168: Your House, Your Rules: Take Control of Your Live Events and Webinars

Hey there. Happy Tuesday. Welcome back to the Professional Creative. This episode is one that is going to go really well with one that I did about a year ago called Learning to Love Going Live. And so that's episode number 20, and we'll link that in today's show notes. And so today we're talking about going live, whether that's on Instagram Stories or Facebook Live or on Zoom, if you're doing workshops or webinars or Q Day.

I'm Bonnie Christine, and this is where all things creativity, design, business and marketing unite. I'm a mama living in a tiny town tucked right inside the Smoky Mountains, running a multi seven figure business, doing the most creative and impactful work of my life.

But when I first set out to

become an entrepreneur, I was struggling to make ends meet and wrestling with how to accomplish my biggest dream of becoming a fabric designer. Fast forward to today. I'm not only licensing my artwork all over the world, but also teaching others how to design their creative life and experience the same success. I'm here to help you spend your life doing something that lights you up. I'll help you build a creative business that also creates an impact, changes people's lives lives, gives you all of the freedom you want, and is wildly profitable. Welcome to the Professional Creative Podcast.

I think that this is such an interesting topic because I don't know of a single person who always just loved going live. I'm sure you're out there, and if so, I'm a little jealous. But it took me so long to get comfortable going live. In fact, I'm still not super comfortable. Like, I have a hard time showing up on Instagram stories naturally. Not sure why, though. I do love going live on Q&As and workshops and anytime I'm on Zoom, and that took a bit of a learning curve for me. There's many times where I'm live in a kind of behind a paywall, right? So inside my membership, inside my course, inside my mastermind, inside my coaching program, inside. But other times, it's public. So we're inviting the big wide world to join us on Zoom. And that one can feel a little nerve wracking because you just honestly never know what you're going to get. You never know who's joining and if they're the right person, if they know you, like you, trust you, or like if they're there to sabotage you. Now listen, that has never, ever happened to me, okay? Uh, I think that if you are in the creative industry, one of the biggest blessings is that we just have the kindest, just most incredible community and audience and industry ever. And so no one has ever showed up to sabotage me. But the thing that keeps me up at night is knowing what I would do if someone did. Okay. And so there are some safeguards that we put in place so that no matter what happens on a zoom call or a conference, I do a live conference every year, like a three day live event. So we always have a backup plan for any number of things that could go wrong. And so I'll tell you a funny story. One time I was on, I think a Facebook Live and like the mad emoji, the red face with the furled eyebrows just kept going off the entire time. It was like someone's mad over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. And it's hard to not let something like that throw you. And then finally I saw this comment that said, oh my goodness, my toddler was at my computer. I'm so sorry. And so it was like a two or three year old punching the button. And that's such a good lesson. Like I was assuming someone was there trying to like throw me off my game. And it wasn't. It was just a two year old. So important to just remember that those things can happen. But I definitely want you to go listen to Love going live. Episode 20. I outline all these steps for you to take, but today's episode is really based off of a conversation that we've had in my mastermind, just about how

to safeguard yourself when you are on

a public call presenting. So if you're not familiar, there's two different types of zoom settings. One is a meeting and one is a webinar. And so the difference is this, on a meeting, everyone can see each other, so everyone's cameras are on. I'm sure you've been in a zoom call like this before. You can see everyone. And then a webinar is just you. And so the chat is going off, but nobody's camera's on. No one can see each other. They're only looking at you. And so it's more of a broadcast and with no opportunity for conversation other than in the chat. So there are a couple of things we do in both scenarios. First, I would highly suggest you just spend some time in your zoom settings. There's so much there to discover. Honestly, I can't believe it. Like for instance, this is totally a side note, but I always get so frustrated that my cursor disappears when I go into share screen mode. And especially if I'm presenting a keynote. So share my screen, go into play a keynote, and my cursor disappears. I can't move the chat around or anything.

That's just a setting.

I found it just recently and thought my life has completely changed. So spend some time in your zoom settings. There's so much there that you can do to customize the experience for you and the people attending. So one of the things that I do if I'm in a meeting where everyone can see each other is, first of all, I kind of go over etiquette. And so I personally don't like being. I don't like presenting in a zoom meeting with a bunch of people's cameras off. And so if you're coming, I want your camera to be on.

If at all possible.

If you're driving or eating or something, fine, turn it off. But if you can turn your camera on, that way I can see you and we can actually be together. Right? The other thing is that as soon as I open the zoom meeting, I go down to the chat box and there are three dots right there. You can click on that and then deselect where it says people can unmute themselves. So there's just this also could be in the settings somewhere. But this is just how I do it. As soon as the meeting begins, I go to the three dots and then I check off to where they cannot unmute themselves because inevitably someone will join from their phone and they'll be unmuted or they'll unmute, mute themselves accidentally, and then there's like this conversation about someone needs to mute. So go ahead and just take that off, and then you can ask someone to unmute if you want to, using a button on their little profile image. But that will prevent anyone from unmuting accidentally or speaking over you. Are you ready to take your passion

and your expertise to the next level? If you've been dreaming about creating a digital course, but maybe feel overwhelmed by where to start, I've got just the thing for you. Amy Porterfield's Digital Course Academy is the ultimate program that will guide you step by step through the entire course creation journey. From strategy to planning to launching, Amy leaves no stone unturned. So you have everything you need to build a profitable course that you can launch over and over and over again. I'm a huge encourager of teaching what you know. In fact, I believe that creatives are called to be educators, and adding education to what I do completely changed my life. So whether you're a seasoned entrepreneur looking to scale or you're someone who's ready to transition from maybe one on one client work to a more scalable business model. Digital Course Academy is truly perfect for you. Amy's patient and kind and personable and

you're going to love her teaching style

and the community support which is going to keep you moving forward even when you're uncertain. But listen up. When you sign up through my link before September 26th, you're also going to

get my special bonus. For the very first time ever, I'm

going to give you my very own comprehensive launch debrief for our last $5.6 million course launch. It's super detailed and full of incredible insights of everything that we did leading up to and following through this course launch. I think you're going to love it. So it's an insider's look at what it takes to launch a successful course and it's packed with valuable insights that you don't want to miss. So what are you waiting for? Head on over to BonnieCristine.com Amy to learn more and claim your bonus before September 26th. Let's turn your dream into a reality.

I've got you. Let's go. The next thing that I do is I always have a co host and so this is typically Tessie on my team or whoever it is. Immediately as I start meeting, I open her three dots on her image and I say make co host. That's really important because if you have a co host on the call, they have all the same administrative abilities that you would. So you can focus on doing your thing and the co host can kind of manage any of the settings. They could also kick someone out if they needed to, or delete a comment if they needed to. Those two things typically don't matter. But again, I sleep better at night knowing that if I needed to kick someone out, then we could. Here's a funny story. We were hosting Immersion Live, our annual conference a couple of years ago and we went to a break and someone left their computer up with the camera running during break and their husband walked by in his underwear. So husband walked by in their underwear. That is a perfect example of why you need someone on the call who can kick someone out. Or in that case we just turn their video off. So you can do that as well as host or co host, you can just turn someone's video off. So it's a good practice to have as backup. Okay, then the next thing that we do is for webinar style. So webinar style is one to many, no one can see each other. They can only see me. But I always, always have a co host. Now, there's a little bit of a tricky way to do this, so you need to add your co host as a panelist. That's how you do it in webinar style. So you add them as a panelist on the actual webinar setting page inside Zoom. You have to put someone's email there to add them as a panelist. Then I always have practice mode checked on, which means that when you start the webinar, you're going into practice mode, meaning no one can see you, but you can see you yourself and any other panelist. So it's someone off my team, let's say it's Tessie, will join in the test setting and say hello to each other. Tessie will get her video turned off, so no one even knows she's there. And then we will go live and I'll present the whole time.

So literally no one even knows that there's a panelist.

You can't see them. You can't, you know, see their name or anything. But having a panelist there with their video off means that they have all of those administrative capabilities again. So again, they can boot someone out, they can delete comments, they can come on in case you are having, like, mega technical difficulties or, you know, had to step away. They could come on camera if they needed to. Not typically anything that we've needed to do, but it's nice to know that it's an option. So those are a couple of things that I do to kind of safeguard, I guess, our online experiences. Again, we've not really needed to do an anything because our community is just amazing. But it makes me feel better knowing that we could if we needed to. I love feeling very in control of the room when I am presenting. You've heard me talk about your house, your rules. Before inviting someone into a webinar meeting or workshop. I view it the same way as inviting someone into my home. And in my home, it's my house and therefore my rules. And if you say something on my workshop webinar, that I would kick you out of my house for saying, I'm gonna kick you out of my webinar too. Again, don't need to do it, but I love, or I haven't needed to do it, but I love really feeling in control. This is my presentation, this is my space, and I get to say, you know, what goes. And so when you go into a situation with that perspective, you're way more comfortable. Hope that's helped you. There's no way to get comfortable with this except for just doing it. So go ahead and do it. Book it. You're going to do great. Listen to episode number 20. For all my tools and tips, my friends, create the beauty that you want to see come alive in the world. And remember, there's room for you.