shows when compared to some of the hardware streaming solutions. And one thing that makes e-cam great specifically for podcasts is the fact that it has the ability to record isolated audio tracks. So once we finish recording this podcast, I'll have a separate audio file for me, my guests, and any other audio tracks that have been a part of the recording. That makes the editing and repurposing of the content for the podcast so much more streamlined. It does have another little trick up its sleeve though, and that is its virtual camera feature. This allows you to take the video output from e-cam live straight into communication apps like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Discord and so on. This means that rather than just appearing in Zoom meetings with a regular camera feed, you can now show up with all of the amazing production values that e-cam live gives you and deliver that straight into your Zoom meeting. And trust me, when you rock up to a Zoom meeting with e-cam, the other participants will be truly amazed. So whether for live streaming recorded video content or to level up your Zoom game, I highly recommend that you give e-cam live ago. You can get a free trial by going to takeonetech.io that's E-C-A-M takeonetech.io slash e-cam. And of course, you can find a link to that in the show notes as well. You will certainly not regret giving it a go. Now, let's get back to the show. Perhaps we can talk then about like the sort of changes have happened. Obviously with, you know, the pandemic has driven so many people just, well, everyone really online. And that has been a big sort of game changer in terms of people having to embrace live streaming. And by the way, when I call this the live streamer backstage podcast, I take live streaming to mean not just, you know, live streaming on YouTube and the way that certain people in our community may think of it, but also live streaming is, you know, running online workshops on Zoom, online webinars, things like that, anything where you are sort of sort of broadcasting. So there has been, you know, a big sort of explosion of this sort of even pre-pandemic, obviously the pandemic accelerated it. But I'm just interested to get your sort of your sort of thoughts on that and your thoughts on how you think things are going to change now that things are returning back to a certain level of normality after the pandemic. You know, how you see things sort of playing out from here with this? What is normal? Were we normal before? Again, we can go in a whole different direction. I like the distinction that you made, though, right, that live streaming content creation is not just that one thing that you think about from a YouTube perspective, from a micro content on Instagram or Snapchat or TikTok and things of that nature. But it's more of just presenting yourself very similar to how folks have already done from a Zoom side, from a WebEx side, from a whatever, go to me from those aspects as well, just having conversations with constituents and counterparts across the globe or across the room. And the need and the desire to really show up more, because again, we've been sitting at home for 700 plus days, unfortunately, starting to come out of it now. But the fact that I can't just be sitting here with my sweats and a t-shirt and my sandals on, if I'm going to turn on this camera, I still need Alec to know that I'm engaged, I'm fully prepared for whatever conversation that we had. So I still need to be productive and I still need to show up. The fact that we're live streaming and we're doing it in video, there's two, I'm going to say there's too many tools now, but there's so many tools out there that allow you to really level up that traditional legacy appearance that you have had before, right? We no longer will settle for 360p, 480p, lower resolution video, low quality audio. There is now such an open aspect of being able to have access to higher resolution video, higher quality audio and different dynamics within our presentations as well, right? So Zoom has blossomed into more than just a video conferencing tool, right? You can you can collaborate, you can share documents, you can do your presentations, you can have breakout rooms, you can do all these things that really allow you to have more enriching in-depth conversations and engagements with the folks on the other end of the phone. So if you don't prepare yourself for that, if you don't at least learn how to use those different aspects of those tools, instead of just clicking on the Zoom look and saying, I'm here for the meeting, if you don't raise your awareness and raise your appearance, raise your engagement for those particular sessions, then you're really doing yourself a disservice, right? And then that can really be that first impression, unfortunately, that folks will see it and say, oh, you know, James really, he was there, but he wasn't there. We wish he was there a little bit better. And, you know, if you bring about that aspect with your audio, video, lighting, quality and things of that nature, when you're having these sessions with folks, that really can can increase your awareness that can increase your subject matter expertise, just again, from the mindset of the person you're talking to, right? Just just by showing up and looking better and sounding better and just being better and doing all the things that really can help with the perception that folks have about you and the other person is on the line. So I think it's it's a great time for us as consumer, us as users of these different pieces of technology, because we have the ability now to very cost effectively, I'm going to say, level up our appearance and level up our gaming when it comes to audio and video conferencing and communications. The point you made there about the way you are perceived, it's so true. If you're in a meeting and you see someone that's there with all of the high quality video and audio, they're immediately almost command more respect in the in the virtual room than somebody who turns up, you know, it's almost like someone turning up with a, you know, smart suit on compared to someone who rolls in with, you know, looking scruffy or something like that. It's got that sort of same I shave for you. I shave. I had a lot of salt in the beer about three hours ago. I tell you what, but I don't know. But the other thing about being on Zoom is because of that. It is then a great sort of level really in terms of, you know, you. The sort of swanky offices that people people have or had that before were kind of, you know, statements of their the status of the company to a certain point. Whereas when people are not sort of seeing all of that, then it really is, you know, what sort of turns up in the little box that is is the way you're putting yourself forward. So yeah, I totally totally agree with all of that. You mentioned them productivity earlier as well. And I wonder like how people are seeing the sort of shift to get back to sort of in-person meetings and in-person events when they've suddenly had this, you know, two years, three years to have this realisation that actually it's really quite cost effective to to have people, you know, working, working remotely and not having to travel. You know, it's cut down on, you know, business travel expenses and things like that. So I'm wondering how that's going to sort of pan out. Yeah, I mean, that's real conversation as well, right? Because you think about expense budgets, you think about travelling, travelling and things of that nature. Now, from an enterprise, I'm with my enterprise hat on from that perspective, my day can actually start earlier or maybe in later. And there could be less gaps in it because I don't have to take in the commute time. Sure. I don't have to take in the time that I'm flying to another location or on a train or in traffic or something of that nature. I can just roll downstairs into the office, fire up the cameras and be ready to go. Now, there's pros and cons of that. But as long as you, yourself are conscious in terms of blocking off your time to be as effective as possible, right? Don't necessarily don't necessarily say that you're available from six a.m. to seven p.m. Without taking the time throughout that day to block off. Personal growth, lunch, just relax. Things of that nature, right? Don't just make yourself completely available that entire time. So as long as you're conscious from from that perspective, but you many folks have found themselves more productive now that in some of those outlying aspects are no longer part of the schedule, the commute, the travel, the getting 100 percent dressed in a two or three piece suit and things of that nature, right? So so that can be a good pro for me. It's kind of in between because I will still go do laundry. I'll go cut grass. I will still do all these other things in between meetings. You know, multitasking and doing a whole lot of things. So it's good for me. It's good for my for my mind and for my spirit to be able to do these things. Take a take a break from the hard mental fortitude and things that are designing solutions or working on something for for a client or for a partner. But as long as you can consciously understand what your mindset is, as long as you can consciously take care of yourself first again, because now that schedule has been elongated and folks will take it back. I'm not talking. I'm speaking to the choir here, right? Folks know that folks will take advantage of you. If you say you're available from six a.m. to seven p.m. If you don't block off specific times for you to regroup, regroup, reengage, real realign, refocus, whatever the case would be, do what you got to do to take care of you. That time could be taking advantage of. So just make sure you take care of yourself first and foremost when when it comes to planning out the structure of your day. If and if you're going to be effective resource for others, make sure you're an effective resource for yourself. Totally 100% agree with that. It's all too easy to be just on all the time and available. So definitely I'm with you all the way on their time block in there and being very conscious of that. So like, you know, when people book calls with me, there's specific hours of the day that it's available. And although technically I do tend to work quite a few hours a day, I'm just have specific I know, I know what time it is right now for you, young man. So I will not even say anything about that. I know what time it is in your neck. It was you were talking before you're just about to go off to an event though tomorrow. And there is there is nothing that really compares to doing the sort of in person events because you get all of the networking that comes along with that. But I just wonder how how you found that. I mean, there's so many people that I've met, well, you being being one of them that I've met through live streaming and I feel like I've met you. We haven't actually ever stood in the same. Well, not even on the same continent at the same time. So but you still can build, you know, sort of meaningful connections over, you know, through, you know, live streaming in the sort of virtual space, if you like. And I just wonder what your thoughts are on that in terms of I'm sure you prefer the in person events. But how would you feel about the, you know, the abilities to sort of replicate that online with virtual events? Yeah, that's a great, great question. As long as you put your your heart and your all effort into it, right? Then it does not regardless of being in person, that just means that I'm either, you know, buying your dinner or buying your drinks or whatever the case may be, because we're physically right there. But having the engagement, having the connection that again, Alec, you and I have had, we've talked on camera, off camera, text messages, emails, and we've built that relationship, we've built that friendship over time just by being able to collaborate with each other. That's invaluable, right? Those are the things that again, I hate saying this, but again, if there was any blessing of COVID, it was the fact that I got to meet people like you during that particular time, because we were aligned to the same type of purpose and the same type of ecosystem. And I don't ever see, and I made the joke earlier about, you know, what is what is normal and will we ever give back to normal? I don't believe that we'll ever give back to a fully all hands on deck, everyone in Las Vegas or everyone in New Jersey or New York, you know, everyone at these events, as opposed to they're not them not being hybrid, right? Just having the ability now to actually put on a quality event where you will provide a virtual experience as well. That really resonates with a lot of folks again, because now they've gotten into the groove, into the feeling of being able to do multiple things at the exact same time and do them effectively. I don't have to fly to. I want to. I don't have to fly to Albany, New York for people of video. I can watch the virtual session as well and get the same kind of value out of the sessions. Yeah, I can still communicate with the folks who I'm going to miss that are physically there. I can talk to them offline on other channels and things of that nature. But I don't feel I'm necessarily missing anything because I am I'm giving the opportunity of having an alternate beings of receiving that content and that information. So hybrid, I think is here to stay. A lot of larger, again, enterprise organizations are building that into their everyday go to market strategies. A lot of companies have either closed remote sales offices and remote engineering offices and remote marketing offices, things of that nature. A lot of companies have said, you know what? You don't have to come back to a physical office. All you need is a internet connection and a phone. If you can do your job from the local coffee shop, let's get it done. Right. So it just makes more sense now to be flexible in terms of what what works for the individual employee. And I think again, from an enterprise perspective, companies are seeing that and from an entrepreneurial perspective, from a solar manure perspective, from a small business perspective, they're seeing as well that I don't have to. They don't have to try to emulate the big boys out there, right? They can actually provide value by still just being true to themselves and offering different types of solutions. So again, those hybrid types of solutions, I don't have to physically book out an entire conference room at the Mandalay Bay. I can use what is it? I can use Hoppin or Altercall or or some of these again, virtual conference platforms. You can stream your ebmux thing, whatever whatever you want to use, you can use these platforms and actually have a very dynamic, engaging and interesting session as well, hybrid and virtual. Yeah, I think that's that's been such a great thing that everyone's now got all this infrastructure that they can they can sort of leverage for those. One thing that just sprung to mind, actually, when you were talking about the virtual events and then becoming hybrid events is one of the sort of shining examples of that and how it's really sort of changed their approach is actually with Apple, someone I know that company that we're both very fond of and their big announcements. Be watching them tomorrow. Some things are happening tomorrow. I'm not sure if you're aware of that. There's a little thing going on. Well, hold on. It's already tomorrow for you. That's it. I already know the news. So what happened? No spoilers. Yeah, it's where you are. It's already tomorrow where you are. I'll stop. But they but they I mean, they dramatically shifted the way that they did their entire announcements. And now what they, you know, these really heavily produced like almost cinematic announcement things that they're doing these days are just on a complete another level. And that was totally brought about by, you know, not being able to be on stage in front of a load of people. And so I mean, that's just such a shiny an example of what you can do. And now they're just basically playing these to a studio audience. So it's it's quite phenomenal. Listen, I was I was in the room for one one time for one of those in person Apple announcement sessions when I worked for the company. Right. Yeah, it was amazing. Listen, it's amazing. It was a highlight of my professional career at a particular time, because, again, in the room feeling all the buzz and all that. But what they're doing now, right, by by having, like you say, this more of a cinematic approach by having an us videographers, us content creators can appreciate the fact that, you know, that you got Tim Cook up there and you've got all these other executives. They've got this B roll. They've got all of this this other CGI that they've got all of these aspects of building out an experience. Yes, and in this particular announcement that it's not just Steve Jobs or Tim Cook or or anyone walking across the stage with a with a keynote slide day. There is a complete experience that shows time lapse video that shows all kinds of different types of animation, all utilizing all the different emotions and feelings for someone as if they were at a movie. So you get all of those emotions and that is what they know. Apple is master at this. That's what causes you to go and buy that new iPhone 14 before it's even available. That's what causes you to go out and pre-order. I got to have that, right? I got to have this then Mac Studio. Why? I don't know. Because because they told me they told me it's better than the one that they had last year. Why? Because they evoked that emotion by pulling in all of those aspects of the lights and the and the conversations and what you can do with it and what you weren't able to do before and what you can do now. So all of those things are really forward thinking and conscious in terms of how they deliver those sessions. And you can't get that at an in-person event. You're only locked into the one principal who's on stage, but when you have this cinematic experience from these virtual events that they're now providing, tomorrow it's going to be amazing. It's going to be locked in. I'm going to be watching it at the airport before I fly out because I'm just going to be locked in with credit card in hand because whatever they're going to now they're going to buy. They've got me. I'm part of the cult of Mac. I will buy. Yeah, yeah. So speaking of, we're talking about Mac and gear stuff. What do you think has been the sort of, I suppose, the biggest innovation in the past few years that's really helped live streamers? I mean, either could be software, could be a bit of tech or what do you think has had the biggest impact? Or is there is there one thing that you can nail down? Probably the biggest impact that I believe is higher quality audio creation at home. All right. Being able to really dial in and have superior audio quality, not just a microphone, right? But but having these audio mixers and having these processors and having these devices to where we can really make our voice resonate the way that we want to and may not come out the way that it sounds. We can we can change that. We and then we can ensure that we sound phenomenal when it when it comes to the content that we're creating because at the end of the video is cool and we love video, but that's secondary. Man, if I don't sound right, so you're going to you're going to shut it off. Right. If you can't hear me clearly and if I don't sound resounding, if I don't sound encouraging, if I don't sound authoritative, things of that nature, right? You're going to lack luster experience. So I really think that the ability to to create that audio experience has been one of the bigger things that have hit the content creation ecosystem within the last year and a half or so. All the other stuff is good, too. But this roadcaster pro to right here. I'm just looking at my right now. Right. This this thing right here in the palm of our hand, in the palm of a consumer's hands as opposed to just being at a studio's mixer engineers presence by having this right here and where I can control multiple channels, multiple microphones, sound. Listen, I'm talking again, talking to the choir here. You know this thing, right? But I really think that that's been one of the the biggest aspects that has helped folks level up their experience of delivering quality content. I'm with you all the way on that. You know, you know what I think about the roadcaster pro to its is a phenomenal bit of tech. I actually find the roadcaster pro to is kind of on the the cusp of something, which is it's it's so accessible. But there is still a certain level of complexity to it. So I find that, you know, people who are asking for consultations and stuff like that, one of the biggest things is the roadcaster because there's just some little bit that is just they can't quite figure out how to do one particular particular thing with it. So I think that that is it. I feel like it is at the sort of the threshold of, you know, what is at, you know, works for consumers, you know, using this sort of tech. It's, you know, I would liken it to the iPhone, right? I would apple to Apple and the iPhone and I would liken it to Apple taking out the headphone jack, right? Thinking that they know what we know before thinking that they know what we need before we need it. Yes, the RCP to is six months ahead of, I think, what the average every day consuming content creator needs. Roadcaster Pro one, the original OG is perfect for ninety nine point five percent of the folks out here creating content. This new one, though, is just again, is just a six months ahead of the curve in terms of the capability. Once we really figure out what we want to do with it as creators and once road starts rolling out more releases of the firmware, I'm sure, just like you, I'm on you're on a beta version of the software and it's only at one point oh seven. Yeah, version one point oh seven. Once they get to a version one point five or version two, once they get to something like that, there's just going to be so many capabilities and aspects that we can do with this thing that are can't even fathom it at this particular point. Right. So again, I think it's just was given to us before we thought we needed, but for those who invested in it, hold on to it. Don't don't don't sell it or anything of that nature. Hold on to what you got and just be ready for this next wave, this next evolution of this capabilities and functionality that they're going to be baking into this particular piece of hardware. Yeah, this is got to grow. It's just it's just amazing. I mean, it's actually sort of driven some of the things that I'm doing with my discord, that whole thing of having the, you know, live stream, the backstage area for the live streams, that is all made possible by the Rocaster Pro 2, really, because I have them all on different channels. So I've got you on one channel, ECAM discord on another channel, myself on another one and being able to do that sort of cross mixing is yeah, with mixed minus on all of them and potentially even have a zoom call going on as well. It's it's just a phenomenal piece of tech. So so think about that, right? So again, this is what excites me about technology. Think about that. You have been able to open up at a whole different niche, a whole different lane of your content creation journey by having this particular piece of hardware. Now your community is able to experience not only this feed, but you have a back channel feed going with your community, where they're communicating and they're commenting and they're saying, you know, James looks crazy. He should have put a hat on. Oh, what are you talking about about the old guy? But but again, it brings out a whole another level of engagement with your particular community and allows you to level up your your messaging, your authority with your community and your your your your content creation evolution, things of that nature. And it's all within this box. And yes, it's a little you got to read the manual. It's not something that you can just fire on and then learn how to do. You actually have to read the manual to know how to do some of those things and know which channel to have the device on. But just having that availability and having that ability to do so much more so fast, so quick, relatively easily is amazing. It's just astounding that we have that capability now that it is typically in your ABC, NBC, CBS radio station. And listen, man, I got to hear my little 10 by 10 office right now. But OK, there you go. And that's what I saw. I'll go I'll go on Tanya's like that, right? Because I'm excited about all this stuff. This is all good stuff. It's funny, I spoke to J.P. High tech on the first episode when we were talking about that and he had a background in cinematography and broadcast and so on. And it is this thing of like you've just mentioned, this is tech that, you know, only a few years ago would have been, you know, limited to people in, you know, expensive TV studios and places like that. Whereas now it's just available. And that's kind of what I was alluding to in the intro as well, really. It's it's the availability of all of this technology, the hardware, the software that has made this all just so accessible to everyone that is causing this, you know, anyone can go out and buy, you know, a relatively inexpensive microphone, a mixer, a camera, and then they can be, you know, creating some amazing things. And perhaps turning it around to the software. I mean, for me, e-cam has obviously been a huge enabler, shall we say? For what I'm trying to do. But what's your thoughts on software? I know you're a big e-cam fan as well, but any other software or things like that has had the same sort of effect as the hardware that we've just talked about. For delivering the content and for pushing it out, e-cam is number one. It just is there. There's no I'll get I'll get hate mail and you'll probably get some some statements and then in the comments or whatever. But there's there's nothing that compares. There just isn't Mac, PC, whatever the case may be. I've offered a lot of my PC users a Mac. I will send you a Mac mini so you can make that switch over to the e-cam. Listen, it just does everything that you needed to do. And with this next release that we're testing right now that's in beta that's hopefully will be out for a general availability before the end of the year. Multi-streaming directly from within the platform. Come on now, it just there's nothing out there that compares to it. There are other high quality platforms out there. And, you know, we can talk about them if we want to. But again, they just they each serve their purpose. Each platform serves a particular person's and whatever season of the journey that you're in for content creation, you may want to go with. An e-mux, a stream yard, a V mix, a melon or yada, yada, yada, all of those. They all serve be live because we know some folks that are masters for them. So shots out to them. But listen, each one of those platforms serves a purpose. They serve that purpose very well. But when you want to and I and I hate to say this and I don't want to be disrespectful, but if you want to come over here and hang out with varsity, if you want to get out and get off of the JV squad. And if you want to come over here and hang with and do some real complex things in a very simplistic manner, right? The fact that we can move overlays that we can do scenes that we can bring in virtual cameras that we can bring in virtual mics. The fact that we can do so much of the production from a handful of screens within our environment. And it's and it's all built forward thinking from an Apple perspective, meaning that it's user centric and it's not meant to be overly complex. It's built with the foreshadowing of being very Apple centric, Apple ecosystem centric, so very simplistic and very easy to do. I don't want to use the word simplistic to think that it's for folks to think that it's dumbed down or leveled down or anything of that nature. It's just very intuitive in terms of the way that we can actually do things. Now, again, I know a lot of the executives and a lot of the top notch folks at a lot of those other platforms that I use, again, I want to restate and reiterate those platforms do what they do for their particular audience and communities very well. If you want to do something a little more complex, something a little more unique and specific to you, as opposed to being kind of locked into a framework or locked into a structure. That's where you go to something like a like a VMAX or something like an like an Ecamp. So that Ecamp is number one for me from a software perspective. I also use a handful of apps, you know, really just from a productivity perspective, keeping track of my run of show and keeping track of all of my show notes and things of that. But, you know, nothing tops Ecamp for me. You mentioned I got to think of something else because I always say Ecamp. I got to come up with something else. It is, it is, though. It just sort of shine above, you know, all of it just does what it does. And that is so well, I'm sorry, it just it does. You mentioned about it being being simple and then not simple, but it allows you to achieve really complex things in a very simple way. But there's a lot of, you know, my background is in sort of design and engineering and often the most elegant solutions to things have required, you know, a great deal of, you know, work, effort and thought to go into it to actually create that, you know, really simplified version, you know, the simple formulas in mathematics have been, you know, months worth of, you know, derivation and thought has gone into actually whittling something down to its simplest form. And there's something that always I come back to with Ecamp. I think they've got a huge benefit in the fact that the massive development team behind it, which is basically Ken and Glenn, the twins, people think that they must have, you know, hundreds of developers working on this, but it is just the two of them. And I think that there's something that actually comes out of having that really sort of. I mean, I call them one person, they're obviously two, but having that real sort of focused a view on things where it's not sort of designed by committee. I'm just thinking about some other sort of similar, you know, desktop software, some open source options that there are on the market. There is very sort of fragmented in terms of the actual way that you do things. So they don't have that same. So that's the challenge with OBS, right? Again, open source, free, it's infinite. The possibilities are infinite. Yeah, yeah. But again, there are pros and cons, just like we were talking about WordPress, right? Again, being open source with OBS, there are pros and cons to being an open source project. No one essentially owns the direction of that project. And you just don't know where it's going to go one season to the other. Now, more than likely, it's going to continue to progress and move forward and go in the direction that the majority of the community wants to. But you do have to have some structure. You do have to have a roadmap. You do have to have kind of a steering committee or something that says, let's take in these feature requests and let's make sure that we work on these types of things. And I just from an open. Source project perspective that that just doesn't make me feel very comfortable for something that I'm really banking a lot of my business and how I show up to my community and to my clients and to my for my organization. I got to have something that, yeah, I'm paying a subscription for that actually I'm paying to make sure it continues to be evolved and innovated and progressed on from a from a development perspective. That's just me not telling anyone else of what they should do, what they can't do. That's just how this 52 year old mind works. The other thing about OBS as well, of course, is that's cross platform as well. So with the Mac and PC. And I often think that when you've got anything that's cross platform, you're basically getting the worst of both worlds rather than the best of it because you have to come down to that sort of lowest common denominator in both of them. But you mentioned before about telling people to, you know, you'll send them a Mac mini to be able to use e-cam. And that's I've got a Mac mini sitting right here. Yeah. M one Mac mini right here. Whoever want, I put the I put the call in a request out on Facebook and on Twitter. The folks that responded back don't need it. They can afford to buy a Mac mini. So I'm waiting for someone legitimately come up and say, I need, I would like to have a Mac mini and I will bless them with this. I'm just sitting here. Well, there you go. You've heard it here now. But it's I mean, I say that on the the zoom course that I do as well, where if people really want to sort of level up their appearance on on zoom, the best thing they can do is get a Mac to run there, even if they only use it to run their zoom calls and run e-cam on it to be able to do those presentations. So yeah, I think we've we're both total e-cam fanboys. That's I mean, I'm going to drop a couple of other pieces of software because again, we always lead with e-cam. But I'm not biased. You know, if they were if they were, you know, a stock tradeable company, I obviously be invested in them, but they're not in the content creation ecosystem. We've talked a lot about Canva. Listen, Canva folks that are listening and watching Canva is the truth. Don't sleep on Canva. Definitely take advantage of what that platform provides. There's another platform that has just come out called Simplified, which is close to what Canva offers, but it's just not there yet. It's it's it's it's got a lot of capabilities, a lot of functionality integrated around the the platform. Simplified is another one to look at that that is that is good. It's an A minus Canva Pro, not just regular Canva. Go and get that pro, go and spend that extra dollars and get pro. Canva Pro is an A plus. And then I also use an app platform called Fellow. Fellow allows me that that's where I keep all of my show notes, all of my agenda that integrates with Zoom. That integrates with what's the Cisco one? Is that is that GoToMeeting? Yeah. I think so. Right. So it integrates with all of that and allows me to collaborate with guests that I may have on a show as well. So I keep a running run of show in that for each particular stream that I have. And as I have different topics and as I want to do some web clippings and bring in articles and things of that, that's what I have running right below my program screen that shows me. Oh, this is Alec Johnson. This is and I type in this is his bio and these are the links. Things of that nature. So Fellow is another platform and app that I use. I like it because it's not just that's desktop. It's also a mobile app as well. So I can create and write ideas on my phone and they automatically sync to the web as well. Oh, great. I have to have to check that one out. There we go. That's a bit of a bit of balance there out from the there. All right. I can't just be one hundred percent. You can, you know, I've got pillows and everything. Oh, my God, what else do I got? All of my all of my mugs that you can mugs, it seems as well. All of my mugs are too pretty much, you know, galley. Well, let's have a little talk then about some some hardware as well, because I always like to get a little look behind the scenes. And we've talked about software and hardware solutions. But I do always like to to have a little look at what's going on, because we can always see the the lovely backdrops that people have got. But we rarely see the actual the tech that they're using to make everything actually run perfectly. So so I'd love to have a little look at that. I can bring up a an image of that, or if you want to share your screen, we can do it that way. But we've got this. I just have to show either way. I'd say what, let me let me do that. So folks can see that I pick up all my socks and everything. Yeah, I did pick up all my socks and they're not on the on the floor. So that is a Insta360 picture I took of the studio a few nights ago. The one that Alec put up just now. Let me just put that. And it's yeah. And essentially I am in a command center here. I can I probably can compete with the local PBS station in terms of some of the infrastructure that I do have in this room. But listen, it all serves a purpose as well. Right. The first thing you see right now inside of me is this Dyson that's keeping the air blowing in here because it gets warm in here. But my main system is the Apple Mac Studio. That is running all of the live streaming activity. That's running Ecam and that's running just all of the essentials that I need from from that perspective. So that's my primary driver from a monitor. What I'm looking at perspective of those I've got a so I've got two 35 inch LG monitors. I'm looking when you see in front of you is an LG and I've got another one off to the side. The LG is the 4K monitor, which is my primary display. To the side of that, I have I have the Monty Weaver is how I call it. It's it's it's the Samsung 49 inch monitor. So yeah, I call it the Monty Weaver because I saw it on his stream and I just got to have that. I don't know. I need it. Maybe I don't know, but I got it at 49 inches worth of goodness. And that's right now it's trailing the show. It's watching on the different platforms that we're streaming. So I've got a total of one, two, three monitors that are actually doing something active on any particular stream. I've got another system, another monitor that's connected to that Mac mini that I'm giving away to someone that really is just here for screens right now. And I'll I'll show. I'll bring my phone up and show it to you in a minute. But from what you can see here, microphone, sure, SM7B, the Michael Jackson microphone right the one you recorded, Driller with. So I can't go wrong with that. Got that going, got my iPad for primarily when I'm doing my Amazon live streams because you have to have an iOS device when you're doing Amazon live content. That's what that is. My stream deck, which is again, a marvel of technology, innovation. It is more than hotkeys. It is more than a switcher. It is an amazing piece of productivity gear that everyone should have in their studio in their office. So I've got the Elgato stream deck controlling all of the aspects. Load the desk. I've got the Elgato foot pedal as well, which I do use. Let's see. You can't see it. But the roadcaster pro, there we go. The roadcaster pro two right there controlling all the audio pieces from a video perspective. My cameras, I'm all Sony. So I've got the Sony a seven four full frame as my primary driver with the 20 millimeter prime lens that's given that that goodness that you're seeing on the stream right now. Hopefully it's goodness right now. Hopefully that's a good picture. But I've got that an alternate view and altered angle. I've got the Sony ZV-10 with a. It's got the 16 millimeter on there. So that's got the Sigma 16 on that. And then this is my I'm calling this my Tom Buck view. This is a Sony ZV-1 on a Ronin slider. And that is again, providing just a different view, different aspect in terms of the content available that I'm providing to folks. You see the 50 inch screen behind me that I use really as a marketing piece. So I have my branding on that. What else? What else is good to talk about? I've got some other infrastructure pieces here. I got my OWC external drive that houses all of my content. So when I record, I send all of that data. All of the audio goes to the micro SD card in the back of the ROCaster Pro. And then when I'm recording Ecam, all of the data goes to my OWC external drive. Lighting. Lighting is important. I've standardized on Godox. I've got two Godox ES45 flat panels in front of me. So I've got and they're both pointed kind of at an angle. So they're bouncing off the wall, kind of resonating light off the wall. And then behind me, you can see I've got two of the. What are those? The TL60, Godox TL62. So I've got two behind me that I had four. Where's the other two? Oh, yeah. There's I've got I don't know where they are, but I've got two others as well. Oh, there you are right there. There's one right there. So I've got two directly in the back and then two other places within the studio as well, providing additional practical lighting. And as you can see some additional practical lighting back behind me as well. So yeah, you know, there it is. And then my flair. I'm not sure I forgot what movie that came off of the term flair. But I've got my different pieces behind me. My on air sign, my my grid studio. So I've got the original iPhone. And I've got the iPhone five when they switched to the candy bar. Very nice. So I've got I've got those framed and mounted as well here in the studio just to provide some additional context and color. And yes, the Ecamp pillow. Got to have the Ecamp pillow. A search of. There's more. But you know, those are those are the main pieces, right? There's there's more. I mean, I've got my other boom arm and I've got another microphone. I've got the Lewitt LCT 440 for when I don't want to have a microphone in the shot. And I've got honestly another iPhone mounted up there from when I do my top down shots when I'm doing unboxings, things and things of that nature. The LCT 440 then. So is that do you not need to have that in as close a proximity? Then I would always imagine that you would have still need to be fairly close. But can you have that out of the shots? Then you are. Yeah, it's so it's a condenser, Mike, as opposed to a dynamic as the SM7B. So it can be a little bit further. And I just I raise the gain up a little bit when I do that. So yeah, right, right. It's a lovely looking microphone. That one is it is. Yeah, it's one of my favorites in terms of just the overall sort of design of it. It just looks it looks fantastic. And in terms of that, that way you're out with your studio then. I mean, this is a bit of a foolish question, but is it done yet? Have you got plans for further upgrades? You know, it's never done. Is it? But it's. I am I am comfortable with where it is. Right. You know, I am I'm OK. To be honest with you, there is. One of our colleagues in the content creation world, and I won't mention his name, but because I don't want to talk bad about him. But he's got me thinking about another microphone. He's got me thinking about an omen. Right. An omen microphone that I want. And I'm glad my wife isn't here. I hope she's going to be watching. You know, the normal microphone I want is $2,000. Now, do I need that? I don't know if I need that, but I sure I tell you what. But birthday is coming up here in a few weeks that I may have a have an omen microphone replacing this essence. I don't know. But yeah, for the most part, the studio is done. I think I may. Move off of some of these large displays to be honest with you and go with more of a consolidated approach. So instead of this large forty nine and these two large thirty fives, I may actually go down to something more, more ergonomic to whereas I can easily look at the comments on one screen and all of the infrastructure for you, Cam, on another, as opposed to having to scan my eyes across all of the time. So that that may be the next evolution of the studio. But no, I'm OK for right now. I'm looking pretty close to perfect to me. Thank you. One of the things that I ask about when, you know, when you when you came on was what's your favorite bit of tech? And you mentioned the metric. And it's something that I've seen a few few people have those. But I don't know that you can you can put all sorts of information, you know, YouTube subscribers, weather and all that kind of stuff. But what is it that that makes that your favorite bit of tech? And what what? OK, so that's it. I've got too much. I've got too much bokeh running on my camera right now, but back there. Can you get out of the way, James? So there there it is right there, right? And again, it's just a desktop smartphone. Oh, speaking of clocks, I've got. Did you see in the picture your clock? I told you I was going to buy you a big face clock. Yeah, yeah, put my major back up with that photo of I've got your big face clock here, like I like has you just tell me one time to buy something and then I'm going to buy it. I've got the year. No, but the metric again, it has where is it at? Oops. There it is right there underneath the the large monitor. Yep, yep. Yeah, that's right. Yes, so the metric is smart clock, Wi-Fi connected ties into my music as well. So my Apple, my Spotify, my Amazon, so I can either play music from that, but it also ties into my social presences. So as someone likes something on Facebook, on the page or on the brand page or the business page or the group or someone follows me on Twitter, someone becomes a subscriber on the YouTube channel. I think I've got no know why I've got Twitch on there, too, but I'm going to take that off. But all those various social platforms as people engage and either like or even dislike, they'll actually make an audible sound. So I like that just that that dopamine hit, to be honest with you from that. And just having it there, I'm going for a goal and target of reaching 10,000 followers on Twitter before the end of this calendar year. And every time I see that thing, take up one, two, three, four, five, however many people I say, I'm getting closer to that number. So I just love that just for, again, the gamification of the aspect and saying, you know what, there are that many people that like what you're doing, that are buying into the community that want to continue to hear what you're talking about and are either sharing that with their constituents. So that's kind of that extra caffeine in the cup sometimes just to hear that thing tick off and say, yeah, five more people subscribe to the channel or two more people like the post that you put out on the website. So yeah, I should definitely say then at this point, you can find James's Twitter handle in the in the description as well. And in the show notes, we've got a we've got a goal to achieve here, folks. There it is, right? One of the other things that I always ask into the calendar year, 10,000. And I don't know. Well, I'll start recording and it's going to be at Alex's house. What are you up to now? How far have we got to go? I think I'm at like sixty seven hundred. All right, right. Like we're like like close to sixty seven. So you know, I'm doing the math and I got a couple of nice shows and streams and events coming up within the next couple of months. So just might get there. Just might get there. Anyone listening or watching hit the pause button and go and do what you've got to do and then come back. That's it. Come back. Don't forget it. One of the other things that I asked for as well is is a book recommendation because I'm a big reader. I always like to, you know, learn from what other people are learning from as well. And the book you mentioned, the give first economy. So I listened to that yesterday and I loved it as well. I'd love to hear your take on on why that's had an impact on you and and you know, from your content creation and point of view. I suppose in any aspect of life, really suppose. Yeah, you know, Kirby Hasselman, the the author of the book, the give first economy really just solidified and resonate what a lot of us in the content creation ecosystem and environment are already talking about. Right. The fact that it's bigger than the individual. It's bigger than me. It's bigger than just what I want. It's all about community and it's all about making sure that we show up every single time we turn these lights on, we press record. Every time that we show up, it's for the community that we're bright. We're bringing value that we're bringing something of usefulness. And we're really from my perspective as well, wanting to rise above the noise, right, wanting wanting to bring something that that that matters to to the folks that are giving us their most precious commodity, their time. And so the book really talks about doing business the right way by being locked in and and attentive to what your consumers, your constituents, your your sphere of influence has to say, right? You don't always have to do what they have to say, but you have to listen, right? You can't be so close minded to where as you, you can't get out of your own way, where again, where you think it's all about you when you're not really serving yourself, you're really serving those around you and you serve as you're serving the community. So this book really, it was a pretty, pretty straightforward read. A lot of common sense statements that were made in it, but you know, it really again made you made me stop and pause and say, you know what? That's right. These are the things that matter, making sure that every single time I write a blog post, every single time I put out a piece of micro content, every single time I do a stream that it's serving a purpose of the ones who are either paying me in time or paying me from a financial perspective to bring content to them. So it, yeah, I mean, it's on Kindle, it's on audio book. I think it's a hardback and paperback as well. Like I got mine off of Audible because I have a subscription to Audible. But yeah, it just it just hit all of the points that I've been saying. I and a lot of folks around me again, within this ecosystem have been saying that stay locked in on the community, make sure you're doing the best for them in the actions and and you will succeed. Whatever your measure and whatever your mark of success is, just stay stay focused on on doing the best that you can for your community. You mentioned something there about it being, you know, a lot of stuff in there is common sense, but one of the things I actually wrote this down from the book was the greatest distance in the world is the distance between I know and I do. So there's lots of things that we know that we should be doing. We're not actually doing it. And it thought that is that's really powerful. That is because yeah, there is so many of these things that we read. And they think, well, I kind of know that that's that's obvious. But it's like, are we actually doing it? So yeah, it's always good to have these these reminders. So I love I love that. Yes. And just it's one of those reads like that you continue to read every single time and you'll pick up a different nugget each in each time I've read it like I think three times, to be honest. Well, like I have the audiobook, so I've listened to it at least three times. But each time I'll pick up on something just a little bit. Extra and say, OK, this is a good measure. This is a good marker to continue to keep doing the right thing the right way to make sure that I'm serving the community. So yeah, it's great, great book. And perhaps just as we're nearly at the top of the hour, have you got sort of one final bit of advice that you would like to sort of impart to somebody who's maybe starting out in live streaming? I mean, this is a, you know, a podcast for live streamers by live streamers. But is there sort of one thing that you think could have really sort of advanced your progress if you'd known about it sooner, perhaps? Yeah, and don't try to do what someone who's been doing it for longer than you is doing day one. Right, right there, right, do go at your own pace, appreciate and understand the process and the journey. Right, start with what you have. Don't try to get out there and don't try to get this SM70. Don't try to get this roadcaster pro to don't try to get this A7 for day one, unless you can financially afford it, unless you want to get it. And unless you can take the time, as I said before, read the manual so you can understand how to take advantage of the tools and the capabilities of what you have. But everyone's walking around with one of these, right? Here's $1,000 4K 60 resolution camera in your pocket right now. Everyone's got one of these. Hey, man, I have an iPhone, but you got you got a you got a Martin Day smartphone that they can do and they can shoot in 4K resolution. Start there. So if I had and I say this all the time as well now, you can get out of my own way. If I if I could have gotten out of my own way and not slowed my progress to the point where I thought that so much had to be in place before I could really start out of start a much earlier. And for folks who haven't started, who are waiting till they get the logo, they get the branding colors, they get the hardware infrastructure, they get the pitch down, they get the niche down. Right? Some of those things you need to have obviously up front because you want to tell your story and you want it to resonate with the particular community. But don't worry about all of that ancillary stuff. The content is what matters the most. Talk, you bring you bring quality content, the community will come. And then you can bring on all these other as I'm calling ancillary pieces to it as well. So get out of your own way. Don't pause, don't hesitate. Just go out there and do because if you got you've got a story in the world is waiting for you to tell that story. Fantastic advice. I've just noticed we've got a question coming on Amazon. So before we wrap up, I do want to just address that. Somebody's Richard from San Diego is asking, is there a difference? Is there a different set of rules for doing business with millennials versus boomers? And actually, it sort of ties in with the sort of live streaming aspect of things a little bit. I know this is more of a business question, but just in general, there is a sort of a different way of consuming content as well. I would say at these different levels. I did a bit of a I'm always looking at the analytics of my my my videos. And I'm looking at the sort of age groups that I've got. And there is a definite spike in the sort of for me, it's the sort of mid 30s to mid 40s is the the highest number of people that are watching the content that I've got on YouTube. But actually, if you if you just rank it by the percentage of my videos that they're watching, it's it's a direct line going from the youngest to the oldest. The the older people watch more of a given video, watch a higher percentage of a specific video. So they're actually watching all the way through, whereas the the younger they are, the more the sooner they're switching off and going on to the next thing because they need that sort of quick quick hit sort of thing. Right. So it's that quick double mean hit, right? Ninety seconds. And what is this? Take not take talk. But Instagram reels are 90 seconds, I believe. Yeah, particular points. Yeah, but I just wonder if you've got any just since we've had the question, have you got any insight on that in terms of, you know, different different demographics and how you noticed anything different with the you know, the people that you you're you're serving. Yeah, very similar, right? In terms of just the the attrition and in terms of the retention of the content, I get more engagement from a sharing and collaboration perspective from the younger generation, as opposed to the older generation. But correct, right? I've got my dynamic and my numbers show I've got a higher percentage of males watching as opposed to two females and I'm really trying to level that out so trying to be cognizant and bring on bring about more diversity from that perspective for my audience. But I do also see that that older folks more seasoned folks. I'm going to call them older folks. Oh, my goodness, you know, the boomers and those folks do tend to watch longer form content and they will sit there and actually watch an hour long live stream as opposed to, again, the need it now social media environment and age bracket where they're swiping every 90 seconds or every three minutes because they need to move on to that next thing. So that that's where, again, we're building content for both. That's why we're we're on TikTok. That's why we're on Snapchat. And that's why we're making YouTube shorts, because again, you can create that quick hit that really encapsulates all as much of the information as you can in that quick shot and then folks can either choose to watch more of that by going back to the channel or doing whatever. But again, they get kind of a core piece of that information. My advice is to. It depends if you're trying to serve both audiences that you then you do. You have to create both of those types of content. You do have to do the longer form. You do have to do some of the medium form and you do. And you do have to do that micro content with all the hashtags, with all the relevant topics and all of that. So you can garner the audience of those that younger audience who they will see it. The younger audience tends to actually do more of the sharing, right, because they'll tell us so what. Oh, did you see what Alec was talking about? The other they check this out too. So so they'll see it if they can see within that 30 seconds, that 60 seconds that they like it, they'll tell their friends about. But again, the the more seasoned demographic will just watch the entire bit. They'll do the like on Facebook or something of that nature. But it may not necessarily grow from from that particular audience. But but again, you want to have a smathering of each of those demographics within your community so you can make sure you're touching and reaching and having that dialogue with everyone. But because they all matter, right, they all matter because there could be that time maybe in a face to face conversation or a session where that older person, those more seasoned folks are talking to their peers and they say, oh, I was watching Alex show the other day and it was so cool. You should go check it out. That's the engagement as opposed to that instant, just an airdrop or an I message or something that the younger folks would do. Yeah, great. So so long as you're short. Yes. Make content for make content for everyone that's in your community, regardless of the age and demographic, because you never know who is going to share, engage and resonate with a particular message, even a snippet of that information. And they make sure that with their with their counterparts. Yeah, well, you know that I'll be making a short tiktok and a real just out of what you've just said as well. So this is this is certainly all going to be repurposed. So yeah, it will be all over the internet, folks. You know, thanks to Alex Johnson. I'm going to be all over the internet. Oh, my goodness. Well, trouble. Thanks so much, James, for coming. I just want to be conscious of your time that we're we we've overrun slightly past the top of the hour. But thanks so much for for coming on and sharing all of your your insights. Where is the the best place that people can go and follow you? Obviously, Twitter, first and foremost, let's go and get to follow. But where else would you like to sort of direct people to come and connect with you? Let's see. I was trying to see if the number flipped over, but I didn't hear it. So I saw that was just a time. Everything really lives at HicksNewMedia.com. That is the hub for everything that has links to membership. That has links to podcasts. Links to the YouTube site. Links to my newsletter. Links to being able to book me for any conversations and things of that nature. That right there is where the hub for all of my content lives and resides. So yeah, you can definitely reach me there. Great stuff. Well, yeah, a little collaboration testimonials. Oh, my goodness. That's some good stuff that I noticed, Mr. Keith Pelzer. Always nice to see Keith's face just there upon the screen. Well, scroll up. Look at the one that's right next to one right next to Keith, too. So go back when he recorded it. He had a pause screen in it, but go back and look at that first one there. Oh, yeah, Mr. Book, the master himself. Everyone loves Tom. Well, thanks so much for for coming on. And obviously, all of the the links to everywhere you can find James, you'll find them in the description and in the show notes for those listening to the podcast as well. It's been great chatting to you as always, James. It's great to be on the other side of the conversation as it were. I've been very honored to have been on your show a couple of times. So yeah, great to great to speak to you and let you be the focus for a change. Awesome. Thank you, sir. I appreciate it. This is amazing. I like what you I like the evolution of what you're you're creating, right? You you are really doing you're doing it the right way, right? You you you have created masterclasses. You have created sessions. You have created streams you and you're in your you're going about it. The way that should be copied, it really it really should be copied because what you're doing, you're touching everyone as necessary, when necessary, where necessary, right? So again, you're you're you're on YouTube, you're on LinkedIn, you're on Amazon Live with the right content for those particular platforms. So I wanted to give you those flowers and say kudos to you, man, for for what you're doing as well. This it's it's been fun to watch the Alec Johnson that to take one tech of evolution in terms of content creation, content delivery and just really community building as well. So well, thank you. Thank you very much. And you know, I'm only copying other people as well. So we're all sort of learning and taking bits from from other people. So I really appreciate you saying that, though, James, you've always been a supporter and champion of what I'm doing. So, yeah, you know, I've got a great deal of gratitude and respect to you for all of that. So thanks once again. So thanks, everyone, for watching on the live stream. You can catch us live every Tuesday at 7 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. In the next episode, I'll be joined by Keely Dunne, and we'll be talking as we were just talking about community. We'll be talking about building and serving a community on Discord. If you've never heard of Discord before, then you're in for a treat. And if you have heard of Discord, but think it's not for you, then you'll definitely want to hear what Keely has to say on that. I personally resisted Discord for months, but it turns out that I was wrong and hashtag Keely was right. Setting up the Take One Tech community on Discord was the best thing that I've done since starting Take One Tech. And I now feel that I have a much deeper connection with my audience. And this is fed directly back into my content. And it's all down to, as I say, setting up this community. And Keely has been so instrumental in showing me the light in that respect. So it's sure to be another insightful conversation, as always. So you definitely want to check that out. In the meantime, have a great week ahead and we will see you all very soon.