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Connect with Jim
http://dealcasters.shop
http://dealcasters.academy
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimfuhs/

Connect with Russ
https://russjohns.com/
https://thepiratesyndicate.com/
https://nextstepnext.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nextstepnext/

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Introduction: [00:00:00] Welcome to the #PirateBroadcast™, where we interview #interestingpeople doing #interestingthings. Where you can expand your connections, your community, #kindnessiscool and #smilesarefree. Let’s get this party started.

Russ Johns: [00:00:10] And it's a great day for the #PirateBroadcast™ and if you're watching this live, awesome. Type in #piratenation, hashtag #piratenation, we're going to be giving some things away later in the show today and also thank you so much for being here. If you're watching this live or you're watching this in the future, if you're watching this whenever, wherever you happen to be. Thank you, Jim. Good morning. How are you, my friend?

Jim Fuhs: [00:00:35] I'm doing great. It's funny because you live in Arizona, right? The whole time difference thing. I was thinking at first that we were going to be on at nine cause I think the last time it was, but you guys don't change and we did, it was like, oh, it's actually at 10.

Russ Johns: [00:00:49] Yeah. It's actually at 10. Yeah. It's one of those things that even I have to think about. Sometimes  I'll inadvertently transpose the times when I'm working around the world and you just have to calculate it. It's okay, which time am I in? Which time are they in? Because even on StreamYard it says mountain standard time when I'm setting up a show, even though I'm in Arizona. So I have to be cautious about how I set things up. So we were talking before the show about streaming in general and this is one of the things that we really have evolved over the last two years really. Wouldn't you say?

Jim Fuhs: [00:01:31] Oh, absolutely. I think between where you can live stream and things of that nature, but I think, and it was interesting because I was interviewing Mike Alton yesterday with my friend Chris Stone on our DealCasters show over an Amazon and they were, and Mike recently co-authored a book called the ultimate guide to social media. And in there they have a chapter about live streaming, but it's really not so much about like where and what equipment, but it's the fundamentals, right? It doesn't matter if we're using StreamYard or some of the other programs that are out there. It's the basics. It's like looking at the camera, it's thinking about your audio. And that can all start with a cell phone. It doesn't have to be multi thousand dollar investment, which sometimes  I see these people doing that. The reality is you got to have good content first. Cause you could look all slick and great, but if. If garbage comes out, then people are going to tune out, and I think that's where you've done a great job with the pirate broadcast. Cause you're always bringing on interesting people and you keep it, you keep it interesting. And you also, you respect people's time. You can't just go, on forever and ever, because if you tell people you're going to be a certain length of time, sometimes I think that's important as well.

Russ Johns: [00:02:54] And for myself, the broadcast is one piece of it. And I want the guests to have a good experience when you sign on and you fill out your form and you'll get notifications and everything is in place and it's pretty easy to get access to the #PirateBroadcast. I think so anyway, that's my experience. And it's not always the case with a lot of podcasters or livestream people.   I recognize that when other people invite me onto a show and I put it out on the calendars and all of a sudden it's the day of and I haven't heard anything from them. I was like you should probably remind people a couple of times that things are going on, things that are taking place.

Jim Fuhs: [00:03:38] Yeah, absolutely.

Russ Johns: [00:03:39] And I think a lot of people over the last couple of, say for the last 12, 18 months, people are starting to get a little bit of zoom fatigue too. Remote broadcasting and things and people may not necessarily watch the live streams as often as they would historically, however, I think the overall game is a long haul. It's like podcasting, you just have to be consistent. Continue to show up. My numbers are still... some things are dropping. Some things are growing. And it's really about the relationships that I'm building through this conversation. You've been on this before and we've had several adventures in connecting and working together and that's what it's about. It's, okay, what kind of a community can I grow? And for me that's my #motivation is what kind of a community can I grow?

Jim Fuhs: [00:04:28] Absolutely. I think that's so important. Shout out to some of the folks watching. Hope I say it right, Elize and Angie, Marcia, Wendy, and then of course my, my good friend, Chris Stone.

Russ Johns: [00:04:39] Hey Elize. Yeah. I want to mention, would you please type in #piratenation again? I hadn't started it yet, so type in the #piratenation and get that going just so I can get my production down here. Get things going.

Jim Fuhs: [00:04:55] But we've become a part of a community with with Amazon live creators. It's a community on Facebook and it's really become quite a neat group because what a lot of people don't realize, talking about live streaming, is there's probably, we think Amazon hasn't told us maybe a thousand creators on the Amazon platform. And so when you think of the days of wouldn't you have liked to have been one of those first YouTubers, 10 plus years ago. You got these people creating great content that would make sense on Amazon that are, oh,  I'm gonna put all my eggs into the YouTube basket. That's not to say that there's anything wrong with YouTube, but it's a lot of work to get things moving.  We were talking about how many videos you've done and you're still only at 500 subscribers and so it's not for lack of effort and not for a lack of good content. And so it's just fascinating. You could very easily put the #PirateBroadcast™ on Amazon just doing what you're doing and we can always talk about that for you, too, cause that might not be be an interesting experiment, I think, for you to see how that works because I know Chris and I really enjoyed... I mean, we've gotten an interview cause you think about it, if I say, hey, how'd you like to be on Amazon? People say, what?

Russ Johns: [00:06:13] I found out the other day that my podcast is on Audible.

Jim Fuhs: [00:06:18] Nice. So that means you're probably on Amazon music, which means believe it or not that in the carousel that you get with your Amazon show, you can have your podcast out there and people would just click on it and they could go subscribe on Amazon music.

Russ Johns: [00:06:31] Yeah, it's really interesting to see. I did a little experiment the other day and I walked through the process of the #PirateBroadcast and essentially each episode gets delivered every single day, just first round, over 20 platforms immediately. So I don't know, other people are going to pick it up the RSS feed's going to get picked up and having over a thousand pieces of content on YouTube, I would think would offer a little bit more visibility. However, it's so noisy. Like you said, YouTube is incredibly noisy compared to what Amazon is right now. So if I could  introduce some products or services on Amazon, that would be fantastic.

Jim Fuhs: [00:07:19] Yeah, I definitely think you could. And I think if you're someone that is interviewing authors or talking about products, I talk about this microphone. You've got a lot of tech you use, you could be teaching people how to use it without really changing what you're doing. It's just now they can actually ask you questions live while you're doing it. 

Russ Johns: [00:07:39] It's like the tripod and I can turn it and I can see Marcia's copper backing here so I can actually stay safe.

Jim Fuhs: [00:07:48] Yeah. It's really cool, but it goes back to that whole community thing. The people in this group, we're not looking at each other as competition.  It's more about collaboration. We even did our first one a couple of weeks ago cause StreamYard is a great tool for live streaming where we actually had both people's channel destinations in one stream. So the same show was playing on two different channels on Amazon. But each person had like their own unique set of products. And we were getting different view counts because it's kinda like the people following them, we're seeing them and vice versa. So that was a pretty neat experiment, cause you're really almost creating your own TV station on Amazon when you become a Amazon live creator.

Russ Johns: [00:08:38] You should interview Marcia Reece. Marcia Reece is in the house here. And she's an awesome individual and I'd let her tell her story because she'd be great to interview, but she created sidewalk chalk and used to be mentored by Sam Walton. And she now is attempting and I haven't talked to her recently, but her product Stay Well is actually attempting to get back on Amazon after being booted off because they disconnected a lot of people just because of COVID. Some reasons behind that, but it would be  a great interview for Amazon Awareness. Just understand what it takes, the journey and some of the things behind it. And then also her Staywell product when it gets back on Amazon.

Jim Fuhs: [00:09:26] Interesting. I have to check that out.

Russ Johns: [00:09:29] Amazing person. And Wendy Weiner's  in the house. Welcomed to the pirate posse, Jim. Admiral Russ Johns is a very good leader. Thank you so much. That's very kind. Thank you for your service, Jim. We're honored to have you, yes. You guys had a birthday, right?

Jim Fuhs: [00:09:44] Our birthday's not till November, but but we did just remember all those that made the ultimate sacrifice a couple of weekends ago. And then we got the big birthday coming up, the 4th of July, and looks like we might actually even be able to be outside for it, which is exciting. Now for us, at least here in Georgia, it's going to be more about weather permitting because we we are doing pretty good with people getting vaccinated and numbers are way down. So hopefully that's the same out there in Arizona.

Russ Johns: [00:10:15] I think Arizona is the same way. People are starting to get out a little bit more. Michael Baker's in the house from Florida. Amy, good morning. How are you doing? Good morning pirates. #piratenation. Howard Kaufman, another individual that's amazing. He'd be a great one to interview as well. And he's got a cool product that is out there doing some good work that I use every single day. Howard. I use it every day and I love it.

Jim Fuhs: [00:10:39] What is that? Now you've got me intrigued.

Russ Johns: [00:10:42] He does ORL or mouth care. It's safe and let me get this, see if I can get this in. Here we go. Let me see. Turn it around. I got to get my my QVC skills up. So it's an awesome product that I love and yeah, just great people. Great community. And I think that's how Amazon is going to turn out. Do you see the same people showing up every day?

Jim Fuhs: [00:11:10] We do. We do. It's pretty cool because you do get followers within Amazon itself. And so we do definitely see some of the same folks watching our shows and then even fellow creators will support each other and watch each other's shows and give each other shout outs Hey, make sure you go follow our friend, Christina Nietzsche, who does a lot of fitness videos. I actually helped a lady by the name of Denise Bell who does an art show. She actually does like art projects,live on Amazon, teaching kids and sometimes adults how to do these different art projects. And so what's cool about it is the products you need to make that project are right there. So you can go back and watch it later, you can go order this stuff. So that's something that I think is pretty cool. Cause you know, we talk sometimes about quote unquote starving artists. So that is a great way for people that are really in a niche where the products are on Amazon, kinda to grow that expansion. And then I'll tell you the other thing that happens that we're seeing more so with podcasters and YouTube challenges, We've been approached much earlier in the game by brands. Hey, we'd like you to talk about our product or we'd like to do this or that, where if just on YouTube or you've got a podcast, I've got a couple podcasts. It's not like people necessarily are banging down your door. It's much more the opposite way. So  it's really fascinating, the opportunities, if people are willing, but it still goes back to, you gotta put in the work. You gotta be consistent.

Russ Johns: [00:12:43] You to actually go live longer rather than shorter. I know a lot of, like LinkedIn wants you to not necessarily go for hours and hours. I think Amazon would be perfectly acceptable.

Jim Fuhs: [00:12:57] Oh yeah.  There was a lady the other day that went live for three hours and just had a crazy amount of views. And then of course the 21st and 22nd, it's a Christmas in June for Amazon live streamers. It's the prime days. And I think Chris and I are going to maybe try to set our own personal record for how many hours we live stream in two days. So that should be interesting. We'll be drinking lots of coffee and we'll have... who knows what we'll be saying, but it'll be fun though.

Russ Johns: [00:13:27] Are you using StreamYard to stream to Amazon?.

Jim Fuhs: [00:13:31] Yes

Russ Johns: [00:13:31] So is there a limit of four hours?

Jim Fuhs: [00:13:34] I've never done a show longer than four hours. So that's a good question. And I thought on the pro plan, you could maybe do eight, but I'm possibly mistaken. I do have the pro plan with StreamYard, but yeah, that's a good question. I hadn't thought about that, but  even if we were going to do something like that, we'll take a break. Then come back, do another one. So I could see where, we might do two, three hours. Stop, go back. I think the longest one episode that Chris and I have done on Amazon in the past, it was maybe two to three hours. I can't remember the exact amount, but I'll tell you, sometimes if you're talking about a lot of stuff, the time flies.

Russ Johns: [00:14:14] Oh yeah. 30 minutes flies a lot of times on the #PirateBroadcast. And just sharing regular information, it's really important for people to gather it, like you said, get the information out there and knock it out and get it done. Amazon, on the other hand, and what I've heard and what I noticed was these individuals are going on, like a long-term broadcast. It's almost like a marathon show. I'm curious from anybody in the audience, have you had an opportunity to go on Amazon or watch any live programs on Amazon yet?

Jim Fuhs: [00:14:49] I would almost, if you were to take a poll, I should probably put a poll on my LinkedIn today. It's have you ever watched are you aware of Amazon live would be one poll question and the second one would be, have you ever watched one? Cause I will tell you that more times than not people have not, don't even realize that it's a thing yet.

Russ Johns: [00:15:05] I think it's still early. So is there a specific link that you have that you can send out in advance?

Jim Fuhs: [00:15:11] We actually made it really simple and this is where, and I'm going to give away a one today. If it's okay with you is Chris and I got a dot live.. Now you say why a dot live? Because it's a live show, right? This is a live show. You could get piratebroadcast.live. And so what we did is we created DealCasters.live, and we have a redirect to our Amazon. It goes to our most recent Amazon live episode. Now, if we're actually live, it'll take you to that show live. And yeah, so Marcia, you literally just go online DealCasters.live, and you'll see all our live shows cause it keeps them all in the library of our shop page. Otherwise,  it's amazon.com forward slash this forward slash a bunch of letters and numbers. And as I joke sometimes, you lost me at the slash. I took that pirate sword and I slashed it and I'm done. And that's where we just make it easy with the redirect by going to.live. And so I think Chris and I even feel like that and we started working with name.com because  that it makes it easy.

Russ Johns: [00:16:24] So what is it? Dealcasters?

Jim Fuhs: [00:16:26] Yeah. DealCasters.live.

Russ Johns: [00:16:29] I put it in slack here.

Jim Fuhs: [00:16:30] Awesome. That's all there is to it. You just type that in and boom, you're able to see all the shows you'll see the show we just did yesterday with Mike Alton, talking about blogging.

Russ Johns: [00:16:41] Why does Mike Alton sound familiar?

Jim Fuhs: [00:16:44] He's the blogging brute. He's the head of a strategic partnership for Agora pulse. He's a pretty well known person in the social media space.

Russ Johns: [00:16:54] It's not coming up and it may be because the CDN is down. I dunno if anybody's aware of this, but there was a major outage on the internet today. So a lot of people are going to be upset.

Jim Fuhs: [00:17:05] Yeah, it looks like there's something wrong.  Amazon might be down. Amazon is down. Cause that's a redirect to Amazon. Let me see. Oh, now Amazon came up.

Russ Johns: [00:17:14] Tracie reminds us the link is also in the show notes. After this broadcast, you can go to RussJohns.com/piratebroadcast. You can watch all the episodes. There's a big button right on the home screen. And Tracie says, it's coming up for me.

Jim Fuhs: [00:17:31] Now it's working.

Russ Johns: [00:17:32] Is it coming up for you now?

Jim Fuhs: [00:17:33] Yep.

Russ Johns: [00:17:34] All right. Let me refresh it a couple of times. Oh, I have to spell it correctly.

Jim Fuhs: [00:17:39] Spelling is such a thing.

Russ Johns: [00:17:42] Spelling is such a thing, but yeah, so we can actually share this. I can share this screen. So here it is. So there you go.

Jim Fuhs: [00:17:52] Yeah. And so if you scroll up just a little bit, you'll see, there's the proverbial carousel. So we're able to put products in there.  Right underneath the video. And so if people click on the book, we actually get a cookie that if they make that purchase, that book or anything on Amazon for the next 24 hours, we get a small affiliate commission from Amazon, just like you would with the Amazon associates program. And while it's live, there's actually a chat off to the right of the video where we're able to chat with our audience and see who's making comments and you can even see two right under the DealCaster, you see? We even have a storefront. So if you click the storefront, which is there at the top. Yeah. See, and those are all our previous episodes.

Russ Johns: [00:18:41] So if I go to the top, when you say the top...

Jim Fuhs: [00:18:44] Scrolling up, I think, towards the top or down, I'm sorry. There you go. See right under DealCasters? It says view my storefront, right?

Russ Johns: [00:18:54] So this is all your stuff that you can actually...

Jim Fuhs: [00:18:56] We have shoppable photos, we have product videos that we're able to upload, idea list that we can create.

Russ Johns: [00:19:06] May the blog be with you, all of these things, if people click on and buy this, you get credit for?

Jim Fuhs: [00:19:12] Yes. So it's really a neat thing. And I think the #PirateBroadcast™ needs to get out there, but that's just me.

Russ Johns: [00:19:18] I think I've already applied once for it. But I'm not sure that... I didn't see an email, so I should probably go through it again. Maybe we can talk offline and you can show me. Share a few tips.

Jim Fuhs: [00:19:29] Absolutely. Cause some of our, I think do you know Marco Novo.

Russ Johns: [00:19:33] Yeah.

Jim Fuhs: [00:19:34] Marco's on there. Ryan Swanstrom is on there.

Russ Johns: [00:19:38] Oh, Ryan's on. Ok.

Jim Fuhs: [00:19:39] All the time. Those guys have gone in heavy. Jetty from South Africa is on there. So you've even got Howard Vail, I think, Howard as well from the live group we're in. So yeah, several of them have all jumped in.

Russ Johns: [00:19:54] Jumped on the Amazon train, huh?

Jim Fuhs: [00:19:55] Yes. 

Russ Johns: [00:19:56] I can talk about nerd stuff all day.

Jim Fuhs: [00:19:58] You could absolutely. That's what I'm saying. And there are people looking for that nerd feedback that you and I can provide on things that really can help them make good decisions on purchases. And cause we treat it like a show. We don't treat it like a Like QVC. We talk, we have interviews now. Every once in a while, Chris and I will do episodes where it's just the two of us and we will talk about stuff, but it's more going into the details of like, why you would want to pick this microphone, maybe over something else and really looking to help people get started with live streaming and podcasting. Cause I think that even though it may change, like we talked about earlier, the fundamentals remain the same. And so we're excited about what the future may hold because a lot of people may not realize this, but over in Asia, the type of live stream shopping going on Amazon is huge.

Russ Johns: [00:20:52] Humongous. So Nick says, Hey pirates. Hey Nick, you need a a domain.live to go for your lives. So type in hashtag pirate nation and let's get it. Angie, thank you so much for being here. Hope you recovered from your camping. It's awesome to see you here. And then I got to come up here for you in Wisconsin. Amy found it. So people know how to find you on Amazon now, Jim.

Jim Fuhs: [00:21:21] There you go. So easy everybody was able to do it.

Russ Johns: [00:21:25] It pays to be a pirate. That's all I'm saying. So as we wrap up here, what else is going on in the world of Jim and your marketing team? And what's fun and exciting that we can look forward to over the summer.

Jim Fuhs: [00:21:38] The Tim and Jim show, we've got a lot going on, shows every week. You were on it, I think it was already like two, three months ago. So time is flying and so we've got some great guests.

Russ Johns: [00:21:47] Oh yes, I remember that. My camera kept shutting off and I wanted to tell you what it was.  I had taken my camera out to do some photography and I had changed the settings on my battery life. And so my battery was overheating it's wow, it's just a setting. Cause I can run it all day. And it's what is going on? It's like simple flip of the switch. That's all it took.

Jim Fuhs: [00:22:13] Yeah. But August is going to be the three-year anniversary of the Tim and Jim show. We've already locked on our guest. I'm not going to announce it yet cause it's going to be a big surprise, but we're thrilled. A very big name guest. It just goes back to you gotta be consistent when it comes to doing any of your social content and whether you're live streaming, blogging, podcasting. Cause if you're not consistent, people think, oh, maybe they're not doing it anymore. And they go and they find other people. So that's, yeah, that's big. Chris and I go live at least twice a week on Amazon. We've got a show Thursday at four Eastern with Ron Carr. We're gonna be talking about his new book, Velocity Mindset. So if you're an entrepreneur and feeling stuck, you might want to tune in. Ron's got some great words of wisdom, but yeah, just keeping busy. Getting out. I'm actually going to go to a conference in August in person. Getting out of that house, excited about that. Social media week  in Lima, Ohio. Great conference. If people are thinking about going, it's only about a hundred bucks for a ticket and there'll be a lot of really good people there. So maybe you should come to Ohio.

Russ Johns: [00:23:24] Yeah. I would love to, I'd love to. People are getting anxious to get out. It's really going to be happening here a little bit. So yeah, Jim, thanks for being here today. I really appreciate it. And I want to do this giveaway, the.live to one of the pirates and we can help you get live if you need some assistance in that arena. People that know people, I'm just saying. So anyway, we're going to do this. We're going to do this giveaway and also just as a soundbite. If you want to learn about something from this episode, Jim, what would the takeaway be? What would you want the take away to be?

Jim Fuhs: [00:24:01] The biggest takeaway would be, if you're a creator, ask yourself why you're not taking a look at Amazon as another place to share your content with.

Russ Johns: [00:24:13] Awesome. All right. You ready? You ready for this? Let's do this. Okay. We got some entries here. Survey says, winner, chicken dinner, Amy from Wisconsin. Fantastic. I love it. Thank you so much for being here today, Jim, it's been an adventure and I thank you for so much for being here. I really love the fact that we're still live streaming. We're still kicking. We're still doing this thing and shows every day and we're just continuing to show up and share the value with the community today. And anyone else, as always, we're doing giveaways, we're bringing guests on, we're sharing #interestingthings. If there's something that you want us to share, or you want something to be brought to the table here, give me a shout out. Love to have conversation with you. Cause you're only one conversation away. A lot of things out in social media that are changing and evolving. I got some things cooking in the back end that I'm going to be announcing here shortly. And I just really would love the opportunity to continue to stay connected and everything else. Because as you know, #kindnessiscool, #smilesarefree and you #enjoytheday. So Jim, take care, man.

Jim Fuhs: [00:25:29] You too. Thanks Russ.

Russ Johns: [00:25:31] Bye.

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