Last updated on January 22nd, 2019 at 01:58 pm
Come join us at The Virtual Laugh Bar – where the comedy is served up clean and neat – shaken not stirred – and nobody has to drink alone. Sundays 7pm EST on Blab.
A New Dream Has Arrived- My Own Virtual Laugh Bar – Where the humor is served up clean and neat – shaken not stirred – and nobody has to drink alone.
Two months ago, I had never heard of Blab (www.blab.im). Shoot, two months ago nobody had heard of Blab. It’s this rocking super cool online platform that lets you hold four online video conversations at once – while your viewers get to mix and mingle on the side and have their own fun additions to the conversation – while you can swap people in and out of the video as often as you wish. Highly interactive. Highly fun. Highly cool. And catching on like wildfire.
I was part of a blab conversation with my dear friend and fellow speaker Laurie Guest (www.solutionsarebrewing.com). Laurie is VERY funny. And when you put the two of us together. Well, it just gets funnier. People throughout the blab were commenting about how funny we were and how they loved listening to us. As soon as the blab ended, I had an idea.
“Let’s do a show together!” I told Laurie. “Just you and me. Bantering and dishing about life. No business advice. No motivation. Just hanging out and laughing together. You and me and some random guests.” She instantly agreed. So while it sounded scary and over-the-top (we were committing out of the gate to host a show every week) it just felt right. We didn’t go seeking advice or asking others what they thought. We just jumped. I figured I had nothing to lose and whole LOT to gain by jumping into this Blab thing early.
Yes, I had the doubts and the fears that went something like this:
- What if you’re not funny enough?
- What if you have technical issues?
- What if nobody signs up?
- What if nobody listens?
- What if the comments are awful?
- What if we get weird people in the video seat?
- Will this hurt my brand or help it?
- What if we spend a lot of time and energy and it doesn’t work out?
- What if….what if….what if….
And I came to the conclusion that I often come to when faced with a new dream – if it doesn’t cost me a lot of money and doesn’t tank my career or hurt my brand – why not? So we jumped.
We scheduled our first show for SIX DAYS LATER! Gulp. Nothing like acting fast! But we knew we had to act fast. Sometimes you have to move without waiting to figure it all out. We came up with a cool name: The Virtual Laugh Bar. And we came up with some cool ideas on how to brand and host the show.
Then I went an made a demo video to tell people about it. Here is the demo:
Then I created a YouTube Channel where we could post all the replays of the episodes for those who can’t watch it live on Blab – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMCung5SKgpSFQvIyMdkuLQ
Then I created a Facebook Fan Page where we can have conversations about the show: https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Virtual-Laugh-Bar-with-Kelly-Swanson-and-Laurie-Guest/1648099662099793
Then I started telling all my followers (on LinkedIn, Facebook, Google Plus, and Twitter) about it. People started to subscribe to the show. It was pretty exciting. And still very scary.
Show Time!
Laurie and I did a lot of planning for this show. It was all new to us, and Blab was still in the Beta Testing phase, so all the kinks had not been ironed out yet. So we did what we could to plan, figured out back up options if things went wrong, and discussed our roles for the show.
I was VERY nervous. This was a new platform for me. Totally off script. Gulp.
And we did it.
The Virtual Laugh Bar with Kelly Swanson and Laurie Guest – Pilot Episode
Here is the video of our pilot show. As you can tell, we had some technical issues. Everything did not go according to plan, even though we didn’t have a plan. But we had over 400 viewers – as of the writing of this post – the replays are available forever. When you get some time to settle in and watch, I would appreciate it. I think it’s pretty funny. Not bad for the first episode. And now I know how to make it even BETTER. I’m so excited about this new dream. It was something I didn’t see coming. And aren’t those the best kind!
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Kelly Swanson is an award-winning storyteller, comedian, motivational speaker, Huffington Post Contributor, and cast member of The Fashion Hero television show airing on Amazon Prime. She is also the author of Who Hijacked My Fairy Tale, The Land of If Only, The Story Formula, and The Affirmation Journal for Positive Thinking. She was a featured entertainer for Holland America Cruise Lines, keynote speaker for the International Toastmasters Convention, and has keynoted major conferences and corporate events from coast to coast. She just launched her one-woman show Who Hijacked My Fairy Tale in theaters, and it is being booked all over the country. In July of 2022, she was inducted into the National Speakers Association Speaker Hall of Fame.
Note: Articles by Kelly may contain affiliate links and may be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on an affiliate link.
