 Hello and welcome to the livestream. Today we're going to be taking a bit of a look, a bit sort of self-serving really, this one, but I'll be talking about my sort of 2023, four take one tech and the sort of growth and things like that that have happened during the year or not in some cases. And then also looking ahead to 2024 to talk about some of my plans there and also how maybe I may be able to help you with your plans along the way as well. So I thought I'd start with YouTube growth. Now I've talked in the past about how I kind of shifted my focus really from YouTube being the sort of primary thing of take one tech, the primary thing that I was focused on. And this happened sort of mid last year actually where it became more about the whole sort of take one tech ecosystem as such. So including the courses and various different things like that. And so that's certainly been the theme this year really is all about sort of building out the sort of the ecosystem, the back end of all of the courses that take one tech academy and things like that. So that's really been my sort of primary focus this year. And that's been reflected in the volume of content that I've put out on YouTube. So I thought we could start then with a bit of a look at some stats. I always used to, by the way, when I started my YouTube channel, these weekly live streams were really kind of like a check in with the progress and the sort of growth of the channel. And then I was doing sort of six videos a week and one weekly live stream. This sort of changed where now the live streams are the primary content that I'm putting out at the moment. This will change slightly next year. But that's also part of the reason why I've changed the format of these live streams as well. So whereas before, I used to do a lot of checking in with the chat fright from the outset. And it was more of a more of a sort of community building thing. And I do want to get back to that sort of live stream as well at next year. But this year, because this has been the only content that I've been putting out, then the live streams really have just been my one take videos, you know, all of the videos, the recorded ones have been made in one take with no edits. And so the live streams have pretty much been just a live version of that. So all of the live streams that I've done this year have generally had sort of one specific theme, maybe a tutorial or whatever it happens to be. And I've tried to get that content done first in the in the live stream and then come back to comments and things like that a little bit later on. So that's been kind of the way that I've been working things this year. But let's just take a look at the the stats then because it is worth sort of checking in with these and, you know, sometimes celebrating your wins or maybe looking at where you could make improvements. So this is basically the lifetime of my YouTube channel. And we're approaching a million views, which is kind of mind blowing. I know people get a million views on a single video. So it's all relative, isn't it? But to me, it's still kind of mind blowing. The watch time we've just passed 100,000 hours. And then subscribers, we're just approaching now probably in the next couple of days, I'm probably adding on around about, I guess, 15 to 25 subs a day, something like that. So probably by Christmas or just after this would be at 9,000. Now, in the past year, if we just go back to change it from the lifetime view to the past 365, then you can see that, you know, it's the majority of these gains have come in the last year. So 5,000 subs added this year, 65,000 hours watch time. And if I had to, can just stop these little pop-ups coming. And, you know, nearly 600,000 views. Obviously, my channel is still relatively, you know, it's pretty young really. So this is, I guess, two and a half years so far. So what I can say is that the first, up to the first year, which was sort of middle of May through to the end of the year, I just hit the 100,000 subs, sorry, the 1,000 subs mark at the end of that year one, which was only kind of seven months or whatever it was. Then year two, it went from 1,000 to 4,000. So added sort of 3,000. And then, or just Latin, I think actually. And then now we've added another 5,000 this year. So the number of subscribers, the number of views and things like that are increasing. But also the rate of increase is increasing as well, if that makes sense. So, you know, when people talk about this sort of growth curve where, you know, it's not necessarily linear. In fact, if I just go to the subscriber numbers, for example, you can see there that this is the number of sort of daily subscribers effectively. And that is actually fairly consistent in terms of the numbers that are being added, although there is certainly more at this end, if I go back to, you know, right to the beginning, then at the beginning, yeah, it was like, you know, if I got one or two a day or something like that, it was, I was lucky. So that's the thing, you know, this graph is a bit skewed as well, because there was this one particular day when I ran a giveaway, and it just had a massive number of subscribers, whatever it was, nearly 200. So it skewed the whole graph. But if I took out that one, it would be a kind of more of a slope. And what that's meaning is, it's not the rate of increase there is as in the number of new subs per day. So when you've got an increasing number per day, then that is compounding obviously into a more sort of exponential growth curve, although I'm really at the very beginning of that. There hasn't ever been anything in my stats that have had a, you know, dramatic effect on the overall trajectory. If you kind of look at this in terms of the watch, the number of views rather, you can see that this is, if I drew a line of sort of best fit through there, then it would be, it would be kind of fairly steady in terms of the line through there. And there've been a few blips where there's been some specific event or something that has caused that. But I haven't had any sort of like one major viral thing that's caused the entire growth to change trajectory. So the rate of increase is steady as in the rate of increase of views per day is steady. And that's leading to a more pronounced overall rate of increase in total views, if that's making sense. It's making sense in my weird mathematical head. So anyway, that is the views and the subscriber numbers, which are, you know, they're always little milestones. I do like to sort of celebrate those, you know, myself when I hit them, it is nice to hit those. I used to post my TubeBuddy milestone little marker things every time I hit, you know, first of all, it would have been every hundred. Then it was every, you know, 500 subs. And then now I'm just doing it kind of at the thousand mark. But yeah, I expect this one to be 9,000 by the end of the year, certainly in the next few days. And then maybe the views will get to a million by the end of the year, who knows. But I would expect though, if things continue with the current growth rate, then, you know, maybe these would kind of double by this time next year. So we'll have a check in and we'll see. But I never check though, I never set those sorts of things as goals because I'm not really in control of it. You know, if a load of people unsubscribe or stop subscribing, I'm not really in control of it. It's nice to see those milestones as sort of kind of metrics really. But yeah, they're not, they're not goals because I'm in total control of them. What I can set as goals are more things like, you know, course content produced, number of videos produced, and all of all of that sort of stuff. So yeah, that is where things are at with in terms of the actual YouTube stats. But it's useful to look at the content though, because there has been something happening or not happening this year. And I went through the other day, if I just come out of here, this is the wrong place for going to my content section here. And then if I go down and look at my published videos, there's a few in here that are not technically published. So a few unlisted ones from various things. But if I just count up the actual recorded videos that I've posted in this year, excluding my live streamer backstage podcast that were all actually recorded at the end of last year, and then some of them were still sort of trickling out through the beginning of this year. I've only actually posted 11 recorded videos all of this year. And also, I think four of them were in May. So it just goes to show like how inconsistent I've been in the posting of my recorded videos. I have, however, been fairly consistent with these weekly live streams. I've missed a few of them for various reasons, probably four or five out of the year or something like that. But generally, these weekly live streams have been the one thing that has been the consistent part of it. And the reason for not producing those recorded videos so much is just the focus on building out, as I say, the sort of business side of it, the take on tech side of it, which is the primary sort of revenue source. I've talked about this at length before, you know, chasing YouTube AdSense revenue is not necessarily the wise way to go. I can show you what the lifetime figure for that is just if you're interested because a lot of people don't really talk about it so much. But there you go, nearly a million views and 9,000 subs. Then that's the total revenue in, you know, basically, well, actually two years from New Year, because that's when I got sort of monetized. So yeah, you're not going to be making a living directly off YouTube unless you've got significantly higher numbers. But that said, you can make a significant revenue with a relatively low number of subscribers. So this is again, something I've talked about using YouTube as being your inbound marketing source. So you're putting yourself out there, putting all your free content out there to bring people into whatever other offerings you've got be it your courses, consultations, your regular business, whatever else that happens to be in your particular niche. You don't actually need a huge number of subscribers. I think that some people look at the number of, you know, maybe their growth rates in terms of YouTube, and they maybe feel disheartened because they think, oh, well, I'm only on, you know, whatever the number is in their mind that they think is a low number. And maybe that is because of comparing themself to somebody who's got hundreds of thousands, tens of thousands or millions of subs and thinking that that is what success looks like. If your only goal is the number of subscribers on YouTube, then, you know, for sure, then it is easy to get disheartened by that. But it's just worth noting that, you know, with a relatively low number of subscribers, you can make a real, you know, consistent business out of this because you just need the people that see you to build that connection and want to want to do more with you either through your business, your courses or whatever kind of thing it is you are marketing. And really, you know, you could have two subscribers and one of them becomes your, you know, a primary client in your business that's going to go on to have a knock-on effect of recommending you to other people and, you know, just growing from there. So, yeah, all of that is just to say that, yeah, the numbers don't really matter so much in this context. It's more about what you sort of do with the viewers that you've got on YouTube. So, with that said, I mean, that's the kind of YouTube side of things. I'm not going to go into that too much. I have been putting some content out on other platforms, but really quite sporadically. And when I say quite, I should probably say very. So, and that would include, you know, short form content on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and things like that. And then also some written content on LinkedIn. Again, this is the sort of stuff that has never been the higher priority for me during this year when I've been focused on building out the content. But it's going to be something that's going to be more of a focus coming into next year though. And I'll talk about next year in a moment. But really, as I say, the focus this year then has been on just building out the take one tech ecosystem aside from just YouTube. And so I guess the sort of main thing that has happened then in this year has been the building out of that. So now when you go to my website, there's a lot more consistency across all of this than there was last year. You know, it's only when I kind of reflect back that I think, oh yeah, there was lots of things that I implemented on the website. So just having a consistent look across everything, you know, and giving this the sort of clear paths for either personalized guidance through my one to one coaching, the education programs that I've got or the free resources, free resources, of course, being what we call lead magnets. So those are things that are offered for free but in exchange for an email address to be able to then potentially provide further value and also promote classes, workshops, classes and so on as well. So really building out all of this, you know, the sort of infrastructure behind it all as well. And then, you know, if you go to the classes, for example, or the courses, building out these, I've got to say, I was talking to Dan just before we got on one of our academy members and how, you know, we set goals for the year, but sometimes we don't always hit them and by sometimes I can say my experience never actually hit all of these targets that we aim for. But there again, that's the point, you know, is setting goals and sometimes setting, you know, big audacious goals. It's better to aim for something like that and maybe fall slightly short than just not set any at all, or maybe just create some really quick wins or easy ones. But for me, I know that I haven't quite built out all that I wanted to do with my courses. I'm looking at the wrong thing here as just as my monitor switches off. I wonder why that happened. Here we go. Let me come to the courses. I'm actually on the wrong section here. I'll go to my courses and here we go. It's just happening again. There we go. So I've got my beginners guide, master classes, accelerator courses and the academy as well. And if I scroll down here, you can see that I've got my beginners guides, so YouTube and Discord. I've still got these ones all to build out. I'm planning on trying to get all of those out in Q1 of this year, but I'll see how that goes. Then we've got my master classes. I've added quite a few more of those this year. So actually the keynote stream deck and so on have been added in as well. And then the accelerator courses. I'll be doing more of those through the year. Actually, the Kajabi one is coming up beginning of next year. So that will be in the second week of January for that Kajabi accelerator. I should probably drop the link into the chat for that actually. Let me just go ahead and do that. So that is if you want to build out your own online content business, then I can highly recommend Kajabi. It is the all-in-one solution that I have for all of the websites hosted on Kajabi, the courses are on Kajabi, my email marketing is done with Kajabi, basically everything. And that's what makes it, for me, a really great platform is that everything is all-in-one. I've used other platforms for my courses, sales funnels and things like that in previous businesses or other businesses that I'm involved in. But this is definitely something that I'm wholeheartedly recommending because it's such a great platform. And some people will look at the price of Kajabi. It's like for a, I think there's $150 a month, but I'm on the $200 a month package. And so you might think, that's quite expensive potentially that I know that this is feedback that I get from some people. But when you actually look at what you get with it, it's the video hosting, it's also the course platform, it's also your email marketing, it's also your funnel builder, it's also all of these other things all rolled into one. If you break those down into individual services with other things that I was personally using before, like I was using click funnels at $300 or $400 a month, I was using things like Mailgun for my sending out bulk emails with click funnels, I was using Vistia for my video hosting to host course content on click funnels. And so I've got all of these things grouped together and it was hundreds of dollars, not just a couple of hundreds. So yeah, for me, it's really cost effective. And at the end of the day, it's a case of what you do with it. And if you can get in with their free trial, get some stuff together, and then, you know, promote your course. That's what I did with my first course, my Ecamm Live Masterclass. I basically had it, you know, Kajabi paid for for the year off the launch of my Ecamm Masterclass. And that was all done within the free trial period of Kajabi. So it never actually cost me anything out of pocket as it were. It was all sort of paid for by revenue generated on the platform itself. So all that to say, yeah, I'm a huge Kajabi advocate. And so the Kajabi Accelerator coming up in January is an opportunity for you. If you've got some aspirations to build out all of this sort of stuff yourself, or any kind of aspect of your online course, then Kajabi's a great platform for that. I digress. I'm waffling. I wasn't intending to go into a little Kajabi promo there, but yeah, this is just one of the Accelerator courses that I've been running. I've got my own affiliate program, something else that Kajabi allows you to do very easily. It's just a sort of toggle on. So if you're interested in becoming a Take One Tech affiliate and you get 30% commission on any referrals for any of my courses, then you'll find the button to sign up to that over on my website as well. The affiliate program I'll come back to later because that is sort of part of my plans for next year as well. So yeah, building out all of the infrastructure, putting in place all of those sort of back end systems, obviously the website itself is one thing, designing that, designing all the pages and building that out is one thing. But it's also putting in the infrastructure so that when people sign up for things certain things happen, building out templates for all of this. So now when it comes to creating a new course, creating a new lead magnet, creating any of these kind of things that need to go into the website, it's a lot quicker because I've done all of the upfront work now of building those out. So that's taking less of my time now as I go through and add more things in, hence hopefully freeing up a little bit more time for me next year. The other thing then that has been a bit of a feature of this past year is that I've done a few sort of collaborations, firstly with product manufacturers and things like that, but specifically though also workshops. I've done a couple of virtual workshops for Ecamm. There was the Ecamm Advanced which I did over on the Ecamm Live YouTube channel. That was in I think February or March time, I forget exactly. And then also there was the Ecamm Tools and Tech workshop that I did and these were both sort of five-day workshops for basically not five full days but an hour a day over the period of a week as a live stream and then with a follow-up Q&A session in a Zoom meeting. Then just this past week or week before last, I also did something similar, a workshop with in collaboration with Vivo Meetings and so that was again a five-day workshop. It was called the Meeting Tech Mastery where you know it's all talking all about the stuff that I talk about on this channel, how to level up your online on-screen presence using tools like Roadcaster, Streamdeck and all of that kind of stuff and improve your lighting and video quality and so on. So that was done the week before last and then we had again sort of in-person session or rather online in-person if that makes sense in a meeting, in a Vivo meeting and that was just last Monday. So yeah those are sort of three of those kind of virtual workshops that I've done. I'll intend to do some more of those next year with various different companies as well and as well as doing some myself that are just sort of purely sort of Tape One Tech workshops as well. I also did the Ecamm Live Creator Camp and I delivered one of the workshops there with Daniel. We talked about online presentations and there's a bit of a theme here which I'll come to when I talk about 2024 but basically everything that I'm doing is all in a particular direction talking about the same thing but just in different forums, in different levels of detail. I also did my first Tape One Tech event. It was intended to be a hybrid event but I had some things come up. I had to change my travel arrangements. It was going to be done in Dallas in the US. In the end it was just online only but that was well received and I'm happy with how that went and I'll be doing some more of those next year both virtual but also some of those in-person ones as well in different locations. So yeah, building out all of this stuff has been the sort of theme of this year. I will just say a few hello's before we get on to my sort of ideas or plans for 2024. Hey George, great to see you and I've just realised this is what happens. I've been doing some tweaking in here and now I don't have a background on my overlays. Let me just get this so that people can actually see your comment background. There we go. Let me just put a colour on it. That's better and I will put a border on it as well. Like this, if I put a border and we'll just put a white border. There we go. Perfect. Now I can see you. It was great to meet you George at the CreatorCamp and I mean this has just been the CreatorCamp stands out as a total highlight of the year, Ecumlives CreatorCamp, 100 plus people all coming together and it felt like being reunited with old friends even though for me I hadn't met anybody in person before so it was an absolutely amazing experience. Great to see you there George. Hey Florence, great to see you as well and talking about the Digital Stage Revolution event, it was great to meet you in I always think of it meeting in person. Zoom is so personal these days. You know what I mean but it was absolutely wonderful to get to know you in that event. Dan as well talking about reflection on 2023. It's been an absolute pleasure having you in the academy for the past year and having our weekly Q&As, one of the regulars at the weekly Q&A sessions so great to get to know you as well. Welcome. It came across one of your videos about buying me a coffee notification. Thanks for that. I'm glad it's helped. It's something I don't really promote on my channel anymore but yeah you can go to buymeacoffee.com slash take one tech. Let me turn on my widgets just in case I haven't had that on for a while but glad you have found the videos useful and great to have you here and thanks for popping into the chat and also thanks for commenting in the chat actually because I know that wherever we see every live streamer will say this you know when they see number of viewers and then they see you know number of active people in the chat there's always more people watching than are actually you know posting so it's I do appreciate anybody that posts to say hello and it's always great to put a name to the little number as it were on the counter there. Hey Parker great to see you here as well thanks for stopping by again another regular in the live stream and Jeremy as well recovering perfectionist yes that has been a theme I was gonna say it's been a theme of my a theme of my year but it's been a theme of my life really so I suppose technically recovery has only been relatively recently but yeah great to have you as a member and get to know you as well in the in the discord. Michelle wonderful to have you here as well with a fellow creator from the our little creators pod always love hanging out with you and by the way I'm loving your what's called the the resin things that you're doing they're so cool I was thinking like hmm I want to hold I want to hold desk I should probably put this into context I don't know what the technical term is but where you've got like a slab of wood then you've got this colored resin and then I forget the you know the how to explain the technique but you can make it look like you've got a sort of a beach on your desk I thought yeah it'd be great to have a full-size desk like that anyway so with that said let's get into the my sort of plans for 2024 and it is really more of the same in terms of building out take one tech but really I want to get back to doing a lot more content I talked about how earlier about how I've only done 11 pre-recorded videos that will be changing going forward so I'm not going to get back to my original six videos and one live stream a week that I was doing when I first started the channel but certainly getting to more regular posting you know of at least a pre-recorded video a week and then this weekly live stream but also I've got some other live streams planned so you may have seen if you are a regular on the channel you may have seen that I built out a specific scene in Ecamm a green screen scene which is for my sort of news news update and it's going to be called the creators report and it's basically all about you know what's going on in the sort of creator space on a weekly basis I'm deciding where to do this though whether to put all of this content I'm going to be starting to do on YouTube or whether to do it live to another platform and then put it here I've just got to decide about that because there is going to be a lot of a lot of potential overlap I want to be doing more live stuff on LinkedIn as we go into the new year as well so it may be that the the creator report live stream is something that I do over there because I do want to sort of build out that that side of things as I say YouTube is still kind of my primary creator focus but take one tech as an overarching business is the is the actual primary focus albeit that as I say YouTube just being the primary source into that as an outbound inbound marketing tool but certainly because you know ultimately my sort of core demographic are business folks who are wanting to level up their online on-screen presence and you know get better at live video in their online meetings online webinars and in their content too then yeah being on the business platform LinkedIn certainly makes more sense or makes a lot of sense and so I want to be making sure that I'm doing stuff over there too so that is the the creator report and I will be bringing back my live streamer backstage podcast one of the things I love in podcast is that you can just call it season one and season two so season one was basically 25 episodes 25 guests and that sort of I recorded those in kind of in bulk at the end of last year and then they went out at the end of last year and a little bit into this year as well so I'll be doing another batch of those at the start of next year 2024 and then sort of releasing those on a weekly schedule I'll probably still do those in the same way that I did previously with the previous set which was that they were streamed to LinkedIn but also to Amazon live so one of the things about the podcast was that obviously it was I say obviously I often use the word obviously when it's not necessarily at all obvious so let me just remove that word so the thing about the live streamer backstage podcast is it was all about how people are using live streaming as a tool in their business and it was about getting them to share the tech and the tools and the techniques and things like that that they use to maximum effect and so because it was focused on kind of a business use case really of live streaming which is what I'm all about then that's why the LinkedIn focus but then also at the end of those episodes we always had a 15 minute segment where it was taking a look at the the gear that they were using and so being on Amazon live made sense from that point of view because they can have the carousel where you're showing products and it meant that anybody who was in the process of looking for a product on Amazon you know our live stream would pop up and maybe they'd get some extra insights around the the products as as the guests were talking about them so yeah that is the that was the the sort of point of that but then I always just released the recording of it to YouTube so I'll probably do that as as well. I'm also going to be starting a new podcast which is called the digital stage mastery product podcast because that's the name of my LinkedIn newsletter and this whole idea of a digital stage which is what we have when we are using you know live well even if we're not if we're just going into our Zoom meetings or our webinars or online events our virtual events we are in effect on a digital stage and you know I'm all about you know how do we actually enhance that through the use of live production software like Ecamm live through the use of you know immersive presentations by combining keynote with Ecamm by the use of you know enhanced audio lighting and video and so on so my overarching thing you know or foundation I guess of all of these different things is this concept of a digital stage and so I want to talk more about that in a podcast as well and then the podcast is just another one of these sort of inbound marketing tools to the courses the you know all of the the ecosystem essentially that's going to be something that I'm going to batch record but then I'll release the the videos for that into into YouTube and again you know post them on other places I'll be doing some short form content and taking the some short form short form content out of that as well and then also I've mentioned that I do sort of want to get back to having more of a sort of community live stream as well because I do kind of miss the the one that I used to do this same time but where it was more about just general interactive interacting with you know viewers and community and so on as opposed to you know being really hyper focused on just getting the content done first and then you know checking with the chat afterwards so whilst it's great for replay value and I noticed that when I dropped my intros my countdown timers from my live streams when I wasn't just immediately jumping into checking with the chat and constantly checking in with the chat throughout the content then then what I noticed was I was getting far better replay value and so rather than a live stream being just something that would have X number of views at the time live you know some more on the week you know that followed or two weeks that followed but then the views would kind of like drop off whereas now as I've said you know my primary source of content is these live streams and I'm seeing you know high much higher replay values in fact you know the second highest viewed video on my channel is a live stream and it was just a stream deck tutorial video start to finish kind of thing and yeah there's sort of minimal checking in with the chat however what that means is you know as you will know sitting here right now if you're watching live then that's leading to less engagement in the chat because I'm not having the conversation so I want to maybe do some more sort of without going to a kind of weekly you know Q&A type thing but just figure out a way to get a little bit more interactivity going and and whether that is directly in YouTube or whether that's more more of a kind of weekly sort of hangout sort of type thing in Discord for example we'll have to we'll have to see I haven't quite sort of figured out how to have to do that to maximum effect so that is kind of like the the video content I'm intending to put out but I mentioned before about the written content and the short form content that I've kind of done a little bit of this year but really very sporadic that is something that I intend to make a lot more of a thing of in the coming year as well and by the way you know the point of me saying all this is is really largely self-serving for my own accountability to just kind of put this out there but yeah more written content long form written content on LinkedIn but also on you know be more engaging in platforms like Twitter threads and so on and yeah I still call it Twitter I don't know when I'll ever get used to calling it just X seems a bit weird but yeah on those those platforms and the short form content as well so creating some different style of content I'm still not fully on board and no let me say that again rather than saying not fully on board I'm not even stepping foot onto the boat with the the idea of repurposing existing content I still don't like the AI repurposing I know that they've come a long way but I much prefer to be far more intentional if I'm going to create something and I see that you know people taking a long form thing and chopping it up but I don't know it never it never works well for my workflow because of yeah the friction involved in just even doing it seems to be too much whereas just sitting and actually recording something more intentionally for me seems a lot more the way that it's going to work with my workflow to that end I have actually set up another thing I don't know if I can actually show you this let me just see if this is going to work but I have actually set up another sort of camera angle so rather than everything just being like this I've been looking at ways that I can sort of use my space in a slightly different way and this is this camera frozen let me see it might well have just frozen let me see if I can do this it maybe it hasn't I will try I think it has so anyway let's just gloss over that I've got a remote camera that I should have probably hooked up but it's not not just hooked up at the moment but anyway I've set up another sort of camera angle over here with even I've even got a separate mic ready and ready to go and that is for recording some other stuff over to to this side that it's going to be more suited for like vertical content you know so it just looks a little bit different to just me on a on a blue or whatever color background as well and that'll be for some of this this recorded content that's as the the sort of anti repurposing just recording the videos in short little stints so that's something else that will be you know I'll be I'll be working on next year and I say next year you know it's like a week away isn't it so the week after next let me put it that way because otherwise maybe it just mentally puts it too far away in my mind but yeah that'll be stuff that I can sort of batch and then have it just sort of released over a period of time I've got a number of reviews actually to do for products because I've not been doing the long form video content so much this year or indeed the short form but I've sort of got away from doing you know specific tutorials and reviews and things like that you know these live streams although they've been very content focused rather than more so than general community focused I've I've still sort of not done quite what I was doing a lot of in the early days of the channel you know creating more sort of tutorial style things reviews and so on so I've got a lot more of those to do and I've got a sort of a lineup of specific products that I need to get creating content for as well so those will all be be worked on in the in the first couple of weeks of next year as well I've got some really interesting actually new products that are literally on their way to me right now that I can't actually talk about but I'm really looking forward to receiving and reviewing some some unannounced stuff so that's to come in the first first couple of weeks of of next next year the other thing that I need to work on towards well actually over the the Christmas period so I've kind of blocked out all of my time for next week and obviously you know Monday is Christmas day so I won't be doing anything then and probably not the next day but those other few days between then and the start of you know when I'm officially back one of the things that I intend to do is work on the the book so my book is almost finished it is called imperfect presence and when I say it's almost finished it is as almost finished as it was two three months three months ago so I just haven't done I haven't got it over the line since then but it's it's almost there so I need to just wrap this up in perfect presence it's all about as it says let me just read the tagline for you shall I mustering the digital stage and capturing the online spotlight and it's all of the stuff that I talked about in you know my events in my workshops and all of this kind of thing and it's and it's also including the whole sort of getting over the the perfectionist mentality and understanding that yeah the your content needs to be authentic rather than perfect and if you can do that then you're actually going to get a much better connection with with people and the book is split kind of into into four parts one is sort of introducing the concept I've got this thing which I call the value formula so the V for video a for audio alpha lighting so you know going into the technicalities of you know what you need to do in terms of getting all of those things on point but then it is the U is for understanding and this is this thing of not just understanding how to use all of the tools and the tech but really more understanding what's possible so many times I'll have a consultation call with people where they'll tell me you know something that they're trying to achieve and I'm like no problem we can we can sort that for you no trouble however have you also thought of this possibility and it's kind of like opening people's eyes to another possibility of you know something that they may not have considered now I'm guessing that if you're right here right now you are probably aware of some of these things and understand the possibilities but a lot of people you know don't understand what they can actually do in their meetings in their webinars in their courses on content and so on with relative ease with just a few pieces of relatively low-cost technology you know when you look at what the effect is and what the value add is from these things and I'm talking about obviously things like the the stream deck or I've just pressed the wrong button there you go I've just double linked into the other chat but I'm talking about things like the the stream deck the the roadcaster and all of that kind of stuff so yeah that book is something that I need to get wrapped up and we'll be out at the beginning of next year as well and also more collaborations so I talked about those workshops that I did earlier on this year the the virtual and also the ecams in person one and obviously my my event as well I've got more of those planned for next year as well and working with some folks on getting some some other collaborations in place for for that kind of thing I'm also intending to do some more of those myself as free workshops so the way that you know these things work for the ones that I've done for vivo meetings just recently and previously also with ecam is that they are free workshops for people to come and for the companies it helps them in terms of give delivering value to their existing users you know showing them how to get in the case of vivo meetings for example how to look better on camera in your meetings it's an obvious value add that they're providing to their to their customer base to their client base but then you know from my side it's also an opportunity for me to sort of showcase my my their skills and knowledge to a broader community and then obviously there is only so much you can cover in you know a live stream for an hour a day over five days so from my point of view it's also a sort of inbound marketing thing to to then promote to those additional wider audience to those folks about you know ongoing education in terms of my courses the take one tech academy and all of that that kind of thing so I've got more of those are planned but I also intend to do more of these just myself where it is to my existing database if you like of contacts you know so people have signed up for a download or something being able to add this additional value by offering you know these these free workshops and so on is something I want to do more of myself but really as well it's to help out affiliates so one of the goals for next year is to really build out my affiliate program anybody can go and sign up to be a take one tech affiliate and as I said earlier you get 30 commission on any referrals and typically an affiliate program you're going to be encouraging people or the the the owners of the affiliate program are encouraging people to share out their paid products so you know go and you know recommend somebody to our paid product or service and then you'll get the the commission off that and that's great you know if somebody is a you know uses your product or service and they they want to recommend you then that's one thing but you know people maybe feel a little bit either uncomfortable about just sharing you know I'll go and buy this that kind of thing you know or maybe they maybe it's something that yeah they they're only going to share the details of your particular product or service if it is to somebody specific who is you know has that particular need whereas if you have got a free product so if I'm offering a free workshop for example but then can give my affiliates the opportunity to share out that free workshop it's something that they're much more likely to share out because it's completely free for people to sign up but obviously there is a follow-up after the workshop where it's like okay if you've enjoyed the workshop you know maybe there's a special offer associated or whatever the case but here are some take one tech courses or the academy that you might be interested in and so it's a way for affiliates to share something out that's free and then basically you know I'm the one that's responsible for then doing the selling but they would then still get the commission because obviously anybody who is referred by somebody is just tagged against that affiliate and so any sales that come after the fact are then within a 90 day period but the follow-up would always always be within that would be attributed to that person so this is one of the things I'm looking to do with sort of building out the affiliate program and getting more proactive on my side about giving affiliates the resources and tools that they need to make money off my content ultimately that's what I want and nothing delights me more than seeing a referral commission to be paid out to somebody because it warms my heart to know that somebody has gone out and recommended it to somebody so yeah I absolutely love those things so that is yeah the another sort of focus next year then is as you're putting on the free events to help out the the affiliates I'm also still going to be doing my one-on-one consultation so in case you weren't aware you can always go ahead and book a consultation with me at takeonetech.io slash consultation if you're not sure if I may be able to help you there is a discovery call that you can book on there as well so 20 minutes where we can just have a chat and see if you know I might be able to help or if I'm the right person to help you even we can have a little chat there but then there is yeah you can just go ahead if you if it's something that you think yeah this guy is the one for me then you can just go ahead and book a call directly from there as well either an hour or there is a block of 10 that you can book there as well if you if you want some sort of some fixed ongoing coaching or you think that it might be something you need over a period of time but there is also the take one tech academy so I need to just pop this one up there as well because the academy has got a number of different tiers to it and I mentioned Dan who's in the chat one of our academy members but with the academy what you get is basically access to all of my courses over at take one tech and then you also get access though to monthly workshops and here are just some of the examples of previous workshops so technical setup for virtual presentations strategies for effective task and file management boosting efficiency with mat utility so they're kind of like around my content and this sort of comes back to something I mentioned I think in the last previous live stream or maybe the one before maybe it was maybe it was when I was on the stream show with strict where I was talking about how if you actually look at the content on my youtube channel you might think that I'm not really niched down because I cover kajabi, I cover stream deck, I cover rocaster, I cover ecam and various different things and it's certainly not like a really niche channel but for me I'm really focused on the fact that everything that I'm putting on my channel is for my as I say core audience who are generally business folks maybe solopreneurs maybe small businesses maybe larger enterprises or maybe someone working in a larger enterprise but they're looking to level up their online presence and online skills and part of that comes down to also you know everything that goes around it so not just creating the content or setting up your you know your lighting and camera but it's all about you know file management and you know managing windows on your screen for example when you're setting up for these workflows so all of these different workshops here again might seem quite sporadic but actually they're all designed specifically to help my my sort of core core demographic for the for the academy and then we've got the accelerator courses but also we have our weekly group coaching the weekly Q&As and I do two of those a week actually so at the moment they would be Wednesday 5 p.m eastern and Thursday 5 a.m eastern time for me it's 5 a.m and 5 p.m on a Thursday here in Thailand and I do two of them because there's folks in different time zones so just want to make sure that everyone's got an opportunity to to attend and there are three different levels to the academy so there's the professional level which basically gives access to all of the pre-recorded content those on-demand courses and also the monthly workshops at the premium level though this one gives access to all the courses the the accelerator courses but also those weekly Q&As as well so it's more about the you know some of the in-person time as well or in-person online time I should say and then we've got the elite coaching so if you are considering you know wanting some one-to-one help on an ongoing basis then this is something that is flexible depending on the time that you want some folks you know I see an hour a week others it's a couple of hours a week others it is you know a couple of hours every two weeks and so on so this can be flexible depending on your your needs and you'll find details down in the the bottom there of the pricing for those tiers if you're interested in that elite coaching as I say because it is completely bespoke just get in touch and we can have a talk about what might work for for you in that sense but yeah those the consultations though are something that I find really valuable and I won't ever stop doing those I may sort of reduce hours at some points but yeah I find the one-to-one consultation is the the best feedback loop I've got because often people have seen a video on my channel and then they they book a call with me you know and I might even say to them hey you know you can get you can find the answer to this question in the in this video and invariably the answer is I know I've seen that video I just want you to talk me through it yourself sort of or specific to their needs so yeah it's it's a really great feedback loop and the same goes for the weekly Q&As in the academy I mean it's just it's a highlight of my week honestly to hang out and geek out with some fellow some fellow dare I say geeks as well but yeah it's and it's more about the the group as well not just it's not just people you know asking me questions it's about our shared knowledge and expertise as well so everybody in there has got their own unique take on things they've got their own unique skills and expertise to bring to the table so it's certainly not just a case of you know come and ask Alec questions at all although you know I'm there to help as much as I can as well but yeah I really really do enjoy that that whole side of things so so yeah building out the academy is actually something that is always on my mind as well and how I can sort of add more more value and things that can do differently so I'll be definitely taking stock of everything over the over the the Christmas break as well and thinking for new things that I can add in and to a broader extent the community so I talked about the the concept of the live streams being more sort of community focused and that will probably be something that I think to do more in the discord because if you're not already in the discord let me just while I'm doing all of this dropping of links in let me just drop in the take one tech community as well that is where you can it's free to join there and all of the you know the main conversations in there are free it's not behind a paywall or anything and that's a much better place to get questions answered by the way than in the in the comments of youtube because I just find dealing with that overwhelming frankly for what's the better word in terms of the the volume of them and tracking conversations and things like that it's it's it's something that I probably need to get better at but so many different messaging apps commenting apps and things like that it's a bit of a fire hose of of requests so whereas the discord at least they're all sort of contained and also the benefit of discord is that there's other folks in there again that can help so it's kind of like the hive mind it's not just about you know my response to a comment or hoping that somebody else sees it but I want to do more in there as well and sort of build out more of the the live aspect so at the moment it's really pretty much just the the sort of text back and forth and chat comments and things but yeah having some sort of maybe a monthly hangout or something like that for a more sort of community style thing is something else that I'm looking at doing in the in the new year as well let me just come back to the chat having said that I don't check in with it hey Michelle working on that desk good to hear that Dan once again Alec oh thank you I always feel weird when I start reading something and then I've suddenly humbled by it oh well that's great I'm glad that I'm glad that at least this thing because we were just chatting in the the discord so one of the things I do for channel members in discord when I'm streaming to YouTube I'm also starting off live in the discord first of all and then we have a bit of a chat before I go live usually Jeff is the one that reminds me to actually go live otherwise I'm just rumbling away and forget to hit the the live button at the top of the hour but then we're also in there afterwards and have in your chat as well so yeah if you're interested in becoming a channel member you can find a link down to that in the just down below this video in fact and of course that's open to all take one take academy members but yeah me and Dan were just talking before I went live about goals and things like that so I'm glad that it's been an inspiration I'll be sure to just check in with all of that as we go forward in the the academy Q&As keep each other in check and as I say that's what this is about you know this session is about my accountability as well and that's why I like to put these things out in the public domain because yeah it does help give me a little kick up the backside sometimes if I'm looking like not making something in time and thank you the academy value equals priceless perfect the check is in the post thanks for that hey Aubrey great to see you here and David as well watching on your lunch break well I appreciate you uh appreciate you being here thanks for stopping by so with that said that's kind of like where I'm aiming for in in 2024 more of a focus on the content building out more of the academy stuff although the sort of foundations and the systems and processes are now in place so there won't be as much time that I'll be spending on that introducing those new courses and so new live streams and so on as well to both YouTube but also LinkedIn maybe getting back more into the Amazon stuff as well so I haven't done really many I've done a few Amazon product videos so I'm a technically an Amazon influencer what does that mean it just means that they've they've allowed me to live stream to to to Amazon so yeah well how much influence I carry is completely separate to that but yeah maybe creating some more content over there I did just want to talk though about because this is the time for me to sort of sit back and take stock I just want to talk about this idea which is not a new thing and it's something I've talked about before as well this concept of ikigai this Japanese principle and apologies in advance for my pronunciation of that but it's just something worth noting and it's this idea that you know you've got something that you know you may be passionate about something that you love doing and something you're good at sorry which you know if you are doing something that you love and that you're good at you could say that that's your passion something that you love and that the world needs well maybe that's your mission and then something that you can get paid for in the world needs that might be a vocation and my thing has just gone off let me try see what's happened just there let me get that back let me try that once more time one more time and now that's interesting I think what's happened there is my camera here has covered it up there we go that's better and if something you're good at and you get paid for then that's your profession but really what you're looking for is something that combines all of these things so something that you love something you're good at something that the world needs and something you can get paid for and that is this thing called Ikigai which is I believe translated as your reason for being and it's interesting to me those things there that are these little call outs where you've got like maybe maybe one thing is missing so if you're if you're you're doing something that you're good at you're paid for and the world needs but you don't really love it you know it says delight and fullness but no no wealth or that's the wrong one actually comfortable but feeling of emptiness is the one for that or if it's something that you're good at you love and the world needs but you can't get paid for then that is this one at the top left so a top right delight and fullness but no wealth so what I've found in my life is I've been very lucky to do things that I always really enjoyed doing and so I've always had this feeling that like oh aren't I lucky to be doing something that that I really love but often there's been something missing in some respect and so it has led to some of these feelings in those little sort of call out things there where one of these different things is is missing in some respect and one of the things that I've really found with take one tech since sort of going really full in on it as and growing it as a business is it is something that really checks those four boxes and so it's something that really has been a real sort of um I don't know I don't know what the quite the word is and just really a pleasant experience really a lovely experience and I've got to say it really hit home when I went to the creator camp the ecum creator camp which was the first time I'd really gone away from home since sort of pre-covid I'd been down to to Bangkok for a couple of business meetings previous to that but generally it was the first time that I'd been sort of away from home and on the flight over I was just reflecting on the fact that yeah pre-covid I was doing a lot more traveling either back and forth to to Bangkok for business meetings down there previous to that was also doing a lot of international travel back and forth to the UK from Bangkok Dubai UK and back and stopping and doing events there and so on lots of travel lots of time away from from family but really take one take and this whole sort of concept of you know a digital stage that you can create for yourself using YouTube using platforms like Kajabi really does afford you an amazing opportunity to sort of craft a life that you want and you know now you know I'm taking my kids to school every day I'm picking them up from school every day and those sort of things are you know really precious you know to be able to be in a position to do that and to just be at home all the time when when they need me and you know if my my son was ill I was there I was able to you know for a week we were in hospital with him with some respiratory issue just a couple of months ago but I was there I was able to just be there for him all the time and the freedom that this kind of business afford you is really not to be underestimated and so I'm only saying that to say that if you are in the process now of creating your goals for next year and thinking about what you want to do and thinking about YouTube maybe as a as a platform to develop you don't need to be thinking in terms of tens of thousands hundreds of thousands or millions of subscriber numbers to actually make a real dent in in things you know you can actually start with a relatively small audience size but be growing a significant business out of that and so I just wanted to leave you with that and if it is something that you want to pursue further and you are interested in you know the take one take academy you'll find a link of that in the description but that you know I'm I'm here to to help other folks because it's made such an impact in my life all of the things that I'm doing with the free content with the the paid courses with the workshops with everything I just want to help as many other people to to have the same sort of feeling as it's been able to give me so I just want to leave you with that if I can be of any help feel free to to reach out to me either in the discord server or in your book a consultation call or whichever way you you want to and I'll be more than happy to help out in any way I can so on that note I'm going to wrap up now I wish you all a very happy Christmas I will be back before the new year so I'm going to do a live stream same time next week week but for those that celebrate it in the meantime have an absolutely wonderful Christmas and I'll see you all again very soon