The Three-Part Video Structure That Breaks a Stuck Business Loose

You’ve recorded a video for your business, watched it back, and felt your stomach drop. The lighting’s fine. The words are fine. But something about it feels stiff, like you’re performing a version of yourself instead of just talking. Michael Martin opens his session by admitting he used to feel exactly that way, phone propped on a stack of his wife’s candles stolen off the living room mantle, hands shaking before he even hit record. What he built out of that discomfort is a simple, repeatable video structure that took his business from stuck to moving, and he hands over the whole thing.

Before the mechanics, though, he tells you where he was starting from. He and his wife Chrissy came out of the restaurant business his grandfather had built after immigrating to the country, and when the economy turned in 2008, they lost that business and eventually the house that came with it. He describes sitting on the front porch with a for-sale sign up, hoping something would come together. He’d tried network marketing before Empower and struggled there too. By his own account, the actual enemy was never the market. It was that every time real success got close, some part of him turned away from it.

Why does a simple video convert better than a polished one?

Michael’s core teaching point is the pre-sale bridge video, the short clip that sits between wherever someone found you (a social post, a blog, a list) and the actual sales presentation they’re about to watch. Its job isn’t to sell. It’s to lower the prospect’s guard by making the whole thing feel personal instead of like they’ve been handed off to a stranger.

He breaks the approach into three plain rules, plus one non-negotiable close:

• Be relaxed. Not low-energy, just calm. Get the camera out of your hand, set it somewhere steady, and stop performing.
• Be relatable. Share a real piece of your story, briefly, something the person watching has actually lived through too. Losing a home. Wanting more time with your kids. Whatever is true for you.
• Show results, and they don’t have to be yours. Borrow other people’s early wins if you’re just getting started. A modest result someone can picture themselves hitting will move more people than an enormous one they can’t imagine reaching.

And then the part he says he struggled with the most in the beginning: tell people exactly what to do next, clearly, more than once, even if it feels repetitive to say it. No call to action, no result, no matter how warm the story was.

What’s the internal shift that has to happen before any of this works?

Michael is honest about how long it took him to actually use these principles instead of just knowing them. He describes years where he’d come to an event, get fired up, go home, and do nothing with what he’d learned, a pattern he says was really about a fear of the very success he claimed to want. The turning point wasn’t a new tactic. It was deciding, out loud, that he was finally open to the outcome he’d been chasing.

Don’t overthink this thing. Don’t overthink it. Don’t do 50 cuts.

That’s the mechanism underneath the whole session. Perfectionism isn’t caution, it’s avoidance wearing a nicer outfit. He tells the room to get one video up, even an imperfect one, and improve the next one instead of endlessly re-shooting the first. A video sitting unpublished in a private folder does nothing for anyone.

What does this actually look like day to day?

Keep it under three minutes. Smile, because a flat greeting reads as disinterest even when you don’t mean it that way. Practice by shooting daily, not because the fifth video will be perfect but because the hundredth one will be effortless. And use his own aside as permission to be human about it: “I used to be like shaking, like a chihuahua poop in a pine cone, you know, you’d be like, uh, set it up somewhere, you know, get you a little stand.” Nobody starts smooth. The daily habit is what gets you there.

The structure is simple enough to use this week: relaxed, relatable, results, and a clear ask at the end. What separates people who use it from people who just nod along is the same thing that separated Michael’s stuck years from his breakthrough year: actually hitting record.

The full session goes further than what’s above, including the exact video template he uses today. Watch it in full, free, when you Create your free account.

The full session transcript follows below.

Transcript

So, how's everybody doing? Good? Awesome. Awesome.

I was going to have a stool up here, but I guess not. So, well guys, man, it's just been an amazing, amazing ride over the past, I would say. This marks our three-year anniversary, actually, in Empower this past week. And, yeah, thank you.

And it's been wild. I can say that. And the cool thing is, is over the past year, we really had our breakthrough. You know, we didn't come to this game with a whole lot of internet marketing experience, really none.

We did some MLM stuff, and we really just didn't get any results, you know. Like I told you guys before, we lost a lot of weight. We looked really good, I guess, for a little bit. I need to try it again.

We looked pretty good, but we didn't have any real success. We didn't have a story, a real income, anything going. And so, we found Empower a year, or three years ago, and like I said, this past year has just been insane. We actually started, we broke six figures.

It took us two years to get to six figures. Two years. Would you, like, do this for two years? Would you stick with it to get there?

That's my question to you. All right? And then things just took off, you know. We had the iPass system rocking.

We were literally doing, we've done about $100,000, about every 90 to 100 days since then. So, we just broke $400,000. Income disclaimer. Results not typical.

If you're watching the livecast or the webcast, you can check the link out at the bottom of the page, I'm sure. And so, and say hey to the webcast people real quick, guys. What's up? You should be here.

But it's funny, because, you know, we've had these amazing results. You know, and we know we're just going to do more, because we've got an amazing team, Team Consistency in the house. And so, we know we're going to do more. But everybody likes to look at what we have now.

They like to look at the result. They don't always want to look back and see the journey, the struggle. The struggle was real. Hashtag.

And so, it was tough, man. I mean, Chrissy and I. We got married back in 2005. We just celebrated our 10-year anniversary in Mexico this past week, two weeks ago.

And it was tough, man. We got married. We had a business. We had a restaurant business that we had to sell in 2008.

So, I don't know if many of you have heard this story yet. But if you've heard it, you get to hear it again. You can watch the I-Pass video, too, and hear it there. And hear it everywhere else.

But anyway, so we actually had a restaurant. It was great. Mexican restaurant. I'm half Mexican, in case you can't tell.

And my family actually was in the restaurant industry. My grandfather was an immigrant. He moved here to the States and started a Mexican restaurant empire around Atlanta. It was pretty awesome.

Food distribution, you know, all this stuff. So, I was kind of just born and bred to be in the restaurant industry. You know, I grew up in it. I think I, like, fired my first person when I was 15.

I was like, yeah. If you've ever been fired, I'm sorry. But so, it was. It was just something that was in me.

And so, I always kind of already had that entrepreneurial mindset. Okay? Like, I knew what it was like to have a little bit of freedom. I watched, you know, it's a restaurant.

It's 24-7. But, you know, you're not having to clock in 9 to 5 and go, yes, boss, yes, boss, yes, boss, yes, boss. So, I got to experience that. So, we had our own restaurant.

And when 2008 hit, we all know what happened. You know, the bubble burst. I'm Southern. So, we kind of make up.

We make up our own words. And so, when that happened, we had to sell that restaurant for a major loss. We actually put in probably about $20,000 to $30,000 of personal guaranteed stuff. Young and stupid.

Didn't know. Hey, this guy's offering me some money. I'm going to take it. And so, we did it that way.

And, man, we struggled. We had just bought the house that we had always wanted. We have a son. He's 15 now.

So, he was very young at that point. We watched everything, like, literally fall in between our fingers. Like, you know, if you just go to the beach and just pick up some sand and just watch the sand go between your fingers and just watch it just all fade away. And it was tough.

You know, I'd sit on the front porch and just, we'd have the for sale sign hoping to do the short sale. And just hoping that we could pull something together. Kind of like pulling a rabbit out of a hat. With our MLM company that I'd found and things like that.

So, the struggle was real. The enemy was there. So, over that course of time, I'd struggled in that MLM. We had just filed for our bankruptcy.

This was in 2012. The very end of 2012. October of 2012. And we knew we had to get out of our house.

So, we'd lost our home as well. That was with no income. I mean, my wife was working. I still couldn't find a job that would actually pay me enough to actually sustain us.

Because I have no college degree. I bailed out of college my first year. So, I'm one of those guys that doesn't have the systems paperwork or whatever. That guy.

Where does that dude at? I hope he doesn't come out here yelling at me. So, we found Empower in October of 2012. And I was listening to…

I was listening to what we're talking about tonight or today. We're going to fight the forces of evil. And I was thinking, what was the evil that I had to fight? Because it wasn't really apparent to me then.

And it really just became crystal clear over the past year what the enemy was. I had gone through many times in life where I could have been very successful at things. I had gone, you know, I was a vocal performance major. I got all kinds of scholarships to go sing in college.

I got scholarships for soccer. I had a business. I had all these different things that came together. But my enemy, the evil for me was success.

I turned away success. Every time I had the opportunity to be successful in life, I turned my back on it. I was almost afraid of being successful. And the reason I say this to you is because a lot of you will come in here and you'll sit in here.

And you'll do the fight. You get all pumped. You go, I'm going to… Go home and kill it.

And then you go home and you're like, well, I got everything. I know what I need to do. But you don't do anything with it. And that was me.

Until I found Empower. When I found Empower, something changed. I became… I started plugging into inner circle audios like Justin and Dee were just talking about.

I started changing my mindset. I started thinking and listening to people who were actually going to help me create the results that I wanted. I would come to events and I would be plugged in. I would be sitting on the edge of my seat just listening and taking notes and just taking everything in.

Because I wanted more. I wanted more and I wanted more. And with that, we started having some success. We were finally open to receiving the success that we'd been looking for.

Now, was it fast? I don't know. What do you call fast? You know?

We actually… We broke our first $3,000 a month within, like, I think about 60 days of being in the company. Which was… That was kind of cool.

I never made that much money from home. I was like, what's going on? And then from there, we slowly progressed to four, five, six, seven, eight. And then we kind of stopped.

I mean, Alex saw it. What are you doing? You going to get busy? What are you doing?

So we hung out for, like, two years, like, stuck. Like, we were between five… Five to eight, you know. Eight was our top.

And then we were usually around three or four. For two years. Or, yeah, for two years. And then something just happened.

It was in Orlando, October of last year. I just kind of said enough was enough. Enough was enough. And we just got focused.

We followed the daily activities that everybody keeps telling you about. The eight core commitments. Blog daily. Read daily.

Inner Circle audio daily. Market daily. And we started to all of a sudden see that when we started taking these actions every day, things started to happen. Who here does the daily commitments every day?

Wow. Wow. Okay. Woo.

All right. I just told you what you need to do. Bye. See ya.

So we were finally open to success. Yes. And that's what got us. To where we're at today.

So, you know, a year. So, yeah, it's been a, we broke, uh, we broke our first, like I said, a hundred K. It was December of last year. And, uh, we've just been going ever since there's not a whole lot to the story.

Other than that, other than the daily actions we take, I'm a very simple guy. I'm not super deep. Uh, you know, I'm just all I'm white and black. You know what I mean?

Okay. If you tell me to do this, I'm going to go do it. And that's what we try to do with our team. And we've created boot camps and things like that that are just focused on the daily action.

Focus on the daily action. That you're already taught in the products. And you know what happened? I think the other day we took the member signups board and we were like six or seven of the top 10 people on the, on the seven day leaderboard within our team.

So what did I say? Proof is in the pudding. You know what I mean? So what you have in front of you, what you have in your hands works guys.

It really works, but you just have to put in the work. Okay. Now I'm going to just share. That was just some storytelling.

Let me go ahead. And like bust out some slides real quick. I usually have like a lot of pictures and stuff, but we're not going to roll pictures today. For your anniversary, my three.

All right. All right. Just kind of what we were talking about. Something that just kind of sticks in my head all the time.

Success is, it's not a destination. You guys are always like, Oh, success when I get there for me, success is a mindset. It goes day in and day out and coming into this. What we've been able to do is the, one of the reasons we've been able to create results that we have through those daily actions is through video.

So who here knows what a pre-sale video is or a bridge video you do. Okay. Keep your hands up that do know what it is. How many of you have one or have done one that you're marketing with?

Nice. Cool. No hands drop. All right.

Something that we have done that's totally transformed our business is creating a pre-sale video that just works. Okay. It's not fancy. It doesn't have to be like super complex.

Um, it's something that I just, I think the last one I did, I was like sick and I just said, God, I got to do it. I ran it to my office. You're like, and it was like a two and a half minute video and it just converts like crazy, but I'm going to give you the concepts that we follow to actually do these videos. Would y'all like that?

You got your pen and paper out. All right. Talk kind of fast sometimes. Yeah.

Might want to be ready. All right. So what is a pre-sale bridge video? For those of you that don't know, okay.

Um, for us very simply, it personalizes your sales funnel, right? You get to be inserted into the funnel now with the new iPad system, I think you'll be able to do like custom funnels and things like that with the old, when they actually had a bridge video page in there that you could use, but I don't know if they're going to have that in the new one, if they're going to add that or not, but they do have the custom that you can do yourself. So. Personalize your sales funnel.

Put your face in there. Secondly, it introduces the sales video and the presenter. Okay. That's very important.

You want to kind of bridge that gap because a lot of people may be watching you on social media. They may be following your, they may be on your list. It doesn't matter, but they need to have that bridge or that gap bridge, the gap filled between you and that, that presenter. Okay.

And lastly, the end result. With all that, it just lowers the walls of the prospect. It lowers their guard. It lets them feel like, Hey, this person is real and they're introducing this to me.

So this is like very, the simple, this was the old, I pass, um, actual bridge video page and that's the one where I was sick and I was just like, Hey, got to do it. But, uh, so very simple welcome and you can do this with your Insta builder. You can just build something very simple. All it is is a video page with a welcome at the top and a green button under it saying.

Click here to see more, whatever, to get instant access. So these are my three R's to pre-sale success. I don't know. All right.

Number one, be relaxed. You know, a lot of you like want to do videos and either you're, you're like, I used to be like shaking, like a chihuahua poop in a pine cone, you know, you'd be like, uh, set it up somewhere, you know, get you a little stand. I used to remember, I used to stack up like candles. On top of each other.

I'd steal all my wife's candles from like the, the living room, like the mantle and she'd come home and everybody's candles stacked up and then like my phone would sit on top of it and just, you just do what you got to do, you know, so, but be relaxed, get the phone out of your hands or the camera and just cut a simple video. Be relaxed. But that doesn't mean don't have energy. That just means be calm.

Number two, this one's huge for me. This one does a lot with us and helps us be relatable. You know, you all have you, you guys know what a target market is, right? Your audience that you're trying to actually talk to be relatable to them when you're tell a little bit of your story, very brief, but tell parts of your story that people can relate to.

When I tell my story, people can relate to losing their home. A lot of people can these days. People can relate to wanting to like reach out and do outreach. We do mission work.

So like, you know, we've been to Burkina Faso, Africa, Bolivia. I'm actually leading another trip to Bolivia this year. I got asked to do it again, which is awesome. And, uh, but, but you share things that people can relate to in the video while you're telling your brief story.

Okay. Be relatable. Number three results. And some of you are like, but I don't have results.

Well, so use other people's results. I spent, I spent, I built my business in the beginning by creating blog posts, sharing the stories of people like Alex and Justin and these guys. Just share it. Results are results all around you.

They're small wins. There's big wins. Uh, one thing I would say about results is share results from people who like, maybe they aren't making like a huge income yet. Share those $3,000 a month results or those $5,000 a month or those $200 days.

Do you know that people will pay more attention to that? Then an Alex Z with $50,000 a month. Sorry, Alex. But, but, but that's.

That's huge. You've got to keep the results relatable to people. Think about that in your marketing. So there you go.

Results and you can find those, you know, what, what do we have? We have rising star pages, ideas you can get from there. You don't have to show everything. You screen shares if you have to, you know, do what you gotta do.

Always include income disclaimers. Yes, I love compliance, but share results. Results are huge for people to see social proof is what we like to call it too. And then last but not least, it's not an R.

So it didn't get a four. So call to action. Remember the page with me on the video and the green button below it, you've got to tell them to click the dang button and you can tell them multiple times. Click the button, click the button, click the alert that from Dave, David always repeat stuff over and over, click the button, click the button, click the link, but yeah, call to action.

Tell them, tell them what to do. I had a hard time with this in the beginning, telling people what to do. I just, I don't know why I was like, I did it in the restaurants. I don't know why I couldn't do it on a video, but you have to tell people what to do.

If you don't tell them what to do, they're not going to do it. All right. And that's, that's it. That's my pre-sale video.

That's the one that's gotten us to break in 30 and $40,000 a month is that it's that simple. So some, just some other quick tips, smile. That's, that's a big one because I see so many people who do video. I'm just like, Hey, welcome.

It's good to see you. Thanks for checking my page out. And it's like, I'm never going to click that. Smile guys.

Show those pearly whites. Keep it under three minutes. Keep it under three minutes. Don't even let it get to the three.

Let it be like two 59. There's just a visual, like if they can see a timer or something, sometimes it like it all, it plays tricks with people. So keep it under three minutes. Practice, practice, practice.

This is where that daily action. It comes into play. This is where doing daily videos, daily blogs, and things like that are going to get you to making a better pre-sale video. It just does.

You get more relaxed, you get more comfortable and you, and you can share much better. And then last but not least, my favorite one. Don't overthink this thing. Don't overthink it.

Don't do 50 cuts. And then you're like, I still don't have a good one. Get one up and start. You know, I mean, how many of you have videos in your YouTube that are still in private and you're not, and you've never even shared them yet?

Yeah, exactly. You got to get over that crap. Just put a video up and let it go. And then in the meantime, continue to enhance and get better in your skill set and then go for it again.

All right. Keep it simple. Very simply. And I'm going to do it again.

I'm going to be early. And that's it for, for, for the, for the pre-sale video stuff, guys. Man, it's just, it's just amazing to be here. I just, man, I really just want to see everybody succeed.

And it's like I said on the hangout, the webcast the other day, you know, you guys, you guys don't even know yet what's like really coming. You just, you won't be able to wrap your head around. You may not even wrap your head around it while you're here. It may be like when you get home, you're going to be like, what the?

What the heck did, what happened? So you guys are in for a treat. And the other thing, get in the Ferrari and just drive the heck out of it. Don't drive it like a Pinto.

Don't drive it like a, like a, like a, I don't know, some other slow car. Just get in it and go. But you've got to get in it and go with daily action. Drive it like you stole it.

That's what I'm talking about. So, hey, if you're wanting to go fast, I need you to get up. And then we're going to do a little fight the forces of evil channel. All right.

One, two, three. Fight the forces of evil. Fight the forces of evil. Fight the forces of evil.

Fight the forces of evil. Woo. Thank you guys so much.