 Hello, everyone. Welcome to the live stream today. We're going to be talking about building a content ecosystem. And really, it's more of an update on where I'm up to with the content ecosystem that I'm attempting to build. And also, basically how I'm monetizing on and off YouTube and where sort of YouTube fits into all of that. And then also talking about my plans for the next sort of six months and onwards thereafter as well. And the reason for this right now is it's a bit different to my regular live streams because it's more of a kind of reflective one as opposed to, you know, an actual tutorial. But hopefully for anyone with their own YouTube channel or maybe thinking about starting one or maybe with a business that they're looking to use YouTube as a tool for that, then this may hopefully give you some insights into that. And specifically now it's because we are for me the first day of June of July rather. So it's the start of quarter three. And so yesterday was when I did my sort of big Q2 review, which I do on the last day of the quarter. And also, it was something that we talked about in the creators pod episode this week, which I need to make a thumbnail for actually, I've just realized, but will be posted out, I guess, imminently. And that was all about sort of our Q2 review as well. Don't tell the other folks, although some of them are here, but actually done my full review then but I'd got a good idea of where I was up to anyway. But the other thing that has driven this is two other things really. One of them was I was also interviewed on another podcast, the Q10 podcast with a great guy that I'd actually never met in person as so many of these other things. But Chris Hutchings he contacted me and wanted to have a chat because he's reaching out to content creators. So that will be coming out probably, I guess next week. So I'll put a link to that in the description when it's available. But we were talking all about the sort of journey on YouTube and the whole sort of content creation thing and monetization and things like that as well. And then also another reason for this, it seems like everything was pointing to me doing this live stream this week was that in the Take One Tech Academy, one of the members there, someone who I do ongoing coaching with as well, was asking about the sort of mechanics of setting things up, you know, not just a YouTube channel, but the sort of business side of it. We are going to do a workshop all about that. So in the Take One Tech Academy, we have monthly workshops. So there is going to be one of those coming up. And although that will be in a in a couple of months time because we've got a whole queue of them now. So I thought I'd just cover this all off in this in this live stream to just give a bit more of a sort of broad overview of it. So really is that that we're talking about the sort of the overall evolution of the channel where we're up to and where I'm heading to just a few. Just a few hello's. Hi Rich in the chat there. And obviously we've got Paul and Peter in the Discord. Hi Jamie, hope you're enjoying the course. Parker Jennings, great to see you here as well. And Alicia, my man there. I've got to say I was always, of course, you know, I was thinking of you with the title of my thumbnail, Content Ecosystems. So Alicia has this, you know, this is his whole thing as well. And it very much, you know, has been sort of inspired that to a certain extent, you know, this whole idea of building, you know, not just one thing, but a whole whole ecosystem of content and Hi Mark, great to see you here. So I'll start off with talking about the sort of a brief evolution of the channel because it was through that interview that I did on the Q10 podcast, sorry, 10Q podcast, that this thing came up about the whole sort of evolution of Take One Tech. And the fact that a lot of people don't realize, you know, first of all the sort of origin story of it but then also this fact of I do make all of my videos in one take with no edits and that is kind of part of the reason for the sort of the birth of the channel really was it was a place for me to practice this process of creating videos in one take with no edits for course content that I was doing for, you know, business interests that were completely separate to Take One Tech. And so that's why I started the channel was just really to sort of as a test bed to practice all of this kind of stuff. But then the tools that I was using to do that were Ecamm Live and Stream Deck, you know, largely amongst other things. And I just became so passionate about those that that became kind of the focus of the channel. Originally the channel is going to be more about the productivity side of things. And, you know, the tools that I use on the Mac to get things done and, you know, doing those kind of tech tutorials and demonstrations. But then I just really, you know, fell in love with Ecamm, fell in love with Stream Deck and, you know, the other devices that have since been added to the studio. And it was because of the way that they enabled me to do the things that I wanted to do with such ease. And I realized that all of these things that I used to, you know, fret about in terms of editing and all of that kind of stuff was actually, you know, we can just now all do it, you know, with the touch of a few buttons on the Stream Deck. And then obviously, you know, the Stream Deck then open my eyes to all of the potential for productivity gains that you can get by it, which then fed into my, you know, my fondness for being efficient and productive and the whole sort of productivity side of stuff as well. So I just really love all of the tools that I talk about on the channel. But the other sort of side benefit then of Ecamm and the whole one take thing was this ability to then take all of this and go into Zoom calls and, you know, still doing, you know, team meetings, not teams meetings, although I do do meetings on teams as well, but like team meetings on YouTube, running webinars, presentations, workshops and that kind of stuff on Zoom. And the ability that Ecamm and these are the different tools provide to be able to do that in a much more efficient way and a really frictionless way that adds a lot more impact to the value that we're trying to deliver. And that ultimately is, you know, the whole the whole thing about this is everybody's got a message to give everyone's got something that they want to deliver. And just in the same way that me setting up the YouTube channel was a way it enabled me to deliver that value. This is what it can do for for everyone else as well. And so that was that really the start of the channel. But I did, although although I would say that, you know, take one text since May 2021 so just over two years now has sort of evolved into something a lot more than necessarily I had anticipated from the outset. It's not that I didn't think that it was going to to grow or it wasn't going to be able to add value. I mean, it's always, you know, nice to get the, you know, the, the feedback, the comments and the views and things like that and the, and, you know, understanding that you are making a difference for people, but I certainly couldn't have mapped out exactly what was going to happen from the outset. But I did expect that, you know, something would come of it because otherwise, you know, first of all, I wouldn't have bothered putting on YouTube if it was just about practicing the process. But secondly, it was the things that I put in place from the beginning. So, you know, I knew that I would be talking about ECAM. So I set up my ECAM affiliate. I knew that I would be talking about some products. It wasn't going to be a purely product channel. But I set up my Amazon affiliate. I also knew that there would be people who wanted, you know, help with the sort of things that I was covering. So even before my first video, I'd already set up my Buy Me a Coffee and had a way for people to book consultations with me. And I think probably the first consultation was, I guess, within like a month or two months of setting up my channel. So this whole thing of monetizing on YouTube and having to wait for, you know, a thousand views and 4,000 watch hours. And I know they've reduced it now for, you know, super thanks and community donations and stuff like that. But aside from that, you know, even after having been monetized now for over a year and a half. So I got, I started in the middle of May 2021. I got monetized by the end of the year. But even if I look now at like the entire revenue from YouTube since that time until now, it's still actually significantly less than what I just made off YouTube in that first year before getting monetized, if that makes sense. And now, you know, the YouTube revenues kind of less than 4% of total revenue of Take One Tech as a business, if that makes sense. But I did always have this anticipation that, you know, something that, you know, would come about it. But again, as I say, always pleasantly surprised and delighted by the, you know, the way that it's been received and the growth that it has experienced as well. But as things grew, then when I started out, I didn't really have an exact idea of who I was speaking to. This is kind of a weird thing about YouTube is your audience does kind of reveal itself to you because although I knew the things that I was going to talk about. And, you know, obviously it's about tech. It's about ECAM, Stream Deck and, you know, the tech tools that I use on my computer. In terms of the precise demographic, I wasn't really sure exactly, you know, who it was that ultimately I was speaking to. And what I've realized and this came about, sort of, I guess, six months after starting the channel when I started noticing, like, well, who is it actually who is going on to book those calls with me? Who is it that wants to really dive into all of the things that I'm talking about and figure out how to apply those in their business? And what really occurred to me was that generally it was, you know, either business people, coaches, solopreneurs who were looking to harness all of this technology in kind of the same way that I'm doing off take one tech. I mean, now I'm using it for take one tech, of course, but these things have been able to do presentations and all of that kind of thing and, you know, level up their Zoom meetings, level up their webinars, have better communication with their clients all online. And that's what all of these different tools that I talk about that where they all fit in. And so that was really a realization that I had after six months was that actually there's lots of people who might watch my videos about Stream Deck or ECAM or these other things. But the actual core demographic who ultimately go on to become, you know, clients, if you want to think of it in that term, are those kind of people. And that's not to say that, you know, everyone's welcome. I'm just happy to be able to be spreading information and sort of sharing the knowledge with anybody who is interested really. But that's how my sort of content grew. And then it came to the point where having identified that particular group, it didn't really change totally, you know, what I was doing. I'm still doing the same kind of content. But I do now always have that more in my mind in terms of how to bring this all together. I mean, even this live stream now this has become come from, you know, somebody who's wanting to do something similar. And so thinking about like how I thought about it to put this all together into an overall content ecosystem as opposed to just a YouTube channel. So I now always have that, you know, end, you know, that core demographic, I guess, in mind with everything that I do. But obviously, as I say, you know, a Rocaster Duo review applies equally to anybody else as well. But then when I started, you know, my content grew and I started having more and more things from, you know, tutorials on Stream Deck, tutorials on ECAM and all of those kind of things. There came a need for a little bit more structure. And one of the things that I love about YouTube is you can find out anything you want. You know, pretty much if you do a search for it, you'll find out how to do it. But there's one problem with YouTube, which is you never quite know if you've got all of the information. So if you're wanting to use Stream Deck, you can find somebody or give you there, you know, some particular opinion of some particular aspect of it or maybe a general review. But you're not necessarily sure if you've got all of the information. This was with me when I was starting to use ECAM. You know, I dived into it full, you know, headfirst. But there was things that, you know, I discovered myself that I hadn't discovered through just searching for videos about ECAM because nobody had done like a total all in one thing. Apart from, you know, unless you do a course or whatever. The other thing about YouTube is you never actually know if the information is fully up to date. And this was something that came home to me when I realized that, you know, the videos I was making on ECAM, which is under really, you know, active development and Ken and Glenn do a great job of keeping it all up to date. A lot of my videos now on my channel are just out of date, you know, there are different ways to do things. It used to be in ECAM, for example, that if you wanted to have, you know, a camera overlay in one place and you wanted to have, you know, a screen share and you wanted a pretty board around it, well, then you would have to actually make that in an external app like Keynote Camera or something like that. Cut out some little holes where the camera was going to show through and the screen share was going to show through. Put that on the screen over the top of it. And that was the way that you designed stuff. Well, now you don't have to do that because in a later version of ECAM, they allowed you to style the borders of your cameras and your screen share. So there's much simpler way of doing it. So I realized, you know, quickly that my information was out of date on my channel. So then what do you do? Do you take it down? But there's actually still useful information in there or do you leave it up? The other thing about not knowing whether you've sort of covered everything off. I did try to tackle that in this mammoth video that I did in one take, which was four and a half hours, how to use ECAM Live from start to finish. And it covered like everything from how to use ECAM, but then how to use it with your stream deck, how to use Keynote to make those overlays that I've just talked about, you know, with the little cutouts. And that one solved the problem of having all of the information and knowing that you've got it. And it is still, you know, quite a popular video on my channel, this four and a half hour video that people can go through and pause it and, you know, go through the process. But now I've got a problem with that one, that it's, you know, four and a half hours long and big chunks of it and now totally out of date and there's there's better ways of doing it. And that's where really the idea of doing the courses came from. Because the benefit of courses is that you do have everything in a, you know, all together. And you have the ability to take people on a journey, you know, a learning curve if you like a learning arc, story arc, just as I did in the four and a half hour video. And so you know that everything is in there. But then it gives you the opportunity to then update sections of it. I also do the courses in a different way than I do the videos on YouTube. So typically in my YouTube video might be, you know, well, the live streams are a different thing. They tend to go on longer, but a general video might be, you know, like 30 minutes or something like that. Whereas the videos in the courses are generally kind of like one to five minutes. I guess some of them go to 10 or 15 or something, but generally they're much shorter. And the reason for that is it makes it much more bingeable, which isn't in my interest, because we're not looking for, you know, views and click-throughs and stuff like that. Like you would be on YouTube. The reason why it's bingeable for, why it's good for learning though, is because you get to the end of one video and rather than thinking, do I go on to the next video? But it's like, you know, half an hour, an hour long or do I do I quit? Whereas if you've just got like another five minutes or another three minutes, it's much easier to go through and actually complete a section. So I find that breaking it down like that makes it easier for people to learn. It also makes it easier for people to find the thing that they want. If it's broken down into sections with each single video talking specifically about one little topic. And like I say, if it only needs to be a minute, it's only a minute. I don't sort of expand them out for the point of it. It means that after the fact, if somebody goes back to the course, you know, they want to find out something that they've forgotten how to do or something, then there is going to be a little video that they can find that is going to, you know, just answer that specific question from a course creators point of view. It means that if something changes, it's easy for me to go and drop extra content in or go and change out those videos for something that's been updated. So that's the benefit of courses, really. There is no that for me, this was the question that came up as well was what do you where do you draw the line between, you know, what you give for free and what you, you know, include in your courses. And there is no difference for me. I don't hold anything back from the stuff that I give out for free on the YouTube channel or anywhere else. And, you know, anyone's welcome to email me or DM me or anything like that. You know, if they've got any specific question, I never, I never hold back with free information because it's the point of the, you know, the point of being here on YouTube and giving out all of this information for free, you know, ultimately is to, you know, to help people. And then a side result of that is it just just demonstrate your knowledge. So I don't believe in putting anything sort of behind a paywall in that respect. And I got an email from somebody. I've just launched my Stream Deck Masterclass. I'll talk about that later because it's the last day of the launch offer. Technically it was yesterday, but it's still yesterday for some people in the world. So it's got another 12 hours or 24 hours or something. But yeah, somebody emailed me and asked, I've seen that you're running this Stream Deck Masterclass. Is there anything in that that isn't in your YouTube videos? So I said, honestly, if you go and watch all of my YouTube videos, you'll probably get the same kind of information. But what you don't get is you don't get the organization of it taking you through step by step. And some of my old videos are out of date. There are different ways to do things. Some of the new ones are, you know, some of the new ways to do things are different. And so that's what you're getting. You're getting something that's up to date and will remain up to date as well as new updates come out. Incidentally, a new update for Stream Deck is out today. I've been testing the Stream Deck beta and it's really great. And that is now finally live now. So I'll be updating the Stream Deck Masterclass to add in this new Stream Deck mobile thing. But anyway, that's a bit of a digression. So that is where the why I started doing the courses, though, was to offer people that option of having that more curated learning experience and a more guided learning experience as well. And that kind of go to encyclopedia on the topics that I created. And the first course that I did was the Ecam Live Masterclass. I added in a Zoom course and a Roadcaster course after that. And then I've got these three courses. And I appreciate that one of the things about courses is that it's very easy to go and buy an on-demand course and then not do it. I've done that myself before when there's been some offer on a course and I've gone and bought the course and then I've not completed it or I've started it and just not got into it. And it's kind of from a point of view of the course creator, then when you go through and look at the stats and you see how many people have purchased the course and then you look at the progress through it and then they've not made that progress. It kind of feels like, well, you feel for somebody who's potentially invested in something and there's lots of reasons why people do it. Speaking from myself, I got it with the best of intentions, but then I just haven't had time to get round to it and I'll get back to it someday, but I haven't got there. But there are other ways of learning as well and other learning resources that I wanted to be able to offer as well because I wanted to give people that option of the one-to-one time. I know that some people work better in that kind of environment where they've got those kind of things. Offering the workshops and things like that that is not just a live stream which is I love the live streams and seeing everyone in the chat and taking questions and comments but there's still a disconnect there in terms of if somebody asks a question then there's that 10-second lag before I receive it and then I'll give the answer out and there'll be a 10-second lag before it comes back that I've misunderstood the question or misread it or something. So it's still not an entire connect. It's great that I love the live streaming but it doesn't quite compare to just being in a Zoom call with somebody or in a voice channel in Discord and just being able to communicate directly with somebody. And then also the other aspect of it was having the different courses that I've got these three different courses and our whole series of courses to come out as well. I understand that people might just feel like, oh, it's just one course after another whereas actually what they're looking for is this holistic thing that is going to tackle the whole thing that I'm talking about in terms of the digital stage, improving your online impact and your online presence and all of that kind of thing. As all of these courses are interlinked, that's why it made total sense to start at the Take One Tech Academy and so that started in technically April this year or middle of March I guess it was when it launched but that was certainly on my horizon before the third course came out so I'd kind of put the structure in place in Discord so I've got my Discord community but then in there there are different areas within that that you can have for specific people so it's free to join the Discord community I suppose I should pop the little thing up, shouldn't I if you're not already in it? So it's free to join the community and all of the sort of conversations in there about StreamDec, Rocaster and everything like that is all public so I don't sort of put any of that behind a paywall but we do have separate areas in there specifically for like Academy members so the weekly Q&As that we do are done in there and some other resources and things like that. So that's why the Academy came out of that but coming back to this thing of thinking about the overall plan yes that was a later addition but I'd sort of been planning it out for I guess the last sort of six months of last year and then ultimately it launched as I say launched in March. And so that's what the Academy is for really it's for that core audience and I still appreciate that there's this wider YouTube audience and people who maybe just pop in to find I mean at the moment I think I'm approaching about 7000 subscribers and then I think my views are about nearly 700,000 views so there are far more people watching my content than you know subscribing which is cool because people do that all the time I do that I'll sometimes want to find something I'll go and watch a video and then you know if I'm not going to be looking at that content more then I won't necessarily subscribe to every video I watch it's just normal you're just looking for the information sometimes aren't you? So as I say it's coming down to this sort of core core demographic really and talking about a content ecosystem having you know talked about the Academy and that side of Take One Tech the content ecosystem applies also to the content you're posting on other platforms so I am on Twitter, I'm on Facebook I'm on TikTok, Instagram and LinkedIn as well and this whole idea of you know cross-platform presence and posting on other platforms there's been something that I think I kind of specifically for Take One Tech struggled with a little bit and it's kind of ironic really because I did a whole I did a whole sort of course and mini-book all about curating across platform presence specifically for other businesses but with with the YouTube stuff I think I was approaching it in kind of the wrong way because what I was thinking about was using these other platforms to drive people into YouTube that's where my sort of mindset was so when I was thinking about posting on TikTok, Instagram and all of those in the back of my mind I was thinking I'm driving people to my YouTube channel and I think I was wrong in doing that because really the YouTube is just a part of you know the overall Take One Tech thing which is that core audience which is more so the consultancy, the academy and then some other things which I'll talk about later on that are coming up like live events and stuff that are for that sort of real core and so because I was unsure of what I was actually on those platforms for I was a bit haphazard in posting to them in any case so you know having flurries of activity on Instagram and also on TikTok and things like that but just basically I guess just trying to drive people to YouTube was kind of in the back of my mind so I've kind of changed that approach and I'm glad that I kind of took a break from those platforms because at the beginning of the year what I said I was going to do which I didn't do what I said I was going to do was I wanted to understand what these other platforms could do in terms of helping me grow my YouTube channel and so I had this idea that I was going to post heavily to all of these other different channels like Instagram, TikTok and so on and then see what effect that had on my YouTube channel and then stop posting to those in like the midpoint so like now and then see if the growth of my YouTube channel changed in the following six months now as it happened I totally abandoned that plan because of a whole number of reasons but I didn't actually been posting on those platforms since then but I'm really pleased that I didn't do that because actually as I say it would have been completely the wrong way around it isn't about driving growth of the YouTube channel it's about driving growth of the take one take brand and the things like the academy and the other learning resources that I'm offering and yes YouTube is a massive part of that and is kind of like you know the biggest if you want to think about this in terms of they call it top of funnel actually you've got a product stack and you've got a series of different sales funnels coming in but this whole idea of top of funnel something as a marketing an inbound marketing tool that is bringing people into your company then yes you know YouTube is a massive part of that but those other platforms Instagram, TikTok and so on are actually other other just things that are feeding into the you know the overall brand they're not supposed to be feeding into YouTube is my view now of this at least anyway and by the way all of this is just purely my opinion and I'm just sharing my experience going through this and what I'm figuring out I'm sure I'll probably have changed my mind a little bit in a year or so when I'm or maybe a week who knows when I'm seeing actually how these things are all sort of planning out but it's this idea of being a lot more focused on the overarching goal rather than just one platform but that now leads me to well actually I could be doing a much better job on these other platforms now with that in mind where I'm not thinking about it's got to be feeding it's just got to be feeding take one tech and I also had issues before with where it seems like people are just posting to every platform and they're posting the same thing to every platform and obviously there are differences in content you know short form videos on TikTok you're not going to post a long blog post like you could post on LinkedIn to TikTok because it just can't work there but apart from that you know where you have got short form video that you could be posting on shorts, TikTok, YouTube YouTube shorts rather IG Reels and even on Twitter posting vertical video and on LinkedIn you can post vertical video as well I used to think well what's the point of just posting the same thing everywhere and sometimes I would see people posting the same thing everywhere because I was following them in all of those places and then feel like well it is just duplicating the same stuff in everywhere but this is something that I've changed my opinion of now as well because I might well be following somebody in five places but that's not to say that you know everybody is following that person in five places or the same as me there are people I know that follow me on all of the different platforms but then there are some people that are purely LinkedIn there are some people that are purely Twitter there are some people that are purely TikTok so actually if you've got content that does work on all of those different platforms I now actually don't think there's anything wrong with posting exactly the same thing to all of those places because all you're doing is you're just basically putting the same net if you like in a series of different ponds if you want to think about it like that you know bringing in leads bringing in potential contents for your business to grow your business then yeah if the content does physically fit into that space then what's the you know what's the reason why you wouldn't actually go and post that in those places because you just basically got a different pool of an audience don't assume that everyone is everywhere but like I say with me the thing that has changed though with this is just the idea of rather than thinking that it's got to direct them to YouTube YouTube now is just one of those other platforms amongst amongst many and and that's really it's about thinking about that I mean I've got my my mission statement on my website which is to help you become more productive impactful and professional with tech so that you can confidently present yourself and your content online and it is these kind of like business professionals coaches people like that who just want to enhance their online presence and really it's for elevating presentations and all that kind of stuff and then the tech that you go on to use to do that now actually as it happens the whole productivity side of stuff which I was going to talk about originally on the channel has ultimately still come back into that because as well you know all the people that are in the academy that I'm speaking to they're all business people they all still want to be more productive and so that still does form you know quite a core part of it it's just that I still don't cover that too much on the channel itself so the channel is more about the tech tools for this kind of stuff but then you know in the academy we still do talk a lot about the productivity and in fact the workshops that we've got coming up are specifically about you know productivity tools on the Mac systems and processes to become more organized and I never wanted the channel to go down like the fully you know task management and productivity because that can actually be a rabbit hole for people to go down to if they're not careful of just being so productive that they're not getting anything done because they're designing the perfect system so yeah I didn't necessarily want to add to that but yeah that is that is kind of like the core mission I guess and who the like academy members on it's all about this thing of you know the digital stage and so with that in mind now I feel like I've got a lot more clarity in terms of all of the other different products and services and you know content within the content ecosystem so I'm going to be doing a lot more long form LinkedIn posts I've already started doing that over the past month I guess of doing more kind of long form writing on LinkedIn that is you know feeding people in that way rather than to the YouTube channel and it made me then also sort of reflect and redesign my website so this was being something that it's still a work in progress and it's not a major redesign but it's something that I did do I guess about just over a month ago now or more where it's more about the overall thing and YouTube doesn't really feature as prominently whereas before my website was always kind of like in support of the YouTube channel now if you go over to my website you know it's more about the core values still work in progress I've got a video to put up at the top there but this is all about you know the three core things it's either personalised guidance with you know coaching and consultation it's all of their educational resources so whether that's courses or you know the take one tech academy because I am still offering courses as well as you know stand alone as opposed to just in the academy and then there's external sorry other resources as well so that's like the guides and things like that the free content and as we go down it's basically all of those different things are then broken down on the homepage so you know there is the academy and each of these there's by the way with websites I mean you can you can go for a website that is a funnel website so it's just got one core thing on it and or you can create separate funnels for each of those things so and then have them all housed on your homepage so that's the approach that I've gone to so I have still got a traditional homepage but like this one here if you go through to the academy then that takes you to more of a sort of funnel style page where it just lists all of the benefits of the take one tech academy the courses that are available all the different resources that are part of that and this is a sales pitch for the academy I'm just showing my process here those are the workshops coming up and what's involved in it and all the pricing so when I talk about the academy links through to a funnel page but the actual web my homepage take one tech is is just listing what all of those resources are a bit of an introduction here some reviews I'll come on to this in a moment the digital rate stage revolution which is an event that I'm running so this is again called comes back to catering to these this core audience and then I outline the different courses so I also split those up I didn't talk about this earlier but the thing about courses is I think there's a lot of misnaming of courses people call things an academy when it's a standalone course whereas I think of an academy has been a an educational institution for example where there's lots of different learning resources so that's why I called the take one tech academy and academy because it consists of courses but it also consists of one-to-one sessions group in a workshop and all that kind of stuff it's essentially you know a whole educational environment but then you get people calling things a master class when really it's a beginner's guide a master class in my mind should cover everything from absolute beginner through to you know everything there is to know about it that's what I think you should call a master class so that's my approach so certainly with the e-cam master class the rocaster master class for example and the recent stream deck master class those are kind of more like of a complete thing that will give you a complete system to work with but then they are not for everyone as well this comes down to you know people's learning styles some people do the course but then they say like you know it's either it's maybe it's too long for them or maybe they don't start don't want to do the course because they feel like I don't want to go into like a whole you know hundred lesson thing I just want to get up and running so that's what the beginner's guides are for just a short thing that's going to get you up and running so you can learn it yourself I mean I like to have a master class as a resource for myself but I also like beginner's guides if I'm starting something new because I tend to be more of a hands-on thing just let me get at it let me check out everything press all the buttons and I just want something that's going to get me up and running so that's what the beginner's guides are so that's the the tech the the courses and then there's workshops part of the ecosystem as well I guess is my digital products so I've got icon packs and things like that for stream deck and loop deck and then there is the free resources here as well so the homepage now is acting for as a resource for like everything that I'm doing and then the book which I'll talk about a little bit later and why I'm doing that as well and then a blog I mean I should probably have a link to my YouTube channel on here really shouldn't I I mean it is on there technically because I've got it down at the bottom but I suppose I should probably have a section on here that is specifically oh and by the way I'm on YouTube but that's kind of my point here whereas before my website was a reflection of my YouTube channel now it's very much a reflection of the take one tech business of which YouTube is a part and YouTube sort of feeds into it so that was something that I did earlier this month and you'll see that there's like a lot more consistency over all of the different pages as well so I think before it was a like I say it was something that was in addition to the content and yeah maybe there's lots of lots of little jobs that I didn't have done on it whereas now you just see there's a consistent look and feel across the whole the whole website but that is that is it really the bigger picture is that you know it's about this this sort of core core demographic I've got and apart from the you know that sort of whole approach this then feeds into actually what I'm going to be doing with the content and how it's going to work on those those different platforms and I've talked about you know the stuff that I'm doing on those other platforms like LinkedIn that very much is going to you know be leading into into this I'm also going to be very focused on creating a lot more of the kind of lead magnets so what I mean by that is if we go up to my site if you go to resources there's a few things here as a couple of guides AI course creation guide the five step digital marketing blueprint which is all about creating a cohesive cross-platform presence something which ironically when I started the YouTube channel because it was kind of like a almost like a test bed as I say I didn't actually apply the same process to that and then one here for zoom audio settings and things like that so there is a lot more resources on the site though and there are kind of related things and so digital guides checklists and so on one on the zv1 setup guide which was a specific request from somebody in the academy so I created a guide for that are we adding in more of these ones whoops I probably need to change that I get annoyed by these little pop-ups and now I've got one on my own website and a few templates and checklists and recommended products and services to that I recommend and services that I use as well so that's all in the sort of resources section of the website but yeah specifically those guides and checklists and stuff like that I'm going to be updating that as well one of them that I want to have as more of a living document really is the studio guide so in the descriptions of all my videos I've got a list of all the products and services that some of the tech gear and products that I use in the recording of the content but it is a kind of ever-changing thing and so what I'm thinking is it's better to sort of swap that out for rather than just a series of links to check out this product I want to make a cohesive guide or a complete guide I should say of the stuff that I'm currently using and then as I say that would be a living document that I could update in the description to go and download that sort of gear guide where it's more than just links because you're kind of limited in terms of the amount of information you can put in your YouTube descriptions so you can't really talk about okay there's the you know whatever it is nanolites that I'm using here for my lighting it's just a link to the product I can't really say what it is I like about it and why I like it whereas in a gear guide I'd be able to do that so that's definitely an option rather than individual products so those sort of as I say lead magnets which sounds a bit sort of cold but that's what they are they're free information resources that essentially people are giving in return for an email address and then you're able to you know promote other opportunities and offers to them with the LinkedIn stuff then that as I say is more sort of long form stuff I'm starting to write on my blog more as well which is essentially you know the same kind of I'm doing on LinkedIn although there will be some extra stuff on the blog one of the things about the blog is it is then just another searchable resource that people will be able to find when they're looking for information and some people prefer not to watch videos they prefer to watch you know information in a blog and so what I'm doing it actually is going through and looking at all of my video content on YouTube and then looking at the ones that are the most popular and then you know looking to write blog posts about those things and about those topics so that if that's what people are actively searching for then there is written content there as well but also then that links as you know I can give a link back to the actual video as well if they do want to watch it and then that's another way to you know cross promote the YouTube platform as well or the YouTube channel rather off-platform with you know the two biggest search engines Google and YouTube search which is Google as well so it makes sense to do that whereas I wouldn't be doing that on LinkedIn I want to keep LinkedIn specifically focused on as I say that core demographic but the blog seems like a fine place to add that other kind of kind of information then there is this another potential avenue for basically expanding the reach and that is through writing books and I've had this idea for a book for a long time and it came I mean since I started doing this I've been interested in the idea of you know this whole thing the recovering perfectionist the reason why I wanted to do things in one take to get over my perfectionist tendencies and just be you know be content with not things not being perfect and the ums and urs like I'm doing all the time in this live stream and even in my recorded videos as well but then also the sorts of things that we talk about in the academy and the sort of things we talk about with you know mastering the digital stage and so that's what the book is all about and it's called Imperfect Presence because it's all about as it says mastering the digital stage and capturing the online spotlight and it's talking about all of the different tools and things like that that we use but it's really a book that is split into four parts so the first part is talking about this digital shift obviously with the you know the pandemic which everyone knows about no one doesn't know about that but it was amazing that everything shifted online and yet people didn't do anything to change the way that they were looking and sounding and showing up on zoom meetings and even now you know yes okay it's past things are opening up we're you know getting back to normality but still there's a huge number of people that are doing all their business online because they suddenly realized they could and yet they're still not investing in the way that they're showing up online and you know we're still in I say we because I know the people that I'm speaking to here in the chat I know that all of you got you know great setups and looking great and sounding great but we are still in the vast minority of people here when it comes to you know zoom calls are still an absolute mess and teams calls when people show up and they've got bad audio bad lighting bad video you know fumbling around trying to share some part of the screen in the share the wrong thing using you know crappy virtual backgrounds with you know using zooms built in one that eliminates the background and they got all the kind of mess that we know goes on and it's really talking about that first section talking about this digital shift and talking about really the importance of you know mastering this on-screen presence because what ultimately it's about is it's about delivering your value everybody in business has got some sort of value to the deliver or in education you know they're trying to impart their knowledge and so really if there's anything that is impeding that it's doing yourself a huge disservice and it's actually preventing you from delivering your true value now there are some real techies out there you know I mean I love tech and so I love to use all of this stuff just for the sake of using it as well you know I mean it is all forming a you know you I'm using it for a purpose but I really relish the you know the opportunity to use all of this stuff because I just love you know the gadgets and things like that but that isn't the case for everybody you know some people don't necessarily want to do that they just want to get on and deliver their message and they don't want spending time troubleshooting and all of that kind of thing and they want the tech to get out of the way so that they can you know deliver that value and so this is all about the importance of that and why people should care a lot more than they're doing about this so I created this value formula which I call it which is all about you know improving the visuals that you've got on screen so that can be obviously camera and so on but it's also about how you introduce information on screen so we've still got people who are okay they've got their little picture in picture but then they're still delivering a traditional you know slideshow as if they're standing in front of a you know projector screen or something like that which you know in this day and age there are much much better ways to do things so the whole visual side of things how you actually put yourself onto the screen can have a massive difference can make a massive difference to your your sort of impact in those things then you've got the audio side of things which again is you know massively neglected and if there's anything you know people are not able to hear you clearly or they're getting distracted by background noise or things like that there's a whole series of things here which is like you've got to be you've got to make sure that people can not only see you but hear you clearly the L part is all about lighting because that's really what's going to sort of set the mode for you know for what it is you're doing and so for those core concepts you can say well those are pretty obvious really yeah get some you know good video good audio and good lighting and then that's actually a massive other section to this or a massive part of this you know jigsaw if you like which is really understanding not just understanding the tools that you're using but really understanding the full capability so I'm on coaching calls with people all the time where they'll they'll book a call with me to find out something about whether it's the Rocaster whether it's audio whether it's cameras lighting or whatever it happens to be and then they'll tell me what they're trying to achieve and what they're doing and then they'll tell me the problem that they think that they have with you know whatever bit of gear it is but usually there'll be a whole part of this which is kind of like the the information that they don't know that they don't know that kind of thing and so really having that understanding of all of that other stuff that you could be doing so it's having an understanding of the broader capabilities that we have at our disposal as people who you know here I'm sitting in a my little studio in the northeast of Thailand and you know we can communicate with anybody anywhere in the world I mean that's not not a surprise but what is a surprise is the ease with which we can do some really really quite complex stuff that literally only a few years ago would have required a massive team to do so there's that thing there's the understanding of the overall capabilities that we have at our disposal and you know that obviously then the technical understanding of all the different components but then it comes down to the the which is the execution so that's all about about well actually how do you then go about you've got all of these things how do you go about delivering on all of this and then there are a whole load of other things that come into place the perfectionism you know is it said you know doing things in one take and all of that kind of stuff that aspect of it then how do you actually physically then deliver something that can be done as a seamless presentation a seamless you know whatever it is a lesson maybe if you're a teacher you know pitch if you're pitching something you know how do you actually put that all together the practicalities of it and so that's kind of like the e-part this is the value formula that I've created so that's all explained in depth in the sort of second part of the book but then the final two parts of the book is first of all is building your digital toolkit we all go through this process of and I talk about gas gear acquisition syndrome in the book as well we all go through this process of like wanting to build out our studios or wanting to add new pieces to the puzzle and I was talking to someone in the academy just the other day and they were saying you know there was this one extra thing that they needed they'd run out of spaces or it was actually to add in another a teleprompter or a dock or something adding a teleprompter and so they needed a dock because they needed the extra display over and above the maximum number of displays for the max so they needed a display link dock and they made the comment that this just seems never ending it seems like there's always just one more thing to buy there's always like some more gear and there's gear acquisition syndrome which is as we comically call it which is where you are basically always chasing the next bit of gear and you feel like you can't make a start until you've got this perfect setup but then there's the other one where it's just continuously on a cycle of feeling like you're constantly buying stuff in the hope that it will make some you know marginal gains or whatever well I actually think there almost is an ideal setup and so it's not actually about you know a constant never-ending thing although it can feel that at the start when you go and buy something and then you realize I haven't got a cable I need to go and buy this other cable and then oh now it doesn't work because I need to get this dock or buy this dock and it's just like snowballs like that but actually there is a definitive for me in my mind a sort of definitive list of well actually if you got these things and this is the sort of the way that you should think about it then you kind of can plan for this in advance when you do that then you can kind of break it down and this is not to say that you need to go and buy everything all at once but when you've got a very clear plan in place of what it is that you need and when you need it and why you need it then you can be a lot more sort of intentional about that and you can also budget for it which is obviously the crucial part so that whole part of building your digital toolkit is another section in the book in itself and then finally once you've understood you know the value formula once you've understood you know why it's important and once you've got this idea of your digital toolkit then it comes down to the actual execution of the whole plan itself and so that's in the final section of the book so and it's called Imperfect Presence because it is about making an online you know presence in your online meetings and having an impact in all that you're doing it be it in meetings be it in the content you're creating be it in just one-to-one calls maybe you know whatever it happens to be maybe with coaching clients but it really just does cover you know the whole gamut of everything and it is for you know everybody that is the as I say this sort of core demographic I guess of the people that ultimately are interested in the academy so it's coming out it will be available for pre-order but the actual final launch will I'll tie in with something else I'm doing which will be in October so if you're interested in the book then head over to ImperfectPresence.com and then there you'll find a bit more information you can leave your name and email because what I'm going to do is for the for the launch I'm going to do a whole pre-launch period and then I'm going to have some giveaways and prizes and things like that for those that go ahead and start with the pre-orders in advance so hopefully people will find it interesting it's it's been something that I've been working on for some time on and off and it was only really this last month that I've just gone full steam ahead with it to really try and get it all all polished off the seed of the idea I'll say actually came from a last year on the ECAM channel say May or June 2022 I was doing one session as part of their bigger zoom workshop that they did so they had different speakers on different days and I sort of broke this down this sort of the value formula and then we focused in on just one sort of small aspect of it and so since then I've been kind of like working on it and building out since then but yeah if you're interested then definitely head over to that link I'll drop it again in the in the chat and and just register your interest to let me know that you you want to be first to notify get notified when it is available so that is the book and obviously this then becomes not just something that describes this overall you know caters to this core demographic that I'm talking about so coming back to the content ecosystem this is just one part of the content but obviously it's another avenue then to to reach out to a separate audience that maybe isn't the YouTube audience entirely you know there's going to be an overlap of all of these different things that I'm doing but ultimately the book will then become another source of driving people to the academy the consultations and those kind of things speaking about the different ways that people learn as well and I mentioned it earlier the event I'm doing so this is in Dallas in October and this is going to tie in with the book launch as well but this is this idea of people like courses some people don't like courses some people watch on YouTube but some people do still want to have that real sort of hands-on thing that they get in events so not just a Zoom workshop but you know some sort of real event and so this is something that I'm doing in October in Dallas so the digital stage revolution 7th to 10th of October and it's a kind of four-day intensive where ultimately it's going to cover the same sort of topics as in the book really but just with some real practical hands-on stuff that we'll be talking about in there and it's just that kind of one-to-one thing so coming back to the point that I made earlier about this idea of you know where do you draw the line between the content you give for free versus the content that you sell as part of a course or a book or you know the event it's really all the same it's just a different way of delivering it and you know a more personal so you're getting different levels of time from people you get in different levels of interaction and so that's what the digital stage revolution event is and there's one other final sort of piece to talk about with this oh and incidentally I should say this is just one sort of you know my own event but I'm also looking at other speaking opportunities as well one that I'm definitely doing is in is also in October actually the day after this event which is Ecamm lives creator camp so I'm running one of the workshops there with Daniel Chi and we're talking all about this same kind of stuff really delivering presentations online that particular workshop is one of five workshops so as part of the link for it now that's terrible I should have had that on a button shouldn't I but the creator camp from Ecamm is a two two and a half day event where there is just for a hundred people split into five groups of twenty and then basically they go and do these five different workshops so sort of rotating round so this workshop that I'm running with Daniel will be basically 90 minutes and then we're running it five times for the five groups so it's a much shorter thing but it's part of the Ecamm creator camp where that is going to cover the Zoom presentation side of stuff they're also going to have a section on talking about sort of production using Ecamm then there'll be one about studio setups and lighting and things like that that is with Doc and with Laura from Shaw and then there'll be one with Ken and Glenn and Adrian Salisbury which is about Ecamm itself and then there's one other thing that I can't just remember what the workshops are now, let me think who is it, it is with Anna and Folgens which is more about I think it's them that are doing that one which is more about the branding of it I think they're doing that with Stephanie Liu I may have got the wrong way round there but anyway so that is something I'm doing I'm also looking at some other speaking opportunities as well thanks Paul for dropping the link into the chat but yeah so looking at some other speaking opportunities which again now that I'm very clear on the core demographic and the ultimate message then this becomes a lot easier to understand who it is that I'm actually speaking to at these other events there is one other thing that I'm going to be doing slightly different going forward as well which is podcasting now I've had my live streamer backstage podcast which has started towards the end of last year and it's been on a bit of a hiatus really again not necessarily ultimately planned but I did have like the first season of it if you like which was 25 episodes and I did group them all together and had them so that they were going out on a weekly basis and then they've been a little bit sporadic for the last three I guess but the idea was that then I would have a break and then come back and do more recording and the original plan was for the listener it would be seamless but for me I would do them in batches and I kind of thought of them in seasons 25 at a time but I haven't actually done any more of those since well the last one that I recorded was technically in December and they haven't really gone out since then either apart from they went out through January and through February I think it was and then yeah so the live streamer backstage podcast was all about me interviewing fellow live streamers to understand how they use live streaming as a tool in their business and you know talking about the tools that they use and having a little studio tour and stuff like that I still will do more of those I'm going to start off another season imminently I need to just clear off my desk of some of the things that I need or the content that I need to create first but I'm also going to start another podcast which is called the digital stage mastery podcast and that is essentially as you can tell going to come back to this call message and this core demographic that I've got because one of the things about the live streamer backstage podcast and my thought for doing that is and if you look at all the thumbnails it's got the person that I'm interviewing and the spotlight is on them I wanted to shine a light on these people not that they've these people got platforms bigger than me in most cases but I mean what I mean is I wanted to highlight these people to my audience so you know people in the academy or anyone else these are the people that you know I've learned from and they've got respect for and so I wanted to you know show these people and share them with other people as well the people that I admire and so that's kind of like my thought process behind the live streamer backstage podcast people that you know could share something with with my community essentially but there was an interesting point that came out of the the creators pod and my little mastermind group that I'm in with some fellow creators and I'll drop a link to the creators pod podcast but in there we were talking about the the concept of using a podcast as a vehicle to bring people into your business and what a lot of people do is and what I did with the live streamer backstage podcast is they they'll have some sort of interview show where they're bringing in you know experts and their interview in the experts and in doing so they are you know obviously as I intended to do shining the light on that expert where it's actually if you're looking to bring people into you know into a specific thing that you're doing it's also useful not necessarily instead of but also useful to have something where you're just talking and positioning yourself as the expert in that field and so that's going to be more so the the idea of this the second podcast is really where I'm just kind of sharing a bit like I've been doing today really sharing my sort of experiences and it's and it's not about you know not about saying that I'm I'm the guy I'm the you know look at me kind of thing but sharing your knowledge essentially with the people who are likely to come to want to learn more from you and so that's what this new podcast will be all about so the digital stage mastery podcast the thing about that as well is from a technical production point of view it's much easier to produce than a show with guests because then you have the whole scheduling thing and and so on whereas it's going to be much easier to actually you know batch record a whole series of these podcasts and then you know put them you know schedule them to go out so this next three months for me is really about putting all this stuff that has been sort of formulated in my head over the past I guess past month really and and put it all into practice and get a lot of this content sort of queued up and ready to go out because the next three months are going to be pretty hectic really to get all of the stuff going out obviously the book and the podcast and the the other things and the existing courses that all sorry the the scheduled courses that I've got going into the Academy also all need to be all need to be launched as well so this next three months between now and going to the US is going to be really hectic and then after that what I'd like to do by the end of the year obviously there'll be October is for me is out because I'll be traveling but then in the final two months I'll be you know filling in any any gaps of things that I've missed missed out but by the end of the year what I hope to have is a really solid and you can hold me to this this is the reason why I make these videos and make them so that I'm making myself accountable and being very public and open about it but by the end of the year I'd like to have you know the Academy in terms of the bulk of the main content because there are still new courses to come out I've got the YouTube beginner's guide that's coming out imminently then after that there'll be the keynote masterclass which is all about how to use that for obviously you can see how this all feeds into this ecosystem of you know that core demographic again I'd like to have that all wrapped up because then what's going to be happening is you know over the next year in 2024 it's going to be more about sort of maintaining that content and yes there will be new courses as well but not quite such a heavy release schedule I mean by the end of the year I should have 20 or 20 or more courses actually available and I'm also going to do a free course as well and that came about because of a monumental screw-up on my part which is part of the part of the the Academy is these monthly workshops and one of them was all about technical setup for online presentations and talking about I've talked about e-cam at length I've talked about stream deck at length I've talked about keynote but actually how does this whole thing all fit together into one sort of system and if you are preparing to use all these tools what do you need to think of in terms of the hardware the software and just the process of actually setting up for it so that was going to be the topic for the workshop and I made a bit of a mess up and I sent out the Zoom invite to like 10,000 people fortunately it was a really short notice so 9,000 people did not turn up there was a thing about only about 50 or 60 or something like that because it was literally like the last email before the thing started and that's because I'd set my audience segmentation in Kajabi but then it seems that I missed to hit the save button before I proceeded anyway so what happened then was I realized that this email had gone out and I ended up doing I had to rethink my entire workshop because it wasn't going to be applicable to most of the people in that list maybe didn't even know what ECAN was let alone how to use all these things together but what I got back from that was and I'd said in the email because it was intended for Academy people don't worry if you can't make it there'll be a replay available so I got a lot of responses from people saying I couldn't make it it was too short notice but I'd love the replay so what I've decided I'm going to do is actually create a little mini course which covers all of the stuff in the workshop but just in a much more structured manner for people who are just sort of starting out and takes them through the whole process the side benefit of that is that that then acts as just yet another avenue for sort of bringing people in and it also gives people the opportunity to sort of experience what it's like to do one of my courses because maybe if they see me on YouTube they expect the course will be exactly the same so having something that is there for free actually when I reflected on it was a good thing because it gives people the opportunities to experience and understand what a course is like when they go through one of my courses and then obviously because it's going to be a mini course really it's not a master class on everything but it gives people a taste of everything then that then also leads into the Academy so as a sort of marketing tool it's good from that point of view as well a lot to get to let me just check through the comments though we'll see where we're up to hey Jesse great to see you here and we've got some Academy members in hey Annie great to see you as well because I definitely had you in mind when I was talking thinking about doing this one in terms of thinking about the whole ecosystem great to see you as well Roy thanks for stopping by I was really pleased to be on your live stream the other week you can find a link to that in the discord hi Johan let's have a look hey Michael I hope you're doing really doing really well good to see you hi Jamie again having things to sell that are useful to your audience seems to be the key to monetization oh that's it yeah and using the YouTube platform obviously as a way to demonstrate that your sort of knowledge and abilities and then having those options for things and you know other ways for people to to use your services and by the way this was another thing that came out in the conversation with the Academy was when it comes to information that you're giving for free seemingly you know on YouTube and that thing of well what's the difference between what you put out for free and what people pay for actually people will pay for exactly the same thing as you've given for free and this is like absolutely 100% the truth because what happens is sometimes I'll get people to book a consultation call with me and when you book a call with me you have the option to you know say give me some information about what it is that we're going to be talking about I should I suppose I should put my little link up shouldn't I but yeah and sometimes people will put a list of let's say you know three or four things where I need help doing this I need help doing that I'm just in the process of doing this but I'm not sure how to do x y and z whatever it is and often what I'll do is if there's something specific where I have got a dedicated video that answers that very question I'll respond and say you know well there is these videos that cover that and in all cases and I'll say you know here's here's the answer to this question here's the answer to that and here's the answer to the other question if you want to cancel the call let me know because these videos do answer those those issues directly for you and invariably they'll come back and say I've already watched those videos I just want you to tell me how to do it for my specific scenario and that is really what happens with all my coaching calls there's the information I've put out there technically answers it but it's not necessarily always directly relatable to you know their specific situation or they just won't help walking through it so from a consultation point of view there is this you know very clear link that you know you're talking about the thing that solves their problem but now they want you to just come and help to solve their problems specifically and walk you through that process and that's the same with you know coming back to your point that's the same with the courses as well so the hey Dina great to see you as well let me let me see where we're up to I think I've just lost my place in the I think I've pressed scroll on my mouse wheel and it's just scrolled through all of my chat messages let me come back I'll find it hey oh it's great to see you let me find out where I'm up to that's it yeah the new well you know what you laugh there the new training course announcement how to get through your course stack so in the academy I actually created a course which is the academy course and it shows you how to get the most out of the academy and I did feel like the irony of creating a course to tell you how to do the courses was yeah quite ironic speaking of the new training I should just actually take a moment to mention the stream debt master class and the reason I mention it today specifically is because there is 25% off until the end of June now technically it's the first of July for me but here but I am running it till it's everybody else's end of June and the stream debt master class is all about obviously stream deck but what I wanted to do with the stream debt master class was break it down into a number of different segments really the there's obviously the introduction so it's 80 80 lessons there is obviously the course introduction how to use stream debt basic setup understanding plugins and actions so the basic operation of using stream deck but there are really then sort of four core areas actually split into five more like but really four so the first one here is organizing your stream deck which is all about like actually you know I get the question what do we do when we run out of buttons so there's lots of different ways to approach that you know do you have a different profile for each application you use how do you go about doing that so the organization side of it is one thing kind of linked to that is the personalization side of stream deck because a lot of people I think either they just use the built in you know little default icons with text on the screen or they'll just you know have a whole sort of mess of different icons on their stream deck and the thing to think about with a stream deck is it is essentially a blank canvas when you get it and if you think about how much time and effort and money companies put in designing user interfaces for an application for example or a website whatever it is user experience is a massive massive thing and it plays a huge role into whether something is a great product or not and stream decks in this situation where it's such an amazing product but you have the ability to you know actually screw it up by making it impractical and hard to use and it's amazing how many times I'm on calls with people and we'll be talking about the presentations of this kind of stuff and they'll say oh I've got a stream deck but it's kind of sitting on the side I don't really use it that much and for me it's kind of like I could not live without my stream deck and I don't know how people have one and are not using it but it really what it comes down to is it comes down to it not being a frictionless part of their process it isn't easy to use. We are the architect of that we have the ability to change that and we have the ability to make it either a seamless part of our setup or it can be something that is difficult to use not organized the buttons aren't there when you need them maybe they're not consistent which is a bit like imagine if you got into your car and every time you got into the car the buttons have been moved around and that comes the same with window management on your screen really it's the same kind of thing as that so many times that I'm on calls with people and they're sharing their screen but the stuff's all randomly positioned all over the screen and then the next time I'm on a call with them it's in a completely different position which says that there isn't that consistent organization it actually is a massive productivity killer the improvements that we get in productivity come from those minor little improvements minor little changes and so having the stream deck allow you to have that sort of frictionless workflow whilst using it is what is going to make it a much more usable device so I wanted to make sure that the course really laid the foundations for that so as well as the usual stuff about how do you use stream deck how do you use profiles plugins adding new profiles and all that kind of stuff I really wanted to talk about the organization and personalization because those are key to it becoming this invaluable thing that is as valuable as your keyboard and mouse you know I would hate to lose any of those things off my desk then there is the the fact that it is the ultimate productivity tool once you've got these two points mastered in terms of the organizing and the other personalizing and by the way these are just the module titles load of videos inside each of these sections but it is the ultimate productivity tool and people get it because it's a streaming device potentially I think the majority of people I mean that's why I bought it I thought that was just going to be switching scenes in e-cam live and in you know for my recordings I didn't realize just what a massive productivity powerhouse it was going to turn out to be so I cover that off in a complete section obviously it is you know originally for live streaming hence the name stream deck so it is originally for live streaming and video productions of course there is a module all about that but there is then this other aspect to it which is that it allows you to elevate your online meetings and presentations again coming back to this core thing because I think that that is an often overlooked aspect of stream deck and when we talk about you know using things like e-cam live to you know use the virtual camera into zoom to then be able to do these amazing presentations and linking in with keynote some people are daunted by that because it then feels like they've got all of the different applications open these different tools open what stream deck does is it really unifies all that so that stream deck then becomes the mission control for your meeting for your presentation your webinar or whatever it is and it's a really overlooked aspect to stream deck that this ability to unify everything and so that then it suddenly doesn't feel like you're using lots of different apps you could have everything controlled from you know one stream deck or five if you want to go to I mean it's like I do but you can just have a couple of scenes in e-cam to switch back and forth between them controls for zoom to do a few things in there maybe control your slides from there as well maybe you use a teleprompter you want to scroll your text on it highlight the screen so with just one stream deck that then can control everything and suddenly all of these different things that you felt like you having to manage separately suddenly they're all just under your control with a simple device on your thing and if you link that back in with the organization and personalization it's really an amazing device so I do then go on to some slightly more advanced things like talking about using multiple stream decks there's also some resources in there as well because on if you go to my store I mentioned it earlier I've got these icon packs that I've been selling from my store so this was one of the early ways that I monetized was having you know I've got the zoom icon pack e-cam youtube keynote 3000 icons calculator pro mouse and I've got to turn that off and this one for stream deck plus as well well all those icon packs are available from my store but actually when you buy the stream deck master class you get all of those icon packs and all future icon packs will be included with that as well so I've got a whole list of icon packs other ones to make which I'll get around to eventually when I get a spare minute and those will be added to the store but they'll also just automatically appear in the the course for anybody who's bought the stream deck master class so that is the stream deck master class as I say it's just launched earlier this month the launch offer of 25% off does run out at well technically yesterday for me but yeah in about 12 hours or something like that it will switch over to the regular price so go and check that out in the link if that is something that is of interest to you let me come back to the comments to see where we're up to and why did you go down that rabbit hole oh it was because of this comment from Michael by the way I'm Michael yes needing a course to talk about how to get through the courses I'm not sure what that's relating to but thank you very much amazing I'm glad to hear that this is the problem with that live streams as you come back and look at the chat afterwards and you've kind of lost the content but I'm glad you're finding something amazing and thank you for explaining taking the time to explain master class and yeah I think people use it to inaccurately they'll call things a master class and it's just like scratching the surface so yeah thanks Dina I'm glad you are like that idea about the bog let me see the amount of times I've attempted to drop affiliate links to well it's funny you say that I mean the ongoing joke with Keely is that her biggest affiliate link is for her lashes so that's the one that she makes the most done in terms of affiliate links in her live streams about field hockey umpiring is her lashes too many ignore how they show up and sound online at their peril as people just fatigue quickly switch off and you don't get your message heard it is mind boggling quite frankly I cannot believe that the same executives CEOs that will quite happily sign off on some massive new corporate headquarters which is just all about that idea of setting impression that's why they have all these luxury headquarters with artwork on the walls and their exclusive coffee shops and catering facilities and stuff is all about entertaining and impressing their clients and yet those same people turn up just looking like crap for one to a better word so and you're right it is it's not just about it's not a vanity thing it's not just about hey look at me the image quality and the sound quality is good it is about getting your message across and people not being distracted if you're on a meeting with somebody and they've got some really weird virtual background going on that's coming in and out of focus because it's just using zooms built in one that eliminates their real background to put a virtual one in your kind of eye is drawn like where those little gaps are it goes around their head and then it fades in and out of here you can see the real background just over their shoulders almost or maybe there's a ghostly figure that walks past and they just pop in and out of focus it's just a total distraction from what the person is saying and then let's not get started on audio if you can't even hear them properly because there's some fan noise or something or it sounds like they're speaking to you from the other side of the room it's just madness and people still have not got it I mean it's great for the rest of us because we get the ability to outshine the competition effectively and we do get heard over and above other people who maybe don't but yeah I'm all for helping as many people as possible get up to speed with all of this sort of stuff oh and Anna's doing that sorry just coming back to the creator camp thanks so much for pop up on screen for those watching on the replay yeah ecam.tv slash creator camp and Anna is doing it because Anna's a photographer and they're infolgens then Anna is a photographer as well so she's doing headshots for people that'll be good I use the same headshot in all of my profile pictures everywhere and I do that just so it's consistent and when people ask for a profile picture to go on a like a thumbnail I always use the exact same shot just so that it is consistent everywhere and it always is recognizable rather than changing that up every time but it's probably about time I changed it to be honest but anyway um yeah the time zones thing are always a little bit confusing the worst about the time zones is that sort of month period where all of the different countries change their time zones at different times and so there's this moment of this month of madness where no one quite knows what time it is everywhere the gap for many professionals is getting clarity on their key positioning their brand and their initial online business plan maybe an online business coaching opportunity um yeah well I mean to be honest that's exactly what I'm talking about right now with you know my my evolution with take one tech is actually getting that clarity because whereas other businesses I've done um I've always started out with a clear you know idea of this is what I'm doing this is the demographic that wasn't the case with take one take it just kind of evolved for me but I take your point that you're saying you know it's an online coaching opportunity I'll certainly be um you know once I've once I feel like I've got this thing sort of more nailed down myself for my you know for take one tech I'll certainly be making this as more of a documented process for the benefit of others as well um you know when I've finished figuring it out myself um just been making a stream deck making stream deck icons for a project and working on in infinity a affinity designer yeah I mean it's I'm all about the icons it makes such a difference to have everything uh you know everything looking consistent and as I say it's not just from a vanity point of view and making it look pretty it is about you know that that sort of user interface uh thanks Jesse glad you've uh glad you've nearly reached the end and uh thank you very much I'll take that comment the check is in the post um and I'll leave a few I'll leave a few unintentional spelling mistakes in there to catch people out so I think those those have nearly all been corrected I'm going to do a video all about my actual process of creating courses as well because that's something that people have asked about is how I go about creating a course from kind of start to finish so that will be a separate a separate video uh or maybe another live stream another another one or two hour marathon um but that is what I wanted to talk about really and I'm as I say everything that I'm doing on take one tech um at the moment is it's all a work in progress you know I do have some as you can tell I still have some finally uh have some uh you know sort of clear ideas about where I'm going but you know things do crop up and you know you get opportunities that come out from here there and everywhere sometimes and you maybe not take a total pivot but you know often it's about course correction um and there's a an expression though that I love which is I'm not a ice hockey fan but I believe this comes from my ice hockey which is um and I forget who it's attributed to so that's pretty useless but the expression is at skate to where the puck is going which means that you know if you see the things sliding across the ice you don't head in the direction of where it is you look at see where it's heading to and then you adjust to go in that direction and then similarly uh with that then you know if if there's something that causes it to change course on its way you are constantly doing these minor course corrections and that's what you know I feel that take one tech has been like that from the outset really there's an overarching direction um but then you know you'll see something that changes and then I kind of change course slightly to adjust for that and I'm I'm all for setting goals I'm all for you know having a really well thought out plan of uh of attack um but I'm also very uh open to uh adjusting when when things I see opportunities in different directions so this will definitely be a uh a sort of work in progress but I hope that you know just being me being transparent and open about where I am with it hopefully this might be of use to some people who are maybe on a similar path looking at starting a youtube channel uh maybe put off by the idea that it takes ages to monetize whereas in actual fact you can build a real business out of something if you're offering value off of youtube uh but then also how maybe you might want to be thinking about using all of these other platforms and youtube as part of you know an overall business because obviously I could have just started out with you know the take one tech as a business concept in the beginning for that demographic and then be adding these things all in after the fact all funneling into that so hopefully that is um useful to some of you I'll just check this that one last message I finally jumped in and did a practice stream today congratulations uh using your phone and uh to check and placed it on the desk not realizing it was causing static across the audio oh well there you go it sounded terrible but oh well that that sort of stuff happens to us that sort of stuff happens to us uh or my worst audio failure uh was in a live stream I did all about the importance of checklists and then it was only when I was running through the checklist and I got to the audio point that I realized the one time that ecam ever has just randomly switched audio on me and it was probably down to me I probably unplugged the mic and plugged it back in or something um but yeah when I got to that point I realized that it had switched to the uh it switched to the uh the overhead webcam up there um it switched to the microphone in that uh and so I had done the first 20 minutes of this live stream all about the importance of checklists and make sure you check everything and then I got to the audio section and I looked down and went oh dear I'm on the wrong mic so this this these things happen to us all it's just one of the uh one of the joys of live streaming I guess if anyone has ever got any uh any questions about anything that I'm doing from a technical perspective uh do feel free to reach out you know I am an open book with these sort of things I don't have any hidden trade secrets or anything like that somebody asked me once about this which was when I was doing uh I was talking about some you know plans and things I was going to release that weren't released uh and said like aren't I worried about you know that the exact phrase was am I not worried about the competition final I was like who the hell is my competition I don't have any confidence I don't see the content creation thing as being uh competition I don't see anything that's been like that I uh there's lots of other great creators but we're essentially we've all got our own voice and we've got our own way of telling things and I'm not really selling I'm not saying anything new on my channel specifically uh I mean I guess this is you know this is obviously just coming from me right now but I mean generally my videos on YouTube there isn't much original there it's all just kind of my opinion on something or something like that so I never ever think about it in terms of competition and I don't have a worry that somebody's going to come out with you know take two tech or something like that so uh yeah the point about this is I'm I'm completely sort of open about this if ever there's anything that you would like to know then feel free to reach out or drop it in the discord uh definitely if you're not already I'll just pop this up once again then feel free to join in there and ask any questions I'm uh totally transparent about this tool but I hope that has been useful to some people and uh for those watching on the replay I'll leave a link to a video over on the other side I always say that at the end of the live stream uh the thing about it is I have to actually go through after the fact and wait till it's finished processing and then go and add that little video in so when I do this and say for those watching on the replay I'll leave something interesting over here um yeah it might take uh it might take a few hours for it to come up or maybe even a day or two until I actually get back and add it in anyway thanks for watching have a great day I'll see you all next time