1:00:40
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, working, presentation, andrew, biggest mistake, big, zoom, mistake, clients, company, green screen, business, career, elevator speech, software, learn, meeting, video conferencing, question, put
SPEAKERS
David Maldow, Kevin Williams, Damon Pistulka, Greg Mischio, Marty Vondrell, Andrew Deutsch, Susan Ganz, Jacob Warren, Troy Neihaus, Brad Smith, Ron Higgs, Ira Bowman, Randy McNeeley, Andrew Cross, Michael Gidlewski, Kon Apostolopolous, Pete Alexander, Jeffry Graham
Damon Pistulka 00:00
Live on LinkedIn. Thank you everyone, once again for joining us at the exit your way round table we’ve got, I’m just really excited today because we’ve got our first guest, host, and guest speaker. So Andrew Deutsch is our guest host for today, he’s going to be leading us, we’re gonna just hang back and watch him and David malko they’re gonna be talking about taking video pass. And so, Andrew, I’m gonna let you take it from here.
Andrew Deutsch 00:30
Fantastic. Great to see everyone. Although from here, you can’t see everyone. But, you know, usually we start with the question of the week and give everybody an opportunity to kind of come up on stage and give their elevator speech. This week, we’re gonna do a little bit differently. The elevator speech comes first. And then you’re going to answer the question, what one mistake that I make in my career, that led me to being so much better at my job. That’s,
00:59
that’s,
Andrew Deutsch 00:59
that’s the question of the week. So just to show you how it works, we’re gonna give the elevator speech. And here we go. So fangled tech, my company, we’re a marketing and sales consultancy service on a global level, we help companies strategy, first build their brand, and convert everyone they touch into voracious advocates for their brand. And my biggest mistake in my career, was accepting a job interview, where they expected me to present a presentation on what I would do with their company.
And I won’t say the name of the company, but they basically hired some someone from within and implemented my entire strategic plan and never paid me for it. So now I know that if I get involved with companies, we if you want discovery, it cost money. And it certainly increases the validity of my brand by insisting on that. So who’s next? Oh, bread?
Brad Smith 01:59
Apparently I am. Yeah, elevator. So elevator, um, I coach CEOs and business owners on how to ignite and accelerate the growth. So and my biggest mistake, I’m trying to think all I can think of is this vast array of 1000s of mistakes, and none of them actually pop up. You know, that in my business that kind of dragged me. That’s not true. I would say it’s marketing. So I’ve been hiding out for 24 years, and only doing individual contact process. And so I’m trying to figure out my marketing works, actually marketing. So that’s a recent mistake I made.
02:48
Cool, cool.
Greg Mischio 02:52
Mr. Greg, hey, Greg, Mischio, we do content marketing, for manufacturing and industrial sector, and we definitely help small marketing teams who can’t don’t have the time or resources to do content. Um, I just, I don’t know why. But this is always kind of comes back to haunt me. I just remember, this isn’t really a professional mistake. It’s probably more of a financial mistake.
But I remember is doing a lot of reading when on branding, early in my career, and Amazon had just come on the scene. And I was talking with somebody, I was like, they don’t really that what do they sell? They don’t sell anything. These guys aren’t gonna make a big like Walmart or something. These guys gonna go. So I kind of regret that one. Great. So what did you learn from it? invest in Amazon.
Andrew Deutsch 03:51
Too late. Thanks, Mr. Jacob, you’re up.
03:55
unmute. Oh, yeah,
Jacob Warren 03:57
thank you. So the elevator speeches that essentially make it more accessible for business owners and leaders to get the benefits out of. So that’s from cloud technology, cybersecurity, and making sure that the technology is meeting your goals for the CIO, say that, so it’s the biggest or the mistake that’s from your career. What what what exactly it
Andrew Deutsch 04:30
was a mistake you made earlier in your career that made you better at what you do now.
Jacob Warren 04:35
So I’m the one that sticks out to me the most is the time that I talked myself. Literally. It was I was first getting in technology pulling apart this computer system and I accidentally touch things and it, art and it from there, from then on essentially If I wanted to learn everything about how, how the devices work, what type of you know, how do you manage that? And, you know, the power and all that stuff, which that made me better in the sense because I didn’t want to get shot that bad anymore. I mean, I’m, I’m the kid that my parents put my room on my own circuit breaker because I’d trip it so often. So
Andrew Deutsch 05:26
yeah, we call that the spark of curiosity.
Jacob Warren 05:33
I’ll have to use that one. You got it. Thanks.
Andrew Deutsch 05:38
Mr. Graham. What’s going on? Jeff?
Jeffry Graham 05:40
How’s it going? Everyone? elevator pitch essentially grow e commerce companies, exclusively launched, just launched recently. e commerce management cooperative. It’s pretty exciting stuff. A lot of folks here know about that. Big mistake I made in my career was, this one just sticks out the most kind of fun one. I’m a sales guy and I oversee, I essentially oversold a deal. I sold a $4 million deal.
We were a manufacturing company. This was my last kind of corporate job. And we weren’t, you know, huge at the time. And the production manager found out about me selling this $4 million deal with a pretty heavy timeline 12 week timeline. And we almost got in a fight in the parking lot. So yeah. That was a big mistake. Sometimes overselling things to a point where you’ll crumble a business. Yeah. So it ended up working out we didn’t fight he would have lost but
Andrew Deutsch 06:43
that’s not what he told me.
Jeffry Graham 06:45
And, ultimately, ultimately, be careful sometimes if you if you go too big.
06:51
So cool. That’s a good one.
Kevin Williams 06:53
Kevin Williams. Hey, guys, my name is Kevin Williams. I’m in Park City, Utah, I focus on building digitally native brands, also e commerce. At the moment, I’m focused on technical solutions for changes in internet privacy, specifically with Apple iOS changes. And developing a solution for that.
We can help lots of my biggest mistake, I made the consultants critical error of taking an actual executive job with a with a client. I think there there are a lot of nods going around. We blew up in my face. And I ended up with, let’s just say a life gap, which gave me some resources at some time to start my first company. And it’s worked out great. And I learned a valuable lesson about not wanting to work.
Andrew Deutsch 07:51
That’s a great, that’s a great one. Is that the last from the from the tables? You’re muted in Android.
08:06
There’s more coming sorry. There we go.
Michael Gidlewski 08:13
Hey, good morning. Good morning.
08:16
You’re up?
Michael Gidlewski 08:17
Okay, Michael, get loose the achievement unlimited. And I facilitate the creation of high performance culture, high performance teams with a bunch of tools that helps get everybody on the same track go in the same direction. This dismantling the silos so that everyone is
Andrew Deutsch 08:38
it’s great. And and the biggest error that led you to learning
Michael Gidlewski 08:43
the biggest error that led me to learning biggest error that led me to learning was saying that I couldn’t deliver anything when a client needed it, and I could deliver it, but it took way, way too much prep work. And at the end of the day, I lost money on the deal. So very, very selective about what I can do, and what I can’t do.
Andrew Deutsch 09:17
And what’s your premise
Michael Gidlewski 09:21
it was just a workshop that I had not been familiar with. So I had to go do all the, you know, the research and put it all together. And I thought it was obviously there’s gonna be a lot easier than it was. Yeah. hours and hours later. I’m like, Oh my God, then doing the PowerPoints and redoing them and back and forth. And it’s like, this is insane. Do what you do best and outsource the rest.
Andrew Deutsch 09:45
You’re good example. Yeah. All right. Mr. Marty, you’re next. You’re on the chopping block sir.
Marty Vondrell 09:56
Yeah, simple manner, right. So I help entrepreneurs and business owners get what they want. From their business, I do that by helping them implement EOS, which is a complete set of proven and simple tools, practical tools. So they get to experience.
Andrew Deutsch 10:16
Your mind keeps cutting out, Marty. Still out? Can’t hear it. Let’s go on to Randy and see if you can get that straightened out. We’ll get the rest of it.
10:30
Mr. Ray, can you guys?
Randy McNeeley 10:33
Can you guys hear me? I heard you. Sure. Interestingly, Michael, and I consult for the same company, high performance culture. I work with organizations to, you know, to establish world class cultures and help them identify the fundamental behaviors that they need to not only establish them, but maintain them for a long time. So that’s what I’m working for. And I’m also of course, you guys already know that. And I don’t need to say it. I’m a big kindness advocate. So that’s what I do in my gallon. Do I have to, I’m going to sound like I beat myself up, but I’ve made too many mistakes too.
I was working in the Department of Defense as a contractor. And we had an upgrade to do on a Cisco router. And I accidentally fat fingered one name in it. Like so. got it fixed, really famous. But fortunately, at that time, there were no missions being run and the crap did not hit the fan. But it could have been a really bad bad, bad thing. So I, I was very, very, very, very conscientious after that, of making sure that I followed the checklist to a tee and that I triple checked every everything that I was putting in so
Andrew Deutsch 12:00
this fat finger, anything’s dangerous. I’m gonna write a book on how to how to put your fingers on a diet.
Jacob Warren 12:08
mistake.
Andrew Deutsch 12:10
Yeah. All right. Thank you very much, Professor Pete. Oh, good
Pete Alexander 12:14
morning, Andrew. And morning, everybody. I’m Professor Pete, Pete Alexander. I am empower working professionals to go from mentally and emotionally overwhelmed to better protecting their health and handling challenging situations with grace. As mentioned early in the career and classic for me was I worked my way through college as a radio shack manager. And I was interviewing, I was ready to graduate and I was interviewing at different companies.
And I was getting, I was absolutely positively sure I was going to get this job in public relations that I went and I told my co workers Oh, yeah, I’m gonna get this call on Monday. And they said it was down to two candidates, and they really, really liked me. blabbity blah. Monday came and went, no call Tuesday, I found out I didn’t get it. And I had to eat crow back back with my co workers. So the big learning I had was don’t count your job chickens before they hatch.
Andrew Deutsch 13:20
Nothing, nothing worse than then there’s Mike. There’s my job, chickens. Oh, the cows are in Collin County
Pete Alexander 13:28
coming out to
Andrew Deutsch 13:30
I forgot they were here today. I think someone left the barn open.
13:34
Thanks, Pete. You bet.
13:36
And we’re on to Ron Higgs.
Ron Higgs 13:38
Hi, guys, Ron Higgs. I’m here in Seattle. As most of you know, I am searching for my next opportunity. But you know, I may make some changes as far as that goes. But let’s say operations, and looking for a position to where I can work with all the major operating functions of the business to move the company’s mission forward. biggest mistake, so I’m going to go back to my Navy days. And in the Navy, I actually decided to go to a resonant master’s degree program and get a master’s degree in systems engineering.
I was appalled that that would sort of you know, that was it, I probably wouldn’t get promoted if I did it. So I did it. They didn’t get promoted. And so it was the reason you’re not talking to Admiral Ron Higgs retired is because of that.
However, I learned a lot I got a master’s degree something on the Navy for free, you know, well, not for free. You know, I did spend we got shot out in a war. And, but I got that for free, something that I something that I take with me. And it also the biggest lesson that taught me was not to let anyone else define my sense of self worth. So that means that that title, you know, make an admiral make commander making whatever those ranks are right. The Navy doesn’t define myself worth it. Right. So hard lesson learned, you know, it ended my career kind of faster than I wanted it to. But ultimately, I would make the same decision again.
Andrew Deutsch 15:07
We still like yeah, bro.
15:10
I appreciate that.
Andrew Deutsch 15:12
Who is that? I guess Susan’s next?
15:15
Hello, Susan. Hi
Susan Ganz 15:16
everyone, greetings from New York I’m Susan ganz of dance strategic solutions, I work with the C suite on their key strategic initiatives, getting them on blocked or working with fast growing companies and putting in place some systems and structure as they go from the infancy stage to the adolescent stage, as I say, in terms of mistakes that I’ve made. A mistake that I made early on in my career was about when I was writing a report with some colleagues and and just became the message became unclear.
And our manager ripped the report apart. And it didn’t feel so good seeing all the red marks, so to speak, click in school. But what it taught me is to be crisp and clear with the messages and to be very mindful and intentional about what points you want to get across. And are you communicating your message effectively?
Andrew Deutsch 16:21
It’s good stuff. Thank you. Moving on to Sir Troy of niehaus.
16:28
Hello,
Troy Neihaus 16:29
how are you? Good to see everyone. I advise wealthy individuals and multi generational families and help to make money meaningful for my clients. I’m a former startup owner, I’ve led a worldwide software business, I was president of a high tech hardware company.
And because of these experiences that focus my practice working with business owners and senior corporate executives, and helping them to find out what they’re missing in their financial life. The biggest mistake I’ve made was sticking in transactional roles for too long. The value of my practice is it’s relationship based. And it took me too long to really realize that. So that’s where I am today and what I do and super important to me. So I’d say that was my biggest mistake.
Andrew Deutsch 17:18
Cool. Thank you, Troy. Thanks. Moving on to Ron, what’s going on with Craig?
17:23
Hey,
Andrew Cross 17:24
thanks for help. I’m not muted a lot. That’s awesome. My name is Ron Craig. And I am a copywriter and storyteller for me cybersecurity and technology industry. So I help companies kind of bridge the divide and communication between technical and non technical so that we can get the idea of, you know, security over to, you know, CEOs, board members, stakeholders who don’t actually understand anything to do with technical, the back end of what goes on in it and security, which is, you know, highly needed in this industry, in the world in general, just because it’s just too inundating and to stressing.
So that’s what I do. And I and I think, you know, in terms of what is the biggest mistake, I think the biggest mistake for me is probably not really getting into my own thing. Because I have my own company now.
And I’m just kind of working like everybody else, you know, having a job for for 20 years or so. And not really doing this in a timely fashion when I should have you know, I’ve never been somebody who did well working for others. I think I’ve always had the entrepreneur and kind of business mindset. So I always was at odds with everywhere I work so so yeah, so this is good. This is nice. It’s nice. I’m extremely busy. And so I have a lot to learn to get that a little bit more efficient. But other than that, yeah, it’s been good. It’s been fun and I’m excited to help people and and I think I’m doing well at that.
Andrew Deutsch 18:47
Great stuff, man. All right, I think I think Ron was the last from the audience. No. You’re muted Damon.
Damon Pistulka 19:00
Cory Hansen was but he must not be he’s on stage with us. So he’s not
Jacob Warren 19:05
Martinez back.
Damon Pistulka 19:07
Back. Awesome.
Andrew Cross 19:09
For some reason I lost.
Damon Pistulka 19:11
He was coming back. Let me see if I get Marty back up here.
Ira Bowman 19:14
I got up here. Marty. Marty, if you turn on your camera, he’ll be back up, brother. There you go.
19:22
Yeah, I’m on.
19:23
Can you hear me? Yep. Hey, can
19:25
you hear me?
19:26
Yes, yes. Okay.
19:27
Cool. Yeah,
Marty Vondrell 19:29
I was using my old EarPods. So fix that. Hey, so I run through us a little bit. So many us implementer. I help entrepreneurial business leadership teams get the most out of what they want from their business by using a simple set of practical tools that help them experience vision, traction and healthy. And once we get that with the leadership team, as goes the leadership team, so goes the rescue organization. So my mistake definitely comes clear to my mind is I’ve been Working in and doing this work for 10 years now in terms of developing leadership teams on my own. And with EOS, I was basically trying to write my book and put all my systems into place. And when I found
Greg Mischio 20:15
all that for me.
Marty Vondrell 20:17
Great, so there we go. Can you guys still hear me? Yeah,
Jacob Warren 20:22
I can hear you fine.
Marty Vondrell 20:23
Cuz I can hear Damon. Anyway,
20:27
we can all hear Dan’s
20:28
mistake, realizing,
Marty Vondrell 20:30
realizing that it’s out there. It was already out there. And I didn’t have to reinvent the wheel. So.
20:36
All right. Good stuff. Good.
Andrew Deutsch 20:38
Thank you so much. Thanks, Mike. We’ve got
Kon Apostolopolous 20:41
john. Morning. Good. Sorry for being late to the party. But I had to take care of a few things. But I couldn’t miss it considering the topic considering the friends. Since Andrew was talking here. I figured I gotta show up, man.
Andrew Deutsch 20:54
Oh, I gotta up my game. Did you hear what the question is?
Kon Apostolopolous 21:04
I did not. So I thought I was asked
Andrew Deutsch 21:06
- So first, your elevator speech about what you do. And then something early in your career that you made a mistake that made you makes you better at what you do now? Oh, okay.
Kon Apostolopolous 21:17
All right, good. What I do so I am the proud owner, and founder of fresh biz solutions. We are a talent management consulting firm. And in many in so many different ways we help our clients but primarily by providing tailored events, whether that’s a training workshop, a facilitated strategic planning session, or otherwise, we do that through executive coaching, working with the their senior level executives or their emerging leaders. And the third way is purely consulting on their human capital management systems and making sure that every dollar that they invest in their people is $1. That’s targeted and well spent. Great. Well, that in a nutshell, is kind of what we do.
As far as my lesson. There’s an interesting one that I use in my classes as well. I was working in corporate America for a fortune 100 company. And my boss had asked me to prepare some key slides and information for her presentation to the executive leadership team. And she had asked me to deliver it by a certain day. She said, basically get it to me by Thursday, let’s say. So I was working on things and being the young executive that I was at the time, I wanted to do the best job I could to impress the boss, especially since she was going to be in front of the big wigs.
Well, I kept working on it, keep working on it, trying to perfect it trying to make it better. And her five o’clock came and went on the East Coast, I justified it to myself, I said, you know, no, she probably meant into business my day. So I kept working, kept working, kept working, my five o’clock came and went. And then I started playing the justification game, that it was purely a calendar thing. By Thursday, Thursday is not over yet. I’ve got more work to do here. Long story short, I delivered it sometime in the middle of the night.
She obviously had a meeting first thing in the morning. And after her meeting, I was eagerly awaiting her feedback. And I got it got her feedback. And it was she was very kind and patient, probably more than I would have been. And basically said, Look, you put me in a situation where I had to walk into a presentation that I was not prepared for. I want you to understand if nothing else, that sometimes your B product on time is more important to me than you’re a product late. And that is stuck with me. And always understanding the voice of the customer and understanding who you’re serving and what their priorities are not your priorities. It’s good stuff,
Andrew Deutsch 23:49
man. Thank you. Thanks. I think that’s that’s the last one I Cory put in the chat is. He said, taking my partner’s fastest growing business. biggest mistake was not taking equity and my clients. So I think now we’re just at the table right? So IRA Andrew Newman and our guest now
Ira Bowman 24:13
if you want if you want to go first only because my my mistake kind of mirrors a little bit with cons just made. Although mine My mistake was with a client. So I come from the print in graphics background, right? That’s that’s my background. So in Las Vegas, there was a huge tribal distribution company. So Native American distribution and one of the product lines, the major product lines was actually cigarettes.
So people will come from 100 miles in either directions to buy Native American cigarettes off of reservation because you don’t pay any tax and it’s cheaper. So here I have the opportunity to do all the printing nationwide for this company. That’s just true. Company represents several brands. So they said, what we want is we want samples of your art. And we want samples of your products like what you can print on. So I was printing on styrene, and window clings, and all kinds of stuff to cover the surfaces inside and out of these basically stores. So we’re all excited because this could be a multimillion dollar deal.
And for, for me, I was in my 20s, that would have been the biggest sale I ever made to that point. So go in there, I was really confident in my skills, I was really kind of cocky, just kind of like, not even, it wasn’t justified, let’s say like, you know what I mean, I was over, I was overconfident. So I go in with beautiful art, like I’m talking about it’s it’s got a sex appeal, it’s got good coloring it, it just pops off the page, everything pop. But the the thing that the mistake that I made is I didn’t study the client. I just went off what I thought look good. So I go into this presentation, and I and I deliver what I think is an amazing presentation.
And the very first words out of the lady’s mouth, if I had studied, I would have known I was presenting to a woman was that is everything we hate in art, not just talking about the quality of the work. So just talking about the like, we can never use it. And I’m like why she’s like that stereotype. That’s not even our tribe, those those markings mean actually means something. And it doesn’t mean what we want it to mean. I’m like, wow, I mean, I flubbed that up as bad as you could really. And what’s what’s funny kind of talked about the lady being gracious is the lady that I was talking to you ended up being gracious and still ordered from us anyways, we got a second chance.
But I’m sure that I lost some of the business I would have got. And, but but the lesson has stuck with me forever. You know, don’t don’t take anything for granted. When it comes to dealing with your clients, you really got to understand their point of view. And I and I talked about that with people. I teach that to people now. So it was helpful. Anyway, my elevator, my elevator pitch, I’m doing it backwards. Sorry, my elevator pitch, I ran bomb and digital media, we help small businesses and entrepreneurs to build their website traffic into increase their social media following. And then we also help entrepreneurs monetize their social media efforts. So that’s really what I did go.
Andrew Deutsch 27:25
Great, great example, knowing your customer is so important. So
Ira Bowman 27:29
that and really knowing them that not just you know what you think you take the time to really learn? Yep. Yeah.
Andrew Deutsch 27:35
Who’s not? Andrew, you want to go next?
27:39
Sure.
27:41
So um,
Andrew Cross 27:44
David and I co founded exit your way, exit your way, helps small medium business owners build empires to eight figure exits. So I’m still working on that. No, that works. Anyhow. Yeah. Thank you.
28:03
I love that.
28:04
That’s awesome.
Andrew Cross 28:07
So learning from your mistakes, um,
28:10
you know,
Andrew Cross 28:11
I think there’s so many. If you if you learn from your mistakes, I have a PhD. And then I apply that, but I think learning I think, really, it goes back to the earliest days with the wayward emails and how you communicate and the power of that, and it’s just, I think the biggest thing for me was learning from my mistakes was that that’s a good thing. You know, and mistakes are okay, you know, and, and not to, and in my younger years, I had to have the, you know, I felt I had to have the answers to everything. And you don’t, you don’t, you can ask the questions, and you can get help, and you don’t need to recreate the wheel and you can support and ask for help.
And I listen to everybody’s else’s experiences, too, when you’re working on a deadline, and it’s five o’clock and you start rationalizing I’ve been in that situation because because you know, you you had to bring on the answer. And five o’clock goes by 10 o’clock goes by, you know, you used to get older, and you get experienced, those are the mistakes you make, and you learn to say, hey, I need help here. And, and oftentimes, you know, that’s, that’s received well, from the clients, they don’t want to not hear from you. You know, if you don’t know yet, sir. So that’s great.
Andrew Deutsch 29:29
Amen. You’re muted. Well,
Damon Pistulka 29:36
I think I think, I think like Andrew, I’ve got a PhD and making mistakes. And Jeff Graham always says, You got to make a bunch of them to get good at anything. So I must be like an expert in many different things.
29:51
Their core competence.
Damon Pistulka 29:52
Yes, core competence. I’ve screwed up enough. So I’m good at a lot of stuff. But you know, I really think it goes back to early for me I’ve done the email thing where you accidentally hit Reply All and hit those kind of stuff or, or, you know, but the one that sticks out to me is really early in my career I had had one of my first management assignments where I was responsible for a company and and I didn’t get buy in a people I thought I was going to be able to go in and and explain to everybody what we needed to do and go do it right.
And I didn’t get the the the buying of the managers and the people that actually working in the factory and and really do it the way I should. And man it is took for ever to get anything done. And I had to go back and basically restart over and go to Arrowhead and say okay, yes, I’m stupid this is I don’t know what I’m doing. Let’s start over again. And then we we on converse of that turned it into a lot. But I think that that was that it just still sticks in my mind the importance of of at least explaining perspective and why you’re doing things to the people that you’re working with.
Because then they can understand. And without that understanding, they’re going to be always wondering why the hell they’re doing something? Or why you’re asking someone to do something. But and with Andrew Yeah, we help businesses grow. And when they’re ready to get out, we we can sell their business succeed your business wherever they do. Our work is primarily through increasing revenue and business efficiency. Using a lot of people like are on the call today to drive specific points of revenue, ecommerce, manufacturing, health care, some of those other businesses. So thanks a lot. I love love what’s going on. So
31:43
let’s
Andrew Deutsch 31:44
get going and have a little bit of fun. You know, it’s funny, though, in your example, and I’ve heard a theme through many people. At the end of the day, when you’re working in an organization you got to recognize when you want buy in those employees on your team or your customer? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they treat them that way. And man, things get a lot better. So anyhow, for those who have seen me goofing around with video and kind of having fun. Over time, I want to introduce you to a good friend of mine we recently met, and we actually have a joint venture between our two businesses to be fully transparent.
We’re not here really to talk about the product that the training program that that we’ve created to help people use video. What we want to talk about today is the power of video in zoom and presentations. And even if you’re putting on webinars, let me introduce David, he can kind of, first of all, let’s let’s turn him to Speaker mode. And then in speaker mode, he can kind of give us his elevator speech about let’s do video, his company and answer our question, and then we can get into the presentation.
Damon Pistulka 32:45
If you want go ahead and share your share your screen, David now I’ll move you around
Andrew Deutsch 32:51
for a second for us to get set up.
32:52
Yeah.
33:00
Oh, yeah.
David Maldow 33:03
All right. And can we just one second to set something up behind the scenes? Let me see. Actually, let me let me introduce myself. And then we’ll do a little setup when we get into the presentation. Yeah. But my name is David Maldow. And I’m kind of on my third career.
So the first two will only get a sentence because we don’t have a lot of time the first career I was an environmental attorney in New Orleans for 10 years, which is is an educational but I don’t do anything like that anymore. The second career was an analyst and writer covering the videoconferencing industry for at least 15 years. And it was a you know, was the business. It was the business room stuff, the the big expensive cameras in the meeting rooms and the board rooms. That’s what business video conferencing was until it became easy A few years ago, and I was jumped on that quickly.
As an analyst I was one of the first zoom experts before zoom was a big thing. But that and that’s still going on unlisted video. But that ties into the third career which is needed shifted over the last few years. It’s not the big boardroom video conferencing thing anymore. It’s It’s It’s us. It’s what we’re doing right now. So I’ve been using techniques and tricks that I’ve learned to make daily video, video conferencing, desktop, video conferencing, homework or video conferencing, more effective and impactful the webinars are giving and and Andrew soon showing you some of the tricks that our techniques can do. And I have a lot of fun and crazy tricks.
But we’re really trying to focus on on the business use a simple thing like putting a title bar, a name and title bar that really makes a difference in a meeting it gets someone’s attention, it wakes them up. Those sorts of things, just being able to customize where you put your logo as opposed to you and there are some solutions that are starting to implement some of these features but having full control, full control over the size of yourself in the window, full control over the background. Those things have been had been pretty exciting and the big chicken now I’m going to try Talking setup at the same time, so bear with me for a second.
35:03
Um,
David Maldow 35:04
and this is going to work, it’s going to be very cool. You guys
35:08
are going in there. He’s not part of the presentation.
David Maldow 35:10
Oh, you’re not supposed to be seeing that. Okay. All right, it didn’t didn’t quite what we wanted it to.
35:17
So you set up earlier you were capturing
David Maldow 35:21
behind the scenes.
Andrew Deutsch 35:22
I don’t want to sit on your lap. Dude, I were friends. But
David Maldow 35:26
I might have just crashed. Give me a minute to
35:29
get this back up here.
David Maldow 35:32
But I can, you can still hear me. So I’ll keep talking while I get the video stuff going. We haven’t used this before with remote. So it’s our first time using it with remote. But the big trick is being able to move people into your screen which I’m which I’ll be doing in in just a minute once I get this back up. And which is what I’m doing with with Andrew with that I’ve been producing. And this is something new that I’m not seeing a lot of a lot of it out there. But what I’m able to do is bring people onto my screen. So for example, over Christmas, I did a signing for Santa’s event. And I wasn’t even on the screen. I just produced it.
But I had a I had a Zoom Room and a signing Santa a deaf Santa was in zoom with a green screen. And the children were in zoom one by one. And we had an interpreter elf and I was able to bring them all in so that they were all on the screen with me. So you know, with the pandemic, these children couldn’t sit on Santa’s lap, but I had them virtually sitting on Santa’s lap. And please bear with me, the software’s are loading back up. You know, this is this is the classic demo nightmare. It always it always happens in the demo, but it’s just be a few more seconds, it’ll come back up.
36:52
We’ll be back up in a sec. Yeah.
David Maldow 36:57
So So I will. And it’ll look good. Once we get it going. I just want to give it a give it a minute. And other events and I can I could just describe it as as we’re waiting for it to come back up. Here we go.
37:14
And let’s
37:19
Okay, so
Andrew Deutsch 37:24
you gotta go back. I think Damon, here we go.
37:27
So, okay.
David Maldow 37:29
So I’m able to bring other people into my screen. And, you know, usually we do it, more rehearse, we’ll have Android higher quality and not have this name up there and whatnot. But the idea is I’m able to bring people onto my screen and even hide myself up I want so I can put anywhere I want to but right now I don’t want Andrew on my lap. This is a little too close.
So let’s, let’s go to this is a scene that I use with another partner of mine. For a weekly stream that we do on YouTube. I get on zoom with her. And and we’re able to have her high resolution next to me. And I pushed out live to YouTube and we answer questions we talk about the industries that she’s another AV video conferencing expert from, from old school. let’s get let’s get a little cozier. Here we go. So now, this effect is just amazing for me. And like I said, I can do millions of tricks, we could fly across the screen on dragons, we can, we can turn into cartoons we can.
But but for business, we want to keep it professional. So we have something like this usually even more professional, the backgrounds, you know, whatever suits the clients need, but it really feels. And this is the magic part for me, is when I first started doing this, I thought okay, I’m still sitting here in my office is just gonna feel like I’m sitting around my office giving a presentation. It really feels like I sit next to Andrew, you get into it. And it makes it so much more engaging and fun and interactive. And it becomes this doesn’t feel like a zoom meeting or a Microsoft Teams meeting or a remote meeting. It feels like hanging out with Andrew.
Andrew Deutsch 39:05
You know, it’s funny in rehearsal that we had, I guess we had better bandwidth because this was almost completely smooth. But nonetheless, you know, some some of the reasons that we use video in in our meetings is really about being more impactful, more interesting, and memorable. But what what are some of the downfalls if people aren’t careful with how they use this tech in a business meeting?
David Maldow 39:27
Well, I mean, you don’t want to go crazy and maybe I should have set up some of the some of the funny stuff. But I mean, I have all these silly crazy effects I can do. And you don’t want to turn people off. You don’t want people to think you’re unprofessional. Let me see if I have you know, I’m not even going to show you I want to keep it professional but I have silly stuff I have myself in in a Pac Man. And just my head is floating around in the Pac Man maze. All right, you know if I’m trying to get someone to take me seriously as a business analyst fortune 500 companies To set up their meeting rooms, I want them to see see business, Dave.
But then again, I’m doing an event of this is awesome. It’s a girl stem event. It’s like 500 girls that usually high school girls that usually meet up with all of these women who are working in STEM scientists, and get inspired and teach stories and whatever, because the pandemic, they can’t do it in person. So we’re doing it on zoom, using using this technique, and we are going to do so much fun stuff, and we are going to put the girls flying around on dragons and unicorns, when they answer a question, right? It’s going to be bananas. But that’s appropriate for that venue.
Andrew Deutsch 40:39
It By the way, someone people are asking us to pull up the chat, we can
David Maldow 40:43
certainly go speaking of good business views a business uses. Here, I’ve set this up, right, there we go. We’re engaging with our chat
Andrew Deutsch 40:56
now. So Greg, Greg is asking us, how’s the quality of the recorded video tried recording zoom videos, and the quality has been low? Oh,
David Maldow 41:07
yeah, that’s a great question. Zoom. Well, first of all, this is sort of a behind the behind the scenes thing. But with the pandemic zooms, usage has gone up like a million times, they went from 10 million daily users to 300 million daily users, something like that. So and they wanted to keep all the calls up.
And they did a really good job of it. And so one of the ways they did that, is they reduce the quality on some of the recordings. So you can if you talk to your zoom account, you can say, hey, I need to do high quality recordings. Can we set it up for that, and they can do it. But by default, I think some of the recordings have been lower. But with this technique, you get optimum recordings, because the software that I’m using to do all this, let’s get a little cozier again. There we go.
The software I’m using to do all this, I can record directly from it to my computer without going up and down in the internet. So whatever I’m seeing, which is me and pristine quality, and the best, whatever I’m getting from Andrew, that’s what that’s what I’ll be recording if I record it locally. Also, we can take this if I wanted to right now I can click and I’m not going to, I can click the start streaming button, and this would push to my YouTube channel, and would be the quality of whatever YouTube takes. And whatever my my connection is, and then it’s recorded, anything you stream on YouTube is recorded. So you just avoid using zoom for recording.
Andrew Deutsch 42:27
You know, one, one of the one of the other questions people always ask, it’s not just about using this tech in a zoom meeting, or emo, you actually because it is a production studio, guys who are doing for example, their morning, talking head video giving inspiration for the day, you can use this software to record those and directly publish it right out of it with no editing. So as you don’t have to be a film editor, you can go on and in the morning, have yourself have your background, pull up your name across the bottom, say your piece and transition right out and you’ve got a finished video ready to go for for your LinkedIn content.
David Maldow 43:05
Yeah, a lot of my videos I just record in in this, I have post editing software. And I’ll use that sometimes to throw on a little bumper at the end or if there’s something I want to edit out. But a lot of times I just get into this software, which is called OBS By the way, it’s free software, I get into this software, set myself up, click record, just do it all live. And it’s good to go.
Andrew Deutsch 43:27
You know, for those who who are curious, I try had asked in the chat where where he could learn how to use this, I put the link in there, we develop this course you can download this software for free, get me off your lap, weirdo, go here, there we go. You see the
43:43
chat?
Andrew Deutsch 43:44
Yeah, if you can download the software for free, you can go out and watch 20 or 30 different YouTube videos from different people to teach you bits and pieces of it. What we did is we combined a course so that a person can in less than an hour and a half go from zero to I’m ready to conduct business meetings, do a PowerPoint presentation, all of that kind of stuff.
So one of the things that that’s critical in terms of the con side of things, and we were talking about it at the tables before the meeting is Yeah, when I’m around friends goofing around making bat wings behind me having cows walk through all well and good. But if you’re doing business meetings and you’re going beyond into that crazy stuff, you really have to know your audience, which we just talked about before. If you don’t know who your customer is, who your audience is, limit limit the silliness,
David Maldow 44:35
you know, like you can you can get away with having, you know, having having the kittens in the corner, but you might know if and if, if it’s the right audience, you might want to close a close up on them once in a while and say, Hey, kittens, what do you think about this and make a thing out of it? Or if it’s not the right audience, you might, you might not want the kittens there at all, where you might want to leave them there. We’re not saying anything about them. It really is. There’s all sorts of levels
Andrew Deutsch 44:59
there One of the other applications that that that we use for my company is what I call the no pitch pitch. So somebody, I want to get to and isn’t willing to give me an appointment, I’ll record the presentation that I was going to give to that person as a generic presentation, and then have somebody of influence get them to watch it on a hidden place in YouTube.
And they get the info without the sales guy in the room, waiting for a close, and nine out of 10 times it ends up turning into a meeting. Because the purpose of the no pitch pitch is not to sell your product, it’s to sell the meeting. And with this, it gives people who don’t have the video video chops to know how to go in and download and use high tech editing software to edit your videos to be able to, to create it and do it that way.
David Maldow 45:50
Kevin, the course does have if you click on that link, there’s it scroll to the bottom, there’s a syllabus, a short description of all the lessons in the course, there’s 10 lessons in the major section of the course. And there’s one bonus lesson. And we’re working now to add others it and if someone gets it now they’ll have access to anything that we add to it. But if you go to the link that Andrew posted and just scroll down, you’ll see a full explanation of all the all the lessons in the course.
46:15
Yeah.
Andrew Deutsch 46:16
And the other interesting thing that David and I came up with, which is part of an experiment, is we’re growing the course, trying to use this video process that we’re working with, as a vehicle to also build a strong model for why affiliate marketing can be powerful. The question we had at hand was, how do we do this bring it to market without feeding the Google beast. And without feeding LinkedIn, in terms of having to put ads and having to put ads on Facebook. So what we’ve done is we’ve built a website for the training.
First of all, all the videos are put away somewhere posted in a manner that that they can’t be downloaded and copied and cheated. But we also built an affiliate program. So typically, when I would give a presentation, someone go, oh my god, How’d you do that? I give them a link to the course. And then they can decide to study or otherwise, with people who take the course and really are impactful.
They have the ability to give that link that we give them uniquely as an affiliate after they give a presentation and have people and typically if five people love your course, your presentation enough, and click on the link and join the product, your course ends up being free because we we pay commissions to the affiliates. And the reason that we’re doing that is to build this model that through affiliate marketing, you can grow a business and also become podcast sponsorships. So which is which is a different topic for a different day. But most people who have podcasts, they don’t really feel like they’ve become a real podcaster until they have a sponsor.
Well, if you have a product that works within this affiliate model, you can sponsor podcasts with no money upfront. You they do an ad for you, they drive people to your website, if they’re able to get people to buy from you you pay your affiliate commissions, which pays for your sponsorship. So it’s just something that we’re working on going going forward with, with what we’re doing. And and the reality is, at the end of the day, it’s just really darn cool. When when you realize I’m 1500 miles away from David, and we’re able to conduct a webinar together. Yeah.
David Maldow 48:27
I’m wanting to show off more of the fun tricks. I want to keep this professional I’m really I’m really, you know,
Andrew Deutsch 48:31
we had three or four requests for silly stuff in the in the chat,
David Maldow 48:34
I think. And I didn’t I didn’t rehearse it because I’m gonna crash it again. Because you know what, when I when we’re doing a real thing, we lock it down. This was kind of spur of the moment just friends so so we’re embarrassed by the technical difficulties, but I think you get the idea. Let’s see if the
48:52
see if this was working.
48:53
Here we go.
David Maldow 48:54
I don’t have the audio connected, but I’ve always wanted to be since I was a kid, right. It’s such a fun thing to do. I think I think kind of you can kind of see me I’ll put in putting myself in Time Square with Weezer for some reason. Oh, yeah, we have, you know, silly transitions that we would never use in business meetings as opposed to the simple fade. I’d have to stand up in size myself correctly. I’m kind of stuck in the dragon but
49:29
yeah.
David Maldow 49:32
It’s like this one. And again, you need to know your audience.
Andrew Deutsch 49:39
So you’re not going out for pitching for financing for a $4 million deal writing a dragon.
David Maldow 49:43
Yeah, that wouldn’t be right. That wouldn’t be right but for just just for showing, you know what can be done.
49:53
I think that’s good.
David Maldow 49:58
And it goes on and on and on. See that that’s The thing is, you know, Andrew was saying before, hey, this is free, anyone can do it. And it’s true but to and it’s hard for me to say cuz I don’t want to it sounds, you know, patting on the back. But the fact is I spent four or five years obsessing about this software, it was my hobby. In my day job was let’s do video talking to zoom in Microsoft and Logitech about, you know, business cameras. But I have a hobby stream on Twitch the website with all the kids. And I really obsessed about the software, I just, I just nerd it out on them a nerdy guy and, and I spent a lot of time learning it for you.
It’s not meant it’s not meant for this, to be honest, it was designed to just it’s not, it’s an open source tool. It’s not meant to be easy to use, we made it easy to use, it’s not easy to use. But with our course it’s easy to use, because we took the time to take out all the parts of it, that you don’t have to worry about that confuse you that confused me and say, This is what you need to do to do the things you want to do to put your lower third behind you, or lower third is the title bar.
But your title bar below, you get your backgrounds below, you get your PowerPoint behind you, if you want to present a much more effective way of presenting a video you want to show, put it behind you put yourself wherever you want on the screen. Those things, you can learn those tricks, if you if you watch a ton of YouTube videos, among all the other stuff that you don’t need to learn, but we kind of just filtered it down for you.
Andrew Deutsch 51:30
Yep, the most common way that I use it in my daily work, is what he just described. So I’ll come on the screen that looks normal. And I’ll shrink myself down to the corner, bring up a PowerPoint run through the presentation. But what it allows me to do when somebody asks a question is to grow back like a big boy in the screen. And, and be able to address and, and be in the room, even when I’m not physically there. So that I don’t lose people, as we joked about before. We don’t create zoom zombies, those people that just sort of fall asleep when you share your screen.
David Maldow 52:05
And you can come up with things that are you may not work for everyone may may add more impact to your meetings. And, you know, it’s so it’s so customizable, that it’s not just like, okay, here it is how you use it. Like some people like to whiteboard, some people like to write on a whiteboard, when they’re meeting with their teams. And and there are some tools that are really hard to use that can put that in front of you with this you can get excuse my handwriting.
And I’m actually drawing this as I’m doing it, it’s a little one of the many tricks that we can do, and a little more impact to your meetings. Now, hopefully, better handwriting and you know, using with the tablet, and I think a team leader could really get some stuff done this way. But again, it’s just it’s not like, okay, so So you have your title bar, you have your background, and you have the writing of it. It’s an endless list. It’s whatever your imagination is, is really it’s pretty magical.
Andrew Deutsch 53:07
Yep. And, and whether you’re a creative or not it, it’s certainly certainly can can add to what you’re doing. And of course, we’re always here to help to make it even more impactful for your clients.
53:18
So anyhow, we
Andrew Deutsch 53:19
got to unshare the screen to wrap up. And there’s the last five minutes, I think we can wrap up the event.
53:28
Let me turn
Andrew Deutsch 53:30
turn my screen back on.
53:34
There we go.
Ira Bowman 53:36
So I know from previous meetings, that anybody can learn how to do this, because you had is a 99 year old person, right?
Andrew Deutsch 53:45
Yeah, at 82 was the most that we got. We got to train when and we we literally IRA, rather than play the game, we sent him a link and said go on and learn it. And Call me when you can get on a zoom meeting. Yeah,
Ira Bowman 54:01
yeah. I love it. I absolutely love it. Look, I make videos professionally, right. So I’m in all that fancy software. But I’m gonna tell you that the way you guys are using OBS, and I run OBS for my church three times a week. So I’m very familiar with OBS software. I don’t do anything in OBS. It’s anything like this. And I am going to take the course, for any of you out there who are saying, hey, maybe I have enough video experience.
Probably don’t make more videos, and I just honestly I make a lot of videos, I publish a video every single day. Right? So these are these are things that can help us all in 150 bucks. They I just looked at the price. So they’re giving you a $50 discount if you click on that link. So save the money. And then like Andrew said, just start using it and show people when they say How the hell did you do that? Send them the link and get get your money back later. Right. Yeah.
Andrew Deutsch 54:55
Thank you so much. I you know one of the funny things you’re kidding around in meetings, someone said We needed to keep this PG but I decided to wrap this up, I’m just gonna move on. So, hope you guys don’t mind being moved.
55:08
I love it, bro.
Ira Bowman 55:10
It’s a lot of fun and humor humor, as long as it’s tasteful like that. So you’re in a room with serious people like icebreaker for the beginning or the end. You’re not doing it during your presentation, but just something like that in the beginning, or even the kittens to borrow from your own presentation that you just did. I noticed those kittens right away. And you didn’t say anything about but it was kind of cute. But, man, if you if you’re
David Maldow 55:34
like a superstar,
Michael Gidlewski 55:36
I should be standing up. But you get the idea.
55:40
Really superstar,
Ira Bowman 55:41
you got a meeting that’s starting with 10 people and maybe eight of them we’ve never met before, but I come in like that. I’m like, How the hell is he doing that? That’s cool. You know what I mean? There’s a lot it says a lot. It speaks volumes about you, if you can do stuff like that.
55:54
Yeah, I really do think I have good idea.
Andrew Cross 56:01
Now, I think it’s excellent. You know, and I don’t think, David, I think you’re being too cautious on being too professional.
56:08
You know,
Andrew Cross 56:08
I may mean, this kind of stuff. I mean, that’s all I think I think all of us is Fred’s here have in common is that we can break up that, you know, he just can’t take it. So seriously, you know, and that’s a great way to get in
56:23
contact with
Andrew Cross 56:25
connection with with your clients and your employees and everybody else. Again, one
Ira Bowman 56:31
thing just to clarify a green screen to me. Okay,
Andrew Deutsch 56:36
so that’s a green screen makes it better
David Maldow 56:39
by doing more with a green screen.
56:40
Yeah,
Andrew Deutsch 56:41
what you can do? Let me do it really quick. So I’ve got my green screen on, I’m going to turn it off. And then I’m going to switch myself to Oops, wrong way. So this is, although I don’t have it boxed in perfectly. This is what you you can your background becomes the square, sort of like, see if this will show up? Because it’s Yep. Let me turn the green screen background. So you can see this. So when you’re when you’re presenting you’re you’re sort of in the box. When when your green screen isn’t, isn’t there, you know, pulling you together into into that that little space? But of course, you know, I can get out
57:17
of the box if I want
Ira Bowman 57:18
- And you can you can crop that. Like if you don’t have you can crop it. So the box isn’t so big. Is that right? Yeah.
Andrew Deutsch 57:28
It’s just a cropped a cropped image of me.
Ira Bowman 57:31
Because you’re just using separate cameras, I’m guessing is the idea, right? Just
David Maldow 57:35
like no I can, I can put myself in a corner. And so my background could still be my PowerPoint, obviously, anything behind me will be blocked. But unlike a traditional screenshare, I have the power to put myself wherever I want. I usually can’t put yourself at the top. But stuff at the bottom make myself a little bigger, a little smaller, maybe just depending on what your PowerPoint and you can build your PowerPoint around this. So
57:58
yeah,
David Maldow 57:58
it’s more fun with the green screen. But it’s totally effective. You could do a lot without any you could put things in front of you. Without a green screen, you can put the lower the lower third title bar thing still works without a green screen anything in front of you.
Ira Bowman 58:11
Well, this is gonna come up a lot if you’re trying to build on the screen with you. Right. So yeah, they’re probably not sitting in front of a green screen, because I didn’t know you could do all this. So yep, I think that’s where it would be most.
58:22
I love it.
Ira Bowman 58:24
You guys did an amazing job.
58:25
Thank you. Yeah, I think
Damon Pistulka 58:28
a lot of fun for the presentation. Yeah, for presentations. It’s, it’s phenomenal. Because just like David is now where you can be in front of your presentation. Andrew, you’ve done this before. And really I think that the impact of if you’re doing a presentation and and someone starts asking questions, you can go back as larger. And then as that question goes, you get smaller and continue on the presentation. Go back up larger when the questions come in, there’s not an interaction of a voice behind, you know, slide deck, you’re really looking at him and doing the having the conversation. So go get
Ira Bowman 59:01
it take off, but thank you so alright, our thanks a lot.
Andrew Deutsch 59:05
We’re wrapping up where we hit it right on the mark. One minute.
59:10
This is awesome.
Damon Pistulka 59:12
Yeah, thanks a lot, guys. I’m gonna I’m gonna let Andrew Krause is going to take us away today. And for those people on LinkedIn live, we’re gonna shut down there as well. So Andrew,
59:21
yeah. Can you hear me?
59:25
Yes, no, it’s just awesome.
Andrew Cross 59:27
This is great stuff. Can’t wait to take the program. It’s it does this. These are just great tools. If you know, especially these times to when we’re doing so much of this video connection. It makes it a lot more real. But thanks so much for sticking around. If you’re in remote, not on LinkedIn, but we’ll go back to the tables and do some more networking. So we’ll hang around for a little bit as usual.
59:50
And
Andrew Cross 59:53
looking forward to seeing you all next week. Same time, same place. Yeah,
Damon Pistulka 59:57
next week is our monthly networking event. And then I don’t know what’s coming after that, but we got a lot of good speakers. We are looking for a guest host for April. We’ve got March we’ve got Oh, I’m drawing a blank. We got a great host for March. I know that. But we’re looking for one for April. So
1:00:18
we’ll do the first the first.
Andrew Deutsch 1:00:22
I had a great time. Thank you,
1:00:24
David. Oh, awesome. Thanks a lot.
Damon Pistulka 1:00:27
Thanks. Going back to the tables now. Have a good time.
1:00:32
Boom.
1:00:33
Boom.