From Teen Rocker to Online Marketing Expert with Drummer and Marketing Guru Dan Shinder

Hello there. It's Terry McDougall with another episode of marketing Mambo. And my guests. Guests today started his professional rock and roll career at the age. The age of 15 when he signed on with the band. Tore. The United States. He actually ended up doing that for every summer of. His high school career. And then continued. To be in rock and roller for a good 10 years after he graduated from high school. He later took his. His love of the drums. And created an online business around that. And it was really what. What he learned when he was promoting his business. That led to the business that he's here to talk to me about today. 

So I am thrilled to welcome Dan. Gender to marketing Mambo. He's a really smart, interesting creative guy. Even though I was a marketer for 30 years. He really disavowed me. Me of some of the things that I believed about social media marketing dan is an expert , and we really need to look no further than. His statistics he's been able. To reach 120 million people on an annual basis for. 10 years. 

Without spending money. On paid advertising or Boosted posts. So.  That's enough to make you sit up and pay attention Cause. I certainly learned a lot from From Dan and i hope you will too So now without further ado let the mambo begin.


Hey everybody. It's Terry McDougall with another episode of marketing Mambo. And my guest today is Dan cinder and he is the founder of advanced social marketing. And he also has courses on social media called social media on steroids.

He knows what he's talking about. He's actually reached more than 120 million. People organically without paid ads or boosted posts. So that's super cool. I want to hear more about how he did that. So Dan, welcome to marketing Mambo. How are you today? 

Wonderful. Terry, thank you for having me. How are you?

I'm really great. We had a missed connection before, because I forgot to look at my calendar. So I'm really glad that you gave me some grace and decided to reschedule with me. It's great. so one thing that we didn't touch on, and I think it's a really important part of your background.

 I know that you're. A musician and you were a film producer. So maybe you could give us a little bit more about your background besides just being a master at social media marketing. 

Yeah, thank you. It's interesting because it really all did lead up to what I'm doing now.  I believe in taking from every experience and bringing it forward to whatever you're doing, there's always some element, of whatever we do and I've done.  My parents were both self-made individuals didn't go to college, but did pretty well.

And, I wanted to be the next jock Cousteau. I had my heart set on being a scientist and an oceanographer.  My mother made sure my first two initials were Dr because of course I'd grow up and be some sort of doctor.  But I started playing drums. Shortly before I turned seven. And by the time I was 14,  I was pretty good.

I'm told about my dad that year, took me to see my first concert that I didn't play in, not the school band or anything. He took me to see my favorite band led Zepplin. And by the third song, the light bulb went on above my head and I thought, oh, so that can be a job. And then when I got my hearing back a few days later, I told my parents, I don't want to be a scientist anymore.

My mom said, oh, what do you want to be? I said, I want to be a professional tremor, like John Bonham. So after we hit her with the paddles and revived her  she was a little disappointed at first, but exactly one year later at 15, she. Found an audition for what ended up being my first tour as a paid musician at 15 years old touring from LA to long island and back a different way.

in a band backing up a singing group, opening for really big bands at state fairs. And, it was just amazing. It was amazing. Yeah. came back. The poor had to register for high school because back, back in my day, way back then high school started at 10th grade and I just wasn't feeling it. I wanted to take the test and just skip over high school, but my mom said that high school it's new.

So during that summer, I went on tour again, same outfit. And I said the same thing. Can I just take the high school equivalency test? And my mom said it's 11th grade. It's got to be something a little different, just trying. Did that, that same summer. I asked that question right before 12th grade city got one more year, just get your diploma dummy that, oh my gosh.

She led me on the whole time. I learned a lot from that whole experience,   I  ended up being a professional musician into my late twenties, early thirties. And it just got to a point honestly, where. I got tired of being in bands and being married to three or four other people and their drama.

And I started to put my attention more towards the business end and doing session work and producing and things. And eventually kids were coming along and I got out of it completely went into corporate America. But years later, I ended up having a video production company. This is shortly before social media started, had a video production company that was doing video marketing and video on websites and product launch videos, company, bios, things like that.

And,  after about 14 years then with. Everything from main street, retail to city bank, Wells Fargo McDonald's is Sydney to Hobart yacht race. I lived in Australia for a couple of years, working with the charter yacht industry. I came home and told my. I didn't want to work with big companies. Let me just do your marketing.

You will work together. It'll be fun. My wife's a professional artist and art therapist, and we did that for about three months and she said, you know, I think he needed to find something for yourself. And it 49, 50 years old, I had no idea what I wanted to do. 

And she's yeah, it was really weird. And she said, Well, why don't you teach drums?

You told me you used to do that. And in that moment, I thought, well, I can do that. And I'm a trained trainer. I was certified in NLP as a NLP trainer. I knew streaming video, all these great elements for the time and how the social media was alive and well. So I started an online lessons platform, and that's where I started to cut my teeth on marketing.

I had followers from 65 countries before I even released my first lesson, because I knew I had to build a following first or the lessons would matter. Well, long story, a little shorter, a few months. I started drum talk TV, which in its first year became the largest online media company covering the world of drumming in the music industry.

And that's where things really took off. The secret is I didn't pay attention to what other people were doing. There's a lot of herd mentality out there. A lot of people are copying what everyone else is doing. Because that's what everyone else is doing. And most people are doing it wrong. Even big agencies for big legacy companies.

Like Levi's subway Toyota, north face. I can go on and on. They're all blowing it and they don't know it. The problem is. That the people hiring these agencies don't know enough to vet them. They don't know what the right thing is to do. So it's kind of the blind leading the blind. I knew that must sound really conceited when I name all those companies, but it's.

yeah.

The 

reason I love the name of your company. So much marketing Mambo is because it truly is a dance. You're constantly having a dancer on all of these changes. And who's saying, what, and what do you believe? Who do you believe? Well, I say, believe the person with results. Gotten great results for the last nine years, four months in three weeks with my own strategies, without paying for advertising without boosting posts and without even worrying about SEO rankings and.

I really did it because I knew that with Trump, talk to me, it's just like the lessons thing. The interviews didn't matter if I had no one to watch them, no matter how big the artist was, you know, the documentaries, none of that mattered without an audience. How's really determined. And I think I did something most people didn't or won't do I put 70%?

Of my waking hours into marketing, marketing, marketing, marketing, and figuring out what worked, what didn't polished, what didn't work or scrapped it leveraged. What did work got better and better at it, and really got to recognize. What all the changing algorithms were. Cause every year, twice a year, there's someone that professes to be an expert saying you'll never reach the people like you've been reaching.

You'll never get as much, but I've always been able to figure out my way around those algorithms. It's not that I'm smarter. It's really that I do two things. I use some critical thinking and some uncommon steps. 

And you're also recognizing that you need to pay attention, that there aren't any hard and fast rules. And,  just, the fact that you're talking about algorithms, right, algorithms are constantly evolving based on how people respond to them.

And so if you're paying attention and,  doing some testing and learning to see what works, that makes sense. 

Yeah, and that's true. And they're also evolving because the platforms want to squash our reach as content creators, as being counters, business owners, the one squat, or reach on their own platform so that we freak out and see their carrot. They're dangling that says if you spend $300, you'll reach 10,000 more 

people. But what's the point of reaching more people with something that's already not working. And that's where the content marketing. Perfection needs to come in. No one will ever perfect it, but we have to always be better at content marketing because it works on social media. It works on our website, works with our email marketing.

And if we're just posting stuff just to post stuff and making the number one mistake that all brands at all levels in any industry are making, which is. Most people are just posting what's for sale was for sale. What's for sale. Here's 

my offer. 

yeah, 

that's so 

as if, yeah, if we were the consumer hat, why would we follow a brand?

That's only constantly advertising to us what they are 

for sale. 

right? You become kind of numb to it. Right? You learn how to block it out. 

And there's nothing interesting.

Yeah. Yeah. You know,  you. Have given me so much that I'm still kind of digesting, but I want to just go back to something that you said a little bit earlier. I mean, I looked you up on LinkedIn and so we're just about the same age you finished high school the year before I did, but I'm still kind of trying to get over the fact that when you're 14, you went to see led Zeppelin. 

So that was like the late seventies probably. 

Yeah.

77.

I mean, I never got to see led Zeppelin, but  I saw Robert plant with Alison Krauss, probably about 10 years ago. 

yeah.

And I was just, swooning. Cause you know, he's still was I think the number one, rock lead man.

Right? Yeah.

totally, totally.  I'm also putting these thoughts together about You being a musician and. As a drummer, you keep the beat, but you have to really pay attention to the rest of the band.  And adapt. And I'm thinking that what you were just describing about how you figured out, how to use, social media marketing that, maybe you had that skill finally honed, 



That's interesting, possibly what comes to mind is this is funny that you point that out because on Friday, so I don't play in a band anymore. I don't go gay getting all that. I just don't do that anymore. I have a show on Trump talk TV. I do a couple of times a week where I broadcast live and I plan, I demonstrate we talk music with the audience it's live, but.

Friday, I got a text saying, Hey, can you play a show tomorrow? And I'm like, what's tomorrow. And, you know, I live in the mountains in a very small community, a hundred miles east of Phoenix. There's 7,200 people here. We have a neighboring smaller town of about. 2000 people. And then there's nothing for an hour and a half in either direction of us.

So the guy who runs the arts community there, was having this, this arts festival and this gentlemen, who's a five string fretless bass player. Wanted to come perform, put this thing together with musicians he's never played with this is like this, his thing that he does. And also, man, I sound like so conceded, but I don't move my stuff anymore.

My gear does not move. I've got an enormous giant drum kit. I mean, with tympani drums, a gong, I mean everything. And I do have a little small four piece jazz kit, but I just don't move my stuff into her. So I know how to get out of this. I said, You know what  I'll do it. If I don't have to learn much music.

And if there's a drum step provided, I'll bring my symbols. He said, someone's bringing a drum set and it's a hundred percent improvisation. So I went from going so averse to even wanting to do this, to tell him how I felt my God. I'm so excited. I can't wait until tomorrow. I didn't have to learn any music.

It was myself, two guitar players, the bass player. And a gentleman who played baritone, sax, Alto, sax, tenor, sax, and flute. And it was a hundred percent improvisation. We were supposed to play an hour. My wife said we played about two hours in 10 minutes and  it was fun. And I bring that up because you brought up something that I believe you're kind of referring to an alluding to sometimes skills that we acquire and develop kind of help us become innately in tune with them.

And I think that I'm naturally somewhat intuitive, but I do think that there's , a common denominator there with just being able to kind of watch, observe, and then, oh, all these, the sky is falling. And I say, I think I can figure that out. And I've always been able to, and it's not even been.

That hard, but when it comes to marketing, especially content marketing and digital marketing, everyone's too busy listening to the chatter and paying attention to what everyone else is doing. So that's what they're doing. And 90% of it is if I could use a technical term BX,

Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, I I worked in marketing for my entire career before I became a coach and I thought a lot of it was pretty intuitive. You know,   I have an MBA and all of that, but I've always been one that really listened a little bit more to my intuition and my gut.

And I always think of marketing as. The way that you create a relationship  with the customer and so in most relationships we want the person or the organization that we're having a relationship with to be responsive. 

We don't want them to talk at us.

You want them to listen to you and respond to you. And think that a lot of people are so focused on like, how do we do this? The quote, unquote right way that they're not taking the time to listen. And again, going back to your background as a musician, like you would never, and even the example that you just used.

I mean, I would imagine that at this point, you're just like, Yeah.

that would be fun to just go and play, not have to  rehearse. just, go and use those skills that you've developed all this time and not have to spend time practicing or rehearsing or learning. 

Yeah. And you know 

And what you said about the relationship and resonance smell that that's a thousand percent, right. For one edge of the sword. The other side of the sword is what people are really getting cut by and that's by not taking the time to understand what works.  On the different platforms.

And what I mean by that is just two big things to consider what are the parameters and the algorithmic parameters of the platforms. But beyond that, what are the differences in human behavior of how each of those platforms are used? And that's where it all kind of gets divided in and a bit scrambled this whole thing about using popular hashtag.

 It doesn't work like that. If 400,000 people on Facebook or Instagram or Twitter or whatever, 400,000 people are using let's say motivation Monday on Monday. How was your post gonna come up for someone? And if they click on that hashtag or search it, it just doesn't work like that.

So that's one of the many things that I teach that is bass ackwards from the weight. Everyone else says it works. But  I have the number. I have the numbers and we hardly even use hashtags. So how important are this? Just one grain of sand on the beach of all of the things that I teach that are really looked at differently.

And that's what it takes. It's just taking a step back, not listening to what everyone else is doing. And like you said earlier, trying some things, then leverage what works, get better at that and not just doing it because that's what your 14 year old niece is doing. Cause she's on social media.

She must know what to do. 

I see so much of that. And it's.

Yeah. I mean, it's kind of interesting, with kids,  I've got,  1822 and 24 year old and my daughter who's 18 has, an Instagram clothing store and she's just kind of figured it out very intuitively  figured out what works and, apparently it's working cause she's got a going business, but,  I think that that's a little bit different she was learning it before she ever decided to use it  for business.

But,  tell me a bit more about, social media on steroids. Tell me about the courses and what's that look like?  Who 

Great. Thanks. So  until about nine months ago, I was teaching it in three different levels. Not necessarily good, better, best, but really good, deeper, and then really deep and about. Eight or nine months ago, made a big change and I decided I want to do two big changes. One only teach my deepest level and add to it too.

Like I taught some other workshops, like a podcasting workshop and I decided to just mush it all into this really deep thing and teach it in groups, teach it in mastermind groups. And I used to think like many might be thinking as they hear this, that the value. Was in me teaching one-on-one, but I met a gentleman about nine months ago when all this happened, who is teaching a master class?

On how to teach masterclasses in groups. And my objection was, I said, well, Chris,  I really think my value  is doing one-on-one and giving them all that attention. And he said, well, Dan, I get that. And he said, well, you're in another mastermind.

Right? I said, yeah. He said, well, don't you learn from the other questions and as soon as you started down that road, I thought, oh my gosh, he's right. And he's got me. He's right. I can't deny that it's a must. Richer learning experience to learn with other people. But then the next thing he said really got me and he's a lot younger than I am.

He said Dan, when I started teaching in groups, I got my time back, Terry, when he said that my mind wandered to me running and slow motion through a meadow of flowers with my dog flying. Like I So that part hasn't come yet. However, I am providing much more enriching experience and I'm enjoying it even 

more 

as well. 

well. 

I know who you're talking about because I actually interviewed him on marketing Mamba. You're talking about Chris Williams of group, coach nation, right? So he's gotten me thinking too, because,  I think this is just a little bit of My own problem that I need to get over, but sometimes it does feel like, oh, if I'm not giving that individual attention that I'm cheating, 

So, let me help people with that. Let me help you with that. Here's what I decided to do. Initially, my course was going to be eight weeks, but then I started adding all this other stuff in. So training for two hours on Fridays, one hour, anything goes Q and a on Mondays everything's recorded. It's archived in a Kajabi course for people who can't make it, people can review had it all figured it out eight weeks, but then I thought, oh, but I want to add the podcast thing and then this, and then it came out to 12 weeks.

Then I said, I'm not putting limits on it. I'm going to give everybody who signs up. They have access to me twice a week and the whole program for 12 months. Then what I do is every four months now I'm rebooting it and adding more to it, updating with all the crazy algorithmic changes and all that.

And everyone gets six, two hour one-on-one sessions with me as well. So it has that personal one-on-one element for what does make us all different for our business, all of that, but it also has the really enriching element. Of the experience of learning with other people from different industries  and cleaning from their aha moments and their questions and doing breakout sessions, it's really the best of both worlds.

And I'm just really loving it. And I have to say. Again, hopefully people won't put this in the conceited column either, but part way into the experience with me, everyone comes to a session called measuring your aptitude. Sometimes people have been with me for three weeks when they come to that, because of when I place it, sometimes they've been with me for months.

Everyone gets an a plus. And what they do is they pick a legacy brand that they like, like what's a great brand. If I called on uteri, what's a great pound that you'd like to follow in food, fashion, automotive travel, anything. What would that brand mean?

I'll tell you United I just got back from a trip and I fly United airlines.

United airlines. Perfect. Okay, great. So then I would go to two of United social channels for United. I probably go to YouTube and Facebook and there's other attendees there watching everyone watches everyone else. I go to. Specific places on those two channels. And I ask you to tell me, what are they doing?

What are they doing completely wrong? And what are they completely missing out on every one of my students it's done this with me has proven that even partway into the course, they knew more than the brand agencies doing the content marketing on social for brands like Toyota, subway north face, Louis Vuitton, salvation army red cross mercy ship.

I can go on and on and it's just, amazing. The big agencies really don't know. And none of it's difficult. It's just knowing 

the right style. 

Your approach makes a heck of a lot of sense because as the consumer.  It only has meaning if it has meaning for you. 

And I think that the organizations do need to  step back and whether it's the agency or  the brand to step back and say, well, how would I respond to this as a consumer?

Because most of the time the people that work in marketing or work at the agency are a consumer. 

Yeah, 

 

Yeah, we eat at subway or fly on airplanes or go to the grocery store or watch HBO, whatever it is, whatever it is, we're experiencing it as a consumer.

But  for whatever reason, sometimes maybe we say, well, you know, that's not how it works when in fact, maybe we're not even interacting as a human with it in the same way that we're expecting that quote unquote other consumers would. So. 

Right. And we have to look at it two ways with that. When I mentioned earlier about brands just promoting, promoting, promoting, promoting, and that's not marketing by the way, promoting an advertising is not marketing. Great marketing is what gets people to respond to the advertisement. Promotion, but it's like, if we turn on the radio and heard one song and then twenty-five minutes of commercials, then one song, then we'd never listen to that radio station again.

So we can't run our content channels that way. The other thing is a lot of people say, oh, I know who my audience is. I have a hiking boot brand. And so all my audience are people who go hiking that doesn't make them all the same. If I had a hiking boot brand and all my videos showed seniors like me, that the youngsters like the kids, your kids' ages, and my grandkids ages would say, all those boots are for old people.

I'm going on a real hike. I need to find boots for people my age, if all the boots. Videos were their ages, the gen Z gen X, gen, you know, all of them, the older people like me would say, oh, those boots are for the kids. I need boots for my high mileage, frankly as feet. But it's the same food. It's the same 

blue.

We need to see ourselves in the marketing.

I'm just thinking about Timberlands, and 

those originally were work boots. And then people started wearing 'em for, God forbid they get them dirty, 

like they became a fashion shoe. Right. And it's not that people still don't wear steel toe Timberlands on the construction site or whatever, but, that's not what every segment of their market is using them for.



That's such a great example because I think what we're both talking about means it doesn't ever come down to the product. It comes down to how well your marketing can resonate with your target market. And it comes down to the people and it comes down to do they see themselves in it? All the features and functions and benefits in the world will not convince them, that it's for them seeing themselves. Is what convinces them. They have to be in the marketing or just 

Yeah. 

this kind of work.

I've had this conversation with a number of people I've had as guests about the meaning of brand,  because brand is not what the company says. It is. I mean,  the company can say, well, this is our promise to you, right? That's maybe what the company thinks their brand is, but the brand is what the consumer believes that okay.

You know, where you can have, close alignment between what the company says they are and how the consumer experiences it. That's usually where you have, high levels of brand loyalty, where you have big disconnects where, they're saying their brands, one thing, but people are experiencing it as something else.

And I'm just thinking back like years ago, I don't know if Kmart is even still around, 

I heard there's three stores left that they're getting ready to go. I 

Yeah. Uh, but  I can remember, many, many years ago, my kids, I think I only had two kids then, and I saw these cute, curious George pajamas in the Sunday circular. And so I didn't normally go to Kmart, but I was like, oh, my little boys will look so cute in that. And I went in and the store was such a mess.

They did not have the merchandise. There were no prices on anything. I mean, I walked in and I walked out and I never, again, went to Kmart regardless of how. Fancy, their ads looked on TV back when they still had them. But, that was just a huge disconnect between what they said they were and what the actual customer experience was.

Yeah.

And that comes down to how poorly or greatly a brand projects, how they want to be perceived, because you can say all you want it just like people you are, what you say you do, or what you believe it's how you act actions and when a brand. Yeah. It really comes down to the brand, taking the right actions to be perceived how they want to be perceived.

Right. Exactly.

Otherwise there is that despite.

And it's not all about marketing either, because it's about how to all of your associates in the store treat the customer, are they making sure the merchandise makes it to the shelves? Are there prices on the shelves, are the marketing people at the headquarters aligned with the  logistics, people making sure the stuff makes it into the store?

I mean, it's a lot, things that need to be fulfilled  to really fulfill on the brand promise.  When we were first talking, you said that you had been trained in NLP, which is neuro linguistic programming. Dan, can you give a definition of what neuro-linguistic programming or NLP is? 

Yes, neuro-linguistic programming is the way our mind reacts or responds. To language. And the difference between react and respond is if a doctor gives you a treatment or a medication, and you have a allergic reaction to it, you reacted to it. That's a negative, but if it's working your body responded to the medication, same thing with therapy, same thing with exercise or really anything else.

So when we can. Work NLP into our language whether it's speaking or the written word. And we understand things like eye patterns, if someone looks upper left side left, bottom left, or upper right side, right. Bottom line. Those all six positions have different meanings.

And you can also tell when someone's embellishing or making something up versus recalling something that they heard saw or thought about. value of it is just incredible, but it really is, the natural scientific way that our brain responds to language.

I'm wondering she can speak on,  the insights that it's giving you into what makes for effective marketing. 

Absolutely.  The NLP thing was great because when I had my video production company, I acquired who became my favorite and largest client at the time, the tad James company, the largest training company in the world.

NLP and hypnotherapy. And the first project I did for them was in a completely different environment than what they usually do. I filmed just tad and his wife Adriana in a studio, and it was a trainer's training without an audience. It wasn't a real training. It was made just for video. And I didn't know much about.

They're talking about, but they wanted me to do more projects that were happy with how it came out. And I say, great. In order for me to produce the best product for you, why don't you put me through your programs? Let me get certified all the way up. So I understand what the F you're talking about, and I can create,  a better product.

So my wife and I went through their programs. And quite often, while my company was filming these,  live in person seminars with people. As well as being trained in getting certified at the same time.

So when you really understand how the brain and language works, it's a game changer. And when you understand the different values levels, when you understand that people, I just taught this session. So this is fresh in my head in marketing. I talk about an NLP, the Foursquare presentation model, and tied with the.

Primary representation systems. We all only have one. We are either visual, auditory, auditory, digital, which is self-talk or thought inner thought or we're kinesthetic feel. And what I've learned is if we're marketers and if we want to really reach everybody. We need to know how to use language. That's gonna read the visual people to say something like,  I know you'll see how exceptional my program is and it'll help bring your vision crystal clear into light so that you can see more profits.

But if it's for someone who's auditory, I would say. Oh, wait, Tia here, everybody raved about how great the program's going when you're in it. And you'll just hear the cashier ringing in your head. When you see how to apply all these strategies. If it's someone who's auditory digital, it would be, I know you think this may be like everything else, but you will soon realize how different it is when you see how much thought I've put into the strategies.

That absolutely work. Lastly, if it's kinesthetic. You'll build a very strong foundation and easily grasp these strategies that will give you a firm. Hold on your marketing,  no matter what someone's, primary representational system is, if you use any one of those or all of them together in order of, backwards, kinesthetic, auditory, digital auditory to visual.

Cause those are different speeds. Speeds and people process at the pace they speak, people hear and listen at the pace they speak. So if someone starts out visual, but I don't remember that. I'm like, I usually am an after slow. You'll lose all the, so there's a real science to that. And to weave that into your marketing so that you are reaching everybody's internal primary representation system, there's no way you can't resonate with people once you master that and learn how to do that.

So it's been great for me, just.  Relational communication within family with putting together, scripts for videos, proposals.  When I speak at associations, it's just been mind-blowingly beneficial. It really has.

Yeah. 

Very interesting. And like the examples that you use too, because  it got me thinking  how can people figure out What their preferred 

Usually by the predicates. Here's how you could figure it out for someone else and how you could probably figure it out yourself by following the same thing. There's a couple of things. One is if you listen to people's predicates, when someone says, yeah, do you see what I'm saying? They're visual. Do you hear me?

Listen. Here's how it's going to work. They're auditory, someone who's kinesthetic has going to say you feel. 

Can can get a grip, you know, foundation where it's like that is someone's auditory, digital. They're going to use some cerebral or thought related. So if you think of how you process information and recall stuff, do you hear it in your head?

Do you form a picture?  Is it self-taught. Those are some of the ways you can identify, I would say by your speech pace, I think you're either visual or auditory visuals. The quickest auditory is next. And then auditory digital, then kinesthetic, typically people  who speak in a slower paced, more methodical way or Kinesis.

Yeah. 

 And when they are, we need to, if we're visual or auditory, we need to slow down to have that conversation and match and mirror  their pace 

and use words that we believe would resonate, grip, grasp strength, foundational pillars, like that.

man. I love that. That's really, really fascinating. 

It's still such an interesting realm and it's absolutely tied to marketing as much as considering gender cultural differences ages. 

probably more so. 

probably more so. Yeah. Cause if that's the way that they're receiving the world, it's not 

the demographic things. It's really their way of processing that you're speaking to. 

And you use the exact right words. It helps big part of forming their model of the world is how they process information. 

Yeah. Okay. so, wow. That was cool. And  I'm going to do more research into that. That's very interesting. Well, let's talk a little bit more about your courses. 

Okay. Thanks. 

Is this just for entrepreneurs or 

could this be for, people in corporate  

Yeah, absolutely. 

who are your courses best for. 

they're best for anyone. And we'll get to those categories in a moment. Anyone who's smart enough to know. They don't know it all and they want to improve. That's the biggest thing when we stop learning, when we think we've got it all figured out what we think, we know it all, that could be the death of whatever we're working on or aspiring to do.

 I've worked with everybody from the arts, the music industry to health and wellness banking, food service, dental tech, the biggest real estate training company in Arizona automotive. I've worked with four dealerships startups, nonprofits. There's a couple of nonprofits in my course right now,  entrepreneurs of all different types.

And I know some people. They want to believe so much that they're so different and it won't work for me and my customers. Aren't on social and they're not. Yes they are. And no, you're not. And yes, they are. Period. End of story. From circus clown to potato chip brand to C suite, we're all humans and that's really the biggest common denominator.

And if we want to improve, you've got to learn this stuff and why not learn from someone who's had great results. I know a guy.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, being a long time marketer and having dealt with many, many business leaders in the many places I've worked so often, I've had people say, but we're different. 



Yeah, and we don't have competitors.

Marketing is marketing and human beings are human beings.

And whether they're buying investment banking services or a pack of gum, they're still human, and that you still are going to need to appeal to them in a particular way so that they believe if they pay attention, they're going to be rewarded. 

You're right. And that's one of the two things, if I do say so myself, that's one of the two things that differentiates me from everyone else who teaches or professors to teach this one. I have over 50,000 hours in getting this right. That's a lot of time. Number two. No matter how many changes the platforms.

To their parameters, to algorithms, what matters most is that human behavior will not change in our lifetime. And when you understand that it doesn't matter what platform you're working. Yeah. You've got to know how the parameters are with the algo, but that's when you really are going to strike gold, when it's all geared towards the human behavior, like you said, It's just so important, but that experiential part, some people bless their hearts.

I know they want to help. I know they need to put food on the table. I'm not saying they're doing anything scammy, but there are people who follow a couple of blogs, read three books, went to a seminar. Now they're doing. You know, I have 50,000 hours in getting right. If I see one more LinkedIn profile from someone who doesn't even say that this is what they provide.

One more LinkedIn profile that lists social media is a skill I might throw up in my mouth. I mean, every single day, no matter what the business is, no matter what the person's position is, they list. And they have no idea what that even means. They're not getting results. They don't know what drives me nuts.

It 

Well,  I've got my suspicions about. Why that is. And,  I think about,  interviewing for jobs and talking to business leaders that don't understand marketing period, let alone social media marketing, and they know they don't understand it. And so.

For somebody to come in and say, look, you don't need to worry about this. I understand social media. I think that  that reassures people that maybe are not as educated about marketing, but I also think that what it does.

is it, can leave. Organizations down the Primrose path, right?

They're like, oh, we're just going to outsource this where this agency is an expert in this. And I'm not saying that 

there aren't agencies. 

And they have no way to flip that.

Right. Because they don't have enough knowledge About it to even judge, but somebody comes in and they're Smith talker and whatever, and they're like, oh, well, they, they stay, they're an expert in social media, so I'm going to trust them.

So, buyer beware, I guess, right. And 

maybe spend a little time getting educated, you can still outsource, but you'll know enough not to be dangerous when you do it. 

Exactly. We do provide the service by the way, too. And we have a great onboarding program because. We want our clients to know enough about this for them to be on the same page with us and for them to really truly be able to work as a team, brainstorm together on what content they should be creating or what assets they need to give us to create the content for them.

It's about understanding a certain level of how this works. Would they do that? You know what I'm curious,  if I may ask a question, we'll kind of flip the table around for a moment, having  been in marketing for so long, what was the biggest common denominator you saw with clients where there was some sort of impasse?

Was it what you mentioned earlier about them thinking they're different? Was it something else? Was it being stubborn and not want to be told how to do something or.

Yeah. I mean, you know, I was,  doing in-house marketing. I think. one of The biggest impasses was that they didn't understand how strategic marketing needed to be like that. We really have to start with what's the objective? Not. Hey, we need a YouTube campaign or we need to get a Facebook page up for this, or I need another brochure or we need to make the logo bigger in an 

ad. 

spinning the sign on the corner. Just get more 

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, You know that it's not about that, right? we could have a multitude of different approaches. That could all be successful if we understand what the objective is. There's a lot of 

different paths. 

And how to communicate it. Yeah.

Yeah,

There's a lot of different paths to get there, but a lot of times people are very, impatient, And, And don't understand that marketing actually is very strategic. We're not just the people that make stuff pretty, 

you're right.  

It is a very strategic, function.

And you mentioned Terry, a great thing. Impatient people want instant gratification. I want to point out one more thing. If I. I can't say how many people I'm sure you've heard this too. They say I don't have time to do it. I don't have time to learn. I don't have time. I don't have time. On a lot of time.

We all have the same 24 hours. And through this whole journey I've been married. I've had two very busy businesses. We have a combined family of 11 grown kids and 19 grandkids so far. 

We have a six-year-old Maine, Coon cat, and now an eighth month old Shefsky puppy. I consider myself a pretty busy guy, but I've always put learning how to get it right first, because that's the first domino that needed to fall to make all the others fallen, make that beautiful pattern to bring to fruition, whatever the goal is, like I said, the 

objective. 

Yeah.

We got to make time to learn get really good at things, especially when we talk to them, a marketing in a world where there is so much noise out there. And even if it's all good noise, we still need to know how to stand out and really resonate with our target market. Build that relationship and keep it.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. That's such an  excellent point. And I'll tell you that as a coach, I hear that quite often too, like, oh, I'm just too busy. I'm too busy. I don't have enough time to do all the things and 

So correct. My problem. I just came to you for 

right. 

Yeah, yeah, Exactly. At some point, we do need to make decisions about how we invest our time and our energy and our attention.

And it does require us to step back and be thoughtful about it. Not just, you know, run faster on the hamster wheel. And to the point that you're making it is very noisy out there. And if we're not thoughtful about. the marketing strategy  and then we can just be out there shouting with everybody else and really not making the connection.

 I mentioned that marketing is about creating a relationship,  it's not about shouting at people or, you know, having the biggest blinking light if nobody's looking at it, 

Exactly. 

what good does it do you 

know? Well, so Dan, before we wrap up, I just want to ask you, what is the. One piece of advice or wisdom, you'd like to leave our audience with 

It's such a big question. So if I could pick one thing related to marketing, it truly is. Stopped following everyone over the cliff, who's doing it wrong. Stop the herd mentality and really slow down, take some time, use some critical thinking and some uncommon sense the way I did to figure all this out and look around and look at how much sameness there is that is not working.

And don't do the same thing just for safety. Sake. That's never going to work. If it would, everyone would be super successful.

Yeah. It's an excellent point. And it kind of goes back to what I was saying earlier. You have to decide on what your objective is first, and then you have to design a strategy to fulfill on that objective. And when you see other people, doing stuff well, do they even have a strategy?

Is their strategy appropriate for your business? Because if you just do what they're doing. Maybe you might get results, but maybe that's not going to fulfill what your objective is. If you've even thought about it. 

And that's a good point. Cause even if someone has come up with, what differentiates me? But never to say we're completely different. And to never say you don't have competition. Everyone has competition.  If this coming weekend there's a bowling tournament and a carnival in town that's competition, because carnival means.

And  if it's mother's bowling tournament, well, there's competition right there. It doesn't even have to be the competition is anywhere else where someone could spend their money instead of on what you provide. And it's very important to really come to a reckoning with that and learn how to make people want to fall in love with what you do and fall in love with being part of it.

And that goes back to the relational part that you mean.

Yeah, definitely. Well, so Dan, where can people find you and find the social media on steroids courses? 

If they go to advanced social marketing.com, it's all on. And if they sign up for my email list there, they will be emailed my first two modules of the course at no cost or obligation, just so they can learn more about me. The first one's mostly an introduction about me, my background, and,  the second one  absolutely gives people some tools and tips they can apply right away.

So you'll get a little, try it before you buy it kind of taste of what it's like. Right. I make everything fun. I mean, I have 11 kids in 19 grandkids. I'm not doing anything unless it's fun. Believe me. And I do enjoy having a great time watching everyone's light bulbs go on getting results. And so if you sign up for my email list, it advance.

Social marketing.com. You'll get the first two modules and you can read more about the course and there's some other helpful info there as well. And I'm on LinkedIn. 

Great. Okay.  I'll put all those links in the show notes. Dan, Thank you. so much for being our guests today.

Thank you. Terry was honored to be on with you and do the Mambo.