Video marketing is often overlooked, as far as marketing tools go. Many people and companies think of it as excessive and expensive, and while that may be true in certain specific situations, that’s not the only way to go about things. Molly Mahoney is the host of The Prepared Performer Podcast who regularly uses her electric presence on video to drum up attention for herself and the things she does. Together with Scott Carson, Molly teaches you to do the same using one simple tool – Facebook Live. You may not know it yet, but the future of your marketing may be right in front of you now!
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Watch the episode here
Listen to the podcast here
Using Video In Your Marketing With Molly Mahoney
The Prepared Performer
I’m excited to have our special guest on, somebody who I met here and we hit it off. We have the same lines. I didn’t know if she realizes, but I had been following her online for a couple of years now, going back to when I first started the show doing Facebook Lives when I first started launching this thing. I’ve learned many great tips from her. We met, which is a funny story. I was flying out of Austin to go to San Diego for New Media Summit. I see this lady get on the plane, a little bit different colored hair and she had the most amazing pants on. The heels have some stars on it. I was like, “Who is this gal?” She looks familiar. I find out she’s going to the same hotel where I’m going in. I’m like, “I know this lady from somewhere.” She turned out to be a fellow icon influence at New Media Summit.
She is an absolute rockstar. We’ll get to the story later on there. You never know how you’re going to stand up. This lady was prepared for the flight out from Austin to San Diego. Who am I talking about here? She’s a digital strategist who specialized in creating authentic Facebook video content and leveraging bots to skyrocket sales. After her video reached one million organically, she developed her signature Go Live And Monetize, GLAM method. She’s been featured in Inc. Magazine. She’s seen speaking at the Social Media Marketing World. She spoke at DigitalMarketer here in Austin. She is known as The Prepared Performer and my friend. I’m excited to have her here. The one, the only, Ms. Molly Mahoney. Tell me a little bit about yourself for those that are tuning in here, why they need to tune in if you don’t mind.
What you said is the truth. I was a professional musical theater performer for a bajillion years and transitioned all of that. I was helping starving artists to build a career. Instead of doing that, I started helping business owners who are successful in being able to perform. We have some strategies and also some methods that help you to show up on the camera in the first place. It’s about the confidence to create juicy content that attracts a flood of leads who want to throw credit cards at your face.
In our case, close on deals or provide money to fund deals versus throwing credit cards in your face. You got to be careful there. It’s a visualization out there that people might be scared of. Marketing is one of the big things that we preach here. We’ve been preaching it for years. We own our niche in the note industry because we have embraced the video aspect of things and doing something that most people aren’t doing, doing that little bit extra. It doesn’t have to be filming thousands and thousands of videos. It’s doing something on a regular basis and going from there. You’ve got a couple of tips or a couple of things that you’d like to share with people all the time on getting rocking and rolling.
I’ve got a lot. Where do you want to start?
Why don’t we start if somebody is thinking about it in the new year? It’s like a softball for you. What’s a couple of things that you do in 2020 to help leverage a video with what they’ve got rocking and rolling?
The easiest way to think about it is by going off what you said, the consistency piece. What I love to do is think about that perfect person you would love to connect with and what would be the best time for you to set up an appointment with them. Think about the best time to set up an appointment with them and go to your calendar, put that appointment in there. That appointment is your Facebook Live. When I ask people to pick a time every week to go live on Facebook, all of these gremlins creep up, “I don’t know if I have the gear. I don’t know if I have whatever.” I’m like, “I’m going to bring you a sales call.” For everybody here, what’s the perfect type of conversation they would want to be having so I know?
It comes down to two things, probably with either asset managers at banks and best time to reach them and noon, every Wednesday and Thursdays or between 2:00 and 5:00 PM Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursdays as well or talking with real estate investors or people that have money that want to get into real estate that don’t have money, maybe hours that they get off of work.
The cool thing is with Facebook Live, they can watch the replay at any time. The most important time of day is when you will show up. I don’t care if your Facebook Live is around midnight, if you know that people will end up showing up later. That’s one of the things that we are specific about is we have this APR method that I can share, Announce, Pretend, Repurpose, which goes into the APR rate or something.
What are those three things again?
It’s announce because, as my friend Stephanie Lou says, “If they don’t know, they won’t show.” People are not going to show up for your show if they don’t know when it’s happening, so you’ve got to tell people when it’s happening, talk to human beings. We have many things we do to announce the shows, which we can get into that. Pretend is about having a Mr. Rogers style conversation. I was watching that documentary on Mr. Rogers and somebody asked him, “What is it that you think made the show successful?” He said that it was that he wasn’t speaking like, “You guys out in TV land.” He said, “Neighbor,” and he was looking right into the camera and talking to one specific person. Even if nobody’s watching, as horrible as that can feel. We’re all looking at those numbers, know that people will be coming in the replay and that one singular person that you want to connect with is there. They’re maybe not there yet.
![NCS 549 | Video Marketing](https://weclosenotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/549NCSCaption1.jpg)
Video Marketing: The confidence to create juicy content attracts a flood of leads who want to throw credit cards at your face.
Knowing that one person and knowing what they’re thinking and feeling. The ideal client or person that you would want to have that sales call with or that discussion targeted for them being niche-focused down to what their issues are. What their time frames are, what their common characteristics would be and tailoring your message to that aspect.
Even more specific than that is what you said in the beginning. It’s like picking the actual human. We get caught up sometimes in the demographics of things, but if you know it’s a real estate agent and you can pick the exact real estate agent that you love working with. Imagine a question they’ve asked you, and this is from the world of performers. We take what we call the moment before. Before you start your video, you think of that moment before and you don’t start your video like, “I’m Molly Mahoney. I have been featured in Inc. Magazine.” Nobody cares. You start by listening to that question and you say like, “I get it. You’re struggling to drink water because you’re working so hard. I’m going to tell you how to drink more water.” You’re connecting with them right away to that singular person.
That goes to that point, getting straight to the meat and potatoes of your video much faster versus, “I’m such a badass” or why you need to listen to me. If they’re showing up, they’re already ready to listen.
If they’re not ready to listen, you want to make sure you convince them to listen right away and you let them know what’s going to be coming. The fourth or fifth step in your video is where we would introduce yourself and do more of the housekeeping stuff. That’s the A and the P. The R is Repurpose. This is what I want to talk to you about when you come to my show because you have many awesome ways that you’re doing this. We have this awesome system called the Map to Millions and it includes the whole APR method.
One of the cool neat parts about it is that when you do these videos every week, even if you wait a year to repurpose it, don’t wait that long. You could wait a year to repurpose it and turn it into many other things. One video can become a podcast, can become an Alexa briefing, can become a collection of gifts that people randomly find and share. It helps your SEO because your face is more of your logo now than your logo oftentimes. It can become YouTube videos, LinkedIn videos, IGTV. There are many ways that you can repurpose this stuff like a blog post, all of that so people can find you and do whatever they do with credit cards.
Instead of throwing out one hook, like going fishing with one hook in the water, it’s literally throwing a dozen hooks out. They’re all connected and you cast net.
That’s such a great way. I was picturing a fisherman or fisherwoman with twelve fishing reels going at the same time. You’re right. It’s like casting a wider net as they say.
It’s throwing it out there a little bit. You could have different hooks in the water if you use the same thing, but it all turns into a net because it’s all connected and featured in each network.
Our whole Map to Millions thing is about combining messenger bots with videos in the beginning so that you get more people subscribed to a community where they are notified about your videos. You can direct traffic if your video is prescheduled or if it’s a prescheduled Facebook Live using something like the dot-live. When you get people to that video, it’s this cool circular thing where they go into a Facebook group. They do a blog post. It’s like this awesome web of magic. I used to teach little kids musical theater. My husband came to a show once and this fourth-grader comes up to him and goes, “Are you Mr. Magical Molly?”
I love that performance, Magic with Molly. Some people have been like, “Facebook is great. We can understand that.” These whole bot things, it seems confusing. It’s gotten a lot easier than it used to be.
I’m going to say in some ways, it’s gotten easier and in some ways, it’s gotten way more complicated. Here’s the thing is that you don’t have to do all the complicated stuff. Know that more people are learning about bots and I find myself getting caught in this trap where I’m like, “That’s cool. I can set up this thing that has a tag that takes it into a sequence. It does this action. It’s like all these crazy things that you don’t need to do that.” The Map to Millions is like one post with a bot that will reply to the comments on that post. One video with a bot that will reply to comments on that video and one message that tells them to show up. You don’t need all the fancy connections, integrations, zaps and all that stuff. You can get fancier but you don’t need to.
![NCS 549 | Video Marketing](https://weclosenotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/549NCSCaption2.jpg)
Video Marketing: The cool thing with Facebook Live is your audience can watch the replay at any time.
I have a better idea. Let’s say that somebody has a property or they’ve got a note in a specific area. They’ve got a decent following on their business or the personal page, which works best for people when it comes to bots.
It’s a business for sure. I meant to tell you this because she is a mortgage broker in Australia. I’ve been learning all about this stuff in Australia, which is crazy. She launched a series on her business page for first time home buyers teaching them how to. There’s a lot of information. I know at one point we were thinking of buying a home. I was even afraid to call because it’s like, “I don’t know what any of these things mean and I’m going to feel stupid if I talked to somebody about it.” The business page is the only place that the bots work automatically like that. It’s important to put out that consistent content on your business page, have the bots follow-up, do the automation thing. On your page, you want to be building relationships as a human being. The two work well in conjunction together. There are ways to bring people from your page into your messenger bot. If people don’t know what a bot is, it’s a way to build a subscriber base like you do on an email list but in Facebook Messenger. It’s an automated conversation, which is why they call it a bot.
Let’s walk through one, somebody got a property and they got maybe a short little video they’ve done or they’ve taken some photos of the property. Let’s do the easy one thing.
This is stupidly effective and easy that you’re going to think that it won’t work, but it works. We did this with a slab of wood. I’m going to use this as an example because it’s similar. If you have a beautiful photo of this home and this is what we did with a beautiful photo of a slab of wood. We posted a picture of this slab of wood and it said, “Check out this black acacia slab. Do you want to know where you can get your hands on it?” That’s all it said. “If you do, let us know below the photo.” Everyone who commented below the photo was instantly replied to and it said, “I see that you want to know more about this slab. Reply with the word details and we’ll send you details.” They replied and we sent them the address to the Woodyard. They sold out of slabs. It was 800 shares or something crazy. If it’s a beautiful photo and you know that you have people who are interested in a home like that, all you have to do is say, “Let us know if you want more info by dropping a word below this. Don’t say, “Comment below this photo,” because that’s one of the trigger words that Facebook doesn’t like. Inside the bot, it follows up and tells them where they can find more information.
They need to leave or they get a bot basically. Is this a website or a plugin or something special?
Yes. It’s a website called ManyChat and they make it crazy easy. It’s all drag and drop. The thing that you would use for that comment feature is called the comment growth tool. There’s a bunch of other things you can do. All you need is that comment growth tool. You want to make sure that you’re clear that when they opt-in that you’re going to be sending them messages. The thing is there’s some compliance stuff that’s coming up. I’ll put some resources together for you. Would you appreciate it if I built a little template for you for that comment feature?
Yes.
That’d be cool. I don’t have one, but I’ll build one for you. There are some things you want to do to make sure that you’re compliant because Facebook has changed the rules. You can’t send a random message if it’s after 24 hours of that person interacting with the bot. There are some cool workarounds and I did a video explaining a super nifty way to stay compliant and still be able to message people every week.
Some of the great things that Facebook has for that are taking pictures or video the property and in our case, we’ve got a note deal in Danville, Illinois. Can we promote that post and people comment on the promotion?
Totally. That’s exactly what we do is we do an ad and it’s an engagement ad. There are crazy words you’ll hear like a Jason ad, forget about it. You don’t need to do any of that fancy, crazy stuff. I am probably going to break some hearts with some ads managers, but you can boost it if that’s all you know how to do. It’s better if you go to the ads manager. It’s more effective. If all you know how to do is boost something, that’s fine.
The reason I’m asking for a close personal friend because I suck at the bot thing. That was one of the things that confused me when I went to ManyChat. It’s like, “Which one do I need?” You answered that to make it simple.
![NCS 549 | Video Marketing](https://weclosenotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/549NCSCaption3.jpg)
Video Marketing: Make sure you convince them to listen right away, and you let them know what’s going to be coming.
They’re called widgets. The widgets are the different ways that you can bring people to the bots. You can create a link. It’s a forwarding link. You can create a pop up on your website. If you produce content once a week, whether it’s a show or a podcast or even a blog post, this is the secret on the video that I was talking about. One of the types of messages you can send is a confirmed event update. It’s gray right now, but I’m erring on the side of a confirmed event is my Facebook Live show that happens every Wednesday at 10:00 AM. If people have said they want to be notified about that event that I’m using that category and I believe we’re staying compliant within Facebook’s rules.
You get to set up and preschedule an event on Facebook. If they click on that, it’s going to send them the reminder, “We’re going live.”
No, they have to click on the link to say they want or comment below. The Map to Millions is they comment below a post saying they want to be notified. You can direct traffic to that video ahead of time.
Seen as you could say, “Where are you investing or what other states are you investing in?” People have other deals, “You’re invested in this one, check out this asset.”
Asking open-ended questions like that and if you’re in a place where you’re like, “I don’t have a lot of engagement on my business page, so this isn’t going to work for me,” I have some secrets for you. If you have an email list that you started building, you can send people to give them some reason to go to the next step. I’ve found these listings that are nobody else knows about like secret listings. The link that you send them to is your post on Facebook. You don’t send them straight to the listings. You send them to the post on Facebook that tells them to comment below to get access. You’re building your organic reach because you’re directing this traffic to that post. You’re feeding Facebook. Facebook is stoked that people are commenting on Facebook. They’re going to show it to more people. You do an ad with it. The social proof is already there because all these people have commented so your ad is going to perform better. You’re building your bot list also.
Is this going to cost $15,000 for people to do this?
It varies because Facebook Ads, who knows? ManyChat, there’s a free version that you could do all of this with. There’s also a pro-version, which is $10 a month, which is silly. With the pro version, you can collect emails, phone numbers and there’s text messaging. I know you love texting. The pro-version, it’s amazing what you can do. We’ve had some ridiculous results with Facebook Ads and bots don’t always work as well as I’d like. Our best result was a $900 ad spend that turned into a $90,000 in sales.
I know the backstory to this a little bit, but you got to share it with everybody. It’s such a crazy story but in such a simplistic manner.
It’s about listening to human beings, showing up and solving a problem. Here’s what happened. I’m thinking of all these things. I’m going to put together a big resource for you. I have a blog post where I detailed every single step of this so that you can do it yourself too. I was at lunch with a friend. She told me she was experiencing a problem in her business. I was like, “If one more person tells me they have that problem, I swear I’m going to punch them because I can solve it in two seconds, maybe longer than two seconds, but I can solve it.” She was like, “Really?” I said, “Yeah.” She goes, “Could you do a training on it?” I said, “Yeah.” She said, “How much would you charge?” I was like, “I don’t know, $97.” She said, “Done.” I was like, “Okay.”
I went home, put together a landing page for it because she had other people that she knew in the same industry. By that afternoon, I created an empty Facebook group, nothing in it. That’s where the training was going to be held. That’s all I had. She shared it with her community. I did a video. I had an event on a couch with my phone that was like, “Are you this type of business owner? If you are, this video is for you.” Holding my phone up with my selfie stick arm. It was such cash. I said, “If this is who you are, identify that person right away, this video is for you. If you’re not, you can stay here or leave because it’s not for you.” It was specific.
![NCS 549 | Video Marketing](https://weclosenotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/549NCSCaption4.jpg)
Video Marketing: One video can become a podcast, an Alexa briefing, or a collection of gifts that people can randomly find and share.
I said, “I was talking to a friend who had this problem. You may have this problem also. If you want to learn how to solve it, give me the word ‘connect’ below this video and I’ll send you more information on how you can solve it.” I didn’t say it’s paid training. I said, “I’ll send you more information.” Once they commented with connecting, the bot asks them to reply with the word ‘connect’. It’s like a double opt-in. That was connected to a keyword inside the bot, which sent them a message that said, “Molly told me that you wanted to learn about this training. It’s coming up next month. It’s only $97. Here’s the link to purchase.”
Within two weeks, we had 200 sales. I was like, “What?” At that point, we had 1,200 people who had opted into the bot. I was like, “There are 1,000 more people that could still potentially purchase.” I had the idea to raise the price. I sent out one message. With this 24-hour rule with Facebook, you are allowed to send a message to people who subscribed. After 24 hours, you have to pay a little bit for it. It’s not much, but it’s a sponsored message now, which is fine. I sent what now would be a sponsored message that said, “Wondering, did you sign up for the training?” They could say yes, not yet or not interested. That not interested piece is important. If they clicked yes, it was like, “Great, head to the Facebook group. Molly has already added bonus training in there.”
At that point I was like 200 people, I’m giving them extra stuff. We had to like Facebook Ads or other stuff. The not yet sent them a message that said, “No pressure but wanted to let you know the Facebook group is rocking and that price is going to go up tomorrow.” This is new in the world of bots. When I sent this message, I sat there watching the backside of my account and I could see all of the messages in my Facebook account, the conversations happening when they click the buttons. We had 40 sales within 30 minutes. We ended up bringing in 400 people into the training between $97 and $197 apiece. Five people up-leveled to a $10,000 program. We spent $900 on that Facebook ad.
That’s a smart thing. What was the focus of the product?
It was training about messenger bots, social media, but the company was LuLaRoe, so it was a direct sales company. I tried to duplicate it a month later. There are a couple of mistakes that I made when I tried to duplicate it. One, it was a specific problem because at the time, LuLaRoe was a clothing company and they weren’t allowed to sell on their business page at the time. They were only allowed to sell in private groups because they were trying not to create competition because they all have different inventory, whatever. At the time, they weren’t allowed to sell on their business page. That was the main pain point specifically was how do we use our business page if we can’t make sales there? What I was teaching them is you use it as a lead generating thing. Those of us who are in marketing know that, but people in the direct sales company didn’t understand that. It was a hot button pain point for them at the time. You have to make sure that it’s like specifically speaking to an actual pain within that niche.
You filmed the video for the time of the training was how long?
It was maybe a month at most.
That’s important because literally, people could create twelve months of training videos, twelve months of the different opt-in stuff, have the video set to go out on prescheduled automatically. They were using Restream to rebroadcast live or using Be.live to schedule that and have that set up for twelve different FAQs or maybe ten issues that they have, the ten biggest issues training.
I already had a full course called Camera Confidence, which is now a coaching program. At the time, this solidified the idea of selling it first. If you’re reading this and you’re like, “I’m not recreating a course or training or whatever,” I’m telling you people need information. They want value. Even with this LuLaRoe group, they’re not selling courses, but we’ve had people who have launched a closet clean-out training that helps people to buy more clothes from them.
I was reading somewhere that more and more people are doing side hustles to make ends meet of stuff like that. That side hustle doesn’t mean that you’re selling a product or information or it’s providing some quality. We’ve all got stuff rolling in our heads. I had lunch with a fellow podcaster who does an amazing job. He’s a great speaker. If you’re trying to speak more, why don’t you start talking about the things that you do and don’t do that set you apart as a speaker? It’s valuable training. It doesn’t have to be expensive. You don’t have to sell a $20,000 coaching program if that’s what you’re against, but you still provide your content that you’re giving away is still valuable. In that way, you’re not dealing with all the tire kickers who want to waste your time or as I call them, price pigs. They show up for the free goodies but never pulled the trigger. You want to deal with people who will pull the trigger.
We have this thing called the tree of beliefs. Have you heard of the ladder of influence? It’s the same thing. I used to call it a ladder of beliefs, but we have another thing we call a ladder post. It was getting confusing because I was using the word ladder twice. Everybody in our glam program was like, “Molly, we can’t give it straight.” I realized it’s more of a tree of beliefs. What it is that in order for someone to say yes to you, they have to believe a certain amount of things? They have to believe certain things about you, about themselves, about the thing that you’re trying to get them to say yes to. Also, understanding why now? Why is it important to do it at this moment? If you can create content that allows them to crawl up the tree of beliefs so by the time you make the offer, they already agree, all of the objections have been crushed through your content. It makes the actual closing of the notes much easier.
![NCS 549 | Video Marketing](https://weclosenotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/549NCSCaption5.jpg)
Video Marketing: It’s important to put out consistent content on your business page, so have the bots follow up and make sure to do the automation thing.
You’ve built that yeses along the way. You’ve built the confidence and knowledge along the way.
It’s all micro-commitments. By the time it’s there, they don’t have any more objections because your content has squished them.
We are taking it back a little bit prior to bringing it back away from bots and stuff like that with people looking to do things. You and I both agree that video is one of the most effective ways to market out there. Being prepared or people coming up with a con, what are some tips to helping people maybe flush out some of the things that they need to share or ideas for the new year to help them market themselves? I can’t think of anything because that’s always the biggest. People are like, “Scott, you’ve done hundreds and hundreds of episodes. How do you keep coming up with content?” I’m like, “I pull stuff out of my ass.” That’s not an exciting thing, but I make a list of things. We go through that list.
The tree of beliefs is an awesome way to start because for us, somebody needs to believe that social media is a great way to connect with people and bring leads into your business. If they don’t believe that, they’re never going to want to do anything about Facebook Live or Messenger bots. If I were to do something speaking to that, I would help them move further up the tree of beliefs. Getting that tree of beliefs in place is important. One of the things that people majorly missed opportunity is non-product-based solutions. We had a client who did a five-day challenge on how to drink more water.
It brought in 300 leads, which was crazy because she knew that her ideal client was a mom who was looking to be healthier but didn’t want to have to do lots of working out. She sold makeup and it ended up being that was a transition into the makeup because it hydrates your skin and whatever. You’re listening to humans and solving their problems. Anytime you hear someone ask a question or share an issue that they’re going through, have a notebook that you keep there and write those problems down. Another big one is the objection crusher idea. Do you ever do that or keep a list of objections people have to work with you?
Those are usually the first things that I’ll discuss. It’s like the elephant in the room.
For me, people will say, “Video works for you because you are a professional performer and you’re naturally confident.” I’m sure you get that too because your personality is awesome and out there. One of the big things is to make sure people understand that it’s a learned skillset. It’s not about being more like me. It’s about being more like you. Creating content that speaks to that is going to help them to have more confidence. It’s going to help them to be closer to saying yes to whatever it is I want them to say yes to.
The big thing too is that you have to realize you’re not going to please everybody. You can’t target everybody. Some people get worried. I’ve had friends that do a video and they get great responsibility. They’ll have 1 or 2 ugly comments that shoot them. They knock it down. I’m like, “Why are you focusing on 1 or 2 negative comments or these people that have nothing good to say. They’re not going to do anything anyway versus the 198 other people out there who are all giving the thumbs up and excited.” We have a warped sense of focus a little bit.
That’s something that I had to tackle in the world as a professional performer, going to audition after audition and standing there for the sole purpose of people judging you. It’s like what? I will say that forcing myself to do an actual official show at least once a week. There have been times when I’ve done 2 or 3 a week. I’m not like quite to your standard of crazy. I think showing up and doing a Facebook Live show, there are a couple of methods that I’ve developed to help the people I was coaching to have the confidence to go into an audition. Even people who are crazy successful still need that mental shift. Reiterating that for myself every single week has made me better in sales conversations, made me better networking or whatever too.
Many people worry about perfection. Your company is not The Perfect Performer, but The Prepared Performer.
It’s about living prepared. The secret is that prerecorded videos stress me out like live videos, anything can mess up and it’s okay because everybody knows that it’s live. When you do a prerecorded video and you mess up, there’s this expectation of stopping it and doing it over again. I’m speaking at Social Media Marketing World in March, which I’m excited about that. They asked us for videos this year, which last year they didn’t do that. I was stoked that they’re having all the speakers do a video. I was almost done with the video and I tripped up on a word. I was like, “In a split second, I thought I could stop this and do the whole thing over or I could incorporate it into what I’m teaching.” I was like, “The confidence to create, be able to keep going even if you make little mistakes like that. Recognizing that those little moments are authenticity indicators. It helps people to know you’re human.”
![NCS 549 | Video Marketing](https://weclosenotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/549NCSCaption6.jpg)
Video Marketing: In order for someone to say yes to you, they have to believe a certain amount of things. This is called the Tree of Beliefs.
We’re all not perfect, I agree. I get more comments from people that are like, “You’re a normal guy.” I’m like, “Yeah, I’m a normal guy.” I’m not all fancy and schmancy. I screw up, I cuss and I trip over my own words when I’m doing this or talking to asset managers. We’re all human. Everybody puts their pants on one leg at a time for the most part. That’s the thing. People get worried about everything. Delivery will always beat perfection anytime.
We have this method that I developed, before I was even coaching, when I was in New York, I came up with this weird thing. It’s called the Quesadilla of Awesome. Have I told you about it?
No, you have not. I like case ideas.
It started because I was at an audition once in New York when I was not a union member. At the time, when you weren’t a member of the Actor’s Equity, which is the actor’s union, you had to sit outside of the audition room. It’s where the union members were and you had to wait there in case they had room to see you. I went up to the woman at the desk and I was like, “I’m here for the audition. Is there a restroom you can point me to?” She said, “Are you an Equity member?” I said, “No, but I’m here for the audition.” I was all dressed up. I’d been sitting there for hours and she said, “You can go downstairs and around the corner, there’s a McDonald’s in Times Square. I think they have a restroom there.” What?
I turned around and I looked at the 40 women that were sitting with me in this long hallway. I was like, “This is stupid.” I realized I was spending so much time trying to prove to everyone else that I was what they wanted me to be rather than owning who I was. I left the audition that day, which is one of the only times I’ve ever left an audition. I was like, “This is ridiculous.” I went through this mental shift, where I decided I was going to figure out what it was that made me so that it was worthy of using the restroom and the way in the building. To be able to have the confidence to know this is not about begging for someone to like me. This is about showing up and knowing who I am. We put together this list, this acronym of twenty things that make you a uniquely awesome human being. It’s an amazing exercise to do before you walk into a meeting, before PTA, like the first day of kindergarten with your kids you’re going to meet all the other parents. It’s awesome. I can share the acronym.
It’s five letters. It’s the word SAAVE. It’s your Skillsets, the things that you’re naturally gifted at. Your Appearance and if you don’t find things about your parents’ appearance that you can celebrate and love, when you’re doing videos, your gremlins are going to creep in. It’s not about what other people think about you. It’s about what you think about you because your energy will change. Your Activities that you love, knitting, crocheting, hiking, fishing with twelve fishing rods at once. The Activities that you love and that will give you things to talk to other humans about without being a salesy weirdo. It’ll give you stories to drop that will make you memorable.
The V is for your Values. For us, it’s standing for joy as a fierce form of activism. We have the #StandForJoy is our mission is to help people to see that there can be joy even in crazy difficult times. Kindness and then also a little bit of hustle. We celebrate a little bit of hustle so that we live a life instead of working a million hours a day. The final thing is things you like to Eat because all humans eat. If you can find polarizing food. You were saying, “You don’t want everyone to like you.” I have this trick with Brussels sprouts. This is going to blow your mind. What you do is you go to your personal Facebook page and you’re going to write five words. Brussels sprouts, yes or no. That’s all you’re going to write on your page. I am telling you your engagement is going to get the most massive kick in the pants because people either love or hate Brussels sprouts. I talk about them often that I even get gifts like this in the mail.
I’ve had four people send me a dish towel that says every day on Breslin. My assistant bought me on Etsy, which is so cute every day on Breslin. This Brussel sprouts thing is proven to be such a tangible example of when we talk about things as a human. They’re polarizing, but it’s things that you like or care about. You’re not faking the authenticity. That’s an oxymoron, faking authenticity. That’s what a lot of people do it feels like. That whole thing becomes your case idea of awesome because everybody has something that makes them uniquely awesome. Even if it’s that you make an amazing case idea. You bring it into yourself and body. Can you do this with your hands? Take your fingers like this and you want to feel the case idea of awesome. Write in your chest before you start speaking on stage before you go on camera. It’s not about trying to be more like somebody else. It’s about trying to be more like you.
Being proud to be you, only you versus trying to be somebody else. I think Tony Robbins, I’ve seen him do a lot of different things before he goes on stage and jumping on the trampoline, getting his energy up, getting excited about things and rolling out there. It’s the same thing. It’s a little bit different type of mechanism. SAAVE, that’s good stuff. I like that. The whole key, because you’re asking those questions to start getting engaged and start getting people to take notes, I started doing that a lot about, “What’s your favorite movie? What’s your favorite this? Where do you look at that?” and be like, “Why the heck are you asking all this?” I’m like, “Because, I’m getting 100 to 150 people engaged immediately in the first hour.”
People were like, “What do you do after that? You talk to humans like magic.” Talk to actual human beings.
What do you mean I have to pick up the phone or talk to them? We always have one-on-one conversations. We can still get stuff done, but it takes forever versus doing this mass and using a couple of cool tools to engage those engagements and get the many to one conversation rock and rolling.
It directs back to a human on the other side at some point. The cool thing is with a Facebook Live video, it’s starting as a one-on-one conversation. It’s you’re here on this side. They happen to be there on the other side and there happen to be lots of other sides. Sometimes people will be bummed like, “I only had five people on my video.” When’s the last time you randomly turn your phone on and had five people show up inside your room? It doesn’t happen.
![NCS 549 | Video Marketing](https://weclosenotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/549NCSCaption7.jpg)
Video Marketing: The cool thing with a Facebook Live video is that it starts as a one-on-one conversation.
One is always greater than none. We’re all one person away from something amazing happening. I would rather have that one interested person versus 1,000 people that aren’t interested.
Who is interested in watching your free stuff and never going to move to the next step?
Going to drain you of content, drain you of your mind. Those price pigs are going to show up for that free poster, that free t-shirt. I had somebody on here and we talked about the price pigs. She went out and bought me the Fisher-Price sound machines.
I have a friend who plays accordion and they had one in their band. There was like a moment of the song where they would pull it and it would play in the middle of their song. It was fun.
The question I want to ask you, you’re on the West Coast now. With acting and being a performer in theater and stuff like that, what was your highlight of doing that? Do you have a big highlighter too?
There are many. The first thing that comes to mind is the national tour, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. It was first of all, a major part of my life obviously. The Sherman Brothers, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, wrote everything in our childhood. It’s a small world. Mary Poppins, they wrote everything. Richard Sherman came out on tour with us, which was like to be able to spend an evening with Richard Sherman, he came out a couple of times, crazy. It was awesome. As crazy as it was at times. Also, the flying car was super magical, so to be on stage in this magical world every night, I was on tour for a few months. It was awesome. I also met my husband doing a show, which I thought should have been the first highlight I suppose. He came on tour with us as the person in charge of the kids backstage too. He’s a professional bass player, but I convinced him to get in is what they called the child wrangler. He was in charge of all the kids on tour.
The question I like to ask here is we’ve talked about some great things about saving and the tree beliefs increasing, focusing on being you, focusing stuff on a regular basis. You are a big advocate and a brand ambassador for Be.live. It’s a phenomenal tool. I used to use it for stuff like this, still like using it occasionally when I have the opportunity to, but let’s talk that a little bit because it makes it easy for people not only to go live and to hit Facebook Live, using that and some of the cool tools that you have.
First of all, it is easy. There are ways that you can do some of the things that Be.live does with something like OBS, but it is confusing and takes such a long time. It’s easy. What you can do is first of all, even if you’re not going live, you can use it as a tool to record your videos or record your audio. You can add lower thirds on the bottom. That’s the text. It makes it looks like a real news show.
Either it shows up stagnant and you have to go away or you’re going to have it roll across and repeat going back and forth.
It’s like ticker tape at the bottom of your thing. You can add a frame. You can add a logo. You can even change out your frames while you’re live, which is cool. It’s basically like what you would do in post-editing a video but you can do it all while you’re live. If you’re doing a video like on YouTube, a lot of people will do videos where it’s like do you experience this problem? I’m going to solve it. It goes to the little show credits and stuff. You can do that while you’re live on the actual show. There are many new cool things. You can bring in gifts. If you have five houses that you want to show, there’s a new live selling option. You can load all the pictures of the houses ahead of time, bring it in. It has the different information you share, price, whatever can be at the bottom of the video. It’s in a little staggered cool way at the bottom of the photo. You can scroll through the photos while you’re live showing the different houses or products or whatever it is that you want to show.
Can you also bring on a PowerPoint presentation and have that there? We’ve talked a lot of people about doing lunch and learns. They don’t have to be two hours long, but maybe 30 minutes talking about what they’re trying to fund or close on. They have a short PowerPoint presentation that pulls up.
You can pull the PowerPoint presentation right up because you can screen share. You can also bring up to four guests so you could have four people there. You can do audio only guests as well. If you have someone who doesn’t necessarily want to come on the camera that they’d like to speak and have a photo over them, you can do that. With the whole Map to Millions, Be.live is integral in that because you can preschedule the video on Facebook, meaning not that you like would load the video ahead of time, you’re still going to be live, but you can create a link and a place holder on Facebook so that you can promote it ahead of time.
For that APR method, you get a link when you use Be.live to preschedule it. You can bring anybody else in. Zoom is awesome and I use Zoom’s Facebook Live option for one of our glam coaching calls. GLAM is our program you mentioned earlier, Go Live And Monetize. The problem is when you’re using it for like a marketing video or a more public-facing video where you’re not going to have a bunch of people, you can’t see the comments and questions that come in when you’re using Zoom. With Be.live, you can bring them up into the screen. It’s a way to celebrate your viewers as well.
That’s the big thing. It adds instantaneous ego bait. On the many comments, they can see that, “My question is going to go live. I’m going to be live on The Prepared Performer and The Note Closers Show.” They got to comment a lot more on that stuff there. It’s a beautiful thing. It is getting them to comment back and forth.
You can go live on YouTube now also with it. We had it in beta. We were worried if everybody had it, they would shut it down. We had the approval to go live in more places, which is dope. It’s cool.
You’re going live on YouTube. Is LinkedIn probably in the process?
In the future, it’s in that process. It seems like it’s hard even as a human to get permission to do it there. I don’t interact on LinkedIn as much as I should. I wouldn’t give myself access either. You have all these repurpose posts coming here. You’re not showing up. I’m not going to give you anything.
Record there, you still share the video over as a link from your YouTube channel or sharing. You can preschedule out seven days on Be.live, is that correct or is it longer now?
That’s Facebook in general. It’s not Be.live. On Facebook Live, you can preschedule seven days ahead.
It gives people the opportunity to go there. They click on it. They subscribe to it. They can be in your Facebook Live. I’m sure you probably use the mini chats in there to help drive people’s engagement to connect from your live videos.
For every single live video, we do show notes after the video. Every video there’s a new keyword, they comment below it. We get people commenting below the video before it even starts. The organic reach goes up because the social proof, the feeding of Facebook, all of that happens before the video starts.
This started off talking about some pants. What’s the pants thing you’re talking about?
I spoke at the ManyChat Conference. ManyChat is that bot tool. I had already spoken in the social media marketing world, which was a huge honor and a big huge deal. The ManyChat Conference is something that I had been working on making it happen. It was a huge community, a big deal. I was like, “I need something amazing to wear when I speak at the ManyChat Conference. I searched literally everywhere and nothing was working. I was feeling down about it. I was looking at Alice + Olivia and they had all these cool things. They were all a size two and I was like, “Doesn’t anybody understand a real woman? What’s up with you?”
I walk past this store that has nothing but sparkles in it. It’s like a store of sparkles. I was like, “That’s crazy, but I’m going to go see.” I walked in and I find these pants. They are bedazzled from top to bottom with an actual Bedazzler. They are crystals and pearls the whole entire and stretchy. They’re like leggings that are all crystals and pearls. They’re the most comfortable thing in the whole world. My dad was honored at this big event at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. I had to kneel at church. I wore them to church. They are not the best for kneeling at a Catholic church. I try them on and I’m like, “These are the most amazing things I’ve ever worn in my life.” They are amazing. I’m standing in this dressing room and I looked at the price tag. They are $5 bajillions. I’m like, “There’s no way.” I stood there and I was like, “I have worked my booty off. This is a huge deal. It’s going to make an impact. I’m doing it.”
I did it. I texted my friend Shimika and told her, but I was super embarrassed about it. As I stepped on that stage, it was the most amazing entrance to a speaking thing ever. It was awesome. The content was great, whatever. After I stepped off the stage, I was attacked by women who wanted to touch my pants and they all asked me where I got them. I was embarrassed about what I had spent that I didn’t tell them. I realized first it’s stupid. A couple of days later, when I saw you because it was that day I wore those pants, I went straight from that day to the airport. At the next conference, someone was talking about the money mindset and how the things that we do even when we hit success. It’s that money mindset piece is big. I responded to her because I was on-stage on the mic. I grabbed the mic and I said, “I bought a $1,000 pair of pants.” It was one of the most nerve-wracking moments of my life to admit it. I told them a quick version of the story. What did you think when I said that?
I was like, “They’re worth it.” It’s a marketing piece.
I was embarrassed even saying it, but I had many people who came up to me afterward and said they had had a similar experience with a $100 shirt or $1,000 suit or whatever. I realized that this is something that maybe we need to be talking about, celebrating our success and also not de-valuing our worth.
Molly, what’s the best way for people to reach out to you if they want to take advantage of anything you offered up or get to know more about The Prepared Performer?
I’ve got all this crazy stuff that we mentioned, the different case studies and I’m going to put together that template for you. I’m going to create a new page. If you go to ThePreparedPerformer.com/Scott. I’m going to put all the case studies I talked about. I’m also going to give you a video content planner. The content stuff we talked about is great, but it’s also either a spreadsheet or a principal PDF. There are two different ways for two different types of vines. I’ll have that in there too and it’s going to be a lot of goodness.
Thanks, Molly.
Thanks. This was fun.
We’ll have you on again. We’ve got some stuff to go into going forward and we’re excited what the year is going to hold because I’ve learned some stuff. I’m sure that our audience learned some stuff. Thanks for coming on to the show and delivering some great stuff. That’s going to wrap it up for this episode. Check out the website, ThePreparedPerformer.com/Scott, to be able to download all the templates in the list that Molly is providing. Go out and take action. We’ll see you at the top.
Important Links:
- ManyChat
- Be.live
- ThePreparedPerformer.com/Scott
- https://YouTu.be/GEvpK9VbLEc
- http://www.ThePreparedPerformer.com
About Molly Mahoney
Camera Confidence Coach, and Facebook Live Ninja, Molly Mahoney, will bring your crowd to their feet, eager to share their awesome with the world via Social Media, Messenger Automation, and Live Video. She is known for energizing a room, and inspiring others to step into an elevated sense of their own awesome.
Molly pulls from her vast experience touring the world working professionally as a performer for more than 10 years. She delivers clear steps that allow business owners to step into their spotlight so they can increase their visibility and bottom line with clarity, confidence, and joy.In addition to performance skills, she has a magical ability to make the complicated and technical easy and FUN! And can’t wait to show you how to “take your show on the road” leaving your audience begging for an encore.
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