Hey!
This is a quick write up on my very first Facebook live video.
I’m aiming to a bunch more Facebook lives in the near and the distant future, with the aim to grow my personal brand and gain more followers for myself (outside of the work I do within our company; Clarify Marketing).
I was putting the Facebook live OFF for months! Maybe close to a year.
I don’t think anyone enjoys being on camera for the first time! But it’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time now.
It’s just ticked over 13 years, since I’ve in the online business world. And it’s about 7 years since I’ve been able to earn enough money from my online businesses, to do it full time! (Without having to work a regular 9-5 in any capacity).
I can’t believe it’s been 13 years, but time flies as they say!
Going live on Facebook has been put off for a few different reasons..
- I don’t like being on camera. It’s not a comfortable walk in the park for me 🙂
- It’s a worry thinking about having something to say!
- Being concerned with trying to make it perfect, the background noise / background scenery.
But I realised that, all this stuff doesn’t really matter at the end of the day. If someone was to mention it in a comment, call you out on it or complain about it – they were obviously never going to be your customer anyway.
These type of people pick faults in any situation, just so they can stop themselves from actually having to do something.
If you are going to jump into the online business world, if you are going to be getting customers for another business, or maybe you’re in SEO, web design or whatever it is…
Facebook live is getting more and more popular of course.
Up until this transition I’m making, usually I’m working behind the scenes. I’m not usually front and centre of the company. But over the last 12 months I wanted to make this shift to to build my own personal brand for more consulting and coaching for businesses who want to grow online.
All of which Ive done before, but always behind the scenes and from recommendations to the next recommendation and so on.
Now here I am! I hope that you get something out of it, I know some important lessons you’ll need will be here… hopefully you find the missing piece/s you’re looking for sooner rather than later.
The aim for me is to do the first 30 Facebook lives in 30 days, that’s 1 a day. I want to get the first 30 out of the way, and then hopefully I will be more comfortable pressing that ‘GO LIVE’ button and talking to the camera and all of you also!
This is a write up of the first Facebook live I did!
Tomorrow I have a all day, online workshop to take some business owners through their strategy for online marketing. So depending on how I feel after that, I might just want to have some food and fall asleep… but if I have some extra energy and extra time I’ll jump online again and let you know how the workshop went.
If you want to hear more about that, and follow me as I share my stories and learnings with you, just go to my Facebook page HERE, like it and follow along.
The company I run is called Clarify Marketing, we’re an Australian based company. 90% of what we do is behind the scenes for bigger companies here in Australia. We do sales lead generation for our clients, this is marketing their products or services and getting the following from interested customers to pass along to their call centre:
- Name
- Phone Number
- Zip Code
But I need to put myself out into the world, to move towards the consulting and coaching area more.
Like I said, I’ve been doing this online business stuff now for over 7 years. And part time for over 13 years.
In my previous career I worked in the call centre industry. I worked for a company in Sydney, Australia – they ended up offering me a role to move to the Philippines! Because the company I was working for was moving it’s call centre operations offshore there.
(Which is the most common story these days in the call centre world).
So I said yes to that opportunity, and literally 10 days after getting that offer.. I was on a plane on my way to the Philippines.
But a funny thing thing happens when you offshore your job to the Philippines, you end up NOT having a job when you come back home!
Therefore as you can guess, when it was time to come back to Australia from the Philippines… I didn’t have a job for myself. I’d already been learning this online stuff for years. Every day after the office job I’d be at home learning more and more and starting to make my first few dollars online.
Most weekends too I’d be putting a lot of hours into having websites built and working on strategies to grow a online business.
Dabbling like this, never earned me enough to quote my 9-5 career and work on this full time.
But when I arrived back to Australia, I didn’t have a job. I was “laid off” or as we say in Australia “received a redundancy” pay out. So now I’m thinking… what do I do?
Do I go and find another call centre job in an industry that is ultimately offshoring to the Philippines and other parts of the world?
Or do I commit to the online world. and figure it out once for all…?
I chickened out at first, I got another job! I had a friend who was already working for himself in the online world and he was quick to call me a chicken for not having the guts to make the move!
The new company I got a job with, soon merged with another company that it took over. There was now two call centers that got merged into one. But I was the new guy in the room, and there was an existing call center manager that had been there for years.
There’s an expression in the HR industry.. it goes like this: “last in, first out.”
So… I got laid off again. For the 2nd time in 12 months.
This all happened at a time when my soon-to-be-wife and I were talking about getting married, saving up for the wedding. We had a home – a mortgage, so we were paying that off too. Plus all the general every day bills and expenses.
So this wasn’t the easiest period to get through, it got very stressful as you can probably imagine.
Big Opportunity
Now I’m faced with a big decision and a big opportunity. What do I want to do now?
Do I want to get YET another call center job in a new company, or do I want to try and make this online business stuff work? Do I want to dedicate MORE than just a night time and weekend chunk of my life to making it work?
I made the decision to let go of the corporate world (I can now say I’m very glad I made that decision).
My 9-5 corporate world turned into a 8am-9pm+ self education world, all about online business.
This was about 7 years ago from the time of writing this.
It wasn’t easy. No matter what some people might try and tell you and make you believe. If you’re on this journey I was, if you are trying to make money online and start your own business… I HEAR YOU!
I understand it’s not easy.
If you’re finding it easy, that’s fantastic! You’re one of the 0.1% of people who launch an idea and have it work right away. If this is you, tell me ALL about it in the comments section below – I’d love to hear all about it.
Industries Adjust and Evolve
About 7 years ago I started my solo self employed journey. About 12-18 months ago, I noticed that there was a lot in our party of the industry that was changing.
We still have clients that we work for, every day and every month, but besides working with clients, chasing them, and having them chase us to work out a deal.. I really want to work more closely with the right person on a more ongoing basis. Imagine an ongoing consultation service that lasts years.
But now my wife and I have our first baby, he is 5 months old at the time this first Facebook live went LIVE! I want to be at home a lot more, closer to home as much as possible.
I’ve been able to spend most of the first 5 of our babies life at home which has been priceless – and being here has made me want to be home even more, as much as possible.
So building and growing this ongoing consultation support is the shift that I have made.
If you to follow along the journey I’m on, be sure to LIKE my Facebook page, book mark this website and tune in once a week to see what I’ve been up to. Hear what I learned and what I’m sharing with you.
Any questions?
Just write your question below in the comments. I’ll reply soon.
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