1064 – Streamline Your Life: Tom talks Stream Deck

SUMMARY BY CHATGPT

Tom Antion returns from a short hiatus and introduces the Stream Deck, a productivity and automation tool he recently adopted and wishes he had started using years ago. The Stream Deck will be added to version 4.0 of his free Automation e-book, though it’s not new technology—just newly embraced by him.
A Stream Deck is a small desktop device with programmable buttons (and optional dials) that can trigger single or multiple actions with one press. Tom emphasizes it does not require programming skills and can be learned quickly through videos and experimentation.
Key Uses & Benefits
• Automation & Time Savings: Reduces small, repetitive tasks that add up and drain mental energy.
• Lighting Control: Turns video lights on/off, adjusts brightness and color temperature (day/night) instantly.
• Audio Control: Mute/unmute microphones silently, adjust volume, and add sound effects.
• App & Website Launching: Open frequently used apps (Zoom, Canva, Audition) or websites with one button.
• Multi-Action Buttons: One button can open Zoom, turn on lights, set mic levels, open notes, and start a call.
• Window & System Control: Resize windows, put the computer to sleep, and manage workflows efficiently.
• Folders & Multiple Pages: Organize buttons by task (lighting, graphics, recording, etc.).
• Hotkeys & Macros: Replace complex keyboard shortcuts with simple button presses.
Tom highlights that while there’s a small learning curve, the long-term payoff is hundreds of hours saved, allowing more time for income-producing work or personal life.
Gear Mentioned
• Elgato Stream Deck
• Elgato Key Lights (two lights positioned at 45° angles, fully controlled via Stream Deck)
• Upcoming episode will cover the Elgato Teleprompter, which Tom praises as the best he’s ever used.
Closing Message
Tom reinforces his philosophy of doing more with less through automation, encourages listeners to download his free Automation e-book, and promotes his long-running mentorship and online marketing training programs.

===

Episode 1064 – Stream Deck
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody, it's Tom here with episode 1064 of Screw the Commute podcast. Back from a couple week hiatus, dealing with some bunch of new equipment, going to have a new show rolling out this year, and trying to figure out all the technology and all that stuff. So keep an eye out for that. All right. We're going to talk about something that's going to be added to your automation e-book. You should have downloaded the for free My Automation e-book, screwthecommute.com/automatefree version 3.0 is current, but this is going to be added to version 4.0. So I'm giving you a heads up on it. And it's not something new. It's just something new that I started using that I wish I'd have started a couple years ago. It's called a stream deck, and it's, uh, like I said, it's going to be included in the next book, but this is something you could buy one from Amazon and be gone in no time with this thing. All right. So make sure you get that copy of my automation, uh, e-book and then check out my mentor program at GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com, and my school IMTCVA.org, certified to operate by SCHEV.

[00:01:36] Okay. So what is a stream deck? Well, it's a little thing that sits on your desk, and most of the versions of it have a bunch of buttons. One version has some dials and buttons. Okay. And they're relatively inexpensive. The one I got, I think was about 99 bucks. It has 15 buttons on it, but that's not limiting to what you can do with it, because you can make page after page after page of buttons that to do automate a bunch of stuff for you.

[00:02:10] And what the kind of the definition of what a stream deck is. It's a I don't want to say programmable because that's what it is technically, but I don't want to scare you off that you need a programmer for this. Know the stuff that I'm going to tell you. Most of it. I figured out the first day within a couple hours just by watching a couple YouTube videos. But I'll tell you what you know I'm all about. If you've if you've read my automation book, you know I'm all about automation, doing more with less. And so it's kind of a programmable bunch of buttons that you can make it do stuff by just hitting one of the buttons. You can either make it do singular things, or make it do a bunch of things just by hitting one button. I want to give you some examples of this. So when I sit down to record a video, or if I'm already sitting here getting ready and looking at what I'm going to say, I got to get up, go way around, turn on one light, turn on another light, come back around and sit down. All right, so there's one minute. All right, you say? Well, big deal. Tom. What are you so busy you can't do one minute. Well, it's it's these one minute things that add up over time.

[00:03:32] That means I could be doing something that's going to make money rather than just fooling around with technology. See? So I said, I'm getting ready to do the video, but I don't want my video lights on all the time. There's no use. Use wasting them like that, even if they're led. So I can sit down. I hit my stream deck. One button that turns my lights on, and then if I hit another button, it brings up all the controls just for the lights. So the only thing that's on those buttons on that screen is my light controls. If I say, oh, it's daytime. Some of you may know or you may not know that light has what's called a color temperature. There's daylight and there's evening. So if I want a daylight color temperature, I can just hit a button and it turns it to my daylight setting. If I'm nighttime and there's not much ambient light coming from windows and stuff, I'll turn it on by nighttime setting. That's just, you know, one button to turn them on and off, and then another button gives me all the controls, and I don't have to get up and move the lights back and forth and tilt them and do all or cover them with a, you know, a diffusion thing to knock down some of the intensity, because I can change how bright they are to see. That's all one button. Okay, next thing I can have a mute button.

[00:05:01] I always teach people if they're going to do any audio stuff to have a mute button. So even if you're doing a zoom call and you got a sneeze or, you know, hook up some stuff and you're sick. You hit the mute button and then you can do that. And it doesn't interrupt the call, especially on these ones that are audio only. I agree and do all kinds of stuff, and nobody knows it because it got mute buttons and it's a quiet mute button. So you can put a mechanical mute button in. But sometimes that puts a little click on your audio and you don't you don't want that. So I can adjust the volume of my microphones. I can add sound effects, all kinds of things just from that particular screen. And then other just things you can do is you can open websites. So instead of typing in YouTube. A thousand times a day I hit the YouTube button and it boom, it pops open. I can open apps, you know, all the applications on my computer. I can open up Adobe Audition or, you know, a Canva or all the things that I use for graphics and video and stuff. You can resize windows, I can put the computer to sleep instead of get my mouse and going up to the apple and clicking something, I just. While I'm turning my lights off, I hit the other button. It puts the computer to sleep. Okay, so I can resize windows for you.

[00:06:27] Now the other cool thing it can do is what we call Multi-action. So here's an example. I can hit a button. It'll open zoom. It'll turn on my lights. It'll set my microphone levels. It'll open my notes for that call and start to call one button, say so when you add all these things up again, there's only so much psychic energy in a day, and I want you using it to create products and services and handle customers and make money, not fight with stuff or waste your time doing stuff that could be done in seconds with a small investment in in technology. And then another thing, like I said, you can have multiple screens and you can have folders, so you can have a folder with all my light controls. In other words, you can lump all your stuff together. If you do graphics, you can lump Canva and Photoshop and everything in a folder and have it all ready to go with one button. Now another thing is, frequently I don't know if everybody's listening to this understands the term hotkeys, but but I use those quite a bit in my macro program that that's, uh, highlighted in the automation book. It's what saved me 9 million keystrokes. But there's hotkeys you can program into your stream deck so you can, if a certain program you use all the time and you have shortcut keys, you can program into your stream deck, or you can use them on your keyboard either way.

[00:08:07] But I'm just saying that's also available to you now. I don't want to pretend there's not any learning curve. Yeah, I had to watch a couple videos. I ask AI a couple questions because I was having trouble with, uh, adjusting the lights separately and just simple things like that. So there is a little learning curve. But see, the thing on learning curves is if a learning curve is going to save you hundreds of hours next year, which you can either be petting your dog or playing, you know, going somewhere with your family or doing anything but working. All right. I'm going to tell you about it, because that's the way I've built my career over 47 years. Okay. So ask yourself, what could you use this for? Even a couple things could easily take care of the investment. And also to to hook it up. It's just plugs into your USB port and there you go. And you download some software and you tell what button you want to do. What. So it's pretty easy. So anyway, Stream Deck now next episode I'm going to tell you about another now I happen to have one made by Elgato. And they have a lot of good stuff. And so the lights that I got to go with this are Elgato, because I like to have stuff that works together easily. And so I got an Elgato Stream deck. I got an El Gato lights, two lights. They're called key lights k e y l I g h t s, which is also a generic term for a main light.

[00:09:44] But I got both of them. And one on each side at a 45 degree angle, all controlled by the stream deck, so I don't have to get up. And if I look at the picture and it looks a little bit too blue or whatever, I can change the color temperature right here and monitor in real time what the picture looks like. Instead of trying to get up and change the back of the light and come back and sit down and forget what it looked like previously. I can see the changes in real time. So, uh, so Elgato Lights, but the next, uh. And I'll guess I'll cover them in a future episode. But the next episode is going to be on the Elgato teleprompter. Oh, my God, what I gotta tell you, I have been in the actor's union for well over 35 years, maybe 40. I can't remember. And we studied like crazy using teleprompters. And I've had various ones here that connect to the computer. I've had them on my cell phone. Uh, nothing was really great. I mean, they they got the job done, but they weren't really great. This thing is great. All right, so I'll cover that on episode 165, coming up in a couple of days. All right, so that's my story, and I'm sticking to it. If you like help with this and the hundreds of millions of other things you need to be successful online.

[00:11:08] I am your guy. I'm considered the OG. And when I was on a mastermind a while back, I didn't know what the hell OG was. I thought people were saying, I'm the old guy. And I thought, that's pretty rude, you know? But they were calling me the original gangster. All right, so I've been selling on the commercial internet since there was a commercial internet in 1994 and making a lot of money doing it. So I have the longest running, most successful, most unique mentor program ever in the field of internet and digital marketing. And I'm the only one at my level that will even talk to you one on one. And all my crew that works here will make appointments with you one on one for very specific things, but it's the only one of its kind that I know of and it has a lot of unique features. So check it out at GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com and if you're in it, you get a scholarship worth $19,000 to my school, which you can either use yourself for extra training or gift to someone. And it's the best legacy gift you could ever give any person in your life, because it gives them a highly in-demand skill in as little as six months. And we even had people making lots of money before they even graduated. All right, so that's my story and I'm sticking to it. We'll catch you all on the next episode. See you later.