Marketing Lessons From Live Shows With David Meerman Scott

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You on your Conscious Pivot. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Conscious Pivot podcast. I'm your host, Adam Markell, and I'm sitting in this seat feeling really at peace this morning. And I've been working for a couple of hours doing some writing and working with a client. And I just have this peaceful feeling that I'm always sort of tracking my own sense of peace. I don't know if you ever, ever do that yourself, whether you think about what creates peaceful moments and try to duplicate them. I'm at a stage of life where I try to do that as frequently as possible. And I noticed that there's just, you know, there's some things that I can do to make it sort of force it, and then it's more often the case that it comes just sort of out of nowhere. This is one of those moments where just kind of popped in and feels great, which is terrific because I get to spend now the next 40 minutes or so in conversation with someone that we have a mutual friend. This gentleman and I don't know each other, but he's got a background that's really similar and simpatico in a lot of ways to things that have been important to me and in my business pursuits. I think there's a lot here that we have in common which we're going to explore today.

So.

So let me read a bit of his bio and then jump right in. His name is David Meerman Scott and he spotted the real time marketing revolution in its infancy and wrote five books about it, including the New Rules of marketing and PR. With more than 400,000 copies sold in English and available in 29 languages around the globe from Albanian to Vietnamese. I've yet personally to see another author with an Albanian translation of a book so fantastic. David now says the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of superficial online communications tech weary and bot weary people are hungry for true human connection. I think in the pandemic or in this pandemic Pivot that we're all living in, that couldn't be any more true. Organizations have learned to win by developing What David calls fenocracy, the subject of his Wall Street Journal bestseller, tapping into the mindset that relationships with customers are more important than the they sell to them. He is a massive live music fan, having been to 790. Sorry, scratch that. 804 live shows since he was 15 years old and is passionate about the Apollo lunar program. He loves to surf, but isn't good at it. And I would say that's probably because he lives outside of Boston. We could talk about that more in a minute. David, welcome to the show. It's great to have you as a guest.

Thank you, Adam. I loved your spiritual beginning to the program of thinking about what you've been thinking through. So it's great to be here. We do have a lot in common. I would say we know one another. It feels like we've connected in some prior life or something like that. So it's really good to be on.

It's true. What's not a part of the bio that I just read is it's significant. You've done. You've done a lot of things in the world. What is one thing that's not written in that bio that you would love for people to know about you?

So I lived for 10 years in Asia, seven years in Tokyo, two in Hong Kong. I went to Tokyo when I was 26 with two suitcases and I returned from Asia. When I came home From Hong Kong 10 years later with 126 boxes, a wife and a daughter, it was a productive 10 years in Asia, I can say that for sure.

Wow. And you're a concert goer, lover of music and live music probably. In particular, were you able to continue the streak of going to live music events when you were in Asia? Were you doing that?

It was a little bit tougher, I should say a lot tougher. Tokyo did have live shows, but getting tickets was a hassle compared to what I had been used to. And the venues were such that it was much harder to get a decent ticket. So, yeah, I did go to shows when I was in Asia, but that was one of the points where it wasn't as strong as it had been otherwise. So the reason I know I've been to 804 live shows is I kept all my ticket stubs from when I was 15 years old. My first.

Who doesn't wish, as you're listening to this right now, that you hadn't kept all the ticket stubs?

Yeah, right. I know. And there's some that are missing for a variety of reasons. They're missing mainly because I was, you know, they're gone, they left. But my first show was Aerosmith. My second show, the Ramones played my high school. My most epic experience was that I'm the only person known to have taken photographs at Bob Marley's last concert on September 23, 1980, at the Stanley Theater in Pittsburgh. And I was 19 years old and had borrowed the yearbook photographer's camera. And I had never borrowed anyone's camera or taken a camera to a show ever before that, and never did after. Of course, once we have smartphones, we have a camera, but never photographed show. And the one show I photographed of hundreds when I was a teenager was Bob Marley's last concert. And those photographs have become historic. I'm now working with the Stanley Theater to actually put my photographs in their lobby because it's their most famous show. The photographs were used for five minutes on the Bob Marley documentary that came out a couple of years ago. The Bob Marley family has copies of the photographs. So it's really fun how karma takes you somewhere. And like, like I've told so many people, I don't know why I felt compelled to bring a really nice camera with a good lens on it to that show. Of all.

That show. Right.

Of all shows.

Right. For reasons maybe we don't quite get into now.

The unit, the universe was telling me something, I guess I don't know what it's about, but it was super cool. It was a great show. It's. They've turned it into a live album. It was a great show. But. But yeah, the only known visual record of that historic show were my 19 year old and I, you know, we went from. I went to school at Kenyon College in Ohio. It was four hour drive to Pittsburgh and we partied the whole way. You know, getting prepared for a show as one does when you're a teenager, especially getting prepared for Bob Marley show. It's a wonder I could even focus the damn camera. But that karma intervened there as well. And a couple of the shots are epic.

Are they black and white or color?

They're color, yeah.

Wow. And you're right, I like, I like the, the use of the term prepared. Yeah, we got prepared. We got prepared for a show or two back in the day.

Yeah.

Yeah. The, the being prepared part and what that involves and the taking a good photo might. It might have seemed mutually.

They're a little bit incongruent. But I think the cosmic universe was helping there somehow because there's a couple of the shots that are super Sharp, super interesting. I'm good buddies with Jay Blakesburg, who's a famous rock photographer. He's shot Rolling Stone covers and whatnot. And Jay says, dave, these photographs are great, you know, and so I was just lucky. And it was funny back then, if you brought a small camera and stood up in your seat and took a photo, they would tell you to stop shooting photographs. But I had a camera with a long lens on it. I stood up from my seat, walked down front, was taking pictures. And they assumed I belonged.

Part of the press.

Yeah, yeah, they assumed I belonged there.

That's interesting. Wow. It's funny. I've got a friend, Carl Stuttna, who's a wonderful photographer who's taken some pretty famous photographs of artists and musicians along the way. And he also. I think, you know, this stuff that you sort of stage and set up and you know you're gonna get a great shot. And there are things that just happen with God's grace or however you want to define what it is. But, yeah, you just get something that's, you know, it's ethereal. It's. It's, you know, becomes a last.

Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, and that's what. That's what Jay says to my buddy, Jay Blakesburg. He. He went to the no nukes, like, rally. This is live show, long time ago, 30 years ago. And he looked on the ground, and this is before he had his. Where he. Before he was getting press passes, but he looked down on the ground and there was a. A press pass. And he, like, oh, wow. A press pass on the ground, waiting for me, put it around his head, walked in, and the first person he ran into was Bob Weir. And so just started having a conversation, asked if he could take a couple of photos. Bang, bang, bang. Those photos were great. They ended up being published in Rolling Stone a bunch of other places. So, yeah, you never know what the universe will give you. Right. And I think. One of the things I think is really interesting, and we don't know each other real well yet, but I'm sure you'll appreciate this, is I think that we have to be open to that. To use a word that you would use, cosmic. That the cosmic aspect of what the universe is giving, because if you push back on it, those things don't happen to you. But if you accept that this oddball thing that just happened to be coming is something that you should embrace, then go for it and see where it can take you, see what direction it can take you. I think that that's an Important thing that we should all be thinking about, kind of especially now during this strange situation we're in where everything is thrown topsy turvy with COVID and where is the universe taking you personally? Or where is the universe taking we as humans now with the fact that, you know, we really shouldn't be seeing one another in person at this point.

It's, wow, you really opened up a beautiful space there, David. And part of what you said, you know, just your friend that finds this pass on the ground, you could call that coincidence. I don't personally believe in any such thing as a coincidence, but it's. And then he meets Bob Weir. Because what I was thinking when you were saying that was this. If you've ever been to a Dead show, and I know you, you've been. And I have been.

I've been to 75 Grateful Dead.

So for folks that have, they'll understand this. And those that have not, maybe you've heard it or you haven't, but there's a thing called you need a miracle. Like there's people that are walking around in a Dead show who don't have tickets, and there are people who followed the Dead. Followed the Grateful Dead when it was with Jerry and the rest of the boys and Donna Jean and others in the band, but followed the Grateful Dead or the Dead around for and from show to show. Kind of living out a bit of a hippie lifestyle, but something beautiful for them and not always having the money or having the where would you know to get tickets? And there were always people around that didn't have tickets but would end up getting a ticket they needed called need a miracle. I need a miracle. And this idea that all things are possible, that in the times that we're living in right now, you might think, yeah, I do need a miracle.

Yeah. And I've been on the delivering side of that. I remember distinctly, I went to a show in 1984, I believe it was in Hartford, Connecticut, and I had an extra ticket. And, you know, you can sell a ticket when you get to a show, but the good karma is to figure out a way to provide it to the universe and have the universe give you something back, to put it that way. And so there are a whole bunch of people with tied selling tie dye T shirts, or, you know, they had tie dye T shirts. And I didn't want a tie dye T shirt. But then I ran across this young woman and she was selling tie dye socks. And I just thought, that's the coolest thing. Tie dye socks. I hadn't seen that before. It was a summer show. And it's like, I wish I had tie dye socks on right now. So I said, how much your tie dye socks? And I don't remember how much they were, probably $5 back then. And I said, well, do you have a ticket for tonight? And she said, no, I'm looking for a ticket. I wish I had one. So I'll give you a ticket for that pair of socks. Which was a completely, you know, not a valid trade because she would probably give me 10 pairs of socks for a ticket. But to her it was like, holy cow, look at that. And I still have those socks. I wear them to shows still. And I remember that moment still, which is way more valuable to me and way more valuable to her than if I had just purchased that pair of socks.

Just the story of it alone, just the resonance of how many things in our lives have we experienced, whether they were shows or other things that we don't remember anymore. And regardless, not even the remembering of them, but we don't have a resonance of feeling. You have a feeling from that you have something you remember about it. And you also have an artifact, these socks that still exist. I mean, you add all that up, you couldn't have known at the time that the balance was so tilted in favor of giving, giving a miracle.

And 30 years or 25 years, how many years it's been later. I'm talking to Adam about it right now. How cool is that? Which never would have happened if we hadn't, you know, made that, that, that cosmic connection.

Yes. And inspires the thing I'm about to say, which wouldn't, I wouldn't say or have said, but for that fact, which is in the situation we all find ourselves in, there are things we would love to be different than they are. And again, I believe in miracles. So I was praying or praying and meditating on that just a bit this morning. So to me, giving a miracle is something we can all think about. What's the opportunity to give a miracle to someone today?

Right.

As opposed to even just the I need a miracle way of thinking. So thank you for that. David, I'm going to ask you a near impossible question, I suppose, and I'm going to answer it myself. But I got to think about it. So I asked you, buy myself some time. Do you have a favorite show of 804 live events? Is there a one single show that stands out in your memory as being epic?

Well, I would normally have answered that by saying the Bob Marley show just because it was so epic on so many levels and such a memorable show. It's really hard to identify one show that was super cool like that. But I'm going to answer with a show that if we were sitting here for 24 hours talking about music, you would never ask me about, never pick up on. And the reason I'm going to mention this is because I've got a group of buddies that I go to shows with all the time, including Brian Halligan, the CEO of HubSpot. He and I wrote a book called Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead together. And I've been an advisor to HubSpot since 2007. We're good buddies. We've probably been to 25 dead and company shows or other Dead related shows.

That's where we met David. We met at his 50th birthday party.

Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we did.

What I'm saying to myself now I get it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So we have met. We met at Brian's 50th birthday party. So there we go. The cosmic world is delivered. So. So people like you, you may know Joe. Joe B. Who is at that party as well, and Meredith, who was at that party. Party. Those are my buddies who I go to shows with all the time in Boston. And I told them, I always tell them because they. I always have more eclectic tastes than them. So I find a show I want to go to and I say, hey, you guys, we really got to go to this. So that happened where I'm a huge fan of Mud Crutch. Do you know Mud Crutch?

I do, Yep.

So. So I said to my buddies, mud crutch in a club? Mud Crutch. Mud Crutch is super cool. Super cool band. And I said, they're in a club. We have to go see this. And we did, and it was fabulous. But I saw this show that sounded so freaking cool, and I said, you guys, we should go to this. It was Miley Cyrus backed by the Flaming Lips at the House of Austin.

No way.

And I said, and she never does. Miley Cyrus never does club shows. Miley Cyrus backed by the Flaming Lips.

I was gonna say the Flaming Lips would be my preference in that, but.

Well, Miley Cyrus, her voice is unbelievable. And so this was a couple years ago. So I said to my buddies, I'm gonna go to this. Do you guys want to go? And they all laughed at me. It's like, miley Cyrus. Who are you kidding? What are you, like a teenager? And I said, no, this is going to be really good.

I'm a big Hannah Montana fan.

And I loved it. And so none of my buddies went. So that was memorable just because of the idea that, you know, even if my buddies don't want to go many times, I'll still go anyway. And by the way, Mud Crutch, as you know, was Tom Petty's first band. And it's an interesting story that they did one album in the 70s, I think Gainesville, Florida, and then the band broke up because the record, the record label said, we don't want Mud Crutch, we want Tom Petty. So he became Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. And then about, I guess it was about five years ago, they did a second Mud Crutch album. And then they did one really small, maybe 10 show tour to clubs and it was the House of Blues in Boston, which is maybe 1500 seats. And you know, Petty in a club. Amazing.

Are you kidding?

So. And that was one that my buddies went to and we all loved it.

Yeah, what a shame. Was really sad. There's a few just days, memorable days when, when I learned of someone's passing, like a Tom Petty and it just sad me or the day Jerry died. I'll remember like, you know, like it was yesterday actually, because. And I got a coup, I got a couple. I'm going to drop in here with.

You, but I'm interested to hear what your answers are. And I've got one more I'm going to mention. So in 19, I believe it was 1986, I saw Jerry Garcia and John Kahn, just the two of them together, acoustic at the Ritz in New York City. Very small club, about a thousand people, and it was such a great show. And then just about a couple months ago, Jerry Garcia's family released it as a live album. And so I bought the album and it's a really well done, high quality recording that they then mixed. And it's like, this is such a good, such a good show. And I'd forgotten how great it was until I had a chance, 1986 to now, however many 35 years later, to listen to this amazing show. And that made it all the more special that I mean, I remember the show, remember distinctly. My buddies and I were like this on the stage, like right in front, like. And there's Jerry, you could touch him almost if you stuck your hand out. And it was just the two of them, they're smoking cigarettes the whole time.

And mandolins, totally acoustic.

Acoustic, acoustic guitar with Jerry the whole time and acoustic stand up bass with John Kahn the whole time. And so that was kind of epic. But I'm really interested to hear your. Your epic shows.

I saw the Jerry. Just the Jerry Band once at the Garden, which. With. With a buddy of mine named Jerry. Which was cool.

That's cool.

Which was, you know, it was classic. And. And. And Jerry, you know, is just. Yeah, he was a force. He was a force of nature. True tour de force. We. The. The year that he died, which is 1995, I remember we bought our first house in New Jersey right next to my in laws. About the house. If you could believe anybody strange enough to want to buy the house next door to your in laws, that's.

That's a little bit too close for my book, but I.

To this day, to remember our kids running across the lawn to get to their grandparents, that's cool.

That's cool. To have them be near the grandparents is cool.

There. There were so many cool moments. It just was a counterintuitive thing. But we. I was sitting out in the backyard of this house, this first house. I'm a kid from Queens, grew up in an apartment, never had a house. Didn't even know what crickets. You know, like the middle of the summer in central Jersey is like fireflies everywhere. It's a magical night. And. And I was just sitting out there thinking about. About this guy that. That had touched my life and touched the lives of so many people that had passed. And. And it was. It was really poignant because earlier that summer, right before their summer tour was to begin, we saw a kickoff set of shows out in Running Rebel Stadium in Las Vegas. My brother and I and a couple of buddies from. He was at the University of Michigan. He had a couple of his friends that came down with us, and we prepared heartily for those shows. I'd say that it's probably the first time I dabbled in like, mushroom tea and some things. And it was a zillion degrees out in the desert. And Dave Matthews opened. So nobody knew who Dave Matthews was, so it was like hardly a person in the place.

I remember that tour.

Yeah. So Dave Matthews opens for the Grateful Dead. And we were in. And, you know, Jerry didn't speak a lot. I don't know if this was your experience. He hardly ever said a word. I mean, you know, he's a garrulous guy. He liked to talk, for sure, but just not while he was playing, you know. So we heard Jerry speaking in the middle of this show. I mean, and it was so hot. They were. They had fire hoses. They were shooting fire hose water out, out. And, you know, keep us cool, you know. But Jerry's speaking and I'm going, is that like, what is this? What I'm, you know, the trip I'm on? Or is. Is he really speaking? And, yeah, it was just stunning. And that same weekend, we saw them three times and, and saw Hop Tuna.

Oh, wow.

And, you know, memorable, Memorable weekend. Only months. Just a couple of months before he passed.

Nice. That's awesome. I love it.

Good memory. So now your first show, your second show is the Ramones. His first show was Aerosmith, right?

Yeah.

Where'd you see Aerosmith?

Madison Square Garden. I grew up in. I grew up in Connecticut. And we would take the train down and that was the first show where I said to my parents, I want to go do this with my buddies. And I was 15. And they said yes. And I'm not sure if I have a daughter. I'm not sure if my daughter asked me to take the train in with her friends to the city at the age of 15. I'm not sure I would have said yes, but my parents said yes. And, and that was. I was mesmerized, not so much by Aerosmith, but by just the whole experience was just, wow. So my buddies at the time and I just decided this is our thing. And about once a month on average, we'd take the train to New York. And many, almost always, it was a school night, take the train to New York. You know, show started at 8. We'd leave it, whatever time when it finished and run back to Grand Central Station, hoping that we'd catch the. Not the last train, which left at 2:30 in the morning, but the one just before that. And it was an amazing, amazing, amazing childhood.

Nothing like being in the train station in Manhattan after. After a show at the Garden or somewhere else and making your way home, which to me would have been, you know, at one point, live in Forest Hills, take the train there and. Or as you say, heading. Heading on. On Metro north or any of the other. And then we lived in Jersey, we take the train south. But there's something about being in that city after hours, little banged up with a bunch of other people who are a little banged up. And it's. Talk about peaceful, talk about safe. I always felt that was one of the, you know, so your parents intuitively knew you'd be all right. And this is a different world we're living in now.

I think so. And New York City was more, whatever this means, dangerous.

It was dangerous because that was.

That was the mid-70s. My first show was 1975.

Get mugged in New York, you literally get mugged.

We would walk from Madison Square Garden back to. Back to Grand Central.

Grand Central right at 42nd.

And there's homeless people pissing in the corner. And, you know, it was. It was different than it is now.

It wasn't a Disney version of the city.

Never, ever, ever had a problem of any kind.

No, no, it's true. I think that the rock gods were taking care of everybody. So your first show is Aerosmith? My first show is a little. I'm gonna. I'm one. Upping you just a little bit here.

Okay, that's good.

And I'm gonna out myself, too. Not the. This is a big deal anymore, but it's the first time I ever got high was at this show. I was at a summer camp in Connecticut, and they day tripped us to an outdoor venue. Check this out. They talk about a different world, right? We go to this outdoor venue to see Santana.

I'm.

I'm either. I'm 14 at this time.

Wow.

And I make my way all the way up to the stage. Talk about, like, literally your elbows on the stage and Carlos sitting. Standing there, just shredding. And I got a speaker. I probably can't hear well to this day from that one, you know. And some guy next to me with some, you know, like, bearded dude, hands me a. What I thought was a cigarette.

Nice. Nice.

But that was my.

That's cool. First experience was that venue in Connecticut.

Outdoors. Connecticut, yeah.

Yeah. I went to the same venue. And I remember there, it was like, almost in the woods. There were trees around.

Yeah.

I saw all the Allman Brothers at that same venue.

Yeah, it's. And I'd say. But that's. I'm going to pick one obscure concert that I went to that I was with my wife and my brother. And I think it was just the three of us. We saw Ray Davies, I think the Living Room or someplace. I'm trying to remember where it was, but, yeah, I mean, Ray Davies, to me was the Kinks. It was like seeing a Kinks concert with a couple of hundred people, Right? I mean, the dude was just ridiculously. Is ridiculously talented.

Yeah, yeah.

And what a voice. Super cool.

But, yeah, I saw the Kinks in Madison Square Garden. I don't. I. I don't know the year. I could figure it out if I went to my spreadsheet.

So. It's so funny that our common denominator here is Brian. I had Brian on the show just a couple of, just like two months ago, I think, and talking about marketing, talking about a ton of things. And you're so your passion is marketing. That's. And you write about it.

Yeah, so I was, I was a marketing guy for corporations for 15 years. Most recent, my most recent corporate gig was with Thomson Reuters. And they sacked me in 2002 because my ideas were a little bit too radical for them. And so I started doing my own thing and I recognized super early that marketing was changing. Everybody at that time was talking about marketing in the old way, which is advertising. Right. In the offline world, it was very difficult to get attention unless you paid money for advertising or you figured out how to get the media to talk about you. It was virtually impossible to get attention outside of those ways. And then when the web started to emerge, and ironically the same year as Jerry died, 1995 was when Netscape went public, that, that was feeling like the time that marketing was changing because of the ability to create content yourself. And in the early days it was just websites, then it was blogs, then YouTube came around and then other social media like Facebook and Twitter came around. And I was just. Because I had worked in the financial information business for companies like Dow Jones and Thomson Reuters, I'd been using and creating electronic information services my entire career, going back to the mid-80s. And I would tell people, hey, I'm working on a bond trading desk and here's the information we're using. It's all in real time. Think I was, you know, I didn't, didn't understand it. It was too foreign to them. The idea that you're looking at a screen and the news is in real time. But for me, once the web came around, that was nothing new. So I started, I started my own blog probably 20 years ago or so. I started writing books on this topic. And in 2007, my book the The New Rules of Marketing and PR came out. And it was the first book that talked about these ideas. The idea of creating content yourself, the idea that you no longer had to buy advertising. You could create the content that would drive people to you through the search engines. And at that point, at that point, social media didn't exist. But soon thereafter it did. And so it was like eye opening to many people in the world, which is why I ended up with 29 languages for that particular book. But this is a fun story. Brian and his team found my book when it first came out. And Brian's vice president of marketing brought it on his honeymoon, believe it or not. Why would you bring a business book on your honeymoon is beyond me. But he did, and he read it, and he came back and he said to Brian and his colleagues, and at that point, there are only eight people at Hub working at HubSpot. You guys all need to read this book. And so Brian read it and they said. They said, let's get this guy in or let's get him on the phone. Where does he live? Oh, my God. He lives in Boston, too. Let's book a meeting. So they reached out to me and said, we've started a company based on the same ideas that are in your book. And so that's pretty cool, because at that point, there's almost no one doing this. So. So I met them in their office, and then I put down my computer, my Notebook Computer, Apple MacBook Pro, and I opened up my computer, and on the back of my computer was a Grateful Dead sticker, A steely. And Brian says, hang on, hang on. We can't start this meeting until you tell me about that Grateful Dead sticker. And I said, I love the Grateful Dead. I've been to. At that point, I think it was like 50. I've been to 50 shows. First show when I was 17, and I just love the Grateful Dead. He goes, I've been to a hundred Grateful Dead concerts. And then he sees a couple of other stickers on my computer. He says, tell me about your Nantucket sticker. I have a house there. I love Nantucket. He goes, I go to Nantucket every year. Tell me about that Japan sticker. What's that all about? And I said, I lived in Japan for seven years. My wife is Japanese. And he goes, he said, I lived in Japan, too. And it turns out we overlapped, although we don't know of any time we actually met each other in Japan. And so Brian says, well, gosh, it's like we're long lost brothers. And so we've been buddies ever since. But, you know, talk about the cosmic world, bringing things together.

You speak Japanese, by the way.

I speak some Japanese, but I haven't used it in more than 20 years since I've lived in this country. So I've lost most of it. But that idea, that was just a very early stage. Back in 2007, HubSpot didn't even have any clients yet. My book had just come out that week or two weeks earlier, all of a sudden became the whole inbound marketing, social media marketing revolution that so many people are talking about today. And so that was a super cool.

See, you and Brian not only become friends, but then you ultimately decide to collaborate on a book that is the Grateful Dead, right? Yeah.

Well, also, he asked me to become the very first advisor to HubSpot, so I joined his advisory board and have been on the advisory board ever since. 13 years. And then we decided to do a webinar. And so Brian and I went to a bunch of shows together. Within two weeks, we went to a Phil Lesh show of meeting one another, and then we decided to do a webinar. We called it Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead for HubSpot. And it turned out to be the most popular webinar they had ever done up to that point. Point. And we're like, wow, there's something going on here. And that's when we decided to write the book. So we got Bill Walton to do the forward to the book. He's a. Bill's our buddy. He's a great guy. And so the book came out. It's probably 10 years ago now, and it still sells well. People love it. And it was really fun to collaborate with that book because it was putting together the things that we love. It was marketing, and it was the Grateful Dead.

Yeah. Well, it's such a great way to segue into. I think it'd be fun to talk about one or two of those lessons in the remaining couple of minutes we've got. But there's a. I think it's a Netflix documentary called Long Strange Trip.

Yeah, yeah, it's actually on Amazon. But yes, Long Strange Trip.

Yeah. And they. The Grateful Dead had a different philosophy about their fans and about the ultimate value that they were contributing. They weren't looking to become rock stars or a part of the music establishment for that matter. I don't think they were even looking to make a lot of money. And for a long time, that wasn't really a driving force. You know, ultimately, you know, when. When you are that good at what they were good at and that many people follow you, you're going to make a lot of money. That's just.

Yeah, they ended up making a lot of money. But not in the beginning.

Not at the beginning. So what? Maybe. Maybe share this one significant less example. Like, I'll just say I was. I was blown away by the idea that they spent so much money on the music and on the sound. Sorry, the sound system. At their shows, they had a wall of sound.

Yes, they did.

Engineering marvel.

And incidentally, I have two pair of speakers that were originally in the wall of Sound, Really? Yeah. So that's a really important lesson. They spent a lot of money to make a quality product. But the lesson I find the most fascinating, and all of us can still use that lesson today, is that the Grateful Dead allowed fans to record their concerts. And every other band said no. Every other band on the ticket said, no recording allowed. And if you tried to bring a recording device into the show, you would either get kicked out or they would tell you to, you know, put it away or whatever. The Grateful Dead said, sure, why not? And so it got to be such a big deal that they had. They created the taper seats that were right behind the mixing board where people brought in professional level sound gear. The band set up power strips for them, and people had long poles with microphones on them to record the music. And what the band recognized is that the concerts are something that. That people really want to go see. Everyone is different. You never know what song they're going to play next because every. Every set list is all improvisational, all improvisation. So they're all different. It's not like they're giving something away that. That. That becomes, in a sense, proprietary, although it is proprietary. And then that's how maybe you as well. But that's how I was exposed to the band was my buddies had these in the. In the early days, it was cassette tapes. Right.

Not a bootleg, though, because they were permissible. They allow people to plug into the board to actually record the shows.

Exactly. And they had a few rules. You can give them away, you can trade them, but you can't sell them.

Right.

And so that was a catalyst in getting people like me and perhaps you to be eager to spend money on concert tickets. And they ended up making a billion dollars in concert tickets over the course of their career because they did what every other band did and they allowed fans to freely record their music. And I think that lesson applies even now, because what I see is that so many organizations try to control their information. If you think about just one example, in the business to business world, a lot of companies create a piece of content like a white paper, and they dangle that in front of people. They say, get our free white paper, but it's not free because they require you to give an email address to get it.

Yes.

And so it's a coercive tactic where what I say is, offer that white paper for sure, but make it totally free. Don't put any roadblocks in front of it, just like the Grateful Dead did. So I think it's a really cool lesson. I think it's something valuable that we can all learn from even today.

I agree. David. So, so love this conversation. And didn't anticipate, actually, that we'd go. We'd go there.

I pretty deep into music, which was fun, actually.

So great. I was working as a waiter at this restaurant, and somebody I was working with handed me a tape, said, you ever heard the Grateful Dead before?

Oh, really?

No. You know, it was in my. I mean, it was 18 years old or something. And he said, yeah, and they're playing at the Garden. I have an extra ticket if you want to come.

I'm like, wow. See, that's it. That's. That's the whole point. And if you hadn't listened to the cassette tape, you might not have been exposed to them.

No. When. The minute I heard Eyes of the World, I was just like.

And then. And then. How many tickets have you bought since then? How many albums have you bought then?

Yeah, I mean, we probably went to 60, 70 shows, Randy and I.

And you spent thousands of dollars on the band because they allowed fans to record their concerts? I think so many people told me stories like that. It's fabulous.

A great lesson.

Yeah.

Well, David, we didn't talk much about rituals, and I end my shows in the same way, so I'm going to ask you this question and then go ahead with that. But is there one thing that you do on a ritual basis daily to just help you to feel better about your life? Be more resilient, Enjoy, you know, be. Enjoy More?

Yeah. Ten years ago, almost to the day, was my 50th birthday, and I weighed 60 pounds more than I do now. And I was. Wasn't feeling good about myself, wasn't feeling good about a lot of things. And I decided I didn't plan this. I don't know where it came from. The universe gave it to me. But on my birthday, I just said, you know what? I'm going to get healthy. And so on that day, I started exercising every day. And for almost 10 years now, I've exercised every day, and I'll miss one or two days a month. If we weren't in a pandemic, it might be two or three because of business travel. But there's no excuse if I'm in a hotel, there's no excuse if I'm at my vacation house in Nantucket, there's no excuse. It's every day I exercise. And in the early days, I exercised with the TV on. But very quickly, I realized that that was distracting. And I needed to really be more mindful of what my body was doing, what my muscles were doing. So for maybe the last nine years, except for the first year, it's all been about no distractions and I average an hour and I alternate between. I haven't been doing swimming for six months because my, my pool is closed, but normally I'm swimming. I do mountain biking, I do yoga, I do weights, I have a home gym which is awesome. I do Pilates and, and, and it's been transformational for my life. And you know, I'm. Now I'm fitter and healthier than I was at any other time in my life. You know, nearly 60 year old David can do more pull ups and sit ups and push ups and swim faster and mountain bike faster than any other David that ever existed, whether I was 20 or 30 or 40 or 50. Yeah, so that's, that's my thing.

Beautiful brother. So good. Well, at some point it's, if it's east coast or west coast, I'll get you out on a surfboard. I read in your bio you like to see surf, but you're not good at it. So we'll, we'll.

Yeah, I am. I don't have a chance to surf. I have a ton of core. I might, my core is really strong. I mean I've got a six pack at age 60, so I've got a, I've got a great, I've got a great core. But I learned surfing as an older person and anything like that. If you learn as a kid, you become way better than if you learn as an adult. So I have that handicap. I also don't surf year round. My place in Nantucket, I usually get five months out of the year of surfing. And then if I happen to have a business trip somewhere, I'll maybe grab a surf if I'm in somewhere that has waves. But these aren't excuses. It's just to say that I love it. It's really important to me. I'm not that great at it, but that doesn't matter because the person who's having the most fun is the best, right?

Indeed. No question about it. To end the show, I'll ask you this one question, which is, do you love your life, David?

Oh, yeah, absolutely I do. I do.

To me, that is the. It's a subject that's been on our mind for a long time. I did a TED Talk about two years ago on it. We've got a new book that's actually coming out in January called The I love my life challenge.

Oh, cool.

Yeah, it's to me, like you said, there are certain things you do consistently that you get to see a transformational dividend from. And one of them for me is the way I wake up. And so it's three simple steps to this waking ritual. One, wake up. And that's not something we take for granted because it's not a guarantee. Two, when you're waking up, when I'm waking up in the morning, I, I have this sense that it is special. It's. It's sort of a holy moment because I realize somebody is not waking up at that same moment. So I can feel gratitude. And, and thirdly, I say something out loud, start the day with some. With a statement, speaking, speaking something I most want into existence. And. And that is those four simple words. I love my life.

Nice.

So it's been a pleasure, David, having this conversation. Thanks folks that want to find out more about David's work, his books, et cetera. You can check out the show notes, there's links to ways to buy and find out more about the kind of work that David does and his thought leadership in the marketing space. We'd love to get a comment. You go to AdamMarkel.com podcast to leave a comment. Subscribe and if you know somebody that would love to hear some of the things you heard today, share it with a friend, especially somebody that loves music. I can, I can see somebody really vibing on this conversation. So terrific. Thanks again, David.

All right, thanks, Adam. Take care.

You too.

Thanks for listening, everyone.

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