Hey Brenda: What Tech Do You Use? Ep 154

What type of tripod do you use and why?

Why should you keep your old cellphone, so you have two cell phones?

What type of microphone should you use and why?

What type of headset do you use?

What type of lighting do you use?

What type of webcam do you use?

What type of video editing software do you use?

What are some pro tips on how to use different types of technology?

I answer all these questions and more in this episode. 

This episode comes from early 2023, but the tools are still relevant today. This is a playback of a livestream where I review the essential technology tools I use to support my business. 

I demonstrate and discuss various gadgets, including tripods, smartphones, microphones, headsets, lighting, and other tech accessories. 

This live walkthrough covers practical tips for making cost-effective tech investments, managing audio quality, and optimizing lighting for virtual presentations. 

I also answer audience questions, share pro tips for video production, and provide insights on maintaining professional-quality streaming setups. Tune in for a comprehensive guide to enhancing your tech stack.

00:00 Introduction and Episode Overview

00:36 Starting the Tech Review: Tripods

04:09 Using Multiple Cell Phones

05:39 Microphone Troubleshooting and Recommendations

18:55 Headsets and Speakers

25:27 Lighting Solutions for Your Setup

31:41 Additional Tech Gadgets and Wrap-Up

33:45 Handy Tools for Audiobook Recording

35:18 LED Lighting Setup

36:59 Rocket Book and Home Scale

38:46 Fun Props for Video Recording

39:07 Celebrating Business Wins with a Bell

40:17 Conference Swag and Purple Cow

42:50 Pro Tips for Video and Live Streaming

48:20 Engaging with Your Audience

58:14 Q&A and Final Thoughts

Watch it on YouTube: 

https://www.youtube.com/live/Tgxmx__-0j8?si=eP5XxMawVWlPGSff

**************************************
My name is Brenda Meller. I'm a LinkedIn coach, consultant, speaker, and author. My company is Meller Marketing and I help business professionals get a bigger slice of the LinkedIn pie.

Visit mellermarketing.com

Let's connect on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/brendameller
(click MORE to invite me to connect and mention you listened to my podcast)

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome back In today's episode.
This is a review of technologythat I did in the beginning of
2023.
And this is coming from myvault.
I was looking back through somepast LinkedIn Live episodes
that I've done and I thoughtthis one was really valuable and
still relevant to you today, soit's a bit of a longer episode.
If you're interested inwatching it on YouTube to
actually see the demonstrationsI'm giving, I'll include the

(00:23):
link for that YouTube video andshow notes below.
But for those of you justlistening on the podcast, I hope
you'll walk away with somegreat tech takeaways as it
relates to technology, and thatit helps to inspire you as well.
Enjoy the show.
Hey, good morning and welcome.
Today I'm going to be talkingall about my technology.
I think sometimes people callit their tech stack.

(00:44):
I always feel like that's alittle bit above my level.
I don't know if it's a techstack.
It's the technology that I useto support my business and I
have a lot of things I'mactually going to.
I was going to put it on asmall card table and then I
realized it's much more than Icould fit on a card table.
I've got some things on my sidesofa over here that I'll be
showing with you today cardtable.

(01:05):
I've got some things on my sidesofa over here that I'll be
showing with you today andwalking you through, and I'll be
talking about where I pickthese things up.
I'll be talking about why I usethem.
You're going to see that I havea couple different versions of
things as well, and I'm athrifty marketer and a thrifty
entrepreneur.
So I don't like to make the biginvestments at first.
I try to make investments asthey feel right for my business

(01:26):
and as I grow out of thetechnology then I upgrade to
something better.
So I'll be walking you throughthat.
And I'm using a second cameratoday because sometimes I'm
going to be actually flippingthe camera to show you what I am
seeing on my screen.
So right now I've got my phoneis on a tripod sitting on my
desk.
I'm going to show you thisweird camera thing.
But I've got a tripod with mycell phone and I invited myself

(01:49):
as a second guest from the cellphone so you can see.
And hey, let's just jump in andget started and I'll look at
your comments in just a second.
So I'm going to go ahead andget started here.
So this is a tripod and I don't.
It's not technology, meaning itdoesn't take any electricity or
Wi-Fi or anything, but you doneed a tripod.
I believe to.
If you're running a business,whether you're coaching,

(02:10):
consulting, speaking, if you'rean author and you do audiobooks,
if you take pictures ofyourself for social media, I
think it's really helpful tohave a tripod.
What I like about this one isit's got the extendable arms on
it, and let me just extend thisout.
This is going to be like ahands-on today, just so you can
see how tall this is.
I actually want to walk youthrough and show you the

(02:31):
technology.
It's not just going to be metalking about it.
I see a lot of people saying geta tripod, and then they move on
to the next thing, and I'm likehow do you use it?
And what I like about this one?
It's pretty lightweight, it'snot like a super expensive piece
of equipment, and it does havea telescopic arm on it as well.
I didn't extend one of theseout.

(02:52):
Okay, there we go, and it doeshave a telescopic arm so I can
raise it up.
Now my only hesitation withthis type of a tripod is this is
as far up as it goes, so thisis good for sitting down, but if
I wanted to take pictures froma higher vantage point, I've
reached the limit of what thistripod can do.
But I do like it for the factthat it is pretty lightweight.

(03:12):
It does have some legs on itand you can see, I can shorten
it up to put it on my desk right, and I was even debating about
getting one of those desktoptripods too and I'm like this
works pretty good.
I don't know how much thiscosts.
I'll put a link at the end tomy blog where I put all of these
items, but I want to say thiswas like a $20, $25, $30 type of

(03:33):
tripod.
It wasn't super expensive.
By the way, I buy my owntechnology.
I'm not one of those influencerfancy people that gets like
sent free things.
I'm going to put the blog lateron, but I'm not going to give
shout outs to the specifictechnology unless it's something
I really love, because this ismy business and I'm promoting my
business today.
You get what I'm talking about,all right, so this is my tripod
.
It's going to be sitting on thedecks next to me and then I'm

(03:56):
going to also face it towards.
I've got a bunch of tech that'ssitting off to the side, and
there'll be certain points intime where I'm facing it back at
the camera and other pointswhere I'll be picking up some
items when I'm going out ofcamera.
I haven't gone away entirely, sothat's my tripod, and I do have
a cell phone.
I actually do have a secondcell phone too.
This is my old cell phone.
The battery's like completelydead on it, but I want to share

(04:18):
this with you as you upgradeyour phones and your technology.
This can still be used.
Think about it.
It's not like a phone anymore,but now it's more of a tablet or
an internet device.
So I can still use it toconnect to the Wi-Fi.
I can still use it to takephotos.
I can still use it, and since Ican connect to the Wi-Fi, I can
use it to join the live event,like if I wanted to do that

(04:39):
today.
Now, one thing I want to keepin mind is keeping it charged,
and this one's not charged, soit's no use to me if it's not
charged.
After I'm done here, I'm goingto probably plug it in the wall,
so I have it as my backup.
Now this might seem like whydoes she need two cell phones?
I don't need two cell phones.
I need one cell phone.
This is like a backup, smalltablet, wi-fi internet device is
the way that you want to lookat it, because you might be

(05:05):
using your phone to hold it upand to do the live stream and
then maybe you want to use asecond device to take pictures
or to do like a second vantagepoint.
You ever seen that as a speaker?
They'll have a speaker sizzlereel and one is them speaking,
is it's the cameras and them onstage, and the other is it's
almost like an over the shouldervantage point, so you can see
the audience right, andsometimes we do that even in
selfie style videos and thingslike that as well.

(05:25):
We're filming ourself here andwe might see a side vantage
point as well, and you can shiftback and forth between those.
So that's why it's sometimeshelpful to have a second cell
phone to use as more of aninternet device.
So something to think aboutthere.
All right, hey, if you werewatching, yesterday I posted on
LinkedIn with a tech hiccup ofall the days to have my

(05:45):
microphone go down.
It's the day before I goLinkedIn live talking about my
technology.
I don't know what happened, butI have a Q2U microphone and I'm
going to hold it up here so youcan see.
It's on a little tripod andit's an adjustable arm in here.
It does have a USB port.
Let me just show you here.
I don't want to unplug it rightnow, but it does have a USB

(06:07):
that plugs into the side of mylaptop right there.
And when I go on to Zoom calls,typically what happens is the
technology will.
It goes to default microphoneand speakers goes to the
computer Okay, and then if Iwant better microphone, I'll
switch to this.
It's a Q2U microphone.
I really like this one Muchbetter audio quality.

(06:28):
When I got on my Zoom yesterdayit wasn't even available.
I'm like that's weird.
So I did what you normally do,right, unplug it, plug it back
in Still wasn't there.
And then I exited Zoom, cameback in, because sometimes they
don't recognize the technologyafter you started.
That didn't work and I wentdown my list of all the things I
could do and then I threw myhands up and I Googled things
and I couldn't find anything.
I'm thinking maybe it's thedriver, I don't know, but at any

(06:49):
rate I'm like I know there'ssome smart people on LinkedIn,
so I posted about it on LinkedInand I got a bunch of people
with suggestions and ideas.
One person and I don't know whoit was I to the microphone, but
I'll check and it wasn't and Ihad to do an upgrade.

(07:10):
It required me to log off of mycomputer and it did the whole
like it kicked me off for thenight, which was fine, right.
Sometimes that's like a signyou need to stop working.
So I went off my computer forthe night.
I came back in in the morninghere and I plugged into
StreamYard and guess what workedmy Q2 microphone.
I don't know why, I don't knowwhat happened, but it's working
again today.
So thank you for all of you whosuggested ideas for this.

(07:32):
Having a high quality microphoneis a really important thing for
you if you are a coach,consultant, speaker, or if
you're an author thinking aboutdoing audio books.
I think for the first threecategories, if you're doing any
sort of virtual coaching, or ifyou're doing team training, or
if you're doing presentations orif you're doing keynotes
absolutely it's going to bebetter audio quality.

(07:53):
Now, I'm going to unplug thisright now so you can see the
difference in audio quality.
When I unplug it, it shouldpull up sound from my laptop and
I'm going to ask you if youcould please.
If you're listening to themessage, I want you to say, yes,
I can hear the difference, andit's going to be about 30
seconds from the time I unplugit to the time that you can hear
the difference.
So right now I'm unplugging.
Okay, now I need to unmutemyself.

(08:16):
You should be able to hear meright now.
Let me know if you can hear meand I'm going to go into my
StreamYard just to do a quickcheck.
I'm going to show you what I'mdoing up on screen right now
here On my StreamYard.
Let's see, I need to close thisso I can see what I'm showing
you on screen.
I need to angle this up alittle bit, okay, so you can
actually see what I'm seeing.
I'm going into my settings onStreamYard and I'm going into

(08:40):
audio to double check that thesound, like the little
microphone, has the greenbubbles that are lighting up
when I talk, which tells me thesound is being captured from me
and it's being pulled up by mywebcam.
So that's where it's comingfrom and I can also test the
speaker right.
A little bit of music insidethere.
I always like try to test outthe technology, especially if

(09:02):
it's new software that I'm usingbefore I'm getting started in a
live stream or a Zoom call oranything like that.
But let me know, can you hearthe difference in audio quality?
If you can drop a comment inand Samina says it sounds like
you're in a can, michael Lesichhey, michael, any good bacon
that you've eaten lately.
Michael says I can hear you.
Yeah, it's a little echosounding, isn't it?

(09:23):
It's not as clear.
So I'm going to go ahead andplug it back in now, okay, and
get that plug back in.
And as soon as I plug it in, Ineed to go back into my
StreamYard settings undermicrophone, and now it is
reading Samsung QU.
So can you hear the audioquality?
Isn't it amazing?
And the interesting thing aboutthis, it's not just the audio

(09:46):
quality, it is the perception ofyou as a professional.
I'm going to say that again,it's not just the audio quality,
it's the perception of you as aprofessional.
If you're on a Zoom and itsounds really echoey and far
away, they may have no basis ofcomparison because they've only
heard that from you.
But you can tell, like, withyour ears you can tell it's a

(10:10):
lower quality sound that you'rehearing it's not quite as crisp
as sometimes you hear a higherquality.
You're like, wow, that personsounds amazing.
There's some really greatmicrophones.
I know Blue Yeti.
I hear about it everywhere, theBlue Yeti.
You got to get the Blue Yeti.
I invested in this and Ibelieve it was John Gay who
suggested this one for me and Ithink it was like 50, 60 bucks
pretty inexpensive.
There are much more expensivemicrophones that you can use,

(10:31):
and I want to show you one of myother microphones, and I'm
going to just go to my side sofa.
This would be like if I was onthe tonight show.
This is my Ed McMahon visitor'schair over here.
So let me grab this real quickand since we're going to talk
about all kinds of technologytoday right now I'm going to be
talking about microphones andthen I'll be going into some
lighting and some other things.
So this is the first one I hadand it's actually it's on a.

(10:53):
It's like floating.
I don't know why it does that,but anyways it's on an
extendable arm.
This piece actually.
There's a clip that fell off ofhere.
Oh, let's see Where's it at.
It's probably in the other wall, but it's got a jaw clip that
would clip onto my desk and thenI could extend the arm in and
out as I was doing interviewswith Bill Cause.
That's another thing.

(11:13):
As you're doing the work, youdon't want the technology to be
blocking you.
If my microphone was sitting infront of my face you'd be like
why is her microphone soobnoxiously positioned?
You don't want to have yourmicrophone blocking here.
It's okay, you can see themicrophone.
It doesn't bother, it doesn'tblock the view or the
presentation if I'm doing one.
But this one I liked because ithas an extendable arm and I
could pivot it out of the way.

(11:34):
But when I started doing audiobook recording, I believe it was
John Gay, we did some tests onthis one, maybe it was Dave
Stokes, I can't remember.
At any rate, they said thisisn't the best quality of
microphone and I'm not supertech savvy, my friend, I'm
OK-ish, I'm probably on thelatter side.
If you were to do an index of 0to 100, 50 is average for

(11:55):
technology, I'm probably above50, but I'm not 100 by any means
.
My microphone wouldn't workyesterday.
I couldn't figure it out.
So I don't figure it out.
So I don't give me maybe a 50or 60, 60 or 70.
I don't know, but at any rate,the person who was explaining
this microphone.
They said that the sound isbeing captured from all around
the room with this type of amicrophone, whereas this
microphone it's being captureddirectionally one way.

(12:17):
I think that's the way my braininterpreted this.
So they said change to this ifyou're going to be doing an
audio book and a lot of audiorecordings.
And I said good idea, I will dothat.
And that's what I did thisextendable arm microphone that I
use I'm just winding up thecord because it's really long.
It does have a USB.
I'm going to show you guys that, which is important because
then it just plugs into yourcomputer.

(12:38):
I don't want to have one ofthose fancy DJ soundboard things
where I have to plug it in andplug it in.
So I'm like I'm not tech, supertech savvy, I'm pretty good,
right, I like the USB plug andplay type of a model.
These work really well for me,so I'm going to set that one
aside.
All right so far.
What have we talked about?
Talked about my tripod, talkedabout the use of multiple cell

(12:58):
phones to have a second device.
I talked about my primarymicrophone, which is my Q2U, and
I talked about the microphone Ihad before, then I also want to
talk about oh, here it is righthere.
This is a lavalier microphone.
And I'm showing you the box,not because I want to show you
the product name as much, butjust so you can see the tiny
little device.
And I do keep these inside thepackages, especially these,

(13:20):
because this is fairly expensive.
I want to say $80 to $100 forthis one.
It might even been a little bitmore than that.
If you're doing a lot ofvirtual presentations and you're
on the go with your cell phone,I think this can be really
handy.
And I'm going to show you here.
This is a teeny, tiny littlemicrophone.
It's got like a clip, alavalier clip, and for this

(13:40):
particular unit it has I don'tknow what this is called the
prong.
I'm going to call it the prongbecause I'm not super techie.
The prong versus this is Ithink they call this the
lightning adaptant.
I don't know why they call itthat, because it's straight.
It doesn't look zigzaggy likelightning does, but at any rate,
this works really great ifyou're plugging it into your
laptop, but if you're like me,probably most of the time you're

(14:03):
using your cell phone, whichhas just the lightning adapter
and it doesn't have the prongadapter, the prong little slot
thing anymore.
So you're going to have tothink about getting and they
have a lot of these littledevices, this one where you plug
the prong into there and thenyou can plug that into your
lightning.
Really great thing to thinkabout using this.

(14:24):
And what I like to do is, if youare doing speaking engagements
and I wore a white colored shirtintentionally to have a little
bit of contrast in thebackground today I want you to
notice right now as I'm puttingthis on and I've got a light
colored shirt.
It's distracting, isn't it?
Seeing that cord have lavaliermicrophones.

(14:46):
The best bet is and it's alittle awkward, pardon me for
being awkward right now but I'mgoing to shove the wires down my
blouse in the front and thenpull it out and then plug it in.
So then you've got just alittle bit of that technology
poking out on there.
Does that make sense?
And if you are doing filmingoutside, here's a pro tip.
I don't know who taught me this.
This was brilliant.
But if you're doing filmingoutside, instead of having the
microphone on the outside ofyour attire, where the wind's

(15:06):
going to pick it up and it'sgoing to pick up the volume.
Put the microphone on theinside of your attire and I'm
even going to clip it, like downin here, and it will still be
able to pick up sound.
It may be just a little bitmuffled, but that's better than
having it picking up the outsideair in the wind.
Okay, so we're getting somebonus tips.
This isn't just my technology,it's like my pro tips on how I

(15:27):
use different things as well.
So again, this is the smartlove.
It's a road microphone.
I do like this one.
This is the second one thatI've purchased and it's very the
reason it's the second one.
It's very delicate and theprongs break easily and I don't
want to have it get broken, soI'm going to keep it in this
nice little.
The prongs break easily and Idon't want to have it get broken
, so I'm going to keep it inthis nice little.
It's almost like a leatherysack and then that stores inside

(15:49):
here.
All right, so that's microphone.
So far, I showed you all three.
My laptop does have amicrophone.
And then I want to show you thelast place I use microphone
sometimes.
Oh, my battery is dying.
Oh, no, it just says undotyping.
Okay, so let me switch the viewso we can get this a little bit
larger.
There's a way in StreamYard youcan switch your views there,
okay, so the last microphone isactually the microphone that is

(16:10):
on my webcam.
See off to the side.
There's speakers on both sidesof it and I don't know where
it's picking up the sound from,but it also has a sound device
on there.
So that is really a helpfulthing to keep in mind.
If you don't have great soundquality on your laptop, if you
purchase an external webcam,that's probably going to be
better sound quality than thebuilt-in laptop.

(16:32):
Now, laptops are getting betterand better and obviously you
might have a laptop that'sreally super high tech and has
better camera and sound and allthat, but I always feel like
using an external webcam, usingexternal sound device, using an
external microphone, is going tobe better quality.
In my experience, that's beenthe case.
While we're on the subject ofpicking up sound, we're talking
about microphones.

(16:53):
I don't know if you noticedthis or not, but when I'm
joining on StreamYard, on mysecond device, I have this
plugged in, and a few weeks agoI tried doing a cover video and
I noticed when I plugged in onthe second device that I was
getting a lot of sound and echo.
So what I've actually done isI've plugged in with my
headphones because let me showyou what happens here, apologies
for the noises.

(17:13):
So right now I'm hearing anecho, right, and I can try to
turn the volume down.
I don't know if you can hear metalking about me.
There's a little bit of a delay, but sometimes you get that
like echoey sound thing that'shappening.
Or on the device, if you'rejoining, it's picking up.
Even if I mute it it's stillpicking up audio that's coming

(17:34):
up.
So let me plug this in, okay.
So when I plug it in, the soundis still being streamed out to
my phone.
But now the sound is beingstreamed into here and if I
listen in right here I can hearmyself.
That's painful, hearing thesound of your own voice.
So the sound it's still comingin, but I'm putting a.
It's almost like when you havelike water dripping and my

(17:56):
husband's like we sometimes havewater dripping from our Florida
room from the ceiling.
He puts a bucket underneath thecatch it.
This is like the bucket I'musing to catch the sound that's
being dripped into my phone fromjoining StreamYard.
So a little pro tip on the sidethere if you're using a second
device, and sometimes you canmute the ability for you to
broadcast sound out, but youcan't mute the ability for sound
to come in and be broadcastfrom the device.

(18:18):
So you got to put a stopper init and that's what I do on there
.
All right, is this helpful?
Are you guys enjoying this sofar?
Let me know in comments, andlet me know if you have any
questions about the technologyalong the way as well, and I
will drop the link to my blog alittle bit later.
It's literally called heyBrenda, what tech do you use?
What I do try to do is, everytime I purchase a new piece of

(18:38):
technology, I add it into theblog along with.
Sometimes I do a video, andI've had my son help me like set
up different technology.
Other times it's just a pictureor a screen capture of that
device in particular.
So we've done sound.
I think everything's sound.
Let me show you a couple morethings.
We talked about microphones.
Let's move to headsets andspeakers.
Let me grab a couple thingshere.

(18:59):
Okay, so I just moved over tothe side desk.
Oops, I didn't angle it.
I want to angle it, so you knowwhen I'm going out of camera
that I'm not walking awayentirely, I'm not leaving you,
all right.
So I got a bunch of stuff here.
Let me show you on my desktophere.
I'm going to show the view ofall of these things.
At first I'm going to move theview.
Isn't this kind of fun too,seeing the view of everything?

(19:20):
So this is like my desktoppardon my messy desktop here.
So these are different devicesI use for headphones.
There's my Apple iPods Abouttime to get a new mousepad,
brenda Mahler, it's getting alittle dirty, being used a lot
there.
These are Panasonic headphonesand a little fancier than the
white.
This is almost like theEvolution.
I think we started here.
Then we went up to here.

(19:41):
These have the straight plug inadapter.
And then this is like thetelemarketer adapter, because
it's got the thing that you cantalk in the microphone right
here, and let's see, this isstill the straight plug in on
here.
And then these are the high endof the spectrum.
I think I might have evengotten these for my son or
daughter, I don't know Likesometimes we share technology in

(20:03):
the house and these have let'ssee, these still have the single
plug as well.
So there's different types oftechnology there.
Let me put this over here andswitch the camera view and then
we're going to talk about them.
Okay, there we go.
Isn't this fun?
You never get like behind thescenes stuff from other people,
right?
I like to show you behind thescenes stuff.

(20:25):
So when I move away from, Idon't like.
First of all, I don't like theearbuds, the wireless
microphones.
Let me tell you why.
I've had many guests join me onmy LinkedIn live.
They need to be charged, right.
So if you have an instancewhere there is no battery life
left to them, I think sometimesyou can still hear, but they
don't broadcast your sound.
Like the microphone doesn'twork anymore and the person

(20:46):
doesn't know that becausethey're like I can hear you just
fine, and you can't hear themand I have to go through and
troubleshoot this process.
And sometimes they enable themwith a Wi-Fi and they might not
even be having them in, but theWi-Fi is still picking those up
as an audio device.
So I personally don't likeWi-Fi enabled microphones, even
like when I go on walks, I willuse these.

(21:07):
I don't like to have Wi-Fi.
I like to have something that Iknow can plug in and I know
these fall out of your ears, Iknow, but for me that's better
than worrying about the battery,if that makes sense.
So part of the reason I likethese is because of the falling
out of the ear problem, right,and these have little hooks that
go over your ear One of the earproblem, right, and these have

(21:27):
little hooks that go over yourear.
One of the things I really likeabout these is they're darker,
and right now I'm wearing awhite shirt, so if I put on the
white headphones my Apple onesyou may maybe, depending on what
you're wearing, you might beable to see them.
What I like about these isbecause they are dark, and let
me just put them on real quickhere.
I'll wear my hair down too.
Usually, men, you have a luckyyou don't know what we have to
deal with.
We're about hair and makeup.
They're hidden on my ears, forone, because it's darker.

(21:50):
I feel like I like this doesn'tjump out as much, depending on
the color of a tire that you'rewearing on here, and then
because it does have the plugin.
It works great on the laptop.
I do have a device.
Let me see if I can find it.
Yes, I do.
I don't remember who told me tobuy this, but this is another
adapter.
This is something I got off of.

(22:10):
You can get off the internet,but there's the single prong in
here, and if you have deviceswhere one prong is for
microphone and the other prongis for speakers, but you've only
got one input on your computer,you got to get this.
I think it's a splitter.
Is that right?
Is that the right word?
But this is what you want tohave handy a device like this

(22:31):
that you can plug it in once andthen have two prongs going into
it.
So that's another thing.
So I've showed you my iPhoneheadphones.
I've showed you my little flatPanasonic ones.
The next one, up from there, is.
I like to call this like thetelemarketer.
Thank you for calling customerservice.
How may we help you today andfor me?
I'm in a very quiet environmentin my home office.

(22:53):
Everyone's gone for the dayright now.
It's pretty well insulated.
I do have some people out onthe street doing some work right
now, so if there's somebackground noise, you might have
it coming from there.
So some people like to havethis, because you can keep the
sound condensed to what you canhear, both with the microphone,
picking it up and where you'rehearing it on your headset.
I don't need that for myparticular show, but your show

(23:14):
may need some headphones as well, but this one has the single
plug in there as well.
All right, so that's that.
These are.
I like these.
They feel a lot more.
I don't know heavy duty that'sthe word not higher tech.
I just feel like these arebetter quality.
I think these were really madefor sound and these don't have a

(23:35):
microphone on them, they justhave the sound on them.
These are really great for whenyou're traveling, if you're a
speaker or you're a coach andconsultant being flying out to
see your clients.
These are really great for theairport, cause I was on Delta
and they have the in-flightmovies and they give you oh my
gosh, those horrible little andthey're free.
So thank you, delta for givingus free, but they're like, oh,

(23:59):
they're painful in your ears andthey're really poor quality and
they're like disposable,they're like worse than these.
These are really good forpicking up the sound quality in
the plane.
That's more of my enjoyment, butI think self-care is an
important part of beingself-employed.
So I would say, yeah, that's animportant piece of technology
to have and I keep these at home.
So if I ever do need them, ifI'm getting into an interview
with somebody who's I'm on theirpodcast or on their show and

(24:20):
we're having some backgroundissues with sound quality, I
have a couple things I can pulltogether and, by the way, it's
not as neatly organized rightnow as I normally would have,
but I've got like a bin.
This is where I keep my tech.
You don't want to have thingsin too many places, because as a
speaker, as a audio book author, as a coach, as a consultant,

(24:43):
you never know when tech isgoing to fail and you want to
have things like within almostarm distance to be able to grab
things out and know exactlywhere they are.
I don't want to keep mymicrophone in one place, my
lighting, and I want to keep itall in my tripod.
I want to keep it all in onebin so I can pull the bin down
and grab things out of it.
Okay, now you do want topackage them neatly so that
we're not damaging things andwe're being careful about them,

(25:03):
but just keeping that in mind,all right.
So what else?
Here's a and, by the way, theselittle dongle packs.
They usually come in likemultiple.
There's two of them in here andI keep those in my desk drawer.
In case I ever need a seconddevice, I'm going to put that in
there, all right?
Okay, so that's microphonesheadsets.
Talked about my tripod.

(25:25):
What should we talk about next?
Let's talk about lighting.
Ooh, lighting.
All right, so my latest lightis a ring light.
Let me show you what I have now.
I just recently upgraded to this.
I'm going to change my cameraview so you all can see this.
Give me just a second to makethis adjustment.
This is my ring light.
Let me pull it behind so youcan see the vantage point.
This is what I'm seeing rightnow.

(25:45):
So my ring light is about 12inches and I'm going to show you
on the camera.
I'm going to pull my laptopdown as I do this.
It's on a tabletop stand.
It does have an extension with.
You can see there's a cellphone holder over here.
I think you can see that, andit is telescopic.
I can raise it up and down andyou can see I can move it.
Part of the reason I like thisring light is I don't know about

(26:08):
all of you, but like ringlights, they can give you a
little bit of a headache if youhave them on for way too long.
So as soon as I'm done with theinterview, I can swing it out
of the way and it's convenient,okay.
So part of the issue, part ofthe reason I upgraded to the
ring light it was twofold.
One was I wanted something thatwasn't taking as much space up
in my office.

(26:29):
Let me set this down as I'mtalking right now.
So I wanted something thatwasn't going to take up as much
space in my office, and I wantto show you the other what I was
using prior to this.
I was using a box light, so I'mgoing to switch the view again.
Might be making you dizzy, butyou get behind the scenes with

(26:49):
me.
How fun is that?
So this is my box light overhere and it's fairly close to
the position I would have it.
Let me move it a little bitcloser here.
And this is set on a.
It's like a turn off, turn on,switch, right.
So let me do this first.
I'm going to turn off my ringlight, so show you the
difference in lighting quality.
Okay, first of all, look at thedifference.
Right now, this is natural light.
I do have a window on this sideof me and I have a lamp that's

(27:11):
in the distance, so I do havesome light coming this way, but
for the most part the lightthat's coming to me is from
daylight.
So that's really not well litit's.
You can see my face, but youcan see it's like ashy and it's
a little bit harder to see me.
Let me move the view so you canget a better closeup view of
this.
There you go, so you can seehere it's not super, super well

(27:31):
lit.
This is with no lighting on atall, with only natural light
from the outside, from theheavens right and then from the
lamp that's inside my room.
So previous to using my ringlight, I was using a box light.
Let me turn this on and thenI'm going to point the camera
towards us and we talk aboutthis a little bit.
So this is the box light thatI'm showing you right now, and
the box light is.
It's good in terms of filllight and I can bring it up.

(27:53):
You can see here it good interms of fill light and I can
bring it up.
You can see here it's a littlebit of a lighter tone.
If I bring it closer to my faceit's going to get brighter.
Let me do that right now.
So don't be shy.
When you do get lighting kitsand things like that, try
different angles, try bringingthem closer.
Just had a stack of papers fallover, so that'll be fun to
clean up later.
All right, so you can see, as Ibring it closer to my face, it

(28:14):
gets a little bit more well lit.
Still, it's like super great.
And I do have a second box lightthat I can use as well.
I'm not going to do that rightnow, but I'm going to turn this
back off, okay, and then I'mgoing to turn my ring light back
on.
What I like about this ringlight is look at the fill light
it's on me.
It's like a spotlight, but it'sa smaller, it's just a circle,
so I don't have it quite aslarge.

(28:36):
Right, it's not taking as muchspace in my office, which I like
.
The other thing that I like andlet me angle the camera down to
show you this, since I'mdemonstrating it is this little
device right here.
I'm going to make this largerso you can see this Behind the
scenes with Brenda Muller.
So this little lighting thingright here.

(28:57):
I've got the on off switchbutton.
You can make it brighter, wecan make it dimmer.
I like that.
I can't do that with my boxlight.
I can't make it brighter ordimmer.
It's got one on off and I cango from this is I don't know,
this is a warm, I can go to acooler tone, I can go to a
warmer tone or that that's, Ithink, natural.
So let me just show you thedifference on here.

(29:19):
I'm going to switch my handsagain, okay, so this is the one
I normally use.
This is the one that's like acooler tone.
It's like almost like a bluetint to it, and this is like an
amber tone, a little bit like awarmer tan tint to it, if you
will.
So you can see there how thedifferent angles change.
I can't do that on my box light.
I do like this one, the best ofthe three.
So there's something to thinkabout there different angles and

(29:41):
different lighting, and interms of the lighting kit itself
, I do have.
Let's see two other lights thatI have used.
Let me show you these two.
This one let me angle this backso you can see the couch again
here.
This one is a it's got a clip.
It's like a jaw clip that youuse for potato chips.
Clip it on your desk and thenit has a ring light.

(30:05):
This is plug in with a USB.
By the way, I've got a littlebinder clip on here, because
when I have it clipped on mydesk I don't want the wires to
be I'm tripping over them.
So I have a little mini binderclip that I clip it to the side
of my desk too, and then it'sgot the cell phone holder.
That's inside here and I think,yeah, this is expandable so you
can slide it in and out asyou're getting in there.
These are really great Ifyou're doing if you've ever seen

(30:28):
me do like a letterbox, where Ibuild words or phrases on my
letterbox and I do a time-lapseversion of it.
So what I do first is like pickout all the letters and then I
put them on the letterbox and Imix them up, and then I set my
camera up and I film myselfcreating the letterbox in
time-lapse and then, when youget done, it's like a

(30:49):
seven-second video of youbuilding something.
That's pretty cool, and I don'thave to worry about my tripod
it has a light on it as well.
So it's an all-in-one option.
You're doing a lot of things onsocial media.
If you want some content, ifyou have a letterbox, that's a
fun thing to do, so I do likethat one.
That's a lighting kit.
And then the last one I gotthis recently from a.
I believe this was from theTogether Digital Conference.

(31:11):
I have not used this yet.
I don't know if I have.
No, I don't have the batteryplugged in, but my understanding
is you can clip this on theback of your laptop and I don't
have the batteries in right now,but you can light it up, so I
keep that.
It's in my backup desk drawer.
Never tried it.
Maybe I'll try something likethat in the future.
So that is lighting, and I'mjust going to pop onto LinkedIn
and see who's on, and I'm goingto show you a couple of other

(31:33):
things that I have in mytechnology list, and I'm going
to pull up my blog and then I'llprobably start to wrap up maybe
another 10 or 15 minutes herefor timing wise.
So let me show you a coupleother tech things that I have,
tech related things that I have.
Okay, so I just moved off tothe side.
My camera's going to die on thephone here slowly too, so I got
to get everything over here.
All right, I think I've goteverything in front of me.

(31:56):
I wanted to put it all on atable, but it would have been
such a big table so I couldn'tdo that.
All right, so let me show yousome other things that are in my
technology, my tech stack, soto speak.
First thing is I have a brickright.
You want to have one of theseready to go with you whenever
you leave the house.
If you know what I'm talkingabout, you're traveling to a
client appointment.

(32:16):
Your cell phone maybe wasn'tfully charged.
Having one of these is reallyhandy, and I always try to keep
it plugged in.
I put my name on it, just likeat school when the kids lose
their hats and scarves, becauseif it does go missing, people
will know who it needs to bereturned to.
Also, this is an investment Imade in the past year.
This is a hotspot.
I don't know if I can turn iton right now.

(32:37):
Yeah, so this is a hotspot.
I go through Verizon for mycell phone.
I've had pretty good experiencewith them.
I've been on and off withVerizon.
I don't know how much I paidfor this 80 bucks and then I
think it's $5 a month for thesubscription, something like
that.
It wasn't super expensive.
Why do I have a hotspot?
Sometimes I am working offsitein a space where there's not
really good Wi-Fi coverage.

(32:57):
In the summer I work at acommunity pool and I'm a
volunteer working at the frontdesk my daughter's swimming.
Usually I can bring my laptop,I can do some work, but I don't
have really great Wi-Fi.
So I bring my hotspot and I canuse that.
This has come in handy, too,when I'm in airports, when I'm

(33:22):
traveling, when I'm offsite atclient locations and the wifi
password isn't working and Ineed to jump on my email right.
So having one of these isreally handy.
I try to keep this charge allthe time, throw it in my purse
when I'm leaving the door,because you never know when
you're going to be sitting inthe doctor's office and instead
of five minutes of a wait,you're going to be there for 45
minutes and they don't have goodwifi.
So that, to me, helps me to runmy business, it helps me to
stay self-employed, it helps meto have the freedom and
flexibility to go anywhere Iwant and to still have Wi-Fi on

(33:42):
my phone, and there's so manythings that you can do running
your business from your phone.
It's pretty amazing.
A couple other things that I douse when you are, if you're
doing an audio book, if you'reconverting a printed book to an
audio book, this little thing issuper, super handy.
Let me just show you.
It's got like a little thumbclip.
Can you hear that it's?
Actually?

(34:03):
This is a dog training tool.
My dog doesn't know what thisis, so she's not responding to
her now, but it's supposed to belike you're either encouraging
or rewarding behavior byclicking, like when you want
dogs to do something.
I found this as a as it waslike on one of the sites where
you're working on audio booksand they said get a clicker tool
, because if you're reading anaudio book and you make a
mistake when you do that, thiscreates like a sound spike.

(34:25):
So it makes it a lot easier, asyou're going back through and
editing, to identify where youmade a mistake, where you made a
mistake, so you can clip it out.
So this is really handy ifyou're doing.
I use it for audio book, but Icould see this working really
well if you work for podcasts,because it makes it a little bit
easier to find those or anytype of technology where you're

(34:47):
maybe not doing a live broadcastlike where we are, but you're
going to be doing recording ofsound and then editing later.
Having this handy can help withediting, so that's something
handy.
I like to keep that in my deskdrawer.
I used it when I recorded theaudio book version of my book
Where's that at over here?
Social Media Pie?
Available on Amazon.
You can autograph copy on mywebsite.

(35:07):
Audiobook available whereveraudio books are sold, by the way
.
But I really liked having that.
It really did help me out withediting.
Okay, so that's that A coupleof final things that I have in
my tech stack.
This is my LED lighting.
Let me show you what I havegoing on here.
So in my office, let me makethis a larger view so you can
see.
I like the ambient lightingthat's happening in the

(35:28):
background, and I bought thisone.
I don't know how much this was.
I think I bought two to threerolls of it because it's only
like 10 or 12 feet and I neededa little bit more, but it does
have a lot of different colorsoptions on here.
Right now.
This is blue and let me changeit to orange.
It's not super orangey.
When you change the colors out.
You can see it up on screenhere.
I can change it to green.

(35:49):
I can change it to purple let'ssee there we go and pink.
A lot of the teenagers thesedays have these in their rooms.
Did you notice that you everdrive around a neighborhood at
night?
Pay attention the next timeyou're driving around your
neighborhood.
If you've never noticed this.
A lot of the teens have theseLED lights in their room and you
can identify houses that haveteenagers in them.

(36:10):
Now it's not working anymore.
I think I've got to be a littlebit closer, so it's stuck on
purple.
At any rate.
This provides a little bit ofmood lighting in the background.
What I may do eventually is inthe bookshelves behind me.
I did purchase these.
They were super cheap from FiveBelow they were super cheap, so
you know what that means.
They don't really work thatwell.

(36:31):
You're supposed to be able toclick on them and they light up,
and I had these where they wereaffixed to the bottom of my
shelves and they had somelighting.
They didn't work for very long,so eventually I might get some
lighting in there as well.
I always love to see peoplethat have lighting and really
great backgrounds.
Alex Minor is one, by the way.
Tag Alex in comments right nowso he knows that I'm talking
about him, but eventually I'mgoing to get probably the LED

(36:53):
lights on my bookshelf behind me.
I don't have them just yet, butthat's an example of another
form of technology that I'musing.
Let's see two more pieces oftech, and then I'm going to show
you some non-tech things I doas well.
I, my website, is hosted onKajabi, and when you reach
different revenue achievementsthrough Kajabi, they call the I
think it's the Kajabi heroes.

(37:13):
They send you gifts, and thiswas a gift that I got from them.
I don't remember what revenuelevel it was, but it was a
little packet of cool stuff.
I think I got some socks.
This time, too, it's called arocket book, and the way that
this works is it's there's aspecial pen that they give you
right, and the pen actually hasan eraser on the end of it and

(37:33):
you can take notes on things.
And then, if you write like ahashtag like I did on the end of
it and you can take notes onthings, and then, if you write
like a hashtag, like I did onthe top of it hashtag, hashtag
to do Tuesday and you scan itwith there's like a QR code in
the bottom.
You can email it to yourselfand then I can erase the page
and reuse it.
So there's probably I don'tknow 10 pages in the whole book.

(37:57):
But I don't ever need anothernotebook ever again.
So it's almost like having awhiteboard version of a notepad,
and I don't think they're superexpensive.
I don't think they'reinexpensive either.
They're much more expensivethan a notebook, I'm sure, but I
like it because now I can havesomething where I don't have
pads of paper sitting around andI can email notes to myself,
right.
So that's something I use.
And if you don't have a homescale already, I use these for

(38:20):
when I'm shipping out packagesof my books that I can weigh
these.
This is a part I don't want tocall it technology.
It's kind of technology related.
So I wanted to show you thatthat's helpful to have for home
shipments.
By the way, I use pirate shipfor shipping.
Shout out to Amy Holachak IfAmy go ahead and tag her in the
comments.
She recommended that to me.
It was much more efficient andeasier to use than going through

(38:41):
the USPS or any other shippingservice.
I love Pirate Ship.
That's where I ship my booksfrom.
Okay, if you do a lot of videos,this might be something fun.
I pick one of these up, theclicker.
Oh shoot, it's not clickingright now.
I think the nail got a littlebit moved.
Oh, there it goes.
Action and cut.
It's fun when you're filmingvideos.
If you're working with otherpeople, it's just for fun.

(39:04):
It's like a stage prop on there.
I like using that.
And then my two final items.
This is a bell, just like whenyou go to the deli counter or
like a hotel and you're checkingin.
It's a bell and I love itbecause it's got ladybugs which
remind me of my mom.
Whenever I get a new client,when I get a verbal agreement, I
ring the bell one time and if Iget money coming in, either

(39:26):
through online payment or acheck in the mail, I click two
bells and my household knows myhusband and my kids know that
when the bell rings I got a newclient and they'll even say new
client.
So this is important.
This might seem like a smallthing, but this is important to
me because it signals to mebusiness growth.
It signals to me new clientscoming in, success, and it's

(39:50):
like I don't know, it's just,it's like applause, right.
When you ring the bell you'relike, yay, I got a new client, I
got a new thing coming in, so Ithink that's helpful for me.
And, like when I get a newclient, I ring the bell and it's
and nobody's else is even hometo hear the bell.
My dog probably hears it andwhat's that bell ringing for?

(40:13):
But I think it's fun.
Drop your comments andquestions in.
Right now we're going to dosome Q&A as we wrap up.
I was just at a conference forGermania Insurance speaking.
I was speaking about LinkedInand after I was done speaking, I
walked around their vendor showplace and this organization
Hawksoft is the name of theorganization.
I'll tag them in comments.

(40:34):
They had a booth and they had agiant purple cow and I always
like to go to them.
I like to walk around to thevendor tables and I this it's a
good thing to do to walk aroundand say hi to people, ask them
what their business is all about.
As somebody who isself-employed, doesn't work in
the insurance industry, it'sprobably not as relevant for me,
but it may be something that Ican learn about and I can refer

(40:56):
business to them.
What drew me to their table,they had a giant inflatable
purple cow.
Drop a comment right now if youknow what's coming to mind,
because if you are in themarketing world, you probably
have heard of Seth Godin, whowrote the book Purple Cow.
Right, this was years ago,probably 10 or 15 years ago.
By the way, I was one of thefirst.

(41:16):
He started an influencerprogram I think it was through
BuzzAgent or I don't rememberexactly, but a bunch of us were
helping to create viralmarketing for him and promoting
I don't know if it was his bookor probably this was like back
in the day before influencermarketing was a thing and there
was, I think, a hundred of usand he gave us a shout out in
his book.
I'm not sure if it's in thePurple Cow book or the one that

(41:37):
came after.
I got to find it and I'll makea note in show notes later but
at any rate, I was like PurpleCow, seth Godin how cool is that
.
And so he had some promo itemsat his table, and people always
feel guilty when they go up tovendor tables at events and
they're like they don't want totake them.
They don't want to take themand I always, like when I worked
at vendor tables.
I was like, feel free to takeanything off the table and I

(41:57):
would jokingly say, the morethat you take, the less I have
to take home.
So if you want the sunglassesand the lip balm and the
tchotchkes and the pens, feelfree to take one of everything.
Like for me as a parent, when Iwould go to events, I would
take things I could take home tomy kids and somebody to my
husband, but they would sitaround the house and they would
gain familiarity for me overtime and I remember the name of
the company.
This was one of the really coolthings they were giving out.

(42:18):
Shout out to Hawk and it's allbranded Ready for this.
Isn't that fun?
I don't know.
My dog hears it and she's likewhat the heck is that?
I just think that's a funlittle thing.
So I don't know what I'm goingto use this for.
Maybe it's for firing a PETAclient.
I'm talking about pain in thebleep client.
When you no longer work withthe client, you can.

(42:40):
I don't know.
I'm going to use that forsomething positive.
I think my bell is for newclient wins.
I need to figure out what I'mgoing to use this for.
Maybe I bring this with me topresentations too.
I don't know, but that's a funthing.
So I think that covers all ofthe technology that I use.
I am going to drop the bloginto the comments.
It's called hey Brenda, whattech do you use?

(43:02):
And you can visit this blog,read all about the technology.
After I'm done with the videohere today, I'm probably going
to go into my blog just todouble check that I have listed
everything that I've talkedabout inside here, because I
know there's probably a fewitems that I have not and when I
do a once over on here.
Oh, my webcam.
I didn't tell you guys about mywebcam.

(43:22):
I showed you this earlier.
This is what I use for mywebcam, and I do have it on a
telescopic arm as well.
I'm going to turn this othercamera off because I think we're
done with the show and tellversion of everything.
It's a Logitech camera.
I bought it pre-pandemic, Ithink.
At the time it was like under$100.
During the pandemic the priceswent up because of supply and

(43:43):
demand, and now it's down to $66.
So I think demand has flattenedout a little bit on that.
I love having an externalwebcam.
I'm touching it right now andI'll do this a lot when I'm on
Zoom calls.
Look at the camera as much asyou can and this is like another
side pro tip.
If you are a coach, consultant,speaker, or if you're an author
doing audiobooks or podcasts orthings like that, if you have a

(44:03):
camera, try to make eye contactwith the camera as much as you
can.
When you make eye contact withthe camera, you're actually
making eye contact with youraudience.
Whenever I do a LinkedIn Livebefore my show, I always remind
my guests of a few things, oneof which is look at the camera
as much as possible.
Now, when we're doing Q&A, weboth look down on screen, right,
but we break eye contact withyou.
Try to do that as much aspossible.

(44:24):
That's an additional pro tip.
But also, when you think aboutyour technology, I recommend
that you use an external webcaminstead of something that's
built into your laptop.
You're going to get betteraudio video quality.
Let me just show you what thislooks like with my regular
webcam instead of the externalwebcam.
Give me just a second.
I'm going to swap this out.

(44:44):
Here is my regular computerwebcam.
Let's give it a second here andyou can already see something
happened.
Right, I changed view.
It's a fun vantage point too,but I changed view.
Now my camera.
If I were to put like my armstraight across, it's just
slightly above my arm level, soit's lower than my chin.
And what happens?
Look at this, my microphone ishuge.

(45:06):
It's like more in my face thanfrom above.
The other thing is that youhave this weird view.
It's almost like it's lookingup your nose right, as opposed
to if you use an external webcam.
I want you to pay attention tothe quality.
It's just, it's a.
I just like the angle better.
It's slightly higher.

(45:31):
It's if I were to draw a linestraight across at my eye.
It's slightly higher than myeye level, so it's looking down
on me as opposed to looking upmy nose, which isn't as
flattering of a view.
And I can move the cameraaround as well and even like
when I came in the room today Iwas like, oh, that's a little
bit off to the side.
Oh, I gotta angle it.
I gotta make sure I get thebooks in there.

(45:52):
By the way, shout out to JoeyHimmelfarb on his book Don't
Paint your Kitchen.
Tag, joey, in comments below.
If you want Having an externalwebcam, I can move it around my
laptop, like having thatexternal webcam in there.
That was one thing I mentionedin the blog that I didn't talk
about today, and I do have atelescopic arm with that as well

(46:14):
.
I don't want to have it clippedto my desk because I like to be
able to move it around on there.
I think I've covered everythingelse that I'm looking through
my blog right now to see Did Icover everything else?
Video editing I use Camtasia byTechSmith.
It's really good for capturingvideo, adding slide-ins and
things like that.
I do use Zoom for video captureas well, but I do prefer

(46:36):
Camtasia.
It's got some additional bellsand whistles on there, and I
think that's it.
So now I'm going to go to yourquestions and comments and then
I am going to get started withthe rest of my day, and I want
to thank you all so much forwatching here.
Someone asked earlier do I havea model for Q2U?
You're looking for it onlineand there are different models.
If you go to my blog, hey,brenda, what tech do you use?

(47:00):
I'm going to put this up onscreen for you right now.
You'll see the particular modelthat I use.
Again, I am not an influencer.
I do not get paid formentioning of these products.
Maybe I should Do.
You know how to do that?
People in connections andindustries that do that tell me
I don't know.
At any rate, I buy these thingsmyself.
I do expense them to mybusiness because it is an

(47:20):
expense for Mellor Marketing,but I'm not being gifted these
items, nor am I being paid totalk about them.
So I will only talk abouttechnology that I stand behind.
So this particular model isSamsung S-O-N, not S-U-N,
samsung Q2U.
That's the version of it.
Let's see what other questionsyou guys have on here.

(47:40):
It is on the blog.
When you lean in towards the newmic, it's even better.
Now someone told me this is atrick.
So if you do your hand likeyou're hanging 10, I think that
is you want to put this on yourchin and this on your microphone
.
That's how far you want to beaway from your microphone.
I tend to get a little closerSometimes.
I'm pretty enthusiastic.

(48:01):
I move around sometimes too,but this is about the distance
you should be.
It shouldn't be too far away onthere.
So hopefully that helps you.
Hey, liam, thanks for seeing.
I think you sent me a videomessage over the holidays.
We were traveling.
I didn't reply back, but niceto see you.
I'm so glad that you were ableto find us.
Somebody dropped the blog linkin earlier.
I appreciate it, david.
It is a little bit challengingto talk to the camera as if

(48:24):
you're talking to a person.
It's really hard to talk to acircle is really what you're
doing.
And I remember when I firststarted doing LinkedIn lives
back in early 2020, like whenthe pandemic hit I was like live
every day.
I remember it was like veryweird looking at a piece of
plastic day after day and somepeople look like beyond the
plastic or they put like alittle picture, a note that says
smile.

(48:44):
You really do have to lookinside the circle for it to be
looking like the best form ofeye contact.
But it is hard, david.
But I try to imagine like I'mlooking at a person that I'm
really friendly with, thatreally enjoys listening to me,
and they're like laughing at myjokes along the way.
But even right now, I don'thear any feedback at all.
There's nobody in the housewith me to laugh at my jokes or
to grumble when they don't thinkthey're funny or to say there's

(49:08):
too much.
Sound out Like none of that ishappening, so I'm getting zero
feedback from any of you, withthe exception of chat.
So that's why chat is soimportant, which, by the way, is
another pro tip.
When you're doing live videos,engage your audience.
It's not just about me and whatI share, but I also want to
make sure it's landing on you,and that's part of the reason in
the beginning, I ask you todrop comments in and I always

(49:31):
joke on my LinkedIn live.
It's like a mic tap, tap.
Is this thing on?
Can you hear me in the back?
And the people in the back like, go, we can hear you.
Or, yes, we can hear they dothe thumbs up.
Yes, we can hear you.
Getting an audience engagementis a version of that.
It lets me know that the livestream is working.
It makes you feel like you'repart of the presentation too,
david, doesn't it?
And I like to give shout outsof names, as if I'm sitting

(49:54):
across the table from you and,granted, I'm probably in my
stage voice and stage presence.
Right now I'm on.
When I'm done, I'm not at thesame high energy level.
I'll need to quiet down andhave some coffee for a little
bit, but it's a skill that youlearn over time, david, and for
anyone else who's watching.
Was I always this comfortableand confident on camera?
Absolutely not.

(50:14):
I'm an introverted heart.
It was painful for me to thinkabout, but I got more and more
comfortable.
The more you do, the morecomfortable you'll get.
You learn different techniques.
You watch and you learn fromothers.
I try to give shout outs topeople as often as I can when
there's a technique that Ilearned from them.
But I did find and this isthrough my Toastmasters training
, by the way, shout out toToastmasters years ago that I

(50:36):
learned that the audience isgoing to enjoy themselves if you
are enjoying yourself.
So if I came on camera todayand I seemed like I wasn't happy
about this, or if I was nervousnervousness sometimes comes
across as disinterest, right, ifI didn't have this high level
of enthusiasm, you probablywould have stopped listening by
now, david.
So I've learned techniques andit's one of the most painful

(50:58):
things like hearing my own voice.
I hate hearing my own voice,but watching yourself on video,
that's.
It just makes me cringe.
I can't stand watching myself.
I'm like, oh my gosh, she's socheesy.
But the more you watch yourself, the less you make it about.
What do I look like on camerato more of a technical how well
lit am I?
How's my audio quality?
How's my sound?
How is my pacing?
I tend to talk fast.

(51:19):
Have you noticed that?
So even when I'm watching myplaybacks, I start to realize,
oh, at that point she gotcontrol.
I got control of my tone, mypacing, I even varied it up a
little.
It makes me think about how Ican continue to improve myself
over time.
So it is challenging, but it'snot a challenge that you can't

(51:39):
overcome with practice.
Samina says the ring light ismuch better, but for us with
glasses, we tend to get circlesreflected in our glasses.
Oh my gosh.
I have heard a couple oftechniques that you can try with
glasses.
One is if you try to angle yourglasses up or down a little bit
on there and I hear you withthe ring lights being a little
bit more challenging.
Have you tried box lights,samina?
Let me know if that's been agood workaround for you, or if

(51:59):
anyone else watching this hasglasses and they use a ring
light.
What tips do you have for youraudience on getting rid of that
glare?
I know sometimes you're goingto have it and I've seen other
people.
Sometimes I don't even mind itbecause I'm like, oh, it's cool,
I can see the ring light in thereflection in their glasses, so
sometimes it's not too problem.
Roz says the same thing.
Ring lights reflect off ofglasses, so hopefully I can get

(52:20):
some comments on this video,with people sharing tips about
adjusting, like Samina says,raising your glasses up and then
let's see webcam.
Ring light set you justmentioned is currently
unavailable.
Is that the one I'm using?
Did you check my blog?
I just purchased it, and when Ipurchased it I actually I
searched for ring light.

(52:40):
I wanted something that wasgoing to not be super huge and
not have a floor stand,something I could have on my
desk, something I can movearound.
I like that.
It's flat because I can slidemy laptop actually right all the
way up against it.
I like the cell phone version.
I like the clicker light, thedifferent tones, the up and down
.
There's a lot of things I like.
But then there were some userreviews of it as well.

(53:01):
What I may end up doing isactually clipping out a portion
of this video and uploading itto Amazon.
Now the other two people thathad reviews they were paid
reviewers.
I don't know how I get into thatprogram, but I like to share
feedback to help other people,because when I'm shopping around
, I want to see does it work forreal people?
Not for the models, right,because that's an overly
produced video.
I want to see how it works forreal people.

(53:21):
So if that particular model isunavailable on Amazon, there are
other places you can buy thesethings too.
You don't have to just go onAmazon.
You can search for the vendorand manufacturer and do a search
online and find it in otherplaces.
By the way, I've got a bone topick with Amazon.
They used to, or they havecurrently have a program called
Smile Amazon where you can setup for donations to charities

(53:42):
based on purchases that you'vemade.
I have all of my money, mycharitable donations, going to
my daughter's school right now.
They announced that they arecanceling their Smile program,
so they're no longer doingcharitable donations based on
your purchases.
Now I don't know about all ofyou pro or con on Amazon.
One of the things I liked aboutAmazon is my purchases helped
my daughter's school.
Now that I don't have that, I'mgoing to shop around.

(54:04):
I might go to Target, I mightgo to OfficeMax or local
retailers.
I might go to Target, I mightgo to OfficeMax or local
retailers.
I might go to direct websitesinstead of going to Amazon.
I don't know.
I feel like Amazon.
You make a lot of money you canstill give to charity.
So it irritates me that's nothappening anymore.
But at any rate, if you canfind your products on Amazon,
you can shop around on those.
Book titles on your shelf arenot appearing in reverse.

(54:25):
How do you make that happen?
Book titles on your shelf arenot appearing in reverse.
How do you make that happen?
Magic?
No, not really.
I wish it was magic.
I don't know.
Roz, this is like a goodtechnical question.
How did I make that happen?
I don't know.
It has something to do with thewebcam.
And think about this.
Even from your cell phone, youcan video yourself facing.

(54:46):
Let me see if I can turn thisback on.
I think my camera is stillworking right now.
If I video myself facing myself, let's see if the books are
right side up in here or wherethese are going.
I'm going to put this in theprimary view here.
Videos myself facing myself.
This is you can see profitfirst.
You can see the words on there.
Let's try to zoom in a littlebit.

(55:07):
You can see the words facingthe right way.
Now, if I were to change thisto flip camera view, I don't
know if it'll.
Let me even do this in here.
Settings, camera front.
Okay.
So this in right here it saysfront camera.
So if I change it to backcamera, I don't know if that
would make a difference.
Flipping it around the otherway, I don't know.

(55:28):
Or there's mirror my camera.
Let me do that.
I'm going to do mirror mycamera and front camera, okay.
So now, no, it's still in rightside up.
I don't know.
I don't know how I did that.
I do know with some devicesit's slightly different, though
At any rate, I don't know.
Good question, I know there's away, depending on your camera,

(55:50):
that you can see, and it'susually what I like to do on
that.
Roz is making sure that youcheck it out before you go live.
Or if you're doing a selfiestyle of video, do a test clip
of it first, and if you realizethat the book titles are
backwards, then you might needto flip your camera around.
There's a little camera, thearrows thing on there.
You can flip it to the otherdirection.
That's how I do that.

(56:11):
By the way, did you guys notice.
I have a mirror up on my wallover here.
That's another like pro tip Ihave for my home office.
I'm going to take this off ofhere.
But if you don't have a lot ofgreat, great lighting in the
office, you're not.
I only have one window.
I have a mirror facing thewindow which reflects the light
and brightens up the room, so itadds more lighting in the room
even without the use oftechnology.

(56:32):
So a little pro tip on the sideon there.
Let's see.
Yeah, it's something to do withmirror.
This is again above my pay grade, roz, I don't know.
Nicole's got some great tips onthere.
How do I get to displaysettings, roz?
I'm not sure what you're askingthere.
If display settings, roz, I'mnot sure what you're asking
there.
If you could clarify incomments or message me later.
What do you call that clickthing they use for movies?

(56:53):
Take two, I think it's called aclapboard.
I'm going to add this to myblog too, and part of the reason
it's not working for me isthere's a little screw hole
right here.
You see this screw hole.
There's a pin in this one.
This one fell out.
So now when I'm raising it up,it's like moving the whole thing
around, but I think it's justcalled like a clipboard.
You could like, if you were toGoogle search it, action cut

(57:17):
board or action clapper orsomething like that.
Now, what I like about this oneis it is a whiteboard, so you
can write on it and then eraseit.
By the way, I want to show youa quick, quick pro tip.
If you ever have this issuehappening with whiteboards, you
see how there's a lot of likeink that's still on here.
These dry erase markersactually have a little bit of
oil in them.

(57:37):
Did you know that?
So if you have ink that isresidual on here from before,
what you want to do is write onit with your dry erase marker
and then erase it with your dryerase marker and then you can
see.
I don't know if you can seethat little space in there.
Let me do a wider area on here,but this will take off the ink
that is sitting on there.
So you can see here there's thered.

(57:58):
Let me see if I can erase itand keep it in place and can you
tell it's a little bit cleanernow from that area.
So there's a little pro tip foryou.
You have a whiteboard, you justwrite on it again and then
erase it and it will remove moreof that ink on there.
Meryl, thank you for watchingNice to see you.
Joey asks what do you wish youcould do in these events and the
current technology that itdoesn't allow you to do?

(58:19):
I don't know For me.
I don't know, joey.
If there's anything I wouldchange differently, differently
with this.
There's a delay in StreamYardto LinkedIn.
I wish there wasn't as much ofa delay.
That would be helpful.
The other thing is, I'mcontinuing to grow my business.
It would probably be great tohave a co-pilot on with me to
help with technology, to help toload up links, to help to tag
in people, that kind of thingtoo.

(58:40):
But yeah, I don't really haveany issues with that.
Michael asked about the Logitechcamera.
He said is that the Logitech?
And I don't know what numberyou have on there, michael.
The one I have is called, let'ssee, logitech C920.
You are correct, sir Ding ding.
If there was prizes, you wouldwin a prize for today.
Let's see.

(59:00):
Yes, my microphone is working.
For those that were watching meyesterday I had some mic issues
and my good is fixed.
All Anna, thank you so much forwatching Nice to see you.
A person asks is this livesession available after you're
finished?
In a link.
I arrived a few minutes late,plus, my notes are messy.
Yes, there's a couple of waysthat you can do this.
Now my LinkedIn live.
I go live on LinkedIn on BrendaMuller.

(59:23):
It's starting in 2023.
They're all on Brenda Muller.
I go live on my YouTube channel, which I actually have a
playlist, so you can watch allthe playbacks of all of these
sessions on there.
I sometimes find that watchingit on YouTube as a playback is
better than watching it onLinkedIn, because LinkedIn it
pushes you to a page where youhave to watch the comments one
at a time.
The workaround on that is go tothe person's activity feed and

(59:45):
then you can see all thecomments at once.
But, yes, you can watch theplayback.
My hack for this is, if there'sa topic I'm interested in and,
let's say, one of my friends,like Kenneth Lang, invites me to
his event, I'm not going to beable to make it live because I
have an appointment.
What I will do is I will reachout to.
I'm going to stop my streamhere.
By the way, over here, I willadd it to my camera.

(01:00:05):
Whoops, I don't want to end mybroadcast yet.
I got to keep this plugin andI'll add it to my calendar,
rather, and then it sits in mycalendar and later on in the day
I can click on that link andit'll take me to the playback.
So there's a little pro tip foryou If there's an event you're
interested in, you can attendthe full thing.
If you click on the RSVP likeyou're going to attend, it will
go in.
You have the option to add itto your calendar and then later

(01:00:27):
on you can click on that link towatch the playback.
Now for mine, I typically wouldsay you can watch it on LinkedIn
.
Obviously, this is my network,linkedin but if you go to
YouTube, you can watch the wholething and you can watch it in a
YouTube player, as opposed toLinkedIn player, which isn't, I
don't think is as nice.
Sorry, linkedin, I thinkYouTube is a little bit better.
Let's see here.
Yeah, someone else was talkingabout the Amazon smile and I've

(01:00:49):
given to other organizations too.
This person donates to theiranimal rescue for kids, no kill
shelter.
I know Amazon's got somerevenue issues, but we all hear
about how much money they'remaking in Amazon and we all put
a lot of our money to Amazon too.
Susan.
Hey Susan, how are you?
Susan says I do online trainingand need to reference the
slides on my laptop while tryingto maintain eye contact on the
laptop webcam Suggestions.

(01:01:11):
Susan, what I do is exactlywhat I'm doing right now.
I'm telling you what I'm doingBecause when I'm telling you
what I'm doing, it's not quiteas distracting as doing it, if
that makes sense.
So I say I'm going to look downat my screen right now and I'm
going to pull up my other cameraand then I'm going to switch
camera views and then I'm goingto look back at the camera right
.
So when I'm telling you whatI'm doing, I'm going to remove

(01:01:33):
that again.
When I'm telling you what I'mdoing, you're watching me
navigate as I'm doing it.
So sometimes, like just tellingpeople what you're doing as
you're breaking eye contact isthe same thing as keeping eye
contact all along.
Does that make sense?
So I'm telling you I'm going toshare my slides right now.
So I'm looking down as I'mdoing that, and that's a way of

(01:01:53):
resolving the issue.
There's some of these awkwardthings that happen.
The other thing you could do,susan, is you could have an
intern or a VA or another teammember doing the slide
navigation for you and you tellthem OK, let's go ahead and get
those slides loaded, and thenyou do a quick look down, make
sure that they're there and thenyou can maintain your eye
contact with the camera.
I don't think it's possible tomaintain eye contact a hundred

(01:02:15):
percent all the way through yourvideo.
I don't think that's a humanbeing thing.
We're not robots, right?
And this shows that we're real,live, human beings.
When we do break eye contact,when we step out of the view for
a second or bring things intocamera view, I think it's fine
to let your audience know.
I'm going to look down as I'mloading it up and then it looks
like we're all set.
Okay, let's get going into thepresentation.
So that's what I like to do.

(01:02:36):
It's almost like what I'm doingtoday, susan.
I'm giving everybody a behindthe scenes view of my technology
.
Not a lot of people would dosomething like this, right, and
it's not overly produced.
Right, and it's more, it'shuman, right.
So you're being human and Ithink that's a really great way
of connecting with your audienceby being human.
While doing so, this person sayswhat size is your clipboard?

(01:02:58):
I'm going to open up my deskdrawer right now, because I keep
a lot of things in my deskdrawer.
I've got like literally ahundred not quite, but almost a
hundred of these dry erasemarkers.
I've got post-it notepads inhere.
I've got scissors, becauseeverybody always walks away with
scissors and I never find them.
Oh, look at this.

(01:03:18):
Somebody said do you have yourowner's manual?
It's in my drawer for themicrophone.
Yeah, I do still have theowner's manual on here.
But somebody said what size isyour clipboard?
I've got a ruler on here.
But somebody said what size isyour clipboard?
I've got a ruler.
By the way, shout out to PikaMarketing Group.
This is a promo giveaway.
They are local to Metro Detroit.
I can see their phone number.
I believe Paul Zaffirana, Am Iremembering you correctly?

(01:03:39):
Tag Paul in comments and tagPika Marketing Group.
If you're watching this.
I keep this in my drawer.
This is a really.
It's a metal ruler and it's gotlike a hole in it so you could
actually hang it from the walltoo.
I'm going to measure myclapboard.
I'm going to show you guys asI'm doing this right now.
So, clapboard from top tobottom.
This is tricky to do.
That is about what Six inchestall by.

(01:04:00):
Let's see here if I can do this, trying to get this angle right
here.
And this is the width.
This is about what?
Five and a half inches wide,and it's only.
I don't know if it's not evenquite.
It's not quite an inch wide onhere.
I do need to get that screwreplaced on here, but yeah, it's

(01:04:21):
fairly small.
Eight by six.
Is that what I said?
I've got a short term memoryissue sometimes.
I think I said eight by six onthere, so it's a smaller one.
You certainly can get a biggerone.
I like this one because it has awhiteboard.
It's fairly small.
It's something I can throw inmy tech bin and grab it quickly
and I often have it like we'redoing a video or a testimonial

(01:04:41):
and somebody will be like taketwo and I'll pull it out and
I'll be like take two and itjust makes them laugh and smile.
So it's a nice, fun,inexpensive tool, really
inexpensive to use on there.
So hopefully that helps you out.
Yeah, it is a clapperboardclapperboard.
Yeah, that's the name of it.
Hollywood, we're in Hollywood.

(01:05:02):
Yes, christopher Johnson wouldbe a great co-pilot.
And, by the way, shout out toChristopher Johnson of Calm
Clear Communications.
He is a virtual event producerexcellent voice, great style in
terms of his communication, hismanner.
I'm not quite at the point inmy business where I can hire
Christopher full-time.
I'd love to, but I'm not quiteat that point in the business.
But yes, he would definitely bea great co-pilot on there.
And yeah, logi Capture, they dohave some software that you can

(01:05:26):
use for video recording.
I personally like Camtasia,michael, because it does allow
me to bring in animations, soundeffects, transitions, different
things.
But there are a milliondifferent types of video
recording software out there.
If you are aware of others thatyou'd like to add into comments
, feel free to do so.
All right, so I think that's it.
Have a wonderful day and I lookforward to seeing you on

(01:05:46):
LinkedIn.
Take care everyone.
Bye, bye.