Imperfect Marketing

Episode 14: Being Two Places at Once—Now Possible

June 30, 2022 Kendra Corman Season 1 Episode 14
Imperfect Marketing
Episode 14: Being Two Places at Once—Now Possible
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

Thank you for tuning into another episode of Imperfect Marketing. In this episode, I had the pleasure of speaking with Brandan Fisher, the founder of Live Pigeon.

Live Pigeon allows you to go live without actually being live. So, if you are on vacation, at a wedding, or even someplace without any internet, Live Pigeon can help you stay consistent and upload your pre-recorded content to look as if it is live.

Pretty cool, huh?

What's even cooler is the story of how it started and almost stopped before we had the opportunity to really enjoy the benefits of being in 2 places at once.

Click here to check out the transcript and follow along.

Topics in this episode:

00:00:47 How did Live Pigeon come about?
00:04:09 Where did the name Live Pigeon come from?
00:05:47 The first stumbling block for Live Pigeon
00:07:10 The pandemic and a YouTube Influencer
00:08:51 Niching down and growing!
00:10:00 You can't fast-forward through church services
00:12:48 Appointment Watching of Live Video
00:15:43 Natalie Hodson Goes Live in the Wild
00:18:45 Why invest in customer service?
00:26:01 Batching Live Videos
00:29:36 Lessons learned from thousands of live videos
00:34:51 Lessons learned from marketing

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Kendra Corman:

Well, welcome back to Imperfect Marketing and thank you so much for tuning in for another episode. I'm so excited to be joined today by Brandon Fisher, founder of Live Pigeon. 

Live Pigeon is one of my favorite tools to use for clients that are really nervous about going live on Facebook and YouTube. It's a tool that allows me to, I call it simu-live stream prerecorded content. Brandon started out his career in video production and video editing, and he is a true entrepreneur. He started many different companies, invented some products and built an amazing software solution, like I mentioned, Live Pigeon. 

Welcome Brandon, and thank you so much for joining me today.

Brandan Fisher, Founder of Live Pigeon:

Thanks Kendra. Let's let's get into this. This is awesome.

Kendra Corman:

So as I mentioned, I'm a huge fan of Live Pigeon, not just for your ability to let me broadcast prerecorded videos live, but also your amazing customer service. Can you tell me a little bit about how you came up with the idea for Live Pigeon?

Brandan Fisher, Founder of Live Pigeon:

Absolutely. So you touched on the fact that I have done video production. In fact, I'm still currently doing video production. That's been my passion in life is video. 

And I had the opportunity to work with Russell Brunson. I don't know how many people in your audience know who he is or follow him, but he has a mastermind group. And people at the time were paying $25,000 to be in this room. And I was lucky enough to be at the back of the room and listening while I'm recording all of these sessions for him, which was an amazing opportunity. 

I didn't have to pay the money to be in that room. I had worked my way in because of my skillset that I had. And so what was interesting is what I heard in the room was that there were some guys that had figured out how they could go live with a prerecorded video using a piece of software.

And I'm like, "Oh wow, that's really cool. I should learn how to do this because I'm already in the video field. And if this is what marketers are in this room, learning how to do, I should also learn how to do this." 

And so we started doing it actually for Russell. But I found that the technology was just super difficult to use. And as a video professional, I was like, "There has to be an easier way." 

And so what else was interesting is I happened to be at a different mastermind group. And there was a guy there who was talking about the fact that you can create a software, even if you aren't the one that's actually knows how to do the coding and things like that.

And as business owners, we can probably all agree with this, which is we don't have to learn how to do everything, because there's people out there that we can bring on our teams that can help us, if we have a vision of what we're trying to do and to get across. 

Then anyway, it just made perfect sense what he was saying. And so what I ended up doing is I went up to him afterwards and I told him my idea for a software, which was Live Pigeon and what a cool opportunity it was for him.

I mean, I don't know how many of you would agree with this, but as we go through life and as we come up with maybe an idea or something hits us, sometimes all we need is just a little bit of validation. We just need someone to come along and say, you know what, this is a good idea. 

And then we can just take it and run with it. Right? And so that's basically what happened is he told me, I have a good idea for a software, and that just put me on the path of where I am today in the software.

Kendra Corman:

That's great. So how long did it take you to develop it from idea to roll out?

Brandan Fisher, Founder of Live Pigeon:

Yeah, so we started, it was five years ago in March, so-

Kendra Corman:

Wow.

Brandan Fisher, Founder of Live Pigeon:

And from March, from the first idea, the first concept to launch, it was actually June 13th, which as you're hearing this episode, we launched five years ago. And what I think is really cool about it is we actually launched on National Pigeon Day, which is June 13th.

Kendra Corman:

That is so cool. So where did the name come from, Live Pigeon?

Brandan Fisher, Founder of Live Pigeon:

I remember I was driving with my wife. I live in Boise, Idaho, and we were driving down to Salt Lake. And on the ride, I was just trying to think of a name. 

And I just, I know that there's a lot of like Geico has a gecko. And there's all these companies that will have these almost mascots or these type things.

And what was actually interesting is pigeons were used in times of war to basically get the message across enemy lines. And it's just kind of interesting that this concept of a pigeon came to me I guess. I don't know that there's any ... I wish I knew exactly what it was. 

I just knew that I was on the fence about some different ones. And on that trip is where I solidified this concept. Because to be honest with you, we're all at war if you will, of trying to get our message out in front of people. That's why we called it Live Pigeon. 

So we help you to get your message out in front of more people. That's really what the goal of our software is.

And what else is interesting is, when we first came out with it, we thought this was going to be an amazing marketing tool. For anybody who's listening, we all have these amazing ideas for businesses where we all have these amazing ideas, but you can have the most incredible idea, if no one actually sees it, they don't know about it. 

And so that's the whole goal of this. And that's what I love about your podcast, this Imperfect Marketing, because we're all just trying to figure this out.

And what I thought was I was going to come out with a tool for marketers. It's just kind of interesting how it kind of evolved, I guess, because what was interesting is when we first launched, we only were going live to Facebook. 

And so that was our MVP, our minimal viable product. That's all we were trying to do is, How do we go live just to Facebook? And we did that. And then Mark Zuckerberg went in front of Congress. They shut almost anyone who had a third party application on their site. They shut them down because he had to change a bunch of stuff because ... Anyway, you guys probably remember this-

Kendra Corman:

For privacy.

Brandan Fisher, Founder of Live Pigeon:

Yeah, for privacy, so-

Kendra Corman:

We all remember it, for sure.

Brandan Fisher, Founder of Live Pigeon:

Yep, so that was definitely, I think my first blow in the software business. Because here we launched, we had 40 customers and then nothing. We didn't get back up and running. 

So we got shut down in August. We didn't get back up and running and re-approved until October. Yeah, it was just such a grind after that to try to build the momentum back up. But my point of that is you can have the most amazing thing, the most amazing product or service, but if nobody knows about it ... 

That's kind of how the story began, which is we set out, like I said, we did that for three years, where I just kept putting time, energy, effort, into the software, but it never really was taking off.

And when the pandemic hit, I remember we went into lockdown in March. My video business was suffering. That's what was fueling the whole ... That's how I was able to get this whole thing going. 

I was bootstrapping the Live Pigeon software. And we had a lot of video clients pull out during pandemic, because everyone was going into lockdown. Everyone kind of didn't know what was happening.

And I remember my wife, it was in April. She's like, "Hey."

 And she had been super supportive. Three years of spending a lot of money, by the way, on the software. 

She came to me in April and was like, "Hey, we need to talk." 

And I knew what we need to talk meant because we only had 26 customers on the platform and it was not profitable. And I knew that meant that we had to shut it down. I'm trying to stay positive as an entrepreneur. We all have these crazy ideas [inaudible 00:08:01] we think that we sometimes like, we don't want to admit defeat. 

And what was interesting is I'm like, "Hey, I'm just trying to stay positive. Can we talk about this later?" 

And so she's like, "Well later is fine, but we need to put something on the calendar." 

So she wrote, we have whiteboard in our bedroom, and she wrote on our whiteboard May 15th.

I'll never forget that day because she set kind of the deadline goal of when we were going to talk. And what was really cool is we had an opportunity where we had an influencer on YouTube, create a video for us. And that's like what caused a spike. 

Because we needed a hundred customers on our platform to keep the doors open. And we only had 26. And when that video hit around May 1st, we had our hundred customers, which was awesome. And so-

Kendra Corman:

That's fantastic.

Brandan Fisher, Founder of Live Pigeon:

... if you want to talk about Imperfect Marketing, sometimes you don't know where the source, or where your audience is going to come from. And what's fascinating, I told you at the beginning where I thought this was going to be a marketing tool for marketers. 

And really who started using it was churches, because during the pandemic, when everyone shut down, a lot of them didn't even have the ability to go live. They weren't ready for it. But yet they're constantly creating content and this was the perfect tool for them. 

And so that's ... We were able to kind of niche down and that's what gave us our customer base to keep the doors open. And now we've just been building and growing ever since.

Kendra Corman:

That's fantastic. I love that story because I know so many people that get really close to throwing in the towel and then all of their hard work just comes together and finally pays off, which I think is just, it does. 

If you do the behaviors and you do what you're supposed to do, if it's a product that people are interested in, which clearly Live Pigeon is, they come through with it. And it takes a little bit to gain some steam and then takes off, which is fantastic.

And yeah, I do think I became a customer of Live Pigeon, probably back in 2020, and used it all the time. And the reason I used it, and now I'll talk about this, transitioning into my next question for you, is live video has so much more engagement. 

People will watch longer when compared to prerecorded content. I know that I've seen people watch it. They can't fast forward through the reveal, so it's unlike a premier on YouTube or something like that. 

What have you seen Live Pigeon do for the marketing that other people, companies, churches have done?

Brandan Fisher, Founder of Live Pigeon:

And I think what's very interesting is everyone uses it for a different purpose. And you touched on it. You can't fast forward. The reason church is like that is because they wanted to recreate if you're sitting in church, you can't fast forward a message. You're just there and you're listening. 

Yeah, there's so many ways in which people are using this. But what we've seen is, in fact, this is really good question because we've had a lot of people who will ask us, "Well, why don't I just post my video on Facebook?"

Well, the thing is, if you post just a video on Facebook that you've uploaded, just like you said, they can fast forward it. Facebook also wants you to boost it to your friends. And here you think, well I've created this friends or I've created my audience over on Facebook. If I post to it, everyone should be able to see that. 

But that it's not the case. It only shows up in, I don't know how many, I don't know what the actual algorithm number is, but my point is, not as many people see it in their news feed. But if you pay, they, they will. 

And so really that's, I think what we're trying to figure out as marketers, is how can we get our message out in front of more people and do it in a way that's not going to cost us a lot of money.

And so what was really cool about this is Facebook was totally incentivizing. I mean, they came out with Facebook Lives, I think six years ago. And what's interesting about it is when it first came out, they really incentivized, like where you went Live, they let everyone know. And that's what's been really cool. 

Over time, that's kind of shifted in changed. There's still this algorithm game that you can play where if you warm up your algorithm and if you do certain things, then more people will see it.

At the end of the day, more people still get notified about it than if you make a normal post. And really what it comes down to is how can you spend the least amount of money, but get as many eyeballs to what it is that you're trying to do. Because at the end of the day, we all have messages that we're trying to share. 

And how can we get those out there? Because everyone's trying to do the same thing and it just becomes a lot of noise. And so this tool helps you to kind of rise above the noise or just the strategy of taking and going live more.

This is one of my favorite things, which is when I was a kid, tuning into TV at a certain time. If you missed it, you missed it. And I go back to Seinfeld, where when Seinfeld came out, everyone tuned in Thursday at I don't know, I'm going to guess like seven o'clock or eight o'clock at night. And you just didn't want to miss it. 

And so I think that you have the opportunity of doing the same thing with your audience. I don't want to make it sound like you're training them. But in a way, if you get people to understand like, hey guys, I'm going live on this day and that's when you can expect me, they'll rearrange their schedules to make sure that they can do it.

Kendra Corman:

Yeah. The consistency definitely helps. I also find for a lot of my clients and business owners that are just starting out and can't afford a lot of video editing and things like that, people are a lot more forgiving of live. You can have some bloopers.

Brandan Fisher, Founder of Live Pigeon:

Big time, oh yeah.

Kendra Corman:

If it's uploaded prerecorded content, I expect a little bit more editing and quality and ...

Brandan Fisher, Founder of Live Pigeon:

It can be that way. In fact, I don't know that we ... I think that when we're first starting out, we do try to posture ourselves in a certain way. 

We want to be perfect. We want to let people know that our messages are well thought out and we have the perfect frameworks and that you should follow me because look at me, I'm perfect. I have my message down. 

And that might help you at the beginning, but I think just what you said, people want to know that you're a human and that you're not perfect. And when there's that vulnerability there ... Ultimately, what I'm trying to get at is it's okay to just pull out your phone.

And that's the other thing too. A lot of people think that they need to have the high tech gadgets and the cameras and the ... And what we're actually finding is sometimes that can become a procrastination loop where you just want to do the research on what's the best microphone to get so that I can do podcasting. 

Or it's just interesting that I know a lot of people who will just use their phones, the microphone that's built into your phone. I mean, these things are incredible.

We spend, in fact, you look at how much people spend on phones these days. It's like, everything that you can do from a phone now is just absolutely incredible. And it's so easy to do a lot of it. You just pull it out, you press a button, you're creating content. And you can then take that. 

And there's so many different ways to distribute it, whether it's a podcast. In fact, a lot of people are doing hybrids now where for example, we're recording this over video. Maybe people only see or hear the audio, but that's okay. Some people want to tune in and see people's faces and how they, their mannerisms, if they're expressive or not. 

But really the goal is getting outside your comfort zone and just getting started, just creating content. And that's really, what's nice about Live Pigeon. If you want to be super postured and edit, you can totally do that, or if you just want to do something quick and record a video and get it uploaded.

In fact, there was a customer of ours, Natalie Hotson. What's interesting is she does a lot of stuff where she goes out in the wilderness and they don't have good cell phone coverage out there. 

So she didn't even have the ability to go live. But when she has an outside event or she's going to be doing something, she can pull out her phone, hit record, get her message across. 

And then later when she gets into range where there's wifi, she can upload it, schedule it. It just goes live for her after that. And so it's just kind of interesting.

Kendra Corman:

That's a great example that I just didn't even think about, but I should have, because my in-laws live in a hard to use cell phone area, or signal area. Scheduling also helps you be engaged when you're there. 

So yes, you can record your message in the place. Then you don't have to worry about polishing your post and polishing the description and all of that stuff. And is it going right? Is it? You can be present in the moment where you're at, which I also think is really important.

Brandan Fisher, Founder of Live Pigeon:

If you're traveling on vacation, or there's so many different ways of doing it where you might not have, and that's just one example of just not having the ability to go live. Yeah. 

And in fact, there was another, we had another customer who was trying to do a 30 day challenge. He challenged himself that he was going to go live for 30 days to see what happens after 30 days. 

Well, he started and I think he was about a week and a half to two weeks into it and realized that next week he had to go to a wedding. He had a studio. He just, then pre-recorded his video ahead of time. His audience still was able to get the same content that he was already able to do previous to that. 

And yet he was able to go to a wedding and nothing got disrupted by that. And so that's just another, another use case example of how people are using it.

Kendra Corman:

Oh, that's awesome. Now I'm definitely a fan of your customer service. The cool thing about it, especially even starting in back in 2020, I was super paranoid. I was always able to get someone to hold my hand through the process because I'm really not super techy when it comes to this stuff. 

And I needed to figure it out and quickly because I didn't have a choice. I had to figure out how to go live with prerecorded content for my clients. I was prepping for a fundraiser. 

I was super nervous, super nervous, because I was like, "This is the first time I'm going to do this. I don't know what I'm doing. Is this going to work?" 

And so I sent in a support email. Someone called me back quickly. They double-checked all my settings and even followed up two days later to say, "Hey, just wanted to check and see how that fundraiser went." 

I was so impressed. And I think that says a lot about you and Live Pigeon.

Personally, I think customer service has gone downhill regularly. I could share like a million and a half examples of that. And not as many examples of what I'm talking about with you with Live Pigeon. 

I think it's really important and it's taken me, I think from a fan to an advocate, where I actually tell everybody if they're doing video, you should take a look at Live Pigeon. 

Why did you take the time and effort and invest in the customer service and the outreach, and what have you seen that do for your business?

Brandan Fisher, Founder of Live Pigeon:

What's fascinating to me is that just like you commented, there is a trend right now where a lot of times people don't even want to call a company because it's going to go to a phone tree. It's going to be somebody that might not speak the same language. It's just ... 

And it's hard because really at the end of the day, my whole goal and focus is how can I best serve my customers and clients. That's the thing. I answered the phones for the first three years. Because first off, there wasn't a lot of calls. I did set out to try to make a very simple and easy to use software. 

And what's fascinating is sometimes there's customers that will reach out. But usually if they reach out on the first time and we get them going, they don't usually call back, which is a good thing. But it's also like, I think that's the hardest part about any business is we want to hear feedback from our customers.

And in a lot of customer service right now, they'll they'll even do a popup, which is like, "Leave us feedback," because we all need the feedback. But the way in which companies go about getting it, it just bugs me. 

So basically what I wanted to do is, I want to earn business. And I didn't get into this just to try to make a fast dollar. That's not what this was about. It's like, this was a problem that I had that I solved through software. 

And I literally want to make sure that if you want to be able to experience this, I want to be able to help you as much as possible because once you see it is so cool.

It feels like growing up in high school, I did a lot of magic and I loved slight of hand. And that's actually why I got into the video industry in the first place was because it's movie magic. I still love the concept. And what this ultimately is, is that you're performing a trick if you will, because you're uploading a video that you've already recorded, but to everybody else it's going to look live. 

And I just, I love the concept of being able to do that. We do try to invest in the way in which we do customer support. Disney has a pretty cool online program now. In fact, we have one guy, we have one person on our team, his name's Dawson, and he is doing our customer support. And I actually just sent him through the program, because again, our focus is how can we best serve our customers. They are the lifeblood of our business.

It doesn't take much. It's these little touch points, whether we send a welcome package, whether we try to get people on the phone. In fact, when you try to leave our website, it's like, "Hey, before you go, do you want to talk to a human?" 

We do have the chat feature. We do have like all these things that all the other companies have, because some people do just want to do text. They just want to type in a message. Great. Some people want to do the email. And they'll send us an email. Great. 

And yet some people are still intimidated to speak on the phone because they think it's going to be a horrible experience. But then I love that you had a positive experience. And that lights me up more than anything.

In fact, when I saw your email come in and you had said that, that just made my day. That to me is why I did this in the first place, is to be able to connect with people and to actually be able to serve them. Because again, we truly believe that you have a message you're trying to get out. 

Sometimes tech can be frustrating, but yet if we can spend a little bit of time and make sure it's set up correctly, then the rest, it just takes care of itself after that. And it's just so awesome.

Kendra Corman:

No, I think that's great. I love what you had to say about wanting to serve and earning business. I think a lot of people just take too much for granted right now. 

And I love that you feel that way and it comes through. And it shows up and it makes fans of the advocates, or customers and the advocates, which is really the ultimate goal.

Brandan Fisher, Founder of Live Pigeon:

And I think it all stemmed from, I do that on the video side. We just try to serve our clients to the best of our ability. And we do want you to have an experience when working with us. Because if not, there's somebody else that will be able to serve at a higher level. 

So if somebody has just such a positive experience with you, the stick rate will be a lot more. It's just at the end of the day, that's the only way that we can stay in business and to continue to serve people, if we actually serve them.

Kendra Corman:

Yeah. No, that's great. And I will say that I did find Live Pigeon through a YouTube video. 

So I wonder if it was the same influencer. She has a lot of followers and we did a how to go live with prerecorded video. So might have been the same one. 

Now I've used this mostly for virtual fundraisers during the pandemic, things like that, because we really needed it to be live, and for people to feel like we were doing this and that they were at the event. I mean we had dinner packages people could get. 

We encouraged watch parties, small watch parties of no more than two families, with no more than five people, and all the wonderful rules we had.

And I use it a lot now for clients who are nervous about going live. It's interesting because I don't do a lot of editing to their videos, but they feel a lot more comfortable knowing that it can be edited, if needed. 

Now I know you talked a little bit about churches. I think your website talks a little bit about training. What are some use cases that you've seen people use or heard feedback on with people using it for?

Brandan Fisher, Founder of Live Pigeon:

So because I'm in video production, what's interesting is I can kind of see how much it can cost business owners who, let's say they want higher production. So they want cameras, they want lights, they want all these things. 

And if we were to go into a business every single day for, let's say 30 minutes, that would cost the business owner a lot more money if we did that on a day to day, versus if they were super organized with what they were wanting to do, and we came in and filmed all the content in one day.

So basically where I'm going with this is if you batched your content, which again, this might not be for everybody, but there might be situations where let's say Monday was your content day or a Tuesday. And then you do all your filming on that day. 

Then your videos can be edited and then they can be dripped out over time. And the best part is you don't have to be there when it's going live. And so as business owners, I think that's what we're all trying to figure out is calendaring, scheduling. 

We've had people who will bring in a multiple wardrobe, so you can change your shirt or you can change different things in the background. So it looks like a new day.

Again, really the goal is ... Or another thing that we've heard that people are doing is they will go live, let's say every day, let's say Monday through Thursday. And they'll say in the video, like, "Hey, I don't have a lot of time today, but I wanted to go live to get across this message." And then they'll deliver their message. 

But if you have questions or comments put them in down below, and then I'm going to be going live on Friday and I will answer your questions live. And so there's different ways in which you can still get that engagement. I think at the end of the day, that's I think how people are using this is, to save the time of actually having to be there and doing it.

Kendra Corman:

Yeah. I love the flexibility. I love batching. I'm a huge fan of batching. So I recommend people batch their social media content, that you batch your blog writing, your video create, whatever it happens to be. You're just a lot more efficient if you're doing that. 

I batch all of my podcasts. I record usually two to four of them and then I edit them on a weekend. It cuts the time down in half because I actually get really efficient at it as I'm going through it. I get a lot better at it too. So I think that's really important.

Brandan Fisher, Founder of Live Pigeon:

And we're live. We're doing this live if you will. Because we're in real time. We're doing this episode and it's like, when everyone listens to it, they just consume it the way in which they want to. 

And then they gleam whatever nuggets they need and then they move on to the next one. Right?

Kendra Corman:

Right.

Brandan Fisher, Founder of Live Pigeon:

And so it's pretty cool.

Kendra Corman:

Yeah. No, I do love that. And I love the fact that Live Pigeon does save time. So if you are looking to save time on your content creation and streaming, but you do want to show up live for your audience. I think that's a fantastic way to do it. So-

Brandan Fisher, Founder of Live Pigeon:

One other-

Kendra Corman:

Oh, go ahead.

Brandan Fisher, Founder of Live Pigeon:

Sorry. One other thing I was going to add too, is that we've seen this across, I mean, we do have some musicians that use our platform, or churches, and what's interesting is a lot of times when you go live, the audio can be out of sync. And so your mouth is moving different than ... 

Where that's what's kind of nice too about our software is everything's in sync and aligned. And so if you ever have anything that you want to get across that's important with making sure that everything's in sync, then that might be another reason why you might want to use Live Pigeon.

Kendra Corman:

And if anybody listening uses Adobe Premiere Pro, you actually have a Premier Pro setting, export setting. I think you guys sent it over to me, to make sure that everything lines up perfectly. So I thought that was really good too. That was very helpful-

Brandan Fisher, Founder of Live Pigeon:

Awesome.

Kendra Corman:

... for those people that are a little bit more sophisticated, I have it actually programmed in my Adobe Premier Pro. I use that dropdown when I'm going to Live Pigeon. 

So, okay. You talked a little bit about this, that there's ways to create engagement, even though you're not live. You're going live without necessarily being live. And one of the things that people do like about live is creating that engagement. 

I love the idea of how they say, "Hey I don't have a lot of time, so I'm not going to answer questions right now, but go ahead and mention something in the comments and I will answer those questions," or DM me, or whatever it is. 

You drive that content so that you can handle it another day when it works better in your schedule. Because yeah, if you're going live at the same day, every week at the same time, it doesn't always work out perfectly. Sometimes something is going to come up. So how do you deal with that? I think that's an excellent suggestion.

Now, do you see any big mistakes or huge successes that people make when they go live? Are the successes, content related, engagement related, any insights there?

Brandan Fisher, Founder of Live Pigeon:

What's awesome about this is we don't, well, we don't have the opportunity to go and watch every single live video, because we have a lot of live videos that are coming in. 

But what's interesting is we do see, we are able to check in ... For example, if someone's going live to a private group, we can't go into the private group. Or we don't even have the opportunity to. 

But if someone's going live to a public page, then we can sometimes go in and see it. It's pretty cool. Because from that actually, we can see what type of content people are coming out with, or we can hear maybe what type of equipment they're using microphone wise, or how it looks and things like that.

What's actually interesting is we went through, I thought this was an interesting stat, so over five years and after streaming 128,766 plus videos, live videos, inside a Live Pigeon, here's everything we learned. In fact, we're going to give you guys this link, if you guys want to check it out. 

But if you just go to LivePigeon.com/improve and you can get this for yourself. This is a guide, or this is actually a report that we put together. And what's cool about this is it goes through and it basically explains how people have been going live, maybe things that I've recognized that I think could be improved upon. 

So I think some people want to know how can I make myself look good on camera. There's just different tips and techniques inside of this guide that we put together that will definitely be able to help you guys out.

What else is interesting is sometimes maybe people are too far away from a microphone, so they're just like, they like to have these really wide shots. Well, if I get too far away from a microphone, then people can't hear as good as if I come really close to it. 

In fact, I could demo this on a microphone here. If I start talking and I come farther away, it might be a little bit quieter. But then if I come in closer to the microphone, it's probably a lot louder. And so it's things like that, we probably notice if we're watching other people's videos. 

But it's also interesting because I'm not trying to tell you that you need to have the fancy cameras of the fancy equipment, because it's just, if we learn how to use the tech that we have, which is if you pull your phone out and you hit record. There's just different things that you can do to even improve upon that, if that's what you're looking for.

I think inside the guide or this report will be able to help you answer any of those questions. Because I think that's a really good question because I think everyone wants to know like, "Hey, what's something that I'm maybe not doing now that I could be doing to make it better?" 

And I think what else is interesting too, is how people are using Live Pigeon because they're not using it to go live every time they go live. But what's nice is they use it to supplement how they're going live, is how I like to use it. Because if you do it well and if you craft it in a way, people don't know when you're live and when you're pre-recorded.

And it's like, the goal isn't to be super deceptive, the goal is to just deliver your content. And how can you get your content out in front of your customers? 

And that maybe the best way of doing that if you're too nervous, but you know that you have good content, this might be the way to do that. Or it might be a time constraint or you might have a, oh shoot, I told my audience, I was going to go live at 10:00 AM, but I just got this opportunity. I got to be two places at once. 

How can I do that? Well, this is how you can do that, so that's what I love about the software.

Kendra Corman:

I love how you're talking about supplementing because yeah, you can go live and then use Live Pigeon when you're not able in your schedule. And you can use it to batch the majority of your content and schedule it out and then actually be live on a regular schedule that fits your schedule.

Brandan Fisher, Founder of Live Pigeon:

And what else is nice Kendra, is you had a unique situation in even how you were using it. And so everyone has a different way in how they might use it. We try to if they go to our website, you can see other examples of how other people are using it. 

And so it's just, like I said, it's just kind of fun because we don't have the perfect, this is exactly how it should be used. It's like you get to be creative in how you want to use it.

Kendra Corman:

For some reason, Giving Tuesday is usually around the time that I go on vacation and I usually go out of the country. And I work with a lot of nonprofits and Giving Tuesday is a big day for nonprofits. But I can't go live with them because I'm in another country. 

And so it's actually been a lifesaver from that aspect that I'm able to plan all that stuff in advance, and take my vacation, and enjoy a little bit of life, not just working all the time, which is I think another great reason for this tool.

The show as you know is called imperfect marketing. We touched on that a little bit at the beginning, because marketing just isn't perfect. 

I mean, we're always learning and evolving. I do want to ask you what your biggest marketing lesson learned has been, either with growing Live Pigeon or one of your other companies. 

Because I know that you've done video editing and production. You've also invented a product.

Brandan Fisher, Founder of Live Pigeon:

Yep. It's like a camera accessory that I sold for a little bit. In fact, technically I still sell it. But it's not like ... That's, what's kind of interesting, right, I guess being a serial entrepreneur, you just try certain things and you see what sticks. 

And I think everything I've set out to do has kind of worked out in that, I think anytime you make even one sale, it's like, wow, that was cool. Because you're exercising your brain to studying it out in your mind of like, okay, making the product or fulfilling a service or how ... 

It's been such a fun exercise to be able to do that. You know what's interesting is there's this [inaudible 00:36:00] I've heard this inside of the marketing space, those that spend the most to acquire a customer win.

I don't think I've understood that until I started until you start trying different marketing tactics, whether it's Google ads, whether it's Facebook ads and you just have to keep trying these different things. 

But what's interesting is if you have the most amazing service in the world, if you just have it sitting there on a website, no one's going to know about it because nobody just serves that up for you. There's not like a ... You have to do the work. 

And so the nice thing is there's opportunities out there though that you can do things organically to try to grow things. But it's all in testing. So for example, I might be jumping on with you today to test out like, "Okay, does podcasting work, right? Or is it just Google video or YouTube videos? Or is it Google ads? Is it ..." 

So I guess what I'm trying to say is, I think that's really what it comes down to, is being okay of testing and trying and embracing Imperfect Marketing to try to figure out what works best for you.

You might come in and even try Live Pigeon and be like, oh my gosh, I grew my lead flow or I was able to get more people in the door because I use Live Pigeon versus just posting videos just directly into Facebook," as an example. 

So I don't know, there's tons of different ways, but I think too many people too, try to hit for a grand slam instead of just getting on base. In other words, just trying different things. 

So it might be a podcast. Okay. I tried that. Okay. Now I'm going to try Facebook for a little bit. Okay. I tried that. 

You have to almost learn to juggle in that you, once you pick up one that you then can try another. And then you just keep doing it until you figure out.

And that's what I love about what it is that you're doing with this show. The name of it, it's just such an alignment with where entrepreneurs are, because we are all trying to guess to figure out what's working. 

And so some of us will pay a lot of money to go into a mastermind group to learn these things. Some of us can tune into your podcast and learn about these things. You just got to try to figure out and just keep testing and just, that's really what it comes down to is figuring out how can you do things almost organically so it's not costing you a lot of money at the end of the day.

Kendra Corman:

Yeah. It definitely is about tight budgets. And I always used to recommend 10, 15 to 25 percent of your budget be experimental. And if it's not money, it's time. 

So 25 percent of your time budget is experimental marketing. You've got to test different things, different places. And it changes. What works for the first two years might not work for the second two years. So building up that organic is really, really important and it does end up saving you a lot of money, so that's a really good point.

And I love the trial and error and testing things out. And I do really also like, yeah, your first TikTok is not going to go viral, it just isn't. Or the odds I should say are not in your favor of it going viral. 

But that doesn't mean that TikTok is not a good platform for you or that YouTube's not a good platform for you. You have to build that over time. 

Now I always ask this one question because I do love sci-fi and superheroes and superhero movies. What superpower would you choose for yourself?

Brandan Fisher, Founder of Live Pigeon:

I'm sure you get some funny responses. What I think would be interesting is to, I guess it's similar to even what our software does. 

I would love to be able to be two places at once or multiplicity. To be able to like clone myself so that I could be at home, but also at work at the same time. Or I think that's the biggest struggle as entrepreneurs is how do you get it all done in a day. 

But yet, if we could be two places at once, that would definitely help. Or if we could clone ourselves to just be able to get more work done in a shorter duration of time.

Kendra Corman:

I love that. I do like that a lot, because that would help us in a lot of different situations I think, so but this was fantastic. 

Thank you so, so much for joining me today and taking time out of your busy schedule to spend some time with me on this podcast, to talk about Live Pigeon and a little bit about your journey. I am confident that people are going to get a ton out of this and out of what you were able to share. 

And I do appreciate your honesty and transparency in that. We'll make sure we have a bunch of links in the show notes to Live Pigeon, the Live Pigeon Improve Guide, with all the lessons learned on over a hundred thousand live videos. 

Be sure to share that with you guys so that you can check it out. And you can tune in to the next episode of Imperfect Marketing, same time, same place. Thank you.

Brandan Fisher, Founder of Live Pigeon:

Thanks Kendra.

How did Live Pigeon come about?
Where did the name Live Pigeon come from?
The first stumbling block for Live Pigeon
The pandemic and a YouTube Influencer
Niching down and growing!
You can't fast forward through church services
Appointment Watching of Live Video
Natalie Hodsun Goes Live in the Wild
Why invest in customer service?
Batching Live Videos
Lessons learned from thousands of live videos
Lessons learned from marketing