The one with Maria Andros

Joe: Hello this is Joe Polish. I’m here with my dear friend Maria Andros, and you’re the video queen, that’s at least the title and what you do in your information marketing business. So I’ll talk about me in a moment but you know most people that listen to I Love Marketing kind of know who I am but they don’t know who you are.

Maria:  Yeah but you’re kind of a big deal.

Joe: I’m sort of a big, actually I’m not a big deal at all, but right now we want you to think that we’re both kind of a big deal. But no in the marketing world you have real learnt how to take video and monetize it and all that but you do a lot of stuff. And so first off what’s your elevator speech for who is Maria Andros, if anyone wants to ask, and you really wanted to tell them what would you say, what do you do?

Maria:  Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me here, I love what you do, and I’m very honored to be here with you. I kind of got started just needing to get out of the life that I was in where I was really just you know feeling frustrated and working for a job. And back in 2006 was when I knew that I had to do something different and YouTube was kind of taking off at that point, and so I was watching, studying videos on YouTube. And I was looking to see that people were actually using it to generate free *0.01.19.4 traffic to their websites and I had a website where I was an affiliate, not even my own products and I had two visitors a day. So I knew that I had to do something fast. It was a pinpoint. It was a whopping two visitors. I had no knowledge of Google, AdWords, nothing and so I had this intuitive feeling which is something that I’ve been using like probably my entire life for everything that I’ve ever done. It’s always been this kind of this intuitive head; I don’t know if you’ve ever felt that, you just have that knowing.

Joe: Probably not the way that you do but I definitely have felt that.

Maria:  Well yeah, anyone who’s successful, Richard Branson goes by intuition, like he can know.

Joe: He’s like an intuitive entrepreneur, so he kind of gets certain things yes.

Maria:  So I just saw that video was trending, I could see the trend before it was like really going to hit and I just thought okay I’ve got to like learn this, I’ve got to study it, and I didn’t know what I was doing. But I literally had to kind of reverse engineer my way backwards and look at you know people like you at the time, very successful entrepreneurs in the marketing industry and I just had to start somewhere, so that was my starting point. And I used video as my kind of medium to kind of get my name out there and really it’s not really about even my brand anymore, it’s really about the leverage of what video can do for your brand online.

Joe: Awesome. Well you know it’s interesting because I tend to think of something I learnt from Gary Halbert where there’s three things you need in order to sell something. You need a product or service, you need a sales pitch or a marketing message, and you need a delivery system, and I look at video as a delivery system. There’s many ways to deliver, like right now this video of us is being delivered via video and everywhere that it goes we’re going to put it on the ilovemarketing.com site. It will be up on YouTube, it will be in a variety of places, wherever you decide to put it, it’s a delivery system. Now to back up you also had to either focus on creating your own product or service or selling the products or services of other people and within the video you had to actually speak and talk and present yourself in a certain way. So I kind of want to talk about that because I envision the people that would be watching this are people that are entrepreneurs, they have a product or service to sell. They have some way that they talk about it, and they’re wanting to deliver it via video and other ways, but I really want to focus on video. I mean right out of the shoot I think you had some pretty good success. I mean what did you actually do? I know you probably don’t know, it’s like talking about money, I would love to hear what did you do when you first kind of latched onto this?

Maria:  Yeah well I just want to say that video can be very overwhelming. It can feel like oh it’s too much work, it’s hard, it’s intimidating but really we’re sitting here in Joe’s office, we’ve got this awesome ilovemarketing.com which I’m really excited to attend, background. It doesn’t have to be difficult but what I had to do was learn to find a way to connect with people through that lens, and it takes some strategic thinking but when you can be strategic about video or marketing you can have bigger results, and no matter what state the economy is in you can reinvent yourself, you can rebuild, you can become like Madonna where she’s always like changing her look, and she’s pioneering.

Joe: Do you think she’s going to look like me anytime soon, Madonna, just out of curiosity?

Maria:  She might be modelling, I think we saw one of her cards, she might be you know kind of studying that trend right now of Joe Polish. She might take over. We’re being silly. We’re totally playing. But really it’s about having fun, like we’re really like when you can be authentic like this and really show people who you are and just not be afraid to you know just show different sides of yourself I think people will appreciate that. But to make a long story short I started actually filming with my camera, I would hold up the camera like this and walk up and down the street or on the beach, and I didn’t realize that was called a pattern interrupt at the time. People started following because it was very much like a reality show, like what is this girl doing but it’s been you know a million views plus views now over $1m in sales generated without advertising. So it does work if you can actually follow a system and showcase you know your value and what you have to offer your market, your community and actually really position yourself as a market leader. I think that’s what really the power of video is, becoming a market leader in your market and that’s what’s really possible.

Joe: You know what I admire about you is that I guess in a lot of ways like myself I had no formal education. I failed owning and operating a small business at a community college. I’ve even showed you know my report cards so people can see really.

Maria:  You really failed?

Joe: Yeah I got an F.

Maria:  I’m a beauty school dropout, we both failed.

Joe: My high school I didn’t even walk during the night.

Maria:  I didn’t go to my thing either.

Joe: We didn’t know that about each other see, we discover things every day. How bizarre is that. So I never got a degree, I never had any formal education. On the night of my high school graduation, I was getting high. I mean I was kind of a drug addict back then, and I’m not saying that jokingly, I mean I was in actually a bad place and so the upbringing and the education never you would think would lead to somebody running a successful business and all that sort of stuff. However, I believe like people ask how did you learn what you do and there’s this funny line just like Abe Lincoln I’m self-taught.

Maria:  Totally. I say self-taught at school, and I was actually just featured recently in a book called The Education of Millionaires. And you know for me I wouldn’t have had the privilege of invitation to be invited to be featured among entrepreneurs like Russell Simonds who’s like a huge mogul, the guitarist from Pink Floyd, some billionaires in this book, but it’s really interesting because it is all about just using that personality side of things in your own self-taught kind of street-smart mode and to be innovative. I think people just are afraid to take action and like using video and something like this you can actually create those products.

Joe: See I guess in a lot of ways without it sounding like you know we’re dumbasses or anything because we’re not, I mean we think about what we do. The point is like you know we just started doing something in the beginning that we really didn’t know what the hell we were doing but we.

Maria:  We had a vision though.

Joe: Exactly.

Maria:  And a goal to help certain people actually reach some kind of impact or fulfilment or happiness or freedom in their life, like that was my thing, and I’m sure for you you’ve empowered so many people.

Joe: Oh yeah totally and at first I did it because I needed to, I mean for selfish reasons I needed to survive, I needed to eat, and I learnt marketing, but I was in a dead broke carpeting cleaning business. I was a dead broke carpet cleaner trying to figure out how to make this small business work. I read Think and Grow Rich, I read books on positive motivation, but I still didn’t have any you know marketing knowledge. And it wasn’t until I actually learnt how to communicate a compelling message to people that my income started to change and so you know basically what I want to do for the people watching this is to inspire them to, you know the best way to get started is to get started. And to put a focus and emphasis on communicating and educating people and that’s what both me and you did, we actually just started doing something.

Maria:  What I really liked about what you just shared Joe is that you were actually sharing, if you just noticed Joe was sharing his story and he went from like being this kind of broke, you were struggling. And so your story has progressed and changed over time, but your story is your story, no one can duplicate you, no one can like, they can try to copy you, but it’s like what’s that saying, like often imitate it, never duplicate it. So it’s the story that I think a lot of people are not paying enough attention to when it comes to marketing or marketing with video, like you have so much magic and gold in your story it’s ridiculous. And you could literally rewrite your story like today, like you could literally take it out and change your entire business and brand if you make a decision and I’m a big believer in that.

Joe: Well you know I was in New York recently, and I met a young lady named Bonnie and she was really super, there was few people in the world of marketing that were women that she looked up to you know, and you were one of them. And so I said you know if you want to talk to Maria I can actually make that phone call, and I did, I actually called her, and you guys ended up talking. I called you when I was with her, and you know what’s kind of cool is you never realize how many people out there are impacted, and I always think it’s funny because when people come up to me. And like they ask me for an autograph or something or want to take a picture, and sometimes they’ll think I’m like this you know very special person, and I use a lot of deprecating humor. I’m like oh if you knew how many personal problems I had you wouldn’t find anything special about asking me for a photo and I say it jokingly.

Maria:  But that’s something you ask them because you’re just humble.

Joe: Well one thing I’ve learnt in marketing is you’re never as good as your own PR, not that you don’t do great things but the point is you’re not this larger than life person, people, are people. And I always try to remind people that you know your job as a marketer is to obviously be persuasive, have people think you’re awesome and at the same time don’t ever believe that you are somehow more special or something because then it becomes arrogance. And then you start being a jerk to people and I think if you operate with a level head not only will you go much further also people will tend to like you. So the point is like when you know Bonnie, now Bonnie is super excited as a result of having you know talked to you.

Maria:  We got on the phone and lovely young lady and it was a privilege for me to talk to her because again I appreciate you saying that because maybe a lot of people do think that because we’re maybe a little bit more in the public eye that we are larger than life, but really we’re really just people. And if anything it’s just a lot easier that way, let’s just keep it that way because everyone’s just doing their own thing, and we’re just trying to provide tools. And things that have worked for us in the hope to empower our viewers and your viewers to use it in a way that they can create their own juicy kind of spin on marketing and their message.

Joe: Well yeah and what I tend to, as I nearly fall off my chair here, by the way, we could do all kinds of crazy graphics on this video, we could edit it. I’m going to purposely because that’s what people would expect when I’m interviewing someone like you that we’re going to have a *0.12.16.4, I’ll try to cover the label because we’ve not been paid a sponsorship.

Maria:  Yet.

Joe: Have you seen the Greatest Movie Ever Sold by Morgan [name]*0.12.29.4, the guy that did Supersize me?

Maria:  I haven’t.

Joe: Yeah he did a whole movie where he went out and get sponsors to actually pay for this movie for product placement, and he did a whole movie about product placement which is quite funny.

Maria:  That’s almost like what YouTube has done now, like whether you’re a small business owner, you’re a mogul, or you’re just getting started there’s people on YouTube who literally built up their fan base. I think that building up your fan base is actually where the value is because if you have fans, it’s even more valuable than say like your customers are like your lifeblood, they’re your family, you want to take care of them. But the fans are the ones who will follow you with any changes, like if you have an event coming up, they’ll follow you with that or if you’re going to switch gears and do something new. So the sponsorship part of YouTube is like you can actually use that leverage of video and then like maybe where t-shirts, I’m just using this an example.

Joe: This is product placement right here.

Maria:  Right here but imagine like if you could create an idea today or tomorrow, if you got inspired with an idea and that idea turned into a $1m idea you. Don’t know when you’re going to have that $1m idea and that’s what I think is really cool about you know just this possibility on the internet that we have and that you have to leverage right now.

Joe: Yes and there’s a saying that I think Dan Sullivan’s the first one I heard say this where you know you have to have a lot of silly thoughts in order to have the great thoughts and the way that I tend to think of video is just putting stuff out there and seeing how the marketplace responds. Because if you’ve got a talent, if you’ve got a skill, if you’ve got a story there are a lot of people that will resonate with it. There are some people that will resonate with it purely for entertainment, and there’s others that will say I will give money to this person, I will follow this person, I will take advice from this person, I will be influenced by the recommendations. I mean Justin Bieber is a by-product of doing video and putting his talent out there. Now people can make fun of Justin Bieber and stuff, but this is an extremely talented kid who works his butt off that you know in the last year 51% of music sold was from Justin Bieber.

Maria:  Because he’s created those raving fans.

Joe: Exactly.

Maria:  He knows how to like, and I saw that you’ve got that.

Joe: I’ve got a life.

Maria:  Life-size Justin Bieber.

Joe: Just Bieber for Dean Jackson because Dean Jackson my partner and I love.

Maria:  I love Dean, he’s awesome.

Joe: Yeah he’s great and you know he follows the entertainment business and he’s the one that really put me on, like Never Say Never which I think cost $18m to make that movie. And I think it brought in; it’s brought in I think close to $100m at this point and you know we’re talking about a marketing machine. If you’ve never seen Never Say Never, Justin Bieber’s movie, watch it because you’ll learn a ton, even Guy Kawasaki told me that, he’s like it’s one of the best movies you could ever watch about marketing, to learn something about marketing. But the point is you know it started out on video. Now I’m not saying that your child or you may be the next Justin Bieber but the point is.

Maria:  Results may vary.

Joe: Exactly, no but the point is if it wasn’t for this new day and age that wouldn’t exist.

Maria:  It’s like being able to use this medium to actually reach people, like imagine if you could start reaching people in Australia or other countries that you would never have been able to reach locally in a local business, it’s like literally, it’s ridiculous but it’s exciting, it really is. We’ve got to get more excited I think because sometimes I think it’s easy to forget how much power and leverage you have by choosing to use these types of tools and learn from Joe or learn the marketing tips that can propel you forward.

Joe: As a matter of fact as we’re sitting here doing this video we have a guy sitting behind the camera who I can assure you knows absolutely nothing about how they actually do a video.

Maria:  He’s flexing his muscle.

Joe: He is, he’s quite a funny guy. We might call him up later, we’ll see because he’s kind of well known, he’s sort of a big deal too but let’s not mention his name. I’m kidding. So let me ask you some questions for people, okay so they kind of get that there’s this medium out there, there’s all this technology where people can distribute, and someone wants to go into the business of either educating people and getting paid for it or building a fan base. Because their ego requires them to have a bunch of followers or they just simply have a cure for something, a methodology for something, a story to tell, a non-profit, a for-profit, what are some tips and suggestions on how to get started in communicating, how would you do it?

Maria:  The message. Okay, so the first thing you’d want to do is kind of set up your hub, whether that’s a video blog, whether that’s your YouTube channel, a simple website it can just be. We want to actually start capturing your viewers’ information because you can just create videos generically and it can maybe go viral. But the chances of that aren’t extremely high unless you’re filming like weird cat videos or something like that, but your goal is to actually bring along your viewers into a series, so it’s not just like a one-hit wonder with your videos. We want to create a hub, like a home base and a good analogy is with Apple, for example, Apple came out with the IPod like years ago, you remember that was like this huge thing, it was like no one, like they didn’t actually have a market share. It was actually PC’s that had this huge market share, but Apple got innovative, and they came up with the iPod and what they did is it was a small entry point product, like what was it, less than $200 or approximately maybe $300 or $200.

Joe: I bought one of the very first iPods.

Maria:  You bought it right.

Joe: And I loved the slogan, they had a thousand songs in your pocket.

Maria:  Right, I don’t even remember that but I remember I was not, I personally wasn’t an Apple customer, but there were so many people who jumped on that bandwagon. But what happened is we actually got to the store, and once we were in the store you saw all the Mac Book Pros and all those other products.

Joe: They hooked you with that.

Maria:  So your videos, you’re not meant to actually sell on your videos when you’re building up your business with video, your video sales page is meant to sell your product, but everything else is to get people to your website. Your videos are like little employees that are working for you while you eat, play and sleep and they’re driving the customers and the potential customers and the traffic to your website which is where you’re going to offer a place where they can enter their name and email address. And then you’re going to give the actual like really good information and almost like a taste test, a try before you buy where you’re actually giving away something that may be one of your best techniques and giving them a feeling tone of what your service offers. You’re going to be build extreme brand loyalty quick because a lot of people think oh I have to save all the good stuff and our friend Evan is a genius, Evan Pagan, about moving the free line.

Joe: We shouldn’t call him a genius though because I don’t think he deserves that. No, but Evan is smart.

Maria:  Okay Evan is smart, so I’ll take that but it’s really about creating a series of videos, so it’s almost like you’ve seen Friends, when a new show comes on it’s a pilot, we have no idea who the characters are. But we got to know Rachel, Monica, Joey, like all those quirky characters through a series of videos okay and like they made us laugh but really it’s about creating how to content works really well, like kind of what we’re doing right now, we’re doing somehow to, like what your viewers take in how to right now.

Joe: Do you think they’re watching this video more because they want to look at you or me? If there was no content, just say we were like, this was a silent film.

Maria:  I think that shirt is very captivating. It’s actually not pure white, just so you know, on film it might look white but it’s actually this interesting ecru color that I’ve never seen before, almost like an eggshell.

Joe: It’s because I wash it with all my colors, no I’m kidding because this is white, this is pearly white over here, and this is yeah.

Maria:  So if you wear cool shirts then.

Joe: Well let me say something which I think is, I’d love to hear you take on this because we live in a world that is fascinated with celebrity. And I think one of the appeal of doing video much more when it was early on and new than it is now because now any goofball with a video camera can throw up a video somewhere.

Maria:  And make money if they want to.

Joe: Of course.

Maria:  If they chose to.

Joe: And so some of the most popular channels on YouTube are young girls on how to apply makeup or how to do their hair or how to dress and gossip shows. The stat I heard is that two-thirds of all American conversations are gossip, so we live in a world of people, US magazine, Entertainment Tonight, that sort of stuff and so you can bring a lot of that you know fascination with celebrities to your use of video. And so I know in your video you’ve done videos that you do in photo shoots and then you’ve done videos of you on how to make money and how to build a list and how to put together you know an opt-in page and all that.

After you’ve established a following, like for instance, I put like really incredible interviews on my Facebook page as an example, and I recently put up a ridiculous video of me at Burning Man wearing like basically golden underwear and a ridiculous necklace that Annie and this goofy hat. And I’m walking on stilts, and I get more comments from that then all of these incredibly valuable how to make money sort of things that just you know the whole world of communication never ceases to amaze me what people respond to. So what is your take on what people respond to and why and how do you mix it up?

Maria:  My take is that people are buying experiences online and the companies that are actually creating an experience, like Virgin, like it’s an experience. It’s not just the content. You have to have good content, we want to encourage you to really do your research and create content that will actually help your viewers and your customers to actually better their lives and get a result, but it is experience. Reality shows, people want to see behind the scenes. They’re captivated by seeing just like authentic, like we’re just being ourselves. This is impromptu. It’s much more interesting and actually, Larry King, there was a video where, Larry’s usually very polished and just like Larry’s Larry, but there was a video that went viral.

Where it was behind the scenes where he was actually really grumpy one day, and it had millions and millions of views because people don’t want perfection. People are buying like brands that actually have character or that provide an experience or what are actually staying alive right now in this industry. If you aren’t bringing an experience to your business right now, you may go under. I just went in the airplane today on South West, and it said 2.5 million local businesses, people are going under if they’re not online right now and using Facebook video but it’s creating an experience. Like you actually showcased a part of your personality, and that just makes you a unique offer, even though it’s not directly an offer to buy your 25k coaching program.

Joe: Which everyone should buy right now, 25kgroup.com by the way.

Maria:  But do you see how you can actually bring people in at different entry points and help them, like you’re building trust, people buy from people they trust. Why is it that one website can have one offer and they’re not converting at all or no one’s buying but then there’s another website where maybe there’s a story or an experience that feels like oh I can relate to this. It’s being relatable; I think that’s what we’re just, like I kind of sometimes go on these tangents but I get really excited about these conversations but being relatable. People want to relate. We’re this fast-paced time, like we all sometimes feel disconnected and social media and everything has made us feel more connected. But at the same time, we’re still looking for that feel good and that value and that experience from something that we will want to take out our credit card and buy something from because we’re going to feel like we got value from that if that makes any sense.

Joe: No totally because I think if someone is not providing some sort of experience you’re simply commoditized because it’s really.

Maria:  You’re generic.

Joe: Yeah and I mean in this day and age you can go on Amazon, you can go online, and you can figure out how to buy stuff for a much lower price, but it’s the experience that’s attached to it so whenever you can. I mean one of the best examples of taking a non-related product would be something like the George Foreman grill. I mean if you didn’t have George Foreman grill and you just had grill there was a whole story, and there was a whole persona, and there was a whole for the lack of a better word a brand built around you know a George Foreman grill. And so whenever you can attach an experience, something fun, something memorable, something that has significance beyond the product or service that’s how you elevate the perception of it. I mean in my *0.26.18.9 program I do a whole segment on pride of spending. Years ago I read a book called The Experience Economy, and they talked about the coffee bean as a commodity, Starbucks.

Maria:  Starbucks took it, ran with it and they treated is as an experience.

Joe: Exactly and it’s like you know you take a coffee bean which is like a two cent commodity and you put it into Folgers Crystals, or you put it into Denny’s or a convenience store, like a 7/11. Or wherever people are in the world where they have places you can go and get coffee, you’re talking about fifty cents, a dollar. But then you put it into a latte, and you charged $3 to $5 for this two cent commodity, you’ve created an experience around that, and even if they sold the coffee for $1, they could still make good margins. Because such is the low price of coffee and the margins in it, but it would ruin their followers because no one would feel psychologically good about spending $1 on a latte right, it just doesn’t seem to match. And so part of it is I learnt through that is that when you tie in the personality, when you tie in the experience not only does that engage people but they’ll actually pay way more money for that then for the commodity.

Maria:  They’ll pay higher prices for that, so you’re actually leveraging your time and not needing to reach the masses, like a lot of people think that you have to have millions of video views. Like you don’t have to have a million video views at all, you can actually reach a very small niche market and be able to offer a product or service that’s high value for higher pricing. If that’s what you have and not have to reach the masses, but you don’t have to reach the masses, that’s a myth.

Joe: The areas where I make the largest sums of money in my business are actually pretty much under the radar. I’ve got my 25K group which the vast majority of people are not even aware of what the heck that even is, it’s a high-end coaching mastermind group for people to make a million dollars a year net income or more. I’ve got my carpet cleaning niche where you know you never see me advertising marketing materials for carpet cleaners in airline magazines or on national television because I don’t need to. So I don’t need tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people seeing messaging in order to sell that, it’s a very tightly knit thing. So the point here is you don’t have to be gigantic, the whole word doesn’t have to know who you are and you can still make a million dollars plus a year simply just targeting a small segment of people relative to what a lot of people think you need to do.

Maria:  And what I love about you Joe is you actually use a lot of video. I’ve seen throughout the years, like I’ve watched your progression as well. You actually use video everywhere pretty much.

Joe: Totally. I carry like my iPhone, and I carry a flip video. I still love flip videos.

Maria:  And yeah you’re using like the flip video, it’s not like you’re using, you don’t always use the high-end cameras, you’ve done a lot of this with just technology.

Joe: Some of the most well-received videos I ever shot were done completely on the fly with no editing whatsoever and just in the middle of like I want to capture a slice of life. And if there’s a slice of life happening and I’ve got a video camera you bet your butt that I’m trying to be not too profane here that I’m going to capture it, but I would encourage everyone to think that way too. I mean people think you need to be so polished.

Maria:  You don’t. It’s really cool, like I was at the airport coming down to the office today and I was thinking I’ve made a little video for a friend, not a voicemail. But just to say hey I’ll see you next week but you can literally take your iPhone or your mobile device and actually film a video. It will probably connect a lot more because people feel like wow she’s talking or he’s talking directly to me, and there is serious power and magic in that.

Joe: I want to point something out that I don’t think I’ve talked about this too much. One of the ways that I actually build rapport with people is I always try to get as close to a person as possible even we’re across the country, people in the UK, Australia. There’s videos that I will make for a few people to watch. I will make public videos that I want everyone to watch. I will make private videos that small groups of people watch and I will make one on one videos. So if I’m sitting in front of my Apple Air and I wanted to shoot a video you know whenever there’s an important email or an important request or someone does something that I think really is worthy for something more than an impersonal email. I will actually record an audio and send it either on my iPhone if I’m out and about or I will shoot a video, and I will send them that personal video. And I cannot tell you how that has accelerated my impact with things that led to sales, things that led to people wanting to work with me and do things. And so I would encourage people to think of video not just as like something you have to produce for everyone to watch but just as a way to can and clone a message and send it out to someone.

Maria:  That’s such a powerful how to action step right now, I’m so glad you brought this up because think about it, everything, sales, marketing, everything is communication. Is your communication like really landing with the other person so if you could start practicing by just acknowledging even the people in your life or building those stronger relationships. Just by like using your little camera, just practicing and you cement either a relationship or deal or someone introduces you to your next future business partner or the next whatever that is that’s like huge. I have no doubt in my mind that the top leaders are most likely, if you’re doing this then you want to model like I’m going to do it even more. Now like Joe says because he’s a master at communication and you have been connected to celebrities, like you’re connected to like Richard Branson. I think that’s really powerful that you do that, so that’s a huge like takeaway, if you could do that one step I think within the next, let’s just say give yourself a goal, one month, three months, a year from now where are you going to be. If you actually nurture and want to just take action and build those relationships.

Joe: Yeah exactly and here’s the thing, I sucked at doing video when I first started, just like I sucked at marketing, just like I sucked at writing copy but you know there’s this line you know anything worth doing well is worth doing poorly in the beginning. Now if you’re still try to do something, it is just not within your ability one of the worst things to do is keep trying to get good at something that you just suck at. Because Dan Sullivan says you know if you spend your life trying to improve your weaknesses at the end of your life you’re going to have a lot of really strong weaknesses.

So there comes a point where like you’re either getting it, or you don’t you know. I mean persistence only goes so far. Some people like persist, persist, persist and it goes back to well sort of because the best way to get out of a hole is to quit digging it. So sometimes persistence is really, it’s like some games in life the only way you win is you don’t play. So there’s certain games where if it’s just not within your skill set and you’re not good at video then do audio. Some people have a great radio voice, but they won’t do video well. Some people are great writers.

Maria:  You can do screen captures. You can actually create screen captures or little videos. For Apple computers, there’s screen flow, or there’s *0.33.58.8. You can get a thirty-day free trial. You can literally create a PowerPoint with a white background, black text and create your script and just do a voiceover and I see people who are doing that making like they’re doing really well. So you don’t even have to be on live camera if you really don’t want to.

Joe: Well John Benson who’s in my 25K group is like the ninja of ugly video sales letters.

Maria:  And he’s cashing in right?

Joe: Oh he’s making a fortune. I mean literally he’s made people millions of dollars, and at a recent Bill Glazier*0.34.30.1 Dan Kennedy Glazier/Kennedy super conference, 1200 people I spoke at I had the highest closing Glazier/ Kennedy history for a product called the Triple X Halbert recordings. It was literally a consultation I did in 1997 with Gary Halbert that I recorded. He’s one of the most brilliant marketing minds on the planet, and I sold that product, and I used a seven-minute video that John Benson helped me put together. And so from stage, I had people watch a seven and a half minute video and over 500 people got in line to buy my product, and basically a couple of hundred people dropped out of the line because they thought they were going to miss out on the offer. I still sold six figures, like it was huge.

Maria:  That’s awesome.

Joe: But basically it was done with a video, and it was done with an ugly video that didn’t even have my face on it, it was simply just talking. And so there is so much power and leverage in video, and there’s so much more that we could say, but we’ve got to fly to New York for our buddy, I’ll just date this, but our buddy Evan Pagan is getting married to Annie in two days.

Maria:  We love them.

Joe: And so we’re going to fly to New York, and so I wanted to do a quick video with you before we needed to get the heck out of here. And you have training; people can find you so if people want to learn from you, see what it is you’re doing, where do they go, how do they get more Maria?

Maria:  Sure. The best place that I would direct you to go is I actually have a free video series. It’s called the videoformulaconversion.com. You’ll see me in a white karate outfit in a dojo; it’s quite interesting. I’ve had a lot of comments from all over the world, and it’s a series.

Joe: Do you think you could kick my ass if we got into a fight?

Maria:  You know I don’t know, we’d have to try.

Joe: I would hope not. I would feel so ashamed of myself.

Maria:  No I think you’d probably, you do *0.36.19.6.

Joe: I’m sorry, totally like you’re right in the middle of talking being in a dojo with the video series.

Maria:  So anyhow I actually have a series where you can actually go, and there’s a formula called the instant video expert formula, I give you an actual script that you can follow, you can model. You can actually get started with, fill in the blank and actually start, like I really want to help people with videos. I really am kind of like the underdog that made it, and I’m all about empowering people to have an awesome life. I’m taking it to the next level now, but you can go there or mariaandros.com, but video conversion formula is a good place.

Joe: Awesome. And what I will say is you’re coming up with the famous last words that I’m going to end this video with from you because I will talk endlessly. So it’s great having you as part of I Love Marketing. I totally appreciate it.

Maria:  Thank you. I really, truly like am happy and grateful to be a part of this. This is so cool and thank you for featuring this interview. It’s really an honor.

Joe: Absolutely, absolutely and hopefully we’ll do more of these, and they will see more of me and you in shenanigans because we’re going to shoot some funny videos and some funny pictures and stuff very soon and those will pop up. You can find them if you search.

Maria:  Stay tuned.

Joe: But yeah so for I Love Marketing one of the reasons I love marketing so much is that marketing is the ultimate leverage. I mean you truly can take a message, anything you have to share for fun or for profit or for serious things that are saving people’s lives and making people aware of cures to social ills or diseases and what not. And video is a fantastic way to do it, and with all the advances in technology, this is available to everyone. I mean literally, it’s so easy to get stuff out there, however, the par that’s not easy is the psychology and to be a good marketer psychology is infinitely more important than technology. So what I want to encourage you to do if you’re not having success with your video, if we kind of prompted you and inspired you to get started really do a study of human behavior.

Maria:  famous line in Robert Collier’s Letter Book which is a copywriting book written in the 50’s he said as a copywriter, as a marketer you want to enter a conversation that’s existing in your prospect’s mind. And so whenever you’re putting something together, whatever sort of messaging you’re doing, think about what is going on in the prospect’s mind, what are their fears, what are their obstacles, what are their concerns, what are the things that make them laugh, what are the things that will engage them and as you put your videos out there, put them together. Also, think of yourself as doing an R&D experiment where you’re literally watching what people are responding to, kind of like you’re fishing just to see what the fish are biting on and once you’ve identified what people are responding to just keep recording that.

Just keep putting it out there, and those are the ways that you can build a list, follow what Maria is doing, follow the I Love Marketing podcast, listen to it because the whole reason we’re putting this stuff out there. Yes we love it when people get engaged enough, and they want to buy our stuff, and they’re willing to invest in stuff. And at the same time, both of us put a tremendous amount of free content out there because we want to basically put it out there and say if you like it you know you’ll buy something from us, you’ll learn something, if you don’t that’s okay. And that’s a smart way to actually understand human psychology because either one of us would have ever made a penny if we didn’t really study what people are actually responding to and leverage that.

So I just want to make sure that you understand that along the ways of trying this out if you don’t hit it right off the bat always watch what’s working and what’s not working. And once you’ve got something that’s working keep doing it, keep going deeper with it because you know part of what, I’ve interviewed a lot of people. I’m in this thing called genius network, and it’s really the wisdom at work and what genius is in a lot of ways is simply redundancy. It’s people that have kept trying, kept trying, kept trying, they’ve failed many, many times but they just kept trying, and they actually got to a point where they started working, and they kept doing it, and then it, started working more. And then all of a sudden they were world class and if you study any area for six months, a year, three years, five years, if you study something for three to five years not only will you be an expert you’ll probably be one of the world’s leading experts, and the thing is when it comes to success some people just give up way too soon. Anyway that’s the rambling I wanted to do so that was probably more than I needed to say but that was a tangent. So Maria again thank you, famous last words, what would you say to any final thing to these listeners as we send them off into their?

Maria:  I think that all the experiences that you’ve gone through in your life have made you a fighter and that everything that you may have like been challenged with and that’s like tried to put you down. And you felt like maybe you’ve been a failure, and it’s like you are like you’re a fighter, you’re a survivor, you can completely reinvent and reactivate your path right now, and I like to say that everything you want is just outside of your comfort zone. It’s just like right outside there, so it’s so close that if you just choose today to like just like you know what screw it, let’s do it.

Like that Richard Branson saying, like no matter what you did yesterday, no matter what you did three months from now, no matter what your results are you are like, you’re able to start over now, and you’re able to take it to another level of leadership. I think that the world is waiting for leaders. It’s waiting for you. You’re here for a reason. You’re watching this, investing your time, your energy, so I just encourage you to really look within to find that leadership, that tiger that’s there and just go for it and get it done. And really encourage you and wish you tons of success and again with appreciation and gratitude I just want to say thank you and good luck.

Joe: Awesome. Thank you so much. Give us your comments. Let me know what you thought of the interview with Maria.

Maria:  Thank you guys, really appreciate the comments yeah.

Joe: You’re awesome.

Maria:  Thank you. I love you. Thank you very much, Joe. Thank you.    

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