Speaker 1what is up welcome back to the james kennedy podcast episode 46 baby hope you enjoyed last week's chat with the awesome awesome awesome rao reynolds from the awesome awesome awesome enter shikari who are currently tearing it up around the world as we speak if you haven't listened to it yet go and check it out that is one cool dude dropping some knowledge and since that one came out i've already lined up another ton of awesome guests who are going to be coming your way really really soon so stay tuned also since we last spoke i attended a performance of a song that i co-wrote with the uber talented and lovely miss cat southall called sing for life which was performed by the ten of us cancer choir at the saint david's theater in cardiff it was a 400 piece choir performing a song that we wrote a good few years back now which is i'll be very close to both of our hearts it was um that we we wrote it specifically for the cancer charity in cardiff called ten of us and at the time they were trialing a new program where they were trying to see if um singing specifically singing in choirs brought about any physiological benefits to people suffering with cancer or the after effects of treatment and that sort of thing um and it was actually there was a documentary on channel four about this which followed the choir's journey from having never sung before to getting a standing ovation at the royal alba hall in london it was a hell of a journey um very very emotional like i said it was a few years back for us now and we wrote a song called sing for life which was kind of a song that we wrote for the choir and it was kind of came after the documentary on channel four which was called sing for your life and it's become kind of like their anthem as such you know and it's a song that's personally very close to both of our hearts obviously i lost my father to that awful disease as well last year and just the the significance of what the lyrics mean and the fact that the people singing it are all affected by cancer so seeing a 400 strong choir of people from the community not professional singers who are all going through something singing that song loud and clear and it's a song that's going to be sung loud and proud in a packed out saint david's theater in cardiff was really really something and it was a fundraiser for the charity's 80th birthday and it was a bill packed full of welsh talent including uh only men allowed were there um and of course the incredible amy watch who performed the set of absolute bangers um including um thinking out loud and the song from keeping faith i mean her back catalog at this point is absolutely insane there's not an a-list music star on the planet that she hasn't written for at this point and it's mental because i saw amy you know i used to know amy obviously it's been a long long time since you know we've spoken in that capacity but um you know i used to go to her shows when she was playing like solo acoustic gigs in like the tucan club in cardiff you know 20 years ago you know to like you know a handful of people and i would look at a man you know what i mean she's writing songs for ed sheeran and literally everybody else it's absolutely incredible so to see her in the theater playing some of those songs really kind of like hit home just how far she's come and i think that's really important and i think it's and how possible the dream is as well you know i mean i'm seeing someone there that i used to know who's now living a completely different life it was really really really it was a lovely nightmare all around and to hear our song as well just just sung back and you know perfect harmony with 400 voices it was yeah it was a very emotional touching night so that's what i got up to last week amongst other things still plugging on with the book you know making good headway with that i'd say i'm about halfway through now and uh yeah i mean the more time i spend writing this thing the more into it i get and the more i kind of just want to rush it out so you guys can see it and read it but unfortunately publishing takes a long long time so uh i don't know when it's gonna be but it's certainly not gonna be this year before you get your mitts on the thing but things are gearing up with the band as we speak there will be some new material hopefully soon as well as some other cool things we've been working on for a while now behind the scenes and of course there will be some shows coming really really soon so if you are on my mailing list you will get the first announcements of where we're going to be playing if you're not on the mailing list what are you doing get on the mailing list and i'll see you in the next one bye bye on there right now the address for that is jameskennedystuff.com slash tribe jameskennedystuff.com slash tribe get in there whack your email address in and put the city and the country that you live in as well because then when we're planning our tour routing we can see who's where and we can come and play for you so make sure you put the details in do subscribe don't worry i don't spam i send about one mail out like every month or something like that when there's some good shit to talk about so don't worry about getting spammed but please do head to jameskennedystuff.com slash tribe enter yourself into our mailing list and then hopefully we can come and make some noise and have some good times with you guys super soon now that is the promo out of the way i think we should get down to business and bring on the real talents of today's episode man have i got a good one for you guys today today's guest by no means needs to come on my little podcast they are already crushing it on pretty much every level from best-selling books to podcasts to ted talks and tv appearances and sold out speaking engagements around the world okay you know they don't need to come and talk to me but they very very kindly offered to come and give their time freely and to give awesome nuggets of knowledge and insight that is going to help all of you lucky listeners so do not say i'm not good to you and do not tell me that you haven't yet subscribed to the podcast whatever platform you're listening to this on press pause right now and go and hit follow subscribe whatever you gotta do give me a star rating you know the usual jazz than a nagu but every week go and do it right now i just want to get down to business and bring on today's guest because they have got so much knowledge that i want to tap into and i have so many questions i want to ask them and it's so little time to do so so let's get on with it and bring on the star of the show mark schaefer is one of the world's leading marketing experts as well as an author public speaker blogger podcaster and educator his clients include companies like adidas dell pfizer and microsoft and his best-selling books include marketing rebellion known and belonging to the brand he has spoken in 35 countries his books have been translated into 14 languages and his podcast has been downloaded more than one and a half million times so i think it's safe to say that we're in pretty good hands today guys mark thank you so so much for doing this my man how you doing hey i am doing great it's just awesome to connect with you oh likewise man 100 i mean i've been looking forward to this conversation ever since we locked it in i mean there are so many things i want to ask you but i think we should just jump in head first and start with the biggie the biggie the biggie oh my god what could what could it be i'm tingling what what is the meaning of life mark what is the meaning of life tell us no the biggie for me is this right um i have lots of music industry guests on here and we all talk about the merits of the new model versus the old myself in particular i'm a big evangelist for the new model that i can record my own music and put it out this next day if i want to there are no gatekeepers or curators telling me what i can and can't do it's empowering it's democratization it's it's leveled the playing field it's awesome problem comes when you want to put it out there and you're confronted with the realization that everybody else on planet earth is also doing that and this is a question that nobody in the music industry in particular has been able to answer for me yet concisely is what the hell do you do to get heard above the noise of everybody else also doing their thing that is the big question
Speaker 2and you know it's it's funny that's basically what i have devoted my career to for the last 12 years um or or maybe even longer and and it kind of started around 2011 where i made this observation that and you and i before you push record we started talking about the shift right the shift in the world the shift in the industry the shift with media for me it was really happening around uh 20 2010 2011 and i saw that the power in the world was moving from these big consolidated media companies and advertising agencies to the people once you can start creating content and remember you know in the early days of the internet being a musician or an artist it really wasn't that feasible because we didn't have the bandwidth we couldn't download anything yeah right you couldn't upload you couldn't download but then things started moving along and that's when the power started to shift so in 2012 i wrote the first book on influence marketing called return on influence nobody was even talking about it nobody was even using that word but this was the significant change where people creators artists musicians they could start creating their own brand on the web they could create their own influence their own power their own audience without a gatekeeper yeah this was a historic moment this was a historic moment so that was sort of the beginning of this trajectory okay i i saw the power shifting i wrote this big book and then ever since then i've been trying to figure out okay what do we do about it because it's true it happened and now everybody's creating content and music and now if you thought it was noisy before you ain't seeing nothing yet because now we've got chat gpt yes and we've got now we've got robots creating our content and they never get tired and they never get hungry and they you know don't go on strike so that's they're going to be creating infinite amounts of content in some ways it's great because it unleashes a new level of creativity i mean let's say you're a musician but but you're just you're not a writer and what chat gpt does is it is it does for writing what the calculator did for math right if you hated math the calculator made you adequate you could do your taxes even if you never even understood what you were doing and chat gpt can do that now for for writing we've got uh programs out there like mid journey you can do that sort of thing for art you know i'm i'm now creating you know artificial intelligence generated art for all of my content all of my blogs oh wow and it's beautiful and compelling and it's it's and it's fun to do it's just fun to create and so so the the positive the beautiful thing about this james is that it's it unleashes a whole new level of creativity if you if you if you were afraid of writing now you can be a writer yeah you know if you never were that artistic now you can create beautiful images you can do art that goes along with your music at the push of a button so that's the good that's the good part about it the exciting part about it and um but there are also you know a lot a lot of challenges but but that but that you you are asking the right question is is is is what do we do and i think the short answer and maybe we can explore this a little bit more is uh so i wrote a book in in in 2019 called marketing rebellion yeah and the subtitle was this was the most human company wins so it's most human fill in the blank most human university most human symphony most human non-profit because that is the key to how you stand out in this world is is to recognize that people want to experience the authentic human connection you got to peel back the curtain and show the world this is what it's like to be me this is the good this is just like you did in your book right you peel back the curtain and said okay this is what it's like to be me this is what i'm learning this is how i'm growing this is these are these are the mistakes i made and that that that vulnerability is missing in in most of the world and all of the marketing so if they if they if they get that from you you you earn this connection
Speaker 1that can turn into community great point yeah that makes a lot of sense um there is a kind of like an advertising burnout isn't there fatigue you know we've been happy you get content saturation from every angle everybody's on the make everybody's trying to sell you something to someone that just have a direct humane conversation with you is a breath of fresh air because everybody's got something to sell and it is a as you said it's a very very noisy world out there right now and how anyone makes any sense of it i don't know i think my community struggles a lot with this i'm because we may be talented in in creative areas but not necessarily talented in business or marketing areas so so we do struggle with that sort of thing but we are ironically perfectly placed because communication and authenticity and artistic expression is what we do you know so we we you would think we would be best at it i think this the confusion within my community definitely from my own experience and that of my peers is we we're not really entirely sure what the process of marketing is in a basic sense what are the sort of key fundamental principles of marketing what am i doing what am i hoping to achieve how do i start and how do i get there and
Speaker 2how do i keep it going yeah but you know let's this is a good intellectual challenge from me to describe the marketing process in five minutes or less yeah sorry man no pressure because i don't think i've ever done this before jane so here we go oh that's cool all right number one what is the process of marketing and what are the principles of marketing what is marketing marketing is the process of creating a customer you know underneath that there's a lot of things you can do you kind of have to understand what your customers like and where they are and what they're what's going on their lives and how much money they have but essentially it's creating a customer for a musician is creating a fan that's going to buy your work okay now there are two different kinds of marketing and this is where a lot of people get one is direct marketing so this would be if you go into a store and you see a coupon for coca-cola so coca-cola they need to move more product they can they can have a coupon and they can and then they'll sell more stuff and it's pretty easy to measure you do you know you do ads you do coupons you sell more stuff it's pretty easy to measure that's called direct marketing that's not so relevant to artists and musicians it's not so relevant to artists and musicians it's not so right i mean i'm imagining you've probably never had a sale you know you probably never said it's you know it's boxing day we're going crazy two for one special i mean that's not how it works right now here's what does work this is the second kind of marketing and that's called brand marketing so let's go back to the coca-cola example i gave a speech in poland before the pandemic and and it was it was huge thousands of people in this audience it was amazing event and i said when you think of coca-cola what do you what do you think of it's sort of a rhetorical question but somebody from the audience yells out polar bears so even in even in poland you think of coca-cola that's polar bears now why yeah why does coca-cola do that because they don't want you to think about you know high caloric sugar water that makes you sick right they want want to create an expectation a feeling yes when you interact with this product it's supposed to make you warm and friendly and happy and you share it with family special occasions and you drink it on the beach that's coca-cola it's a feeling that you expect now now we're getting somewhere so the key to marketing for a musician or an artist is to create a feeling that you expect and you deliver on that feeling every time and and that feeling is going to connect to your audience that's why some people might like taylor swift and some people might like radiohead and some people might like ozzy osbourne they're completely different feelings completely different expectations but it connects to you in some authentic and organic way okay now all right so here we are our job as a musician is to create and uh a mean a meaning a feeling that connects us to our audience that makes us different that creates loyalty because as long as you deliver on that the so and that's why a musician might struggle so let's say you got a you know a rock and roll artist and all of a sudden they create a country album now you're going to lose a lot of people because the expectation has been breached okay so that's so that's really what marketing is about now the the good thing about the world today is that every person and every person has an opportunity to reach directly to their fans through any you know all kinds of different kinds of social media you know outlets uh and so we don't have to worry about gatekeepers we don't have to pay advertising agencies we just have to really show up in a human way that reflects our brand that's consistent with our brand and typically you know as you sort of mentioned that you know an artist and their persona it's generally going to be consistent with who they are anyway yeah i mean unless you're like kids you know then all bets are off but you know for for most you know singer songwriters you're going to be so that so the idea is how can you take people along on your journey and let them in on what you're doing now here now we're going to connect the last dot and this really this is where i have a new book out so this is this is like the evolution of my thinking and my new book is about community so most artists uh naturally they're doing something on social media social media is cool um because it gives you the opportunity to connect to people who have never heard of you before so you can reach this vast new audience you've got the potential to you know possibly reach the whole world but it's a weak relational link i have 180,000 followers on twitter if i put out on twitter hey everybody i've got a new book you know or i got a new album out how many people will buy it almost none because it's it's like throwing a message in a bottle out into the ocean right it's just it's ephemeral the people are there the connection is possible but i mean is it really going to connect with people so the strategy is to take them to the next step which is an audience so do you have something they can subscribe to a blog a podcast a video series uh an instagram account now it's not throwing a bottle in the ocean it's reliable reach they're saying i love you i want to hear from you i want to know everything about you and now you've got an audience and if you say i've got a new album out they're going to buy a lot of albums right so the strategy is you know create this you know brand connect on social media but bring the social media you know connections into an audience encourage them to subscribe now unfortunately this is where most businesses and most artists stop you know i've got my thing i've got my audience that's cool the ultimate emotional connection that's what we want we want the strongest possible emotional connection that is a community okay so let's use kiss as an example they've got the brand they're on social media they've got you know they've got an audience but they've also got the kiss army the kiss freaking army now here's the difference in an audience it's a cult of personality if you go away the audience goes away but in a community people know each other there's communion there's a purpose bigger than the music it's like look at my kiss t-shirt look at my kiss makeup right you look at my recording from this show yeah oh my gosh they're on their final tour right and so it's it's it's like a neighborhood and here's the interesting thing that i found in my research james so my new book is called belonging to the brand the last great marketing strategy because you know i've been in the business for a long time and i've been in the business for a long time and i've been in the business for a long time and i've been in the you know we're blocking ads we're in a streaming economy we don't want ads we don't see ads we don't believe ads but we need community we don't just want community we need community to be fully human human beings we have got to be in community this is the only kind of marketing that people actually want so the key the ultimate is to bring people into a community and then and then focus on getting people once they know each other and they have a place where their friends are they're never going to leave you because that means they got to leave their friends right yeah they literally belong to the brand yeah a community creates a layer of emotional switching costs they can't leave you they're going to always be loyal to you because that's their that's where their peeps are that's where their friends are and uh uh and and it it's the most powerful kind of marketing there is so there you go that is artistic marketing strategy in five minutes that was amazing thank you so much
Speaker 1for doing that if there was an audience here now there'd be a standing ovation i'll just imagine it in my mind yes yes please do because when this episode goes out there will be a fragmented audience all around the world who'll be doing exactly that like finally you're going to be doing exactly that you're going to be doing exactly that you're going to be doing finally it makes sense now someone has just condensed it all down succinctly into five minutes and cleared up all of the noise on this issue so thank you so much for doing that that was brilliant and a lot of what you said resonated with me personally because i've fallen foul to a lot of those pitfalls myself um in the sense that when i first discovered the power of social media i really threw myself into it head first and i built up organically a large audience of over several hundred thousand followers across my various pages online which was awesome right but only a very small proportion of that following became an actual engaged audience and listening to what you just said i think it's because i focused exclusively on attracting as large an audience as i could and not on building an actual intimate human community so what's the missing link there how does one go from utilizing the amazing powers of social media to attract and build their tribe you know but also to then develop that into the sort of self-sustaining community that you just described well
Speaker 2there there are two things i think in terms of of of the artists i mean normally if i was talking about a company i would start with the culture of the company i mean is it a culture is it a company that really cares about their customers or do they just want to hit their quarterly sales number i assume if you're an an artist or a band that doesn't really matter because you are the culture now here's the big thing that a lot of people miss is well let's go back to this idea of brand and what you stand for here's an example that's easy to understand patagonia so when you hear this brand patagonia you know they stand for environmental sustainability responsible recreation i mean everything they do and everything they say i mean i think i just read last year the like the the founder of the company is selling the company and taking all the product out of the company and they're selling the product out of the company and giving it to environmental causes wow so i mean that's what they're about i've got a friend who only buys patagonia which by the way is not the cheapest clothing but he says i only buy patagonia because my purpose intersects with their purpose so he literally belongs to the brand so you get back to this idea of like what do you what do you stand for you know what do you stand for what kind of sense of fun or what sense of social commitment or you know what what what's going on with you and then you you you move people into a community because they want to be part of whatever you're part of right it might just be fun it might just be i want to be entertained in a certain way that's perfectly fine um other other ways it might be people who are not part of the community who are part of the community who are part of the people want to they want to grow maybe they want to change the world in the same way you do um and and and the artists might think well look i can change the world in a bigger way if i've got my fans with me yeah i can have more fun if i have my fans with me i can create better art if i have my fans with me um i can get on a bigger stage if i can have my fans with me so what can you do bigger and better and have a bigger impact if you can change the world in a bigger way people are coming alongside you because they believe in the same thing you do so that's that's next and then they need a they need a place to gather um it could be i mean a lot of people today are going on to discord right uh my community is on discord i have a community dedicated to learning about the future of marketing there are people there from all over the world challenging each other with new ideas now you know how does that grow you know how my purpose is you know i'm writing books and blogging and and giving speeches about the future of marketing so that's my purpose and that's their purpose and we're growing each other and we're we're learning and every blog post i write now every speech i give somewhere in that is an idea that came out of this community we're we're pushing each other and learning and so maybe you say hey everybody you know we're going to get on discord and then you set up chat rooms of things that are going on and maybe every once in a while you come on and give a little you know play a little song or say hello use the audio channel use the video channel on discord you know have a little event prime the pump and then watch the watch from for for leaders who emerge people who want to start a discussion yeah maybe they want to start a newsletter about you maybe they want to help you with promotions maybe when they you maybe you set up people in different cities if you're on tour you know on the ground kind of people yeah and and you find those volunteers who who build the community for you and so now i mean i've got uh your people in my community we're doing experiments in the metaverse i'm not doing it they're organizing the whole thing they decided they some people wanted to start a podcast we're starting a podcast we're writing a book we're writing a book together it's going to come out in in june we're doing experiments with with nfts uh and and and and the last thing i'll i'll say is every we're talking here about discord and online community but every community has the best communities have an offline component as well So if you're an artist, You have a special section where your community sits, or you have a meet and greet, or you have a party before the show for your community. Because once they see each other face to face, remember that the love and the friendships in a community, that spills over to the artist. That's as important as the love for you. If they love each other, then you don't need any more marketing. Your marketing is over. It's marketing without marketing. Because you build this group of people who, you know, they're going to do the marketing for you. They're going to talk about all the things that they're learning about in this community and spread the word.
Speaker 1That is a great point amongst, you know, many amazing points that you've dropped so far, which is something I hadn't previously considered in my use of social media as my means of audience generation. Because if I understand what you're saying correctly, you're saying that the role of social media has now changed. It might be a great place to meet new people and meet your audience, but it is no longer the end destination. It's no longer enough. You now need to have that other home, that other hub where your guys, your tribe exclusively mingle, which isn't just an open town square, as Elon Musk calls it. You know, it's your home. It's your club. It's your private membership area where your tribe can assemble and become that thriving and collaborative. Collaborative tribe that you described. Exactly.
Speaker 2100%. That's the goal is, you know, it's, you know, I don't have a good analogy at the top of my head, but it's almost like, you know, you're planting the seeds in social media that you, you know, the harvest comes in your audience and then your community. So you want to, you want to connect with people in social media, but somehow encourage them to. You know, to opt into whatever they can subscribe to and then eventually become part of a community on, you know, on, on discord or reddit or wherever you want to have your community.
Speaker 1Yeah. And it's a lot more platform options now as well, isn't it? You know, outside of the main, the major ones, you know, like a telegram, you've mentioned discord already, you know, mastodon is one that I want to try and check.
Speaker 2Well, you got to be careful because I don't, you know, like mastodon is similar to Twitter. It's still an audience, right? Okay. I mean, you've got to have a home. Base like Slack or circle or a Facebook group, uh, where people can go every day, any time of day, day or night, and they can come in there and meet friends who share their love, share their passion of, of what's going on. You've got to have a home base and if it's Facebook or Twitter or something like that, it's, it's, you know, it's, it's, it's probably not even an audience. You've got to, you've, a community is, you know, what defines a community is when they know each other. You know, if you've got an audience is great, by the way. I mean, I've got a huge audience and they, you know, they buy my books and they hire me to give speeches and hire me to do marketing consulting. That's great. But the ultimate connection is, is community. And I'll give you, let me give you a quick example of how this works. And, um. So I teach a class on personal branding. So it's, you know, it's, it's, you know, it's reasonable, but it's, it's $1,500. It's still, you know, quite a bit of money. And, uh, so every time I have one of these classes, I have to, I have to promote it. I have to put it on social media. I have to put it on LinkedIn and, you know, I try to limit the class to 10 because I give people a lot of individual attention. And then, you know, last class, I only got eight. I didn't, I couldn't fill the class and I was doing all this work to try to fill the class and I only got eight. In my community, someone said, you know, Mark, I saw that you teach this class. It would be great if you could teach this class just for our community so that these are people that know each other. We could have friends in this class and then we could help each other. And then we'd be in this community talking the same language. I said, well, okay, here's a signup list. I'll let 10 people in and 10 people signed up in two hours. Wow. No promotion, no social media, no work. Because it's, it's the, it's the, it's the ultimate marketing. It's marketing with no marketing. Right. My mark, my, if, if, if my community gets big enough and strong enough, I'll never have to worry about content, marketing, advertising, or SEO ever again. There's a, there's a chapter in my book that it would be very, very relevant to artists. I've written 10 books in the new book belonging to the brand chapter four. I did something I've never done before. I devoted the entire chapter to one person. This is a, this is a woman. She was an entrepreneur, had a great business. This is 2015. She got pregnant. Some people are saying, well, you know, you got to give up the business now. You got to be a mom. Some were saying, no, you got this great business. You got to fight for the business. She decided I want to do both, but I don't really feel supported. I want to do both. She started talking about these ideas in a, in a Facebook group. She had five or six followers. She had five or six people that said, yes, we need a group that will support moms who want to be entrepreneurs. Long story short, she now has a Facebook group with 80,000 women in it.
Speaker 1Wow.
Speaker 2She's making a million dollars a year. No sales, no marketing, no advertising zip. No SEO, no content marketing, nothing. She has no salespeople, no marketing budget at all because she has 80,000 people in this community. She said, my only job is to make them feel validated and safe.
Speaker 3Wow.
Speaker 2This is a safe place to talk about these issues. So she creates courses, videos, coaching events, a paid membership VIP level. So she's, she's, she's like doubling her business every year with no sales budget, no marketing budget. Any artist could do use that model. It's, it's like I had this little victory, you know, selling, you know, 10 slots in my class in, in, you know, just a couple minutes. And it's just like, oh, that's how this works. What if I had 80,000 people in my group? I could sell anything. I could fill everything. My marketing would be over. That's the beauty of community. It's the ultimate marketing. It's the ultimate emotional connection with no marketing. That is incredible.
Speaker 1What a story. And that makes total sense as well, because if you've, if you're a part of that community and you want to do a crowd funder for an album or a project or something like that, that's, you go to your guys. You know what I mean? Because it's, it's there. It's all there. Yeah. That's awesome, man. Jesus. What a story. And like for a band starting out. Then let's say they only have a bunch of followers, you know, they haven't really built much yet, but you know, they're a kick-ass band. They're hardworking. They're, they're, they're, they've got a great brand for want of a better word. They've got a great new album coming out, but they're trying to harness the power of social media towards that end goal example that you just used there. But they're not yet at the stage where everything they do is super interesting. And this, this is a common complaint that I have from so many of my friends is we get social media despondency, you know? Like we run out of steam because the relentless need to find things that are interesting and engaging and fun and, or insightful or cool or exciting. It's not always possible because so much of what we do in reality, isn't any of those things, you know, there's a lot of admin and emails and many people have got day jobs and, you know, shit going on outside of the band and people run out of ideas. They run out of steam. It's very difficult to maintain that kind of momentum, like in a corporation, you know, they'll have, or, or in a major label band, you know, they'll have a digital department and a team of people. They're constantly making content, but how do we, as, um, speaking about specifically about my community as artists, how do we navigate that without getting a little bit of traction, a little bit of hype going? And then all of a sudden it runs out of steam because you just, you know, or, or oftentimes like, like to use my current example, oftentimes you're too busy doing the thing to be documenting the thing. Like I've, I've just received my advance to write my second book. There's a deadline looming. I've got a crack on with the book as much as I'd love to be, you know, taking pictures. And stuff like that for social media, I've got to actually write the damn book. And there's nothing interesting or cool or exciting about a picture of me hunched over a laptop, writing a book. And there's only so many times I can post that picture because the process of writing a book is, is, is exactly that, you know what I mean? It's, it's not interesting. So how do we harness the power of these platforms to the end destination that you have brilliantly described without having to fall foul to filling the world with more pointless crap or, or staged inauthentic crap? Because we know we've got nothing genuinely exciting happening right now, which will obviously have the opposite effect. How do we navigate that?
Speaker 2Yeah, I mean, again, well, first of all, I want to back up because you said something interesting that I want to build on. You talk about, well, maybe it's a small band and they've got a great band, but they don't have a lot of followers. Every community starts with five people. Right. I mean, it's amazing. It's basically you've got five friends or five fans or five customers, five people who just believe in you and love you and want to help you. And that's where it starts.
Speaker 1Right.
Speaker 2Arguably, the biggest community in the world is Twitch. Started with five people. The stories, the stories in the book, this guy named Justin, he started live streaming his life. He had a camera on his head and just live streamed his life. And everybody thought that was cool and they wanted to do it. So he created this software where you could live stream, you know, what's going on in your life. There were these games. These gamers. And they're saying, we want to live stream. People, we want to watch each other play games. And he said, that's not a thing. That's not, that's not what this is about. No. They said, it is a thing. It is a thing. He said, okay. And that's how Twitch got started. Just five or six passionate people who said, just give us a chance. So, I mean, even if you're small and starting out. You know, you're not going to be able to do it. You're not going to be able to do it. You're not going to be able to do it. You're not going to be able to do it. You're not going to be able to do it. You're not going to be able to do it. So, don't be, you know, concerned about it. I mean, you could be optimistic about it. Because here's the difference. Let's, you know, for the third time, let's go back to KISS. KISS didn't start the KISS army. The army started the army. All right. It was an, it was an, they got lucky. Really. They got lucky in a way. They had critical mass of people that started this sort of movement. But what most bands miss out today, they can create their own movement. You can be mindful about it. We've got the technology today that's helping us. You know, we talked about, you know, Discord and Web3 and even like the Metaverse. And, you know, bands, artists are using NFTs in creative ways. There's a case study in the book where the whole community is built on NFTs. And the NFTs, you know, get, you know, give you, you know, advantages and they give you access to certain, you know, opportunities to, to create new content, create new stories. So there's just so many opportunities. If the, if the band approach this, like I'm a startup. Right. I'm a startup. I need help. I need help with promotion. I might need help with finance. I might need even help on, you know, creative input.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2So, so, so in, in, in the startup world, most startups, their, their marketing begins with community. Saying, look, you're my fans. Let's get going. And then you start with five. And then the five turns to 10 because they, because they're saying, oh my gosh, I'm having. So much fun. I met these cool people and we're actually getting to have creative input into this, you know, into this band. They're helped. We get to pick the album cover.
Speaker 3Yeah.
Speaker 2Or whatever. Right. Can you believe this? Or, you know, I did this piece of art and, and this, you know, this might actually be the, the album cover. So people, more and more people get involved and then the, and then, you know, you build the momentum, you know, but you've at least at first. Yeah. You, you, you've got to be involved. You've got to be accessible. You've got to be open. You've, you know, um, this, this same community that I talked about that's built on the NFTs, um, is, was started by an artist and, and this artist comes in every day and people watch him draw. So you're sort of like, you know, demeaning yourself in a way about writing the book. Why wouldn't you just pop on every day and say. Well, here's what I've written today. This is where I'm going with the thing. Right. Or I've hit a, I've hit a block today. You know, I, I thought I was going this way and I just thought I was all wrong and I wasn't being honest and I'm writing the whole darn thing over. And, or you just, or you said, I did my best work today. Let me read this to you. Or, or here's a memory. I'm sharing my book. I've never told anyone this before. I'm going to tell you first. So, I mean, there's lots of things that you can do that take five minutes. That it's just peeling back the curtain to say, you know, here's what's, you know, here's what's going on in my, in my world today.
Speaker 1That's fascinating stuff. I mean, it's so interesting for me to hear you say things like that, because that would never even occur to me. That's the difference between someone that obviously has a natural talent for this mindset and someone who doesn't. For me, I would be like, why would anyone care that I'm writing? You know, it's boring. It's a boring process. They'll, they'll enjoy the book. The book is the end game.
Speaker 2But James, think how easy this is. It doesn't take a lot of time. It doesn't take a lot of talent. It takes a mindset. Right. You said it exactly right. And a mindset is something that anybody can change. It's just a matter of awareness. It's a matter of what you need to do to make it work. That's a little bit different from the way you used to do. Things, but that's the way the world it's, it's like tuning yourself to the way the world is today. And if you can do that, you can do marketing.
Speaker 1That's a great point. And I know that my musician friends are going to be virtually high-fiving, you know, loving, finally having some clarity and inspiration on these, um, what are often, you know, frustrating and confusing extracurricular things that we also have to do as well as all of the other bloody things we now have to master in this day and age. Um, I don't know. A common conflict that I know happens amongst many of my friends. And I'm sure it's the same across all industries too, certainly for startups and, you know, independence is how to prioritize our time because we do so much as it is already. And I, and I know that a lot of my friends feel like, well, do I spend the morning, you know, taking selfies and posting on social media, or do I practice my instrument and write the song and, and all the book, whatever it might be, and, and actually do the thing that ultimately is what I should be doing. And I know that some people, you know, do say to designate a day to doing all of that. We social media stuff. And I know that other people just, you know, just constantly do it on the fly. Do you have any recommendations about how to manage that most effectively to maintain consistency?
Speaker 2Well, it depends on, um, you know, it depends on the, you know, the situation. If like when I teach my personal branding class, what I do is, is I emphasize that the people will create some kind of content, you know, a blog or a podcast. Or a video or something once a week, and I have them commit to 18 months because it takes 18 months to really see if it's, it's, it's not a hockey stick, you know, it's not going to go straight up. It's, it's, it takes time. It takes patience. It grows slowly, but then it starts to build and it starts, it starts to work. You know, I'll, I'll, I'll tell you, here's an example. I'll use them. My class, uh, the black keys. So I got to, you know, uh, maybe six or seven years ago, I got to go backstage and meet the black keys. And this is when they were just about, they were blowing up. I saw them in a place that held 2000 people. And 18 months later, they were playing Madison square garden. They were blowing up. And I asked Patrick Carney, I said, what was it? What, what was. What was the thing that just ignited you? He said, nothing. He said, we've been writing and touring for six years, but we just don't stop. Right. We just create, create. We want to do a little bit better week by week, by week, by week, a little bit better on our shows, a little bit better on our songs. And you don't give up. So for personal brand, you know, I recommend, you know, once a week for a community, probably something. Once a day, and it could be as simple as I saw something in the news today that blew my mind. What does this mean for artists and let people chime in, or I just listened to the most magnificent piece of music today, it reminded me of you or I just saw today is the 50th anniversary of the dark side of the moon album. This was a special impact of me in my life. Tell me what you thought about it, you know, in the community. And then, and then if you do that every day, you'll find after a few weeks, the community takes over, they'll start having their own conversations, they'll start creating their own culture. So, you know, I think personal brand, you know, once a, once a week, creating a community where people are gathering in some place like discord, you know, I start out doing something once a day.
Speaker 1Consistent and keep the faith, I suppose, as well, you know, because it can be challenging when you're looking at those likes and... You can see that no one's cared in that video that you're already proud of. No one's watched it.
Speaker 2Consistency is more important than genius. Right. You know, you just keep showing up. If you want to become part of the fabric of someone's life, you got to show up. You got to keep showing up and do it on a consistent basis. You know, when I started blogging in 2009, I blogged 650 weeks in a row without stopping. And then I took a little break for COVID, got really sick.
Speaker 3Oh, shit.
Speaker 2And then, you know, blogged another 180 weeks in a row. I've had a podcast for, we're in our 11th year, never missed an episode. Wow. Because you just show up, you show up, you show up, and they know it's Tuesday. What's Mark going to send me? And you show up. And soon, you become a habit. You become part of their life. So, community. What's James got for me today? What's got to do with it? Oh, look at this. Billy posted something today. That's interesting, too. Oh, now there's three of us.
Speaker 1And that's how it works. That makes so much, so much sense. Yeah. I must say, you're making me feel like a slacker, Mark, as well. We're 11 years without missing an episode. I think I took a week off after my third episode or something. And I think we should mention as well, probably. We haven't mentioned this yet. There is a meritocratic element to this as well in the fact that you have to actually be good. You have to actually be delivering something of value and be contributing something good to the world. In the case of music, which this episode has been mostly centered around, you have to be good. You know what I mean? That has to come first.
Speaker 2Oh, right. You've got to deliver the goods. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, people are only going to talk about your restaurant if the food is good. And the price is fair. And the bathrooms are clean. And, you know, it's a clean environment. You've got to deliver the goods. Yeah. In whatever you do, whatever business you are. And if you deliver the goods as a musician, then you've got a chance to build a community and win and blow up.
Speaker 1Love it. Well, as we come towards the end, I wanted to ask you about the future. Because I'm personally seeing a stark change in the old dinosaur platforms, you know, like Facebook and Twitter and YouTube. I'm sorry. I'm seeing like their engagement is thinning out quite drastically. And I know that many people are becoming disillusioned in those, you know, gigantic platforms now. But do you think that they're still as relevant as they used to be? Or do you think that they're soon to become like relics of the past and that something else is going to take over? And if so, is there anything that you've got your money on?
Speaker 2They are. They're definitely aging out. And the reason they're aging out is because young people don't want to be there. Young people, they don't want to be exposed. They don't want to be ridiculed. They don't want to be part of this polarized world. So Gen Z, to some extent millennials, they're blockading themselves in digital campfires. They're going to places where they can't be seen and they can't be found. I think Discord is big. I think Discord is a place where a lot of young people are going. It started out as a place for gamers. And now it's become a place for artists, a place for tech industry people. It's kind of like the hot place right now. And Discord is growing and improving a lot. It's very, very flexible what you can do there. I think another place where young people are hanging out, and I don't really know the solution to this, is they're spending more and more time in video games. Places like Fortnite. But brands are showing up there, right? You can buy things in Fortnite. You can go to concerts in Fortnite. So I think we're going to have to see what the next big channel is. Obviously, TikTok is big right now with Gen Z. It's not without controversy. It's not without some legal problems right now. So we'll have to see how that plays out. I predict TikTok will be okay because there's a lot of money there. I'll put my bet on the money. I'll put my money where the money is. But here's the other thing I would look at, James, is that social media fragments along demographic lines and age groups. So really, the only demographic growing on Facebook is 55 and over. Everybody kind of loves YouTube and Instagram. You've got 18 to 34 kind of on Snapchat. And then, you know, kind of 20 to 12 on TikTok. But behind Gen Z is Gen Alpha. And they're going to look up at their big brothers and sisters and say, nah, we've got this thing. That's going to be the next innovation. And it's not there yet. I'm hearing it. I'm hearing it. I'm hearing rumblings. But keep your eyes open. Keep your eyes open. Certainly, if I was a musician appealing to young people today, you know, TikTok is obvious. Discord, I think, is obvious. And then, you know, it's kind of lots of other options beyond that.
Speaker 1Fascinating stuff. Yeah, it'd be interesting to see what the new platforms are looking around the corner and what the next big thing is going to be, you know. But as we're speaking about the future, we need to, as we come towards the end of the episode, talk about what the future holds for Mr. Mark Schaefer. What have you got coming up? What's around the corner? I can see that you've got the brand new book Standing Proud behind you there on the bookshelf belonging to the brand. What else have you got happening? And what do we need to let people know about?
Speaker 2I mean, I've always got lots of different things. But the one thing that may be interesting to you and your fans is I have a marketing retreat. And for the first time, I'm going to bring it to you. I'm going to have a marketing retreat at a castle outside of Dublin in September. Wow. And this is all going to be about the future of marketing. I'm limiting it to a small group of people. And it's literally going to be a retreat because it's going to be re-energizing. It's about being relevant in this marketing world. How do we stay relevant? How do we adjust? How do we adapt to all these things in this marketing world? And it's going to be a lot of fun because we're going to be in this beautiful medieval castle. It's built in like 1053. We're going to have falconry. We're going to drink mead. Probably by the end of the event, I'll be in armor. Who knows? But my site is Businesses Grow. So if you don't remember how to spell my name, just go to Businesses Grow. Dot com. We mentioned dot com. We mentioned, you know, my books, my blog, my podcast and my events. You can all find it at BusinessesGrow.com.
Speaker 1Yeah, the site is amazing. I mean, I will link everything, all of your links into the description for the podcast. And I'll give it a plug after we close the chat as well, because the website, you've got so much free stuff on there as well. Great resources with the podcast and articles and blogs and links to your books, which I think I'm now going to have to go out and buy all of. So definitely go and check out BusinessesGrow.com. And people can follow. Follow you also at Mark Schaefer on Twitter and Instagram, which I'll link in as well. Definitely worth doing that, because you share a lot of great stuff on your socials as well.
Speaker 2Yeah, I try. I try to. Instagram, I don't. It's not business at all. It's basically rocks and plants, hiking and kayaking. And it's like peering into my personal life a little bit.
Speaker 1Well, where can people find out about this awesome event in Dublin in September? Have you announced it yet? Is there a ticket link available? Yeah.
Speaker 2If you go to if you go to BusinessesGrow and then BusinessesGrow.com and at the at the at the nav bar at the top, it says events.
Speaker 1Right.
Speaker 2And I've got one coming up in America in in the spring. And then in September, I've got the first one ever in Ireland because I have so many friends in Europe. They've been begging me to do this in Ireland. And I will just say this is the best thing I have done in my career. Wow. Period. It is magical. It is life changing. You know, and it's you'll you'll meet people that will help you succeed for the rest of your life. So it's it's it's it's a magical, magical event.
Speaker 1Wow. I'm going to go and grab myself one of those bad boys now. I think a weekend in Ireland as well is always a fun thing to do. So hopefully we'll see you there. Mark, that sounds absolutely amazing. Thank you so much for doing this. I really appreciate you. You've really given so much knowledge and insight there to my community, which is a real gift. We thank you so much. And thanks for everything you're doing. And. Best wishes with everything coming up. Thank you, James. Thank you, Mark. Thanks so much for your time today, man. It's been great to meet you. See you soon.
Speaker 2All right. Great interview. Take care.
Speaker 1Mr. Mark Schaefer, ladies and gentlemen, put it together for him. What a nice guy. And what an absolute dude for coming on and answering all my stupid questions and giving us all of that amazing free insight into how to manage this wild new terrain and landscape that we all find ourselves in. No excuses now, guys. You know, like Mark said, this is a mindset shift and he's giving. You all the tools and all the answers that you need there to get cracking and go and achieve your dreams, man. I know I framed a lot of the questions around the music. industry obviously because that's the only one that i have any experience of and it's the community that i spend most of my time within so that's why i hear from people but i you know it applies to everything man you know like whatever industry you're in you can apply the wisdom that mark has just dropped on you there to your success and your advantage and i would recommend you go back and listen to the podcast again take some notes and put that awesome wisdom to your advantage the lovely and brilliant mr mark schaefer can be found on his website at businessesgrow.com is also on twitter at mark w schaefer let me spell that it is s c h a e f e r that's mark w schaefer on twitter he's on instagram at mark w schaefer also and on youtube at mw schaefer now his website that i mentioned there businessesgrow.com has got tons and tons of incredible free content including podcasts articles blogs links videos all sorts of things it's amazing that he gives all this stuff away for free so honestly go and do a deep dive at businessesgrow.com you can also check out any of mark's best-selling books including belonging to the brand marketing rebellion known social media explained the dow of twitter and many many more and the event that mark mentioned there in ireland is under the heading on his website events it's called the uprising europe which i love the title of that and there are still just a handful of tickets available so please if you've got any sense at all go and snap them up right away so a massive thank you again a round of applause to mr mark schaefer for blowing all of our minds and sharing so generously all of that amazing knowledge that's going to help all of us do our thing thank you so much for joining us and listening and if you want to thank me for making these conversations happen all you got to do is show me some love on that subscription button baby go and hit subscribe follow on whatever platform it is or on all of them even if you listen to it on youtube go and follow me on spotify and apple and anywhere else just to help share the love and if you've got any questions you want to be the first to know about upcoming tour dates with the band new merch secret live streams and all that sort of jazz then join the secret society mailing list at jameskennedystuff.com slash tribe that's it from me for this week stay tuned for another awesome episode coming up next week with another amazing guest and in the meantime take care of yourselves take care of each other and i'll see you then have a good adios
PodcastTranscript AI