EPISODE 16: The Social Media SUCKS Show - Snapchat Expert Mark Kaye

SPEAKER_00 0:01

What is happening, everybody? Welcome to the social media sucks show. I'm your host, Sebastian Roska. As always, hey welcome to the show. This week, my trusty co-host and guest, Mr. Mark Kay's in the house. Mark, what's happening? Hey Sebastian, hey hey, thanks for having me. Hey, thanks for uh for being on. I think you and I have met through live streaming. So that's really the unique part of um of this whole live streaming um uh uh world that is um merely what six months old?

SPEAKER_02 0:30

I mean, it's really the only way I meet anyone now. I don't like to talk to people in person. If you're not on my screen or this screen, I'm not gonna pay you any attention. So right.

SPEAKER_00 0:38

I agree with that. Yeah, I just somebody wrote me a letter the other day. I'm like, who are these people?

SPEAKER_02 0:43

Or the the IRS? Come on.

SPEAKER_00 0:45

Yeah. Those are love letters. Those are those are always so um, fresh out of the Periscope Summit. I um had some serious FOMO and not being able to make it up to the Big Apple for that. Tell us about the Periscope Summit a little bit last week.

SPEAKER_02 0:59

Periscope summit last week was phenomenal. And I say, you know, I've said this to everybody who's talked about it, and I've said this on my own streams. I host a lot of first-time events. For whatever reason, whenever there's a first event, they're always like, hey, come on out. And this was the best first event of its kind. Usually there's hiccups, usually there's mess ups, usually something goes drastically drastically wrong. This one was perfect from beginning to end. The crowd was phenomenal. They sold so many tickets. The speakers and the periscopers from all over the world that showed up, Euro Maestro, Alex Pettit, Alex Kahn, Tasman Lucia Khan, no relation to Alex Kahn. Uh, you know, Robert C. Stern was there. I know he's here too, so I like to throw his name out there. Um all of those people that showed up just, I mean, they made it such a great event. The weather was perfect, the venues were amazing, and uh, and Ryan and Kathy, who put it on, just did a phenomenal job from beginning to end. I you know, it's you know, usually they say, Oh, we're gonna get better every year. It's gonna be tough to top this one.

SPEAKER_00 1:57

Yeah, I agree. And I was mind-blown. The very fact that A, these platforms are like six months old, and B, they were able to put together an event and get the who's who of the Periscope World of Live Streaming World all in one place at one time. I mean, it really hats off to Ryan uh and Kathy. Um, you you stole my job, so I didn't get a chance to be the MC. But um, you know, so and it happens, Mark. Obviously, they went with the better-looking individual, you know.

SPEAKER_02 2:23

I I apologize profusely for that. I mean, you know, there are on maybe if you get out to San Francisco, uh, I know I I assume they're gonna do another one in New York, but um no, you here's the thing with the Periscope Summit, uh, you know, I looking back on it now, I really wish I'd paid attention to more of the keynotes because I feel like I would have gotten even more information, but I was too busy, like you said, on the side writing jokes for the next person coming up on stage. Um luckily a lot of people, yeah, there's catch.me, so I can go back and watch them all, which was fantastic.

SPEAKER_00 2:52

Sure. Yeah, I know it it at heart, and I that's uh I I do a lot of MC work as well, and I find that's the big I walk away and I'm like, dang it, I didn't get anything from that other than you know a bunch of green room conversation and you know, are always trying to, yeah. I I think as an as uh you know you see as an MC2, you're at the forefront, right? So conversations are a little bit easier because people approach you and they want to have conversations with you. And I always I'm always focused on engaging those conversations, especially now with with with social media being so crazy. But yeah, I know exactly how that is. I'm like, can I get a copy of the replays, please? That'd be great. So um you're you're a radio host. Is that is that is that your full-time gig?

SPEAKER_02 3:29

Yes, that's my full-time gig. I actually here's my here's my other microphone that's not you know USB. Uh, but I'm a radio host here in in Jacksonville, Florida. I know you're in Miami, so you should you know uh drive up sometime. Uh we'll go we'll go fishing or something that I don't know, people in Florida do. Yeah. But yeah, I have a radio show. I do uh TV uh work. I we've I own a TV station, so I do a segment segment there every day. And then with social media, with video, it just was the natural jumping off point. You know how it is. You know, I do I started really with Snapchat, and Snapchat's a lot like radio because it's only 10 seconds and it disappears when it's gone, supposedly. Uh and you know, you've got a really you've got a really allegedly, yeah. Although I have like two hard drives full of all my old Snapchat stories, so I don't know what they're talking about. Uh, but you know, it's just it's been a great way for me to um build my brand and continue my show when I'm off the air and uh and been so much fun. Like, and you know what, I've met so many great people and you.

SPEAKER_00 4:23

This is true. Well, it's great to meet you as well. So, so when when did this all start to click? Why did you go, wait a second, wait a second. We've got a traditional marketing platform here, radio. Um, and now we've got all these really neat tools to be able to connect with. Now, I I I've I've talked with a lot of local personalities, um, you know, especially down here in South Florida, not just in radio, but in television. In television, it's more like, hey, get over here. You need to get this Periscope thing done. You need to periscope before that five o'clock drop this afternoon. Go get them, right? With no formal training, they're just they're making us do it. We have to do it. And then you have um larger radio personalities down here. There's a show um that's been on for 20 plus years, um, um, Paul Castanovo and young Ron Brewer. And uh I I met Paul uh a few years back and it was great because I grew up listening to the show, and the guys are just just it's just good radio, right? And um, of course, they got picked up with uh iHeart over the past couple of years, and they've been on every South Florida station, the typical route that a successful show takes. And I said, you know, and Paul Paul's in his, I don't know, his 50s probably, and he said, Yeah, I'm gonna get this Twitter thing down and this whole Facebook thing down. But now, three years, uh, fast forward three years, it's such an integral part of the show, especially being on a global platform like iHeartRadio. But now they're embracing it. So I'm sure you do it on a daily basis as well. It's hey, for more information on that story, make sure you go to our Facebook page and check that out. And then, you know, listener engagement, which can get a little crazy, I'm sure, and can also um there can be an upside, you know, with the local um appearances and things of that nature, being able to connect with people. And then of course, the at the end of the day, the job, you know, the goal is to sell is to sell spots and to spell and to sell sponsorships, you know, for the station, for the show. So as and the best way to be able to do that is have people connecting with the the the the human aspect of it. So, so how is this all how how is it all really um, you know, how's it all changed um for you? And how long have you been in the radio space, by the way?

SPEAKER_02 6:27

Well, yeah, I I've been in radio for like two decades. The my morning show, uh, which is more of an entertainment-based music kind of show that people, you know, we do the silly crank calls and we interview celebrities and we give away cash and tickets and stuff. That one we use a lot of Facebook, we use a lot of Twitter. Um, and but recently, but I have a talk show on Sundays, which is straight talk, it's two hours, and that's nationally syndicated. And I've really been, I've I've had more freedom to experiment in that in that uh aspect with the social media. And that's great for a couple of reasons. Number one, my Snapchat has been a huge source of um of content for me. And you know, usually people are saying, hey, how do we get our radio or TV and spread it out virally using these other sources? I flipped it around. I was like, I need content. I'm gonna use my Snapchat and my Facebook and my Twitter and my Periscope to find content to put back on the air. Uh when I started my talk show, it was Sunday night at seven o'clock, and nobody listens to the radio Sunday night at seven o'clock. So I had no I had no interaction for the pre the first couple weeks.

SPEAKER_00 7:26

Well, there are some people, but I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 7:29

Maybe five, but they weren't calling for whatever reason. So I got on Snapchat and I said, hey, here's what I'm talking about. Send me a snap. And I would get these cool little 10-second pieces of audio that I would then record into my uh my computer and play out on the air. And then I was basically having conversations with my my Snapchat audience on the radio, which then inspired people to call. So it was a great way for me to kind of reverse engineer a radio show using the social media. Now, Periscope has been even better. I mean, I I plugged in my phone, my radio station to my phone, just you know, you can get a little quarter inch fly, just plug it in the bottom. And what I would do is I would start broadcasting my radio show on Periscope, and all of a sudden I got callers from all over the country. And you know, my poor, my call screen is sitting there, and he's like, There's a call from Las Vegas. When did you add Las Vegas? I'm like, we're not in Las Vegas. And I answered the phone, the guy said, Hey, I'm listening on uh, I'm watching on Periscope. I thought I'd call in. I wanted to uh add to the conversation. So, you know, there's a lot of different ways you can you can integrate uh the radio, it's all basically the same thing. Media is media, it's just your delivery service.

SPEAKER_00 8:31

Whether So when when did you how and how did you build your um your following on Snapchat?

SPEAKER_02 8:38

Snapchat was really kind of, I mean, I I got on Snapchat because I found out people were making money with Snapchat. The first time I got Snapchat, I'm sure a lot of I did what a lot of people did. It was it was brand new. I downloaded it, I played around with it for two seconds, and I said, Well, this is stupid, I don't understand it. So I deleted it. And then about six or seven months later, I read an article in Time magazine about these three dudes in New York who were running around doing Snapchat stories and making $100,000 a week. So I thought, well, this is a good time to download Snapchat again. And I downloaded Snapchat and I got back into it and I reached out to some of these guys, and you know, that I did on Snapchat what everyone does on Snapchat, because you can draw on your picture. So for whatever reason, I thought all of a sudden, oh, I'm gonna do these cool drawings that everyone's gonna love. Totally forgot that I suck at art. And my first few Snapchat drawings were just horrible. Nobody really followed me. So I reverted. I said, What am I good at? I said, All right, well, I'm I I host a talk show, I'm just gonna do that. And that's when I started talking snap, which was the first and only, I believe, still Snapchat talk show. Uh, I started interviewing all the famous Snapchatters. They started sharing my content with their audience, my name with their audience, and that collaboration is how I really exploded. So between um all the Snapchat stars and the Vine stars, I interviewed, you know, Curtis Lapore and Logan Paul and Amanda Cerny. Um, I interviewed uh Kevin Jonas, who's huge on Snapchat now, he reached out to me. I got a couple of other musicians coming through the radio station. I did Snapchat collaborations with them. So by seeking out people that have a big audience, same thing with Blab, same thing with Periscope. I mean, if you if you can get into uh an Alex Pettit uh dual screen interview format, then you're gonna get a lot of followers. You're gonna grow a pretty big following. And then the goal is after that just to keep giving them content that they're gonna enjoy, that they're gonna like, that they're gonna talk about, and that they're gonna share. Uh, it's all it's all collaborative. It's who do you know? Who can you add content and value to, and you know, and in return, you know, the the followers will follow you as well.

SPEAKER_00 10:33

So let's talk about these guys that are running around New York City um trying to, I you're not trying to, doing it, yeah, making a hundred grand for Snapchat starts because I am a new having been in the social media space and written a book on social media, yeah, I am a new Snapchatter. So I don't know if that's uh I don't know if I'm late to the game. I've just I have a 14-year-old that absolutely loves the platform and loves Facebook. But uh, as far as Snapchat is concerned, other than you're you're essentially taking snaps of your entire day that in turn tell a story, and then you're also communicating with the people that are following you and that you're following. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_02 11:14

Yeah, that's right. Though Snapchat works two ways. And you know, I wrote a I wrote a blog post about this that went viral, but basically with Snapchat, you can do one of two things. You can chat, meaning I can send right now, I think. Oh, right, yeah, I'm gonna do that too. Uh with Snapchat, it works two ways. Basically, I could send you a snap, and that snap is seen just by you and it's from me. Or I could post it on my story, and anyone who follows me can watch it. Now, the really successful Snapchat are those that do both. You want to post on your story and you want to respond to your snaps. Some people just use it as a broadcasting tool, like you said, and they just post on their story over.

SPEAKER_00 11:49

How do you respond to your how do how does one respond to their snaps? Is that through a through the like the text messaging option?

SPEAKER_02 11:55

Yeah, here you here's my phone, just so you can take a look at it. There's a couple people. The blue boxes are just text messages, but the red box means that's an image. This guy, Georgio Copter, is one of the he's one of the top Snapchatters in Beirut. I he's a he's a genius. Look at this, I'll show you. This is what he does on Snapchat. He creates these monsters. So he said that, he said that to me with the little, I can't even read it this way, when you realize it's still Tuesday. So now if I want to respond to him, I can just uh I can just tap here and I can say, you know, I here I am, and I can say, wow, Giorgio, great snap. I was just uh I was just with you on Sebastian Rusk's show, the social media sucks show. Congrats. Say hi. Yo! And now I'll send that directly to him so he'll get that message. Uh, but if you if I put that on my story, anyone would have um access to it. And that's where I built my talk show. I put it on my story. So when I do my talk show.

SPEAKER_00 12:50

My thing is how do I don't know how many people are following me, and I don't know how to find more followers unless I add my entire phone address book, which I'm a little apprehensive to do.

SPEAKER_02 12:59

Yeah, the best and worst thing about Snapchat is you never know how many people are actually following you. Now, this is good if you're selling advertising because advertisers don't really know how many people are following you either. They're just kind of going by what they've heard. Uh the bad news is uh if you're trying to build, you know, if you know you have a huge audience, you can't really prove it to anyone except by the view count and whatnot. But it Snapchat makes it really difficult to be discovered. I mean, there's no button like on Twitter where you just follow someone or on Blab where you just follow. Oh, that's a good, that's a good one. Uh what you have to do is you have to you have to figure out what someone's Snapchat name is, then you have to go to the Snapchat, open it up, you have to type it in, which is unheard of. You have to hit the little plus button. If somebody really wants to, if somebody follows you on Snapchat, it's because they really, really, really want to follow you on Snapchat. And that really makes them valuable. That makes them a valuable asset because they're, I mean, they're a fan. They're not just a casual observer. So you know that a view on Snapchat is worth, I would say, 15 or 20 uh viewers on Twitter or on Facebook.

SPEAKER_00 14:01

Wow. So I need to figure out getting a little bit more, other than just, you know, somebody said um, you know, it's the it's the my friend Anna Hendrix said, you know, I would um I, you know, I wouldn't post a picture without um my with my glasses on and no makeup first thing in the morning everywhere else, but I would do it on Snapchat. I love the raw, authentic spur of the moment, real time. It's happening right now, it's going down right now type deal.

SPEAKER_02 14:25

Oh, yeah, it's uh it's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 14:27

So, so I added, I'm gonna add this to my story, but I don't think I'm following you on Snapchat, so I wouldn't be able to tag you. Let's see, maybe I am.

SPEAKER_02 14:35

Well, you can't really tag anyway, but what you can do is, for example, is your Snapchat Sebastian Rusk? It's uh Seb Rusk, S-E B R-U-S-K. Seb Rusk. All right, so here's what I'll do. So I can go now to uh uh add friends and add by username as S E B, right? R-U-U-S-K. Okay. Oh, well, if I didn't have fat fingers, I'd be able to type it properly. Uh Seb R-U-S-K. All right, so there you are. I've now added you. And so now we're friends, which is cool, right? So now if I go to my um if I go to my uh stories, if I go to where you know my recent updates, you should pop up there because you've recently updated and I can view what you just posted. Uh if you friend me, you could view what I just post. And that's kind of what happens. You need to get as many people as you can to add you so they can view your stories.

SPEAKER_00 15:27

Right. So I'm I'm I'm about to add it to my script and have all these people that I'm following underneath, but I and I have the option to choose their name. If don't they aren't they notified anyway that I have added to my story? So what's the purpose of them being added there?

SPEAKER_02 15:40

They don't get a notification. Yeah, they don't get a direct notification. What happens is, see, here's a list of all the people who have recently updated. The most recent is on top. So Daniel Gayer, there's a name for you. He's the most recent update. And if I tap on this, I can watch his story. Hopefully he's not saying anything. Let's go, boy. So that's that's that. Now that I've watched it, it's going to uh it's gonna, well, there's a couple of see, he's got a couple that I can scroll through here, and now he's gonna disappear because I've watched all of his recent updates. If I refresh, the next person who's just updated is going to be on my recent update and I can watch theirs. Now I have a few thousand people on here, so if I start scrolling, it takes it's a little buggy at times, but if I start scrolling, you're gonna see there's hundreds and hundreds of updates that I could sit here and waste hours of my day watching. And every time I watch it, they're notified that I've watched it. But see, here's all the stories of the people that I follow. Um, uh but they don't get a specific message or or pop-up.

SPEAKER_00 16:38

Unless I chose their name specifically, right? Correct. Correct. Got it. All right. Well, that was a little Snapchat 101 here. Yeah, a little lesson for you. Yeah. Yeah, we got you know, I even changed the topic to Snapchat, just and I think we might chat with it for uh a little bit longer. We've got um, we've had uh we're we're breaking records here with seven people live in our room right now, just in case you were wondering. We'll cross for a quick station identification. My name is Sebastian Rusk, and I am the host of this show called the Social Media Suck Show. And this is my trusty co-host and guest this week, Mark Kay. Am I pointing the right way? Maybe I should point this way. I don't know. I can never get that right either. Mark's a radio host and also a uh a big Snapchatter, big Snapchatter, big adapter to this live streaming game. In fact, Mark and I met on live streaming, and that's how we ended up here today today. So I just wanted to find out radio and social media and how it all ties together, but that is truly profound. The fact that you have figured out a way to set to, you know, I love that quote that says, go um if you want to attract the masses, um go to where the masses are and then direct them to where you want them to be. And that's exactly what you've done because you're like, hey, I've got a market that's listening to me right here, but I've also got a big worldwide market here through Snapchat and be able to. So let's let's let's talk, let's let's segue real quick while we're talking about what you're utilizing Snapchat and your radio show for. You said you were the first to have a talk show on Periscope. So you're you're literally plugging a mic into your phone, hitting start broadcast, and then you're literally clicking the board and starting your radio show.

SPEAKER_02 18:15

Yeah, but with uh with Periscope, and my talk show on Snapchat is the is lives on Snapchat. With Periscope, what I do is when I do my show, the Mark K show, I have a radio studio. And it, you know, the the thing I found was I would just start periscoping my show. Problem with that is people could hear me, but when I take phone calls, because of the way the radio station works, because you have headphones, they couldn't hear the phone calls. So uh, you know, after a few minutes, I realized people were complaining we can't hear what's going on. I also play a lot of audio clips. You know, what's the thing Donald Trump said that got everyone ticked off? Or what are the Kim, you know, what's Kim Kardashian saying? Lots of audio clips that, again, they couldn't hear. So I went on Amazon and I bought all this equipment and I got iRiggs and I got cables and everything else. And I figured out a way to run the entire radio board, the signal with everything mixed together into my phone. And I simply put it on my Archon mount and I would then hit hit start broadcast. But instead of people hearing me live, they would hear the radio. So I, you know, and people were freaked out for a minute. They're like, I hear radio commercials, what's going on? Then, of course, when I started talking, they realized they're hearing my show. Then when I go to a phone call or play a segment on that's been prerecorded or is, you know, an audio clip, they're hearing that as well. So now they're watching me do my show and they're hearing what radio listeners hear, which is what really opened it up because then I start giving out the phone number. I start telling people, hey, if you want to get in on this, 855-297-9696. And I forgot that Periscope people can call too. And that's exactly what they started doing. In fact, Euro Maestro would be watching me on Periscope. He called in a couple times from Paris. I've had him on my radio show uh talking about the um the uh the uh gentleman in the the uh with the uh United States military men who uh thwarted the train shooting in Paris. He talked about the bridge of locks when that came down. And it was like, you know, two or three o'clock in the morning when I was on the radio here, but he just called up the number and I put him on the air, and it was all through Periscope. So if you have, I mean, I'm in four markets right now on Sunday night. I'm in Orlando, Jacksonville, Tulson, Dayton. But when I plug in my phone, I'm international and I get calls from Michigan, from Canada, from Texas, from all over the place. So it's really, I mean, it's a really incredible way. It gives you a global reach automatically, anybody.

SPEAKER_00 20:30

And how hard was that that that process to set up, that technical process of figuring out you can plug this into the radio station?

SPEAKER_02 20:37

It was pretty easy. I don't have it here. I got there's a mixer here that you can use. There's something called an iRig, which uh they're pretty popular. It's a way to plug like an XLR cable or a microphone into your iPhone. This is the bigger version, this is the dual mixer. Um, it's like $99. But basically, there's a smaller version that works just as well. And it it creates the the one end has a plug, an eighth-inch plug that you can plug right into here, right into your port on your phone. And once you've plugged that in, whatever you plug the other end into will be broadcast. Now, the other end is high-tech, it's it's like this. And you plug this right into the board, all of a sudden, you know, I'm mixing and blending on my radio station uh, you know, processing unit, and it's going right into the phone. And it's incredible. Bands have started doing that, you can get the live performance, but instead of just you know how like whenever you watch somebody at a concert, you can kind of hear the music, it's kind of iffy. But now what they can do is they can plug their mixing board right into their phone, you're getting the video and you're getting the audio quality, the recording digital quality of the audio as if you're listening to a CD. So I mean it's really phenomenal.

SPEAKER_00 21:43

Concerts, I think, because you're gonna have GoPros flying all over the place with drones that are actually connected to their media board that's being live. He's like, You want to go to the you can go to the actual show for a hundred bucks or for twenty four ninety-five, you can sit on your couch with a cold beer and watch it. High definition and uh Chromecast or Apple TV will allow you to patch it right into your surround sound and your television.

SPEAKER_02 22:06

Oh, yeah. I mean, well, you know, you know, Brian fans, though. I know you guys are good friends. We did uh we got invited to speak in Dallas. He went to go speak in Dallas. They wanted me to come speak in Dallas, but he suggested that instead of doing that, we should just connect via blab. Now, all this tells me is he got a free trip to Dallas and I didn't. But basically, it I mean, it was the same exact thing. Now think about these presentations. He's in Dallas, they've got a big screen. I come in via blab, and now I'm doing a presentation in Dallas, but I don't have to get on a plane, I don't have to miss work, I don't have to be away from my family. The three, four hundred people that were there in Dallas are getting the same information. Really, I was sitting in my underwear the whole time, which was great. Uh, and it's it's really actually in my underwear right now. Oh, are you really? Oh, good. Awesome. Uh so I mean, it's it's changing the face of every kind of communication. The live uh webinars, you know, or the um, you know, live seminar business, it's it's thriving, but I think a lot of people are gonna see this as not if not a replacement, but a good addition. And like you said, the staffing entrepreneurs are gonna say, you can come to my seminar. It's a two-day event, it's $1,900 live plus hotel, or for half that, just watch at home.

SPEAKER_00 23:14

Sure. Well, I think there's such a large, and of course, Mike Steltzer and his team have been such um so instrumental in taking an online conference, taking it offline, and then adding the online. Not in it, he took his online social media summit online, took it offline and added back the online while still in the offline. I mean, he's been able to to the tune of 2,000 plus people, however many people show up for social media marketing world. But being able to, you know, you're catering to every audience. Not everybody can afford the cost of the event and the cost of travel, but some can afford the ability to sit in their living room, be able to watch and consume similar content on here. But I think that's the route. I and I think you're right. I don't think we're ever going to replace um the in-person, real life conference attendee experience. Um, you and I'd be out of a job. Yeah. Or actually, maybe not. Maybe we'd just be starting a job and be traveling less, right?

SPEAKER_02 24:08

Maybe that's it. You know, and Periscope, someone see, I mean, that's the key. Every time you get somebody with a with a common passion, you there yeah, Periscope, we all knew each other, but we got there and it was just so exciting to see these people in person. So there's always going to be that element. But this is just you know an additional factor that whatever you do, it makes it, it just opens it up to the world. Amanda Oleander is a great example of that. She was a the they're calling her the very first Periscope star. For those of you that don't know, she's an artist in LA. I mean, she was she was nobody knew her until Periscope. Nobody knew her. Three weeks into Periscope, she was the number one biggest celebrity, and her art was flying out the door. She transformed her life. She started getting orders from Abu Dhabi in Australia, people she'd never met, but they watched her on Periscope. They saw her paint live, and all of a sudden, I mean, she's she's becoming a professional artist, which is what she always wanted to do. So it's really exciting stuff.

SPEAKER_00 25:04

Yeah, I don't think there's ever been a social platform that has helped you grow an organic following faster than Periscope. Yeah. I just I haven't seen it. I mean, Vincenzo Landino talks that, you know, he's had a lot of good success, especially with brand activations, but as well as hopping on with Joel Cobb and doing a couple different shows, and you know, he wins the consistency um award, that's for sure, but also has been able to convert it um into business by working with large brands. But he said it's been like astronomical. I mean, like something over like well over 2,000 new followers within a 30-day period just by being consistent.

SPEAKER_02 25:39

Yeah, the one thing I lucked out on with Periscope, and I mean this was funny. I was at a Snapchat conference in Orlando. I was getting ready to talk to 200 people about Snapchat, and that was March 26th. That morning is when Periscope landed. So 7 a.m. I'm supposed to be preparing for a huge Snapchat conference. I download Periscope and I spend the whole day on Periscope. And I was at a hotel, that's when I did my first underwater Periscope, like 15 minutes after I downloaded it. I was trying to figure it out, I was getting hearts, you know. I was, I like we talked about the underwear. I accidentally found out that you screen capped the first image because I was pointing my phone down when I started. I was in my boxers, thank God. But you know, learning all about it that first day, then I had to walk in and switch gears and talk about Snapchat all of a sudden. But because I was on it so early, I was on that most love list for a long, long time. And that's, I mean, being an early adapter, that was the only reason I got so many followers. Because when you download the app, you have no idea who to follow. But Periscope gives you a list. Oh, here's some people. So people just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And I was able to get new followers like you know every single day in my in my sleep, basically.

SPEAKER_00 26:45

Uh now it's a little bit periscoping right now. I just started the Periscope.

SPEAKER_02 26:48

So oh hi, what's up, everybody? Tap for hearts.

SPEAKER_00 26:51

So uh there's no one there.

SPEAKER_02 26:53

Oh, I feel bad. Maybe I should maybe I should go watch us.

SPEAKER_00 26:56

Wait, wait, wait, wait, we have one, we have we have one person. It's always fun who actually jumps in, who cusses you out, you know, all that fun stuff.

SPEAKER_02 27:03

Welcome. But uh, but no, I mean it is a great way to build a following, and I think because they see Grant Cardone is a great example. I the I the only reason I met Grant Cardone is because I popped into one of his Periscopes and he was bashing the media. And I had no idea what he was talking about. All I heard was like I literally turned it on. I hear Grant Cardone looking at his phone, going, You can't trust radio people, you can't trust the media. So all of a sudden I'm on there going, whoa, whoa, whoa, why why are we bashing the media? What's happening? So he and I got into it on Periscope, but then I started watching him more. I realized, you know, his whole shtick and what he's doing. And I've actually had him on my show twice. So when we finally met at Periscope, again, he's in Miami, all these people in Florida that I have to go to New York to finally meet. But um, but you know, and he was a great guy, but he's been able to his brand. I I sat one day watching Grant Cardone try to make a deal for like a $10 million apartment building, and it was the most fascinating thing because he's in a room with three guys, they're on a phone talking to three other guys, and the no one wanted to make a deal first or throw out a number. And there's 500 people watching them basically not talk, but it was riveting and tense, and you know, and when they finally got the deal done, or when they finally got to the point where somebody hung up the phone or had to go check with the bank, I don't know. It was it was just an amazing experience to really live in someone's world that way. And it, you know, it taught me a lot about negotiating and it taught me a lot about what I do. So I think it I think it's really helpful.

SPEAKER_00 28:30

Yeah, I was watching him yesterday. He's in Vegas at uh he spoke at uh a dealer dealer conference. Yeah, and uh with a bunch of car dealers and uh you know, right up his lane. And from my I didn't know that he was previously in the car business way back when, once upon a time. And he said, listen, you know, I've got one of my team members right over there in the front row with my smartphone. We are streaming live on Facebook, Facebook right now. Hey Jared, how many people do we have in the room? 1100. I have 1,100 people in a room that I know for a fact are there and listening to every single word that I'm talking about right now. And I control that conversation. In fact, we're at a car dealer uh convention right now. So let's just see who needs a car. Let's just ask them who needs a new car, I'll make your first payment. And I I'm not kidding you. There was at least five or six people that said, Hey, I'm in the market for a new car, Uncle Grant, you'll make my first payment. That sure is nice. And Grant said, I could take every single one of those comments right there and I could distribute them to one of you here that own a dealership to sell them a car with me making the first payment. Yeah so um I don't know if I sound like Ross Perot or um, it was good. Grant Cardone.

SPEAKER_02 29:39

It was like, yeah, it was like Ross Cardone. It was good. I liked it.

SPEAKER_00 29:42

It was it was you want to call your sales trainer by the name? Well, I'm Grant and you're the boss, right? Yeah. That was there. We go.

SPEAKER_02 29:48

I was watching he's a funny guy to watch. I was watching him on the phone because he's still now what he does is he doesn't sell cars, but he has a program that he sells to dealers and it it's a training program for their salespeople. So I'm on there the other day and he's on the phone with some sales guy, and the guy's like, I don't know if I can make this commitment. I mean, you're talking about $1,500 uh, you know, grant, and he stops me, he cuts him off, he goes, No, I'm talking about $40,000. It's $1,500 this month for two years. You got to be with me for $40,000. If you're not, I'm hanging up the phone right now. And I'm like, how is this working? But all of a sudden the guy's like, I right, of course. I'm sorry. No, I'm with you, I'm with you. And he like faxed over the contract. And I was like, Oh my god, I just watched somebody make $40,000 live on Periscope.

SPEAKER_00 30:30

Right.

SPEAKER_02 30:30

And I mean, it's amazing, it's great.

SPEAKER_00 30:33

Well, I think that I mean, I and again, I wrestle with that. I was just on um Ian Cleary had um Kim Gars on, and then Fanzo jumped in. So I figured right before the show, um, jump in a room with those guys is great PR. So uh jumped in real quick, and I as I would call it, I randomly just barged into their blab. Um no, I did have some productive things to add to the conversation, but I I I I I said um hey uh thank thank thanks for sharing the sharing the periscope here. Look, squirrel. Um Kim Kim has really um Kim has really been able to put this live stream game in the chokehold, more specifically the uh sales aspect of it because she is a she exemplifies jab jab jab right hook in that she knows how to make an introduction, educate, motivate, differentiate, provide value, and then just drop a link and let people do whatever they're gonna go do. Not buy my product, buy my course, buy this. Here's a link if you like more information about live streaming of my course here and being able to get them in. She said most of the time when I do giveaways, they end up converting to sales. So I'm giving something away and it converts to sales. I saw I sold uh tickets to her iBoom event in Chicago uh last week. She said, all through uh live streaming and being able to do that. And I I said I wrestle with the fact being a true grit born, it's in my blood salesman, right? I just I just it's I just know that I was born to do it. You can't really sell anymore. You've got to provide that value, you've got to engage with your community. So I wrestle with the fact of can you have the Uncle Grant Cardone mentality of lift up your skirt, grab your balls, and sound off like you got a pair and close the deal, or is it providing value? I I wrestle with that back and forth. What what are your thoughts in 2015? Because I don't, you know, hashtag don't pitch me, bro.

SPEAKER_02 32:24

Yeah, I'll tell you the first of all, if I if there's reincarnation, I want to come back as Kim Garst because she's amazing. She's like unassuming, perfect, does everything right. Her Facebook is She uses the word tush. Oh, yeah, Tush. Her Facebook in the Tush. It's a thing of beauty. If you look at her Facebook post, if you look at her Twitter, everything is meticulous and she makes it look effortless. I was watching her Periscope, she has a Periscope product, and I was watching her Perry School, hashtag Perischchool, which I wish I'd thought of first. Uh and you know, we're sitting there because I've done Periscope training. You know, I have a Periscope course of my own, so I'm watching her and I'm like, how is she doing it? And she says this amazing thing. She says, because she has a free giveaway, like you mentioned, and then she has her course. And she says, uh, you know, for a lot of you, I know you're not ready for my course. I know you're not ready. I know you're not there. You're probably not ready for that. And it could sound, it could sound condescending, but the first thing I'm thinking in my head is who the hell are you to tell me I'm not I'm ready for your course? Watch, click, you know, don't tell me I'm not ready for your course. Right. And again, she says it in this gentle way, like, I, you know, you're not, you may not be ready for my full course. So let me just explain a couple things here for you. But, you know, when you're ready, we'll talk. And that makes people lunge. I mean, that, yes, I'm ready. I'm not a nobody. I'm smart enough to handle this. So she makes sales that way. Grant Cardone, I think he does the opposite. He shows you, because what he's selling to you is the Grant Cardone sales system. So you watch him sell on Periscope and you're thinking, man, I want to sell my products like that. I want to sell my stuff like that. So you go to his website and buy how to sell like Grant Cardone or, you know, how to convert, how to close on the phone, all that stuff. It's I want to be like that person or I want to do what that person's doing.

SPEAKER_00 34:09

Right. Now you're exactly, you know, I didn't even look at it like that. And I said, I I asked, well, Kim's answer was, I said, you know, how do you avoid the don't pitch me, bro? And she says, I just don't pitch anybody. I say, my name's Kim Garcer. I wrote a board book. Yeah, I have a agency. We're working brands. Here's what we do, here's a link. And the rest just starts to take care of itself because of the fact that she's not pitching. And I've seemed to find that now that that I always like to say, I don't need to tell you that I wrote a book called Social Media Sucks. If you don't know what you're doing, it's available where books are sold. I don't need to say that, even though it is my show. Um just because of the fact that if you like my bow tie and the content I'm providing and you like the guests that I have on my show, you're going to gravitate towards it because I've made an emotional connection with you by being able to provide value to you, build a community around you. And it's not hard to figure out what I do or where to find me or message me, et cetera. And I think that's a tough adjustment for people to make because when brands see, you know, a platform like Facebook, let me just get on there and shove my message down consumers' throat.

SPEAKER_02 35:09

Well, the thing, yeah, you're absolutely right. You can't do that at all. And the the great thing about Blab, uh, you know, I have a I have something that I started recently because of Periscope. Everyone was writing me on Periscope saying, how do I do this? How do I do that? And I had a list, I have a VIP list, free list, free tips. But I said, you know, I'm gonna go more in depth. I'm gonna start a Facebook group, I'm gonna start an email because the big problem people had was I don't know when new things come out. I don't know when Blab comes out, for example. How do I jump on that? How do I use it in business? Yeah, it's great that it's here, but like you just said, how do I sell with it? How do I promote with it? How do I build an audience? So I developed my own thing. It's called Social Pro Report. And I started to sell it, which worked, which was awful. I would get on there and say, hey, get social pro report. It's monthly, I'll keep you informed, yada yada. But then what I started doing was I just started going on blab and answering questions. And I said, Hey, look, I've got 30 minutes. You tell me about your social media marketing, you tell me about your problems, you tell me what you don't understand. Like you and I just did with Snapchat. All right, you figured out Snapchat. Now, how do you use it to grow your business? How do you use it to how do you put the social media sucks show on Snapchat? We could sit down and talk about that for 30 minutes. And I did one blab with a woman. She popped in. I was just like, for 30 minutes, I'll give you what I call it like a social media breakthrough. So for 30 minutes, I did that with her and I suggested how to use Periscope, how to use Blab. I suggested she start an email list and I turned it off and I went back to my desk and I had four people sign up for Social Pro Report. And I thought, this is, I mean, this is great. It was the most success I'd ever had. So now periodically, what I'll do is I'll get on Periscope or I'll get on Blab and I'll just start asking, you know, answering questions, and people find it out and they find Social Pro Report, and you know, they come in and they say, This is great. I want more of this. I want to sit down with you and I want to talk for 30 minutes on the phone. Or, you know, we have a Facebook group. I want to get in the Facebook group. I want to be able to have access to that information at any time. And that's exactly what you have to do.

SPEAKER_00 37:02

So let's talk about the social programs.

SPEAKER_02 37:04

It's so funny. It started off as a newsletter. Basically, what happened was I realized there's a lot of new information coming out, and and blab and Periscope, people still don't know about it. I mean, 10 million users is nothing. Blab has even fewer than that. Every day, people are still, like you just said, getting on Snapchat. So I know all the stuff that's going on in the social media world and I'm answering questions. But the one question I got was, do I need to be on this? And if so, how do what do I do with it? And I started an email where I would find real life examples and I would send it out. Then people are like, Can we have a Facebook group? So I started the Facebook group. Well, the email was too slow. Facebook really became the big number one way for people to connect. So in the Facebook group, I will put videos up there, I'll put uh columns up there, articles that I find. I have all these Snapchat stars and Paris, Brian Fanzos in there, uh, Sean Doris from Snapchat, a good friend of mine, and they're answering questions. So if you, for example, had a question about Blab or Periscope or anything else, you go to the Facebook group, I'm gonna answer it, someone else is gonna answer it. Uh, I also started offering a 30-minute, like I said, the the thing I was doing on Blab, the one-on-one VIP breakthrough. I would sit down and I would offer a 30-minute session with everyone who joined, and that was free. And I made some really amazing friends and learned a lot myself. Uh Adrienne Dyer, who's on Periscope, we met because she signed up and I sat down and talked to her with 30 for 30 minutes about Periscope. And she's, you know, she's great. She's connecting with um folks that have eating disorders that are that are bulimic and anorexic. And she said Periscope is, I feel a way that I can build that community. So I gave her some tips uh and some tricks. The one thing I recommend to anybody, whether you want to sit down and talk with me for 30 minutes or subscribe or anything, the one thing you need to do is take your viewership offline to some kind of list uh because it's great not just for keeping in touch and selling, but also for promoting future Blabs, future Periscopes. Periscope doesn't have the function that Blab has or that Meerkat has where you can uh pre-promote. You know, you see you, Sebastian. I think you started this one what last week sometime you started promoting this. Uh and you can do that on Meerkat. On Periscope, you can't. But if you can capture your Periscope viewers on an A Weber list or uh you know a MailChimp, you can schedule it yourself and you can write them an email and say, hey, my Periscope starting in 15 minutes. Get to a quiet place, you're gonna want to watch this. You know, my blab is about to start. Make sure you go subscribe. And and ever since I started doing that, and I know Kim does that as well, I know I think Fanzo does it, but ever since I've started you know doing that, I see much more interaction in my blab and in my Periscope. And it's more, and that's important because then you get featured in the top spot and you get tire kickers and you get passers by who jump in, and then all of a sudden I mean, because what's a blab without a tire kicker, right? So uh it's just another great way to build that audience. So that you know, that's my one tip. If you're gonna take something away from this, start a list and get people on that list so that you can communicate them with them when they're off of blab.

SPEAKER_00 40:00

And speaking of that list, so let's just say I'm a novice, but um, I know a lot about underwater basket weaving, and I really want to start a blab about underwater basket weaving. And I know that I can probably start a blog or just a small website, but I need to be able to capture those emails. I think I got the whole Periscope and Blab thing figured out. Um, now I'm gonna launch my blab show. I'm gonna provide a link, but how am I able to collect email addresses when I provide that link? How do all-I'm glad you asked?

SPEAKER_02 40:28

That's great. If you go to AWeber uh or MailChimp or one shopping cart or any other, it's called an autoresponder. And basically what that is, is that's a place where you can go and you fill out, you've seen it, you know, get my free report, just fill out your name and email address. Uh Kim Garf's has a thousand of them. Um, I have one for Periscope, which I started, which has thousands of people on it. And this was just free. This was what happened with Periscope was you know, the comments go by. And before I'd started doing my scope mobs and everything else, I was a little Alex Pettit. I would answer questions, I would teach people how to use Periscope, but the questions would go so fast I couldn't keep up with them. So I started a Periscope list on A Weber, and I told people, look, go here, join my list, and I would immediately send them out a little welcome email. You can set up as many emails as you want.

SPEAKER_00 41:14

Uh you run everything through A Weber then, and then you're just putting the form on your website. Is that right?

SPEAKER_02 41:19

No, on Periscope, here's what I do. I go, all right. In fact, this is the two most important things you can have if you do live streaming are note cards and a uh Sharpie of some kind. Because what I would do is I would take a Sharpie and I would take a note card and I would hold it up and I would say, look, join my VIP Periscope list. It's free. You can email me here, screen cap this, screen cap it right now. And people would screen cap it. And then after the broadcast, I would see I would get 10, 12, 13 new followers. And this is great because again, this one, my main Periscope list is totally free. And I would send a PDF with a tap for hearts sign that they could hold up. I have it in the back of my studio. People loved it. Uh, you know, my archon mounts that I have. I would send them an Amazon link to the Archon mount. And I would say, great, if you're serious about Periscoping, you need this Archon mount. And that is an affiliate link, so I get a little bit of change back from Amazon. And I, you know, I've made a couple hundred dollars selling, uh, selling Archon mounts and selling battery packs and these lenses that everyone wanted, you know, just through that list. But but these are the two most valuable tools when you're when you're live streaming streaming. I've made thousands of dollars with my social pro report. When I started that, you know, I just sat down, I was in the middle of something, and someone goes, What's the address? And I go, Oh, it's easy. Let me just show you. And I would type it, I would write down socialproreport.com and I would hold it on it. Sometimes I put on my forehead. I said, This is the most valuable real estate I have because it's so big. And I would I would do this, and then I would get off my blab, and all of a sudden I've got you know a handful of new subscribers. And I'm thinking to myself, holy cow, this is great. Who needs a website? You need some note cards and a pen. Because on Periscope, you can't type in a link. On Blab you can, but on Periscope, you can't. On Meerkat, you can't. Oh, I think you can now at the end. But live streaming is great. Uh, and and if people do this, if they really take the time to screen cap or make a note of it, then um, you know, they'll they'll go and they'll and they'll take part in whatever it is that you're offering.

SPEAKER_00 43:19

So now, of course, you don't you don't have to worry about that on blab because you can just type a link in, but I think the note card still could be useful. You're like, listen, I'm dropping a link in the comments, but also if you look at my forehead, you can see that um that's a direct link to where you want to go. I want to I want to welcome you into my my sandbox and provide you as much value as I can. Just go here. Awesome. I love it. I love it. So um we're we're almost out of time here. We got a few more minutes left, but I did want to open the seat up in case we've got some folks that like to jump in here. I know a couple of rock stars have uh have joined us through here. I think I saw Sabah just jump in the room. What's up, Sabah? I had Robert Stern's in the house. Robert will be on the show next week. And um, if anybody has any questions. For Mark. Um, now's the time to jump in that hot seat right now. Um, and any trolls that might be in the room, I I doubt it because there's not a lot of trolls on blab, but I always welcome them in the hot seat too.

SPEAKER_02 44:11

Trolls don't have time for blab, they don't like to be invited.

SPEAKER_00 44:14

Somebody said yes, exactly. All right, let's see here. Jay Schultz.

SPEAKER_02 44:18

We're not gonna scope mob today, Jay. I'm so sorry. I was I I had to be here. And uh yeah, I did I try to do scope mobs. I did them daily, but I just couldn't keep up with it. But Jay's a big fan, and I appreciate that, Jay. And uh tomorrow I promise you a scope mob at noon. I promise. Can you enlighten us on what scope mobs are? Yeah, scope mobs are uh something I just I stumbled on with Periscope. Um, you know, you like you just said, you can share a broadcast. Uh well one day I was watching a broadcast in LA, Justice Bowens. I don't know if you know him, I'm watching Justice, and he's sitting in his kitchen and he's giving this very, you know, I guess I was feeling down or whatever, but he was giving a very inspirational, motivational speech, and it and it touched me, and I was like, yeah, this is good. And I never really shared anything with my followers. I was just too busy trying to get people to share my stuff. So I'm sitting in my car waiting to pick up my kids from school, and I shared, I said, you know, and invite my followers. Well, I forgot at the time I had 25,000 followers. So all of a sudden, uh the you've got Justice Bowens, who had maybe 15 people in his Periscope. All of a sudden the number starts going like this. And it's just, I mean, it's I mean, it was like a a time, like a time-lapse timer. And he went from 15 to like 83 and he flipped out. I mean, here's a guy who's always energetic and emotional anyway. He all of a sudden becomes a rock star on Periscope, he flips out and he's screaming and yelling. He's like, oh my god. And of course, all my viewers now are entertained. So I realized I just literally flash mobbed him on Periscope. Uh, and so I when I realized how much fun it was, I decided to do it over and over again. So we came up with scope mob and we started, I mean, we've scope mobbed people in Australia, in Canada, first time scopers. We had one woman get so freaked out she vowed never to scope again. Uh, we've we've made so many friends all over the city.

SPEAKER_00 45:57

How do you identify which where the mob's going to be? I mean, I know it's easy to do. Like if you were starting a show at two o'clock, we could drop the link here and send everybody out of here and jump in your room. How does that happen on Periscope?

SPEAKER_02 46:08

Well, what I do typically is I'll start a Periscope and say, hey, it's time for the scope mob. Get ready, invite your followers, and we'll get like a hundred people on my Periscope. And then I sit and I explain to them here's what's going to happen. First of all, you've got to follow me. You've got to make sure your notifications are on, and then you have to join the next scope I invite you to. So once we've gone through all of that, I end my scope. I go to the map, I search around the globe, and I try to find some really quirky character, maybe in Great Britain, maybe in South Africa. In the deep south, there's a lot of fun people at home at noon on like a random Tuesday. And they have five or six people. This is my cousin. Exactly right. They have like five or six people. I jump in in, I invite everybody, and all of a sudden, their you know, their viewership explodes. And if we're lucky, we get a great reaction. And uh, and I I put a compilation on YouTube. If you search hashtag hashtag scope mob on YouTube, you'll see a great compilation. It's been it's we've had some fun with it.

SPEAKER_00 47:04

Talk about paying it forward, huh?

SPEAKER_02 47:05

Yeah, no kidding. Yeah, and that's true. It's you know, it makes people famous. They either love Periscope or hate Periscope after that.

SPEAKER_00 47:11

Yeah, this is this is true. Jay, you're trying to get in the room, brother, but nothing's happening there. So um, I don't know about technical difficulties here. Robert Stern, what's happening, brother?

SPEAKER_01 47:19

Mr. Mark, how are you? How you doing, Robert Stern?

SPEAKER_02 47:21

Good to see you again.

SPEAKER_01 47:22

It's good to get that big hug from you, lad, the other week.

SPEAKER_02 47:25

I know, I know. You're a good hugger. He's a good hugger if you ever meet him. Squeezable.

SPEAKER_00 47:29

Yeah. Anything longer than six seconds is weird.

SPEAKER_01 47:34

So um I I I you know, talking about his mob, the mob uh scopes that he does. I mean, I remember the one he did to a guy in Italy, and the guy didn't speak English. Oh he just starts going, oh no, oh no, no. I thought he was gonna have a panic attack. But yeah, I'm curious. Um, what happened to the lab? Oh, the Periscope Lab?

SPEAKER_02 47:54

I'm from the old I'm from the old days with you. Yeah, Robert's been around all the Periscope. I'll tell you what killed the Periscope Lab. It's Blab. Uh when Periscope Sebastian first uh started, I tried to reinvent what I did on Talk and Snap or my Snapchat show, do a talk show in a laboratory, I called it. And I had a huge TV screen and I had all this equipment that I bought. And what I wanted to do was I think I did Euromestro, I think I interviewed Alex Pettit, and I called it the Periscope Lab.

SPEAKER_04 48:22

Welcome to my lab.

SPEAKER_02 48:24

And then all of a sudden, Blab came out, and I didn't need it anymore because basically this is exactly what the Periscope Lab was.

SPEAKER_01 48:32

So I stuck to scope mobbing and I left, you know, I left Blab to the experts. I mean, I've seen Mark evolve because I mean we've known each other since the first week. Yeah, six whole months. I was one of his first Periscope interviews on the podcast.

SPEAKER_02 48:46

Oh, yeah. You have been with me a long time. You forget that. I sure do. I try I forget things on a daily basis, though.

SPEAKER_01 48:54

So don't take it, don't take it personally. Yeah, it's uh it's because the sun goes right to the skin. I understand.

SPEAKER_00 48:58

I love how we're all talking like we went to high school together and it's all under six months ago.

SPEAKER_01 49:06

That's what Mark brings to the table. Mark Mark brings to the table when he was periscoping in the beginning, he was really getting to know the people that were coming in. He was talking to them, and he started getting those regulars, and it was like, oh, hey Rob, or or oh, hey Alex, or oh, hey John, or Deborah. And he got to know them, and that's why they kept coming back, you know, besides being funny looking and funny. Right. You know, they kept coming back because he was entertaining, and and the thing was he made relationships with so many of these people, and that's what that's what kept me going to back to him. I mean, you know, who else? I wanted to go back to a scope that I figured I had a chance with a single woman more than he did. Well then I stood next to Alex Kahn and everything was thrown out the door.

SPEAKER_02 49:45

Oh my god, that guy is like, I don't know why that guy's not married to eight different women. Come on. He's six feet seven, he's German, he's beautiful, and he's rich. Like, why is he single? I don't get it.

SPEAKER_01 49:56

You know what else I learned about him that week hanging out with him? What he plays guitar.

SPEAKER_02 50:00

Oh god, forget it.

SPEAKER_01 50:02

He's a businessman, yeah. He played basketball, obviously, in high school. Yeah, he sells scented candles with rings in them. I mean my my wife would marry him.

SPEAKER_02 50:11

It's crazy. But no, and another thing that happened, there's I don't know, Sebastian, if you know Mark Shaw. Do you know Mark Shaw from the UK?

SPEAKER_00 50:19

Yeah, I had Mark on last week, actually.

SPEAKER_02 50:21

Okay, you do. So I also lucked out because people started calling me the American Mark Shaw. I mean, we're both bald, we both talked about Periscope. The only difference was he had an accent. And I think a lot of people would stumble onto my Periscopes thinking I was Mark Shaw. And my goal for a long time there was if I get any of Mark Shaw's viewers, I just need to keep them interested long enough so that they follow me.

SPEAKER_01 50:42

But, you know, but I mean he's a great person, he's a great human being. I love the scopes, I love when he gets out there, and you know, he's a great person to have on here. I just wanted to let you know.

SPEAKER_00 50:50

I think that the one problem with Mark Shaw is he lacks energy.

SPEAKER_01 50:55

If you're new to my scope, please cast cupcake. Cupcake in the comments. Type cupcake in the comments. But I love Mark.

SPEAKER_02 51:05

I mean, he's my brother on the other side. There are so many, it's amazing. There are so many amazing people who you've we've never met, but I feel like, you know, I'll tell my wife. She's like, What are you doing? I go, Oh, I'm gonna be on Sebastian Rusk's show. She's like, Who the hell is that? I go, Sebastian, Sebastian Rusk from Miami. She's like, How do you even know this? She's probably thinking Rush Limbaugh. No. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 51:28

Hey, what's happened there? Uh what's your name there? That screen name doesn't say Walter. Walter, okay, that's a little bit different from Varelord.

SPEAKER_03 51:37

He always jumps out as soon as I get in. He does. No, Walter. Because we're both from a Long Island. How are you? I So what's happening, Walter? I I guess I wanted to talk to you because I don't know anything about sales and social media. I'm trying, but it just doesn't sink in.

SPEAKER_00 51:58

So so what what what what's not sinking in? What what does sink in for you? Sales or social media?

SPEAKER_03 52:04

Neither one's really sunk in. Uh I'm an artist and I do things my way that I've been doing since 1976 in my own business.

SPEAKER_02 52:13

What kind of artist are you?

SPEAKER_03 52:15

Uh well, first I'm a photographer, I do assignments, but also I have 310,000 images on my art site, which you can see it's on the link is on the picture thing up top, right?

SPEAKER_02 52:27

Okay, yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_03 52:29

So so uh I got on with uh Alex Mendozian the other day, which is one of these blabs he was on, and I was very fortunate to be able to speak to him direct, and he's talking about social influencers. You know about that, right?

SPEAKER_04 52:43

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 52:44

Okay, so I said, but this is nothing to do with my art. All I do is focus on creating my art. I have 200,000 more images to upload. I get up at three o'clock in the morning, that's all I do all day. He says, but you're already a social influencer because you're an artist.

SPEAKER_02 52:58

Right. Yeah, I it's Walter, do you are do you upload your where do you upload your images? Just a uh a site for sale, is that right?

SPEAKER_03 53:05

Yeah. I actually have uh a Facebook fan page with 13,200 people there too. I upload it there. I have Pinterest, I got uh some Instagram once in a while to do that, you know, from uh if I can between eating sandwiches or something like that.

SPEAKER_02 53:23

I mean I I do, and do you uh do you let these people know what you do? Because I can't imagine if you have 15,000 people on Facebook, none of them are buying your images.

SPEAKER_03 53:31

I get I get between 10,000 and 40,000 views to my art site every day. Okay. So someone's looking. Great. Comments are that I have too much, but maybe art is a little different because they gotta look at it a couple of times before they really find which one they want. And there's a lot of different choices.

SPEAKER_02 53:51

You know, just uh not having seen your site or or what you're offering, I you know, I would just say I know a lot of photographers who get a lot of business. I I know it seems to me like you're less of a photographer for hire and more of an artist.

SPEAKER_03 54:02

That that business comes in. That comes in. I've been doing that long enough that that just comes. That's from referrals and giving out so many cards, over five million cars in the street in Manhattan. Oh wow. A lot of people know me. But it's it's the art, which is I I just may have to be a little bit more patient because when I started with photography, it took a while before things built up, but didn't just all of a sudden drop from the sky. And I think that that may be an issue for a lot of people. Because if you come on and you try different things that people encourage you to do and it doesn't happen right away, right? No, and you can get discouraged in incorrectly.

SPEAKER_02 54:41

It is true. Building a following on social media does take time. Now, a lot of people have found quick success on it, but that's because they've been successful on other platforms. But absolutely, if you're just getting started or if you're, you know, I your Facebook is a great place to go. And I always tell people you want to build from your base. So if 13,000 people on a Facebook page is awesome, it's incredible. If you ran an ad for $20 just to your Facebook followers, that's you know, that's warm traffic, people that know you, you would reach a phenomenal audience and you could push them to your Instagram or your website or a particular image. I mean, that's the beauty of it. If you have if you have a particular image, maybe not send them to your website where there's, like you said, people are saying so many, but maybe create a smaller page with four, or even just one image that you think a lot of people would want to buy. Maybe your most your most popular image, the one you sold the most of, make that into a Facebook ad.

SPEAKER_03 55:34

That was Alex's direction. That that's good. But but the thing is that he's talking about a story. Now, I create these images like you you drink water, they just come out. I got, you know, I can create uh a thousand of them in a in a two-day period or something like that. But I don't know about the story. What kind of story do you want to hear about anything? I I mean I posted that this was my first photograph back in 1958 of my uncle making shish kebab, and he just made it on a machine that he invented with the piece of the rotating.

SPEAKER_02 56:04

Now I want now I want shish kebab, so thanks for that.

SPEAKER_03 56:07

All right, you're welcome.

SPEAKER_02 56:09

Now look, I think what when people talk about the story, I think what they want is the story of you. And especially photographers, they're gonna want to not have you tell them a story, but show them your story. So if you're going out on a shoot, fire up your Periscope, fire up your Snapchat, fire up your Instagram.

SPEAKER_03 56:25

Those things I don't do. Instagram, yeah, but but the Periscope, I never did it. This is the closest thing. This was like a quantum leap for me. Really? All right, yeah, from from uh Facebook, a little bit of Twitter because it's connected, it's it's incorrectly connected to my Pinterest where I push something there, goes to Twitter and and and LinkedIn I got. But but this this I can't do anything else. I mean, you you go back to Periscope, doesn't even sound right to me because I think of a submarine. My uncle worked at the uh Brooklyn Navy Yard as a steam fitter, and when I was a kid, we went on the on the uh aircraft carriers that they built, and I and I freaked out because I couldn't imagine staying on it was large, but staying on something for such a long time. Walter is submarines, forget about it.

SPEAKER_02 57:13

Right. Well, it's actually, I mean, I I see your point there. It's actually just a catchy name. It's not I know you think it's catchy, but it hasn't but what you're doing right now, what you're doing. Exactly. You saw that movie? Did you see the movie where the the uh Mark, they're coming, I've seen them. What you're doing right now, Walter, is basically Periscope only with two other people in the room. The beauty of Periscope is there's no one to interrupt you.

SPEAKER_03 57:36

But I like the interruptions. I want to have the interaction. I prefer not to have just me. Because I could do a I could do a blab, I get in on it, and no one shows up, but I can't I can't talk. I gotta have people interact.

SPEAKER_02 57:47

Yeah. Well, the only problem is now that you're blabbing, you can't take pictures. With Periscope, you could set up a camera and you could go to your photo shoot and people could just watch you. I think if you try it, I think you'd be pleasantly surprised. That's just my suggestion.

SPEAKER_03 58:00

But there's another thing.

SPEAKER_00 58:02

No, there's don't try to par Walter, don't try to periscope and take your pictures at the same time, bring somebody along with you.

SPEAKER_03 58:08

That's me periscope my cars and taking pictures at the same time. But now here's the other thing. The truth is that there's a yeah. I remember that. Yeah, but I'm having a good time. This guy's he's having a good time. Well, it's my show. You're supposed to. Yeah, exactly right. I'm having a wonderful. This is the best show I've been on. I'm glad that jumped off because he gave us some space. He's too over overwhelming sometimes. But the thing is, yeah. He knows everything, you know. He doesn't remember my name until we say it. You know, now he he knows me. But anyway, there's a lot of tools, for example, on Facebook.

SPEAKER_04 58:53

I heard that, Walter.

SPEAKER_03 58:55

Come on back, man. Let's you want let's do some New York.

SPEAKER_00 58:58

Throw down our so um do you know on we gotta we gotta wrap things up here, Walter. So let's if you can if you can finish us off.

SPEAKER_03 59:09

Yes, this is the one thing. There's a million tools, and no one knows all of the tools of that's on the Photoshop. So you don't need to use everything. If you if you become accomplished with one thing or a couple of things and you're successful with that, that's better at least to start with than to try and do everything. That's one of the reasons why you're saying go to Periscope. Let me just get some of this here. You know, yeah. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 59:34

Hey, there's there's a million tools on Periscope, too.

SPEAKER_00 59:37

Yeah, there really is. Hey, Walter, listen, we'll leave you with this because we got a jam. But Walter, the very fact that you're on a blab right now and you're curious about how to do it is the first step in the right direction. People ask me all the time, how do I start with live streaming? Just get in the race. Don't worry about if you're walking or running, just stay focused on being in the race and you can adjust accordingly. All right. Keep snapping those pictures and remember the sort of race slowing down.

SPEAKER_03 59:59

It's just a slow walk.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:00

How does it stay? Don't tell me what to do. Thank you, Walter. So um, my goodness, Walter. Rule number one on Blabs, you got to be constructive, you got to get on there, you gotta go. Here's exactly where I'm at, and I want to get it accomplished. Otherwise, I don't think about it.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:16

Not yet. I'm going, I'm going to, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to go get a uh kebab now.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:20

I'm going to go get a kebab too. And I think the very fact that he took his first picture in 1958 and he's asking us whether or not um, you know, how he would tell a story. I think what he was confusing a little bit is that, oh, should I tell a story of all these thousands of images that I capture on a daily basis? And I don't think anybody gives a shit about the story of an image until they know about the story of the individual. And once they know the story of an individual, then you've sparked you've created some sort of emotion where they say, you know what, I like this individual. Um, I people will look at people will watch my content and tune into this show just because they like the fact that I wear bow ties. I don't know. Maybe people make specific, maybe they'll tune back in because I had, you know, guests like you that wear sunglasses and and note cards on their head. But you know, I like to do that stuff too.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:04

I'll tell you, the fact that Walter made it into this blab and that we could hear and see him puts him in the top 99 percentile of social media stars. I mean, there's there's so few people in the country that can't even do what he just did. Everyone who's here, everyone who's in this room right now, you guys are way ahead of the curve. Have faith and confidence that you are doing something that no one else is doing.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:25

Right. I mean that was great.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:27

That was my favorite part. That's it.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:29

That was like I'm waiting. Like, I want a full-blown argument. Like, I want some drama up in my. I mean, I'm not talking like um Spencer Pratt drama, but I'm talking, but you know, I mean, I want some, I maybe we need to, I don't know, we need to mix up the crowd in here a little bit. We need to get like uh, you know, complete polar opposites in there to have a discussion. It'd be you know, you know what what Blab is allowing to come to life? Uh Mark is is boy, I'd like to see those two locked in a room together.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:59

Social media does not suck, Sebastian. Yeah, yes, it does. No, it doesn't.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:04

All right. Uh I'm sure Walter, I'm sure Walter will be back on next week, Robert. All right. Well, it's about five after two here. I don't want to take up all of Mark's time. I gotta go run get my kids, actually. Yeah, if you don't leave them, if you don't pick them up at school, I learned that um that doesn't mean someone else will just go ahead and pick them up. No, I thought, well, I'll just leave them there. Someone's bound to take them home. I mean, they they take them home, but then they call the police.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:26

It's awful.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:27

Yeah, you don't want to make that mistake twice. No, not at all. Hey, um, I what's what is the um what what's the link? I actually I just typed that in, but it won't make time.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:36

It's uh social pro report. And here's the deal if you uh if you subscribe, awesome. The first thing we do is we book a uh 30-minute phone call so that you and I will sit down and we'll talk all of here's how the phone call goes. Hey, it's Mark K. What's up? Oh my God, hey, I can't believe I'm talking to you. Yeah, tell me about your business, tell me about your social media, let's strategize. Okay, you talk for about 20 minutes, we brainstorm, and then I go, Great, this is awesome. I feel like we're best friends forever. And you go, me too, and then we follow up every day in uh in the Facebook group, the private Facebook group. So if you want to take advantage, I'd love to have you. I love making friends in my socialproreport.com group.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:15

Awesome. Hey, thanks for uh thanks for being on, Mark. I appreciate your time, brother. Come back soon, will you? All right, friends. Well, this is where the show becomes awkward because it's just me in the room now, but I want to take the time to thank each and every one of you for being here. Without you guys, this show doesn't happen. Well, it does, but it's a little awkward with just me and myself on here. Thank my guest today, Mark Kay. Uh, thanks Walter for jumping in, Robert Stern for jumping in, everybody who's tweeted and posted and shared and done all of this. This is our uh third episode of the social media suck show on Blab. You can also, maybe you're listening to the podcast. Um, a few weeks from now, you're watching the replay on YouTube or on our blog. I appreciate each and every one of you. This show happens live every Tuesday at 1 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. I'm signing off from our studio here in downtown Miami. Remember, friends, social media is so if you don't.