How to Become Known (Without Being a Marketing Clone) – Mark Schaefer on Personal Brand, Speaking & Authority

John Ball (: 00:00

Well, listen, I am super excited today to have in my virtual studio an author who I have been enjoying reading for some time now. Let me officially welcome to present influence Mark Schaefer. Great to have you on the show, Mark.

Mark Schaefer (: 00:12

Well, thanks for having me, John.

John Ball (: 00:14

It's a real delight. was first introduced to your work through a friend of the show, John Esperian, who you may remember. John introduced me to your book, Known, and that's the first time I got to know a bit more about you. And since then, I've read several others of your books. I think the most recent one I read was Audacious, which was a great read as well. And so for our audience, for the audience of people who are aspiring or

Mark Schaefer (: 00:38

Thank you.

John Ball (: 00:44

currently professional speakers, your content is absolutely essential, I think, for people to be checking out. really awesome work.

Mark Schaefer (: 00:51

Well, thanks. It's very kind of you to say I put a lot of care and effort into my work. So those are those are great words for me to hear. Thank you.

John Ball (: 01:02

It's definitely appreciated, Mark. And let me ask you this. I one thing I think is sometimes fun to ask, and I think you may have an interesting answer for this, whether you have some, whether you have a particular point of view or industry, something that you say, particularly that might be a bit controversial or contrarian in the space that or that you don't hear other people saying at all, that is more specifically, this is my take on this.

Mark Schaefer (: 01:25

So frame that as a, I missed the question, frame that as a question.

John Ball (: 01:28

Yeah, I

didn't do a very good job. Very good job. Do you have do you have like an opinion on becoming more more know and getting yourself out there that perhaps is a little contrarian or different to what you hear other people in the industry industry saying?

Mark Schaefer (: 01:36

yeah.

Well, I mean, that's a deeper question than you might realize. So I have a view that the field of marketing in particular is sort of ill in a way. I grew up in the corporate world, and I grew up in a world where

The executives were engineers and they were accountants and they were finance people and they wanted to seek the truth and they wanted debate. They wanted people to challenge them. They weren't afraid of that. That was an expectation of working in an effective and productive company. Then when I entered the world of marketing, there's this, you know, there's this weird culture where it's guru led.

And so there are these ideas that might be stated by Gary Vaynerchuk or Seth Godin or whoever, and it becomes code. sometimes these ideas, I mean, a lot of times they're really good and really helpful, but sometimes they don't even really make sense. And one time, have a very good friend and she reposted some quote from Gary Vaynerchuk.

And it really made no sense. And I said, did you think about this? I mean, what does this really mean? And she admitted that she just posted it because she posted it, because it was something floating around. And I think that is just bizarre. And so I tend to see the world in a realistic view.

I'm not necessarily contrarian, but I would say bold. know, bold is telling the truth in even when it might hurt. I think I'm not afraid to be bold. I don't have a particular agenda. I mean, I don't have a big agency where I need to keep people working. So I'm selling something. I just want to help.

navigate the truth and that may come across as contrarian sometimes but I just think it's being real.

John Ball (: 04:04

Yeah. Yeah, is there maybe a bit of an irony then that lots of people are kind of like following the following the herd, so to speak, and maybe we really want to. Yeah.

Mark Schaefer (: 04:13

⁓ totally following the herd. It's

it. It's, it's, you know, that's the thing that's, that's the great irony is that great marketing is about nonconformity, not conformity, nonconformity. And yet, you know, when everybody says it has some idea that everybody just rushes like lemmings to copy that idea. And then everything's the same again. It's, it's, it's, yeah, it's, part of the illness of

of the field of marketing.

John Ball (: 04:45

I went maybe more of a cognitive bias in general, perhaps of when we get a bit of rightness or something good from one person or they're referred or recommended, we often credit them with having all the answers or knowing way more than they should or being way better than they are. And I think that's maybe common in so many parts of life that we don't question stuff enough.

Mark Schaefer (: 05:06

Yeah, yeah, I mean, I'm a naturally curious person. My career has sort of been led by curiosity. And when something doesn't make sense, I'll go down the rabbit hole and figure out why and try to explain it.

John Ball (: 05:21

Yeah. Other other things that you see maybe when people are getting a bit wrong about becoming known is like, are people just trying to get the the the herds to follow them or, just trying to do what they see the other called the people who are like the Gary Vaynerchuk and whoever else in the world, but they just want to copy what they see other people doing.

Mark Schaefer (: 05:41

I think copying is an issue. I think another big issue that people get wrong is that they think it's about them and about their fame. And to have an effective personal brand, it's about having the presence and the authority to get your job done. And that is about serving others.

So a personal brand is other centered, not you centered. So I'll see someone's website and they'll say, you know, I won this award and I grew up and this is how I learned to do this thing. Nobody cares. What people care about is what is the problem you solve for me and how do you uniquely solve it? That's what I want to know. And that's how you build a personal brand by just being

helpful and generous and nurturing and consistent and tenacious.

John Ball (: 06:41

Yeah, rather than just trying to show up everywhere or be covered on any platform, actually doing something useful. I wish the people who pitched my podcast to become guests could hear what you're saying as well, because that's what I see very often from them. My guest has this award, my guest does this and does that, I can talk about this. it's like, yeah, I don't really care. I, yeah.

Mark Schaefer (: 06:59

Yeah. Nobody cares.

Nobody cares. I'll tell you a little story. This is a great sort of iconic view of what a personal brand really is today. So I was invited to be the keynote speaker at this big conference. so the guy called me and I said, yeah, I'd be honored to do it.

So then we started just chatting about our lives. And I started talking about my previous career when I was working for a Fortune 100 company. I was the first global director of e-business and I got seven patents and I won all these awards. And he said to me, you know, I consider you a friend. I've known you for eight years. I didn't know about any of that.

I said, well, let me ask you something. Does it matter? The only reason you're asking me to be the speaker at this event is because I'm known right now. It doesn't matter what I did. It doesn't matter what I accomplished. It's how I show up now. He thought for a moment and he said, yeah, that's right. I said, let me ask you something else. If I didn't show up for a year,

If I stopped blogging, if I stopped posting, you probably wouldn't be inviting me to be the keynote speaker at your event." He said, that's probably right too. So this is the only equity we have that matters in the world today. Are you known or not? It's not about the awards. It's not about the acclaim. It's not about the stock options that you won last year.

It's about how you are showing up to help people now.

John Ball (: 08:47

Yeah.

which makes all the difference. It really drives home this message of a lot of people are trying to get their credibility, their ethos in the wrong way in the in the wrong situations of just trying to like, I've got this, I've got that, I've won this, I've won that. Definitely not the things that really help people or connect with an audience as well. Let me quickly ask you, I mean, as you do speaking in your career, how much of a part is stage speaking from stage as as part of your business? How much of a part does that play?

Mark Schaefer (: 09:19

Well, I never planned to be a speaker actually. You know, it started with the books I wrote. The books I wrote became popular and I started being invited to speak and people were inviting me to pay for to be a speaker. And I thought, well, okay, you know, that's interesting. Let's give that a try. And for me, the lines crossed in 2016.

where I started actually getting more revenue as a speaker than for consulting and other activities that I had in my business. know, today I'm trying to sort of get some of the time back in my life and I've shed some activities. I just sold my podcast actually. So that's one of the activities that I'm moving away from. I've really shed.

John Ball (: 10:00

well.

Mark Schaefer (: 10:05

a lot of my corporate consulting activities. so I'm focusing more on speaking. I like speaking because you can have a big impact in a short period of time. mean, I really, I'm good at it. I believe in it. know, people, when they hear me speak, you know, they'll remember something and they'll have something that they can take action on.

You know, I got to interview Tom Peters one time and he had retired. And then two years later, he had another book out. And I said, Tom, what's the deal? I thought you retired. He said, I'm desperate to get my ideas out. He said, I think that's what makes the best author and the best speaker when you're desperate to get your ideas out. And certainly that is

my case. That's why I write books. That's why I speak because I know I have ideas that can help people now. And I think that urgency and that passion comes through.

John Ball (: 11:11

Yeah, it's very fascinating to me, hopefully to our listeners as well, that that speaking is something that you actually leaning into more over your business as well. Which I think is fantastic. If you I don't know whether you have advice that you might be able to offer someone who is like maybe just getting started with this or perhaps getting trying to get some traction in the speaking industry, but should they be thinking about getting some books out there first? Or do you have any sort of insights as to where people may be?

It should be starting to become known if they're trying to get some traction as a speaker.

Mark Schaefer (: 11:42

Well, OK, so there's three questions there. So I'm going to break it apart and answer each one sort of separately. The biggest mistake people make when they try to be a speaker or they try to sell a book or they try to sell a course is nobody's heard of them before. So it is really important to work on your personal brand. It is absolutely essential. I shout it from the rooftops.

Biggest investment you can make in your speaking career, in your writing career, if you're selling a course, whatever you're doing is to work on your personal brand. And my advice would be, as you did, buy my book known. I spent two years researching and writing that book. And I'm a humble person, but I will say I nailed it. This is how people become known. It is a scalable, repeatable process.

And it works. So number two, should you write a book? I think a book helps a speaking career in two ways. Number one, it sort of gives you social proof. It's hard to write a book. Almost nobody writes a book. So if you write a book, that makes you elite. And when you're introduced on the stage, you'll be introduced as John Ball, the author of XYZ Book forever. Nobody will know.

how many it sold, nobody will know much about it other than that makes you elite. The other thing is if you self-publish the book, it can help increase your speaking fees. So I do this quite often, right? So I just spoke at Denver, in Denver a few weeks ago, and the organizer said, well, you we can't really pay your usual rate. I said, well, can you buy my books? They said, sure.

Why? Because that's a separate budget. The gifts for the attendees is a separate budget. So I give them a discount on the book and voila, I doubled my speaking fees. and the other reason to write a book is it really helps clarify your ideas. You know, every time I write a book, it produces a new idea that becomes a speech.

And so people can hire me a second time or a third time because I have something new. Now your third question is how do you get started? How do you jumpstart if you're just beginning? And I believe strongly is that you just can't wait for something to happen. You have to take the bull by the horns and you have to create your own opportunities. Look around your area. Is there a chamber of commerce? Is there a social group? Is there a charity that you can

volunteer time to show up and give a speech. And what happens is you go to the local chamber of commerce. Maybe they call them something different in the UK, but it's a group of business leaders in your community. You say, hey, I have this new idea about how AI should help small businesses today. I'd like to give it and teach local business leaders. great. We'd love to hear that. Then what happens after the speech, people line up. They give you the business card.

Can you speak here? Can you speak there? Right? And then the ball starts to roll. Even in my early days, I was doing my best work. I thought, think I was just as good as anybody out there and nobody would hire me. And I created my own event. I created my own conference and it actually worked. So you just have to be...

John Ball (: 15:11

Yeah.

Mark Schaefer (: 15:18

your own boss. mean, if nobody is choosing you, choose yourself and make it happen.

John Ball (: 15:24

Yeah. Do you think there's a possibility that some people are spending too much time trying to become completely original with how they do this rather than just doing tried and tested and should they should that something you should be looking at?

Mark Schaefer (: 15:37

don't know, that's an interesting idea. I think you do need.

something you need to wear a crown. I think, you know, I think and it might take a while to figure that out, but I teach a class in personal branding and and you know you have to figure out where you fit in your ecosystem so that when people think of you, they think of you know when they think of John Ball. he's the humorous leadership coach. OK, that's the crown you own.

You know, have a friend, he says, the crown he wears, says, I'm the most popular teacher on the internet. Is he? I don't know, but he's pretty good. You know, on my website, it says the most trusted voice in marketing. Am I? I don't know. That's what people tell me. So, okay, I'll try that crown out.

in and wear that. Certainly, I do hope that I'm a trusted voice. Like I said, I don't have another agenda, really. So I do think you need to figure out where you fit in the ecosystem.

John Ball (: 16:49

Yeah, that makes it makes a lot of sense. within that, when you got that is that is that maybe one of the main things to have figured out and sort of how to stand out? Or are there other things that we maybe should look to add to that to where where should we be directing that you've already mentioned about the networking after some business talks in different places? But what about

social media, particularly like the ways that we can leverage this stuff more effectively on social media.

Mark Schaefer (: 17:16

Well, the personal brand is fueled by content. That's how a company brand is fueled and that's how your brand is fueled. And so the real question isn't how do I show up on social media? The question is what kind of content do I need to create to fuel my brand? And it's not complicated. There's only four choices.

You have to write something like a blog. You have to create a video like something you'd put on a series on YouTube. You need to do audio like a podcast or maybe something that's visual that you'd put on Instagram or Pinterest. For most. You know, personal service providers for most business people, it would be writing audio or video and you pick one. Because you have to be great if you're going to stand out.

You can't be great in 15 places. You have to pick one and you pick the one that will bring you the most joy that you will have the most fun doing. Don't worry about the competition necessarily because you know there's room for everybody. There's only one you, but you know if you're going to create something that you're that's good, you're going to be bored with. That's going to show up and you're going to lose your audience. So you've got to create something that brings you joy.

And you have to do it consistently. You cannot give up. You do it every week. And that the two failure mechanisms for a personal brand, one, people never get started, two, they quit too soon. There's no hockey stick of success. You just keep on going, you know, week after week. Now, social media becomes

the distribution system for your content. So that's like the trucks taking your ideas to market. So once you have, let's say a blog post, you can put it on LinkedIn, you can put it on Twitter, you can put it on Facebook, you can put it on Medium, you can put it on Substack. So the key focus is how do you build your brand with a form of content.

John Ball (: 19:14

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. It makes a lot of sense to me and I'll just show you one of the things that I've been doing over the past year is I open my comedy nights and, and it's been a lot of fun, but I've been videoing most of that and sharing clips on social media. And those clips do do incredibly well for the most part, they'll probably get more views than just about anything else I ever post on social media. And that stuff is like, definitely helped me figure out more what my brand is, is like the the

public have helped me figure that out because that's what they're responding to more than other things that I put out there. And so it's definitely like, all right, that hasn't been part of my brand, but now it absolutely is.

Mark Schaefer (: 20:02

I love that. I love that.

I have a saying that we create content, but content also creates us for this very reason that if you start, someone's going to say, John, that was awesome. Then John thinks, uh-huh, I'll do a little bit more of that. And that's how your brand evolves.

John Ball (: 20:18

Right.

Yeah, yeah, I like to think as well that there's some element of social proof in there too, that people are seeing the audiences reacting and responding and that that maybe is, is helping things out there a bit too. But it's been an interesting experience for me this year that I will definitely continue with just for that. But I work with a lot of different clients. And I say one of the things it's been a challenge for me personally, but it's definitely a challenge for lots of people who I end up working with is when you're not there yet.

Mark Schaefer (: 20:42

I like that.

John Ball (: 21:00

wherever there is for you, whatever success means for you. If you're not there yet, there's often a lot of flinging the spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. You're trying to do everything and be everywhere. And that definitely seems counter to what you're saying of like, being more focused and picking that one thing. And yet it's so, so hard to do that. Is there really anything you can maybe say?

to add to what you said that maybe could help people who are really struggling with that simplification and focus in that might just help to get it to click for them.

Mark Schaefer (: 21:32

I find that indeed this is the hardest part that, like I said, I've taught classes for years. I've coached hundreds of people. And what I've found is that this is where they typically get stuck is what do I want to be known for? So they're in my book. There are lots and lots of exercises to help.

people get focused. And there are three exercises in the book that I have found help people the most. Exercise number one is finishing this sentence. Only I. Now, that might seem really intimidating, but I've never found a person that eventually isn't able to figure that out. And if you could figure that out, it's sort of

points to what makes you unique, how you help people in a singularly unique way. And then if you need help figuring that out, go talk to people, go talk to people who you work with, talk to people in your family. Say, what words would you use to describe me? Why do you come to me for the answer on these types of questions? What is it about me? That's number one. Number two would be what makes you come alive?

If you think about something that you did in your career in the last couple of years, and you think, wow, when that happened, that made me feel like this is why I'm here. That's really kind of an interesting revelation that maybe that's where you fit in the ecosystem. And then the third one might be, let's say you want to have a speaking career or you're working in your personal brand and you're becoming known.

John Ball (: 23:13

Yeah.

Mark Schaefer (: 23:22

and you're invited on a wonderful podcast like yours two years from now. What are you passionate about talking about? What's the message you want to get out? If you're on a stage and you're being introduced and your heart is pounding because you're so excited, you get to tell this message. What is that message? Now backward engineer and say, OK, what does that really mean?

That's what I want to be known for. How do I start creating content to support that?

John Ball (: 23:55

Yeah, yeah, I say I do wish I'd encountered your content long before I did because it has been very helpful ⁓ in figuring a lot of these things out.

Mark Schaefer (: 24:05

It can save people so

much time.

John Ball (: 24:09

Yes.

And that's what it's all about. We definitely want those shortcuts. As someone who is in the speaking industry, and even if you're not, people might be more know you for your books than anything else, and your marketing, are there any things that anything you see, anything you see as opportunities for people in the speaking industry coming up over the coming years?

Mark Schaefer (: 24:29

so I think there's lots of opportunity and let me, so this is, let's, let's talk about like turning lemons into lemonade. So, I have this annual, marketing retreat that I absolutely love. And last year we had a guest at this retreat. She's the senior vice president of Mark of senior vice president for Ipsos.

which is the biggest consumer product research company in the world. And in her presentation, she talked about how we are living in a period of multiple crises, not a period of crisis, but a period of multiple crises, and how this presses down on mental health and how this affects the attitudes of Gen Z and really affects everything. So that's the lemons. Now, how do we turn that into lemonade? Well, if you've...

put time into this process of being known. And you've clarified what you want to be known for. In my book, I call this your sustainable interest. the next step is to think about what are the mega trends going on in the world? And how am I now newly relevant

based on my personal brand. So if there's something going on in the world that's keeping people up at night,

How can I fit in that arena? How can I be relevant in this arena? And that is a key idea because you want to be interesting to a broad group of people. And what are people interested in? They're interested in the dynamics of the world today. So there's lots of things going on today. There are lots of pressing issues.

John Ball (: 26:22

Yeah, definitely.

Mark Schaefer (: 26:25

Lots of problems in the world today. And so you basically say, all right, this is what I'm good at. And this is why I'm relevant because I fit in this space today because of this. And that becomes your speech.

John Ball (: 26:34

Yeah.

Right? Yeah, gosh, that's hitting hitting home for me, Mark, I have to tell you, a, you you can go back to the comedy stuff. One of the reasons one of the reasons that I started doing stand up was precisely because there's so much pain and misery around and people seem to be a lot more depressed and sad and I just want to help make lighten the load for people and make people laugh a bit. And I was like, well, I can see how that could actually be something that I work in even more into.

Mark Schaefer (: 26:55

yeah, for sure.

John Ball (: 27:08

into my speaking positioning as well than I already have. that's incredibly, incredibly valuable. It leads me to something that you, I don't know if you will agree or disagree on this, because it kind of seems like you might, but let me ask a question. One of the things I'll often say to people in the speaking world who I work with, I've been coaching speakers for a long time, but is that there's a big difference between having a nice to have solution and a need to have solution.

Mark Schaefer (: 27:12

Yeah, that's amazing.

John Ball (: 27:36

Do you think that we should really just focus on the need to have? So do you think there is space in the world and the market for the nice the house as well? Or does it depend on really what your goals are?

Mark Schaefer (: 27:49

Huh.

I can only speak for myself. I've never been asked that question before. It's quite interesting. If speaking for myself, my process when I write a book, which becomes a speech, is thinking about being aware of a problem that people are struggling with when I hear it over and over again. So I'll give you an example. You mentioned

At the top of the show, you had read my latest book Audacious. The subtitle of the book is How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World. That is on everybody's mind. How do I fit in? What's going to happen? And so, you know, I wrote this book. I think it's a need to have.

I think it's, and the speech certainly I think gives people ideas that inspire and give people hope. want to make sure, you know, I don't sugarcoat anything. I mean, like I said, I'm a realist. I'm not going to give people false hope, but I've really spent a lot of time exploring this idea of where are human beings going to continue to thrive and survive in this AI world? That is a need to have.

So, you but I think like in your case, comedy, humor might be a nice to have. So I do think there's a place for that too. Why not? I mean, why not have just a little fun? So I think, I think both can work.

John Ball (: 29:20

Yeah, yeah, I've always kind of thought there's there's, when it comes to people's budgets, and that's ever an issue, a need to have speaker is an easy decision, but a nice to have speaker is a bit more a bit more complicated, that it's easier to say no to. And that's probably one of the main reasons why I always encourage people to, to look at those needs to have but certainly there's, there is space, space for both but sometimes different results.

Mark Schaefer (: 29:44

Well, I think that makes

the decision a lot easier, doesn't it? If you say, hey, this person is an expert in this, we need to have that. Certainly makes the decision easier.

John Ball (: 29:47

Yeah.

Yeah, undoubtedly. You mentioned AI. mean, I wonder whether what you see is the bigger opportunities for speakers and people looking to become known with AI and what maybe might already be seeing some of the potential pitfalls.

Mark Schaefer (: 30:11

So I actually wrote, I did something really crazy. I actually wrote another book. You might not even be aware of it. It's how I spent my summer vacation. I wrote this book called How AI Changes Your Customers.

So this is based on research from futurists about how AI is literally rewiring us. at the end of the book, you know, there's a lot of things in this book that will freak people out. But at the end of the book, I talk about this very question and I challenge people about like, how can we shed the fear about AI?

and think about how AI can make us bolder, more creative, more effective, more impactful. Now, I don't have a ready answer for speaking. I'm exploring this just like you are, John, but it might be recording your speech, running it through AI, saying, how can I be better?

How can I be more direct? What am I missing? How can I add humor in an effective way? So it's not really changing you, but it might be giving you a little edge that can help you be bigger, bolder, more impactful. I mean, thankfully, I think the emotional connection we have to a speaker is I don't really see that as being threatened by...

AI right now, although I did attend South by Southwest last year and they actually had AI as a panelist on a panel. It's quite, quite interesting. So I think there's a way that AI can certainly help us, help us be more of who we are at our best. But I think that emotional connection we have to a human being will sort of

John Ball (: 31:47

Yeah, same.

I will.

Mark Schaefer (: 32:11

You know, I hope we'll protect us in this field.

John Ball (: 32:14

Yeah, hopefully we're not about to become best buddies with Alexa or anything like that anytime soon. But yeah, I do agree with you. think the human elements, I don't think they're replaceable anytime soon. But I also don't think people really want those things replaced so much. We still want to have the interactions and the human to human connection. But who knows what's coming in the future.

For you personally, when did you first feel known? What was going on for you at the time? Do people know who I am? I'm actually at a level of being known right now.

Mark Schaefer (: 32:47

forget the moment.

Um, so it was, I already mentioned that I was really frustrated. I went to this, uh, big marketing event and this is an event I could have been a speaker at and no one was hiring me. I sat at the bar and the organizer of the event was there. I said, what would it take for me to be invited to be a speaker at your event? And he said, ah,

We already have our guys and literally he meant guys. I mean, it was back then in the early days, social media marketing, there were the same seven guys at every single event. So that was sort of my F you moment. So I decided I'm going to have my own event and half the speakers are going to be women. And I'm going to have people of diversity there. People of color there, people of different heritages.

and I'm going to coach them, am I going to help them? And so I got a couple of my friends together who also wanted to be speakers. I said, let's have our own event. Maybe we'll only have 25 people there, but at least we'll have a picture. We'll have video. We can have something we could put on our website to say, hey, I'm a speaker too. So I created this event. I made it really low cost because I didn't want it to be elitist. And so

Hundreds of people signed up. Hundreds, 200, 300, 400. It's like, oh my gosh, we need the convention center. We cut it off at 400 because we had no idea what is going on here. And then people were angry because they couldn't come. So we raised it to 450. So here we are. So I got these volunteers to help.

We have this event. We're in this convention center. So I'm standing there at the registration desk and all these people are streaming in. And this guy, there's hundreds of people. I don't know who they are. And this guy said, I said he was registering and I said, where are from? He said from Pittsburgh. I said, what brings you to Knoxville? He looked at me said,

You.

It was like, what? He said, yeah. He said, you know, I've been following your blog for years and I love your books. And when I saw that I had this opportunity to, to meet you and see you speak, of course, you know, so I flew from Pittsburgh to be here for you. I was like, my gosh. And, and it was like this overwhelming response, this overwhelming validation that every, all this work I'd put into my personal brand paid off. And.

And I had that event three years in a row. By the third year, I had like 750 people from 28 states and 13 countries. And it was crazy.

John Ball (: 35:49

An amazing moment, though. Thank you for sharing that with us. I don't want to take up your whole day here, Mark, but this has been such an amazing conversation and I'm so glad we were able to make it make this happen today. let me ask you this, is there anything for you that would cause you or maybe has caused you to ignore a speaker immediately?

Mark Schaefer (: 36:08

Obviously you got a good response out of me. I mean, I'd be the worst speaker I've ever seen was an opening keynote speaker at 10 AM and he was drunk. So I would avoid that. That's a, that's person. There was another speaker I saw one time, who, who used this case study and he was absolutely drilling this, this one company and how terrible their website was. And he said,

John Ball (: 36:20

Yeah.

Mark Schaefer (: 36:31

people who created this website, they're just a bunch of babies. This website is so terrible. And beside him on two 30 foot LED screens were the sponsor of the event, which was this website that he was tearing apart. That is a speaker that would never be invited back.

John Ball (: 36:50

Yeah, speak, speak of horror stories. We've got a lot of Mark. That's amazing. Let me me I mean, your books are definitely highly recommendable known as amazing one that I refer to quite often. Certainly love to audacious as well. think there was another one of your books. I definitely remember reading but I'm going to be checking out the the book about how AI is changing customers. That sounds fascinating. I wonder if there is there anywhere that

Mark Schaefer (: 36:52

Yeah.

John Ball (: 37:14

So people who want to know more about you or maybe connect with you or find out more your content, is there anywhere where you would recommend for our listener to go and find out more about you or connect with you?

Mark Schaefer (: 37:24

It's super easy. You could find everything about me at businesses grow. You don't even have to remember my name. If you can remember businesses grow, you can see my blog. give away all my best ideas for free every single week. So subscribe to my blog. and then my books are there. and, there's actually a little thing on, if you don't know where to start, there's actually a little app on my site that'll help you pick out the right book for you.

based on where you are in your career. And then you could also find my social media connections there too. So I generally follow people back on LinkedIn and I'd love to hear from you and love to hear from your audience, John, and how they liked my show, how they agreed with me or disagreed with me.

John Ball (: 38:09

Yeah, awesome.

Yeah,

definitely. We love the feedback. I hope that people I hope that listener will. I will just quickly share that I was quickly reviewing Audacious this morning because I had the audiobook originally of that and I was like, oh, I saw it on my Kindle Unlimited and I like, all right, let's have a quick skip through whilst I prepare stuff. And one of the things I noticed there that I didn't think I saw in the audiobook was about that the rest is gamification in the book.

different words bolded in each of the chapters that you go and click the words and they go, all right, I'm going to have to go through this now. I need to play that game and go and get the little bonus that you put in there.

Mark Schaefer (: 38:47

has to, if you call

a book audacious, it better be audacious, right? And the cover of the QR code on it, the changes, right? You wouldn't see that with the audio book, but the cover of the book, if you hover over it, it has an infinity cover. The cover keeps changing based on the stories in the book.

John Ball (: 38:51

Yeah.

something else I didn't know. So lots of things that make it super interesting. Mark, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on the show. And this has been such an interesting, insightful, fun chat. I hope we'll be able to maybe connect again in the future and have you back on.

Mark Schaefer (: 39:20

It's been an honour. Thanks for asking me such thought-provoking questions, John.