Learning to love live
It doesn’t feel much, because quite frankly, it isn’t. I've only been going live for a week on instagram & facebook, yet in that week I have managed to learn a very valuable lesson and the payoff was huge. It is crazy crazy to think that from one week of experimenting you can learn so much If you allow yourself too.
I am not a natural at going live, it feel clunky and even preachy at times. Honestly, give me a conversation, something with interaction and I’m in my happy place. Which is great news for someone who spends his life in 1-1 relationships with clients. So starting something like this, regardless of any fear I felt, allowed me to have confidence in the act of going live, trust my voice, connect with people and ultimately give value out to the world, meaning I get to support others.
For me the focus right now is to do something out of my comfort zone, learn new skills and to push myself to think about how I communicate my business: Me. When people pay for my time they are getting me. I am the product so I have to let people get to know me. Let people know my voice, how I work, my passions, what I can do & how I do it.
Until now, I have never needed to advertise myself. All my work in the last 5 years has come from word of mouth and referrals. However, now the landscape has changed I need to respond to that and connect with people.
When we go live we have to remember the most important thing is to remain authentic. It would be so easy to fall into the trap of presenting a version of ourselves that is published so that we become attractive to the clients we want to reach. However I'm a true believer that we need to be a fully authentic selves, owning our mistakes, showing our vulnerabilities well also bringing our professional expertise to our chosen field. I think what attracts me to this is that makes me feel that I can achieve my goals. Watching highly successful coaches tell me how highly successful they are in a very polished way does nothing to help me connect to them. But then many of these style of coaches are simply selling a dream of high income rather than believing and investing in you.
So let me break down the six things I have learnt in just one week of going live:
Going live helps you grow in confidence. It doesn't matter where you start from, going live increases your experience & if you can feel the fear but do it anyway you can build your self-confidence in the act of speaking to a camera.
You find your voice. In creating short form videos you start to find a rhythm. Like any habit, the more you do the more natural and instinctive it becomes. Out of repetition of that you find your voice.
You start to connect with your tribe. Finding your voice will connect you with the people who need to hear your message. This is your tribe. These are your people.
Not an easy one but you get instant and direct feedback. It’s not about chasing the likes, but like any experiment pay attention to what part of your message, on which platform, lands with your tribe. when you start you don’t know who will connect with you. By starting and testing you find out.
Gain Clarity & become better at communicating. With more clarity from the process you are able to better communicate your ideas and connect with more people as a result.
You return to 1 and allow the process to help you grow in confidence. It’s a cycle.
Here’s the amazing things though. Not simply have I learnt a lot about the process and myself, this has also led to 2 new clients. The feedback from them both being that they discovered more about what I was about and that what I was saying in the videos connected with them. In a sea of people they could have chosen it was me going live that connected them with me.
So if I want to encourage you to do anything, it’s to do something that scares you, connects you with people and gives you an opportunity to learn about yourself and a new skill.
