Connecting with your Audience through Live Streaming with Chris Strub

Your Dream Business

English - October 20, 2018 23:05 - 57 minutes - 51.3 MB - ★★★★★ - 34 ratings
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Previous Episode: 3 Mistakes I Made When Starting My Business

Next Episode: 8 Tried and Tested Methods to get your Emails Opened and Read

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCASTSocial media allows you to research and build relationships before you meet people, so if you do encounter someone for the first time you already have a bit of a background relationship to build on.Don’t focus on how well you can do your job, instead think about your goal and how you want people feel about you when you’re not in a room.What matters the most is the value and excitement that we bring to the people you are connected with.Livestreaming gives you the best opportunity to be yourself and engage with your audience through conversation.Livestreaming is not just about the broadcaster, but the conversations you have with your audience who help shape the conversation as you go.Although social media gets a lot of negative press, there are so many positive elements that people forget. It’s about that personal, one to one conversations that are important to you and your business.Your social media following is not the be all and end all. It’s about the depth and complexity of the relationships you’re building with people.How many people think you are the reason they love the internet?
THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…Don’t be afraid to go live as when you’re live streaming it’s not about you and your business anymore, it’s all about your audience. Interact with them, have conversations and let them lead the stream.HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISSIntroducing Chris Strubb – 04:06Building relationships on social media – 07:09Being the best at what you do – 11:52Bringing value and excitement to the people you’re connected to – 13:1050 States in 100 Days - 15:01Live streaming, its’ not so scary! – 30:41One to one conversations on social media – 38:08Followings are not a binary thing – 49:00
LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY'S EPISODE50 States in 50 Days by Chris Strubb Chris Strubb Courses Chris Strubb Website
Transcript Below

Hello there and thank you so much for joining me for episode 35 of the podcast. I am your host, Teresa Heath-Wareing. Really glad to have you here with me today, as I am always. It's so nice to think that you might be going about your day, or walking the dog, maybe getting ready in the morning, and you're listening to me talk, so thank you, I really do appreciate it.

I normally ask this right at the end, and then I did some research the other week, and I stupidly, I don't know why I thought this, because actually this shouldn't surprise me in the slightest, but obviously you have a drop off throughout the podcast. Depending on the type of podcast it is, what it's about, some people don't listen all the way to the end. Which, like I said, if you asked me that about videos that are online, or anything where someone has to engage, I would say obviously that makes sense. For some reason I forgot that this might happen on the podcast.

Normally at the end of the podcast I ask you so nicely if you would be willing to give me a five star review on iTunes, and not to forget to hit the subscribe button. Obviously there is a percentage of you that either when you hear the podcast wrapping up you kind of think, “Yeah, okay, we're done now.” Or people that just don't get to the end. I'm going to get it in early, and I'm going to ask you if there's any chance you wouldn't mind, I would be so very grateful if you could possibly give me a five star review as this obviously helps the exposure of my podcast. Also, if you hit the...

Today I'm bringing you another interview, and I'm really excited about this interview, because actually I don't know about you, but often I find that social media gets a lot of bad press. Obviously there are a lot of concerning things that happen because of social media, or things that happen on social media that aren't great. I'm certainly not dismissing those things, it's just that actually in my world there are loads of really good examples of positive uses for social media. Not only for business in order to reach their customers and their audience, but also some really good messages that are out there. Today I'm going to be bringing you one of them.

Today's interview is with the amazing Kris Straub, who has a fantastic story to share with you about how he used social media to promote the message of numerous charities all over the states, in his trip that was called 50 States in 100 Days. Back in the summer of 2015, Chris was only 29 years old, and he travelled solo, and without any funding I might add. No sponsorship deal to do this. He travelled all the corners of the country to promote stories of youth related nonprofits. He used social media and live streaming as a way in which he could convey that message.

From that trip, he wrote a book and also has a film, which I was very honoured to be part of the first live screening in Nottingham a few weeks ago, when I met him for the first time physically meeting him, at MarketEd Live, where he was the keynote speaker. Chris now offers courses, he does keynote speaking, and it was an absolute pleasure to have him on the podcast. He's such a nice guy, and you know one of the best things? He's completely humble about what he did, and I still don't think he sees the impact that he had on all those charities, or the amazing story that he can now tell. I really hope you're going to enjoy this episode. He also gives some great tips and strategies away along the way.

Introducing Chris Strubb

Without further ado, here is the lovely Chris Strub.

I am so pleased and excited to welcome the super lovely Chris Strub to the podcast this week. Welcome Chris.

Hey. Good morning. Good morning. Glad to be here.

I'm so glad to have you here. I said in the intro that although I've followed you for some time, we had only met just recently at MarketEd Live, where you were keynote speaker, and you are such a lovely guy. I love to talk, and I love spending time with you, and it was a great event, and your first time in the UK.

Oh it was fantastic. It was such a joy to be over there. I'm so grateful to Paul and the team for bringing me in. I had an unbelievable time, and I'm glad to hear that the talk went well. We screened the film too, which was great. It was a really, really exciting week all around. I had a fantastic time, and it was such a great first impression of the UK for sure.

Oh good. I'm so glad, because I think we joked while you were that you were saying how friendly everybody was, and I said that I actually thought, I'm going to get shot down now by all people in the UK, but I actually thought that when I go to the states, the people in the states are super friendly. It was lovely that you felt that we were all super friendly too.

Yeah. You know, I think you and I talked about that a little bit actually when I was over there, which is it all depends on where you go and what your experience is. Like the states, and I could talk to you about the states all day, it all depends on where exactly you are, what communities you're diving into. Again, I was exposed to, over in Nottingham, the very best of what the UK had to offer. Like I'm surrounded by you, and Lucy, and Paul and all these wonderful, wonderful people, both in the contemporary, in the hotel. Downtown Nottingham was gorgeous. I was put in a great position.

It sounds, in our conversations as well, when you come over to the states, you mentioned you're coming back to California in a week or two, you're putting yourself in a great position as well, and surrounding yourself with some really smart, and lovely, and compassionate people. It's lucky, but it's luck by design. We're both getting better at putting ourselves in these advantageous positions.

Yeah. I totally agree, and in fact we've just said that one of the things that I like to do, even though obviously we are huge advocates of social media, actually there is still a huge part of me that likes to get physically in front of someone, because that is when you can make some real connections I find. I know it's a long way, but sometimes these trips are really worth doing.

Yeah. I think that's why we connect so closely Teresa. I mean, my company is called I Am Here LLC. Yeah, literally. I've spent much of this year and last year travelling around my country, and now of course over to the UK, with that exact same goal in mind, to get in front of people.

Building relationships on social media

Social media really gives us the opportunity to do our homework in advance, to research a little bit. To start building those relationships before that meeting, so that when you do encounter that person for the first time, you have a bit of background.

Boy, that sounds a little creepy when you kind of put it that way, but from a professional standpoint this is what we do as marketers, and as networkers, and relationship builders, we want to make sure we have those right people on our radar so that when we do have those encounters we're able to hit the ground running with that conversation, and be able to pick up with exactly what we're looking to accomplish in that conversation.

Absolutely. Actually that is such a perfect way of putting it, because the fact is you do start building those relationships on social media. You start to interact with them, you start to see what they do, what they like. They start to see what you do and like, and therefore it just makes that meeting so much easier, and it opens the door for it. Whereas if you went in completely cold, to try and get a meeting with someone, or to try and get someone to meet you for a coffee, it's not going to be easy, is it?

No. It's not, but I do think there's so many opportunities there now to get to know, like I said, the people in advance. I would also say Teresa that in my travels I used to be a bit nervous. I noticed this in our conversation over in Nottingham as well, or even in your podcast with Amy where you're talking about, “Oh, I have this dream list of all of the people that I'd love to speak to for the podcast.” I've really found that the more you travel, the more conferences and things you go to, the more you realise that even the “big names”, these people that we really look up to in the industry, they are so incredibly nice. Like with almost no exceptions in our industry.

My favourite story to tell is when I met Joel Comm for the first time.

Lovely guy.

At Summit Live. Just the nicest man you could possibly meet. He's keynoting this conference, Summit Live in San Francisco in 2016, and you just expect, okay, man there's thousands of people here, they're all here to see Joel, he's got to be kind of haughty and uptight, and like he doesn't want to talk to someone like me. I'm just a kid, this is my first social media conference. It was the total opposite of that. Like everything I thought in my head, everything that I was worried about unravelled within two seconds of meeting Joel Comm.

I think that encounter in the hallway in San Francisco, totally reset the tone for me for what it's like to be in this industry, in this relationship building industry. From that point forward, everyone that I've really tried to connect with I think has just been fantastic. That's really how I got to the UK, was this exact sort of game plan, this exact sort of strategy, if you will, meeting [Biz Paul 00:10:04] at Social Media Marketing World. I was like, this guy is awesome. If you see the two of us together, we're like brothers from another mother. We just immediately hit it off, and now we're like best friends, and I got to go keynote at this unbelievable conference.

Yeah. Honestly it's so good meeting these people. I think the other thing that makes me think is I think for the up and coming people, which hopefully I would class myself in, I'd obviously class you in, well you're a bit more than up and coming, you're definitely more known widely than I am.

Ee. Okay.

Honestly, but you know, for the likes of us though, it makes us want to help everybody else, and perhaps that's where it comes from. Perhaps because the people above us are showing us this really lovely way of being, and wanting to support people coming up, and support people to be better at what they do, that actually for me I just want to help everybody else up. I just want to keep kind of lifting them up to kind of build them up to where we can all be. I want us all to feel like this.

Yeah. I love that sentiment Teresa, of wanting to be able to lift others up. I've been talking to a lot of my friends and colleagues in the industry about this. One of the folks that I so dearly want to help is Ben Roberts, who was also at MarketEd Live. He's working on his book about his Marketing Buzzword Podcast. He's just a phenomenal guy, right?

Yeah, lovely.

Being the best at what you do

This is the thing that we can keep coming back to throughout our entire conversation here, is we have the opportunity to meet people in this industry that just blow you away with their kindness, their generosity, but also their intellect and their ambition. When we talk about stratifying people in the industry, we talk about the people who have been really successful, and you've interviewed Pat [Folan 00:12:01] and Amy Porterfield in recent weeks. I mean, that's awesome.

I know. Yeah.

What I think we all have in common is the determination to want to be the best at what we do, and want to be the best in our field. That was a major theme, of course, at Marketing Live as well, is do you want to be the best? At the end of the day it doesn't come down to how good you are at creating an internet post, or can you schedule our your 25 tweets a day? That's really not what it is.

No.

It's really about, what is your goal? How do you want people to think about you when you're not in the room? How do you want to be spoken about in that conversation? I can sense, and I can see it, and all your listeners can hear that ambition in your voice as well.

Thank you.

With wanting to raise the bar with this podcast. Teresa, to me it's all about perception. I talk onstage too, about how we are all famous to a few people. In the grand scheme of things, it's no offence to either one of us that 99.9999% of the world doesn't know who either one of us are.

No.

No, I'm just being frank about it, right?

Yeah. You're cool.

Bringing value and excitement to the people you’re connected to

In the grand scheme of things what matters the most is the value, the energy, and the excitement that we bring to the people that we are connected with. That's when you start to, the wheel starts to turn, you pick up that momentum, and then one day you wake up, and you're Amy Porterfield, and you have this unbelievable impact on hundreds of thousands of people. It's because of that ambition, and that drive, and that determination that you've put in over the years.

I love that. I love that actually one of the things I think about, and I think it was possibly Amy who mentioned it on a podcast, where she talked about, she did a podcast about, how do you get going if no one knows you? She basically said, you love the people who do know you.

That's it.

You give them more value. You appreciate them. You don't sit there and think, “Oh, I wish I had 10,000 downloads a week for my podcast.” Don't get me wrong. Wouldn't that be lovely? Absolutely, but I appreciate every single person that has sat listening to this. I appreciate the fact of everybody who comments on an Instagram post, everybody that interacts with me, and I love them for it. I desperately want to help them back, and for me that is actually something that you don't just say, or do, you are literally living that.

50 States in 100 Days

Now we've jumped on a little bit, because I wanted to kind of give your story. Actually this does fit in perfectly at this point because you are the epitome of giving back and being completely selfless that you are just doing what you do to help other people. Because one of the things that you said we did in Nottingham, was we watched your first airing of your video that is about your 50 States in 100 Days. I would love you to tell my audience about this, because this is a phenomenal story. Please explain what I mean by 50 states in 100 days, and what it was you did.

Yeah. First of all, thank you for being there. It was very, very special to have you there in the audience. It meant the world to me.

It was very emotional, I have to say. Very emotional.

For those who haven't heard the story, in the summer of 2015, I quit my job in South Carolina, or as [Biz Paul 00:15:21] would call it, the bottom right of the states. I love that disambiguation. I took a road trip, solo, to all 50 US states in 100 days. It's about a 15,000 mile drive, plus the flights across to Alaska and Hawaii.

Now this ties into social media and social media marketing because I became the first person to use both live streaming technology and Snapchat in all 50 states, which has kind of become the hook. Much more importantly for me was the work that I had a chance to do with different youth related nonprofit organisations in each state. I would get to the state the day before, wake up, go to, say the YMCA, or the Boys and Girls Club, the local Big Brothers, Big Sisters chapter, and spend a few hours working with and using social media to share the stories of these organisations.

As I talked about at MarketEd Live, it's not so much about the trip anymore, it's about the community that's developed around this project, because I really did set out to try and make a memorable, digestible story that sticks with you. We talked about this as well, that it's nice, it's round, it's simple, it's easy to remember. 50 states, 100 days, and it's turned into a self-published book.

As you mentioned Teresa, in the recent months here in the states we were able to produce 50 States, 100 Days, the film, in partnership with a company called Scofield Digital Storytelling, based out of Indianapolis. It's 22 minutes long, and it basically tells the story of a number of the organisations. It tells the story of the ups and downs of the adventure, a little bit of the how to. My joke is always, Teresa, that I never want to spoil the ending, but he doesn't get the girl at the end.

Yeah. The right amount [crosstalk 00:17:28].

It's a feel good story. It's a fun story. It's a great new medium through which to share this adventure, but really it's a great way to bring people together. Like you said, we had about 15 people there at the Lace Market Hotel. It's just it's an experience that makes you laugh, and it makes you cry, and it makes you feel emotional. A wise man once said, if you can do those things in a day, then you've had a pretty good day.

I love that.

Showing that film, still the only time that we've shown it, and we're trying to think of a long term strategy to release it here in the states and such. It was an emotional day for me,...