 Hello and welcome to the live streamer backstage podcast. Today I'm really excited to be talking with Dr. Efrain Lopez aka Dr. Elo. Efrain is a doctor of management, a live streaming strategist, researcher and consultant for B.live. I asked him to come on to the show today because I've been really impressed by the consistency he has not just with the initial content creation side of things but with all of the promotion and repurposing of his content across all of the social platforms all while juggling this with his full-time job and family life. We all know that we should be repurposing our content whether it's recorded or live streams but few of us actually do this effectively and it's certainly an area that I have not yet got into a consistent flow with but I'm working on it and I'm looking forward to learning a lot from Dr. Elo and of course sharing it with all of you too. So without further ado let's welcome Dr. Elo. Hey Elo it is absolutely wonderful to have you here today. Oh it's a blessing being here man thank you very much. I'm super honored to be on your show thank you for having me. It's a pleasure and like I say I'm here to learn myself. So obviously I've titled the show workflows for a consistent content creation and distribution and so I do want to get into that because as I say I've been really impressed by how you're doing all of that but first I'd like to just get a bit more of an understanding of maybe a light your background and also your origin story if you will how did you get into live streaming? So background starting off from Puerto Rico that's my you know where I was born I was raised I moved to the States because with the Coast Guard right? I've been with the Coast Guard 18 years I'm a reservist right now with them I used to be active duty first now I work with the Department of Transportation I'm a full-time civilian and I manage an office here in Washington DC so I live in Hernan, Virginia which is west of Washington DC about well depends traffic an hour 30 minutes depends so um yeah I have a beautiful wife beautiful kid we were three we're super happy where we are right now and basically I started off with live streaming I was a big fan I still am actually from Livestream Pros back where David Foster and Lugia was they were together as geek something I can't remember right now yeah geek beat yes so all those episodes I've watched I've always been a fan and I found it myself I found myself watching Livestream Pros already were Livestream Pros and they got me as a as a moderator and I started moderating for them I learned to trade I fell in love with live streaming at first I started live streaming about sustainability which is my doctor degree in but I noticed really quick that I was burning myself out in between work and here talking about the same thing so I chose a passion that I had already discovered which is live streaming right so I started doing streaming and and all of a sudden I'm doing this a lot more than I thought I would right it's kind of addictive yeah it is actually you get you get the kind kind of a high from it like you get it's really is really in your for me is the interaction with the public it's that's not about though you know the full video and all that stuff that you watch afterwards about for me is the being alive in there and answering questions and if I don't have an answer I'll look it for you next episode I'm looking forward to that so I can answer your question you know the back and forth is really weird because it's not tv but at the same time it's not a zoom call so you're like right there in between interacting through chat which is at first it was really awkward for me and now it's really natural like for me interacting through a linked thing like this through chats and everything it's easy it's really easy right now but it took me some time and took me leaders took me a bunch of things until I finally got it and started talking without any you know my nervousness yeah yeah sure and just you mentioned their um leaders so that's uh live every day in august and they have some similar in in april as well yeah yeah so what was your experience of of doing that because I did that last last year as well yeah I did two of them um I did one as a moderator was one before being a moderator and another one as a moderator helping them out and moderating the group it was amazing eye opening you know um you have skills that you don't know you have well like like the speaking gets really easy the looking at the lens it looks really easy the stuff that people need to practice you get that in one month how many times you go um you know you can go 52 times a year if you do once a week go live once a week that's not going to happen you know not going to go live every week let's say you do go 40 now in one month you have 30 right there and then you can keep on building on what you have and you'll get really easily um talkative you'll you'll start talking really really well online once you do a lead or two so that's what really caught my eye that it was really it was really good for me at least for for my from with my experience I think that's that's the one thing one of the things that struck me about uh leader when I did it as well is when I went into it I kind of just thought that it was going to be the idea of just going live every day for a month but actually there's a real sort of structure to it that uh Laurier the live streaming pros team have put behind it where um they're actually really stretching you you're not just going going live for the sake of it every day there's a specific mission and it's that that actually draws out the the whole sort of personal growth aspect of it um so yeah it was it was an amazing experience and so um as you're now doing this uh sort of on a on a more regular basis so how how did that that lead to sort of influence what you went on to do afterwards and how did it sort of shift your your focus oh it influenced everything because after that I had the confidence I started on September 2020 started doing live stream every week and um I started making all kinds of mistakes as always I started ugly uh until I started to get you know uh the upgrades the look and everything started learning because you know I'm you're always learning around sure you know in the process so um I started to perfect the trade little by little until I finally got a shot that I like my wife did the background which is amazing so um yeah I I finally got something that I like and I stuck with it so then comes be live and contacts being via messenger on hey would you like to do some shows for us and I was like yeah definitely I'll do them for free you know I want to learn my trade while I'm you know I don't want to get money from something that I'm not a professional on it yet but they thought I was so now after a year they I'm a consultant with them as well I'm doing all types of stuff I'm doing a show for them every week unless I'm on vacation right but at least four times a month um I'm doing other stuff with mentoring as well on the side so it has been a really great experience for me and um very I think I never thought it would work in this you know that that would get paid for doing for for talking all this gibberish talking about something you love talking tech yeah for me it's it's it feels like it's not work it feels like it's just you know this is what I do on Tuesdays and Wednesdays every week and um these people are my community and I'm just talking to my friends that's basically what I think of it right now before that I had a block mental block on it oh my god there's millions of people watching me you know there's not there's millions of people but they're watching other people as well you're not the only one there so and that thing about you have the the connection with the people through live streaming as well that's the kind of takeaway that I've got it from it as well it doesn't feel like you're just making content that is going out on video and you know it's it's anonymous people watching it you actually know who your audience is through through life so yeah yeah perhaps you can talk a little bit a little bit more about um B live then because you know that I'm a uh a total ekam fanboy and so that tends to be what I use for everything but there are like lots of other platforms around so um perhaps you can explain you know what B live is and uh sure a bit more detail about our B live is uh it's a streaming platform it's a cloud based um streaming platform ekam is it's a software you download so um we're more like uh if if you put it into comparison we compare more with restream or with uh stream yard so we're cloud based uh the company is from israel um they had an amazing team very very hardy people um and that's what I love about them so the you can stream up to 10 people at the same time obviously nine colors one person uh you can use multiple cameras like uh i did amazon live with four cameras not so long ago uh comparing the four cameras at the same time um you can put overlays as well it has a uh uh an area where there's like a uh an outline where you can write everything and it's right there on screen right beside you that's really cool so it has a lot of stuff we can do amazon live we can do rtmp we can do all kinds of stuff people are doing out there plus we have the uh a smart comments um thing that actually takes uh evaluate your comments on screen on on the chat and puts the most you know the most the best comments in there automatically you don't have to touch it oh that's interesting that's really cool and then and it takes out the the back comments as well so it is really good we have a really great community um I think it's 14 000 in in in growing um and we're ready to step into more stuff we're we're doing some mentoring now so that's I can't say completely what it is because obviously we're so on it but um we'll have some new stuff out there as well and there's always a discount as well well there's always a 30% there and 20% discount there and you know we're we're very competitive with what we have and the company is always always listening to the customer and you know trying to make changes and things that the customer likes so yeah that's that's what I use to um to do all my license from now that's what I'm using and I do use ecamm virtual camera right so you're taking the you're combining the benefits of all of them taking the ecamm virtual camera taking into be live but you get I mean one of the advantages of cloud-based um platforms is the sort of heavy lifting is being done on the the browser side exactly on the you know their server side and then presumably has that got something where you know if your internet connection drops for example then the stream continues and you can pick it up does it do something like that is here's the funny part I had that happen last week I believe or yeah last week and they have also have an app they have a iphone app iphone the android my stream fell out I went to the app kept on going to the stream and then changed the computer and put the stream back in there it was amazing like I was like really surprised because usually you just lose it that's it it's pretty good to have that that sort of security because I've had a couple of a couple of failed streams before so oh yeah from my my connection side of things but yeah good stuff I just want to take a moment to talk about ecamm live this is the live production max 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 ecamm 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 take 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 ecamm 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 ecamm 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 ecamm 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 ecamm live gives you and deliver that straight into your zoom meeting and trust me when you rock up to a zoom meeting with ecamm 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 ecamm live ago you can get a free trial by going to take one tech dot i o slash ecamm that's e c a double m take one tech dot i o slash ecamm 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 so let's let's have a little talk then about um about this workflow that you've got that you've uh you've developed and are you know no doubt still working on and tweaking but as i say it's been something that i'm just always seeing your your content your adverts for upcoming streams but then the repurposing of content and you just seem to have a really a really consistent flow to it and as i say it's something that if you see any of my posts generally i've just literally posted them so i've not quite got there in terms of the the full automation and and repurposing so i'd love to hear more about how you've structured all of that i first i have to thank um obviously the one who actually put me in my place i had a consult with ash borland probably you know him right of course yes yes so ash um we had i had a consult with him it's like man what am i doing what am i doing wrong here it's like you're not being consistent this is what's going on so i made a plan with him and from there on i've been posting almost almost every single day i do take like saturdays and sundays mostly off and if i'm not taking that off that means that if you see something it's automated so what i've used for the past four or five months is agorapost that's the the the software that i've been posting with now behind all that i wake up at six in the morning from monday to friday so probably sometimes five but usually i'm like six the first thing i do is sit down at this computer i already have figured about what i'm going to do the next day like if i had a livestream i will take snippets of that livestream leave him there go in the morning and in the morning i start doing some editing on it like really light editing it's not and you've seen him it's really light it's nothing that you have to spend hours in i spent five six minutes with whatever i have put uh i have a template on filmora x which is from moray 11 which is the one that i use for doing my editing that's my editing software so i have a template in there i just throw it in there change the colors from the background and you know do do whatever i need to do and then export after i export i go to um what's the name of this uh let me see here real quick because i have it right there so uh jasper jasper or i have an alternative which is um word hero word hero so and that word hero is a one-time pay from absumo so that's the the version that you can afford you're not looking to bring the bank that's the one word hero if you have enough money for every single month like a 30 dollar thing you got jasper so i use one of both and i put the topic in there start developing something that the ai gives me and i and i make all the corrective things that i want and i basically make it mine right make that thing mine i don't want it to just copy and paste and show people the robotic part of me because that's not me i want to show that it's me so that's where i get the blurb i get the hashtags from from there as well with the keywords that i put and after that i go to agorapulse if you are willing to pay a hundred dollars a month for a program that it's amazing that's agorapulse that's how you start with it if not you have radar r a d a a r that's from absumo as well bought it for 59 bucks it does exactly the same probably you have to you know not as easy as agorapulse but you have options as well for people that are not not looking to bring the bank right so i've used both of them to um basically that's my social media manager so i put thumbnails in there if i have and my thumbnails are really easy what i do is that i take a picture of the video and put it that picture i put it in at the front of the video when i'm editing and that's the still that's the image that they you know the the software will take because it always reverts the first part so you know but it's really thin in there really thin right in there put some words on top of it the topic that's it so i don't have to do a thumbnail and because i'm repurposing and i'm using it for every platform i use everything in one by one one by one instagram and then i distribute to everything because it it adapts right and basically after that i schedule um whatever i'm going to have at seven in the morning or if i'm going to do a nine o'clock in the morning depends on the day um what type of content i'm i'm you know i'm pushing out there and the other thing is i also put my live streams 30 minutes before or an hour depending on the live stream um i'll do it through aguro polls or radar as well i'll put it with the social media manager and it will automatically populate 30 minutes or 45 whatever i chose for that one it will populate you know to the different platforms what i like about radar is that it has tiktok in there ah cool and and tiktok nobody has it but but them for now that i know of that it works well for the other ones like for aguro polls and for the other platforms it works amazing you know and i do this every single morning um obviously i was on vacation i just came back you haven't seen probably some polls during those days because when i say i'll take a vacation i just shut off everything so so i've learned i learned my lesson about burnouts so i take off and i don't i don't even check anything out my cell phone was for the last five days i was in the beach my cell phone was in in a pocket in the bag my wife's bag that's where it was so basically that's what i do that's what i do every single day it's uh it takes discipline it takes a lot of iteration repetition repetition until you get used to it the first thing that i do is brush my teeth and come and create that's basically what i do yeah i mean that's similar to my part is a get up and my content creation is in the morning uh it's it's the all the rest of the stuff that you're doing with the scheduling that i've got a got a work on but i i find that my most creative time is like in the morning and uh i don't know you've you've got family as well i don't know if you find that it's the quietest time in the house as well oh yeah and i'm a military man so i'm up already so it doesn't really matter i'm up even if i'm on bed just with my eyes like that just open yeah i'm up and you mentioned about the um like the software you're using to actually manage the post i'm just i've always got a bit of a productivity angle on on things do you use a specific task manager as well for just other general stuff i mean we're talking about live streaming not necessarily productivity but what do you use for that i use click up um that's where i have everything that's where i throw that's my idea bank that's uh where i have all my you know a b c d e i have everything all my workflows are in there um and evie ask evie you know her as well right sure so she's my mentor with this type of uh uh software she's the one that basically showed me how to use it right and that's what i do and it has automations and reminders that get by email you know everything's automated everything is automated my posts my reminders my calendars everything i have it in there so i can get reminders um whenever i need to be in this desk creating so i've made it but it's taking time it's taking time and it's taking a lot of um let's put it out there um a lot of my part to actually do it because the first couple weeks i was like a little later yeah how to build the routine yeah the procrastination comes in until you build it and once you build it you feel strange and you feel like uh it should be doing something now oh look at your email or whatever here it is so boom it's uh it's been it's been uh uh let's put it this way it's been a really hard habit to get into once you get into it 10 weeks in it i was just doing things automatically without even looking at my phone or click up yep okay and how long would you say it's taken to uh you know when when did you first start to develop in this this process and how long is it it gone for now and also where would you see that there is um you know what are you still looking to improve on with it if if anything where where do you see it going it's taking time it's taking time because you always try to perfect your stuff so let's let's say i developed it in two weeks because i was obsessed with it right right at the time but i kept um you know looking at stuff that i could add stuff that it wasn't working like there's there's some i can't get stuff three times if i get stuff three times i get mad we'll do it so like like emails and automations like that so i kept it to one kept it to like 555 so when i was up that was the first thing that i saw it takes time and you you will always be changing and evolving the the process because that's that's the way it works right i've trying to make something that is very sustainable but at the same time it will change for it to remain sustainable and there's no there's no way things are gonna remain the same all the time so it it's a it's it's put is a live like a live document sure that you have in there that it's it's gonna continue to grow and continue to um adapt to your your schedule for me my family's first my family's first i only do content on tuesdays and wednesdays for live streaming and then the other ones because they're always you know they're sleeping at six in the morning of course so that's the time that i take to do my stuff now you won't see me doing anything apart from podcasts and you know i have a podcast on friday as well that being invited stuff like that of course i'll do it but guess what a time i'm doing it i'm doing it like at four and my kid is gets out of school at four and while he comes and he comes in the bus my wife picks him up all that stuff i'm done with the podcast so i i'm really i'm really cringy about the times that i use um so i don't so i don't get into my family's time but uh it will take you time it will take you time and discipline to do it if you're using click up using a work document using you know apple notes it doesn't matter what you're using in reality just know that you need to follow it and it will change a lot that's it great great advice i mean i use um omni focus for my task management but uh i'm just cool i just need to actually assign some more of these sort of tasks to it i think that's all um yeah it's normal man believe me you mentioned about um tiktok earlier though and like how um the that platform will that pro application will post to tiktok i'm just wondering about how um how you treat the different um different platforms as well because obviously there's different audiences on them and uh you know how how do you decide which to go on and also which you know what to post where basically i post everything the same place that's it um for me i'm not going to be dancing on tiktok and doing stuff like that it's it's just not me right yeah i also work for the federal government i don't want to be seen doing stuff like that as well so um i do um like shorts um short type of of stamp of information yeah that can you digest and that's in 30 seconds i'll do those on tiktok and they work really well that's you know i i just i don't see myself doing that type of content outside and you know maybe some interviews on people of video that i'm i'll be there are you you under people video uh yeah i'm not i'm not coming it's a little bit far away from me but i'll be watching from where i am but yeah yeah yeah but yeah i'm going there so there maybe i'll i'll do some interviews like like some small question something but reality my main platform um other than youtube is linkedin right that's what i do a lot so different content but yes i repurpose everything and use it for every platform because people need to learn about live streaming in every platform it doesn't differentiate you know the this whole the whole being in focus the whole being you know on a good microphone good camera all that stuff it's basically all the same just different type of tech um so maybe we could talk a little bit about um then the the setup you've got since you mentioned at tech and i know this uh one of your big uh slogans is f the tech oh yeah in there's a big part of your uh merch has got that brandy i know you she got some new stuff there that i haven't actually seen so uh let me just bring this up a second but you know why it's f the tech right yeah f the tech is basically when you're gonna start if you just start what would you have yeah forget the tech just start as simple as possible that's basically what i say it's such sound advice that is because too many people get caught up in the whole the gas you know gear acquisition syndrome and i i think that's fine if you are on a path and you're still doing stuff but it's when it's when it holds you back though like you know this is your your whole ethos i mean too many people feel like whoops there's too many people i feel like they've got to have that new thing before they get going and so yeah i really i really resonate with that that was small story happened to me you know my wife was the first one that told me i had a of course everybody has a yeti i had a webcam i had all type of stuff and my wife looks at me it's like when are you gonna do something with it i'm like huh what it's like yeah you haven't gone live so why are you buying all the stuff you aren't going live got me naked so yeah basically that's what i started and and and said you know what people need to learn about all this stuff that you don't need to have the best tech in the world to deliver a message the message has more weight than anything else than any of this tech the message has more weight so yeah that that that taught me that have the tech let's go with it so what was the the first the first sort of tech that you bought for live streaming and how far did it go before you ended up actually going live for the first time and what were you using using back then i bought a yeti like it was a you know oh wow i went to best buy bought a yeti you know best buys a store that we have here as a tech store so bought it and took almost a year that thing was a paperweight right not even the camera on the camera i bought it afterwards i thought about our c9 c9 20 about like six months afterwards didn't do anything with it um yeah it was really hard to talk to the to the lens was really hard to talk to the lens i can't i can't you know i can't lie but uh here comes lita and here comes being a moderator for live streaming pros and that's what snap you know by my brains and you know came around and understood what i was doing and and why what why i was doing it and the passion and all that stuff and just i started and i started ugly people they need to go go back to my channel and go look at the old videos started said the wrong words talk to you in spanish because spanish is my first language you know i sweat all every i pass through everything i pass through everything the only thing that made me better is iteration doing it a hundred thousand times that's it not the microphone not the camera this is additions for whenever you get proficient get whatever you want but yeah that's it after tech so in terms of um like then was that the leader last year or was that which which year was that no that was no 2019 that was 2019 um before the pandemic and then entering the pandemic i was ready to do my thing so 2018 2019 let's put it that way right right um from august all from april 2018 all the way to the next year and then i just in september i just started spilling the beans yeah september 2020 and and how's your setup changed since then then so how how's it sort of evolved over over the time i can pull up horrible horrible picture it's changed my friend it's changed so much so i can actually i can actually show you right now if you want me to yeah sure well you have yeah i've got the picture if you want to show me live that's that's cool we can do that like that whichever yeah the picture's fine okay all right so here we go so i can actually show you what do i have right so i have here you know the this is a uh one one of several microphones that i have obviously this is the uh the broadcast the pod pod mic oh my god pod mic thank you uh so here's the pod mic i have the olgato um low profile arm then i have two monitors these two monitors are lg monitors they're um 24 i believe they're gaming monitors so they're pretty good refresh rates 144 i got the rocaster pro 2 before that i had the one then i have over here i have in this part right here um the stream deck and the black magic design this is the atem i'm blanking out i don't know why atem mini thank you so much i'm blanked down on the way um i'm using a macbook pro right now then i have this microphone right here this microphone is a um a nt5 the nt5 this is a rolled nt5 so this is great for you know when i do my videos and everything or i just don't feel like using the microphone this is the cve low sorry cve 10 with the 16 millimeter um um uh sigma sigma lens uh that's the one that i have right there then let me see if i can actually change this a little bit so you can see i got a teleprompter up there mm-hmm um all my lights are gato this is a ring light i have a uh key light air on the side that lights you know the right side of me and that's basically it man i have uh i have more stuff that you can probably see um here from the back oh i didn't turn it on yeah let me see if i can turn it on will of course you missed it shall i just uh stick this other picture over the time me but um yeah the um uh one of one of the things when i had to look at your gear list was uh the list of microphones that you've uh you use or you've you've used is uh you've done quite an exhaustive study yeah i got a bunch of microphones but this is the one that everybody tells me that my voice has gone on for some reason so here's um right here on the top i have a uh a green screen and got a green screen that can take out sure sure and just you know let me show it real quick uh huh yeah they're really good to get those drop down ones yeah it's great goes all the way um goes all the way down um you have a monitor that you can see back there um you have more lights on the right you have a have a pc over here which is because it's turned off right now i'm using my mac this is the cv one with the how do you call it with the 24 millimeter um you see the brand here the 52 millimeter wide angle lens uh from yulanzi that's the one that i have and then i have another desk over here which is my work desk and i have a 49 inch monitor there that's right below the camera and a standing desk and this desk is from ikea it's uh actually is a kitchen um table not a table kitchen countertop yep with uh you know with two cabinets on the bottom holding it so pretty cool man i'm just you know i've done so many changes to this um to the studio little by little nothing has come that i went to you know to a store and bought 25 000 of stuff nothing nothing like that at least not in my world yeah it's a i think you need time to sort of adjust to get used to certain things as well and then as soon as you do there's some other use case that comes up it's like just to do this podcast i've kind of reorganized everything for the you know my desk so there's always new things uh new things coming about and microphones obviously you know yeah roll microphones and i use the shore small microphones as well uh not microphone headphones so right not a see-through so yeah yeah a lot of tech how have you been using the uh tech i mean we've all been on zoom calls the past few years probably more than uh uh the time that we were before um and so how have you found that you know one of the things i'll do is obviously right i've got this um thing that's all about zoom and teaching people how to be better on zoom and uh i'm sure that when you rock up with your setup on any zoom call you kind of my eye switch yeah i'm a cat i'm a cat i'm not a cat sir it's really hard so um everybody tells me basically wow how do you get that set up it's like i'm using the elgato facecam with a yeti i use the yeti no because it sounds good i use the yeti because it has double mute so there's no way i can mess up in a meeting how do you mean double mute what do you mean by that you have mechanical mute and then you have the mute you can put on the on the on the zoom call so i put mute on the zoom call and then you have that mechanical button that's the best thing as effort effort right for me for meetings at least yeah so i keep that like that just in case and i'd rather been told you're on mute that uh what did you say yeah that's funny and so how about the other people like you know when you're your sort of corporate life when you're speaking to people do you um do you give like consultations and things like that to people do you get asked by people for for that kind of thing in terms of hey how can we look like you i get asked but they don't really care because this is a government computer so there's nothing you can do about it so you know you can get a cat get a camera and get a microphone that's that's as much as you can do to improve the the look or the sound and a lot of people the judges are not willing to do it which is fine now on the on the consultant side yeah everybody you know whenever they do a consult and they hey how can i get clear sound how can i get your look which that's almost always like they say and um help them out help them out do a consult uh i've practiced with people one on one as well because i know the value of practicing and i've reminded people that we've been doing this since 2020 since 2020 we've been doing you know zoom calls with family so it's not that you don't have experience doing it is that you don't have experience talking to people that you don't know that's basically it you know a zoom call uh a call on your iphone with your with your mom um video call it's the same thing it's the same principles just you know just get used to it and keep on doing it and don't think about all the people that are watching out out there so yeah i try to remind people that and just coming back to your uh your setup just one second what would you say would be the uh your your sort of favorite bit of tech that you've got on your uh you know what it is i think i do i've been i've been watching your videos and making comments on it too so so learning my way because i've learned my way a lot on it but this is do you have some you have some great videos because they go detailed so oh thank you for some stuff that i've learned so watch his videos on ropessa pro 2 that that's it yeah it is just uh it is quite a quite an amazing piece of technology and what it sort of opens up up to us and uh and so how are you using do you use that for um uh obviously for your for your live streaming are you going into your zoom calls without you doing any other sort of if it's consultancy based i do it if it's from government work obviously i use my government computer right right i stick to that but i don't put any any type of tech other than a microphone and the camera on that because it's not allowed anyways so yeah and with the consultancy that you do then what sort of um what sort of things do you cover there if people want to go over to so i've got your website all this by the way will be linked in the the show notes for those listening and watching on the replay but if i just come over to here you can obviously go book an appointment so what sort of stuff do you do you help people with over there so i help people with setups i help people with speaking with ideas of of you know how to do your live stream to what platform um you know i help people one-on-one as well to practice live streaming on on youtube but you know not private youtube we will just start getting into it and start you know developing i i'll help you do an outline everything that you can think about live streaming i can help you out and tech tech wise yeah of course i definitely do anything that's tech wise and if you're near enough like uh my friend uh down in maryland that i can drive there i can help you do a setup as well go in there and basically build you a setup and leave you you know with live you in good hands you can have a perfectly sounding and looking live stream yeah i mean that's that's a big thing for people it's just they want that sort of turnkey solution so they can just get out there and do it without having to worry about all of the the setup so nothing wrong with that there's nothing wrong with that there's people that that do themselves there's people that pay for stuff and that's that's why everybody you know that's we all have jobs so it's it's all good cool stuff um so tell us about something that um like maybe what is a book that you've read that has helped you on your journey i do always like to get that i already know the answer to this obviously because i asked you in advance but i'll just highlight it i'm always keen to know what you know people are reading and uh how it sort of influenced them or how it's impacted what what they're doing right now um art the subtle art of not giving an f yeah so for me that book what it did is that uh it basically showed me that nothing um really is important unless you make it important so um no matter how many times you try um i'm a person that makes me i make a lot of mistakes and i've been like this in some little like i've been one of those guys that have to do things two or three times to get it done and i've got accustomed to fail i've got used to fail that that's that's the reason that that i've gone and and probably i finished my doctor's degree i finished you know i did everything everything and i failed on it it's not i failed in one class you know research class i failed it and nothing doesn't matter why does it matter i just took the learning process that i had the learning from it um from failing in there and next next class i killed it so basically this book showed me exactly how to handle um you know the the stuff that you don't like you know just hey vaseline keep on going that's basically it that's uh what i've learned from it just let stuff go learn from it and just move forward that's basically what i do with every single thing and um before i used to get mad i'm like now like i'm i expect to fail so when i don't fail get surprised so that's very cool well that's when we learn most isn't it is from the things that uh yeah from from our mistakes and i know i've made more more than my fair share as well and that's always my approach as well is you know look what we can learn from the the things that have happened and then uh you know it's the way that we the grow grow the fastest there's no good or bad situations it's just situations it depends on what you do with it so tell us a little bit more about the the book then because it's i haven't actually read it it's one of those ones that's on my list but i've not not read it so so that book gives you a lot of a lot of situations of of you know there's there's a lot of stories in there that basically gives you you know what this is this situation this happened and this is the example of this and this is what um you know don't say f to everything in life just to the unimportant things that's that's the the key message that he's trying to send right like stuff like you know stuff with your family don't say after that just say after stuff that really doesn't matter if you do it two or three times that's basically what it is so don't give an f about adversity you must first care about something more important than that adversity so that type of message throughout the book with um with stories i was really amazing and it was fun to listen to as well and what are you what are you listening to right now what's something you're reading right at the moment right now the youtube formula from darryl darryl aves so i'm listening to that one again yeah i was just about to say i need to listen to that one again i'll listen to that and yeah uh and are you gonna have the good sort of content creation books as well that are related to sort of stuff or i think that's the only one that i have right now i'm i am doing um one from my friend from andrew borst he's another contract creator the income booster like this is uh 100 businesses you can start from home and ditch the nine to five so i'm i'm reading i just got it yesterday which it was amazing he just he gave me a signed copy fantastic great so i'm just gonna start to read this one um well i'll start yesterday a little bit but i can't say i've read two pages so eight hour drive yesterday so i'm gonna start to see that one to see what what can learn from it so i'm sure i can learn a bunch of it from it so and that's that's as you just mentioned about ditching the nine to five how would you see the the nine to five and your content creation going do you see more of a uh you know do you want to do more of the content creation or i'm just speaking from myself just recently we were talking just before uh before we were live and i've sort of been starting to carve out more time for the content creation side of things um you know with the the the stuff that i generally do day to day so i'm allocating more time to it just because i found that and i kind of mentioned at the beginning about live streaming being a bit addictive i found that it is the content creation in general my sort of um when my mind would wander i found it was always wandering towards the content creation and so i was thinking well there's probably a little subtle message in there for me so i'm wondering how for me for me is different um i'm a career federal employee i'm a career military so once i finish my time then i can jump in and do you know whatever i want but right now i have a a career that i need to finish i have a you know a retirement plan already that i'm working on and it's halfway through so if i don't finish that it will be a disadvantage for my family and for myself i work hard for this so once i finish all of all of the federal stuff that i have to do i'll definitely jump in and and i have plans to write a book as well and you know stuff like that but right now i'm very happy doing what i do in the time that i have yeah and i don't think i won't invest more time that i am investing right now because if not i will get into one cut into my family time sure so yeah i'm personally fine i'm earning good money from conservation on the side which gives me um stuff to buy it's amazing the excuse to indulge in the uh the love of ten yeah they can't tell me no you can't buy that i can because i pay for it with my work so um i think after i don't know 10 years from now when i'm retired from at least with federal um i can start doing more stuff but for now i think i'm good i'm in a good spot and i like where i'm at right now and you mentioned earlier about streaming to uh facebook sorry to youtube and uh to linkedin are you doing stuff on amazon at the moment as well i am i am uh have an amazon shop as well but um i haven't done much with it um because i've been on travel yeah and i got like accepted before i started doing all the all the traveling right but um yeah i plan to do more amazon lives and um hopefully i those i will be doing on saturday morning right really early um saturday morning nine or eight or something like that and because i can't sleep anyway so all the others are sleeping i can do something and so what's that uh sort of show going to be focused on is what what are you going to be focusing online streaming tech that's what i that's what i love to do that's what i love to talk about i have it all already so might as well just talk about it yeah yeah uh well so i'm doing obviously this is streamed live to amazon and then i do one on a sunday sunday the sunday session where i basically do like a deep dive tutorial on something uh so it's just focused on one product but yeah i'm also looking to do something similar on amazon but i'm still very much a newbie and find him a way around the the amazon the amazon ecosystem yeah i'm also doing a show before be live with on amazon live on mondays so i do as well what's what's that show about that show is about live streaming tech definitely do we have uh three be live on consultants uh and the ceo uh three or four actually depends on the time and on mondays one 30 p.m eastern time we're talking about the tech that we use our favorite tech the tech that you can use for starting a live stream so it's all focused on live stream as well and i i am doing that consistently right right uh yeah it's um it's a really interesting platform and i think a lot of people think about um you know amazon as being a shopping platform but i think there is a definitely room to be doing well shows like this shows like your show and that's um a little bit different so that it's actually bringing people in not just there for yeah i mean i always had this idea of it being kind of like a qvc shopping channel time exactly what i say that's exactly what i said qvc but you don't have to call anymore you're right there on your computer yeah yeah this ain't your grandma's shopping you know channel yeah one of the things that i've got to get more into in in amazon as well as the the shoppable videos i mean this is obviously a live streaming podcast but yeah the whole other side of amazon is creating the videos that are product videos reviews and things like that so i am bad with videos man that's the only thing that if you're you're so good with videos and consistent if we switch or we learn from each other we should be rocking it because i i just videos for me they they're time consuming so my streams for me are really be easier and i can actually live with it so that's why i haven't done so many videos unless i do some tech videos review well do you know the thing that i've kind of um struggled with a little bit or just haven't got over myself with is for amazon videos my uh my videos on my youtube channel tend to be about you know 20 minutes 30 minutes and their tutorial videos and i'm just kind of speaking naturally as if i was talking to you know teaching a friend or something like that yeah but that's not good when i'm trying to do a two or three minute shoppable video on amazon like the first one that i recorded was 15 minutes long and i thought that's way too long they need to be a lot more snappy than that and one thing i don't seem to be able to do very well is snappy so i've got i've got to work on that work on that skill a little bit more oh man but it's it's all a learning experience i love that i love the whole the whole process of you know learning all this i mean that that's why i think i'm so enthusiastic about it it's just because it's a new skill to learn and uh you're you're the same very uh open to learning new things and teachable and it's yeah it's just an exciting thing to be involved in just tell somebody um that causes grass in 20 minutes to cut it in three so what's in terms of the like the future then from obviously you're not going to be turning full time to content creation but in terms of like how you want your the things you're doing to evolve where where do you see you you're sort of taking things going forward and what you're most excited about at the moment i see myself doing more consulting i love helping people so i like probably in the in the backside of the livestream i'm doing more consulting helping more people go live helping more people get noticed uh get better cameras get better looks get better microphones get a better you know a better sound i see myself doing a lot of consulting doing in the background and i'm and i'm know i'm gonna do some stuff with be live that's already had a conversation with ceo today that we're gonna do some more stuff um but i know that in the consulting side as well i'm able to help more people and that's what i want that's how that's what makes me feel good helping others helping others achieve what i achieved um during my time with livestream pros and and you know learning would be live and all that stuff i just want to help people how to look and sound better and be more presentable on camera so as i always say um i want to help those who want to be more comfortable on camera that's basically my slogan you want to be more comfortable hey come on over i'll i'll set up some time and we can do a one-on-one and i'll show you exactly what i've learned and how i have you know um getting better of what i do because i've i started ugly i always say i started ugly and i'm turning into a butterfly little ball little i'm with you on that journey as well yeah man that's it's all about the those loads those little steps people think that you have need to get take big gaps no just a little ball little two percent better every single day by the end of the year so you're double the percentage that you were thinking about but yeah and and so so someone who's sort of starting out with that with live streaming and getting yourself set up what's there's sort of one little gem of information that you'd like to pass on to them what's the one thing that you wish you had thought of or done differently when you were you started out what's the best best advice you would like i would have liked that i had uh in my in my you know in my mindset was that i have hours and hours and maybe days of experience already doing this um all those zoom calls all those face time calls you've done with people you've already been on camera you already have been comfortable camera so that means that you're already comfortable in front of the camera so all you gotta do is put your mind to it and just go live it doesn't matter where or how go live it doesn't matter with what microphone with what camera just go live with your cell phone your cell phone nowadays cell phones are are really expensive right you got a thousand dollar cell phone in your pocket it has a good camera and a good microphone it does and sometimes better than a laptop so why not just go live with that just use it if you want to convey and you want to share your message with the world just you know think of it like that way you've done a thousand times this is one more time and people are not even looking back at you so how easy is that you're talking to a lens to a piece of tech forget about the viewers viewers will come with the journey you won't get a thousand viewers the first day guaranteed you'll get maybe one so don't worry about it that is such a good point the first time i went live on my yeah my youtube channel so i'd like set this day that was going to be my first live stream and i wasn't expecting you know i'd literally got no subscribers anyway you know i'd literally just started it i was just the first time going live but you know nobody watched it for the whole the whole time that i was live so i wasn't you i think people have this idea that you know oh there's going to be like you say millions of the world's other watching but no nobody's watching and then the funny thing is the the longer you do it with the the sort of the way that the community sort of builds up you get to know the people who you're you're talking with and or who are watching rather and talking to friends it just becomes yeah it's uh it's so true well it's been that i can't believe it it's nearly top of the hour again so uh thank you so much for coming and and speaking and and sort of sharing the the process because like i say i've been in admiring what you've been doing so much with uh with your consistent approach same here brother same here you're doing videos i'm doing you know just short content during the day believe me i've seen you throw like two videos in two days like wow 30 minute videos in two days well that that's the no edit thing that's the other thing about live streaming is is if you can get good at live streaming then you can all get over the the sort of camera side of thing with live streaming then it's only another step to just actually press i've probably got those the wrong way around really but just to press the record button and just record it live i mean that's that's the reason why i do all of my things in one take is just to uh to be able to just say right i'm going to sit down record it and then it's done no no editing after the fact amazing yeah but once again thank you so much for coming on and taking the time it's an honor man thank you for having me i appreciate it i'm really honored to be here and um hi to all your people thank you very much and obviously links to all of the places where you can find Dr. Elo are down in the description in the show notes if you're listening to this on the podcast if you are listening definitely go and check out the recording of this it's posted to youtube as well and you'll be able to go and if you want to have a look and see the sort of behind the scenes where Elo was sharing his studio and showing all of his setup it you really do need to see it because you've got such a cool setup Elo i love the the background that you've got going on there as well it's it looks fantastic appreciate that thanks once again and so next week in the next episode i'm going to be talking with uh james hicks uh james is an engineering technologist a thought leader an entrepreneur advocate and curator of creative content and just another all-round nice guy just like Elo and i'll be getting his perspective on the technological technological advances that have had a positive impact on live streaming it's sure to be an insightful conversation uh you're going to want to hear it and i would say definitely tune in same time next week or be sure to look out for it in your podcast player of choice in the meantime have an absolutely wonderful week ahead and we'll see you all very soon