00;00;00;00 - 00;00;11;24 Nick Clason So I learned pretty early on in high school that having the right tool for the job makes all the difference in the world. I remember when I was a junior in high school, I was over 00;00;11;24 - 00;00;13;26 Nick Clason at my girlfriend's house, who's now my 00;00;13;26 - 00;00;17;29 Nick Clason wife, and they had just moved into a new place. 00;00;17;29 - 00;00;26;25 Nick Clason And so my, my future mother in law's then girlfriend's mom, gave me a drill and said, hey, I need you to hang these pictures. 00;00;26;28 - 00;00;31;00 Nick Clason I had absolutely no experience like doing any of that, but 00;00;31;00 - 00;00;50;18 Nick Clason I was the man of the house. And so it was my responsibility to figure that out. And so I spent all day long trying to hang pictures and hang fixtures and, fix things to the wall. And I've never I had never done that before. And my wife and girlfriend at the time was no help. 00;00;50;18 - 00;01;04;25 Nick Clason She also didn't really know what was going on and what she was doing. And I learned that, like, I can hang these things with the screwdriver, but having a drill makes all the difference in the world, and doing things with the right tool 00;01;04;25 - 00;01;23;00 Nick Clason makes all the difference in the world. And so, in the same vein, as we explore what it means and what it is to do digital ministry and lean into the hybrid nature of student and youth ministry, I have for you my ultimate hybrid toolbox. 00;01;23;00 - 00;01;37;00 Nick Clason And in today's episode, we are going to be exploring my five must haves software, things, subscriptions and services that I use on an absolutely daily basis. So item number one 00;01;37;00 - 00;01;50;24 Nick Clason also linked right here, down in the show notes or in the description in my 100% completely free e-book, The Complete Hybrid Strategy I discuss and I talk about one of my favorite services, opus Dot Pro. 00;01;50;28 - 00;02;15;15 Nick Clason Now, if you, have been listening to or, you know, subscribing to any of the stuff that I've talked about, I have been mentioning the importance of pre filming your talks and your YouTube messages. I actually have a full playlist linked right here at the top screen. If you're watching on YouTube, you can go and navigate to that where we describe and lay out how to how to pre film your messages, the strategy and the philosophy behind it. 00;02;15;17 - 00;02;34;16 Nick Clason But one of the things is that once you have that full length, kind of like YouTube video or like just full length, long form, widescreen based video, you can drop that into something like opus Dot Pro. And what it will do is it will analyze the clip and it will with I will generate, captions on screen. 00;02;34;18 - 00;02;39;08 Nick Clason It can give you some auto emojis. It can give you the relevant hooks. It can give you, 00;02;39;08 - 00;03;00;10 Nick Clason it can give you the, the caption, like the the title, like the copy that you would put on your social media. Like it'll do all of it for you. You'll even analyze like the virality score on it and so like how well the service thinks it's going to do with, creating viral shorts, reels and TikToks. 00;03;00;10 - 00;03;22;29 Nick Clason And so once I have that that longform piece of content, I drop that video into Opus Stock Pro, you can drop a YouTube link, you can drop a Google Drive link, you can upload the the file directly, and then it will spit out for you anywhere from like 8 to 15, depending on how long the video is, shorts that you can use and you can utilize to then sprinkle all throughout social media. 00;03;23;01 - 00;03;42;08 Nick Clason Opus Start Pro is an absolute game changer. I used to create these things, meticulously by hand and by scratch. I'd create two to 3 to 4 reels per week off of longform teaching content, but now with Opus Stop Pro, it does all of that for me. The second thing that 00;03;42;08 - 00;03;48;21 Nick Clason I cannot live without me personally, Nicholas, and this may not be true for everybody else, is PowerPoint. 00;03;48;24 - 00;04;15;15 Nick Clason I got, I've been really familiar with the Microsoft Office suite. As much as I don't like Microsoft any more, but growing up with Microsoft Word and PowerPoint, I got really proficient at PowerPoint, and so I can bust out a graphic in PowerPoint really quickly. You can do all kinds of customizable sizes. You can, you know, save things as PowerPoints, as JPEGs, as PNGs, as PDFs, all kinds of different things. 00;04;15;18 - 00;04;37;07 Nick Clason you know, even a friend of mine asked me like, hey, how how what do you use to lay out your completely free e-book? And I said, actually, PowerPoint. I just built it the size of the pages. You know, that needs to be eight and a half by 11. And I dropped all the graphics in that I had predesigned in Photoshop, which we'll get to in just a second. 00;04;37;10 - 00;04;41;00 Nick Clason and then I dropped them into PowerPoint, and then I export or save 00;04;41;00 - 00;05;04;11 Nick Clason as a, a PDF. And so the fact of the matter is PowerPoint is pretty powerful. And yes, it is used for presentation, but it can be used for graphics. And I use that, you know, early on as a youth pastor, I used it all the time before I ever use, services like pro presenter, before I ever use services like Photoshop, I was using Microsoft PowerPoint. 00;05;04;14 - 00;05;28;15 Nick Clason Don't sleep on it. It's pretty powerful. But the third thing that I think that you cannot live without, and I probably can't live without it, but I think if you're getting started now, most youth pastors should not live without it. And frankly, it's Canva. And if you didn't know, Canva actually offers a, a nonprofit, you can get their pro version of Canva for free. 00;05;28;16 - 00;05;52;07 Nick Clason As a nonprofit, you just have to reach out to them, submit your nonprofit status and paperwork, and then you will get all of the pro features of Canva. And they have all sorts of different templates, templates for graphics, templates for social media, templates for slide decks, templates for videos, templates for bumpers, like everything you could possibly imagine. And it's web based. 00;05;52;07 - 00;06;11;19 Nick Clason And so as a Canva Pro user, you also have the ability to create teams. And then within that you also then have the ability to add members to your teams. And you can collaborate on different projects by sharing them across things. In fact, take a look at this graphic right here on screen. This is created in Canva in under five minutes. 00;06;11;19 - 00;06;30;03 Nick Clason I actually I think I did it in the previous tutorial. The Canva episode is link down below in the show notes. If you'd like to see more detail and layout all there is to know and do with Canva. But I just made it quick in while I was actually in the middle of filming an episode, just to kind of like create an on screen tutorial. 00;06;30;03 - 00;06;52;12 Nick Clason And the the beautiful thing is that I can't tell a discernible difference between this and a graphic created in a more powerful program, or what might be deemed or dubbed a more powerful program. Which leads me to my fourth one, because what I would consider a more powerful program is, anything under the Adobe Creative Cloud, I would be sunk. 00;06;52;13 - 00;07;17;01 Nick Clason Like, this is probably the number one thing on my list for me. I would be sunk without the Adobe Creative Cloud, and this is a little bit of a cheater, you know, because this has Adobe Audition, which records audio and captures audio for me, Adobe Photoshop, which creates graphics, Adobe Premiere Pro, which edits videos, or Adobe After Effects, which makes on screen animated, graphics 00;07;17;01 - 00;07;17;29 Nick Clason and stuff like that. 00;07;18;01 - 00;07;41;22 Nick Clason You also have access to all other sorts of apps on the Adobe Creative Cloud. You know, you'll get, access to Adobe Express, which we have also laid out as a graphic option, for, you know, for youth pastors and for churches. in previous episodes. But we got things like Illustrator and Lightroom, and Adobe Animate and Adobe in Copy. 00;07;41;22 - 00;08;02;16 Nick Clason I mean, there are tons and tons and tons of different graphics. And so, the Adobe Creative Cloud is amazing. I do believe that there is a nonprofit discount as well. I think it's like 34, 99 a month or something like that. You have to check out the pricing link down below in the description, which I have done after recording this, they'll have it right in front of me. 00;08;02;18 - 00;08;20;29 Nick Clason but you can check that out and see what works for you. I will just say that you get oftentimes what you pay for in Adobe. you can do anything that you want with Adobe. I, I sat down with an intern of mine this last week, and we were making graphics. Now show them how to do it in PowerPoint. 00;08;20;29 - 00;08;39;00 Nick Clason And he's like, man, PowerPoint is so much easier than Photoshop. And I was like, yeah, it is for sure. And also you can't do as much. You can do a lot more. And so if you're just looking to kind of get by PowerPoint, Canva, check out any of those things in my budget, you know, design playlist that's linked down below. 00;08;39;03 - 00;08;41;21 Nick Clason But if you're looking to like, level it up, like 00;08;41;21 - 00;09;00;11 Nick Clason I personally I could not do without Photoshop or I could not do without Adobe Premiere Pro. I have either one of those two programs open any single day that I'm working on my computer, and the fifth and final thing that I use on a pretty regular basis is motion array.com. 00;09;00;11 - 00;09;27;23 Nick Clason If you haven't checked out motion rev.com, it has all kinds of different options. It has video templates, it has presets, it has motion graphics, it has stock video footage, stock music stocks, sound effects, stock graphics, stock photos. Like it has everything that you can do, all for commercial use, all for a pretty, reasonable rate. A few hundred bucks for an entire year's worth of a subscription to MotionArray. 00;09;27;26 - 00;09;45;11 Nick Clason It is worth it. you will see things. If you're watching here on YouTube. You'll see things that are templates that I've used that I've gotten from motion free and by, downloading it from MotionArray and then pairing it and using it with things out of the Adobe Creative Cloud, I look like an absolute 00;09;45;11 - 00;09;50;18 Nick Clason professional. And fact of the matter is like, I don't know how to build all these things, but these are presets. 00;09;50;21 - 00;10;19;20 Nick Clason These are pretty fun things for me. I just plug my graphic in or I just plug my text in and boom, all of a sudden this thing looks amazing. And I got it downloaded off of MotionArray, which is a fantastic tool, one that I super, super, highly, highly recommend. so you might be thinking like, okay, great. I got all those things or I'll check those things out, but like, what do you actually use to like film and create and make the content? 00;10;19;20 - 00;10;43;03 Nick Clason Well, I'm glad you asked because linked right here on screen is the second installment in this playlist, the ultimate hybrid ministry toolbox, where in this episode we talked about software, in the next episode, we're going to be looking at hardware things like cameras, microphones, lighting equipment. Check it out on the other side. Don't forget, as always, to stay hybrid.