Jess
Hello and welcome to the Theory of Marketing Relativity Podcast. I'm Jess Burton, a marketing specialist here at Epic Marketing Consultants Corporation. Let's talk all things marketing and merchandising with our epic team. Today, we have Epic's futurist-in-residence, Peter Shankman. So, Peter, how are you doing today?
Peter Shankman
Doing well how about yourself?
Jess
I am hanging in here we're supposed to get some serious thunderstorms so I'm just hoping that they hang off until we get off this call.
Peter Shankman
Last night I was in my bedroom around eight o'clock and I looked out my window on the 56th floor look out my window and I couldn't there was no view. I was covered in, all I heard was I heard was thunder and all I saw was lightng. It's crazy.
Jess
Oh my gosh, I know it's I can't even imagine like living up that high. But your Instagram always has like the best pictures of like, just take your scenic view of like the city. Being that high up. I'm always like, wow, I guess that's what it feels. like to be a bird.
It's the best way I know of avoiding people.
Right, exactly. That's like social distancing 101, live on the 56th floor. All right, so I have you here today because we are going to talk a little bit about small businesses. Actually, this morning. We just got news here in Delaware, that like one of our like, cornerstone restaurants, like this little diner is closing due to COVID. And mostly just because all of the requirements for all of the counties and the states and the mandates are just changing by it seems like the minute. Um, so with all of the changing updates and stuff, you kind of are are, you are futurist and residents. So thinking to the future, how can like small businesses, be ready for what could potentially come down the pipeline?
Peter Shankman
Well, I think one of the first things to understand is that no one knows what the fuck is gonna come down the pipeline. You know, is I mean, what's next? Right? I can only assume that what's what's August Godzilla? Or is Godzilla September?
Jess
Oh my gosh I don't know. Well, I think July was supposed to be aliens and they're not here yet. So.
Um, I mean, you know, at some point between November and December a comets gonna hit us and just take up the whole world so it doesn't really matter. Bqut you know, the one thing I think companies need understand, first of all, we need to stop calling it the new normal. It'll never nothing's ever gonna be normal to be what we understand to be until some other shit comes down and messes with us again, right? You know, I'm, I'm looking not towards six months from now. I'm looking towards 50 years from now 100 years from now, five years now. You know, how is the world different? Um, I think that if companies can do one thing, right now they can adapt. They can understand that You know, there are there are always ways to make money. And I am amazed by how many people I've spoken to, oh, well, you know, my, my company no one wants to buy what I'm selling during a pandemic. So I guess I'm going to have to go out of business. Okay, that's one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is that you can pivot. I know a company who was making t-shirts, and they made really funny cute t-shirts. When they saw this coming down the pike one of their one of their you know, they source all these shirts in China and things like that. And so one of the one of the guys was in China in like, I guess January and saw what was going on and came back and said, you know, we might want to look at expanding and starting a new line and making the same shirts we're putting on masks and they are selling like hotcakes. Right? So ask yourself you know, what did Wayne Gretzky say? He said, You, you, you you skate to where the puck is going to be right. Which is a brilliant piece of advice. So where are we going to be in a few months we're going to be in three months six months. I mean you know the concept of masks are going away. I wrote a piece when this whole thing started in early April about the winners and losers you know, whatever your company is doing, can you create an at home comp onent for it? You know, um I'm open and transparent with all the stocks that I own and when this thing started going down, um, I bought as much Peloton as I can afford. Right? I bought Peloton I bought shares in Amazon. And they both done very, very well. Can you create an at home component, whatever your business is, can you adapt? Imagine if you could write, you know, as Bank of America, I think is telling 30,000 employees that they're gonna start working from home. Imagine your balance sheet when all of a sudden you don't have to pay rent. That's huge. Right? I have a space with Regis right now. I guarantee you, I am not going to be keeping it. When my lease is up with them in June, I'm out of there. There's absolutely no reason to keep it.
I would 100% agree with that. I know my dad is an electrical contractor. And he said that there are plenty of buildings in Wilmington that used to be 20 years ago used to be full up like prime real estate, and that in the last 20 years, he's seen full companies just leave because not just because real estate was getting expensive there but because they've realized that well they don't have to come into do this job. They're sitting at a computer they can do it at home.
Peter Shankman
So the think about you know, I always love working from anywhere. I love working from planes love working hotel rooms that that. As we start getting back to being able to fly, I'm going to Mexico to the police. Cancun. I'm going to take a week off and head down Cancun very low, low numbers down there. And hotels like a 10% capacity and the flights are really cheap right now. But the I'm so excited to be able to get on an airplane start writing. Right. The it's a great story. And that's what I tell companies. This is what I tell companies. Once upon a time, there were five baboons in a cage in a zoo. And one day the zookeeper came in and he put tied a bunch of bananas to the ceiling and put a ladder under and didn't take long because before one of the baboons noticed the bananas, it's a ladder. climb the ladder and ladders. And as he sat down on the top half leading the bed, zookeeper came in with a fire hose, ice cold water and spray hose down the other four baboons on the ground who weren't doing anything. It was fine. Yeah, you know, getting slammed by color. The next day, the baboon was waiting the fattest and sure enough when people came in and put bananas up, and the first baboon, went up the ladder again. Saw the bananas as soon as he did the other four got sprayed again, with ice water. Third day, zookeeper put the bananas back up. As the first baboon went to go for the other four baboons jumped and beat the shit out. Right? Because they realized that him eating the bananas was causing them to get sprayed with ice cold water. All right. Fourth day, brand new bananas up there. Not one baboon goes for one, because they know if they do the other one get sprayed, they're gonna get crap beat out of them. Okay, fifth day, the zookeeper takes out one of the original baboons replaces it with another one. A new one who immediately goes for bananas and immediately gets the crap kicked out of him. He has no idea why. The next day, zookeeper replaces another one. Same thing happens. Over the next three days, zookeeper replaces all five of the original baboons. None of these new baboon have ever been sprayed with water. They don't know that's what happens. But they all know they're not allowed to go touch the banana. But none of them knows why. How do you relate that to business? Oh, well that's the way we've always done it. There comes a point where the way you've always done it isn't the way that works anymore. I have a more relatable story might be the daughter who's cooking with their mother and they make me love. They let me give me love and they, before they put it in the oven, they cut off a quarter inch on each side. And daughter says Mommy, why why don't we do that? So well? I don't know. That's that's how your grandmother taught me. That's how my mommy taught me. Let's call her ask her. Ma why don't why don't we cut off a quarter inch on either side. I don't know. You ask me great-grandmother. That's the that's how I learned it from her. They call great-grandma was in you know, nursing home. Yeah. What do you want? Great Grandma. Why don't we cut off a quarter inch on the meatloaf before we put it up. I don't know why the hell you did it I did it cuz my oven was too small.
Jess
That is very, very true.
Oh, it comes down to you know, being afraid to embrace change guarantees that you'll die. And so what? Here's the nice look if we're gonna I hate to say there's a nice thing about COVID-19 but it's it's that we've thrown out all the rule books and no one gives a shit if you try something new. If you try something new and fail well what was your other option failure anyway?
I'd rather go down fighting.
Absolutely. I think like one of the big points is I work with the high school that I graduated from. And with all of the talk about schools reopening and private schools or public schools verse blah, blah, blah, what is happening with kids in August, September. Um, someone said it in the meeting, they were like anything we've done up to this point cannot like it's useless throw it out the window, we need to start from scratch. Because this is unprecedented because 100 years ago, the world was different when like this, everyone is saying like, Oh, well, the Spanish Flu was 100 years ago, a lot has changed in 100 years. And I think like for us as a marketing company, it's definitely kind of been a nice thing to be able to tell our clients that like, hey, now's a great time to change stuff because everybody's like, what the heck is going on?
Peter Shankman
What I find is that, you know, I look I've always been a believer in trying new things and see what happens half my life is let's see what happens right? And that's served me both well and bad. I mean, I remember when I was young. Peter, why did you paint the cat, I wanted to see what would happen. Nothing good comes from painting the cat. You know, said my mother. But On the flip side, I wanted to see what happened if I could beat Newswire at their own game. And I built HARO. Right? So we are in the greatest time in the history of the world to see what happens. Right? And so I encourage every single company out there, to try something new and see what happens. What's the worst thing to happen if it doesn't work? And you go back to doing what you're doing? You know,I look at the credit unions out there and the banks out there. Everything's going on with Black Lives Matters right now and all the protests around the country. If they're not learning from that, and they're not learning that it's a good idea to implement, you know, create a Advisory Council and fill it with the types of people you serve. Right? It just seems like a no brainer yet. So so few companies are doing it. It always amuses me. It's not that hard. No.
Jess
Yeah, it's definitely something that I'm, we I've had this discussion with multiple people about. It's just seemed like the perfect storm like the Black Lives Matter movement. June is Pride Month and the whole nine yards and just kind of making everybody almost like forcing everybody to take a good deep look at themselves and to look at their company and to look at their brand like and really think about what do we stand for? And how can we fix the things that we need fixing? I know we've had a lot of conversations with some of our clients about being able to implement more diversity and within their companies, and how to be more transparent about that to all of the customer, the members of the customers that they serve, because I know not everybody understands that that transparency helps you build a brand.
Peter Shankman
It totally does. And And the thing about it is But when it does, you wind up being, you wind up being remembered, not simply recalled.
Jess
Yes, I think I don't know who said it. But um one of the takeaways that I always have from like college was that one of my professors always says people will always remember how they made you feel. I forget who said that.
Peter Shankman
It was um, it was I know where it came from Maya Angelou.
Jess
Yes. So he would say that to us at the end of every week, because we had, who scheduled a college class for three o'clock on a Friday is beyond. But like it was like one of the only like, 230 it was 230 to 315. So it was like, five It was like I don't even know. But he always on Fridays. He was always tell us and I think part of it because we're college students. It's the weekend he didn't know I was making super bad decisions. But he would basically say people always remember how you made them feel. So if you make them feel valued and wanted and important, they're going to remember that if you made them feel like they didn't matter or that their concern wasn't valid, they're going to remember that and coming I come from like a small business background. One of the small businesses These are for heat the owner was very much for on social media, we would call influencer marketing, but he was very much about word of mouth. He wanted everybody to always have something great to say. So his customer service was through the roof. He gave every client his personal cell phone number would text regularly with them, send them images of the things that they were looking for just super onpoint but there were hard I've never heard anyone say a bad thing about him. But it is one of those things where I think a lot of brands Now is the time for them to embrace that mentality.
But that's the best part about it is that I don't need you to be awesome. Customer Experience sucks so badly. I don't need to be even remotely close to awesome. He just sucks slightly less than everyone else.
Exactly. Yeah.
Peter Shankman
If you see my favorite joke two guys are in the woods running on a trail run. They see a bear. Oh my god, it's a bear. Bear notices that he starts to raise up. Oh my god we're gonna die. The second guy leans down and tightens up his running shoes. The first one says what the hell is wrong with you can't out run a bear. He says oh no. I just need to out run you. It's like I don't need you to be great. I remember I had Tony Robbins on my podcast. He's like, oh, and I'm walking across fire. Like it's freaking hard. I don't want walk across fire.
Jess
To be slightly better, you don't need release your tiger bullshit. Be a little bit better than everyone else. It's not that hard.
Absolutely. I think that that's like the one thing I think like is great about small businesses is that they have that like opportunity to kind of be to welcome you to like their family and their like business. I know one of my one of my personal favorite podcasts I like I'm obsessed with Jon Taffer and his show Bar Rescue I don't know why it just is. But like his like, his like thought process of like you like it's along the same line, like you just have to be better than you were and you just have to be better than what other people are doing. And it doesn't have to be by a lot. But you have to make it your own as well. Yeah, I think small businesses are definitely going to have a big chance with all of this new normal because like you said, it's not going back to the way it was. We're this is this is it. I swear that like 50 years from now when I have like grandchildren, they're gonna be like, why is grandma wiping down the groceries? Because she had to. She survived COVID Um, but I think that it's kind of an opportunity for
Peter Shankman
Because my mother has been doing that since before I remember. She brings the groceries in the house and and she's washing the damn boxes. You're putting them in the closet, what are you washing them for.
Jess
Well, I always I always hold Was it something my grandparents did like my grandparents always got like paper the paper bags at the grocery store. And I was like, and like my mumum would fold them and like put them there's actually like a shelf and like a drawer and I'm like, why? And like I think about it and like it's because you can use it for a million things. I'm like that's the way she was raised is that you save the paper bags and you use them for I don't even know I like I've never ever I use reusable bags so I have no idea but like you use them for whatever you use them for. I just thought it was one of those bizarre things like a generationally bizarre.
Peter Shankman
I think that You know, it's funny cuz i don't think that stuff should leave us that stuff is our history that stuff is our it's why caveman rattle walls. Right? But you things can you can remember history and update it. Right? My mom used to save plastic bags, everyone saved plastic bags, well, plastic kills the environment, Let's save paper bags.
Jess
So you don't have to forget history. And, you know, every time a new social platform comes out, I remember back in the.com, boom, I like 2010 or whatever when all that you know, 2007 when Twitter and things that go, you know, oh, let's use MySpace now. It's now it's Facebook. No, no, it's Twitter. You know, you see all these brands, like forget what they were just doing to focus on the greatest thing. No, don't, you know, you implement things in ways that work for you, but you don't stop something just because there's something better out there. You find a way to implement everything and implement What works for your clients? What works for your customers, but don't get distracted by the new shiny objects? Right? There are other things out there that you want to focus on. And if something's working for you do it. You know, I, I love tech, and I love technology and all that. But on the flip side, there are certain tools that I use that are way outdated, but they work for exactly anything to do. I remember up until like 2006 or seven I was using, I was telling getting into my ISP and using pine for email. You know, so there are a lot of things you can do without having to forget about you can implement the future without having to forget about the past.
Love that. Yeah, absolutely. I think another big thing is using like, what you have already, I think we've all kind of I know within epic, we've all kind of discovered that instead of trying to like Google something or look it up asking our co workers, because we don't work in a traditional office like all of us. If we have a meeting, we all telecommute. And we all work remotely. So I think learning how to use your co workers as like a brainstorming source, to come up with new ideas, and to come up with things that make it more that make more sense, or even just improving upon an idea that you've had, we've all kind of learned all we've slowly started to learn all of that here. Mostly because all of our clients are starting to change a little bit with COVID. So now we're all like, wait a minute, we're all in an uncharted territory. Let's like hop on this boat and go together. But
Peter Shankman
That's really the key is that you know, because this is so new, because none of us have ever dealt with this before. We all have the opportunity to create, whatever we want to create. And, you know, and I'm not I'm not of the belief that he only says like, Oh, it's locked down, I'm gonna learn French. I'm like no your fucking not. Just because just being in lockdown, and dealing with this bullshit is incredibly stressful. But the beauty of it is that we get to experiment. And we get to try new things we've never tried before and that is very exciting.
Jess
Now, has there been anything that you've seen a company or a brand or someone do that you've been like, Oh, that's actually a really good idea since COVID. Started.
Peter Shankman
I think it's brilliant. Right? Um, as soon as this happened, Morton steakhouse, started doing daily emails with takeaway menus that they had in our delivery menus and they never did that before. That was a great idea. You know, I want to say that airlines have gotten it right but they haven't. Um, unfortunately they never will. You know, it's great. They're making the planes safer, but that whole like we're gonna we're gonna keep the middle seat free. lasts about 11 seconds. Right? I flew three weeks ago and the plane was 100% full. Right and, and it's fine. I mean, that was, you know, but I've just gotten used to oh it's Monday morning, time to go for a run on the how COVID test, you know, and that's what I do. And and it's it's, um, that's our reality. I remember there was a bank in Texas. If you open a savings account, they give you a free gun. Because fucking Texas. But they got so many new accounts. I am waiting for the first company. If you buy X amount of whatever it is we sell. You'll get a coupon for a free COVID test. There's a part of me the thinks oh my god that's hideous how do we do that. There is another part of me that is probably the most brilliant thing I've ever come up with.
Um, why not? Why not. I love, you know. So here's the thought. I remember I was having this conversation with someone. I was on a plane probably about six, seven months ago, next to a guy who he had a Tesla sticker on his laptop. I said, Oh, yeah, you own Tesla. He goes, yes, man, I love that car. That's awesome. And we started talking and I said, he said he's married. I asked what does your wife do? She works in insurance. I'm like oh has she started thinking about how she's going to reach how she's going to retrain. He goes what do you mean? Is said so if self driving cars become the norm in 10 years, they're gonna make 98% fewer mistakes than humans. She's gonna be out of a job. So the color started to drain from his face. But thinking about things like that, and this is why I love what I do as a futurist. I like to look at these cool new things. I love tech. I love cool new tech, but I like to look at it and think about impacts no one ever thought of. So if I had 100 million dollars to investment now, I would be investing in 3d printing
Jess
for countless reasons, but one of them being this when someone needs a new liver, or kidney right now. There is a 90% or higher chance that the organ they're going to get as come from someone killed in a car wreck. What happens when there are no more car wrecks because of autonomous driving? How are people going to get donated organs
they're gonna have to 3D print it.
True true
If you're printing if you're if you're working in tech right now and you're working in medical tech and biotech. You should be putting all your money in figuring out how to 3d printed organs because that, if autonomous driving. If, if the thing that the Hyperloop if hyper loops come to fruition which they will over the next 10 years, man of cars never going to drop amount of accidents will drop matter people dying from oxygen drop. We're going to get those organs.
True.
Peter Shankman
It's questions like that. Okay, so if we can 3d print organs and people in our living 140 How do we feed them?How do we house them? Where do they go? We're busting at the seams here with 7 billion people on the planet. What happens when it's 12? You never see a movie set in the year 2100 or above where the streets are just lovely and people are walking around. No, it's always in total dystopian fucking nightmare. With the fifth element, they had it he had to drive the car down he goes well hide in the smog on the streets. They'll never find us. That's How we should be thinking, what can we do today? That's going to start paying off in the next five years. The problem is, American businesses tend to think about the next quarter, and they don't think past it. China, and even Japan they don't think about the next quarter they think about the next quarter century. A lot of that comes from the fact that if you're a public company fiduciary responsibilities to your clients, and if you don't make a profit every quarter, you're fired. Problem, though, it's the part you could trace that back to the stockholders, the shareholders want to make a profit every quarter Well, I like to pick on stocks and hold them. And I pick stocks in companies that I know are looking towards next 25 years. What can you do today that will start to pay dividends over time?
Jess
But set you up for a much better world?
Absolutely. So well, I'll leave you with one final question. Because I my undergrad degree is in psychology. So the way the human mind works is fascinating to me. And the way and when I meet people like you who have this like ability to just look at things and like a completely different like upside down backwards, flipped around way. How do you think that people who don't normally think like that like to see that autonomous cars are going to lead to a shortage of, you know, donated organs? How can people start to change the way they think so that they can see these things a little bit easier? It's a loaded question.
I don't necessarily think a lot of people are gonna change. Fortunately, they're dying. People don't change generations do. And it says it seems it takes a generation dying before new things to implement.
Peter Shankman
I hope that we're smart enough to take away what we can learn from the generation that's on its way out. But if we take away what we what the good things we can learn and dismiss the banal, then we can implement better ways using their knowledge, but do it better. I think that's what we have to look at. In short of a generation passing away, I find that you can change a lot of minds with money. If you can explain to a company or client that being nicer, doing things a little bit nicer, being a little bit better, will generate real revenue. You'll get their attention you know, as back when I was once wrote a blog post on all social media as experts need to go die in a fire, because I don't want a social media expert. I want a marketing expert who understand that social media is just one arrow in the quiver of marketing. Back in 2008 9 10 11 you had all these companies hiring these 20 something year old kids to run their social media department, and they can make Yeah, we got 300,000 likes, and they finally have the CEOs. Okay, how much that is how much revenue that translated to, I don't know, oh, that's a problem. So, focus on figuring out how to generate revenue from it that one? It was a company. And finally I said, listen your audience, your audience will tell you what they want. Your audience is dying to give you money. They just want a reason to. There used to be a company called timehop. Timehop. Remember, timehop, they tell you what you did in the past on all the different platforms. They used to send an email every single day. One day, they said, we're canceling the email, it's gonna be only in the app. That was the last day I use timehop. Sometimes companies make the what they believe are the greatest changes in the world and it just destroys the product. Listen to your audience, they'll tell you everything you need to know.
Jess
Awesome. Well, thank you for joining us today, Peter. Where can people find you on the interwebs the interwebs my entire
life is at Peter Shankman on all the socials.
I just revamped my YouTube channel
Peter Shankman
You'd find me there but uh yeah, I'm @PeterShankman on all the socials. I'm Peter@Shankman.com is my email. I encourage people to reach out you find me over at Epic. Faster Than Normal is the book and podcast. Shankminds is the is the mastermind. I'm everywhere man. I'm everywhere.
Jess
Well thank you for joining us today. Good time. Thank you all for tuning in this week. We hope this theory is relative to your marketing needs. Make sure you subscribe to get notified of our latest episodes.
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