Why You Need To Cut The Fluff—Marketing For The Millennial Age

Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the land geek with your favorite niche real estate website, www.thelandgeek.com. and today's guest is, like, if we. It's like a millennial, kind of like chaotic thinking genius, if you will. I can't wait to interview this guy, Scott. I can't wait. But before we get into our guest, I'd be remiss if I didn't properly introduce you. Scott Todd. Six Sigma. Scotttodd.net landmodo.com and most importantly, if you're not automating your Craigslist and your Facebook postings, postingdomination.com thelandgeek Scott Todd, are you ready to get your mind blown?

Mark, let's talk about millennials, shall we?

You know what? Let's talk about millennials. Because the only thing I know about millennials are that they are smarter than me, they are cooler than me, they're hipper than me, and they're living life in a way that I'm jealous of. That's all I know. What about you, Scott? What do you know about millennials?

Well, I know that the millennials that I know, they're really more about experiences first. You know, they really want experiences. Millennials maybe have a reputation about being tech savvy, when in fact, maybe they're more tech dependent because of the fact that they didn't grow up with, like, the programming age like you and I did, Mark. What they grew up in is like, hey, here's your iPhone. Here's the apps that all go along with it. And they had cool stuff. Cooler stuff than I think we had. So, you know, I think it's.

I think it's cool.

Yeah. You know what's cool about millennials is, like, if you watch them touch an elevator button, they don't use their index finger, they use their thumb. Never thought about that, did you? No.

Interesting.

It's interesting. Brian Fonzo is our guest, our millennial rock star, if you will. And he is so cool that I'm just gonna let Brian introduce himself. Brian, how do we describe you?

Well, I'm a elevator thumb touching millennial. I guess that's the first I've actually heard that, which actually is pretty interesting. But thanks, guys, for having me on. You know, I always say I'm a pager wearing millennial. I actually just turned 36 this past week. And so I'm 81 years old. I was born 81 years old. I was born in 1981. And so I'm right on the. On the older side of the millennial kind of generation range. But I introduced myself, or I'm known as a kind of change evangelist, mainly because I have a really awkward or weird background on how I've got to where I'm at now. But I to kind of summarize it, I went to school for computer science, so I can appreciate the coding side of the fence. I Learned ADA and QBasic and a lot of origin code whenever I was in college. And actually one of the things that I talk about with the millennial conversation, which I know we'll get into, is I actually kind of debunk a lot of what people think of as a stereotypical millennial because I graduated college in 2003. I gave up my Edu address because I had graduated college. Facebook comes out the next year. I actually had to wait four years before I could get on Facebook because I didn't have. I wasn't in college. So a millennial like myself wasn't even. I wasn't born on Facebook like many like to kind of label millennials. And I had to wait a lot like other people. But the reason I'm kind of known as a change evangelist, I worked for the U.S. department of Defense for nine years in cybersecurity and social business. So I deployed and managed the largest cybersecurity initiative for the DOD for nine years. I worked for a government contractor called BAE Systems. And so I traveled to 45 plus countries, three trips to Iraq, two to Afghanistan. I had a team of 32 team members that deployed and managed these tools. I love the job, but for me, I'm a passionate guy that likes to drive, drive change. And one thing working with the government is you learn that change isn't something they're very good at or very fast at. And so I left that industry and then went to probably one of the most boring industries in the tech space, which is the data center industry. And I kind of crafted my dream job, which was a technology evangelist, kind of modeled after Guy Kawasaki and Robert Scoble on that side. And what my job was, we were moving a data center company from a data center company, which was a real estate play, into a cloud computing type arena where we are deploying cloud solutions. And so I did that for three years. I managed kind of internal onboarding as well as social selling, kind of internal, external. And then about four years ago, I decided to go do which without question has been the craziest journey of all three of these. I became an entrepreneur and started my own company, Isocial Fans and What I do with that company is I'm a keynote speaker. I speak about 50 events a year. But I work with brands on how they can tell their story and leverage some of the new technology, kind of like Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook Live, how they can use that technology and create stories and experiences. Kind of like what you said, Scott, to reach the kind of millennial Gen Z customer. And that's really where I focus a lot of my attention now on is it's not really labeling the millennial Gen Z customer, but it's understanding where they're at, how to capture their attention. And so that's why I'm a change evangelist. The background doesn't make sense. Most in marketing or social media, you know, haven't been to Iraq, aren't computer coders. But for me, it gives me kind of a unique perspective when it comes to marketing social media and then kind of taking the digital space to the. To the next level.

I mean, I think Brian just dropped the mic on us, Scott. Todd. Well, you're on mute, Scott.

Sorry. I don't know why I think he did drop the mic on us.

So this is why it was so hard to sort of introduce Brian, because he has such a wide, varied background. I think the first question, Brian, is, when we're speaking to a millennial, number one, how do we define them? What is important to a millennial, and what type of story resonates with them?

So, yeah, and I love the way you kind of broke that down, because I think there's two different things. When you're marketing at a millennial or kind of building a sales funnel towards a millennial, you're actually using the characteristics of someone born between 1981 and 2000. Right. So you have that kind of parameters for how you're kind of looking at it. But for a lot of people, when they think about a millennial or they're trying to craft a story, they think about somebody that's digitally connected, that enjoys experiences over, you know, doesn't want to be sold to or marketed to someone that, you know, is slightly distracted, you know, that you hear the thing kind of like, you know, they like participation trophies. And my caveat to that is always, if millennials were getting the trophies, it was the Gen X and baby Boomer parents that were giving it to them. So we can't really just blame millennials on that side. But interestingly enough, I call what I label the. There's two different things. Marketing towards a millennial or addressing the millennial mindset and the Millennial mindset, in my opinion, there's two different groups. You have the digital dinosaurs. People that look at digital as a roadblock, as something they wish they didn't have to use. They wish they could throw their phone, disappear from email and only communicate offline. Kind of take digital out of, because they don't believe digital is moving us forward. And then I have what I call the digitally empowered, which it doesn't matter how old you are. In my book, I interviewed someone, Warren Whitlock. He's a 72 year old, what I call 72 year old millennial that's taught me how to podcast, he's introduced me into Internet of things. And so a lot of these, I'd say Personas or stereotypes are usually kind of labeled at a millennial. But I will challenge almost everyone. The only one of the biggest differences and the reason millennials kind of get a lot of this labeling, is that they have the megaphone to be able to tell the world what their opinion is that the other generations didn't. I would argue with anyone that, that if baby boomers or Gen Xers had social media and had digital at their disposal like millennials did, they would be just as loud, they would be just as opinionated, they would be just as determined to drive change. And so when you're looking at stories, two of the biggest pieces is that you have to talk with millennials, not talk at millennials, because they've really grown up, and myself included, kind of grown up in a world where I remember I was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A lot of my relatives, the only time they left the state was to go on vacation to the Jersey Shore, to Virginia beach. And then they really had no other exposure to external culture yet. My 7 year old daughter does Skyping with one of my employees, daughters in Australia. When I'm In Dubai, I'm FaceTiming with my kids. And so the exposure and really, you know, the ability to be kind of connected with different cultures and different arenas really requires you to talk with Millennials because there's so many, so much content, so much distraction, but kind of what all of those things I'm talking about, I can probably challenge the listeners. Everyone wants to be heard. Everyone prefers experiences no one loves being sold to. No one says, you know, please, you know, influence me. Those are things that I think no matter how old you are, really have those same characteristics. It's now just about understanding. You must go to where they're at, you must talk with them, and then you must put it in the sense of they must be able to relate with you. You know, the old school way of. And I love watch Mad Men or you watch kind of the. Even the story, if you guys haven't seen. I've been talking about this show a lot, which randomly it comes up is on Amazon, they have the Playboy story. So it's how Playboy came to kind of life. And one of the things I thought was really interesting in Hugh Hefner's journey was that in his early days, he would looked at when he left to go do the magazine and do the things he wanted to do. It was so rare for someone to work with something they are passionate about, to work outside of the 40 hours a week, and to think of their job as something that helped define who they were. And I think that's where we're at today. And it's something that I think we've always kind of been leaning towards. It's just happening at a faster rate today.

Scott. Todd, my head's swimming.

I always caveat with all shows I'm on. I talk fast. I realize that. I do talk fast. So I was diagnosed ADHD at 31. And so I always tell people, you know, I talk fast. I'm very transparent with my own distractions and world. But the nice thing on a podcast is you don't have to hit the speed up button when I'm talking. You just leave it in normal and it's like 1 1/2 x for what you're usually listening to.

I like that. I like that. So, Scott, you know, I thought what Brian said was really true, that, you know, there is no gap between a millennial and the rest of us. There really isn't. None of us want to be sold to. We all prefer experiences. It's so true. And yet, you know, there's always that part of me that resists what is right. And I'll give you an example, right? My kids are on Snapchat and Instagram the most of all the apps. Facebook's for, like, old people, for them, right? So Facebook's for the old. The older people, they're on Snapchat and Instagram. If I ever want to get anything done in my house, all I have to do is, if you don't do it, I'm taking away your phone, right?

So.

And then it gets done, right? So the issue is that there's part of me. It's like, okay, put your phones away. Let's go back to a time that was just we were less distracted. But that's not Reality. The reality is we are all distracted. So if we're going to live in reality, we're just going to just say, look, we're all distracted. What's the best way to cut through the distraction and actually get a message across? Right. In a way that we want it to be impactful. Right. So the question then is, how do you do that in a way where, you know, if I only have. Let's. Like, I used to only have maybe three seconds to get someone's attention. Now I probably have a half second. How do we do that, Brian?

Well, you know, I always like to, you know, my grandfather growing up in Pittsburgh, always joked that, you know, he had three TV channels on his TV for his content and his newspaper in the morning, but he didn't have a remote control. So really, he had one channel per day because he didn't want to get up and change the channel. And if you think about it that way, your choice and options for how you were distracted, how you were interrupted, was very, you know, you had no control as the consumer. They decided when your commercials were. And it's interesting because, you know, I remember growing up, my incentive for good school. So you were talking about your kids with Snapchat and Instagram. For me, if I got good grades, which I struggled in school, I. I got to stay up on Wednesday nights to watch 90210 at 9pm and the interesting thing is when I say that to millennials, they will often say, well, why did you have to stay up to watch it? You didn't watch it on your DVR or Netflix. And if you think about it that way, Right. I grew up with a fact where I remember my programming was determined by the TV audience. Right. I remember that we would change when we were eating dinner because my family is a big Pittsburgh Steelers fans. And all of these things were really, you know, drastically controlled, let's just say by big brand or by. By. By the. By the. By the man. And now we not only have all of the choices, but we are living in a world that we want stuff when we want it, where we want it, how we want it, and we're going to tell you about all of those things as well. Right? So, I mean, no one wants to go back to the age before dvr. We don't want to watch, you know, when you watch commercials other than the Super Bowl. No. Everyone's like, oh, yeah, these are what commercials look like when you're watching a sporting event or something. Because we've now become so prone to deciding how we're interrupted because we all have 24 hours in the day. And now that we're able to decide that the brands and the advertisers, the marketers, and really us as people that want to deliver a message, you have to cut through all of that by saying, this is something that will either help you, inspire you, motivate you, and not only do I have to get it in front of you, but it can't be full of fluff. It can't be fake. This world where fake it till you make it, or, hey, we can put this on our website, but we don't have that product yet. Right? But let's just, you know, that world doesn't exist today. Right. You can be easily exposed in this new kind of transparent desire for authenticity. But I think it's a great thing. I believe I'm raising my daughters in the greatest time in history because I believe this new approach to you have to provide great experiences. And sales and marketing really does come down to, you know, the old adage of people buy from people they like. That's still the same thing. But the only thing they didn't used to do is buy from people they didn't like. Right. People they had a mediocre feeling for, they still bought from them. If it made sense, I would argue moving forward, people buy from people they like and people they can relate to. And it's those two things. And to wrap your head around that is your marketing and sales now have to be focused on that experience. I mean, look at the Apple TV commercial. The iPhone is not in it. It's an iPhone commercial that shows video and pictures on, on the experience enabled by the technology. Because the consumer doesn't need another phone. We all have plenty of phones. But we would love, you know, I have portrait mode on my new iPhone 7 and it's amazing for my daughters how much better those pictures are. And for me, I bought the phone for the experience of creating digital memories of my kids, not because I needed the new iPhone. And Apple gets that and they focus on those experiences. And so I would say if your listeners are trying to wrap their head around a lot of these things, the two big pieces are, you must go to where your audience is. The old school way of field of dreams marketing, which meant, if I build it, they will come. That's broken. It does not work anymore. Just because you have a website or a Facebook page or an Instagram, even a Snapchat, just because you have it doesn't mean your audience and consumer is going to come to you, you must go to them, educate them on who you are and what you're about. And oftentimes it's who you are and how it's going to impact them. And, and if they're able to relate with that, they come back to you and say, what is it you're selling? I want to buy it. And talking about a cool way of switching the whole future of sales on its head. When you're able to provide that unique story and it relates with them, they end up doing the reverse selling for you. I think that's where we look at this future as we move. It's really about how do we cut through the noise. It's we focus on how and why we do what we do, not what we do, because what we do is extremely boring. And I think we just kind of finally realized that.

I like that. How and why what we do, what we do. Scott. Todd, what are your thoughts?

Well, I mean, I think that, you know, Brian is like delivering so much value here. I mean, I think that what you see in the fact of, like, even today, you know, like the groups, Facebook groups, for example, you know, it's not necessarily about build a Facebook page and people are going to flock to it. I mean, they do if it's a brand that they like, what they do want to do is they want to be part of a community. Right. And you know, I think that, you know, we, I think a lot of people kind of blame millennials for things, you know, and you know, like I heard that they're blamed for like not buying houses anymore and all these other things that are like, messing up the economy. But the reality is, is that the world is changing and you know, they are. The millennials are kind of leading the way in that change. And you really have to adapt to it, otherwise you're going to be a dinosaur.

I love that you brought that up about the houses side. You know, I grew up, I graduated college, I got my government job, I purchased my first townhouse outside of Washington D.C. i sold that first townhouse a couple years later to move to Arizona. I bought my dream house in Arizona, a six bedroom house in Queen Creek, Arizona. And now I'm a rental. Now I'm a renter. You know, I left that. And the interesting thing was I wasn't. I don't want to not own a house. I don't want to make a commitment for the next 30 years on something because I'm open to changing my life and my world next year. Right. And so I Think what you said there is extremely important because I think we often, we will blame, you know, hey, millennials are going to go move in with their parents. Well, the reason they were moving back in with their parents is their parents welcomed them, and in their priorities, they the priority of spending money to travel or having money to travel versus having their own area to spend when they're not working was they just kind of split their priorities. And I think when you look at this, I think you can relate and transform these conversations with millennials, if you think of it from that spec. And I really preach empathy more so than anything else. Right. Empathy isn't just, hey, this is what millennials want. But strap on a millennial shoes and put yourself in the shoes of someone that is now growing up in a world that we're able to experience cultures, we're able to share our opinion, we're able to believe that we can change the world. And not only do we believe that, but we see examples of that every single day. And because of that, we look at these opportunities as not distractions, but really a vast future. And I think we have to kind of change a lot of the rhetoric and change a lot of the conversation to what not what millennials don't want or don't do. You know, one of my favorite jokes was I was sitting at a dinner table and I had some fellow speakers with me, and they were like, yep, see, look at. I can tell that's your millennials. You're over there. All of you have your phones out. I said, well, the interesting thing is you looked at all of us and said, we all have our phones out. We are not distracted. We have no human skills. We're not connecting with the people around us. But when you asked, the four of us at the table, we were telling you that we were actually sharing our stories on Instagram and Snapchat, connecting with hundreds of thousands of people and bringing them along on the journey with us. Right. And so when you flip that, it's not, hey, they're completely distracted and doing something so different than the way that we did it. It's actually they're looking at community. They're looking at relating with people from a different point of view. And I love that you brought up community, because chapter one in my new book is Is the future of business is community. And I couldn't agree with you more that community, investing in your community, having conversations, and really providing that value out of the gate is the future as we move forward in business.

Yeah, absolutely. And I love the Jeff Bezos quote, if everything's going to change, what's not going to change? So Brian Fonzo what's not going to change?

Our need for human interaction. I believe we're right now in 2017. The reason live video, Facebook Live, Periscope. The reason these things have blown up and are growing everywhere. You can't scroll Facebook now without seeing video. The reason is because we are yearning for really going back to the days and time where we look somebody in the eyes and we understand the reason that we love social versus email. Email is about a message. Social is about a conversation. A conversation includes a person. A message is a technology. Right? We're actually picturing an individual transaction where a conversation is what we live in. Social. And so we, what I believe we're going to get to now is we've spent the last nine years in this digital world really getting as far away from the customer as we possibly could with digital and web and social media. I mean we create a website, we add automation, we do all of these things so that we can have more customers and reach more people and we have to spend less time individually with each person. And I will argue that that actually is coming back around to where these one to one engagements and the desire and need for people to, to look you in the eyes is increasing. And so I think the things that will not change is our desire to relate with people, desire to trust a brand. I mean, nobody trusts a logo today. I mean, one of my favorite stories was I went back to a group that I run, a Facebook group for my community and I was talking to them about some work I was doing with IBM and I got multiple questions from the younger millennials. Who is IBM, what do they do and are they still in business? And I went then took that information directly to big IBM and said, and IBM, I give them so much credit. They looked at us and said, we have a problem. You know, from the other generation, they know IBM and blue suits and mainframes and the technology that's running the world. But from a newer generation, IBM is something that they heard about. The logo was maybe in a movie they watched, but they don't tangibly think about that. And so you have to almost kind of bring the, bring this whole digital world back and say, how do I build trust and authenticity? And I believe that starts with the people in your business. Right? We've always said businesses are great not for the products they create, but for the people that make up that business. I believe we're going to have to start Empowering those employees to use things like social media and tell these stories so that we can relate with them. So I would say, to answer your question, I think the desire for people, our needs to relate with people and interesting. I've launched 30 Fortune 100 Facebook Live accounts for 30 Fortune 100 brands. And one of the things I always start with is there's two things they must understand if they want to work with me. I have it on a slide. It's my first slide. Perfection is a fairytale and control is an illusion. Because in this new world, the most powerful thing you can say on video, live video especially, is saying, I don't know. Which is weird, right? We lived in a world where we never admitted what we didn't know. But if you want to add validity to what you do know, when someone asks you a question live, just like you would if you were at a networking event or you were offline, someone asked you a question like, ooh, I don't know that answer, but let me go find the right person that does know it. Right? And that part, doing that is what we always have done. We now need to do that online. And I'm working with some big brands to even create I don't know pages I on their website explaining what they don't know. Because then when they say, hey, I am the best in this and I am the world's famous, and it really does kind of allow that validity of your conversation. Because we don't believe a brand just because they are IBM or they are Lego or Uber. We trust the people behind the brand. And to build that trust, you have to be human and be willing to say, I don't know, and really change the conversation.

Yeah.

This is so such good stuff, Scott. Todd, we're gonna have to have Brian back. We really are.

You know, I think that, I mean, you're right. Brian. Brian's got just a wealth of information. I think that, you know, when you look at. When you look at building your brand, right, you should really think about not necessarily building it for you or depending on who you are, Right? Like, if you're older than the millennials, then you should not necessarily build it for you. You should think about how people are communicating today and the fact that, look, you know, whatever it is you need to, even if you're just hiring employees that are millennials, you need to understand that the communication style is different. You know, I was told once by. By Millennial that he's like, you know what? I think that the older generations, especially the baby Boomers are cool. Cause they can do math without a calculator, right? You guys can. You guys can actually sign your name. Okay. My kids, they don't even know, like, how to sign their name. You know, Mark, you have a millennial working with you.

He doesn't know how to write a check.

Doesn't know how to write a check. No. Doesn't know how to do a check.

You have to think about, like, all of those things. How do we get people to. To buy stuff from us that don't know how to write a check the way that we.

Yeah. I also think that, you know, you. You have to come to terms with scale because a lot of things today that you want to do won't scale. And you have to just accept that, Right? Because, like, what Brian was saying is if you want to have that relatable conversation with another, you know, community or group, you got to show up. Right? You can't outsource that. You can't delegate that. And, you know, you can't fake it in a way. Right? So a lot of these things that we kind of are taught, let's say if you're getting an mba, right, they just won't scale today. And it's, you know, I have my own issues with it. Scott, I'm sure you did as well. But, Brian, do you ever have that sort of frustration, like, well, to get to the next level, I want to scale, but, you know, this won't scale. Right.

It's my number one automate.

Facebook Live.

It's my number one concern. I would say without question. I think my number one thing each, you know, as I've been growing as an entrepreneur especially, is scale.

Right.

I think, you know, when I work with big brands, you know, I'm very lucky that I work with IBM, Dell, SAP, Samsung, like, the big, you know, I always work with them. And when I'm working with them, it's a little bit easier for their site because I tell them, you know, they're, you know, they're like, hey, we have a marketing team of 70 people, but we know we work with, you know, all these all over the world. And I'm like, but you have hundreds of thousands of employees. Let's, you know, if every employee has always been told they sell, and if our, you know, if the people that are getting a paycheck and their livelihood is, you know, resting on our business, then we should be able to leverage them to. Able to tell our story and start empowering that employee. And they're like, that's A great idea. Then I'll say, okay, so we should start doing employee takeovers of your Facebook account. They're like, oh, no, no, no, no, no. I'm like, so you don't trust your employees? And they're like, no, wait, Brian, I didn't say that. I just. I just don't want them on Facebook Live because I don't know what they. They're gonna say. And for me, that's a. That's a problem, right? That's a cultural problem. And I think from when you look at scale, I think the reason small businesses are amazing is because the distance between the CEO and the consumer is short, right? It's a very small window. Therefore, they can relate. You feel more connected. You're in the grind where you get to these large companies. The CEO maybe hasn't used the tool or the product in years. Couldn't even tell you what the person looked like. That is the average consumer. But if we're able to leverage our employees in big brands and we're able to focus on, I like to say this content marketing thing kind of took off and everybody said, content is king. And I will argue great content is king, not content. Because we are overloaded with content. And so if we focus on creating great content and then we take that content and we transform it into different elements and then bring it to our audience where they're at. I think that's the scale question, right? That's how we scale. And I'll give an example is that I do a podcast that I host myself. And so it's a 30 minute podcast. I record it live on Facebook Live. I rip the audio down, I upload it to Libsyn and push it out to itunes. I take my best 5 minute clip of that video and I post it to YouTube as a teaser. I take the best two minute clip, I post it as a Twitter video and promote my podcast there. At the end of the month, we take the five best quotes from the podcast, we make that a blog post. At the end of the quarter, we take the most popular episodes and we turn that into an infographic that goes on Pinterest and SlideShare. And if you think about it, I'm taking one piece of great content that I do for 30 minutes a week, and I'm turning it into 17 and 18 different pieces of content that is uniquely custom. Right? It's not just saying post the same thing on every channel. That's not what I'm kind of saying. But I think to really look at this scale is you have to empower the people that make up your brand. And you also have to kind of look at things and say, how can I focus on great content? And then kind of leveraging that across multiple ways. Because part of the thing that's frustrating in Snapchat is it disappears in 24 hours. Part of the reason that Snapchat is amazingly powerful is that I wake up in the morning and my routine is I check Snapchat every single morning when I wake up, because I know that if I hadn't checked it in 24 hours, I'm gonna miss someone's story. That's. That's the FOMO. I mean, that's. I host a podcast called FOMO Fans. And so that element, you know, we look at Snapchat as one of the limitations is that the video goes away in 24 hours. But one of those limitations is the reason that the consumers believe it's powerful. So now when I work with brands, I say, every 24 hours, we download that content, we download the video, we then edit it, and we put it up as a YouTube video. We then take some of those clips and we put them into a slideshare. So then it's part of our presentation. So just because I always like to say limitations inspire creativity. If you look at limitations for scale, limitations of Snapchat or a new platform or live video, rather than looking at those limitations and saying, this is what I can't do, try to look at and say, because I'm only limited to do it in this way, what are some creative ways I can kind of think outside the box and. And leverage these kind of technologies and mediums?

I love it. I love it. Well, Scott, Brian just whiteboarded our entire new content marketing strategy. Wait, Scott, can you just repeat that whole thing?

I'm kidding.

All right, so. All right, Brian, we're at that point now. The podcast, we want to put you on the spot. Your mentorship has been amazing, by the way, and we're just going to ask you for one more tip of the week. A website, a resource book, something actionable. With the art of passive income. Listeners can go right now, improve their businesses, improve their lives. What do you got?

So I. There's. It's a tool, and it's called Flipboard. I'm not sure if you're familiar with Flipboard, but it's a, you know, an app for iPad. But also they have a website. You know, I think content consumption is overwhelming for so many of us, and not only consuming it, but curating it. And kind of crafting our store content to get out there. I use Flipboard every single day for 30 minutes a day. And I'm able to actually put out content, consume content with what's going on so that I'm in the know, but also be able to curate it and add it to my, my schedulers so that it goes out across the different programs that I use. So I'm a really big fan. Flipboard.com you can create your own little Flipboard magazines. And what it's great for is it works for SEO, it works for sharing, but for me, even for my teams, I, what I end up doing is I consume 30 minutes of content and I put them in these different buckets. Well, each person on my team consumes 30 minutes and all of a sudden now I can go into those buckets and my content is almost hand curated by my team. And so I'm only reading and consuming what's going to matter the most to me. And talking about a productivity lifesaver. I went from being the guy that was distracted from every post on LinkedIn or Facebook or you get the email newsletter and all of a sudden you're reading 14 posts. Now I'm able to kind of spend at the max 30 minutes a day consuming content. And that to me has been a massive lifesaver for scale and productivity.

Fantastic. Fantastic. Scott. Todd, what's your tip of the week?

Wow. I don't know how I can compete against that one mark, but check out blade signatures.com blade signatures. Yep.com. it's a Chrome plugin.

All right.

And in this plugin, I know how much you love plugins. You can create like very nice looking email signatures.

Okay.

Templates. It's really cool.

You know what, this is great because I know that it's not easy to make like an HTML signature. Like there's like a bunch of companies that charge you for this.

Yeah, this is cool.

This is cool, huh?

All right. I mean, I already have the signature, but I'm gonna add extension anyways. Just kiss. Why not? That's a cool one. That's a good one. All right, well, my tip of the week's the best one because it is I social fans f a n zebra.com and learn more about the change agent of Brian Fanzo@isocialfans.com Check out his podcasts. I know I'm going to start listening to the podcasts as well and the FOMO fans podcast and the Smack Talk podcast. And this has been great. Brian Fanzo, did we ask you all the right questions. Was there anything we should have asked you? We didn't ask you.

No, I think I enjoyed it. I love, you know, I. For me, I really enjoy, you know, being a guest on podcast, kind of, you know, understanding you know, different arenas. I've been a podcast listener for seven years. I've been hosted Smack Talk now. We've done four years and now one year into my solo one. But no, I think this was a lot of fun. You know, for me. You know, the speed of change today is unlike we've ever seen before in our lifetime. You know, the VHS recorder that my dad had over his shoulder every Christmas morning, recording us coming down the stairs, you know, that was the king of that space for 25 years. And the Blu Ray DVD didn't even last three years as the king of their space. Right. And so if you look at how quick technology is changing, I think we have to focus less on the blocking and tackling the minute things of technology because it's going to change so fast. And we have to focus more on that workflow and mindset that is now going to allow us to scale, allow us to embrace change. And I think you asked all those questions, so I'm excited to hear your listeners to kind of take some of those things and kind of implement them. And I think one of the things I didn't say, and I'll kind of share my wrap my part up on that, is consistency is without question the most important thing in this digital distracted world. And it's the hardest thing. And the reason it's hard is because, like you said, you can't mail it in. And, you know, the podcasting, the average podcast dies after seven episodes. Because in podcasting is a, you know, show up every week type, you know, relationship. It's very intimate. But as soon as you skip a week or a month or you, you stop delivering when people, you know, expect it, they immediately become distracted or find something else. And so if you had a focus somewhere to start is I would focus on consistency. You know, even if you're doing a Facebook Live, it's about being consistent. You know, I record my podcast episodes live on Facebook Live, but I do it every Monday at 4pm Eastern time. And the reason I do that is not because I don't have work to do on Monday, but it's because I wanted people to be able to put it on their calendar and know consistently no matter how much stuff I talk about, no matter how many shows I'm on, how many things I do every Monday. At 4, they can know they show up and they can consume this for 30 minutes. And I tell you what, consistency anyone can. Everyone can do it. And if we focus more on that and less on the distractions, you'd be amazed at the value you can provide.

Fantastic. Fantastic. Well, I want to just remind everyone the only way we're going to get the quality of guests like a Brian Fonzo is if you do us three little favors. You gotta subscribe, you gotta rate, and you gotta review the podcast and send us a screenshot of your review@supporthelandgeek.com if you don't know how to do a review, just go tolandgeek.com iTunes review and we'll walk you through it. Today's podcast is sponsored by Geek Pay, GeekPay IO, the only automated financial CRM a set it and forget it system. Scott Todd, are we good?

We are great, Mark.

Brian Fonz, are we good?

We are good. Thanks for having me. And I'm always, always happy to come back again and share anything that anyone has to say. And I'm ISO, you know, the consistency part. I'm isocial fans on every social network, on every channel. It's the same user handle, you know, across everything. So if you, no matter what your channel is that you prefer to communicate with me in, I, you know, feel free to reach out. I will say that email is the thing I check the least, and I am a millennial in that sense, so, you know, connect with me first on any of the other channels. If you send me an email, I can promise to respond in 24 hours.

All right, sounds good. Sounds good. And I want to thank all the listeners and let freedom ring. All right, thanks, everybody.