I get a lot of questions about my workspace.
“What does your setup look like?” “How do you stay comfortable?” “Do you like working from home?”
And people think that I have some elaborate setup, because I run so many profitable businesses. I must have 8 monitors, a hovering desk chair, maybe a robotic butler…
The truth is, my workspace probably looks a lot like yours. (Though I do have a couple weird things you might not expect.)
But I have put a lot of thought into my desk. Because let me tell you: It’s so important that you have a comfortable, optimized workspace.
I mean, you spend a good chunk of your life here!
So I want to show you my tech—my computer, my mic, my webcam—and I want to show you the things I have that make my work life more comfortable.
Like why I decided to give my wife my office and work out of the guest bedroom.
And I want to see your workspace too!
What tech do you use? How have you made you workspace more comfortable? Do you have any plans to make your work life even better?
Take a picture of your workspace and share it in the comments!
(And check out the video transcription for links to all my gear.)
Video Highlights:
0:01 Welcome to my workspace
0:25 Why did I move office spaces?
1:50 This is where I run my 8-figure business
2:15 My stand-up desk
2:30 You need a comfortable workspace!
2:45 My amazing microphone
3:20 A reminder the consistency and hard work pays off
4:15 The importance of a high quality webcam
5:00 I back up my computer
5:15 I’d love to know what your workspace looks like
Click Here For Video Transcript
If you've been following me a while, you might be wondering, "Why the change of office space?" I used to have this big, grand office. We have a virtual team of about 40 people. We've chosen to do all virtual so that we can work from home, which is really nice and pleasurable. And there's a lot of pros and cons to a virtual company, but being home is one of the pros.
Now, I used to be in the room next door, which is now Carrie's office. And the reason I'm here now, and I'm going to take you through my desk, I'm going to show you what's at my desk. I've been questions like, "What does your workspace look like?" So I'll tell you about that in a moment. But the reason I'm in this room is because ever since we started online, before we started online, Carrie and I have had small apartments in New York City, 500 square feet, 600 square feet. We had one that was 1,400 square feet. It was huge for us.
And at every place, she always wanted her own room, a room that was hers that she could do her thing in and it could be her room that would be for creative space. You know? And we just never had room for that. And we finally moved to the country. We get this big house. And somehow or another, it still ends up that all the rooms are categorized as not hers, not that it's not hers. There's our bedroom. There's the guest bedroom. There's our gym downstairs. There's the living room.
There wasn't a room that was hers, yet I had an office because it's important that I have an office, I guess. But I would be following her around with my laptop. I don't like to be closed away in a room. And so we thought, well I thought, "Why don't you just have this office? What do I need this thing for?" So now I have a desk in our guest bedroom and it's phenomenal. She has an office, which she keeps much nicer than I kept it, so it's a nice room now that you actually want to go into.
Now, here's my desk. So that's why I'm in the guest bedroom, in case you were wondering. But I'd like to show you what's at my desk. I run an eight-figure business and multiple seven-figure businesses from this desk. And so I would like to take you on a tour of it and then hopefully, in the comments below this video on Facebook and on our blog, you show me your workspace. I'd love to see it. So, okay.
What do we have here? Well, the first thing that we have is a stand-up desk with a solid maple top, and I'll link to the actual kind. So this thing goes down. It also goes up so you can sit at it or you can stand at it, which is nice because it's nice to move and feel like you've got some space and not just be hunched over a computer all day. So for those of you who do not have a comfortable workspace, it changes your life because you're going to spend a lot of time working.
You want to be comfortable. And if you're working on the couch on a laptop, that's just not comfortable. So let's get you a nice, comfortable, open, big workspace with a big screen. I've got a Herman Miller chair. I don't know if it's on camera, but it's a nice, comfortable chair for when I want to sit down. I have my Rode NTG-USB microphone. Comes in and out here on this boom microphone arm and makes me have good quality audio when I'm recording videos.
I've got a Mac Pro, one of those tower Mac Pros. Nice speakers so that it's nice audio in case you just want to jam out to some Prince or something like that. I do have some crystals because I'm just kind of a weird crystal guy. I'm not actually a weird crystal guy, but I do have crystals on my desk and I like them. Some of them were gifts. Some of them I bought. I've got my jujitsu blue belt here, which is an accomplishment that I recently achieved. I was a white belt in jujitsu.
I was like the world's longest white belt. I reigned as a white belt for 18 years. I got my blue belt and it reminds me that consistency and hard work pays off, so that's kind of cool. I like to have that on my desk. I also have this random bowl of stuff. I've got pens in here. I've got poker chips and matches and just weird things. I don't really know. You've got to have a little bit of mess, I suppose, so I've got that.
I have, of course, pictures of my loved ones that I get to look at. This is my wife, Carrie. And this is my wife, Carrie, when she was just a little muffin playing dress-up. So I like to look down at that. I've got my little, lucky cat here. I don't remember where I got this, but I love it. I think Carrie gave it to me as a gift, actually. What else? I've got my keyboard and my mouse. Oh, I have a USB, and this is important, a Logitech USB camera and it's mounted here on a tripod.
I don't know if it's visible in the frame. Okay, it is visible in the frame. But it's nice, because when I'm doing Skype, when I'm doing video messages the difference between an HD webcam and the normal webcam that comes on your computer is...it changes the way that people perceive you. You will be judged on how you look. You just can't get around it. We are, as people, judge people based on how they look. And so, looking nice is good.
So I have a USB and I got a window. I get to look out this window here and see the forest. And I've got light coming on me. And I think that's it for the workspace. Oh, oh, what else I have, which is important, is I have an 8 terabyte hard drive connected to my computer that's backing it up so that everything is in the cloud. So my whole computer is backed up in the cloud as well as on a hard drive. So that's important that you set that up as well.
And that's about it for my workspace. So I'd love to know what your workspace looks like. Please post a picture below this video with a picture of what your desk looks like and why you've set it up that way. And I want to say one more thing, which is you'll notice there's only one screen. I used to have two screens. I even had three screens at one point. So why have I gone back to just one screen?
Well, what I noticed was that when I had the two screens I was always slightly turned this way or slightly turned this way. And it didn't feel good on my spine and my stomach to be constantly at an angle. So with one screen, I face forward, my hips are square, and it feels much better to sit and stand straight forward. And I actually find that I don't even miss the second screen, personally. You may have a different opinion.
So let me know what your desk looks like. Take a picture of it. Post below. Tell me why you've set it up that way, what kind of stuff you have on there that you think people might benefit from, so we can all kind of see where we work. Ezra here from SmartMarketer.com. Thanks for taking the tour of my desk. I'll see you soon.