Follow the Fun: With Marketing Legend David Meerman Scott

Steve Haase  0:00  
Time. All right. Well, welcome to the podcast. David, we are absolutely thrilled to have you here today. And to be here. Yeah. Why don't we just kick it off with something that you said on one of our coaching calls really struck me, you said that you can spot patterns in the universe. And I want to know how you knew that you had that power, what it means to you tell me about spotting patterns in the universe.

David Meerman Scott  0:36  
I don't spot them up that often. But when I do, it's the light bulb moment, so to speak. So the first time I was aware that I was spotting a pattern in the universe that was really, really important, was probably about 20 years ago. And everybody at that time was talking about marketing on the web, as being banner advertisements. And if you remember back to that time, that this was, would have been the late 1990s ish, that at that time, everyone was saying, oh, you know, do a banner ad and you're going to be good to go and on your web marketing? Well, I was fortunate that in my early career, I worked in the real time news business, I worked for companies like Dow Jones and Thomson Reuters. And so I understood prior to the web, I understood the idea of real time information, real time communications. So when the web did come around, I recognized it as a way that organizations could create content. And my gosh, the pattern in the universe, I noticed was that the web, great web marketing is not spending money on advertising to get your business in front of people and other people's real estate. But rather, it's about creating your own content. Now, that was before social media, but in the form of blogs are great websites. And I started to write about that starting in about 2001. And, and that became essentially, the background for the book that came out in 2007, called The New Rules of Marketing and PR, which still to this day, is the best selling book about online marketing in the world. It's now in the eighth edition, it's in 29 languages. And, and that pattern that I saw was, was kind of remarkable. And so I'm always constantly on the lookout for a similar kind of pattern that I'm not saying I'm the only one who sees it. But I am the only one who's written about it at the time I write about it.

Erin Aquin  2:58  
So amazing. And, you know, I was less familiar with you, when we started working together, Steve was like, You're gonna meet this amazing person, we want I want him as the book, our book coach, like we're going to do this stuff. And the thing that I have really just come to admire about you is that you've been able to carve out such a beautiful space for yourself in a very noisy industry and noisy world. But even in that first meeting, I kind of figured out why, Oh, tell me how this ability just to connect with the person in front of you and build such an authentic relationship? Thank you. Well, I mean, it's, you know, we love you, I got off that call. And I was just like, send him our money, give him all our money.

David Meerman Scott  3:54  
Give me more money, which is

Erin Aquin  3:56  
kind of what entrepreneurs you know, it's the it's the dream of all entrepreneurs, where I've said this to so many people about you, like, I love paying you for what for what you have given us and infused in this project. But I think what I'm what I'm curious about is there's so many people out there that think relationships, building them making an authentic connection, whether it's with the person on zoom across from you, or in your case with 1000s of people in an audience. People think that that's just a natural skill. And they don't treat it like a practice. And I have a sense that this is something that probably was did come naturally to you in some ways, but I'm curious about how you've cultivated this beautiful skill in your practice if you're willing to share with us.

David Meerman Scott  4:54  
Great question. Thank you. Thank you very much. So yeah, I Couple of things come to mind around this. The first one is something that I decided a long time ago was that a couple of things that I decided a long time ago around my own business, one of them was, I don't want to build a team, I don't want to become big, I want to just be me, and be able to serve as many people as I can in as many ways as I can. And the second thing I decided really early on, is that life is too short to work for jerks. So I, I've, I've put myself out into the universe to use language that you might use. I've put myself out to the universe in a way that I'm inviting people who might want to work with me to raise their hand and say, Yeah, I think I want to work with you. And let's, let's have a conversation. What I don't do is go out there, and hustle business. In 20 years of running my own business, I have never once made a sales call, I've never once went out and pitch to business. I put myself out there in the universe with the expectation. And for 20 years, it's proven true that some people might want to consume my free content, my blog posts, my social media feeds, some people might want to take the leap of spending 20 bucks to buy one of my books, unfortunately, or a million people have. And maybe somebody might want to take the leap of hiring me to speak at their event or, or like you did, and Steve did and said, Hey, maybe this is somebody we might want to have a deeper relationship with. So I always try to be present with who I'm engaging with at that time. And, and I look for people that I want to work with, I very often say no to people, I don't want to work with them. And when I have conversations with both of you, it's like, yeah, this feels, this feels good. It feels it feels like fun, it feels like a fun book to work on, it feels like a great couple to spend some time with on on Zoom, and one day, hopefully in person. So those are the sorts of things that go through my mind. But another another thought related to this is a lot of people talk about work life balance. I don't think really about work life balance. To quote Tony Robbins, from what he said on Wednesday, I actually spoke at his conference on Thursday, the business mastery conference. Life's not about work life balance. It's about work life integration. And I think about that a lot, you know, right now this conversation or working with you or the other things I'm doing that work today doesn't feel like work to me. It's, it's it's stuff that I want to do stuff. That's fun. And I happily say no to many, many, many things that I don't want to do. But when I say yes, I'm there, I'm President, and those are the things I want to do.

Steve Haase  8:25  
That's cool. So your approach to relationship building is, is to build the business in a way that aligns with the business that you want to have, which is one where you aren't working with jerks are loving the people you're with. And it's, it's you're kind of building your dream as you go.

David Meerman Scott  8:42  
Yes. And what I always tell my wife is I don't make decisions based on money. I don't make decisions based on how much something will pay how much a project might pay, how much a speaking engagement might pay how much your coaching engagement might pay. That's not the way I think about it, I think about is this going to be a fun experience, is this going to provide provide value to the universe? Is this going to be something that will be enjoyable for a couple of days or a couple of months or whatever it might be and, and therefore I will frequently turn down a highly lucrative speaking engagement, because that's not something that seems interesting to me and accept something that will not bring as much money into the bank account, but we'll be working with a group of really fun people. I'll do that any day of the week. And ironically, that approach is probably brought in more money than if I had done the other way anyway, because Because interesting business comes my way and, and and I turn that into how I support my family in a way that works really, really really well for me So I mean, it's a lot of what you have been writing about. And what I've been learning about your work is, is push great stuff out into the universe and the universe gives back. So push love into the universe, love the universe, give what gives love back and, and push fun loving a fun loving attitude to the universe and you get fun loving clients in return. So that's worked well for me for a number of years. And I'm gonna stick with it.

Erin Aquin  10:28  
Oh, good. I mean, I think it sort of flies in the face of it's something I see a lot of entrepreneurs doing, which is like, the compartmentalization of like, I've got to like fixate on the work hours versus the, no, I'm here with my kids. They spend so much energy, if it's all fun, if it's all what you really want to be doing, if it's all interesting. You know, and you make your whole life that way. The other stuff just doesn't vibrate. Doesn't really tend to, like come into that field.

David Meerman Scott  11:06  
It at least for me, that's absolutely worked. And it's also worked for my daughter, Reiko. She's my co author, and this book we wrote called Fan autocracy, I know you guys have both poked around, poked around a little bit with the book yet there's a copyright here. And we wrote this book, starting about seven years ago. Reiko was in medical school at the time, she's now an emergency room doctor at Boston Medical Center. And as we were writing and researching this book, one of the most surprising things we learned about building fans is that people are attracted to people who have passion for something. And this was really surprising to both of us. And the passion doesn't have to have anything to do with the work that's actually being done. And so what I noticed and you just kind of talked about this, Erin is the idea that so many people have built a brick wall, between this is my business life and my business life is serious. And my business life is conducted on LinkedIn and my business life is important. And over here, we're having fun and we're going out with my family and having fun and we're going with my friends and visitors on Instagram and EAA. That's weird to me. You know, putting them all together is not weird to me. You know, it's got a Grateful Dead logo over my shoulder and a Grateful Dead logo on my on my sweater. My favorite band has seen them 91 times. It's kind of silly. I wrote a book about them with Brian Halligan, the co founder and Executive Chairman of HubSpot and Bill Walton, the NBA basketball hall of famer called marketing lessons from the Grateful Dead. Yeah, it's fun business is and should be fun. Reiko. When she goes into her, she's in the emergency department at Boston Medical Center. Now in her third year of residency, she'll wear sometimes a pen or even a t shirt, over her scrubs of the Boston Bruins, the sports team she loves. And she'll talk about Kpop or Harry Potter, the things she's a fan of, that makes people like me and people like her open to the universe, who shows when we show that we've got passion for something. And in the business world that's so rare, because so many people feel like they need to be professional. Now we're going to be professional, we have to wait till five o'clock until we can have fun. That's not for me. I want my entire life to be fun. And I think for those who work in that way of making their entire life fun, even if they work for a big company or even big companies that adopt that idea. It can be great.

Steve Haase  14:02  
Yeah, that's brilliant. One of the one of the questions that I had was, you know, you embrace your mistake quirkiness, right, you're, you're, you're interesting. Take a look at the selfies, like you're, you know, you don't have like a strong guy pose. You're just like, hey, you know, it was more of a Gumby pose than, than I like Power Pose. And my question was, like, what and even the title of your book and your work right? You do these cool portmanteaus of newsjacking and Fen autocracy. You write books about your favorite band, it rather than saying, Well, my my quirky human self needs to live on this side of the wall and then I'll just like do business the way business is done. You kind of bring that into your business life. What What helped you kind of get over the cultural programming of B be a professional, right? Look, look the part of a marketing guy.

David Meerman Scott  15:06  
It helps that I was fired three different time from three times from three different corporate gigs. I didn't work very well, in a corporate environment, I didn't play well around the idea of corporate politics. It's not the way my brain was wired. Even though I was successful, I rose to be Asia, marketing director of a division of what became Thomson Reuters, and so on. And was the vice president marketing of two different technology companies here in the States. So I was successful with it. But I eventually would implode because I didn't work well, in that rigid kind of environment. Now, there's nothing wrong if somebody does work well, in that kind of corporate environment. I know a number of people who thrive in that world of corporate politics, but didn't for me, so I realized I had to embrace what I was good at what the universe had in mind for me, then just trying to be the corporate drone, which, when working so well, for me, and fortunately, I, I, my wife was very supportive when I decided I wanted to go on my own. And, and, and I recognized that if I took this path, that I need to totally embrace it, and not try to do some kind of weird hybrid where I was kind of having fun, but I also kind of wanted to become a corporate, you know, be in the corporate world, I was like, one or the other, just do it. And I decided to embrace what I think the universe has in store for me that I'm good at.

Erin Aquin  16:48  
Okay, this, this is everything. And I want to, I want to kind of dive into that. I think about business as being one of the most ultimate spiritual practices like, I also do yoga, you can, you know, if you can contort your body into weird positions and still breathe. That's one way, meditations another way. But I think having you're going out on your own, when it's so against the brain, it reveals so much about our strengths or weaknesses, who we are, who we're trying to be what we're trying to prove. And I'm I'm curious, because it kind of the way you talk about it. It sounds like it's been a spiritual transformation in some ways for you. And I would just kind of love to know what what did you learn about yourself, when you in those early years when it maybe wasn't, like going to speak at Tony Robbins events and writing bestseller books.

David Meerman Scott  17:50  
It was interesting, because at when I first went out on my own, which was in the middle of 2001. So horrible time, to try to start a business was a horrible time to time to try to begin a new job because 911 had just happened. And nobody knew what in the world was going on. I mean, we, you know, America just been attacked and, and people were losing their jobs, and it was not a good time. And that's, that's when I chose to go out on my own. And when I first did it, I created a very corporate approach to becoming a consultant. And what I did was I created fresh spot marketing. And I used we, I said, we do this and we do that. And I had, I think there might have been one picture like in the about section near the end of me maybe in a coat and tie. And I was essentially taking what I knew of the corporate world, and just doing it independently as a chief marketing officer for hire. And I did okay, I had some clients and but it just wasn't feeling right. It wasn't feeling like it was me. And it was a couple years later that I don't I don't know why this came into my mind but I said you know what, this is really isn't working for me. So I completely changed. Got rid of the name fresh spot marketing. I still have that as my business name, but I never used it again. To describe who I was I got rid of the royal we and said i i went with the website DavidMeermanScott.com Rather than fresh spot.com I used fresh spot to redirect to DavidMeermanScott.com And I went out on my own and really Properly went out on my own and said, you know, you're not hiring some nebulous marketing agency, you're hiring me. And this is who I am. And this, these are my quirks. And this is my personality. And this is what I good, I'm good at, and this is what I'm not good at. And, and then that was when then I started to say, you know, I've got some ideas to share here. I started my blog in 2005, and started to get my ideas out into the universe and my own personal ideas. And then we talked earlier about this pattern in the universe that I saw. And I started to write about that a lot. And then that turned into into the, into some books. So I think it was just recognizing that I had to, I had to embrace who I was that it wasn't really going to work in a way that was sustainable. If I did it a different way. I'm guessing had I chosen to continue down the path of the royal we and I'm a marketing agency and so on, I probably would have filtered back into the corporate world in some form or fashion. But fortunately, I figured out that I had to embrace me and, and that worked really well.

Erin Aquin  21:18  
I love it. Oh, cool.

Steve Haase  21:23  
That's awesome. So the I want to know about your, your own story of transformation. So you mentioned your transformation from corporate guy to icon, my icon, marketing thought leader, you also had a chance. Yeah, transformation from sort of average lifestyle to a very healthy person. You tell us a little bit about what, what drove that, that change? And what that was like? Sure.

David Meerman Scott  21:59  
Sure, absolutely. So I remember distinctly around my 50th birthday, a number the universe sent me some Wake Up Calls. And to me, it was super clear what was happening. So the first thing that happened was, sadly, two of my friends who are my age passed away from essentially bad health. And, wow, that was pretty scary. This was around my 50th birthday. Then. The second thing that happened was I went for I call it my 50,000 mile checkup, I went to the doctor, and he said, you know, you're doing okay, but I might want to put you on a couple of meds. You know, some of your numbers are creeping up in the wrong direction. I was like, Oh my gosh, what medicine to control something I can control myself. I don't know about that. And then it was literally my 50th birthday, the day I looked in the mirror, I was naked and said, Oh boy, I need to fix that. I was 65 pounds heavier than I am today. And I wasn't healthy. I wasn't exercise. I was doing a little bit of elliptical here and there. But I wasn't properly exercising and I was I am a surfer I was a surfing then. But you know, I wasn't able to go into the waves like I had wanted to go into the waves. So I made a change. And I actually didn't plan it. I didn't say like when I was 49 on my 50th birthday going to start an exercise program start eating right it didn't at all it was like it was like these these signposts I noticed in the two, two months or so leading up to my birthday, sadly, a couple of my friends passing away and then and then seeing myself in the mirror on my birthday a couple of days before that going to the doctor and I just decided I need to make a change. I didn't tell my wife I just didn't tell myself even I just decided I was going to make a change, bought some books about how to get healthy but how to start an exercise program how to eat right and, and within about a year dropped 50 pounds. And then over the course of the last that was 12 years ago over the course of the last 10 years or so have steadily built more muscle lost a little bit of fat, so I'm now 65 pounds lighter than I was super strong. And you know based on other people who are my age in their very early 60s. I mean I can do a lot more than they can I don't know very many people who are my age who can do six to six sets of 10 pull ups for example. And I'm proud of that I prior to my 50th birthday I couldn't do any pull ups, I literally could not do a pull up. Like, I was too fat and not strong enough. And, and that's just one example of the fitness. But it's been transformational for everything because it's helped me to be a better speaker, it's helped me to be better at pretty much everything I do, just by being able to be that much more healthy.

Steve Haase  25:27  
So was it just the, like, the wake up calls that you say, kind of switched you from one track on to the other? Never do look back again? Like, what? What was the? What was the process like for you?

David Meerman Scott  25:41  
Well, I think it was the leading up to the birthday. And it was that I mean, 50 is i Oh, boy, 50 Wow, that's crazy. I, I need to fix this now. Which I wish I did. But to me, a lot of people say Oh, I'm going to get healthy. And I'm going to eat right, I'm going to exercise and it doesn't work. I recognized I had to make a lifestyle change. You know, it had to be all the I had to be all in on this. And so what I said to myself that day, was I need to exercise every day. And I have, if I miss a day, I do doubles the next day or a couple days later. And in my case, what I do from an exercise perspective is that I mix it up over the course of the week. I do yoga once or twice a week I do weights went today was weights day, weight, and then I do the weights day includes pull ups and push ups. I do Pilates once or twice a day, I swim once or twice a day. And then in season. And with availability, I hike a mountain bike I serve. And that works for me every day is little every day, it's different. So I'm not doing two days in a row typically. So it keeps it interesting. And then with my wife's help, she's an awesome cook. I stopped eating starch, so bad bread, rice, pasta, beer, anything sort of starchy, cut it out. And and that's all it took really to drop that weight and become fit and healthy.

Erin Aquin  27:21  
Okay, I'm noticing a theme. And I want to just I want to kind of pull this out with the with the business examples as well that you've given us, you totally mix it up. You mix it up with your your weight training and your yoga, you mix it up with how you, you know, the different streams that are part of your business, writing books, doing talks, coaching, like all of these different things. And I want to, I kind of want to know, you've built something very successful without it being like a really strict, narrow niche, which I think a lot of the input we get from a lot of marketing people is you got to be super, super duper nice. You can't the one program one thing one platform doesn't seem to be the case for you. And I'm very

David Meerman Scott  28:15  
interesting observation. And I actually when I was thinking about why I got fired three times, and when I was in the corporate world might be related to your question and that is I get bored easily. And so I need to mix things up so I don't get bored. And so if I was only doing consulting, I would get bored. However, you know, writing so far I've done 13 books I'm writing a 14 Now if I was only writing a book books, I would get bored but writing books giving speeches, doing some coaching, creating my own content on my blog and social networks. That's interesting to me because every day is a little bit different and I can focus on the stuff that's that's fun for me and and and I'm just thinking this through right now as you asked that question and that's probably why I got fired a few times is because the same silly job all the time was not the way that at least I personally operate. And then I ended up as well adopting that approach with with what worked for me for exercise, you know, some people only run oh my god are going insane if I had to run every single day. So I think that worked for me and I'm glad I figured that out with with the exercise part because nothing ever really stuck. I tried running a bunch of times I try I have had an elliptical I would try to get on on a regular basis but it bored me to tears but mixing it up works.

Erin Aquin  29:56  
You heard it here folks. You don't have to rigidly only do one thing in any one area of your life. It's like, I think that that's something I really admire about you is that you, you let your passion your interest, be your business plan, your life plan.

David Meerman Scott  30:15  
You know, it's really funny that I know a bunch of very, very successful CEOs of billion dollar companies. I know, many famous musicians. I mean, I've had the honor of meeting some really super cool people, and almost everyone, when they get to know who I am, so you know, you've got the best job in the world. And I think that's true. I really, I really do believe that, you know, I've had people tell me who, you know, who's got three houses travel and corporate plans have, you know, ridiculous numbers of hundreds of millions of dollars in the bank that they would rather have done what I did. So yeah, I think I'm chasing fun, rather than chasing money. And that, that works. For me, at least I don't know if it works for everyone, but chasing fun works for me.

Steve Haase  31:08  
That's amazing. Okay, so what about when it's not fun? I want to hear about David's low days where he's like, you know, this thing? What do you do? Right? What do you ever have any static in your life? And if so, how do you handle it?

David Meerman Scott  31:24  
Oh, totally, absolutely. 100% I have static. And so first of all, I try not to obsess about things I can't change and see if I can make something good out of the things I can't change. I'll give you a good example on Wednesday, as we're recording this on Wednesday. Last week, I had to travel to Florida. And I arrived at the airport early. I like early flights at five in the morning. And by the way, another thing about me I do everything early, I wake up at four o'clock in the morning, eat my breakfast, I exercise, eat my breakfast early ate my lunch at like 11 o'clock. But I go to bed at 730 at night. It's like, like, so early. I know. It's ridiculous, but I do everything.

Erin Aquin  32:12  
We got to bed at like 830 We're totally with you.

David Meerman Scott  32:14  
Okay, so you understand that? It's weird to many people like I'm going to bed when they're like just like having dinner. But um, but anyway, I I'm always I always try to take the first flight out in the morning when I have to fly somewhere. I'm at low Boston Logan Airport, I live in the Boston area on Wednesday, and the entire American commercial air system is shut down. And I can't get to Florida. And some people get frustrated some people bitch and moan some people will go find someone to yell at. Some people get out their phone are constantly trying to figure out what can I do? What can I do to fix this? What can I go to another airline? Can I rent a car and drive there? And to me, I just kind of get in my zen mode. It's like, I can't change it. So I'm just gonna like go with the flow go with it. And and so then I said, Well, how can I make this fun? So what I did was I realized, I'm at logon at five for a flight that was supposed to depart at 530. This is an Eastern you Eastern time. This is probably among the very first flights to depart in the United States and the entire FAA system is shut down Federal Aviation Administration. So then I went to the FAA website, there was nothing about the shutdown there. American Airlines was flying at flying with said FAA is just shut down the entire airspace. We don't know what's going to come out is going to be at least an hour. Oh, interesting. So I took out my phone. I took a picture of where I was. And I tweeted, and I said roughly paraphrasing, hey, according to American Airlines tagged them. The entire FAA system tagged FAA at Boston is shut down. I'm here at Boston. Logan tagged Boston Logan Airport. And we have no idea when any planes are going to fly. Put that out on Twitter with a photo at Logan and, and then within an hour. I got requests to go live on television. With NBC television, ABC Television, the Boston Globe contacted me I did an interview with them. And I went live using my phone using zoom and was live on several television stations so I was having fun with it. And and everyone else is like oh god, you know, we got to wait around how long do you have to wait around like I just make make the best of the I'm gonna go on. So that's one way that I managed the, the downers. But I, you know, I do have times when I wish I didn't have to like, do what I need to do, I know I need to do it. I've been blogging since 2015, when is that 18 years, and I try my best never to miss a week. And if it's like Thursday, and I haven't written a blog post, I kind of beat myself up a little bit. And I try to get one out. And once in a while I miss it's very rare. And Mike's probably like 10 times, and if in 18 years, but I'll miss every now and then. And I don't let it bother me too much. And if I'm facing something that feels like it's giving me a little bit of stress, then I'll try to focus on something that I enjoy more for a few minutes, and then come back to that other thing that maybe I don't really want to do so much. But those are pretty rare. To be honest with you, I, I tend to try to fill my calendar, with the things I want to do rather than things I feel like I have to do.

Erin Aquin  36:13  
I think it's like the bonus plan of creating a life that's fun, is that the static can still be there from time to time. But it's, it's harder for it to just show up kind of unannounced. It's like a more of a rare thing. So

David Meerman Scott  36:32  
I think so. And I think I think that's right. And then, you know, how can you make the best of static? It exists? It's part of life. You know, we only have so much time, in a day, in a week, in a month in a year in a lifetime? And do you really want to go down a negative path. So in this example of of spending three hours sitting on the floor at Logan Airport, waiting for a plane to take off? How do you want to use those three hours? Do you want to use those three hours getting stressed and yelling at gate attendants? You want to spend those three hours reading a book? Do you want to spend those three hours like I did, or part of those three hours, seeing if you can get yourself on television. And those are choices of how you spend that static time. And and I think we have to be conscious of that, that those are choices, we we choose how we want to make those moments. Be a part of our life.

Erin Aquin  37:43  
I love it. The technique I kind of use that's similar is like, Can I turn this into value for my people? And I turned my bad day, or how I totally failed at something or something flopped. And I'm not happy about it. Can I like talk to people about that and use that even that as like a note of connection? And it's like, I just love that you brought you brought value while you're just sitting at the airport.

David Meerman Scott  38:09  
Yeah, right. And and it was fun. And I had a story to tell. And the next day I spoke at Tony Robbins business mastery events and event and it was a story I told I said, Hey, you know, you just put content out there and the world comes to you. Here's what I did yesterday. So it turned into an example that I shared, and I'm sharing it with you. So you know, make use of those those times. I mean, it's very rare in our life, in this case where you get three hours uninterrupted to do something that you weren't expected to do.

Steve Haase  38:44  
Can you talk a little bit about timeline? Because, yes, you create content the world comes to you. You've spent years creating a platform so that when you create content, it's more likely that the world will come to you. So what about investing yours in something that you know the payoff might be down the road, especially if people are feeling maybe some scarcity around payoffs today.

David Meerman Scott  39:09  
So I'm my first job was in the financial markets I worked at on a bond trading desk on Wall Street, I hated it. But I learned a lot about investing and money and very much subscribe to the idea of portfolio management theory that says you need to be diverse. And you know, you have some stocks, maybe some bonds, some alternative investments and real estate, in my case, also some collectibles. And that eventually some go up some go down but eventually that does well for supporting your family. I believe that as possibly the same thing to be true actually about a career. And I think the same thing is true about as you as you ask building content is that if you think of it as a portfolio theory of I'm going to create some blog posts and some videos and this and that. And the other thing. Over time, that portfolio of content exists online, it doesn't go away unless the platform you create it on goes away. But if not, it doesn't go away. You know, the, the several 1000 blog posts that I've written for the past 18 years are still to quote HubSpot, bread O'Brien and HubSpot bread crumbs that that lead a trail directly to me. So I think of it much like this idea of investing is your first go to school, you don't have any money, maybe have some debt. What's the point of investing? Well, the point of investing is that if you do it diligently and you invest wisely, you will never have a time that you're in need of money. And I believe the same thing is true in a career, portfolio theory of a career portfolio theory of content is that create that content when you can keep doing it. And over time you build wealth of content,

Erin Aquin  41:18  
you have a book called The portfolio portfolio theory of content, David, I'm feeling a new book coming on.

David Meerman Scott  41:24  
I've actually I think I've done but I think I've done a couple of blog posts around that idea. Point to it, because it is it is an interesting idea for a book title. And I'm not going to write that book. But it is an interesting idea for a book title. And by the way, that's also what's gone through my mind a lot over the time that I was thinking about going out on my own because, again, portfolio theory, if you have all of your wealth tied up into one stock, and that company has a problem, you're in trouble. If you are only employed by one company, you're in other words, you have a traditional job, and I'm not knocking traditional jobs are great. I've had them for myself for a long time many of my friends and family members do. But if you have a job, it means that you're tied to one organization. And if that organization for whatever reason goes away, like in my case, they fire you, you've got zero. And if you go out on your own and you have multiple revenue streams, in my case, I have online courses and books and speaking gigs and coaching, that if one client goes away or when or when book stops doing well, there's other sources of income coming in. And I think that's important for people to consider. And again, not knocking a corporate job nothing wrong with it. I've done it myself. Many of my friends have done it but

Erin Aquin  42:54  
don't listen to this podcast. Maybe not business owners. Yeah. So good. David, thank you so much. Oh, of course. Like just it's such a we've we've really just learned so much from you in our time and I hope everybody who listened today will go and check out David and his many books in his all of his beautiful work that's all over the internet on any platform that you are on.

David Meerman Scott  43:28  
Yeah, there's a bit out there. I'm not on Tik Tok. I don't have my own podcast. Haven't done many YouTube videos recently. Can't do everything but there is a bunch of stuff out there.

Erin Aquin  43:39  
All of it too.

David Meerman Scott  43:40  
Thank you so much. My pleasure. Talk soon.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai