Agency Forward

Chris DuBois 0:00
Hey everyone, today I'm joined by Junaid. Ahmed. Junaid is the founder of home studio mastery and an expert in transforming homework spaces into professional video production studios. He has over a decade of experience video production and tech solutions, and he has helped countless entrepreneurs, influencers, creators, just elevate their content by optimizing their home studios. So whether you're just starting out or looking to upgrade your current setup, Gen Eight's insights in this episode are going to help you create a space that's both functional and a reflection of your personal style. This episode that you'll want to see some clips from, because obviously we're talking about video. So make sure to check out the agency forward LinkedIn page, where you can get all of this content. Now in this episode, we discuss common mistakes people make when setting up a home studio. Essential Elements every professional home studio needs how to design a studio that enhances both creativity, productivity and more. Today's episode is brought to you by Zen pilot. There are lots of tools out there for agencies to manage projects, but any project issues aren't usually caused by the tool. They're from your own processes. Zen pilot helps agencies implement their project management tools while streamlining operations so your team can move from chaos to clarity. And see for yourself at Zen pilot.com/forward,

and now. Junaid ahmed,

it's easier than ever to start an agency, but it's only getting harder to stand out and keep it alive. Join me as we explore the strategies agencies are using today to secure a better tomorrow. This is agency forward.

Unknown Speaker 1:45
Why should everyone invest time in their studio setup? You know, that's a great question. Chris, time in our studios now, just like we spend a lot of time in curating our living room, our dining room, the walls, what's going to go on the walls? We spend a lot of time in there. Why? Because we want to invite the guests to come to our homes, to have a place to hang out with and sit down. So because we spend that time in creating that setup,

Unknown Speaker 2:19
when you invest time in setting up your home studio.

Unknown Speaker 2:23
What you're doing is you're setting up yourself for success. You're cutting down all of the friction that goes into setting up gear, that goes into troubleshooting problems that might arise because you spent some time

Unknown Speaker 2:39
to you've invested some time in setting up your studio.

Unknown Speaker 2:43
That means that you've thought through all of the different scenarios, and sometimes things might come out of the left field, and you're like, Okay, how do I do this? Well, lucky for you, because you've spent so much time in thinking through and practicing in that studio, you're able to resolve that issue a lot quicker than for somebody would be like, You know what? I can't figure this out. I'm gonna have to cancel the podcast episode. Let's do it another time. So again, you're much more better prepared, right? I think something that was a mind blowing for me. It was on the last panel that we were on together with Nikki's group, the mark Baum user, hopefully I said his name right. Told that story about them hiring the biggest Google Ads expert at the time, and like everyone knew him as this guy who crushed it for Google ads. But all people wanted to talk about when they were in the meeting was how awesome his his setup was. And so I just thought it was really telling, because when you look at the inverse of that, right, I could have all the skills in the world and show up and be able to just crush it for you, but if I don't look like I can right now, we're we're potentially screwed.

Unknown Speaker 3:59
And so yeah, I guess, what? Have you seen a lot of that with clients that you're working with? Have you seen like a deliberate shift in that? I guess, absolutely, you know,

Unknown Speaker 4:10
first of all, it's almost like you're showing up to the big boys table in shorts, right? You know,

Unknown Speaker 4:19
you have the shirt on. You don't have a jacket, you know, you show up and when you're when you're going as a business owner, right, as an agency owner, as a business owner, when you're going to a place where you're expected to do business, well, people want to make sure that you respect them by dressing up, right? You're not only respect yourself, but you're also respecting the other people who's put in the time to show up professionally. So the same thing you're doing when you're setting up your space. Now, a lot of people that I have worked with, they had the same issue. They probably had a window in their shot, and they're like, I don't know how to get this lighting right. I'm like, Well, there's a really beautiful library right behind you.

Unknown Speaker 5:00
That you can, if you just flip around your camera, you can utilize that powerful light for to show you up, to show you know how highlight you in a shot, right, instead of being backlit like you're doing an anonymous interview with a news story.

Unknown Speaker 5:18
So COVID, I think, kind of shifted everything and moved a lot of companies into remote work and made this more important now. But are you? Are you seeing a lot more people trying to actually pay attention to their setup now, rather than just saying, Well, I can get away with just having my laptop open while I sit on the couch, versus creating a studio so that they're actually showing you, know, I imagine, for like, career advancement and stuff, right? You're, you're putting yourself out there in a better light. 100% you are definitely putting yourself out there in a better light. When you pay attention to the lighting, when you pay attention, no pun intended. No pun intended, right? Pay attention to what's in your background. You, most people allow curating that setup because they want to show up professionally, just like you don't want to show up

Unknown Speaker 6:09
unprofessional to a professional meeting. So a lot of people who are working from home, and sure, there are orders from different companies like Amazon and Google to come back to work order, whatnot. But a lot of the entrepreneurs, we're still working from home. You know, what office are we going to go to and work from now? We were working from home. Not sure. A lot of people would do go to co working spaces, because they can get more work done. But when you're showing up and creating content and being a podcaster like this, you want to show up in the best light possible. Now I know sometimes it's really, really hard, especially if it's just a hobby, but we're talking about you being an entrepreneur. You being somebody who depends on these videos, these calls for your income. So why wouldn't you show up in the best light possible? Now, there's a story where this guy started to be, you know, he joined real estate, and he's showing homes, and he would show up in his little Toyota Corolla from, you know, an older one, and not a lot of people would want to get in his car and, you know, go to see the showing, and at the end of the day, you know, he wasn't able to

Unknown Speaker 7:29
close any deals because of how he was showing up. So what do you what do we see? A lot of successful realtors, they're driving nice cars, and that shows, that impresses, that conveys a message to the buyer. Okay, this guy must be doing something right. He's definitely knows the right people. He's gonna find me the best home that's for me, because he's taking care of his outward appearance. And now, yes, we, we do have a saying, don't, don't judge a book by its cover. But guess what? It's in our human innate nature, like we literally, you know, judge everything based on what what it looks like. So why not you

Unknown Speaker 8:17
work on that cover so that people will open and listen to the story that you had to share. And that's what is to do. That's for you, right? Yeah, that saying has never, never landed well with me. It's like, if you care enough about what you put in that book, yeah, right, wouldn't you spend a little time making sure the cover is nice? Like, you want to package your your art really well? And so I think I mean, exactly, too human nature, right? If we're, if we're gonna look at a book, we're gonna judge it by the cover, because you can tell pretty quickly if someone actually spent some time caring about what they're doing. You know, I have a new saying now. I mean, I actually have just come up with this saying on this episode, right? All right, don't judge a YouTube video by its thumbnail.

Unknown Speaker 9:01
There you go, right? Yeah, yeah, that fits. So let's go. Let's get a little tactical here. What are some of the biggest mistakes that people make when starting to set up their studio? Well, the first thing they do is they spend a ton of time

Unknown Speaker 9:18
on YouTube, and they'll and, or if they're not spending a ton of time on YouTube researching, they're asking the question, What camera does somebody else buy? They're going for that one camera that everybody's talking about, and then they go and buy that camera, and guess what? It still doesn't do the job. Because, as we know, just because you have flour, you can't make cake. You need all of the other tiny little ingredients to make sure that cake settles and, you know, it comes out really well. So camera is just only one part of the entire ecosystem of what a studio stands for. So the biggest mistake people are doing.

Unknown Speaker 10:00
Is not studying all

Unknown Speaker 10:02
of the different elements that they can easily have without spending the massive amount of money with a camera. So if you if you look at just your lighting alone, if you have good lighting, and you know cheapest lighting, $5,250

Unknown Speaker 10:18
you can make your webcam image look really sharp and clean because you're providing additional light. Just like how when we go outside, we like spending outside, spending time outside when the sun is out, not when it's night time, right? Because you can't see things clearly. So just like that, cameras want lots of light so that they can help you shine on camera, right? So this is another piece that's telling of human nature. I was in I did an agency like aI panel at one point, and I wanted to take a different approach and not talk about the tools, but talk about the mindset you need in order to adopt it. And at one point I mentioned one tool in the chat blew up with, like, what tool did he mention? What was talking I'm like, Guys, we're talking about your mindset here. But similarly, someone was at a Stephen King like, writing workshop, and they have the master of horror, right? So many books and all of this

Unknown Speaker 11:21
talking about how you should be writing. And the question when someone in this workshop asked was, What pencil do you use?

Unknown Speaker 11:29
Okay, yeah, we're we're past that now, but, but yeah, I think everyone will gravitate towards those like, What tool do I need in order to do this? When, in reality, it's like, Oh, if you have to be thinking about this appropriately. Because even, even myself, like, I'm sure you give me tips right now for for my lighting where, like, I have one above my desk,

Unknown Speaker 11:50
and I have two windows that I like on either side of me that I've closed so that it, you know, I have the rooms a little darker, but even, I mean, I'm sure I need to get back lit, right? There's always like, little things, yeah, that I'm not even thinking about.

Unknown Speaker 12:07
So what are those things? Well, good thing that you've, you know, you've closed those lights and, you know, you've made the room darker. I like to start with a blank slate, and what that means is, so with a dark room, start adding lights that highlight you and make sure that you're framed in correctly too, right? You want to make sure that you're taking like your face is taking 1/3 or

Unknown Speaker 12:32
half of the screen, and that the other half is with your bust and your body and your microphone and whatnot, because that will make sure

Unknown Speaker 12:41
away from the camera, matching, like you're matching and you're, you're, you're similar to the other person, but we're also mimicking what we see on television. Right on television, on newscasters, you'll see a lot of their, you know, at least all the way down to their waist or maybe up to their chest area, and then you see their head, and that's how you're communicating, because when you're sitting in front of each other, and this is funny that this is something that I

Unknown Speaker 13:10
experienced lately. I was doing an in person podcast interview with and I basically had to set up a range for other people to come and record. And this two couple came in when the guy was least easily six two and the lady was probably five something. But when they both sat down on the chair, they were barely inches right,

Unknown Speaker 13:36
uh, height difference. Like, wow, that is really crazy. Like, our top torsos are mostly around the same size, which is really

Unknown Speaker 13:46
insane to like, even visualize. So you want to make sure that when you're sitting down on chairs, we're basically around the same height, and you know, we're seeing eye to eye. So that's the type of setup that we're doing with our framing on our shots.

Unknown Speaker 14:02
Yeah. Yeah. So I guess, let's go back to the blank slate we started. We just got a room as dark as we can make it, yeah. And we're trying to find all the right angles for for everything. What, besides lighting right and making sure that we have a good lighting source, which could be artificial or natural, I'm guessing,

Unknown Speaker 14:21
what's the next step? What are we?

Unknown Speaker 14:25
Yeah, so so to make it pop, you're not only just lighting yourself, but then you're also creating some ambient lighting. So as you can notice, have a little purple, pink, blue stuff going on, because I have two separate lights that just like that background, it's it's not me at all, right, so if I were to

Unknown Speaker 14:49
shut off those two lights, and if you're watching this on video, you can see this, you know, now my background is completely black and white, and you can just see me. But.

Unknown Speaker 15:00
Properly in the shot, but again, adding those two pieces of lighting in the background brings that background to life, right? So that's something that anybody can do by, you know, just adding a little bit little splash of color in that background, right? Yeah, I think I need to figure that out for myself. The I should probably also not wear the same color shirt the wall behind me,

Unknown Speaker 15:26
just blending in. It's a thing, an army thing I'm trying to, trying to do.

Unknown Speaker 15:32
So,

Unknown Speaker 15:34
all right, so we've got lighting, super important. The equipment, you know, isn't necessarily the most important thing, if you can't get everything else straight.

Unknown Speaker 15:44
But I guess, what are some of those? Are there some critical things you should be looking for with your equipment that 100% will help you, like, pay dividends, I guess in the long run? Yeah, the number one thing that I've said before, even all of the other things, is make sure that you have a good microphone. Oh, as a podcaster,

Unknown Speaker 16:03
our message or our voice is is how we communicate with others, so making sure that you have a good microphone and good treatment in your room, right? So maybe you're in a really big room and there's a lot of echo. So how do you solve that? We'll make sure that you have more on a good microphone, so that you can be really close to that microphone. Number two, make sure there's

Unknown Speaker 16:27
you're eliminating flat surfaces. So if you have walls, make sure you have curtains or paintings or whatnot on floors, make sure you have some kind of a carpeting, rug and whatnot, and all of those things are going to absorb the excess bouncing off the sound. So again, your sound is the number one thing. Then we are, you know, of course, looking at the lighting, looking at the design of what people see in your shot, because that becomes a scroll stopper, right? If they see something that they like, and we, we love beautiful things. We stuff to look at flowers and sunflowers and whatnot. So the same thing you're you're creating that look, that showstopper with your setup. So if you have all of those things lined up, so you got, you got the audio, the lighting, make sure that you're using a good camera. If your webcam is not doing the job your smartphone, then you're designing your setup and making sure that you don't have any distracting things behind you, like maybe an open door or or or a mirror or something that's going to distract the audience from, you know, listening to the message, yeah, for most of the people that you work with. Do they have, like, a dedicated office space, or are they working in a different room that, you know, the rooms multi purpose. And so now, right, like, I'm in, for example, a studio apartment that my in laws used to live here, they moved out,

Unknown Speaker 17:56
and so I've turned this into my office. And so right in the middle of, now, the kind of living area? Yeah, it's, you know, it's this space. But so if we have guests over something to make sure that it's a livable area

Unknown Speaker 18:08
for everyone, or how can you kind of take some of those considerations Absolutely? Yeah, mine, yeah. 100% so not everybody's going to have a dedicated room in their homes

Unknown Speaker 18:22
or in their apartments for a dedicated studio, but making sure that you can utilize the space that you have in the most effective little way is important. For example, in my room, this is that almost a 12 by 12 room, right? But I've put my desk on one corner. I've got bookshelves on the other corner. So if I did wanted to bring a bed in here, I still could or, you know, or a mattress, so there's room here again, for additional activities. So think about it from that perspective. And then the way that you set up your space, you want to make sure that you're minimizing the floor, things that are on the floor. So what do I mean by that?

Unknown Speaker 19:07
In the beginning, I had tripods. I had tripods for tripods for my cameras. I had light stands for my lights. Everything's on the floor. And, you know, kids are tripping over, I'm tripping over. So I was like, How do I eliminate that? And I saw a lot of other YouTubers, a lot of other podcasters, they're mounting things on their desks, right? So if you can mount stuff on your desk, and if you have wheels on those desks, guess what? You can then move it out of the way to make that space livable, or, you know, push it against the wall. But when you're ready to create content, you can then pull it away from the wall, change it around, and, you know, make it more portable, kind of setup for yourself. Then,

Unknown Speaker 19:48
yeah, I wonder the, what do they call those beds that you can fold up into the wall, Murphy beds. Yeah, Murphy. But I wonder if you could do a Murphy podcast station and just fold, fold your entire studio up and I.

Unknown Speaker 20:00
Why not, but, uh, you gotta be thinking about something on just a quick pro tip for people who are planning to get into podcasting, or will be guests on podcasts, get if you're going to mount your your microphone on your desk. Don't have just like a base stand, try to get it actually mounted on, like an arm. Otherwise, every time you tap your desk, you can hear and like, I've had some guests on my previous podcast at Wisconsin, they were like, drumming their fingers, and it's like, I can't edit that audio enough, no? So

Unknown Speaker 20:29
yeah, it's something super easy, and it you can also get the mic a lot closer to your mouth for better quality. So absolutely. But yeah, so I guess are there any trends that you are currently seeing with with studio setup. So just things that like that'll take you to that next set. Maybe you don't need them to get started, but it's like, if you're doing these things, you're now moving into, like, the pro level,

Unknown Speaker 20:51
you know,

Unknown Speaker 20:53
as a trends, I'm seeing a lot of people are doing, you know, podcasting, style video records for their reels,

Unknown Speaker 21:02
even though, if they're not talking to anybody on the other side,

Unknown Speaker 21:07
and you know, you'll see comments like this guy's talking to nobody, he's just continue talking, because there's no switch back to the other person. So when you're creating content, make sure that you're having a real conversation with somebody else and switch back to the other person as they're paying attention, even if they're not saying a word, because that goes to show your authority, like you're not just talking to into thin air, you're actually talking to somebody, and people want to feel connected. You know if, if you're shooting content from the other side, for example, my side angle, right? I'm just looking into my camera, or into this camera. But if you're, if I'm just shooting this whole thing and nobody sees the other side, well, they're gonna get lost. I'm like, Who is he talking to? Why am I seeing this? So that's something that I wanna you know, try to debunk, or try to see if can people you know, do better on that side, right? Yeah, and that one, like, I've had friends just jump on a call before to be my other person that I'm I'm just talking to. So now it's not me talking to the camera. It's just yeah, you know, and they can throw in some feedback afterwards, like, hey, maybe a fewer, fewer ums and rights, right things that I know that I'm, I'm doing in my speech,

Unknown Speaker 22:23
as I as, I just do it

Unknown Speaker 22:26
the Yeah, so that's a good

Unknown Speaker 22:31
I guess there's also so, like, I've noticed kind of a distinction, right? Like, you have a very nice background, you're, you're doing a lot, probably with video as well. I spend most of my video content is done in meetings, right? Like, I'm not, I don't have a YouTube channel for the podcast yet, and so I'm not necessarily creating a background to catch people's eye and, like, make it look sexy on on camera yet. And since most of my my videos are really, like, in client meetings and stuff like that. Like, do you find, I guess, obviously your your business is selling the right? You want people to see a nice background? Yeah, are there trying

Unknown Speaker 23:11
to figure out how to phrase this, right? Because I don't care as much about making the background pop, but I still want something that looks good and kind of sets me apart from the background.

Unknown Speaker 23:22
What? What should I be doing, I guess, in order to to kind of maximize that effect, and not, not necessarily need, like, all the lighting and everything, but sure, just to keep attention on me with still not pulling away with, like, an ugly background, yeah. I mean, you, you said, right, you know, you got to have some kind of separation between the color of the shirt that you're wearing and the color of the background, right? So you can, you know, maybe shine a little light on that background, or shine a light on you, so that, for example, I've got little shoulder lighting here, you'll notice, and that's because I have a light coming shining from behind me that's lighting me up. So if you were to add another set of light just above that shelf pointing back at you, you'll automatically create that separation between the wall and not be blending in.

Unknown Speaker 24:11
Yeah? So I have actual lighting, like tripods and stuff like I said. I'm wondering now if I just put one on the floor behind me, angled up, if that'll be enough too. Yeah. I mean, again, it's all about experimentation, right? You might not get it right the first time, but the more you experiment, the more you play around with it. That's how I was able to tune this up to it's always the same every single time, right? Yeah, I am 100% confident I will not get it right on the first try.

Unknown Speaker 24:39
So

Unknown Speaker 24:42
what is your, I guess, what's the 8020 here, right? If I could do one thing to really just knock it out of the park, and what would that, uh, what would that be?

Unknown Speaker 24:53
Well, you've already done a lot of one things to knock that out of the park over the years, right? We just gotta be one.

Unknown Speaker 25:00
1% better every day. And if we can improve that quality of your video every single day, every you know, 1%

Unknown Speaker 25:08
then you're already doing a lot of work by the end of the year. So again, you know, with good microphone, good camera, good framing, and then

Unknown Speaker 25:19
having the three point of lighting, separation of the background. And then

Unknown Speaker 25:26
you probably heard this before Look at the camera when you're talking to somebody, right? Yeah, that would be good enough. There you go, right? Yeah. So that way they feel more connected. And

Unknown Speaker 25:38
over the years, I had to practice to just look in the camera, even though I know they're down here on my monitor, I'm practicing to look into the camera sensor. And it got harder and harder, till it got easier. But then to make it even more easier, you get the right tools so you bring in the more enhanced tools. For example, I added a teleprompter. Now, Elgato just came out with a really cool teleprompter, which is for $280

Unknown Speaker 26:10
that you can just plug in. It has a little extent monitor built in that can mirror whatever you see on your computer monitor right in front of the camera. So now you're looking directly into the camera, no matter who you're looking to, and you know, your notes are right there. Anything that you're looking for is right there. So that's something that I always recommend to my clients, and they're like, Oh, my God, this is a game changer. It's totally, you know, changed

Unknown Speaker 26:39
the feeling that I'm creating in other people's

Unknown Speaker 26:45
lives. I guess I don't even know where I was going.

Unknown Speaker 26:50
Yeah, that's something that I want to do more. The issue is that I can't see, like, without the teleprompter, right? I can't see the expressions. I don't know what someone's doing, and so it makes me want to just pull away so that I feel like I'm having the conversation with someone 100% but yeah, then they don't feel connected to you. So yeah, it's almost like, you know, when we're on a phone call, we're not really looking at each other's eyes, we're listening and paying attention to the audio. So I noticed that you're not wearing any headphones, correct, right? So maybe if you had headphones, you'd be you might feel more connected with the conversation on the other side, because then you can turn up to volume like, Hey, what are you saying? Again, I want to hear you better. So again, that sound is going to create that connection with the other person, right? Yeah, I guess putting that closer in, I

Unknown Speaker 27:41
work pretty hard to get the setup right so that I don't get any echo or anything with using some good tools. Actually, that's probably another super easy thing for to talk about with your studio setup. Just like there's some simple software right that you can put in. I'm on a PC with an Nvidia graphics card, and so RTX voice is free, and I can cancel out noises using this. And so my kids could be home banging on the piano, doing everything, and I'll be distracted, but no one can hear that in the audio that, yeah, it's awesome. Or my dog's getting one of them sleeping on the couch, and it used to be that I had to kick him out of the room if I was gonna do

Unknown Speaker 28:20
do any episodes, because if they get up, yeah, it's now, you know, their nails hitting the floor, things like that.

Unknown Speaker 28:27
But with this, nobody else can hear it, and so it doesn't matter as much. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 28:32
yeah, I guess are there

Unknown Speaker 28:34
other one of the things you had shown in that last panel was even just had to shift your lighting using some some of the software. Yeah, there are other tricks like that. You recommend people have this is like a quick thing, yeah, the quick thing is, we're all living in, you know pretty

Unknown Speaker 28:51
well areas where you can now, we have to access to technology that enable you to turn on and off the lights through software. So I use something called home kit that lets me turn on specific lights on command. And, you know, I've also set up scenes. So to say, hey, it's time to go recording, and it's, it's send a signal to turn off the lights that I don't need and turn on the lights that I do need. So then again, I'm reducing friction in every single thing. Like, two minutes before this, I was like, Okay, I'm just done. Finish eating my breakfast. Let me jump down. And as I'm walking down, I just tell Siri, it's time for studio recording. I turn on the lights and I just show up. And you know, I'm online,

Unknown Speaker 29:34
and I need that little assistant, instead of walking in, flicking all the switches, and, yeah,

Unknown Speaker 29:42
all right. So I've got a couple more questions as we as we round up here with the first being separate from your own. So we're going to talk about these in a second. What book do you recommend every agency leader should read?

Unknown Speaker 29:56
So the book that you want to read, especially if in a if you're an agency.

Unknown Speaker 30:00
And you're trying to grow your reach, grow your approach, help your clients get further ahead. Check out the book by Gary V it just came out, called day trading attention. It's actually part two, two, or, you know, it's basically the second book. His first book was called Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook. And this was he wanted to name this jab, jab, jab, left hook, but then his marketing people like, no, that's not gonna work. We're gonna call it something else. So that's a really powerful book. I've been listening to it and reading it, and it's got so many amazing strategies and tips that you can implement with your business and get immediate results and get a better understanding of what is it that people are actually looking for when they're working for you? Yeah, that's probably good, man. I'm reading the experience economy right now, and

Unknown Speaker 30:57
one of the kind of biggest points of the book is like, where you want to create these awesome experiences for people, because we're competing for attention, but not just with our competitors, with everything? Yeah, right, like the your whoever your target audience is, they're going to go home, they have to make dinner, and they have to take their pets for walks. They have to put their kids to sleep, and but what if you could create an experience that they just want to be part of throughout the rest of their life? And I do think everything we've talked about in this episode for like, setting up an awesome background, right? Creating, like being able to create this visual experience and audio like experience will help with being able to create that content that drives people to you.

Unknown Speaker 31:35
Yeah, awesome. Absolutely right. Attention is the number one thing.

Unknown Speaker 31:40
That's why,

Unknown Speaker 31:42
you know, the more attention you have with your kids, the more attention you have with your audience, the better they're going to be connected with you. And the more paying attention, the more you're paying attention to what they need, the better you know relationship you're going to build as well. Right? Awesome. So let's actually talk your two books now. Awesome. The Yeah. Let's give the quick premise for each Yeah, 100% so the first book is called the seven stages of home studio evolution. It takes you through a journey of your own evolution as become a content creator or somebody who's looking to get into content creation now, as as a as a photographer, Film, film, filmmaker myself. I started with a simple film camera long, long time ago, right? But all that I was doing was I was actually using that gear to create content, to get better at it. So over time, you're going to level up. Now the cool part is, we all live in an era where we have $1,000

Unknown Speaker 32:50
cameras in our hands in our pockets, that people are creating content on these devices that go on television, that go on Netflix, that goes on commercial, that does all sorts of things. So it's not the gear, it's how well are you prepared, or how well are you

Unknown Speaker 33:12
practicing the activity that's going to create content? So the book talks about the novice stage. You start with your smartphone, and that's how I started. When I started recording my podcast episodes, I would start recording it on my smartphone

Unknown Speaker 33:28
in my car, right? Because I wanted to get that muscle to go and I wanted to train my muscle. I wanted to condition my muscle to be like, Hey, this is what I've got to do. And then over time, you just progress. And you get better and better. You add in more equipment, you bring in more training, you bring in more nutrition, you know, all of those things go hand in hand, but you got to get started somewhere. So we all can start with our smartphones, start creating content, creating that connectivity,

Unknown Speaker 33:58
and as you level up by, you know, adding additional gear to your stuff. So from novice, you go to be a hobbyist when you purchase a microphone, then you become an enthusiast when you purchase a high end camera and add some

Unknown Speaker 34:15
room, you know, acoustics, or, you know, you're treating your room, you're designing your space. So you're leveling up at every single stage, and as every single thing that you're starting to add, and then all the way up to, you know, become a broadcaster expert, where you now have multiple camera angles. Your room is all set. You've got automations, you know, again, the book talks about all of the different levels, and it helps you get started.

Unknown Speaker 34:42
Awesome. All right. So actually, where can people grab copies of those Absolutely. So you can head on over to you. You can head on over to Amazon. Just look for seven stages of home studio evolution, and you'll find that. But.

Unknown Speaker 35:00
There. I also have it as a digital copy, or, you know, or

Unknown Speaker 35:05
or a physical copy, and I'm also working on an audio book, so that will come pretty soon. And then the next book is how it took my podcast from an audio only podcast to a video podcast, because, as we've seen in the last few years, when the pandemic hit, more and more people were consuming content on video. In fact,

Unknown Speaker 35:28
about a doubt, about a billion hours of video is consumed every single day on YouTube television. So what does that mean? We are used to watching YouTube. Sorry, we're used to watching video, so why not your message also be video bound? So that's where you're going to get even more

Unknown Speaker 35:50
attention. You're going to get more distribution. You're going to get more people connecting with you and learning from you. So

Unknown Speaker 35:59
the next book that recently is coming out, is called The Ultimate Guide to video podcasting, and it helps you go from audio podcast to video podcast. Awesome. And that's going to be the one I pick up next as I start taking the show on the road.

Unknown Speaker 36:16
Last, last question for you, where can people learn more about you? Absolutely. So I'm on all the social media at super generic. But if you want to learn more about the home studio, just go over to home studio mastery.com

Unknown Speaker 36:29
and you can learn all about the home studio

Unknown Speaker 36:32
services that I have in the books and whatnot. And if you want to listen to more of my podcast, because I've been podcasting for a few years myself and reviewed over 600 guests. You can head on over to hacks and hobbies.com

Unknown Speaker 36:46
Awesome. A thanks for joining. Thanks, Chris, this was a lot of this is a lot of fun. I appreciate you inviting me on.

Unknown Speaker 36:57
That's the show. Everyone. You can leave a rating and review, or you can do something that benefits. You click the link in the show notes to subscribe to agency forward on sub stack, you'll get weekly content resources and links from around the internet to help you drive your agency forward.

Unknown Speaker 37:22
You.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai