The Entrepreneurs Radio Show 088 David Meerman Scott

THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW

Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

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Episode #88: David Meerman Scott

In this episode, Travis speaks with successful entrepreneur and best-selling author David Meerman

Scott. David’s road from corporate employee to a successful entrepreneur hasn’t been a straight line.

However, as he turned his unfortunate situation to an unexpected opportunity, David’s perseverance

and positive thinking transformed him into the marketing and business success that he is right now.

Travis and David gave various learning points to the listeners as they shared the secret on how to

become the best in your marketing niche. David encourages budding entrepreneurs to concentrate their

marketing efforts on creating the best web content that their target market is looking for. According to

him, entrepreneurs should concentrate on creating content that would be beneficial but related to their

customers instead of solely introducing themselves and what their product is about. Employing

professional help in creating your content is also necessary to ensure quality in the things you present

to your customers. These are just some of the things that would surely interest entrepreneurs in today’s

episode of the Entrepreneur’s Radio Show.

David Meerman Scott – Strategic marketing and PR

to grow your business

Travis: Hey, it's Travis Lane Jenkins, welcome to episode number 88 of the Entrepreneur's Radio

Show, a production of RockstarEntrepreneurNetwork.com. Today, I'm going to introduce you rock star

entrepreneur David Meerman Scott. Now, David's a marketing strategist and a best-selling author of 8

books, including 3 international best-sellers. He's also an advisor, easy for me to say, to emerging

companies which you'll hear more about during the interview. Some of David's well-known books are

The New Rules of Marketing and PR, also Real-time Marketing and PR, and Marketing Lessons from

the Grateful Dead. Now, David has a great story of having to start over later in life, which I know a lot of

us can completely empathize with. So, as usual, this is going to be a great interview for several

reasons. Plus, there's going to be a lot of value that you can use to take your business and help grow

your business to that next level.

Now, also as always, be sure and stay with us until the very end if you can because I like to share

some inspiration with you as well. Now, before we get started I want to remind you that there are a

couple of ways you can take these interviews with you on the go through iTunes or Stitcher. Although

both of them have clunky search functions when you go to their websites. So, what you can do is you

http://www.rockstarentrepreneurnetwork.com/

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1118488768/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1118488768&linkCode=as2&tag=travisandsand-20

http://amzn.to/1fu71iw

http://amzn.to/1fPRZoO






can go to rockstarentrepreneurnetwork.com, click on the iTunes or Stitcher menu in the bar and it will

take you there. Now, you need to know, if you have an Android phone, Stitcher is your best choice, as I

understand. Now, I have an iTunes account and an iPhone, so I use iTunes. But for those with Android,

definitely go the Stitcher route, that way you can take these interviews with you on the go while you're

driving, workout, or whatever works best for you.

So, now that we've got all that stuff out of the way, let's go ahead and get down to business. Welcome

to the show David.

David: Hey Travis, thanks, good to be here.

Travis: You bet. I know you're very busy. Do you mind giving us kind of the back-story of how you got

to be where you're at today?

David: Sure. So, I worked at a number of different media companies in my career. I was Asian

Marketing Director at Knight-Ridder. I was based in Tokyo for 7 years and Hong Kong for 2 years. And

then I moved to Boston, and I was the vice-president of Marketing, our company called NewsEdge

which was then acquired by Thompson in 2002, and as a result of that I lost my job, I was fired. And

because it was 2002, it was right after 9/11, it was really difficult to find another vice president of

marketing job. So that's what forced me into my entrepreneurial role, and it was a good thing too.

Sometimes in life we end up doing something down an unusual path. And in my case, because I got

fired and because the job market was terrible, it launched my entrepreneurial career.

Travis: Right. So, really no desires to be an entrepreneur until you were just kind of forced into it due to

circumstances, huh?

David: Well, I wouldn't say no desire, but I would say that the push to actually do it was because of

that.

Travis: Right, right. Sometimes you can be stuck in a success trap where things are going so well that

there's no need to really aspire or make that transition, or make that jump, right?

David: Well, I think there's a course of the corporate tit. Those of us who have worked in big

companies know that you work for a big, famous company, you have a business card with name on it

that people recognize. You get health insurance, you get a nice salary paid every month, and that's a

nice kind of thing. And I think it's very, very easy for people to get complacent in that situation. And it's

only natural to say, "Shoot, why should I try to do something else, this is pretty good." And I think for

many people that's fine, that's just fine, there's nothing wrong with it. But I think if you have an





entrepreneurial spirit that can be a little bit disheartening in that, you're like, "Well, gosh, what should I

do? This is pretty good." And in some cases the spouse is the problem because they say, "What do you

mean you want to quit your job? This is a great gig we got going here." So, I was just lucky in my case

because I think if I hadn't been given my walking papers that I would probably still have a corporate job.

Travis: Yeah. And there's somewhat of chasm between if you have a corporate job, high-level, making

pretty decent income, and transitioning into working for yourself. Replacing that income can be a pretty

big gap, right?

David: Well, it can be, sure, depending on what it is you want to do in your entrepreneurial life. Again, I

was lucky, again, it worked in my favor in that because in the company I was working for I was a named

officer, I was vice president of marketing. The company was acquired, and then as a result of the

acquisition I lost my job. I had a nice little severance package so I was able to ease that transition. And

again, that was a valuable thing because I think if I had said to myself, "Jeez, I'm going to quit my job."

I'm going to have a no severance and I'm going to start this thing that would have been a much scarier

proposition. In hind sight, looking back, it would have absolutely been the thing to do, but I'm not sure

they would've done it. Because, again as you say, replacing that income would be a lot more difficult.

Travis: Right. And so, it also makes more sense to me now having a severance package gives you

enough time to where you can sit with yourself, "Okay, what is it that I want to do from this point

forward?" And maybe take some time to strategically plan that out. And the reason why I like to go into

this is I feel like it's very illustrative for other entrepreneurs to hear the journey to success for

everybody, because I think there's this misconception that success is a rocket ride straight up, right?

David: Yeah.

Travis: And it's very rarely the truth or at least that I've seen.

David: Right.

Travis: And so, I want people to see that it's a very flawed path that requires a lot tenacity. But I can

see that you had some time, fortunately, to strategically plan this out, right?

David: Yeah, I think I've always kind of wanted to do something like this. I have two people in my life

that have pushed me in this direction, long before I actually went in this direction. My wife was

somebody who always said to me, "Jeez, you should go out on your own. You should become a

professional speaker, you should write books." And I also had a friend who I worked with in Tokyo

when I lived there, who was and still is, 25 years later, independent. And he's always said to me, "Jeez,




this independent thing is a great lifestyle, you should consider doing it." So those 2 people have always,

sort of pushed me in that direction, and they've done so in a way that I always had in the back of my

mind. Should I ever want to or need to start something on my own, there's people who have suggested

that because of my personality and who I am that I could make a go of that. So that was a really helpful

thing. And then of course, as I said, having been fired, that was one of the best things that ever

happened around getting me to do this thing. But the other thing that was going through my mind, and

the other thing that was very important is that back in 2002, when I did lose my job, I was 40 years old.

And I had always dreaded the idea of becoming in my 50's or 60's and losing my job. When it's much,

much more difficult because of ageism to actually get a new job. The harsh realities of the working

world is that once you reach a certain age, it's harder to get an organization to hire you back at that

same level is just reality.

Travis: Right.

David: So I was aware of that. That was something that I saw my father struggle with. That was

something that I saw some of my co-workers and friends struggle with. So, I always had in the forefront

in my mind that I don't want to end up being one of these guys with gray hair, and people look at, and

say, "20 years ago this guy was good, but what are we going to do with him now?" So when this

fortuitous event happened and I was still only 40, on the relatively young side, I had a great, great gift. I

look at it as a gift that, okay, now you can go out, you can start this thing, you can become an

entrepreneur, you can control your own destiny, you can live by your own wits. And you can do it at an

age when people will look at you and say, "Oh yeah, this was a conscious to decision", as opposed to

saying, "Oh yeah, he lost a job and has nothing better to do."

Travis: Right. Okay, one last question then we'll move on. Did you view this as a catastrophe initially,

when you were terminated?

David: No, I didn't.

Travis: No, you didn't. Okay.

David: No, it was the third time that it happened to me. I just see it as business. I have terminated

people in my career, a number of different times at most of the organizations I worked with. I have been

terminated two other times. So, yeah, it happens, it's part of business.

Travis: But in your life at that time, you didn't think-- A lot of people think it's just the end of the world

when they get terminated.




David: No, I knew it was a stage I had to go through, and I had to figure out what I was going to do.

What I thought I was going to and then reality set in really quickly was I thought I was going to get

another vice president of marketing job, but again, this is fortunate, again this is a gift. The gift I got was

that it was a terrible job market because it was just a couple of months after 9/11.

Travis: Right.

David: Nobody was hiring vice presidents in marketing at medium and large-sized companies, which is

where I had set my sights on. No one was going to hire me to do a job like that because everybody put

the brakes on everything. It was too up in the air of what was going on in the business world, and no

one was going to make a commitment of bringing somebody on. So, either I was going to sit on a

beach and do absolutely nothing, or I was going to jump out and say, "Shoot. Now, this is an

opportunity. Fate has dealt me these cards and what a gift that's given. I better go for it, because last

thing I want to do is squander the opportunity than sit around and do nothing." And then up a year later,

without having started anything, and still have no job.

Travis: Okay. Right. So 2002, you're starting your venture. How long before you find success?

David: Well, it depends on how you define success.

Travis: We'll let you define that.

David: My first definition of success was that very, very quickly. I would say in about 4 months, I was

able to replace 100% of my income. So, the first thing that I actually did was do some consulting for

some companies. And I never really called it consulting. What I actually did was I realized that because

the economy was so terrible and because nobody was willing to hire vice presidents of marketing on a

full-time basis, what I actually did was I became the outsourced vice president of marketing for several

different companies at the same time. And these were smaller companies that have enough to have

full-time VP's of marketing. So, I ended up being the outsourced vice president of marketing for initially

3 companies and then 4 companies. And it's really hard work because each one was pretty close to a

full-time job. But each one paid roughly half over a third of what I would've been making if it were a full-

time job. So, one hand I was working harder than I ever did, but on the other hand I was actually

making a bit more money than I ever did. So, for the first definition of success that I had created in my

own mind that was really quick. I was able to replace my income pretty quickly. The second sort of thing

I set as a success was that I wanted to be known in the marketplace, I wanted to be somebody who

people would call on. I didn't want to ever make a sales call. So I started blogging really early, I started

blogging in 2004. And I started to actually create content on the web, even before that I started to

create content on the web right when I started my business in 2002. I created research reports and




published some in selling. So, because I was creating this content and because then in 2004 I started

to blog, and I was pretty quick on the Twitter in 08, and what not, starting pretty quick on the YouTube

when YouTube was founded under Facebook and LinkedIn and Yelp everything else. It was very, very

quick that I built an online reputation such that people reached out to me and I didn't have to make any

sales calls. So, what was initially in the first roughly one year, me actually selling myself very quickly,

and has been about a year. I never have and never-- even since then, this is 10 years later I've never

placed a sales call, people just contact me. And since I've transformed my business. I do different

things now, I no longer do consulting, I no longer do that outsource vice president of marketing stuff.

What I do now is deliver speeches on seminars, serve on advisory boards, and write books. I've never

had to make any sales calls in any of those endeavors as well. So, that was second definition of

success. And then the third authored goal that I had, which I achieved 3 different times now is to have a

best-selling book, and I've had actually 3 international best-sellers. My books have sold over a million

copies. So I reached that goal as well.

Travis: Nice, congratulations on that.

David: Thank you.

Travis: So, what's interesting to me is several things that you've said, is that you've come from big

business marketing. And my observation as an entrepreneur for the last 23 years is the majority of big

businesses don't seem to get marketing or effective marketing, it's more ego driven. And I don't know

where you stand on this but obviously, to me, you understand positioning and marketing on a more

macro level for smaller businesses because you illustrate it through positioning yourself early on so that

your most ideal prospects came to you rather than you coming to them, which is, by definition, good

marketing, right?

David: I think that's accurate, and I think again I was lucky in that for my entire career as a marketer, I

worked for the underdogs, I worked for the scrappy upstarts, I worked for the companies that people

hadn't heard of, in markets where they were large or more entrenched players.

Travis: So they needed to have accountable marketing that yielded an ROI?

David: Yeah. It had to achieve results because otherwise there was no point spending the money.

When I worked in Asia I worked for a company called Knight-Ridder. And we were competing with

Reuters, and Bloomberg, and Dow Jones, all three of those companies most people have heard of,

very few people had heard of Knight-Ridder. And we were small, we had less resources at our disposal.

We couldn't rely on the fact that everyone knew who we were to be able to reach potential customers

and make sales. So that taught me how to become a good marketer. The same thing was true in my




career after that. And I was working for small organizations. So, I understood, number 1, that you've got

to be scrappy, you've got to make it happen yourself, and you can't just rely on the fact that people

know you, and spend money on advertising. So, the second thing that I hit on really early in the internet

revolution, way back in the late 1990's was that content online is the greatest way to market a business

because everybody today, and many people even back in the 1990's would go to the search engines.

They would type in the problems that they had, or the types of products or services that they wanted to

buy. And then whatever it came up was companies or products that they were to evaluate. Later on, in

the past 5 to 10 years as social networking has grown, they then also reached out to their friends, and

colleagues, and family members through the social networks as a way to research facts and services.

So, way back in the 1990's when I was working for companies and then right when I established my

business in 2002, I recognized that if you are a scrappy upstart and no one's heard of you, the best

thing you can do is position yourself such that you got the best content out there. I, as an individual can

have better content than the biggest, most well-funded company if I just create something that's better.

And that's the essence of the sort of marketing that I did to market my business. And it's also the

essence of the sorts of things that I write a book and speak about. So, that was actually really fortunate

because I couldn't rely, as a marketer, on the traditional methods. And then when I started my

business, the last thing I was going to do was spend money on traditional advertising, or hire a PR firm

to market me. That would be a terrible waste of money. So I realized very early on that it was all about

creating information, putting it out on the web. That's why I blogged really early in 2004, that was really

early. That's where I created research reports and put them out on the web for free.

Travis: So you would generate the content, and how would you drive the traffic? Did you let it build

organically over time, or did you pay to drive traffic to your content?

David: No, I never paid a dime to do any marketing. It's all about creating the content and then having

the search engines find it, and then having people share it, that's all that it's about.

Travis: So, did this have an element of SEO to it?

David: Not really. Not in the sense that SEO is this kind of dark art that you tweak things underneath

the covers. I think that SEO, not in every case, but in many cases, is really just snake oil. If you take

bad content and you apply SEO to it, it's just slightly less bad. I think, in my case what I've always done

and what I've always advocated is create great content. Right well, have it well edited, have it well

designed, create information that's specifically going to be interesting to the people that you're trying to

reach, and don't just create junk. And then do some SEO around it and hope that it'll attract attention

because ultimately that's not really going to do very much for you. Well, that being said, there are

elements of SEO that are important. You need to know where to put your title tags; you need to know

what the tweak it should be.




Travis: Right.

David: You need to know how to format things so that the search engines can find them. I understand

that, I get that, and I kind of do those things, but I have the number 1 or the first page search results for

quite a few very important things, and none of them I'd ever gotten as a result of doing any trickery, and

none of them I've ever gotten as a result of paying anyone to help me to do it. None of them I've ever

gotten as a result of doing what many people believe to be sort of traditional search engine

optimization. It's all delivered because I've been able to create the best content for what that search

term might be. And ultimately that's what Google and the other search engines are doing, is delivering

to people who are doing their searching what the best content is. And I believe it's a lot easier to get

high results by creating the best content than it is by tweaking things.

Travis: Oh yeah, I agree with you. I think SEO is like a gun, you could either use it for good or bad,

right.

David: Yeah.

Travis: And the quality is what determines the depth of the visit, the length of the visit, the raving fans,

all of the other things that allow you to go well beyond 200 algorithm changes, right? You really don't

worry about algorithm changes because what you're doing is focusing on quality, exactly what you're

talking about.

David: Yeah, that's right.

Travis: Rather than all the other nonsense that goes along with it. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, your

most recent book is the New Rules of Marketing and PR?

David: Well, the New Rules of Marketing and PR originally came out in 2007. It's now in its 4th edition

and the 4th edition was released in July of 2013.

Travis: Okay.

David: So, yes, it's the most recent publication that I've put out, but it is the updated 4th edition of a

book that originally came out in 2007.

Travis: And so, are things changing that much? It's kind of a rhetorical question, but--




David: Oh yeah, absolutely. Now, the strategies around the new rules of marketing and PR, which are

that you don't have to buy attention, you don't have to beg the media for attention, you don't have to call

people one at a time and sell them for attention, that creating content online is a great way to generate

attention. Those are essentially what the new rules of marketing and PR are, that has not changed one

bit since 2007, the basic strategies of what the book talks about haven't changed at all. What has

changed are the tools that we have at our disposal. So when I first wrote the book in 2005 and 2006,

and what eventually came out in the first edition in 2007, at that time Twitter didn't exist, Facebook was

only for students. So, there's been a huge, huge changes. And every, roughly, 2 years I do an update

because there's always something new going on, there's always new tools that we have at our

disposal. The most recent addition, some of the things I talked about are this concept I call news

jacking which is the art of understanding what's going on, and breaking news, and creating content

around it. I also wrote a lot about a visual content. So that's infographics, and Pinterest, and Instagram,

and tools like that. So, the book is constantly being updated because we constantly have new tools as

ways to market our services and products.

Travis: Right. What's your feeling about the mindset or the attitude that you really don't have the

business until you can pay to acquire a customer?

David: I don't know what you mean by it, can you repeat that?

Travis: Well, there's several people out there that believe that you really don't have a business until

you perfected a model of paying to acquire a customer, because virtually everything else is

unpredictable.

David: I reject the whole question. I built a business that I've been successful in running for nearly 12

years, and I've never once paid for a customer.

Travis: Is it duplicatable for everybody? Do you have to have-- not everyone has the years, and the

depth, and the breadth of knowledge and experience that you have.

David: I believe that by far, the best way to generate attention for a business is to understand that

today; people are making their decisions by going to the web. They go to search engines and they ask

their friends and colleagues for advice using social networks. And I think that the companies that win in

today’s market are those that understand that and are positioning themselves. So that when people do

go to the search engines, and when people do ask friends, and colleagues, and family members in the

social networks, that they're that ones that come up first and they're the ones that have the best

content, and they're the ones that people by definition will then put on their short-list. Now, of course,

there are certain product categories where that may not be the only way that you can generate new




business. But in virtually all product categories, it can be a way that you can certainly augment, if not,

exclusively use that technique to create new business. And I'm just giving you an example. So, if you

think about the travel business, you think, "Okay, I want to maybe go to a country of Belize,” and you go

and enter a search engine for Belize travel. And whatever pops up is the only thing you know. And

people don't go to travel agents anymore, maybe you buy a guidebook, maybe you go a travel

magazine. But ultimately, almost everybody will go to the search engines. So, a really great hotel in

Belize is called the Lodge at Chaa Creek, and everything they do is about creating content on the web.

They don't pay for acquisitions. They don't pay this site, they don't pay to be listed on sites like Expedia

and whatnot because so much of their business, 80% actually, comes through their own web content.

And that's a huge percentage compared to other businesses in the travel industry, other hotels, other

airlines. And these guys have been literally, the most successful travel-related business in the entire

Central American country of Belize because they created content. They've got a great blog, they put

out photos, they write reports, they do all sorts of really great things at the Lodge at Chaa Creek. And in

a business that many people would say you have to pay for acquisitions, you have to pay hotels.com,

you have to pay Expedia, you have to pay travel agents. What they've proven is that 80% of their

business can come direct from the content that they create. And they don't have to subscribe to that

model of you have to pay that everybody else is supposed to have to.

Travis: So what did they figured out, is that that they've got a brilliant writer, someone that really

understands what their ideal client wants, what did they do to crack the code?

David: Yeah, that is exactly what they do. Rather than creating content for their own ego, which so

many organizations do, they create content around the sorts of things that they know that people who

want to travel to the western part of Belize which is where they are located are looking for. So, that's in

the rainforest area. So they create content around the birds and animals of the Central American

rainforest. There's also a number of Mayan ruins that are located in that part of the world. So they

create content around Mayan ruins. They also know that people sometimes come to Belize and they

want an all-inclusive vacation and includes time in that western part which is where the Mayan ruins

and the rainforests are. But they also want to spend part of their vacation on the eastern part of Belize

which is where the beaches are, where they can go scuba diving or snorkeling, or sit on a beach. So

they actually create content around how you can have an all-inclusive vacation even though they've

only got one property that's located 2 hours from the beach. And there's virtually no organizations that

do that because so many organizations are simply creating content around what their products and

services do. If they hadn't created information about wonderful their hotel is, and how beautiful the

rooms are, and how wonderful their food is, they would not be successful. But because they do

understand what their clients are looking for and they create the content for them they are successful.

And specifically, they do exactly what you suggest, they have a professional writer who is not a

copywriter. Rather their professional writer is a journalist. And journalist knows how to create content, a




journalist understand what an audience is interested in and how to create content specifically for an

audience. And that's how they create content that is valuable and attracts people to their business.

Travis: Yeah, so there's a couple of things. And so I noticed one thing. There is packaging going on

here and that's a critical thing that I see a lot of people miss in their business is. So, an example is most

people think very one dimensional. I hear what you're describing about this company. They're thinking

multidimensional here, right? And so, rather than just come stay with us, they're thinking from an

experiential standpoint, what can make this just an incredible experience even if it requires taking them

off property, right?


Travis: Or taking them to multiple locations off-property and then bringing them back, or whatever it is.

David: More to the point, what they recognize is that people aren't coming to go to their hotel, they're

coming to experience the country of Belize.

Travis: Right.

David: And that's how they create their content, knowing that what people are looking for is not a hotel

room. They're not looking for a resort. What they’re looking for is an experience in the country of Belize.

And they also recognize that people have various steps in the buying process. At one point in the

buying process they're just searching for information, any kind of information. They may not even have

decided yet if they want to go to Belize. Maybe they're looking at Belize, and Costa Rica, and

Guatemala, and Nicaragua, and El Salvador. And they haven't even decided which country yet. And

they have content that is very broad, about why they should consider Belize. And then once they said,

"Oh yeah, maybe I should come to Belize, it looks really interesting." And they have information about

what there is to see in the country. And then when they get to the point where they're ready to book a

resort, then they have information that's more specific about what that resort is like. And there's a very

few organizations that actually do that because so many are just focused on the last bit of content.

Travis: Right.

David: They believe that what people are looking for is just the information on their products and

services. What they’re looking for is just information in the case of this hotel on what are our rooms like,

and what kind of packages can I get, and what kind of food can I expect.




Travis: Right. So what I see most people do, and I hear you're explaining the opposite of that here, and

I want to point it out. So, most people in their marketing and their messages, they make their business,

or what they do, or what they offer the centerpiece of the conversation.

David: That's right.

Travis: And that's a mistake because who wants to hear about that all the time, right?

David: That's a huge mistake. No one cares about you, no one cares about your products. No one

cares about me or my products either.

Travis: Right. This hotel that we're talking about is just a piece of the entire puzzle, right? They're just

assimilating all of this great information, and they want to be here to help facilitate a great experience.

David: That's right.

Travis: And they're just a piece of the puzzle. How magnificent their property is not the centerpiece of

anything that they write, correct?


Travis: Alright. At times I read a lot of Facebook feeds and I'm friends with a lot of people that own

businesses. And their conversation is about them, and what they're about to do, and when their

starting. And that's the complete wrong conversation to be having.

David: Well, I think now and then you can do that. I think that probably-- and I'm reluctant to give

percentages. And even though I'm very reluctant to I'll throw one out.

Travis: I won't hold you to it David.

David: Yeah, between 10 and 20% should be about you and everything else should be about other

things. What you really need to do, and this is where most entrepreneurs fall down, is you really need to

understand who your buyers are. Who are the people who are going to be coming to your business?

And what most entrepreneurs do is talk about their products and services. Instead you need to

understand who the buyers are. So what I suggest is that you actually interview representatives of what

I call your buyer personas, the people that you are trying to reach.

Travis: Right.




David: And you understand very deeply who those buyer personas are. And by the way, most

organizations have multiple buyer personas that they sell to. And I'll give you an example again in the

hotel business. In a generic sense, hotels have multiple buyer personas, I'll give you 5. There's the

independent business traveler who's travelling to a particular city. Let's say Boston which is where I

live, and they make a decision themselves about what hotel to stay at in Boston based on things that

are important to them. So for example the availability of a health club where they can do free-weights.

The second buyer persona is the buyer persona of a family who's choosing to go on vacation in a city

of Boston, completely different set of needs than independent business traveler. Or how about a

company's travel manager of a business located in Boston who has several hundred people a year who

visit the company headquarters and they need to reserve rooms for all those people, a very different

buyer persona. Or how about an event planner who plans corporate events for 200-500 people, they

need to have a conference room with great audio-visual, and great lunch where they can hold their

meetings for 200-500 people in the city of Boston. And finally of the 5 that I've identified you've got the

young couple planning on getting married, and they're looking for a place to have their wedding

reception, possibly a hotel ballroom in the city of Boston. And a hotel is better off, rather than writing

about their stupid rooms, and their stupid food, which is what almost all hotels do. Instead,

understanding each of those buyer personas and then creating content especially for them, which is

exactly what the Lodge at Chaa Creek in Belize did. So for example, and using my example, the hotel

in Boston, for that couple planning in getting married could be creating a blog about weddings in

Boston. They would be writing about, for example, one blog post could be about the wedding bands in

Boston, and then another blog post could have links to YouTube videos of wedding bands in action.

Another blog post could have interviews of brides and grooms talking about what wedding band they

used, and why they liked it or disliked it. And none of that has anything to do with hotels, but what it

does have to do with is people who are planning a wedding in Boston. And ultimately, as people are

searching on Boston weddings, they'll find that content, they'll get educated, and sooner or later they're

going to get to plan where they're ready to book a room to have the reception. And if you've already

educated them around Boston weddings, then you're the natural choice for them to consider when it

comes to booking a place to have the reception.

Travis: Right, yeah, definitely.

David: And nobody does this. Well, I shouldn't say nobody.

Travis: Very few.

David: I did find a hotel that does it, the Lodge at Chaa Creek which is why I'm talking about them. But

there are very few entrepreneurs who actually do this because too busy talking about themselves.




Travis: And I just don't think that most people get it, right? It's not just egoism, it's just a lack of really

understanding the overall big picture and strategy. Plus, who wants to talk about a hotel all time

anyways?

David: Yeah, that's right. Well, and I think entrepreneurs, naturally they're excited about their products

and services. If you're an entrepreneur, you know, "Wow, look at this thing I created, look at this

business that I started with my bare hands, look at this thing that I developed out of my own mind."

That's really cool, you do want to talk about it.

Travis: Right.

David: And I'm not saying you shouldn't, you should talk about it, but you just need to do it in the

context that people are actually buying services like yours.

Travis: Right. Okay, so that takes me to one of the question before we move on from this example.

Where does a company get feedback on what to write?

David: Well, first of all as I mentioned before, they really need to do their research to understand who

their buyer personas are. They need to interview representatives of that buyer persona to understand

what problems they have, how they articulate those problems, what actual words and phrases that you

use to describe those problems. And then, as the Lodge at Chaa Creek does, I highly recommend that

organizations hire, literally, professional journalists to help them to create the content. They can hire

people who used to work at magazines and newspapers to create text-based content; they can hire

people we used to work at television, news stations to create video-based content. They can hire

people who used to be photojournalist to create images. And that those people are the ones who are

going to take that buyer persona research of who the buyers are, what their problems are, what were

the phrases they used to describe their problems, and they're the ones who will actually create the

content that will go on the site. If you do that, you should end up getting successful in creating your

content that people are looking for, and the content the search engines will find, and the content that

people will share.

Travis: Okay, excellent. Alright, so two direction that we can go here. Just off the top of your head,

what are the 5 common mistakes that people make, or we could go down the path of what are the 5

common things that people should do, along the lines of the new rules of marketing and PR. Which

path do you want to go down?

David: Well, it's not really 5. I think by far, the biggest mistake, and I recognized that we've already

beaten this to death, but the biggest mistake is that just talk too much about themselves. And that's




number 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, and that's the mistake that they make. And it's a big challenge, but the

challenge is how do you not do that? How can you understand so deeply the people you are trying to

reach that you are able to create the sort of things that they're looking for when they're searching for

answers to their problems. And that's a big challenge, it's not easy. But the rewards for doing it well are

unbelievable. You talk about becoming the biggest thing in your industry online, anyone can do that.

You can be bigger than your biggest competitor on the web if you do what I'm talking about. And that

can ultimately over time, allow you to grow to be the biggest in your industry.

Travis: What do you mean you can be your biggest competitor?

David: I mean, if you're an entrepreneur, you start a company that's 2 people, you have revenues of

$100,000, and you're competing against a company that's a thousand people and $100 million in

revenue. If you understand your buyers really well, and you use a journalist to help you create content

and you push that content out, you can be bigger on the web than that $100 million competitor even

though you only have a $100,000 in revenue. You can have higher search engine results, you can have

more people talking about you, you can have more people linking to you, you can have more people

talking about you on social media, you can have more people follow you on Twitter than that big

competitor. And ultimately that will drive success such that over time you will, in all likelihood, become

even bigger than that $100 million company because you will become the biggest in your industry.

Because ultimately, the biggest online in many industries typically becomes the biggest in real life.

Travis: Yeah, good point. Is it a slow road, building this reputation with great content? Is this a journey

that-- how many year journey is this?

David: Well, it all depends on the market, and the person, and whatnot. But yeah, it takes time, but so

does building a business. No one becomes an entrepreneur because they want to make a million

dollars overnight. It takes time, and to do this takes time. But the rewards can be remarkable.

Travis: Yeah, it's not a footrace is it?

David: No.

Travis: One thing that jumps out at me that I've got to ask you about is The Marketing Lessons from

the Grateful Dead. Is that too broad of a topic to summarize? I know you wrote a book on that.

David: Well the Grateful Dead were an entrepreneurial organization; they were a rock band that did

everything differently. They managed themselves in an era when everybody else had a manager. They

had their own record label in an era when everybody else used other record labels. In a world where




every other band said you're not allowed to bring tape recorders or cameras into concerts, the Grateful

Dead said, "Sure, why not. You can bring in tape recorders and record the show, and you can take

photos, please do." And these efforts allow them to become the largest grossing concert band in the

world for a several year period because they did everything differently, because they ran the

organization as entrepreneurs, because they looked at the people who they were attracting, like the

music, and tried to figure out what it is that they could do to help them. And they did radical things like

allow fans to record their concerts. And even though everybody else said no, the Grateful Dead said

sure why not, we should try that. So, I think that there's lessons for all entrepreneurs in what the

Grateful Dead did. And in the book Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead I draw a lot of those

parallels about what people today in 2013, 2014 can learn from this rock band that started in San

Francisco in 1965.

Travis: That's brilliant, I didn't know that story. To me it seems like a really simple and authentic way to

build a true fan. The definition of a true fan is someone that will buy anything and everything that you

ever put out, you know. And there's a book around the concept of a thousand true fans. And I didn't

know that about them that makes them even more fascinating to me. Wow, to blaze that trail in 1965 is

just 45 years beyond that mindset.

David: Yeah, and what's really interesting, and I wrote the book by the way with Brian Halligan who's

the founder and CEO of HubSpot, and it's a fantastic entrepreneurial organization the he's built to be

nearly a $100 million in revenue, and he's got about 800 employees now, from zero in 2007.

Travis: Wow.

David: And Bill Walton, the NBA Basketball Hall of Famer wrote the Foreword to our book. But what's

remarkable about the Grateful Dead is a lot of the ideas that they pioneered pre-internet, pre-web

actually became the foundation of social networking. The idea of sharing, the idea of putting out content

for free became the tenets that people have been talking about as how you can achieve a successful

online social networking capabilities. So, the idea that social networking started with Twitter and

Facebook 5 or 6 years ago is not really true in the sense that the Grateful Dead built this community of

people who shared because of what they did around content way back in the days of cassette tapes.

Travis: Right. And just bring in the cassette tapes, the videos, the pictures, and everything into the

concerts was a clever way to let your content go viral back then, right?

David: Yeah, absolutely.

Travis: Have a certain element of viral nature to it.

http://www.hubspot.com/




David: Yeah, that's exactly right.

Travis: Cool, listen, we're getting a little long on time, let me segue you over to the lightning round

where I've got a couple of questions that I sent to you that I wanted to probe you on and get your feet

back on. Are you ready for that?

David: Yeah, sure.

Travis: Cool. Alright, so, what book or program made an impact on you related to business that you'd

recommend and why?

David: I'm a big fan of anything that Seth Godin does, and he's the one author that I follow religiously. I

read all of his books, and it's not any one book by Seth Godin but essentially everything Seth Godin

does, I read his blog, and I read every one of his books that came out.

Travis: Yeah, I have too. Purple Cow, and several of his other books. What's one of your favorite tools

or pieces of technology that you've recently discovered, if any, that you'd recommend to other business

owners and why?

David: I've been a really big fan recently of Instagram; it's a photo sharing, service searching,

networking service. And I like it a lot because it's a really interesting way to merge business and

pleasure. So it's a photo sharing site, and you take a photo. I just use my iPhone, it's an iPhone app.

Take a photo on my iPhone and then tweak it with Instagram and share it with my network. I could also

if I want, share it on Facebook, and Twitter, and other places. But what I like about it is when I'm

travelling; I can just shoot photos and send them out. When I'm maybe at a rock concert, I can shoot a

photo and send it out. And it kind of does a great job of humanizing me, and most of the people who

follow me in Instagram are sort of business related but at the same time, this is a way of humanizing

me. So last week I was in Antarctica, and I shot some photos, send them out through Instagram, and

now all people know I was in Antarctica. And it's like, "Wow, shoot, what's this guy doing in Antarctica,

that's pretty interesting, maybe I should learn more." So I recommend it to all entrepreneurs to check

out Instagram.

Travis: Cool. What quote best summarize you belief or your attitude in business?

David: I've been believing for a very long time that you only live once, and I don't remember who said

it, I don't even know if anyone knows who said it first. But, you only live once. So, if you want to become

an entrepreneur, why are you waiting? If you want to write that book, why are you waiting? It's all about

getting it done now.

http://www.amazon.com/Seth-Godin/e/B000AP9EH0

http://instagram.com/




Travis: Right. Do you have any special super powers that you'd like to share with us?

David: Super powers. No, I don't. I think if I'm able to be successful, anybody is. I was the last kid

picked at kickball, I didn't get good grades, I got a C in freshman English in college, never took another

English class yet I've written 9 books and 3 of them are international best-sellers. There is no such

thing in my mind is a real super power, you just make it happen.

Travis: Right. I think a lot of times those hardships that we go through as youngsters shape who we

are later on.

David: I agree with that.

Travis: Yeah. If you had to start over today, what would you do to get the fastest results, would you do

anything different?

David: Well, if I were to start today I would on one hand be more difficult and another hand be easier. I

would be more difficult because there's lots of other people who would realize that we can create

content in the web and put it out. When I started there are very few people who realize that. But number

2, it would be easier because the tools are so much easier. My god, it was tough to start a blog in '04, it

was very difficult to put out a PDF that people could find on the web back in 1998, 1999. You had to

have an html expert to do your website, now there's these amazing tools available. So, I think getting

that web presence, bringing that content, get it done is a great way to go. And it's easier and both

harder.

Travis: Right. David you've been a wealth of knowledge and information, I appreciate you coming and

hanging out with us and sharing your insight and your years of experience that have gotten you to

where you are today.

David: My pleasure, thanks very much for having me on.

Travis: You bet. How do people connect with you?

David: Google my name David Meerman Scott. If you want a free book, this is a book that originally

was published by Wiley, my long-time publisher, and originally cost 20 bucks. It's now completely and

totally free on the iPad, on Kindle, as a PDF, anyway you want it electronically. The book is called

World Wide Rave, that's World Wide Rave. And just Google the phrase World Wide Rave, you will find

this completely and totally free book. And when I say completely and totally free, I mean no registration




required, I'm won't ask you for an email address, just download it, I don't know you're doing it, and

enjoy the book.

Travis: Nice. What I'll do is I'll go ahead and put the link up there for you.

David: Cool.

End of Interview

Travis: Okay, excellent, thank you for that. Listen, remember that you can find all of the links to the

books and resources mentioned in the show in the show notes. Just go to

rockstarentrepreneurnetwork.com. It's a brand new site that we've been building out that's completely

focused on giving you the resources to grow your business. Now, before I close the show today I have

2 additional things that I want to cover with you. First, if you have any questions about your business

that you're struggling with, and you want some feedback. It can be marketing; it can be how to grow

your business, really any aspect, the numbers of what it takes. Just go to

rockstartentrepreneurnetwork.com, look for the microphone icon on the right side of the page. And all

you have to do is just click on it, it's like leaving a voicemail message on a phone. Just leave your

name, type of business you're in and of course your question. And what I'll do is I'll start answering

those questions in future episodes when we get enough really good questions, that way I can answer

them and I believe that we'll be helpful for everyone else, because most people are going through are

struggling with a lot of the same things that you're struggling with. And then, my last thing for you before

we go, I like to share a quote that I feel like represents something important for you to think about, or

embody in your business, or in the journey of growing your business. Now this quote comes from

Walter Scott, and the quote reads, "Success or failure in business is caused more by mental attitude

even over mental capacities." Think about that. This is Travis Lane Jenkins signing off for now, to your

incredible success, take care my friend.






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Small Business & Entrepreneurship

The Entrepreneurs Radio Show 088 David Meerman Scott