Live Video Tool Showcase: BeLive

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This episode is part of our Live Video Tool Showcase series where we go through the best live video streaming tools out there. I’m really excited about highlighting BeLive which totally disrupted the live video tool space when it came out. It works through your web browser and makes it so easy to bring in guests remotely and highlight comments on the screen.

I’m joined by Daniel Mayer, one of the co-founders of BeLive. We’ll talk about how it all started and what’s next as well as highlighting the best features of BeLive. I’ve been so excited about the new studio in BeLive which allows you to switch cameras and microphones and some really cool things.

Daniel Mayer is the co-founder and CEO of BeLive, a live streaming platform that helps business owners easily produce professional live shows to boost their business.

We Cover...

How did BeLive as a company start?
Why did you make BeLive?
Why Live Video?
Do you get nervous on camera? Any tips?
Has the uptake surprised you? What's been the most fun thing to have happened since you launched it?
How would you describe BeLive in a couple of Tweets?
What are the best features of BeLive?
What are your frustrations? What are the missing features in BeLive currently?
What’s next for BeLive?

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Episode 38

Ian: Hello, it's the Confident Live Marketing Show. My name is Ian Anderson Gray. This is episode 38. I can't believe I've got up to episode 38! Today, I've got Daniel Mayer on to talk about BeLive. It's another one of my live video streaming tool showcases.

Who is Daniel Mayer?

Daniel Mayer is the co-founder and CEO of BeLive, a live streaming platform that helps businesses owners easily produce professional live shows to boost their business.He built BeLive from a two-man team to a global team of 30 people in five countries while building a community of BeLivers, currently 10k strong.

Ian: So excited to have Daniel Mayer on the show today. Daniel is the co-founder and CEO of BeLive, a live-streaming platform that helps business owners easily produce professional live shows to boost their business. He built BeLive from a two-man team to a global team of 30 people in five countries while building a community of BeLivers, currently 10 thousand strong. Daniel, it's great to have you on the show.

Daniel: Thank you, thank you. So great to have you here Ian. Just one correction. The community of BeLivers is 11 already, so we celebrate 11 thousand BeLivers last week.

Ian: Oh, okay. So I'm going to have to change that now. It's hot off the press. It's now 11. That's amazing. That's fab. Well, I'm really excited to find out more about the journey, your live video journey, your journey in creating this tool and over the years, but also about live video.

The Quiz

Ian: But before that, I think it's time to find out a little bit more about you, and this time for a little quiz. We do this every week. It's the Confident Live quiz, so these are really simple questions just basically to find out a little bit more about you. Are you ready?

Daniel: I'm ready than ever.

Ian: What you need to say is you were born ready. Let's do this. Okay, so first question. What is favourite type of food?

Daniel: Oh, Asian food, for sure.

Ian: Ooh, can you be a bit more specific? What type of Asian food?

Daniel: Everything.

Ian: Everything.

Daniel: Everything, everything, everything. Really. Everything. As long as you have a lot of spices, I like it, so that's why I was choosing Asian food.

Ian: Yeah, yeah, definitely. I'm a massive Asian food fan. I particularly love Indian food. Yeah, a bit of Chinese, Indonesian, Vietnamese. Yeah, I'm a bit like you. Loads of it, yeah. As long as it's got some flavour. It's just great.

Ian: Okay, I'm interested in this one. I ask everyone this question every week. We get different responses. So if you had to choose, Mac or PC, what would it be?

Daniel: PC. Sure.

Ian: Ooh, excellent. We've got a PC user in the house. That's great. It seems like the last few have been definitely Mac. You know what the Mac users are like. It's like absolutely Mac, and we've had a few "boths" recently. He uses Mac and PC. So it's good to have a PC user.

Daniel: Yeah, yeah. I think that as long as you'll see there is a huge correlation between where are you located and the answer to that question.

Ian: Yes.

Daniel: So I guess as long as you have more guests from Europe, from Asia, you will get much more answers about a PC. As long as you start interviewing guys from US and Canada, you'll find that the majority are using Macs.

Ian: That's a really good point actually. So actually most of our guests have been from the UK or the US, and so I think that figures. Right, so the next question is your favourite kind of music.

Daniel: Whoa, now you have put me in a really, really big problem, so in general, it would be electronic, but everyday I'm opening the YouTube music. They have the personal playlist and I'm just playing that in the office.

Ian: I guess you're broadening your horizons. You're listening to different stuff.

Daniel: Of course, of course.

Ian: A lot of people have a very narrow focus in terms of their music, so that's cool. What kind of electronic music? When you say electronic music, what do you mean by that?

Daniel: All over the place. It could be Infected Mushroom, and other great ones and then we can speak about Avicii and all the other stuff.

Ian: Oh, cool. I love all that stuff. Yeah, I'm a big fan. I love trance music, all that kind of stuff. Cool, okay. So this is the next question: If you had to choose between a banana and a Krispy Kreme donut, which one would it be?

Daniel: Currently, it would be banana. Really it is a diet. If you were asking me that question a month ago, for sure, for sure, the second one. It's just a matter of the day.

Ian: Yeah, it's a hard one. We've had quite a few people recently who said neither because they despise bananas and Krispy Kreme donuts, which is interesting, so you never know. Okay, next question, your favourite kids TV programme?

Daniel: Whoa, what question? I guess Ninja Turtles.

Ian: Ah, cool. I never watched those. I think they were, I'm just going to show my age, but I think it came when I was a little bit older. I was a bit too old for that, but yeah, that's good. Okay, this is going to be an interesting one. So next question is your favourite classical composer.

Daniel: That's a good question. I guess Beethoven or something like that, but in short, I really like listening to that music in general, also opera music, all those kind of stuff. Really helpful for calming down and relaxing, so yeah, for sure.

Ian: Chilling out. Yeah, it's definitely good for that. We have classical music in the house at dinnertime. It soothes the kids.

Daniel: What's your fav?

Ian: What about myself? I'm a Bach fan.

Daniel: Bach fan. Got it.

Ian: Definitely. Okay, there's one more question. This is going to be interesting. Your favourite app.

Daniel: Now, you put me in trouble. Of course it's BeLive, but my second fav app, I guess, would be around Uber or we have, in Israel, it's called GetTaxi. Why I'm choosing that because all the times you're using that app, you're getting to a goal, you're getting what you are looking to have. It's answering all your needs in the most simplest way and taking you from A to B in the fastest way without needing to negotiate about pricing. So smooth, the most smoothest flow you could ever think of, so for sure, when it comes to productivity or fixing problems we had like five years ago, 10 years ago, so that's something that's really solving a huge, huge, huge problem for us.

Ian: That's awesome. Yeah, it's one of those disruptive technologies that's come. These taxi apps have definitely changed things. Well, that's awesome. Thanks a lot Daniel. That's great to find out a little bit more about you.

How BeLive Started

Ian: So let's get into BeLive and your journey. So you mentioned BeLive's been around for three years I think you said.

Daniel: Three years, right.

Ian: Three years, yeah. So how did BeLive, as a company, start? How did you come up with the idea of setting up a live video tool, because this was when Facebook Live was just out. It was a new thing. Tell us a little bit more about that.

Daniel: So as I was mentioning in the beginning innovation, it's something that really, really, really exciting me, and I was always, always, always looking to find new solutions for old problems or new problems. In my experience, I'm a co-founder of seven other start apps and one day I was going to a concert and then it was something like seven years ago or something like that, I guess, and then, like in any other concert those days, you will see a bunch of guys standing, putting their mobile phones and recording that event, right? Like thousands of people holding the phones and recording a specific event, and I was looking at that and thinking to myself, what a waste of time, what a waste of data, what a waste of time that nobody will watch those videos. Nobody will care after they will stop recording about those videos. So can we do something much more smart, maybe collaboration, maybe let's do it live, or so. Why not?

Daniel: So was approaching my co-founder and CTO, Tzafrir, and I was telling him "Tzaf, we have to make it." We'll take all those dreams and we will create a collaboration. How? We'll have a producer, let's say producing the clouds that will get all those streams, and basically we'll produce one show. That means that 100 people, one thousand people can connect to one producer and sending all those streams so that basically was the idea that we had like seven years ago. We were starting to develop it. It was called Ovid. Ovid.com, you can go and search for it. It's still there.

Daniel: We were lighting some events. Long story short, we did something like 150 shows in one and a half years, I guess, or so. But you can understand from the number, 150 shows, it's not something that justifies company, right? It's not something that justifies any business basically, and then after one and a half year, Zuckerberg was standing on the stage and were releasing the Facebook Live API. It was around May, 2016, if I remember correctly. And then we took on the decision, we have to visit here. We have a great live platform. We have a great social network that's currently suggesting us to connect, so why not.

Daniel: One month after, we are basically launching BeLive, connecting our Gett platforms that we had to Facebook and you know. Since then, everything was starting.

Ian: Did you say a month?

Daniel: Yeah, a month.

Ian: So this was the precursor to BeLive. You had some of the technology there already.

Daniel: Right.

Ian: You had the video element of it and you had the producer element, so what was the bit, the technology, that you integrated in a month? Was that the Facebook integration?

Daniel: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Yes, we are talking about that, about going live directly in Facebook. That was the first phase, and then on October 16, we launch our first feature presenting the commenting screen. As I remember, we were the first one to release that feature. Of course, since then, everybody is doing that, but it was something really unique to be live and that was something that support our goal since the beginning because the audience was asking the show host, how are you doing that? How are you doing that magic? How are you presenting that comment onscreen? And the only answer in the room was BeLive, so that was something that was really powerful for us to gain a great, great, great growth at the beginning and with supporting us, yeah.

Ian: We can look back at 2016 and forget these things, but at the time, BeLive was totally innovating. It was disrupting, you talked about Uber earlier, I think that BeLive was disrupting the live video space.

Daniel: Right.

Ian: And there were no other tools that were integrating with the Facebook API to allow comments on the screen, and even today, yes, you're right, I think a lot more tools out there are doing that, they're integrating, but there's still quite a few that don't. I mean, this OBS Studio. At the time, when I was writing about live video, one of the only ways to go live to Facebook Live was to use OBS Studio. I love bits about it, but I want to pull my hair out with other bits of it because it is complicated to use, and it still, today, does not integrate with comments.

Ian: One of the most powerful things about live video is that audience participation. You can add the comments on the screen and not any of that would be live. It actually showed the photo, the image of that person, and people loved that.

Daniel: Right, I think that it's related to the core values of the founders. Like, what you are looking to present here, what is the tools that you are looking to be there. I guess that once OBS guys were sitting in the room and asking us of the question, what will we are looking to build here. The answer was transferring pixels over the internet. Yeah, we're looking to transfer video in a great quality to take everything, to take care about all the video components, to make sure that sure that our users will have any feature in the world. Lot of the times, I'm calling OBS, they excel for live shows. Why? Because you have any option you can think of, but just starting to adjust it and modify it will take you ages and you have so many options that at the end of the day, the average user needs five features on top of that. Nobody needs those 100 adjustments and all those features, and we build BeLive from the very first moment as a platform for engaging with your communities. That is the purpose. It's not the purpose of transferring pixels over the internet. We think that's pretty boring. Let's agree.

Daniel: Live is something that we're starting 13 years ago, I mean, live over the internet, using mobile phones. My co-founder had quick application on his Nokia device and it was going live from that 13 years ago. On his YouTube channel, you can find the evidence for that. So nothing new here. We are not talking about a new technology that we're arriving to life three years ago or five years ago or something like that. It's not a challenge anymore as we can see, but the challenge, of course, those days is to gain the engagement. It's to stand out in the news feed, to stand out in YouTube search or in YouTube in general that your audience will see something unique, that they will want to click on that, and you will have a conversion and you will have viewers that will view and will engage with your show, and again, yeah, that's for sure the main goal of BeLive.

Ian: And the fact that it was just so easy to use. So yes, it definitely was the engagement side of things but the other thing is it works within the browser so you just go to the website and you create your show that way and you don't have to worry about stream keys and all this kind of other stuff. It's just so easy to use and you're right. Live video's been around for ages but I wonder whether in 2016, Facebook Live came out, people had fast internet and decent mobile phones and they had better computers and so it was a good time for Facebook Live to come out with a live product because we could all do it without worrying about the technology and certainly, going back to OBS Studio, one of the big problems that a lot of people had and this is interesting and in a way, I loved OBS Studio because I created my first course on OBS Studio and I was able to sell it because OBS Studio was really difficult to use, and so that was good for me, but it wasn't good for everyone else. And obviously, with BeLive, you just load it up and it's very quick and easy.

Why Live Video? Authenticity!

Ian: So I think you've kind of answered this question, which is why live video? You've mentioned about the engagement but why do you think businesses and entrepreneurs should use live video as opposed to prerecorded video or other types of content, because for a lot of people, still today, it takes a lot of energy. It's still quite a scary thing for a lot of people.

Daniel: So I think that the words that you are looking to have here is "authentic", and authentic is the answer for everything that you are asking. Business owners, they have the business goal, they are looking to collect more leads. They are looking to have more sales. They are looking to drive more engagement to the community. They are looking to show their audience that we care about you. The most easiest way currently to provide that sentiment of authentic is just using live. Yeah. Let's agree that once you are posting a photo or posting a prerecorded video that you are editing and polishing. For one thousand times over a week or so, it won't be authentic. Maybe it will have the messaging of your business. Maybe you will be able to stand out in the news feed, but people, humans, they care about authentic. They're looking to see you in your good times, in your hard times, when it's look like the plan, when it's not look like the plan, they want to bring you some empathy and to show that they care.

Daniel: At the end of the day, how they will be able to provide you those kinds of sentiments, just by feeling authentic from your side. And as a business owner, I think that it's something that's really important for us, that once we're doing something authentic, that that's how our community will judge us and will get our messaging. Because yeah, we're using lots of ads, you're doing lots of commercial to your business and that's something that, a lot of the time, it's very hard for people to connect with. Maybe it's cool for driving new users or something like that, but when it comes to help your community, to grow your own community, to drive more sales from there. I guess that authentic is something that really, really, really missing those days, and that's why we're expecting to see a great grow even around 2020.

Ian: I love that, and that goes together really nicely with last week's episode. We had Jenny Flintoft on the show. She was talking basically the same kind of thing as what you just said. You know, empathy is such an important emotion and also, a lot of audiences out there are fed up with the slick marketing that all these businesses pump out, so actually being real and showing the times when things aren't going quite so well. I've always wanted to try and do that in this show. I've tried to talk about the mistakes that I've made and when things aren't going well, because otherwise it just shows a very one-sided view of me as an individual. And also if you're a business, its people aren't going to trust you as much as if you actually show all aspects of yourself. So thank you for showing that.

Tips on Live Video Nerves

Ian: So I mentioned that with live video, one of the things that really stops people from doing it is really that confidence of getting in front the camera, the mindset. And now, not only are you asking people to get in front of the camera, you're asking them to be authentic and share stuff. Have you got any tips on how to do that? And also, do you still get nervous with live video?

Daniel: A little bit, I guess. A little bit. I think that it's really natural to have those feelings always before you're going live. Let's just understand it. It's like going and stepping into a stage that you don't know the size of the audience that you will face with. You don't know the reactions of those audience. You don't know basically anything. You are speaking at the first very moment to the darkness. Then yes, you have the count of the viewers and you are getting some comments that are helping you to have some relief, but in the very first moment, you are speaking to the unknown, and I guess that's something that's affecting us somehow. But another thing that we have to remember, the fear of speaking to a crowd is the most common fear in the world. It is like the first one. We're not talking about taking flights, elevators, spiders. We are speaking about speaking to a crowd. That's the number one fear in the world.

Daniel: So I guess there is correlation between that and people looking to go live, but anyhow, after your first live show, you're getting so much exciting, so good sentiment and energies, that you are just asking yourself when is my next show, and yeah, five seconds before your next show, you will ask yourself the question, why? But then you will be live and everything will be so cool and great, so I guess it's something that you're just doing and doing and doing and doing until it's so natural for you and you're feeling great doing that. So my two cents here: keep doing that. Keep doing that til the moment that it will be easy-peasy for you, but also there, you will see that the five seconds before you're getting those sentiments that we're humans, it's okay.

Ian: That's so important to say. I still get those butterflies in my tummy before I go live. I still get nervous but the more you do it, the easier it becomes. I have this experience as a singer, trained professionally as a singer, and I kept on doing these concerts, performing in front of people and before each one, I would always think, "Why on earth did I agree to do this?" I was feeling so nervous and then I did it and at the end of it, I thought, "Wow, that was amazing. When's the next one?" Exactly what you say. And then the next time I did it, I felt nervous and the same thing happened. But every time I did it, I felt a little bit less nervous and I think it's the same thing when you do live video as well.

Ian: We've got Mel Bridger on, watching. A big hello to you. Mel's a good friend of mine. She's just started using BeLive.

Daniel: Kudos!

Ian: Fabulous, so let us know what your experience has been with BeLive and what you wanted to do? Because I know a live video's going to be a great platform for you, Mel, and what you do. She's in the fitness industry. I think that's going to be absolutely fab.

The Growth of BeLive

Ian: So BeLive really exploded. I mean, I remember when it came out and the popularity's been amazing. Did that uptake surprise you and what's been the most fun thing to have happened since you launched it?

Daniel: Right, I can't say that it was surprising. You know? That was the goal. Successful. We have to have as many users as we can that will start using our platform. We are building for the mass. We are not building it for ourself or for 10 guys or hundreds even. So of course that once it was happening it was just like another clue for us, you are going in the right direction, keep doing that. So it was like the first evidence that everything went well. Keep doing your magic. So that's like the first thing, to your understanding by the beginning and I have to say that I guess because we are the first one who were promoting and successfully building and launching those features, we're gaining so much traction. Can consider that, I don't know, 50 years ago, 60 years ago, when you have only one channel, the commercial TV, then of course, 90% of the viewers were watching that. In those days, to get 90% viewership on any channel in the world, it's not something that's happening.

Daniel: So of course, I guess, that it's really tight to the timing that we have, launching BeLive one month after the launching of the Facebook API and that was something that, for sure, was really supporting us. But on top of that, I guess that the understanding Zaphery and myself are bringing to the table about social applications, about humans, about how we are looking to interact, how we are looking to engage, what is a simple product, how we are building something like that. I guess that that was something really valuable. To us, our users were watching that. For them, it was like just magic, because like you said, the previous platforms were OBS, so lining from OBS to BeLive, it's just lining from basically. It's like the best comparison that I can bring right now, so I hope that is answering your question.

Ian: Yeah, definitely. It wasn't a surprise because that's what you wanted to happen, that was the intention you were being strategic with.

Daniel: Absolutely.

Ian: Which is, if you're in business, that's what you need to be doing, you know? Success should not be a surprise.

Red Bull & BeLive

Ian: What's the most fun thing that's happened since you launched it? You know? Have you had really cool people using it, companies using it? Has that been surprising to you?

Daniel: Wow, again, now you're asking me questions that we'll need to create research for the upcoming month or so to see all the great brands that were using and used BeLive, currently using it. I mean, I don't want to mention any company, because I guess that I will forget some of them. One of our first show, it was from Red Bull, so Red Bull were using us at the beginning, and they were creating a great show from England with two rappers in a collab, or so. So we were like, okay, you know, Red Bull looking to use BeLive, okay. Two rappers in a collab, how many audience that will bring. How many viewerships it will have. Two seconds after they start the show, it was 10K, the second after, it was 15K. 15K concurrent views. I'm not sure who from our audience, your audience in the world, was having 15K concurrent viewers on his show, but that was amazing.

Daniel: Just watching the comments getting into the studio, it was something that human can read. I mean, it was so fast, so many comments, so much engagement, and yeah, that was a fun and great moment for us, just watching the magic that we created, how other guys are using it and what kind of results they're getting by doing that, so I guess that was fun.

Ian: Yeah, that's awesome. It must have been so exciting seeing all these companies using that, and also from a tech point of view, it's difficult to test a live show with one or two thousand, 10 thousand concurrent viewers with the comments, and so actually that would have been a time where you were thinking is BeLive going to break with all these comments?

Daniel: Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely, and you know, it's the first days, that's means that we are tracking every show that somebody's doing on our platform and it was the other guys were getting show with 10 concurrent viewers, five concurrent viewers, 100 concurrent viewers, but we never had that kind of, let's say, stress test to our platform but it was like a live stress test. It was going well.

BeLive Customer Support

Ian: So this is not an advert for BeLive. I mean, I got Daniel on because we wanted to go through all the live video tools out there. One of the things that I've always been so impressed with, BeLive, is the customer service. Whenever I've had an issue, and usually it's me, there have been bugs in BeLive occasionally, but most of the time, it's me. It's my problem, and so I contact customer support and I get messaged back within minutes which is completely nuts.

Daniel: Right. The average is basically three minutes for answering a client. So it's the question that we're asking ourself from the very first moment, and again, once it was just Zaphery and myself in the room, two founders in the room, it's really easy because you are doing everything. You are doing the marketing. You're doing the customer support. You're doing development. You're doing the product. Whatever it takes, you will do that, right? So at the beginning, I'm like the supporter and every time you have an issue, contact me, I will fix it for you. Everybody will be happy. Great. But then, your company is growing in a week from five users or so to 100 users or so, and then your mailbox is starting to be full with requests and with people that just want to get some attention, asking the questions, want to know what is live.

Daniel: It was like the questions we got at the beginning was more about why to use live, why do I need that, how do I do that? I was never doing live in my past, so lots of gaps of knowledge that we were needing to fulfil, that I guess at those days, it's nobody asking, or the majority of the people are not asking questions about that, but we realised very, very fast that because we are doing live shows, that means that we need to have 24/7 support, that no matter when you need it, we will be there for you. You don't need to wait for us. You have the stress because you are going live, and you want everything to work for you, so we'll be there, always, no matter what the time is, no matter what the day is.

Daniel: Since October 2017, we're working 24/7 shifts, our support team, and that's the moment to thank to our support teams that are doing really, really great, great work, hard and great work, and lots of kudos to them.

Ian: That's awesome, and it's also good for you, because presumably, since then, you've had a little bit of sleep, since the beginning.

Daniel: It's just the responsibilities, it's just replacing. It's not like now I'm not support, you will have much more time, no, it's not that, because then you need to deal with the sales, then you need to deal the product. Scaling your team, we were two founders in the room and as you were mentioning at the beginning of the show, currently, we're like 30 people. In BeLive, five different countries, you need to manage that kind of operation. Yeah, lots of new things and every time you're delegating some of the responsibilities because you don't have any other option.

Ian: It's hard work. Sounds like an amazing job. Mel's got back to us and she says this is her experience with BeLive. She says, "It's been great. I do a weekly roundup with my students in my private Facebook group," because BeLive does allow you to stream to Facebook groups as well, "I download the video and upload the YouTube. I download the audio for a podcast." So she's doing a very similar thing to what I'm doing, doing one live show and then making it into lots of different types of content which is cool.

Describe BeLive in a Tweet

Ian: So Daniel, I was going to ask you to describe BeLive in a tweet, and although we've now got 280 characters, that still might not be quite enough, but if you could describe BeLive to somebody who's not come across it before in a very short sentence or two, what would you say?

Daniel: For sure. BeLive is the best platform for engaging with your community, when it comes to it, there is not lots of opportunities those days for standing out, and be left providing that kind of opportunity to you. The times you're spending in BeLive, that's the exactly times that you're going live. You don't need to make preparations before or after. You are going live. You're speaking with your audience. You're engaging with them and you're getting the results in real-time. Don't wait for results, go live and see them right now.

Ian: That's cool. It's probably a little bit more than two tweets but I'll let you off!

Daniel's Favorite BeLive Features

Ian: It's okay. Right. Okay, so in terms of the features with BeLive. I've covered this on an earlier show when I was looking at different tools and we did a deep dive into BeLive. Although, having said that, you have launched a new, what the word I'm looking for?

Daniel: A new studio.

Ian: New studio. That's the one, a new studio. What do you think are the best features of BeLive? What are you most excited about with BeLive?

Daniel: Right, so it's back to the roots, because the number one feature still is presenting the comments on screen, because as we were mentioning before, it's providing you the ability to speak with your audience, to represent them as a part of your show, to give them the option to feel they're getting it with us. It's not something that just Ian creating. We, as the audience, commenting on that show, we are seeing our picture on the show so we are feeling a part of that and that's something actually really, really, really important for us as business owners, as video producers. On top of that, I think that the number two for showing the comments onscreen would be our agenda.

Daniel: I don't think that somebody was duplicate the agenda from last year or to clone it yet, but the agenda, it's like the part that your are able to plan your show ahead of time, I mean, before you are going live, and to put all your notes. Really easy to use. Then, once you're going live, even when you're forgetting some of your topics, even when you have some of the actions with the viewers or so, you are able to go back to your agenda to see what you're writing to yourself previously on the show and focus in on that. On top of that, you are able to show all those notes if you're looking to one screen, and so on. It's something really, really powerful that I guess every show host that's looking to level up should use it.

Daniel: Let's not forget, those are the methods that using those days all over place when it come to professional TV and so on, so it's, in my opinion, it must have. And just like my two cents here, I see that a lot of the general users are going live without a reasoning, I will say, but it's not without a reasoning. It's without plan your show in advance. Understand what is the goal of your show, why you are going live, what actually you are looking to gain from that. Don't think that you can waste the time or abuse the time of your community just because you want. Going live without a reasoning, without a specific goal, it's just a waste of your time and waste of your community time.

Daniel: How you can avoid it? You can avoid it by planning it in the right way. Planning, suggesting, create topics, and get knowledge to your audience. Without that, nobody will watch you next week.

Ian: Yeah, that's such an important thing to say. Totally agree with you. There's a responsibility in going live.

Daniel: A responsibility.

Ian: People who are watching your live, that you're taking up their time, so you better deliver value. That's not to say you shouldn't just try it at the beginning and play around with it, but if you're going to be doing this for your business and to market your business, then you need to make sure you plan. And I'm glad you mentioned the agenda part of BeLive, because I haven't seen that in, I don't think I've seen that in any other tool. It's baked into the studio, and you could use a Google Doc but then you're juggling browsers and tabs and all that kind of stuff which wouldn't be good.

Daniel: Right, and then on top of that, let's remember that at the end of the day, the mission for us as a show host is basically to be by lots, right? We need to take a look directly to the car. We need to operate all the features, showing the comments, removing the comments, what you are speaking, engaging with the audience, adding the guest, asking him the questions, all of that, right? We can assume that we'll forget something.

Ian: Oh, yeah.

Daniel: It's okay, again, it's okay, we're humans. So don't trust your memory in that case.

Ian: Yeah.

Daniel: Trust your notes and put everything onscreen so you don't need to move your mouse or change something, and even no changing your eyes. That means the main call here is taking a look directly to the cam and not always taking a look all over the screen once you are live. You're looking to stay concentrate with your viewers so the two cents here, use the agenda and you'll see the great focus that you will have once you are live.

Ian: Which is great, and of course, yeah, I mean, you can do absolutely everything. You can host. You can produce. You can manage the comments, and that's what BeLive has done for, but if you don't want to do all that, one of the great features on BeLive is you can get somebody else to produce the show and you just go on there and that's great, and of course, BeLive also allows you to have multiple guests and you can even use multiple cameras, webcams, which is really cool.

Daniel: And mobile.

Ian: And mobile.

Daniel: The mobile apps. Absolutely.

What Have Been the Struggles & What are the Missing Features in BeLive?

Ian: We're running out of time, but I just had a couple more questions just to ask you, just as we finish. So we talked about a lot of the positives, but I'm sure over the years there's been some frustrations that you've had, and I also wanted to ask you quickly about that, but also what do you are the missing features for BeLive. What's next for BeLive? First of all, what are your frustrations and what do you feel is the missing features that you're wanting to put into BeLive?

Daniel: It's a challenging question. I would like to answer the first one about the frustration, and I don't think it's connected or related to the features. In general, there I know so many frustrations. Once you are a co-founder or such a successful company. Let's mention that. The frustration is coming from much more. Once you are seeing somebody that's not so ethic like you are looking to be. Basically, once somebody has stolen your heart, that's something that providing us lots of frustration, and I guess, it's like, the only thing here that I am creating those kind of bad sentiments. Other than that, there isn't anything actually causing those kinds of sentiments, so not a lot, yeah. We are living the dream.

Ian: Well, that's good to know, so what do you feel are the missing features and what can't you wait to integrate next? Have you got any thoughts on that?

Daniel: Right, right, right, right, right, so again, I will help you. Because the question, it's not about features, it's not about missing features. If I will ask myself what I would like the missing features in BeLive, I guess that it would be like any other company, or any other competitors that we have those days, that basically just trying to add more features, more, more, more, more, more features. But let's agree. You're here using all the tools, has the entire experience, you're going from the most simple-to-use platforms to the most hard-to-use platforms, all the variety of the platforms. From your point of view, Ian, after using all those platforms, what is the most missing feature? Not specifically for BeLive but when it come to, lets say, the small companies or the simple-to-use platform. What is the number one feature that is missing for you once comparing the small one to big ones?

Ian: That's a really good question. I still think it comes back to the simple stuff. Some of the platforms out there still don't have comments. It's how you engage with your audience. I would say it's that. It's putting the comments on the screen and also the ability to bring in guests, because some of them, even some of the higher rentals don't allow you to bring in guests easily and I think that's the key.

Daniel: So again, just proving my case, because we're expecting to hear something about VR, AR, green screen, and all other stuff, but we can agree. The common features that the platforms are supporting those days, it's even more than our users are actually needing, and that's something really important to understand. The journey is starting and ending in and with our users. We need to support them. We don't need to build features just in the sake of building those features. Everyday we're asking ourself how we can make the life of our users much more easier, how we can makes those flows much more easiest, how we can make everything much more flawless, how, how, how, but it's not about the features, because in my understanding and my perspective, the current features that we have are absolutely even more than the users actually need.

Daniel: And it's like a symptom then lot of the times when you are not reaching your goals, you're starting to think the only thing that I am missing here for getting more viewers is to have a different background. The only thing that I'm missing here to have a better engagement with my audience is to have the DSLR in the market because the quality of the image, that's the reason why people are leaving my show. So guys, I don't want to destroy all of your great sentiments and all your vision, but people are actually much care about your content and about the knowledge that you are looking to share with them. So my suggestion is to work around the graphics, showing elements onscreen, showing presentation onscreen, sharing your screen, bringing more knowledge and helping them to eat or to learn from that in the most easiest way that you can, but back to your question Ian, I don't think that you are currently missing any feature. Of course that we will build great features but when it comes to something that is fundamental and currently really missing, I don't think that we have something like that.

Ian: Well, that's good. If you do add any extra features, of course, I'll announce it on the show. We can get all geeky and focus on the features and tools, but ultimately, it's about the content that's engaging with your audience. I'm afraid we're out of time. I've got to pick my son up from school in a bit. If you want to find out more about BeLive, there's a special link if you go to iag.me/belive, and you can find out more about that. That's probably the best, that sends you to the BeLive website, and of course there's the BeLive community on Facebook, isn't there as well?

Daniel: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I had great time with you, real fun, and I'm expecting to have it in a monthly basis from now. It was so great to have you here, to have that kind of discussion about the whole ecosystem, about how we build our platforms. Thank you for your time and thank you for having me.

Ian: Appreciate it. Thank you so much for coming on the show. So until next time, I encourage you to level up your impacts, authority, and profits using Confident Live Video. See you soon. Bye.

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The Confident Live Marketing Show

The Confident Live Marketing Show is a weekly live video show and podcast. It’s aimed at established entrepreneurs who want to level up their impact, authority and profits through the power of live video, webinars and podcasts. We’ll focus on knocking down the 3 main barriers these entrepreneurs face when creating live content - camera confidence/mindset, tech/gear and content marketing.

It’s hosted by Ian Anderson Gray. He is the founder of the Confident Live Marketing Academy and is the host of the Confident Live Marketing Podcast. He helps entrepreneurs to level up their impact, authority and profits by using live video confidently. He’s founder of Seriously Social - a blog focused on live video and social media tools. He’s an international speaker, trainer, teacher and consultant. He has a passion for making the techno-babble of live video and social media marketing easy to understand. As well as being a geek, husband, and dad to two kids, Ian is also a professional singer and lives near Manchester in the UK.

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About Ian Anderson Gray

Ian is the founder of the Confident Live Marketing Academy and is the host of the Confident Live Marketing Podcast. He helps entrepreneurs to level up their impact, authority and profits by using live video confidently. He's a geek, husband, and dad to two kids, and trained as professional classical singer. He lives near Manchester in the UK. Find out more