On July 20^th I began the first of what became 90-days of consecutive FB Lives leading into a 21-Day FB Live Challenge I put on for my tribe.

Over 1650 people joined me to broadcast their message… every day. And, in the process, discover who they are, what they do, and why it really matters.

Some of the participants had been studying with me before and the act of publicly sharing their message consistently for 21-days snapped them into a great level of clarity, confidence and commitment than months of working on their business.

There’s something magic about the act of either broadcasting the spoken word or publishing the written word.

So many people keep their gifts to themselves for far too long. Like Emily Dickinson, the famous American poet who published less than a dozen of her nearly 1,800 poems during her lifetime. Her sister found her body of work in a dresser drawer and published them 4 years after her death.

It’s one thing to quietly harbor a gift or a message, and another thing to broadcast and publish…

I believe the world will take your message to the next level and the only way to become truly great is to iterate your way to awesome.

Here’s how it works: you have an idea, and the only way to get true clarity on that idea is to take action on it, which gives you momentum, better ideas, greater clarity and even more momentum.

Broadcasting and publishing is one of the fastest ways to not only activate the iterate your way to awesome cycle but build your business and build your tribe.

What I learned from 90-days of FB Lives is that while I enjoy video, I didn’t enjoy sharing myself casually on video every day. I prefer to create more thoughtful, produced blogs and videos. To write and speak when I have something valuable to say and not just because I can write and speak.

Before I broadcast or publish anything, I like to remind myself of this quote from George Bryant, “Is what you’re about to share, say or do better than silence?”

I believe that most people take their audience’s attention for granted most of the time. And doing FB lives for 90-consecutive days, I felt that I was starting to do that.

I’d have a busy day and do my FB live after my witching hour (9pm) crashed out on the coach. That made me realize that time of day matters — both for audience and for my energy levels.

Video takes a lot of presence and I can’t do it when I’m tired. My best videos are in the morning but that’s also the time when I do my best writing and have the most creative energy, so I didn’t want to use my most productive to record these videos that weren’t really building my business. This daily practice didn’t fit into my flow and I believe you can move mountains when you work with your natural rhythms.

Towards the end, I was broadcasting out of obligation rather than inspiration… and I don’t believe in doing anything out of obligation.

Here’s what happened: After the 21-Day FB Live Challenge, I was so inspired by the energy of the tribe and the videos that were coming out of me, that I made a public commitment to continue the challenge for a full 365-days.

I thought, “How would my life change if I continued this for a full year? How good would I be on video?”

So I kept going. I showed up day after day after day for 90-days straight. And I had the intention to keep going for a full-year, even though it was starting to feel like an obligation. Another item on the good ‘ole to do list.

Then on Day 91, sh*t just hit the fan. We were preparing for 3 big launches simultaneously: our Message to Money LIVE early bird ticket campaign, our November Experience Product Masterclass campaign, and our first partner webinar for our software platform Heroic.

I met a friend for dinner… got home around 9:30 and thought, I have to do my FB live… then somehow forgot.

I woke up the next morning, horrified, and wondered “What have I done?” Then, instantly relieved, “I guess I’m no longer doing FB Lives for a year.” Followed by the realization that daily FB Lives wasn’t my bag.

When it comes to marketing, I believe it’s essential to find a channel and frequency you love… that expresses you best. And double down on that… Whether that’s a weekly podcast or web TV show, blogging, video blogging, Instagram, you name it.

The causal, almost-throwaway format of FB Live was liberating at first and I found myself sharing things on video that I don’t normally share and letting my tribe in behind-the-scenes of my life.

But it quickly became an obligation. Just another thing I had to do. And I realized that I prefer a more thoughtful, higher-production format where I’m sharing less often but higher-quality stuff.

While I love the authenticity and realness of FB Live, I can still capture that on a blog or a more thoughtful video.

Still some really good things came out of the 90-days that I did FB Live:

1. People and opportunities started to come out of the woodwork just because they happened to catch one of my FB Lives. Because I was doing these every day, at different times throughout the day, I was catching a range of people in my network in a way that I had never done before.

With FB Lives, the longer you share, the more people you reach, but I wasn’t always prepared to share for a long time.

2. My “Infusionsoft Rant” went viral, getting almost 4,500 views and somehow Infusionsoft took notice. They made my little video mandatory viewing for their entire team of over 800 employees. They ended up flying me out to their headquarters to meet with the executive team and they’re taking real action on our concerns.

3. I expanded my range of expression on camera and found new creative ways to get attention. What I realized is that, on FB Live, you have to get attention super fast if you want someone to turn on the volume…. So I started to play with what I’ve been calling “The Art of the Start” or how you actually begin your videos in a way that create curiosity and hook people in.

Because this is so important, not just for FB Live, but for any kind of video, I thought I’d share some of those realizations with you in case you’re wondering how to get more people to watch your videos and FB Lives.

The secret starts with one of my favorite quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Who you are speaks so loudly I can’t hear what you’re saying.”

This is especially true on FB live where there is no sound by default, UNLESS someone chooses to turn the sound on. That means that who you are and how you’re being has to invite someone to turn on the sound.  It’s well-known that 80% of how someone receives a spoken message is non-verbal, and that’s especially true in this format.

When I approach doing a FB live, I think about the context people are listening in and the unique format of a FB live. They’re on FB with a bijillion other posts and Lives screaming for their attention… So I need to get people’s attention non-verbally at the beginning to get them to turn on the volume…

You can kind of think of yourself like a mime. Before people can hear what you’re saying, you can physicalize it or act it out in some small way, so they have a cue or at least curiosity about what you’re talking about…

Now don’t worry if you’re not an actor. I’m not either – not at all. I place such huge value in authenticity that I’m not capable of acting…. But what I am capable of doing is amplifying myself. Somewhere along the way I realized that I needed to amplify my energy to capture people’s attention on screen…

As they say, the camera doubles your weight and strips half your energy… lol…

So how can you amplify your energy two-fold to compensate?

Let me lead you step-by-step though the thought process behind how I approach thinking about how to start each FB live to quickly and I mean quickly capture attention and create enough curiosity and interest to inspire a watcher to turn on the volume…

• In my first video announcing the challenge I popped onto the screen, saying I’m live, I’m live, I’m live, I’m live, I’m dead. Just kidding, I’m really alive… The awesome thing about a video frame is that what’s outside the frame can be as interesting as what’s in the frame and when you play with that tension between on-screen and off-screen, you can do some interesting things…
• In the next video I wore my “I’m the boss” t-shirt and pointed to the shirt with both hands… I was using my gestures to focus attention where I wanted it to go… my husband Murray claimed that it was only interesting because I was pointing at my boobs, but I thought I had a message there tooo… I also leveraged the power of “wardrobe” to grab attention in that video…
• Now, in the next video, I was on a boat and people could see the movement of the water streaming behind me so it was inherently interesting enough to push play… Sometimes your background, the environment or what’s happening around you is fascinating enough to pull people in… so you don’t have to do anything special.
• Then on Day 1 of the Challenge I simply opened the video with some big energy and hand gestures and had my voice mimic Good Morning Vietnam… when I said “Good Morning FB Challengers…”
• On Day 2, I talked about you being someone else’s medicine and showed the bottle of Advil… In other words, I used a prop. And props can be a great way to grab attention especially if it’s something that will get people curious as to what you’re talking about. Why the heck is Marisa showing a bottle of Advil?
• Then on Day 3, I asked what time do you switch on and what time does your tribe switch on… and I visualized this by wearing 2 watches, one on each wrist, and bringing them into the screen one after the other. Here I was playing with several of the techniques I just mentioned… I was playing with the tension between on-screen and off-screen, I used physical gestures of moving my arms in and displaying the watches, and I added interest with a prop.All these things created movement and movement is one of the top 2 things that captures the human eye. Think about it: If you’re being chased by a predator, you want to notice the predator coming after you… you really do!The other thing that captures the human eye is contrast… back in our hunter-gatherer days it was important to be able to tell the difference between a savory plant and a poisonous one…. So you can work with the biology of the eye in your videos to capture your tribe’s interest through movement and contrast…So back to this video. I knew I wanted to address Julia’s question about quickly capturing attention at the start of a video… and I thought about the Ralph Waldo Emerson quote as a great intro into that topic… Next, I started to think about how I could physicalize that quote… and came up with the idea pulling out my ears like a monkey and it worked….

  It may be silly, but I did get attention.

Now you don’t need to be as silly or high-energy as me. You can find your own style and I highly recommend you do that… and I’m hoping some of these tips will help you understand how to get attention fast and inspire people to listen… because you and your message are worth listening to.

Whether you choose to express yourself on video, FB Live or another format, I encourage you to choose one way that you want to broadcast or publish your message and stick with it. In marketing you don’t need to do everything, double down on that one channel until you became a pro.

I promise you, it will change your life and your business for ever.

Now go out there and Live Your Message!