Evolve Replay: “The Most Human Brand Wins” with Mark Schaefer

Crystal Vilkaitis: This is a very special Rooted in Retail episode because I am airing a replay from our Evolve conference from one of my keynote speakers, Mark Schaefer. Mark Schaefer is a pioneer, an innovator. He’s been in the marketing industry for 20 plus years, has written a lot of marketing books, wrote the first book on influencer marketing.

He’s a very impressive Man and a very engaging speaker. I re listened to this topic, which the title was the most human brand wins. And I re listened to it on one of my walks. I was laughing out loud. He’s funny. It’s engaging, but it’s also very important conversation on what makes consumers choose brands and spend money with.

them and he has a lot of great examples and case studies and advice in this presentation. We also have some audience participation and a little heckling going on, but it’s actually adds a lot of engagement and fun to the conversation. And so I know you’re going to find a lot of value out of this episode.

I also want to point out that Mark was a guest on Rooted in Retail in the early days on episode. Three. So if you like hearing from Mark in this episode, you’ll also love that episode. Go back to episode three on Rooted in Retail. We’ll also link to it in our show notes. And I just want to point out that if you like this content, this is a little teaser, a little taste of what the content is like at Evolve, our business conference.

And it’s happening again in April of next year. And super, super early bird pricing is ending soon. So if you are listening to this as it airs in the month of September 20–2000– 2023, uh, you can get your standard ticket for just $197. As we get closer to the event, that price is going up. That price will eventually be $1, 997.

So you can save 90 percent on your ticket if you get it now for just 197. So you can go to. Crystalmediaco. com /evolve to secure your seat, get a great price for it. And then here, here, topics like this that I know you’re going to enjoy. You’re going to love Mark. You’re going to love what he’s saying.

You might want to even be taking some notes or re listen to it. So let’s dive in to this episode.

Welcome to Rooted in Retail, the show that’s dedicated to helping independent retailers thrive in today’s ever evolving retail landscape. I’m your host, Crystal Vilkaitis, and I’m thrilled to have you join me weekly as we explore topics that are vital to the success of your store, from marketing to mindset.

Money to merchandising, sales to leadership we’ll cover it all. Each episode features interviews with industry experts and accomplished retailers who share their real life insights and actionable advice. Get ready for a great conversation on how to build your dream business with Rooted in Retail.

Our speaker today is a globally recognized author, speaker, futurist, and business consultant.

He’s a prolific writer and speaker whose work sits at the intersection of marketing, technology, and humanity. He has advanced degrees in marketing and organizational development, holds seven patents, and is a faculty member of the graduate studies program at Rutgers University. He is the best selling author of ten popular books, including the very first book on influencer marketing.

His blog “Grow” and podcast,”The Marketing Champion” are ranked among the top rated podcasts in the marketing field. His clients range from successful startups to global brands such as Adidas, Johnson and Johnson, Dell, the U. S. Air force and the UK government. Uh, and he has appeared on media channels such as CNN, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and CBS News.

All the way from Tennessee, where his very own bees make honey that wins blue ribbons at the state fair. Please welcome to the stage, Mark Schaefer!

Clapping Knock’em dead, Mark. Yes.

Mark Schaefer: Can you hear me all right? That’s a leftover from the Zoom, you know. First question you ask him is, can you hear me? This is, this is so much nicer than seeing a little green dot on a computer. I’m so happy to see your faces. It’s gonna be fun, because normally I get to speak for like 45 minutes and Crystal gave me an hour today, plus some time for questions and answers, so I can kind of like riff today.

And this is my favorite topic. Evolve. This is, this is the world that I, that I live in, thinking about what’s next, what’s next, and How do we stay relevant in this world? So, I want to start off today, um, by talking about, I want to tell a story. And, um, like all great business presentations, this story starts with soap.

Not just any soap, but the most famous soap in the world. Ivory soap was the first soap that was ever actually cut into bars, wrapped. And individually marketed before ivory, you went into a store and it would like, you know, knock off a bar. That’s how you bought your soap. This is very, very famous. And in the 1960s, they dominated advertising, especially during midday television, which is how we got the word soap opera.

That’s right. And this is why this is the only soap my mother trusted on my precious little bum at that time. Because she, she saw the ads. That’s how you learn about these products and these services. And, uh, they were so successful that in the 1960s, they had about 50 percent of the soap market. Really just amazing.

Now, a few years ago. I was reading an article in the Wall Street Journal that said how a lot of these iconic brands that had been built by advertising were in decline. In fact, Ivory Soap, can anybody guess what their market share is today? Give me a yes, be bold. Someone said five, someone said two. Yeah.

Less than three percent. Now, remember, this product is owned by Procter Gamble. The biggest marketer and advertiser in the world with the biggest agencies and the biggest budgets. How can they screw this up so bad? I mean, it’s not like this isn’t being replaced by Chat GPT. YET. Yet. Yeah. That’ll probably be next week.

Cause I mean, I think Elon Musk, didn’t he announced like chat soap, something as probably, yeah. So I was puzzled. I decided, I just, you know, as a marketing geek, I play these stories in my mind all the time, trying to figure these things out that I went over to a friend’s house for dinner and I got the answer.

At least part of the answer, go into the bathroom, it’s not that funny. This is a wired audience. You’ll laugh at anything. I am so excited. Go to the bathroom. And there’s a soap from the Knoxville Soap Company, where I live. Cucumber and grit soap. Sounds delicious. So, uh, I go out into the living room. The lady that cooked me dinner that night.

I said, I have a question for you. Can you please come into the bathroom with me? The, the, woo! Woo! This is the best audience ever. You know it’s great when you get unexpected woots. So, she comes into the, although I might not finish in an hour.

So, she comes into the bathroom with me, and I said, I have a question. I pointed at the soap, I said, I want to know why you bought this soap. Procter & Gamble has been advertising to you for your whole lives. Why didn’t you buy Ivory or Dial or Irish Spring? Why do you love this brand? She thought for a minute and she said, I don’t know if I love this brand, but I love the hands that made it.

And this points to, this is a great story. It points to a great trend. That we need to be aware of in terms of where marketing is going today. So she said, well, you mentioned advertising and I, she’s, uh, probably a millennial, and she said, I, I can’t remember the last time I saw an ad. She said, I, I, I watch more TV than I’ve ever watched before, but I’m watching Disney plus, I’m watching Amazon Prime.

I listen to music all day long, but I listen to Spotify. I don’t hear any. You know, I don’t hear any ads I list. I love audiobooks. I don’t hear any ads on audiobook. She said if I had to guess, I’d say my consumption of advertising is down 95% in the last five years. And then she went on to tell me about the family that made this soap. She said they’re awesome. They’re involved in our community. They come and they teach entrepreneur classes at our maker movement, uh, events. They’re trying to create a sustainable company, they care about the environment, their employees rave about them, about how good they are to work for, they use local ingredients to try to support.

She went on and on and on, telling me the story about this, this family. She was so passionate about this, this family. She made me want to go out and get the soap. Which I did, and I bought so much of it, and I never realized how long this soap lasts. If you ever come to visit me, I have a gift for you. So, let’s break this down and look at this as a case study that teaches us about evolution evolving in this market today.

Now this is not just a random story that elicited an unexpected woot. This really is backed up by a lot of research about what’s happening in the world today. This is one of my favorite studies. It was an epic study that was done over 10 years. It concluded in 2019 before the pandemic. And it shows that two thirds of our marketing is occurring without us.

This is our marketing is being is happening to people talking to each other. It’s happening to people. So posting on social media. It is happening through testimonies and reviews, and even these people we call influencers. And an influencer can be anybody. An influencer is, my definition is very simple. Uh, crystal mentioned, I wrote the first book on influenced union though back in 2012 when I wrote this vote, nobody was even using that term and it was very controversial.

Like you, like, what do you mean you’re an influencer? You know, what does that, what do you mean? But it’s this simple, an influencer is someone who can move content and ideas through their audience and beyond. So if you find people in your community with the customers that love to share ideas, they’re influencers, even though they might not call themselves influencers.

Now, one of the things I say in all of my books and all my speeches is I never tell you what to do. Because you’re very experienced and you know what’s working with your customers. But what I want to do today is open your eyes to some new possibilities. How the world is evolving and what’s going to be coming next.

And I think this is important because when I was a young guy in business, this was 90-10 the other way. No social media, no internet. You had to see our ads. To know what was going on. Today, there’s so many choices and I could argue by 2030, this is going to be 90-10 the other direction. So we really have to know about this.

And here’s the important lesson. The most important lesson I think is that vectors marketing today is earning our way into that two thirds. We can’t buy our way in anymore. We have to earn our way in to that narrative. We have to create something so interesting and I love being here because I mean, I, I, I was here yesterday and listen to the presentation and I, I agree with everything Crystal says, she’s absolutely counseling you the right way in terms of the content and being bold and being you and you’ll, you’ll hear why when I get in my presentation, but you have to earn your way into that two thirds and I think this is even more than two thirds.

It’s going to be more than two thirds. So, yeah. That’s why I think this is so important that the correct marketing mindset today isn’t advertising and saying, we’re the greatest, we’re the greatest, we’re the greatest, it’s getting the other people to say that, earning our way into the two thirds. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to take a little journey today, uh, from the soap story.

So what did we learn from the soap story? Number one, the personal brand is the brand. I thought this was so amazing. If you think about the history of marketing, why would people buy soap? Well, because it cleans better, or it’s lemon fresh, or maybe it’s cheaper. She paid ten times more for this soap than Ivory.

Ten times more. Yeah, I don’t know what I paid. I didn’t, it didn’t matter. She told me to do it, and I did it. Because, like, it’s the second quote. The customer is the marketer. She told me to do it, so I did it. Alright, when the pandemic lifted, I needed a new suitcase. Travel was picking up again. And I remembered, two years ago, My friend posted something on Facebook.

He’s like a travel warrior. He wants all the best gear, right? So he said, This is the best suitcase ever. It has a lifetime warranty. This is the best. So I need a new suitcase. So I wrote him a note. I said, What was that suitcase you recommended on Facebook like two years ago? He says, Oh, it was blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I went on the website, bought it. No ads. No coupons, no lemon fresh, no nothing, right? Because in this confusing world, I trust him. He’s an influencer. He posted that. He doesn’t think he’s an influencer, but when he said this is the best suitcase, I trusted this is the best suitcase. I have it up in my room today and I can’t even tell you the name of the brand.

I’m not kidding you. It’s not like Samsonite or something. It’s like something, right? I don’t really care. Somehow I, I feel comforted that I bought the best suitcase because he told me that it is. So the customer is the marketer. The customer is the marketer. So you have to think about how do we help them do their job?

Because they want to, because they love you. All right. Now, the other thing that’s so fascinating here. Is, um, if I say Coca Cola, what comes to mind? Polar Bears. Good. Polar Bears. Alright, before the pandemic, I actually gave a speech in Poland. And I said, what do you think of? Because I didn’t know. And even in Poland, they think of Polar Bears.

Just a fun fact. When they hear Coca Cola. Now why? Coca Cola is… Brown sugar water. But nobody says that. Nobody says that. Actually, one time, I was telling a story, and I said something about Coke. I said, what do you think of when I say Coke? And there was a guy in the front row, and he said, sadness.

Completely threw me. I said, do you need a hug? Uh, so, why, why, why? Why do we think of polar bears? Because Coca Cola has spent billions of dollars over a decade to move us that way, right? A brand, great brand marketing is creating that emotional feeling between what you do. It’s an expectation, right? When I work with you, when I come into your store, I’m going to get this feeling.

I’m going to get this service. I’m going to know these people. That’s your brand. And in the old days. The emotional connection was to polar bears or lemon fresh, or, you know, leprechauns or whatever. Right? But today, as we see from this story, the emotional connection is moving to the people, the owners, especially young people today.

They want to know who’s running this store. What do they do? What are they like? What do they stand for? How do they treat their employees? How do they treat the environment? All right, and then the last thing is, how did I stay relevant? They just became irrelevant. So we’re going to spend, we’re going to go through each of these four things.

Okay, let’s start with the first one. Personal brand is the brand I teach at Rutgers university. I’ve taught there for 13 years. Now when it comes to stay in a hotel, I’m one of these shop around customers. I don’t care. Just put me up someplace that’s close to where I’m speaking. Except, when I go to Rutgers, I have to stay at a hotel, because I live in Tennessee.

I always stay at the Hyatt, because of her. In fact, I saw her this week. She works at the front desk. This is Terry. She’s my Facebook friend. She knows me. And when I come in the front door, she says, Hello, Mr. Schaefer. And a few years ago, there was a blizzard in New Jersey. And what happens is, is the streets, they become like rivers of slush and it’s just awful.

I was like five hours late. I missed my meetings , I missed my meals. I walked through the front door of the Hyatt and I was a hungry popsicle. And Terry knew I had a bad day. And when I got back to my room that night, I had a cheese plate and fruit and a carafe of wine and a handwritten note from Terry.

Saying, Mr. Schaefer, I hope your day goes better. But it gets better. So the next morning, I’m checking out and Terry comes out from behind the registration desk and she hugs me goodbye. I don’t know if that’s politically correct. But I, I, I, I liked it. And I was so moved, well, to that. Guys are… Guys are… You guys…

And… That’s my presentation. Thank you very much.

You guys are freaking crazy. This is going down in Schaefer history. You’ll remember our birth. I know. I said, yeah, and where, okay, Colorado, Denver, get, I’m back. But I, I was, I was, I was moved by, by this gesture in a, in this hotel. So I wrote a blog post called How I was Hugged by a Brain. Literally. Hyatt loved it.

They put it on the front page of their website. What thing goes viral, Terry gets a call at home, it’s her day off. They said, Terry, you need to come to work today and you need to look nice. She comes to work and there is the president of Hyatt Hotels to congratulate her for hugging me, I guess, to be honest.

And three months later, Terry was named the employee of the year for Hyatt. Now. I didn’t even get a free breakfast out of the deal. And you know that’s a big deal. I just said, yeah, did you? Uh, yeah, and uh, I was like, it’s $20 for breakfast. That’s the ticket. Keep down. But here’s the point of the story.

There is no amount of advertising or marketing that would make me stay at this hotel. It’s a half a mile from where I teach. It’s more expensive from a closer, than a closer hotel. I stay there because of her. She is the brand and that’s the way I think it is for you. And, and here’s, I think, just let me say, small, medium sized businesses like you, you are poised to kill it in, in, in the, in the world today.

You really are, okay? Now, I stay at Hyatt because we, Terry and I, we’re friends. We love each other. Who do I love at Marriott? Nobody. Who do I love at Verizon? Nobody. Who do I love at Ford Motor Company? Nobody. But I can love you guys, because you’re the face of the brand, right? So, there was a study done by Princeton a few years ago, and it said whenever we meet somebody for the first time, there’s two things that click in our head, if we’re thinking, could this person be my friend?

Are they warm, and are they competent? Turns out, When people think about businesses, they think the same way. The conclusion of this study by Princeton University was, businesses are our buddies too. If you’re warm and you’re competent, that’s going to click. I want to be friends with this business. That explains Geico.

Geico is not a gecko, right? And they’re probably very competent. They’re a bunch of accountants sitting in cubicles, basically. But they’ve spent lots of money. to become a gecko because that’s, that’s, that’s warm and competent. So, one of the things to, to, to think about, I don’t know what’s funny about the slide, but I appreciate it.

It’s not warm and competent. Yeah, I’ll take any last minute. So, um, I mean, I think we kind of know that, um, people aren’t paying attention. To our ads like they used to, there’s this research called, uh, Edelman trust barometer for, I think, 15 years, they studied trust all around the world and what they have shown is that trust in businesses, brands and advertising has declined 15 years in a row, but who do we trust?

We trust each other. We trust business owners. We trust technical experts. We trust company founders, we trust our friends and our family and our neighbors. So that kind of reinforces this idea to, you know, how do we create content? How do we do things with our business that can make people so interested and excited about what we do that they want to share it too.

So this is why I have it. I, you know, I place a big emphasis on your personal brand, on becoming known. I know this is some of the things that Crystal teaches you as well. And it starts with content. Now, when I say known, I don’t mean you have to be a TikTok dancer. Not this. And don’t try this. This is a very dangerous move.

Crystal, did they sign the waiver? They did sign the waiver? They didn’t sign the waiver. Then don’t do this. Because I don’t want to be responsible. What I mean by, you don’t have to be a comedian. You don’t have to be a dancer. You don’t have to do, you know, you don’t have to be famous, but being known and having an effective personal brand on the web means having the presence, the reputation, and the authority to get your job done.

Maybe it’s bringing more people into your store, maybe getting more donations for a charity, whatever your job might be. So, in the back of your mind, what Crystal is saying, Content every day, content every day, content every day. This is what’s happening. You’re establishing the presence, the reputation and the authority.

And what else does she say? Be authentic, be yourself because in this world where we don’t know what to trust, they’ll trust you because you’re there. You’re local. They don’t, you know, they’re not going to trust someone like Procter & Gamble or Verizon, but they’re going to trust you. And that’s why, I mean, you are poised to win, but I, a lot of the research I’m, I’m, I’m talking about today is from a book I wrote now.

Crystal gave everybody my, my book. So thank you, Crystal. Let’s give it up. Round of applause for Crystal.

See, she gave you my new book. We’re going to talk about that in a minute, but a lot of these ideas come from a book I wrote called marketing rebellion. And I, as I was interviewing experts, like brand experts. Say, look at these chiefs in the world. Nobody trusts these companies anymore. How are they going to make this shift?

And this brand at first said, I don’t know. The small companies are going to win. So, I mean, truly this, this is, this is your time. All right. So that’s number one. The personal brand is the brand. Personal brand is the brand. That’s huge for you. Number two, the customer is the marketer. So I’m going to tell another little story here.

It’s about this guy here. Has anybody seen this documentary called Free Solo? Raise your hand if you saw it just like that. Wow, about half. That’s really, really good. So, uh, this guy is Alex Honnold. And a few years ago, he climbed the North Face rock, El Capitan, in Yosemite National Park with no safety equipment. Uh, and it was a, they, uh, National Geographic, uh, and North Face made a documentary about this.

And you can see here, he’s not wearing a helmet and there’s no ropes. It’s, she says, it’s crazy. And that’s the same thing I thought, because, you know, the people in this sport said, this is the greatest human achievement in the sport. This is the moon landing of rock climbing. My reaction was. How did he explain this to his mother?

Because, This is crazy. It’s, this is, so, and I don’t want to, you know, equal both people, but, it’s crazy. Now, here’s the problem. The people that love this sport, they know that they don’t sit. They don’t have regular jobs, and they don’t have regular lives, and they just feel alone, and they don’t sit. No, North Face had a problem.

North, say North. Excuse me, north. That’s hard for me to say today for, I’m gonna get North face. Their, their custom low base was aging out five, six years ago. When he was planning this. The average age of a North Face customer was 45. They needed to reconnect with the extreme sports market, so they sponsored this thing.

I’m gonna show you a little video now. It’s about two minutes long. This is the best. corporate video I have seen in probably the last 10 years. So I want you to think about what’s going on here. What’s so different about this? Uh, this is created by North Face. It was posted on YouTube a few years ago after he did this climb.

And there’s only two sentences of narration at the beginning. And the voice you hear is. It is weird having tons of people questioning your motivations, questioning your sanity. Miles from nowhere. Guess I’ll take my time. Yeah.

To reach there. Look up at the mountain. You can’t do this!

I have to climb. To reach there. Lord, my body Has been a good friend

I won’t need it, when I reach the end

Out of nowhere I guess I take my time Oh, yeah to reach the end I came through the valleys, and I broke through the woods. Cause I know when I find my honey, it’s gonna make me feel good, yes.

This is amazing!

Miles from nowhere. Guess, I’ll take my time. Oh yeah.

Crystal Vilkaitis: Retailers, it is time to step out of the day to day of running your store and step in to a new perspective. I would like to invite you to join me in Denver, Colorado at my conference Evolve. This is built for independent retailers looking to transform their business. Retail is changing faster than we ever.

Ever seen before. So is marketing. And so are the tools to help us build our business. This conference is one of the best places for you to stay up to date and stay relevant. And it’s super, super early bird pricing right now. So you can get a ticket for as low as $197. Go to crystalmediaco.com/evolve to secure your ticket.

And I can’t wait to see you in Denver and help transform and grow your store.

Mark Schaefer: Pretty crazy, huh? So this was a video they posted on YouTube. You can see here, it had about 8 million views. 7 million of those views were mine. But I, I just, I just like this so much. But here’s what got my attention. When they posted this video, here was one of the first comments posted on the video.

And we just learned people don’t want advertising. They’re spending lots of money in our streaming economy to subscribe to Hulu and Amazon and all these places. So they don’t have to see ads anymore. And here’s someone say, that’s how you do it. So there’s a really interesting lesson here about how we evolve into the expectations of people today and what they want to see.

So let’s look at this. What made this great? Three things. Number one, they made the customer, the hero of the story. Now, at the beginning today, Crystal was taking questions, and someone asked, Do I need to be in the video all the time? You know, it’s, it’s great for your personal brand, but it’s even better if you can get your customers to be part of that as well.

Because the customers are the people in your community that people are really going to believe. You know, so I, you know, I just like play these Mind games about thinking about marketing. And I thought, here’s North Face. They’re sitting with their advertising agency and North Face has this idea. We want to create this video where people are screaming and bleeding and crying at a hospital.

No, I mean, who told this story? The only people that could really tell this story best. I mean, people can tell your story, your customers can do it even better than you. Cause they’re going to see something about you that they love, love, love. You may not even think about it. So the customer is the hero.

Now the customer is also the marketer. Or one other thing I want to say about, well, yeah, we’ll just keep moving on. Customer is the hero. So the customer is also the marketer. So who, where do these little videos come from? They pour from. YouTube, they came from Tik TOK or whatever. Right? So the customers were telling the story and that’s what made it so authentic to connect with that young audience, that, that extreme sports audience, they had to have the extreme sports people telling the story.

So to the extent that you can, you know, help your customers along to tell that story, let me give you a quick small business example. I was at a barbecue restaurant in Virginia, and it wasn’t a very big place, but in the middle of this restaurant was a 15 foot fiberglass pig with a tie dye t shirt on, and it was taking up a lot of room.

So I asked the owner, I said, what’s the deal with the fiberglass pig? He said, that is my entire marketing program.

He has to have good food. He has to have a reasonable price, clean restrooms, good parking, good service. You’ve got to deliver the goods. But if you deliver the goods, this fiberglass pig is a reminder for people to talk about it on social media. He said every family that comes in here wants to pose with this pig and take a picture and tell everybody what a great experience that they had.

So it doesn’t have to be complicated. You just, the customer, the customers that love you, they want to be your marketer. So just find ways to help them do the job. Now there’s one other thing that’s super interesting and important. Why do you think they took those negative words and flipped them? What were they trying to do?

What were they trying to do with these negatives? Yeah.

Flip the script. They’re saying, hear the word you’re hearing, but hear the words that are the truth. And what they’re saying to this group of people who are lonely and they’re misfits, North Face is saying, you’re okay. You belong. And specifically, you belong with us. And this is really important in our world today.

And it’s a huge opportunity. The company. Found a way to help these people feel like they belong. So let’s move into this idea. This is big idea number three. Where it’s this, I, this concept that the branding, the power of branding that used to be with Lemon Fresh and, and leprechauns and polar bears, it’s moving to us.

It’s moving to us. So to the extent we can help people feel like they belong. To our business. If we can create community around our business, that is a big opportunity to help us win. Here’s one of the reasons why I wrote this book. I saw a headline in the New York times that said the loneliest generation.

It’s talking about our kids. It’s talking about our teens and, and, and, you know, you’ve seen the numbers and the statistics and it’s. It’s profound. It broke my heart. It just broke my heart and it’s, it’s been in the news a lot. And so this is a, this is a mega trend in our world that we’re, and it’s not just Gen Z and it’s not just millennials and it’s not just the pandemic.

This is something that’s been creeping up on us really since the 60s. It’s been growing sort of every year and now it’s at the, it’s, it’s a global health crisis. So what I want to talk to you about today, and this is one of a main idea from my book. This is in the book that, that everybody has said is to think about social media as the beginning of a process.

We talked about how important it is to share your content, how important it is to build your personal brand, but it’s also can be the beginning of a process that can lead to community. So the beautiful thing about social media is it provides reach. You can connect to people in your community who have never heard of you.

They’ve never seen you before, and it can get them interested in you. But at first, at least at first, it’s sort of a weak relational link. They may see you on Instagram or TikTok. They don’t know who you are, but maybe they’re interested in you. So many times you probably feel on social media, this is like throwing a message in a bottle out into the ocean.

Anybody really seen this? Does anybody really care? So if, if I, I have 180, 000 followers on Twitter, I think my total social media audience is like half a million. If I went out on Twitter and said, Hey everybody, I have a new book. How many people would buy my book? Almost none. Because it’s a weak? That’s not funny at all.

That’s just, That’s just, that’s just mean. You’re, so now we see the dark side of, of the, of the Evolve conference. You, yeah, and you are the face of the dark side. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. You go receive. So, I’m lost again. Completely, completely and utterly lost. So, social media is awesome because it gives us this opportunity to have this first connection.

Now, what we need to do, best we can, is bring them into an audience. An audience, that’s when people subscribe to you. When they subscribe to your TikTok channel, or your Instagram channel, or your blog, or your podcast, or whatever you’re doing, whatever you have on YouTube, then they’re opting in and they’re saying, I want to know more.

Now, you have a much higher level of emotional connection. If I go on my blog, or my podcast, and say, we have a new book out, how many books am I going to sell? A lot, because they’re waiting to hear from that. Because they’re part of my audience. They’ve raised their hand in a virtual way and say, I believe in you and I want to hear more.

So, moving people from the weak relational link of social media to people who are subscribing to your audience, that’s a huge win. I think that ought to be a, you know, a key metric for you to see how many people are subscribing because now you’re showing this is resonating. Now, also, it’s a great clue.

You know, all of a sudden you’re going to create something on social media that people are going to go, wow, that was amazing. And you’ll go, really? I’ll do more of that. Right? So, so just watching when people subscribe and engage with you is a good clue that you’re on the right track. Now, unfortunately, this is where most businesses stop.

You know, okay, we have subscribers. We have an audience. That’s cool. And that’s really good. But there’s also an opportunity with community. A community, there’s a big difference between audience and community. A lot of people will tell me, oh, I have a blog community, or I have a podcast community. But it’s not really a community, it’s an audience.

If you go away, or the blog goes away, the audience goes away. So there are three big differences. between an audience and a community. Number one, in a community, there’s communion. People know each other. It’s like a neighborhood. Now this could be a meetup. This could be like this. Think about one of the things that’s happening here.

This is Crystal’s first event. And you love Crystal. You’re also making some new friends here. And guess what? You’re not, you said, I can’t wait to come next year to see these new friends I made. Right. So what’s happening, and Crystal’s very smart, and I, you know, and I’m, I have a community I’m doing the same thing.

When people have emotional bond to each other, that transfers to the brand. You’re creating a layer of emotional switching costs. So if you think, well, I’m going to try somebody else. To handle my social media, okay, but if I try somebody else, then I’m not going to go the, I’m not going to go to Crystal’s conference, I’m going to miss my friends, I want to see my friends, right?

So literally, you belong to the brand, you belong to Crystal’s community, right? And there’s super, super amazing benefits being part of a community. So that’s the big difference between an audience and a community. Second, is that there’s some. Purpose to make you gather. All right. So, and this is confusing to some businesses because you might say, Oh, well, I have the biggest selection of, I know there’s someone here that makes toys.

I have the biggest selection of Legos in the Midwest. Do you really? It had to be you.

This is, are you serious? This is like, this is like, yeah, this is like freaking me out. So what would be man, the way you think of me? All right, so Despite that example, it was a terrible example. Community, we Did you really? What did you do? We just had community. No, we didn’t. Yeah, you did. I mean, we did. This

is like, this is like one step above heckling. This is not

community. Geez, now I’m lost all over again. Alright, so. Alright, so it’s cool. I want to know in her marketing and in her Tik Tok, I want to see all these amazing Lego things that she has, but if you know what I really want, what I really want is like that, if just having a lot of Lego toys, that’s not a reason to gather, that’s a reason to visit her store, that’s not a reason to gather in some community like a Facebook group or a LinkedIn group or even a Twitter group or a lot of young people are going into Discord today.

You know, we’ll talk a little bit about that in a minute, but so, so there’s a purpose. Okay. So maybe we’re, you know, we’re gonna, if I say Patagonia, so Patagonia, you, you know what they stand for. So they want to create, they want to create a better world. The guy just sold his company and all the money from the sale of his company is going to environmental efforts.

I have a friend, he lives here in Colorado, he only buys Patagonia.

You know, the Patagonia, it’s not the cheapest, it’s not the best, it’s not the prettiest, but they stand for something and he only buys Patagonia because of the purpose. There’s a reason to gather because I believe in this. So one of the things to think about is where do you want to go as a business? How can you have a bigger impact on the world?

On your community, if your customers come with you. And, so all of you have my book. And this will, the book will teach you how to walk through, walk through these steps. And then the last one is, is that the community, the community, it progresses, it changes. It’s not like a mission statement. So in, in my community, I have a community, uh, dedicated to learning about the future of marketing.

Because that’s what I love. So I thought, well, if people are my community, then they’re probably going to be interested in the things I’m interested in. So I set up a little chat room about, um, personal branding and public speaking and writing. And now two years in, those are the loneliest chat rooms in my whole community.

Because my community said, We got to be talking about AI. We got to be talking about Web3. We got to be talking about the metaverse. That’s where the future is. And so they’re taking me in new places. They’re helping me be relevant. And they can help you be relevant too. Because they’re going to say, Did you see this new hack?

Did you see this new color? Did you see this new film? So I mean, this helps you be relevant because your community is talking to you. I have people all over the world telling me the new things they’re seeing in marketing. So it’s helping me be relevant as a marketing professional. Now. So, as we learned in the book, there are three big megatrends that are pointing to community as the next big thing in marketing.

We already talked about two of them. We talked about suit and the soap example, like Ivory, advertising and all that stuff. It just doesn’t work anymore like it used to. We have to think about marketing in a new way. We talked about mental health. Our customers are longing to belong. We have record levels of isolation and loneliness and disconnection.

And it’s not just with kids, it’s with everybody these days, right? So, and community is not something that we want. Community is something that we need. Psychologically, sociologically, even for our own physical health, we must have community. Community is the only kind of marketing people really want.

They’ll embrace it because they need it. Now, the only megatrend I didn’t talk about is new technology. And what I mean by that is you’ve probably heard some of these words, and then you roll your eyes, saying, I am not ready for this stuff. And I mean, there’s still a lot of hype going on with Web3, tokenized economies, NFTs, Metaverse.

You know, I think there’s… Uh, some of these things are going to take some time, it could be very confusing. I don’t think anybody really has a good example, a good definition of what Web 3 is. But if you cut through all the hype, this is what’s happening. Silicon Valley is spending millions and millions and millions of dollars to create new places to belong.

And a lot of our young people are moving into these places. I mentioned Discord. So in one year. The number of people in America aged 12 to 24, the number of people on Discord went from 23 percent to 42 percent in one year. So this, this, so it’s just something to think about if you’re trying to reach, if you’re trying to reach that audience now, that’s weird.

What’s going on here?

We don’t know what’s happening if the tech now, stop it. Take your hex off of me.

Okay, so thank you. So my community, we are experimenting in the metaverse and we don’t know what we’re doing. The first thing we do every time we meet in the metaverse, cause we dance. And you see, that’s the back of me there, the safe knee, and over that head is butter. You’re saying, why is there butter?

Because we’re dancing. I’m churning butter. And the butter drops from the sky. It’s like magic. And if you look really carefully, you can see our arms are going to other human beings. We don’t know. We’re learning. We’re just learning. Now, in the last time we met, so I actually have a, I actually have a penthouse in the Metaverse.

I have not yet explained why this is on our credit card bill to my wife, like we have a fake digital penthouse, but the fake digital penthouse. So we went in our fake hot tub. We learned we could jump in with our clothes and here we are. And the, this, this, the fake sun is setting over the fake mountains, but I’m sitting in this hot tub with people from Ireland. and Belgium, and Australia, and we’re talking, and we’re laughing, and this is sublime. This is magnificent. This is amazing, and here’s what happened. People took pictures of this and put it all over the web. They said, you would not believe what we did today. We went into the Metaverse. And we, and we jumped in the hot tub and we had this beautiful scene and I was sitting and talking and laughing with new friends from all around the world.

And this went all over the internet and here’s what happened. People said, I feel like I’m missing out. Mark, how do I join? I entered the two thirds. And this is the most powerful opportunity with community. Is that you don’t just have fans, now you have advocates. You have people that are just not going to buy your stuff.

The people in your community are going to say, this is great, you’ve got to come with me and see this, see this for yourself. So that’s really the greatest benefit of community. And you, you know, I’m very proud of the fake champagne bottles there too, by the way. I’m sure you noticed. Yeah, there was soap there.

You just, you just couldn’t see it. It was very, very tiny. So that’s why, and this is a new idea. And some of you probably are already kind of moving this way. Maybe you don’t even know it yet. Um, the community, it’s like the ultimate connection. It’s where the world is going. It provides the ultimate meaning, the ultimate emotion between you and your customers and your feeing.

It’s, it’s, it’s marketing without marketing. I’ll show you why and what I mean. It’s like, I don’t do any sales. I’m not, I mean, I’m not, I’m not having it. I’m not having any, you know, join Mark’s community. It’s just because you’ve got this advocacy. So this is the ultimate, so the future is to me, and I, and the one, this, I’m not a bragging person, but I will give one mic drop moment.

So when I finished this book, the day I wrote the last words of the book, McKinsey came out with a major study that said, community is the next big thing in marketing. So, so I think I’m right.

Now, I want to give you a few retail examples of community. And we’re going to start with a really big one. This is Sephora. You’ve all heard of Sephora. And Sephora has, um, brick and mortar stores in, in every significant city, really. But did you know that 80 percent of their revenue comes from their community?

Their Online community. They have 6 million people in their community. They spend a billion dollars a year on their retail community. And here’s their number one metric about how is is a community working. Engagement. Because if people are engaging, it shows they’re relevant. So they’re testing their relevancy constantly through the community.

Uh, this is another one. So here’s this woman. She’s a, uh, she’s a solopreneur. This is Dana. And I did something in the book that you have. Uh, as Crystal mentioned, I’ve written 10 books. In this new book, there’s a chapter, an entire chapter about one person. And that’s Dana. So in 2015, uh, Dana was an entrepreneur.

She was very successful. She was growing her business, and she got pregnant. And some of her friends were saying, well, you’ve got to hold onto this business. And some of her friends would say, well, you know, you can’t lose the opportunity to be an involved mother. And so she was in a Facebook group that she said, I want to do both.

And they don’t feel really supported. And a few of her friends, five or six of her friends said, you know, I, I, I don’t feel supported either. She said, let’s start our own group. So she started a community called Boss Mom. Today, Boss Mom has 80, 000 members. She’s making a million dollars a year, and she has no sales, no marketing.

Because when you have 80, 000 people in a community, she says, my only job is to make people feel safe, to feel validated, to feel worthy. And when you have people in the community, then… You know, it’s, it’s starting to happen in my community. Uh, two weeks ago, I gave the biggest speech of my life is before 300 C-suite level people to be in this meeting.

You had to be a C-suite executive for a company over a billion dollars. I was the least famous keynote speaker they’ve ever had, but someone from my community recommended me for this. So, I mean, again, so that’s kind of how it works. Community means advocacy. Alright, last example. M. M. LaFleur. I was interviewing somebody from my book, from my book.

And by the way, Dana is a solopreneur. She has no paid staff other than, than just herself. So I mean, that’s as small as a business as you can get, right? So I was interviewing somebody from my book, from my book. And offhandedly, she said, Well, my go to place for when I have, I’m a woman, professional woman, when I’m experiencing issues, then I go to M.M.LaFleur.

And I said, well, I don’t know what that is. She said, this is a retail chain that they sell clothes for professional women. She said, I’m almost embarrassed to say this. She said, it’s kind of like LinkedIn for women. So I joined, you know, check that out. And, uh, you know, right at the beginning, he says, you can join.

It was like, bring your own soap. So I knew I was being welcomed. And what they’re doing here is like, think about, so community thrives when there’s that intersection of purpose, when your business could have a bigger impact on the world, if your customers come along with you, so at level floor is going to be more successful.

If these working women are successful, so women go and my friend told me, you know, I was really nervous about a presentation and I wanted to know if I should do this or do this. And I went into this group and they’ll give you straight answers, but they also talk about clothes and they’re also talking about trends.

And so like, you know, M.M.LaFleur is learning about everything that’s going on with their, with their customers. So I thought this was interesting. This is the, this is their mission that they say. We know that clothes can’t solve all the world’s problems. We’re committed to using our products and our voices to empower working women in any way we can.

Here are a few of our initiatives. So, and they’ve got lots of, and one of, an important thing is that there’s almost always an online component and an offline component. Sometimes it’s mostly an offline component. That might work for small businesses, but you have an online component, so people know what’s going on in between times when they don’t meet.

But even a big company like M.M.LaFleur, they have conferences like this. So people can see each other because what happens, friends, emotional bond. It’s the ultimate emotional connection. So here’s an example of some of the, of some of the meetups they’re having. They’re even having live concerts in some of their stores.

So people can gather and become friends and become part of the through. All right. Now, the last thing I’m going to cover. I’m running a little bit behind because of you. What’s your name? Gwen. I’ll never forget you. I did my job. Alright, so the last thing I want to talk about is your job is to be on a journey of relentless relevance.

So, whatever you’re doing in the world, you’ve got to find what is going to create that emotional connection today, today, today, today, today. The world is just changing too fast. I’m going to just, you know this. I don’t have to convince you of this, you know, today, it’s the slowest day of change you’re ever going to have.

So we need to be on top of this. Now, here’s the idea. I want you to take away today, and I think hope, I think this will give you a lot of hope and assurance that in the old days, you used to be able to see change coming at you. Here’s the internet. Oh, I better take some classes. If you look at what are like the three biggest things that like whacked out the world in the last couple of years, pandemic, war, some big ship getting stuck in the Suez Canal.

Now, we didn’t see that coming. But what we can do is when you look at change, like a surfer, every one of you has a very good surfboard. It’s what you’re good at. It’s your competencies. You don’t need a surfboard. You just need to look for the new waves that are going to make you relevant. So how do you see what’s coming in the world?

So as a marketing consultant, I collect waves. I want you to start collecting waves. When you see something in the news that makes you say that didn’t make sense, go down and figure out what it if you hear something at this conference. It says wow, that’s something new Let me give you a couple examples.

These are just waves for retail 47 percent of consumers predict their online shopping behavior will increase in the future. Okay, well, I want to know more about that. Why is that? There’s another statistic that shows that the amount of, um, impulse buying has soared. Hangover from the pandemic. People are bored.

All right. More online buying, more impulse buying. How do you become relevant? On that wave. All right. There’s going to be a lot of money in the world in the next few years. The baby boomers are retiring. And they’re, they’re, they’re dying. And they’re going to leave a trillion dollars to their kids. And the kids, they’re going to start new businesses.

They’re going to pay. Yeah, you. You do. You. She just turned, is it the, she jus–is that your daughter? She just, she looked at her mother and said, mom!

$35 trillion, 27% of all the wealth in the US that people are gonna be buying stuff like crazy. They’re gonna be buying houses. They’re gonna be buying stuff that goes in houses. So, I mean, this is a huge wave coming at us. I heard Crystal talk about live shopping. Like live streaming shopping. I mean, this is, this is massive in Asia right now.

It’s just starting to percolate in America. It combines all these good things. Like, you know, if you’re known, if you’re a store owner, um, that is, is known in the community, live streaming, home shopping, impulse buying, 55 percent of all web purchases are an impulse buy. This combines every single retail trend in one, one thing.

Here’s something I caught yesterday that I thought was fascinating. The Gen Z person on the panel up here. She was saying, I want to go into places that are fun and experiential. Here’s one of the things I thought about. All these influencers, they need a place to stream. They need products to talk about.

Instead of trying to convince some influencer to talk about your brand, create a space in your store where maybe these streamers could come. You know, what, what was that thing that was that funny thing, the ring light? Crystal was taught in a funny, had a funny joke about, I don’t, you know, I haven’t started good at all on my ring light.

Well, maybe you have a setup where people can come and stream in your store. Right? Anyway, interesting. Uh, another one. I, I, I, see, this is another one that made me go, Huh? Forty percent of luxury clothing buyers saying they’re, they say they’re price conscious. That probably explains this real real thing, right?

But it’s like, this makes no sense. But I want to, it makes me want to know more. Is this a wave I could catch for my business? Uh, so I just did these, I just did these, this is, this is all for you. I’ve never seen slides before. This is the first time I’ve used these slides, so I’ve got to read them myself.

57 percent of consumers would pay more for an eco friendly product. This is like, I’m kind of skeptical of this. Because I think, okay, are people still going to pay more for an eco friendly product, even if they’re broke? Here’s the answer.

Yes. I mean, they are fighting. Gen Z, they are fighting. And, and, and, you know, I’ve talked about this in my classes at Luckland. I said, I, I’ll believe it. And they said, yes, you better believe it. We’re going to fight through this. All right. Now, here’s the last idea I want to leave you with. Power moments. So these guys wrote a book a couple of years ago.

They’re, they’re brothers, they’re academics. They wrote this cool book called Power Moments. And what they said in this book was that the best way, one of the best ways to get into the two thirds. You know what I mean by the two thirds, right? Is to leave your customers with a special moment. Give them something to talk about.

That they’ll remember. And if you do that, even if bad stuff happens, they’ll remember the special moments. So, here’s the research that they did. Part of the research that they did. They went to Disneyland. And they asked people at Disneyland to grade. their experience at Disneyland every hour of the day from 1 to 10.

So the first hour of the day, they’re waiting in line in the hot sun, and they pay $2,000 a ticket to get into Disneyland. So they’re not happy. So they grade that a 1. Then they get in, they meet Mickey Mouse, very exciting. The only reason it’s not a 10 is because a lot of people are terrified at this point.

But it’s a 9. Then they get hungry. And they pay $19 for a pretzel that looks like Mickey Mouse. And they’re not happy about that, so they give that a 2. Then they ride all their favorite rides. It is a small world after all. And everybody gives that an 8. Now, what does Disney leave you with at the end of the day?

The fireworks and the parade. And everybody rates that a? 10? Right. Now here’s the interesting part. If you average all the numbers for the day, You conclude the customer satisfaction level at Disney is six, but then they were smart. They asked one more question They said give us a final number of your day at Disneyland nine Because they remember the moments that are on their phone.

They don’t remember the $19 pretzels They remember meeting Mickey Mouse. They’re gonna go home and show people the the fireworks You know, and this can be done for every business. You just have to think, look at every customer touch point, every single thing you do, every email, every text, every TikTok. How do you show your heart, your smile, your face, your passion, your compassion on every one of your websites?

I want to see on your about page, a video that says, my name is Sally, and let me tell you why I have this store, because I love this. I live this. I breathe this. I’m going to do the best job for you. I will never let you down because this is my heart and they’ll pick you over anybody else because nobody else typically does that.

Cause my friends, I guarantee you the most human company wins and I will take your questions now. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

No, anybody but her.

Go. Yeah.

Do you have any recommendations for communicating how to be the most human company to your sales team?

You listen to what all the stuff that Crystal’s saying, I mean, it was, what did she say? You got to be bold and you got to be brave and um, you know, and I want to tell you something.

This doesn’t come easy for me. You know, I grew up in a family where, you know, you don’t talk about your feelings. It’s nobody’s business, right? I get it. Don’t show your emotions. And I had to learn how to do this. And I wrote a book on personal branding called Known, and in the first chapter of that book, I started the book by saying it was talking about the darkest time in my life.

I put that in and took that out 75 times, I was so afraid. But here’s what happened. Every time you open that door and you show your heart, you’re rewarded. People will say, and I’m not talking about oversharing, but I’m just saying being real, being connected to what’s really going on in the world today. And the reason I took that risk and the reason I did that is because I didn’t want people to think, Oh, well, of course, he’s going to talk about this because he’s already on a stage and he’s already selling books.

And what I said was, when I started this, whatever you are in your life, I was below that. Come on, let’s go do it together. So, I mean, so every time you do that, and just what I would say is when you’re like your salespeople, when they just open up a little bit, just reward them, reward them. Reward them. And it’s the only way to do it is to practice.

I had to practice a long time to get that courage and to be brave and bold.

Um, what I see, my perspective is that, you know, these online communities are getting exponentially more traffic. But I also see, and they call that community, but I also see if I. The, the mental health issues created with that, the anxiety and the depression and the disconnection, it’s connection, but it doesn’t seem like it’s true community.

So my, my question is, is that based off your experience and that being the new community versus what I would consider a healthy, mano a mano community where there’s people. With skin on versus a flat person. Yeah. Is it, do you think long term, is it really a sustainable environment? Where, where we should develop efforts?

I mean, I think you need to be in the space, but is it, is it a sustainable thing? Great, great, great question. I thank you for this. So like Dana talks about this, like how does she create a human community with 80, 000 people in it? But, but she, she addresses that in, in the book. Like she does like pre recorded videos for people and stuff like that, you know, in, in, in my community, uh, like I’m in a Discord community and, and Discord has a reputation for being very toxic.

So someone came in and in my community and they didn’t use their real name. I said, why didn’t you use your real name? He said, cause I’m in these other communities and are awful. I said, that will not happen here because the rule of our community is you treat people in your community like you treat your mother.

Period. No exceptions. And if anybody is even disrespectful in my community, I’ll, you know, slap them on their wrists. No, no, no. And so we have this culture. That’s your job as the market leader is culture and safety. It’s really weird. You know, it’s like, it’s like a whole different marketing mindset to say, to be successful.

It’s not about having the greatest new lemon fresh thing. It’s about making people feel safe, but it really works. In our community, you know, it’s something I’m learning myself, how to be a leader, but you know, and how people might even feel intimidated by me, how I need my role to make people feel safe in this community.

I’m still learning, but it is, it is working. The people in my community, they’re, they’re rising and they’re growing. And it’s amazing to see. It’s one of the best things I’ve done in my career. Yeah. But it’s a great question. Look, it gets down to the leadership and culture. Yeah. Wherever. I don’t know his name.

I actually had a couple of questions. One was related to how you created the community, what forum you used and what that looked like. And the second was related to blogging. I do quite a bit and I get quite a bit of traffic, but it’s on my website right now. And I didn’t know if your blogs were part of your website or if it was a different subscription or how you did your blogging.

So real quickly, so it was, so the process I used was exactly like I showed. Is that I started connecting with people on social media, they got interested in me, they started subscribing to my blog and my podcast, and then through my blog and my podcast, I moved them over to community. So it works exactly like that.

Um, I, uh, you should always have your blog on your website. A number one, do not listen to anybody that tells you otherwise you must have not only your blog, YouTube videos, podcasts. I mean, look what’s happened already in the world. A lot of people bet the ranch or Google plus their Facebook had a blogging thing called Facebook notes.

They cut it out. Everybody lost their content. So you, you’ve got to have an archive archive on your website. So when they’re finding you. You don’t have to, you know, trust Facebook or SEO or anything else that you’ve got a record of what you’ve done and it’s on your, on your website. So, yeah, so, and, and blogging, I think is still can be very powerful.

Um, it depends on the products that you sell, especially if you’re selling things that are more complicated, blogging can be very powerful.

I guess this is kind of two small questions with it. Uh, first the Discord statistic, do you know the timeline that that’s over? It was 2023, this brand new research. Yeah, perfect. Cause I actually use Discord quite frequently. So,

yeah it started out as a gamer platform, and, uh, and, and I don’t, you know, and I, and I didn’t want to go there, but my, my, what my community said, Mark, if you’re teaching us about the future of marketing, we must be on Discord. So I said, well, that’s a pretty good, you know, reason. So I had to go kicking and screaming into it. Um, Um, with the shift towards Discord being popular for non gaming spaces, what would the benefits for using that over something like a Facebook group be as a selling tool?

I think the most profound thing is that social media is fragmenting fragmenting along demographic lines. So the only demographic that’s growing on Facebook is 55 and over. Right. He’s like, I think the Gen Z person yesterday said, no email, no Facebook. She said, I’m not a Facebook. I’m, you know, now everybody, every demographic sort of loves Instagram and YouTube.

My mom is on Instagram, right? So Instagram, then 18 to 34 is sort of Snapchat, 24 to 12 is sort of TikTok. And here’s what’s going to happen. Gen Alpha is coming up and they’re going to look at their big brothers and sisters, and they’re going to say, no, we need our own, it’ll probably be video oriented. So, you know, nothing’s ever going to stay the same, but Gen Alpha, they’re going to find their own, they’re going to find their own place.

So a lot about where you show up has to be, you have to think about whom I try to appeal to. I mean, you know, you know, Crystal was saying that, you know, emphasizing, you know, being on TikTok, because even though, um, TikTok, most of the creators on TikTok are under 20, the people who are consuming TikTok, TikTok are growing in across other demographics.

Hey, I think we’re done, right? Yeah. Okay. Thanks everyone.

Crystal Vilkaitis: Thank you so much for being here. It means the world to me. Don’t forget to join the Rise and Shine newsletter, which is social media news. You need to know sent via email every Monday morning, go to crystalmediaco.com/rise to join. And don’t miss the newest episode of Rooted in Retail, which drops every Sunday morning.