Screw perfect, we launched this podcast in 3 hours

That is loud.

Welcome to MAVEN, or What Is MAVEN, or whatever we're calling this show that we are just starting today. We decided to start a few hours ago.

Oh, we don't have a name.

It's something to do with MAVEN.

Is it?

Yeah, I'm Jeff Sarris.

I'm Amara Andrew.

And as you can see, this is all just put together quickly.

Welcome to our living room.

Yeah, and camera basically on the floor. But it's not meant to be pretty, it's meant to be a show.

Damn right.

So, we're putting on a show. Ready to go?

You should watch the video version of this.

I was just going to say that's great for audio. So, so this is MAVEN. This is What Is MAVEN.

I don't know. What is MAVEN? WhatIsMaven.com is where the–

You have to talk into the mic.

Don't tell me what I need to do.

Okay. Anyway, so, so this is What Is MAVEN. I think this should be called What Is MAVEN, what do you think?

We're starting the show today. It's about starting. This episode is about starting.

Brought to you by starting. Start now.

But we're going to talk about the importance of starting and how opportunity comes from taking action, and how today, I was talking to this one, and we were talking about a podcast for MAVEN, her company, which is about making videography for realtors as simple as possible.

Yes.

So, this is a show geared towards realtors and business and everything. But it's also just tried and true wisdom for entrepreneurship.

Yeah, it should just be more of a motivational– I feel like I'm leaning too far into the couch.

It's all good.

Like where at home or something. But, yeah, more so just to motivate people and get people in the right frame of mind to just keep going and build your brand, build your business. And hopefully throughout this show, we'll be talking about all those fun, wonderful things, and also helping you come up with content creation tips, tricks, and ideas.

Well, not you not come up with the tips, I will come up with the tips and help you. This is going very well.

There you go. Yeah, also about, yeah, videography practical, just everything about building a business.

Yeah, because businesses are hard. Like it's so much work to try to do everything. But we both know that because we both run businesses where we do literally every single part of it.

So, I totally understand. You totally understand, because I guess we should introduce ourselves a little bit, what we do and who we are. We've talked about MAVEN, but who are you, Jeff Sarris?

That's who I am.

Okay, there you go.

Well, yeah, like 12 years ago, I founded SPYR. It's SPYR Media, S-P-Y-R dot M-E. And we build brands.

And we help with design, and brand development, and web design, just everything that comes with strategy for building a brand.

So, what are some of the brands you've helped build?

Well, so I should just say our main companies, like our main company is SPYR, and that's design. Our other company is Nyla, N-Y-L-A dot co, and Nyla is where we do websites, web design, and building the actual platform for people. And then we have Kidney Stone Diet, where we are helping people live a better life by reducing their risk for kidney stones.

And we work on that one with a kidney stone prevention nurse named Jill.

She is wonderful.

But also, yeah, we've worked on The Minimalists brand since the very beginning.

They are wonderful.

The documentary Minimalism we produced. So, we're all over the place. We've built a lot of other brands as well, but those are the ones we're most intimately associated with.

Very intimate. And we are life partners in addition to business partners. I just want to give a full lay of the land because we know who we are, but if you're just–

Yeah, but who are you? I don't think you even said your name.

. I mean, I have. I'm Amara Andrew.

It always feels so weird to say your name in things, I don't know. I was on the first day of school, which I had many of those. I mean, we all did, but I moved a lot.

Anyway, we're not going down that path yet. That'll be later in our trauma episode. But yeah, Amara Andrew is my name.

And videography is my game. This is not going to see the light of day. Yeah, my god, what do I do?

It's been something that I've been trying to figure out for the last few years, and it's very different now because I had such a sure pathway in my mind of who I was. I don't know, I've seen a lot of comedians hold the mic like this, so I'm like–

Well, I just wanted to make a joke, too, because I bought these mics today and these are Shure mics.

They sure are.

And you said sure.

Sure did. He makes fun of the way I talk. I make fun of the way he talks.

That's why we love each other. Anyway, but I, okay. We'll keep on topic.

I now have a business called What Is MAVEN, WhatIsMaven.com. And yeah, it's to help realtors or just small business owners make video-based social media content, and just trying to make it fun and enjoyable, too, because just from each person that I've worked with, I've heard horror stories of what they've had to go through, what kind of tomfoolery these videographers did, and just like it wasn't a good experience.

They show up with like 50 people, and it just wasn't good. People spent a shit ton of money and got a garbage product. So, just trying to re-invigorate people to be like, hey, you can make content.

You can trust videographers. Here's why.

Well, and simplify it. So, it's one flat rate. You meet with them once every other month for 3 hours, and they have 2 months of content.

So, it makes it very simple.

Yes, literally just a few hours of work for you, and then I do everything else, and it is very straightforward. I wish I had MAVEN for myself for my own content.

Yeah, even right now. So, that's why this show will not be edited. This is going to be a straight-cut, single-camera.

Maybe we'll–

So, see what we talk about.

Maybe we'll snaaz it up with the camera and stuff in the future, but for now this is just to start. So, we wanted to talk about starting because this is just about– this whole show is about helping people build the thing that they want.

Yes.

That's what I think. So, what does it mean to be a MAVEN? I wanted to ask you a question as soon as you were taking a sip.

Could you repeat the question?

So, why is it called MAVEN? What is a MAVEN?

You picked it. Just teasing.

So, I do brand. Do. I knew you were going to I knew you were Look at me as soon as I said do.

But, brand is my thing. I love brand. What you have done–

Brand, brand. It's like you're writing a shitty poem. I like brand.

Brand is good. Brand, brand. No one's ever going to listen to this, but that's fine.

We're having fun. I haven't laughed that hard in a few days, so that was good.

Yes, we are having fun.

I'm having fun, and that's all that matters.

Yeah, I love brands, so we found yours Yes. Through time, because what you've been doing has evolved.

Yeah, this has been a process, which is really cool. It's cool to see how basically I like started, which was back in I like to say like 2019 was kind of when it started, when I was working my full-time job, just because that was when That was my first foray into really doing something on my own, which, I mean, obviously, with all of your help and instructing and everything, but yeah, I just basically just started with a website.

You were just like–

Yeah, what's– what's the first thing, is what I wanted to jump to.

Yeah, well, so I want to start at the website, because that for me was the first like, "Oh! This is so cool!" So, I was working a day job at University of Illinois at Chicago, and I was an archivist, which is really cool. I love history.

It was amazing being able to preserve things and blah, blah, blah, but then we started my website, where it would just be essentially just a blog and get to write about different historical things that we encountered on our travels, because we traveled all the time, and just random, weird, fun things that I would find, and then recipes, because we have various eating habits.

Yeah, gluten-free, dairy-free, and just all around real food, real whole foods.

Yeah, no corn, no soy. We're not going to go too far into it, but anyway, it was just very fun. So, it was like a creative outlet where I actually got to do fun, cool things, and I don't know, just like my own little space.

And that's what I always wanted was to be a freelancer and do freelance illustration and do all those different kind of things. And then it was like, "Well, need to get a real job," blah, blah. Anyway, we'll talk about that another time.

But TL;DR: day job, website, and then it was like, "Ooh, this is really fun. I think I want to do this like forever." So, then we started making YouTube videos, which is very fun, where you were editing them for me, because that was before I really got into editing. I've done some editing before in art school, but that was it.

And then, yeah, you were editing my first video, so you can go to my YouTube channel and see those. It wasn't that long ago, that was in 2020. And–

That's a while ago now.

Well, yeah, that feels like an entire different lifetime ago. The first one was fudgy-ass brownies, I think, maybe.

Yeah, and that was an entire lifetime. So, just to zoom forward a little bit. So, since we're talking about starting, opportunity, like something I like to talk about is that action is the most important thing.

Like, my podcast is called Starting Now, called Starting Now. As I enunciate the words. But it's called Starting Now because the whole thing is I've talked to so many people over the years and the hardest thing to do is get started.

So, many, many times I've had coaching sessions with people repeatedly, year after year after year, who have been talking about starting a thing and never pulled the trigger on the thing. And year after year, they would have a new idea in a different thing, a different direction. And I'd always tell them, "If you started on the first thing, you'd start to build your impact.

People would start to follow you. Some won't follow along when you shift, when you pivot, but others will." So, it's so important to start. So, I like to talk about action yields experience, experience yields opportunity, and opportunity necessitates more action.

And it's this cycle, and it's it's inevitable. Like when you take action, your experience creates opportunity. Just doing that all together is always going to happen.

And that's where I wanted to lead into the opportunity that came from you doing your own videos short-form vertical.

Well, yeah, so I jumped over to TikTok in the middle of the pandemic just like everybody did, because I was just or at the very beginning, it was like March 2020 when we started posting. Two of them were joke videos that we did before, but then one, the like third video that I did was about art history, which is what I have all my degrees in and I just love it, and it's just really interesting.

So then, yeah, I just posted it. It took off. There were tons of people that followed me that night, and I panicked.

It's so funny to look back, because it was like I'd never had that many people. I'm a very private, shy person, so having that many people follow me all of a sudden, I was like, "Oh fuck, I don't–"

How many?

Like 8,000. But I panicked, because I was like, "Oh my god, this is actually like something. Like this is happening.

People are following me, and they're they like what I'm saying or doing or whatever."

And it was 60-second art history, so it was like an art history degree in 60-second increments.

Not a degree, but it was like looking at specific artworks, cuz like what I did my graduate work on, I was like, "I should just make TikToks about, because I know all this and nobody else really gives a shit, but apparently people do give a shit." So, if you think what you're doing is too niche, it is not, and I promise you.

I 100% promise you. I was talking about 18th-century French paintings that depict domesticity and eroticism. So, there is a niche for you, I promise.

So anyway, yeah, and then that I just kept doing for a bit, and then I ended up just kind of getting used to having like followers and stuff, even though I still had like a minor panic. But then what happened was one of my teachers from my undergrad, she ended up I was posting these videos, I was recording them in TikTok, but then posting everywhere, which is a big no-no, by the way.

Don't do that.

Well, wait. Record a video and post everywhere, but don't record in TikTok and use–

Yes. Do not record natively in any single app, and then use that download Do not download it then from that app and post everywhere, because the metadata is tagged on that video, and it'll fuck up your algorithm like no other. Nobody will see your videos.

And just the overlays, because if you think about it, someone doesn't– Instagram doesn't want TikTok videos in their feed, because then people will know they can go to TikTok instead.

Yeah. So, anywho. So then, yeah, I was just posting to TikTok, so then I was separately having the video, posting it to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, like everywhere, just literally everywhere, LinkedIn.

YouTube. But then one of my old undergrad professors, I forgot that we were friends on Facebook, and she had seen my videos, and she was just like She sent me an email randomly one day and was just like, "Hey Amara, hope you're doing well. Would you like to teach?"

Well, so she said that she saw your videos, what you were doing. She loved what you were doing, and asked if you would want to teach a–

Yeah, teach an art history course, which I had actually taken as an undergrad, so I was like, "Oh, I know like all the curriculum. I still have my textbook because I only graduated a few years ago." And then I was like, "Fuck, no!" And then he was like, "No, you should." Like, what This has happened repeatedly where I've had to be like, "I'm not doing that," and then he's like, "Yes, you are," and sure enough it has worked out.

I don't I don't say yes you are, but I always say why not.

He says yes you are and he backhands me and then he's like, "Now get back in your cage." So– So then he was just like, "No, you should like try it out. What's the worst that could happen?" Which that is a really great tagline that specific phrase and "that I will die one day," that sits in my head all the time whenever I have diffidence about doing anything.

And then it's like, "Well, I'm going to die one day, what the hell do I care?" Like, I don't know, I might as well not do not pollute the planet and do bad things, but–

Well, no, what's the worst that can happen? Because when fear is holding us back, why are we What are we afraid of?

Yeah, which so many people are afraid of things, which actually is a video I have coming out this week on my TikTok.

Yeah, we're afraid of what people think. We're afraid of how mostly how we'll be perceived, how people will criticize us, what people will say.

Oh yeah, I've got some terrible comments, but at the end of the day, what's the difference? It doesn't It doesn't matter. No.

It genuinely doesn't.

And the worst One of the things, and I like that someone recently just said it, then me saying this to them made a big difference in how they pursued things, just like a friend. But how looking at what the worst is that can happen can reduce your the friction, the part inside of you that's trying to hold you back and try the resistance trying to hold you back from taking action.

But what's the worst that can happen? Like, someone might jump to, "Oh, I'll be living in a box on the street. I'll be homeless on the street, without a home," whatever you're supposed to say.

Unsheltered.

Okay. But then it's like how many things would have to fail to get there? To get to the point where that would happen.

You would have to lose your place that you're living now, not have any money, family, friends–

And even still you're alive.

Yeah, but like how many things would have to how many dominoes would have to fall for that worst case scenario to happen? And–

And still there's help out there.

Well, yeah, and one of the things I'd said to this person, I'm like, "If everything else failed, you'd sleep on our couch." And she said that was that was something that stuck with her, which I thought was really cool. I didn't even remember specifically saying it to her because it's something that I think it's important.

I say to a lot of people just because–

Yeah, you said that to me when we first met.

I mean, yeah, just similarly.

And here we are. And now you sleep on the couch, so–

No, in the cage outside.

But yeah, like what's the worst that can happen? So, one thing you jumped over in your TikTok story is the 8,000 people was a lot. You got nervous.

It kept climbing. It got up to 12,000 people, and you–

11.

Okay, just under 12. So, and then you got scared. You got so, and that was before you even had this opportunity, you had stopped posting.

Yes.

So, the fear kept her from doing. But because she started, because she was taking this action, all of that groundwork of day after day, week after week of TikToks showing your art history chops, the former professor reached out and offered you a job teaching.

-. Yeah, and I was still posting at that time, but not as regularly. But yeah, it was the fear of negative comments from people because some people were being really fucking aggressive and really rude, and I'm a very soft person on the inside.

So, I don't know, and just like normal people, too, are affected by that. Like you can't help it because it's like what the hell did I do? All I did was make a silly video talking about this woman's dress is made of silk and stuff like that.

So, it's just it's a lot of very broken people who have no other if people are talking shit to you, just ignore them. I know it's easier said than done, but genuinely, these are very broken people who literally just need attention and they're using your platform because they see that it's working and that they can actually have a platform of their own without having to do the work that you are doing.

So, just FYI, you're doing it right if people are attacking you. I know it feels counterintuitive, but it's true, so just I guess take solace in that.

Everyone wants attention and it's when you find a shortcut to attention, then people crank up the volume on that, unfortunately. So, when that's negativity–

Yeah, so I panicked, and I was just like, "Okay, I don't think I want to be a public figure. I'm not cut out for this. I don't think I can handle all the negativity and the criticism." And I mean, you see how celebrities get so much negativity about them all the time constantly from Dickhead Joe down the street to the media to literally every single person on this planet has an opinion about a celebrity, which is insane.

Like we shouldn't, logically, naturally speaking, know any of these people exist. But, yeah.

Well, we shouldn't know everyone's opinion all the time about everything.

That's the problem, too. It's like–

It's just that's not that's not like a natural type of thing, because we would have–

It's cool that we get to express it, but it's stupid that people do all the time.

Well, yeah, I mean, more that we know and care. It's hard for us not to care, because–

But that's our natural we need to fit into the society. Otherwise, we get ostracized, and then we get kicked out of the herd, and then we need we're on our own or we need to find a new group to belong to. So, it's very much part of us, which this is so This is even more unnatural to be able to know everybody's thoughts.

And very meta. This is very unnatural that you, who are watching or listening right now, are hearing our thoughts, because we may not know you, you may not know us, you may have just found this, stumbled across this, and for some reason stuck around this far. So, thank you.

But, but it is funny because we shouldn't We should be in tribes. Tribes of 50 to max 150 people.

Yes.

Not 7 to 9 billion people on the planet who all have a platform, meaning through social media, through anything.

Yeah, which is amazing. So, then going back to social media, the ability to have our own platform like this is amazing. It is absolutely unheard of and it is such a cool tool to be able to have and to live in this time with all of the negativities that I was just spewing.

It still is a really cool thing, because, I mean, think about going back to business, also. To have marketing 10 years ago Well, I don't know, I'm I'm young, but okay, let's let's go back to 20 years ago. I don't know what it was like, but I'm just teasing.

So 20 years ago, so that would have been 2003, oh god, a long time, you would have had to have hired a marketing department of some sort to help you do your marketing. You'd need to have print materials, you'd maybe have a website by then?

You'd definitely have a website, you wouldn't have social media, so you'd be doing ads on popular blogs.

So, you'd need to figure out all of that stuff and hire an agency to help you do that, which would be a fuck ton of money. Now, you literally just post a video, maybe spend 5 minutes on it, 5 hours, 5 weeks, whatever, and you can have instant success, which is amazing. Like, that is crazy.

Around the world.

-huh.

And this after a global audience. But this afternoon, we decided to do this podcast.

Literally just like, "Hey, we should talk about this."

Well, yeah, we were we were just talking about what we should be doing for MAVEN, because we should be what is it, eating your own dog food kind of thing. Like we are always guiding and coaching everyone on how they can grow, but we're not actually producing a lot for MAVEN.

Yeah, it takes a lot of time.

So, just going ahead and just doing this is the big thing. So, like I said at the top, this isn't pretty. Like I know this isn't super-flattering camera angle.

It isn't amazing. We're not like trying for anything. We're just doing, because we want to showcase the power of doing and not holding yourself back unnecessarily, because really, what are you holding yourself back from?

So, starting TikTok–

Most of it is just yeah, like what are people going to think? And what is everyone going to say? And I can't handle mean comments.

You can handle worse. You'll be fine.

Well, no, and just knowing that it's not It has nothing to do with you as a person.

Genuinely nothing, which is even though on one of my recent videos, someone was like, "You're really greasy." I was like, "Okay, and I don't give a fuck." Like, you're actually helping The more they say negative things, the more it's helping your analytics. So, that is actually very helpful.

Well, just the more attention. The more attention that a video gets, the more reach it gets. But I don't want to zoom I don't want to like miss where we're at.

So, TikTok,

Yeah.

Then you started teaching, teaching remotely, shot videos right there, teaching her class that she had taken just a few years earlier.

Yeah.

And she taught it for a semester. They loved what she did, they started integrating her videos into the curriculum for other teachers and into their back.

Yes, into the template.

Yeah.

Yeah, so I taught for a few years, which I didn't think I would, but yeah, it was asynchronous remote, which was very lovely, and I don't know, it was really cool. It was a really great experience. Same class and everything, and I don't know, and I love my undergrad.

I'm one of those weirdos. I just everything about it was so cool because it's such a creative community and all the people that work there are absolutely wonderful and just I don't know. I loved it.

I really was like, "I don't want to graduate!" It was very fun.

But yeah, so if you didn't if you let the fear hold you back from TikTok or if you let the fear hold you back from teaching, who knows where you'd be, because you wouldn't have been editing. So, like you said, I started editing videos for you to help,

Yes.

But then you started doing them, then you're teaching and having more video. So, there's always you're getting this practice.

Yes.

And then there was an opportunity that we saw for video editing with a small group of people.

Yes, and if you hadn't started your podcast, Starting Now, I wouldn't have started MAVEN.

Yeah. So, that is an entire other story.

No, but just the doing, the action. So,

Like genuinely, like I said, this all started with a website where I was just doing historical things, and now here we are, recording this podcast under our MAVEN umbrella. I don't know. It is genuinely just amazing, cuz when I started the website, it was like I've no idea like, "Oh, well, I'm just going to be a videographer then." And like that's what's amazing, is you literally have absolutely no idea, but anything that you're even remotely interested in, pursue it.

Pursue it, pursue it, and just see what happens. I mean, I started making stickers for Etsy and then I made videos about my sticker-making process. They have hundreds of thousands of views now, which is insane.

Like people are listening to me and what I said about how to make stickers, and I'm just some dumb broad who was just like, "I'm going to try this out and see how this goes," and it's done pretty well.

And what do you think about your knowledge of making stickers? What level are you?

Dip- dipshit? Novice? Sorry, this is going to have an explicit rating.

Doesn't matter. Because you got to be you. We'll talk about that in a different episode, but you

Literally I literally barely figured it out, and I was like, "Oh, I'm just going to make a video about this." Same with every single process of the sticker-making journey, which that is something, too, which we'll have to talk about in a future episode. We're laying all these little Easter eggs. But you need to document as you are learning, because that is the only time it will be fresh, because now if I tried to make an Etsy video, it would be totally different.

It would be an absolutely different product. But because I was literally recording as I was like the day I figured something out, it was like, "Okay, I'm going to make a video all about this. Like I just figured out my packaging for the store.

Let me record a video because I know exactly what I did, and I can just tell everybody." And then that is my second most-viewed video, I think, on my channel.

Yeah, and it's just funny because the closer you are to the people you're helping in terms of your abilities, the better you are as an educator.

Because that's something that I run into, is I'm not creating content, because I've been doing this for 12 years. What is it, 13 years? I don't know, the end of 2009.

So,

Oof.

Yeah, a while. So it's different, because to tell someone the who's at the very beginning, I don't have that connection. I can help anyone.

Any questions, which we will have a phone number that we'll give before the end of this episode, because we want to actually open this up for you, the listener, the viewer, whoever, to do this as like a free coaching, as she falls over on the couch.

I'm sorry.

But to do this like, basically, free c- coaching, but public. Something that normally I'd be doing privately just over Zoom with people.

Yeah, and like having like the community support, because that is a huge thing, which that's another thing we'll talk about in a future episode.

But before we get to that part, so the being closer to the person to where they are, it's like you want to be a chapter or two ahead. Just like they sort of said in like teaching, like in school, you just need to be a chapter ahead in the book and you can teach. Like you're actually better off being there.

So, say you're in real estate, you're a realtor, completely new, you've never scheduled a, or what is it, got a listing, scheduled a listing, booked a book, a book a home. I don't know, you know that better than me.

Booked a home.

But you've never got a listing yet, but what you're learning as you go is going to help other people, and you can use that to start to build your platform, even if you aren't reaching buyers. If you're reaching other realtors who are just starting out, who then you are their mentor, like you don't know what's going to happen with that.

Every step of the way, everything you do is helping you figure out what you enjoy most about the process.

I do feel like that's something that's missing from real estate content creation is the absolute novice beginner, because it is such a cutthroat industry. It's not super-supportive to the newbie. A lot of people talk shit about newbie agents, which, fine, whatever, everybody has their own opinion.

But I really think that there is a huge pocket there where somebody could document the entire process, like, "Okay, I just got my license. Here are five things you should know about the test," varying state by state and all that, but I mean, there's fucking enough states, like, everybody from every state could do this.

And you can do anything. So, the thing is, you don't know what you're going to like. So, she was doing stickers, she was doing Etsy videos, she was teaching, you were doing social media video editing for a different group for a little bit.

All of this stuff, everything is so diverse, but it converged at video. And you really came to enjoy video, and that's what–

It's so much fun.

What first was just your website, AmaraAndrew.com, then like your brand became ByAmara, because you could do just anything ByAmara, so it could be–

Which is the name of my podcast currently.

-huh, yeah, the other podcast.

Yes, my other podcast.

And then that was MAVEN by Amara, and now it's just MAVEN. So, MAVEN is, because we never even said what MAVEN means, it's a MAVEN is an expert. So, the whole point, as she yawns as I bore her–

You're not boring me, it's 9:00 p.m. It's my sleepy time.

But so MAVEN is a MAVEN is an expert, and the whole point of MAVEN as a platform is that you don't want to be an influencer. You want to be an expert with influence, because having influence is huge.

Yes.

Being an influencer is a passing fad. So, being someone who's seen as an expert immediately gives you influence and you don't need a platform of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions of people to be extremely successful as an expert. Expertise is highly sought-after, and that's what we do through MAVEN, is help create Mavens, help create experts.

And that's the whole point of this, the whole point of the show, which we should have said up top.

A little bit of preamble, but this is what the show is going to be about, what we're going to do every week. Maybe who knows how frequently we'll do this, because we're going to talk to people that we work with. We're going to talk to anyone who it makes sense to talk to them in the moment and throw it on here to help as many people as possible.

And I want to keep these close to 30 minutes. We're a little over 30 right now. Was there a little more you wanted to talk on before we wrap and do the final two microsegments that we have for the show that you don't even know about?

I literally don't know what's going on. He's he's trapped me. No, I got just start creating.

We'll keep We will be here if you have any questions, please reach out @JeffSarris, @AmaraAndrew, it'll be in the notes and in the description and all that lovely stuff, but please, if you need help with anything in the meantime, just reach out.

Well, yeah, and we would love to feature your voice on a future episode. So, I have to look and see, but we have a phone number. Aha, a phone number!

Ooh.

What area code?

The phone number is 530–

What the fuck is that?

628-3611. That's 530-MAVEN-11.

Oh my god. Why 11?

Cuz you had to put something there.

Oh, I thought he was going to be like, "Well–"

No, so it's 530-628-3611, and we would love to feature you on a future episode, your voice will be on here. And what were you going to say?

"Hi, this is Mary."

Actually, though, we need to record We need to actually record the outgoing voicemail, so in showcasing exactly what it looks like just to start,

What do you even say in a voicemail?

We don't have a voicemail yet, but we're going to record it live right on here. You're going to record it.

Oh, boy.

We'll play the music.

"What up, bitches?"

Yeah, that's probably what you should do. But, so what I did for Kidney Stone Diet, which is another podcast, another platform we talked about, I said, "Welcome back to the Kidney Stone–" "Welcome to the Kidney Stone Diet helpline. Leave your name, approximate location, and your question, and we'll feature you on a future episode."

"My coordinates are -54 22 0."

I mean, maybe we'll have to see where that is. Okay, now where How do I set a voicemail in here? Okay, so in the voicemail, say, "Hey, welcome to the MAVEN helpline.

You know what to do." You can do whatever you want. I just realized I think I've maybe once or twice recorded a voicemail thing, but I don't know. It's been a very long time.

Okay, well, here, we're going to try it. You ready?

No.

Okay, here we go.

Welcome to the MAVEN helpline. We are recording this live right now on our MAVEN podcast. If you have a question, an issue, or need some help with your brand, business, or content ideas, please feel free to leave your approximate location, name, and a brief message describing your problem.

Thanks so much. Love you. Bye.

Wow, where did that come from?

I don't know, let's listen.

Let's see what it sounds like before we wrap the show. So, this will be the voicemail.

Welcome to the MAVEN helpline. We are recording this live right now on our MAVEN podcast. If you have a question, an issue, or need some help with your brand, business, or content ideas, please feel free to leave your approximate location, name, and a brief message describing your problem.

Thanks so much. Love you. Bye.

I think that actually fucking worked.

I know. So, that'll be the voicemail that you hear, and please, please, please call in, because this will be fun.

Location. Leave your location, your exact address location.

I panicked! I was like, "Approximate coordinates?" I was like, "No, that's too many syllables."

No, but yeah, so that voicemail again, the number's 530-628-3611. Eventually, I'll remember it, because it's 530-MAVEN-11, MAVEN-11.

MAVEN-11. I'm going to post it to my socials, too.

Yeah, and it'll be in the in the description, in the in the doobly-doo, as WheezyWaiter would say.

Down there.

But, okay, so we did that. I wanted to throw in Recommendation Station. I want to steal it.

I want to steal it from JRVP.

Jeselnik is going to fucking kill you.

No one's going to hear this.

What if he does? I'm going to send it to him.

Okay, give it a try. So,

He'll be like, "I don't give a fuck." He's like, "I don't even read my own emails."

So, I have a recommendation this week. I think that you will probably agree with it. So I'm curious.

Is it wiener dogs? Cuz I always recommend wiener dogs.

Okay, so what's your recommendation?

Mine? Is yours wiener dogs? Oh, no.

I mean, maybe.

Okay.

Oh no, I need to think. You go first.

I figured we would have a shared one this time. So, having a recommendation each week, it doesn't have to be business-related, it can be anything that we're enjoying, and what is something that we are vastly enjoying right now?

Do you like this? I can't even hear you. Oh, well, there are two TV shows now, but one is not to be outdone.

Well, Silo, for sure.

Yeah, that was going to be my recommendation, is Silo. So, he got a new iPad, so we got 3 months free of Apple TV. So, that has nothing to do with the show.

However,

It does.

Silo is based on the Wool series

It's amazing! I can't wait to watch it after this.

By Hugh Howey. It is such a great book, and it started as a self-published book. He just He was writing a bunch of, I think he said 15,000-word books, so they were like 50 or 50 pages or so, so they were all short stories, and he wrote Wool, one independent short story.

It did so well. Everyone was ask- was begging him for like, "What's the next book?" There was no next book. So, eventually, he did follow up and he wrote an amazing series, and Silo on Apple TV+ is that book series turned into a show that is shockingly good, because a lot of times books that turn into shows or movies, Ready Player One, are not very good.

That was a dumpster fire.

Yeah, it wasn't great. Ready Player One is an amazing book, the movie was–

The book was so good. I really hope they don't do a movie about An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, because that book is so good. Like, so good.

The other recommendation is An Absolutely– We can save that for another time, but that was a long time ago we read that. But, Silo on Apple TV+ and the Wool series, highly recommend. It is fiction, it is what, sci-fi, I guess?

Sci-fi for sure.

Sci-fi sci-fi. We're both stumbling over words. I think we're about done.

We're about 40 minutes in. So, I think if you're–

I'm tired.

Oh, yeah. Highly recommend that, and

Yes, and wiener dogs.

Yeah, always wiener dogs.

Yes.

But yeah, to wrap today,

Here's a little story I like to tell about three bad brothers you know so well.

He had a little house See? See, we know each other too well. I knew there was going to be more.

Just had to give it time. Okay, so, to end today,

Oh no, what is this?

Why did the ghost

What? This is serious, what do you mean? What do you mean?

It's the third segment. Are you drinking? You don't drink!

Not no more. Okay, so, why did the ghost

I'm glad you're enjoying this so much. Why did the ghost go to rehab?

He was addicted to booze. I was literally just going to say he had a booze problem. Can I do the thing?

Can

Thanks for watching and listening, and see you next time.

Bye!

Goodbye.

Next episode's on you.

Easy.

Yay!

That was fun.

Yay. It's late.

We did it. That was 40 minutes. We can–

We can do 30. We can do 30.

Yeah, 30 min is easy.

That's super easy.

Cool. Awesome.

Love you.

Love you, too. Great job.

You, too.