Episode 97: Lessons Learned Teaching Online With Jeff Brown

Show Notes

Episode 97

00:00

Hi, I’m Rob Cairns. I’m the founder, CEO, and Chief Curator of amazing ideas of stunning digital marketing. In today’s podcast, I welcome back from the show, Mr. Jeff Brown. And what Jeff and I are going to talk about to Jeff’s experiences over the last couple of months during COVID-19 is lessons learned. While teaching online. This episode is one you don’t want to miss. So sit back, relax, grab your favorite drink, and enjoy the conversation between myself and Jeff Brown.

00:44

Everybody, Rob parents here I’m here with my friend, Mr. Jeff Brown. Jeff is a workplace education trainer. And today, I thought Jeff and I would revisit the whole teaching from home teaching online. And that whole thing’s has just been doing it for a couple months now at least how are you today? Jeff?

01:08

We’re doing good Robin, we’re still in the midst of continuing to do workplace education training, even in the summer months. Yeah, it doesn’t. It doesn’t seem 10 does it really nobody. And the need is never been greater for businesses to learn how to work online, how to work safely online, how to use all the different types of applications to get stronger, their social media design better websites, and websites that they may not even have in the first place. For instance, education. These are some of the things that handles

01:46

Yeah, and you guys in Nova Scotia do things in a bit of a different way than a lot of areas in country. I know in Toronto, absolutely. We have a big entrepreneurs group, but you guys have a model that nobody else really replicates successful. No,

02:01

the Manitoba was, they had a model somewhat similar, but they changed it. So really, Nova Scotia is effectively the only place in the world that I’m aware of that runs this current model. And it’s heavily around partnerships.

02:22

Now, that’s funny. Usually, it’s my dogs, you know, interfering with recordings. I know, I know, the pros are working from home. So about four months ago, back in March, you pivoted to running zoom. And we you and I did a discussion I guess about a couple months ago about working and teaching from home. And now that we’ve been doing it for a while, I thought it was worth revisiting this whole topic and doing a lessons learned. What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned from teaching from home on zoom all day.

02:58

The biggest challenge is to the biggest lesson is to make sure you keep your participants engaged. It’s not just giving a lecture they’re making notes. It is to engage people. And make sure that they are involved in the learning that there’s a real transfer of skills and some sort of a way of measuring how that transfers of skills that’s actually happening. That’s the biggest challenge because everyone put the time in, we need to make sure at the end that people have achieved, they’ve gotten the skills and they can actually function in these skills. And that’s extremely important. There’s enough courses where people have had taken courses, they’ve got binders, they’re on shelves, they went, that was great. But hey, it didn’t change anything and how they run their ship, so to speak. And workplace education very much changes and transforms how people do business and how they function and deploy these new skills.

03:59

Yeah, I think there’s a lot of people, I call them professional students, they take course after course after course, so that you can toss them on a resume. And then I kind of work at them and say, Okay, what did you implement from this course? I took the next course well, frankly, if you’re doing that, there’s no point in taking those courses. In my opinion, I think you need to take courses and implement one or two apps you’ve worn and and stop taking more courses till you’ve implemented what you already know. My purse.

04:31

Yeah. And one of the parts of the workplace education program is at the very last classes to closing workplace education coordinators and all the partners from the project team. And these are people that are sponsoring it could be the host of the of a chamber or a business organization and everybody else in the community that’s on that project team, they get together and they get to hear this, the great success stories that the participants share and how they Now using these new skills, and I received one letter, they almost brought me to tears. A woman literally said that she would not be in business today, if it wasn’t for the skills that she had learned from workplace education. And specifically, if you have courses that I taught, and it really instructors, what a matter, they really want to make sure that what they’re teaching is valuable, not just fluff. And when we get letters like that, that’s so heartwarming, it just shows that we are actually achieving what we hope we set out.

05:41

Yeah, that’s so true. Let’s talk as an instructor energy level. And this is something you and I have talked about offline, I live in a world of zoom meetings these days, you live in a world of zoom, chats online, and with your students in terms of energy level, moody nk about that and teach Well,

06:03

let’s put it into perspective, I now have over 8040 hours of program delivery since 2007. So a lot of it has been in class. And I’ve taught a lot of classes per quarter, if you want to call it that. And I know what it likes, I know what it’s like to run a class inside when you’ve got participants in the room. When it comes to zoom, the level of energy expended is much greater. Because it’s almost like the instructor is not only the instructor, but he’s the entertainer. He’s the person that is making the conversations happen. And literally, at the end of the week, when I’m done probably seven or eight workplace education programs, and these are four hours, each program is four hours a week, three to half to four hours a week. I literally just beat by the end of the week. Yeah, is high demand. And you always have to be up, you’ve got to be the one that spurs everybody forward into the learning. And that’s very draining. I enjoy what I do. Don’t get me wrong. But there’s a cost to being an online instructor. It is very draining.

07:23

I’ve had a couple of days, I know where I’ve done eight hours or seven hours, zoom calls in one day. And you get off those calls. And I just feel I’m bait. I would suggest to a lot of people, a couple of things you can do one, keep a bottle of water beside you being hydrated when you’re on online courses, I find it’s even hard to if you’re on a three hour call and you’re running that call, make sure you schedule a couple of bathroom breaks in the middle, absolutely. Three, I tried to avoid back the backs. So one of the things you and I were talking about last night offline was what do I do back to back and what I usually do is reboot my laptop because I like my resources clean. I find the nights a problem. And frankly, I take my puppies out. Because the little monsters need to get outside and absolutely, it’s a good breather, but you got to take care of yourself. It’s not easy. And and by the way, because you’re on all these zoom calls. If you are, that doesn’t mean you skip one. And that doesn’t mean you skip them. You need to make sure you get your breaks in no matter what you do somehow.

08:36

Absolutely. Because at the end of the day, I could literally put in 32 hours of class time per week. And some of these classes literally Are you know, morning and afternoon, you’ve got to take care of yourself as an instructor and you’ve got to watch how much energy expended it’s I always arrive early. So I want to make sure that participants have their questions, I want to check in with them and to see how they’re doing. Because I’ve had some amazing stories of some participants that came in one day her mother had just died. And she was pressing ahead and we had a discussion and she hadn’t even gone through the grieving process. And so I like these check in processes to find out where people are at and what I need to do to help them to get into learning mode. And always it’s always questions after class. And then questions before the next class so to speak. So as an instructor, you got to guard your time between classes, but at the same time, it’s that balance of making sure that everybody’s getting what they need to be successful

09:49

now, and now you’re teaching mostly adults, one of the suggestions I would make to anybody teaching youth so we’re talking pre high school kids as well. When you jump on these zoom calls with your students, give them 10 minutes to get their chitchat out of the way their stuff out of the way, you got to remember, they’re stuck at home as well. And, you know, it’s even harder for some of the youth. So give them, you know, time and let them get it out of the way. Because if you do, your class will run much smoother. I think the other thing you need to do too, and we’ve kind of talked about the zoom with all the changes. We’ve been talking a little bit about Google meat, and the changes you’re putting in there. I think you got to be aware of how to use your software. And one of the biggest things is, how do you mute unmute? How do you kill somebody video? And in a worst case scenario, how do you kick somebody out of the discussion if it goes that far?

10:49

Yes. Yeah, absolutely. That’s where, as an instructor, you have to know, the program you’re using inside and out, you have to understand the limitations, you have to understand the technical aspects of it, for instance, that zoom for instance, is very resource heavy rebooting between classes, just to get a fresh start, I find that if I don’t, throughout the day, I’m starting to get some zoom issues with freezing some, you know, beyond the typical bugs, that would come from zoom, it’s because of the resources. And I generally have a machine that’s pretty much a resource, high in memory, high in clock speed, high and high quality, hurt, SSD, hard drives, to make sure that at the end of it, and to make sure that my internet is the best they can be. Those are the things that instructors have to focus on. Especially upload speed, cuz you’re sharing files, you want to make sure that they get those files when they need Otherwise, the class is being held up by until someone can open up that file. And you have to be aware of just something doesn’t work at that moment. You have to know a workaround. Right away. You gotta have a plan B, the plans See, when you’re instructing online,

12:17

no, no question. And one thing I want to go back to you touched on is the internet, I think where we need to get, and parents are going to want to hear me say this colleagues aren’t gonna want me here to say this, but going out and getting the cheapest dinner night your provider can providing air your ring is actually doing you, your business, your kids a disservice right now or any time. Because there’s more people at home, you’re sharing bandwidth amongst multiple people in our house. And frankly, at the end of the day, if you don’t have good internet, you know, and I mean, really good internet, how can you function anymore, so I think the days of people saying the Rogers or Bell or tell us give me the cheapest internet on your block. I think those days are long gone, actually,

13:07

absolutely had another thing that you got to also think about whether you’re teaching or your participant is ergonomics, having a great chair, heavier monitors set up in a place. And I’m a big believer, and I’ve seen this in workplace education, dual monitors, one for zoom, and one for whatever you’re working in. That way, you’re not flipping one screen behind the other, and potentially losing the original teachable moment because you forgot between flipping screens, for example. So dual monitors, having your environment suits comfortable. And as an instructor, I like to create an environment where people are getting I used to watch, they can get up and go, they just feel that they can and it’s so important to make sure you engage people because this helps to time pass better. It’s not about you chatting, and lecturing, so to speak, it’s about everybody partnering together, and the learning and your environment that you’re learning in is very important to the process of having a great zoom or online meeting period.

14:21

And by the way, if you gotta get up and go do us all a favor and kill your video when you do it. Like you know a lot of people just get up and go and don’t tell the video. It’s one thing for chatting with a friend and say give me a minute but if you’re on a conference call just show it or stack chill the video

14:38

absolutely and the audio to just in case when you press the flush mode here that going down all I’ve heard that going down

14:49

and the worst one is the one that has to sit with a bag of potato chips in the middle of the meeting and or the class and leaves the audio on that cycle. Yeah.

14:59

Why? One important thing about meetings from an instructor’s perspective is I need to see participant videos. Yeah, I need to see facial expressions I need to see. Because I can tell whether participants are learning or not simply by their facial expressions. And so that’s so important for me keeping up to speed. So I know that I can move on to the next topic that we’re learning into that particular class day. Yep,

15:30

yep. And I think I think it’s so key, like, you just got to work with your students. And I’m one of the the pearls of getting online is, and doing all these meetings is helping the students and I do things where I always say to my clients, make sure you’ve gotten your Windows Updates before the meeting, please. I’ve had clients Believe it or not, where all of a sudden, they go poof, and it’s because of the Windows Update. And it’s like, why didn’t you just schedule it? And do it ahead of time. That’s number one. Number two is, as I said, reboot your machine on a regular basis. I don’t take once a day is good enough anymore personal. But that’s just me. I’m a little anal that way. And I know that. Number three, try and find a quiet space. And it’s hard. I mean, it’s hard people get Oh, no rock, good. You got to sort of manage the people who live around you and say, wait a minute, I’m working day I’m taking a class today, please let me do my work. and support them because they’ve all got issues. And number four, I don’t think you know, the place to take a meeting is on your phone. It’s not necessarily a guide on a tablet. And I’ll give a tip out there. If you’re having problems getting a web camera right now, many people don’t know this, the new fire eight tablet by Amazon, the HD tablet. There is a zoom app in the Amazon store, and it has a camera built in. So that could be an alternative for some people, but they don’t have a good webcam or trying to get one right now is almost impossible.

17:13

Yes. And one of the things that we’ve discussed early on when we are making this transition is that we’re not doing zoom meetings via the phone because the screen is just too small can be able to read and observe what’s happening. So the transfer of information really needs to happen on a good sized screen, whether it’s a tablet, or a desktop screen. People need to be able to see stuff before they can do stuff. That phone is way too small.

17:43

I would I would I would agree with you. I don’t I know people who tried to do it, and I just shake my head every time. And and it also tells me from my perspective, as somebody who runs Excuse me, is, maybe they’re not putting the fun in the effort into it. And that, to me is a concern too. Like if you can’t sit down at a desktop for an hour. Should you be there?

18:10

Like Yeah, absolutely. Because if you plan to learn, if you plan to get the skills, you have to do everything you need to do to make sure that there’s a transfer of knowledge, which means that you need to accommodate yourself, so you can see it, hear it. It’s not time. I mean, at the end of the day, there are people that in their business plan succeed. And there are people that literally plan to sabotage their business because they don’t really want the pain of growing. And so if you’re going to want your business to grow, you need to prepare ahead to make sure that you’re doing everything you can, you’re buying the right gear, you’re getting everything you need to get the job done,

18:57

held true. And including buying the right gear, especially with online meetings is audio. And I know people are stuck right now. So there’s a lot of people using like internal microphones, microphones built into cameras, I would suggest to anybody that’s doing online meetings all day for me, is go get yourself a good microphone. And that might be your headset. I often use a headset that’s comfortable with a mic. Today, I’m using a new mic and I’m using earbuds but do something I don’t just say all the internal stuff is good enough, because honestly, it’s really not. And that’s the problem.

19:40

Absolutely. Absolutely. The and you have chance Rob to sit into several of my workplace education programs. What were some of the things as an outsider coming in? What did you take away as learning nuggets for you?

19:57

One of the things I liked at the start of every Every call you do a round table should go across and say, okay, where are you at this week? And you do it with everybody there. So everybody could learn. The other thing you do really well, Jeff, is you don’t do all the demoing, you’ll get students to share a screen and show what they’re doing. Because you think their work is just important. And then, and then other people jump in and say, Did you try this? Did you do this? Did you do that? I think that’s most helpful. And I think the other thing is just managing the conversation for right. So I mean, if you don’t manage that, and it goes out, it goes out pretty quick. And I’m a big one of managing the conversation flow and trying to keep things going. So that’s, that’s really good.

20:52

You bring up an interesting point, because what things that people have discovered, the beauty of online learning is that they actually, when someone has a problem, everybody gets to see the problem screen. And there’s a great learning moment from that. Had we been in the classroom, that individuals computer would it maybe be available for the person beside them, but not on the other side of the table? And people are these learning moments where I don’t know where to go, I don’t know how this works, because great learning moments for everybody on the zoom meeting. And this is one of the things that they have discovered that is better than what they thought.

21:33

Yeah, the thing that’s better what I thought. And you know, my take on this kind of stuff is if you get somebody who’s crunched for time in their business or their life, and they’re doing an online learning program, they’re not spending an hour they get there in an hour they get home. I I know I’ve taking courses from the trainer in Toronto, shout out to Paul COVID and his team. And they offer them both ways. They offer them either in our studio or online. And I genuinely prefer to be there. But the state of the world doesn’t allow us to do that right now. Absolutely. So I think I think that’s, that’s what people need to realize I missed that interaction personally.

22:15

But I love to because it’s part of workplace education. And I always try to make sure this happens is the networking aspect of it, where businesses are interacting with other businesses, getting each other’s emails, and building a strong strategic alliance with other businesses in that area. Yeah, we’ve

22:34

done that, where we’ll, we’ve taken one year classes together, and you’ll go around the room and say, Okay, let’s talk about your business. And we’ve spent a couple of minutes with each person doing that on purpose to sort of

22:50

my wasn’t credibly invaluable for them. They often rave about how great that experience was. Because at the end of the day, an online zoom meeting allows me to bring in a expert in a specific field, that allows extra impact to happen for the learning. And that’s I’m always appreciative of people that I bring in that bring extra value and extra expertise. Because at the end of the day, Rob, you and I very much think a lot of like, and how we train, we do. And so it’s almost like I started setting to finish it. And that’s only because, you know, you and I have known each other over the years, we talk continually about where things are going. And these are conversations and up in workplace education, training, maybe six months down the road, as we begin to flesh out our discussions.

23:53

And now, one of the one of the things I like so much when when I’m writing is being able to just help them and give them a viewpoint and say, Hey, guys, it’s not that bad. It’s really not. And I started to give them a couple of tips to say, this is how you can do it. And I think what helps is I’m out there doing it with people every day. So I can take experiences and say, this works. This doesn’t work. This worked six months ago, it won’t work today. You know, that kind of discussion? And absolutely, I think that’s really, really, really important actually. So, the other tip, I want to toss out there just because you and I’ve talked about this one, let’s talk about when you’re running a meeting, and you’re sharing screens, and I think I’ve told you a couple times offline. One of my favorite tips is if I’m doing a meeting when I’m doing heavy presenting, I will actually join the meeting as a second person on a second laptop, and I’ll run sharing my screen off that laptop. Not off my mainland. And that means that something happens and that share screen locks up, I can actually boot it and still take control the meeting and manage a meeting. What do you think about tips like

25:11

last week that happened where I think I had a video driver issue. I was at a class. And it literally, mishap, this was another one to Rob and I had my laptop on standby to stay in the meeting. Yeah. And that made all the difference between the meeting or the train going forward or stopping. And we know that there are external stuff that happens that we have no control over. But if you’re smart, having the ability to have a backup resource to keep things rolling. Yeah,

25:55

so so true. And, and writing is a big part of these meetings to like people, both you and I, today on well lit rooms, which helps. One of the things I would suggest anybody, if you have the opportunity, put your computer looking out the window, not the window behind you, I’ve had to do that before for reasons of just aesthetics as Roman, it’s awful. Like, if you can get the window in front of you, you’re much better off that way. I would also suggest anybody found rubs, if I can get some good LED lights, they work really well in the room. They’re not expensive. So you know, things like that help, especially at night?

26:42

Yes, absolutely. Because at the end of the day, your business face that you put out on zoom, for example, that literally is your business. So how were you planning to show up? It’s like stepping up to bat, we always step up to bat to do our very best, and we want to put our business across in a very professional manner. It doesn’t mean that we absolutely have to be perfect all the time. But you know, we need to be trying. Yeah,

27:14

it’s true. And I think people are more tolerant with people being at home and adjusting to life. But you still got to be reasonable. Like, you know, if somebody’s dog barks, and you ever had it happen today, I can’t tell you the number of times one of my dogs has shown up in the middle of a meeting, you just gotta kill the sound and move on kind of thing. I mean, it’s just like, let’s not dwell on stuff that we can’t prevent and work on this stuff we can write Absolutely. The other thing I would throw out there, and this is just something about whether it’s online teaching or offline teaching and more for students is make a point of reviewing your material before you go to class next week. So somebody covers, say, WordPress, Google Analytics for WordPress, make sure you review that and play with it a little bit. So you go into class in next week with a more better understanding. And you can actually ask the question Genie class to get help.

28:12

Absolutely. And I try to as much as possible have the notes available before the class the new notes, that way, they get a chance to print them off if they want to print them off. But a chance to begin to make notes. Because I want participants not only just to listen, but actually write down because the learning will retain more information, if they write it down as they’re working on. And I try to make sure I don’t go too fast. Because I’m always trying to get input and feedback from them. How are they doing? Are they okay? At a certain stage, are we ready to move? Because at the end of the day, there’s not a truckload of content that I have to deliver. I need to make sure that skills are being transferred. and stuff, I don’t get to the end of the bus, so to speak, for up content delivery, that’s not a problem. If I get them more functional, and they came in, and I don’t have it usually a problem with that. That’s a big thing for me, because I want businesses to be stronger businesses, being able to be more effective in what they need to do. And because of that effectiveness, they’re saving time. Maybe they’re a little less stretched. Maybe they’re able to do more things, maybe the their employer because I offer to have a lot of employees these programs, not just business owners, they are able to do more and because they could do more they help the business owner do more. For a lot of great wins read buddy when it comes to workplace education.

29:41

Now Now you’ve been using Google Classroom as a as a classroom, the manager classrooms, how has that gone And how has the participants viewed using Google Classroom?

29:55

It’s been great. The I said the zoom link by email, but I also put the zoom link in Google Classroom that way, I absolutely make sure that they can join the meeting. They have notes, I can put videos up there. If I want them to watch a video to reinforce a skill, there is a stream section where we can interact and comment, they can ask questions on what’s being posted. Google Classroom just isn’t for school. It is a great business trading platform. There isn’t a lot of different things that I’ve done with it, not necessary, hacked it, so to speak. But if we talk about maybe taking it in a different direction it was intended to to help business do better. We’ve done that we show for Christmas, how to do that.

30:46

Yeah, I think. And a lot of parents out there are probably very familiar with Google Classroom at this point, because many of the schools are using it as a try and get their plans for September, backing year. And I think I think the challenge is going to be I think most school boards are going to head towards a hybrid solution. When hearing the fall,

31:09

I was just thinking that, Robert, that I would say that where we’re at right now, we are the whole fabric of business, but also education and training has changed by the genies out of the bottle, we’re not going back. Even if we go back into a classroom, kind of a setup for a boardroom setup, there’s still going to be room for zoom, there’s still going to be room for Google Classroom. Because when you think about it, if we’re, if I’m doing zoom, even in front of them, they get to see the computer where people are sharing screens, they get to see the person screaming, share, these are valuable things that we’ve discovered, that will not be tossed out the window, so to speak. All I

31:57

would agree with I think, you know, I’m kind of watching it play out with the school boards around the Greater Toronto Area right now. And tdsb, the Toronto board has come out and said, we’re gonna put the kids in the classroom five days a week, I cannot and I’m shaking my head saying, Oh, is that a recipe for disaster? And then the Catholic board came out, I guess on Friday and said, No, no, we’re going to put the kids in five days a week, we’re not gonna do any social distancing in our schools whatsoever. And I think, honestly, I think what’s going on right now is a big political play, to see who steps up to fund what to do what I know, peel school board, right? Some people I know, a lot of people I know, they’re talking about going to a three on three off model. So three days in the classroom, split the class in half. So 15 kids in, and then they do computer based learning. One hour at home and the other 15 kids come in the next few days. So you’re working at doing some height, which is a hybrid model. So it’s getting very interesting and COVID is kind of just pushed all this up by months and months and months. Yeah,

33:13

we’re looking at a place where, like they called the fourth industrial revolution. Yeah, maybe some of the things we’re seeing are for the, for the better, so to speak, because at the end of the day, digital skills need to be increased. I still see business owners and participants struggle with digital devices, why not have the hybrid model where they’re actually working in an environment that they will be working in. Because despite COVID, the world is changing. We are not just working in our local areas, we’re working further out, so to speak, work partnering, we’re working with other businesses, not in our region, but farther out. And the digital allows us to work globally, and create greater opportunities and to participate in more opportunities that we might not otherwise have. Why not raise our kids to be able to work in that type of an environment regardless of what they

34:27

do? I would agree with that. And one thing I would suggest is, if anybody in Canada or the US is thinking about moving into a rural location saying, Oh, I can work from home I can my kids come home from home. Don’t do it right now. Because truthfully, rural locations don’t have the internet access. That is fast enough to be able to sustain your life and you need to really think about that. I mean, I read an article I guess yesterday, the day before the Civil Kane government is about to step in. mandate minimum speeds. I have an uncle who lives in Bath Ontario, which for those who don’t know, is about 35 minutes over Kingston, and he’s on microwaves service, believe it or not, because he’s rural. He’s right. But he and his provider two months ago, in two months ago, and COVID actually tripled his internet speed by microwave. For those who don’t know, microwave is basically Point to Point internet. It’s done by a series of towers. And I think we’re going to get to a point where the government’s about to finally take broadband, high speed internet as serious as power Hydro and the phone lines, I think we’re there.

35:44

I hope we are, you know, whatever the, what they call high speed in some areas, like when the wind blows, people lose their internet for days, that’s not high speed that is, and some of the internet that I’ve seen, and I’ve traveled throughout Nova Scotia, and a lot of places, some of the things they call high speed internet is not high speed, I can’t believe how it ever qualified as high speed. It’s some pace places and not even as good as dial

36:12

Now I know and, you know, my mom has that issue. At the cottage. It’s not as fast. I know from experience when Joe’s parents were up north, my wife’s parents. They had DSL that was like DSL that we got in the city like 30 years ago. And I would just cringe and add that and just say really. So I think we’re getting to the point I hear rumblings where the government is about to step in and mandate stuff eventually, I think it’s it’s at that point. But I also think we just need to keep working with it. And, and frankly, one of the things we have to watch with everybody working at home is that you get away from the screen time. And that means the computer, the TV, the other stuff and take a while because my screen time is always high, yours is always high, because what we do, but we got to be very, very careful that you don’t go from necessarily working all day in front of the screen and watching TV all night to vice versa.

37:22

Absolutely. And at the end of the day, your social skills need to be developed as you need to go out and talk to people. You’re watching TV, you’re not laptops, you’re not conversing, you’re not interacting, you’re just zoning out, so to speak. And so as much as I love the online, developing great personal connections with people face to face is very important. And you do have to have your own support network, so to speak, you know, through this whole process,

37:57

and go read the book. And I don’t mean a Kindle book, like an actual actual book once in a while. And just change your method of learning and relaxing and helps to really does

38:09

absolutely, because you when we trade online, we’re always operating an extremely high level to deliver great training. He can’t sustain that level of activity all the time, you’ve got to come down and you’ve got to rescue moraine, you’ve got to be able to lower your heart rate, it’s you got to take care of your health, so to speak. And that means just get unplugging. Making sure that you just have time to do nothing. That means nothing is not watching TV, it’s just maybe on your deck, for instance, do

38:51

and go for a five kilometer walk every day. And if you don’t, if that doesn’t work, there’s a really cool meditation app and I’m not a big meditator but I have friends that are called calm. You might have heard of CLM somebody dollars a year and I think if that helps you read Jake and feel better. I think it’s truthfully $80 well spent to be honest with there’s a couple other apps out there. Don’t be afraid to use them wiki got it. You got to take care yourself even more. Jeff, if you’ve got three real good tips to participants joining an online teaching course. What would you suggest?

39:31

Personally it’d be have two monitors. Be this fighting and flipping screens is a more of a distraction than it helps with making sure that you check your computer before you go online. Make sure I mean literally. This Microsoft 2004 update hit set both of my laptop my desktop to the repair store. And look after your devices, because that’s how you’re going to work, have a good device, come to the party well prepared as far as your equipment, if you’re going to learn, make sure you’ve got good gear, I know, budgets come into play. But being on old computers, like an old windows seven computer or an XP computer, that is not good. And you want to make sure that as much as possible, you can get a good webcam. It has a good mic in it, or some sort of a microphone that you can have an ear buds, I like ear buds, that I’ve got a good mic on my webcam. But I’ve also looked at something similar to you with a boon bike. I’m also looking into that. And again, the question is, can you get it nowadays?

40:52

So So can you get it just for interest sake? So back in April, my wife said to me, you’re gonna order a new webcam, you order a new mic, you’ll never get. And I said, I know. So what I’ll do is I will order them from China direct. And you know, I had a friend who, you know, shared that said, all you’re ordering from China, and they said, What do you think all your other electronic stuff is coming from? China. So the big the big difference was, I did the homework, and I ordered what was the equivalent to the Logitech 920. See webcam. And then I did the equivalent to what was the top one of the top boom mics, but I did them without the brand name stamp on them. So for those who don’t know, a lot of stuff comes out the warehouses and they’re just stamped, Logitech, Panasonic, you know, the old joke in candy used to be your feedback and all the nice TV for those old enough to remember eaten. So Viking brands were the same brands that other brands had right next to them, except with a Viking stamp on them, right. So. And, honestly, it took just under three months to get stuff. And if I’d ordered on Amazon, they’d still be waiting. So sometimes doing your homework and going to source if you can deal with it is sometimes worth it too. So, but I agree get a good camera, get a good mic. I like the boom mic, because you can adjust it and move it. It also comes with a pop filter, which is really, really handy. But you know,

42:36

the other thing too, is have a good space to train in. And that means that you may have to partner with your family to make sure that they give you the best opportunity to learn. They’re not banging on the door. They’re not

42:52

or doing or doing office work. I mean, I have to admit we we’ve gone through some challenges at home where my wife’s daughters moved in, and I’ve moved my office actually into my master bedroom, God forbid. And people say does that work? And I said, Well, we don’t really use it during the day. So it works. But you just got to train your family that when you’re working or training you you’re working or training. And that’s a big problem. In a lot of households. A lot of family don’t have that respect. And look, my wife and I do conference calls. So we get it. But in some houses, it’s a it’s prompt, and also set your expectations with your friends too. Just because you’re at home learning or working doesn’t mean you’re available. And you got to draw that line was one of the hardest things I did 10 years ago was say to people. I know when I’m at home at 10 o’clock. But that doesn’t mean I’m available to talk to you. Right?

43:48

Absolutely. And another thing that I’ve discovered is that people will they worked in an office setting when they work home, they’re actually working. But one of the challenges that they have to remember is now that they’re home that they have to watch his people are tending to work more at home than they are in the office, they need to have a clear defined cut off time. And make that distinction between this room is the office way step outside of it on hold, and the to dope as much as possible.

44:22

And take and take your breaks. I know when we’re done recording today, I’m going for a walk. So take your breaks, look after yourself. You might have to be a little more flexible working from home because of noise partners, kids, whatever you got to do, but I think that’s the new normal. And absolutely, I truly I truly believe that. What we’re going to see is we’re actually gonna see a glut of commercial real estate on the market very soon because these companies are going to realize cheaper to pay for some of these internet connection on home then pay for their cubicle space. office? Yeah.

45:03

Now one of the things that there’s talk, right, it’s still unfolding is, if I work in an office setting, I’m covered by my my employer’s insurance. The question then becomes when I’m at home, am I covered or not? And that has to do with maybe workplace injuries, for instance, where you’re at work, it’s workplace injury, is it at home you’re working, is that a workplace injury fringe?

45:28

And I think you really got to look at what your home insurance policy covers and doesn’t cover. I mean, you and I are in different spots where we, we have business insurance, but why do p? And even a lot of people work at home? Don’t even think that way? It’s a it’s a problem. Yeah. Yeah. The other discussion now kicking around him, you know, it wasn’t really what we’re talking about. But since we are going down that road, there’s, there’s discussion now that if a worker, say whether it worked out of an office building in Chicago, decides to move to a rural town, do we pay him as much because the cost of living dropped? Should that be tied to a salary? And that discussion is going on too? And it’s not a real? A real good one. But,

46:13

you know, this COVID has brought in a lot of interesting conversations now. And literally, it’s, it’s as simple as Do I need to have my employees in an office building? Or can we use things like zoom and had meetings? And have them do the work in their environment? And work that way? Because that is, there are new discussions around that is, there are people that are never going going to go back to the office, it just isn’t going to happen? Because the employer said, Hey, I got an office, I don’t need that means heat, space rent. That’s a savings for me. And so how do we tie that together?

47:02

thing I would be, I’d be very careful of this. If you’re in an educational environment, where you’re on jungles, and you’re trying to learn, don’t get wrapped up into having web browsers open where you’re distracted and looking at recipes. Don’t get caught in slack conversations, don’t get caught in text message conversations with friends while you’re trying to learn like, honestly, you got to focus. And this is a problem for a lot of people, they get distracted. So in my business, I’m not a fan of slack. I’m not a fan of Microsoft Teams. And people will say to me why then people can get you immediately. Well, guess what, folks? I don’t want people to get me immediately. You have to plan your day. So one of the things I do is I check email a couple of times a day. I don’t, I’m not a slave to the email. I’m not a slave to the device. So if you got work to do you got work to do, I mean, or training to do or anything else. And you got to focus when you’re training. So don’t get caught. Your friend, your friend, Mary, who texts you in worried about the Christian Christmas party on Saturday night? Don’t get caught talking to Mary in text while you’re learning from Jeff, focus on Jeff and Warren the best you can learn. And people don’t have a tough time with that concept.

48:30

Yeah, it’s we’re not as great multitaskers as we thought,

48:36

No, we are so we are showing on and and we they have proven in studies time and time again, that when you shut out of a task and come back into that task, you spend 20 minutes on each side. So if you’re on a course with you, and you get involved in a little text message conversation with Mary, you can write off 20 minutes. And that’s what people don’t get the brain doesn’t just switch on a dime. So absolutely, absolutely. Anyway, Jeff, thanks for joining me today. If somebody needs to get ahold the house the best way.

49:14

best way they can email me at Jake route at alpha al PHA social media, a guy NC calm. And we can begin the conversation from there.

49:24

Yeah, and getting the conversations. If anybody needs any help, they can reach out to Jeff, they can reach out to me on social media. I mean, we’re both around most of the time. And let’s be part of those conversations, not part of the the negative aspect of it all like what’s just keeping up with each other. Have a great day and be safe. Thanks now. Thank you to Jeff Brown for joining me on this week’s podcast. I hope you learned as much after the conversation between Jeff and myself as I did when we had If I can help you in any way, please tweet at me on twitter at Rob counts. If you’d like to email me VIP at stunning digital marketing comm or run on over to our website, stunning digital marketing COMM And I’d be glad to help you out in any way I can. If you scroll down to the middle of the front page, we are still offering free concerts to help businesses and people join COVID-19 you can feel free to sign up for one no credit card required just book into my calendar. I’d be glad to help you out sit down and let’s make some things happen. I hope you’re all doing well and staying safe during this time. Please if you’re going out and going into an indoor establishment wear a mask and protect yourself from protect others. As always, this podcast is dedicated my late father Bruce Cairns, I miss your dad very much. And keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars and make your business succeed. Have a great day of like bye for now.