Announcer:

Are you ready for an open discussion with the best of the best and the best of what's next? Welcome to the Tony DUrso Show. Join in on a great conversation today with some of the world's great influencers as they showcase great advice and techniques that made them the game-changers they are today. Now here's Tony DUrso.

Tony:

Welcome. I'm your host, Tony DUrso. I interview some of the most successful people in the world, and I thank you for joining us. The show is dedicated to helping you turn your vision into reality, and we are the number one show on Voiceamerica.com. We're going to talk with David Meerman Scott about building fans. David Meerman Scott is a marketing strategist, entrepreneur, investor and advisor to emerging companies, and he is the bestselling author of 11 books, including Fanocracy and The New Rules of Marketing & PR. Listen on and learn! And before we get into this, I want to thank our sponsor, Believe in People. If 2020 has taught us anything, it's that the old ways of doing things aren't working. Pre-order the book today at believeinpeoplebook.com/tony and gain access to bonus content ahead of its November 17 publication. More details just ahead on this sponsor with a lot more info on them, so please stay tuned. And as you know, my interviews with the world's elite entrepreneurs are all about helping you launch your new business or take your business to the next level, and we also cover a lot of great information for everyone else. Sometimes the penny drops with the right information for you to start something profitable yourself or help you do your job a whole lot better. I love to help you and I love to hear how these world-class interviews are helping you. Please give me a hand and subscribe, rate and review my show on Apple podcasts right now. If you need help, you can go to ratethispodcast.com/tony. That will walk you through the review process, and here's a wonderful review on my show on Apple podcasts. 'It is magnificent! Tony's passion and professionalism shows in the work he does. The topics are on point to assist those who are on a mission bigger than themselves. Tony provides beyond what you need from advice, inspiration, motivation, resources, and guidance. The Tony D Show is a must have on your journey to success!' That's signed by Your Emotions Matter. I wish I had your first name so I can thank you over and over for such kind words. Thank you again and again for your five-star review. I really appreciate it. If you want to help me help more people and help get my show to those that need to hear this in the world, please consider giving me a review. The easy way is to go to Apple podcasts or go to ratethispodcast.com/tony. A kind five-star review helps grow and support the show. All right, let's get into it. Today's show is about building fans with David Meerman Scott. Let's see what we can learn today. At the end of this interview, I'll give you a summary recap of what we went over. So stay tuned for that. David Meerman Scott spotted the real time marketing revolution in its infancy and wrote five books about it, including The New Rules of Marketing & PR, with more than 400,000 copies sold in English and available in 29 languages from Albanian to Vietnamese. All right, here we go. Hi, David. Welcome to the Tony DUrso Show. So great to have you on with us today.

David:

It's great to be here, Tony. I appreciate you spending a little time with me.

Tony:

David, the honour is mine. I am so looking forward to picking your brain talking about Fanocracy and I am astounded. Forgive me. I'm astounded that you remember me when we spoke many, many years ago, and I was asking you for advice and you've really helped me a lot because back then, way back then - maybe a dozen years - you were like in the top 250,000, top 100,000 websites in terms of getting traffic and you were getting like a quarter of a million visitors back then. And that was like, wow! Well today, I'm sure it's crazy. And I've been following your advice and I am getting over a million people a year to my site.

David:

Awesome!

Tony:

Thank you. I know that's a drop compared to what you're getting, but I just wanted to say that that I'm really excited about it. And David, for our fans, let's educate them. Let's follow your journey to success. How did it start for you? What's your back story?

David:

I got out of school and I thought I wanted to be a bond trader. So I got a job on Wall Street in the municipal bond department at a company called Dean Witter. I hated it and I was terrible at it, but what I found I really loved was the information that bond traders used. So I ended up spending the first 15 years of my career in the financial information business at companies like Dow Jones and Reuters. I left that business in 2002, and that's when I started doing my own thing. Initially it was consulting, but then I stopped doing consulting, and now it's writing books, giving speeches, doing some coaching, serving on advisory boards. So I like to say I've been happily unemployed for 18 years.

Tony:

I love it. A great entrepreneur story there. During your travels here, what brought about the vision for your current success with fans and marketing? How did that come about?

David:

So I was talking to my daughter Reiko. She's now 27 years old and we were talking five years ago about how I'm such a massive fan of live music. I've been to 804 live shows in my life. Yes, I keep a spreadsheet. I have been to 75 Grateful Dead shows and I'm talking to Reiko. And so, you know, what's crazy and I'm such a live music fan. It's so important to me. And she was talking about how much of a fan of Harry Potter she is. Not only has she seen every movie multiple times, read every book multiple times, gone to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme park several times, but she wrote an 85,000-word alternative ending to the Harry Potter series where Draco Malfoy is a spy for the Order of the Phoenix. And she put that on a fan fiction site that had been downloaded thousands of times and commented on hundreds of times. So we were geeking out about how much we are fans of the things that we love, and so we decided to explore together this idea of 'fandom'. Our thesis going into it was that any organization can build fans. Any organization can build fans, much the same way that Harry Potter has built fans and the Grateful Dead has built fans. That was our thesis, and after five years of research, we really dug into this topic. We've learned that that is absolutely true. We found examples of B2B companies, of non-profits, of consultants, of dentists, of entrepreneurial start-up businesses, of consumer products companies, educational institutions, even a government agency that have all been able to build fans. So that eventually became our book, which is titled Fanocracy: Turning Fans into Customers and Customers into Fans, which released in January and that book's been doing great. It hit the Wall Street Journal bestseller list, but we were really happy to work together because I'm a 50-something white man, my daughter Reiko, a millennial mixed-race woman. My wife's Japanese; Reiko was born in Tokyo. I love the Grateful Dead and live music. She loves Harry Potter. She's a neuroscientist. She graduated with a degree in neuroscience from Columbia University and is now in her final year of medical school, so we're very, very different people, but our ideas around fandom were the same, and it was really fun to work on this project with her.

Tony:

I'm fascinated by this, what a - forgive me - an unlikely match in a way, but yet it fits. It works. And I don't mean it in a condescending way, you know, who would think, right?

David:

Well, it was really important for us to write together because while we learned in spending five years together that our ideas of fandom are basically the same, we definitely needed to make sure that our differences were accounted for and we recognized that it doesn't matter if you're a young woman or an older man. It doesn't matter what generation you're from. This idea of fandom is universal. And if I had just written it by myself like I have my other recent books, I couldn't have argued that. I could have said, well, I did the research and this is true, but until she was the co-author and wrote half of the book, and the way that we did is we wrote individual chapters and have our names on the individual chapters. So the chapters that I wrote, it says by David. So for example, chapter 4 is by David and chapter 5 is by Reiko. And so that was a really powerful thing to be able to show readers that yeah, these ideas are universal and yeah, a millennial woman can have ideas around fandom and a baby boomer man can have ideas around fandom and it's a universal truth.

Tony:

David, what's the purpose for what you do? Why did you go into this? What's that passion?

David:

What I really wanted to understand is what's going on when we become fans, number one, and then number two, are we able to create a prescription for building fans? And the answer to both of those questions are yes. We were able to figure out what's happening in our brains when you become a fan. And then absolutely yes, you can create a prescription for building fans as an entrepreneurial business. So at its core, the idea of fandom is about a true human connection. The idea of fandom is about the idea that we humans are hard wired. It's in our brains. It's rooted in neuroscience. We're hard wired to want to be part of a tribe of people. We want to be a part of a group of people who are just like us and that's non-negotiable. That's part of being a human. And so we dug pretty deeply into that idea of how we want to be a part of our tribe. And we clearly both noticed that as we participate in our own fandoms, because when I'm at a Grateful Dead concert, I can turn to anybody else at that concert and there's tens of thousands of people who were there and have an instant bond with that person, even though I never met them because we're part of the same tribe. You know, we could be waiting in line to buy beer and have a conversation as if we're old friends. Same thing is true of Reiko and Harry Potter. If she meets someone who's a fan of Harry Potter, they can have an instant connection as if they're old friends. There's one neuro-scientist. His name is Edward T. Hall who identified the different levels of physical proximity that helps to explain some of these ideas. So what he identified is that further than about 12 feet away is called public space and in public space, our brains do not track people who are that far away. We know they're there, but we don't actively track them. However, inside of about 12 feet to about 4 feet is what he calls social space, and in social space, our brains begin to track everybody who gets within our social space and we can't help it because our ancient brain is kicking in as a survival technique because our brain wants to know are the people who get into our social space part of our tribe or not. And if they're part of our tribe, that's an incredibly powerful human connection. If they're not part of our tribe, we sense danger.

Tony:

This is the Tony DUrso Show where you can learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Just ahead, the chat continues about building fans with David Meerman Scott, but first it's time for us to take a short break. See you back here in just a moment.

Tony:

You already know me from my shows. It's always been about people, and that's why I bring you some of the most well-known elite entrepreneurs in the world to share their stories, their wisdom, their guidance with you. I guess it's my Italian upbringing because people have always been more important to me than money, which I say all the time. When we help others, we get back far more riches than imagined. I guess that's why my show is number one on Voice America. When I heard about this book, I felt a sense of relief because the title hit a strong chord with me. When I saw the trailer for the book, that chord rang loudly. I cheered inside. This book codifies everything you've learned on my shows and then some. If 2020 has taught us anything, it's that the old ways of doing things aren't working. Believe in People by Charles Koch and Brian Hooks is a surprising take on how you can tackle America's biggest problems, independent of partisanship and division. It's not just the life lessons from one of America's greatest entrepreneurs. It's the story of a former gang leader turned peace broker in his community. The story of an amateur athlete who created one of the most innovative recovery programs in the country. The story of anyone willing to unite to do right and move society forward. In short, it's for anyone looking around the country right now and thinking 'there has to be a better way', and I think that's most of us, right? Pre-order the book today at believeinpeoplebook.com/tony and gain access to bonus content ahead of its November 17 publication. It's Bottom-Up Solutions for a Top-Down World. Pre-order this book now at believeinpeoplebook.com/tony. Would you do that now? Help yourself and your loved ones. Thank you so much.

Announcer:

You're listening to the Tony DUrso Show with key influencers. We'd love to hear from you via email. Be sure to send questions and comments to Tony@tonydurso.com. Now back to Tony and his guests.

Tony:

All right. We're back on the Tony DUrso Show where you can learn from the wisdom of success of others to help you move on your vision path. Let's see what we can learn today. Today's show is building fans with David Meerman Scott. At the end of this interview, I'll give you a summary of what I got out of this, and I'll share some pointers with you. Stay tuned for that. Some of David's other bestsellers include Fanocracy, Real-Time Marketing & PR, and Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead. All right. And now back to the chat with David.

David:

And then inside of 4 feet is even more powerful, and that's what Edward T. Hall called personal space. This explains why when you walk into a cocktail party, you walk into a room where there's people who are at a party and you've been invited to, you immediately scan the people in the room because you want to know who do I know? Are these people part of my tribe or not? And if you get in and if you see people that you know in that cocktail party, and you have a conversation with them, you're in your personal space, that's an incredibly powerful, positive human emotion, because we sense we're safe when we're part of our tribe. We sense that we're comfortable when we're with part of our tribe. However, if you get into a crowded elevator and you don't know any of the people in that elevator, you can feel a little sense of danger because they're not part of your tribe and your fight or flight instinct kicks in. And that's non-negotiable as humans. So all of us feel a little bit nervous when we get into a group of people who we don't know, because they're not part of our tribe and we have that sense of danger. So here's what this means for entrepreneurs. What it means is can you figure out ways in your business to get people physically close to you, physically close to your employees, physically close to other customers? Can you, for example, if it's appropriate for your business, put on a client conference? Can you host a couple of clients for a dinner? Can you, instead of just picking up the phone, can you actually visit a customer? These things are all incredibly powerful and it's rooted in neuroscience.

Tony:

We're talking about building fans with David Meerman Scott, and you can find him at davidmeermanscott.com, and I'm going to spell that. David, we know that word, DAVID. Meerman is MEERMAN. Scott is SCOTT.com. davidmeermanscott.com. David let's get into your vision path. This is really quite a topic I think that's near and dear to everyone in my audience. I've got entrepreneurs, mid-sized businesses. I have some corporate executives and people with career paths as well. We're all learning. And this show is dedicated to helping people scale up because we cannot literally read every book, listen to every lecture and hear everything that everyone says. So hopefully this show is a go-to for people to give them key information that they need, and building a fan is like one of the top ones. Now that said, talk to you about physical - and I get that - the physical space, the physical neuroscience, if you want to call it, and what's going on with that. Also because of current events, we want to build fans all over the world. We want to be like you, David.

David:

Well, the good news is we identified another aspect of neuroscience that can help us there, and that aspect of neuroscience is called mirror neurons. Mirror neurons are a fascinating part of our brain. It's the part of our brains that fire when we see or even hear somebody do something as if we are doing it ourselves. Scientists identified mirror neurons only a couple of decades ago, and now they're being studied pretty extensively. So again, it's the part of our brain that fires when we see or even hear somebody do something as if we're doing it ourselves, which I'd like to demonstrate for you, Tony and audience. So if I were to take a bite of a lemon, which I'm going to do now. Wow, that lemon is so strong. It makes my eyes close. My eyes water a little bit. My mouth puckers up, my saliva glands are running. It's a really powerful thing to bite into a slice of lemon.

Tony:

David, you probably knew this, but I cringed at the thought. When you said it, I just started to cringe right away.

David:

Exactly right. And that's your mirror neurons kicking in. So my brain is firing because I bit into the lemon, but the mirror neurons in your brain, Tony, and probably every single person listening in are firing as well, and for that reason, you're tasting a little bit of that lemon. You're feeling a little bit of that lemon. So here's how we can use this if we run a virtual business, or if because in the era of coronavirus, we're not able to meet people in person, or if we have customers that are far in far-flung places around the world, here's how you can use it. So I mentioned earlier that the closer you can get to someone, the more powerful the human connections and that the most powerful is personal space, which is inside of about four feet, which is cocktail party distance. You can use video and photographs of you together with other people, or just looking into a camera and talking, or if it's a still camera, just looking into the camera and taking a shot and cropped as if you're within personal space, four feet and that can be a fabulously powerful way to build fans because our brains, the mirror neurons of our brains tell us that we are in the personal space of you. So intellectually, we all know that if you're watching a video, that you're not in the same room as the person on that video. Intellectually you understand that, but the mirror neurons in your brain tell you that you're actually together with that person. This is precisely why we feel we know a movie star start personally. You've never met that movie star. You know intellectually you've never met that movie star, but your brain tells you that you've met them because your mirror neurons kick in and say, oh yeah, I've been within 4 feet of that person and therefore I know them. You know that's not true, but your brain tells you it's true. And we can all use that technique in our own business. So what it means is use video way more than we're using it now. For most entrepreneurs, a video is an afterthought. Have that video cropped as if you're four feet from the camera. Look directly at the camera to make it very natural. Don't worry too much about the lighting and the makeup and all that, but make it a natural kind of thing. This even explains the selfie phenomenon, because many people dismiss the selfie as frivolous and for young people, when in fact a selfie is incredibly powerful because our arms are four feet or less for most of us. We're looking directly at the camera, and that photograph that you take looking directly at the camera, either you by yourself or you with some other people, you're all - if you have two people or three people - you're aligned looking at that camera lens. That's really powerful stuff and it's a fabulous way to grow fans. Now I know a bunch of people who have built really successful businesses just on this simple concept. Somebody named Matt Reisenger I've studied and he's become a friend of mine since then, but Matt is a builder in Austin, Texas, an entrepreneurial builder. When he started his business 10 years ago, he and I met. He had zero customers, but he started doing a YouTube channel and his videos are all him looking at the camera and talking about different building techniques. He's now been doing that for 10 years. His channel is incredibly successful; tens of millions of views. It's grown his business from zero to $20 million in annual revenue. And not only that, the channel generates $450,000 in revenue from both sponsorship and advertising revenue, so he's actually getting paid to do his marketing. And it's this concept of mirror neurons. It's this concept of how video and photographs shot as if you're within the personal space can be incredibly effective.

Tony:

David, while you've been educating us on this, I was thinking of times where I've seen myself or celebrities in group shots as opposed to pull some shots. And it's now more clear to me that when I see a group shot, I'm not in that person's personal space. They're a little bit far away. I don't feel as connected as I do when it's a close up. It's absolutely amazing how that works, and it's just a couple of feet difference.

David:

Yeah. No, that's absolutely right. And for many of us you can actually test this because if you take a look at your social media feeds, whether it's Facebook or Twitter, Instagram, whatever you do, those images that you take that are cropped like that - about four feet away, looking directly at the camera, conversational sort of approach, not posed - generally have way more engagement than other types of photos or just plain text. It's for that exact reason, because people feel connected to you. They feel as though they know you and they are much more likely to engage.

Tony:

Absolutely incredible, and I'll probably come back with a comment on that. But one thing that I wanted to make sure I address that you've made a comment on before, talk about how companies have to let go of their creations in order to grow fans. Could you explain that and give us some examples?

David:

Yeah, sure. So, what Reiko and I, my co-author in our book Fanocracy learned is that to truly grow fans of a business, you need to let the fans take over. You need to let the fans feel an ownership over what it is that they're doing within your environment. And so for that reason, you need to allow those fans to talk about you in whatever way they choose to do so and not try to control the message. To recognize that you as the creator of a product or service, once you put that product or service out into the world, you no longer own it. It now belongs to the fans.

Tony:

This is the Tony DUrso Show where you can learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Just ahead, the chat continues about building fans with David Meerman Scott, but first it's time for us to take a short break. See you back here in just a moment.

Tony:

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Announcer:

You're listening to the Tony DUrso Show with key influencers. We'd love to hear from you via email. Be sure to send questions and comments to Tony@tonydurso.com. Now back to Tony and his guests.

Tony:

All right. We're back on the Tony DUrso Show where you could learn from the wisdom of success of others to help you move on your vision path. Let's see what we can learn today. Today's show is building fans with David Meerman Scott. At the end of this interview, I'll give you a summary of what I got out of this, and I'll share some pointers with you. Stay tuned for that. David has spoken on all seven continents, in over 40 countries, to some of the most respected firms, organizations and associations in the world. He customizes his keynotes and masterclasses for each audience, but the core of every event is an urgent call to action. And now back to the chat with David.

David:

And we found a number of examples, positive and negative of organizations that have done a bad and a good job of this concept. For example, Adobe, they make a number of different software products, including Photoshop. They're not very good at this. What Adobe does is they specifically talk about how you can use their trademarks. So they say you may never use our trademarks in a possessive form. You may not say that Photoshop's features are impressive. You must say the features in Adobe® Photoshop® software are impressive. And my daughter Reiko, who's a real fan of making art using Photoshop, she said, my friends and I laugh at Adobe because they try to control the way that we talk about them and everything they tell us to do sounds ridiculous, and everything we want to do sounds like a fan talking, but Adobe doesn't want us to talk like a fan, and I would contrast that with a company called i-Robot. They make the Roomba vacuum cleaners, and what's interesting about the Roomba vacuum cleaner is there's a whole subculture of people whose pets love to ride on the Roombas. Their dogs and their cats like to ride on these robotic vacuum cleaners, and many people take videos of their pets riding on the Roomba and they post those onto YouTube and they've had tens of millions of people who have viewed those videos. Now what Roomba could do, what i-Robot the company could do is just what Adobe does is say, Oh, this is not an approved use of our product. You must remove that video, but they don't. They celebrate the fact that their fans are taking over and that their fans are changing what they're doing in the case of the product into something else. And sure, the lawyers could have said that's not an approved use of the product, but the lawyers don't and therefore people are sharing their fandom for this robotic vacuum cleaner in a unique way. So the whole idea here is letting go of your creations.

Tony:

That's fascinating, David. You know, it's always that entrepreneur brain thinking, how can I use this if they provide a software product or podcast. So I'm just trying to think for the audience, how can we use something like this? You have any ideas?

David:

Oh yeah. There are many different ways. So, for example if you are running a business, a B2B business, you could create like a software business, for example, or a hardware business. You could create a client community where the client community comes together, but rather than you dictate how people talk about your products and services, the clients talk about the products or services in whatever way that they want. And you recognize that if people are going to talk about you, for example, on review sites in my case, I write books and people talk about my books on Amazon and other review sites. In some other businesses, it might be Yelp or other places, in those cases, you need to celebrate the idea that people who want to share about you are going to do it in the way that they feel the most comfortable. Maybe they'll make a blog post about you. Maybe they'll make a video about you. Maybe they'll make a social media post about you and what you should do when they do is reach out to them on the social network, leave a comment. Hey, thanks very much for sharing about our product or our service, and that can be really, really effective, but don't try to control the way that people talk about you. Don't try to control the ways that people are celebrating the fandom for your product or service or idea or company.

Tony:

That makes very good sense. And another thing you've mentioned before is giving gifts. We've heard of this - giftology. It's always greater to give than to receive. You stress that very much in building fans, so I would love to know your take on that.

David:

So the whole idea about giving gifts is that it's another thing that's rooted in neuroscience. Our brains are hardwired to appreciate a gift that we're given with absolutely no expectation of anything in return. And so when we receive something, we feel that's a powerful thing. However, so many organizations, instead of creating a gift with no expectation of anything in return, they're actually using a coercive technique and not giving a gift at all, but trying to get people to do something in order to sell them something. So I'll give you an example of what I mean by that. Many companies on their websites to try to create sales leads will make some kind of piece of content - an eBook or a white paper or a report of some kind - and they'll say, hey, download our free white paper; download our free eBook; download our free report. But in fact, it's not free because you have to give up your email address to download that report. And so that's not giving away a gift. That's coercion because you're saying to people, I'm not going to give you something free until you first give me your personal information. What's way better is to give something completely free with no expectation of anything in return. So make that white paper or eBook or report completely free. No registration required. Just put it out there. If people enjoy what you deliver to them, then they may want to do business with you. And that's exactly what you're doing here, Tony, right? You're creating a podcast, which sure, people can register on the various sites in order to be able to download it. But for the most part, you're not requiring that they do so. Anybody who wants to can listen to it. Anyone who wants to can share it and that's giving something as a free gift, which is an incredibly powerful way to grow fans.

Tony:

Never thought of that, but yes. I don't charge anything for my podcasts because I'm of that age, I guess, or I've come to that point in my life where I've been through so much, I've done so much, I just want to give. I just want to give back and help the next generation grow, and that's my deep-seated purpose is to help, so yes. The podcast is free. Everyone knows that.

David:

And that's a really powerful way to grow fans because you're not saying to people, you can download my podcast, but first you have to give me something. No. You're saying, hey, this is my gift to you. I hope it's helpful to you. And then, maybe somebody can say, well, who is this Tony guy? What does Tony do? Is there something Tony can do for me? You know, maybe we can do business some way. A few people might say that, but that's not the goal of the podcast.

Tony:

David, I want to talk about passion, but we've already talked about your passion and your purpose. I would love to know your daughter's passion and purpose, but she's not here to address that herself, but we can talk about the passion of fans, building fans, how to get our fans. How to get our people passionate? How to get people wanting to create with what we give them? Can you come into any of this?

David:

Yeah, of course. So what we found in doing the research on this idea that became our book Fanocracy: Turning Fans into Customers and Customers into Fans was that passion is infectious. So we learned that when people are passionate, that other people naturally want to do business with them because they're drawn to that passion. So in my case, I'm very, very passionate about educating people on now this idea of fandom, but for 10 years, it was around the idea of how you can do social media marketing and create content that will generate customers, and now it's around this idea of fandom. I'm really passionate about helping entrepreneurs about how this idea of fandom is incredibly powerful. My daughter Reiko, you mentioned her, is really passionate about a concept called narrative medicine. So Reiko is now finishing up her medical school education. She actually graduates in just a few short months as we're recording this, and then she will become an emergency room doctor resident, and will embark on her career as an emergency room doctor. And she learned a concept when she was an undergraduate called narrative medicine. Narrative medicine is understanding a patient's narrative, in other words, a patient's story, so that you're not just talking about a patient's symptoms, but rather you're talking about the whole patient and who are they as a person? What are the things that they love to do? What is their backstory? And yeah, as a healthcare professional, if you understand a patient's narrative, you can provide better healthcare for them rather than just understanding their symptoms. And so Reiko is really, really passionate about that, and this idea of passion is infectious becomes a really important thing that all of us, every one of us that's listening to this can use for our business. I want to share an example of that. We ran across a dentist. His name is Dr. John Marashi. Dr. Marashi is a dentist in Southern California, and where he is a dentist, there's tens of thousands of other dentists within a few hundred miles of him. So the competition is really stiff and all of the dentists essentially look the same to a potential customer. They all use the same website template for their website. They all have pictures of them in a lab coat with the photographs, with the images behind of their university degrees and their qualifications. The dental practice websites all look the same. And Dr. Marashi came to me a couple of years ago because we met at a Tony Robbins event. I speak at the Tony Robbins Business Mastery events, and I met Dr. Marashi there and he had seen me speak and he was like, David, I love this idea of fandom, but what can I do? I'm a dentist. And I said, Dr. Marashi what do you love to do? And he said, I love to skateboard. So I said, well, that's it. Share your passion for skateboarding? So that's exactly what he did. So on his website now, you can see pictures of Dr. Marashi skateboarding. In his practice on the walls, he's got dozens of skateboards mounted on the walls. He'll skateboard from one examination room to another, and he's got an Instagram feed with something like 14,000 followers and many of the images that he shares are of him skateboarding. And Dr. Marashi reached out to me just a couple of months ago and said, David, I just wanted to get back to you because this idea of skateboarding has been incredibly powerful for me because I'm now not just one of 10,000 dentists in Southern California, I'm the skateboarding dentist. And he told me that making that one little shift in his business of showcasing what he's passionate about has allowed him to grow his business by 30% just making that little switch. And he's actually able to measure that because when his new patients come in, he asks them how they found out about them and he measures it, and he learned that 30% of the new business coming in is because he's the skateboarding dentist.

Tony:

This is the Tony DUrso Show where you can learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Just ahead, the chat continues about building fans with David Meerman Scott, but first it's time for us to take a short break. See you back here in just a moment.

Tony:

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Announcer:

You're listening to the Tony DUrso Show with key influencers. We'd love to hear from you via email. Be sure to send questions and comments to Tony@tonydurso.com. Now back to Tony and his guests.

Tony:

All right. We're back on the Tony DUrso Show where you could learn from the wisdom of success of others to help you move on your vision path. Let's see what we can learn today. Today's show is building fans with David Meerman Scott. At the end of this interview, I'll give you a summary of what I got out of this, and I'll share some pointers with you. Stay tuned for that. David says "scale and media buying power are no longer a decisive advantage. What counts today is speed and agility. Real time is the mindset for the future and content rules." And now back to the chat with David.

David:

This idea that passion is infectious is incredibly powerful and it's something that all of us can do when we're passionate about something, even if it has nothing to do with what your business is. Like for example, skateboarding and dentistry have nothing to do with one another, showcasing what you're passionate about.

Tony:

David, I actually feel relieved by hearing that. Just like my shoulders sank down. I'm almost taking a side. Let me explain. I love outboarding, going to the mountains, going on trails in my Jeep with my dog and my wife. And if you go on my social media, it's probably all you see now is here I'm in Utah, here I'm in Colorado, here I'm in Arizona. It's just showing us out in nature with our Jeep, just having fun and I get so much response. Now you say Tony, it's a good thing. What's wrong with you? But I actually started to get a little concerned, like am I overusing social media? Should I be doing this? I podcast. Is this professional, you know, but I'm getting so many responses. It's like crazy cause this what I love to do. And so I was worried like, should I cut it down a little bit? Should I not do this as much? And now that I've just heard this story about the skateboarding dentist and the power of that, I'm like, yeah, I have hit right on the money on this in terms being real to my audience. And yes, my listener base, my audience base has grown as a result though I never connected it that it's because of what I do. But now I just feel like, oh good, I am doing the right thing because I was getting worried that maybe I was overusing social media, but nobody's ever said that. It's just come from me and I don't even know why.

David:

And I think that the way I heard you describe that, you're truly passionate about being in nature and being with your wife and your dog, and going four-wheeling in interesting places and sharing that on social media. If it's truly that's your passion and you're sharing it, that's fabulous and there's no question you should continue to do that because that's going to draw people to you. Passion is infectious. But if it feels as if it's cynical, if it's feels as if you're just doing it to get people interested, that will backfire. But it sounds to me like what you're doing is incredibly powerful, so my recommendation absolutely keep it up. Absolutely celebrate it because now when people are looking at who is Tony, they're going to say, Oh, this is really interesting. I just got a podcast. Yes, he's talks about entrepreneurialism and he also is a really into going on interesting adventures with his Jeep. This is somebody that I feel close to because he's passionate.

Tony:

Thank you. I do, because I like to share, and I just didn't expect any results from it particularly. I just like to share and I'm looking what can I share? You know, anyways, thank you. That's very good. Back to you, David. I want to know; we would love to know what are you looking to accomplish in the next few years?

David:

I've spent five years building this book, this idea around Fanocracy, and I've just now gotten it into the marketplace. It's a brand-new book; came out just a few short months ago as we're recording this and Reiko and I read the audio book version too, which many people who love to listen to podcasts also love to listen to audio books. So we read the audio book version ourselves. So for me, the next couple of years is really focusing on getting these ideas out even more into the marketplace. Being on other podcasts like this one, delivering speeches all over the world, writing blog posts, getting the ideas around fandom and growing fans of a business into the marketplace cause that's truly my passion is getting these ideas out there, helping entrepreneurs to build their business because I can show them how to build fans.

Tony:

David, any habits that contribute to your vision success?

David:

I exercise every day and every day over the course of a week, typically it might be a different exercise. I do yoga. I do Pilates. I do weights. I swim. I like to mountain bike. I like to surf. So yeah, it's really important for me to be physically fit cause when I'm physically fit, I feel like the mental follows.

Tony:

Totally agree with that. You've mentioned a couple of resources, a couple of books. We have to listen to this again and pick those up. Are there any great resources that you would like to share with our audience success squad?

David:

I would like to mention that Reiko and I built a wonderful website at fanocracy.com,, where we share a number of valuable pieces of information about the book. There are videos there. There's text-based content, there's infographics, all kinds of stuff. You can download nearly all of it free. No registration required.

Tony:

Thank you. Once again, we talked about building fans with David Meerman Scott. You can find out more about David at davidmeermanscott.com. That's davidmeermanscott.com and you can get the book, find out more about Fanocracy at fanocracy.com. David, thank you so much. And by the way, lastly audience I've said this before. You hear me say this multiple times. When an author reads his own book, you have got to get the audio. It is the most powerful of all, because you get the inflections. You get that feeling from the author and sometimes they throw in more information and it's night and day for me. So when there's an audio, get it, get it, get it. There, I've said it three times. David, once again, thank you so much. This is great.

David:

Thank you very much, Tony, for having me on this fun conversation.

Tony:

Hey fellow entrepreneurs, thanks for hanging out with me while I featured an elite entrepreneur who took his vision to reality. I hope this was as inspiring for you as it was for me to do this interview. I learned some great points on fans, building fans, working with fans and so forth that David Meerman Scott provided. Great ideas I'm going to chat about in a second. The insights are so valuable. So how did you like it? Building fans with David Meerman Scott. I began our interview thanking David for all the great advice he gave me personally quite a few years ago. I believe he was in the top 100 rankings at the time for the most visited websites. I took his advice and built up my following to over a million visits a year. I thanked David for that. It's his fault. He's happily unemployed for 18 years. That's quite the statement. And I liked the thesis that he and his daughter Reiko embarked on. Any organization can build fans. This means you as a personal brand, as well as you for your business. With years of research into this, David and his daughter wrote the book Fanocracy, and teach you how to turn fans into customers and customers into fans. Are you aware of how you become a fan of anything? At its core, fandom is about a human connection. Now most of us are into social media. Some of us may have a big following, but how useful is that? How successful is that to your business? Do you really connect with your fans, or do you just post stuff and hope everyone engages? I've seen a person with a thousand followers in one social group and he gets about 500 comments and views per post. That's amazing, right? And I've seen people with thousands of followers get less than that. So how does that happen? Exactly. It's the human connection element. We're hardwired to want to be part of a tribe of people. We want to connect to people who are just like us. David tells us that Edward T. Hall says that further than 12 feet away is public space. Take note of this when you go to public places. Are you oblivious of people that far away? Unless the person that far away is behaving oddly or unless it is someone that we know, we don't usually track someone at that distance. This is why you could be getting your coffee at someplace, and when you're done to turn and go, you happen to notice that there are different people from when you first walked in. It's like the original people just vanished. You'd never paid enough attention to them to track them. Then we have social space from around 12 feet to 4 feet. It's here that you pay much more attention to anyone around you. Do you take regular walks in public areas? How about walking your dog? Next time you go out, you'll notice that once a person is far enough away, you may tend to ignore them completely as opposed to someone being right there by you. These are very interesting observations. And then within 4 feet, Edward T. Hall says that's personal space. When you go to a party or any public gathering, don't you feel better when you find someone that you know? David takes this information and brilliantly translates it into actions for the entrepreneur to take. Can you get your clients and customers physically close to your employees and you within that personal space? Metalcloak is a company that I believe is growing tremendously. They have a great product for Jeeps. They have good marketing and making videos about their products, but they also have annual events to teach anyone - customers and new people - about Jeeps, and it's all done in a friendly picnic, outdoor-type gathering. They don't even mention their products. How about that? It's fun to attend their events and surprisingly you're never ever asked to buy anything. In fact, there's nothing you can buy from them at their events. It's all a public relation, let's help you learn type of an event. Needless to say, I bought their products. If you are a Jeep owner, feel free to chat with me about this. By the way, Jeep owners have this amazing tribe all on their own. I've talked about this type of camaraderie in multiple shows. You'll notice that some 98% of Jeep owners wave at each other as they pass each other on any roads. In fact, Jeep owners will wave at another Jeep owner, even if one of them is parked. As long as you know the other person owns the Jeep, then it becomes this 'thing' to wave at the person. I would also say that you'll notice at least 95% of the time, the other Jeep owner waves back. By this I mean it's not done at the last moment. As the other Jeep approaches you in the distance, you can tell already that it's a seasoned Jeep owner who's preparing to wave at you. It's very cool. My wife loves this game and she often calls out "Jeep" when she sees one approaching me, just in case I forget to notice, which I can do if I'm deep in conversation or figuring out where my next turnoff is. This is so strong with Jeep owners that if you're stuck anywhere on road or off road, and you wave at them to come by, you will get the aid you need. How does that happen? Now I've had the fancy cars that I also talk about, and I've never seen this kind of friendship with any other car owners. Now your homework is to figure out why and how that can be, and tell me what you came up with. David continues to give great information such as making videos and shooting them at 4 feet. There's so much more I got out of this interview. What did you get? I'd love to know how you use this information to help you in your business or career. Okay, guys, now grab hold of your vision. Decide you're either going to start something great or take it to the next level. You have to decide first. It always starts with the decision and you can get my Vision Map to help you along the process. The eBook is at tonydurso.com/books. I created my empire in just a few years. That's all it took. I had the Vision Map as my guide. You can do it too. Let's help you move on your journey to success. Thanks, and remember: just take action. Success awaits those who persevere and remain steadfast despite the odds. Sow good seeds, do good deeds and join me on the next episode of the Tony DUrso Show.

Announcer:

I hope you've enjoyed this week's edition of the Tony DUrso Show with his key influencers. Be sure to tune in again next Friday at 5:00 PM Eastern time, 2:00 PM. Pacific time on the Voice America Influencers channel.