Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Maria Carrillo Spanish with Maria and William . We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Alright, Maria Carrillo thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Going back to the beginning – how did you come up with the idea in the first place?
So, everything started when I was in my room in Mexico, thinking about doing something fun and educational on social media. As I have a master’s degree in teaching, I’ve always liked the idea of teaching in a funny and dynamic way. So, long story short, I told my now-husband William that we should record videos for TikTok teaching languages. Initially, as I am from Mexico and my husband loves speaking Spanish, we started our page by teaching Spanish.
We realized 1 month later that people wanted us to teach English, so we switched the channel to English. I remember that one video went viral where my husband’s friends were saying the ”months of the year” in English. Since the beginning, I believed in what we were doing, I felt that in my mind that there was always this feeling that I could reach and help a lot of people around the world. This idea has changed my life completely, we always need to take the first step and believe in all our ideas… they are in our brain and our hearts for a reason.
Maria Carrillo , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I’m María, I’m 28 years old, and I’m from Mexico. In college, I studied Business Management, and then I did my Master’s degree in Teaching, as I grew up in a family where almost everyone is either a teacher or principal. I suppose I have teaching in my veins! From there, I did my thesis regarding the best methodologies of teaching English as a second language. Now I use these same methodologies as an English teacher on social media, using immersive and playful teaching methods so our students can effectively learn the language. Our page is titled “Spanish with María and William” (as we originally created the page to teach Spanish) and our content is unique and creative since we focus on playing games and teaching informal English. For us, learning informal English is really important as many traditional English schools don’t teach it, and when you come to the US, Americans are constantly using slang! This is why our audience loves our content, because we give them real and value information based on the English Americans actually use. Now we have our own English course titled: ”SLANG: Speak like a native speaker,” which has been sold hundreds of times to people around the world from Colombia, Peru, Mexico, Venezuela, Spain, and many more countries!
Also, my husband and I have been promoting various brands on TikTok, Facebook and Instagram. We have over 1.7 million followers on all our social media platforms, and we are so excited to continue teaching and helping people with our services.
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
My biggest goal has always been to help others; I really want to continue growing until we have a bigger community to open some English or language schools and give away some of these classes to people that really need it. Not many people realize that being in another country where most people don’t speak your native language can be really hard, frustrating and embarrassing at times, even just to socialize and have a normal life! That’s why teaching English is so important to us. I’ve always believed that when we help each other, we can learn fantastic things, grow as a person and go far in life.
What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?
When it comes to strategies, I would say that the most effective ones for us are being both empathetic and creative. It may sound easy to say, but you really need to put yourself in someone else’s shoes to know what they want. In our case, we really empathize with people who come to the United States and struggle with the idea of speaking English, that’s why we try to offer a simple and easy way to learn English so they feel comfortable and confident when speaking.
And about creativity, I would say that we always create videos that get people’s attention in the first 3 seconds… it could be a title, an image or a facial expression! For these reasons, being empathetic and creative are the core strategies of our channel.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://englishwmariandwilliam.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/spanishwmariandwilliam/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y%3D
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/spanishwmariandwilliam
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQ7wiPdaEzRzK7sEwtF4FGg
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@spanishwmariandwilliam?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc