Make Your Livestreams Binge-Worthy With Tracy Hazzard From The Live eCommerce Podcast With Whitney Lauritsen, Nicolas Bailliache And MJ Allen

Hello and welcome to the Live E Commerce Podcast. I'm Whitney Laertsen and I'm joined by Nicholas, M.J. and a very special guest today to talk about how to make your live streams binge worthy. And we're going to talk about exactly what that means. How to find your live streaming binge factor, which is going to support you in marketing your message, growing your audience, adding lots of value, and also creating authority on whatever platform you're focused on using live video without a lot of time, cost or effort. Those are the big keys here. Our special guest is Tracy. Tracy. Our special guest is Tracy Hazard. I was combining her names together into one word. Has anyone ever called you that Tracy before Tracy or just me?

Not the first time.

I like that. That might be your new nickname. I am privileged to know Tracy very well, but getting to know her over the past probably three years now through podcasting, she is a seasoned media expert with over 2,600 interviews. Although this might be outdated, I bet you it's crossed 3,000 since she last updated this bio I'm reading from. She has articles across Authority magazine, buzzfeed, her Inc. Magazine column, and she has multiple top ranked video casts and podcasts, including the binge Factor and feed your brand. And Tracy's unique gift to the podcasting, marketing and branding world is being able to identify a unique bingeable factor. The thing that makes people come back again and again, listen, actively share as raving fans, and buy everything you have to sell. Which is exactly why we wanted to have her on the show, because everybody wants to know how to do this. This is the number one question people ask of extremely, which is how do they grow an audience? How do you get people to buy things? And I think this binge factor is the key. So, Tracy, I cannot wait to dive into this with you today. Thank you so much for being here.

So happy to be here. And yeah, the other podcast we should mention is Product Launch Hazards because I really refined my idea of how to make things so saleable. I cut my teeth in retail, so I know retail products probably better than I know podcasting. And I know podcasting really well.

Yes, I love that. I'm actually really excited to dive into that side of you, Tracy, because I know you mainly through the context of your shows. And for those listening for context, I also work with potties and support them with their social media, which is something I do over at East Dreamly as well. I'm honored to have them both as amazing clients. And I came to know Tracy when I launched my first. Well, it was actually technically my second show. I, I did something called Pod Fading many years ago with my very first podcast. I wish I had known Tracy back then because I think I would have kept going with that show and who knows how successful I could have been. But I was fortunate to meet Tracy right before I launched my show. This might get uncomfortable in 2019 and I swear by Potatoes, it has been a game changer. We also use Potter Ties for this podcast, the Live E Commerce Podcast, because they offer incredible hosting but all sorts of support when it comes to podcasting. However, knowing all the work that you've done with products, Tracy, working in retail, I hope we can touch upon investments which is, I know another passion and skill, skill set, knowledge base of yours today too. There's so much to get into. I don't know how we're going to fit it all into the 45 minutes that we have, but let's see what we can do. Before we get into that though, we start every episode with an update on Extremely from Nicholas. And Nicholas, a lot has been going on with Extremely just over the past weekend. So I'm very excited to hear that from you.

Yeah, yeah, it's certainly. It's been really exciting. It's, it's, you know, sometimes you, you push a lot of different project and they all end up to realize at the same time. And you know, when you, when you make a release note, that release note is like so long that you don't even read all the way up to the end. So there's so many things that would happen. But it's really good. We're so excited. I won't say everything that we've done because some of them we had kind of pre. Pre talked about on previous episode. You know, the, the ability to upload existing videos and sell those videos. But I want to. There's really two of them that are really noteworthy in my point of view that I really am passionate about. The number one is the SEO work that has been done and there's been a lot of work around that, how to make those videos more searchable. And I'm so excited because. And I hope it's going to stay this way. We are working very actively on that. But some of our shoppable video are the number one thing. The number one thing that you see on Google when you do a Google search and it's not like you have like ad or anything before, it's actually the number one thing. And when you think about this, I think about the team And I'm like, whoa, this is really amazing. And those video are shoppable. So I mean this is really just astonishing. So this one by itself is I think is fantastic. The second thing that I think is really fantastic. It's more to. Because I put a lot of art and passion on this, but we launched our first newsletter. We were doing an investor newsletter, but we launched a newsletter for the few of the audience that have actually registered and downloaded some of our previous content and want to follow about us. So if you interested about Live Stream Live shopping, we are now sending a newsletter every week and we want that to be a place where you can learn your thing about the space, what's going on out there, who does what. So please join us on this new letter. We are very excited to have you.

I'm so excited about that too because email marketing can be a really powerful way to reach your audience. Although, Tracy, maybe that's a good place to start. I had a different question in mind. But I know that you have some opinions about email marketing, so maybe we'll begin there. How do you currently feel about email marketing, Tracy, Especially given that you've been doing a lot of it recently due to this new investment project that you have with Potitize, which maybe you can start with a little background about what you're doing with that and then share your insights about email marketing.

Well, so my view on email marketing has been, you know, first off, from the perspective of a user of email who finds emails really annoying, right? My email inbox is filled with thousands of emails and I'm one of those crazy people who like to get to email net zero each day. Which means that, you know, there's this camp of us who have to clear our inbox every day. Now I know the minute I close it, like 10 more emails show up, but at least I got to zero at the point I closed my day, right? It's a mind clearing kind of attitude about it, which means that I'm a fierce unsubscriber. So I never really understood these people who are staying on your list forever but never doing anything. So I'm a fan of really active lists. And so we call our list all the time. We're constantly refining it, constantly doing it. And so what we found is as we started to, we've just launched a republic campaign to do crowdfund investment into the company Potitize. And when we started sending out our friends and family emails and everything, I thought, oh, we'll end up with big unsubscribe right now because we've never done a sequence where we did so many emails in a row so close together. That's not been the case. And that's what really. I just astounded me that people aren't unsubscribing from it at the pace that I thought. We've had like a pretty average 2% unsubscribe rate, which is pretty average for us all the time of people who actually do that. We unsubscribe people more often than that. And so it surprises me that they'd go through the whole sequence and we wouldn't end up with this like, you know, list that was like a quarter of the size by the time we were done with it. I just thought all of a sudden we're going to head into an email sequence and we're going to end up with like a next to nothing small list. At the end of the day, that's not what happened at all actually. What I think is we've just energized the community. Of course we have like a really high open rate. And so that has helped us, I think, because people are opening it, they're actually getting value from what we do over on our emails. And so it's working for us. We did a cold email sequence and really watching that one is going to be kind of my next thing to see our emails really still working or not. And so far I think, you know, it's still working for us, but I think it's still working for us because our community is curated. They're not. We aren't sending out to just anyone who's an entrepreneur or something like that. We're specifically targeting people who are already podcasters or already in the community. They're already in the know, so they want, they're eager for more information and that's really where we've made everything key for us, is when you get your community dialed in and a specific interest base. That's when I think email still really works.

Oh, I love that. That's very valuable. And that ties into this concept of the binge factor and growing a valuable engaged audience, which seems to be at the core of so much of what we put out over for Potatoes and all the shows. You know, my role in the company is reviewing a lot of the posts before they go out and it feels like that comes up over and over again is how to engage your audience and definitely want to touch upon that. But I want to step back a little bit first to ask you, Tracy, what do you Think podcasting and livestream have in common in terms of mainly video. But of course right now we're live streaming using live audio with Clubhouse. And I'm curious where you see these intersect, what's different about them and where they also complement each other. How can you use live streaming in conjunction with podcasting and Vice?

I think it's a trust factor and that's really where I go to all the time, is that you know, for most of the binge factor, most of what really goes on there is that it's the, the same thing that is building trust in a product, trust in a company, trust in a person. And so we're building trust through our voice. We're building trust through our ability to think on our feet. Right. And do that in an authentic way. And that really helps sell more. That that's really the key to everything. When we can stand up there and talk about a product as you know, used to happen on the Home Shopping Network and is now happening on E. Streamly, right. You're talking live about six something that you're passionate about. You can't really fake that. You can fake a 30 second video. You can, you know, you can push your way through, read a script on anything that's small, but you can't really do that with something that is going into a live stream situation. Look, you, I don't know what questions you're going to ask me here and you can hear from the sound of my voice that I'm not, I'm not doing this from a prepared speech. I'm doing this off the top of my head that demonstrates high trust in my ability to have access to that information, be able to answer you quickly, which must mean that I'm knowledgeable in this. It's the same thing with a product. You just can't fake it when it falls apart in your hands or it's not working. Livestream is real and that helps build that trust factor.

I love that. And Nicholas, I want to hand it over to you next because I imagine you have a follow up question.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's interesting what, what you say Tracy and I, I think you know, when, when, when I look back to what, what we have experience with a lot of the host or even the brands that are considering going live stream. I think you know, on paper everyone exactly is excited about going and doing it and then, then they look back and say oh, but that, that trust factor that you're talking about, that the ability of not, you know, being, being truthful to who you are. And everything is overshadowed by the. Just the fear of going live in front of a camera. And I wonder, how do you feel about that? You know, you're talking about the difference between the point of commonality between podcasting and live streaming. Do you feel that.

There is such thing that people should be afraid of going live because they have to face that audience?

I think if you're not. If you're not real, if you're not passionate about what you've got, if you are not not the best salesperson of your product, your service yourself, then you shouldn't do it, right? You should go and get some skills somewhere, go get some training, go get some help in that side of things. I mean, I started my first podcast because I didn't want to live, go live. Now, live streaming really wasn't. Hadn't taken effect. This was back in 2014-2015. So live streaming was just not as big as it is now. So everything you did in video had to be constructed. And it was still controlled by a lot of filmmakers. So that didn't feel comfortable to me. I didn't want to have my hair done every day. I didn't want to, you know, because on video, you know, if you were looking at me now I have my lipstick on and I have my hair combed, right? It's not. It's not that casual. I'm always carefully cultivated online. I'm still who I am. You'll see me talking with my hands, and you'll see me get passionate, and my eyes will light up. And when I talk about things that I like, so that's still there. And so as long as you can be human, you can be who you are, and you can do that, but do it in a way that feels professional to you, then you should not have fear of any of these media types. You should just go for it. And podcasting was just a really easy way for me to tap into and then eventually go into live video, which we pretty much record video on everything we do. We actually always did it because when I was interviewing someone, I wanted to look them in the eye when I'm asking them a question. I didn't want them to be distracted. So even from the very beginning, even when I was writing articles for Inc. Magazine, I would still do a zoom or do a Skype back then and look them in the eye as I was interviewing them and asking them questions. And of course, I was saving the recording. It made it easier for me to write articles. So I've Always been in this mode of really trying to, like, look someone in the eye and get to know them. So that's why I love livestream.

I absolutely agree and I think that's incredibly important and I will hand it over to MJ for the.

Yeah. So first and foremost, Tracy, thank you so much for joining us. My question, I just want to go back because you hit on a couple of things. One of them that I'm passionate about is actually cold outreach, cold emailing, and I can honestly say, say working with extremely. It works. It definitely still works. Again, like you mentioned, as long as you are.

You know, reaching out to your community who's relatable and, and they actually care about the information that you're sharing, it, it definitely works great. So I just, I, I had to touch on that. Another thing, when it comes to live streaming, I had, I had another question, but because we are talking about live streaming and you mentioned the trust factor, you also mentioned in terms of when, you know, the, the common, the commonality between the podcasting and the live streaming, you know, when someone is going live, you can obviously tell, you know, more specifically if it is a, a founder that, you know, that passion for the product that comes across through video, if they're real, if they're authentic, that that actually comes across, you know, in the video. And then you stated that if, if obviously, if you don't believe in the product, then you should definitely get some type of training. What would you say, you know, with the recommendation for training, what would you, what would you recommend to someone? I would say maybe two or three things that would help them to, to lower that fear, to lower that anxiety if they are, you know, using a platform. Because I know some people, they're afraid to come. Come on Zoom, right? Let's be honest, they don't even want to show their, their video on Zoom. But what would be like two or three things that you would recommend when it comes to, you know, the sales training?

That's such a good point about, you know, about the, what types of training you need. So I, I'm a big fan of a couple of different types of training. The first type is doing, right? If we aren't doing it, we're not going to get better at it. So we need to have a vehicle some way that we're going to show up week after week after week. And this is what I recommend to my clients who are having trouble podcasting. They're having trouble, like doing the recording portion of it. It's get a small group of People together. Get your biggest fans. It might be maybe you're selling a product already and you already have like super users, people who are already fans of it. Offer them up a live stream, Offer them up a private group, put it in private so that you feel really controlled about it. Invite them in, have them come in. You're going to show up for them week after week after week. We still do this every day in our business. So on the poditized platform, it doesn't matter how much money you spend with us, you get live coaching every single week. And so on Wednesdays, my partner Tom and I show up. We show up and we, we coach live. We give a topic, we come up with those topics, we record them for our podcast and save them to the feed your brand podcast. But we're there every week refining our ability to podcast and serving our audience at the same time. So we're serving users who matter to us, in this case our core clients. And yet we're doing that because that holds us accountable to make sure we're recording our podcast every single week. So we're being held accountable, but we're also practicing and it's so important. And a lot of times we'll do this like, reveal behind the scenes of like, we'll talk about how we're recording it so someone new understands that. So we're training at the same moment. So that's a critical part of it is just getting yourself into a place of continual doing. So. So you are working on that practice side of things. The second thing is I got trained in speak to sell, so I got trained by people who did used to work for hsn. And so you're talking about Home Shopping Network to define it for those of you who don't know the terms, which is kind of a little old school now. Right. And so I got trained by them into understanding how to capture an audience, how to get sound bites in, how to make sure that this is conveying the passion and how to sell something from what I do and speaking. And when you hear me speak while I tell stories about my, my business and I might highlight various things that we do that's different than everyone else. I'm not saying buy my stuff. It's not a path to doing that. It's a give, give, give, give, and then a, a story and mention or a testimonial and mention. Right. And you're doing those things. It's a process by which you're drawing people through it. And there isn't one single commercial on our Shows because we don't need it. It sells itself from the topics and how much we're giving in that, and so that's great. But sometimes the owner, sometimes the founder, sometimes the inventor in terms of products, this has been my experience, are the worst people to sell their own product, and that's because they're in the weeds of what they do. And not necessarily taking that viewpoint of, I'm new to this, I don't know what this is about, and I'm learning there. You need to kind of approach it from that outside in a Speak to Sell kind of model can point that out to you. There are lots of speaker coaches out there, and I just recommend you find someone that fits you because it's not always right for you. You know, sometimes you get trained by someone who's just slick and it's not your style or, you know, you need someone where you say, wow, they do a really great job of selling. I want to emulate them. Let me ask them if they'll coach me and give me some tips and give me some reviews. That's the way I would do it. It just works a little better that way. If you can find a better match for you and what you're looking for. For me, I actually went to someone who really was slick in the whole process. And I filtered it out, though, and really took away the five things that I want to do best when I do this. So those are really the few things that I look for in trainings. And then the reality is, is that some people get really caught up and worried about the tech. And that's where you got to get someone to support you there. Whether it's someone like Whitney is here, where she's supporting the tech side of things and making sure this is all flowing, or you're really getting someone who really, you know, I have clients who has someone come in and plug their microphone in and double check the tech for them before they get started. If that's what makes you comfortable so that you can feel confident in. In live streaming and going ahead and talking about your products, then go ahead and do that.

Wow. It's very interesting. All you're saying, Tracy, one of the things that really.

Struck me with what you say is the fact that the brand owner may not always be the best person to speak. And I want to come back to that because if, you know, in some way, it always felt like, I mean, like I had a chance to be from the retail side, you know, more from, like the farmer's market and everything. When I was a kid and I remember vividly a lot of people saying, oh, you know, when it's me, I sell more. If it's a helper coming, they sell less than me. And I think it was really across everyone. And I always felt that one. Well, it's probably because as a brand owner, you know so much about the product that you, you have an ability to, to explain the product like no one else. But what I'm hearing from you is it's not always the case. And I wonder, what do you think? Is that, is that just like, because some people may be introvert or extrovert, or is it like, just because, you know, not everyone know how to communicate with everyone? What, what's, what, what, what do you think is the pain? Not the pain, the, the, the difference. And when, when can we, when should we as an organization tell someone, hey, maybe you're not the ideal candidate to be live? Because that's something that we always asking ourselves, like, should we recommend the owner to go or should we have them work with someone?

That's such a great question, Nicholas. And absolutely. You know, here's what I find because I've worked with a lot of inventors over the years, years, a lot of product focused people, and they all think they invented, you know, the next best thing since sliced bread, right? And they all get talking about their thing and they don't always talk about the benefit, and so they get talking about the features and the functions of things and they forget to talk about what it's going to, how it's going to change my life as a user of this. And so if they're, if that's who they are and that's what they are because they're the tech, you know, they're the tech guru behind the company. That's fantastic. But if they cannot bring it into the forefront of benefit, then they're not the best suited to talk to the outside community. So in our company here, it's, it's actually was that case where I'm the easy, passionate person who can get people excited about podcasting and, and make it feel like it's so easy for you to access and do this, but not so easy that you know you're going to give up on it too quickly too. Like it's not going to be worth it. I can get you excited about it and make it worth your while, but I'm not the best person to be having closing conversations. So my partner, who's my husband also, Tom Hazard, he went and got sales training because he was the guy who had invented the systems and the processes, and he could talk about all the. The in the weeds things about podcasting day in and day out. But what he would do is I'd get someone excited, send them over to him, and he'd scare them off because they would be at this place, would be like, oh, my gosh, that's so overwhelming. And so one of the key things that you learn in sales training is what not to say. And that's really where I think it's really key. If I read my audience really well, and I know that I'm in an audience of. Of a bunch of tech geeks, I can speak that language to them, and I can talk to them about the things that are going to be. They're going to get passionate and excited about that will benefit them, because I understand that audience. But when we don't understand who we're talking to, and we're doing that in a broad way, we've got to speak multiple languages, but we have to be more careful about what. We don't say what we. And it's not that we're hiding things about the product, it's just that we don't need to tell them everything about it. That's for the deeper dive questions. That's for going in to check out an FAQ or, you know, dive deeper into specs on something. Right. If you're selling something technical. Right. Those are not things that need to happen unless somebody specifically asks the question. Because sometimes when we answer those, we just get them overwhelmed. And a confused mind doesn't buy. One of my favorite podcast clients, John Livesay, says that, again, a confused mind will not buy, and so we don't want to confuse them with too much.

Well, it's very interesting what you're saying. You know, I always refer when I talk to salesperson or to my team or my previous company to my sales team. I always say, you know, as a salesperson, you have to be a bridge between your clients and the company. The company has a certain way of thinking, the client as another way of thinking. And your best role as salesperson is to make sure both are able to understand each other and meet at the point where everyone can be happy. And so I feel that what you're saying is so true, and I really appreciate that. But I see that MJ was eager to come on stage and ask more questions.

Thank you.

So I actually have a question, and you touched on this just a little bit with regards to you working with your husband. So Just I know that you Transitioned back in 2014 with, with you and your husband, you guys decided to kind of step out from behind doing the different ghost brands and became more of the face of your company.

Right.

So I believe this kind of ties into what we've already been talking about with the founders and the inventors and things of that nature. What I would like to know is what were the initial challenges that you guys experienced with that transition? And also did it hurt some of the partnerships and deals that you previously made with certain brands?

So what MJ is referring to, and this is a great question, thank you for asking that mj, is that we used to be ghost designers for Martha Stewart and.

All kinds of brands for products you buy every single day at Costco, Walmart, Target. And so we would be these designers behind the scenes. And our, our names were not on those products. Somebody else's brand was. But we were, but we were designing them. And it would take us, I mean, we would do large projects that would take us sometimes a year or more to complete. Sometimes we do multi year contracts. So we did have very large clients that we, we were working with through that process. But we had been getting more and more outreach from smaller businesses and smaller companies. And we decided to do A podcast on 3D printing called WTFF and FFF is the geeky term for 3D printing, fused filament fabrication, so you can see who the audience was. And it was that podcast which was a test to see if we should be out front in our brand. So we really took this transition in baby steps. The very first thing we did is say, hey, let's test being the front people and see how it goes. And then the second part of the test was, do people want to buy services directly from us? Do they want to. Do we have E commerce sellers who want to hire us to design products for them? You know, will it be on a smaller basis? Could we do with our multi year contracts, could we do some three month contracts? Could we do other things like that? And what we really found was that it wasn't really best for us to be doing that. It's not that us being the front people wasn't best. That was best, but it was. Those smaller projects really weren't, didn't allow us to dive in deep enough and get into the work that we really love doing. And so it was much easier to start to take on the role of mentor and consultant from that perspective. And so we started teaching more. And that's why the podcast product launch hazards came about. I've done over 150 episodes there and it really is my tips and all my resources and everything that help those that, that are entering the e commerce space or doing new products for the first time themselves to get, you know, to know who we would work with, why we choose to work with the people we do and what kinds of things are involved in that. Sometimes it's 3D printing for prototypes and sometimes it's, you know, working with factories. And so we would give them all of these pieces of information and we would put that out there. And so in a way, what we did was we moved from being brand identified to being authority identified in a, in a space and a field. And that really worked for us. I mean, it's what got me in, in column and it's, you know, spun off into more and more podcasts. So the transition for us was really slow is what I'm going to say here. And it wasn't until 2018 that I took my last client and it took until 2019 before we ended with that client. So. And then probably for one more year. Yeah, one more year after that we were still making royalties off of products that we sold. So it was really a really slow transition. This was not some quick drop this business and start a new one. And, and potatoes came out. We really started it in 2016 as a test and then when we felt it was strong enough in 2017, we incorporated it into its own separate entity. So we've really been working on that as a, you know, you might have called it a side hustle in 2016, but by 2017 we were full on. We had 100 clients and we were really working through it at a, at a fast pace to grow it.

Wow, that's amazing. So here we are, we are in the 40 minutes of the podcast and I want to try to see if I get all the binge worthy tips that you have and let me see if I can, I have the right recipe. So from what I'm hearing from you, so you have to build authority to sell your product very well. It sounds like you also have to be trustworthy. It's all about, it's not about selling, it's about giving. And the two, the last of the thing that I have is being consistent and then the last one is actually making sure that, you know, who is the face of the whole, is the face of the, of the product and be sure that that person is, I guess, able to, to convey the emotion of the brand, but not so much on a technical Standpoint, but more on the forefront of the benefit. So what am I missing.

That'S such a good wrap up and I'm so glad you covered everything. The one thing that I want to mention because we didn't talk about this is that when we talk about building authority, it actually has as much digital importance as it does like, you know, authoritative, like I'm, you know, I'm the speaker here, right? Those are, those are two different things. So we have to do digital authority today because so much of what we see here and find is controlled by a bunch of bots, right? So a search engine controls which podcasts get served up. So if I want to type in, you know, e commerce podcasts, in order for the live E commerce podcast to show up, you have to have done a good job with your description of your show, the name of your show, and some technical things. Because the search engine optimization that happens in over in podcasting is similar to what happens over on Amazon or on, in Walmart.com or over in Google. Right? And we need to make sure we're doing all of these things because thinking that we don't have to play in the digital field is just outright wrong. Because anyone who does better over there is going to outrank you. Even if their product isn't as good, even if they're, even if they don't have as much trust at the end of the day because they're on the first page of Google or because they're showing up in the buy boxes on Amazon because all of those things are happening to them. You're, you're not seen as a player yet. So our digital authority and our physical, like who we are an authority in the industry and in the, in the space as a thought leader is just as important. Together we want to bring them both up.

Oh, I love that. I love that. The digital authority is something that I always been very passionate about. And you know, Whitney and, and MJ and I, we been writing blogs and trying to create this podcast and creating that digital authority by creating content. And in some way that's what we are trying to do as well. Not so much on the digital authority, but building that authority on the email list. But I think there's so much to what I've learned through that journey with extremely, is there's so much to uncover. It's like, as you say, it's like, like you, you feel you're there. But you know, when I, when I'm talking to my tech partner, she say, we know we, we could have six People working full time just on SEO and, and, and we'll still be amazed by how much we can do more. So it's, it's really amazing this, this what you're saying. It's, it's so, so true and so relevant. So that, that's, that's really awesome. I know. I want to be respectful of your time and I have a one last question for you. I think you've done an amazing job with your fundraising and you're in this fundraising process. So are we as well actually. And one of the things that you've done is you went and reached out to your community through Republic, right? So doing crowdfunding. I wonder if you can comment on that. Why do you, I mean, why did you go through your community.

To fundraise? Why not going through the traditional route of, you know, talking to different VCs? I mean like you have an amazing resume, you have amazing, you know, people working around you. I think, I think what every VC will say is like you have the traction that they all look for, but then you still go through, through that, through the community. So can you, can you come a. About what that choice, you know, it.

Wasn'T a, it wasn't a off the cuff of choice. Right? This was a really carefully considered choice for us. I spent about 18 months meeting with investors, angel investors, actual venture capital firms. I went and met with investment banks and we went through all the different routes of trying to decide what was going to be the best funding for, for us as to where we wanted to go and what the future was. And in the end I kept getting sort of the same feedback back, which was we have a formula we like to use over here and be in VC firm A and we like, we like this formula or we're an investment firm who only invests in someone who has SaaS products. And if you don't get your SaaS subscribers up to this level, then you're not going to, going to be able to play with us. And you know, or the other one was, is tell me who your biggest investor is in and because I don't want to be the first guy in. Like that was. Those were all the things that we kept hearing again and again. And what we felt was, is that, that each one of those models was going to drive our company into an end point that we didn't want. We have a very specific plan for where we're going and a vision for what that's to going, going to look like. And it is much more of a share economy model that really, frankly, when I was meeting with people, they would push back and they would say, well, why would we want to share with all of the podcasters on your platform? They're paying you now, they'll keep paying you in the future. Why do we want to give them a piece of your company? And I thought that was just so against everything that I wanted for where we were going to go in our future. And I thought it was short cited in terms of the vision of what the podcasting community could be like, that I said, this isn't the right model. And so we started to get creative and think about, well, where had we been successful before and where could we be successful again, and who should we talk to? Maybe we're talking to all the wrong people, kissing all the wrong frogs. And so what happened was in that process of we realized we had built our company on podcasters themselves. So the podcasters come to our platform and had prepaid us for episodes. So they. So if we produce an episode that is video to audio to blog to social, share graphics, they buy a package of that ahead of time and prepay for a certain number. The good side of it is that it keeps them committed to making sure that they use up their package. Right? There's a, there's an incentive to do that. We also gave them a greater discount, the bigger package they had. But the best part for us was basically we had a higher cash flow, so we would get that money in advance and we'd be able to use it to get a loan, do what we needed to do cash flow the company and handle the growth. And so our podcasters were already investors. They just didn't get the special title and they didn't get stock or anything else like that. So when we started thinking about that, we said, wow, we already have a thousand clients. We already have a list of 15,000 that we know is really good, and we have access to another group of 500,000 for something new we're building. How could we utilize that to our best advantage and use that as the asset that it really is? And that's when I was introduced to Republic and, and that was late last summer. And when I was introduced to Republic and I talked with them and they vet everyone and you have to go through SEC sort of, you know, you have to file all your paperwork with the SEC and you have to have reviewed or audited financials. So everything felt like more legitimate over there than it had felt in like, let's say, ICO or any of those kind of Models of things. And so that's why we decided to go that route. And I don't regret it at all. Our campaign is almost at a hundred thousand right now, and we've only been live for two weeks, and we haven't even really. All we really sent out was our friends and family round, which was the first amount. And so we are public over there. But I think it is been the best solution. And so the more I look at this, the more it fits the model of everything that I've done in my career, which is making sure that there's a product and market proof, and the market proof of our product isn't some fancy investor who decided to come on board. The proof is in the fact that our clients not only buy products from us every single day and refer us every single day, but they're investing in us, too and telling other people about it. And then the best part, this next best part, was that the podcasting greater community people like Pat Flynn, who is I consider to be the godfather of podcasting, came on board and invested with us and then sent out a review about it as well. So we, the community itself has rallied around us doing this.

Wow, that's. That's really amazing. And I wonder, you know, we have a lot of. I mean, we in the audience of the people that are listening, you know, we have a little bit of retailers, but we also have, like, smaller brand and entrepreneurs that are sometimes looking for funding themselves. And it sounds like, you know, it almost makes me feel that, hey, when you create a community.

It'S not only for, you know, sharing about your product, your passion, but it's also a place where sometimes it goes both way. Right. It sounds like now that community has grown so much and is so much in sync with your organization that they are now coming and being part of it by investing. And so I want to encourage the audience that are considering about going live doing podcasts. If you're an entrepreneur, there's way more that you can actually.

Do when you start creating your own community. And it's such a fascinating journey. It does take time, but it's a fascinating journey. And at the end, you're gonna, you know, grow from it. So I, you know, just my encouragement for Holder, the people that are listening and are questioning themselves, like, should I do it? But I know it's on time, and I see witness or having. Having a last final thought of questions.

Well, I. I don't have another question. I think this has been so wonderful, and I'm so grateful that you spent the time. Tracy, with all of your experience and wisdom and I just wanted to actually see if MJ had one final question before you wrap.

No, I think first and foremost, Tracy, just again, thank you for, for, you know, taking time out of your schedule to even talk with us and enlighten us with regards to creating that binge worthy live streaming content. And I just, I want to just make this statement about, you know, how you explained with approaching VCs and.

You know, just sharing your experience and, and what that has been like because you know, as a woman, just knowing that.

These are some of the things that you have to face when you are going out and looking for funding.

So to kind of get your insight, it definitely, I'm pretty sure it will help, it helps me, but it definitely helps our audience because I'm pretty sure that there is fear around approaching VCs and things of that nature. But there's knowing that there are other options and other platforms that you can use to at the end of the day get it done right, get your goal done. That that is what truly matters. So thank you so much for sharing.

Oh, you're very welcome NJ and I just want to tap onto that and say, look, if you do a really good job live streaming and being out there, I can tell you the one thing that has come back to us again and again. And it was even when we decided to turn down some investment groups and other things and we turned down more than, more than, you know, I met with. We turned down a lot of people because it just didn't feel right for where we wanted to go with them. And at the end of the day I was, they wanted to work with us because we showed up consistently and constantly everywhere. And they could see that that's the hardest part. People want to invest in someone that they can, that is going to perform for them, that has the integrity that's going to deliver at the end. And there's so much risk in any deal, in any program. No one could have predicted a pandemic. No one could have done those things and said, oh, don't invest because that's going to be affected by it. You couldn't have known that in 2018. You couldn't have known that in 2019. So it really is this thing, thing where you showing up out there in the world builds an authority that gives you credibility when you didn't maybe have it before. So I encourage everyone out there, especially if you've got a product to sell to, go on, start live streaming, start doing all of the things you can to create an engaged community. Because at the end of the day, that is going to lift you up no matter which mode of investment you choose.

So much great advice here today. Again, I, we keep saying thank you here, but we're, we're just incredibly grateful for it. I am grateful to know you and also just celebrating the success we've had with this show. You know, to a big point of yours, Tracy, it has been a, an experiment for us. We started this podcast just to see what would happen and we, we were blown away by the results. And it really has shown me how, you know, especially when you're niching down on a topic like this on with a podcast, it's pretty incredible what could happen. And I'm grateful for all the tools that Potatize has provided us to make it really easy. And I guess if I have one final question in these last few minutes, Tracy, it's advice you have for people that maybe considering podcasting and maybe they're listening to this show and thinking, oh, like maybe I should start one too and do that in addition to live streaming. Since you have so much great podcasting advice, Tracy, what would you say to someone who's considering that but feeling a little bit unsure?

I would say if you already are live streaming, if you're already out there producing content of some kind, and I would say maybe not. If you're doing like the 30 second to five minute thing, if you're doing a lot of that, that may not be conducive to podcasting as well. But if you're doing anything that's a little bit longer than that 10 to 20 to an hour long show, anything like that is worthwhile to repurpose. I mean, here's the thing. You already spent all the time and energy. Why not use it elsewhere? I think it's, I think it's more work to create something new than it is to repurpose and reuse what you do. And it, and if you're going to go as far as podcasting, also go farther and take it to blog. Because when we reduce it to the digital word, we help our digital authority tenfold. So we have, we have clients who see this happen again and again where they had a show that had done a hundred episodes and it was fantastic and go ahead and then blog those episodes. And now all of a sudden their website is getting traffic that they didn't anticipate before, so now they're actually selling things because where are, you know, it's great when you're out there in a podcast player, or you're out there on Clubhouse and other places, but they can't actually transact without leaving those places to go buy somewhere else. But if they're in your blog reading it, or they're in there watching the video, watching the replay, you know, reading the. The what's there in the blog and. Or listening to the podcast, that's there. They're. They're right there where they can easily buy something from you. That's a great place. Now you really have really taken your digital authority and brought it home for yourself. So I encourage you to repurpose what you do. I mean, Whitney and I, we repurpose everything we do then into social media and everything. So I think we probably have more content than we even know what to do with. And all it does is start with really for us, for me, two lives a week. That's it.

Yes, you're absolutely right. We do have more. So much content. We have so much content here over at Easter. Extremely as well that we could repurpose in different ways. So you're even getting my wheels turning about what we could do with making more clips to promote the podcast. And Nicholas has become passionate about making short clips after live streams and all of this trial and error that we've been going through. And again, I would say to anyone who is thinking about live streaming, obviously we're here for you over at Estreamly to make that easier. And Poditize is doing the same thing for podcasters. This is the number one thing I hear outside of building an audience. People say, well, it's really overwhelming. How do I start? Or I need support. Who do I ask for that? Well, you have two amazing companies here.

That are offering those type of services. One for podcasting, one for one for live streaming. And I know that everybody on these teams is there to guide you through and make it feel successful and easy and as I said from the very beginning, cost effective and. And really giving you the return on investment, whether that's financially or just through reaching your goals with success. So thank you to everyone, to Nicholas, M.J. and Tracy. Thanks for the listeners. We are here every Tuesday. We've been broadcasting on Clubhouse to Twitter Spaces. We may be switching entirely over to Twitter Spaces. We're figuring that out. So the best way to stay tuned is to either go to estreamly.com to find the links to all the different platforms that we're on, you can find the recordings for all the previous episodes, and you can join us over on Twitter at extremely. And Nicholas is part of posting constantly over there, doing a wonderful job. And of course you can get in touch with Tracy. You can go to. There's so many websites for you, Tracy. So actually I'm going to ask you, which of the websites do you prefer the best? Which should we link to in the description for this episode to make it easy for the listeners to find you?

You can go to straight to potatize.com because the binge factor and feature brand are there. And also, you know my name, Tracy Hazard. T R A C Y H.

Super easy to find. I actually have a website under that name and you can google that. Go to LinkedIn and find me.

Excellent. Well, I will be linking to that in the description of this episode. We're actually working on our show notes, Tracy. That's something that we haven't started yet with the website. But to Nicholas's point about working on SEO, we definitely recognize the benefits to the listener as well as us over on this show. Having show notes can be a game changer. But in the meantime, we will link to potatoise.com in the description of this episode to make it really easy for you to get in touch with Tracy and anyone else from the team. Thank you to everyone here. We look forward to seeing you again soon. And until then, all the very best with your live streaming and audio journeys from here on out.

Thank you, Tracy. Thank you. Thanks, everyone.