David Meerman Scott | Turning Fans into Customers, John Mayer, and Lessons from the Grateful Dead

The Grateful Dead are an American staple of the music industry.

But what can we learn from them about marketing?

David Meerman Scott is an internationally acclaimed business strategist, entrepreneur, advisor to emerging companies and public speaker. David is also the Wall Street Journal best selling author of 10 previous books, including the New Rules of Marketing and PR, Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead, and more. 

In this episode, we talk about David’s books, the interesting marketing strategy of the Grateful Dead, and how John Mayer came to play with that iconic band.

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Here’s a Glimpse of What You’ll Hear:

  • Why David Decided to Write a Book About Fandom
  • The Grateful Dead Have Been a Big Influence on David
  • The Unique Marketing Style that the Grateful Dead Used
  • Some Companies Embrace 3rd-Party Adoption of Their Products…Some Don’t
  • How David Met the Founder of HubSpot
  • Why Tulsi Gabbard Said the Question David Asked Her was Her Favorite of All Time
  • Writing Books about Digital Marketing
  • John Mayer Teaming up With The Grateful Dead
  • How David Became the Manager of Jerry Garcia’s Favorite Guitar
  • Who David Thanks for His Success

Resources Mentioned:

Sponsor: Rise25

Today’s episode is sponsored by Rise25 Media, where our mission is to connect you with your best referral partners, clients, and strategic partners. We do this through our done for you business podcast solution and content marketing. 

Along with my business partner Dr. Jeremy Weisz, we have over 18 years of experience with B2B podcasting, which is one of the best things you can do for your business and you personally. 

If you do it right, a podcast is like a “Swiss Army Knife” – it is a tool that accomplishes many things at once. It can and will lead to great ROI, great clients, referrals, strategic partnerships, and more. It is networking and business development; and it is personal and professional development which doubles as content marketing

A podcast is the highest and best use of your time and will save you time by connecting you to higher caliber people to uplevel your network. 

To learn more, go to Rise25.com or email us at [email protected]

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Check out Rise25 to learn more about our done-for-you lead generation and done-for-you podcast services. 

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Episode Transcript

John Corcoran  0:40  

Alright, welcome everyone. My guest on the show is David Meerman Scott. He’s an internationally acclaimed business strategist, entrepreneur, advisor to emerging companies and a public speaker is also the Wall Street Journal, best selling author of 10 previous books, including the new rules of marketing and PR marketing lessons from the Grateful Dead which will be talking about the Grateful Dead and New Rules of sales and service and his new book with co author and daughter, Rico, Scott is Fanocracy: Turning Fans into Customers and Customers into Fans. So we’re going to talking all about that. 

But first, if you’re new to this show, take a moment and think about what have been the most important factors in career so far, I’m going to guess if you really distill it down, there are critical relationships have made all the difference. And this podcast is about talking to top business leaders, CEOs, founders and experts to ask them a breakdown how they built their businesses and the key relationships with clients, mentors, peers, referral partners and influencers, the backbone of any business and to share how you can do it too. So if you find value in this podcast, make sure you go and subscribe and also before we get to this interview, this podcast is brought to you by Rise25 Media, it’s our done for you agency focusing on helping b2b businesses to get more clients, referral partners, strategic partnerships, and build a great relationship so done for you podcasting and done for you content marketing. We have over 20 years experience in this space. And I have to say it’s one of the best things that you can do start a podcast is get to talk to amazing people like David meerman, smart, smart meerman. Scott, excuse me, like I’m about to hear. And even if you butchered their name from time to time, forgive you. So if you want to learn more, go to Rise25.com

As I mentioned, David Meerman Scott is my author, you are the author with Rico Scott of the nubuck fan autocracy. And now, you know, David, we’ve never met before, I’m sure we know a lot of people in common we’ve we’ve kind of crossed paths in a sense, you’re, you’re one of the lead, you’ve spoken on so many different stages. One of the lead speakers at the Tony Robbins business mastery speed seminars, I’ve actually done webinars for the same community, but we’ve never cross paths that way. But why? You know, you’ve got this really interesting, varied background, you lived in Asia for 10 years. Why write a book about fandom? What what inspired that at this point in your career?

David Meerman Scott  2:49  

Um, john, thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it. So I was thinking a lot recently. Well recently, going back five years about how on one hand I’ve been talking a lot in my career about online marketing and feeling like we’ve kind of the pendulum has kind of swung too far in the direction of superficial online communications but at the same time, how important my own personal fandoms are. I am such a live music geek. It’s ridiculous I’ve been I actually keep a spreadsheet starting from when I when I was 15 years old back in the 1970s going leading up until I will add a new entry tonight because I’m going to a David Byrne concert tonight. I have been to 786 live shows as of this moment, and it’ll be 787 in a couple of hours. I’m such a live music fan. I’m a fan of surfing I’m a fan of the Apollo lunar program actually wrote a book called marketing the moon that was turned into a PBS American x experienced mini series. And so I really think that This idea of fandom is something that people are passionate about. But also it’s something that companies can tap. And so I just got fascinated by the concept of how and why a company can attract fans and dug into what that prescription might be for any company that wanted to do so.

John Corcoran  4:25  

And amazing how you, you took your background, your experience, your, your enthusiasm for the Grateful Dead and other things that you are enthusiastic about and wove that into the lessons of this book as along with profiling a lot of other books, a lot of a lot of other businesses as well. They do an amazing job of not treating their customers like customers, but treating them like their fans and treating them really amazingly well.

David Meerman Scott  4:55  

Yes, absolutely. Like I’ve been I’m a massive Grateful Dead fan. I saw them the first The first time when I was 17 years old and including the bands that have followed the Grateful Dead after Jerry Garcia’s death like further and dead in company I’ve seen the the Grateful Dead 75 times so a huge fan huge fan and then I’m thinking wow you know what, there’s other organizations that are like that in my life I’m just thinking of one right now it’s their grain surfboards and they’re a wooden surfboard manufacturer. And so I’m really you know, I’m I want to make sure I’m preserving the environment but surfboards are these these crazy things are foam and they they’re terrible for the environment in a lot of different ways. And I ran across this company that does wooden surfboards and then I dug around and they’ve got a massive following you know, they’ve got 50,000 followers or something like that on Instagram and people love them. And I found out they have a build your own wooden surfboard course and I’m like, Oh my god, this is hitting all my odd but Not only not only can I get a wooden surfboard, I can build it myself. And you end up going up to their factory in New York, Maine, it’s about an hour from my house. And over four days, and you start with wood, red cedar and white cedar, and you end up with a beautiful surfboard. But what was remarkable about this from the perspective of building fans is and this actually became a chapter in the book fan accuracy is that they’re breaking down the barriers between customers and employees, because you actually work in the factory with green surfboards next to the people who are building who are, you know, the the people who are making these surfboards and you’re actually becoming part of the crew for four days, and they’re teaching you how to do it. They’re giving away their proprietary techniques, you know, and most organizations would say, Oh, I don’t want to give away my secrets. I don’t want people to know how these things are made. I don’t want people to steal our ideas. But the green surfboards is like no, let’s do it. Let’s Let’s and they’re building a massive fan base as a result.

John Corcoran  7:12  

Similar thing parallel to the Grateful Dead to who for years gave would not normally let fans come and record their music but set up a section down near the front where all the tapers can come down. And but the but the theory behind it, which played out was that people would pass around this music at a time when it was harder to do that. And then people would come to the show. So tell us a little bit how that

David Meerman Scott  7:37  

that’s exactly right. You you hit the nail on the head there back starting in the late 70s people started to sneak in recording devices to record Grateful Dead shows, and the band knew that was going on. So first they tolerated it and they didn’t kick people out. And then they said you know what, people are starting to annoy other people because they set up this gear you know these things microphone stands, let’s put them all in one place. So in the early 80s, they created a taper section and you could actually get a taper seat. And it was right behind the soundboard, which is a great place for sound, but it was less disruptive to the other fans. And you’re absolutely right that then the initially it was cassette tapes were traded. And the band says it’s totally cool to be to play the music to share the music to make a tape for somebody else just don’t want you to sell it. And there, you know, probably hundreds of millions of tapes that ended up circulating and that’s how I got into the Grateful Dead. You know, I ended up having a collection of 40 or 50 of these, we call them bootleg tapes, and that were sanctioned by the band and then I wanted to go see a show myself and I went and I went again and I went again and I went again and I went 75 times since then. spending a lot of money with the band actually in jet I’ve been six times this year in January went down to Mexico with the band for three, three days in In Mexico of Grateful Dead music and what did I spend on that and I was five grand or something, right? So I’m spending a lot of money with the band because they broke down barriers with their fans and trusted them and said, Hey, here’s our music. Don’t steal it by selling it but go ahead and share

John Corcoran  9:18  

it and they treated them well by keeping the ticket prices not too high at least in the early days now it’s probably a lot more expensive to see a demo

David Meerman Scott  9:25  

I mean, yeah, there it’s not cheap but but but for a long time they control their own ticketing which was really cool. You know that yes, you could buy a seat at Ticketmaster and in the upper level of the of the of the bowl, but if you wanted the best seats in the House, you bought it directly through the band through a mail order system and it’s unwieldy to do that now but but they were really cool that way. And and these techniques of building fans that, that I researched and my my daughter Reiko is my co author on the book we researched. It turns out there’s a whole bunch of these kinds of ideas that anybody can implement. It doesn’t matter what kind of business and it certainly doesn’t have to be arts related like music like the Grateful Dead anybody can can implement the ideas that can create fans of their business and and there’s nothing better than having a fan base. It’s just incredible way to build and grow a business. That’s a great

John Corcoran  10:32  

asset you write in the book that you need to let go of your work giving gifts without any expectation of return. And it’s really interesting how the technology is kind of caught up to a point where you, you know, a lot of businesses and certainly bands can ignore it. I was looking actually on YouTube, I was curious about Metallica, Metallica is famous for having sued Napster, the 2000s and I looked at Metallica one there on YouTube. There was like videos on YouTube. And all the fans down in front all had their phones out and they were all recording. So there’s whether you like it or not everyone has a digital recording device in their pocket. And it’s kind of like it’s a new world and you kind of have to would you say you have to embrace this world of, of or else you’re you’re not going to be able to compete.

David Meerman Scott  11:23  

It’s a really important way to grow fans. Now, I’m not going to say that you have to embrace it, because some companies don’t embrace it and still develop fans. But it’s one of the ways that you can. So I wrote the book with my daughter and she tells a wonderful story, and we ended up we went this is, by the way, sort of how the sausage gets made in the in our book we were struggling with how do we write as co authors? Do we try to write with one voice where It’s kind of a blend of our voices or do we do we write where we actually say who’s doing the writing and we ended up doing the ladder so Reiko my daughter writes some of the chapters and I write some of the chapters, and she wrote this brilliant chapter called let go of your creations. And she tells to wonder if there’s a bunch of stories in the book, but two that are very different and very illustrative of this idea of let go of your creations. The first one is that she’s, she’s an artist, among other things. She’s a multi talented young woman. But among other things, she’s an artist. She loves to do digital art using Photoshop and other tools such as Photoshop, and she was saying that she was on a blog talking with other people who are really interested in doing artwork using Photoshop, and the photo, which is made by Adobe and Adobe was was chastising them about how they were using Using the word Photoshop, and they said, You must never use the word photoshopped, you must always say that the image was manipulated using Adobe, our Photoshop, our software. And she said to me, she said to me, daddy, we were laughing at them. It was like everything they were saying to us was like a robot, but everything we were doing was like a fan of Adobe Photoshop. And then contrast that with every year she and her friends get dressed up and they go to Comic Con. And she got dressed up as the as a character called the Morrigan, which comes from a book called The wicked and the divine. And she and her three friends have the different three permutations of the Morgan and they looked awesome. They spent like days and days making their costumes and then that day that morning before the Comic Con, they spent hours getting into their costumes and it’s three young women, all with the same character but three different manifestations of the same And they went down to meet the authors of that series of books. And they could have said, What are you doing taking our work and transforming it, but they jumped out of their chair and they said, Wow, this is amazing. And they took their pictures, and they put it on their Instagram, and they treated them really well. So the contrast between what Adobe does with their fans and what the authors of the wicked end of identity does with their fans, is very illustrative of what an organization can do, you can try to control the way people talk about you. Or you can let people talk about you in the way that they want to which spread your ideas. And that’s a conscious decision that we as business people can make. And you know, it can be something as simple as you described what you know, with Metallica letting people shoot videos, or you know, they could say, you know, that’s our content. You’ve got to take it down from YouTube. Yeah,

John Corcoran  14:58  

yeah, they could find it if they wanted to. I thought it was really interesting the way you go back and forth between your perspective, your daughter is more of a millennial generation. You know her perspective, obviously, in that chapter you mentioned, Hamilton is another book. Yeah. You guys mentioned Hamilton. That’s a fascinating story because you’ve got this tome of a book 800 900 pages long. And the author of that book whose name is escaping me right now, but he could have when, you know, when Miss Lin Manuel Miranda came along, and decided to make that into a play could have said no or not author it, but he actually kind of embraced the process. And that’s a really interested

David Meerman Scott  15:37  

Yeah. And it’s a it’s a great another great example of this idea. And, you know, just backing up a little bit when I was thinking about this book. I first At first, I didn’t have my daughter as my co author. Five years ago, I was just asking her a ton of questions. We’d be in the car and I’d say Reiko How about What a millennial react to this and what do you think about that? And then finally, I’m like, Don’t be an idiot. I mean, she should be your co author. So obviously, she’s different generation because she’s my daughter, obviously, she’s different gender, she’s a woman, but she’s mixed race. She’s also comes at it from a scientific perspective. She does neuroscience degree at Columbia, and she’s now in a final year of medical school. So she has a real scientific background and because she’s interested in this, these different fandoms than I am, she comes at it from a different perspective that way, so we’re wonderful co author team, but she’s really into Hamilton the play I haven’t seen it

Unknown Speaker  16:39  

yet. Amazing.

David Meerman Scott  16:41  

God, I know. Well, I had tickets once and I ended up taking a speaking gig unfortunately. So my daughter luckily had another set of tickets to go. But so she said the Great example You know, I’ve got this book, which is what she calls curative. And so the idea of curative fandom is it’s the statistics. It’s the official DME of fandom. It’s, it’s the official website, the official blog posts, the official social media. So the official biography of Hamilton is the book. Whereas the transformational fandom or transformative fandom is when you take that same idea and turn it into a race bent. Musical that’s told that tells the story and rap which is completely different. Now look at a couple of other things that in the same way, if you look at people who collect cars that make them look exactly like they came out of the factory 30 or 40 or 50 or 60 years ago, that’s curative fandom, they want the car to look just like it did when it came off the assembly line. Then you’ve got transformative fandom of people who make hi rods out of a car completely transforming it into something else. A smart automaker or a smart book publisher will celebrate both of those types of fandoms both the curative and the transformational fandom. And that’s what we as business people need to do as well to realize that the way that people will become fans of our work, or the fans of our company or the fans of and it doesn’t matter what it is, it could be it could be a dentist and you have fans, it doesn’t matter. You could be a b2b software company and you have fans. I in fact, I just got I just spoke at the HubSpot inbound conference, and there’s thousands of people with HubSpot t shirts and hats and stickers on their computers and exercising their fandom. But you have to understand that you should let people celebrate the fandom in the way that they want to It’s not wrong To take that Chevrolet and completely transform it into a hot rod and Chevrolet should be celebrating that.

John Corcoran  19:05  

Yeah. And yours you’re mentioned and stickers on the computers reminds me of the story you tell in the beginning of the book about a relationship that really kind of started over the stickers you put on your laptop and an initial meeting you had with the founder of HubSpot. And that’s just really been a transformational relationship for you. Can you tell us that story?

David Meerman Scott  19:24  

Yeah, of course. I wrote a book called the new rules of marketing and PR that originally came out in 2007. And since then, it’s now in the sixth edition. It’s sold like 400,000 copies in English. It’s in 29 languages. It’s done really well. But in the front when it first edition came out back in 2007. I got an email from the folks at HubSpot, and they said, We created a company based on the ideas of your book, which which wasn’t really true, but it was certainly an email that got my attention. I turned and I took I took a meet I took a meeting with them and I walked into the office. I’d never met them before they had just started HubSpot. Less than a year earlier. They only had beta software. They didn’t have any customers yet. And I walked in. They only had eight employees and I opened up my MacBook Pro. And I had a bunch of stickers on it. And Brian Halligan, the CEO said, hang on, hang on, hang on. We can’t start this meeting until you tell me about those stickers on your computer. And I’m like, and this is the first minute literally, I’ve met these people. And Brian is he doesn’t want to talk about marketing and want to talk about me or his company. He wants to talk about the stickers on my computer. The first minute I met him, so he said, Tell me about the Japan sticker. And I said, Oh, I lived in Japan for seven years. My wife’s Japanese. Japan’s a really important part of my life. And Brian says I lived in Japan too. And it turns out that we overlapped, overlapped briefly, he says, tell me about the Nantucket Island sticker and I said I love Nantucket I have a house there I go there all the time he goes I go there every summer. And he says Tell me about the Grateful Dead sticker. And I said I love the Grateful Dead. I’m from my favorite band for saw them when I was 17. I’ve been to a bunch of shows. He says I’ve seen them over 100 times. And then I said, Oh, well I’ve got an extra ticket for the Phil Lesh show Phil is the basis for the Grateful Dead for the Phyllis show in a couple weeks. You want to go with me? Now we’ve known each other for three minutes. Already I’m already inviting him to go to a to a concert with me and we became fast friends because we shared fandom and that’s that’s the that’s the kind of the lesson in that is that because we shared something in common. Nantucket Island, Japan The Grateful Dead. We became fast friends. He then within a week I think invited me to become the the very first member of the HubSpot advisory board which I was happy to do. I put a HubSpot sticker on my computer. And it’s 12 years no 13 years 13 years later, I’m still on the HubSpot advisory board.

Unknown Speaker  22:11  

Buying shows together we’ve we’ve probably

David Meerman Scott  22:12  

gone to 100 not just a Grateful Dead but probably gone to 100 shows together. I went to Japan with him to open the Japan office and we’ve hung out in Nantucket Island a bunch of times so so the idea of that shared fandom is something that’s incredibly powerful and sometimes overlooked by companies you know, the the the logo merchandise and and and you know, even even for a b2b software company, that kind of logo merch merchandise celebrating fandom stickers on the computer is something that’s fabulously powerful. I think I think that that helped to elect to the current president united states you know, the the Make America Great Again, hat was a a form of fandom. Not I want to talk about politics, but but the marketing aspects of, of something like being elected to the president is lm has elements of fandom and you did write a blog post recently about going to observe a Trump rally and a couple of the other Democratic presidential candidates observing them in a speaking engagement, I think was the democratic party convention with a bunch of them. You want to share some of your thoughts and ideas? Yeah, sure. So I am a massive geek about the marketing aspects I need to emphasize and not talking politics. The marketing aspects of the US presidential election I have actually dug into this now for for, for for election cycles. And every time it seems the best marketer gets elected president. You know, brock obama was a fabulous marketer Donald Trump was a fabulous marketer. I live Just outside of Boston, and I’m only 20 miles from the New Hampshire border, New Hampshire, of course being the first primary state, so all of the candidates come through New Hampshire multiple times. And then in the last cycle, New Hampshire was also a swing state. So they came through during the general election to and this cycle just in the past about six months. I’ve seen 22 presidential candidates, events, and including Donald Trump and a bunch of Democratic candidates. And this is interesting, I’ve, I’ve managed to be able in town hall events to ask 16 of those candidates. What they’re a fan of.

John Corcoran  24:42  

One of those candidates said was the best question they ever received. Yeah.

David Meerman Scott  24:47  

Tulsi Gabbert said it was the best question she’s ever been asked in her entire political career.

Unknown Speaker  24:54  

Raise.

David Meerman Scott  24:55  

I know right, Elizabeth Warren said, Thank you, David, what a fabulous question. I’m so glad I’m glad you asked that. I asked Kamala Harris, which she’s a fan of. And she said she’s a fan of Bob Marley. And then and, you know, talked about how much how much she loves Bob Marley and I and then I wasn’t I didn’t want to ask a follow up question because there’s a town hall setting, but she came down from the stairs, the stairs from the the podium or the stage after the physic The event was over. And I remember this is a town hall event. There’s CNN and Fox and NPR and everyone’s there, you know, it’s like, probably 100 journalists and 500 people in the room. She beelines it for me because she wants to talk more about Bob Marley that

John Corcoran  25:41  

passion, right,

David Meerman Scott  25:42  

exactly. And I said camela I was the only photographer at Bob Marley’s last concert in Pittsburgh on in September of 1980. And she’s like, You’re kidding me. Oh my god. And then she started talking about how she saw Bob Marley and in Los Angeles. The Greek theatre. So we’re like, out about a presidential candidate with and I’ve got a cool photo of me talking with her with CNN camera in the background. So she’d rather talk to me about Bob Marley than like, you know, talk to the cameras and whatnot. So this idea of fandoms really, really interesting. And, and, and it’s in. It’s an incredibly overlooked and powerful school for all of us.

John Corcoran  26:27  

Yeah, I mean, a story I’ve told on a couple of podcasts when I was wrapping up working in the Clinton White House. One of my last things that I did my my, my family came out and visited. We were in the Oval Office. I’m about to say goodbye. They did recorded the radio address. And one of the last things we did before getting a picture with the President was we handed over some DVDs of old western movies. And even though there were about 50 people there, including like governors and members of Congress and stuff like that, Bill Clinton stopped everything stopped the the photo line and we end up having like a five minute discussion about Old western movies again, fandom another example. He was passionate about it, he wanted to talk about it. And it was a great discussion right there standing in front of the Oval Office, you know, right.

David Meerman Scott  27:11  

Right. Right. Right. Right. And, and Gosh, we, you know, we’ve seen so many examples of that. And, and, and I just love the idea. I mean, you know, if I, if I’m put the five years of research that my daughter and I did down into like a couple of sentences, what it’s really about is a true human connection.

John Corcoran  27:35  

Right? And now there’s so hard to find that these days, it seems like we’ve gone so digital that there’s less than after that,

David Meerman Scott  27:40  

oh, digital, and I and, you know, I, I accept some of that blame. I’ve written a bunch of books about digital marketing, digital sales, those books have sold a lot. Lots of people have used those ideas. That’s not going away. But the problem is that some people took it too far. And this idea of what I call a fan accuracy. That’s when fans rule is a really powerful anecdote for the digital chaos going on right now. And, and, and is an incredibly powerful thing because it’s that true human connection, you made a connection to Bill Clinton. Based on this fandom over Western films, I made a connection to a presidential candidate because we share a love of Bob Marley. And we can make true human connections with our existing and potential customers that can help to grow our business. Yeah,

John Corcoran  28:43  

yeah. You know, I think one of the most interesting stories and music in the past few years which has relevance to what you wrote about here is the story of john mayer. teaming up with the remaining members of the Grateful Dead detours dead end company over the last few years. Maybe a lot of people don’t realize this but one of the biggest solo music stars of the This generation joins a band that’s 30 years older than him from a different generation. And not only do the members embrace him and give him the spotlight, but it’s reinvigorated the band, they’ve really become one of the tours, one of the biggest touring bands out there today. But at the heart of it really is this shared journey of generosity of spirit and appreciation respect for the fans. And you know, that’s really one of the themes you write about in this in this book. So what do you make of that that the whole this whole I think it would be a movie one day the story of john mayer joining the dead it’s such an interesting story, why he would kind of sideline his own career in order to team up with these guys. But what are your thoughts on that? That whole story so

David Meerman Scott  29:42  

it’s it is a fascinating story and tell us about wolf till you got to tell us and and and and we’ll so it’s a fascinating story because john mayer was was randomly listening to I don’t know if it was Sirius radio or what it was, but randomly listening to music somewhere on Spotify playlist or whatever was any any stumbled upon some Grateful Dead music is like, Oh my god, watch this. This is amazing. And then he just dug deep into the Grateful Dead somehow reached out to Bob we are they ended up playing privately together in one of their homes and then Bob invited him to go on a TV show with him to play. And john was really into it. And then they ended up john ended up, you know, doing a couple of shows to see how it worked and lovely.

John Corcoran  30:32  

Well actually one of the things that I love about it is that it was actually an interview, which is what I love about this conversation we’re having right here is that it was actually a john mayer was guesting as the head of late night or the Late Show. Yeah, yeah. And he invited and Bob Weir came on as a guest. And then they performed together. Yeah, so I love that and then it yielded this wonderful partnership as a

David Meerman Scott  30:57  

wonderful partnership. And then The dead the form the founding members of the Grateful Dead have toured in multiple iterations since Jerry Garcia’s death in 1995. But they’ve never had one person who’s taken on the Jerry Garcia role, because those are massive shoes to fill. You need to have someone who’s a great guitarist, you’d have someone who’s a singer, you’d have someone who’s, who’s fabulous at improvisation. And those are really big shoes to fill. And they’ve had multiple people do it, some of them good, some of them less good. But Mayer is amazing at it. And he freely says many times it’s transformed his career. And in fact, his solo career is still going strong and is even stronger than ever. Yeah. And my buddy Brian Halligan, we mentioned earlier who’s the CEO of HubSpot, who I met over my stickers on my computer. You know, HubSpot now is doing fabulously well. listed on the New York Stock Exchange. I think they have something like an $8 billion market cap. It’s really doing really well. And Brian’s the CEO still has been there since the beginning founder CEO, Jerry Garcia’s favorite guitar wolf came up at auction. And I said to Brian, oh my god, you should buy this. You’re perfect. You got the money. You love the Grateful Dead, this would be perfect goes no freakin way. I’m not gonna buy that guitar, you’re nuts. And so I wrote him this really long email about why you should buy it. You know, here there are 15 reasons why you should buy it. And like I didn’t hear anything from them until like a week later, he emailed me back and say I’m gonna buy the guitar. He goes to the auction, he won the auction for $1.9 million. The money actually went to the Southern Poverty Law Center, so went to a good cause. And he now owns Jerry Garcia as well and he’s too busy. So he says, Would you like to be wealth manager? So I’m Wolf’s manager

John Corcoran  32:50  

and then a museum part of the time

David Meerman Scott  32:52  

at what at the moment. It’s been the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. A couple more months I believe the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and prior to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, it was the men in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And it’s the hundred most iconic instruments in musical history is the exhibition. If you have a chance, you should definitely go see the exhibition. It’s fabulous. But john mayer said hey, I want to play Wolf and he reached out his his people reached out to me. And I said, Well, you know, wolf is in the museum. Let’s see what we can figure out. So when dead end company was playing in New York City, and at that time, wolf was in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. We were able to arrange for wolf to come out for 48 hours and play. So wolf was released to be able to play and I put the whole deal together and I managed the logistics. So you know, we ended up going over the museum and it felt like we were breaking out like crazy like going into the bowels of the museum and all the vaults and stuff and signing documents. retina displays and fingerprints. It was nuts. And then we walked out with the guitar into an S you know SUV with security guards that brought us to Citi Field, which is where the Mets play on went backstage had a chance to to meet john mayer and he was super nervous to play wolf because he’s been playing the Jerry Garcia role in dead end company for four years. And all of a sudden he has an opportunity to play Jerry Garcia’s favorite instrument on stage with dead and company and he crushed it. It was a fabulous, fabulous show. And I look to Brian I go Aren’t you glad I convince you to buy that guitar and we were both there and as a music fan, one of the coolest things that we were able to do I mean it meeting mayor was great. Of course the concert was great, but we are the only four people invited to soundcheck Brian, me Meredith, our friends Meredith and Brian son and so Imagine Citi Field is massive baseball stadium. And dedan company is doing a one hour sound check and there’s four people in the, in the field area. Watching this awesome show is john Mayer’s dialing into wolf. And as a fan, it’s like How cool

Unknown Speaker  35:19  

is that? Oh, lievable

John Corcoran  35:23  

there’s the 1.9 million right there. That’s

David Meerman Scott  35:28  

so yeah, so Brian is like, yeah, I’m pretty glad I bought this guitar.

John Corcoran  35:32  

That’s great. That’s great. Well, I don’t want to take all day, I should wrap things up. It’s been a pleasure talking to you talking about all these great experience great stories. It’s great book. But let me wrap things up with the question I always ask which is, let’s pretend David we’re at an awards banquet, much like the Oscars or the Emmys, or the Tonys or something like that. And you are saving Award for Lifetime Achievement for everything you’ve done up to this point. And what we all want to know is who do you think

David Meerman Scott  35:59  

right? Cool questions. So I would think Seth Godin. And the reason I would think Seth Godin is when I was just starting my independent marketing career. I reached out to him he was so kind, he talked about one of something I wrote and it was so important and helpful to me. And he actually also did an endorsement for the new book fan accuracy, which is amazing. I would, I would thank the members of the Grateful Dead for their, for their music for since I was 17 years old. I would thank everyone who’s ever been to a show with me 786 shows that I’ve been to in my life, almost all of them with friends of mine, my my daughter and co author and my most recent book, and of course, my, my lovely wife, Yukari, who also happens to be an author. She writes in the Japanese language and I would then worry about all the People I forgot to thank.

John Corcoran  37:02  

Of course, of course. Well, thank you so much fan accuracy turning fans into customers and customers into fans with David meerman. Scott and Rico Scott, your daughter, wonderful job, Dan. Ah cracy calm is the website Tony Robbins wrote the foreword for the book, so you got to check that out as well anywhere else that people can go to learn more about you David.

David Meerman Scott  37:23  

On Twitter, I’m dm Scott, the MSC Ott and fan accuracy calm and dm Scott gets you most of the things I’ve been talking about recently.

John Corcoran  37:33  

Excellent. Alright, next time you’re in San Francisco, Terrapin crossroads. I know we gotta go Turpin crossroads. I’ve been there a couple times. It’s I need a fix. So we’ll go together though. Very farm hairpin is this amazing venue that you know Phil Lesh one of the original basis for the Grateful Dead, decided he was getting older and he didn’t want to tour as much but he wanted to keep on performing and so he had the resources he bought this old rundown seafood peddler restaurant fixed it up and made it this beautiful, amazing music venue. Anyone who’s a live music fan, if you’re in the San Francisco Bay Area, you should go check it out because it’s really cool.

David Meerman Scott  38:08  

And the never know who’s going to come and sit in. I mean, there’s people who don’t you know, it’ll be just some random show and they’ll be 40 people in the room and all of a sudden, like, Oh my gosh, like the most famous musicians in the world will show up and just sit in. It’s amazing. Yeah,

John Corcoran  38:23  

really cool. Alright. Thanks so much, David.

David Meerman Scott  38:25  

Thanks, john.