Social media has turned everyone into a little brand who is concerned about their image, voice and much more. This episode looks at the importance of using unique insights in your work and the underlying social currency that really drives social media.
SHOW NOTES:
http://thecrazy1.com/episode-4-social-media-potatoes-and-power-of-experiential-currency/
FOLLOW THE CRAZY ONE:
Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook
Social media has turned everyone into a little brand who is concerned about their image, voice and much more. This episode looks at the importance of using unique insights in your work and the underlying social currency that really drives social media.
SHOW NOTES:
http://thecrazy1.com/episode-4-social-media-potatoes-and-power-of-experiential-currency/
FOLLOW THE CRAZY ONE:
Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook
Ladies and gentlemen, it's time to play the music. It's time to light the lights, it's time to get things started on the fourth episode of The Crazy One podcast. And so just like any great Muppet Show, we're going to cover a few different topics today. And the two things that we're going to focus on are going to be insights and social media. And there is nothing that I think probably dominates our lives that dominates conversations around branding, marketing, and everything else in between these days than social media. And the funny thing is, while everybody does it, everybody takes part in it. And we're constantly trying to all look so terribly interesting with all of our posts. The funny thing is, I think very few people genuinely understand it. I think very few people understand what drives it, what are the trends and the insights that really set it apart? So what we're going to do is we're going to take some time, and I'm going to share some of the things that I've learned about social media but I also want to share some of the things that I've learned about the importance of understanding trends and understanding some of these insights, finding an insight To be able to do any kind of work, anything creative is honestly nothing more than being a five year old. It is nothing more than constantly looking at something and asking why. Why is the sky is blue? why are all these things going on? Right? All those questions that you used to drive your parents crazy with every moment of every day? Well, you need to hold on to that you need to bring that little kid in you back to be able to start constantly asking why. And the reason why it's so important to ask why is the fact that I think that there is no bigger differentiator in your ability to do great work, and to have great ideas, then to have very significant insights. It's the foundation it's the starting point it in the episode where we talked about creativity, it's the palette in the measuring stick that you can use to understand if what it is you're doing is really going to be good and if it's gonna stand out, but also if it's going to resonate with people, because that's the problem is that for most of us who are We're doing commercial work. We're doing it for other people. We're doing it for an audience. We're not doing fine art where people just simply can look at it, judge it and move on. We have to think about what are the insights? What are the trends? What are the things that everybody does just as a collective consciousness that's going to affect our work that's going to affect how it gets adopted. The interesting thing for me is, I think that most people go about getting insights and looking at trends by doing things like they read articles, they listen to the podcasts like this one, they go to conferences, they do all these different things to try to find insights. And and don't get me wrong, right. I think all of those things are really, really important. But the challenges is that if that's all you're doing, then you're not going to stand out or stand apart from everybody else. Because if I'm sitting in a conference and somebody who is from a competitive company is sitting next to me, we're getting the same information. In the same insight at the same time, so if we go back and both do that work, there's not going to be a competitive differentiation, there's not going to be a way for my work to really stand out. It's not going to be different from anybody else. So I think that yes, that that is an incredibly important part of it. I read voraciously. I speak at conferences, I attend conferences. That's absolutely part of my process. But I also think that there's there's a big part of it for me, that is actually going out and trying to figure out what are what are the things that I see that may be different from everybody else. And I think that the one thing that I've done that hear again, it sounds so simple, but so few people seem to do it is that I will actively go out and participate in whatever it is I'm trying to find out about in whatever the trend is, and wherever I'm looking for an insight about. I see tons of people whenever they work in a field like digital or in technology, who will read a couple articles. Maybe they'll download the app and try it once or twice and then And suddenly they feel like they're experts, they really understand it. And I have never bought into that. I really believe that if you want to find a trend, or if you want to find an insight, like you really have to go out and to experience it, you have to you have to live it, it can't be theoretical. And I see this with like, with the word innovation, like this gets thrown around a ton. And there are ton of companies you can tell, read a press release about a product, put together a screenshot, and then put it out in the market talking about what they would do someday. I've never personally found that to be impressive, I don't think you get insights. I don't think you get to differentiated work by doing this. I think that you actually have to put it in play. And so I'm somebody who will actually go out and try to live these things. And and I've taken it to some interesting and almost rather extreme circumstances, in some cases to try to find this stuff out. And I'll give you an example. One of the things that had happened was quite a few years ago, to friends that I knew ran into each other in New York City. Now one of these friends was somebody who I saw all the time they were somebody we went out to dinner, we hung out, we talked all the time, like we really had a really good relationship with the other friend was somebody who I just I didn't see that often we didn't connect as often. And so these two friends ran into each other in New York City without me being there. And as the conversation started, and they started to then talk about me and what it is that I've been up to, the friend who I spent a lot of time with, suddenly realized that the other friend who only saw what I was doing on Facebook, could only speak about me and Facebook posts that it was a it was a veneer of friendship that if he pressed him for any more details, if he pressed him for anything deeper than that, he just he'd really couldn't say anything about it. And so he'd come back and talk to me about this. How interesting he thought it was that basically these two people were trying to have a conversation. They both had been hanging out with me one only really had, but then there is this interesting almost social surrogacy that was happening with Facebook where the person felt like there was still this real connection. But it was it was just so incredibly thin. And I found this fascinating and I thought about this for a really long time and and what did it mean? What did this kind of idea of social surrogacy mean where, you know, so much of Facebook and so many of these social media technologies have come in to replace real relationships, that in the places, we're used to pick up the phone and talk to somebody, we do it last because now we see photos on Facebook or on Instagram or things like that. And I thought about it for a long time. And I really decided that I wanted to try to figure out what was the trend or what was the insight here? I did something interesting. I did an experiment, and I did it on all my friends. But what I decided to do was I said, Okay, I'm going to come up with two rules, because I just want to see how big of a problem is this? How big of a problem is it? Where people aren't really kind of connecting with each other. And so the two worlds Were on the one hand, I was gonna kind of do this experiment on somebody we had to be friends on like just either in life or on Facebook or something like that for more than a year because I just felt like that that was the fair place to start that it was a long enough threshold that that there should be kind of like a real relationship there. The other thing that I said was okay, so out of that group, we needed to have some sort of a significant interaction. Within the past year we went out to dinner we had a drink we had a phone call, I was even willing to even throw in and say like if we even had like a significant email exchange that basically just something more than you know, just as simple like you know, haha to a joke, you post on Facebook to the Happy Birthday whenever you're prompted whenever it's my birthday on Facebook, like I mean, I wanted there to be some sort of a real effort because I really wanted to test and see how much had this really kind of like in our society started. To really become an acceptable form of a relationship. And so at that time, I had 325 total Facebook friends. And I know that doesn't sound like a huge number. But you also have to understand that I'm one of those guys that like on Facebook, I'm only friends with people who I legitimately feel like I have a connection with if i and i will openly say to people, like if I go and speak at a conference, we're not going to be friends on Facebook afterwards. Like if you were in the audience, if you're listening to this podcast, you want to friend me on Facebook, I'm sorry, it's not happening. Like It Is it for me is the safe space. It's the place where I really want to be able to have the relationships and say the things with the people that matter to me. And so out of the 325 people, I was absolutely Mind blown at the number of people who could not make the cut that we had a significant interaction in the past year. So out of these 325 people, 200 of them didn't make the cut. They we hadn't had an interaction and the one thing But I will say with this To be fair, is that I equally owned half of this problem that I was also a part of the problem here because I also had not reached out to them. So this was not something where I was just simply going to put it all on them and say that it was all their problem, because that wasn't the case. But But 200 out of like two thirds of the people didn't make the cut. And I thought about it for a really long time. But what was I going to do, in that if I was really going to kind of follow through with this, if I wanted to really kind of explore this idea of how deep did this go? Or what had this really done to our relationship? What was I going to do about it? And so honestly, it was probably for a couple months, I thought about this. And at the end of it, I decided that I was going to take those 200 people, and I was going to defend them to see what happened. Because I really was kind of fascinated about this and wanted to understand how deep this insight went. And one night I said about and defended all 200 of those people and the results of it for me were absolutely Fascinating and because to this day 95% of the people 95% of 200 people never noticed or never commented. They to this day have never friended me again. They've never done anything, the relationship was just severed and they were perfectly fine with it. 3% of the people saw and they contacted me immediately. Many of them were incredibly irritated about why had Why are we no longer friends on Facebook? And so I would explain to them why we weren't there. This was kind of like an experiment that I was doing and that for us to be friends again, like let's just go grab lunch, good, let's go grab dinner, let's have a good conversation. Let's do something to actually kind of re solidify the friendship. And it was really fascinating because a lot of people really were trying to get around it they would kind of say like, Well yeah, yeah, no, we're gonna do that. But but but can we can we just be friends on Facebook again, I mean, it was almost like seeing somebody who was like a drug addict or something where they really just wanted this implied metaphysical connection without actually Having the real connection in real life. And probably what was even the more fascinating part of it was it was 2% of the people got pissed. And I don't mean like a little upset. I mean, like, there are so many people who to this day will not speak to me, because I got very angry phone calls and voicemails and emails about how they thought we were better friends than this, how I thought I was a better person than this, how, you know, this just so shattered their perception of what our friendship was. And I guess I couldn't help but find this to be kind of funny and a little bit ironic in the fact that it, it didn't affect our friendship, it didn't affect the way that I felt about them. All it did was it severed a technological connection that they had, but it was the fact that people have now given that connection, such unbelievable importance, that it really just sent them over the edge. And so it really showed me that you know, for some Many people that there really is this, this social surrogacy in place where that's become the religion that the replacement for a real relationship, you know, so the reality of that, that I started to think about was like, Okay, if these people were my friends if these people were somebody at some time, whether it was high school or, or more recently that I had a real connection with, and 95% of them didn't notice when I went away. Okay, well, if I started to look at that, from my work, what what did that mean? So if I'm going to design something inside of social media, what does that mean? And I started to think about what it means is the fact that, you know, Facebook has fundamentally changed our society, technology has fundamentally changed our society, because there was a time if you wanted to learn something, or if you wanted to read something, you had to go to this weird place called a library. If you wanted to buy something, you had to go to a mall. If you wanted to be part of a community. You needed to actually go in a car And go someplace to sit down with people to talk. And it's so much of that has been replaced. And that's for so much of us. It's just because of the convenience and the ease of it, because that's what so much of us want. This is why, whenever you go to the grocery store, the aisles are filled with frozen food. But whenever you go to Europe in so many other places, they still want fresh food, because for us, we will, we will prioritize convenience, over so many other things. But what that also means is that as somebody who's trying to build a brand is somebody who's trying to have an idea, somebody who's trying to connect with people over social media, that connection could not be any thinner. Because it used to be that it was a commitment for me to plan my evening to come home, have dinner, get in my car and go someplace to go engage in a group and be part of a community. Now so many of these communities literally just take me nothing more than clicking a Like button. Well, if that's the case, if the if the connection is really that thin, and that I would prove that people who I knew were allowing it to become So disposable, that what did this mean that we really were going to have to work on a couple things. And I think, both personally and for brands and everybody else, that it was really starting to become much more about the quality of the content, and it was becoming much more about authenticity. And your this led me to start to make some changes in my own life, like one of the things that I did. And I will say, I have no idea how I arrived at this number. But one of the things that I'll do and you can go and check at any of my social media channels, is that I will not follow more than 115 people in any social media channel. I won't do it on Twitter, I won't do it on Instagram, no place like that. Well, I follow more than 115 people and like I said, I wish there was some big scientific reason why I came to that number. I'm sure I could make one up that to try to sound smarter, but I'm not. But what I found is that for me, 115 is the number. That's the maximum number I feel like I can follow and Still genuinely participate and get value out of those channels, that if it's more than that number, then I'm not seeing the Instagram photos of my friends or I'm not seeing the Instagram photos of people who I find really interesting or I really respect. If it's on Twitter, if it's more than 115. I'm missing too much content. And I think that this is one of those things for me. Like, I just can't respect people who whenever I go, and I see that they have 24,000 followers, but they are following 25,000 people, I just I have a really hard time respecting that. Because all that you're doing is you're just trying to get an artificial number to make yourself feel better. Like I know, in my social media channels, I could get better followers, I could get more of them. I could get the numbers bigger, but I guess there's some part of me that just doesn't care that I just want to be me. And if that works great, and if it doesn't fine, but for me, it really is much more about this authenticity that came out of me doing this experiment and so it leads to a lot of very interesting conversations because if I have this hard 115 rule, that means if there is somebody new that I want to follow on Instagram, and I'm going to start to follow them, that means somebody has to leave. And this has led to, again, a lot of very interesting conversations with with friends and other people where I will stop following them, some of which, again, get very upset, but I'll have to explain to them that all that it is, is that for me, if I just want to follow you to see what's going on, and we're really friends, that's what Facebook is for. But for me, like Twitter is very much kind of like a professional sort of like place where I can get a lot of really good information. Instagram, for me is much more about visual inspiration. And so that it's just one of these things, honestly, where as hard as it may be for them to hear their contents not making the cut. It's not interesting enough, it's not authentic enough. And so whenever I look at the hundred and 15 people that are in there, the weakest one goes and so I think some people understand it again, some people get very mad, but for me, it really was trying to focus on this concept of authenticity. And so we're going to use that as a bit of a transition point. Because I think, you know, for me, it leads into what has really become probably my biggest insight about the quality and authenticity. And just honestly, what I think is the trend and the insight that drives social media in general. These aren't going to be shows where like, if you want to get more Instagram followers, I'm going to tell you what type of photos to take. If you want to get more Twitter followers, I'm going to tell you what kind of tweets to put up there. There are a lot of other people that do that you can go by them, you can do stuff like that, like, that's not what drives me. And it's not what drives my work that for me it is trying to kind of figure out how do we get to these bigger breakthroughs. And so to talk about this next insight, I actually need to introduce you to someone or are actually probably something and so, I have two friends who I follow on Facebook. And so these two friends have a dog and the dog is named potatoes. I wish I I was joking about that but but the dog is actually named potatoes and you need to understand that whenever the dog was named like no kids were involved in the naming of this dog This wasn't like oh we're gonna name it spot or pongo or dog or something like that like no to adult men named a dog potatoes if you know them it makes a lot more sense not saying that to be derogatory but but literally dog named potatoes. And so for a long time, potatoes lived in New York City. And potatoes, two fathers at one point got married. And so potatoes being the modern dog that he is, had a decision to make. And so in the past where my Facebook timeline and things like that had been filled with pictures of potatoes, it was now featured with potatoes with a hyphenated last name because his father's had gotten married. So now just we're going to change the names to protect the innocent. We will now say that all the postings were for potatoes Jones hyphen Smith, so dog named potatoes hyphenated last name. That alone probably would be worth a pretty good discussion but I think that it gets a little bit more interesting from there because I think potatoes leads a very full life. And I think that you see this with a lot of dogs on on Instagram, where you would get photos of potatoes taking a bath, you would get photos of, you know, potatoes dressed up as a mariachi band for Halloween. Or my personal favorite and I swear to God I wish I was making this up potatoes whenever he drinks martinis. You know, so why write again, we're gonna go back to what we said at the beginning. Why, what why, why is this part of our social media life? Like why aren't Why do animals like Doug the pug have millions and millions and millions of followers. And I think that, you know, from a very simple perspective, what it's leading me to believe, and it's something that I've also seen just from watching, you know, all of my different social media posts, is that social media quite frankly, lets you see just how insanely boring All your friends are because the other part that came with all this social surrogacy is an unprecedented level of transparency. Because now we can see into everybody's lives, we can see what it is that you're doing, we can see what you're doing on a really daily basis. And we can see that for the vast majority of that time, our lives, quite frankly, aren't very interesting. They're actually really boring. And so what it's done is that people have reacted. And when we talk about content, we talk about authenticity, what it's done, and what I think they become is everybody started to act like a little brand, that if you look at what goes into making a great brand and the characteristics of that people have started to adopt that. Like for example, you know, one of the things that people get incredibly hyped about now is their brand image. Just for the next week, watching your Facebook timeline, how many times you see people update their Facebook profile. Final photo. And we all know that like, this can't ever be a simple photo, it has to be like standing on top of a mountain or with a celebrity or in front of a big piece of art or like looking into the sunset or like some big epic thing that is going to define us as a person. And that every time there's a new one of those things, we have to update it. This is why you see like Twitter completely redesigned the entire member page to take advantage of this trend, because it used to be you just had the little avatar that was a little box that had your logo in it. Well, no, they went back and they changed it. So now there is a massive image that runs across the top of every Twitter page. This is why and so just for the next week, just keep an eye on that to watch how often people are trying to curate their brand image. Well, but the other part of this that's become really funny is that this brand curation that everybody has has led to one of the biggest trends in society right now. It was one of the two contributions to the English language last year along with With the word twerking, which is selfies, selfies the concept that nobody can capture the glory of me but me, right? That this is a trend that you cannot travel anywhere in the world without people walking around with selfie sticks. They've been banned in museums that constantly as you're going around, everybody's doing, like you know that the phone with the three quarter up duck face trying to make themselves look amazing. Okay, well, so this trend to me again becomes very funny. And, you know, as an example of this a couple months ago, my wife and I had gone to Miami I was speaking at a conference. And so we were sitting at one of our favorite like brunch places on South Beach. And we're sitting there talking and our foods come and we're just chatting and, and at the table next to us four friends come and sit down. And one of the friends there's a woman and it was her birthday. So they bring the birthday cake and sinker Happy birthday, and we smile and Gee, Isn't that nice? And and so I'm kind of looking down and eating and half paying attention lost in my own thoughts. And at one point I look up and realize that when The gentleman from this party is basically trying to dislocate the better part of his upper body craning his arm out, trying to take a selfie of these four people. Well, my wife being the nice person that she is, just says, Well, sir, you know, look, if you want, I'll be happy to take the photo for you. And his reaction to me was absolutely priceless. He got so pissed off, that she had offered this and looked at her and said, Look, look, lady. If you take it, then it's not going to be a selfie. And I just had to laugh my ass off because because partially, I guess on the one hand, because in this day and age, if we're going to protect the sanctity of anything, thank God, the selfie is where we're going to draw the line. But also just because of the fact that it is that ingrained that that it has to genuinely be a selfie. And this has led to the whole set of other trends as we try to curate our brand image. It's because since our lives aren't that interesting, we've created these whole constructs that let us draw from our entire lives. So now there's a throwback Thursday there's a flashback Friday and, and every other day of the week has some hash tag associated to it. Because that's the problem is that the average Thursday or Friday may not be that interesting. So we're gonna tell you what we're gonna socially as a as a society gives you permission to go back and use any photo from any part of your entire frickin life to post it so that on that day, you can still try to look interesting and have a good brand image. And so these are the constructs to me, that becomes so incredibly fascinating. You also see people who really start to get incredibly concerned with like their tone of voice. You see this I think most on Twitter, because I know the people that I follow on Twitter, I'm friends with with a lot of them. And I know that in many cases, just if we're being honest, they're not that deep. But somehow whenever they're on Twitter, I swear they sound like Yoda if he was writing 140 character fortune cookie, everything just has to be so funny are so deep or so profound or so. Because if it's not, then people won't follow you. So again, you have to be able to have a brand that has this interesting sort of tone of voice. And I think that you ultimately, so much of it is really being driven for the fact that just like with a brand, you ultimately just want to create content that's going to let you stand out from the crowd. That's that's the essence of branding is to take a rational and irrational parts of your brain put it together into a place that's going to let your product stand out from another one. Social media is absolutely no different and, and this is why, you know, even for me as somebody who I understand all these trends, but I've done really funny things like I often tend to feel like Grumpy Cat is kind of my spirit animal. I think my wife has a bit more concerned because she's actually seen the Grumpy Cat and the real Darth Vader both follow me on Twitter, and I think she finds that concerning. I personally find it kind of awesome, but like when Grumpy Cat followed me, I thought that was great, retweeted it. Trust me whenever my name popped up in an apple key. Note, if you were anywhere within a 20 mile radius of one of my social media channels, you knew that that had happened. Partially because just very selfishly, it was a bucket list thought it was awesome. But on the other hand, there was a real Look at me. Look how cool I am. Look how I've arrived. Look how smart I am factor to my ego that drives that because that, for me, I think that sets me apart. Whether other people care about that is debatable. But for me, that's what drives it is this ego to stand out from everybody else? I mean, there's some part of me that thinks that this whole trend is why we keep making stupid people famous. I honestly believe that for a long time. This is why Britney Spears remained famous. Because she was a crazy person. She went out she shaved her head. She did all this really dumb stuff. Her entire product was a lie, because if you ever watch any of our shows, including the one that continues to run in Vegas, she lip syncs the whole thing like that the product is just fundamentally a lie. But the reality is, is that if you go to her show in Vegas, take a photo Weather check in that you're there, check it on Foursquare, tweet about it do anything like that it's going to get a reaction. And so this is why we keep making stupidity famous is because stupidity gets a reaction stupidity will set you apart from everybody else. And and I think that, you know, this is just a profoundly disturbing trend. But all of it I would describe as what I've always phrased as experiential currency. And what it is, is I think that this is really the economy that genuinely drives social media. And the currency really comes from the fact that, you know, people want to get that currency, from content from experiences that are created by their friends, by their brands, by themselves, by just by just anything that's going to make them look different. I think this was one of the things like whenever I worked on a brand like w hotels, we were very much aware of the fact that people really would want to be photographed, you know, and have themselves photograph in a lot. Have a W vastly disproportionately to any of our other brands. Because the reason why was because they felt like okay, well if I'm staying at a W, I'm gonna be you know, people are gonna think that I'm cool people are gonna think that you know, I'm a trendsetter because I'm here. Well, whether that was true or not, you know is going to be debatable for them individually, but they would do it because they felt like the brand Halo would influence them. This is why you've seen this trend in fashion where everything is now covered in logos so that whenever I walk down the street, you can understand what I stand for, you can understand that I have a certain level of money, you can see these logos. And just like any brand, dissect that back to a brand value. But this is what people want is they want this experiential currency. And so then what they'll do is if as a brand, as a company, as a person as an idea, you give them that currency, then what they're gonna do is they're gonna turn around, they're gonna spend that currency back into their networks. They're going to do it through tweets, through photos through check ins through blogs. This is why you see so many companies who have no idea How to be authentic. We'll race now to go out and buy and try to be part of influencers because they, these are people that do have authenticity, these are people that do have a point of view. So instead of the brand actually taking the time to come up with their own, what they're going to do is they're going to then try to piggyback on top of that, well, but this is also why this is a bit of a dying trend is because people are getting just much much smarter to understanding this. They're getting, you know, much better at really understanding what's real and what's not. And, and so I think that you know, you have to be able to understand this spend ability of these experiences that if you're going to do any social media strategy, that has to be the core because I have talked to tons and tons and tons and tons of social media agencies who come in with like this big colored wheel that usually looks like the NBC peacock exploded, covered with 8 million different logos that were I'm sure we'll put together put by their intern fueled by pizza and Dr. Pepper where they want to talk to me about All the wonderful opportunity that's out there? Well, the problem is that if you don't understand how to use these networks, if you don't understand how to create this experiential currency, you're just going to continue to flounder around, you're going to continue to just put messages out there that aren't going to connect. Because this is where so many companies just talk to themselves. They put out their marketing messaging, and they put all this stuff because they feel like it should matter. Well, the problem is they are talking to themselves, because instead of going out and thinking about, okay, how do I talk to a consumer? And how do I talk to them in a way that is going to empower them that is going to make them feel different, that is going to make them want to share something in social media, that that's going to be the biggest differentiation, because at the end of the day, and I am sure I will give this talk more than once through the course of this podcast. No technology is any better than a pencil, Twitter, just a pencil, Instagram, just a pencil because at the end of the day, it is just a tool to communicate. And if you Have nothing to write down, if you don't have an idea. If you don't have something that's going to connect with people, very much like writing a story with a pencil, it doesn't matter. It's a lot of noise. And it's just one of those things where you're just going to put a whole bunch of stuff out in the world that nobody is going to connect with. And so if we can't start in social media, getting back to a place of understanding authenticity, if we can't get back to a place of understanding why people engage with social media the way that they do, we're going to continue to see people pouring hundreds, if not 10s of millions of dollars into these social networks, and then flailing around trying to justify its value. I mean, that's one of the most fascinating things that I've watched over the past five to 10 years are conversations around things like what is the value of a like, because you saw tons and tons of companies go out and spend hundreds of millions of dollars to rack up millions of people in their Facebook communities. And then they were there. And what do you do with them? What What can we do with them and so what we did was we all ran around Trying to monetize the value of it. And I've heard everything that a single follower on Facebook is worth anything from two cents up to $169. It is a range that I find absolutely comical. But the reason why is because they can't figure out how to activate the community. They can't figure out how to make that that experiential currency really worked for them. So what it is they're doing is they're now trying to justify these communities that just sit there. And this is the problem because they don't have a message, but they have the people and what do you do with them. And like I said, in the beginning, they will come really quickly and they will go just as fast. And so this is where we have to make the stand. This is where we have to understand that we have to have something to say, and that this was probably the most cliched way you could end it. But then in so many ways content is king. And I say that knowing that I truly believe that like when the letterpress was invented. There was a friend of Gutenberg who stood up on a stage someplace talking about now that We have the printed word that content is now going to be king yet here we are all these hundreds of years later still having the same conversation and I think that this is the ultimately going to be the problem is that all the trends and all the insights in the world won't do you any good if you don't have something to say. And so with that, I think that's where we're gonna end the show for today. You can find out more about the podcast head over to podcast at Stephen Gates calm that's STP. htm any thoughts Any questions? You loved it you hate it or anything else in between? shoot me an email, send it over to ask at Stephen Gates calm. If you like the show, or have any comments about it. Also, feel free to head over to to the Google Play Music Store, head over to iTunes. leave a review for me I'd always love to be able to read those. As always, the guy's done legal need me to tell you that everything I talked about here all my views are mine and mine alone. They don't represent any of my current or former employees. And so until next time, thanks for listening and stay crazy.