The Membership Machine Show With Special Guest Kirk Nugent Live Stream & Video Conference Expert.
Ready for exponential growth in your membership community? Look no further than our comprehensive discussion on using live streaming as a promotional tool.
Our guest, “Kirk Nugent,” reveals proven strategies that will supercharge member engagement and skyrocket sign-ups. Learn from industry experts who have mastered leveraging live streams for maximum impact. Don’t let opportunities slip away – watch now and transform your membership community’s success.
This Week Show’s Sponsors
Zoho: Zoho.com
Sensei LMS: Sensei LMS
LifterLMS: LifterLMS
LaunchFlows: LaunchFlows
The Show’s Transcript
[00:00:16.790] – Jonathan Denwood
Welcome back, folks, to The Membership Machine show. This is Episode 43. I haven’t got my co-host with me, Spencer Forum. He’s off to a conference over the weekend. But we have got a special guest. We’ve got Kirk Nugent. I probably butchered his surname. I’m terrible for that. I’ve got to be honest. But Kirk is somebody I’ve been hiring for the past couple of years. He’s a real expert on live-streaming video and how you can utilize it to build your membership website or any other type of business online. That’s right. Kirk, would you like to do a quick introduction to the listeners and viewers?
[00:01:02.210] – Kirk Nugent
Sure. First of all, I just want to say a word of thanks to you your co-host, and the team for bringing me on the show today. Excited to be here and to chat with your audience a little bit. As he mentioned, my name is Kirk Nugent. I also go by the geek speaker preacher. I believe…
[00:01:20.410] – Jonathan Denwood
I love it. I love it.
[00:01:23.030] – Kirk Nugent
I believe that your live stream is your digital storefront. I’m just going to repeat that one more time. Your livestream is your digital storefront because there’s no greater way for people to experience your greatness than for them to see you do it live. When they see you do it live, they don’t need the taste test, they don’t need the ad campaign, they’re ready to buy whatever it is you have to offer. I also believe that your live stream can not only help you grow an audience, but it can help you to establish yourself as a thought leader in a given space. But the last one is the one where we’re going to really focus on today in today’s conversation, is that it can help you to create steady streams of referral-based opportunities. Now, I say opportunities because it is what you make of it. It is your systems on the back end, however, you have set your things up to funnel people into the different offers and things that you have. And if you are looking to grow a membership, those opportunities can be created by going live. I’m definitely excited about coming through today and hanging out with you guys and chatting it up, but also learning a little bit more about you guys as well.
[00:02:27.680] – Jonathan Denwood
Thanks for that. Before we go into the meat and potatoes of this great interview, I’ve got a couple of messages from our major sponsors. We will be back in a few moments, folks.
[00:02:38.400] – Kirk Nugent
Are you looking for ways to make it?
[00:02:40.350] – Jonathan Denwood
Is your content more engaging?
[00:02:42.240] – Kirk Nugent
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[00:03:03.720] – Jonathan Denwood
All one word, when checking.
[00:03:05.140] – Kirk Nugent
Out and gives Sense a try today.
[00:03:11.220] – Jonathan Denwood
Hi there, folks. It’s Jonathan, Thenwood here, and I want to tell you about one of our great sponsors, and that’s zolo. Com. If you got a WordPress website, a membership website, and you’re looking to link it with a great financial management package, Zolo can provide this solution, so all your bookkeeping needs are done through Zolo. If you need new inbox email functionality and you don’t want to pay the high charges that Google will charge you, Zolo offers a great email inbox platform. They’ve got over 50 apps and services that all integrate fantastic with WordPress at great value levels, and they almost always offer a fully functioning, free product as well. It’s just amazing value. Also, if you’re a WordPress developer or agency owner, Zolo are looking for great partnerships in the WordPress space. To get all this information, all you have to do, folks, is just go over to zolo. Com, and they have the products that you’re looking for. Thank you so much, Zolo, for supporting WP Tonic and the Machine Membership Shows. It’s much appreciated. We’re coming back, folks. I just wanted to say that we got some great special offers from the sponsors.
[00:04:48.460] – Jonathan Denwood
Plus, we got a curated list of the best WordPress plug-ins. If you’re looking to build your membership website on WordPress, and you should be, I think you should be, to get all these goodies, all you have to do is go over to wp-tonic. Com/deals, and you find the special offers and this curated list. You don’t have to troll the internet to find the best solutions for your membership website. What more could you ask for? Probably a lot more, but that’s all you’re going to get from that particular page. Let’s go straight into it. Yeah. What do you see some of the difficulties in 2023 to start using live video as a driver, connected as a key call for driving possible students and membership to your membership website? What do you think are some one or two key things that people got to really understand so they can utilize this tool more effectively?
[00:05:56.280] – Kirk Nugent
There’s a same thing for membership, anything membership related, you are providing a service, you’re providing a solution, you’re providing a community. And all of those things have to be… They utilize the same strategy. That’s the term I want to use. So for your membership, you already know who your perfect person is, you know who your avatar is, you know who you are speaking to, and what problem you solve for that particular person. When you are launching out into live video, as you mentioned, key tool for driving students to your membership sites, you want to make sure that you implement the same strategies. You want to make sure you have that same person in your head as you’re speaking. Maybe you go live and you are giving out these little quick tips, tricks, best practices, very short and sweet, but they are meant to, I guess, stir up some questions. The more questions you can get, the more interactive your live will be, and the more people will recognize that there is more here. Because there’s more here, I’m not going to be able to get access to it here on the live stream. I’m not going to be able to get access to it here on social media.
[00:07:07.080] – Kirk Nugent
That is what membership is for. And so if you craft that, as I’d like to say, customer story, if you craft that journey for them, making sure that all those pieces are in place, that same strategy you’re using for your membership, you’re using it for online. But yeah, I believe that I actually would even go as far as to say having online presence, whether it be live or even just social content, is a critical tool in terms of creating that funnel and bringing people into your ecosystem. Absolutely.
[00:07:41.850] – Jonathan Denwood
All right. I think oneIs there one key thing that people got to understand that stops and form is a major barrier that they over… I’m trying to explain this in a better way, I apologize. Is there… Is there one thing that stops a lot of people from trying to use live video that they overestimate the difficulty?
[00:08:11.470] – Kirk Nugent
Hopefully, I’m- Yeah, there is. I mean, one of the major things that people constantly say to me is like, I’m just not good on camera or I have imposter syndrome or I suffer from, I’m camera shy or stage fried or whatever you want to call it. You have so many different terms for the same thing. One of the things I like to say to folks is it’s live video. They’re like, Yeah, that’s the part I don’t like. It’s live. I’m like, Yeah, okay. When you’re talking to me right now, are you alive? They say yes, because clearly they’re not dead. I’m saying I think we overthink live video because we have conversations with people every day. You go to Starbucks, you have a conversation with the person making your coffee. You go to a restaurant, you have a conversation with a waiter. You go to the grocery store, you have a conversation with the person because you’re looking for the bread aisle. You have conversations all the time. Those conversations, maybe even at a networking meeting, maybe at a social event, you sit down, you meet new people, those conversations, we’re simply trying to take that same concept here to the live space.
[00:09:21.510] – Kirk Nugent
We’re allowing your audience to have that two-way conversation with you if you’re solo or like myself and Jonathan are right now, we’re able to have this conversation together on camera together like this. That’s one of the major things I would say is something that people overthink. I don’t want to belittle it because I know that for some people it’s a very real issue. But I do believe that, well, let me say, from my experience, I have taken so many people through the process of learning how to go live, and they absolutely enjoy it once they do it for the first or second time. And so getting over that hurdle sometimes can be just the major thing. But once you get over it, you recognize like, Oh, this is really not that bad, actually. This is actually pretty simple. And then the results, however, are exponential.
[00:10:14.830] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, the thing is I can’t listen to myself. I think you’ve got a lovely voice. You’re very polished and just love your voice. I can’t listen to myself. Itry to do this and I like chatting with people. I just say it as I like how you explained it. I have a reputation sometimes of asking blunt questions and some people don’t like that, but I don’t want it to be a total interrogation. I just see us having a chat. But I can’t listen to myself. I think I’ve got an awful voice. I’m sorry. On to the next question. What are some of the major platforms for doing live video? Now, we’re using StreamYard at the present moment to do this recording. I imagine you want to talk about StreamYard, but maybe I think myself, I don’t know, I think there’s about four to six. Maybe you can go through the top three or four.
[00:11:21.810] – Kirk Nugent
Yeah, we’ll go through. Absolutely. Let me explain how to break them down first. You have… For any of the live streaming methodologies out there, you have tier one, you have tier two, you have tier three, and you have tier four. I’m not going to bother with tier four because that’s really high end video production, NFL-type stuff. The major sporting events, that’s that tier four. Nobody’s doing that at home. Tier one is just your mobile phone. There’s nothing between you and the streaming platform. If you want to stream on Facebook, you get your phone out, you stream. You want to stream on YouTube, you get your phone out as long as you have the requisite amount of subscribers, you can stream. Keep that in mind. Tier two, however, is web-based. You open up your web browser, whether it’s Safari, Chrome, Mozzillah, Firebox, whatever it might be, you open up your browser, you log into your streaming platform. In this case, just as Jonathan mentioned, we’re using StreamYard. You log into the browser, you connect your camera, your microphone, and you’re able to stream. That’s tier two. There are many in that tier two streaming platform category.
[00:12:26.070] – Kirk Nugent
I would say tier two is actually easier than tier one. It’s easier than using your phone. Yes, you heard me right. It’s actually easier. Streamyard, Restream, BeLive, Mellonapp, EVMucks. There’s so many tier two web-based streaming platforms that are out there. But of all of them, I would say StreamYard is probably the easiest, the lowest bar for entry, in my opinion, you can go live with the free account in less than 10 minutes. Literally, you can create the account, add your destinations, create a studio, and go live in less than 10 minutes. They make it that simple and easy. Streamyard is definitely one that I highly recommend and one that you should check out if you’re getting started in this space. But there are those who are like, Okay, I’ve used these tier two for a while and there are some limitations because there are. I would like to have a little bit more freedom in terms of my design and my flow and my functionality as I stream. If that is you, then there is tier three. Tier 3. Tier 3 is an installed application. This is not web-based anymore. This is like Ecamm. That’s what I like to use.
[00:13:31.580] – Kirk Nugent
But then you also have stuff like OBS and Wirecast and Vmix. These are all same streaming type applications. It’s just that they’re not in the browser. You install them on your computer and you would stream that way. As I mentioned, tier four is not one that we’re really going to get into, but it’s just really that simple. You can use your phone, you can use a browser-based streaming platform, or you can install one on your computer. Depending on what your functionality is, I would say getting started, you would want to start with something like a StreamYard.
[00:14:02.040] – Jonathan Denwood
Absolutely. I know it’s almost two years ago, I moved over to StreamYard. But before that, I was using Zoom for the interviews and I had a roundtable show, a weekly one. I wanted to do this show and I didn’t have the bandwidth. The roundtable show, I only do it monthly now because there’s only so much time I’ve got. But I used to use Zoom and I’ve noticed you didn’t mention Zoom as you were talking. Is there a particular reason why?
[00:14:39.930] – Kirk Nugent
Yeah, so Zoom is a really great meeting platform and they have added into Zoom some really useful recording abilities. One of the abilities that you’re probably referring to, Jonathan, is the fact that you can actually go live. You can actually turn on the streaming functionality in Zoom to stream to the different platforms, whether it be Facebook, YouTube. I think you can also stream to some of the other platforms as well, but those are probably the main ones. The reason why I didn’t mention it is because of the functionality of Zoom and Zoom’s core purpose. It’s a meeting platform. When I talk about streaming, when I’m talking about doing broadcast production, you want a scenario, you want a scene, an experience is really the term I’m looking for for your audience where they’re not seeing the mouse move around, or they’re not seeing this green box type of scenario. The way Zoom has it set up, it’s really for a meeting. You don’t have the ability to do a full production. What Jonathan is able to do would stream… What we’re in here is he’s able to play a video, he’s able to play background music, he’s able to bring guests on and off.
[00:15:50.750] – Kirk Nugent
People can sit in the back stage. What we’re in here is not the meeting space. This is actually the broadcast space. The audience, however, is on those other platforms and they’re able to watch from there. You’re able to provide them with a clean experience similar to what you would see from maybe even a TV station. Because of the production functionality that Zoom lacks, I just didn’t bother mentioning it. But yeah, that’s really the main reason.
[00:16:20.590] – Jonathan Denwood
Just a quick follow-through question. Sure. Obviously, it’s got a lot of baggage as well. One of the exciting things recently for me is Twitter or X now.
[00:16:34.080] – Kirk Nugent
X.
[00:16:34.470] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. Oh, my God. Bless his little heart. He said you could do live streaming there, can’t you? Are you very… You’ve got to have a Pro account, the Blue Tick account, whatever they’re calling it. I coughed up my $80 for the year because I straight away started not live streaming, but uploading my videos that I recorded that week to it. But I think you can do live video now with it as well, can’t you not?
[00:17:12.880] – Kirk Nugent
Yeah, even before they made the switch to X, you could definitely stream. That’s one of the destinations I have several clients that stream to Twitter as well. Absolutely.
[00:17:21.040] – Jonathan Denwood
I was quite excited about that because I’ve got a reasonably large following on Twitter, about 7,000-8,000 people.
[00:17:28.720] – Kirk Nugent
That’s awesome.
[00:17:29.650] – Jonathan Denwood
I’ve been doing that. Let’s go on. What are the key steps somebody needs to understand connected to improve… You’ve made a decision. You got over the imposter syndrome.
[00:17:52.110] – Kirk Nugent
That’s correct, yeah.
[00:17:53.240] – Jonathan Denwood
You’ve chosen your platform. I think you should start with StreamYard. Me too. I totally agree with you. You got over the initial steps and you got your platform. What are one or two things, let’s say you’re like two, three, four months in, what are one or two things that you can do to improve the experience for your audience?
[00:18:19.660] – Kirk Nugent
Absolutely. Yeah, you’re a couple of months in, I think that’s a great place. That’s a great question, Jonathan. I see a lot of.
[00:18:26.950] – Jonathan Denwood
People- I have the occasional one, but not that often that often, actually.
[00:18:30.830] – Kirk Nugent
But there’s something to be said for… Most people ask that question right at the outset, but I think you need to give yourself a couple of months to actually make sure you like it, make sure this is something you’re actually going to do long-haul before you start making an investment. Because what you’re talking about now is improving your sound, your light, and your video. Those are the main three components of live streaming, sound, light, video. I want to say that that’s not only the three main things, that’s in the order of importance. If you’re going to make that first investment, you want to make the investment in sound. People don’t care what you look like if they can’t hear you. So don’t bother to make the investment in a better camera or better lighting if you don’t have good sound. You want to make sure you make the investment in sound. Let me tell you, investing in sound doesn’t necessarily mean going out and buying a $2,000 mic. There is no $2,000 mic. Let me just say that to begin with. But the mic I’m on is 150 bucks. The point is you want to invest in your sound.
[00:19:25.380] – Kirk Nugent
You want to actually think about what do I sound like? Do I want to sound better? What I often walk, coach and clients through is putting aside maybe $200 to $300 and just saying, This is money I’m going to use to really start playing with some microphones. Buy one, test it out, send it back. Buy another, test it out, send it back. Make your notes. Find the mic that works for you. Everybody’s voice is different. I’ve listened to my voice on different mics, and, Jonathan, I know you said you can’t.
[00:19:52.680] – Jonathan Denwood
Listen to yourself.
[00:19:53.650] – Kirk Nugent
I can’t do it. But I’m telling you, I’m telling you, I challenge you. I challenge you to just listen to yourself on different microphones and just see what it sounds like. You never can tell. But I’ve come to, I’ve tested many, many, many mics and I found that this mic was the one that I really like. Even though I have more expensive mics, this mic, I can listen to myself on this mic. I like how I sound on this mic. But another investment in sound is that Jonathan and I both are wearing headphones. That is a major investment in your sound for your live stream. Because when you wear headphones, you’re not forcing your computer to remove the person’s sound. I can turn off echo cancelation, which is a major performance hog on a computer. Because I have that turned off, my computer can focus on other things. I can hear the person in my ears. They can hear me from the microphone, and no one else needs to hear what’s going on. I think that’s a major investment in sound. Everybody always asks me, Why do you put light second? Why not invest in light after you invest in video?
[00:20:54.500] – Kirk Nugent
Because any light improvements you make will make any camera better. I don’t care what camera you have, if your lighting is good, it’s going to look good. If you’ve ever gone to a wedding and you know everybody’s taking pictures at the wedding with their cell phones, and of course, you’ve got this photographer who has been paid a lot of money to take pictures as well. Then when you look at the pictures coming out afterwards in terms of the cell phone pictures and then the professionals pictures, there’s just a little bit of difference. The reason for that is because the photographer set up the light. The lighting is actually the difference maker. Once the photographer set up the shot, staged the shot, lit the shot, anybody could take a picture and it’s going to look good. That’s why I always say you got to invest in your lighting second. Then finally, after you’ve gotten your sound is right, your sound is right, then you may want to look into your video down the lineways. There might be months in between all of these different investments, but your first investment, you want to invest in sound. Maybe a couple of months later, you say, Okay, I’m ready to level up again.
[00:21:58.000] – Kirk Nugent
Let’s look at lighting. What’s my lighting look like? Maybe your investment in lighting isn’t even purchasing a light. Maybe it’s buying blackout curtains like what I have behind me because I’ve got a big, huge bank of windows here. But if I have those lights in my shot, it’s going to completely mess up what I look like on camera. So your lighting investment comes next. And then lastly, your video. Anybody that’s in that thing, just as you said, Jonathan, a couple of months in, they’re like, Okay, now I’m ready to level up. Those are the three things I would tell you to do.
[00:22:27.430] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think you’re you’re totally spot on where you would be because you’re the expert, but I’m not the expert. I’m just a DIY guy.
[00:22:38.930] – Kirk Nugent
A DIY is good. I like DIY.
[00:22:41.940] – Jonathan Denwood
I’ve been using this for eight years, this mic. It’s an auto technic. It’s a UBS. Do you think you can get away with just utilizing a USB mic? Yeah, absolutely. You don’t need the… Because when I first got started in podcasting, I had a co-host and he was from the audio engineering, quasi-background. I used to call him the sound Nazi because he used to spend a lot of five hours on a podcast making sure that the.
[00:23:18.650] – Kirk Nugent
Sound.
[00:23:19.430] – Jonathan Denwood
Every hum, butt was removed. I said, We don’t have to go that far. So I’ve been using this audio technic. It cost me about 90 bucks. Do you think that’s fine.
[00:23:38.040] – Kirk Nugent
To start off with? Absolutely. I’m a big fan of starting off with whatever you have. There are so many people who have mics laying around the house. They’re not using. Most of them are USB mics, and I’m fine with that. I have some clients who don’t want to do an XLR mic, which is what I’m using. But that’s okay. You don’t have to have an XLR because XLR mics require additional components to be able to bring that into your live.
[00:24:03.770] – Jonathan Denwood
It needs a deck.
[00:24:04.410] – Kirk Nugent
It needs external decks or something. Yes, that’s exactly right. Usb audio interface. You’re still going to have to convert that XLR to USB anyway. The mic I have actually has both. This is the MV7X, but the MV7, it’s its cousin, it looks exactly the same. It’s just that it has that dial on the front. But the Shore MV7 has both XLR and USB. But even that may be overkill for somebody. Usb mics sound great. They’ve come a long way. The pandemic has done us all a favor in that a lot of great audio is so much more accessible. It used to be there’s huge disparity between XLR mics and USB.
[00:24:42.830] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, people want to… There’s a lot of people suggesting people use Shore. I think it’s Shore, isn’t it? They’re $300 a pop on there. Are you sure?
[00:24:51.800] – Kirk Nugent
Yeah, but this is a Shore mic and this is 150. But it’s just depending on what you want to do. Like I said, there’s just so much opportunity now. There’s so many great mics. There are little known brands that are out there that are creating some really great sounding mics. And again, it’s just a matter of going through and testing and seeing what do you like, what don’t you like, and how can you really get into that space?
[00:25:18.580] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, and I think it was great that you… Because I understood why you started with audio because I think people… Ionus, the content is interesting, they’re put up with bad lighting, bad view. Yes, they will. All sorts of things, but they will not put up with bad audio.
[00:25:35.590] – Kirk Nugent
That’s so true.
[00:25:37.360] – Jonathan Denwood
Now, I am surrounded with lights. I literally got a lightthere, I’ve got a light there and I got a whacking big light here. I’ve got a natural light, but it’s got a blind. I’ve literally got lights everywhere.
[00:25:55.780] – Kirk Nugent
I’m going to flip mine so you can see this is what it looks like.
[00:26:00.370] – Jonathan Denwood
For me. That’s what I’ve got. I’ve got one of those big lights.
[00:26:02.650] – Kirk Nugent
I’ve got this big, huge light with me and then the panel light to the side to fill it in.
[00:26:06.490] – Jonathan Denwood
I’ve got a similar setup, actually, but my lighting isn’t as good as you.
[00:26:11.500] – Kirk Nugent
Like that. Well, I mean, over time, like I said, I started off in a storage closet in our home here and I’ve just grown to the point where we are now. But I think you have to have that journey in order to truly appreciate where you arrive at. A lot of people who start off just say, Hey, let me just buy whatever you have. Well, you don’t know why I have what I have because I’ve bought them piece by piece over time for different projects, for different things, for different looks that I’ve been trying to build over time. I think you said it best. You invest in that sound because people really, really, that’s so critical. Then, of course, you want to invest in the lighting. I don’t really care what camera you have. You have good lighting, that camera is going to do better.
[00:26:58.200] – Jonathan Denwood
Now, when it comes to the lighting, when I was searching the internet as you do and watching your channel as well, you get all these recommendations. When you go on to Amazon or some of the other shopping channels, there’s just a enormous disparity when it comes to lighting kits, isn’t there? I chose ones that were in the medium price range. I think I spent… I bought a kit and then I bought another. I think I spent about 300-400 in total.
[00:27:38.960] – Kirk Nugent
That’s a great investment, I think, in lighting. Absolutely. I can’t remember what my key light cost at this point. It’s a Godox, SEL-60W, but I’ll look it up. But I think it was maybe two something. But yeah, I think 2-3 hundred dollars is a great investment. It’s not too heavy. It’s that if you start today, if you’re starting today and you give yourself four months to say, Okay, in four months time, I’m going to make an investment. In four months time, you say that you’ve been doing your live shows, and that gives you enough time to say, Do I like doing this? But the moment you start doing it, you start saving as well. I think if you save a hundred dollars a month, which a lot of people can do if they really try, skip Starbucks or McDonalds, but if you save a hundred.
[00:28:31.380] – Jonathan Denwood
Dollars a month- You do yourself a favor anyway.
[00:28:34.900] – Kirk Nugent
But yeah, you would have about $300 to four hundred dollars saved up and then you can get a mic. You do another three to four months and you’re still saving that to $100 and then you can buy your lighting. Then you go another three to four months and you can probably upgrade your webcam or whatever it is that you’re using.
[00:28:52.610] – Jonathan Denwood
For your camera. Let’s discuss that before we go for our middle break. Cameras. I started with a webcam and I still have got a webcam. I’ve got a as a backup.
[00:29:03.280] – Kirk Nugent
As a backup. It’s my behind the scenes camera.
[00:29:06.670] – Jonathan Denwood
For my just conference calls, I have it so I can flip it up. I’ve got a Logitech, they’re 4k. But when I was getting serious about this, I bought the camera that I’m using now, which is a Canon 50.
[00:29:26.840] – Kirk Nugent
Yeah, a 50. Good.
[00:29:28.470] – Jonathan Denwood
But then I had to buy a lens that always cost more than the camera because I tried to utilize a second-hand lens, a Canon lens, but then I forgot the lens I ended up, which was recommended by all the YouTube, and it was almost the price of the Canon to get this depth of field. Would you still think that was the right journey? You start with a webcam, but in the end, when you’ve saved a bit of money, you’ve got to go with something like the… I think it’s the Sony and the Canon that’s still pretty.
[00:30:04.910] – Kirk Nugent
Popular, aren’t they? Right. I’m a Canon. I was a Canon guy before. I’ve switched to Sony. But I’m going to tell you right now, what you just said, that is exactly the journey. That is exactly the journey. Like I said, you want to start with what you have, and most people have a camera on their laptop. If you’re using an iPhone and a MacBook or a Mac computer, you could actually use your phone as your webcam. You can use continuity camera, and that’s actually a really great camera. I always say that because I always want to make sure we completely eliminate excuses for people who are like, Well, I got to get this camera before I can go live. No, you actually don’t. You purchased a really expensive camera already in your phone. If you have a MacBook, then all you’re talking about doing is just turning on continuity camera, and you would be shocked at how great the quality is. You can start there. But you do want to have something dedicated if you plan on doing this long term. If you give yourself three months to get acclimated, after three months, you’re going to be like, I don’t want to use a webcam anymore.
[00:31:09.310] – Kirk Nugent
Maybe after six months, you might want to say, Hey, I don’t really want to invest. That’s a time where you really want to start looking at the marketplace and seeing what are some of the things that I can buy. I think you purchased a really great camera. The M50 is one that a lot of us got at the beginning of the pandemic, right around that time frame. The mark two has clean HDMI on it. You want to make sure.
[00:31:29.050] – Jonathan Denwood
Whatever- Yes, because I had to buy additional, because I’m using a Mac, I had to buy some additional software.
[00:31:34.820] – Kirk Nugent
In order to pull it off? Yes. Yeah, so it’s clean. That’s another major thing I always tell people. When you’re getting a DSLR camera, especially if you’re using it for streaming, you need clean HDMI and then you can get that.
[00:31:47.230] – Jonathan Denwood
Can you explain what you mean by that?
[00:31:49.150] – Kirk Nugent
Right. If you’re looking at the camera, everybody, most people know when you look at the back of the camera, you’re going to see your ISO, you’re going to see your white balance, you can see all these little things. But when you take a picture, of course, you get a clean picture. Well, if you’re going to use it as a webcam, all those things that you see on the back of the camera, when you plug it up to your computer, you’re going to see those things because you’re not actually taking a picture, you’re using it to show yourself live. You want to make sure that you get a camera that has the ability to give a clean HDMI out. I’m going to say it one more time because that’s all you got to do is you’ve got to Google the camera and put in with the camera clean HDMI out. Once the camera is… If you have the camera of your choice, if it has that, then you could start looking at some of the other options in terms of what lens is going to cost me and things like that. But the capture card, if I can just take a second, the capture card also is critical because you do need to be able to get that camera feed into your computer as a webcam.
[00:32:49.300] – Kirk Nugent
The capture card essentially does that. The capture card, you plug it into the computer and the computer sees it as a webcam, and then you plug your camera into the capture card. The combination of the two really gets you across the line. That’s what both Jonathan and I are using today.
[00:33:05.510] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m using a bit of software for the Mac called Carcade Pro Webcam. That’s what I’m used to.
[00:33:15.010] – Kirk Nugent
Okay.
[00:33:15.550] – Jonathan Denwood
Cool. Because there are some cameras that only… I think that this has gone away, but I think when I was looking a couple of years ago, there were some cameras that only allowed you to film for a certain amount of time. Time, right.
[00:33:28.840] – Kirk Nugent
They would switch off. They would turn off, right? Yeah, that 30-minute thing. Yeah, that would be terrible.
[00:33:33.670] – Jonathan Denwood
That was jobby, wasn’t it? I think we’re getting close to a break. I’ve got a couple more questions and we’re on the camera and then I’ve got some more questions. I think we’re going to go for our mid-break, folks. It’s been a fantastic discussion. Hopefully you got some value. I’ve got a couple more messages from sponsors. We will be back in a few moments, folks.
[00:33:55.740] – Kirk Nugent
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[00:34:33.170] – Kirk Nugent
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[00:34:45.520] – Kirk Nugent
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[00:34:46.590] – Jonathan Denwood
Lifter LMS is the most secure, stable, well-supported solution on the market. Go to LifterLMS. Com and save 20 % at checkout with coupon code, podcast 20. That’s podcast two zero. Enjoy the rest of your show. We’re coming back, folks. We’ve had a real dive. I’ve loved this conversation. Before we go into the second half, I just want to point out, if you’re looking to host your membership or community website, WordPress, and I think you should, why don’t you have a look at WPtonic? We make it easy to host your website, utilizing the power WordPress. We take away some of the pain and obstacles away from utilizing WordPress. You can have all the benefit of flexibility of design, ownership of your website and your membership website. When you actually grow your site, you don’t have to change platforms, which is extremely painful. Take my word for it. If that sounds interesting and it should, go over to WP Tonichave a look at what we got to offer and we love you to become part of the tribe. The other thing, should you go 4K? Because I’m using one of the lowest paid StreamYard and I don’t think with that level I can do 4K.
[00:36:20.530] – Jonathan Denwood
I think my camera would do it and that, but I just haven’t bothered. I think now YouTube will do it 4K because when I was looking at it about a year, whatever, I don’t think you could do it for YouTube. But what are the benefits? I would imagine you do it all 4K. I’ve got a business partner that’s also a professional video guy, and he does his video 4K for his professional clients. What are the benefits? Could you really see a really big difference if you’re not at 4k, do you think?
[00:37:05.200] – Kirk Nugent
If your main objective is live, live video, what you just said is exactly right. Youtube for a long while was the only one that was doing 4k, but I believe LinkedIn and Facebook have up theirs as well. I think they do 4k as well. How many people are actually watching in 4k? Probably not many. It’s totally up to you. I think 10.80. Is a standard right now. Maybe in another year or so, we’ll see 4k replace that. But right now, 1080p is probably the highest that you’ll find people watching it. 720p is still fine, especially for mobile, but 720p, when you make that thing, put it on a big screen, you’re going to see the distortion, you’re going to see some of the pixelation. That’s where we are with that. Now, I’ll also say this, Amazon doesn’t do anything above 720p, so keep that in mind. There are platforms that are still saying, We don’t even care. But they’re taking the bet that most people who are watching their platform are watching on mobile, and 720p on a mobile device looks great. You need to balance that thing a little bit. Now, let me answer your other question.
[00:38:20.280] – Kirk Nugent
You said, why do people go with 4K anyway? It’s really going to be more for the person who’s going to be editing. For live, I don’t know. Can I stream in 4K? Sure, I can. How many people are going to watch that in 4K? I don’t know. But when I’m editing a video, I would much rather that video had been originally recorded in 4K than for it to be recorded in 1080p or 720p because I can zoom in on different parts. I can crop, I can almost make it as if there was three or four cameras, as long as it was recorded in 4k, 6k even. Because you can bring in different pieces, you can do different things. There’s just so many opportunities that you have when it’s 4k. 4k meaning 4,000 pixels. In that same square or rectangle, you used to have way more pixels to work with. When you zoom in on it, you don’t get pixelation. You’re actually still seeing it as if it was recorded that way. Those are the reasons why a lot of people move to 4k, especially for repurposing content. You want to clip out a piece and just have, let’s say, for the portion of the recording where I’m talking, you want to clip that part out and just post that to maybe TikTok or Instagram.
[00:39:38.970] – Kirk Nugent
That’s going to be critical to be able to do that in 4K because you can crop in on it and have it still look good. That’s one of the reasons why.
[00:39:47.440] – Jonathan Denwood
All right, I get it. Because I do with my business partner, I do another podcast. Well, no, it’s a podcast. Well, the bit I do with him is actually a regular video show. We don’t use StreamYard, we use something else because he wanted the extra 4K, whatever, because he edits the video and then we put it up to YouTube. I do edit this. I keep the stream up and then I download it and I do a basic edit. Just put some video adverts in and I do some cutting at the beginning and I do a rough cut at the end. Really, I think what you’re saying is if you’re going to do some major editing to it, you really do need to look at 4K and above, really.
[00:40:45.160] – Kirk Nugent
And above, yeah. Or at least the highest that you can get from whatever platform you’re using.
[00:40:51.410] – Jonathan Denwood
Now, what are some of the biggest mistakes that you see people making about utilizing live video and building an audience? Because I don’t think it’s easy, but anything worth doing isn’t easy. That’s the contradiction of the human condition. Anything worth doing isn’t easy. That’s right. We’re always looking for the easy. That is the problem of the human condition, in my opinion. But we’re all the same. Most of us are. I think so. What do you see?
[00:41:27.400] – Kirk Nugent
Yeah, this is a great question. I think… I can answer very quickly because I think we’ve touched on aspects of this already. When you’ve created your membership, when you’ve created your live, you have to have a target. I think one of the major mistakes a lot of people make is that they haven’t clearly defined their target and their value proposition to that target. That’s the first piece, and I’ve said that already, so I won’t go too deep on that. But I will share two more of the items. One is this, I hope this isn’t going to be earth-shattering for anybody out there, but I know that there are one or two of you, maybe more than that, that are not doing this one thing, and that is you’re not responding to comments. You’re not responding to comments while live, and you’re not responding to comments after the live is done. I think that’s a major mistake that people make when they’re trying to build community from their content, from their live content. I can’t tell you how many… I say this to my community all the time. I respond to all the comments. Don’t send me a direct message on Instagram or Facebook because I’m not going to respond.
[00:42:38.160] – Kirk Nugent
Put a comment on my YouTube video and I’ll respond. I respond to all the comments on every YouTube video I’ve ever put up. The reason why I do that is because I want to create community. I want people to feel like they’re part of. When you respond to a comment, you don’t respond and put a period. You respond and put a comma. You respond and put a ellipsis. You respond and keep the conversation going. Sometimes I’ll answer their question, then I’ll ask them one. So that when they see my response, they respond back. A lot of times in my comment section, there is a full conversation going on. That’s how you develop community. It’s going to be very easy for somebody to move over to your membership platform when they’ve already been engaged with you in dialog and conversation on YouTube or on Facebook because you’ve already been responding to them. When people realize that this is a two-way conversation, I’m not just throwing information out there for you to consume and then I expect you to pay me. When they realize like, Oh, I can actually have impact on what the end product looks like, especially if you respond to the comments while you’re live, that is how you build community.
[00:43:43.480] – Kirk Nugent
That to me is a huge missed point when people are launching out. That’s a major mistake. The last thing I’ll say is there are other communities online that have a larger set of your community. I’ll take, for instance, StreamYard. I have a community of DIY Streamers. Streamyard is a larger set of my community. I go in that community and I comment in that community and I talk in that community. I want to be a fixture in that community. I want people to know my name in that community. I post my videos in that community. People share my videos in that community. I go in that community to be a member and to really add value, but also to receive. I don’t just go in there to answer questions. I go in there to ask, Hey, who’s doing this? How are you doing this? And as we have dialog and conversation, people get to know who I am. And because they get to know who I am, they come to my live show and they may end up in my funnel and they may end up joining my community. Those are some of the things I think people are…
[00:44:44.640] – Kirk Nugent
They don’t have that as part of their strategy, is to keep that two-way conversation going however you do it. That alone is a major mistake in terms of building community online.
[00:44:57.530] – Jonathan Denwood
When it comes to a membership site, helping hundreds of clients build their membership community websites over the past eight years, me and my team, I found that for understandable reasons, people tend to get very engrossed in the mechanics of building a membership website. Then one of the failings of WordPress is there’s an enormous amount of choice and they get sucked into, I call the WordPress bubble of which plug in for this, that and the other. Also they get in for another totally understandable reason that they want to build like what I call the war and peace of a course and throw the kitchen sink in and that will provide value. What they tend not to do, unless they’ve been very active online, is that they’re not building a community. They’re not building. They have no plan to market the thing that they’re spending a lot of time and money on. I know you do this is part of your daily activity and please use… Kirk, he’s a real expert on this, but what outline could you give if you were initially consulting somebody about how they could use live video and building community and to encourage people then to sign up for somebody’s membership website?
[00:46:44.350] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m sure you’ve had this discussion hundreds of times, so I’m not asking you to give everything, but maybe you just give us three or four steps of the consultancy process that you go through somebody.
[00:46:57.170] – Kirk Nugent
Yeah, I actually have a… We just finished a series on my YouTube channel where we walked through six steps. The series is called Establishing How to Establish Yourself as an Expert with Content. That’s the point. You want to establish yourself as an expert. When you have that established, one of the steps I say is you want to get your ask out of the way, get your ASK out of the way. You want to make sure you ask them to do something after you’ve provided them with value, after you’ve let them know they’re in the right place, that you’re the right one to guide them to success, and that here is the solution. Here’s how the solution works. Here are examples of the solution working in the wild. Here are testimonials of people who have used this solution. Then you say to them, Here’s how you get it. Come to my course, come to my membership platform, come into my coaching program, whatever that thing may be, here’s how I can engage with you around this solution that I’ve developed. So walking people through that journey is critical. But what I’ll also share is you touch on a major point there, Jonathan.
[00:48:01.700] – Kirk Nugent
I had a client hit me up. We did a Discovery call a couple of weeks ago who was an author. And he said, I’ve got this great idea for a book. They have chopped it down to several publishers. And even though all of them like it, none of them are willing to pick me up. Why? Because they all say, I don’t have an audience. Every last one of them said, You don’t have an audience. And so he’s chatting with me and in a course of our conversation, he was saying, Man, if I do all that and I’m successful and I actually do get this audience, then why would I need them? I said, There you go.
[00:48:32.980] – Jonathan Denwood
You would self-publish.
[00:48:34.150] – Kirk Nugent
Wouldn’t you? Self-publish. Because you’ve already got a captive audience that’s waiting for the content that you’re about to put out. They’re waiting for it. They know you’re going to create it. They know you’re good for it because they’ve been following you. You’ve been giving them little tidbits here and there. But that book is going to be just that one thing, that one place where they can go and grab all of that value. You’ve already created the demand and now you’re going to supply it.
[00:48:59.560] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s the- Because they don’t realize the day of advances from publishers for lower to medium authors have long gone. Long gone. They just don’t… They’re not interested in giving you. They only give advances to establish a larger Absolutely. You’re not going to get a advance, are you?
[00:49:20.180] – Kirk Nugent
Yeah. That’s what I would say, is you want to follow that thing through. A lot of people are… If you’re looking for a three-step process to create a community, I think Jonathan said it best earlier, anything worth doing is going to take work. It’s going to take work. Don’t look for the cheat code, hunker down and get ready to do some work. You’re going to be building a community. And if you are building a community and all your only motivation is to sell something to them, you’re not going to build a good community. Exactly. Your motivation has to be bigger than I want to sell them something. Your motivation has to be bigger than I want to make some money. Your motivation has to be somewhere in the realm of, how can I serve them? How can I provide them with immense value such that they won’t want to go anywhere? If that’s not your core why, then you’re probably barking of the wrong tree.
[00:50:23.070] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m going to say something, but as I’m going to say it, I’m not totally sure because there’s contradictory data in my own spirit here. I think they want to know, they want to be able to trust you.
[00:50:38.790] – Kirk Nugent
Yes.
[00:50:39.850] – Jonathan Denwood
But there’s in, and I’m not going to go down this, I’m just mentioning it, if you want to go, hopefully you understand what I’m going to say that there are people online, in politics, in business, there’s personalities, influencers, they have enormous audiences. I think they’re totally untrustworthy to their core, but they’re enormously popular. I don’t know what to make of that, but I still think people… Do you make it easier? Am I going off on the big one here?
[00:51:25.220] – Kirk Nugent
No, I absolutely believe you’re right. I think that those personalities, influencers, even politicians, they do have… They are authentic to a point. There are people who have followed them for their original core reasonings. But then there are those, as they say, when something goes viral, you don’t even remember what the original post was about. It’s just got millions of views now and it’s like, what was this really actually put up here for? I think that’s what you see when you reach peak, what I like to say, saturation in the marketplace. Some of the guys that I like to follow, I’ll give you an example, Justin Brown, Sean Cannell, Luria, Petruchi, these are people who have been huge personal influencers online for me, big mentors for me in terms of my business and my path and my trajectory and my career development. But they have millions of subscribers now. Millions. Now, if you talk to them one-on-one, they’re just regular everyday people like me and you, Jonathan. I mean that seriously. I’ve sat down with each one of these people. I mean, sit at a table eating dinner. They put on one pants, one leg at a time, just like me and you.
[00:52:44.360] – Kirk Nugent
But when I post and say, Hey, I just had a quick chat with Justin Brown, people go nuts. It’s not because Justin Brown did anything specific or particular. It’s because he’s at almost three million subscribers now on YouTube and he’s got that much recognition. As they say, there’s a point at which that thing tips over. And yeah, it’s very difficult to be, quote-unquote, authentic and really care at that level. This is why I think Vanity Metrics are not necessarily to be chased. I think it’s a great paycheck, but at a certain point, you can’t serve that audience. I can serve maybe 50 people well, you see? But once you get past that, you have to start using platforms like YouTube with this one-to-many scenario, this one-to-many delivery system so that you can actually still provide value at scale. Because I can’t deal with two million people at one time. I can’t. That’s the you find yourself in that space. I think that there are many people who were authentic at one point and just time and situations and circumstances that jaded them and brought them to another place where they’re not authentic at all anymore.
[00:53:55.940] – Kirk Nugent
But I do think that there are those who get a bad rep. They have that large following and they don’t seem authentic, but I think they are to the core reason why they started in the first place. But they’re just that maturation where it’s like people are just… They could put up a picture of their sock and somebody’s going to follow that. It’s crazy to see how things have transpired and gone over the years. But yeah, I know in saying that I answered your next question, but I hope that that ties into some of what we were talking about.
[00:54:30.070] – Jonathan Denwood
I’ve got a… Before we go on to the last two questions, I’ve got another question. First of all, I want to warn you, don’t take this the wrong way because I’m English. I’ve been living in America for 15 years and I’m a joint citizen, but at the core of my home, it’s English. I’m going to forgive you, Kurt. You’re a fantastic guy. But there’s one part of what you’ve done that’s been deeply disappointing to you. What’s that? You’ve gone to Kajabi, haven’t you? You gave up on WordPress, didn’t you? Some of your websites are WordPress, some of your…
[00:55:10.320] – Kirk Nugent
Yeah.
[00:55:10.860] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s so true. You’ve gone to Kajabi, you’ve gone to the dark. But I understand in a way. Can you outline? Because we are on this podcast, even though it infuriates my co-host, literally, to the extent that he might have enough of me, is that I insist that we look at all, we look at the SaaS platforms, we look at WordPress, we look at the strengths of WordPress, the non-strengths, we look at the strengths of Kajabi, all the other ones, Teachable, all of them.
[00:55:47.710] – Kirk Nugent
Thank you for Kartra.
[00:55:49.030] – Jonathan Denwood
There’s a lot out there. We look at them all. What led you to give up on the membership side and go to Kajabi then?
[00:55:58.940] – Kirk Nugent
Yeah. First of all, you rightly said that my business, Composition, is the name of the business my wife and I run. It started and it still is a web design firm. We support clients with their website needs in every capacity and aspect as you can think of. But we are very much laser-focused on WordPress. We don’t work on anything else. We don’t work on… Listen, we don’t work on anything else. Wix, anything else. We don’t work on anything but WordPress. Our clients all use WordPress. For my site, however, as a content creator, I needed something that I could put everything into and be done with it. I wanted to run my mailing list. I wanted to run my podcast. I wanted to run my store and wanted to run, of course, my membership. Then lastly, wanted to be able to run my courses all in one place on one pane of glass, one dashboard. There are a number of platforms out there that will allow you to do that. There’s a number of plug-ins that WordPress has that will enable you to do that as well. But I just didn’t care to figure out any of it.
[00:57:11.310] – Kirk Nugent
That’s actually not my field or my gifting. It’s not even what I want to do. You alluded to this earlier that sometimes people get into these spaces for a particular reason, and then they go down the rabbit hole of looking at which WordPress plugin is going to really do the job. I think that’s possible on with Thinkific and Kartra and Kajabi and all the others as well. People really run down the rabbit hole and they just really get into this thing and they don’t do the work of actually creating that funnel to get people to come into the platform no matter what the platform is. You could be using mighty networks. It doesn’t matter. But you’ve got to create a system to be able to bring people in. I wanted to focus mainly on creating the content and creating the systems. I wanted a background, a background, a system on the back end that would be able to manage all the other things for me. I create my podcast, I upload it to Kajabi, and it goes to all the different platforms. I don’t have to think about it. I put my course up. I could stand up a course in literally 10 minutes.
[00:58:17.790] – Kirk Nugent
I don’t have to think much about it because it’s just the one way that it’s being done. It will give it to my members in one way. It will give it to others in a different way. It takes the guest work out. Can that be done with WordPress? Absolutely. I’m the first one to tell you that there’s many ways to get this thing done, but I think everyone’s going to have to come at it from the perspective of what’s my core thing? And my core.
[00:58:42.700] – Jonathan Denwood
Thing is pretty much that. Oh, no, I.
[00:58:44.190] – Kirk Nugent
Totally understand. Oh, yeah, I’m with you 100 % as well. Yeah.
[00:58:47.410] – Jonathan Denwood
I totally understand why you made that decision because Kajabi is a good platform and they are laser-focused on them. They understand who their audience is you.
[00:59:01.420] – Kirk Nugent
Totally agree.
[00:59:02.600] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, it’s me. A creator. I totally.
[00:59:05.600] – Kirk Nugent
Agree with that.
[00:59:07.790] – Jonathan Denwood
And WordPress, that’s one of the purposes of WP, Tony, is that we don’t become the worse of worse. And what is the worse of worse? You want to ask. The worst is what I call a WordPress walled garden, a WordPress solution that attempts to become a SaaS. Because you’re losing the.
[00:59:30.510] – Kirk Nugent
Benefits of WordPress.
[00:59:31.970] – Jonathan Denwood
We guide, we don’t insist.
[00:59:34.840] – Kirk Nugent
I totally get it.
[00:59:35.770] – Jonathan Denwood
We provide, we guide, and we provide key plug-ins, which we have licensed and it’s part of the hosting and we provide a lot of support and guidance. But if somebody insists that they want to use something, as long as it’s not a security problem, they can go at it. I’m not a great fan of the founder. He’s a fabulous guy and he really understands his audience. That’s the founder of Divvy.
[01:00:10.970] – Kirk Nugent
Oh, Divvy, yeah.
[01:00:12.100] – Jonathan Denwood
I am not a fan of Divvy as a WordPress page builder. Yeah, I get you. We have a couple of clients that have 5, 10,000 students and they built it and then they got somebody and the front of it’s all built on Divvy. Divvy, yeah. Good luck to them. We are happy to support them, but it’s not what I would recommend. Right. Let’s go on to the last couple of questions.
[01:00:41.940] – Kirk Nugent
Sure.
[01:00:43.640] – Jonathan Denwood
I think you mentioned them anyway, but what do you think are a couple good resources apart from your… I would say if you’re listening to this podcast, you really need Kurtz. I will make sure it’s in the show notes. You really need to join his YouTube channel because I’ve learned a lot from it. You definitely want to join that. But what are a couple of other influences or people that you think somebody is looking to… It’d be a slightly different this question. What are a couple of influencers or people online that you think, like yourself, can give some insight to people that are looking to utilize live video to help them with their digital business.
[01:01:32.240] – Kirk Nugent
Yeah. Luria Petrucci from Live Streaming Pros, that would be one I would definitely say to check out. She’s got a thing, I guess, an incubator, a boot camp thing that she does where she takes people through not knowing anything and taking them all the way through. I’m building out one similar to that as well. In fact, I’m going to be partnering with her on some things coming down the bike. But Luria Petrucci, as far as live video is concerned, she’s like the godmother. I mean, she’s been doing it for a very, very long time, so somebody I would definitely recommend. Another person I would recommend you check out is somebody named Diana Gladney. Diana Gladney is somebody I absolutely look up to. She’s really great in terms of understanding people’s use cases and providing really solid, unique recommendations, especially for cameras and lighting and different things like that, depending on what you’re doing with your content. But also just gives some really good perspective in terms of loopholes to look for and pitfalls to avoid in terms of creating your content and getting out there. Those would be two. Another would be, I’d say, Monty Weaver.
[01:02:42.860] – Kirk Nugent
Monty Weaver is another guy that I follow. And he has such a wide array of things that he does. He does a lot of gear reviews. He does a lot of Amazon Live as well. But he also does reallylike guides people on grading, getting their started, getting their channel started, getting their content started. It really helps people walk through that beginning phases of the process. He does a couple of boot camps as well. Those are some of the ones that I would recommend. To be clear, man, I think there’s a lot on YouTube. I always want to say this because I want people to understand it. The point for me is not, Hey, just buy the course or get in membership. The point for me is we put a lot of content out on YouTube that is free and that is a one way. People are like, Oh, man, you’re giving away this content for free? Well, I get a check from YouTube every month. Yes, I’m putting it out there technically for free, but not really. The more people that watch that content, that’s one way that you can actually pay us for the content.
[01:03:49.340] – Kirk Nugent
Check out our YouTube channels. All of the people that I’ve named have really robust libraries of content on YouTube that will really help you get across the line. But if you want, as I say, you want to do it that way, that’s going to get you answering specific questions here, there and everywhere. But if you want to walk that process through, that’s where a boot camp is so critical. If you want to have somebody hold your hand, that’s where coaching or membership is going to really get you across the line a little bit quicker. So balance that thing a little bit and figure out which way is the best way for you to go.
[01:04:21.980] – Jonathan Denwood
Thanks so much for that. The last question, obviously, I’m from the UK, like I said previously, and I used to watch Doctor Who in.
[01:04:30.420] – Kirk Nugent
The Who and the Tards.
[01:04:31.340] – Jonathan Denwood
Oh, nice. Yeah, as a child. If you had a time machine and you could go back at the beginning of this journey, this winding road, this windy road, Kirk, is there one thing that you would like to be able to tell yourself? A bit of advice or insight that obviously, hopefully you’re a very different person than you started this journey.
[01:04:56.420] – Jonathan Denwood
Absolutely. But is there anything you like to tell yourself?
[01:05:01.300] – Kirk Nugent
Yeah, I would absolutely tell myself to document everything. I think document everything. I know that that seems like it’s ultimately way too simple of an answer. I’m going to unpack it just a little bit, but document everything. I would document everything. I remember going through so many different things as a new graduate from college, going into the workforce and having to overcome different hurdles and different things that happened, I just wish I had documented all of it. Because now that I’m I recognize the immense impact that content has on the world and the immense impact that stories, particularly our own unique stories, have in grabbing people’s attention and allowing them to build that, like you said, know and trust factor so that they’ll be willing to do business with me, I would document everything, create process maps for anything that I’ve overcome. Literally, my story, your story is your gold, and no one else can tell it.
[01:06:09.730] – Jonathan Denwood
If.
[01:06:10.410] – Kirk Nugent
You cultivate this skill set of telling that story well, it will serve you. I don’t really care what industry you’re in. I don’t care what your discipline, what your vocation, what your skill set, what your expertise is. Your story is what allows those tidbits, those soundbites to come alive. I can tell you exactly how to go live in terms of live streaming in a 1-10 step process. But if I don’t interject my stories into there, nobody’s going to want to listen. Nobody’s going to want to watch. I would recommend to myself, I’d get back to that time machine I’d say to young Kirk, Hey, document everything. Document everything. Write it down. That’s interesting. You don’t have.
[01:06:53.590] – Jonathan Denwood
To be asking before we wrap up the show because obviously you’ve been very generous with your time. You spent an hour with us. I don’t think asking you too much more than an hour is fair to you or anybody putting up with me. You’re so polished. Did you have performance acting training?
[01:07:14.490] – Kirk Nugent
No, no. But what I did do is, especially as I was climbing the corporate ladder when I was working in the C-suite doing different things in the technology field and media, I did take a lot of public speaking courses. Oh, you did? Yeah, I did. Because I was actually being asked to go to different places and speak. In fact, another side career of mine is public speaking. I love to present. I love to get on stage. I love to talk to audiences and engage with them. I realized that those skills and that whole practice, that whole muscle that I was working really has lent itself well to life. Being able to come in life and really share and engage, even when it’s just me and the camera. In this case, you’re here with me. But sometimes, when I go live, it’s just me, the camera, and the comments, and I’m able to really just have at it from there. That’s one of the things that has really served me well. It’s just learning the principles and practices of public speaking.
[01:08:15.070] – Jonathan Denwood
I thought I’d ask that because I’ve always been impressed with your presentation. I’m not impressed with mine. But people say I’m really good at this. I don’t know.
[01:08:25.130] – Kirk Nugent
See, you’re natural at conversation, and I think that’s something that most people aren’t natural at. I think that’s.
[01:08:32.660] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, because I suffer from a bit of dyslexia, and as a kid, I’ve self-educated myself. I was a great listener of Radio 4, and they used to have an interview show called Desert Island Disks. It’s corny when they ask you your favorite records or music during the interview, and they go through your career and everything. I was a great listener of that. I’ve based my interview style on Desert Island Disks. It will mean nothing to our American listeners in years, but if you’re based in the UK, you probably know. It’s an odd thing to listen to as a child, but I used to love it.
[01:09:20.610] – Kirk Nugent
No worries, man. That sounds great to me.
[01:09:24.060] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, there’s always opportunities. So Kurt, what’s the best way for people to find out more about you and your wisdom, which you have been so nice to share with us during this interview?
[01:09:39.200] – Kirk Nugent
Listen, Kirkarnugent. Com. Kirkarnugent. Com. That’s my headquarters on the World Wide Web. But if you want to actually just go to a page that has all my links, Kirkarnugent. Com/card has my digital business card. It has some of the courses on there, some of the playlists on my YouTube channel, and, of course, different things that you may want to engage with. Of course, you can even grab 15 minutes on my calendar right from that digital business card, jump on a quick little Zoom meeting with me and we can chat it up about some of the things you want to do and see where that takes us. If that means we end up sending you back over to Jonathan so he can help you, or we may end up sending you to wptonic. Com. Honestly, there are so many resources on there. I just pulled up the site myself. That’s definitely something we want to make sure you guys get a chance to see. But yeah, that’s how you would get in touch with me, Kirkarnugent. Com. I’d always emphasize the are because I have a perfect friend who has the same name as me, Kirk Nugent, and he is Kirknugent.
[01:10:39.430] – Kirk Nugent
Com. If you go there, he’s a public speaker works with Tony Robbins and several others. That’s not me, though. Mine is Kirkarnugent..com, and I would love to have you.
[01:10:49.840] – Jonathan Denwood
Oh, please go there. I said, I’ve learned a lot from you, and it’s been great. I had to end? I’ve gone blank a bit. I’ve been star-filled. I’m getting old, so my mind wanders. You’ve been our first guest on The Membership Machine show. We’re on episode 43, I think. You’re our first guest and I do appreciate you agreeing to come on the show. I do another podcast that’s since 770. I’ve been at it for about eight years or something, but this is our first guest for this show. We will be having other guests on, but I do appreciate you agreeing to come on there. I think it’s been a fabulous discussion. Definitely look at Kirk’s channel. I’ve been saying partly, Kurt, the reason I’ve been doing that is my other podcast, my co-host is Kurt, and I’m such a maniac that I get the words mixed up, so God help me. I’m going to end it now, folks. Hopefully you’ve enjoyed it. It’s been a great discussion. We’ll see you soon, folks. Bye. Thanks for.
[01:12:04.610] – Kirk Nugent
Listening to The.
[01:12:05.550] – Jonathan Denwood
Membership Machine show. Make sure you.
[01:12:07.720] – Kirk Nugent
Subscribe so you.
[01:12:08.660] – Jonathan Denwood
Don’t miss any future episodes, and leave a rating to support the show. Until next time.
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