271 Why Community is the Last Great Marketing Strategy in the Age of AI with Mark Schaefer| Partnering Leadership Global Thought Leader

***DISCLAIMER: Please note that the following AI-generated transcript may not be 100% accurate and could contain misspellings or errors.***

[00:00:00] Mahan Tavakoli: Mark Schaefer , welcome to Partnering Leadership. I am thrilled to have you in this conversation with me.

[00:00:05] Mark Schaefer: Thank you. I'm delighted. I know we've been connected on social media for a long time and this is our first conversation, so this is a great day.

[00:00:15] Mahan Tavakoli:

Mark, actually, I had heard you first on a podcast and based on that, I read your book "KNOWN" and I fell in love with both the insights yet shared in KNOWN, but also with Mark Schaefer as a person.

So you've been a thought leader that I have followed since then. I really enjoy the content you create, the books you've written, "Marketing Rebellion", and then we'll get a chance to talk about "Belonging To The Brand".

But would love to start out first Mark, with you and your upbringing, whereabouts did you grow up and how did your upbringing impact the kind of person you've become?

[00:00:57] Mark Schaefer: If you see where I am now, and you saw where I started it is a very unexpected trajectory. I grew up in a very modest household in Pittsburgh, a very blue collar sort of working class neighborhood.

I was the oldest of six. In fact, I still am the oldest of six. There were eight of us in a two bedroom house with one bathroom, which explains why I spent a great deal of my childhood outdoors, and it probably explains why I continue to love the outdoors. Hadn't really thought about it until this moment, Mahan.

I think it was just part of my DNA. I had this curiosity. I had both my grandfather and his brother, my greatuncle were they didn't even have a high school education, but they were voracious readers, highly intelligent people.

My greatuncle was a plumber and founded the first amateur astronomy association in the world. He built his own telescopes, ground his own lenses. He met Einstein. He had letters from presidents and congressmen and astronauts in his home. And yet, He was a plumber who never finished high school.

And someone in my family said that his spirit lives on through me, which is a great compliment. I was very poor and I think a lot of the work ethic I have today came from that background where if I needed something, I had to get it. I had to work for it.

I had to get money to buy my own bicycle, to buy shoes to play baseball or whatever I needed. So I didn't let anything stop me. I was an entrepreneur if you remember Mahan I was an entrepreneur based in the back pages of comic books.

Cause in the back of the comic books it said you can get rich by selling greeting cards door to door, which I did. Or selling vegetable garden seeds door to door, which was a great challenge because nobody in my neighborhood had a vegetable garden. But they bought seeds for me just because I was so pathetic, I think. So I sold everything door to door, any way there was to make money. I made money.

My first entrepreneurial effort, this is gross. When I was five years old, I was five years old. My first entrepreneurial effort lasted five minutes. We lived on this corner of this street and people would empty their ashtrays and there were these cigarette butts on the street and I thought, look at all this extra tobacco people are throwing out.

I'll collect this tobacco and put it in bags and resell the tobacco. And that entrepreneurial effort lasted five minutes. And then was a hot bath to scrub me down from playing with this trash. But I was always thinking about making money.

[00:04:05] Mahan Tavakoli:

But it also takes a lot of creativity Mark, you were seeing opportunity all around

[00:04:11] Mark Schaefer: you, which is five years old. I was hustling baby.

[00:04:16] Mahan Tavakoli: A big part of what I see in you is you are a believer in pull and being magnetic, whether known and a community to me are elements of pull and magnetism.

While it sounds as a young person, you also had to do a lot of push in getting your way in making sales.

[00:04:43] Mark Schaefer: Yeah, definitely. That's a great observation. It really is. I would say personality wise, look, I was in sales outta desperation. You do what you need to do.

There was a picture of me that I hadn't thought about this picture for a long time, but there was a picture of me I love playing baseball and I couldn't afford baseball shoes. And I was wearing these, I don't even know what you call 'em, they're like deck shoes, like these Olive Green.

My mother probably got 'em secondhand at some store and they probably had a tear in them or something. But I remember being so embarrassed and so ashamed to wear those shoes that I thought, I'm never gonna live this way. I've gotta buy shoes. And so I was a babysitter. I cut grass, I did everything.

Newspaper roots, anything I could do because I just wanted to, have enough to get by. And so that drove me for a long time. But my personality, I don't like sales. I'm not good at sales. Some of my entrepreneurial efforts failed because it wasn't that I couldn't do sales, but I wasn't patient enough to do, especially B2B sales.

It just wore me down and I thought, oh my gosh, there's so many more interesting things I'd rather be doing. So thank goodness for the internet and the ability to create a personal brand because I am truly successful in spite of myself. That by putting content out there generally in the form of a blog or a podcast episode, putting it out there consistently, generously, and not being afraid to express my humanity.

Even vulnerability, once in a while. That has, like you said, it's attracted a group of people that believe in me and support me and buy my books and hire me to give speeches and workshops and consulting. And so it's worked out great. But I don't know, if I didn't have the internet,

I'd probably be, shoveling coal someplace.

[00:06:54] Mahan Tavakoli: We're all thankful for these opportunities, mark, but I'm also thankful for you because part of what you have done both through your example and the stories that you tell and the books that you have written along with your podcast and your talks, you show people and now organizations how they can become known.

Yes. And. Build a brand. Before I get to that, there's one other thing I have to touch on, though. You had the opportunity for three years to spend time and learn from Peter Drucker. Who anyone that knows anything about leadership or management knows Drucker was decades ahead of his time.

I still find myself in interacting with clients, mark quoting him and they're like, wow,

[00:07:45] Mark Schaefer: he really was unbelievable. In the seventies and eighties he was predicting the economy we have today.

[00:07:52] Mahan Tavakoli: So that's what I wanted to get from you.

Mark, in interacting with Drucker, what are some of the lasting leadership insights that you got from him?

[00:08:07] Mark Schaefer: It was just an honor. It was just an unbelievable honor. And I had to really fight to get into the program. I was the youngest person they ever accepted into the program.

And they kept rejecting me. And finally I went to the dean and I said I wanna file an e o complaint. He said, what do you mean? I said, everybody in this program has silver hair. You need somebody that's young. And finally I wore 'em down and they, I think I was 28 when I got into the program.

Everybody else in the program was like a vice president of something. And it was a full M b A program. Usually like every Saturday or something, Peter Drucker would sit on the edge of his desk and talk about his life and his books and his philosophies. If there's one thing I adopted from him, he had this unbelievable way of distilling complexity to its essence. And I've been very fortunate in being able to do that in my own way as a teacher. And I'll give you an example. One time someone asked him, they said, Dr.

Drucker, you work with so many different companies. How can you possibly know enough about the plastics industry and the food industry and the entertainment industry that you can go in and do consulting for any of these companies? How do you prepare? He said, oh, it's very simple. He said, you just look for three things everywhere you go.

 First, he said, is the place clean, spotlessly clean? Because if it's not clean, that shows a disrespect for the process, for the leadership, for the customers. There's underlying issues there. Number two I think was is there a rhythm to the business or is everybody fighting fires?

If you're always fighting fires, then that shows there's underlying problems. There should be a rhythm to the business. And number three, he said. 75% of every meeting that you have should be with your customer, either internal or external. If everybody's just in meetings all the time, there's a lack of accountability.

There's a lack of people having the authority to do their jobs correctly. There's a fundamental fear in the organization. So there you have it. And look, every time I go into a new company, I'm thinking about those things, I did a project for the US Air Force one time, and I won't name the plants, but I went into one company that was absolutely filthy and they were building jet engines and the union had all these hateful posters on the walls.

And then I went to another aerospace facility. It was like a surgical room. It was, everything was white. Which one went outta business?

Hello, Dr. Drucker.

[00:11:32] Mahan Tavakoli: Even the other point that you mentioned, mark, in the organizations I work with, a lot of times I have to push them on their meetings, as especially post pandemic. Because setting, scheduling and having meetings became so much easier that the average professional is spending 23 hours a week in meetings.

And it's unbelievable how many meetings they have and most internal. Now that said, , I first got a chance to get to know you through your book, known

then Marketing Rebellion. And in there you had already started talking about the need for a sense of belonging and community, how come you took it to this next step talking about that sense of belonging and community as being. Last marketing strategy.

[00:12:29] Mark Schaefer: As you said it really started with the Marketing Rebellion book.

There was a chapter in there about belonging and community. And I predicted this would be a major part of marketing going forward. And one year after the book came out, we got hit by the pandemic and people started saying, mark, your ideas are coming true. And if you remember Mahan, how The Pandemic started, it was companies creating these ads that said, we are with you in these unprecedented times.

And they couldn't get off the script. They just couldn't get away. And it became ridiculous. And then finally, Some of them rolled up their sleeves and actually began to help people to get down in the trenches and say, here are customers they're suffering and we've gotta do something about this.

And this idea of community connectivity and collaboration getting in there with your customers to create something better and to survive together. People were telling me, mark, your ideas are coming true. Everything you said in this book it's coming true. And I knew that was the most important chapter in, the book.

Then the other thing that just propelled me in this direction, the first thing is that it is needed. It's appropriate. It's an overlooked opportunity, and we need something new now. The second thing was that there was A headline in the New York Times a few years ago that said The Loneliest Generation.

And it talked about how our children are suffering, how their record levels of isolation and loneliness and depression and even suicide. It wasn't caused by the pandemic. This has been creeping into our society for decades really. But it was certainly amplified by the pandemic. And once you start getting into the psychology of community, you recognize there's this power this power to heal and we need community.

We can't really be a fully realized person without community. And I realized, look, this isn't just a marketing strategy. This actually heals people and I'm not being. Pollyannish here by saying, Hey, start a community and save the world. I'm a business person first and foremost. This is a business book with a very good business case.

Solid, proven, documented business case, not just my opinion. I've got dozens and dozens of research studies backing up every statement I make in this book. However, not only does it work, it heals. And I think that is something to think about that what if you could create marketing that not only works, but marketing heals?

Isn't that a great legacy? Isn't that something you could be proud of every day of your life? Again, I'm a business person and there's no reason to look at this other than. A solid business book. You can enjoy it that way, but I also say, you can really do something good here

[00:15:57] Mahan Tavakoli: now, I wonder, mark, is this something that all size and types of organizations can do?

Or is it unique to larger

[00:16:06] Mark Schaefer: brands? The biggest community I profile in the book is probably Twitch with millions and millions of users. The smallest community. I profound, the book has 30 people in it. It's a real estate company in Jacksonville, Florida that drove 40 million worth of revenue from 30 people in their community.

There are massive companies that I mentioned in the book, like Salesforce, like Lego, like Nike, and then there's an original case study in the book that's a stay-at-home mom with five kids that build her own business through community. So I think it's truly accessible by anyone, by any organization, by any person or any group.

There's nonprofits, b2b, b2c, small, big. I intentionally tried to create incredibly diverse case studies and examples. In this book I don't have an answer to, the question is community for everybody, but I do have a story. And the story is this, it's one word, Yeti. Six, seven years ago, I started seeing people walk around with Yeti t-shirts and Yeti hats and Yeti stickers on their trucks.

And I'm thinking, wait a minute, isn't that an ice cooler? And they've created, the first five years of that company, no advertising, 100% community, word of mouth driven period. If you can do that, if you can have that massive, exciting success creating community for an ice cooler

At least whatever you do in your life, think about it. Just think about community. Just consider it.

[00:18:21] Mahan Tavakoli: That's such an outstanding example and I love the way you express it, mark, because to many of us, when we think about an ice cooler, it's just there.

But in creating community, you are able to engage people that are loyal to that brand are able to build on each other . Now, part of the question that comes to my mind along these lines, mark, is that there isn't a day that goes by that I don't get an email of a different community to join. That a lot of people seem to have found their view, that community is the way to quickly monetize. So they're putting together communities right and left.

What differentiates communities that have that purpose, that connects to a brand, to communities that are just built purely for the purpose of monetization.

[00:19:23] Mark Schaefer: That's the number one reason why communities fail, because they're designed to meet a quarterly sales goal. And that's not a reason for people to gather.

And so I spent a lot of time talking about this in the book because it's so important. I talk about the importance of culture. I talk about the importance of purpose, a successful community really comes when the purpose of the company, which is different than your marketing plan or your points of differentiation,

An example would be Patagonia. When the purpose intersects with a purpose where some, group of customers wanna take a stand on something. So I have a friend who says, I will only buy Patagonia clothes, and they're expensive because he believes in this mission of this company, with every fiber of his body.

And when someone from Patagonia makes some statement about the environment, you believe it a hundred percent because that's what they stand for. So the idea is to think about where does your company come from? Why does it exist? How did it start? What does it stand for? What could you create in this world that's better if you had your customers doing it with you?

And that's where the magic can happen. You don't have to necessarily be perfect, right off the bat, because typically what will happen is once a community starts to grow the community say we want to go in this direction. We wanna go in that direction. And it's vital and it's growing and, you're learning as a brand and adjusting as a brand.

But you need to start in a place of what do we stand for? That we could do a better job standing for this if we had our customers or our fans or our audience along for the ride with us.

[00:21:33] Mahan Tavakoli: That's beautifully put. So that purpose is a core reason behind that community the same way. People who work for the organization can be more motivated, can get more meaning out of their jobs if they're aligned with a clearly articulated purpose of the organization.

What you're saying is that same purpose can galvanize and pull together a community that supports the purpose. So the purpose is what keeps them together.

[00:22:08] Mark Schaefer: Yeah that's exactly right. And the purpose will probably change over time because the world changes over time. It'll adjust and shift a little bit, year by year.

But you want that to happen in a community because it keeps you relevant as a brand.

[00:22:25] Mahan Tavakoli: So Mark, one of the challenges I've seen with couple of communities that are well aligned with purpose is the lack of comfort in allowing the community to guide where the community goes. So I'll give you a quick example in that the most robust community I'm involved with is leadership Greater Washington.

I actually had the opportunity to serve as board chair of the organization for couple of years on the board for many, and it's a thriving community. I have to tell you though, It is very uncomfortable for whether it was for the board when we were having conversations or for the team members to allow the community to go where the community wants to go.

Yeah. So there's still a desire for not top-down coordination, but it's, the thinking is it's our brand, we need to make sure we know what people are saying. Doing what are your thoughts with respect to the balance between letting the community thrive and maintaining some alignments?

[00:23:43] Mark Schaefer: That's a great question. I know you're a leadership geek and so am I, and I love studying leadership and reading about leadership, and when you get into a community, all that sort of goes out the door.

And in a good way I have a master's degree in applied behavioral sciences, one of the things I learned is that your mental framework is basically established by about the time you're 15 years old. So when people say, think out of the box, yeah you can't really, but where breakthrough ideas and innovation comes is when you combine the boxes.

That's the power of community. And you have to have a lot of courage and a lot of humility to step back and let that happen.  There's lots of examples in the book where people are coming from a traditional leadership structure and then they're thrust into this community role and they're saying, holy cow, this is so humbling.

I have to like, reimagine what this is about because they don't listen to me. Here's the greatest example. I think I have a community, by the way. It's free, it's open. I invite you to come in. It's anybody can write me an email and it's on my website and you can join this community.

It's free and it's open. And we're learning about the future of marketing together. So I started this community. I thought People are gonna be interested in learning the things I'm interested in, like writing and public speaking and personal branding. So I created these little chat rooms and those are the emptiest chat rooms on the whole site.

They said no. The future of marketing is in the Metaverse and in NFTs and in web three and in ai. And that's where we went. And my life is so much richer for it. I, every article I write, every speech I give started with a conversation or an idea from this. Beautiful community that I'm, privileged to be part of now.

But leading it is weird. It is weird cuz you just gotta give up a lot of ideas about what leadership means. The greatest gift a leader can give to a community is to, number one, assure a safe place, be the shepherd of the culture. And the culture in my community, it's kind, it's generous it's validating and there's zero tolerance for toxicity.

That's number one. And number two, my role is to dispense status. Is to acknowledge people and see people and reward people, because status is an engine of community. If you think you can go to a place and have a chance to be heard, that's gonna keep you coming back.

[00:26:54] Mahan Tavakoli: Beautifully put mark, it does take tremendous humility.

Yes. And it is scary. It is scary.

[00:27:02] Mark Schaefer: I'm still figuring out day by day. There's an example in the book of a guy, he had a B2B marketing agency and he's created this community that's so big and so successful. It's bigger and more profitable than his business.

The community has become the business and he's all into this thing. And he said, I'm just like reinventing myself every day, learning how to be a leader in this environment. It's a challenge, but it's Wow, what an exciting ride. And for me it's become my network.

It's become my university. It's become my inspiration. We've collaborated, we're doing metaverse projects together. We're writing a book together. We collaborated on a blog post that became the number one blog post in the history of my website. And it was written by my community.

[00:27:59] Mahan Tavakoli: That's outstanding. So in addition to having that purpose mark along with guiding principles, it sounds for you, kindness, lack of toxicity celebrating people are all part of it. Are there any other things that thriving communities and community like yours would have in common?

[00:28:22] Mark Schaefer: I think there's got to be a level of conversation and or activities that keep people engaged. And from a marketing perspective, that's where one of the values is derived. We haven't really talked about this directly, but let me mention it briefly that the thing that's unique about this book I wrote, belonging to the brand isn't community is an old idea.

The unique perspective is that this is the first book that's addressed this from a brand marketing perspective, that we've got all this vast. Value of brand marketing that's being left on the table because we haven't considered community as part of this brand marketing portfolio. I've been to, I don't know how many marketing conferences in my life.

I have never been to a conference where community was a discussion topic or a track at an event, and it's just staring us right in the face. Now let's get specifically to your question. So there's all this brand value about collaboration, co-creation, trust speed of information, collecting information, cultural relevance, on and on.

I think one of the most interesting values is brand advocacy. When there's something going on in the community that's so interesting, so unmissable that it starts to be shared outside the community, then people say, wow, I wanna be part of that brand. I wanna belong to that. And now your community grow and you get more diversity and more views and it's very interesting and exciting.

 User generated content, brand advocacy, that's better than any advertising you could ever have. People don't believe ads, they don't believe messaging or PR spin. We believe each other. And when our family and friends said, look what's happening in this community, I'm learning so much.

They're gonna believe it. We have experiments in the metaverse in our community and over the holidays it was winter. So we did this metaverse party. On a fake digital ski slope. Yeah, I had to explain to my wife why I bought a fake penthouse

in the metaverse. What is this thing on our credit card? What is this thing you bought? Oh, it's fake. It's just a fake, it's a fake pet. It's cool, it's got a bar, has a fake bar, , has a fake swimming pool. She was unconvinced my friend. She was unconvinced. But anyway, so there we were sitting in a fake hot tub with our clothes on.

First we learned how to clap in the metaverse. That was a big breakthrough. And so now we're in the hot tub. Me and people from all around the world. Australia, Belgium, Ireland, England, Canada, we're all sitting in this hot tub having a laugh as the sun sets over fake mountains.

But it was absolutely beautiful and people took pictures of this and it went all over the internet cause it was so much fun. And it was sublime to be sitting with people all around the world it was fake, but it was a beautiful scene and it was sublime and it was beautiful. And it was a meaningful moment.

And people shared that all over the internet and people said, I wanna be part of that. How do I get involved? I wanna experience this. And I didn't even organize this thing. But through the love and the commitment of people in the community this emotion and this connection and this power is going outside the community, and that's what will sustain the community over time.

[00:32:41] Mahan Tavakoli: You have a beautiful visual in your book describing the emotional continuum and differentiating within when we have an audience Yeah. Or many of the social media interactions that we have, whether as individuals or organizations have down to then a community.

So what is the difference between having an audience that is paying attention to you or listening to you to having an engaged community?

[00:33:15] Mark Schaefer: It gets down to this fundamental idea of what we're trying to do as a brand is , we want to be seen, we want to be discovered, we want to be heard.

We want to create this emotion. And we used to do that through advertising. Coca-Cola is not colored sugar water, it's polar bears. And we have this warm relationship to these polar bears. But what happens in this world when we are in a streaming economy? We don't see ads and we listen to our favorite music all day on Spotify and we don't hear ads and we listen to audiobooks and we don't hear ads.

And our advertising consumption is down by 95% in the last five years because we will do almost anything, spend almost any money to get away from these ads. So we've gotta do something else. Companies obviously are turning to social media. Social media has been more popular than ever, but it's ephemeral.

When you create something on social media, it gives you the opportunity to connect with people you might have never known before. It's what got you and I together originally, right now. The beautiful thing is we can hopefully bring these people from social media into our audience.

Our audience is someone that has subscribed to our podcast or our blog, or our TikTok channel or our video. So now, here, look at this. Here's you and me. We're collaborating, we're creating content together. It's taking our emotional connection to a new level, cuz we've never done that before.

So that is awesome. Audience creates an important new emotional level of connection, but that's where most brands stop. They're creating podcasts and all this content. There's flooding the world with content, but they're not bringing their audience into community. Let's keep going with me and you.

What if you come into my community now, I'm gonna be hearing about you every day. I'm gonna see you every day. You are gonna create relationships with other people in my community, these friendships. So now it's not just about me and you. You belong to my brand because of the love you have for other people.

It creates this emotional switching costs. I can't leave Mark's community. I can't leave Mark because I've got all these other friends here. Boom. It's the ultimate marketing. It's marketing. Without marketing, because my friend, I will never have to show you an add again. I will never have to show you a piece of branded content.

I will never have to spend a dime on SEO O because you are my community and you love it there, and you believe in me and what I do, and you'll buy everything I put out there. Cause you're part of this thing.

[00:36:27] Mahan Tavakoli: Part of what you said really resonated with me. In addition to all of that value, it becomes really sticky because of all of those relationships.

So there is a connection to the community and to the brand, but it's the relationships that make it really sticky.

[00:36:43] Mark Schaefer: It is and that's a keen observation. And perhaps you, read that point in my book. , I went down so many deep academic rabbit holes here.

I was reading stuff that was so over my head, but I learned a lot. One of the most rewarding things that's happening, Mahan, is that. Look, it's intimidating for me to write a book about community when there have been people working in communities for 20 years, and the people are reading this book and they're saying, mark, we love this book because you're teaching us things about community we didn't even know about.

And it's giving us a new energy. It's giving us a new vision of what we need to do with the community. And one of those ideas is this psychological idea that the bonds that are created among new friends in the community, that emotion transfers to the brand. So you're making new friends, but is bonding you.

You are belonging to the brand because of the friendships. It creates that emotional switching cost. I can't leave Microsoft, Nike, Lego, Ikea, Mahons community because that means I leave my friends. I'm always gonna be here. This is where I belong. And that is almost completely overlooked by organizations today.

70% of communities are transactional. It's customer self-service, which is fine, but they're missing all the emotional value that, it's right there. It's the most overlooked opportunity. In the history of marketing, it's right there staring us at the face. So hopefully this book will just whack people out of their slumber.

[00:38:35] Mahan Tavakoli: I have no doubted will Mark. And as a person that is a big advocate of measurements, I love objectives and key results. Work with a lot of clients on it really see tremendous value in it. There are things like community don't necessarily lend themselves to short term measures.

And that's why when you understand it, then you aren't going to be looking for quarterly measures that. After a few quarters then show you no, there hasn't been a return on investments.

 Go back to previous strategies. So I think this is where sometimes the wrong measures Yeah. Get us in trouble when we are looking at creating real value that has long-term impact on the brand.

[00:39:27] Mark Schaefer: Yeah, and I think that's one of the most valuable chapters in my book. I believe it's chapter 10, and I thought, gosh, this chapter is so good.

It's so important. Maybe I should put it way up front just so I know people will read it. But just the chronology of the book, how it rolls out. It just made sense to put measurement toward the end. But the big idea is that if you look at a community through the lens of brand marketing, you should measure it through the lens of brand marketing, which means.

It's almost impossible to measure it, so just forget it. I'm a measurement geek, look, you asked me about Peter Drucker. One of his favorite quotes was you can't manage it if you can't measure it. But we have to look toward other types of measure around the health of the community as leading indicators of sales and success.

That's one of the reasons why community has failed because there's expectation, there's gonna be a one-to-one correlation between people in the community and our quarterly sales objectives. And that's just not the way the world works. It's not the way the brand works. We mentioned briefly this idea of Coca-Cola spending millions and millions of dollars on advertising over decades I gave a talk in Poland before the Pandemic, which I love the people of Poland.

 It was basically the south by southwest of Poland. I got to speak there twice, and I'll never forget it because they had this massive, auditorium they had these rockstar lights and rock star screens. And instead of walking on the stage, They had these steps that you descended down onto the stage.

It was just beautiful. And I love Poland. I love the people Poland. And I said to the audience, whenever I say Coca-Cola, what do you think of? And someone shouted out polar bears. Even in Poland, people don't think of colored sugar water they think of polar bears.

But the idea is that does Coca-Cola no. How much money comes in because of polar bears? No. Does it sell more co Coca-Cola? Yes. Can they measure it? No, that my friends is brand marketing. And you've got to look at other things that you can measure about. Are people aware of the polar bears

so there are things that you can measure, but they're not very satisfying from an r o I standpoint. And so one of the things I say in the book is say, look, if you really want to capture that power, that potential, that the market crushing possibility of brand, you gotta forget that stuff.

And you gotta take a leap of faith and go for it.

[00:42:30] Mahan Tavakoli: Now one of the things that we touched on briefly before, mark I got a chance to get to know your content through your book known, which I loved. Thank you. And I see this playing a role also for individuals. In this transitioning world and work that we are living through Gary Bolus, I've had a conversation with him for the podcast he is

head of future of work for Singularity University talks about the future of work. Yeah. And one of the elements of that future of work is similar to what Tom Peters, who you also interviewed. Said many years back where he had the analogy of us in essence being like people who work on movies, coming together, working on a project, and then disbanding.

Therefore, the individuals need to be, become known and need to become brands. So I would love to get your thoughts and insights Yeah. On that, on how individuals in this changing world can become known and the interplay of that with community. Should individuals be looking at establishing communities of their own or become known entities within different communities?

[00:43:56] Mark Schaefer: That's a huge, important question, and I'll try to answer it succinctly three ways. Number one, we're in a world right now where many. Job skills and careers are going to be disintermediated or threatened by ai. I wrote known in 2017, it is more relevant and more important than ever and I have been shout from the rooftops for seven years that in this world the only thing that matters is are you known or not?

If you're known and your competitors aren't, the opportunities are gonna come to you. The speaking opportunities are gonna come to you. The doors are gonna open. And now here we are in this world where computers can do a lot of our work. I'm not worried because, you mentioned to me, I think before we recorded how you've developed this friendship with me through my content.

 I don't care what happens in the world. I know you're still gonna listen to my podcast because you know it's me. Because you believe me and you trust me. And as long as I do a good job, I'll be able to earn your attention, this great honor of an audience and a community. All right.

If you are creating commodity type of work you're in real trouble right now. And so that's number one. Now how do we do this?

You have to show up. And you referenced this book known, I think if I had to name. My greatest contribution to the business world so far, it would be that book, because every week someone says, this book changed my life. It works. It's not easy and it's not fast, but it, you put in the work. This book gives you the path.

If you do the exercises in the book, you'll have a strategy and a plan for the book. And my view is, look, don't just, say I'm gonna start creating content. I'm gonna be a blogger. Have a plan. Give yourself the very best chance to succeed. That's part two, part three of your question.

How does this relate to community? I think people join a community because there's some level of trust. Many communities begin because there's an individual. There's an authority that embodies trust. I'm gonna take a chance on this community. Here's a good example. You said a few minutes ago, you're getting pitched by a lot of communities.

Join, join, join. They might as well be saying, come watch my TV show. They're all jocking for your attention. Now, I'm hoping you'll join my community because we do have, a connection. And the reason you'll come to my community is cuz.

Cuz you say, you know what? I've read Mark's books. I listen to his podcast. I'm curious about this community. Maybe I'll take a leap on this. Because I what this guy stands for and I do believe it's a community of like-minded, energetic people that are talking about the future. I think I'm gonna be comfortable there cuz Mark says there's no toxicity there.

Okay. So from the force of my personal brand, you can grow into this community. However, this community is also turning people into stars because of the new connections, because of the new collaborations. We're writing up book together that's gonna help everyone's personal brand and their dream. And someone said the other day, they said, my career has been transformed by this community because they're learning so much because she has a picture of herself giving a presentation in the metaverse. And so that is helping her career as a thought leader in her region of the world.

So it can be both. I think community can start with that trust and the personal brand, my goal is to make everybody, one of our sayings is the name of my community is Rise. Rise Above the Noise. And one of our sayings is Risers Rise. We're helping each other.

We're on each other's shows. We're helping promote our ideas and our content. And so I want everybody in my community to be a star. I'll do anything I can to help them be a star. So hopefully it works both ways.

[00:48:48] Mahan Tavakoli: What a beautiful way to connect those two thoughts. Because I see the transformation and one of the interesting things is I see a lot of executives I interact with that have no clue Yeah.

About the transformation

[00:49:02] Mark Schaefer: that's coming. I know here's the common reaction I get from everybody. I'm excited and terrified. And so , it's not too late. If you're not known, you could be left behind. And I'm not saying this to sell books. I'm saying this because literally, it's the only thing I know that can this differ ourselves, is the personal brand.

Do people know you? Do they like you? Do they trust you? Do they have that emotional connection to you? They're never gonna love a bot. At least for the next 18 months, at least for the next 18 months, they're not gonna love a bot, but maybe they will. But you still have a chance.

I think it's the only thing that can save you against the bots. Literally. I don't know what other answer there is.

[00:49:55] Mahan Tavakoli: I wholeheartedly agree with you, mark. You've provided both the framework for professionals through known to be able to become the kind of people that others wanna associate with and can.

Do well and prosper through these changes. And the same thing for organizations in belonging to the brand. Why community is , the last great marketing strategy, now, before finding out how the audience can connect with you, would love to know.

In addition to your books, mark, you've written 10 outstanding books in addition to your own books, are there any leadership practices or resources you typically find yourself recommending to others?

[00:50:44] Mark Schaefer: Curiously Peter Drucker's books are still great. My favorite leadership book is Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

I believe he wrote that in 1984. He correctly predicted the world we live in today, the gig economy. He predicted that in 1984. And it also lays out a blueprint for institutionalizing innovation in an organization. And I just can't believe why that isn't the most popular management book in the world because it was prescient and it's still so relevant today.

I take part in the. Drucker Forum, they have lots of different activities. They have one big conference every year, and that's based in Austria. that's been a good resource for me. Connects the dots between Drucker leadership philosophy and what's going on in the world today.

But I get my inspiration from so many places. I'm a voracious reader. I'm a trend hunter. To be relevant. We need to look at how do we apply our core competencies. To what I call in my book, cumulative Advantage, the seams, the next seams, these waves of change coming at us.

We don't need a new college degree. It's like a surfer with a surfboard. We have a good surfboard. We just need a new wave. We don't need a new surfboard. Especially, people like you and me that have been around a while, we don't need a new college education. We have a lot of things we're good at.

We just need to see how do we apply this to the next trend. And so I'm always looking for trends to help my friends as well as a consultant to say, here's how you could be newly relevant. So I read.

Very diverse portfolio, publications, everything from Gen Z, technology, environmental things just to keep track of, what are the big touch points that we need to be aware of and leverage and capitalize on as we go forward.

[00:52:49] Mahan Tavakoli: Which is why your books, your articles, the newsletter that you send out are of such great value.

Mark, you didn't at one point or a time or another come up with a thought or insight and then continue to ride that thought. You continue to learn, relearn, and reinvent yourself and add back to your audience and your community. How can the listeners find out more about you, mark, and connect with

[00:53:20] Mark Schaefer: you?

It's really easy. I've made it easy because nobody can remember how to spell Schaffer. So it's businesses grow. If you can remember businesses Grow, you can find my podcast the Marketing Companion. We are now in our 11th year. We're gonna have our 10th anniversary. My blog I've blogged every week for 650 weeks in a row and took a little break for Covid and then logged for another 120 weeks in a row. So that's consistent, and I love doing that.

And that's all free. You can find my books. You can find my events. I have a marketing retreat every year that is the best thing I've done in my career. And so just check out businesses Grow and you can find all that amazing stuff. What

[00:54:09] Mahan Tavakoli: an incredible treat. Mark. As I mentioned, I love your books, your podcast, and your writing.

Most especially. Over the years since I first got to know of you through known five or so years back, I've really appreciated the man and the principles behind these insights to me that says as much and adds a lot of value. So I really appreciate you taking your time to share some of your thoughts and insights, both Unknown Marketing Rebellion is also an outstanding book, and your newest belonging to the brand y community is the last great marketing strategy.

Thank you so much, Mark Shaffer.

[00:54:59] Mark Schaefer: Thank you. What a wonderful show. Last year I think I did 250 interviews. I would definitely put you in the top three of my favorite interviewers ever. Thank

[00:55:09] Mahan Tavakoli: you means so much to me coming from you, mark. Thank you.