To round out this batch of KPI Cafe episodes, host Dane Saville takes a dive into building a tribe, using his own experience as Reunion's Brand Manager to provide a personal (and vulnerable) perspective on what this process feels like. From content creation and content reaction to authenticity to sweat equity, Dane gives a full view of building a tribe, including the doubts and reservations he still has about his own work on the KPI Cafe.
Here's what to expect:
Defining the Tribe (1:27)
"Do Your Part" (3:16)
Why Even Build a Tribe? (8:22)
Tribe Goals Can Evolve (11:45)
Concluding Thoughts (13:45)
To round out this batch of KPI Cafe episodes, host Dane Saville takes a dive into building a tribe, using his own experience as Reunion's Brand Manager to provide a personal (and vulnerable) perspective on what this process feels like. From content creation and content reaction to authenticity to sweat equity, Dane gives a full view of building a tribe, including the doubts and reservations he still has about his own work on the KPI Cafe.
Here's what to expect:
Defining the Tribe (1:27)
"Do Your Part" (3:16)
Why Even Build a Tribe? (8:22)
Tribe Goals Can Evolve (11:45)
Concluding Thoughts (13:45)
So, life is full of terminology — and life is chock full of terminology when you work in digital marketing for retail automotive, especially the acronyms. Am I right?
VDP. SRP. CRM. DMS. SEO. CRO. PPC. OTT. AIA. KPI. CTV. RO. ROAS.
That’s just off the top of my head.
Then we continually hear or talk about AI, digital retailing or remote retailing, culture, and more. Today, I want to discuss a term that you’ve likely heard but maybe haven’t committed to make it part of your — ecosystem.
Tribe.
Now I used to always associate the term TRIBE with the movie Major League. The Cleveland Indians. Ricky “Wild Thing” Vaughn. And in like most sports movies, it’s not until the players stop thinking about themselves and start thinking about the team do they overcome — in the context of Major League, it’s beating the Yanks.
Just like in the movies, it’s the notion of thinking beyond yourself that you build a tribe, but I’ll get to that in just a minute.
When I hear someone talking about building a tribe, I relate it to team sports. The tribe exists around a common goal. And when they all coalesce around that goal and genuinely work toward bringing it to fruition, an inherent trust builds.
So that’s the necessary step to start building a tribe. What’s the goal you want to and can share with others? Whatever it is, it’s not about you. It’s about a greater community. A greater good. And it must be authentic. If you really want a tribe, that thing — that goal — has to be a genuine desire. Because if it’s not, you’ll eventually be exposed. It might take days. It might take months. It might even take years. But it will happen.
When you have that goal, start leveraging your network to expand it with other people who will resonate with your message. Because the people in your tribe are those who rely on you to do your job — and you rely on them to do theirs. The tribe exists because everyone is actively participating. Again, it’s not about you. You’re not the tribe leader. You’re the tribe facilitator. The consigliere.
So what do I mean by “do your part.” I’ll use myself as an example. I wanted to build a tribe around elevating automotive digital marketing. At first, I was only reaching out to actual digital marketers — internet managers, BDC manager, et cetera. But they’re not the only stakeholders in a dealership’s marketing. No! So how can I expand the audience but still hold onto the core principle of elevating digital marketing?
Well, the core of content I create — for Dealer Marketing Magazine, Digital Dealer newsletter, any LinkedIn article I write, any Clubhouse room that I join, it’s related to digital marketing. I relaunched — and need to really dedicate more time to — the video series Dealer U. That’s all digital marketing oriented. To expand the tribe of people who can also get excited about this notion is allowing this podcast, the KPI Cafe, to cover new topics outside of that scope. Now I can connect people with mental health tips, leadership insights, pains of growing a small business, culture needs — and as I grow my connections, who will then see my other content, I continue working towards that goal.
So, it’s about content creation and content reaction. Write blogs. Create a — well — a podcast. Leverage tools like Canva to create social media graphics. Have profiles on the platforms where your audience consumes media. LinkedIn. Clubhouse. YouTube. Instagram. Maybe, for you, it’s also Tik Tok. Get on those platforms and react, comment, reshare with your own commentary.
But remember: the content needs to be purposeful. Creating for the sake of creation is like spinning your wheels in mud. The traction your wheels get is the value you provide.
Now, you may be saying, Dane, I just don’t have the time to continually create new stuff. Okay, so here’s the deal. I do this KPI Cafe podcast. When I record it, I don’t just record the audio. There’s a video file, too. I re-listen to the entire podcast episode and find what I believe to be one of the most poignant moments. Up to — and no more than — 10 minutes. That way I have the capability to post it natively to LinkedIn — everything I do gets posted to LinkedIn as it’s my primary platform — and Facebook if I choose to. Regardless, I keep it to 10 minutes to offer a quick chunk of insights. I also find a single one-minute clip in the episode. It has to be something significant. I call it a Shot of Truth, and they are all posted natively across all of my channels, including Twitter.
Then I find a few lines spoken throughout the episode to create social media graphics that I post to Instagram. The lines need to resonate. They need to really say something. So out of one KPI Cafe, I have a minimum of 4 pieces of content and usually more than that.
So you’re creating content for your tribe around the common goal. But maintaining a tribe isn’t just about creating for them — again it’s also engaging WITH them. You need to be connected to the members of your tribe. Not just connected like friends on Facebook or 1st-degree of separation on LinkedIn. Because your tribe — which, for the record, can be, say, 10 people. So let me break my thought here to go down this rabbit hole. A tribe doesn’t have to be tens of thousands of people. Your tribe is as many people as who share your goal or vision or objective. Your tribe should be deliberately as small as possible because it’s so specific to a single thing.
And the thing is that it will naturally grow as you authentically engage with your tribe. More people connected to the tribe will see the engagement, the thought sharing, the thought leadership, the ideation, the exchange — and among those people will be more who share the goal. And they’ll engage. They’ll share thoughts. They’ll want to be part of the exchange.
This takes persistence. It takes time. It takes commitment. Tribes are organically built. And like most things that are done organically, there’s no silver bullet. No matter what a guru might tell you.
So why put so much work into building a tribe?
It’s the same answer as to how you build it.
Trust. It’s as simple as that. I mean what is the biggest issue with retail automotive. Consumers’ lack of trust in dealers. And, let’s be honest, dealers’ lack of trust in many vendors.
The people in your tribe will trust your judgment. They’ll come to you to ask questions. They’ll come to you to confirm or refute something. They’ll come to you with referrals. They’ll think of you when the topic comes up. And as long as you stay true to your mission — as long as you keep sharing genuinely helpful information, the dividends will naturally come because you’re providing value to more and more people.
Content builds value. Value builds trust. Trust builds revenue… and relationships.
And even when it doesn’t build revenue, it builds relationships. I have a number of friends in this industry who trust what I say but stick with their current digital marketing partners because they like them — and they’re at least content with the results they’re getting. And that’s okay. I don’t place a dollar value on friendships. I’m actually happy there are other great digital marketing agencies out there because they force us to innovate. To be on our toes. To be better today than we were yesterday and even better tomorrow.
Yes, your competitors can be part of your tribe. Now, I’ll put a caveat on this and say that this aspect of your tribe should be limited to those who you truly believe have that same goal in heart and aren’t just using it solely for the purpose of money making. Are there digital marketing agencies out there that I know aren’t really doing the best work for dealers? Absolutely. Are there digital marketing agencies that I know are doing great work for dealers? Absolutely. And you’ll likely see pictures of me with these folks at every single in-person conference and you’ll likely eventually hear them on this podcast. Hell, if you go back to when KPI Cafe was a short-form video blog, I’ve already had direct competitors on to share thought leadership. Why? Because they have things to say that I think are genuinely valuable, and I’m not going to have my tribe miss out on those ideas.
Again, remember, the tribe isn’t about you. It’s about the tribe. It’s about the goal. Set ego and self-service aside. We keep hearing the term “servant leader,” and while anyone can use that term to label themselves, the real servant leaders will have tremendous engagement because they have genuinely connected a tribe together.
Brian Benstock has a tribe.
Laurie Foster has a tribe.
Paul Daly has a tribe.
Why? Because they speak truths that aspire to accomplish a goal that coalesces people in retail automotive. Whether it’s profitability, pushing back, being better together, improving culture, they all want retail automotive to elevate — to change for the better. That’s the work of a tribe: to leave things better than they found them.
Your goals can evolve, too. The tribe I initially tried to start building was purely related to digital marketing in retail automotive. But there were so many issues I saw dealers navigating — wanting answers to — that I wanted to expand the tribe to be more all-inclusive.
And my goal may evolve again. Perhaps trying to expand in that way diluted the tribe. Perhaps I lost tribe members because of that fact — because it was no longer focused on their singular goal — better digital marketing for their dealership — and these efforts of mine became less meaningful.
That’s the journey of tribe building. I’m still early in my journey. Some are more successful sooner because they found their voice faster. They knew more acutely what that goal was and inherently had more trust among their peers. Look. I’m a vendor in retail automotive. I know that dealers will naturally trust other dealers more, and I don’t fault anyone but bad vendors for that.
At the end of the day, you don’t need to be a Gary V or a Grant Cardone. You need to be YOU, the genuine you and communicate that message through content. You’ll find your way. You’ll find your tribe. But you need to do the work. You need to put in the sweat equity because you cannot expect people to trust you. You have to construct that faith one brick at a time.
That’s how you build a tribe.
And it’s hard. Believe me, there are days when I wonder if I’m really providing the value that I think I am. There are days when I wonder if I need to take a break, walk away, and figure things out. Then there are days when I have a terrific conversation or get awesome feedback from someone, and I see the value I gave to at least one person. I continually try to think of ways to create new iterations of this podcast or conceive of new content to do — and sometimes I hesitate to pull the trigger because I’m afraid it will fall flat. I wonder sometimes why I don’t talk more about copywriting and the craft of storytelling because that’s who I fundamentally am — and have been my whole life — a storyteller.
So if you are being hard on yourself or don’t think you have what it takes to start building that tribe, you do. Take it from a guy who has that same struggle almost every day.
That’s it for me today. I want to thank you for spending some time with me today. I always appreciate you. Whether it was a piece of advice or just a little inspiration, I hope you’ve gleaned some value from this episode.
If you’ve been listening all season, you know that I’ve been playing a little game — so since I can’t play a one-man game, I’ll just say “This is a final thanks to yinz fer listening, and I’ll be dahnstairs in the kitchen to red up if you need me.”
This is Dane Saville, and we’ll talk soon.