Learn Erik Qualman’s 5 habits to success & happiness in a WiFi world
Leaders in the Exponential Age are made—not born. We are also living in the golden age of data and disruption, and the key to winning in this golden age is grasping the 5 Habits that all successful leaders practice to achieve success and happiness. Erik Qualman says embracing these habits will help you become more productive, reduce stress and drive success.
Called a Digital Dale Carnegie and the Tony Robbins of Tech, Erik Qualman is the author of Socialnomics. Socialnomics made Amazon’s #1 Best Selling List for the US, Japan, UK, Canada, Portugal, Italy, China, Korea and Germany. His book Digital Leader helped him be voted the 2nd “Most Likeable Author in the World” behind Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling. What Happens in Vegas Stays on YouTube is being adopted by the top universities and global brands and is nominated for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize.
Hello. How are we doing? Alright, I actually live in Austin, Texas, which is where Tito’s is from, and handmade vodka, now that’s some branding right there. I went fishing with my dad and we had to drive up, so you get up to the top of Canada from Michigan and then you have to drive 12 more hours to take a float plane in, another couple hours, and at night this tiny little place, there’s only eight of us there, they have Bacardi, they have Jack Daniels, and they have Tito’s.
And I ask her, wow, I can’t believe you guys have Tito’s, she’s like, it’s handmade. So we’ll be giving this away because the option was I either chug this before I get on my flight, which is good for me, bad for the plane, or hand it out, so we’ll figure out a way to hand it out while we’re here.
You guys know a little bit about me. Speaking of flying. How many of you when you fly do you like to talk to the person next to you? Wow, I was told it was a friendly crowd, but okay, apparently not. I kind of fall in the middle, it depends what kind of mood I’m in. But I started to talk to this guy, and I don’t like to ask what you d within the first 30 minutes of the conversation, so about 30 minutes in I go well, what do you do for a living? He goes I’m a musician.
And the poor guy had no idea, I had three cups of coffee, I go, you’re a musician! Oh man, if you use social, mobile, all this stuff out there, this is how you get your name out there, this is what Taylor Swift does, this is what Lady Gaga does with the little monsters, the Biebs, this is how you get out there and sell music. And fortunately for him, this nice lady comes up and she asks me, she asks for an autograph.
And I am pumped, right, ’cause no one ever recognizes an author on a plane. But I’ve been carrying around a Sharpie for three years just in case someone recognized me, so I was prepared for that moment, so I’m getting my Sharpie out. But, she doesn’t want my autograph. She wants his autograph. She wants five-time Grammy Award winning James Taylor’s autograph. ♫ Oh, I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain
– And I’m sitting there going oh my gosh, three more hours til I get to LA. Was I just saying James, if only you use social and mobile, maybe you’d have some success out there.
(audience laughing)
But we’re going to have fun out here today. I’m going to cover off, I spent four years of research just trying to figure out no matter what you do in here, right? And so I think one of the reasons that I’m on the stage is because I’ve been on the brand side, building Fortune 500 brands. I’ve been on the content side as well, developing content.
And so whatever side of the fence you’re on or whatever you want to do in life, we want to distill it down to all these leadership books were written before the digital age. And so we want to see what’s the difference in today’s world in order to lead, lead yourself, lead your business, lead others within the company. Whatever it might be. So that’s the main emphasis of what we’re going to cover here today.
It all boils down to really digital leadership, and when we look at that, I want to go into real quick just where do we stand when it comes to social and mobile. So what I have is I had my animation studio put this together real quick just to see where exactly we stand when it comes to social and mobile in 2017.
(no audio)
Oh, thank you.
(audience applauding)
So we produced that first video in 2009 when the book Socialnomics came out, and this is just an example of the door comes knocking, you got to be ready to open that door, and sometimes you don’t hear those first couple knocks.
So, a couple companies called me, the first company calls and said hey, can you do a video like that for us? And I go no, I just do those for myself. Then the second company called and said hey, can you make a video like that Socialnomics video? I go no, I just do those for myself. And then I finally wised up and the third company called and said hey, can you make a video, I go yeah, we got a whole studio, we’re ready to rock it out.
So since then by saying that, then we have produced an entire studio, and so we’ve done stuff for Chase and Raytheon and Verisign, and then the best call of my life was when Disney called, and Disney said hey, can you make a video like that? And I go what, are the Pixar guys busy? You know, what’s going on? So we’ve done stuff for Disney. So it’s just been a nice ride, but for all of us in the room, don’t be like me. Like when you hear that first knock, open the door. Don’t wait for the third knock. Sometimes that third knock doesn’t come. And so always be out there listening for it.
The other thing that’s interesting to me is that some people think this trend’s occurring and it really isn’t, so how many of you prefer to actually read books on paper? Yeah, that’s about right, it’s about 90%. That’s true for colleges and university. I’m blessed to visit all these colleges, universities, 200 of them in the world use my book so I’m able to Skype in with them and ask them questions, but 90% of students still read on paper.
That being said, just down the street at MIT, they want to figure out how can I utilize this device to actually read faster. When you read on paper, it’s actually 25% faster than reading on this device, so they want to rethink the game and figure out how can we make it so you could actually read faster through your phone. That’s the quietest that I’ve heard it in this room in the last two days.
(audience laughing)
You can take a breath. There’s a lot of type A personalities in here. I’m going to do it! Once we’re at 500, let’s get to 750. But that’s actually just rethinking the game. That’s like being innovative, trying to figure out how you can actually read faster on a smaller device. Now, a lot of you make a lot of money based on what I’m going to talk about here right now.
All of us have a digital stamp. And that’s comprised of two things, it’s comprised of your digital footprint. Most of us have heard about that, CNN, Bloomberg, Huffington Post, they talk about that ad nauseum. Your digital footprint is anything that you upload about yourself, so somewhat have control over that.
The more important piece is the digital shadow, that’s what others post about you online. And it’s interesting enough is that 92% of children under the age of two already have a digital stamp. 25% of the kids that have never been born already have a stamp ’cause parents are posting names, they’re posting sonograms out there.
So a lot of you make money by making sure that your stamp is as great as it can be, or I say produce your best, and then protect it. We’re not going to talk about that today but that’s my book, What Happens In Vegas Stays on YouTube. It’s really about produce your best, and then go out and protect that brand that you built out there.
We look at socialnomics, all that word means is word of mouth is now on digital steroids, or word of mouth is now world of mouth. And the thing is it’s not going to slow down any time soon. This is being live-streamed right now. You think about this wearable technology that Google has coming out with their contact lenses so that everything on your smart phone, you can actually see what’s happening. Which is great when it comes to Google Maps, because a lot of people get hit crossing the street when they’re looking at the map when they’re walking.
So this is actually genius idea to have it with your head up, so you can actually see looking forward. But a lot of it is, are you willing to take that step and take the risk to take advantage of the new technology once it’s available. And in this video, Pepsi was willing to take the risk. They took Jeff Gordon, who’s one of the best NASCAR drivers of all time, and they put these glasses on him that could film everything, and they had him disguised to go into a car dealership and to film it like he was actually buying a used car.
– [Jeff] Glasses cam that show you everything that I see.
– How you doing?
– Hello, I’m Mike.
– Steve, nice to meet you, Mike.
(engine starts)
– Oh, wow.
– Nice and easy. Just head on out whenever you’re ready.
– [Jeff] Are you ready to go ahead and drive? Okay. Whoa.
– [Steve] That’s all right.
– [Jeff] Little more than I’m used to.
(engine revving)
– It’s got some power, so just get a feel for it. Okay. Okay, alright, ease off just a little. Ease up. You are liable for any damages to the vehicle, so please stop the car, or at least slow down. Slow down, slow down, you can’t go through that gate!
Mike, stop, stop!
(indistinct)
Stop, stop, stop, stop! Oh, (bleep). Watch it, watch out!
(horn blaring)
You’re going to wreck this car, and you’re liable for it if you wreck it.
– [Jeff] Woo!
– Michael, stop the car! Stop the (bleep) car right now!
(indistinct)
Oh, my God.
(yelling)
Oh my, oh my God. Just take us back, just take us back.
(indistinct)
– [Jeff] You all right over there, Steve?
– Oh, you’re an idiot, I’m going to kill you. Stop, stop, stop! Oh God Almighty.
(bleep)
(yelling)
Oh, God damn.
– [Jeff] Whoo!
– What the (bleep) you (bleep). Who the (bleep) do you think you are?
– [Jeff] What do you mean?
– [Steve] I’m calling the cops.
– No, no, you don’t understand, it’s not what you think.
– I’m calling the cops.
– No, it’s just a prank, we were just having fun. Look, this is a camera, here’s a camera, there’s cameras. Look, it was all just fun, look. I’m Jeff Gordon.
(audience applauding)
– Man, they did a good job with that. What they have is really good lawyers. No, there is a lot of risk. Are you willing to take that risk? It’s not easy reward, it’s risk reward, and so they’ve taken a calculated risk, not just taking risks for risk’s sake, but take a calculated risk, and then go for it, and take advantage of some of these new technologies that come out there.
When we talk about this stuff, people ask me like why do you get so pumped about social and mobile, and I go because they’re all about relationships. I’ve got a tech background, but it’s really all about the relationships that we build, that’s what gets me excited about these tools. I know that’s what gets you excited about these tools. But sometimes we’re in the day to day, we’re this, this is just about relationships. And when it comes to sales, when you think about sales, how many of you guys are in sales? Yeah, everyone’s hands should be up right now. Everyone is in sales, no matter what you do.
If you’re a mom or a dad that’s trying to convince your kid to eat their peas, you’re selling to that kid. And guess who’s really good at sales? Your four-year-old, right? My four-year-old’s hey Dad, can I have some ice cream? No, no, no, no, guess what? 20 minutes later the kid’s licking an ice cream cone.
(audience laughing)
And so we’re all in sales, but when you think about sales more as service, then you’ll never get nervous. As long as you’re serving the other person, developing those relationships, it’s not sales, it might come where we call sales water, we need more water to kind of put into the soil. It’s not about putting more money in our pockets, it’s about using that water slash money to actually grow and then empower people and push it back out, whatever we want to do in terms of helping the planet and helping people.
So it’s really about relationships that are out there. Some people I talk to, they go not far enough when it comes to digital. Others go way too far, and they’re in their phone, they’re not talking to people. So I deal with both people all the time. Companies as well. It’s really about behaving like the Jetsons and the Flintstones in the Jetsons era. It’s behaving like both.
Speaking of which, so there is a story behind these crazy green glasses that I have on. So my team said hey, for all the social media accounts, in order for you to pop in these tiny accounts, you’ve got the first initial, last name, Equalman, why don’t you act like a superhero and put on some Clark Kent-like glasses that are green, and web-friendly colors are basically, you’ve got orange, you got blue, and you got green, so we went green. So we take the shots, things go well, it stands out a little more.
I go to Kenya to give a speech. The night before, I’m going to a rescue shelter for animals. When you’re in Kenya, you adopt a cheetah or a lion. So I’m adopting a baby cheetah. On the way there, they go hey, there’s going to be a lot of cameras there, ’cause Usain Bolt’s adopting from the same litter. Where are your green glasses? I go, I don’t wear those things, those things are stupid. Why would I, I don’t wear those every day. I just took them for a photo shoot.
They go no, everyone’s expecting you to have the green glasses on. I’m like, oh my gosh. So then it gets down to that grind and hustle to try to find a pair of green glasses in Kenya. But since then, we’ve kind of, I’ve stepped into that discomfort, right? It’s funny, it helps the brand. So you got to figure out where your niche is, and sometimes it’s like stepping into that discomfort, and then try to own that. ‘Cause even this morning after I was working out, I didn’t have them on and someone ran into me and goes, I ran into him, I recognized them, I said hey, what’s going on, they go, oh, I didn’t recognize you without the green glasses on. I’m like, you didn’t recognize the 6-6 guy without the green glasses. I am defriending you. No, it worked out well.
So it’s all about kind of stepping into that discomfort. The other thing we want to talk about is that Jetsons-Flintstones. It’s the combination of the offline and the online. It’s merging those together.
So if you don’t mind standing up, just for a second. So, because my name sounds like a superhero, we’ve actually done a lot of research around superheroes, and this lady Amy Cuddy out of Harvard did some research that showed that if you stand like a superhero, so if everyone could go ahead and do that, like deep breath, shoulders back, hands on the side, Wonder Woman, Superman, whatever you want to be. Batman, don’t come up to me, I’ve had a half-hour conversation with a dude that came up to me about Batman’s not a superhero, I don’t, don’t be that guy, don’t come up to me and talk to me about that.
So, Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman. But if you stand like this for just two minutes, it’ll actually increase the positive hormones in your body by 20%, give you 20% more energy. Motion creates emotion, emotion creates energy. With so many of us, we get cranking, cranking, cranking, cranking, cranking, cranking, cranking, cranking, cranking.
If you stand up, you’re going to produce more. If you take a break every 20 minutes and stand up like a superhero, it’s going to make you more productive. It also decreases the cortisol in your body by 20%. So just by doing this for two minutes, I’ll get some music here so it’s a little more exciting but, if you stand up like this, (Superman theme music) if you stand like this, you’re going to get more energy, you’re going to produce more, and that’s about working smarter, right? It’s table stakes.
Everyone up here has talked about, you got to hustle, you got to keep at it, you got to bust your ass. That’s so true, but you know that. It’s now about working smarter as well, and so every 20 minutes kind of do a superhero pose, and then rock it out. So thank you so much, I appreciate that.
(audience cheering and applauding)
I’m going to give you this, ’cause that was the best pose right here, so when you have time you can come up. ‘Cause I know what you do is hard, so every day if you can get an advantage like that, then take advantage of it. I recommend not doing that in the elevator. I’ve done that a couple of times, doesn’t go too well.
Let’s get in the meat of what we’re talking about here today, the five habits. We could figured out there was 20, three, but we figured out there’s five that leaders practice in this digital age. You’ve already got enough on your plate, so I’m not saying you go out and practice all five of these. I implore you not to practice all five of these. Practice two of these. Figure out which ones, if you’re self-aware enough to figure out what are the two you’re strongest in right now, go deep on that, double down on your strengths.
If you don’t have self-awareness, ask some of your friends around you which of the two you’re probably best at, and go deep on those pieces. So the first one we’re going to start with: simplification. It’s not about adding stuff, it’s actually about taking it away, we’re already busy enough. So it’s really about developing that not for now list. So all of us have to have that not for now. It’s not the no list. Some companies I go into, they go, we got the no list, I go, that’s really deflating for your employees. It’s what are you going to not do for now. That’s the hardest thing, especially when it comes to personal branding. What are you not going to be? What are you not going to be?
So write down that list. That list should be 10 times longer than your now list or your to do list. 10 times longer, so write that out. Now how many of us, ’cause we wanna get ahead of the competition have had to be pretty good at multitasking, who here’s pretty good at multitasking? I got my hand up. I should have known this, but it turns out the research once we dug into it, we can’t multitask. As human beings, we’re not computers. Our brain doesn’t parallel process items. We’re actually switching tasks.
So here we are trying to beat Father Time, even though Father Time’s undefeated. Ironically, we’re getting So the easiest way to simplify your life is to actually stop multitasking and to focus on one thing at a time. In the moment that we’re quote unquote multitasking, our IQ drops 15 points, which as my dad would say, son, you went to a state school. That’s a high percentage of your IQ if it’s dropping 15 points. That’s the equivalent of not sleeping for 36 hours. So the easiest way to simplify is to not multitask. What does simple look like when it comes to business, ideas, videos. This is what simple looks like.
– Hi, I’m Mike, founder of DollarShaveClub.com. What is DollarShaveClub.com? Well, for a dollar a month, we send high quality razors right to your door. Yeah, a dollar. Are the blades any good? No. Our blades are (bleep) great. Each razor has stainless steel blades, an aloe vera lubricating strip, and a pivot head. It’s so gentle a toddler could use it.
And do you like spending $20 a month on brand name razors? 19 go to Roger Federer. I’m good at tennis. And do you think your razor needs a vibrating handle, a flashlight, a backscratcher, and 10 blades? Your handsome-ass grandfather had one blade, and polio. Looking good, Pop-Pop. Stop paying for shave tech you don’t need, and stop forgetting to buy your blades every month. Alejandro and I are going to ship them right to you. We’re not just selling razors, we’re also making new jobs. Alejandro, what were you doing last month?
– Not working.
– And what are you doing now?
– Working.
– I’m no Vanderbilt, but this train makes hay.
(train whistle blowing)
So stop forgetting to buy your blades every month and start deciding where you’re going to stack all those dollar bills I’m saving you. We are DollarShaveClub.com, and the party is on.
(pop music)
– Now when we talk, it’s a simple idea, most of us when we saw that we go aw man, why didn’t I think about that? So that’s what simple looks like. Simple is simple, but simple’s not easy. So when they launched this, they launched the entire company with that video on YouTube.
The number one comment they got was this is a funny video, you should think about doing a product like this. They go no, this is our company, we have a product, please buy from us. And 45% of their orders were coming in via mobile and they couldn’t handle it, they couldn’t handle, they were losing 45% of their orders, but they adjusted and then they reconfigured and then went after it.
So it’s like Damon talked about, it’s about this, you know, those failures, up, down, up, down. Alright, T’s for True. All of us, all digital leaders understand who they are or where they’re going, so they understand what they’re trying to do or what their company’s trying to do. They understand who they’re trying to become.
Now there’s a simple exercise, and I’m going to ask you a question in a second here, and I’ll start you on the journey of this true piece. And if you need to, feel free to bring up my email address, and you can send this to me when I ask you this question. The question is, if someone were to Google your name right now, what do you want it to say? In one word, what do you want that to say? Today, they just Googled your name, what’s the one word you want to pop up?
The reason I’m asking you to email me is so I can put you in my database, no, I’m just kidding. The reason I’m asking you to email me is ’cause then you’re held accountable. So don’t send it to me, send it to your mom, send it to your best friend, whatever it is. Send it to someone so you’re held accountable for that, and over time you’re going to develop that digital stamp. Some of you already have one, but it’s really trying to hone that down. And you need to have that right in front of you in order to achieve it.
So start with that one word. If that one word was Cheetos, you’ve got a problem, but hopefully for most of you it was a relevant word that popped up, and you kind of take that and then move forward from there.
So I’ll give you an example. So my word’s empower, my word’s empower. Now what I want you to do is for the next three weeks, really sit down and figure out how do you lengthen that one word into one to two sentences. So for mine, it’s all about, I want to entertain, educate, and empower people to achieve their best life, leadership, and legacy. Every morning I wake up, I know that that’s what I’m trying to accomplish. So you need to have that digital stamp right in front of you in order to go out there and get after it.
Okay, A is for action. Probably the number one term that’s been brought up in terms of grinding, hustle. Nothing happens without action and attitude. And so when we look at this, it’s very simple to fall into what’s called the throughput trap. So throughput is we’re texting, we’re tweeting, we’re emailing. We’re working hard, or our team’s working hard, but at the end of the day we’ve got nothing to show for it. We haven’t produced that output. So for you it might be you’re a fashion designer. Are you actually writing designs, are you designing dresses?
For someone else in the audience, it might be that you want to become the best YouTube star of all time. Are you producing a video each day? Are you getting to that output? If you’re in a company, it might be you have to call these 10 people, are you actually calling those 10 people to make sure that you’re increasing those sales? It’s really about getting to that output, and avoiding the throughput traps.
But, in our digitally distracted era, it’s very easy for us, how many of you when you woke up this morning touched your device within five minutes? Yeah, a lot of it’s our phone, right? That’s okay, I do it, that’s okay. But what happens is we go I’ll just answer this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, and then we get sucked into the throughput trap.
So the easiest way to avoid the throughput trap is to do the suggestion I’m going to give you, which is crazy, it’s the number one highlighted passage of my book, Digital Leader. And the beautiful thing about people that do read digitally, the 10% that read digitally, you can actually see what they highlight. So as an author, you should be researching that to figure out what are they finding of interest. And the reason it was surprising it was by far the number one highlighted passage is that this isn’t anything that I came up with, it’s been around for hundreds of years.
The number one killer of throughput is to actually write down the two pieces of output that you need to do that day. So first thing in the morning, a lot of people do it at night, you write down those two pieces of output that you need to get done, and you hyperfocus on those two before you fall into the fire drills, that’s what we have this image up here behind me, it’s about falling into those fire drills, just putting out fire after fire. And this is easier said than done. I’ve been doing this now for about seven years, and I’ll even tell my team, I go here, we have huddles where we have to say, hey, here’s my output, how’d you do yesterday, it takes about three minutes.
So here’s my two pieces of output. It’ll take me 30 minutes to do these. And then what happens? I get in the fire drills, and it takes me 30 minutes to do the two most important things, and the end of the day I put my head on my pillow, I’m exhausted, didn’t get either of them done. So it’s really about practicing that habit on a day to day basis. How little does throughput matter?
So, I was head of marketing at Travelzoo, it was the top performing stock on the NASDAQ when I was there, part of my job was to interface with Wall Street and also the press. So like you, on average, the average amount of emails you get in this room is 1200 emails a week. How many of you get more than that? Yeah, figured this audience, about 20% get more than that.
1200 emails a week. So if you go on vacation, what happens? You either take your device and go, I got to stay up on my email, or you come back and you’ve got 1200 emails you have to go through. So I decided to try to change the game, and my out of office said, when someone sent me an email, thanks for your email. The server’s temporarily full. Please resend your email on October 1st. That’s when I was coming back from vacation.
Now I wasn’t lying, I didn’t say the email server, I said the server, so that’s me, the server. So sure enough I get back, 1247 emails. I delete all of them. My friend goes why didn’t you just archive them? I go I’m not that smart, remember? It took three knocks before I said let’s do the animation studio. And I was freaking out for two days that I was going to get fired, something bad was going to happen, but nothing bad happened. How many people took the time to resend out of 1247 emails, how many took the time to resend the email? 10, close, eight. That is how little throughput matters. It’s all about the output.
We talked about this earlier. Every 20 minutes, stand up, I didn’t mention this during the Superman pose, every 20 minutes, we work best in 20 minute batches. Test is out for yourself, some of you guys will be 25, some of you will be 30, but most of us 20 minutes, take at least that one to two minute break. Usually stand up physically. Actually research shows from Harvard it’ll increase your decision capability if you exercise during the day, and that little piece of exercise will actually increase your decision capability to not only do them faster, but also make better decisions.
So every 20 minutes, do that. If you want to save your eyesight, look 20 feet, at least 20 feet in the distance at a fixed object for 20 seconds. 20 feet in the distance, fixed object like a tree, a sign, for 20 seconds. That will help save your eyesight over time. So you’re accomplishing a lot when you do that. So you stand up, motion creates emotion, emotion creates energy, increases your decision, increases your productivity.
How many of you guys have heard of the Coolest Cooler? It’s the number one Kickstarter campaign of all time. But it failed originally. They originally launched, wanted to raise $100,000 on Kickstarter, they only raised $90,000. For all of you that have tried a Kickstarter campaign, you don’t reach your goal, you get zero. Even though you raised 90,000, you get nothing, ’cause they didn’t reach their goal.
But instead of giving up, they understand it’s about failing fast, failing forward, failing better, and a key point on that, a lot of people don’t dig into this, people say failure, failure, failure, but they don’t really get into the specifics on it. So practice, you’ve heard practice makes perfect. That’s not true. Evaluated practice makes perfect. Failure is worthless unless you evaluate it, so it’s evaluated failure, it’s failing fast, failing forward, failing better.
I’m going to play this video. This video’s not going to help you except for giving you 90 seconds to think about it. Try to think what did they do that was simple, getting back to the first habit, to change the game from only raising $90,000, failing, to then raising $14 million, and becoming one of the top Kickstarter campaigns of all time. Quick hint, they didn’t change the product, and they didn’t change much of the video. So this video doesn’t really help you, it just gives you 90 seconds to think about what’s the one thing that they did different.
– That’s the sound of a cooler coming down off the shelf. It’s the sound of eminent fun. So why haven’t cooler designs changed in almost 50 years? Boring coolers are boring, break easily, and are a pain to get to and from your destination. I wanted a cooler that was really well built, yet had so much fun built into it that I would look for excuses to get outside and enjoy it. So, I created the Coolest. The Coolest is a complete redesign of what a cooler can be.
First, you’ve got this 18 volt rechargeable blender. You don’t realize the number of places you could really go for a blended cocktail or smoothy until you’ve got a blender built right into the lid. You’re already carrying around a cooler full of ice and tasty beverages, why not blend them up and become a summer time hero anytime, anywhere. And what’s a party without music?
The Coolest comes with a removable Bluetooth speaker that connects to any smartphone to wirelessly stream music from up to 30 feet away. It’s amazing where speaker technology has come in the last few years. You can skip songs and adjust the volume right from your phone, and this little box can really put out some sound. And since you’ve got that 18 volt battery for the blender, why not get the most out of it. Maybe your camera battery is low, or maybe you have an iPhone and want to use it after two in the afternoon.
Recharge your gear wherever you are with this waterproof USB charger. The party doesn’t stop just because the sun goes down, and you shouldn’t have to freeze your fingers searching endlessly for your favorite drink. The Coolest has waterproof LED lights embedded in the lid so you can easily find what you’re looking for with the push of a button. One of the biggest hassles of outdoor fun is hauling your gear back–
– Alright, we’ll stop it right there. And now you’re thinking man, you’re going to go what’d that guy talk about? A week from now you’re going to go I have no idea, but he gave me this awesome cooler, and I read three books on the flight home, it was awesome. Anyone take a guess at what they did different?
(audience member speaking indistinctly)
Ah, that’s a good, they took customer feedback and then put it into one package, they like reached out and said why did this fail. That’s good, I haven’t heard that one before. They didn’t do that. But I like that.
(audience member speaking inaudibly)
Okay, different words, different sentiments on how they repackaged it and set it out there. Actually, all they did was they originally launched this in the winter months, and they changed it, launched it in the summer. So it’s really about thinking back to that first tenet about simplification, getting out of your own way in some aspects in many cases.
The other thing is, when we talk about failure, we understand that sometimes that can be a benefit. Like, we got to embrace it, and walk into it. And that’s what happened with the Red Cross. So the Red Cross decided to open up all their social media accounts to anyone that volunteered at the organization, because they figured out that hey, we can’t respond fast enough. We just have PR do it, we can’t help as many people. And so they didn’t want to do this, ’cause they feared failure, they were going oh man, it’s going to be terrible when someone posts the wrong thing, but we’ve got to do it ’cause we’re not helping enough people, we’re not responding fast enough.
So they opened it up, and sure enough within the first week this girl thought she was posting this to her private account, but she accidentally blasted this to the global account. And she put “Ryan found two more four bottle packs “of Dogfish Head’s Midas Touch beer. “When we drink we do it right.” Hashtag gettngslizzered.
(audience laughing)
But because it was open to the whole organization, within four minutes someone in California at the IT department said “We’ve deleted the rogue tweet, “but rest assured the Red Cross is sober, “and we’ve confiscated the keys.” The young lady wasn’t fired because that week they had a record amount of donations that came in because of all the free PR that they were getting. Also, the beer company that’s mentioned, they were listening for their name, and they said hey, instead of drinking a pint of our beer, why don’t you donate a pint of blood or donate some money to the Red Cross. And when we look at that, that’s really just all about being flawsome.
(audience laughing)
People don’t love us because we’re perfect, people love us because of our flaws, and that we own up to them, and if we do make a mistake we say, sorry, made a mistake, here’s what I’m going to do to fix it, and then I’m going to follow through and fix it. And so that’s what being flawsome is all about. So the next time you get those digital lemons make that digital lemonade.
You know, be as flawsome as you can be when you make those mistakes. It’ll actually turn into a big asset. M is for map. We don’t know, everything is changing so fast, so there’s no more five, 10 year plans, it’s just here’s my firm destination, and I’m going to be not going linear. I’m going to be flexible, my path, ’cause I don’t know the hurdles that are going to be in my way.
Now most of us wake up with the mindset of please don’t anything bad happen to me today. Please make it be easy. But have you ever had a day like that? No. So it’s better to wake up and go I don’t know the challenges I’m going to face, but I’m looking forward to ’em, ’cause guess what? It’s going to keep the competition out. It’s going to keep the competition out, they’re going to stop when that hurdle gets in there, but not you.
That’s why you guys are here late in the afternoon, is it’s not going to keep you out. You’re going to be, that’s for everyone else, it’s going to stop them, but not you. How many of you buy crackers online? Yeah, not many of us buy crackers online. So it couldn’t have been easy for Wheat Thins to say, okay social mobile, that’s cool, that’s for Nike, that’s for Ford. We sell crackers. But instead they go, let’s go see if anyone talks about our crackers online. It turns out a lot of people talk about crackers online, which is in itself kind of sad. (audience laughing) But the beautiful thing is we can surprise and delight our customers.
– This one’s hilarious. “AAAHHHH Im outta wheat thins…”Mi life is officially over!” Kind of dramatic. Tabitha.
– Yes.
– Okay, do you recall tweeting “AAAHHHH, Im outta wheat thins… “Mi life is officially over!”
– Yeah.
– We got ahold of that. We just want you to be sure that you’re aware that we have plenty of Wheat Thins. And that’s for you, that’s just a gift.
– That is a lot of Wheat Thins, oh my gosh.
– [Man] Everybody in the van, let’s go.
In the truck. You take care, alright? Come on boys, who’s next?
(audience laughing)
– Make sure you’re pioneering, right? Get pushback. If you’re not getting pushback, you’re probably not pioneering enough, so pushback’s good, it’s a reminder that you’re actually pioneering.
(audience applauding)
Oh, thanks, thank you. Thank you very much.
(audience applauding)
(audience clapping rhythmically)
Alright, free drinks for everybody. Now, which was louder? The second one, the second one. Teamwork makes the dreamwork, right? So we’ve got to surround ourselves with right people, both offline and also online. And the easiest way for us to do that is what’s called posting it forward. You heard about paying it forward, but posting it forward is actually taking the time, take three minutes a day, just schedule it out, three minutes a day to shine the light on somebody else.
So on Twitter, it’s like hashtag FF, Follow Friday, here’s the three people you need to follow. On LinkedIn, if that’s your tool of choice, you say hey, these are three people I respect in this industry, and you list their names. It’s about shining the light on others, it’s networking before you actually need the actual network.
And so that’s all you need to do, three minutes a day. Sometimes it’ll go into 30 minutes, but that’s how you post it forward. Before I wrap things up, I’m going to wrap it up with a video, but again, motion creates emotion, emotion creates energy. If you guys will, please stand up one more time. I want you to turn to the person, face each other, pair up into twos, if you got two and one, that’s okay, you have an odd number, pair off. The person that’s facing like this, so you’re back’s to this wall just like I am, I want you to smile. Give us your best Crest smile. The person like this, don’t smile. Do not smile. Look them in the eye and do not smile.
(audience talking and laughing)
How many of you were not, how many of you were able to not smile that were suppose to not smile? Yeah, there’s only about five percent of you. Those are the people who don’t talk to people on airplanes, that’s okay.
(audience laughing)
That’s what this is all about. That’s why you do it every day. It’s all about those relations, it’s just about trying to figure out how do you get the other person on the other edge of the screen, or also more importantly the person in person to smile, and the easiest way to do that is to you actually smile yourself. So, well, thanks for the standing ovation, that’s awesome, I really appreciate it.
(audience applauding)
But I’m going to end real quick just with this video about your digital stamp, that how powerful they are, and how you can influence one to a million people. If you influence one, fantastic, that’s great. It doesn’t matter how many, it’s just these digital stamps can provide that influence. But I want to thank everyone for coming out today. I’ll see you hopefully this afternoon, take any questions in the hallway after this is concluded, but thank you so much.
– [Narrator] My digital stamp.
What will be your ultimate digital legacy, your ultimate stamp on life?
