Ditch the Reels: Mari Smith on Smarter Lead Gen with Email & Substack

 Episode Summary

You can find Mari Smith at:
Website: marismith.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/maris
Facebook Group: Social Scoop
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mari_smith/

Additional Resources:
Virginia Kerr quitting IG & TikTok and going all in on YouTbe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VseWCYRU7U
Tanya Smith encouraging less social media and setting up Substack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yk0O64NEhsU
My Human Design free community on Mighty Networks: https://marismithsuperstars.com/

#SocialMediaBurnout
#EmailMarketingTips
#KrisWard

Mari Smith Podcast Transcription

[00:00:00] Kris Ward: Hey everyone. Welcome to another episode of Win the Hour Win the Day, and I am your host, Kris Ward, and today is a lucky day for me. We have Mari Smith in house yet again. She is a social media thought leader and oh my gosh, like I’m not kidding you. If you don’t know Mari, I don’t know what you know because. She frankly was like when Facebook was a little baby, she popped up and she was like the first person I even understood, sold courses I didn’t even know you could buy.

[00:00:27] Kris Ward: Like it was a whole, you were a pioneer before the pioneers on social media. Mari, thank you for coming back. We so appreciate you. Let’s jump in. 

[00:00:36] Mari Smith: My pleasure. Thanks Kris. Good to be here. 

[00:00:39] Kris Ward: Okay. Mari, we were just having a brief conversation before the show and it was really hard. I had to stop myself several times because I was like, okay, I could talk to you all day, but we have to record this.

[00:00:48] Kris Ward: So let’s talk about, there’s a lot of conversation, there’s a lot of things happening in the news right now with social media, with Facebook. What is it we should know? 

[00:00:59] Mari Smith: I [00:01:00] personally have been feeling a degree of unrest. Increased frustration and for myself and for my, my, my audience, my community of just this constant gaming, the algorithm of trying to get our content seen and having to jump through so many hoops and so many new changes, every time you turn around there’s, this is the strategy or this is, nope, that does not work anymore. And on Instagram, certainly the short form reels, you can now do three minute reels. Facebook is still, I believe, 90 seconds, maybe they’re moving up to two minutes, not everybody’s comfortable on video.

[00:01:36] Mari Smith: And the thing is that then they move the personal pro, not move, but the. If there’s a way that you can take your personal profile on Facebook and enable professional mode, it’s called, yeah. In essence, you’re converting your personal profile into a business page because you can boost posts, you get access to metrics and the bonus programs.

[00:01:56] Mari Smith: Yeah. They keep Dan the meta keeps dangling this. Carrot [00:02:00] of, hey, crank out tons of content, get boatloads of views and we’ll even pay you because the name of the game for meta and always has been, but it seems to be just increasingly louder is you know, monetize at all costs. And what that takes is growth and users and growth in time on site.

[00:02:18] Mari Smith: So making content that’s very sticky. And they call this whole like creator economy and I know a lot of people out there really consider themselves creators. But my challenge with that, Kris, is I don’t think it is a sustainable business model. It is for the vast majority, unless you’re in the upper echelons of the few percent that really gotten it down and you’re getting money from YouTube and TikTok and Meta and you’re just loving it, but sooner or later you’ll see that people get really burned out because it’s a constant hamster wheel. You have to be, keep creating the next piece of content, hoping that you’re gonna go viral in order to make any money. 

[00:03:00] Kris Ward: Yeah, you’re feeding the beast constantly. And I find it amazing too, because a lot of us are spending a lot of time on LinkedIn, but I do know a lot of people that are still over on Facebook and they’re, they’re really rocking it out and they haven’t abandoned that.

[00:03:13] Kris Ward: So it’s also confusing of, am I trying to be on all of them? Am I trying to focus on one and am I supposed to be focusing on the top two? And then that’s not even what we do. That’s not the work I do. Yeah. It’s just a place I’m supposed to show the work, which then becomes all of the work. Yeah.

[00:03:28] Kris Ward: And then someone like you. There’s all this behind the scenes stuff that we can’t even keep on top of. Like you were talking about, the book that has just been written in gag orders, and you can explain that to us in clarity. ’cause I don’t wanna get any of that wrong. All of that too. Keeping on top of it.

[00:03:42] Kris Ward: Where, when is the sky falling? When is this just naysayers? What’s what

[00:03:47] Mari Smith: Yeah. Oh, this is so close to my heart. I just recently put together and led a program that I called Beyond Followers Bootcamp. And when I create programs, I always have an acronym for them, [00:04:00] so I oh, BFB, wait a minute, B, F, B.

[00:04:02] Mari Smith: That could also mean beyond Facebook, so I’ll never leave Facebook. I’ll probably be the last one. I’ll be the one putting the lights off, but at the same time, I think just the perspective is shifting in terms of not feeling like we have to constantly be on the hamster wheel and constantly feed the BC you call, I call it feed the machine.

[00:04:18] Mari Smith: It’s totally yeah, okay. Meta says, whoa, this per this post is doing, 80% better than your last stuff. Give us money and we’ll make it go further. And yeah, it’s just very psychologically inducing to get us to spend money and spend more time. The book you mentioned is several weeks ago now, as the time of this recording was in March of 2025, Sarah Wynn Williams, who is a former senior executive, she was like head of global public policy or something from New Zealand and she really beat a path to the door to get a job. She invented a job for herself. ’cause she saw that there was a need for this. And she was with the company for about six years. 2011 to 26. And she was with Facebook? Yeah, she worked for Meta. 

[00:04:59] Kris Ward: Okay. Yeah, you [00:05:00] did mention that. Okay. So she was at Facebook. Okay. 

[00:05:01] Mari Smith: Facebook then converted to, changed her name to the holding company.

[00:05:05] Mari Smith: Changed to Meta. Okay. And she really made a profound impact in the company, but she also got inside the belly of the beast and saw some absolutely heinous shenanigans. Just some awful behavior. We’ll go into it in this interview. Folks can go and research that, but her book is called Careless People.

[00:05:21] Mari Smith: Okay? And it’s absolutely astounding and eyeopening. Now, I have been inside the Be Belly of the Beast. I’ve been to Facebook’s offices in Dublin and London and Palo Alto years ago. Now it’s not, I’m not working that closely with the company. I work with some of their PR agencies and I’m still a champion for what’s possible, especially for small businesses.

[00:05:40] Mari Smith: But yeah, there’s some rumblings of, really holding Mark Zuckerberg accountable for some of his actions and working very closely with the ccp, Chinese Communist Party and oh, okay. Privacy and what they’re doing with preying on young. The young, the youth the users who [00:06:00] are like 13 to 17, and some of this has been going on for a long time. Anyway, so that’s just to put that on the radar of anyone interested in get a copy of the book or just on, on April 9th Sarah and Williams was had her hearing because she was testimony in front of Congress because there is finally it’s taken about.

[00:06:18] Mari Smith: Four years for an antitrust suit as a lawsuit to come to bear. And so we’ll see where it goes. It’s like watching a movie. That’s all we can really do. Yeah. Not get too wrapped up in it, especially as marketers and businesses is we simply want to reach our customers and clients and serve them.

[00:06:36] Mari Smith: It can we leave all the drama aside and then there’s, but there’s this reckoning that starts to come in and I can feel it, like I’m feeling my own internal, moral compass and integrity. And people are like, Mario, how can you be associated with such an evil company? I’m like, it’s not black and white.

[00:06:57] Mari Smith: Yeah. So much good that [00:07:00] meta Facebook has done and continues to do in terms of the users uniting and connecting, and obviously with business growth, but with families and groups, for example, groups is one of the profound features that still works really well for, a majority of either individual users. Personal needs and certainly for possibly for businesses. 

[00:07:24] Kris Ward: It’s not a group. But I’ll tell you, my life changed with the marketplace. ’cause I moved across Canada and I sold everything. And I’m telling you, I decorated my house quite beautifully. Thank you very much. At $20 at a time, like just picking up stuff here and there to the point that a friend of mine’s interior designer, she’s really good and told me where things went.

[00:07:40] Kris Ward: ’cause I don’t know, but they did an article on my house. ’cause the whole thing. It was like a big house decorated under a thousand dollars. Like I got a beautiful chair ’cause grandma went into retirement home, it’s like a wing back white chair. It was 90 bucks and this is 20 bucks. And so that certainly was a game changer for me.

[00:07:57] Kris Ward: It was very different than Jiji or anything else. So I. [00:08:00] So it does definitely, that has its impact. So when we’re not as educated as you, or we’re not in, in the loop like you are, where do we go with this information? And Facebook, as much as we like to pick on it, it’s just, I think the pioneer in the industry.

[00:08:15] Kris Ward: So what we complain about Mark Zuckerberg, he’s, I can’t think that he’s, I don’t know, playing a different sport than they are on LinkedIn or the other platforms. Where, what do we do with this information? Mari? Like where do we go? Okay. That’s my issue. It’s not my issue. Like how do we navigate this?

[00:08:32] Mari Smith: Oh gosh. I think last time we spoke we might have touched a little bit on the human design system. I was looking at my, I was looking at my calendar this morning to remind myself when that was. We last spoke, I can’t believe it was 2023. Oh my. Thought it was like just a few months ago. Now time goes by so fast.

[00:08:50] Mari Smith: But for me, just like that self knowledge that I have really been able to immerse myself with my professional studies of the human design system that you [00:09:00] really embody in your own inner truth. So for some people, if you’re, like, for example, let’s say you have a propensity to be super curious and you’re a real investigator.

[00:09:08] Mari Smith: That is what I do. I’m an investigator. I, if something’s going on, I will get to the bottom line. I will investigate the absolute source, the facts. But that’s not something that, that, that is important to everybody. Yeah. So what I say is stay true to your own self. You were mentioning earlier about the work to get yourself out there on social, but that’s not real.

[00:09:27] Mari Smith: The real work you do, that’s like on top of the actual work, and so whatever you have the bandwidth to do, whether you’re doing it yourself as a business owner, a marketer, entrepreneur, or you’re hired, the services of an assistant or an agency, whatever the case may be, maybe it’s ads, maybe you decide, you know what, this is what I was recently teaching in my Beyond Followers bootcamp is that maybe you’re like just maintaining enough of a presence on Facebook, Instagram and some others with couple of weekly posts. Okay? But you’re not even [00:10:00] bothered about whether you get more followers or you get more reach or engagement. You’re simply maintaining a presence. Keeping that top of mind awareness, or if people go to find you and what you do decide to do is take those resources that you would’ve spent, burning yourself out, creating lots of organic content, and you just run some regular ads. You drive those to a really compelling lead magnet, and then you become a master at email marketing. And you nurture. And you nurture, and you make your offers, maybe your call to action is to get onto a sales call or strategy call, or whatever you call it.

[00:10:33] Mari Smith: I personally don’t do that, but that method it’s, I don’t have the bandwidth, but I know some people will, they’ll outsource to do their strategy calls or whatever they call ’em these days, sales calls. And, a person to follow, I love to give him a shout out, is the, my favorite email marketing guru is Jay Sch Delson, and he’s very active on LinkedIn and, okay.

[00:10:53] Mari Smith: I’m sure you’ll pop links in the show notes, but he’s founder of subject line.com. It’s just a free site. You can test [00:11:00] how well your subject line is gonna perform, and then he puts on these amazing conferences. I just met him in person recently at the Social Media Marketing World in San Diego, although I’ve been following for years.

[00:11:10] Mari Smith: And so that’s the thing. It’s wait a minute. As marketers, I feel like we’ve been sold this. Like we have to just be masters at social media. Starting to shift that a little bit to go no, be a master at lead generation and email marketing and just do enough social to keep yourself

[00:11:28] Kris Ward: that is a surprise and refreshing to hear it to come from you because like I really think that, I don’t know, like when the first caveman built the cave, if the cave was Facebook, your little face popped out underneath there. So I think it’s really profound and again, refreshing for you to say, look, there’s numerous ways we can, I always say when you’re giving somebody directions, like whatever, to get to a mall, there’s always different routes you can take.

[00:11:51] Kris Ward: There’s detours and all this other stuff. And so I think. We, you’re right. We’ve been blindly stuffed with this one philosophy of, okay, that’s it. [00:12:00] That’s the name of the game. I need to be posting every day. I need a video every day. I need to be on one platform or five platform.

[00:12:05] Kris Ward: Or what the, what I heard that somebody else heard and they heard the algorithms is doing this week, which none of us know. And so I really I like the fact that at least we’re talking about other options. You know what the amount of time it keeps makes that it takes you to be creating all that content and constantly feeding it.

[00:12:21] Kris Ward: It might be more economical for you to run a few ads and then have a lead in, right? So that just the strategy, hearing a different strategy, I think for a lot of people that’d be very comforting and refreshing. 

[00:12:33] Mari Smith: Totally. Now here’s the other thing that’s super important. One of the reasons I created this whole concept of beyond followers is that over the last couple years meta changed the algorithm on both Facebook and Meta probably threads too for the people that use Threads blatantly copied from TikTok.

[00:12:49] Mari Smith: And it’s this concept of, okay. We don’t need to show your content to just people who’ve proactively chosen to follow you. We can go beyond your followers. So one of the [00:13:00] most important metrics to keep an eye on in today’s social media world is your non followers, your views. Bind on followers. And that’s another thing.

[00:13:09] Mari Smith: Real quick sidebar on the views is both Facebook and Instagram have unified their metrics. So you’re not really looking at, you can look at reach and impressions and whatnot but you’re specifically going to look actually views, replaced impressions. Views is one millisecond. It’s the tiniest Yeah.

[00:13:27] Mari Smith: Fraction of a moment. Yeah. That the piece of content’s on the screen. Exactly the same as TikTok and that’s what reels were. When you had reels, plays were one millisecond. Then video views used to be three seconds. Now everything, whether it’s a story, a post, a carousel, video reel, it’s all a view, which is one millisecond.

[00:13:46] Mari Smith: So keep an eye, which is highly colors. Yes, 

[00:13:48] Kris Ward: highly misleading. That’s like me running by you at full speed as fast as I can run and I say Hi, Mari. And then me saying later, oh my gosh, I had the best conversation with Mari. You know what I mean? Like [00:14:00] we didn’t get to talk. It’d be like, oh, me saying, oh, she knows me really well.

[00:14:03] Kris Ward: I just ran by full speed, said hello, And that’s sad thing is that becomes a full time, like you’re the investigator, as you said, but the rest of us are just trying to do our thing. I’m just trying to help entrepreneurs get time back and find them, put their VA through our leadership program. I don’t know all the things that, it’s a full-time job for you to be investigating all this and going, okay, great.

[00:14:24] Kris Ward: Before you used to mean this, and now it means by the time you sneeze, you’ve had 10 views and nobody, that doesn’t mean anything right. Exactly. Yeah. 

[00:14:33] Mari Smith: I think a blink is like a hundred milliseconds. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my gosh. And so a couple of the things there earlier I was mentioning about the personal profile, you can switch it to professional mode.

[00:14:45] Mari Smith: So an example I like to showcase my friend Austin Armstrong. Somehow he’s amassed 2 million followers at Lost, I looked 1.5. No, I think he’s up to 2 million followers on his personal profile. And one time he, one time he said a couple years ago, he said, you know what? [00:15:00] Basically sacrificed my friends and family Yeah.

[00:15:02] Mari Smith: To go all in on business and marketing and creator. And and he does have a, he had an agency, a social media agency, which I think he doesn’t really do anymore now because he created a, an AI video app. Which is going real well, but he often will share with me in the dms, his follower versus non follower views, and some of his content will get like 44 million views, 99% of which is non followers.

[00:15:28] Mari Smith: So this just blows my mind. I’m thinking, wait, he or he has 2 million followers and yet Facebook’s finding like millions more. Outside of the people who have said, yeah, I want to follow him. So the algorithms are just going crazy right now to just get your content, viral content if you manage to crack the code and get the flywheel.

[00:15:48] Mari Smith: Interesting thing about Austin and people can check him out. Austin Armstrong, on his personal profile I. A lot of its content is not reel as you think, oh my God, is it all reels now is really clever strategy that folks could try to [00:16:00] emulate this on your profile or your page on Facebook. You know those posts where it’s like the large font and the colored background?

[00:16:06] Mari Smith: Yeah. It reads it as a text post. So you put a really compelling hook or question, the tan ways to save time by hiring a va, then what you do is you do what a lot of these creators are doing. They’re using that type of post on Facebook like Twitter X or thread. So the values in the comments.

[00:16:25] Mari Smith: So now you’re gonna put right, one comment per 10, whatever you’re, it doesn’t have to be 10, you and people have just come to accept that’s what they’re doing. And then they hit. Share all the shares they get have to come back to the original post to get the value in the comments. But that’s really, 

[00:16:39] Kris Ward: I see that on LinkedIn too.

[00:16:41] Kris Ward: They would put something like wise I don’t know, I, something like, whatever being, being a boss is about being a leader something generic or whatever, right? Yeah. And then there’d be so many comments on it, and I thought. And the, but then also you can’t get seduced into this.

[00:16:59] Kris Ward: ’cause I would look [00:17:00] at the comments and there might be 300 comments of the best leaders don’t lead. They follow or something, whatever. Something like that. And then there’d be all these crazy comments. But then I’d look and I think, okay, again, it’s really easy. Get distracted and go, why does this person have 300 comments?

[00:17:12] Kris Ward: And I don’t, but when you look at the comments, they’re like, yeah, I agree, blah, blah, blah. And they’re. Across the landscape, but it doesn’t mean, again, that there’s anything significant or ideal client or leads or anything, right? It’s okay, great. You got a lot of traction on your page and for a nanosecond, I’m envious of that, but how does that translate?

[00:17:30] Kris Ward: So it’s very hard to stay sober and not get all distracted by the bells and whistles. It’s constantly as in, in different documentaries, it’s set up like Vegas and it’s really hard to keep your eye on the ball. 

[00:17:43] Mari Smith: Yeah, it is set up purposely to be addicting, even like the color scheme and everything, like how the notification bell is red and and I know I’m like mis organizer and I need to tidy up my phone screen.

[00:17:54] Mari Smith: I can’t stand it if I see a little bubble with a number in it. Okay. Check my WhatsApp, my messenger, my [00:18:00] telegram, my email. It’s like round and round. The hamster wheel. Yeah, 

[00:18:04] Kris Ward: They’re making it crazy. Oh my gosh. Okay. So again, we appreciate your perspective because I think it’s. It’s not just bound, based on research and education and a tremendous amount of experience and clarity, but also, you’re not swaying one way or the other.

[00:18:22] Kris Ward: You’re just giving us the landscape and you do it in such a beautiful way versus the skies falling and mark Zuckerberg is the evil devil. There’s, that’s the other thing. You can, you also have to be careful who you have a conversation with because it gets so extreme. We just wanna be able to walk, leisurely down the road of owning a business and what do I need to do to get by?

[00:18:42] Kris Ward: Yeah. So I think a couple of things. If you said on the grounds of, you know what, maybe you’re just posting a little bit letter less and you’re using lead magnets or whatever, so on, on that line. Where else do you think we should, what else should we be doing or thinking about in this next coming year?

[00:18:57] Mari Smith: Sure. So I wanna mention [00:19:00] another friend of mine, Tanya. Tanya Smith. She’s a live streaming expert, livestream, like a boss or something, I think she’s called. And when I brought out my Beyond Followers program just earlier this year, I don’t know, like a couple months ago, as of time of this recording, and she private messaged me.

[00:19:15] Mari Smith: And said, Hey, Mari, I gotta tell you I love this direction you’re going. It’s completely in alignment what I’m with, what I’m seeing. She literally said the words, I’m tired of being held hostage by the social media and the algorithms. What she started to teach is, a substack. So like creating yourself a newsletter, possibly a paid version, and, which I think is brilliant because, crafting a newsletter, people read it in their email.

[00:19:39] Mari Smith: But if you also have a link, Hey, read this online, and there’s a full URL there without an opt-in and people can just share that. Obviously the goal is to get more subscribers, so that’s Substack. And then another one, gosh, now I’m gonna, 

[00:19:51] Kris Ward: so Tanya, Goodwill Smith, you mean? 

[00:19:53] Mari Smith: No, just Tanya Smith. 

[00:19:54] Kris Ward: Oh, okay.

[00:19:55] Kris Ward: Alright. So Tanya Smith. So what part ’cause the other Tanya was on our show. [00:20:00] What, where in there do you mean? Substack? So walk us through that again for a sec. Substack is a email newsletter platform. Okay. 

[00:20:08] Mari Smith: And it’s free. You can have a free version or, oh, 

[00:20:10] Kris Ward: it’s a platform. It’s not a type of email. It’s a platform. Okay. Yeah. 

[00:20:14] Mari Smith: Okay. It’s a place that will, it’s like a, it’s almost like having a blog and an email platform combined. 

[00:20:19] Kris Ward: Oh, okay. Okay. I don’t know if medium’s still kicking around, but a little bit. Like back that It’s a little

[00:20:23] Mari Smith: yeah. Another property one is beehive. B-H-I-I-V. I think it’s spelled.

[00:20:28] Mari Smith: Okay. Yeah, so that’s just one example and then she’s really doing quite a bit more on YouTube. And then and I’ll get you the name. I remember her first name, a lady called Virginia. And this YouTube, AI, I quite like the YouTube algorithm. They seem to know me fairly well and they’ll pop something in, like when I open up the app, whether it’s desktop or mobile.

[00:20:46] Mari Smith: And I saw this really compelling hook in this gal Virginia, saying why I, why I quit my Instagram with over 200,000 followers and I’m all in on YouTube or something. And sure enough, she hadn’t posted on both TikTok or Instagram for a [00:21:00] year. Wow. And she’s going all in on YouTube. And I’m like, this really?

[00:21:03] Mari Smith: And it was this short video, 10 minutes or something. And I’m like, okay. ’cause I’m always keeping my reader out. See what different. Yeah. People doing and whether they’re a small business, large business. And sure enough, she said, you know what? I’m just tired of this short form, superficial fast consumption.

[00:21:19] Mari Smith: Scroll scroll kind of content. I wanna go a little bit deeper. I wanna give people more of an experience and with the content that she shares and teaches. And she’ll do, she can do longer videos on YouTube. And of course, like you said earlier, I know we’re both fans of Gary Vaynerchuk have mad respect for Gary.

[00:21:37] Mari Smith: He’s on the other end of the spectrum because he has an agency with 3000 employees and he’s espousing post every day on seven different platforms. Yeah. It’s who has the time or resources to do that? Yeah. Unless you’re in his shoes,

[00:21:50] Kris Ward: oh my gosh. And I think what you’re saying too.

[00:21:53] Kris Ward: Which is, we’re just starting. I personally can only speak for myself, but you tend to get following like sheep. So when you [00:22:00] say, okay, in all the other platforms, they’re saying there’s all these reels and you have to produce all this stuff. So then when somebody says, no, I’m going over YouTube to give more meaningful content and have longer videos.

[00:22:10] Kris Ward: I would think we can’t do that because everybody’s telling me, the masters are saying we have to go right? We have to line up over here and we have to do the reels, and that’s just the name of the game. So I think the bigger thing, what you’re reminding us is, question it, try different things.

[00:22:26] Kris Ward: Even if. Even if they’re all right, and let’s say on Instagram they say, oh, I don’t know, 70% of people do really well with the short reels. That’s fine. It doesn’t mean it’s your audience or your people. So I tend to think, oh, we just line up going, oh, this is what we have to do. And for you to be saying let’s rethink this and try different things, I think that’s a really important lesson.

[00:22:47] Mari Smith: Thank you. Yeah. I really appreciate you saying that. It’s, it comes back to being your own authority. Yeah. Do not follow the masses. Do not allow yourself to be getting conditioned or manipulated or [00:23:00] swayed into the big tax agenda, which is crack a boatload of content because they make money from your content by shoving ads into it.

[00:23:08] Mari Smith: And, oh, you’ll get a little share of that. But unless that’s your full-time business model, you focus on getting your leads and getting sales of your products, your programs, your services, and if you get a little bit of money from your ad revenue share or a bonus program, great. That’s your Starbucks money or whatever the heck your kids’ college fund eventually.

[00:23:30] Kris Ward: Yeah, because I know like when, especially even TikTok, I was like, I didn’t enjoy TikTok. I found it very stressing even to be in the feed, like read, like going through the videos, I felt like it was like people screaming at me and it’s all different topics and it was just not something I enjoyed consuming.

[00:23:45] Kris Ward: And yet for a while I was putting videos up in TikTok ’cause I thought doesn’t matter, this is what we gotta do. Because I think what do I know? If this is what they say to do, I’ll line up. I’m trying to be responsible and I’ll do it. It’s I don’t enjoy it. I don’t enjoy being on it. I don’t enjoy consuming it.

[00:23:58] Kris Ward: I don’t wanna be doing it. [00:24:00] And so that’s nothing no good can come from that. What the hell was I thinking? So I think that’s the point is, also I kept arguing my people, I don’t think they’re on TikTok because my people are like me. They’re all. They’re just trying to keep up. They’re trying to get by.

[00:24:15] Kris Ward: They’re overworked. They’re working way too many hours for where they are at this point in their journey. They look good on paper, but they’re not twiddling around on TikTok. They’re just not, they’re working late at night, but they’re not on TikTok. Yeah, so I think it’s, again, just you being here with this.

[00:24:30] Kris Ward: Calm clarity and the grace that you bring information is saying question it follow different things. Do question. We just don’t all have to line up. That’s right. 

[00:24:39] Mari Smith: Yeah. I always like to say, if everybody else is zigging, I’m gonna zag. I know that about myself. I’m very individual.

[00:24:44] Mari Smith: I don’t like to follow the masses. So for example, the trend, the crazy trend of making an AI version of yourself inside of a like the doll, whatever the heck it is. Yeah. The Barbie doll. Blister pack. So I see everybody doing that. Even like [00:25:00] Arianna Huffington, I saw poop something in the feed.

[00:25:02] Mari Smith: I’m like, oh, come on, people, whatever. Hey, not knocking it. If that’s your jam, great. Yeah. But it’s I’m just like, if I see a trend that’s going viral like that. I’m like, I’m going the other direction. I don’t wanna be like, it might be fun and playful, whatever. I saw some creative versions where people were like dropping it into clingy AI or whatever, and you’re walking like you can mobilize and animate.

[00:25:24] Mari Smith: Yeah. Yeah. You’re walking out of the pack. I thought I could do that with a wee crown. I’ll just have myself grab the crown and walk off the throat. And I’m like, yeah, but I just don’t want to, I just think it, 

[00:25:33] Kris Ward: I also think like the economy. By the time they know the stocks are up, it’s too late.

[00:25:37] Kris Ward: So by the time they go, this is a trend, it’s oh, I missed it. Yeah. So I’m with you. I’m like, all right, let’s not without my jam. Okay. We just have a couple minutes left. What are some final words of wisdom that we’re so lucky to have you on the show when it comes to all things social media? Just take a breath and remember. 

[00:25:53] Mari Smith: Yeah. Being true to yourself. Don’t get caught up in the machine of thinking that you have to crank out. [00:26:00] Give up the words. Keep up. Oh, and the left behind. Okay. There’s no such thing. Okay. Even nobody can quote. What does keep up mean? Does Sam Altman, maybe Zuckerberg and Sam Altman, people like that keep up, but it’s I, you know that saying where it’s like you boil the ocean?

[00:26:17] Mari Smith: I call it like the drink, the internet. I’m like, I’ll find myself doing that. Super investigating. I’ve gotta get to the bottom of this. Oh, there’s another thing. Oh, there’s another thing. And it’s like pinging and dinging and grabbing my attention. I’m like, little voice in my head goes, ma, you can’t drink the internet.

[00:26:31] Mari Smith: That’s right. Nope, that’s enough for today. I don’t need to know everything. I’m not gonna keep up and I’m not gonna be left behind. I’m just on my own path and encourage others to do that. One last quick thing, I wanna give a shout out to Mark Schafer. I’m sure you familiar with Mark Schafer? Yeah.

[00:26:44] Mari Smith: He has this like 12th book out or something called Audacious. Audacious. Yeah. It’s about how to be more human in an AI world. And I recently held a an in-person VIP event for 30 people in San Diego, and I gave everybody a signed copy of that book, and then 

[00:26:59] Kris Ward: he was [00:27:00] on the show too. All we’re … we try to have all your friends on here, Mari.

[00:27:03] Mari Smith: He’s either the show. Yeah. Yeah. And then in September I am hosting an in-person retreat in Scotland, in a beautiful, listed on Airbnb as a castle, but it’s more like a Downton Abbey stately home. Okay. And connecting that back to Mark’s book, my favorite chapter, he talks about to stand out in your audacious marketing, give people experiences that they’ll never forget.

[00:27:25] Mari Smith: Yeah. Including in person if you can, if that’s appropriate for you and relevant and resonates with you. So in 

[00:27:31] Kris Ward: Yeah, it is a good book. I read the book too, and it, he. I thought it was really good and it ties into what you’re doing very well and the fact that. We don’t have to, it’s almost like the social media mil, military, like you line up and you go, okay, get the uniform, do this many pushups.

[00:27:46] Kris Ward: Here’s your medical. We’re just all okay, this, you know what, this is the only way out. And when his book, he was like, okay, let’s slow this down and say, but that’s fine. We don’t need to be on, like at one point I was doing like a video and a [00:28:00] post every frigging day and putting on all the different platforms.

[00:28:02] Kris Ward: Like you know what? I could do three posts a week and just do other things, is I can’t not be there at all. Yeah. But I don’t have to be running a hundred miles an hour because somebody told me I had to. But. But then you see somebody in the scroll and they tell you, this is changing. You think, oh, I don’t even have enough education or wisdom to know how far behind I am.

[00:28:20] Kris Ward: I, I guess I just start running. So I think, again, with people like you bringing clarity to it it’s very calming and very helpful. 

[00:28:28] Mari Smith: Thanks Kris. I appreciate that. Yeah. 

[00:28:30] Kris Ward: Oh my gosh. Okay. Where can people find more of your wisdom, Mari? Oh my gosh. 

[00:28:35] Mari Smith: Mari smith.com and then Mari Smith on Facebook and Mari Smith on Instagram.

[00:28:40] Mari Smith: I’m semi-active on those places, but and then I have a community called Mari Smith Superstars built on Mighty Networks. ’cause I’m slowly but surely building a separate community. Both and I’m a both and girl. I have a very popular Facebook group that people can find as well called Social Scoop. 

[00:28:57] Kris Ward: Again, I know we talked about this on the other show, but I [00:29:00] think it is a testament to your skillset, your wisdom, the longevity that you had in this.

[00:29:06] Kris Ward: Because I remember like the, the first time I was like, oh my gosh, you could get a course off Facebook. Like this was new and it was like 50 bucks and okay, 50 bucks, I’m gonna invest. And you were just on that landscape by yourself. There might’ve been two or three other people just starting to come out with courses and you were the pioneer there.

[00:29:24] Kris Ward: And then to be doing this all this time later, man, that is a strong testament to your skillset, your adaptability, your wisdom. So I don’t know very many people that could be doing this with the longevity that you’ve had and kept relevant. Definitely worth somebody keeping, keeping a thumb on the pulse.

[00:29:41] Kris Ward: We wanna know what Ma Smith is doing because you have done, I don’t know anybody that’s done it as well, or as long as you. 18 years, Kris. Oh my God. I know. And 18 years? 18 like I think in dog years or something like there. There, I think in the 18 years of social media, it’s really 60 [00:30:00] years after the industrial revolution.

[00:30:01] Kris Ward: You know what I mean? That’s a good point. So it’s not a regular 18 years, like it’s from your 18 years to, Hey, we can sell a course on Facebook. This is a new and novel idea. So 18 years doing that is. I think there’s different math there. It’s not pure years, yeah. Thank you again, Mari.

[00:30:18] Kris Ward: There’s nothing more valuable someone can give you than your time. So we are so thankful for yours. And please people share this show with a business buddy. Don’t have the suffering by themselves. There’s a lot of content here and they have to hear it. So thank you again, Mari, everyone else. We’ll see you in the next show.