SPI 502: All Things Live Video (the Best Way to Connect to Your Audience) with Luria Petrucci

SPI 502: All Things Live Video (the Best Way to Connect to Your Audience) with Luria Petrucci

Pat Flynn:
Have you tried live video yet? Well if you haven't, don't leave, because this is the episode you're going to want to listen to. And if you have tried live video, it doesn't matter what platform, this is going to be helpful for you as well, because we're speaking with none other than Luria Petrucci, somebody who you may have seen before. If not, I'm happy to introduce her to you, because she can be found at LiveStreamingPros.com, and she has personally helped me with setting up my live streaming stuff, from gear selection to strategies, to how to be engaging on camera. And she's just such a wonderful personality, somebody I cannot wait for you to hear to hopefully inspire you to do more lives. Whether you've done zero or several, I want you to consider going live more because it's the best way to engage with an audience. We're going to talk about how to engage with an audience, how to go live, where to go live. All those kinds of things and more today in this episode of the Smart Passive Income Podcast. Thanks for joining me. Here we go.

Announcer:
Welcome to the Smart Passive Income Podcast, where it's all about working hard now so you can sit back and reap the benefits later. And now your host—he likes his food spicy, but sometimes regrets it later: Pat Flynn.

Pat:
What's up? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to session 502 of the Smart Passive Income Podcast. We're talking live video today, something that I've been doing a lot of. So much in fact that when the pandemic hit in March of 2020, I went live every day for a whole year. 365 days straight. Big shout out to the Income Stream. If you are somebody who's come on the show and listened in and watched, it's just been fascinating what that has done for the brand, for the connections. Live streaming is such a wonderful tool that you can have, especially if you're going live for pre-launching something, especially if you're going live to pitch something, especially if you're going live to just simply build a deeper relationship with your audience. This is something you're going to want to learn how to do, and there's no better person to help you figure out how to do this right than Luria Petrucci from LiveStreamingPros.com. Here she is to help you get started. We have some fun resources for you at the end that you can take home with you as well, so stick around for that. Here she is.

Luria, welcome to the Smart Passive Income Podcast. Thanks for being here today.

Luria Petrucci:
I'm so thrilled. I love hanging out with you, Pat.

Pat:
You know we used to see each other quite a bit at conferences and it's been a while, so I'm excited we could chat today. And I do need to give you a big thank you, because you were part of the start of my live streaming journey a number of years back, and been as you know, live streaming a lot since then. So thank you so much for the kick I needed.

Luria:
I think “a lot” is putting it quite tamely.

Pat:
Okay. So I went every day for a whole year—that is more than a lot. It was a great experience, though, and I have a lot to credit you for for that, so thank you.

Luria:
Oh, you're the one doing the work.

Pat:
But you set me up properly, which is exactly what we're going to do today for people who are listening. If you've ever thought about livestreaming, or maybe you are live streaming already, we're going to help set you up so you get the most out of it. So I'd love to just take people along the ride, starting at the very beginning. Why live stream? Why not just shoot a video, edit it, and put it out on YouTube, or do a little story on Instagram? What's the real benefit of going live with an audience?

Luria:
Connection, which we learned a lot about in 2020, right?

Pat:
Oh, yes.

Luria:
So, that is the real, true benefit is the community that you can build and the connection that you can have with your audience that is so much deeper than a recorded video. That is not to say recorded video doesn't have its place. It absolutely has its place, as does podcasting and blogging and all of the things, right? So it's not that you need to throw everything out to the wind and just do live streaming only. I would never say that.

But you want to be intentional about the content that you're creating within the environment that you're creating it. Livestreaming offers you the ability to answer questions for your community, to get to know them. You see their names and comments, but what about actually getting to know something about them and having a conversation? That creates loyalty, which then creates a long-lasting, as you call it, "superfan," and that means that people will buy from you. You're not going live so that people will buy from you, but that is the end result. And they don't just buy from you, they desire to help you out. They desire to participate in the book that you just published or in the course that you're just launching or whatever it is. They are so loyal that in my experience, they sometimes buy without knowing what they buy, what they just bought.

Pat:
Yeah, it's true. It's so weird.

Luria:
Isn't it?

Pat:
But it's awesome. That's really great. Yeah, I mean, it's so true. It takes me back to the first time I experienced live streaming. I remember, and it was from somebody who not live streaming like watching a live thing happen on TV, but a connection with a creator who I had been following. It was Darren Rowse from ProBlogger.net. And this was way back in the blog TV days, before YouTube was even a live streaming platform, or Twitch, or anything. And it was super late at night, but because I knew he was going to be live, I stayed up late because I wanted to hang out with him. And then during that time, he was fielding questions from people. And then I remember the specific moment when he called my name to answer my question. My heart started beating really fast, I started getting sweaty palms, and I was just in my home office.

It really felt like a true connection, like you said, so I do feel that. And whatever the end result might be, it's a transaction. Maybe it's a business transaction, a sale, or maybe it's a share. Maybe it's feedback, right? The thing they offer you is feedback. Something honest that you really need to hear, and only a true fan would give you that. It's so important. So I think the why is there, but perhaps even if people know the why, there's a lot of things to be scared of. I know, because I was scared. What are the common things that people are telling themselves that hold them back from actually just going live and broadcasting?

Luria:
So I call it LAM, the live adrenaline monster. So I have a little monster made up. He actually has a face that you can picture, and when you see him, he's actually not that scary. But LAM is the monster in your brain telling you all the things that can go wrong. You're going to forget what you were going to say. You're going to screw it up. Nobody's going to show up. Wait, what if people show up? What are you going to do? The tech is going to fail. What happens if? What happens if not? All of these fears and these thoughts that are going through your brain before you hit go live and while you are live. That's LAM, and all you need to learn to do is to tame LAM. And the reality is, in order for you to get comfortable with being on camera, in live video, you must realize why you're doing it in the first place. And we go back to the why, that community, that connection, the ability to help.

You mentioned ... and I want to come back to a couple more tips, but you mentioned the process of feedback. And we've talked about this offline before: the feedback that you can get actually tells you a lot about what to do in your business, what other content to create, and that you can't get from an email survey. I'm sorry, you can, but you can't... You know what I mean? So it's a different type of feedback. But once you think about why you're doing this in the first place, then you need to understand that LAM is attacking because you're thinking about you. It's all about you. I always refer to it as Gaston from Beauty And The Beast. We all hate him. He's looking in the mirror. He's like, "Ooh, I'm beautiful. Look at me." He's thinking about himself.

You need to be thinking about the viewer. You need to be thinking about helping that one person that you are there to help, or impacting that person or those types of people. And when you start to turn it around from you to them, that's when everything starts to loosen up a little bit. It's not going to maybe necessarily get you going live totally, but it is a good start. And I mean, I can dive deep into how to be more confident on camera if we want to go there, but that's the start of it. And then literally doing it over and over and over, because your first live is like your first video, like your first podcast, like your first riding of the bike. That is, you're going to fail. You're going to... not fail, but you're going to make a mistake. You're going to stumble. You're going to be uncomfortable. And if you can get comfortable being uncomfortable, that's when you're going to be able to go live and get used to that process.

Pat:
That's really great. I love the idea of thinking about who this is for, but what do you say to those people who are like, "Okay, I get that, but guess what? Nobody's probably going to show up. I don't have a huge audience, so it doesn't matter who this is for because nobody's going to be there." How do we get over that hump, especially if you're just starting out? I had the benefit of doing live when I already had a blog audience and an email list, and I can let them know about it. But how do we get started when literally we don't have anybody who even knows we exist yet?

Luria:
I want to tell you about Andi Smiles. She's a bookkeeper, and she went live for the first time having no audience whatsoever. And I had told her... She was a student, and I had told her, most likely you're not going to have anybody showing up live. So what she did is she took a Post-it, she covered up the area where the view count was going to be, and she didn't look at the comment section, she didn't look at the view count. She showed up 100% for whoever, whenever. And what happened was she delivered, she was punchy, she put her all into it. Twenty-four hours later, somebody watched that replay, and she had a $3,000 contract immediately.

Pat:
Wow.

Luria:
Because they loved how she showed up on camera. And she wasn't worried about who was watching. She wasn't worried about any comments or anything like that. She just wanted to provide that value. And then that $3,000 contract, very quickly it turned into a snowball effect of referrals, and that $3,000 contract also turned into a bigger contract with that first individual. So it's okay to not have anybody watching, because live is often about the replay. There are people watching on that replay. You're going to send that out to multiple people as well after the fact. And, the beauty of going live to zero or one, two people is that you get to actually go live and figure it out and get comfortable without any pressure, because Pat has all the pressure in the world when he shows up live for the first time. And everybody's watching and like, "This better be good."

Pat:
That's so true now that I think about it. I did put a lot of pressure on myself because I knew actually people were going to show up. So if you're starting out, you have the advantage of being able to, almost like in a little Petri dish, have things maybe not go the way you wanted to and only having it be contained to just a few people. And plus, I'm imagining that with fewer people there you'd be able to make a deeper connection with them because, right? With the larger audience I can't ... I mean, I can try to reply to everybody, but I can't ask back and have a conversation as well as somebody who has a smaller audience.

Luria:
Exactly. That was my next point. You hit it on the head. It's like, that is where you build your community is in the early days with just a few people watching. Those people will later become your biggest fans, your hardcore, because they would have watched you grow. And they will have become your moderators on your channel and part of your team. And they're going to be all in there for you because you're able to have that conversation. So those are some of the most important people that you can have.

Pat:
That's so true. Okay, so I'm just going over a lot of the objections I think the audience would have and also I would have, which is, okay, you show up. Great. But there are so many choices. I don't know even where to begin. There's Instagram Live, YouTube, Twitch. How do I know where to even begin? And I know what a lot of people do who are quite go-getters at this point, go, "Okay, you know what? I'm going to stream to all of them at the same time. I'm going to use these tools that I find. I'm going to be everywhere, that way I can throw spaghetti at the walls, see what sticks." What should we do, though?

Luria:
Well, first you have to identify where is your audience. If you have an audience, and that can be a small audience of a handful of people, but where is your audience existing currently? That's your first place to start.

Pat:
For your target audience, right?

Luria:
Exactly, yeah. And where are they hanging out? What do you think that they want from you in that environment? You also have to realize that each platform is very different, and so you have a different language, different nuances of each platform. And so you can absolutely simulcast to discover where your audience is at first; that's a possible strategy where you're like, "I've done the research. I can't figure out where my audience is. I don't know what's right." You could simulcast to just discover what hits or where you're getting some traction. But then, I would really like you to focus. Really focus on one to two platforms. That way you can build the community there.

One of the biggest challenges with simulcasting is understanding that there's a conversation happening on Facebook, and there's a conversation happening on YouTube, and those two conversations, unless you put that comment up on-screen manually, those two conversations are siloed. There are tools, like with Restream chat overlay, that you can actually put the whole community on both platforms onto your screen, but that comes with this whole other set of cons and risks of having your chat displayed on-screen if somebody goes bad on you. There a lot of nuances when it comes to live, and so I don't want to overcomplicate it. Just choose one to two platforms that you feel like your target audience is going to be, or that you know, and super focus. Get really good at building that community in that environment.

Pat:
Yeah, going all-in on fewer things will allow you to go bigger on those places, more bigger than you could be if you were sort of spread out, so I love that tip. Thank you. Okay, so now maybe I've found a platform, or I know my audience is there and I could show up, but what do I even say? Once I hit broadcast, I'm just going to be a deer in headlights. Is it just Q&A the whole time? And what if nobody's there, or do I come with a topic? How do I know what to even talk about?

Luria:
Well don't do Q&A when you have zero viewers. The worst thing ever is Q&A like, "Hey, who has a question?" And there is nobody watching to ask a question. So that's something to be cautious about. You want to do Q&A in two different ways. One, either you prepare a set of 10 questions that are commonly asked about your topic, or you wait until you have an engaged audience. Look at what Pat did his year of broadcasting live every day. Every day was a topic, and every day you came prepared with basically something that they could take away. A short, easy win. That is exactly what you want to do.

It depends on the content that you're creating, but, let's assume you're doing educational content, then coming to the table with the topics. Not a huge topic. I wouldn't ever go live to talk about how to live stream and cover all of the possibilities in a single stream. No, we break that up into single topics so that the audience feels like they have a quick win. They can accomplish something out of that training and they can go take action. That's really where you want to focus. But you also might be stumbling with, I don't know topics to actually create, and that's a big mental block for a lot of people that is really easy to overcome. If you turn off all distractions, take a pen and paper and write down everything you know about your topic. Everything you love about your topic. Everything you hate about your topic. Everything that people ask you when you're talking to family or friends or online. Go into Facebook groups or Reddit threads. I'm not a Reddit person, so I don't know what they're called.

Pat:
Neither am I, but there's a lot of conversations happening there too.

Luria:
Exactly. Go into those different groups and communities and find out. Don't pitch. Don't talk necessarily, but look and see what are people asking about within your topic? That will give you a year's worth of content very easily. When you get over the fact that your ... what people are ... The mindset block that people have is that they think they need to go deep. But what you do need to do is actually be basic with your content. Your free public content should be basic because that's, the most number of people who are going to be attracted to that content. And then as you work them down your funnel, then you're going to get a little deeper and a little deeper and a little deeper. So that's where I see the biggest mindset block is they think, "Oh, it's not good enough. It's not deep enough. I know this, and it's so easy." Well, the audience doesn't know it.

Pat:
That's so true. In fact, if it's too deep, sometimes it's way over people's heads and they leave.

Luria:
Yeah, totally.

Pat:
And the benefit of it is if they know it already, well, then it confirms that they're in the right spot, and then that they're at the same level, and then they can even help others who might be in need too and they have something to say. That's another benefit of live that I've noticed is the creator, the person who is live, not just being the only educator in the room, but utilizing the audience to educate too. I definitely want to talk a little bit in just a moment about how to engage with an audience that's there. But this idea of taking any minuscule topic within a much larger one allows you to actually create, let's say for example, I did email marketing. I could potentially do an hour and talk about how to do email marketing, but I would have the same struggles as you doing how to do a livestream, because there's so much to unpack and it wouldn't really be helpful. Maybe a nice overview.

But what if instead I did a whole hour about increasing your open rates for your emails? That in and of itself can have four or five points that I can talk about and discuss with and show examples of. And then the next day I talk about how to write great subject lines. The next day I talk about how to read your analytics with your email service provider. I can have a whole month worth of stuff really that suggests that one topic alone. And so I absolutely love that.

So let's say we go live. We have a topic, we share it out. We let people know ahead of time. Is that what you'd recommend, scheduling something ahead of time? Or do you recommend just like, "You know what, I have a spark right now. I want to talk about open rates. I'm just going to go live and talk about open rates right now"?

Luria:
I will never stop you from going live if you have that spark and you're just going to be like, "Yeah, I need to talk about this. Let's do it." Go for it. But, in order to grow an audience, habits are key. You've got to train your audience, and people laugh at that term, but it's really what it is, and there's no other way to say it. You are training your audience to show up, to take the actions ... and when we talk about engagement I'm going to say the same thing ... to take the actions that you want them to take. And so the habit and the calendar is really, really important. Back in the day when I first started doing video, way back in 2005, people would tell me that their morning habit was to wake up, grab a cup of coffee, and watch my show. That's exactly what you want to create. That was their morning routine. And I'm not asking you to create a morning routine; it's a routine of some kind, right? So that same day, same time, every single week is massively important to create a community.

Pat:
Yeah, that makes me think about the livestreams that I watch now. I've been getting really involved in the Pokemon collectible community, having started a channel. I actually started a YouTube channel. It's, we just crossed 36,000 subs, which is really crazy. But, I'm very involved in that community now and I'm also a consumer of content from other creators, and there's this one guy, his name is Cigar, and he goes live almost every night. And literally every day I get the notification, because I'm bell subscribed, and it just becomes a part of my routine after the kids go down, is I have him on in the background, or I'm engaged and I'm watching. And it's just now I'm at a point where if he skips a day, I'm like, "Oh man, I feel like something's missing here." It's crazy how that habit starts to form that behavior, and then when he comes back live again, it's like, "Oh man, thank you." And we're all excited.

Luria:
And to go a little deeper on this, it's a mental thing. You need to understand what you're asking your audience to do. You want viewers, yet you're not willing to be committed to showing up at the same day, same time every week.

Pat:
It feels kind of selfish.

Luria:
Very selfish, right? It's like, "Okay, give to me by showing up on my stream." But you're not giving to them. So when you think about that from that perspective, it really shifts the way you think about creating that habit, I think.

Pat:
What are some additional items, if any, before we get to engagement, to get more people to watch? I think that by showing up and being consistent, people will eventually, especially because platforms can help you out, like algorithms and stuff. But hopefully you're providing good content, connecting with people. They also share it. Maybe you have an email list or other things. But what are some additional ways that we can get more people to show up live when we are live?

Luria:
One of the most important things is, depending on the platform that you're going live to, you've got to focus on the titles, the descriptions. If you're on YouTube, the thumbnail, the titles, the keyword research, massively important, even for live. And a little thing here is that you can actually show up on YouTube in the search at the top of the search while you are live, but you need to be saying the words. You need to be saying the keywords that are in your title and your description, because they're listening to what you're saying as well as seeing what you're putting. That's important to rise to the top when it comes to live on YouTube.

Facebook, same thing, yet titles interestingly enough, people put too much attention into the title on Facebook while live. It's important on the replay, but during the notification process of Facebook, the description is where it's at. And you need to be intriguing, because when you look at your notifications, it says "going live" and it's actually putting in the notification system the description, and the title gets missed. Little trick there. If you focus on enticement: I took a picture of two of my students and Stu McLaren's live notification coming in my Facebook alerts, right back to back, and I took this and I meant to share it with my students. I'm going to have to do this right after this. It was very obvious that Stu, I'm clicking on that notification, because the description was enticing. And the other two descriptions got really lost. Like, "In this stream we will what? We will what?" You want to make sure you're really punchy and encouraging people to have that must-click attitude.

Pat:
Okay, so they click. They're coming in. They're seeing you. How do we get them to stay? How do we get them to know they're in the right spot?

Luria:
Well you lock the doors. I wish. I wish there was a functionality for that. You cannot leave. It's really in key that you understand that in order for people to stay, they have to be engaged. They have to see something that they must stay for. Otherwise, you're very likely to lose them to a phone call, to another stream, to a notification, et cetera, et cetera. In order to get engagement, you must be engaging. And you have to actually engage with your audience. You can't be paying attention to nothing. You can't be waiting for viewers to show up, because when one viewer shows up, and they see you waiting and not doing anything, they're leaving.

Pat:
So you have to earn it, right? You've got to earn that engagement.

Luria:
You've got to earn it. Yeah, absolutely. And in order for you to be engaging, you've got to tap into your uniquely you magic. That is the key, is being ... I hate when people say, "Just be you." Because nobody knows how to actually do that. What does that mean? So instead of thinking about it that way, it's tapping into your true vulnerable self. That doesn't mean you've got to cry. But there's so much fake authenticity that happens in the world, that you've got to break free from that. And what happens with you on camera, in terms of this process of getting them to stick, is you think that people are there to judge you, and you're afraid that you're going to screw something up. I screw phrases up all the time.

I have so many flaws that are strengths to my audience. I combine sentences constantly. And my brain is moving too fast for my mouth sometimes, and so I'll combine popular phrases and screw them up all the time. And so my audience ... I see that as a flaw. My audience sees that as a fun thing to make fun of me, right? They're not judging me. It's just funny when it happens. I don't get pop culture references at all, because I didn't grow up with a TV or pop culture of any kind allowed in my life. So I don't know anything about the '80s, even though I'm an '80s girl. That is hilarious to my audience, though it's very embarrassing to me, until I learned to tap into it.

And now, I say every time somebody obviously does a pop culture reference, because I kind of maybe understand that it's a pop culture reference. I'm like, "Is that a pop culture reference?" And then they'll make fun of me, and we'll play a guessing game. Or I will be like, "Star Wars, I got it. I earned 500 points or whatever." I'll award myself points for getting a pop culture reference. So this is what I call audience triggers. And when you learn to tap into your uniquely you magic that creates audience triggers and creates a universe, spelled Y-O-U-niverse, then you are creating this environment that is a stick or a bail scenario.

And when people are not going to ... People are going to bail who are like, "This girl's crazy. I don't like her at all. I don't like her laugh," which I get told all the time. "I don't like the way she smiles," which I get told all the time. People are going to hate me, and we want them out. We want them out of this world. So then you're left with the people who are going to stick. If you can tap into just releasing your hidden awesome and just putting that out there, that's what's going to get people to not only click, but to stick and watch and then come back again and again and again.

So it's about the flow, which we should talk about as well. You do need to have a flow for your content, but that's the core. Your content can be amazing, but dry as ... I won't say it. But you know what I mean? It can be super dry, and that's ... They're not going to pick up on the content.

Pat:
So would say you have to somewhat be a little entertaining or bring some sort of entertainment value in addition to the content that you're teaching?

Luria:
Not in the way you think. When you say that, people think they have to be somebody they're not.

Pat:
Or you have to dance, right? Oh, TikTok. I have to dance, right?

Luria:
I may do dance, because I like to dance.

Pat:
You did make me dance, and I don't know if you know I did too, but that worked out that day. We're talking about a livestream that Luria invited me on. While the countdown timer was going in the beginning, we danced and it was fun. And then people made fun of it, and we embraced that and we enjoyed it. Embracing your weird is another thing I like to say that kind of wraps this all up too. But what are you worried about when people hear the word entertaining?

Luria:
So when people hear that they think ... Well, they naturally think, "Well, I'm just a boring person." I used to think that about myself as well. I still think I'm pretty boring. And so we all think we're boring. And so what I don't want you to hear is, "I have to be entertaining when I'm a boring person? Oh gosh. This isn't for me." You need to be entertaining in the way you are entertaining to the people who love you. And the world sees you very, very differently than you see yourself. The only reason I'm able to show up on camera and dance and be weird and what did you say? Embrace the weird. Then it's because I actually understand that all of the things that are going through my brain aren't actually reality for other people, and they see me in a very different light because we are our own worst enemy, quote-unquote.

When you can start to think about, okay, when I'm hanging out with my friends and my family ... If your family likes you ... Then what are those things about you that they like? Is it that you have a dry sense of humor like Rene Ritchie on YouTube? Is that you are super geeky? What is it? You don't have to be the talk of the town. You don't have to be that loud person in the room to perform well and get people to stick into your content. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that you tap into those unique personality traits that you're scared to put out there.

Pat:
That's so important. Not just in livestreaming, but just in business in general.

Luria:
Yeah, totally.

Pat:
That's huge, or else if there was nothing unique or different or standoutish from you, then why in the world would you stand out? You have to have something. There's got to be something, and it doesn't have to be huge. I know a lot of people in the business space, they're like, "Oh, I don't have a sob story that can really emotionally connect with people." Well, don't make one up. But what is it interesting about you and the way you do things? "Oh, well I'm just super OCD." Okay. Let's embrace that and make everything you do have to be perfect. Now it doesn't have to be perfect, but let's make that your thing so that when something is not perfect it upsets you, and you let people know about that and it's just it's who you are.

Luria:
I can't deal. The stuff is not right. Yes. You just, you blow that up. You blow that up, and it becomes a thing. Yes.

Pat:
How else, when we see a live chat, let's see, we've got some people in there, they're talking. What are some different cool fun different strategies that we have for keeping everybody excited, having fun, and engaged?

Luria:
A very easy one is to... Well, a few different things. One, to get people to actually engage, meaning they comment. There's engagement and there's engagement. There's comments, and then there's engagement. You want people to stop lurking and start commenting first, because you need that easy win. And that comes in the form of a very simple answer. Yes, no. Closed-ended questions. Choice A, B, or C. And you can ask those in a variety of different ways. I asked Marques Brownlee this the other day. Do you like bacon, eggs, or cookies? Which one of those three are you going to choose? And then the audience chimed in as well. And so you ask those things where they have to make a choice. Food, pets, always works. Even something as simple as, "Are you new around here? Type new in the comments." Or, "Are you excited about this topic? Are you excited about learning to X, Y, Z? Give me a big 'yes' in the comments." Nobody ever answers no, because they don't want to be that person.

Pat:
No, but then it shows people who are more quiet that everybody's excited, and then they get excited too, right? There's that cool sort of groupthink sort of situation happening.

Luria:
Absolutely. And then you can go deeper with them after you get them to comment. And then you can get full engagement by actually getting deeper. But that's where it starts is in those really easy, kind of fun engagement tricks.

Pat:
Yeah, I love that, and those are things you can't really do on any other platform. I mean, you have to do it live in order to get that immediate response. And it's so easy to watch a live now on YouTube or Twitch or whatever where people can comment really easily. And I love those little games that you can play, like I love to have people share ... if I'm again, livestreaming in front of my Pokemon audience, I'm like, "Okay, we need some luck on the next pack. Hit me up with fire in the chat." And it's just like fire emojis everywhere. And everybody gets excited, and then I have music to sort of build it up, and that's fun.

Sometimes I say, "Okay, if you are this kind of person type in a 1; if you're this kind of person type in a 2." It's super easy, just literally type in a 1 or a 2. The yes-nos always work really well. On a scale of one to 10. Then what I like to do is sort of go one step further with that is start naming people their answers. All right, so Jim said four. Tony said 10. Tony, wow, that's awesome. What are you doing today to say 10? That's incredible." And just it takes practice, though. That's the biggest thing that I've learned is, it takes practice. If you watch the first stream that I did in the Income Stream, the 365 days, and you compare it to my later ones, it's literally night and day. It's just unreal how much you improve just by doing something, but there is that barrier.

So I really, really appreciate all these tips and the help to get started. We didn't even get into equipment and stuff. And I didn't want to, because that's often where people go first. I mean, there is equipment at all different budgets to go live. You might even be able to go live with the tools you have now. But it's this stuff that we're talking about today. What would be one final biggest tip that you have for everybody who's about to go live, or they've gone live, and they want to do it right? Let's give them some encouragement before we finish up today.

Luria:
Can I do two things?

Pat:
Yeah. Over-deliver. This is what you do, always.

Luria:
Number one, understand, on the back of the engagement conversation, understand that you do not need to stick to your content and content alone. People want to know you as a human being. Bringing in the things that are your hobbies, your pets, your kids, your significant other. Conversations around other aspects of your life, outside of the content itself, that's where you're going to really get the engagement. Make sure that you don't get siloed in your brain about that. And then when it comes to the content delivery, we just didn't mention the show flow that I think is so important. It's really important that you understand that the flow of your content is going to move people through the content without you worrying so much about, "I forget what I'm going to say." Or "What if I get off track?" or going down those squirrel holes. Squirrels are totally fine as long as you keep coming back, as long as they're relevant or funny or entertaining of some kind.

But what you want to do is open up with a teaser or a hook. Something that is for the replay viewer, not so much the live viewer. And you want to tell people what they're watching. It's the same for video, by the way. But we'll have some live changes here. And then, you're going to do your quick intro of yourself. Ask a question to get people talking. Then go into the topic. Just dive right in. And you're thinking about the replay viewer. Before you go live, you're going to segment out your content out into three to five bullet points so that you have segments to tackle. And then, in between each segment, you're going to just focus on the delivery of the value. Then you break for engagement, answer any questions, call people's names out. Go into segment number two, break for engagement. Segment three, break for engagement. Call to action, close it out. That's the basic show flow for your livestreams.

Make sure that you're not overengaging, because sometimes you can really overengage and never deliver on any value, because you're just so nervous. Doing that really helps people get started, and then you can advance into more different show flows that allow you to connect with your community more, or that allow you to have an intentional broadcast for replay. So there are different intentions that you can go through with your content. But that show flow that I just laid out, that's going to help you get started and stay focused while also being able to engage.

Pat:
So good. Thank you for bringing that around, Luria. That was a great way to finish off, and I want people to watch you live, because you do it so well. You keep it engaging; you practice what you preach. Where can people go to catch you live? And I know you have a lot more information to share. Where should people go to grab that information or tools or anything else you have?

Luria:
Sure. So, I am live on YouTube and Facebook @LiveStreamingPros. And just check the About section for the schedule, but I would love, love, love to see you in a live show, and not be a lurker. Get your dancing shoes on for the countdown timer, and get your hands ready to comment. And I would love to see you there. And then if you want to download a live video checklist that will make sure that you actually don't screw anything up before you go live, then you can find that at LiveStreamingPros.com/checklist. And that will get you started down the path of the tech if that's something that you're interested in as well.

Pat:
That's so perfect. Thank you so much. We'll put all the links in the show notes for you, and I encourage everybody to go check out more because you've helped me out so much and you've helped all of us out already today so much, too.

Luria:
I told you this at the beginning of everything: You are one of the best livestreamers I have ever seen, because at the end of the day you care about your audience, and that's all it takes to be a great live streamer, is that you care about people. And so, Pat, you're just such a great person to model. So thank you for having me.

Pat:
Thank you. Thank you, I appreciate that. Take care.

All right, I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Luria Petrucci. Again, you can find her at LiveStreamingPros.com. Find her on YouTube. You can follow her show and just dance around and have a lot of fun. She's just such an awesome person. Again, Live Streaming Pros On YouTube. And of course, that amazing checklist, which you can find at LiveStreamingPros.com/checklist, to help you get started, all the tech stuff, everything you need to know, so you can do the best job. And remember, your first time, it's always going to be the worst time. You've got to be a disaster before you become the master. And I haven't mastered livestreaming yet, but I've gotten so much better simply because I said, "You know what? The fear that I have is not as great as the help I know I could offer others. So let me just put myself out there, find the right people, and attract the right people." And that's exactly what happened. And if that happens to be you because you've caught me live before, I cannot thank you enough, and I'm encouraged to continue to go live in the future everywhere as much as possible.

Thank you so much for listening in. Thank you so much, Luria, for all of your wisdom today. And hope that you subscribe if you haven't already, because we have a lot of great episodes coming your way to help you with growing your online business, growing your audience, helping you reach more people, so you can teach and also generate an income as a result and as a byproduct of the service that you offer. Keep it up, and I'll see you in the next episode. Cheers, peace out, and as always, Team Flynn for the win.

Thanks for listening to the Smart Passive Income Podcast at SmartPassiveIncome.com. I'm your host, Pat Flynn. Our senior producer is Sara Jane Hess. Our series producer is David Grabowski, and our executive producer is Matt Gartland. Sound editing by Duncan Brown. The Smart Passive Income Podcast is a production of SPI Media. We'll catch you in the next session.