- I started a movement and it really began from an image.
It was me in a sports bra and some shorts with my kids
who were three, two, and eight months at the time,
and it said the caption, what's your excuse?
And it was pretty powerful, I mean I knew
that it was gonna be powerful,
I didn't know that it was gonna be so controversial.
When I first published it, it was pretty awesome.
I kept getting notifications all of sudden.
This is my first experience of having a viral
anything online, but what was incredible
is that I actually responded to the haters.
So those of you who have haters,
I responded to them a year later,
and that's when it went incredibly viral.
That's when people said, wow, this person
is getting hated on and she's not even apologizing for it.
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- What's up, influencers, welcome to another interview
here on videoinfluencers where we're helping you
build your influence, income, and impact with online videos.
I have Maria Kang from Facebook.
300,000 plus followers, fit mom
to talk about how she got her success,
what she had to do to get her influence,
and to create income to be able to do this full time.
There you go, so thank you so much for being on our show.
- Thanks for having me.
- Can you share with our audience that might not know you
a little bit about how you got your start,
where you get your passion in what you do,
and some of the success you've had along the way.
- Well you know I started my first blog in 2005,
and I've been consistent on it since then.
I mean it changes every so often,
but what matters most is that you're
always a little consistent, right.
But I've always had a passion for fitness,
mainly because my mother was overweight,
you know and I saw her not take care of herself.
She struggled with a lot of preventative health issues,
so I told myself that when I became a mom
I was not gonna go that route,
and so I became a trainer when I was in college
at U.C. Davis you know in 2000.
I wrote, I did podcasts, I did all this stuff
in the fitness industry and then I eventually
became a mother in 2009, then 2010,
then my last son came in 2011.
So I mean I have a big history-
- That was your moment.
- Yeah, well my moment came in 2012.
Yes, when I created an incredible image.
- Image, right, and I love that
you know you not only talk about this success
you had with this image that went viral,
but all the work that went into it before hand.
You were a fitness trainer a long time
and working very hard at that before you ever
put up content, can you talk about how important that was
to your success that you're having now?
- Well you know I will tell you that
in college I was a part-time personal trainer,
and I realized I have a passion for something,
and I know that many viewers out there
have a passion for something and they start.
Whether it's becoming a personal trainer
or a group instructor, but then I needed to elevate myself
to have more influence, meaning I can't be with someone
for a whole hour because I could've been
doing something else for a whole hour
and influence like 10 people or 100 people.
Now I influence thousands of people within an hour.
So I eventually became a manager, then a writer,
then a podcaster, then a blogger.
I mean it was an evolution that most people go through,
and then eventually social media showed up,
and I'm like whoa, this is my moment to really build
and create an impact in this fitness community.
A lot of hustle, a lot of work, a lot of passion
that went into it before you had that opportunity
to be successful. - Yes, uh-huh.
- One of the number one fears people have,
both female and males, right,
is getting judged, hate, negativity, trolls,
they don't wanna put themselves out there
because they're worried about what other people
will think or say, potentially being
attacked through the comments.
Can you talk about how sometimes
what other people disagree with
is the route in your unique experience
that helped you launch your career to what it is today.
- Well let me first start by saying
that I think it's important to get constructive feedback.
I think it's important to think about
and really take in and absorb the people
that have some good feedback for you, negative or positive.
But I will say that if you're passionate about something,
like if you believe, like I truly believe
that everybody can be as healthy as they can be
in their own way, you don't have to look like me,
but you can be healthier than you are right now,
and you need to make it a priority,
then you can talk strongly about it
and not care what people think,
and I mean of course it does suck,
I mean it sucks to be on CNN and saying,
oh you know, someone calling me a fat shamer,
but at the same time if you know who you are
and you know your intent, and you knew your intent
when you published something,
then you won't feel bad about it,
because I don't care what you think, that wasn't my intent.
- Yeah, and let's talk about the fat shamer topic
and why that even got brought up,
because that's what helped launch your career.
Obviously there was a lot of work, a lot of hustle,
a lot of, you know, planning before,
but can you talk about this image
because I'm sure a lot of people watching this
know about that but for those that don't,
how that's completely changed your life.
- Okay so I started a movement,
and it really began from an image.
It was me in a sports bra and some shorts
with my kids who were three, two, and eight months
at the time and it said the caption, what's your excuse?
And it was pretty powerful, I mean
I knew that it was gonna be powerful.
I didn't know that it was gonna be so controversial.
I will tell you for those of you
who have viral videos or viral images out there,
when I first published it, it was pretty awesome.
I mean I kept getting notifications all of a sudden.
This is my first experience of
having a viral anything online.
But what was incredible is that I actually
responded to the haters, so those of you who have haters,
I responded to them a year later,
and that's when it went incredibly viral.
That's when people said wow, this person is getting
hated on and she's not even apologizing for it.
- And a powerful movement, right.
And I think that's what's really important
to learn from that experience.
It's like take a stance for what you believe in right?
- Absolutely.
- Not everybody's going to agree,
but you might actually empower way more people
than create hate or negativity.
And that's what's so important,
that's what people forget, like initially,
especially if you don't have a lot of followers,
you don't have your own fan base,
it's easy to get attacked and just take it,
but the way you create people inspired to follow you
and look up to you is do exactly what you did
and can you talk about that?
- Well you know I think that a lot of people
really resonated with my desire
to not be politically correct, my desire to say
you know what, I know you don't agree with me,
but this is what I believe in, because the truth is,
and I can talk forever about fitness
because I'm that passionate about it,
is that what I'm saying right now
and what I'm standing for is gonna make
more of a difference in 30 years
than what you were saying to me,
which is, you know, you're making me feel bad.
You know, unfortunately you gotta hear negativity
in order to improve, right, so I will tell everyone
out there that if you feel like,
if you're struggling with publishing,
if you're struggling with negative feedback,
as long as you feel grounded in what your intent is
and what you believe in, it's all totally worth it,
and people love that authenticity.
- Boom, mic drop moment, don't drop
these though, because they're expensive.
It's not easy to work hard but that working hard
is what gave you the opportunity to go viral, right?
- Yes.
- But extending that into a successful career,
into a passion that actually monetizes
is a whole nother ordeal, it's a whole nother layer of work.
Can you talk about some of the business models,
some of the opportunities you've had,
and some of the things you've had to do to extend
that viral hit into the career that you have today.
- Yeah, and I think a lot of people who have viral hits,
they struggle with longevity and relevance,
and so for myself I had a non profit that I started in 2007.
This goes back to I was not an overnight hit,
I actually took 10 years to build this overnight hit,
but the way we monetize, especially through the non profit
is we have No Excuse Moms and this is a program
that I'm super passionate about.
I started free mom groups in 2009
and now we are in over 300 locations in 30 countries,
you know we have challenges and all of the money
that we build through these challenges,
through product apparel, it all goes back
to this non profit and it feeds the community.
- And your influence is mainly on Facebook correct?
- Yes
- And this is important because we talk about
how YouTube ad sense is not a reliable way
to monetize, well Facebook really doesn't
have a lot of opportunities at all, right.
So it's so important to be thinking like an entrepreneur
'cause if you wanna be a digital influencer,
it's not like money just gets sent to your bank account
or you're not gonna get a check in the mail.
You have to create those opportunities,
but it's so powerful once you do have an influence
the kind of income that you can create.
Is there any like last tips you wanna share
with our audience who might be getting started
whether being in the fitness world
or just as an influencer in general?
- Well number one, in the fitness world it's really tough.
I mean it's tough in every world,
but there's a lot of fitness people out there,
there's a lot of fit moms now, you know what I mean,
so how do you distinguish yourself,
how are you different, how do you bring value,
how are you going to serve others?
And you don't wanna rape yourself in this process, either.
You know you wanna be you without losing your soul.
So don't put a lot of ass shots just because
you're gonna get a lot of likes, a lot of followers from it.
- You need content, you need spirit.
- You need spirit, but you also need to look at
the long game and don't just always look at the short game.
So I've always been a long game person.
I've got a lot of secrets up my head
of things that I wanna accomplish,
but I love Facebook, I think Facebook,
and I love YouTube too, you guys, okay,
but Facebook there's a lot of opportunity
for live videos, for watch Facebook, obviously you can do
pictures and share links and all that stuff.
- Very shareable, very shareable,
which YouTube isn't anymore, you know.
- Yeah, and same thing with Instagram, you have that issue.
So you just need to make sure that you are there
in all platforms, I mean Facebook's my biggest platform,
however I'm on Instagram and I'm on SnapChat,
and I'm keeping up, I even have a YouTube channel.
- There you go.
- Although I don't publish enough
on there, but I will, I will.
- Sweet, well thank you so much.
We're gonna get right into the lightning round.
- Coffee or tea?
- Coffee.
- What's the last thing you remember
grabbing out of the fridge?
- Oh, I don't know, sprouts.
- Favorite social media platform?
- Facebook.
- Who is the current YouTuber or YouTube channel
that you watch and do you even watch YouTube?
- I don't really watch YouTube a lot.
- So what about Facebook?
- Facebook, okay hold on, let me take that back.
When I do watch YouTube I love watching fitness stuff,
so I love Blogilates, I love Cassey Ho.
- What's your favorite workout in the gym?
- I love to do anything with cables,
so I don't know if, yeah - oh, cool.
- Cables, anything on a bosu, anything
dealing with balance training.
- If you had to give up one of these which one would it be,
social media for the rest of your life
or movies for the rest of your life?
- Definitely movies, I don't even watch movies.
- The hack is on YouTube you can actually watch movies,
so technically you don't have to, you're supposed to cheat.
Well thank you so much for being on here.
Can you share with the people,
I know that you have a Facebook page,
we'll make sure to put it on the bottom,
like maybe share the exact spelling
of where people can find you.
- So people can find me, my Facebook page is
MariaMKang, that's my middle name, there's an M in there,
and I'm also on SnapChat which actually
is my favorite social media, it just sucks but I love you,
it's MariaKangFitness and that's the same for my Instagram.
- Boom, you guys as always, here on videoinfluencers,
helping build your influence, income, and impact
with online videos, talk to you later.