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What's going on? Uploading today we have the pleasure of talking with Stephanie Garcia, who is a seasoned digital marketer with a 15 year career at top agencies. And Stephanie is also a live video strategist with a proven track record. She is the host of Lights Camera Live, a show dedicated to empowering small business owners to step into the spotlight with live streaming. So, Stephanie, I'll let you take it away. Tell us a little bit more about your career, what you do, and all things live streaming.

All things live streaming. I love it. So I'm the type of person where I like to take my clients from unknown to unforgettable. And the way that I do that is through live video. I have this belief that video is one of the best ways to hack into your clients happy brain chemicals. So it's that dopamine, that oxytocin, that serotonin, those endorphins. There's something magical, magical about livestreaming, where when you say someone's name, they're like, oh, oh, she knows me. And they feel as if they actually know you.

And so when it's time to have that discovery call, they're like, I already know you. I know your personality. You're definitely the person that I want to work with.

Awesome. Yeah. So, that being said, you know, you've had a career in media, in paid marketing. How did you discover live streaming? Like, what was your first array into live streaming? What brought you to it?

That's fun. So, as you said earlier, I'm an ad agency veteran. I spent the last decade and a half deep in the trenches of agency life. And so for those of you that have ever worked at an agency, you know what it's like. It's 50, 60 hours a week. And in 2015, when I had my daughter, I was like, oh, man. Well, if I am bringing another human being into this world, I want to be here and be present. And so I figured, well, heck, if I could do this for Nike, Sephora, clinique.

I sure as heck can do it for myself. And so I left that ad agency world, started my own consulting agency, and to my surprise, fellas, everyone was calling themselves, like, a social media strategist. And I was like, well, how do I separate myself from the sea of sameness? And that's when I realized that if you're confident on camera, clients will be confident that you can get the results. And so I started dabbling with live streaming. I started to, I decided basically, I wanted to show people what it's like to do a social media strategy, how to do a social media audit versus just telling people, hey, I do this. And so I would take people behind the scenes. I'm like, this is how I do an audit. This is how I create a content calendar.

This is how I schedule or edit your post. And by the time I was done live streaming, I kid you not, every single time I would get a DM, they're like, how do I work with you? I was like, oh, wait a second. This works. And then a few episodes after that, people are like, well, how is it that you're doing the things that you're doing? Because back then, I was using obs with, like, a green screen. If you're scrolling through the newsfeed, I put myself inside of a Mac monitor, right? And people are like, what is this? This is different. And it's one of those things where you just have to do a pattern interrupt in social media to get people to stop, look and listen to what it is that you have to say. And so after a while, people were like, can you teach me how to do this? So I started doing masterclasses, which led to book deals, keynotes. I've spoken at, like, Vidsummit, Vidcon, and all these different places.

And it's been fun. So now I'm just in the live streaming world. Ecamm fam is my jam, and that's where you can find me most of the time.

Yeah, I'm curious on, you know, you mentioned some other conferences you've been on, but live streaming isn't limited to conferences. And so some people compare, say, podcasting to live streaming. Well, why do I have to be there live when I can just record it and push it out forever to anyone? But there are certain benefits that you get from live streaming that you don't get from podcasting. Now. It's challenging and daunting that you have to get people to show up. And so how, how do you do that. How do you get people to show up? You know, some of. Some of my upper limit, block me into doing life, thinking that people are on calls all day and nobody wants to show up.

I'm sure there's strategies. You have to position it right. And that's the art of what you do. So can you share more about, what's the secret sauce behind getting people excited to join a live stream?