Scariest thing in Social Media

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Hello and good evening, everyone. I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach. Coming to you live to talk about how to go live and Actually, hold on, let me just. I'm screwing it up already. I gotta do the thing on Instagram. Hold on. I wish Streamyard and Instagram would get along a little bit better because they do not do that. Anyway, good evening. Welcome. Tonight I want to do a little quick training on how to go live. I don't want to gatekeep this because going live is such an incredible skill to be able to do if you're building a personal brand, if you're building a business, if you're doing any, like, political commentating, which I'm getting into these days. And it is just really, really powerful. I just want to say hello, hello, 2021 or 221. Amy loves Haiti. Aunt Ann Elizabeth, welcome. Hi, everyone. I am going to be doing a little Q and A at the end of this, so if you have any questions, please do put them in the chat. But I want to make sure that anyone who watches this video later just gets the content they want and doesn't get the back and forth with me. But I really do want to dive into some real simple strategies and tactics for going live. First and foremost, I go live through Streamyard. I think it is an amazing platform. It is better than other platforms that I've used and tested. I really like Streamyard because I can go live to a bunch of different channels. So for instance, right now I'm going live to two Facebook pages, my Instagram page, YouTube and Instagram. I could also go live to my substack. I could also go live to X or Twitch or whatever. I'm in the process kind of revamping those so it's. I'm not there yet, but I could go live to all those places. The other thing I like about Streamyard is that if I have friends, if I have people joining me, then they can also go stream to their platforms. I'm just checking, making sure everything's working. Okay, good. So, yeah, like I said, I'm going to be doing Q A at the end. If you have any questions, please do pop them in the chat. Um, but let's dive into this. Okay? So first and foremost, let's talk about how scary it is to go live the first few Times you do this, it's going to be horrifying, okay? You are going to panic. You're going to be sweating. You're going to be so, so nervous. And I don't want you feeling like if you start alive and you get nervous, you're sweating and you make mistakes, like, you're fucking it up. You are not, okay? I want you to just have so much compassion for yourself. You are being so, so brave. This is a scary thing to do. To, like, sit down in front of a camera and in real time speak to whoever is out there who's watching you. That's scary. And the fact that you are willing to do it is so incredible. The first few times I went live was a nightmare. Okay? It was super awkward. Made even more awkward by the fact that, like, a guy had been on a few dates with, had like, you know, know, was watching and commenting and I was getting really nervous. You have no idea who's going to be watching. I'm even getting flushed just thinking about that moment, right? Like, you have no idea who is going to be watching. And it's going to freak you out because you're going to see the numbers. You're going to see, like, exactly how many people are watching. And here's what I want you to remember. Even if no one's watching, people will watch later. And there will always be someone who needed to hear what you had to say that day, okay? And it might not be that you said anything profound. It might just be that they. They watch your recording and they watch the live. Just that they don't feel alone. Okay? That is valuable. You just being yourself at people is valuable. All right? You don't have to be perfect. I'm not wearing any makeup except some, you know, lip gloss right now. You don't have to have perfect lighting. I have my ring light on just because, you know, otherwise I look really, like, ghostly in this dark room. But you can do any kind of setup you want. You can sit on the floor with your dog. I've done that. I've actually done a live from a bathtub once while I was wearing a bathing suit. I wasn't naked, but it was live with another friend who was also in a bathtub. It was very fun. We were talking about doing things that are outside your comfort zone. You know, you're going to make mistakes, you're going to stutter, you're going to stammer, you're going to say the wrong word. You're going to stabilize, start down tracks and forget where you're going with it. That happens. And what it does is it tells everyone that you're human. Okay? And especially in a world where we're seeing more and more airbrushed AI versions of people, it is so refreshing to see someone occasionally making a mistake. I know when I get nervous, I like, I. I stutter a little bit, I stammer, I tumble over my words a little bit. It happens. And no one's going to think that you're less professional, that you're less educated, that there's anything wrong with you. They're just going to think, oh, wow, this person's being so brave. They're going live right now and making a couple mistakes along the way. Also, just remember, you own the channels. You have full ownership and autonomy around. If they stay up, you can always go and delete everything. Okay? This is your interweb. You have the power here. But I urge you to not delete anything. To go live, to have it saved, you know, on YouTube, on LinkedIn, and go back a few months later after you've done it more consistently, and just see the progress you've made, okay? It's really easy to think you just suck and you suck and you suck and you suck without going back to see your very first time versus your 40th time, okay? You will be shocked how much you improve. So let's kind of dive into it. There are three main things that I think people get really hung up on when they think about going live. And I really want to go into them all and have enough time. And I want to make this quick. So anyone who's watching this isn't going to take their whole evening to watch it. And like I said, I'm going to have Q and A at the end of this. So if you have any questions, then please pop them in the chat. And hi, everyone over on Instagram. Thank you. But, yeah, if you have any questions and please pop them in the chat. I will answer questions at the end of this, okay? So first and foremost, what the fuck are you talking about? Right? Like, if you're going live, and I've done stance where I went live every single day for like, 30 days, okay? And let me tell you, there are days in there that you're just feeling tapped, okay? What I always recommend people do is, especially if you're. If you're going live about something that you do work in, just think of a topic that you were talking about that day, okay? So, for instance, today I had a call with a client and I trained them on sales. And I could go into a whole bunch of stuff without identifying them, without saying anything that was, you know, confidential in that call. I could go into, like, the top three fears that people have when they start selling their own services. Okay, That's a conversation I had today. It's top of mind. It is really fresh for me. I could also talk about stuff that's going on in the news. I could talk about going live because that was the conversation that I had with a group of colleagues today. Anything is game. Literally anything. And here's what I want you to remember is you do not need to solve problems in your life. Okay? Here I'm doing a training live. This is not normally what I do when I typically go live. I pick on something that is like a frustration or a fear fear or a desire that my ideal clients have. And then I talk about that and I just normalize it, right? I don't focus on trying to fix it for everyone because I don't know who's watching. I don't know the exact issues that people have. But when you're trying to think of a topic, especially if you're going live fairly regularly, I want you to think of what are the top 10 conversations you have every single week that are just on repeat. And don't worry about it getting repetitive. It is going to get repetitive. But here's the thing. The people who are watching you, they're not going to watch every single live that you do, okay? They will not do it unless they're, like, crazy and obsessed with you. But that's a conversation for another day. And hopefully they're like, fun obsessed with you. But anyway, you're going to get repetitive. It is going to happen. And that is okay because people will need to hear things multiple, multiple times from you. So, for example, if I were to talk about the fears people have when it comes to selling their own services, like, that's not going to change much, right? But I can probably talk about three fears over here, another three fears over here, and then three frustrations that come up. So I have kind of three different scripts, scriptish things I can follow. But the people who watch my stuff are afraid of selling, right? So they're going to need to watch multiple variations of that. And they may hear the same exact thing 17 different times. But the way I say it, the 18th time could be the thing that changes things for them. It could be the thing that gets them over that fear or just make something click for them. They're like, oh, crap, I think I Might need to work with her because she seems to understand me. Right. It's okay to be repetitive with your topics. Okay. It's actually better when we think about building our own personal brand and doing marketing for ourselves. It's really tempting to think about. Okay, well, I have to come up with a gazillion different new things to say, and that's actually the last thing you want to do. You want to come up with the same, like two or three things that you're going to say on repeat over and over and over, and you just want to say them in slightly different ways every single time. Okay. It is okay for that to be repetitive, right? Because the more you talk about these topics, the more people will get to know you as a person who is the specialist in that thing. Okay? So don't worry about getting repetitive. It is actually a huge, huge bonus if you can talk about the same thing over and over again. And hi everyone, over on Instagram. And if you're just joining, if you have any questions about going live, please do pop them in the comments. I will be looking at those and answering them at the end of this. Okay, so again, don't overthink your topics. Some. Some tips that I like playing with or some things that I liked playing with when I'm trying to figure out topics. Honestly, I'm a big tarot card girly, so I might pull a card and I'll just do this right here. I have no idea what card is going to come up. Okay. Of course I would pick this card on a live. I got the card. Orgasm. Wonderful. Love that number 29. Trust your body, Elevate your spirit. Open the gates to your renewal. Okay? So if I were coming up with a topic that had to do with like starting a business or going and running for office, you know, I might talk about how, like, trust that your body knows what's right. Like trust your instincts. Like if you feel a desire to start a business or to run for office or to get involved in your community in same way, shape or form, because you know that you have the power to change things. Don't wait for someone else to give you that nod. Okay? You know it in. In your body, in your meat suit. Like your meat suit has that knowledge and it's never going to lead you wrong. And you know, orgasm never hurts. So there you go. Anyway, you can get conversation starting cards. You could get. I have. Oh my gosh. The one card deck that I have is Potter against Humanity. It's like the Harry Potter extension pack. For Cards against Humanity, you'd be shocked. The connections your brain can make from one thing to the thing that you specialize in. So coming up with the topic, don't overthink it. It can be something that is super dumb, and you have no idea what's going to come out of your face hole that's going to land with someone. All right? Okay. So that is, number one, coming up with a topic. Just come up with a topic that is something that you talk about all the time or is super timely, or when in doubt, get some cards. Get some stuff that can help spark some stuff for you. Okay, Number two, how do you kind of come up with a script, right? Because you guys can tell right now, I am just riffing. I have no script. I have a couple lines on a piece of paper here. This is literally as far as I have planned this live. Um, and the second one that I'm talking about right now is creating an outline of what you're talking about, right? So when you go live, you want to go live on something that you know fairly well. Okay. You might want to check for some data. If you're talking about current events, you might want to have the numbers and the dates and the people listed off somewhere. But don't worry about it being scripted, because actually, if it's scripted, it's going to be bad. There's just no way around it. People are going to be able to tell that you're reading. So when you're thinking about how you're going to structure your life, my favorite way to do this is to come up with a topic first. So, for instance, today the topic is how to go live. So topic number one, or, you know, in the outline, the number one thing we just went over this was how to come up with a topic. Number two is how to come up with an outline. Number three is I have to look at it because I've kind of forgotten the mindset needed to go live right now. You might have noticed that's three things. I love coming up with three things. I think it's so simple, so easy. And when I'm coming up with these three things, I like to come up. I like to pick things that I know I could pull a story from, right? So for instance, when I was just talking about picking a topic, I referred to a client call I had today where we were talking about how to do sales and getting over the fear of doing sales. That's a small little anecdote that I could throw in there. So when you're Thinking about how you're going to structure your live, I want you to think about like, what are some really helpful mindset shifts that people need? What's some data points that are going to be helpful for them to make their own conclusions, right? So let's go back to the idea of sales, right? So if I were to do a live about sales and the fear of selling, I might start off with like, you know, option number one is we've all had a bad experience with a salesperson, right? We've had a bad experience where we're talking to someone who's trying to sell something and they do something kind of gross that makes us feel really pressured into making a decision. And maybe we do decide to buy, but then we regret it later, right? And a lot of people, when they're learning how to sell or they're realizing that they have to sell sell to have a business, they're terrified that they're accidentally going to be that high pressure person, right? And because they don't want to sign someone up to work with them, who's going to later regret it, who's going to feel like they got kind of pushed into doing this and that like just the fact that you're worried about it, just the fact that is a fear you have means that you are never going to manipulate or push someone into buying from you, right? Real simple. That's just point number one that I'd be making within that topic. Point number two could be like the fear of asking for money. That's a big one. That people have this fear of like saying, I charge X amount of dollars to work with me. And then the potential, this person could laugh at you. They could scoff. They could be like, no fucking way, you're not worth that. What if they also say yes? What if you're charging the most you've ever charged in your life and this person says yes? But then there's. Their expectations are so high and there's no way you can meet it. There's so many things that come up when people think about charging their worth or charging big money for their services. So I could do a whole thing on that. I could also talk about a client win or my own personal experiences whenever I've raised my rates. And then the third thing that I could do, I could talk about the fear of, of hearing no, just in general, right? And I could go into, you know, how my very first coach made me go and play the no game, which if you don't know what that is, it's where you go and you offer 30 minutes of free coaching to a bunch of randos on the street until you get a hundred people who've told you no. Horrifying, embarrassing, never going to stand in front of that salad place ever again in SOMA in San Francisco. But it really helped me desensitize myself to hearing no when I was doing sales for myself and for other businesses. So that's kind of how I would break down that fear of selling into three different topics. And I think the core elements here are you have to have an opinion, right? You have to have an opinion about what's going to be best for the person that's watching. You have to have like, some kind of tactical or mindset shift that they're going to implement from there, Right? Something that they're going to take away from it. Right. And it doesn't necessarily have to be a solution to the problem. It could just be. You're not the only one who's terrified of doing this, right? Knowing that you're not alone, that you're not the only one who is struggling with something, that normalization is so relieving to people. It is honestly worth its weight in gold. And. And then finally, you know, make sure that you have some anecdotes or some stories that you can kind of tag in there, right? Because if you start talking and you realize, oh, well, that only took like, 3:30 seconds to explain, and you want to do a live for a half hour, you know, you have a lot of time to fill. You want to make sure that you can kind of like plug in some stories that help you prove your point. And it could be client stories, it could be anecdotal things you saw on the news, stories from childhood. It could be literally anything. It could even be metaphors. You can make up a story. I have a lot of fun with that. So, yeah, when you come up with an outline, just come up with, like, three main themes that you're going to touch upon. Make sure you have a story, make sure you have a main takeaway, and make sure you have an opinion on what's going to be best for the person. With that, you can very easily fill up anywhere from like 10 to 30 minutes in a life. And just checking in with anyone who's joining me, if you have any questions about going live, then please, please do pop them in the comments and I will answer. Oh, I will answer them. Oh, no, I just did something on Instagram. Okay, well, we lost Instagram just now. I have too many tabs. Open didn't work out anyway. That's fine. Okay, so how to pick a topic. We covered that. How to come up with your. Your outline for what you're going to be covering. We've covered that. Lastly, your mindset. Your mindset around going live. It's going to be slightly different for everyone. Sorry, I'm just getting notifications that I screwed up Instagram, which I did. Okay. So how you kind of shift your mindset into being okay with going live is first and foremost, you have to do it terrified, Right? When you first start going live, you just have to fully embrace that you're going to be afraid and you're going to be nervous, and that being afraid and being nervous is probably going to make you kind of weird. And that's okay, right? That's okay. It's okay to do things afraid. I talk to my clients a lot about how they need to stop being a weenie and just go and do stuff. Because most of the time, we think that there's a way that we can kind of get ready to get ready to get ready to maybe be ready to finally be ready to go and do the thing. Right. And we think that we can handle the fear before we do the thing. And I always remind them, like, when you first learned how to ride a bike, were you a hundred percent confident at it? Probably not. When I learned how to ride a bike, I was terrified of tipping over, of flipping over the handlebars, of getting hurt. And there was nothing I could do to get over that fear. Right? There was nothing I could do. Because you know what? It happens, especially when you're a kid, you're learning how to ride a bike. Like, you're gonna get hurt, you're gonna fall off, you're going to lose your balance, you're going to, like, hit a bush and go over the handlebars. I did that a couple times. Thank God I'm not brain damaged. But anyway. But if I had waited for the fear to go away before I actually learned to ride a bike, I still wouldn't know how to ride a bike. Right. The fear only goes away by doing the thing and doing it badly and doing it badly again and doing it slightly less badly and then doing it another even more or less badly until you're kind of good. And then you just continue doing it until you're actually really great at it. Like, your nervous system is always going to identify things that are outside your comfort zone as things that could end your life that are just so scary. It could mean, like, the end all be all for your time here on Earth. Because that's kind of how we evolved to survive, right? Like the fact that we're able to just turn on a little machine from the comfort of our home and broadcast to the whole fucking world. I want you to think about this. If you're on social media right now and you know that I exist, you could be watching right now. That is insane, right? And you might not speak English, you might not understand what I'm saying, but if you speak English, you could watch me and understand everything. And this capability has only really been a thing for like, what, the last 10 years? Less. A little bit more, right? Our nervous system doesn't know how to deal with it. It still feels like it's tiger in the room, right? What if I say something right now that is going to get me canceled? Oh, no. Like, that's a big danger. It's not because I wouldn't say anything that would get me canceled. And now I'm getting. I'm literally talking about this and getting in my head about saying something that could get me canceled, right? Can't even think of what that would be. But our brains are not good. They're not good temperature takers for what danger actually is, okay? Especially in this modern world. How many times have you opened up your email inbox and saw an email with a subject line from someone that, like, you're late on something to. And be like, oh, my God, sheer horror. I'm going to die. Right? That's, that's our survival instinct that doesn't understand technology, okay? When you start doing lives, I want your mindset to be that I'm just going to go there and just be myself. I'm just going to be myself at people. I'm just, I'm going to stutter. I'm going to use the wrong word. I'm going to make mistakes. I'm going to forget what I'm talking about. From time to time, I'm going to lose a track of my. Of my own thoughts. You know, maybe, like, things will be messy. Maybe I'll have some. Maybe I'll have something in my teeth. I don't know. I didn't check my teeth before this. So don't look too close, please. Go into it just expecting. Just be yourself, right? Like you don't script yourself before you go out and have coffee with friends, right? I want you to just imagine you're just sitting here. This is my, my coffee from this morning. I'm not gonna drink it, but you're just sitting here, just being yourself at coffee, okay? Just go in with that mentality and know that it gets so easier over time. It really, really does. If you commit the time to do it regularly, if you practice it, if you watch other lives and see what people do really well. But you cannot hold yourself to this expectation that you're going to be perfect, okay? That's never the goal. When it goes. When it comes to going live, when it comes to going live, it is all about that human connection about being real, you in the real moment and being completely present, talking to the audience, right? And. And know that your audience, like, when they're watching a live, they're not sitting there, you know, with a notebook and a pen, being like, yeah, yeah, I gotta. I gotta take notes here. This is really important. Everything must be relevant and. And on topic here. No, they're watching alive while they're doing dishes. They're watching live while they're, you know, trying to yell at their kids to get ready for bed. You know, they're watching a live kind of on their phone while they're walking their dog, trying to get them to poop. Like, it's not like their full attention is going to be on it when they're watching a live. What they're doing is they're basically just hanging out with you, right? And learning a little bit of what you have to offer, and that's it, okay? So do not expect yourself to be perfect. Do not try to figure out how to get over the fear of doing this before you do it. Just go and do it, okay? Stop being a weenie and just go and do it. Afraid, right? And if you have to stay a weenie for a bit, that's okay, too. I know you can do this. And I know, because if you're watching me, the people who watch me, I know this about you. You know that you have a gift. You know that there is something that you bring to the world that no one else brings in the way that you do. And you know that you are here for a greater purpose. You know that there are people out there in the world whose lives will be changed after having contact with you, after working with you, after following your content, after just absorbing the lens in W through which you see the world, right? You know that about yourself. And this is just a modality for you to bring more of that to the world. All right? So I want you just to embrace that you are here for a greater purpose. You're here to make the world better. And this is Just one way for you to do that. All right. And again, stop being a weenie and just do it already. Anyway, we are coming up on a half hour. I don't know. I haven't seen any questions come through, but I also kind of fucked it up with actually closing the tab that Instagram is on, so I didn't see any questions earlier. So I don't know if anyone has any questions or thoughts on how to go live, but this is the moment. Please ask your questions if you have any, and if you don't, then just let me know so that I can go and enjoy my evening. Oh, my gosh. The other thing about going live is the numbers are sometimes super wonky. Because I go live on Streamyard, I never have any idea how many people are actually watching my lives because streamyard isn't consistent about pulling the numbers from anywhere. You know, and then, of course, like, Instagram is its own separate interface. But, you know, it's. It's fascinating the amount of people who watch lives after the fact. It really doesn't matter if anyone's really watching, so. All right, well, I haven't seen any questions come through, so I'm just gonna assume. I was so good at explaining this. You are all pros at going live. You understand everything, and I'm gonna leave you with that. So thank you so much for being here. I hope this is useful, and I cannot wait to watch your lives very soon in the future. Good night.