Lakeland Public Television presents Currents with host Ray Gildow, sponsored by Niswa Tax Service, offering tax preparation for individuals and businesses across from the City Hall in Niswa and on the web at niswatax.com. Hello again everyone and welcome to Lakeland Currents, where tonight I get to introduce a friend, a person I've known for a long time, who has gone through a lot of life changes since we first met. She has an interesting story to tell, and she's also working at the end of her career in this position that she's in. Her name is Kathy Galswick. She is the president of the Central Minnesota Initiative Foundation. Kathy, I'm not sure how long we've known each other, but it's been a long time before you got into this position anyway. Welcome to Lakeland Currents. It's nice to have you here. Thank you. It's great to be here. So who is Kathy Galswick? Here's a loaded question. Well, you know, I tell people I grew up in Southern California and aspired to be an attorney in Los Angeles, and instead I ended up on a farm between Pillager and Motley. And the answer is true love. That's what brought me to Minnesota. So I've spent all of my adult life in this area, feel extremely blessed to have had a wonderful place to raise a family and just a really exciting career. First ten years at Region Five in Staples, and then now 30 years here at the Initiative Foundation. So when you moved here from California, you started right away in Region Five. I did. I did. Now, were you the executive director right away, or did you work your way up? No, I started as a secretary there. And then within five years was executive director of the Region Five Development Commission. And tell us a little bit about the Central Minnesota Initiative Foundation. I know it's one of six Minnesota foundations, but tell us a little bit about that. Well when I was at Region Five, I was invited to be part of a planning process that the McKnight Foundation triggered in Greater Minnesota. And this was in the mid-80s when the economy was in really rough shape. We had double digit unemployment, double digit interest rates. There was a lot of stress and despair across our rural communities, especially those dependent on agriculture or mining and natural resource-based economies. The McKnight Foundation was the largest private foundation in Minnesota at that time, and they knew they wanted to do something to help, but they weren't going to be able to effectively do that from downtown Minneapolis. So to their credit, they came out and started talking to local people. And they got ideas and input about what they could do to help. And after about two years, created the six Minnesota Initiative Foundations. And you were the president or the executive director right away? So in my capacity at Region Five as executive director, I coordinated some of that planning for our area and provided some of that input. And then was actually on the incorporating board of the Initiative Foundation, and then stepped down from that board and applied to be the first president of the organization. And my point was going to be, I think when you started, there was you and maybe a secretary. Or were there a couple people? Yeah, when I started, I was by myself. By yourself. Opened up first a temporary office in the City Hall at Little Falls. Our office is located in Little Falls because it's the geographic center of our 14-county region. And I remember going to the post office and getting the mailbox and ordering the phone line and starting the books on a piece of green ledger paper. And then began adding staff one or maybe two a year over time. And now we have 28 people. That's incredible growth. And I know you will share that growth with your teammates. But a lot of it has to do with your leadership because I remember when you started and I remember when you were out knocking on doors for $5 or $50 or whatever, you could get through contributions. And so over that period of time, the 30 years, because this is the 30th anniversary of the state organization, have they all grown like that? Yes. Is that similar to all of them? Right. So the whole state of Minnesota is covered by one of the six Initiative Foundations, except for the 7-county metro area. Each one is an independent foundation with its own board and staff and offices and programs. But we share that common history. We all came out of that conversation with local people back in the mid-80s about what do we need to do to change the face of greater Minnesota and turn things around. And so all of us have been doing grant making since we began. Business lending, which is a very unique thing for a foundation to do, but that was related to diversifying the local economy, operating programs and providing donor services like a community foundation does. But you know, Ray, everything we do is based on the premise that local people are the key resource. Just like McKnight came out and asked people because local people know what the problems are, they're going to have the best ideas about how to solve the problems, they're going to be the ones that need to do the work to bring about that positive change. And so the whole model that created the Initiative Foundations is based on that premise that local people are the key resource and it's about empowering them to help improve their communities. So there are 14 counties in your Initiative Foundation circle. And I know you have, because I'm in the Staples Motley Community Foundation, which is a part of your organization, how many cities have foundations that work through the umbrella organization in your 14-county area? Because the Initiative Foundations are structured like a community foundation, we have the capacity to house funds on behalf of communities like the Staples Motley area or Morrison County or Pine City or Elk River, or for families or businesses that want to have an advised fund or a local giving vehicle. We have over 80 different field of interest donor advised and community foundation funds that we house. I think we have six or seven community foundations like Staples Motley. So in those cases, those are communities that decided they wanted a local foundation, a local giving presence, knew that it didn't make sense for them to set that up independently and go through all the IRS work and all of that kind of thing. And so they affiliate with an umbrella organization like the Initiative Foundation to provide support and services and work with the local people to build an endowment and make grants to help their community. So it must have been a challenge in the early years to tell people in the Motley or Staples or St. Cloud to put money into this kitty, this endowment or whatever you were going to start. Because I'm sure it would have been hard for people to see the benefit to their community right away. Was that part of your early challenge to do that or wasn't that a big issue? I think that's a great question. And yes, getting people to think regionally that understanding what helps my community is also going to help the community 20 miles away or vice versa and that working together makes sense was something new and different. You know, we certainly had communities working together at the local education level, especially after we went through that wave of school consolidations back in the 80s. But the idea of working across counties to strengthen a whole area has been something that we've learned about together. But when you stop and think about where any one of us lives, where we go to work, where we go to church, where we buy our groceries, where we buy our clothing, we all relate to a region, to an area that is our home. And so I think we've made good progress in helping people think about that differently and realize that building up the region, building up greater Minnesota is something worth investing in. Not trying to have you go through all your employees, but what are some of the kinds of things and that the people you hire do? Great question. So we have employees that handle our grant making. We make grants or gifts of money to not-for-profit entities or local governments or cities or counties that are doing things to help improve community. So I'll give you a few statistics while we're at it since we began. We've made over 31 million dollars in grant awards in our region alone and well over 200 million across the six initiative foundations. We have people that are experts in business lending. And this is, I'll just do a little rabbit trail here and mention that this is a very unique area of work for foundations to be in. But when we when we began and we were talking about how to strengthen the rural area, it was really important to think about how we could diversify the local economy so we were less dependent on agriculture and mining and these natural resource-based things. And the way you do that in small towns is by helping local people start or expand small businesses. And back when we began in the 80s it was a really tough time for entrepreneurs to find capital because the banks were struggling too and they weren't able to make those higher risk deals. So we created Revolving Loan Funds which work in conjunction with the financial institutions to make loans to help companies start or expand that create quality jobs. And again just to give you a couple of statistics here are the loans in our region are well over 50 million dollars now across the six initiative foundations over 252 million dollars. We can point to 46,000 jobs across the state that have been secured, either retained or created because of this gap financing that's been provided and over 12,000 of those in our region alone. So we've got the staff that do the grant making working with community people. We've got the staff that do the business lending to help companies start and expand and provide technical assistance and we work really closely with our economic development organizations and others in the region. We also have staff that operate our programs and those typically include four pieces training technical assistance resource referral and grant support to help a team in a community work on an action plan and make that happen. So again back to that idea that local people are the key resource. We have a community that wants to update or develop a community development action plan. They enter our thriving communities program and get that kind of assistance and process coaching and a little bit of money to help advance their projects. It's the same model we use in our early childhood work, our Healthy Lakes and Rivers work. The work that we did on methamphetamine for three years to increase awareness and prevention of methamphetamine. Those same four pieces are there. So I guess you could say that's our model of change. That's the way we go about helping people help themselves and address local issues and bring about positive change in their community. So if a community has determined they want to do something and they don't feel they have the expertise, they should at least contact you to see if you have the expertise that can help provide some of that technical support for that kind of. Absolutely and often we know the other resources that are available as well. The regional development commissions, the various state and public agencies work very closely with our cities and counties. So back to your question about staffing and the grant making folks, the folks that do the business lending, the folks that run our various programs, the folks that work with the community foundations and other donor advised funds and handle our endowment campaigns. The people that publish our magazine, our IQ Quarterly Magazine, we're very proud of that publication and that is a great piece for telling stories about the foundation and the work that people are doing in communities. And then of course the people that support all of that with our accounting and operational side. I remember very vividly when you started, so many of your contributors were just small individual people. And I think you've evolved now into a lot more of the corporate world. You do a lot of work with small companies that are trying to grow. There's without naming names in the area, I know there's a number of the companies you've worked with here in the past and have helped them maybe redesign how they're doing business and it has helped them grow. But is that true for all of the other groups too, the other five? Have they moved into probably a broader base with manufacturing and the industry besides just small, maybe a hardware store dealers? So with regard to the businesses that we help through loans and technical assistance very much, so I think across the state it would be safe to assume that the largest number of our loans have been made to manufacturing companies because those tend to be the kinds of quality jobs that we can create in greater Minnesota and go to scale. I also know that there are, especially in the smaller community business and retail businesses, several of the initiative foundations are SBA small business lenders and specialized in that type of business financing as well. So there's really a range. In our case most of our loans are to the manufacturers but we also have a nice segment of technology based companies in our portfolio. We have some value-added agriculture, alternative crops and processing related to food that's pretty exciting. And we have a nice array of smaller service and retail companies as well. I've done a fair amount of work with the Ag Extension through the University of Minnesota. We've had these discussions in the past when they've gone into trying to help small communities and cities become healthier, more prosperous. There are areas where there's really enthusiasm to do that and then there are areas where there's not. There's not the leadership maybe. And I know I've had Ben Winchester on here a number of times with you and he's identified leadership as probably the critical piece in any community or any small business if they're going to grow, if they're going to develop. It takes leadership and I know that's been a big focus of your organization since the beginning and you've done training for I can't remember what you call it, the cohorts you've put together. Are you still doing those? Are they still ongoing? We sure are. Our community work currently is the program is branded as the Thriving Communities Initiative. We kind of changed it and refocused it a bit during the Great Recession. But going back to that premise that local people are the key resource and we are simply tools in the toolbox to that. It is very much about finding those community spark plugs and giving them some guidance and some coaching along the way to bring about that change. I think about staples, you know, your home community and the great work that's been done there around the poverty initiative, for example. People that have gone through the Blandon Foundation leadership training programs that often are great members of our coalitions and our citizen work groups because they've already kind of made a commitment. I'm going to give back to community now and we provide a little bit of framework for that follow up work. But you know I'm worried about this matter of leadership for the future. When I take a look at what's happening is just a few of us are getting a little older and retiring or thinking about stepping back from our roles so will the people that are running and managing our companies, our employers the people that are serving in elected and pointed offices the people that are running our non-profits and serving on those boards this matter of identifying the next generation of leaders keeping them local giving them the tools to be successful in the region is critical to the future of the region and to greater Minnesota just in our 14 counties alone conservatively we identified almost 12,000 leaders needed to serve in elected and appointed offices and maybe the executive directors of the non-profits that have staff and that's a very conservative number. So we have to be very mindful of how we can attract and retain that next generation. I think we both maybe saw that story in the Star Tribune two weeks ago talking about the number of offices in the state where no one had even filed to run for election. This is something that keeps me awake today. So how has the landscape changed since you started to where you're at as you're going to retire soon? What's different? How does it look? What's different in greater Minnesota is we have a whole lot of people on fire for making their communities better. We have a more robust non-profit sector. So the needs of kids and families and those emergency and safety programs and services are in pretty good shape. I mean there's always there are always shortages and challenges in that regard but we do have a lot of non-profits that have received support and assistance to build their capacity. We have stronger local economic development offices whether those are at the city level or county or sometimes multi-county but we have increased recognition about the importance of having people in the community that are quarterbacking and providing connections to entrepreneurs that want to start or expand businesses and helping them access the kinds of resources they need. We certainly have more diverse economies in our local communities and I think you know I can't prove this statistically but I believe in my heart that greater Minnesota weathered the Great Recession much better than we weathered the economic crisis of the mid-80s because we have a more diverse economy now and we have a better capacity to identify and address challenges as they come along than we did back then. So something's different there as well. We don't want to get by the day without having you talk about something humorous that happened to you because it's always good to have humor on these shows.  I call it my worst day of my life story and I've shared this a few times because it really depicts what it was like for people back in the mid-80s when we were trying to figure out how to transition. In our case I had moved to Minnesota and Neil and I married. We were part of his family farm operation between Pillager and Motley. We had three young children, a four year old girl and twin boys that were two. I was transitioning from my position at Region 5 to this new role of the president of the Initiative Foundation and getting that set up and rolling. At the same time we were experiencing the family farm crisis at home in that during the day I was working at the Initiative Foundation talking about how to diversify the economy and address the farm crisis. And at night we were sitting around the table with Neil's family talking about which equipment to sell and when we're going to sell the cattle or the hogs. And we were living it and eventually that family farm operation was shut down and Neil had to transition to a different career which ended up kind of by accident being in law enforcement and he had a wonderful career there. But during this particular season of life he was needing to leave on Sunday nights to go up to Hibbing for skills training and I was single parenting then from Sunday night to Friday evening when he got back home. And so he would leave on Sunday night and I would be on my own. One Monday morning I woke up, overslept, the alarms had not been reset from the weekend and I had a very important meeting in Minneapolis that day where we were actually negotiating with the state legislature and McKnight about how to capitalize our loan funds. So I'm already running late for the meeting. I run downstairs, 80 gallons of water has overflowed on the floor from the water softener that malfunctioned and I did what any sensible adult would do and turn around and walked out and shut the door. I'm rushing around trying to get the three children ready to go and there's a knock on the door. And it's our neighbor who drives a semi truck.  This is the dog I brought with me from Los Angeles that had her since junior high. She was getting old and feeble but this obviously was not the way we had planned for her to be able to end her life. I had to make some decisions with him right on the spot about that and he helped me out. Trying to keep the kids away from the window so they wouldn't see.  I'm driving to Minneapolis late for my meeting crying because my dog of 14 years has died and I'm feeling stressed about getting down there. Get to Minneapolis, find a decent parking spot, run in, act all professional and together because that's what we do. And the meeting went pretty well, came out and my car was gone. That really good parking spot was not. It had been towed to the impound lot in Minneapolis which is not a nice place to go. So I got a ride from a colleague, had to borrow cash to get my car out of Hock. I had to go back to the lot and get your documents out of the car.  So here I am now driving home. Now I was still finishing my college degree taking classes at Central Lakes College in the evenings. I was supposed to get there for an exam. Now I'm late. So I'm missing my exam. I've used all my cash to pay the fees. I have no food to eat. Driving home, finally go get my children, pick them up, pull up to the mailbox and there's a thousand-dollar overdraft notice in the mailbox. So that's a lot of money to me now but it was a whole lot of money to us back then. Turned out later to be a transfer error but I didn't know that at the time and so that was a big crisis. Pulled in the garage a four-year-old Melanie trying to be helpful hits the button a little too soon. The garage door opener comes down on the top of the car, scrapes the car. Get in the house, get the kids to bed. Neal calls from the pay phone and hibbing because this is pre-cell phones, of course.  So he broke it all with a little humor. Yeah, well at the moment he wasn't making any points but he's a pretty good guy and we're going to celebrate 40 years in December so I think I'll keep him. But I tell that story because it really in a silly and it's 100% factual that all happened on one day. But that's the kind of stuff people were going through back then to try to make transitions and life changes and figure out new careers and do things to settle in to a new way of life. And a lot of people went through that kind of thing and a whole lot worse to be able to make it through and stay in greater Minnesota. Wow. So we're down to the last couple minutes here but what's going to happen with you now? What's your new career going to be? So I'm wrapping up at the Initiative Foundation here at the end of the calendar year. I'm a grandma of seven little munchkins aged two to seven. I'm going to have a little more time with them. I'm a doula which is a birth coach and I do that as a volunteer kind of a ministry and love coming alongside women and girls. Neil and I are going to get more involved in the missions organization we've been working with for almost 20 years called Josiah Venture and so we'll be doing some coordination and some work across 13 countries in Central and Eastern Europe. How have you been to Haiti? Been to Haiti. We have served on a board of an organization in Haiti for a couple of years and also going to be then now focusing in Central and Eastern Europe. And I might hang out my consultant shingle if a little time permits so really excited about the future. Well good luck. That's going to be a big change of pace for you but I'm sure you'll do well. For those who still might be interested in contacting the Central Minnesota Initiative Foundation how do they do that? The website is ifound.org and so that's the easiest way to get in touch with us. You can link to me or any of our staff email addresses. You can sign up to receive our IQ magazine at no charge. You can look at information about our grants and our loan programs. All of those things are right on the website. And do you also then list the kinds of technical services that you provide to the organization? Sure. The programs absolutely. And quickly you just have been at some national conferences. Is what we're doing here unique in Minnesota compared to most states? Minnesota is the only state in the country that has this model that I've described to you of the six initiative foundations. I feel so thankful to have been here to be able to be in this role to watch the amazing things that happen when local people who care get to work to bring about positive change in their community. So what do other states do? Or they just don't have these kind of initiatives? They don't have this kind of system where the whole state is covered. They may have local community foundations and the traditional community foundations are getting more involved in programs but not at the comprehensive level that we've been doing for 30 years. So we've really got something special going on here. Now are you the most senior of all the six? You said that so tactfully. Yes, I am the last original president of the six. Yes I am. I was 12 when I started. Wow. Well you've done a great job. Thank you. It's been a huge blessing. It's some big shoes to fill for the next person coming in. So good luck to you and Neil and your new career. Thank you. And we'll keep tabs on what you're doing. Okay, thank you so much for the opportunity. Thank you. You've been watching Lakeland Currents where we're talking about what you're talking about. Thanks for watching. I'm Ray Gildow. So long until next time.


Good morning. Good afternoon. Definitely good morning to the person that I got behind the scenes right now. But welcome everyone. This is James Hicks to another edition of IT and live infotainment news network. I'm going to go ahead and get started with this, right? I got a guy back here and I really want to pick his brain and he's a definite someone who I think he will get a lot of interest from, a lot of insight from as well. Alec Johnson, lifelong creator, designer, problem solver, author, entrepreneur, father, all the good stuff, right? He started his content creation journey really as an exercise in self-discipline. He's a professed recovering perfectionist who's had an extensive career in a variety of disciplines, including engineering, technology, and finance. When I can go down those paths today, we might. Who knows? Who knows where I may pivot the conversation. But today, I want to focus primarily on the mindset focus of Alec, right? The fact that, you know, failure is not an option but rather a requirement for personal growth. That being said, let's go and get into it. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Alec Johnson, how are you, sir? I'm very well. Thanks, James. Thanks for having me. Oh, man, definitely, definitely. We got some folks in the building already. Let me make sure to look at it. I'm already got my comments and my branding. All right. I wanted to make sure it was right because I didn't want to get in trouble with the recovering perfectionist. There's two pixels to the left. It probably is, right? It's probably not standard, right? And you're going to get me for that in the comments. And so we're, and we've got Elysio Way here. How are you, sir? We've got Mr. Riley in the building.  Glenda's in the house. Rabbi David Paskin. So I'm wondering, again, so we are doing a early beta of some functionality using restream.io. So can someone please say if we are actually streaming on Alec on his channel as well? And if these comments are coming in from his channel, that's pretty cool. Yeah, we've got a couple of people actually on my channel. So Glenda and Rabbi David. Awesome. So are there comments coming right now, the comments that you're leaving? Are they coming from your channel? It looks like they are actually. Yeah. This is pretty cool, right? I will stop talking crap about restream.io now because we have kind of broken the mold here and we've got one stream pushing out to all channels and all of the comments coming in. That's pretty cool. That's pretty cool. Yeah. So Greg says he's watching it on your channel. That's awesome. That's awesome. And so is Glenda. Let me stop pause and kind of rewind a little bit.  You can go into the elevator pitch if you want to. You can go into the long monologue, but I just want folks to get kind of an understanding before we start in terms of who Alec Johnson is if you don't mind. Cool, cool. So from the UK originally, in case anybody hadn't gathered that from my accent. But I've been living in Thailand for the past 16 years. I'm a father to three lovely children, Jasmine, Emily and Dale. So Dale's my youngest. So between two and nine years old is the gap where they are at the moment. So as you said, James, sort of lifelong creator, designer and problem solver. And I actually studied aero engineering at university, aeronautical engineering. And yeah, first proper job that wasn't busing tables or waiting tables was working for a missile defense contractor. So designing guidance systems for missiles. And then sort of between then and now, I've gone through a series of careers that are all related to basically design and engineering in some respect. So there is quite a few. So I don't know whether to mention them all, but basically architectural design and construction is what we've been doing in Thailand for the past sort of 15 years. And then more recently, I've got into sort of financial analysis of the US stock markets. And so we've set up a basically an algorithmic trading company. So we're in the process of developing some algorithmic trading models and then providing training to people on how to use those and implement them. So there's a few other things in there as well. Also partner in a social media marketing, advertising and marketing company. And one of the things that I did for that was create a course for to help basically small businesses grow their business online through social media marketing. And so I did a course for that. And these two sort of course aspects for those two particular companies is how I got into the content creation thing and why I wanted to start the channel, which is all about me basically being able to make these videos in one take, hence the name take one tech without actually doing any editing. Because the first time I made any course material, I was recording and editing and being a perfectionist, I was my own worst enemy. And I'd have thousands of takes for the most menial little little change and things like that. So that's the channel was really an exercise in sort of getting better at being able to just sit down sort of no script or plan really and just do sort of ad hoc videos off the cuff on something that I do know about but haven't really sort of planned out. So I love that to develop the content creation thing for the course is really I suppose. I mean that helping you get out of your own way I guess is another way I think of being able to explain that right. Definitely, definitely. I appreciate you saying all that because I really wanted folks to understand it. You take advantage of all 24 hours in a day brother right because it's it's five a.m. your time now right. Yeah. And you've already been up for for a while right it's not like you are not not active you've got to you've got the three kids you've got the multiple entrepreneurship and business activities going and now you're branching off and doing content creation. So again I really wanted folks to understand that there is no excuse right and in terms of staying motivated staying active staying staying staying relevant and irregardless of where you are again I'm glad we talked about the fact that you were in Thailand right. Irregardless of where you are as long as you have an internet connection as long as you have a phone as long as you have the ability to connect you can be anywhere and get things done right. So I mean because because just those statements right there really I think resonate and hopefully get folks to honestly get out of a slump themselves by saying I can't be doing this or I'm too tired I don't have the time make the time I like to make it time he gets up at three o'clock maybe we should get up maybe we should go to sleep a little bit earlier you know what's the old Ben Franklin thing or early to bed I don't know I don't even know who's been Franklin but I'll leave that alone. I do I do go to bed quite early I should just to clarify that so people don't think I'm just surviving what time what time is that because I you know normally like eight o'clock something like that that's really between eight and nine and it's because I take my little boy to bed you see so I take him to bed and I usually fall asleep before him I love you know I wish I could be in your shoes and do that but you know I I'm a glutton for punishment and still trying to be the guy up at midnight watching the Olympics and watching whatever I mentioned the Olympics because I see Keely in the building we see it button it oh I'm glad you're here you see well it's tomorrow there too as a matter of fact right because it is it Monday it is yeah Monday morning I don't live living in the future I don't understand that at all I don't understand I've got I've got a lot of things do Monday and I can't have it be in Monday right now because I've I've waited too long it works it works really well actually the time zone thing for doing stuff so like for the stock stock trading stuff obviously we're getting up here you know after the market's closed but it means we've got a full day so the market opens here at sort of eight o'clock in the evening so any the US market so any any things that we've got to do from that side of you know preparation for the day we can set everything up and then go to bed while it does its thing in there while the market's open so it works well for that and then working with some people in the UK as well it means that if you're on different time zones sort of you can one person gets one block of work done and then it flips over to the other person and it's it just works out really well this at this time so I love it I love let's talk a little bit about that that title that I don't know if you put on yourself for the the logo that you've created right the recovering perfectionist talk a little bit about that I really want to dive into that because I want to know talk about being a perfectionist talk about the steps that you're taking to recover from that and and why you feel that is necessary because because again I don't know if I completely see the term perfectionist as a negative connotation there's there's there's definitely positivity that but but talk to us a little bit about being a recovering perfectionist all right so I'll totally agree first because I've talked about being a recovering perfectionist it was just something I put when I started this channel I called myself a number of different things in my bio but one of them was a recovering perfectionist and it's this thing of when it becomes limiting to what you're trying to do and becomes like a barrier basically that's going to stop you going that last little step of actually putting something out into the world and you know finishing what you what you started really not something that's a barrier to starting but I'll have to totally agree that perfectionism is something that also drives really good results in some some areas of life as well and you know if you're working for clients and things like that and the the the roles that I've had previously I've always felt like things need to be perfect so if you're building somebody their dream house you don't want to say oh it's all right it's it's it's more or less it's more or less okay yeah it's it's got to be perfect in my view and we haven't always achieved that but we've always strived for that when we were you know building houses for people or designing houses and the same sort of thing with if you're designing you know an algorithmic trading model you don't want it to be like more or less okay it's got to either work or it doesn't and so I've always felt that in in every role that I've had work wise that there needs to be that level of perfection and so having that sort of thing that's you know striving for that is also something that's driven great results but it's when it becomes this sort of barrier to barrier to create creativity and stopping you from doing what you're doing or becomes too much of a time sink so it can you know it doesn't necessarily always stop you getting stuff out but it can actually distract from like other things that you need to do so sweating over you know the odd pixel here or there I mean I've I've gone and completely redone graphics before that I've that I've been working on because there's just something not quite right that almost nobody would have would have noticed and you know I'm the worst person to actually have as a client when I've got somebody to you know design a website for me or do something for me we had some stuff where we had a company doing it and I've just got this it's a bit of a freakish eye really that I can just spot things that are off and it comes from sort of checking houses so like when you're doing snagging lists and things like that walking around the house I could walk into the house and all of the imperfections just jump out at me and it's the same with graphics and things like that so I kind of spot these things the the contract is in the construction business always used to be like a bit on edge when I'd walk in because I'd just walk into the room and I'd spot things that were that's you know five millimeters off and I was also coming from when you're designing you know really sort of fine engineering sort of things you work into tolerance tolerances of you know thousands of an inch for example well you don't necessarily want thousands of an inch to transfer over into building a big house because it doesn't matter but it's yeah I'm quite quite finicky like that and so it's again it can be limiting but again when you think about that and we won't go go into all of them but but you know some of the past professional experiences that you've had you had to be that finite and that that particular in terms of things that you did else catastrophic issues could have could erupt now yeah how do you take off the suit and tie from that speaking suit and tie the the the image that I use for for the thumbnail that's a nice suit you got there brother let me tell you well I'm I'm not sure I'd fit in it now after my yeah my yeah lockdown plan you put on the COVID-19 okay okay I won't go into that but but again so how do you take off that suit and tie put on the the casual wear and and go about the rest of your day you know things that are outside of that how do you use that same energy use use that same attention to detail when it comes to something like content creation right again knowing that as long as you've got great audio video can can can we can we can be okay with your video as long as you sound decent right we will we'll give you a pass for that and so we only need about 80 percent right so I know that may be difficult to hear but how do you translate that into actually who you are and why you may have turned up your youtube channel take take one take so first of all that was the the thing that I invested in for the channel when I decided that was going to do this was a mic and I didn't bother I still got a 10 year old Canon EOS 60d oh bless your heart not a bad camera but I'll I'll be moving over to the zbe 10 I think at some points nice nice uh yeah so I it was just a case of you know this is this is working the image quality is not too bad and I had exactly the same view you know the audio needs to be the thing that I need to get right first and uh you know having a bit of good lighting also helps with uh you know any any camera improves the the camera quality so or the the picture quality so those are the things that I sort of upgraded uh first from or when I was sort of setting up this this setup really um but yeah it it was a case of have setting um sort of talked about this before a little bit but having a minimum viable product for you and what you're comfortable with and sort of setting that so there's nothing in my channel that I'm particularly happy about really not happy about yeah I'm not happy about like not totally happy I'm not totally happy about my thumbnails I'm not totally happy about my logo my website my content or anything but I'm happy now that I'm not happy with it and that's the thing being talked about that yeah talk about that because because I had to have been a dramatic shift right again coming from and and I'm gonna keep picking at the scab about you know the the ideas of uh coming from your professional career and history to to seeing something on here that you don't think is 100% it's only 95% talk about that a little bit uh yeah so um I mean like all of the images for example in my thumbnails first of all let's get past the fact that I just look ridiculous in them in all those stupid poses my my daughter is always like ribbing me about those that they just look that is a job of a father no that's a job of a father to embarrass their kids you you are doing a good job for no not not saying that you're embarrassing no let me clarify that but if that's what you're doing you're doing a good job I totally I'm embarrassing yeah but um so so for example those all those pictures so when I um when I was planning the the channel so I've been going for 87 days so far um and but I spent four weeks before actually the first video so my first video was a live stream and that was my first live stream and then actually the next day I went into doc's office hours for the first time so it was kind of there was this build up to it where I wasn't really part of the community see or anything like that not active in it I was just literally getting all my my stuff together basically so that was where I had to set this sort of minimum viable product of what I was going to be happy with with going out and so you know I thought right well I'll create all of the images for the thumbnails create the template for the thumbnails and so on and so those all those images were taken just like literally in the course of 30 minutes sitting in front of the green screen with the camera click click click click click just take a load of pictures dump them all into photoshop and I really it was just having to have this thing of like I'm gonna get totally over the fact that I look a little bit ridiculous I'm also gonna get over the fact that if you look at the color of them the the sort of tone of them and everything is is quite off it's not it's not it's not right you know the the it's not like I went to have professional photos taken or anything like that it was literally just me in front of the the camera when I came to look at them there's um you know you see the the sort of green coming through from the green screen so although I've done some removal of that in photoshop if that was a uh a professional job for me to go and create those things that would just be so far off the mark for what I would normally like sign off on to give to a client okay it's it's untrue untrue for me so there's those sorts of things like if when you look at my my thumbnails as well if you look at the the sort of text alignment normally they would all have to be like exactly in exactly the same corner you know point and exactly the same distance from the border and from the top and stuff like that when I make my thumbnails now I literally spend three minutes doing them I just I just type whatever the you know unless I've got to get an image or something like that might take a little bit longer but you'll notice that just those ones there the alignment isn't the same so that using interview mode and leader they're not the same distance from the top that sort of stuff would drive me mad before okay whereas I'm I'm literally just like I don't care I've done it and the time that I have incidentally when you were talking about the time spent on it or that you know time available whatever so I wake up at three o'clock and I have my little morning routine of meditation and journaling and then my time for YouTube is basically four until six a.m so that's the time that I've got to do all of this stuff so if I'm creating videos my average video length is about 30 minutes ish I can be a bit more precise than you know look I I I saw Doc's stream with you on it you know exactly how much it was going tell us tell us I sort of track all of this stuff it's changed a bit now actually it's about 20 28.2 or something like that there you go 20 seconds but anyway um so uh it's if I'm making a 20 minute video or a 30 minute video then I don't do any preparation as such but I've still got to sort of you know switch everything on switch the lights on get the cameras set up check the mics do my little checklist and things like that and then if I'm showing a piece of software then you have to you know what you have to do get the things set up for any shots you're doing and things like that so a 30 minute video probably takes me like from start to finish an hour to sort of sit down get everything set up do the video and then upload it to to YouTube and whatever and then I can't afford to be spending a day finickying over little details of thumbnails so right right it was just a necessity to have to actually let that let that go really so let me ask you about a couple of things there because you talk about a lot and I'm wondering is that how are you with that right again because you've gone for so long again noticing and and having to deal with again that line spacing and that character spacing like like you said in your titles there how how are you progressing you're 80 some in to your your journey now 80 some videos and how how is that from a mental perspective and how is that just from your your ability to to let it go and say it's good enough 99.5 of the population did notice that but you noticed that and the fact that it is off it's actually okay that it's off right it it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't take away from what you're eventually trying to do is deliver some quality content which is what you're doing so again how how are you Alec not not necessarily the channel but how are you but being able to say you know what I put out some something that is not 100% but it's 98% and all right it's out there you actually hit the nail right on the head there was something you said because when I started doing it it was all practice so there was no no subscribers or anything like that the first sort of four weeks before I actually did my first live stream getting everything set up it was all to me still like a work in progress sort of thing and then when I did my first live stream there was nobody watching because I didn't have any subscribers I didn't tell anybody I didn't you know I've got email lists that I could have sent this out and people that would actually have been interested to to watch but part of my thing is I want to grow organically to see how you can grow a channel organically so day one zero subscribers so I was doing a live stream to nobody basically and that was the weirdest experience really because I was sitting here in my my basement with my green screen background which is what this is which a lot of folks probably don't realize I mean we'll talk about that in a minute right that's that's one of the dopest backgrounds and setups that I've ever seen to be lit so good and but it's a green screen we'll talk about that in a minute go ahead brother so so so yeah sitting here doing this this thing and I didn't know who you know who my eventual audience or viewers would be I didn't really also know quite how the channel would progress and you know what totally what the content would be my my idea about the content was that it would always be you know sort of more mac productivity tech reviews and things like that but I say I seem to have just gone down a lot of e-cam live stuff because I'm just fascinated by that program and I love it and so there's been loads of that sort of stuff that I've been doing but I will I will go more on to the the mac stuff at a you know further down the line a little bit I think but so there was nobody watching and so I didn't have that sort of as much of a self-conscious feeling about it that there was loads of people watching because there wasn't anybody watching but then as I started getting people that were watching and liking the videos and commenting and stuff like that I realized actually how what an impact it was having on a few people so not everybody who watched it I'm sure some people watch it and think oh that's you know that's helpful but there's one or two people who reached out to me like really really early on and and just told me how how helpful it had been to them and how beneficial and then there's some of these people that you know I've I've had quite a lot of communication with and help them with what they're doing and that sort of totally overcame any sort of need for perfection or ego or anything like that that came with that and it was it was that thing of just knowing that what you're putting out is actually having an impact on people and at the end of the day they don't really care whether my pixels are you know how many pixels to either side of my next on my thumbnail because they just see it come up and they think oh it's another video and click it it's it's irrelevant to that point so you know that's been a huge thing for me and I say that and I'm glad you go into some detail because I say that one finger pointing out at you three fingers pointing back at me as well because you know there there have been times early in the journey and I think we've all gone through this right as content creators something has gone wrong right we either have a bad internet connection we have we have latency we have whatever the case may be our scenes don't line up what whatever but and then we get in our own head and and we lose track probably lose focus and focus on that as opposed to the dialogue the conversation the content which is really what people came for they regardless of again if you if you mess up on video if I if I made the screen completely black right now I'd freak out you'd probably go crazy too but people would still the people that are watching would just be would just wait until we came back but but getting getting again out of your own way focusing on what you're what you're delivering what you're what the whole goal is right and your mission as I stated you know kind of in the in the monologue your mindset failure is not an option but rather requirement for personal growth yeah that ability of you to step outside of yourself and say it's it's good enough and good enough is still great right so good and I don't and I want to say good enough you know it's kind of a cop out or it's kind of just you know me being content but but good enough is actually something really good and you're bringing values as long as you're bringing value I think to the community that you're that you're building and I think that's what really matters and as long as we can get out of our own way and and focus on that context I see nothing but positiveness out of that and continued growth out of that as well I like what Keely is saying right so Keely to sum up what she's saying focus on the content as opposed to I'm summarizing Keely okay the people teaching us about the two percent difference wasting our time and money yeah don't worry about the gear all the time have some quality gear obviously because the gear does matter I mean I'm not going to say go out there with just an old Motorola StarTech well no no those didn't have video those didn't have video cameras on them and I'm probably just dated myself when I said that but um I have quality gear for what for the quality of product that you want to produce right if you're trying to reach someone from and be very professional in terms of what you're delivering you might need to level up you might need to go ahead and you know microcenter best buy amazon whatever get you get the stuff that you can do to make your your your environment you're in your content your stream and your channel look professional but until then do what you can with what you got but yeah do it as good as you can right don't don't don't settle right don't never settle go ahead man talk to us about that I was just gonna agree basically and also have the point of um do have a goal in mind you know if you're if your gear isn't you know up to scratch as it needs to be perhaps then focus on what the most important thing is first but then also do have a clear plan of you know an upgrade path basically and how you plan to do that um and so this channel for me is not something that I'm looking to you know it's not to it's not intended as a you know primary income source or something that I'm looking to monetize and I'm not all about the stats and the things like that it's an experiment in growth and things like that however I do want it to be at least cost neutral yes and so far it has been so there's ways that you can do that without waiting for monetization uh and that can be you know it can be things like buy me a coffee patreon or things like that but it can also be if you've got something that you look at that then uh it wasn't that wasn't supposed to be a segue but it can it can also be you know like digital product so one of the things I talk about is stream deck and I don't intend to you know make a a a living out of creating stream deck icons but if you have created some then you know make them available and so that's something that I've done on my site you know put those up and it's not intended as I say to be you know oh this is going to be the the golden ticket or anything like that but it does mean that through sales of those those are paying for the website um and uh I've not heavily sales orientated I've even got a disclaimer actually at the top of that page that says wait before you buy any of my things go and check out this video how you can make them yourself so uh that's you know it's it's not heavily sort of sales orientated but having those sorts of things does offset the cost of things and uh so you don't have to think about monetization as uh you know something you've got to wait for months for that's a good point I mean that's a good point especially for your for and I won't even just say young creators or creators that are just starting out but creators that are just now getting focused on growing something like a youtube channel right and a youtube community because you know that 1,000 subscribers 4,000 watch hours that that can be a daunting task right to get to you both of those within a certain period of time frame but there's so many other ways of getting getting some type of monetization building community like like you're doing here with the buy me a coffee uh I'm going to buy some of these icon packs as well for the stream deck because I don't want to make them you've already made them and I like your style so so I'm gonna get get me some alex johnson ones um um there I thought I saw you had something else as well in terms of monetization capabilities um was it was it some of the gear here well again you're using your amazon affiliate right so again that people I think aren't people have everyone has amazon access a lot of folks have amazon prime and I think more creators need to spin up an affiliate relationship with amazon because we're always recommending stuff at least amongst ourselves minus well if I'm going to buy another microphone I might as well use your affiliate code so you can get 15 cents off you know or whatever the case may be just that just again helps increase your slush fun because I know you're you're looking to buy something right now that these only zve 10 but again that just helps again helps with with your overall goals and dynamics as well so I mean you've got some stuff out here that I have that I've been also been looking at so I'll um yeah you got to get rid of that that canon 60 d you got to get rid of that oh I know yeah but so to that point though part of that thing is just to be uh I've been quite stubborn about the the upgrade path and uh and the reason is that I do want uh there's there's people that have uh specifically emailed me and said I really appreciate that you're doing all this and showing how to do it without the latest stuff yeah because it's very easy and trust me I'm the worst for gear acquisition syndrome you know the the latest shiny thing um it is it is uh it is a thing for me so that's uh that's something that I'm trying to be a little bit you know going against my normal tendencies with that as well just to prove that you can actually do this you don't need to have the latest camera and oh there's a new one out there's there's some people who have got you know uh who bought a Sony maybe two months ago and now they're really stressing because the new Sony zve tends to come out and they're thinking oh no what do I do now should I send the other one back you know and the one that they've got is fantastic fantastic but there's a new shiny object come out of there yet they need to have so there's that but the the amazon thing so the I was surprised by how quickly that worked because I don't do sort of major sort of product reviews or anything like that on my channel I'm not like really heavily pushing the amazon stuff but I do just mention if I've talked about a product then I'll say oh there's a link in the description or whatever um and I remember that it was literally within a week of doing my uh of setting up the amazon affiliate I got my first sort of notification of having you know earned commission and it was 25 cents and it was like the best 25 cents I've ever earned because it's just this thing of it's just it is it does become a sort of passive income once you've started creating this thing and I'm not making huge amounts of of money off it but it does all help towards um you know offsetting the cost basically exactly exactly it's it's all good but I would I would I would beg to say that that that proves that you're you're doing good work right again someone has listened to your your message seen your message seen your content and your recommendation and they are relying on you as a subject matter expert in the field and saying you know what Alex says go out and get this and get and get the big stream deck instead of the little one why all right you know because he did this video so you know what I'm going to do it I'm going to not only buy it I'm gonna support him in in the end as well it it may be whatever it's going to be in in in his paypal account or whatever but still I mean that just shows relevance for for for the content that you're putting out so definitely kudos to you on on that man well thank you and that actually is a little bit of a responsibility as well that you know you're not to be taken lightly that you are recommending stuff so there was a case where I I talked about I didn't even recommend buying this specific product but it was one of the little you know presentation clickers logitech remote for I've got that one yeah I talked about how to use that with with ecamm live because I just figured out that it just works with ecamm live to switch scenes so I mentioned that and then somebody in the comments wrote me and said oh I bought it and it won't work and it's and it's it's the logitech one that everybody uses but if you look on the logitech website it says it's not compatible with mac and I don't understand why they've got that on their website but this person contacted me and said like oh it's not working and I bought it just because I saw it on your channel and now I think I'm going to have to and I was so excited about it but then now I'm going to have to send it back so I actually went through and made another video and first of all went through all the steps of setting it up and just basically said troubleshooting I'd never had any problem with it but I made a troubleshooting video for it and then this person contacted me back and just said oh thank you so much it's all working now so there is there is this thing of like a real responsibility that if you've recommended something and I just imagine this person being so excited about this thing of you know getting this thing and being able to use it and then figuring out that you know the disappointment when it didn't right right responsibilities on your shoulders as a creator I think if you're recommending stuff so let's talk about you being a creator and and kind of the responsibility and kind of the pressure that we put on ourselves um live stream every day in august you've been participating in that it's uh it's it's only the eighth you get you got a handful more days ago I should be participating but I I know I didn't I didn't I didn't take the time I could have made the time but I didn't take the time but um I'm following vicariously in your in your footsteps all right how was that going well first of all the thing you say about the time I had not budgeted the time for it because before I started I did a live stream the day before the last day of July and I said oh I'm doing leader and I thought what it was was the sort of creator community in general just says let's do a live stream every day and that's like the extent of it I didn't realize that there is actually a whole organization to it oh yeah it's it's it's tough and then you've also got everybody else doing their videos and you know that it's it's power is in the involvement and watching everyone's videos and commenting on those so I'm feeling quite guilty because I haven't had the time to go and watch first of all definitely not everybody's videos but also I haven't had the time to devote as much as I need to to it really so it was it took me by took me by surprise because I don't I wasn't previously part of the live streaming pros community I didn't even realize it was it was Laurier that was doing it yeah yeah and so when you get these these challenges every day which is you've got to make a video about on some topic and I won't go into what they all are but it's um they really yeah it is a real sort of program of self-development for people is that the first thing so you do sort of have to dig deep and search for you know ideas and answers and things like that so um it's it's been it's been really great and just another sort of biggest part of it for me is there's loads of people from our community that are in there doing it right I'm getting to know people so much more you know in a deeper way through watching their videos and sharing my experiences is a real sort of exercise in bonding and community building in itself I I love that and and keely I I appreciate you in your statement there about uh I stream consistently already but I like I like the statement that you made that there's a responsibility right once you start it though you feel the responsibility and you feel the the connection to the community um and that's what it's all about right we we see some some ogs that are out there streaming and part of leader because again it's a constant evolution it's a constant growth it's a constant uh just just making sure honing your skills it's just more the more times you get up at bat the better that you are you still see professional athletes that get up and train and practice every single day why because that's just how you get better and there there is I love the missions as as Luria has them laid out I've seen I've seen more people show other sides and multiple emotions as well I think I may have teared up the first I mean last year when I did it as well right just because again you're pouring so much out and and you're so so bare when you when you're yeah when she asked you to talk about these particular things and you look inwards of yourself that you can't help but grow right and as a person as a professional as a content creator so she knows what she's doing when she sets these missions up and she makes folks do um I'm again vicariously watching a lot of folks I'm still part of the community I'm watching everyone that's doing them and I see yeah you would it was it 86 of you're 86 of 100 of already because you started much earlier and you're pretty consistent with with the leader goals as well so I'm watching you and you know I'll come in with with my customary you know what up yo in the in the comments and then I'll just I'll just listen I won't I won't leave too many comments but I love it I love it so okay did you so Glenda did you just leave this comment on on alex channel I would I would be curious to know because I think I think she must have done uh yes she did yeah yeah okay oh yeah I see him you know I gotta I gotta keep up I gotta stay I gotta focus on alex though right the comments are secondary right now this is this is an interesting intriguing conversation that I'm having you know I need a mod for ecamp you know I got I got a mod for uh for YouTube I need I need a mod for for ecamp it's all good let me let me talk to you about being an uncertified polymath that is my tongue in cheek way of calling myself a jack of all trades really I bring it up at this particular time in the conversation because I think it's relevant for a lot of the stuff that we've talked about so for folks who don't know give your definition of a polymath and then tell people and then explain why you why you feel that way because I I don't doubt it and I I wish there was a way that we can get you certified you know I'm sure there is but but if I get you're uncertified it's just fun in and of itself but talk a little bit about being that about that well so that's you know somebody who has a sort of interest and deep knowledge in a broad range of fields in a nutshell essentially so that is just something that you know when I was writing my little bio for my channel then yeah recovering perfectionist and that because I found it hard to you know when people watch my channel it's or ask me what I do it's a very difficult question because there are you know quite diverse things and it was only when I've sort of stopped to think about it that I've you know sort of summed it up basically lifelong creative design and problem solver because everything that I'm doing is design even the you know the the trading stuff is still problem solving and design it's very much you know and very much designing solutions to problems or the I also have a history in like graphic design and web design and things like that so that's all coming back to this sort of design and engineering perspective but they do appear on the surface of it like quite different disciplines and so that's that's why I sort of chose that term really just to kind of sum up a broad range of experiences but you could also say yeah jack of all trades and master of maybe quite a few quite a few you know a small number you know no don't don't be humble sir you know you you if I if I have a hard math problem or if my kids have a hard math problem in school next year I know the first call I made I would just tell them to go see right down the middle of Scantron I'm called I'm calling you for sure let me ask you about from a technology perspective again right so a lot of the content that you're creating is around tools hardware software services things of that what what's a and don't say Ecamm what's it what's a piece of technology that is probably your favorite or what's a piece of technology service hardware or whatever the case may be that you rely on on on a regular basis okay so the the thing that I did actually consider doing a channel on is Microsoft Excel wow master of the pivot table huh oh don't it's so pivot tables is one but power query is just a completely different level power query basically allows you to link it into SQL databases and you can do so much more with excel than people basically scratch you know one percent of what just basic excel can do but when you link it with power query to do all sorts of back end sort of database work as well it's it's really quite a phenomenal tool and it's something that I've used for you know since almost it's inception I think so I've used it through you know while I was at school through university then you know in all the roles I've done it has been central to everything that I've done interesting so it is it is the sort of tool on a sort of professional level that goes through everything so even building houses I made a spreadsheet that I could basically cost an entire house build in a matter of hours because I could just put in all of the you know parameters and things like that from the plans that I've created and then it would just automatically spit out this is how much the house costs so those are the sorts of things that I'm doing with excel with I mean even with my youtube I've got a spreadsheet that just basically tracks not not anything any of the actual youtube stats they do a good job of that but things like the time the type of video it is and all those sorts of things then I keep a track of that just so that I because I don't really need to do that but that's part of my little OCD nature so and then I'm sorry so let me back up a little bit and I'll let you continue but is that something that you're creating even though you think other folks won't use it is it something that we could probably get some some value and some utility out of because again we're all looking a lot of us are looking at analytics we're looking at numbers we're looking at views we're looking at you know what content and what messages resonate with our community is that something that you can throw up on on your website you know take one take and and sell it yeah it could be it's one of it's one of these things where there are so many different things that I do and there's uh I haven't got the time to monetize them all so that's a good problem to have man that's a good problem to have it yeah it's it's it's it's difficult and it's the same with all the excel stuff that I do it's become it is you know it's kind of an extension of my uh of me when I'm working really so there is a lot of stuff that I could do in in that sense you know so I mentioned it on one of my live streams the week before last I think and somebody asked me like oh can I make a video on how to use power query with excel and it's just not really right for my channel because it's a bit you know it's very it's very niche and it's very advanced for what most people would use excel for so it's great for doing you know analysis of financial data and stuff like that and stock data uh but it's not necessarily gonna that that particular feature isn't going to be useful to a lot of people so it's one of those things of just trying to have a focus on the uh you know on my channel of what I was doing but in terms of a tool though that you know that was the question excel is the one that has been through all of the different roles that I've I've had that is the thing that is the sort okay you know the the foundation of them all if you want to talk about stuff that I use for general productivity which is stuff that I will be covering on the the channel uh there's kind of like a few different apps that are also used to automate a lot of the things that I do so I use uh keyboard maestro uh which is an app that allows you to basically record uh different macros and things like that to perform actions uh on your mac so I use that one and have that linked in with stream deck so there's a great app for uh stream deck that allows you to trigger keyboard maestro uh actions actually there is a keyboard maestro plug-in for stream deck but that isn't as good as one that's called uh km keys which is a third party one but just has a much better integration for some reason uh so I use keyboard maestro then I use things like text expander as well which is basically you can type a little series of keystrokes and it will populate a load of text so those two work hand in hand quite well together then I also use hazel which is a application that's basically it can watch folders and things like that and it can perform actions depending on what happens on those folders so for example if I go to an email and I have a bank statement or something like that and download it it recognizes where it's been downloaded from into my downloads and automatically files it away into the right folder uh it can also do um you can have it go into a folder and then do optical character recognition and then it will sort of put that into you know various different places so those sort of three apps are kind of like a uh a core of all of the ways that I sort of automate stuff and speed up my process on the the mac and they work really well together and then as I mentioned stream deck with the stream deck that's been a game changer as well definitely definitely folks look I I told you to bring your your notebook and and a pen or something to write notes stuff down because I knew I was going to bring some some winners there I let me get those links from you like afterwards so I can put them in the description I pulled up keyboard maestro while you were talking while you were talking but I'd be interested as well as and I'm always looking at I don't want to be a a you know subject to the tool but I'm always looking for the right tool to again help automate to help help help with the overall workflow right because we were all getting more more more busy we're all getting to be a little more complex in terms of what we're doing again talking talking about from a content creation perspective and what can we use to take out some of the tactical things be more strategic what can we do to automate some of the things that we do every single day all the time right I mean I know there's a conversation coming speaking of Ecamm with Descript right in next week right of how to actually do transcription and things like that I mean that's phenomenal right everyone is always trying to break up their content do micro content and that just seems to be a way to go so I'm sure I'll be watching it I'm sure you'll be watching it but you know some of these tools that you just mentioned as well I definitely want to see if I can put these in my in my toolkit and take advantage of these go ahead yeah just very briefly these sort of tools are definitely something that I will be sort of moving on to cover on the the channel and it's kind of like what I set out to do originally but I just went a lot down the ecamm route because it's what I've been using and then it's there's something about I don't want to talk about ecamm too much but there is something about that program that I can't quite put my hand on it's got some special sauce in it or something if it was a if it was a food I'm sure they were placing it with some sort of drug or something because it's got some crack in it oh well I didn't I said that he didn't say it it's it's got something there I don't know I don't know but it's it's really really yeah it's got this little little hook in it and something that it's a very Mac like application because it's got this sense of it really delights you but then also there's a community around it and the ecamm community I kind of still have to pinch myself to realize that this is a community built around an application there's not many applications in the world that have got such a tight community sort of feeling to them as well so so that's why I've tended to do largely ecamm live or ecamm live related content of late you know stream deck but how to use it with ecamm a logitech clicker but how to use it with ecamm yeah how to set up a camera for ecamm so that's all good but I will be I will be going more down these sort of Mac productivity stuff because the more things that I'm doing I realize you know the the people are using ecamm are essentially all mac users so anything to sort of speed up processes on the mac for them will be still welcome I think yeah I mean I I almost think that it's not by accident right the fact that ecamm is so followed so so loved and endured by by its users and by the community right it's since it's a mac product like I worked for Apple for 10 years so I'm part of the cult of Mac right I'm an old Steve Jobs guy right I had my you know one-on-one with him one of those infamous one-on-ones with him and so I've been drinking that Kool-Aid for a long time and the fact that you know Ken and Glenn decided to just do mac focus on ecamm as opposed to making it cross platform we know that we again in the mac community look for creativity perfection we look for just being able to do things before we even think we need them right the iPhone came out and took the the headphone jack out before we thought we wanted taken out you know now now everyone's following in that footsteps everyone taught trash about it but now no one has a headphone jack in it no you know just stuff like that and just the elegance of it right again the fact that we can run a large a large looking very professional production from a smaller footprint right you just you just really just need a camera mic and and a screen so I think that is one of the things that's drawn so many folks to the community I would love I just want to be in the room when you Ken and Glenn sit down at a table and maybe pull out a whiteboard and just start drawing ideas I want to be at that community meetup and just and be sitting at the next table because I don't want to interrupt I just I just want to be like look at these three right here knock knock it out they they've definitely got the perfectionist streak in them as well I can tell yeah yeah yeah I'm hoping that that happens sooner than later as as things start changing within the globe and within the world so hopefully we can have something like that before before too long I've wanted to talk about the about the green screen because it took me a long time to find the the mic the the bad lighting it took me a long time to find the crease in the screen and I haven't found it dude your set is dope right and again it's it's not even that right just right I thought India Delgado had the best green screen when she was doing it but you know what you guys are both you both get the gold medal on this one right here you know the the funny thing about this this image is it's not even actually a real photograph it is CGI see you just now you're showing off let's see why talk about it brother now you're just showing off but yeah it's I don't know what to say about that really it's it's just something that I'd that because I use this setup for other things as well like I use it for work zoom calls teams meetings and stuff like that and I don't necessarily want to have a purple background on my work calls so the reason for the green screen was basically to have something that was you know I could use it in for for different different circumstances and actually I had a green screen before I started this channel because I was traveling quite a lot pre well obviously free free last year and so I used to be moving around quite a lot and so I'd have a portable green screen that I could use when I was on meetings because if I was in a hotel or something like that I always had this consistent background and it was when I was also recording my course material for this other thing that I was doing so I needed to have that background the same for that as well and it meant that I could it was obviously a total MacGyver job homemade frame thing and green screen but it was that's when I first started using the green screen and so when I sort of was became more stationary last year not moving around then I just actually set up something a bit more permanent here and yeah it's just about basically making sure that the screen is tight at the back and making sure the screen itself is well lit and then the other thing is that people get wrong I think with green screens is first of all not having the angle correct so you've got to think that the angle of the camera needs to match the angle of the view of the background but then also try to match the tone so this has got a bit of a warm tone to it so adjust the the warmth of the yeah in your camera either the kelvins in your camera or the the warmth of the light that you've got and then also because there is a sort of a blue tone on this side and a purple one on this side then I've actually got two small lights on either side that are bouncing those colors off my off my head so there's a bit of a purple tone here and that to try and make it match basically what's going on in the background and that's those are the sort of five things really I love to sort of get right see and it's done here is like she's picking two right she's with her with her percentages I have a suggestion on the lighting for the green screen but that's two percent stuff right she again going going after that perfectionist right you know yeah yeah you know change it change it from from 5600 to 5500 no clearly we're not we're not going to do that we love you though that that's good do you know one at one one of the reasons why I had this particular background is because it I could have different sort of lighting tones in the scene so I could make it sort of daylight the actual background picture have it either sort of a daylight effect or warm light or different colors or things like that so I always imagined that when I started the channel I might actually have a sort of different look to it depending on the content I was doing so it sort of differentiate between the topics but ultimately I've never bothered doing that and so I've just left this one all the time you got it going on that was my thought process with that I love it man no you you got it going on you your look and feel your your content is is amazing we we appreciate you for everything that you do and just recently I noticed and realized that you again had products and gear and services that you were selling as well so like I said I'm probably going to pick up some of those stream deck elements as well talk to us about real quick and just in terms of wrapping up what's what's next what's next for you I guess personally professionally and and primarily from a content creation perspective what's next for you out so with the with the channel um yeah day 87 and done 91 videos so when I get to 100 basically I'm going to um I've actually already considered I'm going to just extend it to 365 days 365 videos but at day 100 I'm going to stop to sort of reevaluate and maybe update those thumbnails and things like that and just sort of refresh what I've done but I did make the conscious decision at the beginning to not sort of tweak anything until I've done the hundred videos so that's what I'll do after 100 and then in terms of other sort of content creation I'm just at the moment refreshing the the course material that I did for my one of my other companies and then I'm creating a whole new course for related to the trading stuff so I'm still working on I'm still producing videos for those sort of in the background that's going to be released at some point so those are the the main things from a content creation point of view I also want to get into um repurposing my content a bit more actually so I did um I set up a TikTok account after I watched Dot Rock talking about TikTok with somebody I forget who it was now um but anyway so I set up a TikTok account and I was going to do a load of videos to that and in the first five days I put out 30 videos but then I just fell flat on my face and stopped because there was just some something happened the last two weeks that meant that I just didn't have the time and I thought well I'm not going to stop my YouTube stuff to distract me to go into the TikTok stuff but I do want to after day 100 get a bit more organized in terms of repurposing content because I'm not really doing any of that so get that going out to other platforms makes sense makes it yet TikTok can be a distraction right again you can go in there with a focus of again creating micro content but um it's actually easier I shouldn't say that it's different than something like Instagram or something like Snapchat or whatever the other case because you can actually directly upload from the desktop so I have noticed that has been a lot easier for me than creating something for Instagram and trying to make that look a certain way so again trying to do all the things with only 24 hours a day and so the other one was Jart so Descript obviously you can do your um uh you know get your what's the word like edit them and get your captions and things like that out of Descript but then also Jarvis which is the one way you can create content so we've talked a lot about that sort of in the past few weeks in the in this sort of community and so I was looking at getting started with using those but I just figured I'm actually gonna not do anything with that for until after the 100 things finish because uh it is there is too many things to go after them all and that is comes back to this perfectionism thing and like make sure that you are not overwhelming yourself with uh you know or not taking on too much I don't use the word overwhelm but it's uh you're not taking on too much and committing to doing too many things that is unrealistic so uh that's minimum viable minimum viable product that is at the same time manageable there you go right I mean I'm uh I'm not even gonna try to close it up with anything else the minimal viable product there alex johnson ladies gentlemen he just gave us all kind of information and again like I told you if you didn't come with your pen and paper and take some notes don't worry about it I got you I'll I'll put all those links to some of the products and services and automation tools in the description so so you can take advantage of those as well um I like you're doing it brother right um oh thank you I'm a fan I just I just want you to know that the videos that you do the the even though you may not see 100 percent uh perfectness in that the stuff that you put out I I love the the yellow and the and what is that the aqua or whatever I love the the consistency I love the message I I love the sense of humor and I and I love just the fact that you are doing it for the right reason because you're looking for a means of taking better care of yourself right I really think that that's kind of kind of a goal right that you're doing it to realize that I've been and I and I say this positively I've been so tightly well and so focused on doing things 100 right every single day because of the things that I've been involved in from a professional perspective that I there was no margin of error right now you're letting yourself breathe a little bit come into your own and amazingly enough and rightfully so you're finding a community that supports you a community that that that agrees and and just uh embraces you and you're you're really flourishing man so so kudos to you on that brother very much um what time has the sun come up yet uh well this is this is the thing about recording from a basement oh my god but it will be it will be coming up soon it's 6 a.m. yeah so yeah all right we're done go out there enjoy the sun enjoy your family brother I will talk to you soon appreciate you everyone also for joining enjoy your day and take care yourself we out