How to do a livestream!

Hello, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach, coming to you live today to talk about how to go live. I was supposed to be doing this live with Katie Belfi. She attacked me in a post asking for advice. We connected. I don't know. I hope she's okay. I haven't heard back from her. You know, I. I hope she's okay. And also, like, if you want to go live like that, one of the key parts is. Is showing up, you know? So I hope everything's okay on her side. But I have to say, in all of my time going live, this. This may seem scary to you if you're like, oh, my God, what if I plan on going live with someone and they don't show up? Deep breath, deep breath. It happens. This is actually the first time it's happened for me. I know. Chris Hennessy, Hi. In the comments. Goes live all the time with guests, and sometimes he has to scramble last minute to find a replacement guest. There are absolutely ways for you to make sure that this doesn't happen. Hi, Chastity. Oh, I'm so glad you like the podcast this weekend. Thank you. If you don't know, I have a podcast now, business strategy for weenie ADHDpreneurs on all the PAT on all the podcast hosting systems. Honestly, just search Weenie in ADHD and you can find it. Anyway, welcome to both of you, Chris and Chastity. So, okay, so there are two. Two ways you can go live. All right. By yourself, like I do all the time, and I'm very comfortable doing this. And also with guests. Okay, you can absolutely go live with guests. Hi, Priya, Welcome. I'm so happy to hear about your teeth getting better. That was. I thought it was a prank post on you. Priya Clemens, everyone is an incredible newscaster in San Francisco Bay Area. I used to work for her, and she had a mishap today, this week, I think, and she lost one of her front teeth, and they were able to replace it pretty quickly because she has to be on camera. It's important. Anyway, great to have you here, Priya. But anyway, you can also have guests on your live. And how that looks, typically, is there like two big boxes and one's your face and one's the other person's face. I honestly, I. I like going live by myself. I like being in control of the conversation. I find that my chat is far more interactive when it's just me able to have a conversation with you all. However, Chris Hennessy. Yes. It is the worst one, I guess. No shows, but Chris Hennessy is amazing at creating community in his lives. Even when he's talking with someone else. It's really a conversation between two people in the audience the way he does it. But it's really. It's up to you. And it's up to. It depends also on what you want to get out of going live. I find going live is a great way for people who are already curious about working with me to have an experience of what it would be like to be in conversation with me. And that's helped by having guests and by, you know, being on by myself. Okay, so I do a blend and you can decide what works for you. I. I like using Streamyard. I did try using Restream for a little while. It shit the bed so badly. It was awful. I know some people in the, in the chat here use Restream and they're big fans of it. I had full lives that I did that didn't even get recorded anywhere. I had a terrible experience with their support team. At one point I wrote a post about how bad my experience was and they tried to bribe me by saying that they'd give me a $20 refund of my membership if I took the post down. Just awful. Streamyard has been amazing. I've never had any problems with it. The only thing that I liked about Restream that Streamyard doesn't do is that guests can stream to their, their streams as well or their platforms. Oh well, it's fine like if that. If, if Stream Yard ever adds that. That's amazing. But not a fan of Restream. As for technology, I mean, I use my laptop. I use my laptop when I go live. I don't use a separate microphone. I've been told the audio on this is pretty good. I do use a microphone when I record my podcast, however, that one, if it's audio only, there's no visual to make up for it and the quality really matters there. But for going live, I'm not a perfectionist. Also, I tend to forget things. So like I'm. I'm on my parents. I'm at my parents house for Christmas right now and I just realized I forgot my microphone, which it's fine. I'm not recording any podcasts coming up. But if you're a forgetful person and like, you know, you're just likely to forget some of the particles and you move around a lot, don't worry about getting a bunch of accessories that you're going to have to Remember what else? As far as the tech setup. So it helps also if you have your computer up kind of eye level. I, I wish I could show you this janky setup I have here. I still can't sit down because I have a Bruce tail phone. So I literally have like a platform with a, a puzzle box underneath my computer right now to prop it up high enough so it seems like we're at eye level. But you know, whatever you can use. If you can use a music stand if you can. If you have a standing desk and you want to sit down and just have it a little higher, it just like if I'm down here or if I'm really up here, like this is not a flattering angle. Okay. This is where the double chin happens. We don't want double chin. Okay. Not a good look. Also, it feels far more like this is a conversation between two equals when the camera and the eyes are on the same level. So that's a pro tip. Lighting, lighting. Like you want your face to be well lit. People want to see you. Let me see. Yes. Raise the laptop up. Nobody wants to look up your nose. Oh yeah, that's a good, that's a good one too. No bats in the cave, Chris. Anyway, lighting, I have natural light here in this room, but usually I have a ring light that I like using. Funnily enough, I actually don't use the ring light when I'm going live later in the evening. And the reason for that is that the lights are so bright that it actually messes with my circadian rhythm and it makes it harder for me to fall asleep at my normal bedtime. So on those nights I tend to end up staying up later just because I'm. My body still thinks it's daytime. So full permission if you don't want to do that to like just use normal room lighting. It's going to look a little grainy. But if it helps you get better sleep, I am in full support of that. If you have any questions about going live, please put them in the chat. I'd love to answer them. I'm just going off of like what I imagine you might have questions on. Like I said, I was expecting to have a partner here with me on this live who had actual questions about this, but there seems to be some problem on there end. Anyway, let's talk about content because here's, here's what people get freaked out about is oh my God, I'm gonna be on camera and there's no editing time. It's just going out Live to anyone who wants to watch. A, like, what do I talk about? B, what if I screw it up and see? Like, what if I go blank? What if I just go blank? Like, what happens then? Okay, so. So let's talk about content, like, what you can talk about. So if you have a guest, it's pretty easy. You're going to ask them questions, you're going to highlight them. You're basically making them the most interesting person in the room. The this badass strategist LinkedIn user. Your privacy settings. Tell me your name. I don't know who you are, but hello. Thank you. So you make them the most interesting person in the room. And really it's a conversation. You don't have to worry about having, like, badass interview skills like Priya Clemens. You just have to know how to have a conversation and don't really worry about what's going on the computer. You can absolutely pull comments that people bring in or questions that they put in the chat into the conversation, but you also don't have to. If you're having a really rich conversation and you don't want to be interrupted, you can ignore it. Okay. One of the things that I like to do when I have a guest on is I will put like the comments in the chat, like this one. And I just won't acknowledge it verbally, but I have acknowledged it. As a producer, if you're talking just yourself, if you're just coming on and going live to build that relationship with your audience, there are, there's a whole menu of options that you can do to create content. I personally am a huge fan of turning to my market research for my ideal clients and just acknowledging, like, what a fear that they have is. Oh, great question, Priya. I will get to that. So I like to do that. So, like, a lot of my clients have this fear that they're their bosses will find out that they're starting this side hustle business. And and so they really keep themselves small. They don't put themselves out there. And so I'll do a whole live and I'll create all this content about, you know, how normal that fear is and how irrational that fear is. And here are some things that you can do to bypass it, to get over it, to find out if it's actually going to piss off your boss or not. That's really helpful. And here's the thing, like, we're told constantly that we have to go out and give value and give value and give more value. And people hear that and they're like, okay, cool. So I have to give people like 17 steps to fix their lives. You can, but let me tell, let me tell a little story. Okay, so let's imagine there's a new mom or young mom, she has a 3 year old and every day they've kind of gotten into this habit of going to the park. And at the park there's this fountain and it has little fishes swimming around in the bottom. And the three year old girl is just so obsessed with the fishes. She likes to bring bread to them, she likes to read to them, she likes to count them and make sure that they're all there and present and counted for. And there are two old men that also kind of hang out around the pond around this time of day. And the mom at one point is like, well, I see these guys every single day. I should introduce myself. So day one, she goes over to the first old man she introduced herself and he says, oh, hi, I see you here a lot, blah, blah, blah. And she, you know, he invites her to sit down and he just starts giving her advice, you know, advice. If you ever have a squeaky, squeaky door, here's how you fix it. And if your faucet's ever dripping, here's how you fix it. And da, da, da. And your kid was throwing a temper tantrum the other day and here's how you fix it. And she's like, oh, oh. And it's helpful advice, but it's just constant advice. And you know, the day ends and she goes home and the next day she comes by and she, you know, does the same thing with the second old man and he invites her to sit down and you know, he asked her questions about herself and you know, he says something like, you know, your daughter is throwing that temper tantrum the other day and you handled it so well. You know, I remember when my kids were that age and oh my God, one, one of them did this and the other one did that and now they have kids of their own and they're seeing what we went through and you're doing great and like, you know, what do you like about being a mom? And he really connects with her. Who do you think she's going back to on day three? Probably the second old man, because there's connection there. He didn't just throw advice down her throat, okay? He actually took some time to connect with her and normalize the struggle of motherhood and relate to her and show her that she's not alone and tell her that, like the things that she's struggling with are things that parents have struggled with over time. Like, it's. It's not abnormal. She wasn't a freak. She wasn't a bad mom. He just reassured her, you get to do the same, and that's still providing value. Okay, so when you're thinking about creating content, know that is valuable. I also love using tarot cards. I have this deck called Mystic Mondays. It's somewhere in this mess of a room because I just, I haven't really unpacked yet. And I'll pull a card and I'll just kind of make it relate to what my ideal clients are going through. What else? Questions that my clients ask in session. You know, if they have a question, I'm like, oh my God, like I'm hearing this so much lately, then I'll go on and I'll talk about it. I won't obviously divulge anything that's. That's private to them. But the topic I will share on. But really, like, you can create content all, like, of anything. And then of course, when you do go blank, because it happens to all of us, especially if you're going live and you're starting to overthink, tell on yourself. Just tell on yourself. Like, oh, my God, my brain just went blank. Oh my God. And then just like start talking about something in the room. Okay, so if I, like, imagine my brain went blank today, I could start talking about this huge pile of multicolored post it notes that's over in the corner that I forgot from when I was here in the summer. And oh my God, I've had to hide all the post it notes in my apartment on myself because I'm an idea hoarder. So I'll like write little notes to myself and I'll keep them all, but none of them make sense because it was in the shorthand of what I was thinking in that moment. But it just becomes a mess. And at some point I have to like, really just bite the bullet and swallow my pride and just throw them all out. And it feels like I'm just releasing all these ideas that could be valuable if I just knew what they meant. So, you know, get creative with your content. It's so much fun once you get rolling. Okay, so I want to answer Priya's question. Do you record and reshape your lives or clips from them? Priya, that's a great question. This is something that I have wanted to do, but I honestly am too lazy, slash adhd, slash disorganized to do myself I currently have my team going through and kind of documenting and this is hard for them. This is a lot of work because I go live so often, there's just so many hours worth of recordings, but they're going through and they're clipping little bits and we'll be reusing them for social media content. This stuff can absolutely be reused on TikTok and in Reels and in the, the new YouTube, like short form videos. But yes, yes, you can absolutely do that. Streamyard, if you pay for the premium membership, it does record all of your. Your lives forever. So you can either download it and keep it somewhere else or you can just pull it from here. But yeah, absolutely. And then to invite other guests, do you just send them a link or do they need to set up a Streamyard account? No. So this is the cool thing about Streamyard, if you're a. You don't have to set anything up. You're sent a link and you just enter the. It's funny. So you enter in as if it's like a staging area. So you get to make sure your camera works and your audio works and then you click the button that says Enter Studio and then you enter the setup and you'd see me on the screen and then I'd have to add you in. But you don't need a Streamyard account to be a guest on anything. And hello, Stephen Doyle from cold Dublin. Hello from cold Massachusetts. And then. Oh, and I figured, I figured he meant Reshare. Yeah, Priya, absolutely. What else? And if you have any more questions about going live, please put them in the chat. I'm gonna think for a second, what else would be useful for you. Here's one that a lot of my newer clients struggle with. Because here you are, you're doing some edutainment, you're being with people, you're connecting with them. Are you allowed to sell stuff from your lives? Are you allowed to pitch stuff? Are you allowed to make an ask of your audience? And to that I say, fuck, yes, yes, absolutely. If you are here to represent your business and what you're already talking about points to a pain point, a problem that working with you solves for your ideal client, why wouldn't you tell them, hey, just so you know, I solved this problem. If I'm speaking to your soul right now, and I'm talking about the thing that keeps you up at night, you need to book a call with me. You need to book a call with me and, you know, will determine if it's a fit or not. But this is exactly what I work on with my clients. Like, that's kind of greedy for you not to share that, right? I mean, here's someone who is obviously so stuck in this problem that when they saw that you were going live about this topic, they were like, oh, my God, that's the topic I need to hear about. And then you're just not going to invite them to be a client or to solve their problem further. Because here's the thing. Like, watching your life is never going to actually solve someone's problem. All right? So, yes, absolutely. And also, let's credit you. You just spent how much time of your life sharing your professional opinion publicly? Okay? That is worth something. Okay. You're being so generous to your world right now. Providing this content, you are fully within your right to make an ask and invite them to become your client. Okay. It feels weird and gross. The first few times you do it, you're probably gonna say something and really, really fast. Like, if you want to book a call with me and no one's gonna be able to register what you even said, but I want you, if you're thinking about going live, to invite people to be clients, I want you to literally stand in front of the mirror every single morning and practice how you slow your voice down and say something like, if you have this problem, I want to invite you to book a strategy call with me. And how you do that is you DM me and I will send you the link to book on my calendar. Okay? Something slow like that. It's. It's. It's pretty simple and straightforward once you get used to it. All right, Priya, one more question. What is the value of going live? Oh, this is a good one. So it's immeasurable. The value of going live is immeasurable. How do I explain this? So I've gotten on strategy call, sales calls with prospective clients who I get on the phone with, and we go through the whole conversation. They're the perfect client for me. I'm the perfect solution for them. And by the time we get to the point of talking about working together and they're asked to make a decision either way, I've heard numerous times. You know, I've binge watched all of your lives. I know you. I know your sense of humor. I know how you think. I know, like, how you approach problems. I didn't get on this phone call to say no to you. I've literally heard that numerous times. It's just such an incredible way for people to see you in real life see you as a real human who sometimes makes mistakes, who sometimes stutters or says I'm a lot and gets nervous and overthinks how their hair is looking on camera, which I'm guilty of across the board. It also just helps normalize the struggle. Like, especially if you're doing content that is based in the principles of empathetic marketing, which is what I work on with my clients. It just is this really genuine way of saying, hey, you, I see you and what you're struggling with right now. I know it seems super scary, but know that everyone goes through it, and here are the ways in which everyone goes through it, and here are the thoughts that come up for them while they're going through it. And if you're having any of these thoughts, like, know that you're not a freak. There's nothing magically wrong with you that's completely different from everyone else. I see this every day. There's just this relief of stress that happens when you do that well with your audience. That builds immense trust. Immense trust that this person gets me before they've even met me. So the value of going live, I mean, how much do you charge for your services and how many people are seeing your lives and how are you directing them to work with you? I mean, once you can answer those questions, I mean, the. The sky's the limit, really, if we're talking about money, but really, like, the trust that you build through building your brand. Going live is just incredible. Yes. Yes. Chris Hennessy. Chris Hennessy actually coaches people through and does production stuff for people who are wanting to go live. Highly recommend him if anyone is wanting some hand holding here. This is also something I work on with my clients, who going live is a great way for them to get. Get clients for their businesses and really figuring out what your. What your thought leadership is. Right. Because you can go live about anything. You know, I. I've gone live showing my dog throwing a temper tantrum before, and that, of course, like, humanizes me and shows me as a real person and, like, gets people all the dog people in my life, you know, connecting with my dog, that's valuable. And also, like, if you're trying to grow your business, you have to figure out what are the key things to say to get your audience's attention that makes them want to book with you. That's what I work on with my clients. Oh, and Priya, thank you so much for all the great questions. I really appreciate it. Lastly, if you want to go live to Facebook LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, whatever else, you can do that, all that through Streamyard. The only thing Streamyard doesn't do is Instagram. And so what I will literally do is just take my cell phone, which is, like, somewhere lost. My cell phone. Oh, no. Anyway, I'll take my cell phone and just balance it against my laptop. It's kind of janky, but it works. If I want to kill two birds with one stone and go live, which actually, now that I say that I haven't done that in a while, I've been kind of remiss in Instagram. Have to fix that. Anyway, I hope this has been super useful. I hope Katie is okay. She wasn't able to make it here for our live together. But if. If you're watching this and you've been wanting to go live, I challenge you to just go do it. Even if you go live for only two minutes, even if you just pop in and say, hey, everyone, this is my first live. I'm kind of nervous. Like, how's this set up? What do you think? Full permission. Go for it. Okay. I want you to remember that you own the delete button. If you put something out there that you don't like, you can delete it, right? And the chances that you're going to go on there and, like, say something that is going to ruin your life is very small. Okay? So don't worry about that, but just. Just go try it. And if you absolutely hate it, you never have to do it again. But at least you found out, right? Anyway, with that, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach. I want to give a big thanks to Priya, who had all the great questions, Chris, who's been cheerleading me this time, LinkedIn user who's calling me a badass strategist whose name I don't know, and Chastity Holman. I hope you enjoyed this so much. And to everyone else who's been watching and not putting in the chat, thank you for joining. I will be going live again every day this week. Stay tuned. And if you have any topics that you'd like me to go live on, then please DM them to me, okay? I love making custom content for you all. All right, have a great Monday, everyone, and I will talk to you soon.