Creating a Cult of Customers

Business Brain, episode 527 for Casual Friday, February 23, National Rationalization Day, perhaps my favorite day of the year. 2024. Greetings, folks, and welcome to Business Brain, the show where we take an idea, we dissect it, we analyze it, we use it to tune our business brains every single time we get together. Sponsors for this episode include gosquaredaway.com contact squared away empowers highly educated military spouses to become your remote executive assistants. I love this idea. We'll talk more about it in a little bit. For now, here in Durham, New Hampshire, at least when I'm recording this, I'm Dave Hamilton and I'm still out here in California.

I'm Shannon Jean. How's it going? Happy Friday, man.

Happy Casual Friday. National Rationalization Day. I, I liked it when I saw that one.

How do you do that? That's crazy. Rationalize anything, right?

You can. That's the thing is you're, you're allowed to rationalize anything. I will be in Mexico on National Rationalization Day at an all inclusive resort. So that seems like a dangerous combination.

Completely irrational.

It seems completely irresponsible.

They're. Yeah, there's some great. I want to dig into that more.

Yes.

Because I have some questions for you about that, that business model.

Yeah.

But before we do that, I wanted to mention just a quick tidbit of a way that I am. You know, we've talked about AI on the show quite a bit and chatgpt and some Gemini and Copilot, all that stuff is great. And you know, my concept is, or my framework is we should be learning as much as we can about it as business owners so that we understand it, so we're not left behind, so we're not afraid of it. Like it's going to replace people, whatever. But we need to be on this, on the wave here. And I think we're just at the beginning of the wave. You know, Charlie Munger always said, you know, get on the wave as something starts. I rode the Apple wave.

Oh, same for.

Right. For almost 20 years, ups and downs. And it had pros and cons. So I, I probably made more money when they were, when Apple was having trouble than I did when they were booming. But that's because I took advantage of inefficiencies that they were not able to control. But so I'm using Chat GPT. Chat GPT a lot. I have the paid version which is. Allows us to do a few more things and more computing power, I guess.

Same.

We use it for our episode artwork, which is great. I love it. You can fine tune everything. It's a little quirky. You gotta learn about it. Doesn't spell worth a darn.

Oh, yeah. No, no, no, no, no. I have been shocked the times that I've gotten correctly spelled things in an image. Like most of the time I have my prompt to create an image. I know that when I need to create it for the podcast, I tell it I want a wide aspect ratio image, not a square image because it works out better. So I've, I've tuned all these things and I always tell it, don't put any words in the image.

And you go and put the words in later if you need it.

If I want. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

I've been able to. To. This is not what I want to talk about, but it's interesting. We're here on the. Some of them I've done. I'll open it up in Pixelmator and I can get in there and adjust the text and remove the wrong letter, whatever.

So I've done that too. Yeah, yeah. And pixelmator is great if you're on a Mac. And by the way, the, the AI on the AI topic, all of the ad reads I do for this podcast and all my other podcasts, I now have Chat GPT write my ad scripts. I take the things that the sponsors want us to say. Over the last 19 years, what I had previously done was I would just come up with my own version of their talking points. But I noticed that I'm a human, I would get into habits with it. And you probably noticed this too, folks, if we had the same sponsor on, you know, three or four times over the course of a couple of months, you'd hear me say approximately the same thing. And so I started feeding them into Chat GPT. And now, and I tell it, make it funny and include, you know, the catchphrase from the show. So, like, figure out how to say Charmed Life as part of the sponsorship. And so if, even if you've already heard the squared away ads that we've done in previous weeks, listen to today's again because it's going to be different. And I always try and get Chat GPT to make things that will, that will create a script that will make it tough for me to read without laughing. So that's cool.

Yeah, that's great.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so one of the ways I'm using it, I'm working on a new book called Escaping Employment. Just kind of the story of not working for Anybody my whole life and all the things we've talked about a lot. But what I thought was it'd be nice to have follow up worksheets and maybe some. Yeah, worksheets and different things. Course material after each chapter that either somebody could do themselves or maybe somebody could give to an employee if you wanted to learn about a specific topic that I discussed in that chapter. So that's what I've been doing. I upload the chapter that I've got done to ChatGPT and I'll say, hey, I want you to analyze this, this content and create a set of worksheets that can go over each of those things and create two sets, one for an individual and another one that a, an employer could give to an employee if you wanted to learn about something. I mean if I'm talking about hiring or cash flow or.

That's smart.

And it, it, the, the results are amazing. You do, you do have to edit them to be sure kind of doing what you want. But that's great. I know how to edit and editing.

Is way easier than creating out of whole clothing.

It.

Yeah.

And it's my content. It's creating it from. I'm not asking it to create something to shortcut to write because you know a book and it's been great and it has really filled out. You know, I'm about 10 chapters in and each of these chapters now is got a whole set of curriculum that somebody gets with the book. So the book will be, you know, maybe twice as as useful or maybe exponentially more useful, but certainly twice, twice as as much content, maybe three times as much content. So instead of maybe a 250 page book, somebody's going to get like a 500 page book that they can dip in and out of and learn different things. So it's just a way that I'm using it that I thought might be kind of interesting to share here on the show.

All right folks, you ever feel like your to do list is a hydra? Chop off one task and two more sprout in its place. Take me for example. Coordinating recording schedules for the podcast is like trying to nail jelly to a wall. Sometime tricky and messy. And don't get me started on research. It's a time gobbling monster. Oh, and meetings. Without somebody there to take notes, I might as well be talking to my plants. They're great listeners, but not so hot on the follow up. Enter the Cavalry. AKA our sponsor, Squared Away. These folks are on a noble quest to empower military spouses by turning them into your Go to Remote executive assistants. It's like having your own business, superhero cape and all. Imagine having a sidekick who's not just reacting to fires, but is proactive like a business savvy fortune teller. Squared away assistants are ready to leap tall buildings or at least daunting to do lists in a single bound. And because they operate in all US Time zones and are as much a part of your team as anyone else, you're not just getting help. You're expanding your business family. So why wrestle with your schedule when you can have a squared away assistant do the heavy lifting? Don't wait. Contact Squared Away today to find out how they can help your business thrive. Just go to gosquaredaway.com contact that's go squared away.com contact. Here's to making your business life a breeze and our thanks to Squared Away for sponsoring this episode. All right, Shannon. Well, I mentioned in the intro that I'm going to be on at a resort in Mexico when these episodes come out, and you and I talked a little bit about that pre show and you had some questions. I'm going to see the band Fish. Right. They're playing four nights on the beach in Mexico at a resort.

And so. Yeah. You've done this before.

I have. I think this is our sixth time, our fifth time. Something like that. Yeah. Yeah.

And my comment was that why did it come up that I'm trying to look up fish's earnings for. Oh, 23.

Yeah.

My comment was that Fish is basically a cult. And I thought. But I was saying that in a positive.

Yeah, yeah.

Light. I mean, this band in. In last. Last year, they did 41 shows. They sold just about 600,000 tickets.

Yep.

And they made their. The gross was 70. Just about $77 million.

Okay. Yeah, that makes sense.

I'm like, okay, so this is great. This is a business that. How do I do this? You know, how do you get this cult like following of where people. Not just going to go to a concert, we're going to fly to another country.

Yes.

And we're going to stay at this result resort for four days and we're going to go watch the same band every single night.

Correct. So there's a lot to dissect here. And I doubt I. And I've thought a lot about this, as you might imagine. Like, you know, Lisa and I, before we met, we both were big fans of going to see live music. Right. That's also kind of how we met. But I'll leave that story for another time. Right. After we met and started dating, we both found this band, Phish. And so it's been a thing that's been a constant in our relationship that has been ours. Right. There's other bands we like. Of course.

Yeah.

I wouldn't even say that Fish is my favorite band. I mean, it's probably, you know, top five, certainly top ten. But because it's this thing that Lisa and I found together. And every Fish show is different. They won't play like, in Mexico. We will not hear the over four nights of music. We will not hear the same song repeated once.

How can that be?

They played 13 nights at Madison Square Garden and didn't repeat a song.

So they just keep producing more content for their cult. Cult members.

Correct. Right. But this keeps it interesting. Right. It's so like, if they're gonna play three. And so what. What. What Fish has become for Lisa and I, and we enjoy the shows. I enjoy the band, of course. But yes, more than that, we. When it has become sort of the easy button for us to plan our little couples getaways and vacations, because we'll. Look. Where is Fish touring this summer? Oh, they're going to be in Tahoe. I've never been to Tahoe. People in New England, Tahoe is a pain in the neck if you have to fly to get there. Yeah. Right. You know, because it's drive. You got to fly and then drive. Right. And so people don't do that generally. Fish fans certainly do. Um, but, you know, I'd never been to Red Rocks before we went to Red Rocks. I mean, this is 100 years ago. But, you know, like those kinds of things to. Because we know, oh, they're going to be in Tahoe for three nights, or they're Red Rocks for four nights, or they're in Mexico for four nights. We know that we're not just going to see the same concert four times in a row.

And.

Which I wouldn't want to do. Yeah.

So are these. When they show up at Tahoe, Red Rock, whatever. Is it okay? We're going to be there.

They can't play Red Rocks anymore. That this was an issue. Well, the town of Morris in Colorado isn't big enough that to hold all the people that are going to show up. It's a whole other story that's.

That's a good problem to have.

Yeah. Yeah.

Is you always buy multiple night tickets or you can go once, or they always do it like a series.

It depends. For Mexico, this is an all inclusive thing. You buy a package that is your room, which, of course, comes with your food and your drinks, because that's how the resort works. And the concert tickets. That's. That's it. And you were going to go see all of the shows. There's no, like, piecemealing those out. Yeah. When they play, say, Madison Square Garden, you know, they played 13 nights a few years ago. They're kind of in a row. It was one run. They. They would play, like, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and then take Monday off and then play Tuesday, Wednesday, and then take Thursday off and then do Friday, Saturday. So they had this, like, thing, but it was just them. And you could buy a package of all 13 tickets. It's there on Ticketmaster. You could buy individual shows, of course, and you could also buy. Well, you want to buy these three shows this Friday, Saturday, Sunday block, and this Friday, Saturday, Sunday block. So they'll. They'll put it all together because they know how their fans are and they know what they've created that is of value to people. And they also know that people are going to buy more than, generally speaking, their fans are going to buy more than one ticket per tour. A lot of times, even a band that I would put as arguably my favorite band, the band Rush, they don't tour anymore because their drummer passed away a number of years ago. But it was rare even for me to see them twice on one tour because they basically played the same set list. Right. And I would. There was one tour where I actually saw him four times, but.

So that differentiation is part of the.

That's it. But they know that their fans are going to most likely see multiple shows, so they don't price their tickets like everybody else does because they know there's a maximum amount of money you can get out of people. So. Whereas.

Tell me about that.

Yeah. Concert tickets are like, you know, for a decent seat, you'll pay 2. 2 to 300 bucks.

Oh, yeah. Oh, easy.

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay.

For the longest time, Fish wouldn't go over 50, and now they try to keep it under 100 per ticket. You know, the. The economy and the concert market got to the point where 50 wasn't sustainable for what they needed to do. But so now it's 100. And there's some shows that might be 110 or something like that. But by and large, those tickets are relative. Relative to the rest of the industry. Inexpensive. The only place where that's not necessarily the case is Mexico. One year, I made the mistake of calculating what it would have cost to stay at the resort for the Same days in the same room without tickets to see Fish. And that's when I realized, oh, this is where they're making up the difference.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because they only played 41 shows last year.

Yeah.

And. And made, you know, almost $77 million.

So there's a joke in the concert industry that There are only 70,000 fish fans, but they all go to every show. And I don't. I think it's probably more than that. I think they have more than that.

But because you never hear. I would not even know who they are.

Correct.

If I did not know you.

Correct.

You don't hear their music. I don't ever get it. Even on a random playlist or radio thing on Apple Music. Of course, you don't hear them on regular radio. So I guess my question to all of us is, how do we take this? They. They've inverted, right?

Oh, yeah.

They've. They've flipped it upside down on how the concert thing works.

They're.

They. They're. They have no hits, as far as I know.

Nope. They.

They play.

They. No. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, definitely do not. Yeah.

You never hear the same song, which is what people always want to go, I want to hear this.

I want to hear my favorite song.

My favorite song.

If you show up at one Fish concert with one song in mind that you want to hear, you won't hear it. There. There was. There was one song that Lisa, my wife, always wanted to hear. We started seeing this band in 1993, and they were playing it. The song had been written before that, and they were playing it a bunch in 1993. This song called Esther the Shows that. And we saw a lot of shows in like 93, 94, 95. Always missed it. Right. We never saw it. Never saw it. She did not see that song. We did not see them play that song until it was that 13 night run. We didn't go to all 13, but that 13 night run at Madison Square Garden in 2017. So and so decades.

Amazing. While you're sitting there, all of a sudden, you hear it.

Yep.

And you must go bonkers.

Correct.

Because you're like, this is a song. This is it for 10 years.

Yeah. And it was funny because in line that night. That's discovery. Yeah. Waiting in line that night. She said, I'm hoping for Esther tonight. And a couple people around us were like, yeah. You know, like, it is this 13 show run. Like, these are the runs where you get this. Like they're going to play everything that you most likely. Right. You know Pretty close.

It's like a. It's kind of like going to Costco. It's a treasure hunt.

It's a treasure hunt. You don't know when. Right. And.

And you don't even.

You don't even know if, like, they could.

If you want a chance, you yet to increase your odds, you have to buy more tickets.

Correct. And when that. When that song started that night, I saw. It was. It was interesting because I saw the guitar player lean over to the piano player. It starts with, like, this. This carnival thing on the organ.

Okay.

And I saw him lean over and say the word Esther. And I didn't say anything to Lisa. I was like, I'll just. I'm gonna. I'm gonna. Now I get to watch. I know what's about to happen. I get to watch this happen. And she, you know, lit up, of course.

Yeah.

And all the people around us who had been in line with us, you know, I mean, it's all general admission. So you wind up sitting at the show with the people that you were in line with, and, like, half a dozen of them turn to her and they're like, hey, you get your Esther tonight. Because they knew. But that's part of the community of. It is. And I think to create what they've created. And cult is not an incorrect word. It might have the wrong connotation. It might have the right connotation. I don't know.

No. In a positive manner.

For. Yeah. Depends on. Depends on your. Your. But it's as we. We like going to the shows for a variety of reasons. The music is part of it. The crowd is the other part. And, you know, I heard Steve Tyler from Aerosmith say once, he's like, look, you know, I learned early on that we are just the hosts of a party every night, but the party's not about us. We just threw the party. But everybody. But it's about them and. And fish.

Really embracing creating the environment for everybody to connect.

That's it for you.

Everyone to have a great time.

Yep.

There's this. This discovery, slash treasure hunt aspect of it.

100%.

You. You never know.

Yeah.

You never know what it's going to be like. Oftentimes. Did you know you have to. Yeah. So you have to buy more.

Yeah.

Increase your chance.

We'll get, like. We'll get, like, you know, halfway through that. They usually play two sets of music each night with a little set break in the middle, and we'll get halfway through the first set before we'll turn to each other. And. And acknowledge, like, what type of show this is. Like, it could be a. I see. Because they have a lot of different types of songs. I mean, they've, you know, they've been banned for whatever, 40 years and. Yeah, 30 plus years. And. And so they've got, like, hard rock songs, They've got, like, bluegrass type songs. They've got, like, more prog rock stuff. You know, I mean, it all sounds like them because it's the same four guys making the music, but there's different vibes to it. And it'll be like, you know, it'll be three or four songs in and we'll look at each other. It's like, oh, rock show tonight. All right, cool. Great. You know, and then the vibe kind of persists, you know, so that's awesome.

So I'm basically. It's basically the Costco of.

Yeah. Of. Of in a sense, with more community. I don't have quite the same community vibe when I walk into Costco.

Talk about Costco. When you talk about Costco or whatever, everybody's like, oh, I love it. Well, then I found this thing and I went there and it was great. And I had. Every time I had to go back because I was worried they were going to be gone and. But a lot of the shared things, and I'm gonna.

It's the mystery, it's the lore. They want their first.

I love that.

And I think that's really important to Fish's story. I think it's important to another band that's a favorite of mine. AR. There's. There's lore about how the band came together and all then the stories, and you don't necessarily know all the bits and pieces of it. And I think that. That it's some air of mystery, some air of a story that people can weave together. There.

There was like, the $50 hot dog.

Yes.

Story.

It's.

I mean, I. I'm not to. I'm saying. And I'm using these analogies as a compliment.

It's. No, I love this. You're right. But it's the mystery. The treasure hunt. Yeah. The lore. They. They. Their first album really was just a musical that. That has yet to be like a musical, although they've. They've performed it five or six times total in their career. But the songs from it wind up getting played here and there. But. But in its entirety. It's only been played, you know, a handful of times. But it's a whole story about this mythical group of creatures called the lizards. And they have this evil ruler. And, you know, it's a ridiculous story, but it's a story. It's a story. And that thread winds through kind of everything that they do. And I think that kind of, you know, it gives you something to talk about.

Yes, absolutely.

Fish was one of the first bands to have an online presence. Long before the web existed. There was a news group that was dedicated just to the fans. The band was rarely part of it, but it was fans sharing setlists and stories and, like, all of the things. But that.

That's great.

If you can create a scenario where the. Your fans want to talk to each other.

Absolutely.

You win. Yeah, you win. We did that with Matt Geekab. It's funny. Like, our fans of. Of macgeekab, they, like, hang out. They have zoom calls with each other. We don't even know they're happening. You know, it's just. But it's. It's the community. They're hanging out. They know each other. It's like, great, great.

That's terrific.

It's freaking amazing.

I'm gonna dig. Yeah. I love it and I. I love the it.

It.

You're part of a special club, a cult.

Oh, it's. You're definitely part of a club. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. When. And when we get to Mexico, we'll see. You know, we'll get there a little earlier than most people, but there's already some people there. I know because, you know, the online community, but, you know, over time, the resort just basically becomes taken over by Fish fans and. And, you know, it's just the element and. And it's a very welcoming community. You can be whoever you want. Nobody cares. You know, it doesn't. That's great. Which is great. Yeah.

Yeah. That's terrific. I'm going to break this down and do this cost comparison thing.

I'm.

I'm fascinated by how this works. If you want to see that, come up on, you know, on X on Twitter. Just follow me, Shannon Jean. And I'm going to do this on Friday when we release the show. And so we can kind of compare these two things. I think there's a great connection there.

I like it. I can't wait to read your thing. Thank you. Yeah, we're looking forward to it. Nice to get away and thaw out a little bit and go stand on the beach. It's great. Standing barefoot, watching a concert. Doesn't get much better. I'll see you when I get back. Keep living that charmed life, folks.