This is a conversational excerpt from the YouTube video "Turning Fans Into Customers and Customers Into Fans" (uploaded Jan 16, 2021). Two speakers recall meeting 12 years earlier after an introductory email; immediate rapport formed over stickers on a laptop that revealed shared interests (Nantucket, Japan, Grateful Dead). The clip illustrates how personal fandom and shared cultural touchpoints can create strong interpersonal bonds that later translate into repeated social interactions and business opportunities (joint events, visits to Tokyo, attending concerts together).
Chapters
Brian, David. We met each other 12 years ago, and I remember it like it was yesterday.
I do, too.
You guys invited me to come and meet you here in Cambridge, although not in this building. And the email I got is. It's a memorial email because the subject line is so awesome. It said, we have based our company on the ideas in your book.
Okay, let me go back even further than that, please. I remember that email because we had a marketing guy and he was going away on his honeymoon, and he was going away for two weeks to Bora Bora, long trip. And he had a stack of books on his desk this high.
Pre Kindle.
Way pre Kindle. And he knew I like to read. And I was like, well, it looks like a romantic honeymoon you're going on. And so he goes away and he comes back and he leaves one book on my chair with a little sticky. Said, brian, read this one. And that was your book.
Nice.
And then we looked you up. It's like, wait, he lives right around the corner from us. Let's see if we can engage him. That's how. That's how they're going.
And this email came like, of course I've got to take that meeting. Company that says they base their company on my book. Which wasn't entirely true, but it got me into the meeting. And I walked into the meeting and I had. It was an older generation MacBook Pro. It was a MacBook Pro. And I opened up my MacBook Pro and we started to chat. Now we have. We had known each other for one minute. Literally one minute. And you go, hang on, hang on, hang on. We can't start this meeting until you tell me about these stickers. And I had three of the stickers that are on this one right now that you pointed out, like, what's that? Nantucket sticker. So I said, hey, I've been to Nantucket many times. I own a house in Nantucket. It's fabulous. And then you said, I get on.
It all the time. Then I was like, oh, the Japan sticker. Why do you have a Japan sticker?
Japan? What's that about? I said, my wife is Japanese. I lived in Japan for seven years. Japan is incredibly important in my life.
And I lived in Japan for two years, and we lived there the same.
Time, the same time. And then I'm like, wait a minute. We both, like, saw the future of marketing. You started a company based on this idea of inbound marketing. I wrote a. A book about what I call the new rules of marketing, which is essentially the same thing. And we both have this Japan fascination. We both love Nantucket. It's like we're long lost brothers. You're like, what about the Grateful Dead? Steely going on here? And I said, grateful Dead's my favorite band. The Grateful Dead I've seen over 50 times. And you're like.
It'S my favorite band too. I've seen him over 100 times. And I remember that conversation led to. You're reaching into your briefcase at the time. You said, I got two extra tickets to Phil and Friends. Basically Grateful that redux. You want them? And you gave me those tickets that night. We ended up going.
We ended up going together. And what's so cool about this is that simply a couple of stickers on a computer led to us having an instant connection in the first minute we met one another, which is something that fandom can do. It's something that sharing something with somebody in a personal way can lead to something that is incredibly powerful. And in 12 years, we've probably seen the Grateful Dead together 50 times, something like that. Six times this year so far. Six. Six times this year so far. When you opened your HubSpot office in Tokyo, I was there. So we've been to Japan at the same time.
I went to your daughter's wedd wedding.
We had beers together at Cisco Brewery in Nantucket. So the whole idea of fandom is you share things with like minded people and the personal stuff can lead to business.
