Left:
Website of Georg Wawschinek: impressionate.tv
Interview:
Thorsten Jekel
A warm welcome to another episode of Hirn einschalten. Then technology and regular readers, listeners and viewers of my formats know that I have a very big motto. And that is to switch on brains first, then technology. And there are few people I regularly meet in my speaking business who combine both as well as my guest today, my guest today. I met him at a conference last year and I was wondering beforehand, should I go to this conference? Because it didn’t actually fit into my schedule. And when I saw this speaker, I said I absolutely had to go to this event. And not surprisingly, this was by far the best keynote I’ve seen on this presence stage. And the great thing is that this speaker understood that online is not a stopgap solution, but that online is a format that is much more than a stopgap solution, namely a wonderful channel with which you can communicate online, both internally and externally. And that’s what we want to talk about today: how to communicate professionally, internally and externally, using technology. And I would like to extend a very warm welcome to Georg Wawschinek.
Georg Wawschinek
Hello, thank you very, very much for the invitation. Dear Torsten, by the way, you have now doubly ennobled me to receive this compliment for my keynote from such an outstanding speaker as you. Thank you very much! And above all, the fact that the pope of technology is talking to me about online technology makes me proud and a little excited at the same time, because I’m talking to the real master. I’m talking to the real master here. Thank you very much, I’m delighted.
Thorsten Jekel
The nice thing is that we have a lot of things in common from the starting point and we have some things where we differ a little. And you can see that from our two camera images. Georg has a much more professional camera image than I have here. He has it with a logo, he has it with a belly band, he has it with a frame, he has lighting on the back. I’m always the kind of person who says Lowest Tech Possible. So it’s always really exciting because I always say that I’m lucky that my office here is on the fifth floor. I have floor-to-ceiling windows that are 3.6 meters high. I don’t have a single light on, and Georg says, yes, I can see that you don’t have a light on, so you’re definitely lit. And that’s why I find it so exciting. And from my point of view, Georg really doesn’t just have one setup, he has several setups. And before we take a look at the setups, um, I also regularly see your LinkedIn formats and what I always notice is that there are certain things where I think you have physical pain with what you see out there.
Thorsten Jekel
What are your three biggest pains that somehow make your eyes hurt when someone communicates them online in a video?
Georg Wawschinek
Yes, I’ll tell you right away. I wanted to say a few words about what you said earlier, and I wanted to motivate our listeners. I have undergone quite a change. At the beginning of the pandemic, I was really totally open. I am present. I really hate online through and through and my stepdaughter Denise has finished studying at an American university and at some point told me that her favourite career aspiration would be to digitize a business with me. And of course that made me really happy. And I jumped at the chance. And then we got into this topic and I was quite honestly a total no-go button, as they say in Austria. I had no idea at all. Zero. Yes, that means everything you see here and also these various cameras that we can sit here. We can take a look at it, now without layout or then with layout. I’ve taught myself all that and a bit of a link to your question.
Georg Wawschinek
I have looked at a lot of your work here. Thank you very much for that. You’ve given me lots of tips. I’ve also asked you a lot of questions and I’ve looked at many, many courses, namely online courses from American women. And they have an incredible level of online performance. So you look at courses there, life settings, it’s crazy, it’s all like television. Yes, and back then I sat down and said, I want to be able to do that. And then I sat for weeks, watched tutorial after tutorial, watched courses and built this whole studio here. We can then take a closer look at the details. This is a bit of an overflow of my workspace here. Incidentally, this is all, as we call it in radio, where I originally come from, a self-propelled unit. I don’t need any direction here. I do the entire setup here myself. Yes, and that was my wish. I wanted to have this look and I got stuck into it and it was a lot of work.
Georg Wawschinek
But I would like to say that no master falls from the sky, it takes a bit of desire, you can get support and then you will have a result that is exactly as you say. Basically, it’s simple. You can do it on your own and you’re welcome to go on this journey. So I’ve changed from I don’t want to be online at all to one that I see as a channel, as you say. I also like to work with my clients live, but an additional door has opened here that is great and that allows me, for example, to do my speech coaching sessions with SEOs online without them losing out because it just looks cool. And that brings me to your question. If I talk for a long time now, please interrupt me there are things that I turn as media and and talk so always get to the point, then you talk to me about online settings and then the dams break. To your question For me, it’s basically my goal.
Georg Wawschinek
It should be that way. The way we’re talking to each other now, I don’t see much difference. As if we were in the same room. Yes, yes, there’s a lack of physicality. And that you can shake hands. Yes, but the quality is so high that I don’t miss anything. And the three most important things, interestingly enough, although we are also talking about video. Yes, it starts with the sound. Bad sound is hell. So that’s how it is. It needs a decent mic. We have here in my academy as well. I’ve done extensive mic testing. We have the podcast setting out there, we can look at it, we have the SMS. B This is an Austrian product, a Luit microphone perhaps as a tip at this point. I’ve looked at countless microphone tests. To put it in a nutshell, if you buy a well-known manufacturer’s microphone, a Rohde en Sennheiser to your ear, you’re never wrong and the subtleties in frequency response – and here I’m talking about technology and switching on your brain – are honestly irrelevant.
Georg Wawschinek
It has to match your voice. We recorded some videos here with the essential B, then we went back to fluid. I find that this fluid suits my voice best. Please experiment. But my tip at this point is to take the pressure off, take a relaxed approach, buy a clean microphone, we’re talking about 101 150 € upwards to a maximum of 400 of the same B and then you’re well on your way. Sound Very important. The second thing I’m always very sad about is camera heights. Yes, there is one. Such a small one. This one here. Yes. So wrong cuts. So there are perhaps two things in there. One is, as you’ve just shown, the famous golden ratio. So if we were to divide up a grid here, so to speak, that makes two-thirds here and one-third here, then I’m here and you’re in your cameraman. Cut exactly on this line in the grid. And it’s true. If we were somewhere down here, there would be too much at the top. It’s called headspace and then you sigh in the picture.
Georg Wawschinek
I see that very, very often. The composition and the angle aren’t right. And that’s because many people just sit in front of a laptop. The camera is down there, then look down, then we have these nostril photographs or there’s a screen right at the top. Then somehow look up at me. That looks terrible. Here’s a tip too There’s a very simple check if you look at the back of the walls. This one is a bit unfortunately wrong because there’s a sound element at the back that’s not quite clear. But if you’re in a room and the walls are parallel in your camera image, then the camera height is correct. So if the camera is too low or too high, then you have the walls either way and then you know it’s not quite right just adjust it that long. And if there are books or A4 stacks under the laptop, if they are parallel, then the walls are right. And then you slide your face to the height and then your camera look is clean.
Georg Wawschinek
So it’s the right angle, the right setting. And then you could just say yes, the subject of the camera, we can talk about it. I’m very freaky here in the big studio. We like to look at my slim desk setting outside, which is a very simple one. There are no more excuses for not having it. There’s also a very slim camera inside. But it should be a clean image and, by the way, bandwidth, bandwidth, bandwidth. I sometimes have Karls, you will also know. You do your whole setup, everything perfect, and over there pixels and grams and crackles because the bandwidth is constantly going down the drain. We also have to acknowledge that if I want to work professionally online. We have triple redundancy here. I have three lines here with a very nice little app called Spotify that switches and switches redundant lines. That’s probably exactly what your tip works wonderfully with it. I can always see the statistics afterwards to see how often this has saved me, because it’s also an important prerequisite.
Georg Wawschinek
So clean sound. The image of the Internet is nicely done and you are already doing very well.
Thorsten Jekel
And when you see someone on stage or when you watch something in a video format, like here in a podcast, there are always three questions. The first question is Do I like the person I’m watching? Do I like them? I think Georg has already answered that question. I’m a quarter Austrian, so everything from my mother’s grandmother onwards is in my quarter. That’s why I have a soft spot for Austrians anyway. And I say with a charming voice: I think we can put a tick in that box. The second question you always ask yourself is the topic relevant to me? That’s why I always like to start with that. One just to say What are the biggest pains? And I can confirm that 100%. Another classic that I see again and again is the office window in the background with a nice backlight. So yes, yes, it’s not allowed today.
Georg Wawschinek
Doors, doors. I hate doors in the background. That’s the Austrian way of putting it. It also works. Sorry if I’m interrupting or you’re making the exact point where I would say yes, we attach so much importance to aesthetics. Yes, there are companies that have their folders, they have their corporate design, the most beautiful hobby. And then people sit down in the online setting and it just looks like shit. And when I’m at the back, for example. But am I that bad? It’s little things like that, cutting a door that goes through somewhere. Then we always wait for it to open for you. Sockets. I just think it’s chic. I took meticulous care to make sure there were no sockets at the back. It’s these subtleties that add up to a picture. I’ve given it some thought. I don’t just sit down somewhere and do things, I put a bit of thought into it. Absolutely.
Thorsten Jekel
And the nice thing is, as you say, it’s not that difficult. It doesn’t always have to be great green screen technology. For example, we have a vacation apartment on an island in the North Sea, so when I’m there, what do I do? I bought a dark gray roll-up, which is 1.5 meters wide and 2 meters high, and I roll it up behind me. And there I have almost the same look that I realize here with my green screen that they say, I have a dark grey background, that means I can do that wonderfully. I even have that when I. In winter, we always like to go skiing in Austria, so I throw the thing in and out of the apartment. So it’s easier than you think. So I think everyone has suffered from this at some point. Something, what? You’ve already mentioned it, it’s a really big issue that I often have too, and maybe the listeners know that too.
Thorsten Jekel
In every fourth meeting, you hear the sound slightly delayed. That’s because there’s someone who still hasn’t understood that it’s a good idea not to listen to the sound through the loudspeaker, but to plug it into their ear. Just like Georg has. We both have our husband in our ear here. So there are different techniques, but it’s just little things like that. So I think the question has now been answered at the latest Do I like him? Is the topic relevant? I think it is highly relevant in order to communicate effectively and efficiently. The third question is, of course, does he have a clue, the guy, so I think it came across relatively well that he has a clue, would you like to tell us two or three sentences about your background, how you became what you are today? My dear Georg.
Georg Wawschinek
That’s a very short version of me I’ve actually spent my whole life dealing with the effects of people. I studied German and Latin very unsuccessfully in beautiful Graz, Austria. Unsuccessfully also because I then went to ORF. I got an offer from Ö3, the biggest radio station in Austria, where I was allowed to work for many years, was a presenter, chief of service, journalist, reporter and took on two geneticists. The one thing that was a good school on the radio. I learned to tell stories using only words, without pictures. And that’s one of course. Yes, I still benefit from it today. And in a very short time, by the way. Our longest contributions for three were one minute 30. So I learned to tell every story in a maximum of 90 seconds in such a way that you don’t need any pictures. It was a good basis.
Thorsten Jekel
Longer than 31? Yes.
Georg Wawschinek
And the second was an unbelievable professionalism and without orientation. So on the three, just learning on a station like that. Everything we do has a single goal and that is the on-air product and this complete orientation towards it. I still have that in me to this day and I sometimes teach my clients this in a charming but clear way. That a stage appearance, then television appearances, an online appearance, that’s a stage. You simply work there. And whether you’re in a bad mood, grumpy or whatever for the remaining 23 hours 56 minutes is relatively unimportant to me. But stage time now? Yes, and then 25 years ago, exactly a quarter of a century ago next year, I started my own business, went into training and coaching, founded various companies and successfully built them up. Initially, I focused specifically on media training from a journalistic background. I then expanded that. I did the academy at the DSA, the German Speakers Association, where we know each other from. I also taught myself keynote speaking and then practiced and learned and have been accompanying people who appear in public for 25 years.
Georg Wawschinek
In all forms of speaking, from interviews to discussion appearances, keynote speeches, that’s what I’ve been doing for 25 years, now well over 3000 seminars, coached over 12,000 people. That’s my thing.
Thorsten Jekel
The whole thing too. There’s a group to which we’ve both been invited, it’s called the nice ones. Dear Rene Bonus is a really great host once a year, where we will see each other in person again soon at the latest. And it’s no coincidence that Georg is a member, because he’s also a really great person and has a combination that I rarely experience. I either meet super techies or I meet people who are good in terms of content. And I rarely come across people who can do both and do it in person and online in this area. And we’ve already talked about this. Everyone always expects you to talk about the image first. I also say that you can watch a bad picture for hours, but you can only endure a few seconds of bad sound. You’ve already said that it’s a good idea to deal with the subject of microphones. What is it? So maybe your three best tips on choosing and using microphones from your experience to get the best possible sound.
Georg Wawschinek
So I completely agree with your thesis Keep it simple. Yes, there is a purely technical basic decision that has to be made. Do I go via a USB microphone, then I go directly into the computer, which is the simplest option Or do I go via a gate? So I go via a mixing console. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. I have it here, I can show it briefly. This is the Roadcaster Pro two, by the way. I will say, by the way, I don’t get money or commissions from anyone here. I recommend. I bought and paid for it all. That’s why I can talk about it. I really like this thing. We often drive in empty and it mixes everything for me. And this one source then goes into the computer. That’s great for more complex settings like we do here, for webinars. When I add guests, when I want to play sound sources, that’s a big advantage. I would definitely think about a setting like this, otherwise USB and that’s it.
Georg Wawschinek
Yes, and then I would take a very pragmatic approach. Let’s say it out loud again. You can also order microphones and send them back if you don’t like them. Yes, and I once ordered a few microphones that didn’t last here either, by the way. Tried them out. And then there are two options. Like the sound, don’t like the sound, send it back if I don’t like the sound. If I like it, the thing stays finished. So in a nutshell, order a microphone, try it out if you like it. Wonderful. And that’s it already. Keep it simple. I can totally confirm that.
Thorsten Jekel
So, we are.
Georg Wawschinek
Yes, sitting for weeks in front of the microphone test. You’re going mad. I think so.
Thorsten Jekel
I also have, I think, 15 microphones lying around my house, because I’m also there for different settings. One tip, by the way: We always think that if you test a microphone like this, you might be able to hear for yourself what you’ve recorded. A good idea is if you have someone in your circle of friends who has a good ear and who can distinguish between microphones, to make a video call with them and say give me some feedback. So that’s always very important, because even if you have a monitor yourself. I, for example, am someone who is not an expert, but I have a very, very good partner in Manuel Koch and he really listens. He hears, you think you’ve overmodulated a bit, he says you’re not speaking cleanly, he says you need to do something about it, so please. Because I often hear this issue too. Double tone, for example. Then he says everything is fine with me, I say yes, with you it is.
Thorsten Jekel
But I say listen to the others. So do you. A classic example Although I was just asked the day before last, I was giving a workshop and someone said, “What do you think of these airports? They’re really great. So I said Have you ever heard yourself on the other side, how crappy they sound? There’s hardly a worse microphone than the one in these airports. Not to mention the fact that it also likes to get doubled over. So I’m 100% with you on trying out this topic from my experience. It doesn’t always have to be the most expensive, so it can also be a cheap microphone. And when I’m out and about, I have a USB headset from Sennheiser PC seven USB. That costs.
Georg Wawschinek
13 €. Exactly. Yes, I bought exactly that following your suggestion and a video you made. Wonderful thing.
Thorsten Jekel
So I recently watched a podcast by this well-known YouTuber who took a few German politicians apart and he has an SM seven B, the microphone, which you rightly mentioned, the gold standard in the podcast scene with Cloudlifter.
Georg Wawschinek
With one caveat. Yes, that’s where it starts with the sound.
Thorsten Jekel
That means.
Speaker 3
He has.
Thorsten Jekel
With Cloud with the thing and everything. What was he doing? He talks to this microphone at a distance of almost one meter and when I talk to 17B at a distance of one meter, my €13 Sennheiser PC seven USB sounds much better. So the question is also why I resisted having a microphone so close in the picture for a long time. I don’t think it’s wonderful and beautiful, but at some point I said okay, the quality of the sound is fine with me. So that’s why it’s a role model. What are your experiences?
Georg Wawschinek
So perhaps two additions to this. One is that it has to be used correctly. I recently had a call with someone who sounded, I always say it so casually in radio language like out of a can, so everyday or like on the toilet. And I say to the use through an external microphone and he says yes, I have what I now rode podcaster and say. Where is it? And then he says yes up there and pulls that. And then I say Up there you need a shotgun microphone with a cool characteristic. A podcaster is pointless up there. Yes then. Or they are like that and lo and behold, suddenly his sound was good. So yes, I completely underline what you’re saying again. Of course, I also have to record and discuss the microphone properly. Yes, one more addition. That cost me a lot of nerves and money. I always show it briefly in my backstage camera. You can see here now, that’s a sound treatment back there.
Georg Wawschinek
We also have that one. The one in the middle. Um, by the way, that was the original view from the back. I was wondering if that was green screen. That’s real. These are bass traps, these are all kinds of sound treatments. Um, for one reason. The best microphone won’t do you any good if your room is badly treated. You said before, 3.4 meter high room. That’s where it gets really exciting. Because high rooms tend to have very strong reverberation. And by the way, I’m happy to share a lesson here because it was so bad. I then set it up here, plastered it all over with some foam boards, which by the way aren’t for anything, and was then very proud of my first recorded episode and sent it to my colleague. And he says it sounds so bassy and reverberant and bad. That can’t be right. I edited it all and, as an old radio guy, I edited these videos on my MacBook speakers, without a monitor or headphones. And now it’s unfortunately the case that this MacBook speaker is good, but simply doesn’t reproduce the frequencies.
Georg Wawschinek
And then I listened to it with the headphones and sure enough, there was something there. Ears is what they call terrible. It really sounded like shit in this room, if I do say so myself. Yes, and then I went back to the start with the sound treatment of the room and then really thought about tweaking the bass here again, with all that, so that it had a clean sound. I’m still not completely satisfied here remember. It still has a slight, slight reverb, but that’s important. Then also listen to it if you still have such a good mic. If the room. Yes, the classic. An old apartment with parquet flooring and no carpets. Yes, you’ll probably have the best microphone there.
Thorsten Jekel
Absolutely. Although I always do. That’s why sound is so important and why I always say relevance before frills. So I always much prefer someone who gives me highly relevant information, a highly relevant message, a highly relevant impulse for my own further development, who likes to stand in front of a poorly lit white wall. And where you say, I’d rather have a nose perspective before I have a high-tech air pump, where I say someone who is super well-lit, etc. Ideally, of course, the two should come together, so I always like to make a comparison: if you buy your wife or husband a beautiful fragrance in the perfumery, then of course even the most beautiful packaging won’t help. If it’s somehow a smelly fragrance for €3.50, but the most expensive fragrance is enriched and enhanced if it’s beautifully packaged. And that’s a bit about my image, which I like to use and which I also find beautiful. As you said, it doesn’t always have to be a green screen.
Thorsten Jekel
So I prefer a real background. I much prefer it to a badly made green screen, which I unfortunately see far too often.
Georg Wawschinek
We can. We can talk about it briefly. I wanted to add one more thing Perhaps some additional thoughts to what you said about the packaging. You know it from my keynote I am. I believe that the real impact is triad. It goes. If the surface, the content and the personality are right, then it becomes charismatic. Just one is not enough. And what I think is a shame, and I would like to pass this on to your listeners. You called them air pumps, there are a lot of them. They look great and that’s why some people buy them. And I suffer a lot when real experts, who really know their stuff and really have something to say, are so badly baked that they then fall off against the air pump. And I think you always have to keep that in mind. Yes, expertise is important, but if I package it badly and it’s about someone clicking on something that looks attractive, then it would be a shame to lose that match.
Georg Wawschinek
Very briefly on the background I also have a green screen at the top of the trailers that I can simply pull down. I have made the experience that I would also like to share. The fact that a green screen works really cleanly is a glimmer of light. The truth is, if you’re really precise, you need a separate light track in your studio for the green screen and another one for this setting like now, if it’s well lit, well, maybe we’ll talk about it later, I think. It makes the green screen much nicer than one of these, for example.
Thorsten Jekel
Yes, so Zoom is a disaster. So I’m doing it on me now, so where I say this.
Georg Wawschinek
Pixel zoom images where people then fray their glasses and the headphones look best.
Thorsten Jekel
The stormtroopers.
Speaker 3
Quite terrible.
Georg Wawschinek
I wanted to show it briefly as an addition, by the way, because you have your gray wall. Mentioned from the vacation. I’ve got this back here, I’ll say that now, I’ll take away the mood picture at the back here again and you can now see this wall at the back is painted gray.
Speaker 3
Exactly.
Georg Wawschinek
Yes, and that’s because I’ve got a light hanging up here that I’m using on the iPad. That will now free you up. can control. And the cool thing is that I can now create any lighting mood I want using the light. It colors my background in red, green, blue or however I want it, simply via a single lamp that hangs up here on the ceiling and.
Thorsten Jekel
This is also that.
Georg Wawschinek
Gray, reflects this best. It works better than on a white wall.
Thorsten Jekel
So that’s always why. Thank you for the addition and also what you’ve already said. Most people start with the subject of the camera and I say that before you start, you have to think about the subject of death. And the second thing you have to think about is light. Because you can often get a better picture with a bad camera with light than if you have a good camera with bad light. And of course it is. So I’m very pragmatic here. I really, really like working with daylight during the day, because I say that it’s always better for me, but it’s okay for me and I still wear it a bit. So if you look now, I’m doing a different green screen here and if you see my jacket and edges and my hairstyle, the green screen is clearly worse than if I model by taking a background that is not deliberately, not monochrome gray, but that is a bit different, I say, not quite uniform.
Thorsten Jekel
And that’s also something that happens when I use a white background, for example. So you have to use the green screen, you have to light it so well and do it so well that it becomes difficult. So you have to do what I always do as an idea.
Georg Wawschinek
As an addition. I also watched a very freaky video by a real specialist. Can you find the desk in your office again? That’s really exciting, for example. We do that unconsciously. I would sense here that it can’t be real.
Thorsten Jekel
Exactly.
Georg Wawschinek
There’s a very simple reason for this: the light source is coming at you from the front. You obviously have light on your forehead, but my brain says the light source is coming from behind the window.
Thorsten Jekel
Yes.
Georg Wawschinek
Yes, that’s quite exciting. If you build a nice green screen setting, then you even pay attention to the image. Yes, exactly, that would make sense, but now the light reflection in the bottle at the back would be in the same position. That the sizes match. The thrower is also a bit too big, so the desk is also quite exciting with the green screen background. If you want, you can go into endless detail. I also recommend building a clean setting here, where the light, directions, perspectives and voices are properly illuminated and then it works.
Thorsten Jekel
What I like to do. This is now a green screen for a Radeberger Group product. That’s a customer of mine and what I really enjoy doing and where I always get great feedback when I give training sessions, I make sure that I usually have a background from the customer with me. And I also did this during the pandemic, for example, where I sometimes put company headquarters that they had on the Internet into the green screen. So that’s our company headquarters, where they’re standing right in front of it. I can’t visit them in person. So at least I’ve chosen the second best way. So just as we always say the customer prefers to hear his name, he perhaps prefers to see his background. And I can only agree 100%. Please no Zoom green screens, you can really only use them in an absolute emergency when you’re working there. And you rarely get really good quality in that area. And would you like to say something about your lighting situation?
Thorsten Jekel
I’ve already seen that you have. I think you have such large softboxes in front of you. Would you like to say two or three more sentences about that? Yes.
Georg Wawschinek
We can try one out now. We have our field reporter, my colleague Mario, here on assignment.
Thorsten Jekel
Cool, wonderful.
Georg Wawschinek
I’m still relatively small at the top of the screen, but it should fit. You are.
Speaker 3
On edge, dear Mario, if you.
Thorsten Jekel
Once you make sure you get across, maybe again, that makes it easier. Wonderful.
Speaker 3
Perhaps the screen lock again.
Thorsten Jekel
If you take it out, the iPhone will also rotate. I suspect that the screen lock is still in so that you can get out in landscape mode.
Speaker 3
I’ll stick to that.
Georg Wawschinek
That’s nice that you can now make a cut or talk about it.
Thorsten Jekel
That’s how it is.
Speaker 3
It is now. Wonderful. I’m not playing.
Thorsten Jekel
I mean, such cowards.
Speaker 3
We are really good.
Georg Wawschinek
Let’s moderate everything. So, what you can see here now. We have the basics here that you need for the lighting. You’ll also see it outside. I even have it in my office. Setting is one. At least I recommend two to 3:00. Lighting is also quite simple. Yes, there’s a light and there’s a highlight, which is my song, this one in front of me and that does my basic lighting. And maybe this one here to the side only does one thing It picks up the strings a little here. Basically, it’s usually the case that you have a bit more basic lighting with my song and maybe a bit less with this one, because then the shadows cast make it a bit more dramatic, give it a bit more dynamism. I have them both the same, because I’m more content-oriented here. It’s purely a matter of taste. I prefer it when it doesn’t have so much drama, but is quite clearly lit. And then we have two backlights at the back here in this case. They’re normally called suffering, which doesn’t make much sense in my case.
Georg Wawschinek
They make you stand out a little from the background and add a bit of depth back here. But that’s already backup light. Maybe. I would certainly recommend it. And then I have this studio lighting at the back as a little gimmick, which now makes up the back, these little accent lights at the back, this little lamp and the red, that’s decorative history, so it’s a matter of taste. But light. In any case, I might recommend adding a companion LED. Makes sense, the rest is just a gimmick. One more small addition, because you said that Mario could perhaps film into the depths and darkness of our studio, in the direction of the door at the back. That’s exactly nothing now. I briefly turn on the ceiling light, we’re really closed here. The wardrobe and the dressing table are still built in back there. And I deliberately work here without daylight for a reason, because it makes me independent.
Speaker 3
Absolutely.
Georg Wawschinek
Because if it’s thundering, storming, snowing or if it’s night, evening or whatever, I switch on here and always have the same look. And that’s the advantage. So that’s a bit of a basic decision. If I were to sit inside for eight hours and make it cold, it would get a bit depressing. I like being outside at my desk, where I have daylight from the side. I also notice that I’m partly over-lit from the side. That can’t be avoided because there’s a very large window outside. It’s more pleasant for the psyche. From a purely visual point of view, I’m definitely a fan of artificial light because you have complete control over your lighting.
Thorsten Jekel
That’s why I always say that we have slightly different strategies. You really are a reference for me. I always find it so nice. When I’m at Gesa, I’m someone who helps people to simply use technology. And everyone always expects me to have the perfect equipment with everything. I tend to take the other approach. I generally have a different approach with every new piece of equipment I buy, and my wife always calls me a speaker slut because there are always boxes being delivered from Thomann or Amazon. But every time I integrate a new part into my setup, at least one has to be thrown out, preferably two. So I’m regularly trying to reduce the complexity of my setup because I’ve also had the experience, as you mentioned earlier, that what can fail, can fail. There is always additional complexity. So maybe you’ve already experienced that. There is a keyword, audio delay, where you also have to struggle from time to time because image signals run a little longer than audio signals simply because they have more information.
Thorsten Jekel
And if you can’t manage this properly in your setup, then you can have effects that are no longer synchronized. And that can of course be extremely annoying. So, and I experience this regularly, the nice thing or the bad thing is that if someone isn’t a professional, they can’t pinpoint what’s wrong. But they have a gut feeling that says it’s somehow not real, that something is wrong. How do you see it from your point of view, Georg?
Georg Wawschinek
There is a study from England that is not very big, but I think it is. This very slight delay is one of the reasons for the famous zoom fatique, as they call it. Because, as you said, our brain doesn’t consciously see, it’s not synchronized, but it is and it needs more processing power. So actually this delay is a bit tedious. We can, if you like, have another quick look here. Have a good look, but I can do that comfortably.
Thorsten Jekel
With pleasure.
Georg Wawschinek
The software that I’m running here in this area, that’s it. I’m very diligent about screen sharing, I won’t admit it! This is my software and it has many, many advantages. I have to say at this point that I think we’re on a similar path. I personally don’t have a single Windows computer in this office or in my entire life. This all happens on MacWelt. I, I, I have a real aversion to the other than Mac and it’s a Mac program. I’ll say this about it now. Obs, by the way, for example, also works fine, but I think they’re mainly unbelievable. They develop, they come out with new features with every update. Incidentally, it’s now a beta update outside Zoom integration. It’s amazing. You can then embed your Sun Calls as a source. You can too. Unbelievable. It’s a great thing. Costs what is not $200 a year. That also makes this whole look here, this frame for example that you see there, you can then do that a little bit moving or not, that’s a matter of five minutes, that’s just controlled by the overlays in real time.
Georg Wawschinek
I have all the options here, but to answer your question, you also have the audio setup here. Can you change that with delay? You see, can you change your delay? That means I can also use this delay to intercept. It’s a bit of a gimmick to set it up properly once. I’ve also experienced what you said. Please always ask outside if necessary. Sometimes you’re in here in the studio, in monitoring, totally clean and everyone outside is suffering. You might also have a look in the chat and not adjust. If everything fits, everything is fine with the audio, but that’s more interesting. So there are still the little traps built in with delay and the bigger the setting gets, something can go wrong.
Thorsten Jekel
And that’s why I always say that the less complexity you have, the easier it is. A practical tip, which is also a possibility. It doesn’t work with every camera because not every camera has good preamps, i.e. preamplification. But if you have a camera that has a good audio system in it, then you can, for example, feed a microphone into the camera, which I did for a long time, and then the sound and the image signal always come in synchronously with an HDMI cable. I have never experienced an audio delay with a camera. So that’s the simplest tip, where I always say just loop it, as long as the preamps are good enough in the camera, push it in via the path. And basically saying less complexity makes sense. And what you also say test it, do it wisely and let others look over it. When I look at your setup, I’d like to think it looks like a teleprompter that you have on there or that you’re looking at.
Thorsten Jekel
Exactly. What’s the idea? This teleprompter? Because I’m guessing that just like me, you’re not using my teleprompter here to do any kind of supervised reading lecture format, but I think there’s another idea behind it, isn’t there?
Georg Wawschinek
You’ll be partly surprised.
Speaker 3
Yes.
Thorsten Jekel
Do you also do supervised reading?
Georg Wawschinek
Partly yes. I’ll tell you something about it in a minute. So on the one hand here, on the other hand here. I have two prompters here in this case. I have the prompter here. You’re on it. Application number one. Correct. And next to it. I’ve written very elegantly here in the teleprompter. Text The text for the interview with Thorsten. I actually use application number one for both and I think it’s a very important one. And then let’s take a look outside in the slim setting with the Legato prompter. I love the way you have it here now and the way I have it here now, that I’m looking at you during a Zoom call. I now look you in the eye and since my camera is behind your eyes in the teleprompter, I automatically look at you. Yes, that means we’re talking to each other. We look each other in the eye. We don’t have to look down and look up. For me, that’s application number one for the teleprompter, which is great.
Georg Wawschinek
I say, there’s the camera, I say one more thing. Bayarena then comforts me. There’s one more comment, but it’s not that important. But it is very important. Please remind me. The second is actually the teleprompter. And here I would like to take up the cudgels, amazingly enough. I have also gone on a journey here, just like in the Online Journey. As a rhetoric specialist, you are naturally only allowed to speak freely and you have to be able to do everything freely and. Teleprompters were the devil’s plaything for me and I was taught otherwise. I produced my entire Impressions Academy here in over a year. We have now produced 300 videos here in 4K quality, each of which is edited like a TV report. Lovingly. There is everything on the subject of rhetoric and it would have been impossible, impossible to produce 300 videos precisely in one year. Impossible without a teleprompter. I have my own course in my academy on how to work with a teleprompter and I’ve won every bet so far because all my clients I’ve met who have watched the academy have asked Do I do them with a teleprompter?
Georg Wawschinek
And they all say no, of course not, you speak completely freely. It’s word for word, word for word from the teleprompter. In other words, the art of the teleprompter is just to write correctly, that’s the most important thing. And then to have a few little things, so that I can take a quick glance away during the performance or think about something or take a break. That’s how speaking works. But then you can read pauses off the teleprompter yourself. It’s a great setting for me. I wouldn’t want to be without it. Incidentally, I also recommend you to people I work with. If they don’t have much time, they can learn to use a teleprompter once, that’s a bit of practice and then they save tons of time because it takes exactly three minutes to record a three-minute video.
Speaker 3
And not.
Georg Wawschinek
Two hours with 27 steaks and 25,000 starts. What a great thing. That’s why I’m using it twice here. So we have the main point once and the prompter once. And here in the prompter software that I use, for example, I can switch you off for me for a moment. Now I have the text here on both prompters and so I can, if I say in this camera work this is the text for the interview with Thorsten, wonderful. And so I have it on both cameras and in both sections of my prompter. And you have.
Speaker 3
It has already been mentioned.
Thorsten Jekel
When I installed my teleprompter, I think I was one of the last people in the DSA to buy a teleprompter, because I say complexity again. And back then, I have to say, the one you mentioned didn’t exist yet. You still had to assemble it from individual components. This issue has also become much easier with the Legato teleprompter. Would you like to say a few words about this system, which I believe you also use in other settings?
Speaker 3
Absolutely.
Georg Wawschinek
So before I send Mario on his journey outside to the elegant prompter. I would like to show it here briefly. Basically, building a teleprompter is also very simple. So if Mario tells us here two, this is my set prompter, there is an iPad underneath as a good screen and my, my prompter here has a completely normal screen inside. Simply put. It’s no different to the screen hanging on my rear HDMI output, which is reflected up into the prompter, so a teleprompter per se is a fool.
Speaker 3
Simple game.
Georg Wawschinek
It is hung at the back and the screen hangs at the bottom. That’s it. Now I come to the little trick. If you ever have anything to do with Apple, please do it properly from Georg. There’s one stupid thing, and by the way, El Gato opens up this field. So now I have a screen in my prompter and of course I have to mirror it. Logical. There, now I can do one thing in the Mac world. I can flip in one direction, but not in the other. I could now put a zoom call here on my prompter. Then I don’t have you standing on my head, but right. But my screen was upside down. That means I always had to look up here with the mouse to see how it works on the screen, because unfortunately the Mac can’t flip in this direction. If you ever hear the friends at Apple, leave it. I dedicate a sanctuary in my office to them if they just put in the system settings where horizontal and vertical flipping. That would be How did I solve it, so to speak?
Georg Wawschinek
There is a single screen that I found in the vastness of the Internet. It’s now here in the Setting menu, can you flip the screen?
Speaker 3
Yes.
Georg Wawschinek
So now I have you up here on Zoom and can operate my son up here as normal as on a screen and don’t have to think in mirror image. Unfortunately, there’s only one screen. And with that Mario, let’s send you outside into the setting, because El Kato has ingeniously closed this gap. So now you can see Mario ruling through our office and our, our studio and our stage. That is.
Speaker 3
Your before.
Thorsten Jekel
Mentioned lateral window side.
Speaker 3
Windows. What? You.
Georg Wawschinek
That was the big window. Exactly. Mario can show it again. That’s where, then? Downstairs, Paula. There you can see Paula, the French bulldog, watching. And that’s really light from the side. So, I have plenty of daylight there. Still, you see, up here I have two little El Kato ladders. There’s a man and a lot of suffering on it, and you can already see what Mario is showing us now. That’s the El Kato prompter. I’ve been testing it for a long time now. I can recommend it without reservation. It costs €299 and is a ready-to-use unit with the prompter unit and the screen. You can put any camera in the back. Yes, I have one. I also had it via simply C1 which was hyped at some point. Okay, yes, it’s in the back there. Makes a nice picture. You can put the mirrorless in, you can put iPhone in the back. Everything. Yes, of course, also obviously delicate, okay. And the complexity of the whole thing is so simple that you have a USB cable that you plug into a computer and that’s it.
Georg Wawschinek
There’s a mini software on it, which is underneath. And the brilliant thing is, this El Gato screen is already flipped in itself. Yes, you have. Mario has now shown it briefly here. I now have a small teleprompter with text on it and now Mario has moved my teams over, which would now be open, for example, and you simply take this teams window from your computer and simply move it to the prompter as a third screen or as a second screen.
Thorsten Jekel
I think that.
Georg Wawschinek
It’s ready mirrored. It’s a great thing, you buy it, you put it behind a camera, you plug it into USB, you download this software, you have a teleprompter, you have a zoom call on top and it’s ready to use and really foolproof. Great thing.
Speaker 3
Absolutely.
Thorsten Jekel
So I’m glad you feel the same way. I also recommend regular restriction, smallness.
Georg Wawschinek
So the screen is relatively small. I guess they’ll be adding 13 14-inch screens soon, I think. But great.
Speaker 3
Ding. So I think.
Thorsten Jekel
If you want to read texts, it would be too small for me. But I think it’s perfect for the camera. Because I hardly ever have any text in the teleprompter. I sometimes do it quite pragmatically by sticking something on my screen with Sellotape and saying, “Here I am”. Sometimes I just say that I’m going to go down a little bit, somewhere, if I have really important points in the keyword. But maybe I just need to take a quick look at your teleprompter, because I’m still saying that I’m probably not yet so well trained by you that I can handle teleprompters well. So that was another good impulse from you.
Georg Wawschinek
You are cordially invited, my dear.
Speaker 3
Yes.
Thorsten Jekel
And if you look at the topic of the camera, which has already been addressed, that is, what most people expect at the beginning, like when I go online, there is the option of using the integrated webcam if I have one somewhere in the computer. I have the option of working with an external webcam. I have the option of working with the iPhone. I have the option of working with a system camera with an SLR camera. What are your experiences and recommendations as to which camera or cameras are ideal for which setting? Yes.
Georg Wawschinek
I have to say, during our whole conversation, but that will be even more true in your business. Rhetoric has one advantage, it is by and large over 2000 years old. I realize that as soon as you talk about technology, two weeks later something new on the market can change everything. So we always say the current status is just 2024, my current status is yes, we have done a large series of tests. I once did a whole webinar on it and a whole video where we directly compared what the looks are like. And they’re not so crazy that I would put it at the top of the list. But they are visible. Yes, Mario, maybe. If you go on another trip outside now as camera kid Mario, to our podcast studio, then we can show that there. If you want to listen to and watch the Impression Deep Dive, by the way, that’s my podcast where I have special personalities as guests and we explore how they work.
Georg Wawschinek
And that’s exactly what we’re recording in the setting you see here. And we’ve decided to go video as well. It’s not just an audio podcast, we’re also on YouTube and Spotify with video, which is a lot more work. Yes, and there are the shoes I mentioned earlier, which can be seen in 98% of all podcasts worldwide, because it’s a good marketing strategy. The thing has one advantage: it’s a buffalo. You can live with a text message unless you’re sitting 1 meter away. You can’t really do anything wrong. It does, I will say this, have one disadvantage. It needs an incredible amount of money. It needs real juice. The Rotcaster Pro two makes it that far. Nevertheless, we’ve installed the plug that you’ve already mentioned. You can now see it at the back of the console. That’s why it’s so long. This series, because it needs the level. And now back to the camera. We have. I have. I have. There’s a very exciting video on YouTube where someone spent five hours listing everything a cam needs to be able to do.
Georg Wawschinek
So, these are now things like can it do 4K, we run everything here on 4K, then of course it comes. The exciting thing is when does the thing get so hot on 4K that it switches off, because there are cameras that run so hot on 4K that they look at some point. They make their story in the middle of the webinar. How long can they record 4K? Incidentally, it’s a bit of a joke. Video and photo cameras are taxed differently in the EU. So now, at some point, the photo camera manufacturers have said that they can also do video. Whereupon the question was when do you pay which tax? And at some point the EU decided that up to 30 minutes it is a camera and from 30 minutes it is a video camera. That’s why there are now many cameras that can only record for 30 minutes. So that was also a reason. How long can it record? The camera Yes, so after all that, the person in this video came to the same conclusion as me. It’s the Sony ZVEI ten, that’s the one we have out there now.
Speaker 3
I say yes now.
Georg Wawschinek
Okay, I’ll tell you why I have them and we’re just changing over completely. So I’ve got another cam here on the side, for example, and it’s already the sun. How did all this come about? It has no restrictions. It takes time to record. It’s not running. That means we’ve been recording here for two or three hours. That’s easy. And it’s also one of the babies. Yes, that’s one thing. It has to be able to do that. It still depends a bit on the size! The second man, the word, that of the sensor is the full-frame or whatever, is completely sufficient here. And otherwise it’s a bit of a matter of taste. How is the handling? That’s basically what the body does. So our game changer game changer was Mario, if you show it briefly. We then went to the Sigma lenses, the Sigma lenses and we now have a 52 millimeter focal length out here on the podcast. And that lens, that was the game changer.
Georg Wawschinek
That was an incredible difference. So the STANDARD sun lens that was on there that they supply you with was worlds apart in terms of the image. I can show it here now. For historical reasons, because I had a Nikon T2 six inside for three and a half 1,000 € at the beginning. This is now my Menke here and this one here. The time came, this is the sun about 16 with the Sigma lens and I honestly somehow think that I now find it more beautiful in terms of the image than the Nikon, which cost three times as much. We’re talking about a Sony body with a lens costing around €1,000. And that’s an investment where I say, I’d take that in my hand immediately for this Sonnyboy, which is ready with the Sigma lens fixed focal length and and and. And you’re in a really great picture with a thousand. By the way, there’s a little something extra. You can see now on the side with this lens that it has a really nice effect at the back. So a nice blur.
Georg Wawschinek
It’s not software, it’s not like that, it’s not the software in game or in total. It’s the lens, because that’s up to 1.4 focal length. That’s the six on the lens here, for example, this one I think only goes down to four or three and a half. A player also has a focal length, but not as intensive. So the lens is absolute in this case.
Thorsten Jekel
Optics beats technology in this case. It is pure physics.
Speaker 3
Then simply when you.
Thorsten Jekel
has paid attention in physics class in the closes white.
Speaker 3
Man, that’s really only limited.
Thorsten Jekel
To.
Speaker 3
Holding is. So we have it.
Georg Wawschinek
Then tried it out on the podcast. We said we would order one of the lenses and test why everything was so heavy. We’ve seen a lot of tests on it and we stop the camera from switching on. Then we said, “Wow! So this really is a real booster.
Thorsten Jekel
Wonderful and interesting. So you have three settings in your studio? Is that right or is there a fourth? Yes.
Georg Wawschinek
We have three. So, this is the studio we’re in, so to speak. And I’ll say it again about everything that our listeners have seen and heard. And I think that’s what you live for. Please don’t let it put anyone off. That’s the freak version. Yes, yes, I built it all myself. You can do that. Yes. I have paid a lesson in the academy videos where I show every single part. But this is a setup where I say, if I want to be very professional, this is my business. That’s why I invested in it, that’s why I have the two cameras and the prompter. And the whole thing should remind you that this is the Big One. Then there’s this very slim option, like we have outside, on my desk. Prompter By the way, I didn’t mention as a kid a little one was also about a Rode etc. USB microphone into the Mac, the setting is ready. Then I played with outside.
Georg Wawschinek
I also have a cam outside, but I can do without it. Yes, that’s the lean setting that you can do at any time. And then the third thing we have is the podcast setting, where we record some of the podcasts. Some of my clients also want to try out how they interview or how they are interviewed during coaching. But by and large, these are the three settings and maybe something will be added now. You’ve infected me there too, my dear Torsten. You don’t know how far your videos go. Um, I’m going to try out a motorhome with my wife next week. Yeah, cool. And if that’s fun for us, did you make me want to do that as much as you showed your on-the-go settings? With the zoom from the motorhome, with the green screen, the little one in the back? If the plan works out, then there will be a fourth setting soon.
Speaker 3
I have to say, I would have had it recently. I was going to.
Thorsten Jekel
I recently had a really hardcore day and gave a webinar from the car in the morning. I had a face-to-face appointment at noon and was standing in the parking lot one S-Bahn station away. I went to the customer, got back into the camper van and gave another online training session. And I disguised it like this in the first moment and at the end of my training I said, “So, now I’ll show you Behind the Scenes, where I’m really sitting here, you would never have done it before. So you would never have said to any Radeberger group now that you’re doing another training course for field service, that you’re doing something from the camper right now.
Speaker 3
How cool is that?
Thorsten Jekel
Does it somehow turn into a camper, i.e. from the side and what? As you mentioned earlier, the topic of the network, which is of course extremely important, is the issue of simply having good internet on the move. So I can’t recommend enough extremely. So as a mobile router. I was just on the train again today and when I looked, there was someone sitting next to me who was swearing because he couldn’t check his emails and I was next to him in Teams Call. So you can tell that it’s significantly better than other devices. So that’s another issue and what you’re saying about bundling channels, so you probably even have emergency power with you or do you still have it in your studio if the power goes out?
Georg Wawschinek
Not that far, not that far yet.
Speaker 3
That saved us once at Hofer.
Thorsten Jekel
We did a livestream once.
Georg Wawschinek
I saw it once. Yes, yes, so I would, when I go into such large streams now, yes, honestly. It would be annoying if something were to hang up here.
Speaker 3
But no end of the world is bearable.
Georg Wawschinek
But yes and yes. So I have in my online supplier that I buy from, we don’t want to name names. Is there a separate list? It’s actually called Thorsten’s Tips, by the way. And I already have Night Talk in there, for example. So thank you once again for these really incredibly useful tips. And I’m puzzled as to whether that’s what we’re talking about or whether it’s a normal one.
Thorsten Jekel
It has light-colored lenses and this is the Ray Ban Meta and.
Speaker 3
The.
Thorsten Jekel
Smart Glasses and it has Colormatic glazing in it and it always has a slight ten percent residual tint, it doesn’t get completely light. And that’s why I always have them like this. You’ll notice the difference. When I take it in now, it’s a bit pleasant.
Speaker 3
The.
Thorsten Jekel
It’s clearer. So that’s why I have two or three bands, but these are excellent for those who don’t know them. The idea is that there’s a camera in there and I can take photos, I can film or I can even stream live. And what I regularly do with it, for example, is that when I produce shows, I do live streams, I do it behind the scenes. In other words, during the show, where I need both hands, I do behind the scenes in that area. So that could also be an interesting topic for you, how to do that.
Georg Wawschinek
My wife forbids me to watch only your videos.
Speaker 3
Because.
Georg Wawschinek
Then it becomes.
Speaker 3
That’s dangerous. I know what it’s like when the.
Thorsten Jekel
Husband and I are rocking up again. We have too. You said the Americans are a reference. I still have two references that I look at. One is, I’ll say, rediscovered by Emmanuel Koch. For him, the European Song Eurovision Song Contest has always been a cult in the family. I haven’t watched it for decades, but I can recommend it to everyone – there are lots of behind-the-scenes videos on YouTube showing how they built the current Eurovision Contest. And that’s awesome. They really, really took it down from the top. So I say, if you look at it, really, you don’t normally see all the cameramen running around, but there are videos like this where you can see the people running around with the cameras and they’re a bit bigger, a bit heavier than the ones we have.
Thorsten Jekel
So it’s really extreme. And what I’ve learned from Tom Friedländer is to take a look at the Twitch scene. That’s me. It never made sense to me how you can somehow allow yourself to play and earn money with it. That somehow didn’t make sense to me. But fortunately Tom Friedländer said: “Take a look at Twitter, because what they can do is interact with their users. Because what I always experience a lot, and I’d like to finish by saying that we’ve talked a lot about technology, and also about the topic of interaction with the audience. Let’s talk about it again. I often experience this when it comes to online formats or hybrid formats. Emmanuel always likes to say “Gerümpel”, “Totale”, in other words, they say that I somehow have a camera in the back. And then of course you also have this issue of people saying yes, online is stupid. In your experience, what are the things that a speaker should pay attention to when they have all the technology?
Thorsten Jekel
How do online lectures become so exciting that people say it’s like a James Bond movie, I want to go there too? After an hour and a half, I’m sad when it’s over rather than thinking how can I get through it?
Georg Wawschinek
Um, yes. I wanted to say one thing: I have a lot of admiration for you. And for the format you always do with the team, by the way. Karin Burger So you’ve already created a STANDARD, which I think is tremendous. Yes, I recently looked at a congress for example, I won’t mention any names. A huge thing, a whole day long and one speaker and one speaker after the other, just from some horrible offices with bad and and and. Anyone know why? Why does that have to be? And as you mentioned, I also had a look on Twitter. It was a completely alien world to me. I can’t believe how much easier it is to watch someone gambling. Yes, and they’re all sitting in a cool setting. If you look at the channels of young podcasters on YouTube today, they have a great setup, it looks great and is often in a child’s room. Yes, there’s a nice background, a cool microphone. A clean camera. They just talk and do it.
Georg Wawschinek
Yes, and then I think to myself and, and, and. The rest of the business world stinks, while the boys from the nursery show us how we perform online. Yes, that’s a real shame. Coming to your question.
Speaker 3
There.
Georg Wawschinek
I’m nowhere near as far as you are. I mainly have one-to-one coaching sessions online. Sometimes smaller groups that are relatively short. Where I’ve shied away from so far is translating something like a one-day training with 5 to 8 people one-to-one into an online setting. I haven’t dared to do that yet, because I know that there’s a lot there with break-out rooms and interactive work and so on. But it would be presumptuous of me to give any big tips on the design, so to speak. As far as performance is concerned, I wanted to say one more thing. This is a very, very important tip for me. Perhaps towards the end of our conversation. And to reassure you. I’ve been speaking all my life, seminars, lectures, I’ve presented on the radio and it was somehow new every time. Yes, I was a trainer, I could do that. Then the customer asks me: Can you make a talk out of it? Yes, sure, I’ll do it. He was completely off the mark. Yes, I realized that giving presentations and keynote speaking is a profession in its own right, so I taught myself that.
Georg Wawschinek
So then at some point I decided to make Impression, not the masses. And when I had a seminar in Vorarlberg and then sat in the steam bath in the evening and had the inspiration for my first video and how to serve it. I went up to my room next to my iPhone and talked this video into it and it was really, really, really bad.
Speaker 3
Test It was.
Georg Wawschinek
Really bad.
Speaker 3
And.
Georg Wawschinek
I was desperate because I was sitting there, thinking to myself that there’s no such thing. I’ve been talking all my life and I can’t do it. So then I set up the studio and I swear to you, I want to pass that on to everyone out there. I suffered like a pig in the beginning. I didn’t enjoy it. It was tedious, it was exhausting. The result was lousy. I kicked tons of videos into the bin because I said, ‘That’s not my level yet. Yes, you have to teach yourself that. And I promise you one thing: the more you work in front of the camera, the more you are in this setting, the more it becomes a part of you. And that’s why I’m now able to set myself. And by the way, yes, the teleprompter also helped me a lot. You just come in and today I sit down and work here. Remembering and it has become a part of me. But that’s just to encourage you. It’s tough at first and I know from my training and coaching sessions that speaking into the camera lens is the hardest thing there is.
Georg Wawschinek
But you have to get through it and it’s a skill that you acquire like any other. Finally, I saw a tip from Michael Caine, the great actor, who by the way is great on YouTube, there are whole academies with him that have been filmed. And he said don’t imagine the audience behind the camera, the camera is your audience. In other words, this is where the music plays, yes, this is where you work, this is where you play. And of course, if you can make it easier for yourself as a speaker and you have a teleprompter where you can see the people you’re talking to, then you automatically talk to them. That’s another reason why teleprompters are great. Because it’s easier. Yes. Standing in front of a camera lens, black hole, and having to deliver a keynote for 30 minutes is, I think, a really tough act to follow.
Speaker 3
Yes, so it is.
Thorsten Jekel
Yes, we both give presentations in person and online. My experience is that I find giving a presentation online more strenuous than on stage.
Speaker 3
So my experience a hundred thousand times over.
Georg Wawschinek
I haven’t done any presentations at all honestly. I have done webinars and I am. But you can really put me on the bread after an hour of high-tech webinar with exaggerations and a lot of stuff.
Speaker 3
Correct off. Yes.
Georg Wawschinek
So really, really, really, really, really exhausting.
Thorsten Jekel
Wonderful. I think we could go on talking for hours and days. I have.
Speaker 3
The feeling.
Thorsten Jekel
The readers and listeners. They know. And you see, I always have guests where, after an hour, after an hour and a half, I know immediately that this is 0.2% of the knowledge and experience that we have just heard here. So, as you said, competence is important. What’s important is performance and also the right personality, the right formatting as a person. And I can put more than three ticks on that. And what I have taken away for myself is this. Yes, you can do it with high tech. It’s hard work and with a few basic principles you can make a clear difference to the others who are out there. And the great thing is. That’s also on my list and we’ll link to it again in this video. I think everyone should take a look at the topic of teleprompters and you even have a great course on the subject. I’ll definitely include the link in the episode. Um, what else do you offer when someone says I need more of this life?
Thorsten Jekel
Georg Waschinek Where else can you support and help?
Georg Wawschinek
For me, it’s always about the public appearance. I’m not a communication coach in the sense of two people talking to each other and sorting out their problems. I can’t do that, and that’s what my wife says.
Speaker 3
That this is the case.
Georg Wawschinek
I always find it exciting when someone is on the stage of life. Whether you’re on stage as a keynote speaker, you have to give a speech, you have a presentation and Pietsch, you’re in an interview, you’re in an online setting. I always find it exciting when this person, who is actually talking, suddenly stands on a stage in life and suddenly something changes. And making people shine is what I do. We have very roughly outlined three areas There is the Impression Academy. It contains all my knowledge from 25 years in high-quality 4K videos. At what I think is a really competitive price. That is knowledge. This knowledge is the basis for the live work with me. I no longer tell people in individual coaching sessions how to sit, stand, look and what to do with their hands. I can’t listen to that anymore after 25 years. It’s a shame about the live time, which is then more expensive for me.
Georg Wawschinek
You get the foundation and then you can work with me live. On the one hand, there is Top Executive Coaching, where I regularly accompany top executives over a period of 3 to 6 months. In other words, we go through the Circle of Excellence, as I call it, which means you prepare a performance with me, you do the feedback, this performance and the next performance tomorrow. Feedback again, next performance, feedback again. So I’ve moved away from this one shot. I do a rhetoric coaching session lasting four hours. That’s good for the cash register, but in reality nothing comes out of it. Then we have the second Impression Master Class. This is for teams of up to five people as a rule. They all get the Academy, get their knowledge after an on-boarding in Call on Line with me and then we work hardcore for six hours live in the boot camp. In other words, we don’t talk about the basics, they have their lectures, their presentations and their interviews all ready to go and we hit each other over the head with one setting after another.
Georg Wawschinek
Also at our studio. Those are the two main directions, so to speak. And then we have Impression Taylor Made. The nice thing is, as you mentioned, with the expansion to online and the Academy, we can of course now tailor everything.
Speaker 3
Super.
Georg Wawschinek
Recently I said that we have 64 people in the company who want to learn presentation. That would have been unmanageable for me in the past and now we can do it by determining who gets access to the Academy, who gets a Master Class? Then we hold a special evening there with me, where we do something like Deutschland sucht den Superstar, where they are on stage. We also have a jury. Yes, we judge that. The others sit there and there’s pizza and Coke. Totally cool. Yes, that’s our Taylor Meet. Where we make exactly the right thing from these ingredients for every need.
Thorsten Jekel
Wonderful. So you are unmistakably Austrian. So before that.
Speaker 3
All.
Thorsten Jekel
Colleagues who are watching and listening from Hofer. So you have a short way to Georg, so he’ll definitely book him if you’re not already working with Georg. But of course you also work for German customers, I assume. So the trip to Germany is not a world tour either. So you can certainly also be booked in Germany if one or two people say “Oh, it’s only available in Austria”. No, it’s available worldwide. Dear Georg is one of them.
Speaker 3
Also to the I will be sent.
Thorsten Jekel
To the Certificate Speaking Professionals, to the speakers who are there at the most professional level, i.e. also as keynote speakers. As I said, to close the circle. I’ve seen him live several times and that was one reason for me to go to the event. It was a deep need for me to have you on this podcast. And as listeners and viewers of the podcast always know, there’s plenty of substance here in a great, humorous and high-quality package. With this in mind, I wish all listeners continued success. Good luck to you too, of course, and many thanks, dear Georg.
Georg Wawschinek
Thank you very, very much for the invitation and the great conversation. The time just flew by. It was great fun. Thank you very much.
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