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Case Study: Skype Call with Marie Forleo

everyone needs to go to youtube dot com. Ford slash Marie for Leo right now, Obviously, guys on computers, but our Internet audience does, because this is the home of Marie TV and founder Marie for Leo, who let me look at some of the stats I wrote down earlier. Ah, she has been growing by leaps and bounds or hear your YouTube channel has been, um, 2.8 million views. It's really funny because I when I wrote the presentation like it was working on some of the slides a few weeks ago, I wrote down 2.5 million views and, like, Boom, 300,000 more views since then. That's like just a couple weeks and close to 30,000 subscribers. Now she's gonna come on in a second, and I'm so excited to have her. I first met Marie in New York City about about a year and 1/2 ago, and she'd been doing the videos for as long as I know about six months to that point, and I remember excited to meet her because I had a coaching client of mine who had said, you know, it was talking about you tips on and she goes, Yo...

u know who's videos? I love watching. And I watched from start to finish every single week. And I'm like, Who's just like Marie for Leo? Have you heard of her? I was like, No, never heard of her and I watched one of her videos and like, she's amazing on She's coming. She's come so far since, like, they've just gotten better and better. And I know she has so much more in the works to take its even even a better level. But I remember, you know, I went to her team and I said, Here's some suggestions. I have some things to do. Some improvements, like little little stuff, will be sharing with you like the third day, you know, like little optimization tricks. And, um, but at the end of their I said the only advice. I really care to give you this. Just keep going and you just keep doing it. And I think about six months later she broke a 1,000,000 views, and now it's just been like, you know, two million. And now, boom, she's about to hit three million, just skyrocketing, and it's so awesome. So we're gonna really quick quickly to put this on context, show you one of her videos. Now she is a unauthorized speaker and coach for young female entrepreneurs, basically showing them how to build a business in a life on their terms that they can actually enjoy and see financial freedom and freedom in every other way of their life. And she, you know, at the end of the day she teaches stuff that a ton of other people talk about, you know, just like we said, Is this original content? But she says it in a way that's resonates with people very well. She communicates it, Um, well, you'll see whether videos in a way that people it's received, and that's why she's got the audience. So without further ado, let's go ahead and check out her video. But I sweat a lot, all right. That may not be the owner. I have more of a spiritual question for you. I really want to be a great high end photographer, and to do that, I need lots of money to learn the craft and by top the line cameras, so I'll take any opportunity to work and earn money. But this focus on making money, even though I believe in what I'm doing is turning me into a machine. I feel like it's bad to want, turn a lot of money and that it's not spiritually and I've become too materialistic. Can you give me some advice on how to be cool with the idea of making money? Elena. This is a great question because money and spirituality is a very hot button topic. So I know you're asking yourself, Is it unsparing jewel to want to make money and my shallow if I want to make more? Let me tell you something, woman. I consider myself a very spiritual person, and I love making money now, not just for money sake, but more specifically for what it can facilitate in terms of me being able to contribute to others, to create experiences and to enjoy my life. And I've always felt this way ever since I was a little kid. Awesome. So that was a clip of Marines. But you're pretty good, right? You guys like it. So we're gonna go live and say hello to Marine. Have a fun conversation with her. So there she is. Awesome. Welcome. Thanks. so much for joining us, Marie. Pleasure to be here. Thanks for having. Yes. So here is we're gonna do. We're just gonna were gonna pick your brain for about the next 30 minutes. I've got some great questions I want to ask. You are wonderful in studio audience is gonna be making videos basically inspired by what you're doing on a weekly basis will be making their own videos. And, uh and then we've got our Internet audience, people that are coming in from all over the world that I know we're gonna have questions for Marie eso. Really? Where I want to get started is ask you that question of where was that moment where you made a decision or had that idea to get started with with YouTube? And then where did they take you? Where you knew that you needed to keep going with that. So it was really a gut intuition. It was a couple of years ago, and in my previous life over 10 years ago, I was doing a lot in the health and fitness industry. And if you ever find yourself in a target or Wal Mart or anything like that and you kind of proves the fitness DVD section. You may see a new image on a DVD cover of me. Like how? Because I used to dio fitness workouts, and one of the things I learned from those days was how much I loved talking to people in teaching into a camera. And even though I've got four fitness DVDs, I realized that in my online business I wasn't utilizing video as much as I I thought I could. And so I kept hearing this little inner voice that says You have to do more video, you have to do more videos. So it got loud enough where I said, Okay, I'm listening and, ah, I just started playing around with my little webcam. Kind of like what I'm doing right here with you guys via Skype just using my little old Mac. And that's really how it started. That's awesome. Now can I have you brag for a second? Some some results. I know you had a video that was like featured on the home page of YouTube. Can you talk a little bit about some of the results that you've seen from ordering videos? For sure, I mean the results are there so many results? It's it's kind of even hard for me to articulate all of them. But from a business perspective, I mean, I know you talked about the views and things like that, but in terms of riel, profit and revenue, I've got to tell you, it has been dramatic for a business in the past 2.5 3 years. Every single year we've either tripled or quadrupled what we do in terms of revenue and profit. And while I can't tie every single piece of that back to YouTube, I know just from being in business for over 15 years and being able to, you know, toe watch things over those years that it plays such a huge part in that such a huge part in how people feel connected to our business, how close they feel to what we're creating, the level of connection that our community has to each other. It's just been exponential in every sense of the word. I mean, I'm out here in Venice, California, right now, and I'd say about I don't know, 50 to 65% of the time I could be out and I run into a Marie TV viewer literally on the street were like, Oh my God, I watch your videos every week and it's it's awesome. The sweetest kind of people. Yeah, it's been amazing. Now let me and I'm going off of that. I wanted to ask you, like where? What is YouTube to your business? Is it? Is it cause I know you kind of said, It's like it's like rallying the community. But do you feel like it's more that or is it Has it been a platform to find, to have new people find you? Or is it just kind of like on a compass ing? Yeah, you know, it's really interesting. When we first started, my intention was, and my hope was that YouTube would be a vehicle to help us find a new audience. But, you know, over the past couple years, what we've seen is, while that does happen, I feel like YouTube's been more of a platform to for us to host our videos, obviously to reach a new audience. But I think more so. It's been for us to connect more deeply with the audience that we already have and really turn up the volume on somewhat of the viral effect. So, for example, you know, I know the clip that you showed it was it was cool. It was it was fun, and I really appreciate that. But a lot of our videos get very humorous, and we do some wacky, crazy things, which you know, And sometimes those are the kind of videos that people say, Oh, my God, you got to see this. Oh, my God, you got to see this and they'll tell their girlfriends or their wives, their husbands or whatever. And so I feel like it's grown more that way than necessarily through the Utah or YouTube audience itself. That's just my guess. Gotcha. And I'm noticed just looking back on some of your last videos that, you know, you're putting out a video a week. Still, is that correct? Yes, One video. Every single week we never mess, and that's that's amazing. We're gonna be talking about that I wanted. I want to dig deep on how you've structured that so that you can actually keep up with that schedule. But before we get there, what I've noticed is that even the last, like five or six videos have MAWR views that have come out in the last five or six weeks than videos that came out three months ago. So he's still seen kind of this exponential growth curve. Or do you think you're doing something different that has changed more of the It's all really good. It's It's hard. I feel like there's such magic and consistency, and I think that's where a lot of us can have challenges. I think you know, when you're starting something in your enthusiastic sometimes you know, you're like, all right, I'm gonna do 10 videos and then if you fall off the map for a little bit and then you come back on, it's almost like you almost erase all the work that you did before. So I feel like consistency has really been on our side, and, you know, one of the things that I don't know if you mentioned, but we were lucky enough to be on Oprah Super Soul Sunday back in November. And so you know, Oprah. God bless her. I love her so much, even though she's in a different platform herself now, with own, I Feel Like That had a very positive effect on our viewership and just on our audience, reach in general. Absolutely. So that's a That's a good Segway into talking about the consistency. Because, um, I hammer that into my students has is that consistency will breed momentum, and I think we can see that with you. So So the real question is, how do we do that? How do you put out video every single week at such a high level of quality and engagement? And not just with the production, but but the content is? Well, you could share on that to be fantastic. Yeah, I'll tell you, it's It's been, ah, long time coming, and we're learning things every single month. You know, when we first started Marie TV, I think I was able to shoot four videos at a time so I would do a bit of pre planning. You know, people often ask me like, How do you come up with your content? I'm like it's pretty simple. It's, you know, Q and A. It's literally the questions that we get all the time. These are questions that people reticent there real questions or their questions that we get constantly in some of our training programs or the things that people ask me, You know, if I meet him out in the street or if I go out to dinner or things like that, I literally have Ah, bank, Ah, spreadsheet of hundreds and now thousands of questions to choose from. So doing some pre work is a lot of the game, and I think we're That's where most of us can stumble. To be quite honest with you. I know it's an entrepreneur. It's very easy to want to do everything last minute and you get these creative ideas. You're like, Oh my God, I got to do what I gotta do this now But the real secret to anything is planning and planning in advance. So when we started shooting four videos at one time, I knew that was okay. But I knew I could do a lot that are, um, James. I don't know if you can share this resource, but we did that video around New Year's of this year. That actually takes you through the whole evolution of Marie TV. Where yes, OK, that's honored. It's on your channel. Okay? Perfect. Yeah, it is on the channel. I just wanted to mention that only because it's literally walks you through exactly how we've done it since the beginning. So the short story basically is. You know, we used to start shooting four videos at once. I didn't script them at all. I just kind of had a rough outline. And then I realized, you know, I could probably more be more effective and more efficient with my time and actually put out better content if I spent more time scripting in advance. And I bet I could actually shoot eight episodes in one day, you know, rather than four. And so over time it's just been this learning curve of realizing, Oh, wow. Here are different places in the process where we can save time and save energy and being more effective so literally over the last 2.5 years. That's what we've been doing every single round. There's improvements. So now it's at the point where I spend, um, over two days, scripting everything in advance, literally selecting questions, looking for proper quotes, because for me, I know this stuff in my heart and my soul. But I remember those first videos I would rewatched Michael. Oh God, I forgot to mention this or I remember this story or there's a book I should have recommend. So for me, it was like, How do I harness all of my experience? All of my knowledge, all my ability to research, to create the best, most valuable free videos possible. And the only way I can do that is if I prepare in advance, it also saves you a ton of time and energy. So I'm a big fan of matching anything in life meetings that you take all kinds of tasks and you put them together and you do it on a course of, like, one or two days, so you don't have to think about it the rest of the month or the rest of the two months. So bashing is really, really huge for a team now, and I would suggest it for everybody. That's so awesome. And I'm so happy to hear all this because we're just starting this three day workshop and we haven't really had a conversation about like, what's the house? The behind the scenes of Marie TV working to here? That it's exactly what I'm teaching is fantastic. It really is about consistency and building systems. And on the the batch ing is amazing is more videos. You can do it one time. Yeah, and I do want to say something there, though, because I've had people say I can't I couldn't even imagine doing like, eight videos at once or even four videos at once. And I just want to remind everyone that it's okay to start where you start. You do not need tons of fancy equipment. You don't need a writing team where production team you really, really don't. The most valuable thing for me was starting exactly where I waas with the knowledge that I had and building up that consistency muscle, just like when you go to the gym to build up your biceps. If your bicep isn't that strong, you have to do workouts, and over time you get stronger. So don't get discouraged or compare where you are to other people and say I'll never get there because it's just not a smart or nourishing way to think, and it's not going to support your creativity. Awesome. I love that now. One thing you dio for your program that you you launch every year. Be school is you do a scholarship and you do that on YouTube. Can you talk a little bit about that? Cause I think you have some exciting results. Yeah. Oh, my God. So be School is online business school for modern entrepreneurs. It's our flagship program. We adore it. And so, you know, it's quite an expensive program. It's just under $2000 I realize that's a large investment, and we reach a global audience. So we have people that pay attention house in 100 91 countries around the world. And I also know from my own experience that not everyone has financial resource is to invest in their business. So every year we offer a scholarship contest. This year we gave away 31 scholarships, and we're so excited about that. But basically we run as video based YouTube contest. So what we do is we ask everyone who wants to participate, to create a 92nd or less video about who they are, where they are at in their business, what their challenges and you know what they want to get out of b school or what they really want to get and put out into the world and why they want to make a difference. So we have all these different specs that we show people and say, All right, you've got this amount of time to do it. You've got to get your videos up, uploaded by X amount of time. Come back here. Put that link in the comment, we give them social media tweets and Facebook updates that they can post out. We even had an audience choice winner this time meeting the person who could garner as much social media attention as possible and as many views as possible. You know, they would be the audience choice winner first, many thumbs up. So it was really beautiful way Teoh inspire people out of their comfort zone because for me, I'm trying to get people to move the needle ahead in their business in life and one of things that stop spokes is often fear, fear of looking stupid, not knowing what to dio. So scholarship contest is kind of a sneaky way for us to teach people that they really can do it, and most the time when people make that first video They're like, Oh my God, I didn't die. Nothing bad happened. It's all good and so they're that much more apt to want to do it again. So, um, over the past years, I think this time we had close to I think it was About 700 entries literally took, like, a full week, and we divided and conquered. We watched every single one, and it was a really tough choice. But you know, when I first started that contest, I think we had maybe like, oh, no 120 entries or something, and each year it just grows exponentially right. That's incredible. It's exciting because you're using YouTube in several different ways and you're getting the people engaged. And as will learn, it's YouTube is a community. It's a two way street on. Are you guys on there like like responding to questions? Because I know your comments on YouTube just get filled up cat stuff. So I'm gonna share something that is maybe a little bit different than what you teach, and I hope that's OK. It's just a different perspective. So for me, what we've noticed it with YouTube and I've really taken your your teachings to heart, James. And I want to say that up front is, you know, ice. We started paying attention to YouTube comments and I used to be in there a lot. And then, you know, YouTube is a really interesting place, and as a female, I will get more comments about my breasts than actually about my content. And I'm not about to hide who I am. I am not about to dress differently because people are eight holes and they don't know how to comment like normal human beings. So basically what we dio, I hope this is all okay. I know this is so great because real quick, Murray, one of the big questions that people had is how do we deal with and the word they used with trolls. How do we deal with the nay Sayers? And you know, I don't think it's as bad as it used to be on YouTube, but it used to be pretty bad, and people can be cruel. So this is this is great. And let it less know how you're doing with this. Sure. And you know, it's not a perfect science, and we just do our best. But here's actually what we've done with our channel, and I actually might turn off comments. It's something we're considering to be on TV. But what we're doing is we're directing all of the conversation back to the actual block post on Marie for leo dot com. Because I right around each episode, there's actually a lot richer of a discussion. There's a lot of things, I think, before the episode after the episode, there's additional Resource is and plus on Marie for leo dot com. You know that in a democracy, if someone shows up in there in a hole there out of there, I am not going to deal with it. I want the conversations to be constructive. It's fine if people disagree, but there's a manner to have a discussion in which it's healthy and it's respectful and you're trying to find some greater truth or find trying to find some support. So we're directing all of the energy back to our blawg, and, you know, maybe some people may say I'm wrong for doing that. But to be honest, you know, I've done things a lot differently in my business all along, and it hasn't done me wrong yet? Yeah, No one. That's great. And I would imagine that the the the YouTube trolls don't follow you onto your website. You can't handle it. You gotta fill out your name. You have to have any male and all that stuff. So totally the people that are that negative and that cruel and that mean And quite frankly, like just sometimes it's violent and it's weird, and the energy is just nothing that I'd ever want to have around my business for my life. I swear. I feel it's like a positive force Feel like they even come in there. And if they do, it's like delete their out for good. Yeah, for good. Um, that's awesome. Okay, so I mean, you've already given so much awesome Valley and I appreciate it. What I like to ask anyone who is doing anything with YouTube is an and pretty much already given great advice. But someone who wanted to get started today with their first video, What's that like very first stab or piece of advice. Oh my God, for them. So I have a couple of them. So the one thing that's always helped me and I feel like it's so helpful for all of us. I remind myself of this all the time is to imagine you're talking to just one person. So I often name the person like I've had Jenny, that I'm talking Teoh. I've had June that I talked to you and if they were real people in my life that I feel if they were asking me that particular question, this is honestly what I'd say to them. I find that went for me If I start going into Oh my God, there's, you know, 25,000 people watching me or how many people are gonna see this. I start to actually behave weird, and I I don't sound like me. I go into like, presenter mode, which is so awful, and it's just look, you know, it's always go there, but it's just not useful. So I'd say Choose one person that you're teaching or talking to, no matter what your topic is, and that will really help. And I think the second thing is, don't worry about being perfect. There's no such thing is perfect. It's really the lowest standard that any of us could have for ourselves. Perfection is not like perfectionism is not excellence like we strive for excellence in our company, but we are so far from perfect. We screw up, it happens. The show must go on like that. That clip that you showed, I really I am Italian and I sweat a lot. And I was really impressed with myself that I had did not have sweatpants all around on that beautiful dress because I was like, Damn, these lights are strong. I believe you didn't script that, like, weeks ago when you were writing the script, I don't even know like that dress. I was like, Whoa, this thing is tight. I'm gonna sweat like a mofo through this. But my point is is when you're first starting out, if you flub a line, don't worry about it. I often notice for me, you know, I leave things in my editor will be like, Hey, do you want to cut that? I'm like I don't even want to do a retake because the content got across the message got across now. Know anyone who speaks perfectly 100% of the time. That's great. And this has been so amazing, Marie, we only have a few minutes left with you, and I didn't want to be selfish and hog you all to myself. So, uh, do you guys have any specific questions from Marie that I haven't already answered? And also the Internet? If we have some questions coming in, um, you guys that at the moment think of anything I want to say, Who got you your red pants? Uh, yeah, right. A brave man who are You know, I always nervous getting home, but knows like, it's creativelive. So Thanks. Thanks, Marie. Um, que you had you had something. So my question I assume it is gonna be something other people have to. Which is why I'm asking it Length of videos. Some of your interviews are long. Some of them, some of Q and a Tuesdays, usually short. How do you know? Like the one with Maston, for example. With super long and then your little ones on Tuesdays are short. So what do you What's the deal there? Yeah. So the deal is I probably couldn't hear myself talk for more than five or six minutes without getting bored. So I try and keep him as short as possible to get the information across, you know, as best they can with interviews. I feel like those can warrant being a little bit longer because they're a dialogue. And I feel like I've been lucky enough to have people who really have something interesting to say in interviews. What's great with all our videos. Obviously we can go back and edit, but I try and structure them so that I deliver things in a short amount of the thymus possible without sacrificing content. So I know that's not like there's no perfect formula. One thing that I learned from Richard Branson, who have been lucky enough to me he always talks about there are really no rules in business is like That's where all of us get tripped up. And I think you can Yes, there are no rules. I think that for video, just like with written copy, you know, copy is very similar. Teoh written copy in terms of e mails and block posts and things like that, try and say it isn't in a short amount of time. It's possible without sacrificing. You know what you actually need to say? Yeah, I think the magic word I use is concise, and we'll be talking about that. We have some Internet questions. Yes, we sure do. First of all, of his Lorraine A. One of the chat house here. It created live, and I want to say thank you for being here and the Internet already in the chat rooms. They're going out of control saying How please, there to have this opportunity to talk to you, Thank you. First question comes from Rice Rome. Who is Joanna from Poland. And the question is, I want a global audience. I speak a few languages, namely Polish, Russian, Korean and French. Do people advertise Slee judge non English videos? Is it better to speak only in English and then sub them over in various languages? Or should I make separate videos for each country? A. God bless you want to make separate videos for each country? That is totally a personal choice. I will tell you that, Um a I don't speak any other languages. It's one of my life goals that I actually have slotted out for the next decade, but we've been able to reach viewers in 191 countries, and I'm just doing them in English, So I feel like it's a very personal choice. Obviously, the more videos you're producing in different languages exponentially creates more work. That James, do you have some advice on that? In terms of? Yeah. And that's a tricky question, really. Is YouTube does have translation ability, but you do need to start somewhere. You know where? You know, Like Marie says she she targets a specific person. Well, what language does that specific person speak? That's where you should start, Okay. And then, you know you can talk about Yeah, if you want to go down the path of doing the same video in four different languages, which is a lot more work, But But YouTube does offer subtitles and translations on, and you can set that up fairly easily. Little technical thing. But we can We can get to stuff like that. That's good. Any anymore. Great questions. We can ask Marie before we let her go. I think we have a lot. If I could clump them all, if I could batch them high Mallory from creative life. Um, we have questions just about the whole process. So how many people are on your production team? where you're filming, how long your videos are if you have a screen where you're reading the script, um, and then the editing process. So very, very quickly. If you could kind of run us through your process, that would be great. Yeah, absolutely still process and this is current for were in 2013. So current processes I will spend about 1/2 a day going through questions and going through questions with my team, um, figuring out which ones are most relevant. What I really want to answer what I feel like I could make a difference, for. We select those questions that I go into a two day writing process and, ah, dear friend of mine, who happens to be an amazing writer. We hold ourselves up for two whole days and we write everything through, so these scripts are pretty much outlines for me. I don't memorize them, but we get things like tweeted bulls down. We get kind of the main chunks of it down and make sure we have a really strong call to action at the end, because for me, it's all about taking action. Once those scripts are prepared, we have our shoot scheduled way in advance. So 99% of the time we shoot in New York City. So we shoot there in terms of our production team. Um, you know, there's someone who does actual lights. Sometimes. If we have interviews, there's three cameras. So there's three different people working the cameras. Oftentimes it's just one shot on me. We have an audio guy. I have a stylist that I work with because while I'm a woman, I don't like to shop. It's a real pain in the butt for me, so we choose all of the outfits in advance, so we have everything set up. Um, I don't read the TelePrompTer, so I just kind of have my notes there. I look at the, you know, look at what's happening. If I lose my place, we kind of stopped and I start again and just kind of flow with it. And then, in terms of the editing process, once we're done shooting, then it goes into post production, where my editing team and there's one main person who does 90% of the editing. He'll start generating rough cuts so that we can watch all 12 episodes and I can see the rough cotton meaning Maybe the music's not all. There may be the some of the graphics aren't there, but we can just see the flow of each episode. I can give notes, and then he takes my notes, edits them in, and then I start to see finals. And like, right now, you know, I've been shot through basically May since last December. So I've done all the shooting cause I'm out in California. Last time I did, every TV shoot was back in December in New York. So the whole time I've been here in L. A, I haven't had to shoot any Marie TVs because we had him on the can. That's pretty amazing. I love it. I think we're about out of time. Is that correct? So thank you very much. Thank you so much, Marie. I'm gonna give you, uh I'm gonna just wear some lipstick on my face. Now. Eso everyone go to youtube dot com fort such Marie for Leo and subscribe to Marie TV. Leave a comment on one of her videos saying, Hey, I found you from creativelive. And I'm gonna watch everything. One videos a Q and a Tuesday every Tuesday. And, uh and thank you so much for joining us, Marie. And, um, I'll talk to you soon. Yeah. Thank you. Guys have so much fun. You're learning stuff. And James is the most amazing teacher has helped us so much. You're in great great hands. Have so much fun with video. You've got a message. Get it out there into the world. By God. Thank you.