Christoph Trappe: Taking Your Brand to New Heights with Live Streaming

All right. Hey, everyone. So anyone that's seen this on the recording? Oh, my goodness. I have. Kristoff Trapp. Is that how you pronounce your name?

That's how you pronounce it. Thanks for asking. Yes.

And I am like, yeah. I am so incredibly honored. I love the moment that one of the community members, Madeline, who has the podcast, it's all creative. She had just been following your show for a while, and I had posted, hey, I'm really looking for someone that does lives consistently. And then she mentioned you, and then there you go. Here you are.

Here I am. Yep. Awesome. That's awesome to hear.

Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah. She said she's watching your LinkedIn show. I think she watches it daily. Are you doing it daily?

No, not daily, but I do cheat a little bit because I think maybe you saw that last night too. I was supposed to do a live stream with Jeff Bulas and we went live a little bit early and LinkedIn didn't pick it up. So as soon as we were done, I streamed the recording 10 times for like four and a half hours. So Jeff on LinkedIn wasn't live, but it was time delayed by like 45 minutes. But we were live on all the other channels. So I don't do it daily, but between Grow Getter and my own show, probably, I don't know, one to three times a week maybe.

So that's really cool. That's almost a live hack, shall we say? Are we getting our first live hack? Is that sometimes you don't even have to be live.

Well, so there's two ways to do it. One was, so when I noticed the LinkedIn live stream wasn't picking up, I just said that on the show. I just said LinkedIn isn't picking up. So if you watch on LinkedIn, we're going to restream it right after rebroadcast. So it's just still leave your comments and we'll see them after the fact. So that's one hack. And I do that for many shows. Like two weeks after they run, I run them again on a loop ten times.

Yeah. Okay, let's check in with everyone. Oh, hey, Randy. Hi, Nicole. Good to see you. Hey, Joyce. Hey, Mike. I just did your Instagram birthday. Real. Everyone say happy birthday to Mike. He's turning 72 tomorrow. And then Heidi, Joel. So good to see you guys. So I'd love to start off Christoph and just have you share a little bit about you and then just what your background is with lives, how you got started and how you're doing?

I work for a growth marketing agency, Growgetter IO, mostly in the market research space. But what I started live streaming is I just kind of happened upon it, like many things happened, right? And about 2019, I was like, oh, I should do a podcast. Okay, let's do a podcast. And then I went into Jason Falls podcast, winfluence. I was not winfluence at the time. I had a different name. Maybe it was the Jason False show at the time, but one of those predecessors, and Jason was live streaming, and he had his iPad here, and he's like, click, click, click, click, click. And I'm like, what are we doing? What's going on? And he was using Switcher Studio to live stream, I think only one channel at that time, LinkedIn. And I was like, I should try to do that. And then everybody started to do more podcasting. And podcasting is really, really hard to build an audience. You know, it's still hard, but you know what's easier is to build an audience on a channel. You already have a following, right? I mean, your case in point, right here, you got a Facebook group. Live stream to the Facebook group. It works, right? So why don't you live stream your podcast? And that's how I started. I was like, I was going to try it. I'm going to try Switcher Studio. And I really just livestream my podcast for the most part. And now the podcast is actually on TV, too. So it's 24 minutes. So we're pretty much like, these are the sections. These are the segments. We're staying on track. When people comment, we do throw them up on the screen and talk about it, especially if they have a question. But it's still 24 minutes, right? So we're not going to go on for hours at a time. But that's how I started it. It makes total sense. Still to this day, any client that wants to do a podcast, that's the first thing I ask. Should we do a live stream at the same time? And you know what else happens when you do a live stream? It takes this whole, let's just call it nit picky editing out of the system, you know what I'm saying? Because it's already live, so what difference does it make if I edit it out?

Yeah. Are you saying this is really good for perfectionists, so they can kind of loosen the rigidity of the perfection because it's just getting out there?

Well, I mean, I like things to be perfect, too, but here's the reality of things. Nothing in the world is perfect. I mean, even I was just watching the quarterbacks on Netflix. They were following three NFL quarterbacks and how they prepare, how they try to be perfect. And after putting in who knows how many hours, 80 hours a week on trying to be perfect on Sunday, hardly anybody ever is perfect. So forget about perfectionism. I don't know if it's possible.

Yeah. And so what does your company do then? What's the structure of it?

So Grow Getter is a growth marketing agency just launched earlier this year. We all came out of the market research arena and basically we help companies ramp up their revenue, for lack of a better term, in the market research space for selling their products and those kind of things. I run content strategy. So basically what we're talking about right now, I do that for Grow Getter. I do it for my own podcast. I do it for clients and try to bring out relevant content, relevant stories. And I think I remember who it was. It was somebody on my podcast and they said, there's enough top of the funnel content out there. I'm like, I can't disagree with you more. Everybody has unique stories, everybody has unique perspectives. If you're not hitting them, that's your fault. That's not the market's fault.

That's a great perspective. Getting some brilliant comments. So that's great. Vicki said I'm basically lazy. If I have to edit, it won't get done. Live is perfect. That's great. And so just to give you some context on where we are, so this group, we just pretty much got everyone to start podcasts and then some new people joined just for the live challenge. We had the kickoff yesterday and it was really fun. Normally I get this whole explanation of do the thing and this whole thing, but this is a go live challenge. So I did a 10 minute little. This is do the thing. This is how you do it. And then everyone hopped on the zoom and just took turns going live on different channels. No one did LinkedIn yet, but I think it was Instagram. And then one person went on YouTube. It was really fun. And so the idea is, let's just get the first few going. Be a little messy, just get it out there, get used to how to turn it on and things like that. But honestly, where I'm at, I'm really just, I do Facebook lives and I just started doing Instagram and then I did my first YouTube one yesterday. And so I don't even know how to. As you saw, I had to change the link on you at the very end, because I still don't even know how to pre schedule a zoom link. And so just kind of curious, just in terms of basic tips that you could give the people here, since I think a lot of them are just very new and a lot of them are coaches, entrepreneurs have brands and they've been using this podcasting journey and now the Go Live to enhance and then other people are doing it purely for comfort zone.

Yep. So it's a great question. So I use Restream. Restream IO. If you like my affiliate link, let me know. It's like 10% off. I think it's like restream IO join, forward slash, C trap. And I think there's a free plan that you might be able to use. But here's why I use it. First of all, it's a production studio, right? So it's not zoom and I can throw up stuff. So if you were to say, christof, let's talk about your book. You could just pull up my book and there's a QR code and people can scan it. And that's some of the promotional stuff. You can have nicer backgrounds like behind us. Maybe you can do that in Zoom. I don't know. You can have an intro, right? I just roll an intro. I always put my guest picture on the last slide, right? So it says episode 607 with Jeff Bullas and as his picture. So it's kind of nice, right? It makes people feel good. I took some time to make it work. But then what I really like about it is you can livestream to all the different channels, super easy. One button click. And I do LinkedIn, typically YouTube, Twitter, and then of course on YouTube. Now if you do your podcast, YouTube actually has podcasts now which run on YouTube Music as well. So your live stream automatically gets converted into a podcast. I mean, it's like the technology is crazy, right? So you can do all that and then you save the entire file and you can download it from Restream and push it to Apple, Spotify, whatever, if you're going to do your podcast. But I'm a big fan of Restream and live streaming to multiple channels just because why wouldn't I, right? Sometimes people pay attention on LinkedIn, sometimes they pay attention to Facebook Group or whatever it might be. And that seems to work. The other thing that's really cool in Restream is you can simulcast. So for example, if we would have done this in Restream, you can send me your link for me to set up my own stream. So when you go live, it goes live on my channels and it's still yours. I don't have it anywhere. It's literally just pulling in yours and publishing it. So the, the reason that's pretty cool is because when like your guest has a big following or an audience that's really engaged, all those comments get shown right there on the screen for all of us in one place.

That's great. And so. And we would like your affiliate link too and I'll share it with them as well. And then when you mentioned. So when it's done, it can also be saved as a video file as well.

So when it's done, it saves it as a video file. Or there's three different ways. Video file, you can download that or you can download the audio file or you can. Which I've never done. Or you can download the split track audio file. I'm not going to touch that one. Yeah, but if you really want to edit stuff to depth, you could actually do that.

Thank you. I think that's great. I'm going to definitely play around with that more because I love the idea of technically. Yeah, we could just be streaming this all over pretty much. So your favorite platform is that LinkedIn and YouTube or is there a specific one that you've been kind of favoring it?

It depends on the topic. So I think for a lot of the business stories, LinkedIn does work. I know Facebook I kind of have a love hate relationship with. Honestly, sometimes I'm there, sometimes I want to stay as far away as possible. So it's fantastic to see that you have a Facebook group that's super engaged for some topics. I love Amazon lives as well and what I do there is. Right. You like if you're talking to an author, I stream to Amazon, have up their book so people can buy the book. I also put up everything around me. So everything around me you can buy on Amazon, right. Maybe not the Hawkeye helmet here, because that's actually a Hawkeye helmet worn during a game. But everything else around me you can buy on Amazon, right. So I have my affiliate links to the microphone and all that stuff. So Amazon is pretty cool for that kind of thing. But LinkedIn probably Twitter is kind of up and down. There's just a lot of drama going on currently on Twitter and then of course YouTube. I've had a lot of success growing my channel by having the live streams and then also doing YouTube shorts and publish them pretty close before the live stream happens. And the reason is because when you have a YouTube short that uses a trending sound, you'll get thousands of views, most likely. I mean, no promises, but a lot of times I get thousands of views and then people see it, and while they're seeing it, they see the little live thing, you know, and then they click over. So, like, you're actually driving up your engagement because people are seeing your other video at that time.

So what do you normally do? So let's say you have a new client and you're kind of doing that strategy session. What's your process with being able to work with someone?

I do have an entire checklist on how to launch a podcast. I can send that to you if you like too.

Sure, yeah.

Feel free to share that. I should make a list. I don't know where my pens actually went. They always end up falling down or something. But okay. Hopefully you keep a list for now and share that.

Oh, yeah, I will.

Restream Podcast launch list. So, first of all, you want to think about what are they trying to accomplish? What are you trying to do? And then figure out where are the opportunities, right? There's a lot of industries still where people are not making the most out of content strategy. So you want to figure out where is kind of those opportunities. What can people actually rank for? What can they talk about? I mean, think about it. If you invited me on here and I had nothing to say about this topic, or I wouldn't have fun doing this. Really hard for anybody to pay attention, right? I mean, who knows? Maybe nobody's paying attention to me, but do you know what I mean? You have to have something to say. So you want to figure out what do they have something to say about? What are they passionate about? And then also, I mean, it has to be something that's related to their business. Now, Andy Crestedino said it's really an exercise in who can give the most the quickest, right? So how can you just give to your audience and then your audience at some point returns the favor and because they think of you when they need your services. So don't just talk about everything you do. Talk about the related things, the other things that they're going to hover around your actual offerings. So, for example, Go Getter offers growth marketing. We haven't even talked about growth marketing, but we're talking about all of these different topics that intertwine with growth marketing, right? So if I launch a new podcast, you can bet your bottom dollar that I will try to figure out how can I drive performance, right? I already mentioned that with YouTube, publish your YouTube short before you go live so you can drive up that audience. So everything really has to do with how do we make it work, how does it drive results? What those results are certainly can be debatable. We mentioned Jason Falls earlier. Jason had a little bit of a ranting monologue a few months ago and he said people need to stop paying influencers only on the sales. And he says, because here's the reason why. In any vertical, people need a certain amount of touches before they even buy anything from you. Anywhere from seven to 30 touches. Right. So if you only pay an influencer for the last touch, how unfair. You should pay them for all these other touches. So just something to keep in mind. You have to stay in front of people. You have to keep getting in front of people. And the more you're out there in front of the right audiences, the more beneficial will be.

Yeah. It's constantly just being consistent. Even though you don't know who's watching or who's seeing, it's just keeping it going because at some point that engine is going to go and then you'll be driving fast. I'm not going to get a better analogy. But Leslie said Kristoff, doing the YouTube shorts is like dropping breadcrumbs to lead people to your live stream. I love that. So true.

Totally.

What do you do the short on? Are you just getting on and talking about what the live is?

No, I hardly ever have my own voice on any YouTube short, so usually it's my 8 year old. My now 9 year old, I guess. Can't get that wrong. And we're picking a trending sound, trending song or something and we'll do a video. We don't typically dance, but we always tie it into something podcasting related. So there was one trending sound and. And it was like switching sides. And the entire short was me just doing this. Right. Switching sides. And then the text said, I didn't used to use a mic, but it's better with one switch insides. Right. That's all it was. Not going to say it's dumb because thousands of people watch it, but it doesn't take very long to produce when you really know what you're going to do and what you're looking for.

Yeah, it's so smart. You just have to open your mind. With the shorts, it's like, what are people interested in? And then from there you're leading them into the actual live. It doesn't have to be in the box, which is really good. And so a lot of the people that are watching right now, so they've started their podcast. Some of them have three episodes already, some have already like 20. So we're kind of in that range. And what do you think the next step is for them to market and grow? And that's kind of where the lives are coming in. But what are your thoughts with that as well?

So a couple different ideas. First of all, always use try all these different channels. And this is brand new to me. I got three episodes on there. So the business storytelling show Overall has like 610 episodes, something like that. And I have three episodes on TikTok. So TikTok, you can do 10 minute videos. Right. And so I uploaded three. What I do is I get as close to the 10 minutes as I can because usually when I come back on screen, it's a new segment. So I can kind of cut at a certain time.

Yeah.

And so I just do up to 10 minutes and I publish them on TikTok. And again, that adds like a thousand views, right? Roughly. So again, it's another way to get in front of people. I use all the different branding on there and all that works. The other one, I think that it's often overlooked is do your keyword research. This is no different than writing an article. Do your keyword research, see what people are searching for. Podcasts do show up in search. And especially if you put it on YouTube and you have a video and there's no other video, you might show up with your YouTube podcast version. So it's always to find balance, not just to do it for the robots, so to speak, but if you're going to talk about a certain topic and Google says, hey, everybody searches for this term and you can still talk about that same topic, just use a different term that people actually use, therefore do that. So keywords everywhere. Google Keyword Planner, those tools can certainly help you with that with doing keyword.

Searches in case people don't know what are your favorite strategies for doing that.

So, yeah, I got a couple different approaches. Google Keyword Planner is, I think by far it's one of the better ones where it gives you a lot of stuff. It's not as good in my opinion to like give you some of the really in the weeds kind of answers. So I use keywords everywhere on Google Chrome to kind of get into actual specific titles of the podcast. So I do actually sometimes it says, there was an article I did the other day, what are the five ways to do something that's literally what People search for. So I literally did a show on that, literally called it the same thing. And I did have five things, so it worked out fine. Now, if I didn't, if I had to cut something, I probably wouldn't do that, but if it matches up, go for it. And then what I do is I use copy line. We haven't talked about AI. How has that happened? Yeah, I use copylime, which has been built on top of ChatGPT, and it has a headline generator, so you can type in whatever you want the keyword to be, and then gives you like 10 ideas for a headline. You can say what the tone is, whether it's witty or funny or thoughtful or whatever. There's like 12 different tones. And then you can kind of use part of that headline or the whole thing if you like.

Oh, so fun. I haven't heard of that yet. So that's actually really cool.

I'm trying to play around with AI, but I want to be careful because I think having AI write entire things for you is kind of dangerous, first of all.

Right.

And second of all, it's not very good, but I should tell you this, my opening music. So if you listen to this on my YouTube channel or LinkedIn and feel free, everybody to connect on LinkedIn if you like. My opening is an AI generated voice. Now.

Wow. How did you do that?

So the service is called 11 Labs and you can actually clone your own voice. And I did that. So I did an entire podcast episode and I had my clone voice read a chapter out of my book, and then I published that podcast episode. Like, I mean, I did tell everybody, I said, this is an AI cloned voice of me. What do you think? And it sounds. It gets some of the sounds correct. They're pretty well done. It's not completely accurate, but it's pretty close. But yeah, I just took a chapter of our book, uploaded it into the system, and Then downloaded about 5 minutes bonus episode, free audio chapter.

Oh, my gosh, I love that.

So good.

Randy said, I couldn't agree more. And then she said, I love 11 labs because I'm still very shy. And then B said, hi. Hi, Lisa. Hi, Cindy. Neil, best strategy to start a podcast. He mentioned he's going to send us his list, so we'll make sure we pass that around. And then Vicki just asked, is there any special setup for Amazon Live, like number of followers needed or anything like that?

So here's my Amazon life story. Probably seven years ago now, somebody said, christoph, you gotta sign up for the Amazon influencer storefront. And I said, why? Why? I don't get it. So I did, because I sign up for everything, right? I see it, I sign up, and then I did nothing with it for like four years. And so then Amazon Live started being a thing, and I was already approved, so I could just start immediately because I was already in the system. And it's been wonderful. I think Amazon Live and the affiliate program which allows you to upload videos too, of products, has been a fantastic revenue stream the last few years. So that's my story. But the short answer to your question is yes, you have to have a certain amount of following. I don't know what it is currently. Back in the day, Twitter was one of them. That's no longer one. They don't look at Twitter. So I think it might be YouTube, Instagram, something. I'd be shocked if LinkedIn is on there, but I don't know. But yes, you have to have a certain following and proof that people are actually following you. And then you can get in.

Yeah. So we can definitely add that to our list of things that we work on during this challenge and see, because I know learning YouTube when I first this challenge was really just inspired because one day I'm like, oh, you can go live on YouTube. And then I mention it in the group, and then everyone's like, yeah, I want to go with you. And then when I went to go live, it's like, oh, you need two days before you can go live. So then we did an Instagram thing instead. But it's been really fun, just kind of playing around with all this stuff. I'd love to hear from the growth marketing perspective. So it sounds like that's revenue streams, but also growing the brands and kind of what does all that involve, too?

Well, at the end of the day, people come to your business through, you know, what some people call a funnel? Some people. I say it like that because I know some people will say thinking of a funnel is kind of the lazy way of marketing. And it is a little bit because, you know, it is not linear. Right. People come in and out. But at the end of the day, what is true is that people need to be touched by your brand one way or another, multiple times for them to buy anything from you. Right. I mean, that's the traditional how do we raise awareness? How do we get in front of people? How do we stay relevant? And believe it or not, that is way harder today than it used to be, because you could just run one TV ad and everybody was watching. That channel today, everybody is all over the place and stuff just kind of flies by us. So growth marketing, you really focus on all those different things and then ultimately, you know, you want to drive the revenue and do things that are measurable. And I kind of hesitate when I say that because there's a lot of things, they're also not linear. Right. Because somebody might see our ad, then they leave, and then they Google, then they find you through organic search and now they convert. So organic search will get the credit. But you know, it was really that ad that kind of pushed them over the top. So just kind of keep in mind, I think a lot of companies forget about how all those different things work in tandem. Right? Everything works together. I mean, think about manscaped, right? You know how I'm talking about manscaped? The, the razors and I think they call it below the waist grooming or something like that. But they do everything right. I mean, they even have a plane with a sign on the beach in Florida. And this is a forward thinking brand right out there doing different things and they have a plane flying by people on the beach. Wow, that doesn't sound like a new strategy. Right. That's been around for a long time. But my point is they understand that everything works together and they just try different things. And then of course, because it was a little controversial, I don't know if that's the right term, but a little spicy, I guess, what it said on the sign, people took pictures and posted them on social media. So now it just keeps rolling. Right.

So just a little bit of creativity can kind of. And then plus the 360 degree view of all the different things can really add to it.

Yep, absolutely. I think that's very easy to forget because some people always say what gets measured gets done. And that's fine. I'm a big fan of that too, honestly. But it all works together. I mean, if podcasting didn't work, why are so many people doing it? It totally works, Right? And even if you listen to the show from Chris Walker Revenue Vitals, that's the name of the show now. They renamed it recently. They even say, they say a lot of people, when they sign up to be customers, they literally say, we heard about you through your podcast, so totally works.

Yeah. What do you think is the best way you mentioned for the live streaming to do the shorts on YouTube before you do more of a random kind of kicking off of something? What about with a podcast or just a live on another channel? What would be a good way for promoting that.

I think growing a podcast is really way harder than it used to be. Right. Because there is so many and there's so many that just have seven episodes. I think that was the latest number I saw. And then they just stop. So it is important to keep going, to show a little bit of. It's kind of like Google, right? You're training the different platforms, hey, we're here, we're actually doing this. So publish an episode every week, keep staying out there, promote it. Personally, I'm not a big fan of those audiograms. Publish an audiogram and then send people. I don't know that anybody does that. Maybe they do, but I haven't seen that personally in any of my projects. I am a fan of using audiograms without even trying to get people to click to the podcast. Right. Just more of a branding activity. But certainly you have to keep going. Use the right keywords, promote your podcast. Also embed your podcast on your website, especially if you have a high performing website. There was a time I had my podcast at the bottom of every story of every article on Christophtrapp.com and I still actually do. But when I first started, that's where most of the listens came from because the website has a lot of views and I was brand new on a podcast network, right? So like, guess what people saw. They're like, oh, cool, I'm just listening right there. Then of course you want them to subscribe, but at the very least, because they're on your website, they're listening to it. So figure out all these different places where you can highlight it or you can show it. And I wouldn't do just a podcast page on your website, even though you could. But I just embed it below articles. When I quote people in articles, I embed the episode so people can listen to the whole thing. I link to the episode. And maybe that's from my journalistic background. Journalists can't write articles without quoting people. I guess at least the good ones don't. And I do the same thing even in marketing. I interview people and then I quote them.

And what's your LinkedIn show about? You want to share about that so everyone can follow that as well.

So that's the business storytelling show. Literally it just goes to all these different channels. And LinkedIn was, I think, one of the first ones. When I got approved for LinkedIn, you still had to apply to be on LinkedIn and they had to have this lengthy process. So now if you want to live stream to LinkedIn all you have to do is turn on creator mode and then you're good to go through a platform like Restream. I talk about business storytelling. How do we tell better stories? That ranges everywhere from specific tactics, sometimes software, sometimes how do you do short form video, how do you publish your nonfiction book? That's a good strategy too to get in front of people. Right. Many people have published business books and I think that's easier than ever in theory at least to do today. So yeah, all those different Topics. It's a 24 minute show now. It was picked up a couple of years ago by DBTV, so it's actually now on a TV station and they of course have a 24 minute slot. So I just decided we'll just make it 24 minutes instead of cutting stuff out. And that's kind of how it goes.

How do you do that? How do you make it 24 minutes? Is it edited? Is that how.

So that's one way you could do it. I had another show that I ran, Real Talk, the Customer Insights show. And that was on TV as well. And that would never be done at 24 minutes. It was like 40 minutes. So we would just edit it down and there's always stuff you can cut out. In fact, you could cut out entire segments and you cut one segment or two. Now you might be down to 24 minutes or like the beginning when people introduce themselves, it's like, yes, they would probably like that in there. But if you have to choose between them talking about who they are or whatever, versus the real meat of the episode, maybe that can be cut down. But my show, I don't want to edit. I want to just be as efficient as I can. So there are 24 minutes and it's not exactly on the dot, but it's like 24 minutes, 12 seconds or something like that. And that's okay. It's pretty, it's get pretty close. And I just watch the timer as we're doing it. And once we get to 25 minutes, there's a minute countdown at the beginning. Once we're at 25 minutes, I know I gotta cut it off and be done.

Okay. Yeah, and you're so practiced with it now too, I bet. Also, so with LinkedIn, there's a creator mode. You turn that on and then you could do it through restream. What other LinkedIn advice do you have for everyone watching?

Well, LinkedIn, I mean just tell good stories and try different formats. I mean, when you write a post, be engaging, use emojis. I mean People use them all the time now. I think they draw attention within reason. Try not to pick ones that have multiple meanings or inappropriate meanings, of course, but I think that works. Do a newsletter on LinkedIn. I do that about once a week. So instead of doing a post, I publish a newsletter on LinkedIn. And basically a lot of times it's an article from my website, except it's not the whole article. It's just the intro and the headlines. And then if I have a video, I might put the video in there. You can actually embed. Embed. It's not a perfect embed, but it looks like an embed of your podcast episode. And then when you click, it goes to the channel where you have to listen to it. So it's not. You can't listen right there, but try different things, you know? And I mean, when LinkedIn stories came around, and I know that has gone away now, but I tried that right away. Now there's LinkedIn audio. Try that. If you don't do video on your podcast, I'm not sure if you can record LinkedIn audio right now. You couldn't the last time I checked, but that's another way to try things. So if you do a podcast and you're both sitting next to each other, so if you're both using the same mic or two mics on one computer, you could totally do a LinkedIn live and record it to somehow with like another phone or something. But yeah, I like trying different things. Seeing what works, Seeing what doesn't work.

Yeah, that's so smart. And so what advice do you have for them? Because you're try it how it works. How do you get people over that fear, right, of just trying something new? Is there any kind of strategy that you have when you're about to do something new and then you're able to just do it?

Yeah, I think the fear is kind of interesting. I think just the more comfortable you are with your content and your expertise and whatever it is you're doing, I think the easier it becomes. Right. I mean, we didn't do any prep at all, Right. We were just like, you want to come talk on our live. Going live. I'm like, yeah, sure. I had no idea what we're going to talk about. Right? But we're just talking. We're just doing it. It's just a conversation. So especially if you do a podcast or any spinoff, just think of it as a conversation. Just try different things. If you really, truly don't like something, just delete it afterwards. I've deleted YouTube shorts before. If I'm like, I don't know if that hit the mark from even my branding or whatnot. So it is. You kind of want to think about that. But just try different things. Especially if you're a solo creator or if it's your personal brand. What I mean, is it really going to kill your brand if you publish a YouTube short that's less than perfect, for example? And what's perfect anyways? What does that even mean? We're all just trying. We're all just playing around. So just try different things. See how it works. See what doesn't work. I mentioned Amazon Live earlier, and I like Amazon Live for podcasting, but I don't like Amazon Live for the True Shopping show. So what happens is people, they just talk about their product. So if my show is about microphones, I might talk about this microphone for an hour. Right? I get bored. I'm like, look at this microphone. It's so. I mean, look, it's sturdy and whatever. And do that for an hour. Oh, my God. And there's people who do it. Or you probably seen him on TikTok, right? On TikTok. There's some people, all they do is they sit and they look at the camera.

Oh, my gosh.

Do you know what I mean? And where's the value in that? I mean, I get it. I know why some people make it work, but I wouldn't want to do that, just sit there. I need to. Let's do something. Let's talk about something. Let's be interactive in a meaningful way.

Being interactive in a meaningful way. And then the other thing I really like is what's perfect anyway? I feel like that's a good quotable for you.

That is. Go ahead. Yeah, please do.

I'll add that in the group tomorrow. So in terms of, let's say, the next two weeks, because we're doing this challenge for 14 days, what would be just a good thought process with every day that they could be doing when they're going live? Is there any kind of thoughts you have for that as well?

So I think there's a couple different ways of going live. Right. One is you have a guest. I think, like, just talking with somebody, that's might be the easiest way to go live, honestly. Right. Because you can just have a conversation. You can play off each other. So try that. Maybe go live with multiple people. They actually do that on TikTok. Some people call it speed dating. I'm not sure it's speed dating, but they have multiple people on the screen and they're just talking. They're literally just having a conversation. And there's people who watch it. I mean, I see it as I'm scrolling, but I'm not just holding on to that live stream. Then if you do a solo live stream, they're a little harder, honestly, if you get going on that, because now you are the entire entertainment. So maybe make an outline what you're going to talk about, what are you going to do, et cetera. So this is me sitting here going, blah, blah, blah. I want to talk about this. Here's my thoughts. And I think that can be hard, and I find that kind of hard, too, honestly. But that's how my podcast started. You know, I would just be walking around a track in the morning, recording on my phone, and that's kind of how that went. Why not just go? And then the other one is where you're not on camera necessarily, but where you're doing something. So I was at Content Marketing World many years ago, and I. This is in the time of Periscope and maybe Meerkat. So that's how long ago that is. And I would just walk around with my phone. I'd be like, I was leaving on screen. I'm like, hey, I'm at Content Marketing World. You know, let's see what's going on and show people the booths and there's like thousands of people watching and. And it's me just walking around a conference. So think about, what else can you do? I did do one. I haven't done one of these in a long time, but. Well, I used to do one Amazon, but now Amazon. I'll get back to what I was going to say, but I have a robot vacuum cleaner. And years ago, I put a camera on top of the robot vacuum cleaner and I would live stream the vacuum cleaner driving around my house on Amazon. And then people would watch that, right? So now Amazon has put the kibosh on that, and they're saying that you can't do that anymore because it's not as interactive. And I'm like, that's completely interactive. The thing is, look at it. People are mesmerized. But their definition of interactivity was it has to be a person talking about the product, which a robot vacuum cleaner is kind of hard to talk about unless you should driving around. But anyways, I did do. I don't remember when I did this or where I even was, but I was somewhere and there was planes flying over me and I was just Live streaming the planes. And people watch that too. Now, I'm not an Avgeek or anything like that, but there is actually a YouTube channel or many YouTube channels. That's all they do on a Saturday. They go to London Heathrow. And this is one that really took off when they had storms in London, and they're just showing the planes landing and people watch it. I mean, when there's a storm, I kind of get it. Right. I watched that too for a while. I was like, holy cow. But people just watch regular planes land and sunny weather, and that's what they do. So think about what can you do that has something to do with your brand or whatnot?

Yeah, okay. I'm totally putting you on the spot, so tell me if you're not okay with this, but one of the people watching is Micah said Mike Reynolds, his podcast is real life after 70, and he has a YouTube channel as well. Just starting. Just starting. So what are just a couple ideas you have for him specifically to grow his podcast or in terms of the lives that he could be doing? Just in terms of. He's inspiring people that are over 70, showing them that you can start at 70, you don't need to wait. Right. And then also he's inspiring people that are younger because they're like, oh, wow, if Mike can do it when he's 72, then I can do it now. And that was kind of the last thing I just shared on Instagram that he did was, don't wait, do it now. So I'm just kind of curious on your immediate thoughts for him.

I mean, make use of all. All the channels. Right. So, for example, when you just said that, the title of the show, the first thing I thought about is this lady. I don't even know her name, but she's maybe like 55. And she retired like a year and a half ago because she took a package, retirement package or whatever, golden parachute, whatever. And all she talks about is how to be retired. Like, totally a niche topic. Right. And so. But my point is, she does it on TikTok. So how do you repurpose what you have on other channels? So you can grow those channels, but then you can also grow your show overall. So that's kind of how I look at it. It drives some people crazy when I. When I talk about, well, this show, it's on Amazon and it's on these 12, 16, whatever, podcast channels. And then I also have a TikTok version, and then I have a Threads version. You know, Threads is new, but Threads doesn't give me any metrics. And to actually measure all the numbers, it's a total mess. Right. But my point is, what are some networks where you can repurpose what you're doing? There was, I think it's Simon something. Simon Wilson. I don't know if I got that name right. But if you search for play Monopoly in real life or something like that. So he has a show and he is playing Monopoly in real life. Right. So he literally rolls the dice and then it says go and run across whatever the bridge is in Istanbul. And so he literally will fly to Istanbul and try to run across the bridge. Well, it ends up that bridge only has vehicular traffic, so you can't actually run across it. So he took a taxi, cross it, but then he rolls the dice again and then he has to go to the UK to go to some monument and then he goes to Athens. So you get the point. So these are longer shows and they have a gazillion views. But then what else he does, he does a YouTube short, 60 seconds or less, preferably even.

Yeah.

And he just highlights what's in the show. Right. And he draws more people to his show. And I'm. I wouldn't be shocked if he does it on Instagram too and other channels. So what are the other channels? What are the current trends? What are the things that currently work and that you can get in? I mean just think about threads. I was like user 160,000 or something like that. And now there's over 100 million.

Crazy.

And in those early hours, because it was only hours, it was not days or months, you could really stand out. Right. You could really make a splash and connect with people that wouldn't connect with you on established networks.

Yeah. Interesting. So what would you say would be your number one piece of advice for everyone watching on? Let's say doing the thing. And we'll say doing the thing is going live, growing your any of that stuff. The thing is blank. Pretty much.

The number one advice I have on this topic is just kind of get out there, try to figure out how do you want to look? How are you comfortable? I'll give you an example. I've set this up the way I want it, right. I got seven lights around me and, and I'm comfortable. I got a gaming chair, by the way. People say to me, middle age gamer. I'm like, I'm not a gamer. I'm just like to be comfortable. And these chairs are completely comfortable. So figure out how you're going to do it? Where are you going to do it? How are you going to be comfortable doing it? And just start and keep going. I mean, the bar to have a successful podcast that continuously is publishing, it's really not that high, right? Seven episodes. Most people quit after seven episodes. Just beyond me how anybody thinks that's going to work. So figure out what you want to talk about, what you want to do, and then go do it. And here's the other thing. Just because you get a couple comments, bad comments, that shouldn't be the end of the world, right? I mean, the other. Especially on a lot of networks, when people comment, right, they actually amplify your content anyways. So especially on TikTok, you see creators responding to comments because they know that it helps them grow their audience. But yeah, just keep going. Know what you're going to talk about. Get into rhythm. And the other tip, actually, this just came up the other day, actually, is I'm a big fan of, I don't want to say quotas, but this is how many episodes I want to do. But I don't care if they're on Monday or Tuesday. Do you know what I mean? Like, you sometimes hear people go, well, we could never find the time on Mondays to do this. And I'm like, and how about Tuesdays? We never looked at Tuesdays. How about Wednesday? Oh, we didn't look at Wednesday. Like, how about Thursday? I don't really care when the thing happens, we're not tv, right? Let's be honest. Most people will not sit there and go, oh my goodness. Kristof's podcast goes live at this exact time every week. They will not. They will catch it when they can. And if they can't catch it, they'll watch it on the replay, which is in the same post. So just kind of get into that habit, get into that rhythm and go.

I love that. Get into the habit, get into the rhythm and go. And then as we're closing out, I know that people are dying to know in terms of monetization goes, what would be just your suggestions on? I've heard you say affiliate a few times, but just curious on just your general thoughts on that, too.

So there's some things that are easier than others. Affiliate marketing is kind of a hard game, especially overnight if you think about it. But yeah, every link, honestly, even on my blog and my podcast, they're all affiliate links, right? It does add up after a while. You certainly have to have some traffic. I also do sponsored episodes, typically. Not always, but typically when I Get out of the blue pitches to people I've never heard of. And there's just some people, I don't even know who they are. And I had to read their email. I have a template that goes back to them and says, oh, I'm currently accepting sponsored guests and there's a calendar link and you can pay directly in there. So that's one model. Some people do that. I wouldn't say that's paying all the monthly bills, but it's certainly a nice little revenue stream. There is some podcast. I don't frame it like this, but I just, I asked to be on one podcast and they kind of did the same playbook a little bit. They said, oh, apply here. And if you want to be prioritized, you can do that by buying these ads or something, right? So I wouldn't recommend that if you only have seven episodes, but once you have a few hundred and you really have plenty of guests booked, like, it might be okay to do, right? When I'm kind of running low on guests, I probably wouldn't do it. But I think I have like 27 guests lined up for the podcast, so there's no rush to get more people in that seat. What else? Also think about it. What services do you offer? Right? So I certainly offer content and marketing, content strategy services. And people hear me talk on there and sometimes they reach out. There's hardly ever a call to action on there. Hey, if you want to work with me, call me now. I'm not sure I've set that in years, honestly, on there. But people still hear and they reach out and they'll say, hey, this one thing, we tried that, but it doesn't work. And then I might say, oh, how did you try? I'm like, oh, I know why it didn't work because you didn't do this one thing. And then that's kind of how that evolves. So that's, I think, how a lot of branded podcasts, that's their purpose, right? To raise brand awareness. And of course, a branded podcast is really just a podcast that a company runs, right? And the reason they run it is, is to raise awareness of the company, but it still has to be informational and whatnot. The other thing, and I don't know what her website is right now, but once your podcast is up and running, there's now actually businesses who look to buy podcasts. I think it's the podcast broker. So something to think about once you have a huge following, might be worth to see if anybody wants to buy It. Maybe nobody will. Maybe you don't want to sell it. I don't know. But there is something like an exit strategy now for podcasts.

Yeah, I would never imagine that. That's craz crazy.

Yeah.

They buy the podcast.

Well, I mean, so it's. Everything is up for debate. Right. And negotiation. But yeah, there's companies out there that look at buying podcasts with an established audience so they don't have to build the audience. And then also not just the audience, but the back log, the back catalog of all the content. Right. They get everything, so then they want to use that for different things. Yeah. So you kind of have to see if it's worth your while. Right. If you get a thousand bucks for a hundred episodes on a podcast, you might not want to sell it, but if somebody offers you 50, maybe you do.

Yeah. And then this question just came up. How do you handle when your guests come in? Do you go through, do you have them sign paperwork or anything like that?

So there's no need to have paperwork, in my opinion. I'm not a lawyer, so blah, blah, blah. Talk to your lawyer for all that jazz. But on my podcast, I use calendly for all my bookings. Sometimes even if we're on a call and we're like, hey, let's do it on this time. And if that time is not open, I will literally open it up and I'll ask you to just fill it in quick before somebody else does. And then there's like two check boxes. One is, I gave you permission to use this on tv, blah, blah, blah. I don't expect any. There's no revenue share or anything like that. So they don't get any money from the ads that run on TV or anything like that. So it says stuff like that. So let's check it. And then the other checkbox I have, which I would never enforce this necessarily, but it's meant as a reminder, and it says it is really important that you have a good microphone and a decent setup for camera. And then it says, I understand, check. And if somebody didn't have, like a perfect setup, would I ever say, no, sorry, we're not going live? Probably not, but it's a good reminder for them to think about that before we actually go live. And then I use the calendly workflows. So eight days before the show, it sends them an email and says, hey, just a reminder, we're going live. Looking forward to it. Make sure you have all this and this and this and this. And if for some reason you can't do it. Please let me know in the next 24 hours and just use the reschedule link because I'll start promoting it tomorrow. And then tomorrow I will get an email saying, okay, it's time to promote it. And then the day before, they will get another email saying, okay, the link for the backstage should be in the invite. If you don't see it, let me know, I'll send it to you again. That's all automated. And then 90 minutes after the show, it'll send them an email and says, hey, thanks for coming on the show. And it's Already live on LinkedIn and Twitter. Here's the links. It's just my profile, basically. And there you go.

So, yeah, Leslie, I'm glad you asked that question because I think that's such a smart way to do it where it's all just in one thing and you don't have to deal with a bunch of extra bureaucracy.

No, somebody. Actually I was on somebody's podcast and they had me sign a paper form. Basically. I don't do any paper, but I just. You have to upload into like sign Easy. And then you sign it like a paper. But I'm like, why just do a digital signature? They're totally so smart.

It work and it's cool. I don't know why this didn't think I didn't come up with this idea until we're talking is you guys could just be doing an interview like you would for your podcast, but then just do it live and then you can upload it to the podcast platform. That's so smart. And like an interview perspective. You could be interviewing someone, it's live, and then it gets uploaded.

I mean, that was kind of my thinking. And then the other thing to keep in mind is, so Spotify has video now anyways, so it's good to upload a video. Right. I know there is a big debate in the podcasting space. Some people will be like, oh, podcast is audio only. Well, maybe it is, but Spotify now offers video. You might as well upload video. And Apple. I thought Apple. Somebody said Apple has video. I don't know if that's correct or not. But even if they don't today, at some point they will probably is my guess. So you might as well have the files ready.

Yeah. How does that work? Well, technical I can always look into. But just curious if you have a quick answer with Spotify. So we have the podcast platform that we use. It goes to all the platforms, including Spotify. Is there Another thing that you then upload to Spotify or you're just supposed to upload it to the podcast.

So it depends on. It depends on what you have. It shows up with your episode on Spotify if it's uploaded correctly. And so I use Anchor, which is now Spotify for podcasters. So they bought it and I upload the video file and then they ship the audio file to everybody and Spotify gets the audio file and the video file and it's all in the same post.

Interesting. Very cool. Well, this has been incredible. I really appreciate you taking your time and doing this. Could you please share with everyone how they can find out about you and then if anyone chooses to work with you, how they could reach out to you in that way as well?

Yeah, just reach out christophtrapp.com or you can also email christophrogetter IO. Always happy to chat and feel free to connect on LinkedIn.

You mentioned the show is a few times a week. Is a specific schedule where they can check that out too?

Well, it is a specific schedule, but I sometimes move it around on different days and stuff. So it's just a calendar. Typically it's over the lunch hour, like when I did the show with Jeff Boulis. That's impossible for somebody in Australia, right, The US Lunch hour to do a show. But yeah, just connect with me on LinkedIn and make sure you have the notifications turned on and you'll see it.

And everyone's saying thank you so much. Informative, great info. Awesome. That is key. So yeah, you're getting a lot of thanks. So thank you so much. Appreciate you. And you guys continue on and we are doing lives every day. I'm going to give you a new dare tonight for tomorrow and I just got three more dare ideas after our conversation with Kristoff. So I'm really excited. And do the thing. Don't wait for opportunity, create it.