 Well, good morning and welcome to my workshop, a roadmap to multimedia sales funnels. My name is Emily Breedlove and I am so excited to be here. I never come out on the weekends, ever. I have small children, they were very mad that I left this morning, but I come out for word camp because this is such a phenomenal event, I wouldn't miss it. So today we're going to cover one hour on sales funnels, which is going to be fun because we're going to cover a lot of ground. First of all, who am I? My name is Emily Breedlove. I am the executive director of an organization called Hatch. Hatch ABL Foundation, it's a nonprofit here in Asheville. They support up high growth startups as well as work to expand existing companies that have the opportunity to pursue rapid growth. With that, high growth typically means either tech or product-based businesses. So we get to work a lot with companies in Asheville as well as all around Western North Carolina to help them scale as well as connect with equity capital and investment. My background is I'm an entrepreneur, like all of you guys. Grew up in marketing, did a lot of work in website development, obviously WordPress and supported a lot of the local entrepreneurs and small businesses in building marketing strategies, helping them to be more relevant in today's marketplace as well as make them more well-known across the region and across the country for the work that they do. So over the past year, I have also embarked upon the journey of pursuing multimedia and really figuring out what that means to rural businesses, what that means to Asheville businesses, what that means for service businesses versus product and technology. What I found is that for companies to be relevant and to scale, regardless of what industry they're in, they have to understand multimedia. They have to understand how to be relevant, how to be approachable, how to help increase engagement, retention, brand loyalty. Obviously, multimedia is one of the big mechanisms nowadays for building that market and building that base. So let's cover what is multimedia. Someone tell me, raise your hand, what's an example of multimedia? Yes? Video, what else? Images, podcasts, what? Twitter, yeah, social media webinars. Okay, so I've got two different definitions. Multimedia is technically an adjective and a noun. Using more than one medium of expression or communication, right? As we saw, there are many different elements of multimedia and the use of a variety of artistic or communicative media. So when it comes to multimedia, it's really that it's the variety of ways to deliver information. You've got imagery, infographics, animation, live video, text, in blogs and content, recorded and edited video as well as audio. So why multimedia? Why are you guys interested in this? To have a presence on multiple platforms? Millennials don't read. That is the truest statement of the day. Yes? Yes, it helps to build trust. Yes? When you put yourself out there like that, it sort of bridges that gap since people don't tend to talk to each other anymore. People do business with companies and brands that they like and trust. Yes? Yes! That you can help inform the world about what it is that you do. Okay, so the baseline of multimedia, it spans across more than just marketing, it's also across just education in general. It's how you tell your story. So Seth Goadden recently said, people don't buy the products you sell, they buy the story you tell. That is at the heart of multimedia is it helps for you to tell the story about your business, your product or services in a better way. The reality is that our cultural learning style has changed all across the world, thanks to technology. We now engage in a multi-layered approach. We process things differently. We're seeing multimedia play a large role in education, in early education that schools and school curriculum are having to create more dynamic ways for students to engage, the same in business. We want to communicate things in a way that sticks. We have to look at all the mediums. None of us just read anymore. None of us process that way. Especially when we're trying to understand complex topics, so if you do any kind of training, if you're trying to introduce new ways of tackling problems if you are presenting innovation or any new methods or approaches to things. Presenting it in a way that people can connect with and fully understand is now the new medium. So when it comes to multimedia, engagement increases. They say, Twitter did a study recently that it was three to four times higher engagement if you had multimedia. If it was more than just 140 characters, if you had a photo, if you had a video, if you had a podcast, people now want to be engaged. They want you to bring them into the process. If you don't engage them, then you lose them. That's the first step of any lead generation is you have to get them engaged. They have to connect with your message on some level. They're not just going to do it through a sentence. Then it increases retention. People stay longer. They actually take the time to build a relationship with you, to build trust and brand loyalty. Having multimedia on any of your platforms, whether it's social media on your websites, your blog, any of those things, it makes it so that people stay long enough to actually get to know you, that they start trusting you, that they can see you as an expert. If they're just reading your 140 characters, they're going to skin pass it and never come back. It also improves their performance. So if you are presenting ideas, if you're presenting resources or tools, if part of your product or service is delivering some sort of information that they would apply, that is applicable to their business or their life, if you're presenting it in multimedia, it makes it so that they're able to better understand the ideas that you're presenting, that they can apply your message to their life and their performance increases. It works. That's how you build trust, right? If people try what it is that you're selling them, if they apply the messages that you share and it actually works in their business or in their life, then they start trusting you. Multimedia gives you the capacity to explain it on a level that they then understand, that they can see it play out in their life and then when they do try to apply it, they get it on such a deeper level that it works. Then they come back. Brand loyalty. If they're engaged, if what it is you're saying makes sense, if they're able to apply it and it works, suddenly they like you, that you aren't one of the 8,000 brands that they see every day. They're one of, you are one of the messages that sticks out, that they want to come back to, that they want to digest more of what it is that you're presenting. Ultimately, this is the goal. Your messaging, your media, all your marketing, all your public relations, everything that you put out there, the ultimate goal is to build better relationships with the people you want to serve. Multimedia is the most effective way to do that now. It's scary, but it works. So, how do you use it? Who in here has done anything with video before? Great, who's done podcasting or any kind of audio? Awesome. Who's comfortable doing infographics or imagery in their messaging? Who has a blog? Man, just preaching to the choir. Y'all could come up here and teach this. So, how do you use it? It really comes down to looking at all the different layers that you can have in your business and the way that you want to use Multimedia to tell your story. Step one, you need to know your audiences. You need to understand your markets. So, I teach the pitch prep training for Asheville One Million Cups, and I help train companies that are trying to pitch to investors. It's a free training every month, Wednesday morning at the Asheville Chamber of Commerce, and the biggest thing that I harp on every single month is yes, you need to know your business, obviously. But you really need to know who your audience is. You need to understand who these people are. That's what differentiates businesses that are highly successful with those who are kind of successful. The deeper you understand your markets, that you understand your avatars, that you're able to intimately know your audiences, plural, the better you are at conveying a message that resonates with them. Your Multimedia then doesn't just become about you and your brand and your product. It's about how you tell the story to better support those people. Business is about service. Multimedia is about telling the story about how you serve people. You can't tell a compelling story if you don't understand the people and what makes it compelling. Ironically, before you do any kind of Multimedia, if you want it to be super effective, you need to do market research. You need to isolate and segment who these people are and identify who your top markets are. Doing research is really hard. It's meant to be. You gotta work for it. This is where you can look at both a quantitative and a qualitative assessment of who these people are. What kind of commonalities do they have? Where do they shop? Where do they live? What do they like? What do they not like? Are they married? How old are they? How much money do they make? Ironically, this is the most important part about your Multimedia, is being able to clearly articulate who these people are because the story that you tell to working moms is very different from the story that you tell to retired 70-year-old men, right? Yes, your Multimedia needs to convey that. If you have multiple channels, you need to be able to isolate so that you can tell the best damn story you can to each of your markets. That's how you make it effective. What preferences do these people share? When it comes to storytelling, you need to understand the language that they use. Sometimes it's not your language. It may not be the same terminology that you use to describe your products or your business or your values. Part of market research is not just getting online and Googling it. Part of it is going out and actually talking to these people. Doing surveys, conducting interviews, listening to how they describe what you do because their wording is more important than your wording. You can talk all day about the benefit that your business provides, about the value that you offer, about how great your product is, or all the 10 different reasons why your service kicks ass. But if you aren't using the language that they use, it can be lost completely. All too often, especially when we are experts in our space and we've spent years developing our products and our services, we fall into the jargon of the industry. We're so proud of the ways that our product or our service excels in certain circles or criteria. But the language that we use to talk to our peers are not necessarily the language that we would use to talk to our customers. So, how do you identify what the words are? What words really resonate strongly with people? What kind of emotional response they get from that language and the way that you say it? Also, what words are going to offend them, piss them off, make them uncomfortable, make them not want to keep watching? Sometimes that's just as important of what they say, but also what they don't say. And asking questions that get you to that. Of what point do you get to the point where they don't like it anymore? That you say something that it's not right for that market. It may be right for your other market, but it's not right for them. Then when you're doing market research, you need to look at your marketing plan and how this rolls into your multimedia strategy. How are you going to find these people? Where do they congregate? Are they on Facebook? Are they on Twitter? Are they on LinkedIn? Where do they go when they are most ready to hear what it is that you have to tell them? The conversation that happens on LinkedIn is very different than the conversation that happens on Twitter or Facebook, right? So, being very strategic in not only where these people congregate in the world and online, but also where they are when they are most ready to hear what it is that you have to say. How do you connect with them? Especially with multimedia, there are certain mediums that connect with different markets on a different level. Some groups love video. Some groups love podcasts. Some groups love reading blogs. Some groups love audio blogs. It's your job to understand the best possible mediums that will connect with these people. How they digest best. What platforms work the best? Also, work the best for what it is that you're telling them. There are some products that are highly technical, right? Some of your stories and information is leading an industry referencing important data or technical terminology. There are only certain times of the day that people want to read that. It's not all the time. Knowing when that is, when to deliver, when to post and how to post, that's key. It's not just writing a blog. It's understanding how to share it in a way that will connect to those people. Then the last step is then how do you convert them, right? It's not just them watching your video or reading your blog. Ultimately, there needs to be some sort of transaction here. Call to action, sales. Right? Multimedia is great at sales. But you also have to be involved in that process. Multimedia can get people all queued up, ready to go. You need to make sure that the sequence, and this is where we talk about the sales funnel, comes into play here. Because the process that you walk people through is crucial in order to get them to the point where they are ready to buy. Where they've got their credit card in hand, they want to hire you, they want to buy your product, they want to subscribe to what you've got. You're not going to get this right the first time. But you've got to keep trying. You've got to keep figuring it out because this is a process. And the best part? It's a process that gets you paid, right? That's what we all want, make more money. This is a beautiful way to do this. But it's not always easy. It's not always simple or straightforward. And the hardest part is when it comes to Multimedia, you're also putting yourself more out there for this process, right? That your face is out there, your voice is out there, your name, your business name, your product name, your reputation, that's what's so scary about this process is because there's more vulnerability in this sales process. You're more exposed. But there's also where there's higher risk, there's higher reward. That when you figure it out, people like you, they trust you, that once you've got a system that works, it's a system that keeps working. There's higher percentage of profit, brand loyalty, business growth, so it's worth sticking to this and figuring it out. Number two, you then need to know your Multimedia. We listed there are so many different ways to do this. So many different mediums, so many different ways for you to tell this story. This is a journey. This is a journey where you have to test these things. You can't just assume that you'd be bad at video or good at writing blogs or be the best voice on behalf of your business. Multimedia comes down to trying it and testing it and seeing if you actually suck at video if you're really good at it or if you should not be the one to write the blogs or if someone else should manage your social media account because you just can't keep up with the posts. Finding Multimedia is all about practicing, testing, assessing, evaluating, figuring out what works for you and what works for your business. The first question that you wanna ask yourself is once you've identified who your audiences are, making a list on what mediums you think are most effective for each of those markets. You've created your avatars, you've identified who these people are, what they do, what they like. What then do you think are the most effective mediums for them? If you don't know, look. Get online and research. What are your competitors doing? What are the competitions that they're so successful at already doing this, that they already have podcasts and videos, they already have Facebook pages with 100,000 followers? What are they doing? That's how you start identifying what works with this market. You either know or you find out. The sweet spot is then also identifying what of these mediums work best for you, your team, your company. So even though there are some mediums that may be great with your market, if you aren't very good at it, then that's gonna be one of your lag time multimedia development. You're gonna have to work at it. It's gonna take a little longer. What it comes down to is identifying where your strengths and your weaknesses are. That you start first where there's overlap. The mediums that are gonna resonate most with your audience and that you are ready to do. If blogging works great with them, then great. You better start writing a blog. If you're good at it and you love it, that's your medium. Start with that. So when you're breaking it up and you look at imagery, infographics, text, video, podcasts, if you're great at writing, that means that you've got the blog, you've got the email newsletter, you've got the social media posts, you've got press releases, right? You can write articles. Text touches into content, touches into like 30 different pieces. That can be a great foundational piece. How then do you look at the other mediums? The mediums that you're kind of interested in or kind of good at. If it's really, really important to your market, you need to find a way to pursue them. This is where it comes down to being realistic. If it's too complicated or too expensive or your team's just not ready, don't start with that. Video is hard, podcasting is hard. That would be phase two or phase three. Be realistic when it comes to your resources, your time and talent and energy. Get started with what works, with what's simple. Just get started. If that means having some pretty pictures with strong quotes that are tied to your blog that then go out on your email newsletter and share it on your social media, bam, good. You're moving the needle forward. If that means that you're interested in video, the fastest and easiest way to start with video is lives, Facebook lives, Instagram lives, man, those things work. They're crazy good, they get you started. Everybody is okay with them being a little rough around the edges. Starting this process from a very realistic acknowledgement of where you are, what you've got to work with, what you're comfortable doing, what you're capable of, what your team can handle without being overextended. This is where you have to really be honest with yourself. Yes, you can set the big lofty goals that we want to start a podcast or we want to create a video series, but you just got to start with where you are, baby steps. Always pushing a little bit further outside your comfort zone, because that's the whole point of multimedia, but not going so far that it's crippling, that it costs too much money, takes too much time, that then you give it all up. Number three is building your roadmap. So once you've identified who your people are, you've identified what the mediums are that they both, that they most resonate with and the mediums that your team is most poised to jump into, this is when you start building out your strategy. So a sales funnel, a funnel, is stacked by the level of what? How do you think a sales funnel is teared out? How do you think they're stacked by? What's the process? Revenue, simple to complex, what'd you say? Effort, yes? Customers questions? Your product story? Product story? Brand trust? Brand trust? Goodness, these are all really good ones. Engagement? Engagement? Urgency? Urgency. So you've got the sales funnel, the people are coming in and moving their way down. It's stacked by level of engagement. Ultimately, as they move down this process, they're getting more and more engaged in your material. They may not necessarily be writing a check here. Technically, that's where they write the check. Once they drop into the funnel and there's a transaction. But as they go through this process, that's what moves them to the next level of their choosing to get more engaged in your material. So the question is, how do the mediums increase engagement for your market? As you're mapping this out, you're having to look at each step and what has the least level of engagement to what has the most before they're right about to pay. Cause that's the biggest level. Writing a check is the highest level of engagement. That's when they're in. Okay, so we're gonna run through a couple of different examples of sales funnels. Okay, so one of the easiest ways to open up your funnel is through social media. Right, putting it out there, creating some really dynamic, compelling, engaging posts. Imagery is a great way to do that. You can get some compelling photos, layer a really inspiring quote. It's simple, but it hooks people. Those, that imagery is what helps draw people in. That suddenly your message resonates strongly that it feels like it's authentic to who they are and what they're trying to do. They get hooked. They actually look at your post. They may like your page. Follow up is that next level, which is an infographic, still imagery, but you're taking that very cursory connection with your messaging and you're going a little deeper to let me share some information about my business or my industry. This is where they have to take a good five to 10 minutes looking at what it is that you've presented and you transition from an emotional connection to an intellectual connection. They're starting to see you as an expert. They're starting to trust your opinion and your insight. Facebook lives or Instagram lives, yeah. This is a great way for you to put your face on your messaging. It's an easy way to move into video and I have to tell you, Facebook lives spread like wildfire. So Sarah and I actually just completed, we did an eight month program called Digital Sales with Soul where each month we did a different online course. And when we started this process we had, so we had seven or eight trainers, I think seven. And when we kicked it off, first we did a couple of videos of just interviews with the trainers. We put them on Facebook Live. We recorded the videos and then shared them on Facebook. So it was not Facebook Live. And with even the seven high profile speakers we put out the videos and we had about 1,000 views decent. We switched the next month and did Facebook Live interviews with all seven. Each had their own Facebook Live interview. And we had 20,000 views in a week just by switching to Facebook Lives because Facebook pushed the hell out of it. They weren't nearly as pretty or polished as they recorded because you can't edit, but people loved it. I do Facebook Lives all the time. It's now become my favorite medium. Because it can spread to far more people, it can be very personal, casual. Hell, half the time my laptop is grainy and fuzzy, it's horrible, but people still watch it. They like it. So I do Facebook Live interviews a lot, which is a great way to interview other leaders in the community or leaders within your industry. They're just doing it on their phone or their laptop. They're not actually having to sit with you. One of the platforms that I use is called BeLive. And so you can do two person interviews. You can even do up to five people on one show. It's only $15 a month to host BeLive. It's tied directly to your Facebook. It's a great way to get started. I also invested in a webcam. And so on Amazon, they have a pretty cheap webcam. It's the Logitech C90, $50, great webcam. So also as part of the Digital Sales with Soul program, we hosted monthly keynotes here in town. And I used that webcam to livestream our keynotes. We livestreamed it and we also recorded it. And that $50 webcam did great. Do what? Yeah, it's Logitech C90. Yep, it's great. It just connects directly to your computer. You can do both livestream and video recording. So also I edit all my own videos and I use a program called WeVideo and it's tied to my Google Drive. I live in Silva. So my internet connection is horrible, horrible. It takes 17 hours to download a video for me to edit. Yeah, it's ridiculous. So I got, WeVideo is tied to Google Drive. So I'm able to download or upload the videos onto my Google Drive when I'm here in Asheville and I can go home and do the editing there. WeDrive is also only $15 a month. So these are great ways to get in. It doesn't have to be perfect. My first videos that I did, I recorded in my living room on my phone. I put a little post-it note on my phone with my notes. Did like five minute informational videos. I then, on WeVideo, you can upload the video file. You can do all the editing. You can do the great slide shows. You can also, so I created the images on PowerPoint. My slides that went with my five minute thing. And so my bullet points or my stats made them on PowerPoint, saved it as an image, just as a JPEG. And then I can layer it in my video, on WeVideo. I am not that tech savvy. And I created some pretty decent videos on a really, really tight budget. Just Googling the hell out of everything to figure out how to do it. You don't have to be great at this. You can still figure it out. So this is where what I did here is I recorded keynotes, your presentations. Once you get the webcam, if you're doing a class, if you're doing a keynote, you can create a video of that. So the next level would be where you've got the Facebook lives, you can have an actual video where you've got a saved video, the people them watch. Okay, so they're moving from the quick and dirty Facebook live, five minute, 10 minute, whatever that is, to then you direct them to an actual standalone video that you have on your site. Whether it's about you training around a topic, you talking about one of your products, whatever that is, it's a standalone video. They're committing to 10, 15, 20, 30 minutes, whatever that is. Then the next piece is you can offer a webinar. This is where you actually teach them something. Oftentimes a webinar is just a video with a PDF that you have some downloadable material that goes with the class, but that they're committing to sitting through one of your classes. They're also then by attending a webinar, acknowledging that you are an expert, that they have something that they could learn from. So then you get to the bottom, conversion, right? It started first with just a pretty picture on Facebook. You walk them through this process, you've established yourself as an expert, you've built up that relationship. They now see you as worth investing in. Whether they're buying a product, a class, hiring you as a consultant, whatever that is, you've now moved them down to the process where they're ready to write a check. Example two. Okay, so say that you're more into content, not so into video, that you wanna start first with writing blogs or your social media posts. More content-heavy, informational-based. So you write a post that then directs people to join your email newsletter. This is always a great piece of your funnel because if they don't join your list, you can't keep them in your circle. If you're comfortable creating content or even creating multimedia at all, you can create a newsletter. If you're generating anything that's more than just social media posts, then that's relevant to going to newsletter. I have a newsletter right now that we basically just share events that we go through so it's for, we WNC, it's the Women Entrepreneurs of Western North Carolina. We just scan the top events that are happening across the region and we pool them all. We make it super pretty, link to the meetup pages or Facebook pages or Google calendars, whatever that is. That's all we do. We don't create any fresh content at all. But we take the time to build something that is high value. Women wanna know what's happening across the region. We also, we have sponsors, so at the bottom we stick little coupons, image coupons down at the bottom. So the women know that when they open up that newsletter, it's gonna be a high level scam of what's going on over the next month as well as some exclusive promotions at the bottom. It takes about two hours. We send it out once a month. But it's a great way for us to communicate and to share information. You don't have to be the sole content generator for your newsletter. You can share great articles that are going out just like you share them on your social media. You can share other events, other programming, other videos, whatever it is that's tied to your content. You can add that. Having a newsletter is great because it helps you to build your tribe in a way that you can continually stay up with them. This is a key piece of any sales funnel. In your newsletter, you can also reference your blogs. Blogs don't have to be super long, but they still need to be informative. You can do a short blog that's referencing someone else's great article that's come out or that has several links in the blog. I acknowledge now, I thought that I would really like blogging. I don't. I tried. I tried and I sat on an old blog for like months and I just wouldn't write. So finally I switched to video. And at first I thought I would hate video or I thought that I'd suck at video. Everybody thinks that they do in the beginning. But I realized that I loved the video platform so much more than blogs. And so how you go, I do the videos and then I take just a synopsis, a written synopsis of the video and I do the blog around that. That I start first with the medium that gets me excited and then I use that to create the ancillary mediums. The stuff that doesn't get me excited. If I charge myself to write a blog first, I'd never write a blog. I'd never create anything. But if I start with a video, I can create videos all day long. The videos then create my blog. And then the blog goes into the email newsletter. So this is also where podcasts can come in. So when you're writing a blog, it's a great place for you to share other multimedia that you can link to a podcast that you've created. Every podcast should have its own written blog associated with it. So that you've got both the text and the podcast version. Who here's done a podcast before? Do you guys host your own podcast or you've just been on a podcast? Oh, yeah? Do you host your own podcast? Do you? Hi, this is Adam. Okay. Ha ha ha. Well, and so do you do interviews or do you, yeah, do you interviews? I found the interviews are the best way to get started because you're not having to source the information. You don't have to be really clear on your messaging yet. You can let other people talk about it. So I do, I do podcasts that are also recorded so that you get to the double bang for your buck. So you've got the camera in there. And so you have both the video and the audio version of the podcast. I also do a lot of interviews because it's really easy to get great people to come on and talk about what they're doing. Doing interviews is though an art form that you need to practice. I've been doing it for years and I'm still learning how to do it. There's a lot of preparation that goes into that. So if you're doing research on the person that you're interviewing, coming up with questions and running them by them, giving them insights on who you are and what you're looking out of the conversation. So if that's something that you are interested in doing, I would encourage doing some research on other people in your industry that are also doing interview podcasts because there's nothing more painful than watching a bad interview, right? Because you not only feel bad for the person doing the interviewing, you feel bad for the person being asked the question. Like it's just, it's like twice the cringe worthy moments. But there's also nothing more inspiring than a great interview, right? Those are the times when the tissues come out or the ideas like the crude of juices just get flowing because you can see the dynamics between those two people and it's more casual. It's not a prepared presentation. You can have that conversation that you can go deeper. You can ask them, you can be Barbara Walters and make everyone cry. You can, yeah. So once you're doing the podcast, there are services that can do that for you that can start the process that they can do a written transcript. You have to go back and edit it though. Oh, okay. Do you provide transcripts for your interviews? All of this comes down to how you want to structure your multimedia and which mediums are best. So if your audience works best in having both the transcripts as well as, and that's also a helpful way to create the blog based upon the interview, is you can do the transcript and then just edit it so it's slightly different. Okay, so another piece, once you've done the podcast, you can create a resource downloadable PDF that's kind of like a webinar and the PDFs can come in really at any point. Often there will be a PDF incentive for downloading or for joining the newsletter. Here are the 10 tips for succeeding in WordPress if you join our newsletter. These are great incentive pieces that if they aren't joining your newsletter, they may sign up to get this downloadable material. If your market does better kind of learning on their own, then this is a great medium. I go to 1115, right? Yeah, okay. And so in the PDFs, this is also where you're able to work in your inspiring imagery and your infographics and your content that you've generated. You can also embed links into your PDF that direct to other podcasts that you've had. And so all of this is mostly the same material that you're just repackaging, that you're presenting in as many different ways that these people wanna digest your material as possible. You don't have to come up with new content for every medium or every piece. The baseline content is just repurposed. And so this is where looking at what your sales funnel is and the process of engagement that your people are best ready for and then being able to create that same content and develop it into 10 different mediums. It can be overwhelming in the beginning, but once you come up with a system, you can pump that stuff out really, really fast. And then the moment of conversion, paid product. Ideally, the further down you get, the more related this material is to what it is you're selling. That your podcast, your blog, your downloadable content, it needs to be tied to what it is that you want them to buy. And that you are asking the right questions. You're highlighting the pain points that you have or that they have, because your product is ultimately solving that problem. Every product or service solves a problem. You need to be talking about this problem throughout this entire process so that by the time they start considering whether or not to pay you, they already know they have the problem. They know that you know how to solve the problem. They now trust that you can solve the problem and they're ready to get their problem solved. Your sales funnel, so most companies have multiple products, multiple services, for each product you're gonna have your own sales funnel because you're guiding them through a different process. Then even deeper, if you have multiple markets, each market will have its own sales funnel. This is where it can turn into the rabbit hole real fast. Picking your main markets, your main products, and going from there and just starting with wherever you're most comfortable getting some traction. You just wanna start with a sales funnel. One funnel that you're ready to go on, that you can write or you can speak about or you can sell that product. And the market that you are most equipped to serve, that you already understand, that you're comfortable presenting to, start with that. You want your first funnel to be a big win because you're gonna learn a hell of a lot on that funnel. Step four, you got your roadmap. It's time to start driving. This is where you can get into analysis paralysis. Right? You can spend so much time building out the strategy, knowing what you should be doing, what you wanna be doing. Where you really start getting traction and momentum is here. You gotta start. So, a couple dirty little secrets from a seasoned starter. Everyone sucks at first. If you go to the people who you love, their YouTube channels, and you scroll down to when they started, you will learn a lot about those people. But what's important to see was that in the beginning, their equipment was cheap, their lighting was bad, they weren't very eloquent or prepared. They started just like everyone else. The harsh reality is that there are things that you will only learn after you push record. So, when I do videos, I give myself permission to do what's called the dirty reel. That I go one or two times where I record it and I have no intention of using it. And I practice and I make an ass of myself. It's okay. It also gives me the chance, cause I do all my own recording. I don't have a video producer. I don't have an assistant. And so, it gives me the chance to test the lighting, to see if I've got it set at the right angle. See if I've got my double chin. If you can see my cat in the background, right? So, I've started moving to other locations to do it. But in the beginning, my first few videos, I sat in the cleanest corner of my house. And what was ironic was that I didn't even realize that the lamp behind me was broken. And so, like three videos in, when people are like, your lampshade's like split in half. This is the truth though, people. It's real. They can. They were engaged. I eventually learned to just go with it, right? That approachability was part of my story. Authenticity. That I'm a mom. I don't hide the facts that I'm a working mom. But the reality is, is that if you wait until you're perfect, you will never start. If you wait until you have the expensive camera, it's not happening. Phones are perfect. They're great to get started. A lot of phones are better than a lot of the cameras you can buy. You've got to give yourself permission to just start. Start creating videos. Start doing audio. Start recording yourself. Sit down and do a couple of interviews. See how it goes. Dirty little secret number two, being broke is not an excuse. You can do all of this on a budget. You don't have to have a lot of money. You don't have to buy the expensive gear. You don't have to use the expensive software. You don't have to hire someone to make it perfect. You just have to be willing to start and figure it out. Own the fact that for the first year, it'll be rough. That's okay. At least you started. Only 10% start. You're already ahead of the other 90%. You also can work your way up to the equipment and the software that you will end up using. If you spend the money in the beginning, you're gonna waste it. Because you don't know yet. You don't know what's gonna work best for you. You don't know if this medium is even gonna be the ultimate medium. You may start with video, but I actually love podcasting. So start first by doing research around free apps, free software, ways that you can do this on a budget. That it's not crippling, it's not intimidating. The most intimidating thing should just be pushing record. It should not be whether or not your camera is good enough or whether you have the right lav mic. So my first setup that I did for my phone, I bought a cheap $15 tripod from Amazon and one of the little clip on lav mics and adapters for my phone. It was $35 all together to get started. That was it. And I was ready to go. And I created a lot of shitty videos with that. But it got started. And I had to force myself to not delete them. Right? But I had to just start and be okay with that. Dirty little secret number three. Not everyone is a petty douchebag. There are a lot of them though. I have a running list if anyone wants to know. You need to know who is and who isn't and start building a team around that. When you're dealing with multimedia, there are a lot of people who will steal your stuff. There are also a lot of people who will help you be better. Being able to differentiate those who will copy your ideas, who will beat you to the punch and those who will sit down for coffee and will help you through this process. That there are some really talented people in every community that are willing to sit down and share their talents. If you've got a question about video, if you've got a question about podcasting, about design, about editing, find good people who will help you. Because they will. Also avoid the people who will take advantage of you because they will. This is the reality of multimedia as you are stepping into the spotlight. People will use you because of that. You gotta roll with the punches, be aware that they're out there and then build an inner circle that is willing to help you get to where you wanna go. We are here to help. This is my social media handle. Feel free to find me and reach out to me if you have questions. I'm always happy to help address those. There's also the Hatch AVL organization. Our website is technically under construction right now but it'll be up soon. And then the Hatch AVL social media. We're gonna be hosting a lot more trainings coming up. There's also so many classes and support circles around the community that if you do want to move into the space, don't be afraid to ask for help. Okay, what time is it? 10 minutes, awesome. So then let's do some questions. Yes. Okay, so the question was, is it better to do Facebook Live on the business page or on the personal page? So that depends on what it's you're trying to do. So if you're trying to sell your business or sell your products, then it's better to do it on your business page. And so when you do the Facebook Lives, there are sharing settings that you have to select that if you want people to be able to share off your page, then you have to push that. If you're doing a Facebook Live in a group, like in Facebook groups, they can't share outside of the group. So a lot of people will do Facebook Lives on their business page and then share it to the groups so that then they can go back. Ultimately, you want that material to sell stuff and you can't always sell stuff on your personal profile. However, it's easier to, once you create the video on your business page, to then share it on your personal page. And that way all the people in your personal network also see the business page share. Because Google, it's their new algorithm, is really limiting business promotion. So you want to try and think on both. But ultimately, like the core, the place where they go back to where all your Facebook Lives are stored needs to be on your business page. Yes? Related to that, what are some of the best visibility, ways to improve visibility through the Facebook Live? Facebook Live. Boosting posts. So, well actually, so it's a combination. Don't be afraid to ask your network to also share your Facebook Live. When you're doing the Live, you can invite your friends to the Live. So I found that it can still be a highly successful video even if no one shows up in your Live. And that you don't need to worry about that. The real traction comes after the fact, after that it's reported. And so you can invite your network to the Live. Once it's done, you can also share it with them and say, hey, would you mind just sharing this on your page? You can also, so the interviews work really well for this. Because I interview high-profile individuals and organizations, they then share it on all of their pages. And so the view rates go up significantly. You can also boost it. And so Boosting is one of the most powerful tools in identifying who your target markets are. Facebook, the Facebook advertising is a great way to segment your audiences and to test immediately. Yes. Have you tried the high-profile interviews in the service section? Sigurd, can we take chat questions with the Live audience? Yes. So the question was, for high-profile interviews, do you reserve time for Q&A? So in the beginning, you probably won't have people there. And there's nothing worse than being like, well, so we were gonna ask questions, but no one's here. I've done that. Where like in the beginning it's like, yeah, we'll save time at the end for Q&A and then it's like crickets. So you don't want to end up forcing yourself to. And then you can also, you have to train your audience to ask questions. So the way you set up Facebook Live's, you set up very intentionally. I found for interviews, people don't ask questions because the conversation is operating between two people. They're already like awkwardly applied on the wall. They don't feel, and you have to like engage them through the process. If you want them to ask questions throughout the interview, you have to say, if you have a question, keep it to the end, a little time at the end, so that like they're constantly thinking, oh, oh, I should ask a question. Otherwise they're not, they don't feel compelled to. And it's not always necessary. Yes. Gated content. So I have a client that I work with that wants to put all their webinars behind a e-newsletter gate. So you have to sign up for it to see the video and they get all the four emails by the end of the month. Whereas when we post the webinars, when I post their webinars on YouTube, they get a thousand views, which I think is more valuable to them at this point in time. How important is it, is it important, is it dangerous to have things behind that gate or is there a certain level that would you get to where you're like, okay, the gate is good because people know us now? Okay, so the question is around gated content and how you strike a balance between the free, shareable information and then the information that you charge for and that people have to sign up for it. So that's it, it's striking balance. Obviously having that free material that is public is going to help build your following. That's ultimately what's going to get people to the gate and through the gates. So you have to have both. Ultimately, the company needs to look at what they can earn properly, what is their sellable content. And so they can take those same webinars and create a shorter version of the sizzle rule, a 90 second version that they share for free. But then people, if they want to access the full webinar, they then sign up. But ultimately you need to have, you need to have the carrot and then you have to, you need to have the place where they buy the salad. Basically. And that really comes down to the larger strategy of the business. Because you can't just have one or the other. Yes, last question. Along the lines of the live videos, you were talking about using VLive to do interviews. Yes. Now that you can do a live video through Facebook with another person, is it better to use a second hand software like VLive or try to use the live and enter and invite other people to the person that you're interviewing to that live? So I personally like VLive for a couple of reasons. I'm able to put the logo, my logo on the screen, and I can change out the logos. I'm also able to put a title bar. And so it has my name and the name of my interviewee. It's also great because there is a dashboard that my interviewee enters before we go live. And so I'm able to kind of walk them through one more time what we're gonna be doing. I can also show them what it looks like on their side. That's one of the biggest downsides with Facebook Live is if you're just doing it through Facebook, you just go live. And so like with VLive, there's a countdown. Like you start and then it gives you five seconds before it takes you live. We can kind of work through some of the kinks. I'm also able to test the internet connection. So I've had some that my interviewee, their connection's horrible. And you don't see that until you're live. So VLive helps you kind of work through some of those things so that you don't have to do it on the fly like when you're live and people are watching. It's worth the $15 I found. Thank you. You're welcome. Okay, thank you guys so much.