Productive Insights Podcasts

215. David Meerman Scott on Fanocracy

Written by Ash Roy | Oct 26, 2021 8:59:45 AM

David Meerman Scott on Fanocracy

"The biggest thing by far is fear. It's fear of doing something new, it's fear of taking a risk of what's perceived as taking a risk. It's fear of putting yourself out there. For those who work in bigger organizations, it's fear of approaching the bosses with a new kind of idea. And so I think that is the biggest barrier when it comes to implementing these ideas." - David Meerman Scott

The digital marketing landscape appears to be changing.

"You can't market at your customers anymore. You need to market with them. Bringing the customer along for the journey is the cost of entry."

The good news is, you don't have to sell your product or service. You can focus on making your products great and building a loyal customer base.  If you deliver outstanding customer service, your customers will tell their friends — they’ll do the marketing for you.

In my recent conversation with David Meerman Scott, he said he's never picked up the phone once to sell to anyone. He's only ever got clients through delivering exceptional service to his customers.

David believes that an important principle in marketing is the power of a gift that you give with no expectations.

Click here to find out more.

You may also want to visit the Productive Insights website and join our growing community of business owners! 

 

Links Mentioned

  1. https://Productiveinsights.com

  2. https://productiveinsights.com/117

  3. https://www.fanocracy.com/

Related Episodes

  1. 207. Brian Tracy on Goal Setting
  2. 117. How to Create An Empathy Map
  3. 200. Seth Godin on Marketing

 

Ash Roy and David Meerman Scott Video Transcript (This transcript has been auto-generated. Artificial Intelligence is still in the process of perfecting itself. There may be some errors in transcription):

 

David Meerman Scott  00:00

You know, the basic idea of what's so interesting about what I'm going to share with you is this simple power of a gift that you give with no expectation of anything in return.

 

Ash Roy  00:20

Welcome back to the Productive Insights Podcast. This is Ash Roy, your host and the founder of productiveinsights.com. Today's guest is David Meerman Scott, a marketing strategist and entrepreneur and investor and advisor to emerging companies, and best-selling author of 12 books, including Fanocracy, and the new rules of marketing and PR. Today, we're going to talk about how to use marketing strategies that are not typically traditional social media-driven ones. And we're going to talk about how to use these strategies to build long-term success and attract lifelong loyal clients. So welcome to the productive insights podcast, David, it's an honor to have you. Great to be here. I

 

David Meerman Scott  01:03

really appreciate you having me on. We're in completely different parts of the world. But that's what's cool about doing these things.

 

Ash Roy  01:10

I agree completely. David, you've written some great stuff. I've been going through some of your content, and you're very well-traveled person. And you're a very well-read person, and a very well-published person. So congratulations. I'd like to open with a question on fan autocracy, you shared this beautiful story about kindness extended to you by another surfer. You're a surfer with a surfboard and a background in the North Shore of Oahu. And that led to you becoming a fan. Can you tell us a bit about that story? Because I think that's a great jumping-off point. To explain how your approach to marketing works.

 

David Meerman Scott  01:50

Yeah, of course, happy to explain that story. You know, the basic idea of what's so interesting about what I'm going to share with you is this simple power of a gift that you give with no expectation of anything in return. And I believe that this is one of the most fundamental principles of marketing of a business is that you create gifts with no expectation of anything in return. So yeah, I love to surf. Not very good. I had fun. I love to surf actually made this board behind me. It's made out of wood. I made it at a factory with green surfboards, not so much. I dig it. I've got it in my little home studio here. So I was at the North Shore of Oahu. I mean, that's where the pipeline is. It's like anyone who's a surfer is like Mecca. It is an amazing place. And I'm not good. So I didn't go in any of the really famous spots. But I did find a spot on the sort of the edge of VLANs that I wanted to go and check out and I needed to be extremely respectful of the surfers because it's their territory, the people who live there. I'm clearly not Hawaiian, and clearly not a very good surfer. So I paddled out and I waited. And I waited some more and I waited some more. And then a couple of big sets came in and everybody got a ride. I saw that I looked around everybody had gotten a ride. So I knew I could take the next wave which I did. And it was awesome. But that was probably I was probably waiting for half-hour, 45 minutes. So I paddle back out. The same thing happened. I was waiting. I was waiting. I was letting the other surfers go. I wasn't going to jump the queue. I wasn't going to go on a wave and fall down do something silly. I was really waiting, you know just waiting it out and enjoying myself and in the in the waves. And one of them sort of alpha surfers looked at me looked at the wave and nodded. And I clearly knew what he was doing was giving me his wave. I simple gift without anything, any expectation of anything in return. And he kind of nodded his head kind of like this and was clearly indicating what to do. So I Oh shoot, I gotta go right now. paddle paddle paddle. I got a good ride. He wasn't able to see my ride because the wave was big enough that I was over the lip. from his position. He couldn't see me. But gosh, it was super cool. He did not have to do that. And that really did give me a nice, warm fuzzy feeling about surfing in that part of Hawaii, which has got a reputation of being a dangerous place. If you're not from Hawaii. If you're not a good surfer, both of which I am not from Hawaii and not a good surfer. And this whole idea is emblematic. What can you give to people with no expectation or anything in return? Right right now you're creating this podcast. I'm a guest on this podcast. You know, I don't have any expectation of something in return. I just want to have a conversation with you and your listeners ash and this idea is super interesting without getting too kind of up in the clouds about it. I absolutely believe that the universe gives back to us what we give to the universe. If you give good vibes, if you are helpful to people, the universe gives good things back to you. So let's talk about what this means from a marketing perspective. You know, sometimes people use coercive techniques, when they do their marketing, I believe you don't do that. I think you give away your content for free, you provide help for people, you provide things that are interesting, you create content in the form of, say, videos, or, or blog posts, and that becomes helpful. And that becomes a way that people get to know who you are.

 

Ash Roy  05:39

A few things came up while you were talking that I wanted to share with you one another great Hawaiian was on this podcast episode 210 and is a server. His name is Guy Kawasaki. And I use 

 

David Meerman Scott  05:50

Yeah, sure. I know that. 

 

Ash Roy  05:52

Yeah, I have a lot of respect for him. And he's another prolific writer. He's written, I believe, I think 19 books now. Something like that. Yeah. And something you shared about this generosity, also was very touching, because that's something Seth Godin talked about. In Episode 200, we talked about the importance of empathy, and how empathy is probably one of the least used words in marketing, and probably one of the most important, and he talked a lot about generosity. That was another very important point that you touched on. I've recorded a useful episode on how to create an empathy map in Episode 117. So our listeners can go and check it out. It's productive insights.com/117.

 

David Meerman Scott 06:35

Do you remember all of those episode numbers? Is it like ingrained in your brain or your heart?

 

Ash Roy  06:40

Yes, I do. I guess I quote them quite often. And I go back and revisit the content. One of the ways to go back and improve your content from an SEO standpoint, is to go back and revisit it and improve on it right? Because that's a signal to Google. But my question to you related to the coercive tactics, there's a lot of scarcity play in the marketing world. And that is something that is all the done can really rankle the consumer, and yes, damage your brand. So can you talk to us about how does one use scarcity and more importantly, not overuse it,

 

David Meerman Scott 07:14

I think that it's much better to be to do the opposite, to make it generous. And just put it all out there. Let me give you a specific examples. Some people will offer a piece of content as a marketing tool, for example, they have a white paper, or an E book or some document that they want to provide. And they put a form in front of it. And that becomes a coercive technique. Because as soon as you put a form in front of your content that says, I have this wonderful content, I'm going to give it to you for free, but they're not actually giving it to you for free, what they're doing is they're saying, you must give me your personal information, at least your email address, if not other personal information, before I will send you that content. And I think that that technique is actually setting up an adversarial relationship with your customers. Because what it's saying to them is, that person is not going to give me anything unless I get something first, I don't like that kind of approach. If somebody is using that kind of approach with me, I tend to walk away the scarcity thing, act now, you know, if you don't buy now, it's not going to become available. It's like, wait a minute, you know, I mean, I'm not interested in your product, if you're going to put pressure on me somehow, to buy it now or your service, if you're going to put pressure on me to buy it. Now. There's lots of different places that you can go to get a product or a service or an idea. And I think it's much better to work with people who are creating a tribe of like minded people who are creating a group of people this concept you mentioned my book fanocracy. This concept that we researched when we looked at fanocracy is one of the best ways to grow a business is to build fans. And when you build fans, people want to do business with you. They're eager to do business with you. They're eager to share what you're doing with their friends and their colleagues and their family members. And in fact, all humans are hard-wired to want to be part of a tribe of like-minded people. It's super, super, super interesting. In my case, I'm a massive fan of live music, especially the Grateful Dead, and I love going to live music. It's fabulous. So that's my tribe of people, my daughter, Reiko huge fan of Harry Potter, and that's her tribe of people. So when I'm with my Grateful Dead bands, my Grateful Dead friends and we're together at a concert. We're a tribe of like-minded people. And that is a super powerful thing. I've spent 10s of 1000s of dollars on Grateful Dead concert tickets. In fact, this year, I bought, so far, six tickets, three of them are down in Mexico, for a show. So this idea of building a tribe is a really, really, really powerful way to build a customer base. Because what you're doing is you're building a group of people that come together as opposed to selling one off customers

 

Ash Roy  10:38

and Grateful Dead gave a lot of their content away for free. They really were very generous. But here's the counterargument to giving your stuff away for free. And by the way, as I understand it, you are on the advisory board of HubSpot. Is that correct? Yes. I am. Yes, which is one of the most generous companies I am of late have become a HubSpot solutions provider. I'm a big fan of HubSpot.

 

David Meerman Scott 11:04

Yeah, I saw I saw that you are congratulations on doing that. I was the very first advisor to HubSpot. And I joined them in 2007. And I'm still involved. And I've seen their growth from eight employees and no customers when I joined them to 4000 employees and over 100,000 customers and they'll do over a billion dollars in revenue this year. I mean super amazing stuff. And yes, I believe HubSpot has grown because of this idea. They have built a tribe of people like you and me who love what they do. They have built a tribe of people who are initially many people become engaged with HubSpot, because of the free content that they provide. And for those who don't know HubSpot is a sales marketing and customer support software company CRM company, that idea of providing all of that free information they have HubSpot Academy with with over 100 courses, I am fact created a course for that all a bit free. I mean, it's just an amazing way to build fan, which

 

Ash Roy  12:10

you would normally pay a lot of money for. The courses are of such good quality.

 

David Meerman Scott 12:14

They're of fabulous quality, and they're filmed in great studios, similar to where I am right now. And that is a super, super powerful way to grow a business.

 

Ash Roy  12:23

My question then David is a lot of our listeners will be saying, but how do I build my email list? Everyone's talking about building an email list? And how do I keep the conversation going? Because the idea, of course of an email list is if you don't have a way of contacting your prospect, then how do you initiate a conversation? How do you control the sale and there in my mind, lies part of the problem that we want to control. I think that since Google has entered the scene, the buyer controls feature discovery and product discovery. And all we can do is facilitate rather than try and control. I'm interested to hear your thoughts on that.

 

David Meerman Scott  13:01

I think you're right. I think that, you know back in the day, 20 years ago, the email list was everything. Today, yes, email can still be important. You can still build a tribe of people, you can still build fans through an email list. However, you're only talking to people you already know, when you create an email list, number one, number two, everyone I talked to says they're on too many email lists. They can't read what they get anyway, they typically only passionately open every time it arrives, maybe five, maybe at the most 10 companies, emails, everything else just gets deleted. And so a way of growing business. Sure, it's fine. I'm not saying don't do it. But I don't know that that should be somebody's primary vehicle for growing business. because by definition, you're only talking to people you already know, you're not talking to people who don't yet know you. It doesn't have that strong a pass-on value. Sure, somebody might forward it to somebody, but it's not naturally conducive to people sharing the content for a variety of reasons. Sure emails, I have, I have a list myself, and I only use my email list to share my blog posts. In a sense, I'm doing something where I've doubled up, I don't have an A close mail list where I'm I'm sending people a newsletter that I write. Instead, I'm allowing people to sign up to get a notification every time I write a blog post. But that blog post is also available on social networks because I share it on Twitter and LinkedIn. that blog post is also on search engines. If you find it on Google, that blog post is in a lot of other different places. And for me, I think for a lot of other marketers, of all kinds of different businesses. That works better than just creating this closed ecosystem of an email list,

 

Ash Roy  15:06

then does the transaction happen? How do we entice people to buy our products? Is it through the funnel to flywheel approach and just for our viewers, if you're watching this on YouTube or our listeners, the traditional view of marketing was the funnel where you saw leads go into the top of a funnel, if you imagine a cone-shaped funnel, and then people progressively engage with their content by more and more expensive products that you sell, and then eventually have a customer that falls out the bottom of the funnel. Then Brian Halligan came out. I think it was 2017, with this very impressive presentation at one of the inbound conferences, and he said, the funnel is dead. And now it's a flywheel. And he took the bottom of the funnel and twisted backwards to the top. And he said that your customers become your biggest evangelists. And that then creates a flywheel and that develops rotational energy. So rather than seeing your customers as an output of the funnel, you're seeing your customers as a continuum. Within your flywheel.

 

David Meerman Scott  16:12

I think that makes a lot of sense. And Brian, I are really good buddies. In fact, I had dinner with him last Saturday night, for example. And yes, the idea you used an interesting word to use the word entice. It's not a coersion, that many people think about with a funnel. And I think that this idea of fandom this idea of growing business by creating a tribe of people who love what you do, and then those people share it, that's super, super valuable way to do it, the whole idea of a funnel, the traditional way, especially business to business sold was you had to get them in there. And then you had to push them down to the bottom, get them to the point where they signed a contract, that was a great way to do it. 20 years ago, I think today, as use, as you rightly said, people, the buyer is in charge. And because the buyer is in charge, it's a very, very different environment than when the seller isn't was in charge. You know, even just a few years ago, the seller had all the power because they had the information. Now the information is everywhere, for free. So the buyer is in charge the buyer has, has the power. And what that means is that sellers need to be totally open, totally transparent, totally providing the kinds of things that will help people to make the decision to buy rather than pushing them through some process to coerce them to buy. And I think that's a really big difference. Another aspect that actually is is an attribute of HubSpot, that I think is underrated is the idea of passion. Passion, is infectious. When you're passionate about what you do. When you're passionate about the customers you serve. When you're passionate about the work you do. When you're passionate about the products and services that you create. You build fans, and so many people when they think of business, they think of, Oh, I got to do it by the book, I got to like, you know, and typically what they'll do is they'll have their LinkedIn for their business over here. And then their Facebook or their Instagram for their personal stuff over there. I think that it's today it's it's it's your life. You know, we started off talking about surfing, what does that have to do with marketing, nothing. But we talked about what I'm passionate about. And we talked a little bit about the Grateful Dead another thing I'm passionate about. So I've found that people who share what they're passionate about, attract fans. And if you're just doing the all business all the time, less so I want to share an example of a dentist, his name is dr. john Rashi. Dr. Mirage, he came to me a couple years ago and says David, David, I, I understand that your idea of fandom but I'm a dentist, how in the world do I build fans? And I said, Well, Dr. Marsha, what do you love to do? He says, Well, I live in Southern California, I love to skateboard. And you know, there are 10,000 or more dentists in Southern California. How do you break through? Well, he started to share on his social networks, and in his office and on his website, that if he's passionate about skateboarding, so if you go to his office, he has skateboards on the wall, he skateboards from examination room to another. If you go to his website, you see that he's got pictures of him skateboarding on his Instagram, which has something like 15 or 16,000 followers. He has pictures of him skateboarding. And so he told me that David, this one idea that you shared with me to share what I'm passionate about. And in my case I shared about skateboarding helped me to grow my business last year by 30%, in terms of numbers of new customers, and 23 internal revenue by sharing what he's passionate about. Now you think about it from the perspective of someone who needs a dentist, are you going to go to the boring dentist who only talks about teeth? Are you going to go to someone who seems pretty hip and cool, who loves to skateboard, and he told me it's not just other people love to skateboard, he said that, it's just all about the fact that they like to do business with me, they like me to be their dentist, because I'm so interested in what I do. That's a concept that I think we can all learn from, you know, I share my love of life music, my love of surfing my love of the NASA lunar program, my daughter, who's my co author, and our book fan autocracy, shares her love of Harry Potter, her love of Kpop. And that makes us more interesting people. And that's, I believe, one of the least understood aspects of growing a business and an underutilized way of doing business. I mean, share with us what you love, don't just be all business all the time.

 

Ash Roy  21:16

Thank you, David. That was a wonderful takeaway for me, because I do tend to think more in terms of how can I offer more value? How can I be more useful from a business standpoint, but you just really touched me with that story, because I realized now that people are connecting with the passion. And yes, that is something that we need to we need to connect with people, it doesn't have to be that they share the same passion as you. It just is the act of being passionate that they're connecting with.

 

David Meerman Scott  21:51

That's exactly right. And this image that I shared earlier with me, with my friends at a Grateful Dead concert, that's me in the mirror with his red shorts. And then on the left there in the green shirt. That's Brian Halligan, the CEO of HubSpot, he and I wrote a book called marketing lessons from the Grateful Dead together, marketing lessons from the Grateful Dead. And, you know, it's like many people would say, why would you bring up the Grateful Dead at work? You know, what's that all about? And that showed that both Brian HubSpot and I are interesting people, we like things outside of our work. And we like to share those things. And that is a really, really interesting way to build fans. And I encourage everyone to think about what it is you love. And for some people, it's a sporting, it's a sports team that they support. Manchester United Football, for example, or so for some people it might be a sport, they love to play, we just talked about surfing, or it could be mountain biking, or, or it could be long distance swimming, whatever it is. Or it could be birdwatching, or hiking or camping or a particular author that you love. Or in your case, I see you've got a guitar behind you. You're you love to play a guitar that I learned something about you simply by what's behind you in this in the room that you're in Ash. So that's important stuff.

 

Ash Roy  23:24

Yeah. And I say that you have a surfboard behind you. So that's a that's a great way to, I guess, visually tell somebody that, hey, I'm not just a business person. There is more to me. There's a human element to me. And it's almost an invitation to connect with the human side of the other person. Almost like saying, well, I love surfing. What do you love to do? And that was the

 

David Meerman Scott  23:50

first thing you noticed when you when we jumped on this call. You said Ash, I see you have a guitar. Before I even started the recording. First thing I said was Hey, show me I see a guitar. Oh, tell me about that. Yeah, because we in the first 30 seconds that we connected, we had something to talk about. And so I just think that's that's, that's super important. And you're kind of goes back to what we talked about earlier, this idea of giving to the universe, if you give to the universe, the fact that you're passionate about life, about the things you love, about what you do when you're not at work, or how you can combine the things you love with your work, which is what I'm all about. Then people are attracted to you, and they want to do business with you. You don't have to coerce them. You don't have to entice them. They want to do business with you because they see that you've got that passion. And again, going back to HubSpot, because it's it is a great example that you brought up. I joined their advisory board 2007 they had zero customers 100,000 Customers now, a billion dollars in revenue now. I mean, that's all built on these principles.

 

Ash Roy  25:06

And I got to tell you, man, I started off with a traditional approach to marketing. I went through the whole, you know, the the email, the outbound all that sort of stuff. But as my understanding of marketing matured, I discovered HubSpot. And I really fell in love with the methodology. I have a membership community and my membership community, we follow this nine step business growth framework. And one of the steps is actually about facilitating purchases. And I don't use the word sales because I think sales is more or less redundant. I mean, yeah, we can't make a sale, we can facilitate a purchase. All we can do now as sellers is provide information and provide support and allow the buyer to buy. So I'm teaching myself that almost every day.

 

David Meerman Scott  25:53

That's right, I think that's a way to look at it. And I think that's something that that anybody can use. And it doesn't matter what business you're in, it doesn't matter whether you're running a big business as a small business, as somebody like me who's independent, I run a one person business, I say that I've been unemployed for 19 years, I lost my job when I was working at Thomson Reuters was the last company that employed me back in 2002. And I started my own business back in 2002. I have never made a sales call business comes to me. And I've been able to provide a great living for my family and myself, never made a sales call using the principles we've been talking about today.

 

Ash Roy  26:35

So how does a customer typically discover you? And how does that process happen? Can you tell us a bit about that?

 

David Meerman Scott  26:41

Well, in my case, personally, I've written 12 books as the outset, and several of those are national bestsellers. One of them called the new rules of marketing and PR is now in the seventh edition. And it's sold over 400,000 copies in the English language all over the world, in English speaking countries, and has all is also published in 29 other languages, but my blog since 2005, I've got something like 1500 blog posts that are out there, I've written a bunch of free ebooks that I tried. I've Like, right now I've been a guest on I think now just over 300 different podcasts, have wonderful hosts, like you who put together shows like this, that, that I love to be a part of. And all of those things are little breadcrumbs, where people will learn a little bit about me, and you know, maybe a couple of people from this podcast might take a chance and buy one of my books, then maybe they'll say, Oh, that's interesting. I've got a conference coming up. Maybe I should invite David, to be a speaker at my conference or somebody like Brian Halligan might say, David's an interesting guy, maybe I should put him on my advisory board. All of these things are the ways that I grow my business. And I've never once ever, in 19 years picked up the phone to try to sell my services. That's amazing. Or send emails to try to sell my services?

 

Ash Roy  28:16

Well, kudos to you for having played the long game. And that is something that I aspire to do as well. I've got to say, I don't think that happens overnight, does it? It takes consistency, effort, sincerity, dedication, all of which I value a lot. But a lot of marketers today want results yesterday, and I don't think that builds a sustainable brand that doesn't build a great company. You may still make some sales, but you're not going to build something truly great to build something great takes time and consistency. Like Seth Godin has been writing for so long every day. I don't think he's missed today.

 

David Meerman Scott  28:57

I don't think he has either. He is remarkable. He writes way more than I do. He's remarkable that way, a blog post every day for more than 20 years.

 

Ash Roy  29:06

Yeah, yeah. Someone you mentioned a couple of times is Brian Halligan. I'm a huge fan. And Brian, if you are listening, I would be honored to have you on the show. You're one of the few people that I've been wanting to get on. And that is conspicuously absent. And there's some great people on the show, David, in your book, you mentioned brands like head count Harry Potter, me undies green surfboards, and they all have one thing in common, which is what we just talked about. And that is they've built a brand over time. They're passionate about what they do. And they have taken the approach of service rather than approach of, you know, closing sales, in your book, new rules of marketing and PR, which is the next thing I want to touch on. You talked about the long tail of marketing. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about that and how that leads to long term profitable growth

 

David Meerman Scott  29:54

prior to the web, you know, for for a long time. There was the The advertising industrial complex, which is what Seth Godin calls it, where you had to market your brand to a lot of people, they would then become your customer. And it was really hard for smaller independent companies to get started. But the web has allowed for very niche companies to be able to quickly rise and become very, very popular. And, in fact, the camera that I'm speaking to you on right now, is a wonderful Australian company called Blackmagic Design, and you may be familiar with them. They started their business with with cameras and other equipment that were optimized for digital video. And a business like that is a very much of a niche business. But they're doing fabulously well. I've got two of their cameras and one of their switching devices in my home studio right now. And a company like me undies that you mentioned, as part of my book fanocracy is a company that created a I think it's only about four or five years old, a subscription underwear business, and much of their marketing was through Instagram where people actually share photos of themselves in their underwear. It's fabulous way to do marketing, and they have his and hers with the same pattern. So groups of people get together couples get together, friends get together, man, it's really, really an interesting way that they do their marketing a business like that would have a hard time competing 10 or 20 years ago, when you think about business and marketing. It's much better to think how can I find a very small group of people, for example, grain surfboards, wooden surfboards. Now that's a small niche. They're not going after the world of people who love sports, that's enormous. Or even people who love surfing, which is also a big market, they're going after people who is a very small market of people who are into surfing love a beautiful wooden handmade product. And like the sustainability idea of, of having a surfboard made of wood rather than something that's bad for the environment. And that's a niche market. And going after a niche market is a really different thing than going after a very broad, large marketplace. It means there's lots and lots of room for somebody, like a dentist in Southern California who loves to skateboard to break through. So definitely

 

Ash Roy  32:41

check out Blackmagic Design, I do use a Rode microphone, which is another Okay,

 

David Meerman Scott  32:46

I have one of those I have one of their stands to another Australian company.

 

Ash Roy  32:50

Wonderful, that's fine company for audio. But I'll check out Blackmagic Design for sure. I'm conscious of the time and I want to be respectful of your time. So just ask a couple more questions before we talk about how our listeners can find you biggest challenges you've seen people face when it comes to implementing the strategies we talked about today. And your advice around how to overcome these challenges.

 

David Meerman Scott  33:12

The biggest thing by far is fear. It's fear of doing something new, it's fear of taking a risk of what's perceived as taking a risk. It's fear of putting yourself out there. For those who work in bigger organizations, it's fear of approaching the bosses within a new kind of idea. And so I think that is the biggest barrier when it comes to implementing these ideas. Because we've been told all along this is how you market you build an email list you you spend a lot of money on advertising, you coerce people, you have to wrestle them to the ground to buy your product or service. To do things differently means that you have to completely change. And for many people that's fearful.

 

Ash Roy  34:02

So what's the one little impactful action our listeners or viewers can take to kick this process off to make this real in their lives. And to get a start on this new approach to marketing,

 

David Meerman Scott  34:15

I would recommend one of the first things to do, which is something that we talked about a little bit earlier is to think about how you can bring more passion to what you do. Bring passion to your work life by sharing the things that you love to do in your private life. Think about the things that you're a fan of, and how can you talk about those things on your social media, even the business social media that you use? If you run a business, how can you bring that into your organization into the company itself into your websites and so on? Because passion is infectious.

 

Ash Roy  34:54

I have one tip that I found very useful that people might find useful too. I actually got it from Brian Tracy In Episode 207, he said, write down your goals every day on a piece of paper, but don't look at the previous day's goals and do that for 30 days straight. So I've been doing that for about almost 20 days, I think now. And I have noticed a change in the sense of urgency and the sense of purpose with which I move through the day. So I found that to be very useful. So that might be something that our viewers or listeners might want to consider doing as well. And I literally sit down and just write down my goals. And one of them you'll laugh at this, David, but one of them was a goal that Joe pulizzi mentioned that he wrote down back in 2008. And he wrote it in the past tense. He said, my wife and I sold Content Marketing Institute for 15 million US dollars in 2015. Well, he read that goal every day. And then it turns out, he sold it for $15 million, but he was about six months late. So super cool. He would read that goal every day and say, What am I doing to get closer to the goal and you know,

 

David Meerman Scott  36:04

so it's an amazing story and crude grid. It's a great story. And I agree with writing down your goals.

 

Ash Roy  36:10

So David, thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you for your generosity, and it's an honor to have had you on how can our listeners find out more about you and by the book fanocracy are the new rules of marketing and PR.

 

David Meerman Scott  36:22

So my full name David meerman. Scott, I'm the only David meerman Scott in the world. So if you Google my name, you'll find me and only me. on social networks. I am d m Scott d M. Sc Ott. And if you want to learn more about the ideas of fan autocracy, I recommend going to fanocracy.com we've got a great website there lots of free content that you can learn more about these ideas.

 

Ash Roy  36:48

Cool. So I will link to all those things in the show notes, which is David meerman. Scott, that's m er ma n. Scott. And fanocracy.com. Thank you so much for being on the show, David. And maybe we'll talk again sometime.

 

David Meerman Scott  37:03

My pleasure, great speaking with you. I'd love to meet you in person one day as well.

 

Ash Roy  37:07

That'd be awesome. Yeah, that'd be wonderful. Thank you, David.

 

 

Transcribed by https://otter.ai