Why Livestreaming Your Podcast Is An Effective Boost Of Engagement With Brad Powell Of The Live Stream Show

Wish you were one of those influencers with raving fans who binge on your every word, consume all your content, buy everything you have to sell, and demand even more. Then stay tuned while Authority magazine columnist and buzzfeed contributor Tracy Hazard shares strategies, tips, and tactics from top videocasters, podcasters, authors, and social influencers on creating that bingeable factor. Now let's join Tracy as she explores how to rise above all the digital noise with the binge factor.

Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Binge Factor. I'm Tracy Hazzard and I have a live streaming expert for you today. He has the show called the Livestream Show. Brad Powell is our guest today. Brad is a business coach and videographer, founder of awesome Video Makers, and host of the Livestream Show. He teaches business leaders how to reveal their remarkable story and connect with the right crowd. Brad inspires entrepreneurs to find everyday moments that make great marketing, and he's dedicated to helping small businesses get over the limiting belief that video marketing is too daunting and too time consuming. As a former Outward Bound program director and National Geographic contractor, Brad can show you how to tap into your sense of adventure and and be bold and daring when you need to be. Like when you're facing your camera. So here's the thing. I interviewed Brad and I thought, I'm going to live stream this. But so many things got in my way. I didn't really know what to use. I didn't know what was going to be the best. So I just thought, I'm going to get him on my show. We're going to talk about it. Then he's invited me on his show and we'll livestream through. That way I'll get to experience it. And then I'm finally going to get this live streaming thing eventually set up here. It's taking me a lot longer than I thought, but that's okay because I've got a guide. I've got Brad Powell here today talking about how to livestream and about his show, the Livestream Show. Brad Powell coming on today. I'm so excited to talk to you, Brad, because the Livestream show has inspired me. It's very rare that I take a podcast off of Double Speed because I listen to so many shows. So, and I'm always doing research. I really have to leave it on Double Speed unless someone talks really fast and then I down it a little bit. But when there's something where I want to write it down, I want to take some notes. I got to take it off the double speed and you were the show that. That is the first time it's happened to you in months and months. And so I have a whole list of notes in my phone about things that I should do better when I go live streaming. So I'm so excited that you're here to talk to us today about that.

That's so great. Well, I'm going to take that as extreme high praise. Good.

You should. So, absolutely. So starting a podcast is one thing, but starting one that has this live stream component in it as well. Which came first, the podcast idea or the live stream idea?

Well, totally the live stream. I've been live streaming probably since somewhere around 2008, which is actually well before social media had adopted live streaming as a thing. And so it was a much more difficult thing to do back then. And as I was doing it, in some ways, I felt like, you know, the cobbler who doesn't make his own shoes. I was doing these regular series events as a live thing, but I wasn't creating an audio version or audio podcast version. And so finally, just about a year ago, I decided to force myself into doing it, and I took Seth Godin's Akimbo workshop for the. It's called the Podcast Fellowship. And it was only eight weeks, but during that time, everyone in the program goes through as a cohort, and you launch your podcast within that time period. And so that was the birth of the livestream show right there, and the audio version of the livestream show. That's how it all began.

I love that. I love that that you sort of said, wait, I'm not repurposing. I'm not doing these things that I should be doing. So let me add that basically I'm.

Promoting to my clients that these are the things that you should do, and I wasn't actually doing it for myself.

Yeah, well, you know, it's so funny because I started my podcast right around the time you started live streaming. And the thing was is that live stream really wasn't that big in 2015. Like, it really just wasn't. And so it was still more structured. Like, if you went on, you had to have your hair done and you had a backdrop, you had good camera. Like, it was still an ordeal, at least as how it was used at that time. So we chose podcasting as the opposite of that so that we didn't have to do all of that. And it is the joke I tell from stage all the time is that I started a podcast because I didn't want to have my hair done every Day. And that was simply it. And so now, of course, we go live all the time. And I think my listeners and my viewers have seen every hairstyle under the sun, so we're more comfortable with it today.

Right. Mine too.

So when do you think that it sort of tipped, really in that sort of early stages of it to becoming something that really should be a strategic part of your content strategy?

Well, I think the biggest advantage now, I mean, the first major platform to make it super simple for everyone who was already online was Facebook. And when Facebook Live began, became really easy, just with your phone, use the Facebook app, hit record, and boom, you're streaming. Like, it was very, very simple to do. And you could do it literally from anywhere. So once that became, no matter who you are or where you're from, if you have a phone and you have the Facebook app, you could start live streaming. And that just made it really, really simple and accessible to just about anyone. And of course, now the big thing that I think is super cool is that most of the major platforms have some capability of doing live streaming. And using some software tools, you can do multicasting.

So everyone, this is how I met Brad, is that I asked Whitney Lauritson, who actually, Brad just told me that he met because he heard her on the binge factor here. And so because of that, I reached out to Whitney and said, what tools are out there and who's using them and who can recommend some? And she reached out to Brad and gave me a quote from him about what he said about the tools that he uses. And I said, well, then I just need to not only use the tool, but have him on my show. So that's how that happened to her.

Yeah, that's great. Well, this is the thing, is that we all have more than one platform where we engage with different parts of our audience. So you can have a LinkedIn bunch of connections, and you can have people on Facebook who are following you. You could have a YouTube channel where people are subscribed to your channel. And those folks, like the people who follow me over on YouTube, don't necessarily even have an active LinkedIn profile, for example. So when I'm doing a live stream, and I'm literally, what I'm doing is I'm taking the lesson from the podcast world, which is turn your content marketing into a show and make it a regular weekly feature. Like, I'm creating an event, and now that I'm not just doing this audio recording, but I'm actually creating a live event that you can join me Live and you can join my guest live. And if you're interested in what we're talking about, you can actually be part of the conversation. And this is where the live streaming has this huge advantage in that now I can invite all of my friends on LinkedIn and my friends on Facebook and my friends on YouTube and we can all come together in this singular event and they can all meet each other and they can all be part of the same community. And this is what I really love about it.

So what do you do different in your podcast versus the live stream? Like what are you building in when you're thinking about how is this gonna sound when it's repurposed as a podcast? And are you editing things differently for the podcast version?

Yeah, absolutely. Well, basically what I'm doing is I go back and forth like I have an interview series and I also do solo shows and in the interview series, what's basically happening on the live side is that I have some pre recorded recordings that are my intro of the show. So I'll put it into like a format and segments where first thing I do what's essentially a really quick intro, which is as far as I'm concerned, a countdown. And I'm not literally having like 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 as a countdown, but I have this short thing that's saying it's the livestream show and there's an image of me and then there's an image of the guest and say, you know, this is our topic. And that all happens within 15 seconds. But what that does is that when you hit record on live, it takes a little bit of time, maybe up to five seconds for that stream to start happening on all the places where I want to be seen. So this little intro stinger that's saying it's time for the show is giving the stream a chance to actually arrive and it's giving anyone who is out there at the very start to be going, okay, I'm ready. Like I can see that it's actually.

Beginning now, those of us who have all gone live and you do that weird. Like I'm silent because I'm really not sure if we're live yet, waiting for like to show up. In the corner the button says I'm live. And then am I really? Or did they not catch three of the words I just said?

Right, yeah, right.

We all know that that's the case. So you have this solution to it, which I love. I that you call it an intro singer. That's a great title for it.

Yeah. And it avoids the worst case scenario, which I see a lot of people doing when they go live, which is that they go live and then they're looking down at their laptop and they're going, huh, Is anybody here? Is this thing working? Can anybody hear? You know? And they go. And they wait for like a minute or so before they finally get somebody chat back and say, oh, yeah, so we can hear you. Everything's good. And they go, oh, okay, great. And then finally they start. And that's just not a good way to begin.

No, it'd be a terrible way to start your podcast. So you can imagine those that just take that live stream and then just throw it into their podcast. That has a terrible effect on your listeners because a minute is a long time.

Right, Exactly. So I do this short little stinger and then I go on just by myself, you can only see me and I'm introducing the topic and I'll even stretch it out. Like, I'll talk about, like, here's the thing, and agitate the problem and what's the questions we're asking and what are the solutions that we're going for? So that I'm hooking people on. This is why you should listen to this particular episode. And I'll say, okay, let's start the show. And then I'll hit my actual show intro, which explains the premise of what the livestream show is, and introduces me again as the host. And then once that's done, then ba boom, we're back on scene number two, where you've got me and the guest displayed on screen. And from then on, I manage the scene so that I'm going back and forth between the two of us on camera. And then when the guest is talking, it's just the guests by themselves. And if I want to say something for like, tell a little story or something, then I'll bring myself back on all by myself and I'll go back and forth between those three scenes.

So you're doing it in a really dynamic way, which is helping the viewing process as well as, in a sense, you created a segmented listening process as well, which works together the same.

Yeah, exactly. And this is like for the live stream, it's visual medium. And so you don't just always want to have the two people on screen all the time, because what happens there is you've got one person talking and the other person is sitting there going.

And there's nothing for them to do. There's no real reason to have them on screen when they're not actually doing anything. So change it back and forth and make it more interesting. And the tools that I use allow for this and they actually allow for all kinds of cool graphic overlays and different displays and including things like recorded video. And one of the things that I actually like to do is that when I have a guest who's been making video and has some interesting video projects, then we can, I can bring a clip of something that they've done that I really like and we can play a clip of that and then talk about and break it down and break down their creative process.

Well, now we got to know what tools you're recommending because I already alluded to it earlier. I was going to ask you it coming up, but let's do that right now. What are some of the tools that you found are some of the easiest and best use? Because we have a lot of tech challenge people out there.

Yeah. So my favorite tool is something called ecamm Live, which if you're not a Mac user, you're out of luck because it only works on a Mac. But it's amazing. Like I like it first of all because it's software that you download onto your laptop and it basically allows you to produce as fancy looking a live stream as you want and create multiple scenes, bring in pre recorded video, put on graphic overlays, put on a background, bring on guests, all of that kind of variety. But because it's happening from your hard drive, it produces a more solid stream experience and less likely for the glitches of the Internet compared to some of these cloud based services. Everything that's happening, they do the same kind of functionality, but because that's being done across the Internet and in the cloud, it's more prone to glitching.

A really good point. I'm so glad you mentioned that. That is part of the problem.

Yeah. So anyway, I use ecamm Live to produce the stream, but then for the multicasting part, because ECAMM doesn't actually do multicasting, I use a tool called restream which is cloud based. But all I'm doing there is I'm sending this RTMP signal from ecamm to Restream and restream takes that signal and breaks it off to all my destinations.

And we've talked about Restream here on the show before, so it's not like it's a brand new thing, but we don't talk about it in great detail. One of the things about Restream is that there's ability to schedule too. So it does make it fairly simple.

It's fabulous. That scheduling feature is one of the biggest reasons, from a podcasting perspective, this is one of the big advantages of doing live stuff, because when you're talking about promoting your show and bringing an audience and cultivating the whole community feeling for what you're doing and what you're talking about, and the messaging that you're getting across, when you have the ability to say, we're going live, this is an event, you're invited and it's happening at this time in the future, here's the date. And when you do this on your YouTube channel, the post where you're going to go live appears like It's a unique URL. And same thing on LinkedIn, same thing on Facebook. And on places like LinkedIn, there are even better features where when you schedule an event on LinkedIn, it actually creates an event page. And on that event page, if you have a guest, you can invite them as speakers and then they appear on the page as a speaker. And once they do that, then that gets under their feed. And so you're attracting all of their connections and followers automatically. And then LinkedIn allows you to, to invite personally all of your first person connections. So all of the people that you're connected with, you can send them an invitation and not only will they get a notification on the LinkedIn platform, but they'll actually get an email from LinkedIn inviting them to come to your show, which is just tremendously powerful.

Great. So you got them working for you there.

Totally.

So we don't really think about that power of having the conversation and the commenting. And one of the notes that I made from one of your episodes that I listened to was that how powerful that commenting is, not only in the algorithm of making sure that more and more people are getting to see your show, because you have your fans who would listen anyway, and they're going to comment on it, but when they start commenting, then their friends start seeing things. And that's that sort of cascade effect that really doesn't happen when I'm listening to a podcast. When I'm listening to the podcast, I might be like talking to you, talking back to my phone, but I'm not really engaging in that way. I have to take the time to go find you somewhere on social media and engage with you. And that's not passive enough. That's not simple enough for me to just do that. And that's where the live stream really makes a difference, I think.

Yeah, I think the commenting part I Mean, that conversational thing, it's turning what is essentially a broadcast into much more of a conversation. And when people are commenting, this is the thing that all of these platforms really love. They want engagement. They want people to be not only passively consuming content, but they want them actively participating in the platform by liking and sharing and leaving comments. So when you have a chat feature and that chat is getting lit up by comments from all over, the platform is looking at this, going algorithmically and saying, well, this is something that people really like. We should show this to more people. And you get rewarded. The more engagement you get, the more your content is going to be seen. And this is the part of the game you want to play with these platforms where the more engagement, the more they help you out, the more your stuff gets seen and so forth.

So it runs that fine line. And this is the part that I've always had issue with. And part of the reason when we do our livestreams and we do it only into private groups, so no one would have seen them publicly at this point, unless you were one of my clients, then you would have seen it. So what we do is we actually livestream our recording of our feed your brand episodes into our private coaching group for our clients, and then we have a Q and A session afterwards that is client only. And we always delete that off of the episode itself. So it's never in there. But one of the things we've not done, and maybe it's just because my clients will comment anyway, like, they'll say stuff to us like, I don't have to train them that hard. But I never liked that idea. And maybe it came from periscope days. Like, that's how I'm really dating myself. Here is we say, like, the periscope days, when you were like, if someone showed up and you didn't say their name and you didn't shout out to them, then they disappeared. And so it was constant. Like, you could never get your content all the way out without saying, hi, so and so, and thanks for coming. And, you know, send a. Like, in the chat. And so it was constantly filled with this noise and distraction and made you not focused on the content itself. So we set it up so that they're trained to not expect that. And can you do that with your audience or do you need to, like, really invite them to engage?

Well, first of all, and I'm going to date myself. You don't want to be doing the romper room scene. They're going not to go there.

But I did grow up on that, too, so.

So I don't think that that's a very good practice, however, I mean, in my case, the way that I do it and the way I recommend people do it is that let's say you have a guest on, and so you're doing an interview with them. And this is also true if you're doing a solo episode, but you're presenting content like you're presenting ideas around a specific topic for a specific episode. And you want to treat that as like, this is a segment that we're doing here, we're going like this. And then you leave time for engagement, and you can say at the top of your episode, this is what we're doing. We're going to talk about this. If you've got questions, please put them in the chat and we will get to them at the end of our conversation here. And so that if you have something, we'll talk about and we'll answer any questions that you have. And so you prompt that, and then people will type in their comments and type in their questions. And then at the end of your time, 20 minutes, 25 minutes in, you can say, okay, now we're going to go to the chat and see what kind of commentary we have. And these tools, when you're live, you can bring a single comment onto the screen, and the person's profile picture will be there, and their whole comment or question will be on screen. And now you can address them. You say, oh, well, Tracy says whatever she has to say. And thanks for the question, Tracy. And now you and your guest can speak directly to that person. And people just love this. This is something that. It's like they're being rewarded, they're being called out, they're really being thanked for being there. And in fact, if you answer their question, they're feeling really well served directly. Like, oh, you're saying this thing. And I thought about it, and here's the thing that I wondered, can you help me out? And if you are helping them, that's just great, great practice.

Do you edit that out, though, or do you recommend that for the podcast version?

Yeah, so I don't include that section in the audio version. And the reason is that I don't want people who are listening to feel like they missed out. It's really different experience.

You want it to be its own thing.

Yeah, like the edited version is a more produced version. I use music and little music beds sort of in between sections sometimes to break it up and make it seem more like A better listening experience. And the live parts just don't really exist in the audio version.

Yeah, we do the same thing and we made it simple is that it's at the beginning, before we start and at the end. So it's easy to cut off. But if you need to do it in the middle, then you need to plan for a segue as you're talking about. Which is why I love that. Your recommendation of using a little musical interlude.

Yep.

Wonderful. Well, I want to jump to some of our podcast focus questions and please mention if there's anything different that you do to these things to try to get more audience or more listeners, more engagement over on the live stream side if there's a difference in what you do. So let's touch on our three questions which we ask everybody here on the Binge factor. Used to be five if you've been an old listener, but now we do three and that's because we found there was a lot of overlap in them so we switched them up here. So the number one thing that we hear from everyone is that they have a really hard time increasing listeners, like finding listeners and getting more listeners to their show. Have you found that the live stream is helping and what do you do differently to get listeners to your podcast?

Well, I'm always telling people about the audio version every single episode. Like every time at the end of the live stream I'm reminding people that this is a podcast and if they want to go binge on all the past episodes, the best way to do that is to go to thelivestreamshow.com which is where all of those episodes are hosted. So I'm driving people to the audio version in that way. And then of course, because it is a video recording and I've got plenty of interesting people who come and talk with me, I will take short clips, little social media friendly videos that I call mic drop moments and some pithy great thing that they happen to say that was really cool. It could be only just a minute long clip and I'll turn that into a social media post and put that out on the different platforms with some invitation to go listen to the whole episode. Like this is just a teaser. And so every time, every week you have this full long form piece of content and then these clips are repurposed things that go out on social media. And so each week I'll have two to three clips from that episode that will be posted all around. And that really, I think helps a lot. And of course I'm using a scheduler this is another tool called Recurpost. And in Recurpost, not only can you schedule things in the future, but it creates an archive that uses artificial intelligence to repost these things from the past. So now that I've been doing this for a while, I have this archive of these clips that are now automatically being reposted over time. So at any given day, people will see a post from me which is a clip inviting people to basically go join the show and be a new listener.

So do you change off the call to action to sometimes inviting them to the next live stream and sometimes inviting them to the blog and podcast?

On these clips, I am telling people to go like this is something from an episode and go check out the last episode. And I'm assuming that if anyone who takes that action and goes and does.

It, they learn that, oh, it's in all formats.

Yeah, I can listen or I can go live. Because like on my site where I have all this stuff hosted, I have both the video replay, the full video replay, as well as they can listen to the.

So you're driving them to the blog post. And I'm so glad you said that because that's also another note that I made. This is, I mean, I feel like a broken record when we say it on feed your brand because we do all the time. So like here I don't say quite as much because I'm interviewing other people and we're talking about their way of doing things. But our way of doing things is to send everybody to the blog post for the episode because they can get the video, they can consume it in whatever media type they're most comfortable and it's easier to figure out how to subscribe from there. So it creates that one thing that you do. So that's what you're doing that is most successful for you is you're really driving them to that one place where they can find all the other things about you. Like your great masterclasses as well, which a little bit about at the end. So that's right. Great. Well, what a great model of just trying to continually like create this open looping to the next one, the previous one. You're creating this dynamic drive through the whole catalog of shows for yourself and by the repurposing you're doing. And one of the things that I really want to point out that you said is that when you're telling them at the end of your livestream thinking that I hear this from clients and other people all the time that they're saying well, they're video listeners, so I'm going to tell them to go to YouTube or I'm going to tell them to go watch the videos. The problem is, is that they're not as easily searchable and bingeable as the podcast is. It's much more in order. It's easier to go through. It's easy to go from one to the next to the next. If you're trying to search through your social media like Facebook drives me crazy the way they catalog all the videos. It's not a library. Right. And so you can't find anything. That way the podcast becomes a much better catalog for those people that you want to binge on you. And those people are the most valuable ones who are going to consume your masterclasses.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more with that. I think that doing both these things is like the best of both worlds. The livestream has the advantage of it's live, it's in the moment, and people who join you live have that ability to really be there and interact with you directly. However, as a replay a half hour long video, most people aren't into the idea of, well, I have to sit and watch this video for this length of time. However, listening to a podcast episode is, yeah, of course, like I'll do this when I'm doing my dishes or when I'm going to the gym or whatever they're doing. And it's a much better way to consume long form content because you can do it passively while you're doing other things.

I love that you have a blog though, because I'm a reader and too often readers get skipped in the process because there's lots of times where got my kids doing something and I don't want to be like plugged in. I need to be pseudo paying attention and the reading I can do. And so it always drives me crazy when some of these wonderful podcasts don't have a written version and you do. And I appreciate that. So thanks for leaving that in there as well. So let's talk great guests, because you have some really interesting guests and as we know from earlier, you found Whitney Lauritson, one of my guests and you brought her onto your show. How do you go about picking your guest, inviting them to your show, and really making sure that you're creating a great guest experience for the guest and for your audience?

Well, I listen to podcasts. I mean this is probably the primary way that I find out about people who I'm interested in talking to. Like any avid podcast listeners. I have a family of shows that I'm subscribed to, and many of them are interview shows, and many of them are interview shows that are going to be introducing the type of person who would be a good person for me to invite on as a guest. So when I hear an interview with someone and I go, oh, this person sounds really interesting, and there's something about them that I'm really curious about. Like, I want to be genuinely curious that, like, here's someone who has some things that I want to know about, I want to learn from, and that's the very best thing. And then, of course, there's another category of people who are authors. And you find them when they're doing their tour, their virtual book tour. And when that's happening, even if they're actually really well known, they're often quite eager to say yes to coming on your show because that's the mode they're in. And so some of the folks who are probably the best known people that I've had as guests or have been in that category, and that's. It's just a matter of timing, of learning about them when they're in the middle of their or at the beginning of their book launch and then saying, hey, I see you're doing a book launch. Why don't you come on and we'll promote it and we'll talk about it.

It's a better time, I have to say. So you're right about that. It's a better time because they are in promotion mode themselves, so they're going to share better what they're doing with you. They're also, in your case, going to appreciate the live stream because it's a more immediate gratification where this immediate result that you get from appearing where when they are on a podcast, they never know when it's going to air. And so that's always difficult as well. So I could see them saying, yes.

Yeah, sometimes it works out really, really well. I mean, there was a woman, her name is Victoria Labaume, and she's this very creative person. She has a book that's called Risk Forward. And her backstory is that she was an apprentice to the mime, the really famous mime, Marcel Marceau. So she worked with him in France while he was still alive, and now she's incorporated that into corporate training, if you can imagine. Wow. And she's a very successful speaker. And the other thing that's cool about her is that she's married to the guy who's like the Founder of the Muppets.

Oh, my gosh.

And she actually made a documentary film of all the Muppet creators. Anyway, she made this documentary with all of them sitting in a room talking about their experience as Muppets. And so really interesting person. And she was launching her new book, which came out about a year ago. And so I reached out to her and she got back like right away. She said, look, I'm doing the launch, it's happening like next week, and if we can go live, like Thursday, that would be perfect because I have all these special things that I want to offer people live, and if we can do it right in the moment, this would be great. So in her case, I got her at just the right moment and she was very excited about being able to come on and actually go live with me.

Oh, that's wonderful. That must have done a lot for her and for you at the same time. So wonderful. I'm really glad to hear that story. So let's talk monetization. So we always talk alternative monetization. Not expecting anyone to be doing advertisement. I didn't hear any ads on your podcast except for some offers for your masterclass and other things that you do. How's that going? Do you feel like it's translating into clients, it's translating into attendees? Are what you're doing both in livestream and in the podcast translating into a cascade of business?

Well, it's interesting because prior to the livestream show, I started doing a regular series on my own, which again, no audio version. I was just doing a weekly livestream series and I was calling it Face the Camera. And Right. Like really early in that, within the first month, the community manager at Restream reached out to me. She saw that I was going live on LinkedIn. And at that time, not very many people were using live streaming on LinkedIn. And she was interested in having somebody who could work with them who was taking advantage of being on LinkedIn. And they sponsored my show.

So he got a sponsorship. So that's fantastic.

Without even really looking for it. And it was only a three month gig, but it was $2,500 a month and it was really great. It was like, are you kidding? Like, of course, yes, sign me up. And it was a really good thing. Although what happened was that they didn't want my show. They wanted me to create a show that would be their show. And so for three months we did this thing that was called Livestream Stories and we just ran through it. It was a weekly thing. And then boom, End of the three months, we're okay, that's cool now. And so like, okay, now what do I do?

Yeah, we did something similar with Hewlett Packard and actually found it really does have a long term cascading effect on growth on your show, especially if you're doing it in conjunction with your regular show. So you didn't start a brand new feed for it, which can be more difficult to manage. But if you did it that way, then it usually does very well in terms of boosting your long term listenership. And all of a sudden you just see that bump up in growth. So the sponsorship, even if it's limited series, can really help you.

Yeah, well, one of the things that happened as a result was that I had these interviews basically in the can. So that when I launched the livestream show and I launched with a set of episodes already done, I used some of the best ones from this earlier show and I just brought them over and rebranded them as the livestream show. And that was a great way to get sort of the ball rolling and have some momentum when I was doing a relaunch. Other forms of monetization, mainly how I'm using the show, is I am doing my own programs and my own coaching and so I'm inviting people to join my programs. And that's to me, it's the most straightaway thing to do this. Everything I do is very meta. I'm live streaming, I'm. I'm repurposing, I'm doing all the things that I am coaching my clients on and I'm talking about how to do this as I do it. In some ways it's very experiential and I'm often doing experimental stuff like I'm trying something new or I'll. I'll do a mobile live stream in some weird location or I'll be trying something out and I'm just sharing and say, here, I'm taking you behind the scenes. This is what I'm up to, this is what I'm doing. We're going to see how well it works. I'd love to hear your feedback.

And they're getting to see me in my element and bringing them along on the journey. And this is sort of the way that I approach all of this. Like I'm really not trying to come across as I know everything there is to do with live streaming. It's much more that I'm fascinated with this medium and I'm fascinated with the future possibilities of this because I think the very coolest things that can happen with live video have not happened yet. Like, we're all pioneers doing this. And then when you combine putting together a show that is a live show and then also turning that into a podcast, like, what are the possibilities there? And these are the things that I'm just very, very passionate about finding out more. And so I'm learning from my guests, I'm doing my own experiments. And this is all by a way of showing people, like, this is what it would be like if you wanted to work with me. You would be able to be doing this, too. It's actually kind of fun, and it's super creative. And there's these huge benefits from working in this way.

Well, here's the perfect time, Brad, to talk about your binge factor. Here's a little bit of this. Everyone's gotten a taste of this today because I let you do a lot more teaching and less questioning here and sort of like less of my standard stuff, because that's what you do so well, because you live it, you share it, you teach it, and you do it in this, I'm going to say, mild, trusted manner that is really resonating with us that we got this. When we get these intense. And there are a lot of intense teachers out there on livestream and in podcasting, I see it a little more on the video side, like these intense, fast, speedy things, all talking about, Gary Vee does this and we should do that. And there's a lot of that going on out there. And it doesn't feel me like, can I do that? That's not my style. Is that going to work for me? And when we don't see that, we hesitate, we pause. So you're really inviting us in with this trusted manner that you have that says, I got you covered. If I can do this, you can do this. I'm living it with you. I'm going to be right there with you along the way, and you should trust me to do this. And that's the first thing. It's like, within one to two episodes of listening to you, I was already a fan because, I mean, you shared advice with Whitney to me, which was already helpful. So you'd already given something to me, but I listened to a couple episodes and I'm like, why wouldn't I take this masterclass? Why wouldn't I do it? Is the questions like, what's wrong with me that I wouldn't do that? That says a lot about the quality of the show and what's going to make me binge on all the others to find out what else you recommend, what, what else you've tried, what else I might encounter as I go through this experience as well. The other side of it is, is that there are those of us who are really, really busy and we're just say, let's just hire Brad. Let's just forget this listening to the podcast thing. I'm just going to hire Brad. And I can tell you from personal experience that works from my show to my business, just great. And I'm sure it's going to work that way for you as it continues.

Yeah, that's. Well, great. Thank you so much. That's great.

Well, let's talk a little bit about these kinds of struggles that people have with the livestream. What do you think maybe the top one to three things that most of the people you hear from struggle with the live stream process?

Well, I think the biggest one that is the most obvious one is that people are just simply afraid to show themselves as themselves. And I think the Internet has exaggerated this. We see all the Instagram influencers with all their Instagram y perfect type looking.

Lives, the Photoshop versions.

Yeah, right. And it's not real. And the thing that's really wonderful about live streaming is that it's actually quite genuine. You can't actually be perfect when you're live streaming. The medium doesn't really allow for it. And no one, like literally no one who is watching you on a live stream wants you to be perfect. They don't want you to be like the polished newscaster that they might be used to seeing on CNN or whatever channel they watch. They want to see someone real. And from a business perspective, this is where if you're showing up as a human being, as the human being who you are, and you're just not being polished and you're being yourself. And even if something doesn't go right, like if your dog comes in or if your kids run in the room or whatever, like any little thing that could go wrong, which probably it will, those are the more endearing moments. And sometimes those can be the most engaging moments of your live stream. People love that stuff. And so if you can just kind of get out of your own way and realize, okay, I know who I am and when I go out in the world, people see me as I am and that works out okay, so why can't I do this? And it really just takes some getting used to looking at a camera and speaking directly into a lens and doing it in a way that you're imagining who you're talking to on the other side in the same way that you would if you're in your closet speaking into your microphone on a podcast, and you want to speak to directly the people who you're wanting to reach and do this on camera. And I really think that the live party, it's the same thing with podcasting. Like, you bring on a guest, well, the pressure is off of you. You don't have to be on camera the whole time. You can put the guest on and let them go and get yourself off camera and so on and so forth. So this live thing, because it's, first of all, it's not about being perfect. It's about being just a person. People like that. This is what they actually want from you. And so you can let go of all the things about what I really need to be doing, and I need to be the expert. And the other part that I'll say is what I referenced earlier is that this idea of I have to be the one who knows everything. I have to be the one who is the expert. And people are afraid to go on because they feel like, well, what if they find out that I'm an imposter and I don't really know everything? And so you don't have to be that. You can be just the investigator. You can be the person who is searching for stuff that you're interested in searching for, which is certainly the attitude that I take and go out and find stuff and learn about stuff and share that with your audience and people will love you for it.

Such great advice there. I'm so glad we touched on that. I really do want to talk about the future of livestream, but what I'd love to do is to do that in a future episode with you, Brad, and have you back because I'm embarking on my live stream.

Okay.

I think it would be really, really meta, meta for us to do that together and talk about the future of live streaming on that show as well. So let's plan for that and we'll get that scheduled in, in the real near future because I'm really, like, within a couple of weeks here expecting to start live streaming regularly. So we'll get that in. So it'll follow up this episode right away. I would love to do that with you.

That sounds really great.

Well, Brad, thank you so much for coming on the show. The livestream show, the tips that you give the people you bring on, so, so valuable. Keep it up, keep podcasting, keep live streaming. You're doing something really right.

Well, thank you so much. This is. Oh man, this is so great. Thanks.

Wow. Brad just opens my mind to all the different possibilities of live streaming and how it's going to work and what it's going to be like. And I saved recording this post until after I had been on his show. So I'd experienced live streaming through his model. And here's the thing, like, look, it was great. It was easy. There was no question that it was a comfortable process. And he used ECAMM Live, which he mentioned as one of the things that he recommends, and we use that together and it was super easy and there was really no issues. But I didn't see a whole ton of benefit from my process in using the live stream if you're not going to get an active audience on the other side of it. So to me, if I'm not going to be able to and if you're not in your business going to be able to drive an audience to that live, then recording it is a whole lot simpler and easier. So I've kind of decided not to live stream this show because of how I record, because I'm trying to schedule conveniently with guests all over. I don't have a regularly scheduled time.

This show.

The Binge factor wouldn't make the best live stream show. However, I do have another one that I'm working on and I'm thinking that that may make the most sen to do that one livestream and to do that one in LinkedIn Live because that's where I'd like it to be because that's where I spend my most engagement and I have my most engagement time and most audience there. So I'm going to keep working on that and I want to get back with you and when I've got it all dialed in, I'm going to have Brad back on my live stream show and I will re air it here in the Binge Factor. For you. So I'm so glad we could have Brad Powell come on. So glad we could talk about live streaming and talk about his podcast, the livestream show. For all of you out there and you'd like to be on the Binge Factor, don't forget you can be a guest on my show. You just have to apply@the bingefactor.com I'll be back next week with a lot more podcasters. Yeah, I got more and more coming up. I am backed up right now, but I promise you I will get through and I will get some really interesting new people in for you. So stay tuned to the Binge Factor.

You've been listening to the Binge Factor Podcast. For more information on podcasting and videocasting success tips and tactics, please go to thebingefactor.com and be sure to listen to our other show for podcasters called Feed you'd Brand. If you'd like to be interviewed on this show as well as featured in Tracy's column, please go to the bingefactor.com guest and apply.